Safe

A furtive call to my aunt, made from behind a rack of sweaters at a clothing store past 8 p.m., regarding the subject of some worryingly tough cubes of beef in a Boeuf Bourguignon, reminded me of something when I got home and was immensely gratified to find the beef, when tested again, fall apart beneath a fork.

At least twenty-five years ago, probably twenty-seven or twenty-eight, I decided one afternoon to ride my bike to the penny candy store a mile or so from my house. This store was a familiar destination. Along with my grandparents' house, two miles up the street in the other direction, it was one of the first places we were allowed to ride our bikes alone. It was a little unusual that I was by myself, and I can't remember why. Almost always, Alison was with me, or a cousin, or a friend, but I must have really wanted some candy because I'd set out solo. It must have been summer or after school in the fall or late spring, because it was warm, although not sunny, I do remember, and I'd been home alone before deciding to go for the bike ride because there was nobody home at my house when I got there, to the store.

Mostly what I remember about this part of the story is the sensation I had, the intuition or sixth sense, I guess you call it, that something was wrong. From pretty early on in the ride I'd had a feeling that someone was watching or following me. A car had slowed, then sped up, then appeared again as I rode past at a point it should have left far in the distance. This could well have had nothing to do with me. It is likely that this had nothing to do with me. But I was eleven or twelve and had a very active imagination and had read all of the YA books about kidnapping and I did, legitimately, have a funny, skin-crawling, goosebumpy kind of a feeling for most of the ride and then still, once I'd reached my destination. Instead of going into the candy store I went to the payphone--yes, payphone--and dialed my father's office. He was not there. I know my mother must have been occupied doing something out-of-the-ordinary, a doctor's appointment? a haircut? or I would have called her at school. These were the days before cell phones. When someone wasn't there, they weren't there.

So I called my uncle. He was at work; it was the middle of the day. He owns his own business, so it wasn't quite the same thing as calling an employer and asking for him, but it was a workday, the middle of a workday, and I didn't think twice. I am wondering now if I was a little bit older, as I don't think my grandfather, who died when I was thirteen, was alive; I distinctly remember calling my uncle.

And more than the calling, I remember he came. Ten minutes could not have passed, and he pulled up in front of the bench I was sitting nervously on in the parking lot. And he drove me and my bike back home and he waited until I was inside with the door locked, and he went back to work. And what strikes me about this memory now, which my uncle or parents probably don't even recall, is the absolute certainty with which I called my uncle, knowing that if I told him I was scared, told him I was pretty much anywhere, in need of pretty much anything, he would be there as fast as he could. And what struck me tonight, when I got home and checked the beef and called my aunt to tell her it had actually all worked out fine, was how many adults in my life were there for me like this growing up, how surrounded I was by this certainty that if I needed help, it would arrive, quickly, unquestioningly, lovingly, and from one of a dozen people who were part of my everyday life.

Of the many reasons I am lucky, or fortunate is perhaps a more appropriate word, this is one of the greatest, most significant, most lasting. I have never, not for one single day, one hour, one moment of my life, not felt a part of a connected group of people who would do anything for me, and did, who--still, when the phone rings in their home, at any hour, after any period of time--hear my voice and respond, automatically, with gladness: Amy! What can I do for you?

If I do anything for these two girls of mine, for whom I would do anything, it is to make them feel safe, Safe, like this. Thanks to the people who gave me this gift, thanks to my uncle with my bike in the back of his truck in the middle of a workday twenty-five odd years ago, I am trying as hard as I can.

Let There Be Light

Some day, in the far off future, I would like Lily and Annika to know, as Lily might not remember and Annika most certainly won't, that once on a December evening at their grandparents' house, they were put to sleep by candlelight, walked a path of light to reach a room where lights twinkled in the windows and surrounded them, lit their faces as they slept, smiling.

Not real candlelight, of course, but earlier in the day Lily and my mother had found some small real-looking, battery-operated votive candles somewhere in the house, and Lily was taken with them. During the day she had played with them, and at some point, when I was not paying attention, had lined the back staircase with them, bringing more up to the bedroom where we've been sleeping, my childhood room. Then, she'd come back downstairs again, to play with something else, and forgot about the little votives she'd set about. But my mother had not.

When I went up to ready the room before bedtime, I rounded the corner to see that my mother had been there before me. She'd moved some of the lights so they still lined the stairs but had also set some in the hallway to the bedroom, lining the pathway. In the room itself, which was dark, she'd set small clusters in the window sills and by the walls, so the entire walk from the downstairs to the bedroom was lit with what appeared to be actual votive candles. It was lovely; it was magical.

Lily is quite taken with magic these days. She asked for, and received, a magic set for her birthday, and has been performing her own creative acts of magic, making herself disappear, under the carpet, for example. She has also become keen on what she sees as acts of magic in the world around her: snow, for example, a line of geese in flight, her ability to make Annika laugh and laugh. I didn't want to spoil this one.

I brought Annika up first, told Lily one more story. When we entered the room and Annika saw the lights, her little mouth pursed into an "O," and she turned in my arms to see my face. "Oh, oh!" she said, and when I placed her in her crib she stood up and walked its perimeter, noting all of the lights in the room. And then I came back down for Lily. Instead of walking her up as I typically would, I told her to go up by herself on the back stairs. I heard her sleeper-covered feet padding on the stairs, stopping at the landing, picking up speed in the hallway.

I walked around the other way, stopped at the top of the stairs where she stood in the doorway, her back to me. Annika was standing in the crib, smiling, pointing at the lights in the window. Lily turned to me, then, not technically in my arms, and her eyes were huge.

"It's like--" she started.

"I know," I said. She didn't have to say it.

Remember. Know.

Bigotry, Plain and Simple

I keep thinking about Frank Rich's column in today's New York Times about Obama's selection of Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his inauguration this January. Reading it was one of those uncanny experiences when I found myself thinking: Yes, yes. Exactly. This is exactly how I feel.

I have heard a few people I respect and some I do not claim that they are "okay" with Obama's choice of Warren to be the most significant religious figure at his swearing-in ceremony. The general sentiment among these people, Obama supporters all, is that the choice is perhaps disappointing but indicative of Obama's oft-stated belief in inclusivity, in bringing many different and differing points of view to the table.

Well, I agree with Rich: This is "too cute by half" as explanations go in terms of the statement this choice makes to the country, the world at large, in a year that has seen some real setbacks for gay Americans, Prop 8 in particular. Warren has compared homosexuality to pedophilia and incest. Until very recently his website made it quite clear that homosexuals were not allowed in his church. Now as a half Jew and a woman and a pro-choice advocate and a huge proponent of stem cell research, I am clearly not Warren's target audience. To paraphrase (nonsensically loosely) from that Tom Cruise sports agent movie, he'd have me burning in hell at "half-Jew." I'm also not naive about the evangelical movement and its millions of homophobic adherents. But pedophilia? Incest? Seriously? This is okay to utter out loud? This gets you invited to the White House? Have other presidents chosen religious leaders to deliver their invocations who espouse bigotry in many--more--forms? Sure. Of course. But I know I am not alone when I say I expected more from Obama. Much, much more.

Obama did not come down on the side of gay marriage when he was running for president. It would probably (although not certainly) have meant the loss of the election. I got this, Democrats got this, gay and straight Americans who would have rather lived in cardboard boxes in Canada than under a McCain/Palin administration and at least four more years of failed Bush policies got this. But Obama was elected. He won. By a lot. And he would not have been unelected if he had chosen a more open-minded, tolerant, accepting, positive role model for Christian Americans to stand up with him and pray for our country's future. There are plenty of options that would not have involved a tacit endorsement of the worst kind of hate-mongering, would not have involved sending what will be taken as a wink by people who really deserve a smack in the face.

I don't really care what Obama thinks of Warren and his weird, cult-like bands of purpose-driven followers in his private life. I am glad that Warren apparently does much to fight poverty and "believes in" global warming, I guess, although the children in my daughter's preschool class understand the science well enough to explain it to an adult. I am not so glad that the millions of children in his church are being taught that homosexuality contradicts, and therefore disproves, Darwin's theory of evolution. I am glad that Obama believes everyone deserves a "voice at the table." I believe this too. I believe the KKK has the right to exist under our Constitution. But I am not inviting a Klansman to dinner.

This was not the right time for Obama to make this gesture. It is the right time for him to do what we elected him to do, what I actually--surprising myself sometimes how much--believe he can do: Change the world. But this requires action, not acquiescence. Words and gestures are powerful, actions more so. And one transgendered marching band does not cancel out a viewpoint that in my humble opinion really doesn't need any more airtime.

Women's Hands

I actually forgot I was supposed to be back yesterday. Remembered today and put it off until now; it's amazing how rusty I feel. I will ease back in.

As much as I love holidays, and family celebrations, and Christmas at my parents' house in particular, having a five- and a one-year-old makes the occasion a little more, should we say, chaotic. More magical. Less restful. My mother, who somehow manages to be the primary caretaker for, well, everybody, when we are under her roof, has been sick--laid out in bed, barely able to sit up--for two full days, adding to the sense of chaos.

This afternoon, Lily, my father and I drove to my grandmother's house, two miles up the street, to pick her up and bring her over here to spend the rest of the day with us. My mother has been preparing my grandmother's meals for some time now, filling her freezer with homemade meals and helping her fix a tray twice a day, or more. We had brought her breakfast, and my aunt had made shrimp stew for her for lunch while visiting, but she was to have dinner here, which made all of us happy, I think. There is something lonely about the meal tray, even when the meal in question is eaten with company.

Anyway, the day made me realize a number of things, perhaps most of all how mothering, when done well, is a lifetime job. Over the past week-and-a-half, my mother has cared for her own mother daily, including accompanying her to regular doctor's visits, driven to another state to make it possible for me to host two special birthday gatherings for Lily, one of which she designed on her own, created our immediate family's holiday celebration pretty much singlehandedly, invited seven children to a gingerbread house-making party for which she had baked the cookies herself, painted and sent out holiday cards to at least a hundred friends and family members, and had thirty relatives over for a full Swedish smorgasbord on Christmas Day itself. This while working, making art, sharing the care of my two children, and keeping up with her own schedule of appointments and commitments.

My mother's mother is almost ninety-three, I am almost forty, my children are five and one; I don't really see an end in sight for all this mothering. I wonder now, as my perspective has shifted from that of sister, granddaughter, daughter to a more complicated view from my spot in this line of complicated women, how, in what ways, the burdens and pleasures of her role as relates to us have shaped her.

I have always found women awe-inspiring and infinitely powerful. I remember as a small girl noticing my grandmother's hands: sun worn, leathery, even, with long, gnarled, beautiful fingers. My grandmother herself does not have a powerful presence. She is quiet and self-effacing in a crowd, almost always. But her capabilities shone through her hands, in her own way, and even now, her hands can do: Do what they need to, when they need to, even as the rest of her seems more frail, sometimes, when I choose to notice. This morning, when we brought her breakfast, she arranged the food on her tray with her pills and a glass of water. She picked up the tray, balanced it, and started to walk toward her room, where she eats many meals now, at her comfortable chair, surrounded by photographs and books. "Let me take that," I said, reaching for the thin tray. She looked at me, eyes steady.

"You can take the glass of water," she allowed. And so I did.

And for now, that was all.

Holiday Sentiments Et Al

It is amazing how much I do not want to be writing right now. The problem with writing 365 days a year is that a person needs a break, a sanctioned break, from ANYTHING, and although I have essentially taken one over the past few days in that I have written a line or two at most, I have been thinking about writing, or rather not writing, and feeling anxious about the blog, in a way that is threatening to impinge on my holiday cheer. So, I hope my loyal readers won't abandon me, but I have made an executive decision (easy, when there is only one of you), that I am going to take a blog break until December 26th, the day after Christmas. This way, I can focus on introducing Lily and Annika to several feet of untouched snow, eating chocolate in front of the fireplace, wrapping presents, and reading as many books as I can pack into the next few days without the thought hanging over me that there is something else I am meant to be doing. Part of me wants to--now that I am writing (see! it works! writing begets writing!)--erase this post and write about parties. I am fascinated by why and how we commemorate signposts in our lives. Or snow. How being here, now, in this white, white world is so evocative to me of my childhood winters and so alien to my winters of today. But I am giving myself a few days off as a gift. So when I return, on Friday, I will be invigorated and excited to write. In spite of the task I have set for myself, it should not feel like a chore. Work, yes. A chore, no.

Happiest holidays full of warmth and light and laughter to anyone happening upon this. Please come back on Friday.

Lame, Again

Post to come: Why Parties?

On Pork and Parenthood

Blog called on account of need to search internet for succulent ham glaze. Back tomorrow, no holds barred. Or at least back tomorrow. I don't know what I meant with the whole "no holds barred" thing. Feeling punchy, I guess.

Feel like I should also mention that five years ago I had been a mother for a not much more than an hour. It took a little longer for it sink in.

Five Years Ago

Five years ago from right about now, meaning this very minute, I went into labor with Lily. I was sitting with Nicole on the floor in our old apartment on the second floor, which was filled with unpacked boxes. The bed was not made; the mattress and boxspring weren't on the frame. All of a sudden I felt a little funny. I wasn't in pain, exactly; something just felt different. And then the feeling went away. A little while later, it came back. "Nicole?" I said.

About sixteen hours later she was half-carrying me down the stairs because I could barely walk, and the elevator wouldn't come. Late that evening, Lily was born. When I think about this now--the fact that I left home without a baby, just me, and returned five days later forever the mother of Lily--it is hard, impossible, to fathom.

We talk about becoming a parent like this: as a transformation, a sudden entry into an unknown universe. The gist of it is that it is impossible to understand something so vast and complex before it becomes a reality. But tonight I found myself thinking: Life is like this. I really have no idea what could happen tomorrow, and try as I might to foresee the scenarios, I cannot know what will happen or how I will face it when it does. I am thinking now that becoming a parent is really just a metaphor for life. We step out into an abyss, close our eyes in anticipation, and are.

The Dance

Annika has taken to dancing. She dances when Lily dances, when music is played, when you say the word "dancing" in an excited, sing-songy voice. She stands up in her high chair and sways side-to-side, looking altogether pleased with herself. This, in spite of the fact that much of the rest of the world seems to be speaking in grim, hushed voices, that I can't remember the last time I danced, really danced--not just wiggled around a little with the girls--which is a shame, now that I think of it.

And it reminds me of how I always feel when I see a ballet. When I watch ballet dancers perform, it is as though my body has a memory. I feel it in my muscles and joints, in my bones: the way it felt to move like that, to be in a place where moving like that was the entire world in a movement, where nothing outside a small room with barres on three sides, a mirror on the fourth, existed.

It's funny; I can remember one specific moment from one specific class over thirty years ago. I was raised on half-toe, my left leg in passe, and the pose was perfect. It felt different than it ever had, and I held it, held it after the music had ended, after the other girls had finished the subsequent motions and relaxed, as they watched me, brows furrowed, and our teacher watched me, knowing smile, knowing, I think, what was happening, letting me stand there, not frozen but by choice suspended in this perfect place, until finally--and not because my leg gave out, or I lost the pose--I decided it was time to let it go.

It is said that a person never forgets how to ride a bike. I maintain that you never forget those moments, when your body does exactly what you want it to, the way you want it to, when it is an instrument, a vehicle. Dancing, in general, is about joy, not precision or perfection. But there is joy in the art of dance, the artistry of dance. My most joyful memories of ballet are of motion, constant motion, learned so as to be completely automatic, allowing for the expression in the movement, the suspension of deliberate thought, the body over the mind, as it were.

I'm not sure how this came from Annika loving to dance, except that when Annika dances, it is with and from a place of joy, and I hope that she never loses that manifest joy.

Everything Best

Abbreviated post due to lingering head cold IN SPITE OF copious amounts of cold medicine.

But do want to say that tonight, due to tickets that were a much anticipated, pre-purchased gift, Lily and I went to the Nutcracker at Lincoln Center, and for two hours I actually forgot about how my head feels like it is filled with cement. When we walked out into a magical snowy night, I asked Lily, "So, what did you like best? Mother Ginger and the Polichinelles?"

"Yes," she said, through catching snowflakes on her tongue. "Actually, no, Mama. That's not what I liked best."

"What was it?" I asked, more curious now than I'd been.

"Everything. I liked everything about it best. And the snow."

More tea. More meds. Sleep.

Head Cold

Blog called on account of atrocious head cold. Back tomorrow, armed with massive quantities of Sudafed.

Why I Can

Today I stood over an outdated stove in an unrenovated kitchen, stirring a big pot with a wooden spoon. Lily sat at the kitchen table, drawing with her colored pencils. Because there was a refrigerator drawer full of apples that needed to be used, but really because this is one of the secret things I do to relax, I had decided to can.

Canning is a weird little hobby of mine that fell out of nearly universal favor fifty years ago, although it has its mad modern adherents, to be sure. Some people still can because it is thrifty, and although I am thrifty, this is not why I can. Some people can because it is crafty and one of the original home arts. These people enjoy Martha Stewart and make little cloth tops for their finished jars. Although I have been known to do labels, and admire Martha as a talented freak of nature, this is not why I can. To tell you the truth, I'm not sure why I ever started doing this, but it must have something to do with the fact that my mother did, and my grandmother and my great-grandmother, although they all made clothes for their children too, with a sewing machine. The last time I tried to use a sewing machine, which was in the 1980s, I somehow managed to cut myself. I have never, needless to say, made clothes for my children.

The canning began when we acquired our little house in Connecticut. I guess I was looking for something to do. I had been spending my weekends in New York, and it was so quiet and still, and although I love to read and garden and cook, I am a night owl, and I had some time on my hands. As is typical of me, I plunged in without research or preparation. I bought some jars and started with my own fruit: tomatoes and rhubarb. The jars piled up, and that year, along with a number of varieties of chutneys and glistening jewel-toned marmalades, I had holiday gifts. My grandmother was especially appreciative.

Whenever I mentioned to a friend that I had made jam, or apple butter--today's project--or jalapeno jelly, I was always met with the same puzzled expression. Several people asked me if I had ever tried a particular brand of canned product, their personal favorite, as if somehow I'd arrived in the twenty-first century with no knowledge of gourmet grocery stores. I sort of stopped mentioning it, and canning became, as I said before, my own secret weird little hobby, reserved for late nights alone in the country, while my husband slept and the dogs lay at my feet, hoping for drips from the spoon.

Today, as I stirred, and the house filled with the smells of the apples cooking down with cider vinegar and cinnamon and allspice, and the mixture spattered on the stovetop around the pot and Lily hummed at the table as she drew, I found myself thinking about how satisfying I always find it to make something, to use something wisely and well, to begin a project, see it through, and set it resoundingly down on the counter in neat old-fashioned Ball jars. Done, and done. Canning is particularly gratifying because canned goods keep. What you make is shared. And the technique, unlike mastery of the sewing machine, apparently, is learned through osmosis, while sitting in a warm kitchen while someone you love wields an old wooden spoon.

Mother

For a variety of reasons I have been thinking about endings lately, about the final stages of things. I like to think of my life as an enterprise full of second and even third or more chances, but sometimes there is no second chance. Sometimes stages are finite. Childhood is finite.

This morning I was relaying the story of Friday's visit to the pediatrician with both girls to my mother. As is so often true when I am talking to my mother, because she is my mother, and by definition (mine) is required to tolerate me,a note of complaint threaded my story, the underlying message being that the excursion, involving as it had the drawing of blood, the eating of stickers, the incessant managing of behavior, had left me spent.

My mother, a wise but occasionally cryptic storyteller herself, said, when I had finished, "You know, a very close friend once said something I think about often." I waited. Trying to hurry the message out of her generally proves fruitless. "She said that when her mother, to whom she was exceptionally close but whose primary caretaker she had become, died, she had expected to feel a sense of relief along with her grief." I waited again. "But she did not."

The silence stretched. Finally, I said, "So what did she feel?" I know my mother's friend, and knew her amazing mother, but I also have some sense of how complicated it can be to be a caretaker in this fashion, responsible for someone you love most of all whose mind is intact but whose body is increasingly frail.

"She felt, along with her grief, a tremendous gratitude that she had been the person to help her mother through this difficult stage of life. That has hard as it had been sometimes, she now realized how much the experience had shaped them both. She felt lucky to have been that person. The person." That was it, I could tell. We talked about other things for a few minutes, then she had to go, and I did, and we said good-bye, hung up the phones.

There is beauty, I think, actual beauty, in the experience of being needed, and in giving what is needed when you are needed, even when it feels excruciating. There is always enough of you left when you do it even if it doesn't feel like it in the moment itself. There is a reason I need my mother, most, when I really need. There is a lesson in this for me.

In Brief

Today, because I had not had one yesterday, Lily and I made me a birthday cake. We made exactly the kind of birthday cake I like, or rather one of the kinds of birthday cake I like, which is angelfood, with a beaten egg white frosting. Many people do not like this kind of cake, but I do, and so that is what we made. I gave Lily the box of food coloring, and she chose yellow for the frosting. Yellow is not what I would have chosen, and in fact I was surprised that she chose it, as it's not in her rotating cast of favorite colors, but yellow it was, so the cake is yellow. She sprinkled sugar crystals on it, and placed five candles on top, in a circle. "It looks like a flower, Mama," she said, and in fact, it sort of did. And then we went out into the cold, dreary day to do things like have blood drawn at the pediatrician's office and stand in the returns line at TJ Maxx.

When we came home, it was past dinnertime, basically bedtime, and I looked at my yellow, flower-like cake on the cake stand, and I looked at Lily, who had insisted on watching her blood flow into the vial to the doctor's shock, had patiently waited on line, and then on another line, and had busied herself typing love notes to me into my iphone, and I said, "What do you say we have that birthday cake for dinner?"

And so we lit the candles, and we sang happy birthday to me, one day late, and we each ate one fat wedge of cake, and then I ate another, and outside it was cold and dank, and inside, we had sugar sparkles on our sweaters and crumbs all over the table, and pale yellow icing on the lightest, fluffiest, most successful angelfood cake I have ever made. When we were done, Lily went in to the bathroom to brush her teeth, and I picked up the stubs of candles from the table and thought about how cake for breakfast wouldn't be such a terrible follow-up idea.

Twenty-nine Plus Ten

Hmm. About fourteen years ago--or exactly fourteen years ago--I was co-hosting a huge party in a loft on 20th Street in honor of my twenty-fifth birthday. My roommate and I had been listening to the Gin Blossoms all afternoon in anticipation (her album; I believe I've mentioned that when left to my own devices I listen only to music recorded before 1978), and we'd played the song "29" over and over again. I can't remember the lyrics all that well, but there was one line that stuck: "29 you'd think I'd know better, living like a kid."

I remember this line because I remember when I was listening to the song that I couldn't imagine being 29, not even close. It seemed truly impossible, so impossible that I melodramatically decided perhaps I was not destined to reach that ripe old age. The number sounded ridiculous. Twenty-nine-year-olds were not kids. They were full fledged adults. Or should be, I thought even then. Twenty-five meant it was okay to dance until 5 in the morning with everyone you knew surrounded by Christmas lights and a makeshift bar on your boss's desk in the loft space she'd let you borrow because although she was so old--pushing forty--she remembered twenty-five, maybe a little too well. Twenty-nine year olds wore suits and sneakers over stockings and read the paper on the subway. They went to bed on time, and met each other for dinner and a single, tasteful glass each of fairly-priced red wine.

Now, tonight, I am thirty-nine, and although it sounds much younger than it used to, and it feels like a relief to be on the safe side of forty still, it also feels like standing with one foot poised over a landmine. Not that I've been in that exact situation before, but now--in an unlikely turn of events--I can imagine that more easily than I used to be able to glimpse the far side of thirty. It's not that forty as an age to be seems old anymore. In fact, so many of my friends and loved ones are over forty now that the number should have lost all of its resonance. Some of the fifty-year-olds I know seem to be living like kids, to paraphrase the Gin Blossoms. But I didn't expect that at thirty-nine I'd still feel so in progress, if that makes any sense. I have this unpleasant sensation that I'm running out of time in the molding department, that by forty--or shortly thereafter--I'd better have a pretty good idea who I am.

Unfortunately for those who know me, I'm not one of those people who let birthdays--mine or anyone else's--pass unnoticed, unassessed. I want them to mean something, need them to reveal something or point me in a certain direction, and so far--although it's only been an hour--thirty-nine is holding her cards pretty close to the vest.

I guess we shall see.

In Anticipation

So tonight is Sadie's first "job." Lily and I are taking her to a place called Gilda's Club less than a mile from our apartment, where the three of us will meet and play with children whose parents are undergoing treatment for cancer. We have been forewarned that many of their parents are dying, and that some of the children are under enormous strain. We have also been told that this is typically one of the most rewarding places to go with a therapy dog, as the children are so immediately and obviously enamored of the dogs.

I was planning to write today's entry after we got home. But all morning I have been thinking about our visit, and wondering what it will be like, and I think, instead, I'd like to write now, about anticipation. There is so much focus, I feel, in our society on the actual experience. We talk earnestly about living in the moment. I myself try to remember this when I am with my children, or older members of my family, and whenever I feel guilty about not doing more to record the experiences I am having. Although the records can trigger memories later on, it is the experiences themselves that leave the imprint that shapes our selves. But it cannot be denied that the reflection of an experience, after the fact, is an integral component of the whole, and that the anticipation of it, beforehand, is essential, too.

In fact, sometimes I wonder how profoundly anticipation has colored many of the significant, big-ticket events of my life, let alone the daily or more routine ones. In a way, I have been waiting for this evening's visit for several years, since Lily first commented on how excited the severely disabled adults on our block were whenever we walked by with Sadie and Scout. There was the idea, the research, the contact made with the organization, the deferrals of the course itself, the course, the graduation, the scheduling, and now--at last--the visit. Will it be anticlimactic? I don't think so, somehow. Will it be different than I expect it to be in a hundred ways? Yes. This, I have found to be true.

Anticipation is a way of being prepared, a good way of being prepared--not as productive, perhaps, as organizing, or packing, or strategizing. But in anticipating we are assuming our role in an experience, and assuming the impact the experience will have on us. In anticipating, we are participating, before, as well as during, and presumably afterward as well.

Instead of waiting until 9 o'clock at night, when I will have returned home, put an exhausted Lily to bed, and had no time to process therapy dog in action, I write now, when I am in a heightened state of looking forward, the place of the hopeful unknown. Which, all in all, is a pretty good place to be.

A Sister Like Mine

This evening, I put the girls to bed at a little before 7:30, the usual time, and sat down at my computer to do a little work. After about ten minutes, I thought I heard whispering from behind their bedroom door. A few minutes later, I heard muffled laughter from Lily and delighted chirps from Annika, and I got up, walked to the door and pushed it open.

I peered in. There were pillows on the floor, and a few blankets, but I couldn't see if Lily was lying under them or was still up on the bed. The room was silent. I quietly closed the door and went back to my desk. The cycle started up again: first whispers and giggling, then actual laughter and some thumping and banging that led me to believe the trundle was being pulled out and jumped on. For some reason, although it was getting later, and I am the person who pays the price when they are overtired, I couldn't quite bring myself to be annoyed.

I got up again, tiptoed over to the door, and stuck my head in the room for the second time. The instant I did so, the room fell silent. I went back to my desk.

Although Lily and Annika have been playing together for a while now, by which I mean Annika follows Lily around and tries to be as involved as possible with whatever she's doing in an often destructive fashion, this was the first episode I had noted of organized rebellion. Somehow, although Annika is essentially preverbal, and I hadn't heard much talking even on Lily's part, a joint decision had been made that if I so much as peeped in the room, silence would ensue. How did Lily impart this strategy to Annika? Had she needed to?

Regardless, something about this dynamic, this episode, made me so happy and hopeful that I abandoned my newfound bedtime vigor and allowed them to fall asleep on their own. Lily may be in the crib, she may be on the floor; I don't really care. By 8, the room was consistently quiet, and I may or may not peek in before going to bed myself. But all I could think about as I sat listening to the sounds of their cheerful voices in cahoots was one of the saddest days of my life many years ago when I called my own sister because of everyone in the world, she is the person I feel safest being sad with. She listened to me, offered consolation and advice, told me in no uncertain terms that no matter what, I would be okay. I hung up, feeling infinitely better than I had been feeling and immediately realized I had forgotten to tell her something. I called back.

She answered the phone--this was in the days before caller ID--and was crying so hard she could barely manage to speak. When she realized it was me again, she tried to pull herself together, but it was too late.

And I will always remember this. That in spite of the many times and ways my sister has made me apoplectic with anger, when I needed one person in the world to make me believe the world was not going to fall apart, she did so, and she suppressed her own sadness, at mine, at the situation, at sadness in general, until she knew she had succeeded.

When I catch these glimpses of Lily and Annika building this bond, even as Lily rejects Annika's advances, Annika hits Lily on the head with a pot lid, I know that in this, at least, I have done good. I hope for as few moments of profound sadness for these girls as is humanly possible. But when they come, I hope for each of them--feel optimistic for each of them--to have a sister like mine.

Ramble, While a Little Bit Cold

It isn't cold very much anymore here, in New York City, where I live. When it is, as it was today, the cold becomes preoccupying, not just for me but for lots of people, the other parents at school drop-off, the people shivering on the subway platform, waiting outside the library for it to open, walking their dogs. It becomes a topic of conversation, an easy in if you want one, a time-filler if you need one. I found myself telling an elderly woman waiting to buy a newspaper while I was waiting to buy a cup of coffee/handwarmer all about how I had to unpack the heavy-duty winter artillery. I found myself listening to a man my age on the train this morning tell his friend all about the plane tickets he had ordered for an impromptu trip to Miami Beach motivated by his walk home the previous evening.

It's funny how cold, the sheer fact of it, can displace all of the other thoughts in your head so you find yourself walking down a street, focused on your breath freezing in puffs in font of your face, thinking only of how cold you are, in a way that might be almost like meditation. It's really not that interesting, being cold, but coldness has this way of becoming all-encompassing, to the extent that even this evening, several hours after I returned home from the day's last venture out into the cold, I found myself remembering how cold my hand was when I took off my glove to rummage in my bag for my wallet eight hours earlier, remembering the way it felt to be cold. Which I think one does primarily to subconsciously revel in one's current state of warmth.

What I think of when it is cold, now, when it is cold like this outside, which it so often was when I was growing up in Massachusetts, is the radiator wall panel in the upstairs bathroom in my childhood home, which to this day blasts hot air periodically when the heat's turned high, which it generally is when I am home. Even now, although I am pushing perilously close to 40, and my parents have had their house to themselves for nearly twenty years, there is a silent battle with the heat controls. I tiptoe down and turn it up. My mother tiptoes in and turns it down. And ultimately, at some point during my visits home, I end up with my back against the bathroom wall, my bare feet pressed against the hot metal grating in a way that crystallizes the fine line between pain and pleasure, until I am warm enough to venture back to bed.

Mine, With Something Like Awe

Today I sat cross-legged on a carpeted floor in an indoor gymnasium at a children's birthday party and watched Lily scale a rock-climbing wall. At first I was shocked she volunteered to do this; many, most, of the children said no way. Which is unquestionably what I would have said at 4 if presented with such a proposition, frankly what I would have said now. Then, I was surprised by the determination with which she began, gripping one anchor with one tiny hand, then lifting her leg higher than seemed possible to place her foot on an another. And as she kept climbing, higher than most of the willing children had gone, all the way to the ceiling, 30 feet off the ground? I'm bad with distance estimation, I watched silently as people around us pointed and marveled, watched her as though she were somebody else's child.

She squeezed the horn at the top to signify success and was pulled back down to the mat by the staff member manning the wall. He turned to me and mouthed the word, "Wow." I nodded, and then, aloud, he asked, "How old is she?"

"Four," I said, and stood up, ready to accompany her back to the main area where there was dancing and a balance bean surrounded by foam. She came running to me, eyes shining.

"Did you see me, Mama?" she asked. I told her I did, hugged her a little bit hard.

"Let's dance," I said, turning, but she tugged my arm, planted her feet.

"No, we have to wait," she said. "He says if there's time I can do it again."

Note to Self

I actually forgot to write yesterday, for the first time ever (the forgetting, not the not writing), and I forgot my uncle's birthday, and I suspect there are other things I have forgotten as well, which I will discover over the next few days, unless the forgetting continues or, god forbid, gets worse.

So I think I should forgo a long entry now, in favor of memory-enhancing sleep, but I will write a very short one.

This evening, as I exited our building with both the girls in tow, we were greeted by the sight of the colored Christmas lights the people in the building down the street decorate the exterior of the building with each year. My personal taste in holiday decoration tends toward fresh greenery and tiny white lights, but the truth is I barely noticed the colored Santa face literally staring me in the eyes, not to mention the other assorted and sundry constellations. But Lily did. I had walked twenty feet ahead with the stroller before I realized she was standing still, gazing at the display. "Come on, Lil," I called. "The store is going to close." She pointed.

"But Mama. It's so, so beautiful. I just can't stop looking."

And so it was.

Curly

You know how families have myths? Legends? Stories that get repeated so often, or are so compelling in some way that generations later people who never even knew the central figures are still passing them on? We have lots of these. Myths and legends aren't quite the right words, though, because in our family, at least, many of the stories that have stuck are small in scope, like miniatures, or dioramas: a single heightened scene. Or an emotional experience that resonates for generations.

For most of my life, I have had a dog. There have been periods of a few years here, a few there, where a dog has died and a new one not yet appeared on the scene, but for the most part there has been at least one dog by my side at every stage. This was not a conscious decision, although I can say now that I don't ever again want to live without a dog, or two, or three, but a natural outgrowth of the fact that I come from people who love--and have--dogs. On my mother's side, my grandfather, Papa, was a latter-day, full-blown Swedish version of the Dicken character from The Secret Garden. Seriously, the first time I read the book, at 6 or 7, when Dicken was introduced, I thought: Just like Papa. Not in that he was a pink-cheeked, working-class boy who worked with his hands (although he sort of was, come to think of it) but in the way he related to animals. Dicken would appear, and--like a scene in a Disney movie--animals of all kinds, from cats and dogs to their undomesticated cousins, would surround him, alighting on his shoulders, curling around his legs, "speaking" to him in squirrel, or chipmunk, or owl. My family would rent a vacation home in an unfamiliar place, and my grandfather would disappear from the dinner table, only to be discovered in the side yard surrounded by equally unfamiliar neighborhood dogs, gazing at him adoringly, turning up their noses at us.

He had a dog himself, pretty much always. When I was little, his dog was a shepherd mix, black and tan, named Vaughn. I think I was told once that his dogs were always named Vaughn, which seems oddly fitting. He was not of the school of modern pet owners who fetishize their pets and treat them as surrogate children. There was something much more raw and natural about his connection to animals. I know this sounds crazy, but it was as though he met them on equal footing. It was, I guess you might say, animalistic. He could, quite literally, communicate with animals.

My father, who started this train of thought for me, did not come from dog people, as far as I know. His mother was a neatnik housekeeper who covered her couches in plastic when I was a child, although it must be said that she didn't flinch when we made forts with the cushions or crayoned at the coffee table. I didn't know my paternal grandfather, and I guess I may be selling him short as a possible dog lover. But what I do know is that when my father was a boy, he wanted a dog. He really wanted a dog, in the way some children really, really want a dog, and at some point, for some reason, he got one.

This is where the mythologizing, if not the myth, comes in. The dog he got was Curly. I knew, even as a very small child, that the way my father talked about Curly was different than the way he talked about even his parents, his childhood friends. His eyes would get sort of misty, in the way they do now when certain of his later pets' names are mentioned, and soon, too soon, the story of Curly would reach its tragic end. Curly got--or maybe had all along--some incurable disease and died very young, before my father had been a real dog owner for long. Although this was never the subtext of the Curly story, and I only just thought of it now, Curly's premature departure from my father's life--the mythology of his childhood, in which he wanted to be a boy with a dog and was, for a brief shining moment--certainly informed his adult attachment to animals, the importance he places on being the kind of pet owner, animal lover, his hero, my mother's father, was all his life.

Families are strange, and complicated, and sometimes very beautiful. Bad things are passed on, but good things are too, and in my best moments I believe we can teach--be taught--how to love. My dad didn't tell the Curly story that often. Every once in a while my sister or I would ask him about it, and he would tell it, and we would listen, in the way Lily does now when I describe the night Alison and I went swimming under the stars in my grandparents' pool, the time we had a real restaurant and people actually came. That is to say, silently, fully absorbed, and with something like awe. But I have no doubt that Curly is, in some indefinable way, behind Grapes, and Midnight, and Max, and all of the pets I have loved over my lifetime, including the ones I live with now, the ones still to come.

I suspect my dad never thinks about Curly these days. There are no small children forcing him to reminisce. But there are two small dog lovers on the horizon, and I think it might be nice for them to know about--and be thankful for--the little dog who will change--has already changed--their lives, too.

Once Upon a Time...

I got a voicemail from my father today telling me he had just turned out of the grocery store parking lot and had remembered a time when I was learning to drive and had--in his words--recklessly "spun out onto Route 20." I can't say I remember the particular incident to which he was referring, but that is because to this day, when either of my parents are in a car with me behind the wheel, they become white-faced and start clutching the armrest the instant the speedometer creeps over 30 miles per hour.

I do remember pulling out of the parking lot in question many times with my father in the passenger seat, during those early driving days, and wincing as he gasped when the car crossed the necessary lane to turn left. I remember the gasps collectively because they happened every single time, not just once, contrary to the impression left by my father's message today. I wonder if he remembers the conversation he had, in front of me and my sister, with our driving instructor, a kindly middle-aged man who wore the perils of his profession lightly. The one in which he asked if it would be possible to order an emergency brake for the passenger side floor like the ones that came in the driving school car.

My primary memory of learning how to drive involves my father, but in a good way, sufficiently pleasant to cast into shadow the untold annoying ones. It is a sliver of a memory, with no plot, no real story, but it is vivid, enhanced by its auditory component. The year was 1986, and my father drove a dark blue Audi, a sleek, classy car with a bit of an edge, or so I thought as I drove it jerkingly around town on meaningless errands and endless trips to the local Friendly's.

My memory, though, has no destination. It takes place on the strip of Dutton Road between my parents' house and my grandmother's house, the strip of road I have driven, walked, ridden my bike down, more than any other strip of road in the world. I actually think if forced, I could drive this two-mile stretch blindfolded. Sometimes still I find I have arrived at my grandmother's house without remembering getting there.

I am driving, although I should probably put "driving" in quotes. It is one of the first times, maybe even the first time, I have been behind the wheel by myself, in control (quotes again for "control") of a car. My father is in the passenger seat, my sister in the backseat, behind me, which was always her side of the car. On the radio a song is playing, a song I loved at the time, played over and over again. It was quite popular on the radio, if I am not mistaken, but not the thing at all at my high school, where alternative rock and edgier pop were favored, so in the privacy of our family car, with my family, it feels liberating to belt out the familiar lyrics. The song is called "In Your Wildest Dreams" by the Moody Blues and has a shallow catchiness to it that occasionally reels me in to music recorded past 1970, although very occasionally and somewhat unpredictably. The lyrics are bad. I know this but don't care. It is the era of "Lucky Star" and not of the poet lyricist a la Steve Earle or Lucinda Williams.

I specifically remember singing lines from the beginning of the song, the lines, "I remember skies, reflected in your eyes." I remember that my father, who also occasionally gets drawn in by a certain pop X factor, was singing along too, and that for a few seconds, anyway, as we both looked out the window at the road in front of us, and I marveled to myself that I was actually making the car move forward (and worried secretly that I would have trouble making it stop), there were no grimaces, no arguments, no power struggle. Instead, there was the music, and the road ahead, and the moment. And learning to drive with my dad.

Raspberry Sparkle

I may have written about this before, but I think I've just been thinking about it. I hope so. It would be sad to be repeating myself when I haven't even achieved 365 entries yet.

I remember the first Christmas present I bought for my mother. I was 5, the age Lily is about to turn, which gives me a jolt. I was so...conscious then. I mean, I remember walking up and down the aisles in the Osco drugstore, which used to be in the Star Market on my hometown's main drag. I remember that I had my own money in a little purse, not more than a few dollars, but it was mine, and I was going to buy my own present with it. And I remember the gift itself: wholly unsuitable, a lipstick called Raspberry Sparkle in a royal blue tube, that stuck around in our house for years after that Christmas.

I remember thinking that the lipstick, sold to me by Joanna Lewis, one of the thirteen children who lived next door and worked at Osco, was very glamorous. I remember thinking that my mother, whose blond hair curled at the ends and who had leather sandals and woven belts and laughed with her head tilted back, was glamorous, too. And although her regular lipstick, which she wore only on special occasions, was a natural tannish color, which I knew, having tried it on myself many times, I allowed myself to imagine that Raspberry Sparkle--true to its name, a glittery berry-soaked pink--would become its replacement.

My mother oohed and aahed over her lipstick, and she put it on. And as I remember, it did look glamorous with her light blue eyes and soft blond hair. And I am reminded of the way Lily watches me from the bathroom stepstool on the rare occasions I put on lipstick, shades that are progeny of my mother's neutrals from the seventies, and the way she will sometimes look at me when I am laughing, head cocked ever so slightly, appraisingly, and say, "Mama? You just look so beautiful."

Easing Back In

I am reminded of the tree falling in the forest with nobody around to hear if it's making a sound as I announce my return. Yes, I took an unannounced, not entirely voluntary Thanksgiving hiatus. I don't have a fully functional laptop anymore, let alone one with internet access, and there was no private computer I could use effortlessly on my own time while I was away. So I just ate instead. Seriously, I ate a lot.

But now I am back, and as the end of the year approaches, or will arrive on schedule after the inevitable blind chaos of the next few weeks during which I celebrate two major holidays, Lily's and my birthday, and a whole host of holiday gatherings, school events, work commitments, bookkeeping and other joyful and not so joyful December undertakings, my thoughts turn to the New Year and my annual resolutions regarding writing. They haven't turned there yet, but they will, and I'm just warning you. There may be some soul searching, some promises bound to be broken or stretched out of shape. There may be some grand sweeping statements, some haunting insecurities, a mixture of bravado and fear. But that is still to come. For tonight, as I ease back in, I give you: Flat Coins.

All the fuss these days about "helicopter parenting" and the "overscheduled child" always reminds me of my own childhood, during which I spent hours a day--more--outdoors, exploring the yards and fields of the people and places that created me, allowed me to create myself. On our (eight hour!) drive back from our Thanksgiving trip, I was looking out the window at one point, just letting my mind wander, when all of a sudden I remembered the field behind the First Parish Church, where the train tracks ran. The train didn't stop in Sudbury, but it ran through it, or had once, and on Sunday mornings when the adults had coffee and talked in the big room, we were set free on the lawn outside, free to lie under the chestnut tree, run like banshees through the centuries-old cemetery behind the church, head back through a grove of trees to a vast expanse of land through which the train tracks ran.

We couldn't have been very old: 9 or 10 at the most, I would imagine. We were fearless and filled with a sense of adventure. We were trusted but not overly considered--so much of my childhood was mine, and my sister's and my cousins' and my friends' in a way that seems so very much in the past to me now. We were often a little band, enough to play hide and seek or kick the can tag or Red Rover or have chicken fights between the tombstones. Back by the old train track, though, we put pennies on the track, lined them up in a jaunty copper row, in the hope that a train--were they still running?--would flatten them into paper-thin wafers, the way we knew trains did, could, had.

Funny, I really can't remember if the trains were running then. I think they weren't, can vaguely conjure up a sense of crumbling and decay about the tracks. But a little sense of danger, too, borne of cartoons where someone was always being strapped to a track, or rescued at the very last second, a sense that skipping down a rail in the hot sun of a late May noontime, was just illicit enough, even if the trains had been retired.

I've seen lots of those machines in museums where you can feed in a penny and get the flat wafer back for a rip-off fifty cents. This, I feel, is not the same. Not the same at all.

The Lint Roller Piece

Lint rollers. We have two long-haired, light-colored collie dogs, who shed heavily pretty much year round and ensure that everything we own or wear is coated in dog hair. Some people, such as the woman who gave birth to me, find this, should we say, distasteful and refuse to enter our home without a fresh lint roller tucked into her purse. Others, such as myself, cheerfully accept the state of affairs and occasionally, if a social or professional situation warrants it, wrap a desperate loop of Scotch tape around a hand for some last-minute futile patting. If I had a dime for every time somebody asked me on first sighting, "Wow. You must have a dog," let's just say I would have my own, in-house dry cleaner on call.

But I did not want to write about lint rollers because I find them fascinating, which--heave shared sigh of relief--I do not. I wanted to write about them because this weekend, when my visiting mother whipped hers out of her purse and started rolling down her black pants, Lily watched for a few minutes, transfixed. "Sands?" she finally asked.

"Yes, Lily," my mother answered, distracted by the monumental task ahead of her--she still had the sweater to go.

"I don't understand why you're doing that. You're just going to have to do it again." My mother thought this was pretty funny, as well as true, and we all laughed, some of us less enthusiastically or sympathetically, but I kept thinking about it for some reason, and then--late, late at night as I was on my hands and knees picking up toys--I realized why.

So much of my days, these days, are spent doing the same things over and over again in what could be a sort of Zen exercise, if I were an entirely different, much more relaxed, potentially Buddhist type of person. Instead, I am tightly-wound and full of nervous energy and determined to fend off the chaos that threatens to wash in at any moment, thanks to thousands of puzzle pieces, doll clothes, dropped snack pieces, scraps of paper, bits of chalk, loose socks, the occasional errant banana peel or toast rind. Each meal, as Annika drops food off her high chair, the dogs eat the desirable droppings, and I find myself picking up the bits of the rest of the floor, I do not feel like an aspiring Buddhist. I feel like a person for whom a lint roller could serve as a symbol of daily existence, and for all you lint roller lovers out there (Mom), I do not mean this in a good way.

Why do we do the same things over and over and over again, knowing as we do them that we will be doing them again before the paint has dried? The immediate answer is that we have to, or we soon become a crazy person living under piles of garbage and the subject of a piece on Dateline or NY1. But I'm talking about other things, less dramatic or health-threatening things, such as, well, rolling the stray dog hairs off of our pants when we know, all along, the dogs aren't going anywhere and we're going to have to sit back down on the couch.

I think we do them because in spite of the fact that everybody I know, myself included, seems to be so busy we never sit down, life is made up, in a way, of these small acts of renewal, and in doing them, we are making a statement, to ourselves, and to the rest of the world. We are saying: It all matters, it all means something, it all keeps the world turning, sun rising, future coming. We do it, all of it, because we need to fill our days with living.

And that may be the only time I have ever--or ever will again--take on the subject of lint rollers.

On Life and Death and Dogs

I was all set to write about lint rollers--seriously--when I put Lily to bed some odd hours ago, and suddenly I realized she was sobbing. "For the last few nights I have been thinking about when you have to die," she said. "You said that everybody dies. Is that really true? It makes me too sad to think about it." I lay down beside her, my thoughts of take-out dissipating.

"Yes, it's true," I said. "People and animals and plants and all living things will die."

"But where do they go? What happens to them?" she asked. I know people handle this in all kinds of ways. Maybe there are reasons for cushioning the blow. I answered honestly.

"Nothing happens," I said. For people and animals, the bodies are buried in the ground or turned into ashes, like Rory's body. But the people and animals we love stay with us because we think about them and love them still." She had stopped sobbing; her eyes were enormous in the dark. Annika was gurgling in her crib, standing and watching us, but we both ignored her.

"Why can't things that are alive live forever?" she pressed. "Why?"

"If we lived forever our days would not seem special," I said, feeling a little lame. I have read Tuck Everlasting 100 times now, and I never quite buy it. I didn't at her age, and I still don't now. I always explain to students why Winnie made the right choice, but I always feel like a bit of a phony when I do it. Knowing what I do now, even, I'd drink the water and deal with the consequences come eternity.

"I hope you live for all the time I live," she said. "I hope you live for a thousand years." I should have said no, that I wanted to live a long, long time, to see my great-children, like Mormor, but that it wouldn't, couldn't, be for a thousand years. But instead I whispered, "Me too." Just then, Scout--all 80 overweight pounds of him--leaped up on the bed on top of us and settled in with his paws around Lily in a hug. She began stroking his nose. Then, the sobbing again, louder than before.

"I hope Sadie and Scout die at the same time," she said. "Because they would miss each other too much if one died first." By this point I was practically sobbing myself, but the mood lifted, on my end anyway, when through the tears and whimpering she managed one last thought: "And I am very worried about Christmas because I think it's just terrible that Sands doesn't let Scout up on the couch when couches are his favorite thing in the world."

At this, I was ready for my Thai food. One needs a full stomach to explain the mysteries of the universe to a four-year-old.

Read "On Love and Pork" Again

Too much work. Back tomorrow.

On Love and Pork

Monday is my father's birthday, and as my parents are visiting us in Connecticut this weekend, and because I haven't been with my father this close to his actual birthday in many years, I decided to make a special lunch and his traditional cake from my childhood in order to properly celebrate.

Although I'd planned to do the cake all week, the lunch was a more recent idea, and after a somewhat hectic day I was forced to turn not to a lovely gourmet market but to the depths of my freezer for a main course. Fortunately, there was a pork loin right in the front, saving us from some sort of casserole (or puff-pastry crusted tart) combining half-melted and refrozen lime popsicles, Trader Joe's eggrolls and a plastic baggie full of sesame seeds.

There was one small problem with the pork loin, however, being that one of the vestiges of my father's Orthodox Jewish upbringing is a very conflicted relationship to pork. Now while I have embraced most of the cultural and some of the spiritual practices of my father's religion, my own relationship to all things porcine is free and clear. In fact, just last night at a restaurant near our apartment, I found myself eating roast Berkshire pork served with steamed buns, stuffed pork ribs, and sticky rice with Chinese sausage. "Wow," said the waitress, after I'd ordered.

"Kimchee cuts grease," I offered, weakly, referring to one of the entree's side dishes.

My father would not have ordered these dishes, but if I gave him a bite of any of them in a darkened dining room, he would have said, "Delicious," and asked for another bite. It is the idea of pork (now that's a subject for philosophers and kings) that upsets him, not the taste. In fact, when pork is not called pork, and is called, say, bacon, or hot dog, he eats it with relish (pun not intended but allowed to stay). If it is called pork, or worse, ham--which I think for his mother was one of those words whispered if children were around so as not to upset the natural order of the universe--he politely declines. Or not so politely, actually, as the declining is always followed by the only partly true explanation: No thank you. I don't eat pork.

When I realized that pork loin was really our only potentially edible option, I expressed my concern to my mother. I must have been having a micro stroke at the time because my mother's sympathies to my father's convoluted pork policies are nonexistent at best. Once, in a deserved yet immensely passive aggressive display circa 1978 she actually cooked a ham on an evening my grandmother was coming over for dinner. This would be the modern-day equivalent of inviting one's strictly Catholic relation over for a big gay wedding, followed by a pro-choice rally and a rigorous denouncement of pedophilic priests. My mother's response was utterly predictable. "He'll love it," she said. "Just don't even think about telling him what it is."

Nice. It must be said on my mother's behalf, that my father often eats foods he claims to detest having been tricked into doing so. After being called out on it he promptly expresses disbelief, then manages to forget the entire episode ever happened 24 hours later and will deny it ever happened the following week. This happened once with his so-called most-loathed food: the beet. I had roasted a pan full of little baby beets and made an arugula salad with beets, goat cheese, caramelized nuts and a sherry vinegar dressing, and my father singlehandedly polished off about a half-pound of beets. When told what he had eaten he tried to argue they had not actually been beets, at which point I felt like telling him they'd been cooked in pork fat. Or melted ham.

Anyway. Once I'd come to terms with the centerpiece, the rest of the meal took shape, enabled by my knowledge that my father--and my mother, who will object to being portrayed as an underground pork pusher--won't be reading this until Monday. The pork loin is to be glazed with maple syrup and wrapped in bacon. There will be Thanksgiving stuffing, because I won't have any on actual Thanksgiving, with just a little sprinkling--or chopped two pounds--of bacon, too. And a vegetable, because some people like that sort of thing. If my father asks what we're eating, which he usually doesn't, I will say: chicken. I won't have to explain why the chicken is long and thick and in the impossible shape of a pork loin because that's not the sort of thing that interests my father. He will be distracted by mentally noting all of the sports events he's missing by virtue of the fact that we no longer have cable TV.

Happy birthday, Dad. The cake was clean. Not so much as a droplet of pork juice.

Related

This evening, as I was standing in the kitchen with Lily, my sister called. We were trying to organize ourselves to run out on an errand; my sister was in a silly mood and was attempting to conduct the conversation as her cat, Elvis. Lily, whose phone etiquette leaves quite a bit to be desired, was not holding the phone up to her ear or her mouth, causing my sister to meow at the other end even louder. Finally, I took the phone and said, exasperated, "We can't do this now. We're trying to get out the door."

"Why so grouchy?" she asked, cheerfully. I did not say, "Because we really need these lampshades and you're 37-years-old and the cat voice thing isn't funny after the first line and Lily isn't even listening to you."

Instead, I said, "Look. I'm not in the mood. I'll call you back." And I hung up the phone. When I set it down, I realized Lily was looking at me with interest. "What is it?" I said.

"Mama? Are you the oldest or the youngest sister? I forget." Ouch.

"Which do you think?" I asked, knowing full well which she thought.

"The oldest," she said.

"Why?" I asked, under the grounds of: If you're already caught in a flash flood, you won't mind a little more rain.

"Because you acted like Aunt Alison was bothering you," she said.

"Like Annika bothers you sometimes?" I said, apparently seeking an ally.

"Annika can't talk on the phone," she said. Which has its own kind of logic. But I think I'll call Alison back in the morning.

Sometimes a Mudge is Just a Mudge. Or Not.

One day recently Lily came home from school with a dog she'd cut out of paper attached to a popsicle stick. The dog was colored brown, with clearly delineated features and a magic-markered collar. It resembled a puppet, which I thought it actually was. But no. The dog was Mudge, from the Henry and Mudge books they've been reading in class, and he came with strings attached, the metaphorical kind.

The idea, Lily explained to me with great excitement, was that we were to take Mudge places with us and photograph him, with or without Lily in the shot. For example, if we went grocery shopping, Mudge could come too, and I could snap a shot of Lily holding him in the grocery cart. If we went on the subway, Mudge could be photographed going through the turnstyle or "sitting" on a seat by himself. What a clever idea, I thought. How fun and whimsical!

The following Saturday morning I happened to take both girls to the greenmarket. Let's bring Mudge along, I suggested. Lily was thrilled to do so , glad I'd remembered, and as Mudge weighs about a gram, we didn't even have to have our usual fight about who was going to carry her stuff after the first two minutes of our outing. At the market, I photographed Lily and Mudge in front of a pile of pumpkins. We ran into Lily's friend Alex and his mom, and I photographed Lily, Alex and Mudge in front of some giant buckets full of eucalyptus. When we got home, I photographed Lily holding Mudge in front of our building. A few days later, Mudge came along to Sadie's dog graduation and was prominently featured in a group shot of all the actual dogs and their owners. Lily looks tired but happy in this one, holding up Mudge on a stick two hours past bedtime.

The next weekend, we were going out to Connecticut, and Lily suggested we bring Mudge along. Sure, I said, but when Mudge fell onto the floor halfway down the Merritt Parkway I didn't really want to pull over so he could be picked back up. When Mudge got wet at lunch, I suggested we cover his body with tape, a suggestion that like so many of mine these days, was met with scorn and condescension. When we got back to the city Sunday night, I realized after putting the girls to bed and unpacking our endless bags of stuff that Mudge had been left in the car.

The next morning, when Lily suggested we bring Mudge to school, I "forgot" him in the chaos of getting out of the house. By the time the following Friday rolled around, I had almost forgotten about Mudge altogether, but as soon as we got back in the car, there he was--missing a foot. I taped it back on, assured Lily that the water smudges all over his body gave him character, and wondered if a strong wind could possibly blow Mudge right out of Lily's hand and into the country sky.

From that point on Mudge became the mosquito in your bedroom at night you hear buzzing around your head but can't see when you turn on the light. He was everywhere and nowhere: everywhere because I kept thinking every time we left the house "Oh, I forgot the stupid dog," and nowhere because I never remembered him and we never took any pictures.

Right now, Mudge is on the kitchen counter. After that first blast of photos, I haven't taken anymore, and we just got a reminder from the teacher that the Mudge shots are due in-house asap. Tomorrow, I will make myself take a few more, download them and order prints, because that is what parents do. We deal with Mudge even when we really feel like setting a match to him.

Here's the thing. When we first started carting Mudge around, I thought it was fun, just like Lily did. Once the initial novelty factor had faded, though, I found Mudge a nuisance and a new sort of nuisance for me: a task meant for Lily and assumed by me out of responsibility or guilt, like the actual dog parents in books and on television shows are always forced to assume care for once the child inevitably loses interest herself.

What interests me here is that when I started to see Mudge as a minor burden, and then as a major pain in the ass, it never once occurred to me that I was complicit in the transformation. Tonight, as I was washing dishes, I noticed Mudge lying there half-buried on top of a pile of mail. Lily hadn't asked about him in days. I picked him up and straightened his folds, propped him up against the toaster, where he took on a jaunty, optimistic air.

Something somebody said to me today reminded me that in most things, especially attitude, we do have a choice. A large part of how I see Mudge is my decision. Mudge can be a symbol of the burdens of parenting or, in a world I'd rather live in, a cheerful, clever reminder that the world is still a magical place to my 4-year-old and need not be anything else for me. Mudge can be one more thing to add to my to-do list and my chronic low-grade resentment, or a way for Lily and I to take on what is actually a very small and eminently charming project as a team and part of our classroom community.

I think once the pictures are taken, the Mudge period over at school, I will keep Mudge around for a while, maybe stick him in a potted plant or on the dresser by my bed where my eyes will pass over him regularly. If Lily asks me why Mudge is hanging out in my room, I will say, merely, "Because I decided I wanted to keep him."

In School

Many of my earliest memories take place at the White House Preschool in Sudbury, Massachusetts, the town where I grew up. This is not just because it is the school I attended from the age of 2 to 4 but because it is also the school my mother worked at when I was very young, during the period in my life that my own girls are in now.

The White House Preschool, so-called because the school consisted of a little white house adjacent to the public high school, for which it was a lab school, was a very comfortable home-away-from-home for me and my sister. We went there as students, yes, but speaking for myself I felt a sense of ownership, of intimacy with it. When I was there after hours while my mother was working I would often curl up in my favorite spot from my own in-school hours: the raised reading nook lined with carpeting that had to be reached with a little ladder. Nooks are very important for preschool-age children, I think. I knew the pantry intimately, that was for sure--on which shelf the goldfish crackers I liked were kept, the cookies for special occasions, the juice. I knew that the upstairs was sometimes forbidden, a little mysterious. It was an attic floor where the staff offices were, as well as a long jam-packed supply room, where we, and the daughters of my mother's best friend and colleague, could lie and color or read if we were "home" sick from school, once we'd left and gone on to actual school.

I logged a lot of hours at this school. Although my mother wasn't technically working full-time, she'd left her first grade teaching job to have more time while we were small, my mother's not really a part-time kind of a teacher. Or a part-time kind of an anything. So when she worked, and we weren't otherwise occupied, we went to her school, too.

I've just been thinking about why I feel so at home in schools, why they feel so comfortable to me. More on this to come...and I'm leading up to something, I promise.

The More Things Change, the More I Still Wish I Had a Book and a Bath

Oh, it couldn't be later, and I got back hours later than I expected to from my children's literature book group, which is a good thing, in that it was so enjoyable, but a bad thing in that earlier--knowing I would regret it--I made Eggplant Parmesan and Caesar salad for dinner instead of writing my 750 words.

So I will give you oh, say, 250 words instead, loosely on the subject of a book called Betsy's Little Star by a really old-fashioned unremarkable writer named Carolyn Haywood, whose name came up tonight when it turned out I was not the only person I knew who had actually read her. This book, and the others in a series about a girl named Betsy and her little sister, Star, were among the very first chapter books I ever read. Not because they are so wonderful, or because someone I knew felt passionately about them, but because they somehow seemed accessible to me in the Sudbury Public Library, I chose them by myself, and I could read them by myself. And so I did.

And these were among the first books I was able to lose myself in, because they were longer than picture books, and there was more than one of them. The characters were the same, with variations, of course, but I could get to know Betsy, feel I understood her, anticipate what she was going to do in any given situation. I ordered the first Betsy book for Lily not so long ago from Amazon, thinking it would be quite nice if it were to be among her first solo chapter books as well, but the paperback arrived looking all glossy and modernized. It was not the soft, worn, pale blue hardbound book of my memory, and I haven't actually given it to her yet.

But Betsy's Little Star I remember in particular, as relates to the notion of losing oneself in a book, because I read it in the bathtub. And I remember I read it in the bathtub because I dropped it in the bathtub, and although we dried it in front of the radiator, it dried all wrinkly and warped, and I had to bring it into the librarian, whose name was also Betsy, and explain what I had done.

And if it were even two hours earlier, there is still nothing I would like more in this world than to be in the bathtub reading a book.

I Am Also Quite Good at the Limbo

So earnest, so self-centered, so annoying. Who knew 365 days would feel so long? The years go fast, but the blog entries are interminable. Is that what you're thinking? I am, at least some of the time. Obviously I've been off the specific projects, in favor of existential whine sessions. Come on, admit it. You've had it with me, too.

I'm going to force myself to switch gears, even it hurts, which it will, because I'm feeling blank. Blankness can be good, in the sense of being open to inspiration, but the inspiration seems to be taking its own sweet time. So I will turn back to specific projects or assignments or give myself concrete exercises, unless I catch a whiff of inspiration, in which case I will let her in.

So for tonight, I give you: Some Things Most People Don't Know About Me

I am an ace at most non-sport "sports." What this means in actual English is that I can hit a ping-pong ball with uncanny precision, am a bit of a pool shark, regularly hit holes in one on the mini-golf course and kick ass at croquet. These are, needless to say, some of the most useless skills known to humankind, most of whom find these "sports" the gaming equivalent of Broadway musicals. That is to say: unbearable. Now I also happen to enjoy Broadway musicals, so I am the wrong person to ask, but if you ask me, a ping-pong table and a game opponent are two of the happiest sights on earth. Along with a private karaoke room, which I love like some people love chocolate, or diamonds, both of which I can take or leave. Probably leave.

There isn't really that much to say about my gifts in the non-sports sports arena except that I have excellent hand-eye coordination, and that my highly developed fine motor skills might have made me a superior surgeon, had I decided there was a way I could avoid chemistry, and I mean the high school kind, not the organic kind, the mere notion of which makes me feel vaguely sick to my stomach. One aspect of being good at these kinds of non-sport sports is caring to be good at them, of course. When one's competitive nature comes up against one's small stature and lack of natural ability on the playing fields and courts of actual sports, one seeks other outlets. Thus, as a pre-teenager, I spent hours in my grandmother's basement chalking cues and making increasingly ludicrous bets with my equally competitive (if more athletic) cousin Andy and our younger siblings, none of whom burned with the fire to emerge victorious or beat one of us.

Non-sports sports are parlor tricks, in a way, like making a coin appear in someone's ear. Giftedness in them is always a little unexpected in another person, welcome when found in a like-minded soul. There is no larger point here. I am not about to bring this around to how mini-golf is like life, or how I learned to serve and found my inner confidence. I'm not in the mood, and besides, there is no point; these examples are nonsensical. I have excellent hand-eye coordination and highly developed fine motor skills; I am competitive, and I have no fear of peer ridicule, never really have.

I feel bad now that I was so mean to myself at the beginning of this entry. I don't need you to tell me that recent entries haven't been all bad, although there have been some self-indulgent snoozefests interspersed throughout. Now, thinking of how I once dazzled a crowd at a bar almost twenty years ago by knocking in three angle shots in a row, or--even earlier--the Round Robin ping-pong tournaments of Martha's Vineyard circa 1982, I am feeling like myself again. Take that, life. I have mad useless skills. And my version of Blondie's "The Tide is High" doesn't sound totally unlike Blondie, when belted out late-night in a private karaoke room.

Balance, Me

Today I did the most mundane things imaginable. I slept in a little, which I never do, and woke feeling a little dazed and groggy. I did dishes, two loads, and made a savory bread pudding and sauteed zucchini for lunch. I cleaned up toys, the ultimate Sisyphusian task, and sorted through a small mountain of clothes I've been avoiding for months, storing some, washing some, putting some in a bag for charity. I didn't spend a lot of time actively playing with the girls, but I was with them all day long, able to build the fence for Lily's barn and find her tape to make the stuffed animal dogs new collars. I held Annika when she wanted to be held, and chased her when she wanted to be silly. When I went upstairs to put away the clothes we were keeping, they came too. I folded; they arranged the doll house (or pretended to eat small pieces of furniture, depending). At night, I worked, some, sent some work-related emails, cleared my desk for the morning. I made Lily's lunch, ground the coffee beans, set the dog dishes on the counter for the morning.

I didn't do anything today for pleasure. I didn't really read, call a friend, lie on the couch and close my eyes. But consciously, I allowed myself to forget about the rest of the world. Today did not feel like a race. It did not feel like a challenge. It did not feel like an entanglement of commitments and scheduling and frustrations. What I did, I did well, not sloppily or half-assed. None of it mattered, I was about to write, but I'm not so sure I think that's true.

The Phantom Tollbooth is doing a number on me. In it, the Terrible Trivium, "demon of petty tasks and worthless jobs," tells Milo, "If you only do the easy and useless jobs, you'll never have to worry about the important ones which are so difficult. You just won't have the time. For there's always something to do to keep you from what you really should be doing." Maybe working mothers shouldn't read The Phantom Tollbooth. Today, if not tomorrow, I disagree with Terrible Triv. I needed a day for the easy and useless jobs. Not just to get them done--I could have waited on everything with no great price--but because in the doing of them I backed off the idea that life has to be largely about what I "really should be doing." And that was absolutely necessary.

On Balance

Completely out of the blue, Lily has decided she wants to "ride on a see-saw." When I ask her where she heard of a see-saw, she will not tell me. When I ask her to describe one, she does. Here's the funny thing, and you may not know this if you don't--or even if you do--have little kids, the see-saws aren't around anymore.

Gone the way of the playpens and baby walkers, see-saws were clearly deemed dangerous at some point along the line (how quietly they slipped away!) and removed from playgrounds everywhere. Or at least in New York City, and anecdotally in Massachusetts, where children exist on the older generation's fond or at least vivid memories of being unceremoniously deposited bottom first on the concrete patch beneath their end of the see-saw, when the (always larger) child on the other end decided to jump off and run away.

The see-saw we had in our backyard was made of wood and was probably a cousin to thousands of like-minded 1970s, peacenik parent-purchased environmentally-friendly wooden yard structures, such as the swingset and the slide. It was on grass, not concrete, but was like its playground counterparts the scene of many a deliberately thrown child. We loved it, came back for more every time. I remember Lord of the Flies type games centered around it, in which several children would stack themselves on each end, pushing with our feet as hard and fast as we could, occasionally throwing the see-saw off-balance and turning it on its side, spilling all of us on top of each other onto the ground.

Much has been written of this, this trend in outdoor equipment for children to be so safety conscious, so thoroughly, overly designed as to lock out so much as the possibility of a spill but for a wholly child-motivated push or jump. And although I don't bemoan the loss of the concrete patches at the bases of the jungle gyms, which are surely not still called jungle gyms, and ooo and ahh over the new foam material that floors our playgrounds now, when I think of the see-saw, and how much fun Lily would have falling off of it, and even the tears she would shed when the falling was not of her own volition but a result of a stronger child and an irrepressible urge for (temporary) domination, I feel a little bit sad. Again, a cliche in this day and age to say so, but when we adults try to control too much in our children's world, something forever is lost. Too much safety, if you ask me, can be a dangerous thing.

I look online to see if one can still buy a see-saw if one wished to buck this trend, stake a claim for moderate risk in the safety of one's backyard. There are a few. They have bells and whistles and are pricey and come with safety features and multiple seating. No need to pile on like gram weights at the end of a scale. I don't feel drawn to them. I would prefer, instead, to take Lily back to 1976 and let her have a real ride.

Perspective, More

Last weekend, Lily learned how to take pictures using my new iphone, which I can barely operate myself. I was busy and let her wander around with it out in Connecticut for awhile, and I never looked at the pictures she'd taken. Tonight, I happened to notice there were suddenly 96 photos, when there'd been 6 before, and I decided I'd delete the ones she'd taken, which I assumed would be mostly random slices from her line of vision.

And, in fact, most of the pictures she'd taken did turn out to be slices from her line of vision. But they weren't random. The first two were just darkness, and I hit the little trash can twice in a row. The next picture was of Annika's crib, taken from down low, so low that Lily must have been crouched down when she snapped it. And then: a series of crib photos, from every angle, including one of the inside, for which she must have leaned over the edge.

A picture of Annika being changed on the changing table was next. I was changing her; I recognized my sleeve. But I don't remember the picture being shot. Changing Annika is something I do automatically. It would never in a million years have occurred to me to record it this way. But changing Annika has always been a huge deal to Lily. It was the one thing that made having a new baby concrete for her from the very beginning. In the weeks before Annika was born, Lily changed hundreds of doll diapers. Now, she stands on the bottom rung of the table and hands me supplies.

Another series followed: Annika, at the bookshelf, choosing, flipping through, then discarding a book. I would also never have taken these pictures. They are blurry, slapdash, action shots. They also capture a few moments of Annika's life at a particular point in time about as well or better than any photos I have taken of her, in that they are so mundane and sequential. Several shots of the leaves covering the backyard. These made me feel a little guilty. Lily has been talking about making a "huge leaf pile" and jumping in it for weeks, longer. A backyard covered with leaves is her father's irritation, something not on my radar screen. For her, it is a scene of possibility and desire.

And me. Seated at my laptop in a blue turtleneck sweater that was my mother's nearly fifty years ago, my back hunched over in a way that makes me fearful for my bones. Seen from below I look serious, focused, not particularly inviting. I didn't know she had taken the picture. I will think of it next time I am working and she tugs on my arm.

I did delete some of Lily's photos from this afternoon shoot. There were a number of gray or black screens, and floorboards, and lots of pictures of doors leading into rooms, which I noted but didn't feel obligated to preserve. But I kept some of them, too. They capture ordinary moments I'd like to be able to remember as images, not just words. Viewing them, I can almost grasp the world through the eyes of my girls.

Orbit

This evening I had to attend a school function at the home of a family who lives just around the corner and has a girl a year older than Lily. So on the mother's suggestion, I brought Lily along. Lily worships this girl, as well as other girls just a little older than herself. I recognize this trait; I do it myself. At one point in the evening, I went to the bedroom where the girls had been playing for an hour or so quite self-sufficiently, and peeked in the door. The older girl was explaining something to Lily, who was looking up at her with shining eyes, shaking her head ever so slightly side-to-side, as if to say, "I can't quite believe my luck."

When I was a kid, a couple of years older than Lily, there were a number of slightly older girls I thought were magical. One, the older sister of a friend of mine, seemed especially awe-inspiring. One summer, and I suspect I am the only person in the world who remembers this, including the girl herself, she had a black two-piece bathing suit with a top that came with instructions. It was two pieces of fabric connected with a circle of elastic and straps that could be moved all over the place. It could be worn in so many different styles that the instructions were in a booklet, not just on a sheet of paper, and each time she wore it she tweaked the design: strapless, one day, haltertop the next.

I remember she seemed like a creature from a different universe altogether. My bathing suits were always one-piece, always worn through on the backside from sitting on concrete, always blue or blue with stripes, and utterly boring. In them, I looked like a little kid wearing a bathing suit. In hers, this girl looked like a movie star.

I still do this, project these otherworldly qualities onto other people, especially other woman, who always seem more comfortable and sophisticated in their bathing suits, more at home in the world and in their lives. I know it often doesn't have anything to do with who they really are, or what their lives are really like, but I can turn any element into this black convertible bikini top, squint and see Marilyn Monroe where a lovely but ordinary person exists.

I guess I've been thinking about how we view other people and how we are viewed by them, how we see ourselves in relation to them. That's all. For now.

Change

Tonight, among many other things, I am feeling mystified by my children. They seem so other sometimes, so unknowable.

Today, when Annika woke up from her nap, I went into her room, and she was standing up in her crib. Her hair was tousled and damp, her eyes still squinty with sleep. She was smiling and drowsy and just standing there, holding onto the side rail, peering out at me, happy to see me, and not at all distressed. Usually, I just scoop her right out, but today, for some reason, I went to her and just stood there right up against the crib for a minute or two, sort of hugging her, rubbing her small back, stroking her soft hair. She seemed so very small, and somehow unreal, in that how can a living person be that small? And I found myself wondering what she was thinking, how she thinks when she doesn't actually have language yet to categorize her thoughts. It made me happy that I knew she was feeling safe and loved, and that I could recognize that from her face and her eyes and the way she leaned into me, but still, I felt a little shiver of wonder: Who is this person, who will she be?

And then, tonight. The long awaited dog graduation. Lily was beside herself with excitement about the staying up. How long exactly past my bedtime will it be? she kept asking. When it was time to leave, at 8:15, she was already yawning but raring to go. She insisted on putting on Sadie's leash herself and walking her all the way to the facility where the training had happened. As we walked, she asked questions--Will the dogs do tricks? Do they do grooming at this place too? Will the huge dog be there?--and after a while I realized that she had no idea what we were going to do at a "dog graduation;" it was hard to say what her sense of the word "graduation" was, although we had been using it liberally over the past few weeks.

The dog graduation was, as I should have known, anticlimactic. The best moments for Lily were getting some sample dog calling cards and a free pen, and walking around and meeting the other dogs, including a big, goofy, uncoordinated rescue pit bull named Jackson whose owners had taken him to over two years of classes until, tonight, he was finally deemed ready to take his life full circle. Sadie's training had taken five weeks. Lily sat quietly on the folding chair next to mine, occasionally whispering quietly but insistently into my ear: When are the dogs going to do their graduation things?

It was mostly talking and paperwork. There were no tricks, no walks, no tests of the kind we'd described from previous classes. But she was a good sport, and at the end, she was in the group graduation shot, holding Mudge, the paper dog she'd made in school that we are supposed to photograph in different situations. When I told her I was certain Mudge would be the only paper dog to appear in a group therapy dog graduation photograph, she looked thrilled. Exhausted, but thrilled.

On the way home, she was pretty quiet. I could tell she was not just exhausted but also experiencing the inevitable let-down of reality trumping expectation. Are you glad you stayed up for that? I asked, as Ben swung her up on his shoulders. She looked up, pointing at the full moon, so I would notice it, then up the street as he walked toward home. Oh yes, she said. Of course I am, Mama. I've never been to a dog graduation before.

How can babies become people so fast? How can it happen while you're standing right there, watching with all of your might?

Vicious Circle

Well, I'm speechless. Not really, of course. But the sentiments of the two Anonymi (?) and my Aunt Sheila took me by surprise and have had me thinking much of the day. This is waaaaay off track in terms of what I am supposed to be writing about here. Or is it? I am supposed to be using this blog to make myself write, right?, and if I have a really strange way of viewing myself at this point in time, then that might have something to do with what and how I am writing, right? I know. It's a stretch. But why does everyone else in the world (or two Anonymous comment-leavers and my aunt) feel that the layers they are adding are all good, while I feel mine are obscuring me?

The truth is: I'm not sure. But I do know that lately I have been feeling beaten down by my many roles and often long for what I remember as a simpler time, before I was so responsible for other people's lives, although this is a trick of memory, this rewriting of history as seamless and clean. I didn't spend my twenties and half of my thirties in a state of grace; it just feels like that when it is, yes, 12:55 in the morning, and I am sitting typing like a madwoman at my computer because the last half hour has been the first time all day I have actually had to myself, and even now, I again hear Annika stirring in her room, and I will soon go to her and comfort her, and I will lie down and close my eyes and it will be five hours later and Lily's face will appear next to mine and her voice, a voice I love but not so much at six in the morning, will say: Mama? What's for breakfast?

I agree with my commenters, after all. My layers are essential. They are part of who I am, and I would not peel them away even if I could. Who would I be, after all, without them now? Not a mother, not a writer, not a wife, not a teacher, not an adult, not a person with many more layers to add. But still, I am wistful. Fewer layers means less complication. More sleep. More time. More me. And here we are again. Back where I started. Still working this one out.