Life in Chicago

Who She Is

As I write this I've just put Veronica down for bed and I'm listening to her cry over the monitor. The little red lights blaze across the top of the gadget with each of her cries. They taper off into aahahahaahhhhs that are so sweet they cause my chest swells with warmth. She's not really awake, this is just something she does most nights as she goes to sleep.

Sometimes it escalates and I go in and lift her out of the crib and sink down into the rocker and nurse her back to sleep in the dark. More often than not, I'll think she's awake and I'll go in, only to peer over the railing of the crib at her little open mouth, her eyes closed, and realize that she's just crying out in her sleep.

I nurse her to sleep every night around 8pm. Usually on the couch, the lights in the living room turned low. She stays up while Greg and I eat dinner, usually playing in her exersaucer while we eat, each of taking turns to make funny faces at her so that she rocks back and forth in excitement. After that I turn off the lamp behind my head and sit to nurse her while we watch Madmen episodes on DVD or catch up on email. She plays with her ear for a while in the beginning of nursing, her fingers fluttering and pulling at the cartilage, her eyes opening wide to look up at me, as if to make sure I'm still there, even though she's physically attached to me. And then, after a while, her breathing grows deeper, her eyes stay closed, and I know that she is asleep.

Sometimes I let her stay there for a while, enjoying her warmth and her presence, but eventually, after I'm sure she's asleep, I heft us off the couch, keeping her cradled in my arms against me, and I walk slowly back to the nursery. I creak across the hardwood floors and gently roll her out of my arms and onto the mattress in her crib. Then I click off the light and back out of the room, being careful not to make much noise.

And then I usually miss her for a while. I've written about this before here, but I'm still fascinated by what a physical relationship this is. It's not something that I wasn't anticipating at all. But you get so used to it. Her tiny hands all over me, the weight of her body in my arms, the way she twists and kicks, and the feel of her soft, soft head against my cheek. My body feels so solitary, so staid, when she's gone.

I meant to write a post about Veronica and the little person she is swiftly becoming, and I guess I am in a way. But I see now that what I'm really writing about is my attachment to her, perhaps in the face of her emerging independence. And I know that this is only the beginning. I have eating and walking and teenagedom to look forward to, but I had gotten used to those early months of complete dependence.

Even though it was challenging, I'd grown used to doing everything for this little person, for making each decision, and for even having to physically manipulate into various positions. But now, here she is, pushing against me, pulling herself towards something, indicating how desperately she wants to grab that cat who is walking by (poor cats, they're really going to be in for it soon). And I can't help but realize that she is her own little person already. She has wants and desires and plans and ideas that are different than mine. I find this at once heartbreaking and utterly revelatory.

I was thinking about my father tonight. He always treated me like a person. Even when I was a kid. He expected a certain level of independence and responsibility from me that I think is rare for a parent to ask of their child. I'm grateful for it. And I know that it had to do with raising three children before I was born, watching  them grow up and turn into their own people helped him to recognize that I was my own person right from the start. Where parents generally have to live through the experience of their child becoming themselves, my father had done that several times over, giving him the ability to know that I would do the same, long before I actually did it.

I always want to respect the person that Veronica is, whoever it may be. I want to recognize that, although she comes from me and from Greg, she is not us. I want to be open to whoever she wishes to be, even if it's something that I would not choose for her.

One of my favorite books is The Fairy Tales of Herman Hesse, and in it, there is a story about a woman who gets one wish for her infant son. She thinks on it long and hard and finally she wishes for all people to love him. The story follows the boy as he grows into a man and, indeed, all who encounter him love him. But he turns selfish and self-centered, and he has no respect or reverence for those around him, not even his own mother. She regrets the folly of her choice and her heart breaks for the man he has become.

I want Veronica to live the life that she will live. I cannot protect her from heartbreak or loneliness, I cannot ask that everyone love her (even though part of me wishes I could). I can only ask that she be who she is. And I can only love her for whoever that may be.

New Camera!

Greg's parents got us an amazing new camera (a Nikon D60) and I can't stop taking closeups of Veronica.

Free Fallin'

Life seems to have become more difficult to manage lately, underscored by the fact that I'm typing this with one hand.

It's just that Veronica has become more fun and engaging than ever. When she's awake Greg and I are both pretty busy keeping her entertained. Her personality is really starting to emerge, she's on the verge of being able to sit up by herself, and making her laugh is the best thing I've ever spent time doing.

That said, my cascading and ever-growing To Do list had me in a deflated and despairing heap on the couch last night. Writing projects have piled up, I'm behind at work, I'm struggling to complete a grad school class for licensing requirements, and I had this grand plan to start posting 2-3 thoughtful and well-written blogs a week (instead of hasty updates such as this one).

It's really just about making choices though, I suppose. And this morning, instead of taking time to write, Greg and I had a Tom Petty dance party with Veronica.

I suppose, at the very least, I can give you a funny picture.

Irrevocable Changes

Sure, maybe it's just because I miss him. Or maybe it's that they really do have the same eye color. Or perhaps it's simply that my little daughter with her jowly cheeks and practically-bald head actually looks like an old man. Whatever the case, sometimes I look at Veronica and I get a flash-sense of my father.

It's surely not impossible that she could resemble him in spirit or even features, but the apathetic 17-year old in me tends to discard any such notions, insisting that it's just that I miss the man. I have to admit though that if there's anyone in my family whom I would want Veronica to be like it would be my father.

And I do miss him. Profoundly.

My father was 57 when I was born. He and my mother had been married for three years. She was forty and they had met late in life and had both been married twice before each other. My father had three grown children who were in their thirties and my mother had none.

My Dad grew up in Michigan during the depression. He was a bomber pilot in WWII, a prisoner of war in Germany and he came home a changed man. He made a lot of mistakes in his early life, wasn't always a great father or a great husband and he tended toward the self-important. But by the time he met my mother, he'd owned up to a lot of those faults and was well on his way to being an incredibly good man.

My mother helped him with that. She demanded that from him. And he from her. They made each other better people. The best marriages do that, I think.

My father loved to tell me how it was him who convinced my mother to have a child. He would lean back in his chair, swirling a glass of scotch and peering out over the bridge of his nose at me, his daughter, as he would tell me that he knew, just knew, that having a baby would irrevocably change my mother's life. 

Thinking back on those moments with him, the resolution in his voice, as my own little daughter entwines her fingers in my hair, I can't help but gasp with emotion for this great gift he gave her. And how wild that he would be up for having another child after he had already raised three.

But here I am.

It wasn't until after my mother died that he and I truly became close and that I really came to know him for the man he was. Oh, I loved him so much. He was such a good man by then. When my mother died I was eighteen and he was 77. We made an unlikely pair, but sometimes those are the best kinds of anything.

About a year after my mother died was when he moved to California from Atlanta, where we had all lived as a family. I was living in New York by then but I flew out to visit him often.

It was funny to see him living alone. Sometimes it was sad but a lot of the time it was just interesting. My mother had been such a force, dominating the household in all areas. It was her taste in art and furniture that filled the rooms. It was her cooking that found our table and her hobbies that took precedence over my father's.

He was living in Garden Grove,  a patch of Southern California about 45 minutes south of Los Angeles. He was familiar with the area having lived in Pasadena in the 1950s and the climate was good for his health. The modest, 2 bedroom condominium he took over from his deceased sister suited all his needs and was the place where I stayed and thought of as home in a way, when I visited from New York.

The condominium was in a little gated complex, a pool at its center, with a plethora of young families living all around him. In the mornings and afternoons the place was noisy with the sound of 7 and 8 year olds going to and from school. My dad often kept the front door open out of loneliness, and he would wave to the families from his perch at the kitchen table where he scanned the LA Times and sorted through catalogues.

When he moved into the condo he got rid of my aunt's outdated, avocado green sofas and heavy curtains and replaced them with slick blinds and a set of black leather couches. He hung modern art on the walls and put up large, framed photos of my mother everywhere. He even picked up a couple of lava lamps for the credenza, their place there by the front door never ceasing to make me laugh.

One month, after I'd sent him some essay I wrote in a college creative writing class about not having a home to go home to after my mother's death, I arrived for a visit to find that he had completely redecorated the guest room. A sign hung on the door that said, "Claire's Room" and inside he had put a pretty feminine comforter on the bed and had dug all my old stuffed animals out of storage to put in an armchair in the corner.

I was also surprised by how much my father suddenly began to cook. He looked up recipes on the NY Times website on a regular basis and was always trying out something new on me or his neighbors. He made apple pies and marbled breads, he made meaty lasagnas too and he even canned a bunch of strawberries one summer. Those seven years we had together after my mother died were unexpected and as each one slipped by I found myself more grateful for this time allotted to us, even if I wasn't always up for admitting that it was my mother's death that granted it.

I loved my father, loved him like I hadn't loved anyone before. I think as children we all love our parents unconditionally, but as we grow older and come to know them for the people we are we get to love them in a way of our choosing. It's a different kind of love than the obvious one we first feel. I never really got past that adolescent love I felt for my mother, not with her dying before I escaped adolescence.

I've been thinking about my father a lot lately. And maybe it really is because sometimes I look into Veronica's eyes and see his. She has the most remarkable blue eyes, but they're not the same blue as mine (a greenish-grey-blue or Greg's, a pale seagreen blue) and when I look into them long enough I get this inexplicable flash of my father.

But maybe it's something else entirely.

This morning I slipped quietly out of bed, careful not to jostle her milky, warm little body still curled under the covers and I tiptoed into the kitchen to pour a cup of coffee. It suddenly struck me that a little over a year ago I was waking up in the mornings with a feeling of ennui, with an unexplainable flatness. My life, even with all its love and adventure still felt dulled and heavy.

And I thought about that again this morning, after she had awoken and I was holding her in my arms, her little hands clasped around my neck, her face nuzzling into my neck as I spoke in soothing morning tones, my cheek brushing against her soft, downey head. The flatness has gone away. It's been gone for a long time. Life, these days, feels the opposite of flat.

And it was then that I knew, just knew, that my father, wherever he is, is happy for me.

The New Me, The Mom Me

 
It's a cold, rainy morning in Chicago and, as I write this, LA couldn't seem farther away. The wind is whistling around the house right now and the tree trunks are black from the wet. Rain drops are beaded up on the windows and wet leaves have plastered themselves against the glass.

I'm finally feeling recovered from my trip but it took a day or two. Traveling alone with a 5-month old was one of the more ambitious things I've ever set out to do, and it wasn't until I was actually there doing it, that I fully realized what I had gotten myself into.

The anxiety set in the moment I saw Greg pull away in the Honda. There I was standing in the middle of O'Hare, a suitcase in one hand, the stroller in another, completely alone with my daughter, on my way to spend three days in Los Angeles, catching up with a dozen friends, none of whom had yet to meet Veronica.

I've traveled alone countless times. I've trekked through the Philippines by myself, gone off to Taiwan, the Grenadines, Sicily and Switzerland, with no one alongside of me. And I'd certainly been to LA enough times. But this trip was different and the moment I found myself alone at the airport my heart began to pound.

Being responsible for another person, when that person is completely helpless, is a big job. I kept thinking about that exercise where they used to ask teenagers to carry around an egg for two weeks, making sure not to break it, in the hopes of giving them a taste of what it might be like to have a baby. And it's true. Imagine trying to navigate the mess that is the airport, while trying carefully not to drop an egg.

Or upset the egg. Because if you do then it's just you standing there in middle of the busy airport with a screaming egg, er baby. And your husband isn't with you so when everyone turns to give you the death stare, it's just you that they give it to. And then you skulk away into the family bathroom, trying desperately to calm your little egg who just doesn't want to be in her stroller, all the while trying not to touch anything so that neither of you contract any kind of fatal airport illness.

I digress. Everything went swimmingly until I got on the plane. And even then, it wasn't so bad. It was just that out of a four and a half hour flight she only slept for 30 minutes. I spent the majority those four hours doing my best to keep her happy, which mostly involved standing in the back of the plane by the bathrooms so that she could make faces at the stewardesses who popped back and forth. This activity coupled really well with my general fear of flying.

As we finally touched down in Los Angeles I was filled, not with relief, but a new anxiety, one that I had not anticipated at all. I suddenly found myself worried that all my old friends in LA, particularly those without children, wouldn't like the new me, the mom me. 

This realization came out of nowhere. Ever since I'd bought these tickets to California I'd been nothing but looking forward to catching up with my friends and showing off my funny little girl. But it suddenly struck me, as I made my way through LAX with my suitcase and stroller and baby and diaper bag that this was not the Claire my friends were used to. Would they like the new me?

Of course they would, I reassured myself. My friends are my friends for good reason. They're wonderful, caring, and thoughtful people and they genuinely didn't seem to mind at all when we had to spend 20 minutes in the parking garage trying to figure out how to fit the stroller, car seat, luggage and baby into a Mini Cooper with three passengers.

But man, I minded! I felt so self-conscious. I couldn't help apologizing over and over, soothing Veronica in between sorrys, and all the while trying to act calm and helpful when all I wanted was to chuck the stroller into nearby traffic.

And so the trip went. I caught up with at least a dozen dear friends in two days, all the while trying to act cool and collected as I strapped V to my chest in the Bjorn or collapsed the stroller  into the trunk of a friend's convertible. Oh no, I'm fine! I do this all the time! Just give me one sec...

By the third and final night of the trip I was utterly exhausted and broke down crying in the parking lot of a restaurant as I tried to walk Veronica around in an attempt to calm her down while my friends sat inside eating dinner.

Being a mom is hard. It's hard because it requires absolutely ALL of you to do it properly. There's no slacking. There's no extra glass of wine or impromptu nap. There's no chance to blow-dry your hair, not when it means you might wake up the baby whom you desperately want to get some sleep because you've dragged her all the way across the country for three short days.

After three days of devoting all of my time to making sure that my daughter was getting absolutely every thing she needed (sleep, sustenance, sun protection, diaper changes, safety, smiles and love), what I had left in me was devoted to being present to my friends, to wanting to genuinely catch up on their lives. But nodding and asking about their writing projects and marriages and jobs while bouncy a fussy baby on my hip just left me feeling breathless and overwhelmed and insecure.

So far, motherhood has been one big lesson in finding balance and being present. On the flight back, as V finally slept blissfully in my arms for a solid two hours, I rested my cheek against her soft little head and knew that even though my life has changed painfully, dramatically, irrevocably, I wouldn't give up a second of what I've had with her to have any of the old life back.

Autumn

Friday Morning Worries

Dear Bug,

If something were ever to happen to me, this is the letter I would most want you to read.

I think a lot about what it would be like for you to grow up without me, your mother. I suppose it has a lot to do with my having lost my own mother and the fact that I constantly fret about my own mortality. Well, actually I go back and forth between incredibly serene moments of understanding about the ebbs and flows of life and death and then extreme anxiety about having to leave this world before I'm ready. And your presence my dear, makes me feel like I'm not ready.

There are so many things I want you to know, so many things I could say. I could write you a letter every day for the rest of my life and probably not say it all. Nonetheless, there are a few choice things I would definitely want you to know if I weren't around.

I think a lot about how, if I were to die now, you wouldn't remember me. You would have no memories of our sweet, little relationship. I think about how that's true for the next three or four years. That in order for you to remember your mother I have to stay alive for several more years. I do know that even if you didn't remember me I know that I would have still had an effect on the person you are. I take comfort in the fact that all the love I've given you, all the care I've provided will always make you that much more of a secure person.

But enough of all that. Here's what I want you to know.

I love you like I've never loved anyone. I love you in a way I didn't realize was possible. I love you in this profoundly transcendent way. This way that, even if I weren't here, you would still be surrounded by my love. It's a love so big that it's never going away. Not when you're 20, not when you're 47, not when you're in your seventies and a grandmother.

I want you to know that I'm always going to proud of you. Even if I were to die today, you can be certain that when you're making your first science fair project or running your first track meet or graduating high school or college or losing a tooth or skinny a knee or taking your first step or going to your first dance or getting engaged or having a baby, that I'm proud of you. Even if it seems like I couldn't possibly be proud of you because I'm not there, I just will be and you have to accept that.

Death is such a strange thing, little bug. It happens to all of us. And it can be so sad and so scary and so unwanted. But the truth of it is that because of death, life is important. Think about it for a moment. It's true. Death gives us meaning. It gives us goals and aspirations and makes us think about just how much we love one another.

I don't know why I think about it all the time. I guess because both of my parents died so early. And because I work in hospice (really need to get a new job next year). But I do. I think about how long I have to live this life. How long I have to love you. To love your father. To be a mother, a wife, a woman, a writer. I think about places I want to see and things that I want to taste and feel. I think about having more babies and I think about you, you, you and your life and all the things I want to see you do and taste and feel.

And all those things make me certain that I just couldn't bear to go yet. And then I think, well, if I did have to go, I'm so very grateful for what I've done and felt and tasted here in my 31 years. You and your father and my mother and father have the height of it all. There's just nothing more important than the people we love.

But I digress. It's a drizzly Friday morning in October. You're 4 and a half months old. You weigh sixteen pounds (my aching back reminds me of this often). You love to suck on your big right toe and you've been squealing and laughing more than ever this past week. You don't have too much hair but you have the prettiest blue eyes and the softest rose-colored lips. You're nursing as I type this and one hand continually brushes against my shoulder, pulling at my sweater and grazing my face. Your eyelashes cast soft shadows on your cheeks and your warm little body is flush against mine.

There is no way I could love you more than I do in this moment. And it's something that will last forever.

I'm certain of it. 

Love,

Mom

Just Because

We had a really lovely weekend.

Yesterday was Greg's 31st birthday.  We started celebrating on Friday with a dinner with friends at Nightwood, officially my new favorite restaurant in Chicago. (Greg and I like to play this game where we ask each other what 3 restaurants we would return to if we moved away from Chicago and Lula is always my number one. Well, Nightwood is the latest feat by the Lula folks, so it was pretty incredible.)

On Saturday we drove out to the middle of Illinois and went hiking at Starved Rock Canyon. The drive was a little far and the canyon a little crowded but it was really nice to get outside and enjoy the fall leaves and crisp air. That night at home we ate tacos and watched Rosemary's Baby.

And yesterday was Greg's birthday. He shares his birthday with my father. My father would have been 89 yesterday (!). October 11 also happens to be my parent's wedding anniversary. They would have been married 34 years. My mother always said that she gave herself to my father as a birthday present and my father always said that she was the best gift he ever received. 

The three of us spent Sunday at home. I was in the kitchen for hours, working on a birthday cake and a lasagna to take to Greg's sister's house for dinner. Greg and Veronica spent most of the day following a football game on the computer and making each other laugh. And in the evening we had dinner with Greg's sister and her husband and their two kids.

It was a really nice weekend. The kind of weekend you dream about when life is giving you harder ones. It was the kind of weekend you wonder if you'll ever have again when you're dealing with a loved one who has an illness or when you've just gotten laid off from a job and you wonder if life will ever be normal again. It was the kind of weekend I used to dream about when my mother was throwing up from chemo or when I was brushing my father's dentures before giving him his nightly dose of morphine. Just one of those classic-life-is-good weekends.

And while I'm glad that my past experiences ensure that I appreciate these weekends more than I might otherwise, I also wish they didn't leave me with such a morbid edge to all things good. The more that I love Veronica, the more that I fear losing her. I remember going through this when I fell in love with Greg too. Before we were engaged and married I worried constantly that for some reason or another I wouldn't live to see those things happen. I used to beg some unseen force to please, please just let me live long enough to marry this man whom I love so dearly. And now I find myself begging again, please, please let me see my beautiful daughter grow up.

I don't know if this is normal. I don't know if my other mom friends experience this or if it's just a result of the loss I've experienced in my life. The moment I find myself loving something, I can't help but think of what it would feel like to lose it. I want to get past this. I want to be able to simply enjoy a perfect weekend, not because I know its opposite, but simply because.

Life in Chicago

Yesterday morning I got up extra early and ran the Bucktown 5K with some friends. Greg and Veronica were waiting for me at the finish line.

My friends and I all started out together but quickly lost each other in the crowd of runners and I ran the race by myself, breathing in the cold morning air in huffs, watching the other runners all around me and looking for Greg on the sidelines.

It was a short run, but still long enough to get my heart pumping, to fill me up with little bursts of unexpected emotion. The sky was shot through with silver rain clouds and the sun came in and out of them, filtering through the fall leaves on the trees in the little neighborhood streets we ran down.

I like running these large public races. I always feel deftly connected, however briefly, to all the other runners around me. What a funny thing it is that we humans like to do, this running. It's so innate in us, to push, to run, to gather together and move like this.

These are the kinds of things I thought about while I ran.

And all the while I was looking, looking for Greg and Veronica. My people. The two people I am most dearly connected to in this world. The sky opened up again in the last leg of the run and I thought about my life here in Chicago, about what a surprising thing it is. I was reminded again, of how swiftly life changes, of how often I find myself looking ahead to some future I can't help but anticipate but how all I ever really need to do is be present to what is. It will all change whether I want it to or not.

And then I was approaching the finish line, the runners around me growing dense and some of them running harder. Finally, I heard my name and turned to see Greg in his yellow zip-up, Veronica asleep in the Bjorn on his chest. My people. My favorite people. The people that give movement to my life.

Last Night

It was windy last night, great torrents of it rattling the windows and pushing around the corners of the house. The leaves in the trees blew so hard that they sounded like great sheets of water cascading down around us, rather than the thousand papery selves they really were.

And now it's morning. Cloud ridges scud by and the wind continues to blow. It's cool out and there is no longer any denying that fall is here.

Around 3am last night I lay awake in bed, listening to the wind blowing and to the tick-tick of the ceiling fan above. Greg was next to me and Veronica was asleep in my arms, her warm, little body pressed against mine. I felt the rhythmic rise and fall of her chest and I thought about how I don't think about my life so much anymore. 

I used to spend long moments contemplating my existence, the whys and hows and all the unending possibilities for it all. On nights like last night, with the wind blowing like that, I would have lain awake for hours, just wondering, wondering.

But now that Veronica is here I don't think about it so much. I don't have time. And when I do think about life, I think about hers, and what I can give to her, what I can do now to help pave her path. Last night, lying in bed at 3 in the morning, listening to the wind howl around the house, all I thought about was how glad my body was there and warm for hers.