Wishful Slacker

Big girl

Ellie transitioned into the toddler room at her daycare this past week.  Next week, instead of walking through the building to the infant rooms all the way at the back, we will be dropping her off in the toddler room, right at the front.  I have so many mixed feelings about this.  She is certainly ready for the toddler room- the toys, the schedule, the fact that she no longer will be navigating her uncoordinated toddler physique around small infants cooing on the carpeted floor.  But the saddest part is the fact that her teachers, the lovely women whom we gave our child before we turned and walked away for the very first time, will no longer be her caregivers.  It is quite an adjustment for Jim and me!

These past 15 months, it has often been the unexpected that leaves me grappling with the emotions of a mother realizing that her child is growing up faster than a science experiment pea plant.  The first toddling steps were not what brought the lump to my throat, necessarily.  But that day when I went to pick Ellie up from daycare after a harried day at work, and she walked over to meet me at the door, arms outstretched, for the very first time?  Yeah, that did it.

On Thursday I emptied the basket of clothes from Ellie's infant room cubbie and when I got home that evening I spread the contents on the floor, deciding what to bring to the new toddler room the next day.  Something took me completely off guard then.  Next to the infant-size striped socks and baby legwarmers was a plastic pacifier cover.  Ellie was never really in to pacifiers, but I remember we brought one to daycare, one year ago, in hopes that it would calm her when they laid her swaddled body down to nap.  I remember bringing the pacifier home a few weeks later and assuming that we had lost the cap.  And suddenly there it was, a sucker punch instigated by a simple piece of plastic polymer on a blue living room rug.  The formal realization that my sweet little girl, the small being whose warm head I kissed as we rocked to sleep countless times in the odd hours of morning, was no longer a baby.

That's when I got the lump in my throat.

What to do with Bunny One?

On a chilly April day, 5 month old Eleanor and I sat in our parked car while Jim ran into Toys 'R' Us.  I had clipped a coupon that gave a great discount when you bought two toys from the company Vtech, and the coupon was due to expire soon.

"Just see what they have and choose whatever," I suggested.  Several minutes later, Jim returned with a musical bath toy, and Yellow Bunny.  We didn't introduce them to Eleanor right away.  Soon after her 6 month birthday, it seemed that she finally might be ready for more than what dangled from her activity center, and I brought out the box containing the next stage of toys- stacking blocks, a shape sorting basket, and Yellow Bunny.

Yellow Bunny was more than a plush toy.  She came from Vtech, meaning that within her tummy was a battery pack nestled inside, sealed by a velcro flap on her back.  Each of her paws had a function.  One got her to enthusiastically cheer, "Clap your hands along with me!/Dance with me!/Sing with me!/ Playing with you is SO MUCH FUN! I looove you!!!", while another paw caused her to jump into a rendition of peekaboo.  "Where are you?  HERE I AM!"  And another setting switched her over into lullaby mode.  "I feel sleepy," she yawned, as quiet lullaby music emanated from her insides, and a yellow heart positioned in the middle of her white circular belly glowed and dimmed, glowed and dimmed, while everyone got sleepy and snuggly.

This is how we first used Yellow Bunny, setting her in a corner of the crib so she could sweetly sing Eleanor to sleep each night.  We soon learned of a new function of Bunny's.  If Eleanor awoke crying, the night light on Bunny's tummy automatically began to pulse, and her peaceful music came across the baby monitor to our ears.  Miraculously, Eleanor was often soothed back to sleep by Bunny's performance. 

We were fans, but at first Eleanor didn't seem like she would really gravitate towards Yellow Bunny as any type of lovey.  As the months went by, we began noticing something.  We'd flick on our video monitor, and would find Eleanor with her arms around Bunny's body, clutching and softly carressing Bunny's ears in the dark.  She began carrying Bunny around outside of the crib too, and with her usual stance, clutching Bunny around the waist or neck and squeezing Bunny's ears while she sucked her thumb.  On long car rides, all Eleanor needed was for Bunny to be on her lap and she was set.  Eleanor finally had a lovey.


One day, Eleanor would not drop Bunny as we headed out the door for daycare, so we brought Bunny with us.  She then wouldn't leave Bunny in the car, and so Bunny came inside.  Starting at age one, children at daycare could start to have an item in their cribs at naptime.  It won't hurt anything to try having Bunny at school, I thought.  I set Eleanor down on her feet in her daycare room, with Bunny snug in her grasp.  The other toddlers instantly noticed the newcomer, as though they had a built in radar system for these types of novelties.  Brent ran over to Eleanor and reached out his arms.  I heard the "pop" of Eleanor's thumb being yanked out of her mouth as she lost her grip to Brent.  Then Malcolm ran over, and he pulled on Bunny, and Trixie followed by Ava came running over, and like a loose ball in a football game they all scrambled for possession.  And my poor baby ran after them, arms out-stretched, with a growing look of panic on her face as Bunny drifted further and further away.  It broke my heart to witness this first experience for her, as mild as it really was.  We kissed Eleanor on the head, restored Bunny to her arms for a brief reunion, and once morning snacktime was served at the table I was able to hide Bunny out of sight in Eleanor's cubby for the duration of the day until we could get her safely home again.

As you can imagine, Bunny is looking a bit loved at this point.  Her yellow fur is faded and her ears appear to be a dirty gray instead of yellow.  At least once a week I notice a new spot on Bunny's originally-snow white belly, and try as I might to sanitize and surface wash Bunny's exterior I cannot get that dingy hue to go away.  I think it is here for good.


Last weekend, Bunny let us know that she was getting hungry for a fresh set of batteries by occasionally letting out a mechanical honk in the middle of a song.  Her stomach stopped glowing as well.  Just as he did during her last battery change, Jim used our mini screwdriver to open up Bunny's battery pack.  He popped in two brand new Energizers, tapped Bunny's paw, and- nothing.  Not one giggle, not one round of applause, just a hollow click came from her paw after being pressed.  No soft light glowed on her tummy.  Jim grabbed the screwdriver, swapped in two other new batteries, and...still nothing.  Bunny was silent.

"Uh oh," we said to each other, using Eleanor's favorite phrase.  We handed Bunny back to her, and she assumed her usual Bunny position with her thumb in her mouth and her fingers curled around Bunny's ears.  She didn't seem to really notice Bunny was different, but then I saw her chubby toddler fingers squeeze Bunny's paw.  "I think Bunny already fell asleep," I explained. 

That night, I hopped onto Amazon, and after three clicks of the mouse another bunny was being sent via two day shipping.  $14.  This is actually a good thing, I thought.  I can retire old Bunny, and now Eleanor will have a nice new yellow bunny that still works.  And, if new bunny is ever lost, we will have old Bunny on reserve.  Perfect.

New bunny (let's call her Bunny Two) arrived this afternoon.  I set her on the counter, pushing her back from the edge where Eleanor couldn't see.  Speaking of sight, I almost lost mine when Bunny Two came out of that box, she is so bright and sunshiney.  The white of her belly is spotless, and my fingertips sunk into the softness of Bunny Two's fur.  She is luxurious, the Lincoln of bunnies, and quite the catch.  Her checks are dabbed with two very bright bursts of rouge.  I didn't think Bunny One ever even had this blush, but sure enough, in peering across the kitchen to where Eleanor was clutching her, I saw two faint dots on her cheeks.  I think I had just assumed that they were stains.

A few minutes later, Eleanor became distracted by something in her bedroom right off the kitchen, giving me the opportunity  to snatch Bunny One up from the floor.  I set Bunny One on the counter, right next to Bunny Two.

And my heart melted.

There was Bunny Two.  Bright, enthusiastic, eager to start on the job.  And then there was Bunny One, not even one year old and already entering the world of coveted heirloom teddy bears, the ones with missing button eyes and stuffing poking out of fatigued seams, kept up high on a shelf or carefully positioned on a quilted bed every morning.  I looked at Bunny One, and I swear she looked back at me.  Sitting next to Bunny Two, Bunny One's smile was deeper, more genuine.  Her blotchy coat and discolored ears were signs of my daughter's love, love that even I am finally just receiving in hugs that come to me with a running start, and kisses formed by lips that quickly dissolve into smiles.  Bunny One?  She's been getting Eleanor's love this whole time.

Did Eleanor really need Bunny's music and songs?  They were really nice to have, sure, but maybe there were times when Eleanor just wanted to sit and not clap, or read a book and not play peekaboo.  Just maybe.  And as much as we appreciated Bunny's lullabies playing to a restless infant at two in the morning, there were also plenty of times when "THERE'S A TRIANGLE ON MY PAW!" screetched across the baby monitor and bounced off our pillows like a pinball, the effect of Eleanor rolling on top of one of her buttons in her sleep. 

I took a picture of Bunny One next to Bunny Two and sent it to Jim, with the caption, "I just can't do it."

When I was little, I lined up all my stuffed animals and one by one loved each of them as my favorite for one week before switching to the next one in line.  I wanted them all to feel loved, and the more of them I loved, tucked next to me under the covers and curled around my head, the cozier I felt.  My sister and I had a recurring nighttime game of make-believe, where our bed was a boat and we, with all our stuffed toy children, were together in the dark night, bobbing in the waves.  All the things I love in life, Christmas or snow days and summer rains trapped indoors, give me that feeling of belonging, that sense of coziness.  And wouldn't we all love to be loved like a teddy bear in a child's arms?  To be that very special someone...

So Bunny Two is now up on the top shelf in our closet.  She can serve as our back up, if God forbid something happens to Bunny One, or if Eleanor one day asks, "What was that song that Bunny used to sing, Mom?"

Or maybe, Bunny Two can one day be passed on to a little friend, and just maybe, if she is loved enough, she will become that child's Bunny One.

From The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams

 The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the others. He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces. He was wise, for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew that they were only toys, and would never turn into anything else. For nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it.

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

"I suppose you are real?" said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive.

But the Skin Horse only smiled.

 

Why the CMA's make me weepy

I keep seeing commercials for this year's Country Music Awards, which take place this Wednesday night, November 9th.  Each time the commercial airs (always catching me off guard), I come close to shedding a tear.  Literally.

Last year, the CMA's were on Wednesday, November 10th, and I watched them from our labor and delivery room at Prentice Women's Hospital.  Jim had run back home to grab our suitcase (it had given me pause, hand on the front door knob, ready to leave for the doctor's office.  Should I bring our suitcase, just in case?  Don't be silly, I said to myself.). 

It was already dark out when we left our doctor's, following his orders to go to the hospital to be induced.  The city glowed outside our hospital window, and under any other circumstances I would have looked to see the view (Jim told me later that we faced south).  I was filled with such feelings that night.  I don't think there will ever be a way to describe them, and those moments of quiet and calm, with my hands resting over my unborn child, have continued to flood my memory in the year since.  All by myself and charged with excitement and anticipation, I eventually needed a distraction.  And so I settled on watching the Country Music Awards. 

Amid the twangs and the fiddling and bluegrass beats, Jim and I text each other updates.  Me to him: Typical country music ballad- Someone young with an illness, living through their child's eyes, God watching over them, yadda yadda yadda.  Oh, btw, they just broke my water.  Him to me: Almost got double parked by a firetruck in front of our building.  Feeding cat and out the door. 

It has been a year.  I can't believe it has been a year. 

There are so many ways we have changed.  So many things we have learned.  We have a 12 month old, a little girl with her own personality, who likes to bounce and bop to music and is in love with a yellow stuffed bunny.  She is now walking and can give high fives.  How did we go from a newborn to a child who now lifts up each foot when we go to put on her socks?

I knew our newborn would not stay a newborn forever, but it sure felt like it at times.  I knew that I would eventually find myself again, how I was before our baby was born, but there were times when I felt I was doomed to a life of drawstring waistbands and hair scrunchies.  I knew that, eventually, I could re-enter into conversations with friends about topics unrelated to swaddling and diaper cream.  I knew all of this, I think.  Still, in the crazy whirl of this first year, buried in a fog of sleep deprivation, there were moments when I wasn't so sure we would ever return to "normal."

And that is just it.  We won't ever return to normal, because we now have a new normal.  My new normal is to wear a shirt with baby snot smeared on the shoulder.  But, at least my hair is done, so I move on with the day.  My new normal is stumbling into the baby's dark room in the early morning, seeing her smile from between the bars of her crib, and knowing that that is better than any extra sleep.   The mundane and simple have become bright and animated.  Look, A RED BLOCK!  A YELLOW SIGN!  THE NUMBERS ON THE ELEVATOR LIGHT UP! 

I knew none of this, sitting there in the hospital room, with the CMA's playing in the background.  I didn't know all the wonderful new friends we would make in the year, our wonderful new mom's group friends with their delightful baby boys, our daycare teachers, the other parents at Gymboree.  I didn't know how trying a new baby could be on a relationship, while at the same time making this year the best one my husband and I have ever had together.  We love our little family of three.

Back then in those late hours of November 10th I knew nothing at all.  I lay alone in the dimly lit room in the middle of the city, hand on my belly, with the knowledge that it was all about to begin. 

What Steve Jobs Did For Us

With the news last week of the death of Steve Jobs, so many are coming forward with their stories of how Apple forever changed their lives and their world.  It is rare that one person's life affects so many to the degree that Steve Jobs' did, and the news of his passing is one that will linger with us for a long time to come.

Here is our story.

I grew up in an Apple Macintosh family.  My dad set up our first Macintosh on the living room floor, where I sat cross-legged for hours in front of that little screen, playing in MacPaint.  I was about 3 or 4 years old.  I filled in shapes with zig-zags and solids and learned that it was possible to scribble using a computer.  From that time on, we were always devoted to the Apple brand, which at times wasn't always easy.  In school, not only was I a lone Protestant amid a sea of Catholics, but I was a Mac user, frequently heckled about being left in the dust.  And for a while, it did start to feel like we were being left in the dust amid the fancy IBMs and the computer games that were not Mac-friendly.   In 7th grade I joined the computer club- well, it wasn't really a club, but rather a time after school on Mondays and Wednesdays when students had access to the computer lab.  It was a year of the doldrums for me, and in searching for some recreation I joined a few other students (mainly geeky boys) amid the rows of white Macs in the chilly and sterile computer room.  The other boys who met after school were very computer-savvy.  They preferred their IBMs, but they had respect for Macs, and in turn, respected me (and they, being heckled enough themselves for numerous reasons, didn't give me a hard time when I used MacWrite instead of Microsoft Word).  Sitting there and writing with them after school made me feel that perhaps dorky was the new cool. 

So this was my background- my relationship with Apple.  My high school graduation gift was my purple iMac, the second coming of Apple, and to this day I think that has been my favorite computer.  It was beautiful, it played so nicely, and it was all mine.

This is what I brought to the conversations that started up between a man at the Caribou Coffee where I worked and me.  Turns out he was also a Mac man and had always been.  He understood my loyalty with Apple.  One day he told me that he was looking to sell his little MacBook laptop, and wondered if I was interested.  To which I replied, "Um, YES."  We chose a night when I wasn't working, and met at the Caribou.  He sat next to me and opened up the laptop, explaining her tricks.  I began feeling very overwhelmed, but I did not know if it was because of the amazing computer that was soon to be mine, or if it was because I was suddenly shoulder to shoulder with this guy whom I think I was starting to like.  Later, when I sat at home with the laptop, admiring it, part of me kept thinking that it had been his.  A couple days later, I had a quick question about the laptop, so I sent him a text.

And instead of texting me back he CALLED me on the phone, for the very first time. 

That was the start of it, almost 9 years ago.  Now we have a Mac Mini, two MacBooks, two iPod Touches, an iPod Nano, an iPod Shuffle, two iPads, Apple TV, and an 11 month old daughter.   

That is what Steve Jobs did for us. 



Click here for my husband's version :-)

Distance

She was always here.  Not near, but here, thousands of miles away. 

She kneaded the dirt in her garden and hugged her grandson tight and felt the warmth of her evening tea through glazed ceramic.  You had just seen her, hadn't you?  At that family party, when she spent the day busy in and out of the kitchen, moving so fast you almost missed her.  But you knew she was there, because on the table where there had been a pork pie and sausages there was now a plate of cucumber sandwiches.  Later on there would be cakes and trifle, enjoyed by sticky fingers and rosy cheeks that deepened as the hours passed, all of us together.

Hadn't that just been 2 months before?  Before the phone call, those words bouncing  around the office as you stared at the blinking cursor, each word falling splat with finality after it registered through the vibrations in your ear drums and was mulled over by neurons, chewed up like cud, and swallowed in a gulp. 

So just like that, she went away.  But what difference did it make in your life anyways?  What changed in the way the alarm sounded in the early hours of morning, the sun breaking over Lake Michigan, lighting upon glassy skyscrapers and still alleyways? 

Nothing changed.  That was the beauty of the gift of distance.  You used to hate the distance, weepy goodbyes at airport security lines, the startling quiet of the drive home, the faint scent of lavender and Pears soap wafting from the guest room.  But now, the distance was welcome.  Nothing changed.  You still dragged yourself to the shower and washed the sleep from your eyes.  Cars bumped over potholes on Lakeshore Drive.  The waves chopped and pulled at the sand.  The world went on living. 

Yet sometimes, it caught you off guard.  As you stared out the window, watching the naked tree limbs reach out to an unforgiving winter sky, you heard a whisper, "She is gone."  Or when you saw her home in your mind, the vines creeping along the barn and the lovely sound of gravel underfoot as you walked up the driveway, you realized she wasn't home.  And immediately you turned your attention somewhere else, to the chopped onion or the bookcase that needed dusting.  Everything needed dusting.

A couple months ago I quietly marked the year anniversary of the last day I ever saw her, saying goodbye on that gravel driveway, watching her wave as we drove away in our rented minivan.  One year, and I still pretend she is there, making us tea from her kitchen, talking to my father as he leans through the Dutch door.  I think I will always pretend.

Back to School

August 26th.

Like a dream that quickly slips away in the morning as your mind struggles to hang on to it, the dates that have come and gone this week have given me pause.  Wait- wasn't this an important day?  August 25th? August 27th?  August 29th?

Oh yes, that is right.  These were the days when school began.  The dates that became seared into your memory the moment that school let out in June.  You have until August 29th. Then as summer progressed, the date loomed closer.  It is now after July 4th.  It is now August 1st.  Remember what happens August 29th?

I have had that lingering feeling that something important is due to happen this week, though truly it is merely a wisp of memory coming back to me from my elementary school days.  The sharp points of Crayola crayons, lined up in perfect order in their crisp box, Brick Red nestled between Burnt Sienna and Mahogany.  The aisles of shiny plastic and rubber in a frigidly air conditioned Payless shoe store that often left me with prickly goosebumps and a walloping headache as soon as the door jingled shut behind us as we stepped back out into the blazing sunlight.  And that back to school smell.  What was that smell?  A school that had for 2 months been wiped and polished until it squeaked beneath those new shoes. The scents of hundreds of stagnating textbooks, slowly melding together into uniformity after being separated from each other during the previous school year, to only once again be dispersed into the unknown worlds of John's backpack or Jessica's kitchen table, soaking up cigarette smoke or freshly baked cookies or repetitive evenings of Shake N Bake pork chops.  I held my breath as the books were handed out, praying for one that was crisp and new, and not lobbing sideways with a cracked spine and dog-eared pages.   I looked at the upcoming year with optimism, but how could I maintain that with a book that had long ago lost its faith?

After a day of school I gathered with the entourage of other children that walked together back to the neighborhood where my babysitter lived.  We shuffled together, younger kids (that was me) in the back, following in the shadows of the older ones who confidently walked along the sidewalk that arched around the bus zone in the school parking lot before curving around to the main road.  On a hot September afternoon, a couple apples committed pitifully sad suicide from their craggy tree and landed with a splat on our path.  The confident boys in front froze as we came upon it, leading us little ones to stumble into their backs like lemmings.  There were bees on the apples, dancing around and languidly slurping up the sweet sauce that had been baking in the sun.  Tom looked left, he looked right, and we stepped aside as he took a few steps backward.  Yelling "CHARGE!" he ran towards the apples and swiftly kicked them away.  In what direction they flew I will never know.  All I remember is the load of us screeching and screaming, and my jostling backpack thumped a formidable rhythm through my body as my legs moved faster than they ever had before.

We only started to catch our breath as we neared Mrs. Helinski standing in her stoic position at 24 Mile Road and Shelby, her large red STOP sign always clasped in her aging hand like a sword.  Through rain and snow and humidity Mrs. Helinski was always at that intersection, both on our way into school and in the afternoons.  Even years later, when I was in college, I caught sight of Mrs. Helinski whenever I drove past.  "Wallkkk," her thin voice barely made it over the muted rumblings of suburban traffic as she stood in the center of the street and beckoned.  She rarely said much else, watching the traffic like an eagle.  She was our warrior.

Going back to school was always such a jolt.  Not only had my sister and I been home all summer, but my parents, both teachers, had also been off of work.  With sluggish surrender we set our morning alarms and rolled out of bed with a plop of defeat.  But this was also mixed with an excitement that crept in through my toes as I ate my Kix cereal while watching Gumbi and the Snorks from the couch.  School.  The first day of school.  Tacky Elmer's glue on my fingers and the crunch of elementary school scissors through construction paper.  The Pledge of Allegiance and chicken nugget Thursdays.  And learning. 

After years of Back to Schools, I still cannot turn my back on it.  I hope that every teacher and student out there has a great start to their school year, and that you all end up with shiny new textbooks with crisp pages.  



 

Girl Looking Up

When my imagination searches through the card catalog of my brain looking for possible interpretations of my life and current position within it, I always picture myself as a little Girl Looking Up.  It is not an image that is purely figurative.  For such a long time I was the little Girl Looking Up.  Mouth slightly agape, I watched the fourth graders- those big kids from the "Upper El"- as they sauntered in High Tops across squeaky-floors to join the overwhelmingly boisterous chicken nugget lunch line every Thursday.  The chicken-patty-on-a-bun lunch line on Mondays was more composed and not as exciting, but if  it contained any of the Upper El kids, you can bet that it still got to me, small piddly first grader that I was.  They were so fascinating, all of them.  The velcro on their Trapper Keepers ripped away fresh as new with each and every use, and the shadows cast by their classrooms into the dark hallway were always vibrant and exciting.  Thankfully the fifth and sixth graders were tucked way down in another wing of the school, or else I probably would not have known what to do with myself.   

At the time, first grade felt YEARS away from fourth grade.  It was eons away, really.  But as time has a tendency to move along, I oozed my way up and up the layers of elementary and secondary education.  The thing that got me though was that I never felt any inner celebration upon reaching that level that I once envied.  For when I reached fourth grade, those former fourth graders had become SEVENTH graders.  They were so big, so big that they no longer even attended my school!  Sometimes they stopped by to visit (which they could do, since they were released from school a whole HOUR before we were), and with heads cocked at an angle they told us of a world where bells rang and students shuffled to a different room each hour.  There were hall monitors and tardy slips, and textbooks wrapped in paper.  And it would be years before I got there.

I continued to look up years later, even as I leaned cross-legged over the student undergraduate handbook pressed open on my bed.  Ahead of me were all my courses, stretching away and across semesters and seasons.  This class needed to be completed before that one.  But that one was only offered in the spring and fall and not winter, and it was only 3 credits and not 4.  Regardless of how it would be done, it had to be done, and hence I continued to look up. 

Why am I telling you about all of this right now?  Well, two weeks ago I turned 30 years old.  And for the past two weeks I have been ruminating over this a LOT, much much more than I thought I would.  Just ask my husband, who probably feels that if he has to hear me start yet another sentence out of the blue with, "You know, I've been thinking..." or "But here's the thing..." he may drive home to Michigan for the weekend just for a breather.  Or at least go to the bar across the street- that would be a lot cheaper than stopping in Gary to fill the tank with gas.

I know that many men and women feel deeply changed after having a baby.  Yes, many things have changed and there is no doubt about that.  But for me it was turning thirty that really threw me for a loop.  After mulling this over for a full fortnight, I think I understand why it messed with my mind the way it did.  I have been too busy dodging spit up and kissing little baby piggy toes to come across this realization earlier, but as I drank my birthday pint at Pequods Pizza and thought about where I am in my life at the age of thirty, it occurred to me that maybe I am no longer that Girl Looking Up.  

For what felt like forever and a day I chugged along- went to college, went to grad school, moved to Chicago, started working.  The twenties, that insanely active decade of our lives, have come to an end for me.  I am not crying about this, don't get me wrong.  I have no desire to stress out over future examinations or to wonder what to do with myself after getting my bachelor degree.  I am happy to be settled and expect to forever appreciate quiet evenings and slow sips of coffee on Sunday mornings.  But still, turning thirty, and realizing that I have reached this plateau, has given me pause.

There will be many more events to come and I still hope to achieve, though what I will achieve next is the big mystery of my new thirty-something life!

Though a baby now, my daughter will one day look at those big kids parading past her in the hallway and wonder with longing when she will be like them.  And as the Woman Looking Down, I will love and support that little Girl Looking Up each and every step of the way. 

Time

Time.  It's an interesting concept.  Sometimes it flies by, prompting comments to our hair dressers about how we just can't keep up, that already the holidays have come and gone, that our maternity leaves are already almost over, that soon it will be spring.  Yet there are other moments in our lives when time crawls, sluggish and oozing like molasses, grabbing onto doorways and clinging to calendar days.  This is how it felt when my sister had cancer.

Those years were horrendous.  Bad news always hit right before Christmas, and her treatments always took place during winter months when, even under normal circumstances, there is often little to cheer about beneath those dark and heavy clouds.  A stem cell transplant was the last resort, and this took place on January 18, 2008, three years ago today.  Nine months later, my maid of honor stood by my side at our wedding, cancer free and with a gorgeous head of hair. 

Looking back, it takes my breath away thinking about how uncertain life was during those years when we were walking blind.  Since then, there have been many birthdays.  Weddings.  Family gatherings.  And the birth of my daughter.  There is no way to measure the joy I feel when I think of Eleanor and the moments she will be able to spend with her aunt Piper.  Time is precious, and it is ours.
 

10 years from NOW

Happy New Year's Eve! 

A few Christmases ago my parents handed me a small cylindrical container, wrapped up with a bow.  My mom pursed her lips together to appear serious yet there was no missing the way the corners tipped up on the verge of laughter.  "We found this while going through an old dresser," they told me.  Peeling off the wrapping paper revealed an old camera film canister.  On the outside, written in a child's scrawl that I recognized as my own, were the words, "Open in the year 2000." 

Instantly I remembered what it was.  I popped off the top of the time capsule and pulled out the accordian folded piece of paper on which, as a fifth grader, I had poured out my assessment of the future.  It is pretty darn hilarious.  And since this is the season of New Year's resolutions and future predictions, I thought I would share the silly thoughts of the eleven year old me!

10 years from NOW
Lindsay Walker, age 11
Mrs. Steffey's class

In 10 years, I hope to have a car.  I will still be living with my parents.  I would be 21.  Piper will be 17 and will have a steady boyfriend.  I would have gone to college and would be practicing the heart and lungs, so I can be a heart surgeon.  I will have a steady boyfriend who I will be very fond of.  I hope to look slender and be very pretty.  I will own a caboodle, and have tons of makeup.  I hope to have my ears pierced.  I hope to be a wonderful citizen and have peace with the people around me.

Love,
Lindsay Walker


Happy New Year!

Christmas Lights

Playing in our living room while my 5 week-old baby girl sleeps is the music from my favorite Christmas album.  I have many childhood memories of listening to this music, filling our home Christmas morning as we lay passed out on the floor in post-gift opening delirium, or playing on Boxing Day as my father’s shepherd’s pie beckoned to us from the oven.  But my strongest memory of this music comes from our family minivan, as the heat purred from the vents and snow crunched beneath the tires on icy subdivision streets.

 

Each December my parents, sister, and grandparents would begin the slow nighttime procession through the quiet neighborhoods of Macomb County to view Christmas lights.  There were always the older subdivisions like ours, filled with the decent attempts of Christmas light do-it-yourselfers, light displays containing personality through the uneven coverage of straggly evergreens and shrubs that dotted the lawns.  Plastic candy canes crookedly lined salt-sprinkled walkways.  At our own home, my father’s handiwork was sweet and conservative, with hints and warmth.  The bushes were evenly coated in multi-color, while fake candles glowed from each window.  A lone pine tree glowed in white at the bottom of the driveway.  Drivers passing our house knew that within there was a fire in the fireplace and tea steeping in the kitchen.   

 

We appreciated the modest light displays of families who observed Christmas with love before their gray American ranches or brown two-storey colonials with quietly manicured lawns.  While we didn’t ignore these lights, the real subjects of our car rides were the Clark Griswald homes that altered the landscape of the monotonous strip mall-rich township where we lived.  We sought out the big guns, the families who either budgeted throughout the year for their astronomical December electric bill or otherwise just decided on a whim to go for it and pay later.  These were the homes that diverted the little Cessna and Piper aircraft approaching the small Macomb county airport on 22 mile road, now long gone.  Lights streamed down from rooftops, wrapped around chimneys and exploded down the fronts and backs, illuminating all houses within a half block radius.   In use were little classic Christmas lights, large retro bulbs, blinking lights, twinkling lights, multi-colored lights, and solid color lights in whites, blues, greens, and purples.  Blow up Christmas Winnie the Poohs bounced and wavered in front lawns.  Wooden Christmas carolers sang dangerously close to sleeping baby Jesuses in handmade mangers. 

 

Because my dad did our lights, I always assumed that these projects belonged to the men in the homes, who perhaps sketched out on a sheet of paper where to place the icicle lights and Santa’s reindeer.  These were ESPN-watching, summer jet skiing American men.  These men invited over friends and neighbors each Sunday to watch football in their man caves, with chicken wings and celery sticks set out on the coffee table and bottles of Budweiser available for the picking in the fridge.  When Thanksgiving weekend rolled around each year, they had the opportunity to make a statement, one that would clog their street with crawling cars gaggling and gazing in disbelief, while at least one old woman on the street tsk-tsked and drew her shades tight to keep the light from reflecting off her television.

 

Our searching brought us to a sophisticated subdivision that contained huge sprawling houses and winding hilly streets with names like Buckingham Lane and Versailles Place.  This neighborhood banded together each year and decorated in only whites and reds.  These were not your over-the-top houses of Clark Griswald’s caliber.  This neighborhood was Grosse Pointe and Beverly Hills-esque.  The men in this neighborhood worked late nights at the firm and knew little about that year’s Detroit Lions team aside from the well-understood fact that they were losing yet again.  These men dared not put up their own lights.  No, it was very apparent that this was professional work.  A million white and red lights wove themselves higher and higher, up and up, to the very topmost bough of the towering trees planted throughout each yard.  Yard, what am I talking about?  These weren’t yards.  They were landscapes, tended to by professional landscapers.  Large (and I mean HUGE) wreaths circled the doorways.  The shimmer of lights seemed to continue inside these houses, bouncing off crystal and beveled glass.

 

This subdivision exuded sophistication and wealth, and we marveled at the cumulative beauty of these red and white homes.  Yet what we all loved even more were playful homes covered in color.  Christmas, my grandparents and parents believed, was that blessed time of year when our lives fill with a richness that is not measured and precise, but explodes in chaotic warmth every Christmas Eve.  Christmas is made of macaroni adorned ornaments and preschool hands sticky with glue and felt.  It is the morning of messy hair and footed pajamas and rambunctious cats leaping into piles of discarded wrapping paper. 

 

“See that house?” my grandma often pointed at houses with multi-colored lights glinting through the car window, “There’s a lot of singing and dancing going on inside.”

As the years went by, my sister and I not only got dressed but we even fixed our hair before venturing downstairs on Christmas morning, and we experienced a slow shift from multi-colored to mature white lights in our home.  Now I live in a city, and vast landscapes are few and far between.  This year the frigid cold has prevented us from venturing outside with our new baby to enjoy the ice skaters or to soak in the windows at Macys.  Out our bedroom window we see a house that has wrapped a single string of multi-color lights around the trunk of the only tree on their property.  This single string of lights is a stark contrast to the outdoor Christmas light explorations of my childhood, but it is my daily reminder that a world of neighborhood light displays still exists.  We will pass on the love of this season to our daughter and delight in her excitement each Christmas morning in future years.  Next December, our Christmas tree will be amusingly void of any ornaments within the grasp of a toddling one year old, but with joy we will be able to see its lights reflected in her blue eyes.

 

And we will make sure those Christmas lights are multi-colored.