Supposed to Be Mine

We went out for Valentine's Day last night, the first Valentine's Day in as long as I can remember upon which I've done anything conventionally romantic.

It wasn't my idea. 

I suffer from congenital perversity, a kind of virulent allergy to supposed-tos.  I like to run against the grain. This dates from babyhood, and made me a particularly endearing toddler.  )The number of preschools I was kicked out of is larger than the number of children my parents had, which does not strike me as an accident.)

But my husband surprised me on this one, engaging a babysitter and making a dinner reservation before I had even clocked the holiday on the horizon.  And who am I to interfere when a man wants to take me out for dinner?  And so we went.  The restaurant was full of couples in red.  There was an overpriced prix fixe menu, attentive servers, and much flashing of wedding rings.  I downed two cocktails and everything was delicious.

Swimming with the horde, doing what comes easy, taking the road more traveled by: It isn't always so bad.  It's only well past preschool that I've begun to recognize perversity for the taskmistress she is, to acknowledge that fear of allowing others to shape your choices allows -not to put too fine a point on it- others to shape your choices.

I wore red, too.  And a diamond ring.

Throw Wide the Gates

Having a child is basically like lying down in front of the universe and screaming "come screw me."

It's an invocation of chaos, a tempting of fortune.  You're shouting the name of the Scottish play in a crowded theater; you're taking down the garlands of garlic over your door; you're opening the window wide.  Sometime will go wrong.  Something always goes wrong.  You're asking for it. 

On the surface of it, this is unwise.  We are none of us at our most graceful when faced with adversity, and adversity is what children bring to the table in one form or another: they stink, they howl, they steal away your sleep and your sanity.  And that's before they get to middle school.

On the other hand, capitulating to your fate -be it ever so poopy- is curiously freeing.  You have no control- but you never did have, really, and at least, when you have kids, you get to learn this lesson at the hands of something genetically programmed to make you think it's cute.



Bring it, kiddo. 

Visitation Street: Ivy Pochoda

"Jonathan stands up and breaths deeply.  The whine in his ears is now in sync with the wheeze in his chest.  His whole body sounds like a kids' recorder concert."

c. 40% on kindle.  Murder suspect running; the recorder as pejorative simile

O sleep

So baby has had a run of excellent sleep, and I'm a wreck. 

You'd think, if you were a sane and rational human being, that it would be the other way around: baby up and about, mama prostrate; baby snoozing, mama restored.

If you are a sane and rational human being, I am impressed.

To be honest, the kid's always been a pretty sturdy sleeper as babies go, with none of the night-day confusion so terrifyingly outlined in books.  And now, at twelve weeks, he's slept a full adult quota -from 8PM to 6AM or 7AM straight- for ten out of the past eleven nights.

I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Is it so strange, that a run of smooth sailing strikes terror into the hearts of those of us with a nose for disaster? When the plane ride is silken I fear turbulence; when the notes come smoothly I wait for the hitch.

Good times- the grin before the fist in the gut.

Which shouldn't, now that I think about it, prevent me from grinning back.  O sleep!

Divorce: $189

It's a small yellow sign, thrust into the dirt of the median.  You drive across the train tracks right before you see it, rumble over the ties, under the highway feeder and past the police horses grazing in its shadow.  It's a nowhere stretch of road, limned by windowless buildings that warehouses or abbatoires or dance studios, and how would you know the difference?  In their company, the little yellow sign seems almost homey, a letter from a world in which humans, even if they fight, nevertheless breathe and drool and listen to their hearts.

People in this pass-through stretch of the world are snug in their cars or homeless.  Occasionally a policeman emerges from his vehicle to tend to the horses, bring them out from under the shadow of the overpass and parade them through the projects.  The littlest boys stop and stare; the older ones pretend not to notice.  Which is something: pretending not to see those hooves, those teeth.  

Divorce: so cheap!  Weddings are inching ever closer to $30,000, but divorce will set you back little more than a cable bill.   In terms of bang for your buck, it's tough to think of something else that will change your life so quickly, so effectively, at so little cost.  Your knots unknotted: your solitude secured; your children shuffled from hand to hand.


It's not an accident, this sign.  $189 and you're alone.  $0, and you're almost there.

One Sunny Day

It's bright and warm today, as if the the world might possibly begin to think about Spring. 

This is false advertising.  I happen to know, thanks to the casual miracle of weather forecasting, that this will be the only sunny day in a clutch of cold and cloudy ones, the one yolk in the carton.  I'm enjoying it, if enjoyment means sitting around wallowing in guilt over insufficiently enjoying the eminently, if transiently, enjoyable.   


Failing to enjoy because I think I should be enjoying more: This is among the least useful of my neuroses, one step below my membership in the clean plate club but a rung or two higher than my nagging sense that I should be accruing more frequent flier miles.  And faster.  Why am I not Sky Priority?  What does is say about me that my travel habits, while adequate to my work-life needs, relegate me to the interminable purgatory of Sky I'll-Get-to-You-Later?

All this rattling around in the bright.

I Am Here

Some shockingly cold version of Atlanta, GA.  In a basement.