And we're back

Yea though we have passed through the valley of the shadow of pneumonia, we have somehow survived. C’s drippy cough means she’s up a few times a night, sometimes wired and unable to get back to sleep, so I’ve been enjoying life jammed in her very small bed with her. I tell myself we’ll laugh about at this when she’s 20.

Despite the illness, Nate and I did sneak away for a few rare nights out last week: once to celebrate my birthday and once to enjoy our annual outing with the judge and Julie, who invite us to attend a reading at a local college to which Julie is very connected. This year Marilyn Nelson read, and I was pleased with how enjoyable the reading was (very little of the poetry lilt which always drives me nuts by the third or fourth poem). I left all charged up and ready to face the page—hopefully it will stick. I love going to the event with the judge and Julie because she knows EVERYONE there, Detroit literati to all the big players, and he has the most amazing sense of humor. I spend a lot of the evening wishing he and I could communicate telepathically because I know he has a thousand stories (candid, funny and sometimes surprising stories) about everyone who walks by.

I was only a little familiar with Nelson’s work before the reading, but I had heard she writes poetry for young people as well as adults. “Poetry for young people” has such a pleasing ring to it that I immediately thought I’d be a very literary mama and snag a signed copy for Clementine, who is wearing me out on the heavy rotation books. When I got to the book table, I saw A Wreath for Emmett Till, one of her “young people” books and didn’t end up buying it. Till, you see, is a young boy who was lynched for once whistling at a white woman, and while I am really behind the notion of the book, I just couldn’t see tucking C in with a rhythmic crown of sonnets about lynching, no matter how beautiful or educational, touching or necessary they really are. What can I say? Even I have limits, though I hope I remember to buy it for her when she’s in sixth grade and so embarrassed I’m her mom she can hardly walk straight.

Spring has sprung in our neighborhood, which is always such a relief because we feel so trapped. It’s also horrible because for the first few weeks of the spring our neighborhood turns especially wild. Maybe it’s because NASCAR isn’t racing as much yet, or perhaps there’s nothing for our neighbors to watch on their ridiculous Rent-a-Center GIANT televisions (I can see nostril hairs on the picture from the street, I swear), or maybe even they get a whiff of the outdoor air and get giddy with all the possibilities. Every year Nate and I swear this is the year we’ll give up on the place after nights of drunken carousing around a fire pit on one side of us or hours of six unsupervised sibling screaming on the other side, but we remember that it always dies down eventually. I used to be good at loving this place, this salt-of-the-earth, trying-to-better-itself place, but I struggle. I long for gentrification. I case newly-bought homes for signs of…well…signs that they won’t move a couch on their front lawn or be involved in domestic disputes. I never thought I’d say it, but I miss the people with the wrestling ring in their backyard—now that they’ve moved it’s just trampolines, broken down 4X4s and large, loud, untrained dogs purchased in lieu of security systems.

Better little by little

This picture was taken before the pneumonia, but it captures her pretty well right now. She's not as pathetic as yesterday, barely able to pick her head off my chest, but she's not back to her happy, dancing self either. The coughing is terrible! Since she's napping quite a bit I uploaded lots of Easter pics finally, but they don't seem as mood-specific. Click for more.

Under the weather

Excuse the silence. Clementine has pneumonia. Not unlike when I unknowingly sent her to daycare with a broken arm, this time I sent her to a day of daycare and exposed her to two days of working in the office with me as her condition worsened. I'm not self-flagellating, just realizing that it is possible to feel like you're following good instincts only to have that all shot to hell down the road. When C puked on my on Sunday and Nate decided to skip the concert and stay home I worried that she would end up being fine and we wasted a night out and a sitter on nothing. On the other hand, if we had both gone we would have been wrecks the whole time. It's a gamble either way.

She seemed to be perking up yesterday, but last night was an endless battle again the flames of fever and today sure enough a rattle on the left side. After we got her medicine she slept on top of me (and only on top of me) for four and a half hours. So much for working the rest of the day from home. She is really suffering but still manages to be cute. In her sleep she called mostly for her socks but also sometimes for Yora, Hudsie, Hudsie mama, PeeWee (as in the playhouse) and the socks again. When she woke up from her marathon nap she told me that Floyd the cat was in the bathtub and then laughed her ass off. Fever dreams must be the best.

Fever 103

It's later than I like to stay up these days, but I can't sleep, floating from my bed to the computer or the bookshelf while Clementine sleeps fevered in her bed. I'm remembering symptoms, quelling new worries (was she pointing to her right side when she said "Owie," and does that indicate appendix?) and realizing I can be a little histrionic. I know she just has a fever, but she seems so unlike herself, so uncomfortable, and I feel like I need to be awake, hovering, waiting for her to wake and need me. I want to comfort her, to soothe her.

This trip up is because I can't stop reciting a line from "Fever 103" by Sylvia Plath: "I have been flickering, off, on, off, on." I need to find the rest of the poem to read it, and I'm taking that as a good sign. When we brought Clementine home I kept Plath's Ariel beside the bed and read it constantly with new eyes as I pumped or when I would wake in the middle of the night to rock her back to sleep. I'd like to say I was learning something about poetry or motherhood from the experience, and I suppose I wouldn't be lying if I did. But mostly I was looking to the book to reassure me that motherhood didn't mean the end of my poetry, that I could still write in the face of such a consumption. Perhaps Plath wasn't the best place to look for that, but the blame is all mine: I have written only a few poems since Clementine, and not one is something I'd show anyone. I tell myself it's hard to write from a place of such contentment, but that's as big a lie as any (for if we are going to get into the argument that poetry is inspired by isolation, fear, anger, etc., what better inspiration than motherhood?). I just don't have anything left for the page right now. I hope it will change, that I will change it. I hope needing to read Plath in the middle of the night is a start, but I don't know how one can balance this much: work, parenting, social connections, an artistic life.

I was thinking about this last night at a Lucinda Williams concert that is worth it's own post (along with a post about the talent show the night before held in my working class/redneck town in conjunction with the contemporary arts museum downtown--a whole post I hope I'll make time to write). Lucinda was singing about making a little something to eat; it was a solitary, searching activity in the song and isn't even the refrain, but I felt the world screech to a halt a little while she sang about it. I can't remember a time I put that much thought (and really it was just a few lines of the song) into what to eat myself. I certainly can't remember a time when that deliberation, that act could then be a part of a mood, a feeling I wanted to communicate in a poem. I can't accurately describe what the hell I'm actually thinking about, but as I listened to her I realized I will not be on my own that way again for a long time, if ever. That restlessness, that attention to every whim and mood, that ability to connect small decisions to larger existential struggles is something I don't have time for anymore. What the hell kind of poet am I, I wondered to myself, that I can't make it the center of my world? That's the only way to be successful, right? Marie Howe, Sharon Olds, even my friend Crystal: poetry comes first. Lucinda too.

But then I remembered Clementine, the things that are the center of my world, and I was OK. Better than OK. Sure, Nate would have been with me at the concert had C. not puked her guts out as we were leaving (is that parenting or what?). Sure, I wilt a little when a writer friend of mine gets a prize, publishes another book. I didn't know this would be my path, my happiness. I didn't know I would stray from writing, but I have. I don't know when I'll go back, but the hope is alive. Ultimately this is the life I want, the life I choose every day. Clementine is wheezing in the next room, her hot little body restless and wandering under the covers, and in a few hours she will nestle between me and Nate in bed. But I know she'll be OK. I'm going to read one more poem (which was one I obsessed over when we were first home with her and the one I read at her faux baptism) and then go get ready for her. This is what I want to be doing.

Ambulatory

There was a time when C was first born that I would have done anything to be at home with her. My mind on that front has never really been made up completely--it ebbs and flows as my love for my job shifts around--but I'm pleased with her life at daycare and the example I'm setting for her by doing my own thing, having a job, even if it is way more traditional than I'd like (remember I'm trying to breed some bohemian tendencies in her from the beginning!). With all the time I've been spending at home these days, I realize I would go stark raving mad if I stayed home with her full time, and it makes it that much easier to go back to work. Sure, I miss her like hell, but I'm reminded what a good situation this is for all of us. Nevertheless, I like being out in the world in the middle of the week day. Grannies in the left lane going 20 MPH, kids having meltdowns in the Trader Joe's parking lot, very little traffic. It's like a totally different universe.

I'm at home today with a ton of electrical leads sticking out of my head for an ambulatory EEG. I've wrapped a scarf around my head and like to think I'm looking a little like Little Steven of Underground Garage and E Street fame as I diligently record everything I do. I have guests on their way tonight who can't wait to get a look at my Medusa-like appearance, and I'm trying to resist the pull of back-to-back Law and Order so that my brain waves look extra-smart when they study them; in fact, I'm going to go start a crossword puzzle in a minute. I think there is little reason for this test besides getting me back on the road. Not being able to drive myself around is driving me crazy, especially because public transportation in and around Detroit is pretty shoddy.

It's ironic that the EEG is called ambulatory when, for me, it's anything but. Nate has been saddled with two extra responsibilities since all this happened: pick-up and drop-off for Clementine AND pick-up and drop-off for me, whether it's work or doctor's appointments. For some strange reason this has me feeling guilty; I tend to shoulder more of the logistics on a day-to-day basis, but it's hardly because he asks me to. I think I'm still struggling to come to terms with the way that we tend to fall into certain roles. I don't want to say it's gender--I think it's much more a control-freak tendency on my part than my inner homemaker--but I wish it were easier to nail down. My Donna Reed plan that was working so well for us for a while has totally fallen apart in the last few weeks, and I'm pretty happy with that. It felt good to know who was doing what, who was responsible, but it's more fun to share, to work together now that Clementine can almost lend a hand (we're not trusting her with a knife just yet, but she's really great at organizing the cherry tomatoes!).

It's time for one of my scheduled rest periods, so I'm going to go look as calm and restful as I can so they'll let me have my damn keys back.

Before trauma, fun

I can't let our great time up north be overshadowed by its unfortunate ending. Clementine is blending right in with our nomadic ways, and I think she was psyched to hit the road with Laura and Joey after her few days at work with me. We started by visiting a friend in Interlochen, where Clementine was able to realize her lifelong dream of encountering a real snowman. She has been obsessed with snowmen since their proliferation at Christmas and in one of her books, but seeing one--two, in fact, if you count the baby--in real life was almost just too much, especially since Joey built them.



This was also the first time Clementine got to play in the snow at any length, which she loved until she couldn't her boots on anymore. She especially loved throwing snowballs.



Joey and I hit Crystal Mountain before we headed up to Petoskey to meet the guys. We checked into a fabulous hotel that had very comfortable bed. The only evidence of my head trauma might just be that I have hardly any pictures of Clementine in the hotel or around the slopes at Nub's Nob except for some pics of her very cute pony tails. Holy hell is that girl is sweet.



On the way home we decided we couldn't possible pass up The World's Largest Crucifix in Indian River. My double vision was just getting started as we pulled up, so I didn't perhaps enjoy the oddness of it as much as I normally might have, but I did find the fabulous nun doll museum that was beyond strange. Hundreds of nun dolls in the garb of convents all over the world, strange dioramas of nuns in action, a hall of life-size nuns. Sadly, the gift shop was closed, but I have a feeling I'll be back.







For now, my cool little girl is just happy to be back. But we are maybe a little curious about the Sock Monkey Festival in Rockford, Illinois this weekend....

Sick. So sick.

We have not been swallowed by a giant black hole, but at this point that's seeming like something I'd rather be doing. We are the house of sick and have been nursing various fevers, sniffles, infections and the likes since Saturday. I'm back at work today but wish I wasn't. The joy of falling into this pit of germs is that between the three of us we may never escape, each of us bringing home germs from school or day care or work and passing them back and forth like an illicit smoke. Nate got a little better from her bronchitis, but then C went down with the flu and ear infection. She turned a corner, but then I got sidelined with my annual winter cold. We're not sleeping. We're cranky. Oh, and we're using lots and lots and lots and lots of Kleenex.

What's a weekend without a medical emergency?

I wish doctors offered frequent flyer miles or a rewards system because we sure have had to see a lot of them in the last few weeks. Yes, the arm fracture and subsequent dozen trips to the doctor but also Nate's asthmatic bronchitis and this weekend's pink eye, courtesy, of course, of day care. Clementine woke up Saturday morning with her eye sealed shut with junk, so we hightailed it to the urgent care office, got some drugs and put her under quarantine for the rest of the weekend. She's actually here with me at work for the day, behaving beautifully because I've plugged her into the beloved "Mah Na Mah Na" and her Aunt K has been spoiling her with cake.

But there is much to tell of our weekend snowboarding adventures (you won't be reading it on my corporate sponsor's website just yet). After work. After the laundry. After, after, after.