Late Night at the Starbucks

Tomorrow is my morning to sleep through the first shift, so tonight, after Miss Baby was well and truly down for the night, I went out. Sensible bedtime be damned! I walked to the local Starbucks (about three blocks away), had a decaf-grande-nonfat-latte and a peanut-butter-chocolate bar, read a couple of chapters out of the book I'm working through, and came home.

Not a terribly exciting story, eh? But it was kind of a special experience, actually.

First, the whole thing sort of reminded me of another time in my life, when I was single and trying to fill the hours hours hours between wake up and fall asleep. I used to walk to the local Chapters/Starbucks (about three blocks away) sometime in the grim after-supper period, order a tea (I was poor then), read a couple of articles for classes I was taking or teaching, and go home. As this time recedes further from the life I live now, I am tending to become mistily nostalgic for it. So it was nice to feel like that younger, more carefree me ... only without the crippling loneliness and self doubt, and with a better income.

Second, coffeeshops are entirely different places at night, and I have forgotten how much I enjoy that whole scene of steamed-up windows opening on lit-up streetscapes, vivacious couples, brooding singles, and night-time 'characters'. It's noisier and somehow more urgent at night, and I find it soothing to curl up with a book and just observe what's going on.

So third, the observations. Three ten- or eleven-year-old girls, picking up tall-extra-whip hot chocolates at the bar, and being embarrassed that the male barista is wishing them a good evening as though they were regular people, and not kids on a sleepover. They sit at two small tables, their fourth a Dad on chaperone duty. Next, brooding intellectual guy. He's clearly a university student (God, they're all starting to look so young to me!). He sits at the bar very near to me, and underneath his blue pea coat, he's in white shirt and (cheap) black pants. Very minimalist. Nevertheless, while he sips his grande tea, he places under the seat the four-pack of Mike's Hard Lemonade he has just purchased from the LCBO next door. Guess he's not managed to cultivate his taste for Scotch yet. So young ... There are three or four couples--all are in the dating stage, as opposed to the relationship stage, and I'm wondering how I can be so sure. Is it the intensity with which they look at each other, or, otherwise, try not to look at each other? The way their body language seems to indicate separateness? The way the women look down coyly and fiddle with their straws? I start to wonder how Pynchon and I look to others when we frequent the Starbucks, but the answer is immediate: we look like a young married couple with a baby, because if the two of us go anywhere together, she of necessity makes a third to our party. Hard to look like you're on a first date when you're out at 10am, playing rock-paper-scissors for who has to change the poopie, swiftly and competently exchanging a toy from the diaper bag for the one that's just fallen on the floor. Anyhow. I notice Tony Bennett's duets album playing. I see the Board of Health notices on the bar fridge, watch the baristas wash dishes and sort bagged coffee. I sit. I look. I read.

These are pedestrian enough kinds of observations, to be sure. But what was so nice (fourth!) was having the leisure simply to linger and to observe. To be quiet and attentive. Reflective. Dreamy. To be out at night, among grownups, mistress of my own solo adventure. I spent my hour lollygagging, and walked home. At the only set of lights on my return, I slowed deliberately to miss a yellow: with Miss Baby, I always rush through the intersection, as she's no fan of an immobile carriage. So why not flaunt my freedom and just stand here, looking around and sniffing the night air?

Earlier this week, Beck wrote a post that dealt in part with the idea that hanging out with little children is not the bee-all and the end-all of a woman's life; she referenced this article that claims that having children reduces the overall stock of happiness in parents' lives. I don't think so (and neither did Beck, incidentally). As with my experience tonight, the sense of contrast between my time with Miss Baby and my other interactions with the world leave me grateful for both, and more attuned to whatever moment I happen to be in. While big chunks of my day-to-day life are blurred with fatigue or repetition, even these moments are sharpened by my little escapes, small parcels of time where I can recollect myself. Happy.

Gestures

My parents stayed with us for nearly a week at Christmas, and I was surprised at Miss Baby's lack of ... regard for them. Actually, she made strange. She warmed quickly enough to Grampa, rewarding him with smiles for his efforts at goofy-facery, but not enough to let him soothe her from a fright, or calm her from a fit of tired pique. For Gramma, she largely maintained a poker face, a wary acceptance of her presence, but an acceptance that nonetheless required careful watchfulness. This shouldn't be surprising, because Miss Baby is nearly seven months old, primed for separation anxiety, and, besides, spends almost all of her time with either The Dada or The Mama.

It appeared that Miss Baby prefers us to all others, even if the only evidence of this seemed to be negative; that is, demonstrated by her rejection of others rather than a clear endorsement of us. Interesting to note, but not particularly heartwarming.

Yesterday, though, as I staggered around the house in my sickness fog, trailing used Kleenexes, moaning, and occasionally lying down on the floor, the most amazing thing happened. Miss Baby reached for me.

Here's what happened. Feeling guilty that Pynchon was having to take care of both of us, in a moment of Tylenol-fueled lucidity I offered to take Miss Baby from his arms so that he could eat, a luxury he'd been denied in the bustle of day. As I put out my arms in the characteristic pass-me-the-baby gesture, Miss Baby herself turned toward me and extended her arms.

She'd never done that before. My heart broke into a million little pieces. It's one thing to know your baby prefers you to others because she will only stop screaming when you are the one to soothe her. It's another thing entirely when a perfectly content baby raises her arms to you in a gesture of simple love and desire: "The Mama, I would like very much if you were to hold me in your arms."

I have loved her since before she was born, and express my love as warmly and as often as I can. Yesterday, I started to get a little of that back.

Grr! I love you, dammit!

Random thoughts ... glah.

Things are grim when the nurse at the doctor's office takes one look at you and says, "Whew! I guess I don't have to ask how you're feeling!"

I won't complain about that though: I'm lucky enough to have a doctor at all, much less one I can call at 8:00am and book an appointment for 2:10pm the same day. There's something about having a family doctor, one I share with Pynchon and Miss Baby, that just makes me feel so so responsible, and also like this new town is becoming our town. We're in a family health centre practice, too, so that means access to goodies like a dietician, of whose services we will be availing ourselves next week, as Miss Baby is being raised by a vegetarian (me) and a non-cook (Pynchon). All we had to do to luck into such a situation was get knocked up, and then follow-up on a timely tip from the midwives. And here, there are more than 10,000 people in the region who rely on walk-in clinics and Emergency. It shouldn't be like winning the lottery to get decent health care.

Any-hoo.

Pynchon made me call the doctor this morning as my head cold is getting steadily worse. I'm just glad I was able to make it (-ish) through my first day of teaching yesterday before collapsing in a puddle of snot today. (Sorry.)

I don't care if they laugh at me, as long as they help. So the verdict is: sinus infection PLUS chest infection. With $100 antibiotics. Boy, when I get sick, I do it right :-)

I was going to attach a cute baby picture here. But Blogger won't let me. Grr. And also, I've just discovered that my document full of blog-topic gold has mysteriously disappeared from my computer. So now I'm bummed out, and feeling dumb. Hooray.

Little bit pregnant

In late September of 2005, Pynchon and I had just discovered my pregnancy. It's a funny story, actually: we had weekend guests and were planning to cook a nice dinner for them after a trip to the local farmers market. It was all a question of wine. Pynchon and I were trying to get pregnant, and so there was a possibility that I might have conceived but of course a possibility that I hadn't. If not, my period would be arriving momentarily most likely right after I had teetotalled through the party, and rather than deny myself an evening of wine with our friends, I thought I would take a pregnancy test to settle the question. Yes, that's right, I peed on the little stick that Saturday morning in order to confirm that I was not pregnant, so that I could drink with impunity that night.

You can therefore imagine my surprise when the little line turned pink.

I had convinced myself that I wasn't pregnant. I had no symptoms! I didn't have 'a feeling'. I wasn't glowing, or barfing, or shrieking, or tired. Pynchon's first reaction, too, bordered on disbelief. "Are you sure?" he asked. "Let me see the test." Even the test seemed ambiguous: shouldn't that little line be darker? More pronounced? We both stared at the little pink line, the only tangible evidence of this ostensible pregnancy. Indeed, I kept that pee-stick on my bedside table for the next several weeks. It just did not seem probable or even possible that I had gone from not-pregnant, to pregnant, after one fateful early-morning, concentrated-hormone pee. (I do understand that it's the not the peeing that made me pregnant. I'm just trying to capture a mood here ...)

The saying 'that's like being a little bit pregnant' is a joking way of indicating that the addressee is shading grey a question that admits only of black and white: you either are, or you aren't, is the implication. The next week, Pynchon and I headed out to the local Prenatal Health Fair after work. I wandered around the sea of big bellies feeling like a fraud. Everyone was round and glowing, or had little babies in tow. Women were wearing maternity clothes and sweating like crazy while their partners carried the heavy things. By contrast, I was shivering in my regular old clothes, a tight blouse and some low-riders, definitely not of this tribe surrounding me. I hardly felt we had the right to be there. As we slowed past one booth, on prenatal nutrition, its attendant called out, "Are you pregnant?" and I could only just force out a weak "Well, I'm a just a little bit pregnant." She laughed right in my face: "No such thing, honey! You either are or you aren't."

little bit pregnant.

But a little bit pregnant is what I was, and I only came to throw out the pregnancy test stick once my breasts became incredibly sore--and then, whenever I wasn't feeling quite pregnant enough for my liking, I would surreptitiously give them a squeeze to make sure they were still sore. I wanted more and more symptoms, to be more reassuringly, actually, pregnant. To be a real member of the club, with a kicking fetus and swollen ankles and a swaying walk. As the pregnancy progressed I felt more and more comfortable with the state even as I felt less and less comfortable physically. I came to appreciate the degrees of pregnancy.

A great deal pregnant

I'm thinking about this now not because I'm a little bit pregnant again (dear God! No! Not yet!) but because I'm a little bit pregnant still.

After Miss Baby was born, I was surprised to become unpregnant in the same way that I had become pregnant: by degrees and gradually. There was the matter of the poochy, still-inflated uterus that only shrank slowly back to its regular size; the pregnancy weight; the sore boobs; the hormone swings; the swelling. I have been surprised at just how long the linea nigra has lasted, this hormonal inscription of pregnancy on my belly, still here lo these seven months later. The gradual de-pregnancy has been, in a way, comforting: I don't know that I was quite ready to part with who I was when pregnant, or quite ready to be who I was to become as a mother. Obviously, I would have like to drop the whole 50 pounds immediately, and not just the baby-plus-placenta. And the swollen feet were not something I really relished enough to desire the continuance of. But still. If I'm honest, I have to say I am still letting go of my pregnant self as the traces of pregnancy on my body fade at about the same pace.

What has really prompted this reflection, though, is that I'm still a little bit pregnant in the sense that I. CAN'T. TAKE. ANY. DRUGS. FOR. THIS. GODDAMNED. HEAD. COLD. because I'm still breastfeeding.

Sniffle.

A Meme for Mimi

I was just over reading Jeze Whiz (a fave, of which I've gobbled up the archives) and found a call-to-meme:

"The meme goes like this:
Find the nearest book. Name the Author & title. Turn to page 123. Post sentences 6-8. Tag three more people."

Jezer says her readers ought to consider themselves tagged, so here goes.

The nearest book is to my left, under the can of pens on my desk. It's a library book: The Lonely Crowd: A study of the changing American character, by David Riesman. I notice now that it's an abridged version. This is a pretty famous book actually, first out in 1950. It's kind of like the non-fiction companion, if you will, to a novel like The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit.

Here's sentences 6-8 of page 123:

"In the fairly tale the protagonist is frequently an underdog figure, a younger child, an ugly duckling, a commoner, while the villain is frequently an authroity figure, a king, a giant, a stepmother. In the comics the protagonist is apt to be an invulnerable or near invulnerable adult who is equipped, if not with supernatural powers, at least with two guns and a tall, terrific physique. Magical aid comes to the underdog--who remains a peripheral character--only through the mediation of this figure."

Um, ok. This is from a section on the development of social character in children, entitled "The mass media in the stage of other-direction: The child market." 'Other-direction' is a social orientation whereby people (in this case, children) gain their sense of self and well-being from the tacit or explicit approval of others, of the peer-group, a situation the author marks in contrast to the prior prevailing code that we might call self-reliance, or individualism, or 'character'.

Oh dear. I hope I'm not as boring as this sounds, but actually I'm finding the book fascinating.

Now I wanna know what Alpha Dogma, Ewe are Here, and Beck are reading ... Tag!