The secret blog

I have to confess something: there is an entire, second blog's worth of draft posts waiting to be published on this web page. But I don't publish them, and I'm trying to figure out why.

In part, because they are unfinished and raw and I write them fast then never find time to go back and polish. In part, because when I post so erratically I don't want the one entry on my blog in a month to be me complaining, for example, about the physical toll of parenting. In part, because this blog has an identity crisis: I wish I could write mainly about words and poetry and books and languages and living abroad, but I really write mainly about babies and kids and being a mom.

But also, and I'm starting to think this is the main reason, who I'm really writing for is myself. I get nervous when I think about people reading my little thoughts or stories of our family, but those are the things I want to set down, so I will remember them, a long time from now. I don't want or care much about links or pins or tweets or reader counts--although I do like the thought of loved ones being able to keep up with our lives, a little bit. But Facebook more or less fills that function, doesn't it?

I'm not sure what to do with this realization. I doubt I will go back and publish those other posts--they're linked to a moment in time that was a week ago, a month ago, a lifetime ago (literally a lifetime, when it's Eloi's life). But that's exactly why I am anxious to record, and anxious to keep writing. I love looking back at old blog posts, before kids, or when Gabriel was a baby (even though there aren't many of those). My own words capture and trigger my memory better than Facebook status updates or even photographs can. In addition, despite my qualms about audience, the at least quasi-public nature of a blog is what motivates me to continue to write.

So. We shall see. I will keep writing, and maybe or maybe not clicking "publish." And, because this is exactly the kind of thing I want to remember forever, in all of its messiness, a little portrait of our morning:

7 am. I am laying dozily in the warm bed, next to a baby who has decided that it is morning and life is grand! Squeal! Clap! Screech! Log roll! Scoot to the edge of the bed and attempt nosedive until mom grabs a leg! I should be getting him dressed, because the Mister is dropping him off at daycare this morning, exceptionally, due to all the ice on the ground and due to the fact that I have a work meeting. But Gabriel has, in the meantime, also come into the bed from his room, and is curled up so cozily in the hollow of my arms.

So the Mister, who has just dressed himself, starts dressing the baby next to us, and Gabriel touches his forehead to mine and whispers "hi! g'morning!" with a grin. The Mister is late, so he is getting frustrated, and then Gabriel starts flailing his feet and maybe-on-purpose-maybe-not almost kicking the baby's face. So I grab his feet to me, and sternly tell him that his feet should not be anywhere near the baby's face. We have a little talk and I try to convince him that we should get dressed too, but he earnestly tells me, eyebrows raised, gesturing at the clock he can't read, that we should stay in bed "a foo moh minutes."

The baby is now lotioned, diapered, and dressed. The Mister sets him in the bed and says that he'll go down to eat breakfast, and I suggest that he take the baby with him so they can leave more quickly. But he doesn't like that idea, because he's thinking he'll have to manage the baby while running around--as he does every morning--to find the last-minute items before departure. But I tell him to stick the baby in the high chair, since that's what I do every morning while I prepare the kids' breakfast/school lunch/daycare bottles. I try to say this neutrally. But the running late and possibly the fact that he had to dress the baby when I should have done it make him tense and we are both a bit snippy.

But here's the kicker, and the reason I am telling this story. While the Mister and I are having this interaction, the boys are sitting on the bed, facing each other. I have half an eye on M. and half an eye on them, a hand on Eloi's back to make sure there's no pushing or kicking or the baby doesn't dive off the bed. Instead, Gabriel leans forward and puts his arms gently around Eloi, and says softly, so I almost don't hear it as I listen to the Mister, "Good morning. I love you, baby brother."And then he gives him a kiss on the forehead.

This, in all of its messiness, is life with small children. It's kicking and kisses, snuggling but also running late, shrieks over clothing changes and then two seconds later swagger over a "cool" shirt, a gurgling clapping baby then an enraged hungry baby, and you never know what's coming next. It might be a bit of magic, even in the midst of crabby sleep-deprived conversations.

I want to remember this particular bit of magic, so I'm recording it here. A picture is impossible, a Facebook status doesn't cut it, my memory won't hold it given that I'm operating on months of no more than three consecutive hours of sleep. Given that it's just an ordinary morning, a morning out of thousands like it. But now it's here, in this repository.

Birth story part II

I'm enjoying writing these posts, and since I love reading birth stories, I hope they're fun for others too. After Gabriel was born I had two conflicting impulses: on one hand, I wanted to tell everybody all the details of his birth (it seemed strange just to announce it without explaining what had gone down!), but on the other hand, I was so ecstatic about it all that I just wanted to savor it for myself. Since "telling everybody all the details" isn't exactly considered societally acceptable, the latter impulse won out.

But now it's fun to revisit the experience, especially since in a few short months we'll be facing another round of labor and birth, and I hope to bring everything I learned then to bear on what we do now (even more so since I will barely know my doctor, and since labor and delivery staff here tend to be very oriented towards a medicalized birth--in other words, M. and I will need to advocate strongly for a natural birth, a task that I think will be easier having gone through it once before).

So where were we? The middle of the night, February 15, 2010. Labor was quiet and calm, but painful and intense. I thought we had hours of labor ahead of us, and so did our midwife and nurse. I had repeatedly asked to labor in the tub, but they kept putting it off, saying that it would be much more effective and a greater relief later in the course of labor. At this point I asked again, and in order to determine whether it was a good moment for the bath, my midwife gave me a cervical check (the first since the beginning of the evening, when I was less than a centimeter dilated). I was eight centimeters dilated! This surprised everyone, especially me, because I had been prepared to discover that I was only at a 5 or a 6.

At this point, my midwife and nurse left the room, and so did my mom, who was getting tired and needed a cup of tea. Precisely then, while lying on the bed after the cervical check, I experienced two long and strong contractions, along with a very strong urge to push. I whimpered to the Mister that he needed to get the midwife. Our nurse came in, discovered that I was at a ten, and asked me to give just a tiny push. The baby was ready to come out! She told me to hang on, not to push, and I held my breath.

Suddenly, the room filled with people. I hadn't expected such a transformation when it came time to actually deliver the baby! Surgical gowns, trays of instruments, a bright light centered between my legs, extra nurses. And my mom walked in with her tea, shocked at the new state of affairs in a room she had left, dark and quiet, only a few minutes earlier.

Pushing with each contraction actually felt great, and not too painful at all. It was more an exertion of energy and strength than anything, although I felt like I wasn't quite getting the hang of it, because they would give me differing instructions about how to push or how to curl around the baby. They dropped the bottom half of the bed and I was then able to grip a squat bar, which gave me a lot more traction, but still, no baby appeared. I was losing energy, even half-dozing between contractions, utterly out of it and waiting for the next contraction to swing me forward. This process by now had taken over an hour, with the baby still caught under my pelvis. He would descend and recede, descend and recede, which is what is supposed to happen, but it felt discouraging. Finally, after nearly two hours, the Mister and my mom could see the baby's head. Their excitement and exclamations gave me some badly needed oomph, although it felt abstract until the midwife told me to reach down and feel his hair. So soft, so present: our baby was arriving!

Even with his head nearly out, the baby just refused to exit his cozy harbor. My heart rate and the baby's were flagging, and they put an oxygen mask on me, which felt supremely annoying and sweaty, and  kept slipping off my face anyway. Worried about the baby's heart rate, my midwife gently asked about an episiotomy. I hadn't wanted one, but at this point, after two hours of pushing, I was ready to agree to anything. I didn't feel a thing when she made the small incision, and then with a rush, at 4:15 in the morning, Gabriel was born.

He cried right away, with soft tremulous cries, and was covered in white vernix (he didn't look like a 41-weeker, said my midwife). He lay on my chest, and although my mom and I had been sure that I would cry when I saw him for the first time, I didn't: I just felt so happy to see him and relieved that he was out. Plus, I felt an overwhelming sense of familiarity: it's YOU! You're here!

I was also somewhat distracted, because there were some distinctly unpleasant sensations still going on below, including the delivery of a very stubborn placenta and the stitching of the episiotomy. We watched, meanwhile, as Gabriel latched on and began to breastfeed, vigorously and contentedly, and pooped meconium all over my dressing gown. Thanks, dude! After about an hour the nurses weighed and measured Gabriel--8 pounds, 13 ounces, and 21 inches--and gave him the eye drops. The Mister got to hold his son for the first time, and my dad arrived in time to take some beautiful photos. We called M.'s parents in Spain on skype, while nurses kept telling us we would be leaving the delivery room but never actually showing up to move us (turns out four other women were delivering their babies at about that time, so the staff was a bit harried and had more important matters to attend to)! At long last, we gathered up our belongings onto a little cart, I got a new gown and was moved to a wheelchair, and Gabriel got his little wheely bassinet so we were on the move. As dawn arrived to reveal a snowdrifted scene outside the window, we settled into a cozy recovery room as a brand new family of three.

Two years (and birth story, part I)

Our dear Gabriel turned two today, and we had a quiet family celebration for him this evening. He loved blowing out the candles, turned up his nose at the cake (not sure why, since cake is his favorite), and oohed and ahhed over every present, in both wrapped and unwrapped states, playing intently with his new blocks, exclaiming over his new books, and delightedly slicing his wooden fruits and vegetables. "More open?" he asked politely after he had finished opening them all.

Two years ago today, in the midst of a snowstorm, we were cozily gazing at the face of a tiny person who seemed wholly familiar and yet startlingly new. We were suddenly parents, in charge of a squawking, snuffling, demanding creature who knew no such notions as day and night, but whose tiny body fit so perfectly in the crooks of our arms.

But let me back up.

I've meant to write down Gabriel's birth story here for a while now, and what better day to do so than his birthday? I did write it down, every last detail, shortly after he was born, but that came out to nine single-spaced pages so I will have to abbreviate somewhat. It still may require more than one post...we shall see. In any case, I won't be too circumspect about the more unpleasant or more...bodily aspects of labor and birth, so if you'd rather not hear about those, you can stop reading now.

Valentine's Day, 2010. A week past my due date, a week during which I, along with my mom and the Mister, had been constantly wondering when the time would come. The big moment came not exactly as we imagined--rather, it came that morning in a gush of amniotic fluid as I was brushing my hair, and M. was on the phone with my cousin, who was in town to play a concert. When my eyes widened in shock, he thought he had misspoken to her, but it was simply my realization that my waters had broken. Today was the day.

Despite the unpleasantness of fluid leaking out every time I moved around, no contractions were forthcoming and I felt fine. My midwife told me we should wait for labor to start, but that we needed the baby "on the outside" within 24 hours. I still felt very relaxed, as well as excited, so we had my cousin come over for breakfast instead of going out, made a bunch of phone calls (particularly to my dad, who immediately got a new flight to Indianapolis for that day), and ran around collecting hospital bag items that we still needed.

By the afternoon, labor still hadn't started, so the Mister and I tried massage to get things going. I had a few very mild contractions, but nothing that felt like real labor. Still, that brief time was especially important for me, as one of the things I had envisioned was laboring at home in a peaceful and intimate collaboration with the Mister. Destined not to be, but at least I got a small taste of it then! I even fell asleep, and dozed for about an hour, which I credit with sustaining me over the night to come. When I woke up, I woke to Valentine's flowers from M., and a phone message from my midwife, who was getting nervous--not only about my labor, but also about the building snowstorm.

We agreed to meet at the hospital at 7:30 pm, much sooner than I had been thinking, because she was convinced that if labor hadn't started by then, it wasn't going to start on its own, and because she thought the snow might cause her to have difficulties getting to the hospital later in the night. I wasn't worried about the snow, since we lived a block away from the hospital, but felt comfortable with the plan. Plus, my dad was on the way, his flight already landed, and would be driving into town right around 7:30--we'd meet him at the hospital! I took a shower, ate a banana, and we headed over in the fast falling snow.

Walking into the hospital, I thought of how I had imagined this moment--doubled over with contractions, or timing them carefully, deep into labor. Instead, I felt perfectly normal except for a few scattered contractions and that constant amniotic gush. I felt almost giddy, in fact, just eager to move forward in the adventure this night would hold. Our room was spacious and our nurse extremely sweet; it was her first night back on duty after her own maternity leave. She would make a few mistakes throughout my labor and commented on how things had changed since she was gone, but I didn't mind because she was incredibly supportive and encouraging. I got into a gown, she confirmed that the constant gush was indeed amniotic fluid, and asked us a lot of questions and made us sign papers. I was glad not to be in labor during that process.

At this point I also got "hooked up"--the fetal monitors strapped to my belly with itchy velcro, and the IVs that would drip fluids and pitocin. Neither was very pleasant: the straps kept slipping and needing adjustment, and the IV required several painful jabs, and of course, the spindly stalk on wheels with fluid bags dangling from it had to be with me at all times. These were definitely not on our labor and birth wish list, but once it had to be, I decided to ignore them to the best of my ability and I think I succeeded pretty well. They didn't interfere with the overall experience of labor and birth, and in my memory the only part of the evening they came into play was during early labor.

My midwife came in, noting that I looked "way too happy," and did a cervical exam: well effaced but barely 1 cm dilated. My dad arrived then, too, in time to take some pictures before labor started in earnest. Around 9:30 he and the Mister went off in search of food (the cafeteria long since closed) and the pitocin started to kick in so my mom and I walked around the halls as the first contractions hit. I could still easily talk through them, the pain very low in my belly, and every few laps around the delivery ward my nurse turned up the pitocin. Contractions came steadily, every two minutes or less, which remained true throughout labor.

Finally dad and M. were back after what seemed like a long absence (not much open in our town on a Sunday night in a snowstorm, it turns out), and M. and I took a few laps around the hallway together. But by then, the contractions were hurting a lot, so we headed back to the room and, after a quick prayer, said goodbye to dad until the baby was born or the morning, whichever came first! I felt incredibly peaceful at this point, even though I was in pain. The nurse asked me to place the pain on a scale of one to ten, and I said 4-5, sure that things were still going to get much, much worse. (Plus, I find that pain scale really hard to judge. Compared to what?)

By then I was moaning with contractions, and needed the TV off, the lights low, and the room quiet. My midwife had reappeared, and was reminding me to keep my vocalizations low and loose, to feel heavy and relaxed. Basically I moo'ed through labor, but it really did help. She would tell me when contractions had peaked and were lessening, and even though I knew she was looking at the computer readout it still felt like a miracle of divination--how does she know? I thought. I tried lots of laboring positions over these hours, some of them suggested by my midwife and some of them just what I thought would feel better, what I remembered from birthing and yoga classes. I leaned over the bed with the yoga ball on it, I squatted on the bed in child's pose, I draped myself onto M., a chair, and so forth. All the time, swaying, swaying--that's what felt the best, that small movement back and forth, back and forth. The best position by far was sitting on the yoga ball and leaning into a pile of pillows on the bed. I stayed that way for a long time, because it felt the most open on my bottom and the least painful. I remember this period as very inward, keeping my eyes closed and focusing on a small dark place, even between contractions. I held the Mister's hand tightly, and the nurse and my mom kept putting cool cloths on my neck and forehead.

At several points during the night, I threw up. Unpleasant, to say the least, and I hadn't really known that it would be part of labor. Early in the evening I had requested a Zantac, worried that heartburn would bother me (hah!). I promptly threw it up, just as the nurse gently warned me I might. At one point, deep in labor, I said into a quiet room, "I'm going to throw up," and all four people jumped up and offered me various receptacles in which to vomit. It would have been comical if I had been in the mood to laugh...

Around 2 am, I thought the pain scale number was at about a 7: I was still sure it would get worse, much worse. Only a few contractions had really gotten the best of me, in that I would tense up and try to curl away from the pain instead of loosening and leaning into it. I also still expected the pain to rise up and consume my whole belly, because the contractions continued to be low and underneath. Still thinking that I had a long, long way to go.

(To be continued...)

Me, in an alphabet

Here's a mid-February meme just to keep me writing blog posts...I'm on a roll, lately, and I really do want to keep up! I've also managed to write in my 5-year journal every day of the year so far, which I'm pretty proud of. However, we're flying to Barcelona this evening, and we're flying light: first time with no diaper bag, only a couple of changes of clothes, one computer (the Air), and so forth. Which means I'm not bringing the journal, which is a kind of heavy book full of mostly empty pages. Should I try to write the weekend down after the fact, or should I write on a different piece of paper and then transfer to the journal? Not sure. Anyway, here's an alphabet meme:

Age: 33. I will be 34 by the time the baby is born, which isn't a bad time to have a baby. Although sometimes I wish I were 24 and that much more energetic.

Bed size: European bed sizes, frustratingly, do not exactly match American bed sizes. We have a 160-cm-wide bed, which is just slightly too big for most of our American queen-sized sheets. Terribly annoying. I've taken to putting flat sheets on the bottom instead of fitted sheets, since we use a duvet and duvet cover instead of top sheets anyway. (Fortunately, those seem to be the same size.) Pillow sizes are yet another mismatch, so our pillows are often wedged into American pillowcases that don't quite fit them.

Chore you hate: Mopping. But I don't mind vacuuming or sweeping. So I sweep and M. mops: it's a good system. I also dislike washing dishes, but mostly because it hurts the eczema on my hands. So I usually cook, M. usually washes up, and one or the other of us puts dishes away out of the dishwasher. Similarly, I rather like doing laundry, but I never ever iron, so M. is the "iron man" of the family if he wants wrinkle-free shirts.

Dogs: We aren't exactly pet people. M's allergic, and neither of us can quite see how they're worth the expense and effort. The only time I wish I had a dog is when I am in a park watching dogs frolic with their owners.

Essential to start your day: Food, and plenty of it. Usually a banana, a big bowl of cereal, one or two slices of toast with butter and honey or jam, and sometimes orange juice or tea. The other day I only ate a banana and toast and I about passed out by lunchtime.

Favorite color: Recently, my bank in Indiana decided to redo their security system, so I had to establish new passwords (the annoying kind, with sixteen requirements) and new security questions. But the security questions were all impossible! Like, What is your favorite restaurant? What is your favorite food? Who is your favorite person? What are we, five years old? On any given day, the answers to the food questions might change, and even the favorite person might not be obvious. M? Gabriel? Anyway, favorite color was also on there, and although my favorite has historically been blue, any shade, my wardrobe consists of an awful lot of purple, a good share of gray, and lots of green. So I didn't choose that question, either.

Gold or silver: M. is definitely a silver kind of guy, so all the jewelry he's bought me over the years is silver or white gold, and my wedding and engagement rings are white gold. But I hold a soft spot in my heart for gold, too, so I have a few special items here and there. The necklace that I received from M's family that had belonged to iaia is gold, and I've been wearing it a lot recently. I particularly like the combination of gold with pearls.

Height: 5'11'' (and a half). I always wanted to be six feet tall, like my aunts, but never quite got there. Still, I love being tall, even though I'm taller than the Mister, and even though I was always taller than ALL the boys until about the 7th grade.

Instruments you play: The piano, badly: I took lessons for years, even in college, but was never serious enough about it. I wish I could sit down and play anything, but I'd say I never really got beyond "advanced intermediate." I do love playing the piano, though, and am pretty good at sight-reading pieces within my reach, or hymns and simple songs. I really long to have a piano again (for the original Brussels piano saga, see here), and we will want one for sure in the future so Gabriel can learn. Oh, I also play the organ a little bit after taking lessons for a few semesters in college, and of course, I sing.

Job title: Scholar, writer, translator, editor, poet, and hoping for a more official title someday. And always: mom, wife, daughter, sister, aunt, friend.

Kids: I'm a fan, generally speaking. We have two, our Gabriel and our yet-unnamed baby, a.k.a. Junebug.

Live: In Belgium, in a beautiful university town, in a little row house with a sweet little walled-in backyard.

Mother's name: Rhonda. I think it's a really nice name, but it's definitely a bit old-fashioned now, right? No one really names their kids Rhonda any more... I've always liked having the same initials as my mom. She also goes by Grandma a lot these days.

Nicknames: Rob. Really just family and a few close friends use that one. Some of the guys in high school used to call me Roe-bine, but it's a good thing that one died an early death.

Overnight hospital stays: Just the one, when Gabriel was born. I kind of liked it, and kind of didn't (mostly the part about people coming into the room all the time).

Pet peeves: Rattly wrappers, even my own, in an otherwise quiet environment. Price or information stickers on a brand-new item that won't come off and leave a gunky, sticky smear.

Quote from a movie: I'm not very much of a movie-quote person, but I can still throw quite a few Princess Bride lines at you. I recently watched it again (25 year anniversary!) and was surprised at how vividly I remembered it all. It was the first movie I saw in the theater, and my brother and I would run around the house yelling stuff about Inigo Montoya and inconceivable and dropping your sword and so forth.

Right or left handed: Righty.

Siblings: Four awesome younger siblings. They all lived in the Boston area, conveniently enough for us, until one moved away to Texas of all places! The three oldest have married equally awesome people, and the two oldest have produced even more awesome kids. And my in-laws on the Spanish side are fantastic too. Lucky, lucky me.

Underwear: Um, in favor of? I'll usually go for a hipster style. No, not that kind of hipster. Recently all of my underwear is getting too small, leaving red welts in my hips, and I'm going to have to switch over to my pregnancy and postpartum stash. Ugh.

Vegetable you hate: I can't think of one. Even veggies that aren't my personal favorites can be delicious when well prepared.

What makes you run late: Oh, everything. I always think I'll just sneak in one more task or wait just a few more minutes, because I dislike the idea of being early, but then I'm perpetually five to fifteen minutes late. Now that I have a child I have a built-in excuse for the lateness, but it's really not his fault (or at least it hasn't been since he was a little infant, when it really does seem a mountainous ordeal just to get out the door).

X-rays you've had: I suppose they would equal the number of broken or sprained bones I've had. There was the broken collar bone when I was about 2 (my mom says I charmed everyone by explaining that "I broke my clavicle"), the cracked wrist when I fell from a jungle gym in elementary school, and then mercifully nothing until the x-ray I got last winter when I slipped on the ice and sprained my wrist. Oh, I guess there are the usual dentist x-rays, too.

Yummy food that you make: Lots! I have a pretty decent repertoire of things I can make without a recipe and with whatever vegetables or grains I happen to have on hand: curries, stir-fries, burritos, pasta, and so forth. I am very proud of my vegetarian BLT (butternut, lettuce, and tomato): Slice butternut rounds and sprinkle them with some cumin, chili powder and salt. Fry them up until soft. Pile on toast with lettuce, tomato, and chipotle mayonnaise (made my mixing mayo with some chopped up chipotle and adobe sauce). YUM. Even the Mister doesn't miss the bacon.

Zoo animal: Zoos always leave me feeling mixed emotions, happy to have seen such amazing animals and sad that they're cooped up in a zoo. The last time we went was to the National Zoo in Washington, DC, and we were pretty taken with the pandas and that big chimpanzee who was sitting up against the glass.

2011 in review, Part II

This is Part II of the 2011 meme/questionnaire. Part I here. I got a little verbose yesterday so broke the thing up into two sections.

***

13. What did you get really excited about?

Our new house/home town and exploring Leuven (back to the land of amazing beer! and fries and waffles and mussels). My new iPad (for the story, see below, question 22). Finally finishing the diss, of course. Getting pregnant! Getting Gabriel to sleep through the night! Finally getting Gabriel into daycare! A number of memorable meals at great restaurants, including a fish restaurant (Beluga) here in Leuven that serves only a chef's tasting menu based on the day's catch, Casa Calvet, where we went for our anniversary dinner in July, a PhD celebratory meal at Harvest in Cambridge with my family, and several great meals throughout the year at Restaurant Tallent in Bloomington. Our vacation in Cape Cod with my family, and an internetless week on the Costa Brava with just me and the Mister and the babe.

14. What song will always remind you of 2011?

This question has stumped me. I guess I don't have a theme song kind of life, although that's something to aspire to. Finding and listening to new music has kind of been on the back burner compared to other things. Plus, for the first time in a long time I haven't been part of a choir (I miss it so!), which usually forms the soundtrack to my days.

15. Compared to this time last year, are you: a) happier or sadder? b) thinner or fatter? c) richer or poorer?

I can't remember precisely how happy I was at the beginning of 2011 (and don't have any record of it in my blog), but I was probably pretty happy, having completed a great semester of teaching literature for the first time, enjoying Bloomington, and enjoying my almost-one-year-old--and because my normal state of being is happy. Although I'm reeeealllly very happy now, so I'll go with happier.

I'm fatter, due to the little baked-potato-sized person taking up room in my midsection (and who is also directing my hips and thighs and boobs and face to take on a bit more padding). Right now I'm wearing jeans that I bought a few months postpartum last time, thinking that my weight would go down no further. I was wrong, thankfully, since I lost so much weight while breastfeeding that I actually went down a pants size from before the pregnancy. So the jeans got stored. Turns out they're perfect for four months pregnant! When I left Leuven in early December they still hung on me and now that we're back I'm happy to see that they fit and to have another pair of pants to add to my scant number of maternity-appropriate bottoms.

Richer, since the Mister has an actual full-time, year-round job that doesn't rely on us cobbling together semesters' worth of teaching salaries.

16. What do you wish you'd done more of?

More poetry writing, more getting down on the floor and playing with Gabriel instead of fiddling around on the computer, more singing, more baking, more making out with the Mister.

17. What do you wish you'd done less of?

As usual, less worrying, less procrastination, less assuming that the Mister can read my mind (in my defense, a lot of the time he can) or expecting praise over stuff that's just part of my job as a wife or mom or, you know, citizen of humanity.

18. How did you spend Christmas?

An odd, sad day this year. Iaia died in the afternoon, Spanish time, so by 9am we were skyping with the family just after she passed. The rest of the family went to church, taking Gabriel with them, and M and I sat in the quiet at my sister's house and watched a few snowflakes fall, while we cried and processed what had happened. I fell asleep. When they got home, we all sat around and talked while the kids took naps, then went to my brother's house and ate leftovers.

19. What was your favorite TV program?

Most nights, M and I watch one episode of a TV show online or (more rarely) on DVD. This year, we watched Big Love, which we liked pretty well although the last few seasons got kind of annoying (and we didn't like how it ended). For his birthday, I gave the Mister the Derek Jacobi BBC miniseries I, Claudius, which we watched and enjoyed greatly for its crazy 1980s vision of ancient Rome. We've been devoted followers of The Good Wife, and we've lately discovered Downton Abbey, which I rather adore. We're thinking of trying Boardwalk Empire or Homeland next. Any recommendations?

20. What were your favorite books of the year?

I always wish that I'd kept a list of the novels I read over the year, so maybe this year I'll actually do it. It's hard to remember them all, so this list is likely to be skewed to more recent reads. One book that still stands out is David Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, which took a while to get into but left me bereft when it was over, because I so wanted to stay in that world of 18th-century Japan as lived by a Dutchman. I really liked Muriel Barbery's The Elegance of the Hedgehog, and after the Mister read it, I read Freedom (Jonathan Franzen) and liked it better than The Corrections. Oh dear, I know I'm forgetting books. Let's see... A set of essays called The Art of Travel by Alain de Bottom. I read The Hunger Games trilogy the week Gabriel and I arrived in Belgium, the house empty of any furniture except an air mattress and a pack'n'play, so those books will always remind me of that time (I'm kind of looking forward to the movie(s) because they'll lend themselves so well to that medium). I think I read Room this year (maybe last, though?), and I adored it for many reasons--the gripping plot, the voice of the child, the portrait of the mother-child relationship. I still think about it often. Also might have been 2010, but I loved Abraham Verghese's Cutting for Stone. Oh I know: another favorite definitely from this year was Ann Patchett's State of Wonder. It wasn't perfect, but the whole invented jungle world/tribe was pretty engrossing.

21. What were your favorite films of the year?

Harder to say. Unlike book-reading, which is only partially limited by this whole thing called being a parent, movie-watching is severely limited by it. We went to the theater only a handful of times, usually to see whichever least-objectionable movie happened to be playing the night we had child care. The rest of the movies I see in a year are mostly on plane trips or when at my parents'. Ones that stand out, although I hesitate to call them favorites...We saw Carnage in the theater in Barcelona. We saw The Descendants in the theater in Boston. (Thank you, grandparent babysitters!) I saw Another Earth on the plane. One weekend we rented Beginners on iTunes, which I liked but the Mister didn't. Of Rotten Tomato's list of 2011's top 100 movies, I saw only four. We've been wanting to see The Ides of March for a while, and hopefully will find a time to rent it soon.

22. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

I turned 33 this year, on Mother's Day. In retrospect, I can laugh about it but that day I was hoping for something extra special because of the conjunction and kind of got (childishly, unreasonably) crabby when it was super low key. We spent most of the day attending the bris of a friend's new baby, and M. didn't realize that the whole Mother's Day thing was so important to me, and he really didn't have time to prepare anything because he was flat-out busy at the end of the semester and was about to leave for Belgium and his new job. I do remember how beautifully sunny it was that day, though, and how nice it was to play with Gabriel in a park while M. took pictures. I made a chocolate cake.

But then! A couple of weeks later, while I was in Boston with my family, we had a small celebration for the May birthdays, and M. arranged for his gift of an iPad to be delivered. I was so bowled over/touched/surprised/excited/humbled that I started to cry when I unwrapped it, realized what it was, and, a few beats later, realized who it was from. I had not an iota of an idea that M. was planning to give me an iPad and hadn't even been angling for it (although of course I was secretly dying for one of my own). People, I don't think I've cried over a gift since I was six and got a Cabbage Patch Doll for Christmas. I guess, to put it in SAT terms, Cabbage Patch Doll : 6-year-old :: iPad : 33-year-old. But it wasn't just the gift itself--it was M's thoughtfulness, and his way of surprising me yet again, with yet another attentive gesture at a time when we were going through a big change in our lives (and yes, more than making up for that birthday/Mother's Day). I love the iPad to pieces. I've read so many books on that thing, and adore the experience of reading magazines on it, and finding recipes, and all around exploring different apps. Of course, Gabriel thinks it's his, and we have to keep it hidden most of the time he's awake, but that's another story for another blog entry.

23. What one thing could have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

You know, I can't think of a thing! I believe that's good. One thing that I really regret is not documenting Gabriel's first year by creating a photo book, or a video montage, or even keeping up a baby book, or writing enough in this blog. The one-year photo book has been on my to-do list since he turned one and is still not done. Argh. I worry that I will forget the many thousands of details of his incredibleness and sweetness as he's changed each month of his life.

24. Whose behavior merited celebration?

My mom, who came to the rescue so many times. She flew to Bloomington on a moment's notice when I hurt my knee (oh, I guess that was fall 2010--another unblogged story, in which I badly twisted my knee on a plane when we flew to Barcelona and proceeded to be on crutches for several weeks both in Barcelona and upon our return to Bloomington, no picking up baby allowed!) and she and dad came for Gabriel's birthday. Then, she deserves a medal in itself for being there in May to help me pack up the apartment, put on a yard sale, and drive out to Boston with me and an antsy kid in a car stuffed to the gills while M. was already in Belgium. Then, she came for a visit this fall in which she helped us get Gabriel to sleep through the night (!), and watched him while I furiously edited the thesis. And, I should note, she cooked SO MANY great meals for us throughout the year. Then, THEN (!), she (and my dad, who deserves his fair share of amazing-grandpa accolades too) took care of Gabriel for a week while I defended my thesis in Bloomington. She has already booked her tickets to be here and help watch Gabriel when this next baby is born. All of this, I should say, she does while being SO respectful of what M. and I want for Gabriel. She has raised FIVE kids, so you'd think she would bring up that small detail more often, and in fact she totally would get a pass for insisting on her experience and doing things her own way. Instead, she always defers to what we want and quietly offers her help and (invaluable) opinions when we ask. She knows just the right balance between offering ideas and setting back and letting us fumble around and learn parenting by doing--which is really the only way you can learn. Man, she's amazing.

And then there's the Mister. I could never say enough about how supportive he is, how much he does to make our little family a safe and secure one, how he does more than his share of housework, uncomplainingly. He treats me like a queen and pushes me when I need it. We're complementary in so many ways that I feel so lucky we found each other (complementary both in the sense of similarities and in the sense of making up for one another's weaknesses: for instance, he's better at long-term planning and I'm better at short-term planning; he's better at big-picture cleaning and I'm better at small-scale organizing; he knows more about politics and history and I know more about literature and science; he has an amazing memory for dates, but I remember where we keep things...and so on!). He's currently working a full time job AND writing his dissertation. And not least of all, he is such a fantastic dad--I just love watching him with Gabriel and seeing how much Gabriel adores his Dada.

And finally, Gabriel has been a total sweetheart. Apart from the whole sleeping challenge, he is such a good-natured, easygoing child, and I love hanging out with him. When he gives me a kiss and says, "I lub oo," I swoon every time. My darling, my big boy.

25. What kept you sane?

The Mister and our rascally, endearing, wide-eyed, charmer of a child. His piping little voice. Friends and family. Faith in God's provisions for our life. Good books, good food (the cooking and the eating of it), and good hard work.

26. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2011.

I blogged about this one before, but it's about letting go...not worrying so much because most of the time the things you worry about are not the things you end up struggling with. And when you do struggle, you make it, somehow, with the help of God and family and friends. As I say in that post, "You'll get what you get and you'll deal with it when you do."

Relatedly, motherhood has taught me that "this too shall pass"... Stages that are so frustrating go by more quickly than you imagine. When you're in the trenches, things seem to drag on forever but all too quickly you look back and realize that it was just a blip in the bigger picture.

The inverse is true, too. I'm sometimes sad to see how quickly Gabriel passes through stages of utter adorability...all too soon he no longer says "nigh nigh" in that new-speaker voice he had, and he says "moo" now instead of "moh," and he runs instead of toddles, and he lost his baby curls when he got his first haircut and so on and so forth. But then! There are things to look forward to: him talking in full sentences and telling me the wonderments in his head, teaching him to read, the wonders of school and a million things to learn, and it goes on from there. Every stage has its new frustrations and delights, and I suppose that will continue long into the future (until adolescence, maybe?!). There's a lot to look forward to, not just from Gabriel, but from our lives together. 2012 is just the first step, and I can't wait to see what it brings.

2011 in review, Part I

I must have skipped last year, but I dug up my old internet meme post with all the year-in-review questions and thought I'd try it again, especially after a friend mentioned it recently. 2011 was a really amazing year, these last couple of months in particular. So much of it didn't get blogged, I'm realizing as I look over my archives, because I (deliberately) let the blog slide while I worked on the dissertation. It makes me worry that I'm forgetting important details of the year, and even before, because I see that I basically stopped blogging in October 2010! Maybe I can catch up on a few stories in this way, however, and remind myself of some of the more momentous experiences of the 2011. (This might get a little long, so hold on to your hats [actually, I've broken it into two parts so it's a little more digestible...part II to come tomorrow.])

1. What did you do in 2011 that you'd never done before?

Unfortunately, moving internationally was not a novel process for us. Although it seems as dauntingly new as it did the first time, I've now moved from Bloomington to Brussels, from Brussels to Barcelona, from Barcelona to Bloomington, and from Bloomington to Belgium (there are too many B-places in my life, methinks, and that list doesn't even include Boston or Burlington).
I weaned my son, definitely a novel process and an involved one.
I went to the MLA conference in LA. I wish I could say that I had some job interviews, but in the end it's better that we could head to Belgium without any conflicting job decisions to make.
I got one of my poems published in a book.
I finished my PhD!

2. Did you keep your new year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

Ah, here's a happy story. I don't remember if I made resolutions, but I certainly made wishes. Last Christmas in Barcelona, the adults were lolling about after a huge meal and the kids were getting antsy. M's mom, creative as always, came up with a project for them that involved taking a stack of empty jewelry boxes from her soon-to-close boutique (she retired this year) and making "wish boxes" out of them for each one of us. The girls dressed up as Santa-fairies and delivered them with orders for us to write down our secret wishes for 2011 and seal them in the box with stickers.

Fast forward to last week. On New Year's Day, M's mother unearthed those boxes, and we opened our wish boxes to read out the scraps of paper (the girls hadn't left a lot of room for big wishes). I had written:

acabar la tesi (finish my thesis)
un germanet o una germaneta pel Gabriel (a little brother or sister for Gabriel)
feina pel M. i per la Robin (work for M and for Robin)

Not bad, eh? We're still baking up that little brother or sister, and of the two of us only M has work, but I'm still pretty happy with the outcome of this year's wishes.

As for the coming year, I haven't made any grand resolutions, but I do wish to do the following (in keeping with last year's "wishes"):

achieve basic proficiency in Dutch
rent or buy a bike and get used to riding around town with Gabriel
revise the dissertation and get it published (I first wrote "attempt to get it published" but one should be more assertive about one's wishes, right?)
publish an academic article and a poem or poems
get a postdoc, a teaching job, or something similar
find a prenatal yoga or exercise/movement class
blog more actively now that the diss is done
adjust to being a family of four (this one, I think, we will have to do in any case!)
(there are a whole category of wishes surrounding the birth and newborn months of this new baby, but I'm sort of thinking of that in its own separate category right now, so...I'll leave it at that)

Plus, there are a few more resolution-y type things that are only worth mentioning because it's always better to write them down: floss teeth every day, go to sleep earlier, and clean the house (especially the bathrooms) more often.

And! for Christmas, my mom gave me and my sister and sisters-in-law each a five-year diary, the kind where you jot down just a line or two each day but then get to review each year as you build the diary. I'd like to see if I can maintain that all the way through the year. I haven't kept a diary since high school, but this seems doable and I love the idea of thinking about where I was a year or two or five ago (once I manage to complete them, first!).

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

My friend Ashley had a baby just a couple of days before we left Bloomington. I'm so glad we were still there when her baby was born! [Edited to add: I forgot about my dear friend Sara, who had a little girl, her third baby!]

4. Did anyone close to you die?

M's grandmother passed away on Christmas day. We will miss her so much.

5. What countries did you visit?

Belgium doesn't count because it's home, and neither does Spain or America, because they're home too. So...Holland, I guess, is it! We visited a few towns across the border while my parents were here in November and had a rental car. We especially liked Maastricht and would love to go back.

6. What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011?

A job--an official, even if part-time or adjunct or temporary one. A bit more published material to put on my CV. A squishy little baby! A bike. A Belgian driver's license. Time to write more poetry.

7. What dates from 2011 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

December 9: the day I defended my dissertation. It was such a happy event, my committee so warm and encouraging and altogether palpably proud of me. I felt such a sense of achievement and completion even as I handed the set of signed papers in, somewhat anticlimactically, at the Graduate School. I wandered around town in a happy daze, just absorbing it all, and bought myself a book and earrings. Then I celebrated with my friends by eating cupcakes and going out for a fancy dinner, where I ran into my dissertation director, of all people, who then proceeded to say such kind and humbling things about me and my defense/work that I still get all fuzzy thinking about it.

Let's see...there aren't any other particular dates that stand out, except maybe February 15, the day my no-so-little babe turned one, and Christmas, the day iaia died. Everything else was a blur of our usual comings and goings, moving out and moving in, work and meals and walks, the daily trials and charms of life with a small child.

Ah yes, one more date: October 5, the evening it suddenly occurred to me that I hadn't gotten my period yet. I had discounted getting pregnant that month due to a previous pregnancy test a week or so prior, but I leapt out of bed anyway and fumbled open the second-to-last pregnancy test in my stash, eking out what little pee I could since I had already gone before getting into bed. A rapid, resolute plus sign: we were pregnant! M. was coming up the stairs after locking up the front door and I sort of jumped out at him and speechlessly showed him the test. I had imagined a romantic surprise reveal but in the event there was no other thought but: !!!! Then I proceeded to get worried because the test was technically expired, so I got out the very last test, a digital one, and had to look up on line how to use it, and of course found myself completely unable to pee. I had to glug water, and think of waterfalls, and there was a lot of jumping nervously back into bed and out of bed while I waited for the water to take effect, and then more waiting while the test turned its little digital cogs, and finally we got that unmistakable confirmation: PREGNANT.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Um, duh. Those three additional letters after my name stand for a lot of hard work and a long, long effort of perseverance (and amazing support from the Mister and our families).
After that, there's getting pregnant again, which didn't happen quite as quick as last time.
Weaning Gabriel ranks up there, too, because of how hard it was and how long it took.
Then, there was packing up a household and moving back to Europe, this time with toddler in tow for added excitement. M getting a new job wasn't my achievement, but it was a great day for us, a solid career step for him, and a big relief to end the uncertainty--which eats away at him even if I'm usually able to blithely focus on the day-today--of what we would be doing next.

9. What was your biggest failure?

There are many failures, I know. Laziness is always at the top of the list, as is procrastination and fretting about unnecessary things. Failure to listen fully to my husband. Failure to push myself out of my comfort zone, whether in making friends or follow-through on career-related possibilities. In terms of parenting, I feel a continual sense of failure to do "activities" with Gabriel...I always aspire to do crafts and come up with games or age-appropriate learning activities but most of the time I fail pretty badly to do so. And I completely and utterly failed to exercise, although I walk around an awful lot pushing a really heavy kid in a really heavy stroller.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

Last winter, on the iciest day of the biggest snowstorm that blew through Indiana, I wondered whether it was safe to even walk outside for an appointment I had with Gabriel, especially considering I'd be holding him. So I stepped out onto the walkway leading to our front door to test the ice, and immediately slipped down the ice-coated step and crashed hard onto the cement, catching my weight with my left-hand wrist (thank heavens I hadn't attempted it with the baby!). My wrist was badly sprained, and I had to wear a brace for a long time. It took forever to heal, mostly because I still had to pick up/hold/nurse Gabriel.

As for illness, nothing major, except for an extremely unpleasant bout of achy-flu-ish cold coinciding with Gabriel's start of daycare, the beginning of my pregnancy (before I knew I was pregnant), and the final countdown for finishing my thesis. There was a day when, trying to get Gabriel to sleep in his stroller walking up and down the street in the sun, I could barely stand up or open my eyes in the bright light, and the kid just refused to sleep. I finally gave up after an hour of dogged pacing and went home, bursting into tears which Gabriel had never seen me do so he laughed and giggled. Which made me cry more. Which resulted in me calling the Mister and asking him to come home from work. Which of course, he did.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

Plane tickets are always worth it, getting us back to our families. I think, judging from a few weeks' use, that our new camera was a great purchase. That really good knife. My mom and the Mister convinced me to buy a goose down winter coat at the end-of-season sales last year and I have been SO grateful for that coat.

12. Where did most of your money go?

Plane tickets and moving expenses, especially new furniture for our new home in Leuven (still slowly working on that to spread out the damage). Rent and mortgages. Food.

****

OK, OK, so this is getting ridiculously long. I'll publish in two parts, first one today and second tomorrow. I guess I have a lot of processing to do about the past year and a lot to write about.

Off key

There was a time in my life when I didn't have any keys. I had sold my car: no car keys. I had moved out of the House of Love: no front door keys. I had left campus: no office keys or mailroom keys. I was living at my parents' house, and they never lock their door (it's Vermont, after all), so I didn't need keys while I was there. In those few months between moving away from Indiana and getting married, I felt a bit unmoored.

Because keys are like little metal dog tags; they tell you who you are and where you belong. I guess they're a sign of possessions, as well, and not having them might be freeing. But they also do what their shape promises. They unlock, they allow access, they permit you to enter the familiar interiors of your life.

I saw keys in a different way, however, when I watched a beautiful documentary about a young Bulgarian woman working as a cleaning lady in Amsterdam. The camera follows her through her lonely days in empty rooms, communicating with upper-class Dutch families mostly through notes, as she straightens and sweeps and vacuums and scrubs. Speaking to the camera, she says she thinks she is losing herself. She feels like a ghost.

But she also takes pictures. Self portraits of herself in the cleaning closet or the bathtub, surrounded by household cleaners. Empty rooms with rumpled sheets. They could be out of an interior design magazine, but because of the point of view threaded through the whole of the collection, they present a diametrically different message.

To the back of the photograph she pastes the words from those notes, repetitive in their obligatory "how are you" and their demands to sweep the back stairs, wipe out the cabinet, change the laundry, a never-ending to-do list. She hangs these photographs and the notes inside a paper cut-out house, and on the floor of the house, she places her large collection of front door keys, all pointing upwards, a menacing carpet of jagged metal.

For her, the keys mean alienation, entrapment; they are a barrier and a burden. She is permitted to enter everywhere but is denied anything that make a home a home. Far from her family, working illegally, she is stalled and alone. Remarkably, though, she seems genuinely optimistic and her smile is always at the ready.

The woman's name is Hristina Tasheva, and the documentary is called The Houses of Hristina (see the trailer here). You can see many of her photographs here (click on the collection "A better life" for the ones shown in the movie).

By following the story of one woman, listening strictly to her voice, the documentary presents a beautiful meditation on domesticity, immigration, interiority, gender, social class, and art.

I'll never think of keys in the same way again.

2468 Memory Lane, Childhood, the Eighties

(Still in England; wrote this post the other day. Am clever like that.)

My dad scanned some great images for me, pictures I maybe hadn't ever seen, or not for a long time.

The first one is of me with two beloved items that are, I believe, still in a box somewhere in my parents' basement. When I was very small, my mom made that activity book I am carefully "reading" for the millionth time. As a matter of fact, most of my childhood pictures consist of me curled up in some chair or another, engrossed in some book or another. Next to me is perched the Christmas present that made my little head nearly explode with joy, a real Cabbage Patch Doll named Christy Nicolina. My great-grandma told me it was an ugly doll (it was, of course, not that I could conceive of such sacrilege at the time), which made me cry. Sadly, it's one of the few memories I have of my grandfather's mother.


The second photo shows the "stacked like a cord of wood" configuration I mentioned the other day. How we drove to Iowa, all laid out in the back. Nowadays, of course, totally illegal, but I have good memories of falling asleep, curled among my siblings, listening to the steady thrum of the highway.

Gym

I mentioned the other day that I joined a gym. This for me is a big deal, since I have never actually been a member of a gym and have always thought of such a thing as something other people do, much in the same way I think of basketweaving or hang gliding. Doesn't one have to actually enjoy exercise to make joining a gym worthwhile?

You see, I have never been what you might call an athletic person. I never played organized sports as a kid, although all of my siblings did, and so I have an at least sketchy knowledge of basketball, baseball, soccer, and field hockey. Just enough to know when to cheer.

In college, I lived across the street from the brand-new athletic center for the three years I was on campus. A one-minute walk. Yet, I probably exercised there a total of...eight times? I was busy with other things, like my self-designed double major and minor, and being an RA, and singing in choir, and any of the other gazillion little groups and things I joined.

I didn't notice that I had gotten a wee bit chubby until after I suddenly wasn't, which happened after I left college and moved back home and started hanging out with a guy who--no joke--was an olympic triathlete. This is still amusing to me. Because I found myself climbing mountains, taking thirty-mile bike rides, swimming, and jogging regularly. That summer, I house/dogsat for family friends, and I took their dog for a run almost every day. And liked it!

Then I got a job in Austria, and didn't do anything but enjoy living in Austria. Sure, there were walks and bike rides, but nothing intentionally exercisy. (By this time I had met the Mister, and so was quite preoccupied with the bubbly hearts shooting out of my head all of the time.) So I was entirely out of the habit when I moved back to the US and into an apartment with four other women on Boston's north shore. Since exercising with a friend is always motivational, one of my housemates and I went to the gym in the basement of her work a few nights a week, as it was just around the corner. And free. Tacked on the wall was a lurid 80s poster of Schwarzenegger as body builder. His muscles glistened. It made me ill. At some point we took the poster down, an act of vandalism that I still think was entirely justified.

At around that time, three things happened. I became a vegetarian and learned how to cook, I applied to grad school, and I got offered a permanent job in Austria. I turned down the job because of grad school, but they offered me a three-month position anyway. Since Austria was thousands of miles closer to the Mister, and since I hadn't really ever found a proper job in Boston, I accepted. And I was back to the no-exercise-when-living-in-Europe plan, although I did stick to eating well.

Thus it was that when I arrived in Indiana, older and wiser than my undergraduate self, I was determined to at least take advantage of the free gym access on campus. I eventually joined a yoga class, and started swimming for exercise. My housemate and I would go to yoga and then come home and make fun of America's Next Top Model while we ate dinner and avoided reading literary theory.

In an ill-advised fit of athleticism, I also let myself be convinced to join an intramural basketball team, made up of women poets from the creative writing program. Only two of us had any inkling about how to play basketball. I was not one of them. We played against tall midwestern girls (superficially, I looked like them) who had just missed the cutoff for the school's Division-I team (their skills made mine look like dogfood). We lost every game we played that semester. By about fifty points.

And then? Then I moved to Brussels with my new husband, and it seemed that I was succumbing again to the Europe=not exercising equation. But after a while the diet of heavy-duty Belgian beer and things fried and/or covered in sauces, plus the cooking-for-two effect (I overestimate how much to cook, and we eat it anyway), took their toll. I was starting to look like a pillowy version of myself, and didn't like that much either. So I dragged myself a few meters down the road to the local art-deco pool, and did laps every once in a while. I always intended to join a yoga class, but never found one that was close by/reasonably priced/in English.

Which brings me to last week's major coup: the gym membership. I went to yoga for the first time in over two years, and boy have I got some loosening up to do. I also got on the elliptical machine for the first time since that basement gym with the Schwarzenegger poster. It brought back memories (which is why I find myself churning out this blog entry, I suppose). The pool, compared to the one in Brussels, where lanes were a theoretical suggestion and children were likely to launch themselves into the water on top of you, is heaven.

I had checked out a couple of options in our neighborhood: the semi-public mega-complex of glass up the road, and the private, dimmed-lights, warm white towel service place down the street. I was very surprised to discover that the fee for six months was the same for both, and the latter waived my sign-up fee and gave me the rest of September for free. And it comes with several guest passes a month, so the Mister can join me on weekends! And there's free wifi (which is why I am writing this post at the gym), and a restaurant, and a spa, much nicer facilities all around, and did I mention the towels! Plus classes that I am much more likely to go to. The first place didn't even offer yoga. Oooh, also there's a high-tech hand-scanner at the entrance. I am easily impressed.

I'm going to challenge myself to go every day, alternating classes and workouts. Things I have never done before in my life include any kind of aerobics class, dance class, or pilates, so I'm going to try all of the above. Meanwhile, just the step of joining a gym feels very empowering. I slung a white towel over my shoulder this morning and thought, maybe I am one of those people after all.

Sublime

No one told me just how desolate, just how cliff-hugging, just how hairpin-curvy, or just how beautiful the Big Sur coast road is. I mean, I had read Robinson Jeffers and John Steinbeck, and I knew it was going to be full of sweeping views and water crashing onto craggy stone towers.

But as we drove through the country just north of San Simeon (before the real curves start), I thought: this is what they are talking about! How lovely! No wonder it's famous.

I was getting ahead of myself, because I had no idea what was yet to come.

And we were woefully unprepared. Having no reservation for a campground, we planned to stop "somewhere along the way." I had a quarter tank of gas, which I thought I would be able to replenish, also "somewhere along the way." And it was starting to get dark.

Thus it was that we found ourselves swerving around the tightest of curves, perched upon the highest of cliffs, face-first into the most deliriously blazing of sunsets. I could barely see the road, both because the intense flaming orange filled the windshield and because all I wanted to do was stare down the horizon: undulating cliffs and cascades of clouds falling golden into the sea. But I crept along and hugged the side of the mountain and, alternating with incoherent exclamations about beauty and telling the Mister to take pictures, nervously watched the gas needle plummet as we vainly searched for campground indications.



It occurred to me that this moment would qualify as Sublime, capital S, in the 18th-century, Burkean sense of the word, an experience (usually of the natural world, most particularly the Alps) in which terror and beauty simultaneously overwhelm the beholder. If John Dennis' conception of the sublime was an appreciation of utter beauty "mingled with Horrours, and sometimes almost with despair," well, our drive along the Big Sur coast road sure was sublime.

Because we were starting to despair when at last we reached the little outpost of the outside world called Gorda, and I was grateful--grateful!--to pay $6.25 per gallon of gas. I asked the guy where the next campground was, and he said laconically, "just a ways up the road." We had already stopped at a couple of places that were totally full, and I was past freaking out, already stoically resigning myself to driving those curves in the dark.



"A ways up the road" turned out to be, oh, three miles, but they felt like twenty. We rejoiced at the sight of a sign saying Plaskett Creek campground, but despaired once again when it became quite obvious that most of the first-come, first-served campsites were taken. At last, we spotted a tiny spur off to the side with a postage-stamp campsite, and in the almost pitch dark, we set up our tent. We had to make do with no running water and pit toilets, and for dinner we ate peanut butter sandwiches out the trunk of the car, but we counted ourselves lucky.

Sublime.

Italian wedding

Five days of visitors (who managed to come on the sunniest possible days of the year in Brussels) followed by three days in Barcelona has not done wonders for my productivity. Neither will leaving again on Friday for a wedding in Sardinia.

I am stressing quite a bit about the question of what to wear to said wedding. The last time I went to a wedding in Italy (a very similar circumstance, where I barely know anyone except my date, except that wedding took place in a terrassed villa overlooking the stunning Lago Maggiore) I was distinctly and embarrassingly underdressed.

I had hastily purchased a flowered cotton sundress in Salzburg, where I was living at the time, and stuffed it in my backpack. After an overnight train ride in a hot and crowded cabin, I arrived in Milan on the morning of the wedding and changed into my dress in a filthy restroom at the train station. Upon finding M, who had come by train from Barcelona, we were picked up by some relative of the groom and squeezed in the back of a tiny (also hot) car with several other wedding guests, and driven to the wedding, at least an hour away. I stressed much of the way because we were late (the finding and and squeezing in and leaving had taken some time) and because I hadn't seen M. in ages and he had to make polite conversation with the other folks in the car.

I needn't have worried; evidently weddings, like everything else in Italy, start rather late. When we arrived, almost an hour behind the appointed time, the bride and groom hadn't even shown up yet. However, I was immediately self-conscious because every other guest there was impeccably fabulous in that Italian way of theirs. Not that everyone was dressed formally; I remember seeing women in pants and men without ties. But there was a lot of silk and satin, a host of perfectly draped scarves, exquisite hairdos, fancy heels: everything breathed elegance, expense, and fashion. My cotton sundress suddenly made me feel like I was twelve years old. And it didn't help that I still felt the grime of a long trip and a train station restroom clinging to my skin.

Hence my Italian wedding anxiety syndrome. This time around, I want to feel good about the way I look, even though I really have no idea about fashion and don't own a pair of heels. Just as before, I am completely unsure what the wedding will be like, but I'd rather be overdressed than underdressed. Just as before, we will be picked up by some unknown entity from the Alghero airport, but at least we'll have a night at a hotel before the wedding.

So I need help. What to wear? On Sunday in Barcelona night I was frantically trying to dig out a pair of sandals that would be appropriate for a wedding, quite fruitlessly. (Where, oh where did we put our summer shoes?) I will have to make do with ballet flats, I think.

My options are:
1. A muted hot-pink strapless dress. Simple but fancy because of shape/draping. I could wear with roped pearl necklace and a light blue scarf.
2. A black dress with a white swirly/chain pattern. T-back, fitted waist, draped skirt. Don't know how to accessorize it.
3. Black pants and a pleated green silk top. Shimmery and thin straps. Maybe the most flattering option. Could wear with earrings and necklace given to me by the Mister for my birthday. Too informal?
4. A red matching pants and top outfit with spaghetti straps. Dressier than option 3, but I've worn it to about five weddings already. May not fit me any more.

It's possible that, once again, I will arrive in Italy feeling rather grimy, because our shower has been cold-water only for a week now. Before, at least the bath spigot had hot water, and I could take baths. Yet upon arriving here yesterday, and despite the fact that workmen have been here twice already and have supposedly fixed the problem, things are worse: there is no hot water anywhere in the house. I have to shower at the swimming pool across the street. I'm clinging to the upside though: this weekend, there will be a hotel, where presumably I will be able to shower and dress. An improvement over the train station.

Spa, part deux

(Part one, here.)

This repeat visit to Spa was a different as could be from the first time around: it's one thing to walk around in slippers all day with your husband, another to do so with a gaggle of girls. Both have their charms.

In fact, the weekend was particularly great because I got to know some fantastic and beautiful women, including several who work for the US government here in Brussels, a barrister from London (she has to wear a curly gray wig to work!), and a woman who works for the Japanese embassy here. It was especially nice to be speaking native-tongue English when making friends--almost everybody else I've met while living here is European and either the language is Spanish/Catalan/French, or the English we speak is not the other person's first language, which does hinder the kind of "click" that feels so great when you meet a potential friend (at least for me; I tend to be a slow friend-maker). Oh, plus two of the ladies brought along their oh-so adorable baby girls (the husbands came along too, and kept mostly out of sight, except to make breast-feeding deliveries)!

We started the day with champagne in the hotel room, and rode up the funicular to the spa in our bathrobes and slippers. From there, we enjoyed a day of massages, swimming, and lounging, plus plenty of chit-chat. The highlight for me was swimming in the warm outdoor pool while grey skies plopped fat, cold raindrops onto my face. I did have to hurry inside when it started hailing, though!

Then we got gussied up, had a fun Italian dinner, then headed over to the Casino of Spa, which claims to be the world's oldest casino. I was so relieved that pretty much everyone else was as green as I when it came to casinos. We felt distinctly out of place, and dramatically overdressed, in the small (albeit baroque) salons, compared to the wizened, chain-smoking figures hunched over the machines or the tables.

We each got ten euros worth of tokens, our limit for the evening. Big spenders, right? A bunch of us immediately lost about half of our tokens in the slot machines, although a couple girls made some money. As in, four or five euros, whoo hoo! We then decided to pool all the leftover tokens and play roulette. We started out with 29 euros and ended up with 49, after one of us with the knack won us back a bunch of money. All the winnings went to the bride-to-be!

The next morning, after a late buffet breakfast at the hotel, we all wandered off either up to the spa, into the town, or back to Brussels. The bride and I decided to go fleamarketing in Spa's Sunday market, and it was the best flea market trip I've ever made! She and I snatched up some amazing finds amidst the cast-off electronics, dingy appliances, and piles of moldering books, including gorgeous antique jewelry, an old manual coffee grinder, which I bought for the Mister (he has admired his grandmother's), fun books, and mod vases. She found a solid silver 1970s watch and some fabulous rhinestone jewelry, and I bought an art-deco ring and a lovely pale blue milk-glass bead necklace. We were also endlessly amused by the characters selling the wares, all of whom had an eagerness to talk. One woman, once she found out we were American, had us trapped for a good quarter of an hour, and was most enthused about pictures she had seen of a friend's son's house in--"that country, what's it called?"--New England, where they have "little wild animals who live in the trees and eat hard fruit, what are they called?"--squirrels!

Flush with our purchases, we drove back to Brussels in the rain. The Mister was already back from Barcelona when I arrived, and as always, it was especially nice to see his face again after traveling in opposite directions. Actually, when we sat down to go over the April and May calendar, it was sobering to realize that he'll be away from Brussels for 30 days out of 47. So a lazy Sunday afternoon side-by-side was a storing up of together time, embraces that will have to last us twice as long.

Singin' in the Rain

Tonight I am singing in my first concert with the BCS, and am greatly looking forward to it. We had our dress rehearsal earlier this week, and although singing in a big cavernous cathedral-like church with mile-long reverb makes us feel like we are singing through butter, and forces us to take everything a notch slower (so it all doesn't become a dissonant mess), it is such an awesome feeling to finish with a big chord, cut off, and let the sound swim around in the air forever.

We're singing five pieces from the Rachmaninoff All-Night Vigil, four Duruflé Motets, Fauré's Cantique de Jean Racine, and the Fauré Requiem, as well as a contemporary piece by our conductor. It involves whole-note scales, chanting things, and big puffs of haaaahhhhh to create a windy effect; it's actually quite cool.

I'm always excited about choral concerts: they are the one performance situation that I don't rather loathe. I'm on stage with a large group of people, so it's not just me, and there's nothing like the synergy of an intently focused group of singers creating something bigger than all of them put together to make chills run up and down my spine.

When I was home, my mom and brother and I were reminiscing about the time when I sang in an All-New England's choir in high school and the choir royally messed up one of the pieces (it was one of these modern pieces, called The Creation, with a electronica tape, and the cue was wrong so the whole entire piece was out of sync with the tape). After the concert, I cried. I was so extremely disappointed that we had ruined the piece and in my mind ruined the whole concert. I remember being outraged that all the other kids were just laughing and gathering their bags to go home, seemingly unconcerned about the royal mess-up. Singing in choral concerts give me a high like nothing else, and that night was a low crash instead.

I hope I've learned not to take it so badly if a concert doesn't go so well, but I am looking forward to that euphoric musical high.

(Oh, and the post title is because we'll be singing, and I'm pretty sure it'll be raining. Yesterday it poured so hard I thought the frites stand across the street might float away.)

At least my hand wasn't cut off

The following is, unedited, what I scribbled down the other morning after waking up:

dream about losing glasses--
unfamiliar university campus
sewage end, Luke Skywalker-like
Many many bl & red glasses
but none were mine.
Snuck into library (which was sewage plant)

Though it might pass for avant-garde poetry, it's not really my style and I wouldn't want to read this all printed up pretty in a book.

Instead, these are, as it were, cliff's notes to my dream of that night's sleep. I shall interpret the cliff's notes, and then you shall help me interpret the dream, OK? Sorry about the memory-holes. Happens with dreams.

So, in the dream, I was with my brother Dan visiting (purposes unknown) a huge university campus. We toured the library and looked at the reams and reams of books (some stuff happened there that I can't remember), exited via a metal gangplank thingy towards idyllic green grass just as they were closing, then drove around in a rattly stick-shift looking for some sort of event (can't remember what it was). As it was getting dark, I realized that I had lost my glasses, my new black-and-red glasses. Maybe I left them in the library?

I went back to where we had parked the car, a strangely European-like tiled plaza, and drove around convinced that I was going to break the car. Couldn't find the library. Found myself on a huge hill at dusk with wide-laned roads that overlooked the city, but I couldn't see the library. I asked a student-like guy (cargo pants, sticky-up hair), who hopped in the car, and instead of driving me there, drove to find another student, a girl (busty, sorority-type), whom he then convinced to drive me to the library.

When we got there, it was dark and not just closed, but boarded up and covered in plastic sheeting. The girl took off. I pried open the plastic and plywood and jiggled a door on the gangplank part until I got into a sort of entryway. Then, there was someone coming! I tried to hide, but he saw me. It was a janitor, but he turned out to be friendly. He led me through windy windy passageways and up some stairs into a series of plush offices (wait, is this reeeally a library?), where he rummaged in a drawer and pulled out a pair of glasses.

Yes! Those are mine! Delirious with joy, I grabbed them, and then...realized they weren't mine. They were little kiddy plastic sunglasses with red frames. He proceeded to pull out black and red glasses of every shape and size, but none were mine. He told me I could look around, and disappeared, so I roamed the library-that-wasn't-a-library, and then stuff happened that I can't remember, but I didn't find the glasses, and suddenly I fell through a trap door into some sort of trash chute and things started getting sinister.

I was flushed out the back end of the library into a bay, and there was trash and noxious green stuff, so I knew, intrepid investigator that I had become, that the library was up to no good and that the EPA should be notified. I was hanging tenuously onto a piece of the trash chute that closely resembled the scene in Star Wars where, after his hand is cut off, Luke is dangling on a skinny antenna-thing at the bottom of the trash chute and by telepathy gets Lea and Hans to come pick him up in the Millenium Falcon.

My brother came to pick me up, and that's the last thing I remember from the dream. I guess I never got the glasses back.

Now you come in. Does this dream:
1. Represent my anxiety about working on my sewage-like PhD while very far from my home university/library and maybe never finishing ever?
2. Indicate that deep down I think I would look better in different color glasses?
3. Show how during the 80s my brother and I were into Star Wars?

Choose one, or fill in the blank:
4. Other _______________.
I'll be eager to hear what you think.

It was a black crayon

In French class on Wednesday, our teacher actually grabbed my notebook and held it up for all to see, exclaiming that THIS (pointing at my homework, written in obsessively neat lines and paragraphs, with space for her to write corrections, and without any crossouts or scribbles) is how everyone should write out their devoirs.

I wavered, in the space of those thirty seconds, back and forth from giddy pride at how well I had done (at writing on lined paper--yes, we are reverting to second grade, aren't we?) to sheer embarrassment at being the goody two-shoes in the room. Then relief when she handed it back, then more embarrassment when another student grabbed it and my notebook was passed around the room (more, I think, to copy study my answers than to admire the straight lines of writing). Grown-up students are just as inclined as kids, it seems, to not doing homework and then copying it or scrambling to do it at the last second (even after class has started). This is a practice that annoys me to no end. I did my homework, why do you get to freeload off of me? Now I am being a goody two-shoes.

(Note: After a brief search, I just discovered that the phrase "goody two-shoes" comes from a "rather twee" 1765 children's book. The main character, named Goody, only has one shoe, is given a new pair, and then acts all show-offy about it. Source. Ain't the internet grand?)

Speaking of classroom embarrassment, I am reminded of a time in first or second grade when I raised my hand to say that I couldn't find my crayon (our teacher had passed them out for us to work with). Everyone laughed at me, because I had somehow twisted the crayon up into my hair and then forgotten about it. They, meanwhile, could plainly see it hanging there in my white-blond hair. I had evidently been doing the "very very shy + absentminded girl with long hair twisty around finger (+ crayon, in this case)" thing: this was a long-lasting epoch of my life. I was mortified.

You know, I didn't even remember that I remembered that. But there it is. And so, the lesson that I learn from this brief detour into memory lane is that, although I was embarrassed the other day, nothing can compare with the mortification of a shy childhood when one twists one's crayon into one's hair.