All Babies Have Fathers

All babies are wonderful. Everyone starts out pretty much on level pegging (class, race, ethnicity, socio-economic and medical factors notwithstanding). On a deeper level, each baby born is a ball of energy already off to the races on acquiring the motor skills, body mass and proper nutrition in order to survive.

This spectacle is interwoven with the bath of hormones (women get the big prolactin boost) and atavistic urges deep within the parents and kin, and in the village... and results in lots of oooh's and aaaah's and ickle witty bitty baby talk. It's what we do. And, secretly, I think it's cool. (Don't get me started on the commercial machine that co-opts these urges and equates buying with love. Well, maybe go ahead, get me started...)

I ran into a friend, who at 52 had become a father for the first time. His wife is a sleek, savvy 34 year old who runs the show, and he admits it. But in this formerly rather slick marketing guy, I could see the sheen of fatherly pride that emanated somewhere between the root chakra and the second, sexual chakra. Oh yes, I think this is how men are wired to become fathers. Women see a baby and begin clucking and nurturing, or lactating if they are capable. Men see that baby and go all ballsy and macho, and then vulnerable, and then protective. He makes plans: "I'll teach him to shoot/catch/play chess/ride a horse/tune an engine, etc."

In the modern, metrosexual marketing male, this pride was exhibited by the ritual handing over of the baby photos (in the stylish Italian leather wallet), the tales of bedtime rocking (so mom can get a shower or have a meal at the table with a fork), even diapering stories and that phenomenon I will call "Baby TV" – where you lie on the bed or floor with Baby and just watch. "It's the best thing I've ever done (raising a child, not the diapering so much)."

Yes, it is. In these days of non-commital fathers – the ones who have to be dragged to Montel or Maury for their DNA test, or more justly, to court to put them on the hook for the welfare of the child, for all that child's minority – it is wonderful to witness how just one tiny eight-pound baby can turn a 150-plus-pound man into the puddle of goo known as a father.

Remembering

It's been a good long while since I've blogged here. A lot of water has slipped under the bridge and downstream... In a nutshell, my father died, and then my brother died. I am moving to Dallas in a few days... I am sorting, packing, decluttering and planning my new life.

I find that I'm remembering a lot of the past, relishing it, holding it close. These memories are wonderful, and I find myself saying to people, "Or as my mother always said..." or "That reminds me of what my dad used to say." I know I'm boring, but I don't care. I am now one of those people who says the quirky, silly stuff that a dead parent used to say, and is boring.

However, just now, in the kitchen, I decided to drink yet another glass of water (hello, Weight Watchers), and I made a discovery.

I got out a pretty glass, I dug my hand into the icemaker bin... and I was suddenly awash with memories of my dad, putting ice in a glass there in the kitchen with its orange countertops and aqua fridge (ah, the 70s!). I think it may have been his favorite sound: ice in a glass with scotch over it, or perhaps a gin and tonic. Even iced tea with a sprig of fresh mint (the taste for which I did not inherit from him). He loved his ice... I stood there in the kitchen, my hands getting cold, and almost heard his "ahhhhh!"

I snapped back to the present – to my current dilemma which is reducing the household goods to a manageable AND affordable level, in poundage, in quantity and in dollars. The estimate I got this morning was eye-popping, and made me stop loving all my heavy things quite so much.

Can I part with the piano? the sofa that was theirs, which needs a major overhaul? the dresser that held my parents' socks and underwear for more than 40 years? I already have a dresser I love. All afternoon today, I've been agonizing over these items, weighing the emotional value v. the cash value/cost of moving them.

That tinkle of ice cut right through my consternation. Moving a piece of furniture that requires upholstering, tuning, dusting, maintaining is unnecessary waste of energy. I have photographs of the sofa and piano. I can close my eyes and feel them beneath me. If need be, I can remove a swatch of fabric from the slipcover. Maybe I'll keep the piano bench? and my music. (I know all of two songs and haven't yet taken lessons as I said I would. Wonder Boy as well shows little interest in piano lessons.)

Why would I expend so much energy to hold my parents so close, when they haunt me freely in the simplest ways – merely the tinkle of an ice cube, a piece of music, a remembered word, joke or phrase, a fabric texture, a color, the feel of a watch on my wrist.

If our name was Rockefeller, I might feel differently and the things might have more value. But their furniture was so them – simple and solid workaday items, bought with saved-up money, built to last. I've already let go of the kitchen table we used since 1964. On the weekend after it was donated to charity, I imagined the family who walked into the thrift store and saw it. The dad knew it would fit in the dining room, the mom imagined how nice her ham would look at Easter, and the price tag was just right.

I can do the same with this old piano. There will be a music class, a Sunday school or a family who will enjoy the piano. Someone else's socks and underwear will rest in the dresser. It's not the piano I will miss – it is his music, but that died in 1994 with his stroke, so I'm used to missing it.

I am not used to missing the people, however. All three of them. I miss them so much that I cannot even articulate it, which is why I bother with mementos, old clothes and furniture (and haven't been blogging much).

But my grief should not, cannot be heavy right now. I know my dad would say something colorful if he knew that I contemplated, even for a minute, paying to move that "junk" back to Texas. In fact, as the moving company estimator sat at my kitchen table today and calculated up how much cash I'll need, my dad spoke to me. Let me bore you for a moment.

As my dad always said, "When you're going on a trip, always HALVE the luggage and DOUBLE the cash."

He did like cash. And ice.

Novel Writing

For the month of November, I shall be writing a novel as part of National Novel Writing Month (www.nanowrimo.org), and there I am Mrs. Wonderful - what a shock. I'll be blogging about it all over on Love of Laundry on Vox.

Keep the wonderful things happening!

Living Right Now

After a recent series of "missed opportunities" and "plans that fell through," I am beginning to realize something important. I probably always knew this, probably as a child. But something goes haywire in adolescence and early adulthood, and it gets all bolluxed up.

Living right now, aware and present to the now, is how children live. Give a toddler a bowl of popcorn and they are fine with it. But give that two-year-old one piece at a time, and the joy of popcorn-ness is revealed each time the single puffy kernal is savored on the tongue. YAY! POPCORN! YAY! This thing in my mouth that is so good! Ah, bliss! Ah, life is good...

I suppose focusing too much on the need for popcorn, the nutritional qualities, the acquisition of it, the earning of the money to acquire popcorn, the logistics, the choices (butter, less butter, homestyle, cheddar)... all of these things overshadow the simple pleasure of each kernal. But only if you let it.

What I thought would happen, what I anticipate, what I plan for, what I imagine will happen (and trust me, my imagination knows no bounds)... all of these things are fine, unless I obsess and dwell on them. The good stuff and the bad. I think that, over the years, I imagine the most fantastic and wonderful things, and then mistake them for a plan, a prediction of what WILL happen, rather than keeping those thoughts in the COULD column.

Finding that what could happen was better than what did happen is just life, but it is also a huge disappointment to me of the fantastic plans. Instead, I have begun (only just begun) to let the brain committee dream and imagine, and then let those go into thin air, and face life as it comes at me, as it happens.

Sure, I make plans, I have dates to remember, I have intention and I take action. Rhythms of the days, the seasons - patterns of being that haven't changed since I've been up and gurgling - these all help create structure for a life.

But for me, mistaking the plan and the pattern for the real life has been a problem. A disappointing problem. Blogs, journals, conversations, fun times and sad times when I can spin out some of these findings from the brain committee are useful for capturing cool discrete flights of fancy, but noticing each real event, feeling and thought as it comes and goes is important too, and ultimately NOT disappointing. Noticing those moments as they flow past, slow and fast, joyful and sad, is wonderful. It boils down into the saying I am fond of: "This too shall pass."

When my son was only 30 or so days old, I finally stopped freaking out long enough to hear a friend say, "You will miss these baby days. This too shall pass." So I began counting his days one by one, just looking at this baby, each and every day, enjoying him right then. Not wishing for him to stop growing, or grow faster. And now, here he is, more than 3,800 days old. And I enjoy him today.

Do the job to earn the money to go to the store/movie to buy some popcorn, but don't forget to taste each kernal as you eat it. Because life is tasty.

Being A Friend

You know the old saying "want a good friend? BE a good friend."

It's true. Facing someone, listening, caring, talking, thinking, challenging yourself to dig deep and find some answers, find some comfort for them, hoping you're making a difference - it makes me feel alive. Really alive. It kindles hope, and that is contagious.

Big Brother (the real person, not the crappy TV show) has cancer and is undergoing chemo. And rode his bike 40 miles this past weekend. He reports, "I was no good for anything else all weekend." I said, "you know, there are a lot of 61 year old men who did NOTHING all weekend, and were no good. You have a fabulous excuse for being no good!"

He replied: "Yep, so I have the cancer as my excuse for doing exactly what I want, or for not doing any damn thing!"

Chatting

Mujeres
Originally uploaded by mrswonderful.

I hate that "chat" is now an internet term, meaning logging onto some kind of synchronous communication software, and typing. It's "talking" but it's not talking. It's typing, really. It's not email, it's not bulletin boards/forums, it's not a blog. It's *chat*.

Call me old-fashioned, but chat to me is this: sitting in a public place, maybe a restaurant, park, sidewalk and having a conversation. Face to face, interrupting, laughing, interacting at the human level. When I say, I had a great chat with my friend today over bagels, I do not mean that I sat at my desk and she sat at hers 20 miles away, and we typed, out of our heads, to each other.

No, I mean we set a time, drove to a public place, ordered a bagel, and just talked a blue streak about everything from cream cheese to world peace, with just enough time to eat the bagels and draw breath. AKA "heart-to-heart" as opposed to a typing session complete with multi-tasked windows, checking email, browsing for recipes for dinner and all that other jazz one ends up doing at the keyboard.

I love exchanging letters (emails) with friends. I love reading and writing blogs. And I like chat for the function that it serves, but it's not real live humans talking. (Or not talking.) Nothing replaces that, and nothing is quite as wonderful. When I tell "internet" friends that I wish we could get together and chat, I am seeing a comfy loungey place with art on the walls, coffee, soup, bagels, or a bench in a park, with dogs.

Long live the satirical aside, the sotto voce, the exclamation, the sincere response, the sympathetic head-tilt... long live face to face chatting.

My Family

My Family
Originally uploaded by mrswonderful.

One of the fabulous things about "getting things done" and decluttered is that you run across old photos.

I love these people. I am not sure who they are exactly. But they are my people. I think I know, and there is someone still alive who is in the photo so he might know.

But what a grand mystery... what a wonderful day that must have been, and what is behind all those different expressions? Which one would die too young, which one would die an old lady who "bequeathed" her 150 Harlequin romance novels to me during the summer I had surgery and was on crutches?

I love this photo, and these people.