April 30, 2009

So, I've been watching old episodes of the West Wing on Bravo. Sometimes Elliot and I spend the majority of his nap time together on the couch, and West Wing is a great way to pass the time. At first I was constantly like "Oh, I LOVE this episode, how come they keep playing all the best episodes?" But then I realized, hah, silly me, it's just that all the episodes were great. Seriously. That was a good show.

Anyway, on one of today's episodes (the one where Will Bailey gets a dead guy elected in Orange County and Sam agrees to run as his candidate) Sam is going on and on about how an Impossible Probability is preferable to an Improbable Possibility. So, for example, while it may be impossible for homo sapiens to mutate into something that, say, can morph itself into SOLID METAL (did anyone else ever find Colossus a bit of a stretch on the "mutant" theory?) (for those of you who don't know what I am talking about, you are either vastly cooler or WAY dorkier than I am) it is highly probable that, given a circumstance in which homo superior DID evolve, some of the mutants would want to live apart, some would want to live incognito, some would want to protect humanity, and some would want to eat them with chocolate sauce. Thus, X-men, aside from having the coolest man ever named for a musk producing animal, is clearly an Impossible Probability. Friends, on the other hand, is an Improbable Possibility. Sure, six people COULD all live in a variety of combinations of room-mate-hood for ten years and then all get married to each other all of a sudden and move away and live happily ever after. But it ain't real likely, is it?

So, anyway, now that we're clear on all that... Tonight while I was putting Elliot to bed I started thinking about the practical differences between possible and probable. Now, the dictionary defines possible as: that may or can be, exist, happen, be done, be used, etc. and probable as : likely to occur or prove true. But here's what I came up with: in an infinite universe, the only thing that matters is "Is a thing possible" because if it IS possible, then it is happening, will happen, or already has happened.

I'm just saying.

I took Elliot to the Boys and Girls Club of Woburn this Wednesday morning. They have a playgroup that is only $2 (yes, TWO DOLLARS) to get into, and after you pay less than the price of a cup of coffee they send you back to the gym, where walkers and play houses and a tiny trampoline and a slide and enough plastic balls to turn one end of the gym into a ball pit have been strewn everywhere, and dozens of small people are dashing around, having fun. Elliot, predictably, LOVED IT. He's still a little young to play with other kids, but he did wander around and interact with them briefly. And the joys of not only filling a bucket with balls by yourself, but having assistance, and then getting to watch as multiple buckets are simultaneously spilled all over the floor again and again were staggering. The only complaint I have is that, while parents are required to be there, some of them are not as vigilant with their children as I could wish them to be. One little boy Elliot's age took a tumble and started wailing, and I had to spend several minutes trying to find his mother, who was off chatting in the corner with another mom. I'm all for Independence but I think you should at least, y'know, keep half an eye on them.

So... Elliot, Elliot, Elliot... Elliot is adopting a much more regular sleep schedule. For about the past week he has taken a nap at 9:30. Almost 45 minutes on the nose after he falls asleep I will hear a little whine from the monitor, that's not him waking up, it's him rolling over. Roughly 45 minutes after that he wakes up and sits up, but he's not really awake yet, and will spend the next 30 minutes drowsing on my lap while he nurses. Then he's awake for the rest of the day, and no matter how high or low key it is he will not go to sleep until 8 pm. He's been waking up two or three times a night, at least one of those being while I'm still awake, so for those of you who are counting I am, for the most part, only getting woken up once or twice a night, which is really nice. Between 6:30 and 7 in the morning he wakes up, and that's the whole shebang. On the one hand it's really nice being able to predict how long he'll be sleeping - it takes away all the anxiety I used to feel about never really knowing if I had 2 minutes or 2 hours to do something - but on the other hand it also means he's way less flexible than he used to be. If he doesn't go down for his nap on time he's really cranky the rest of the day.

The other day we were at another baby's birthday party, and some friends mentioned that, the day before when it had been particularly warm, they had taken their son outside and filled the lid of a packing trunk (still on the trunk) with water and let him play with it to his hearts content. Ah, think I, this is a GREAT idea, I will do the same. So, the next really warm day comes and I take a trunk, Elliot, and a thing of water outside and set him up. Of course, Elliot didn't really want to play in the puddle of water. Instead he wanted to grab dirt off the ground and mix it in the water in the trunk and make giant mud pies.

My boy, the mud pie artist.

On the one hand, it was very messy. But on the other hand, I was sort of proud of him. I mean, some babies are given a toy and shown how to play with it and that's just what they do. Some babies improvise.

My baby is like MacGyver.

He's also a choco-holic. Someone (to be fair, that someone was probably me) gave him a tiny piece of chocolate one day, and now he's after it like crack. If he sees chocolate he wants it. He also recognizes the tin that sits in our living room that has chocolate in it, so if he sees THAT he starts trying to grab it and get chocolate out. Amanda visited us the other day and brought some starbucks truffles with her. We weren't paying attention for a minute and the next thing we knew, there was Elliot, surrounded by gold wrapping paper, half a truffle clenched in his little fist, cheeks suspiciously full. Oh well, at least it has anti-oxidants in it. The funny thing is, it's not just the really sweet stuff he likes. You can give that child the darkest of dark chocolates, 82% coco and he'll be happy as a clam.

He also desperately wants to drink wine, when Waxor and I have some, so we've started giving him his own "wine". Convenient how so many juices look just like wine, isn't it? As long as it's in a wine glass he doesn't seem to care, although it does have to bare a passing resemblance to what we've got - you can't try to give him milk in stem ware, he isn't that gullible.

What else? His communication skills are much better. He uses the sign for "more" to mean both more and "I want" which is really handy. He also is talking a lot more, both nonsense and almost sense. He clearly distinguishes between Dada and Dante, although to tell the truth they still sound like almost exactly the same word to me, but if you pay close attention you can tell a difference, and he gets irritated if he says Dante and I think he means Dada. He says "Harf" and "Raowowowow" when we're talking about dogs and "maaaaaarow" when we're talking about cats, and he understands a lot of what I say. I can ask him if he wants to go outside and he goes to the front door, or I can tell him to come here, I need to put his shoes on and he comes over and sits in my lap. He's starting to identify his nose, ear, hair, and belly, and yesterday I said "Hi Elliot" and he said "Ey-yot" and I said "Did you just say Elliot?" and he said "Ay Ey-yot" while tapping himself on the chest, so I picked him up and told him yes, he was Elliot, and also that he was the most clever baby ever in the history of the world.

Last but not least he has become a consummate lover of books (I am, of course, filled with glee). He loves to read books. Hi favorite at the moment is "Goodnight Gorilla" which has few words, but very expressive pictures, and is the story of a zookeeper who goes around saying goodnight to all the animals, and the gorilla who steals his keys and follows him around, letting all the animals out of their cages. The animals all then follow him to his house and curl up in his bed room to go to sleep, and his wife sleepily turns the light out and says "goodnight dear." The next page is a black page with a bunch of word bubbles on it with all the animals saying goodnight, and the page after that is a black page with nothing but the wife's big, round, surprised eyes staring out. Whenever I get to that page I gasp (as, I am sure, we all would upon discovering a zoo's worth of animals in our bedroom) and Elliot has started copying me. He will get the book, and very seriously turn the pages til he gets to that page, and then he gasps and looks at me and starts giggling.

What a clever boy.

Waxor is going to start fencing again. There's open fencing at a place in Sommerville and he's going to the first time tomorrow night. We'll see how it goes, but he's very excited. Other than that his job is still to his liking. One of the guys in charge of pushing out corrections apparently sends mass emailings to everyone of what he's going to be pushing that day, and before the list he will write a paragraph about some completely unrelated hilarity. So now I have two people from Waxor's office I want to invite for dinner - one who writes funny things, and, of course, his manager, Tom Riddle. Yeah, I can't resist having Lord Voldemort over to eat.

Speaking of eating, for some reason I've gotten obsessed with planning menus recently. Not just any menus, but menus built around a theme or ingredient. So like, I was watching Iron Chef the other day, and the secret ingredient was butter. BUTTER! But of course, I started thinking of what I would serve if I had to build a five course dinner around butter. I decided I would do a "Meals of the Day" set of courses, breakfast, lunch, snack, dinner, dessert. To start we'd have Croissant with Honey Butter and Fresh Fruit, then Butter Poached Lobster with Lemon and Asparagus, then Kettle Corn and Hot Buttered Rum, then Butternut Squash Gnocchi With Sage Butter Sauce and Grilled Salmon, then Peach Cobbler with Brown Butter Ice Cream.

I know, it's a weird thing for me to be doing, but I can't help it. I've got a "Like Water for Chocolate" Themed Menu, and a "Fried Green Tomatoes and the Whistle Stop Cafe" Themed Menu. I've got Olive, Avacado, and Garlic Themed Menus, as well as Menus for Chicken, Squash, and Strawberries.

And, you know what's tragic? I am so excited about these menus, and I don't know if I'll ever make any of them because, let's face it, outside of a competition is anyone ever going to eat five courses of Beets (yeah, got one for that, too)? Probably not.

Alright, so I spent some time this week and wrote one the things I was thinking about. I am not going to comment on it at all here, I'm just going to copy it in at the bottom, and let anyone who wants to comment do so (please, feel free to critique it thoroughly), and then I'll comment next time.



All the Time in the World

breathe

The beeping of the machines keeps time in this room. Sunlight pours in the unshuttered window, spilling across the the floor in an afternoon sprawl, crawling its way up the table on the opposite wall. The table is laden with flowers in bloom, cut down and arranged in vases just as they reached their prime. Odd and disturbing, this sunny floral bower, pulsing in time to the beeps.
My hand lifts slowly. Bad enough that it has to battle its way past oxygen and argon, nitrogen and carbon dioxide, now it also has to push past giant molecules of bee attractors. Air is so heavy, something I never knew until this moment. It's like trying to reach through a vat of molasses. My loved ones, speaking in hushed voices at my bedside, don't seem to notice, but they move with glacial slowness.

breathe

They call it the stages of grief, as though your emotions were on a macabre journey that will, eventually, get you somewhere. As though they are set points that you can leave behind as you move forward. But I feel them all, all the time. I feel shocked and angry and accepting, all at once. Despair and rage and peace each battle their own side in my heart, all winning and all losing at the same time. Yes, I am furious. How dare my body turn on me? How dare it allow this insidious, creeping, fungal rot to invade me, pillar and post? How dare the world? How dare God? How dare... But there is no one to blame. The anger, like all the stages, takes me no where, for there is no where to go. I am already there. I have bargained and promised and bartered, and railed and cried and screamed, and still I am there. I have breathed deep and let go and found my center. Still I am there. My center is there. Here. Here, in this moment.

breathe

My hand settles on its destination, the head of my small son. He has fallen asleep, and I hope he will stay that way until the inevitable occurs. There are things that no child should have to sit and wait for. My husband put his small sleeping body next to mine in the bed. Together we take up no space at all; his tiny, perfect form fitting so naturally against my side. Sorrow surges to the top of my emotional pile up. Tomorrow he will wake up beside someone else, or, worse, alone. If he opens his eyes and says “Mama” it will not be in joy at finding me there, but rather plaintively, wondering where I have gone. And he will not understand, all through that long day, and the next, and the next, and an infinity of nexts, why his Mama does not answer him. Someday he will understand. Someday his father will give him the letter that I wrote weeks ago and tucked among my important papers; the letter that begins “My beloved son,” and goes on to describe, however inadequately, how much I love him, how much I will miss him, how much I wish I could watch him grow, and change. How I hope that he will remember me, but that I don't expect it. He is, after all, so small. And how I hope he will not miss me too much, because, more than anything, what I want the most is for him to be happy.

breathe

I wonder if I will find the time to tell my loved ones everything I want to tell them. Everything they need to hear. How much time do you need to say every last word you have in your heart? More than a moment. More than a million moments, I think.

Perhaps you need all the time in the world.

breathe.