book scout

Nine Months

'She wasn't doing a thing that I could see, except standing there, leaning on the railing, holding the universe together.'
J.D. Salinger

I've been coming here for a few weeks now almost every night after you go to bed, only to stare at the blank screen. It's a new thing, this problem of knowing exactly what I want to say but with no idea how to say it. You turned nine months old right before Mother's Day. You have been here now as long as it took for you to grow and be born and that seems somehow enormous to me. I've been uploading photos. A few sentences here and there. When I attempt any more, my brain seems to short circuit. It's all too impossibly good. Even when it's bad, it's good. I know I've mentioned it before, but lately I just can't shake the feeling that these are the good old days. The ones I will be forever reminiscing about when I am old and gray and wizened and sitting at a kitchen table with my old lady friends like the Golden Girls. I will be boring everyone to death with my stories about Portland and the time when my baby was little. How long the spring was. How soft your hair felt under my hand. How meticulous you were about everything you did. How much you adored your Dad. How I held you on my hip just so. No matter how hard it gets, no matter how little sleep I've had, nothing I have ever done in my life feels as good as being your mother. And nothing ever will. Happy nine months, sweet boy. I love you so.

 

7/52

 

Well, that about sums it up.

 

52: A Portrait A Week 

 

6/52

I do not know if there is anything in the entire world better than a nine month old baby.

Seriously. 

5/52

You try to eat her paws and still she licks your nose and you play tug of war in the mornings with the hanger/blanket/towel/stuffed toys. I'm not sure what I expected, way back when before you were born, but nothing could beat the reality of it. You two are inseperable.

 52: A Portrait A Week 

 

4/52

Some weeks it's hard to choose just one. 

These feel like the last days of your babyhood to me. It seems crazy but I can't shake the idea. You hover on the edge of mobility. So close. Anxious to explore, out and away. Always away. And I knew that, knew that that was The Main Thing about being a parent, that children grow up and become independent and go off to college and fall in love and have their own babies and get mid-life crisis tattoos or whatever but I did not expect to be confronted with that fact SO EARLY. So these days feel tender and a little bit sad in a way I had not expected. I took you to Ikea on a Saturday (because I am an idiot and forgot it was Saturday), and while you are prone to greeting the world head-on, the teeming masses proved to be too much for you. You snuggled closer to me in the carrier, buried your head in my chest. You let me kiss your head and we cooed at each other as we walked through the store and toward the giant ceiling fan adored by all babies everywhere. And next month (or tomorrow) when I am childproofing every outlet and drawer in this falling-apart house with the dangerous stairs and splintery floors, I will remember that funny afternoon and what a gift it was. 

52: A Portrait A Week 

3/52

 

Daddy carried you on his shoulders. You picked me a flower. You crawled backwards. The tooth came through. You discovered cheerios. You were cautious of strangers. The cat decided you were okay. You kissed everything in sight. You laughed so hard you cried.

52: A Portrait A Week

2/52

 

You turned eight months old. We celebrated with motrin. The teething fevers had run their course by the fifth day, but I was mindful of how little you seemed to me again, asleep in my arms like a newborn.

52 : A Portrait A Week

I wish you all good things.

  

So sometimes you sit around on a Saturday night with your fevery, teething baby, thinking about Terry Gross. Because Fresh Air is often on in the car in the morning in the only half hour you have to yourself each day, and she has become something of a friend, that Terry. So you think about her in between the baby's cries, and you rock back and forth, and you think about her voice and the way she listens to people. And you think of how you would like to learn to listen to people (including the crying baby) in just that way.

So you come across an interview between Terry and Maurice Sendak. And you've heard it before, even remember parts of it clearly, but Sendak. You've long held that he is something like a shaman or a high priest when it comes to this thing people call 'children's literature.' There was no one higher and now he is gone, and you don't want to think about that but still you google for awhile and come across a video. Animated illustrations, really. An artist whose picture books you are familiar with, Christophe Neimann, has illustrated the last five minutes of that interview and so you watch it. 

And it should come with a warning label. The radio interview itself should come with a warning label, but to see it illustrated like that, well. Damn. You are not prepared for it. The chronic sleep deprivation is surely not helping, but it goes beyond that. You are crying in that way that is definitely NOT ATTRACTIVE. But since the baby is also covered in tears and snot and drool, you decide a snot and tears party is in order and so you and the baby commune for awhile in that way until he finally falls asleep. And for one night you have achieved Terry Gross' level of empathy.

And you are living your life.

1/52

Ewan, nearly 8 months.

Because it is all going too fast. Because I want to remember. I am joining this project: 52 portraits of my child, once a week for a year. I assure you there will still be books--there will always be books. But this child? This child will only be small once.

Good People Everywhere

One of the things that has surprised me about parenthood is how emotional I've become. Captain obvious, I know, but bear with me. It's more like a kind of rawness. And it is all the time. As someone who once took pride in being pretty level headed, this is a weird development. I am sure the nursing hormones, risidual PPD, and months of extreme sleep deprivation are also all probably at work here, but I have come to accept that I am just experiencing the world from a totally different place now. A place where there is a lot of crying at cereal commercials and Raffi songs and stuff. I feel an equal amount of joy and euphoria every day with my precious boy, but still. I can't watch a St. Jude Children's Hospital ad without wanting to throw all of the (very little) money I have in the world at them. I cannot even think about the lyrics from certain children's songs (I'm looking at YOU, 'This Little Light of Mine') without losing my shit. You can forget about Mr. Rogers. 

So naturally, I am reading books from a new place as well. I am feeling a bit more charitable toward titles I have previously criticised, even here on the blog. (Ahem.) While I still think the illustrations are as creepy as ever, I have softened to the refrain of Munch's Love You Forever. I can't even get through two pages of Someday, by Allison McGee without bawling. Thankfully, The Giving Tree makes just as stabby as ever, so at least the old me is still alive and kicking in there somewhere. I am just a bit more sensitive than I was before, thanks to this boy of mine. I remember in the days that followed the Newton massacre and the later shooting of Hadiya Pendleton and thinking, like so many other parents, I cannot do this. I have no idea how to make my child feel safe and secure and loved in a world that is absolutely not. And that's just it. I can't think about children and their smallness in this huge, terrible world in the abstract anymore. Because, Ewan.

So far, I have only seen Good People Everywhere, by Linea Gillen at one bookstore in town and that is my own, so it might be hard to find. Let me tell you: it is WORTH IT. I'm not sure there is another book out there that speaks so matter of factly about such a simple concept. Not sunshine and roses and rainbows streaming out of princesses's behinds, but real good people you and your children might meet on any given day. It reminds me of the fact-meets-fiction books by Richard Scarry and others, but with a totally different slant. Children are naturally curious about their world, so it makes perfect sense why they would be interested in all the different things that good people are doing. Especially sensitive kids. I think adults could also use a reminder.

 I recently gave it as a birthday gift to the daughter of a friend of mine. A friend who is one of those good people if ever there was one. I think she often worries that she is borrowing trouble, but of course, in even asking that question, she is not. She is just exceptionally good at seeing need and sharing burdens. A friend from my old San Francisco days used to call people like her 'saints,' and he meant it. There was a lady who worked at the bottom of one of those Bay Bridge off-ramps, holding caution signs for construction crews. I have no idea why I still remember her a decade later, or why she put much so much effort into making drivers and pedestrians laugh or why she had so much joy for such a mundane task, but she was one of his saints. They were all over the city. Maybe you know some too. Maybe you are one.

I wasn't originally sold on the illustrations by Kristina Swarner. I wanted to see something a bit more cool, or modern, or high-brow like say, a Jen Corace, or Carson Ellis or John Muth. I'm still torn on a few pages, but the simple, colorful, smudgy illustrations have since won me over with their equally straight-forward style. They remind me so much of my childhood and Reading Rainbow and Free to Be You and Me, and Sesame Street and I mean that in the best possible way.Twee and ironic is not the name of the game here. This is not Good People of Portland, or Austin, or some other hip city. It is not just about white folks who compost their scraps and ride bikes and get all self-righteousness about it. It is about real people, good people, anywhere and everywhere. The kind of people I hope my son will know someday. The kind I hope he will become.

 So I have added this one to the pile of books I can't read aloud at bedtime without a big fat lump in my throat. This baby of mine doesn't understand the words yet, but they are still words I want him to hear. Especially now, while he is little. I like to think about the good people. It calms my messy, new-mama's heart. I hope it does the same for you.