Celebrations in Baby Time

It's interesting to step into celebration mode with a baby in the house. This little person cares nothing for these bumps in the calendar, like Christmas and New Year's; he's still busy learning how to stand up, to eat with his fingers, to use a sippy cup, to sleep without needing too much help--and he can't put a hold on all those activities in order to raise a glass and reflect on all he's accomplished over the past nearly-ten months...his all-encompassing quotidian calendar clashes with our Roman-Christian-American one...and it will be interesting for me, after having stayed up to midnight with the family, to deal with his needs at 6 am as per usual...actually, I'm probably going to bed right after finishing this, so won't make it to midnight. His quotidian calendar wins...and, at the moment, I don't mind in the least that it does. Happy New Year, You-Know-Who.

Let's Make This Brief

It's been a big day for the baby and for myself; we've found a wonderful babysitter, finally, and this morning she was here watching the baby for the first time, in a sort of practice babysitting session. Then my son and I attended a meeting of the older mothers' group, which was, as usual, both entertaining and informative. Everything went remarkably well in spite of a hectic schedule. But now my eyes are closing as I type this; the baby went to sleep an hour earlier than usual, and I'll probably do the same.

Tomorrow I look forward to taking at least one random stroll somewhere. My son and I are both ready for a lazy day.

Amazing Race

Sometimes it does feel like I'm racing every day just to keep up with my son's basic needs, which led me to imagine this interview process.

***

Applicant: Well, I think I'm well-qualified for the position. I've spent more than twenty years being a responsible adult. I'm not including the first six years of adulthood, by the way, those were a wash.

Interviewer: Yes, fine, fine. I guess most people could say the same. Well; and what do you see yourself doing in five years' time?

Applicant: Well, assuming I've handled things okay, I see myself, um, continuing my role as a mother, but branching into other areas as well. I'll be proud to be a mother, but I also hope to become more of a useful member of society...oh, that sounded bad. It's not that I don't think being a mother is useful, but...I hope to work for this company in some other capacities as well.

Interviewer: I see. Well, let's take a moment and go over the responsibilities this position entails. Do you realize that the hours are from 5 am to 10 pm, plus on-call work from 10 pm to 5?

Applicant [with an incredulous stare]: What?

Interviewer: Oh, no one mentioned that to you in the preliminary interview? That's odd. Of course, those are just the hours during the initial training.

Applicant [with an audible sigh of relief]: Oh, I see. And how long is that?

Interviewer: Anywhere from three to seven months.

Applicant [with another incredulous stare]: Oh.

Interviewer: After that it's around fifteen hours a day, seven days a week. No paid vacation, no holidays.

Applicant: Isn't that against the law or something?

Interviewer: I suppose it is, but you know, that doesn't stop anyone from taking on the position, and the authorities have looked the other way for so long that no one even asks that question any more. Anyway, to continue: You'll be working with someone who is absolutely clueless, but again, that's just at the beginning.

Applicant: When you say, "working with," what does that mean, exactly?

Interviewer: Oh, you'll be in direct, close, physical contact with this person during the entire work week. Almost nonstop.

Applicant: Don't people--well, don't they go mad, spending so much time together?

Interviewer: Yes, they do. But at this company, we're looking for a higher-caliber sort of mom. You'll have to learn the techniques for sanity-retention. We'll cover those in Orientation. Usually we devote about twenty minutes of your daylong Orientation to that topic.

Applicant: I'm sorry, but, I'm not understanding why it's so intensive. I know that being a mom involves, at least initially, a lot of diaper changes, feeding, putting on clothes and taking them off, giving baths, and entertaining the little person to some extent, by reading books and listening to music. But aren't there times--at least, by the time the baby is a few months old--where he's just sitting there staring into space? Aren't there times when you can sit and read a book, or at least a newspaper article or something?

Interviewer: [Sighing] I see that you haven't read the introductory materials.

Applicant: Yes, oh yes, I have. I've read every page. But somehow I don't remember reading that there's not even time to, uh, smoke a cigarette or something--oh, not that I smoke! I'm just giving an example...

Interviewer: [raising eyebrows] And you never smoked?

Applicant: No, I swear, never. I know what you're thinking, that I slipped up there and I'm really a closet smoker who's going to pollute my baby's air...no, I promise you, that's not going to happen!

Interviewer: Okay, please, calm down. I didn't think that for a minute. So, you've read the introductory materials, which plainly state that "Motherhood will be the hardest job you've ever had, and it will be rewarding in ways that you never imagined."

Applicant: Yes, of course, I know it's hard, but they don't say that you can't take a five-minute break once in a while.

Interviewer: Well, that's because you can, of course you can. After you've washed the bottles and picked up everything your baby dropped and you've done the laundry and cleaned up where he spat up. Oh, and slept for at least an hour because you're so tired, and purchased new items for your baby on the Internet. And when your baby's awake, he'll be clamoring for your attention during four minutes of that five-minute break, but you can just ignore him. Or better yet, pretend you're paying attention to him. That teaches him the art of deception--a very important skill for young children to learn.

Applicant: [remains silent.]

Interviewer: Anyway, there's one more aspect of the job that you should know about. Assuming you're still interested.

Applicant: Yes, I am. I mean, I think so...please, tell me.

Interviewer: There's no possibility of retirement once you've started, and again, no paid vacations or holidays. So once you've begun, you're in it for the rest of your life. Always and forever.

Applicant: [hesitating] I don't know if this is a question I should ask, but...

Interviewer: Please, feel free to ask anything.

Applicant: Why on earth do people take this job?

Interviewer: For the fringe benefits. And after all, there's never a dull moment. Except those mind-numbingly dull moments when you've read Brown Bear, Brown Bear ten thousand times. Well, have I answered all your questions?

Applicant: [gazing glumly at the floor] I guess so.

Interviewer: I'm sorry, the next interviewee has shown up; thank you very much for your time [stands and shakes Applicant's hand], and good luck.

That Huge Thing

I wonder what my baby was thinking yesterday, seeing the ocean waves rolling in. I had him in the front-facing carrier, perhaps for the last time, since he's hitting the weight limit for that device--and too bad; he loves facing forward. His legs kicked and he chortled excitedly as we approached the waves at Ocean Beach.

Though it was cloudy over most of San Francisco, it was surprisingly clear at the ocean, and the sun cast a soft, late-afternoon light over the water; people were remarking on how beautiful it was, and many of them smiled at the little guy as they walked by.

It was by far the best moment in an otherwise dreary day. He took in everything--sandpipers, snowy plovers, rambling dogs, foamy waves--with a sort of rapture that made me instantly forget I had any problems whatsoever.

Thanks to the little one, I had a taste of what it would be like to see the ocean for the first time.

Music Fatigue Part II

I might take back what I said about children's songs, at least, the American ones that are so popular. "Wheels on the Bus" isn't bad, because it can be fun even for the adults to make the gestures with their kids (though the melody is gratingly repetitive). Same for "Itsy-Bitsy Spider." But "Old McDonald," "If You're Happy and You Know It," "I'm a Little Teapot" and so forth--they start to get on my nerves if I hear them more than once in a great while.

I can't say the same for some of the French songs I've heard, although the CD I have entitled "French Songs for Children" has many songs which were not created solely for kids. "Frere Jacques" wears out after a few hearings, but "Sur le Pont d'Avignon," in spite of its repetitiveness, holds up over time, at least for me. I find that many French songs have a liveliness, a bounce in their melody, that seems to be missing from the popular American children's tunes.

I know that the big thing in children's music these days is the Putamayo CD series, involving songs written for children from around the world. I've purchased two of these CDs, the one focusing on animals and the French songs CD. They're both not bad, but somehow, I don't find myself returning to these CDs over and over. Although it's obvious that the musicians labored over these songs to make them original and inventive, they're often lacking in one important feature--they're not all that catchy or memorable. However, it should be added that they're miles above the four American children's songs CDs that I've bought so far. Somehow the instrumentation choices alone (often with whiny synthesizers rather than real instruments) are enough to drive me crazy.

Combined with two disappointing musical play-classes he's been to, my son's introduction to music has been all too lackluster so far--except for the musical "instruments" and music-playing devices I've purchased for him: a couple different drums, a five-key "piano," various bells and maraca-type instruments, and a portable music player which plays eight different classical melodies at the touch of a button while lights are flashing--perhaps his all-time favorite toy. He also loves to "play" our piano (the full-sized version). And he loves tapping a metal bowl with a wooden spoon. In other words, he becomes a one-man band at home--and until I find a music class that lets him explore as much as he does on his own, it won't be worth it. And until I find CDs of American children's songs that are not nauseatingly saccharine, I'll probably skip buying them or just sing songs to him myself.

Baby Boxing Day

Boxing Day was a servants' day off in 19th century England; the hired help was sent home with a box of Christmas gifts and perhaps leftovers as well. I must admit that at times, being a mother does feel like becoming a servant to one very small person, with no possibility of a day's vacation. I know this is not the right attitude, but when one is bone-tired, and in a bit of a post-Christmas funk, it's hard to muster up the right attitude...

Just now--a flash of lightning, followed by loud thunder (it's raining heavily). My only feeling is not one of awe at the majesty of natural forces, but of dread, as I think about the night ahead, with, probably, a very awake and frightened baby. We'll see.

Baby Christmas

My baby's Christmas consisted of 2 music CDs and a new walking push toy, something that's a bit old for him, but with flashing lights that will entertain him until he's ready for prime time. In other words, he didn't receive a lot of gifts; but he's only 9 months old, and who needs a lavish Christmas at that age? And again, at my age (45), who needs Christmas at all, beyond get-togethers with family and friends, a few modest gifts to others, and some well-considered donations?

I'll enjoy buying him gifts next year, and one day (when he's ready), introducing him to Santa and Christmas trees. But I also hope to teach him how to give. He already smiles like a Christmas tree when he puts a ball in my hand and I say "Thank you!" in a bright voice, so maybe there won't be that much teaching involved.

The Fine Art of Conversation

I've just read that if Facebook were a country, it would have the third highest population, behind only China and India. I've not yet succumbed to the allure of social network web sites; I do see their utility--the ease with which one can look up old friends, or just keep in touch with people at a distance. But I've resisted for several reasons; one of them being, I don't seem to have enough time to vacuum the house, much less maintain a Facebook site. Another reason is the difficulty of erasing one's presence on the Web as soon as one has become a member of some of these sites. Even discontinuing a membership, it seems, is no guarantee that one's personal information will not remain accessible.

Another reason I'm not a member of any social networking site is that I don't like revealing intimate details about my life to anonymous masses of people--and it seems like this is, at least in part, the purpose of these sites. (Of course, most people would argue that it's not for the anonymous masses, that they're on Facebook or Twitter for that special group of friends and associates who are already a part of their lives in some way. But then, why not just establish a personal web site?)

Most people who've asked me to become a Facebook member are in their thirties, a bit younger than I am, and are seeking advancement in their careers, and/or romance. Facebook is a great way to say, "Here I am!"--and I actually do see the usefulness of this kind of self-presentation, in certain situations. What bothers me--and this is probably the principal reason I'm not a Facebook member--is the feeling that we're all shouting "Here I am!" so frequently and so loudly that it has succeeded in drowning out the more nuanced conversations people could be having--whether in person, on the telephone, or on the Internet. No, beyond that--it has reduced people's tolerance for these sorts of conversations. How many of us even understand the art of conversation any more?  (And I count myself in that lumpen mass of people who've never really mastered it.)

A Knowing Look

It's true that as a new mother, I'm charmed by almost everything my son does. The way that he purses his lips and looks so determined when he's figuring out a new toy. The way his mouth forms a little "o" of excitement when he's balancing on his wobbly legs. The way that he drops his mouth open as wide as a shark's whenever he's hungry and sees a spoon heading in his general direction. A thousand other things. But I can see that none of these characteristics are all that extraordinary; most babies have a vast repertoire of gestures and expressions which, while particular to them to some degree, fall also within the general category of things that any new mother would find miraculously cute, but that others do not consider awe-inspiring behavior.

One thing he's done recently, however, which I do find remarkable: he adopts a knowing look, such that he seems to understand complicated emotional situations or subtle changes in mood as well as any adult. When I'm doing something particularly silly, he'll smile thoughtfully, with a bit of reserve in his expression, as if to say, "I can tell that you're trying to amuse me, and it's not quite working but I appreciate the effort." Or when I'm feeling very sad, he'll study my expression intently, as if to ascertain the depth of my distress.

I know that I'm sounding very much like a doting mom at this point; I might be grossly overestimating my son's ability to read people and situations (or his seeming ability). And I've often heard that most babies are quite sensitive to others' emotions, from a very early age. But it surprises me nonetheless that this child seems able to differentiate between feigned happiness and the real thing, for example; and that, in general, his thoughts seem to be so outward-directed. It's the kind of knowing look, and behavior, that I'd never have expected of someone his age.

Noe Valley Christmas Cheer

Was briefly in Noe Valley today, visiting an old friend and employer, then stopping in one store near her office, a gift and knick-knack shop which sold almost nothing but schmaltz and glitz (like half the stores in Noe Valley). But sometimes schmaltz and glitz are just what one needs. No neighborhood does mellow-yet-high-powered quite like Noe Valley. The store played a Christmas-in-New Orleans CD; the woman explaining her collection of Christmas cards to me was followed by an adorable black dog, perhaps a black lab mixed with some smaller breed, who sniffed politely and tail-waggingly at my son; the woman herself was dressed in an expensive pair of jeans and a sweater, the jeans hugging her well-sculpted figure perfectly, the sweater accessorized with a thick black scarf wrapped loosely around her neck; her simple yet tasteful clothes and her perfect hair and makeup gave her that ageless, polished look that only certain women can achieve, and that I've long since despaired of ever achieving.

My mood was much calmer and saner than yesterday's, but not yet completely settled; it irritated me that the clerk (not the handsome woman, who was almost certainly the owner) took at least five minutes to help the two customers who stood before me in line. Then I felt ashamed. Yes, the baby had been remarkably fussy yesterday, and had kept me awake for part of the night; yes, I was bone-tired; yes, I needed to get out of the store before the baby started wailing; yes, I don't care all that much for the usual Christmas-cheer-as-we-shop, slightly frenetic atmosphere that pervades commercial centers in most big cities right before Christmas. But what the hell was wrong with me, that I couldn't slow down for a minute and enjoy, to some degree at least, the New Orleans jazz, the glittery Christmas decorations, the friendly, smiling clerk, the smiling dog, his dazzling owner, the customer ahead of me in line who just smiled when my son let out a small cry of distress?

I started to get into a Noe Valley state of mind. In other words, I started to feel mellow, like a warm, politically correct brandy on a cold winter day.

Losing One's Bearings Part 2

Later. The wind is raging this evening, fifty or sixty miles an hour; reminds me of being on a ship on the high seas (we have a lot of large trees near our house). Will the baby remain asleep all night? I doubt it; but perhaps the pertinent question is, when one's pedals and one's bearings have already been lost, what does it matter if the wind rages? In a way, it's a comfort. Blow, wind, and crack your cheeks.

Losing One's Bearings

There are days when...and this is one of those days.

I imagine most full-time, 24/7 caregivers know what it feels like to "lose the pedals" a bit while caring for someone..."Lose the pedals" is the apt French expression, "lose one's bearings" is the American equivalent. Both of them describe more or less the same thing, but the nuance is slightly different. "Lose the pedals" implies that one still knows how to chart the right course, but is not able to move forward very effectively; "lose one's bearings" implies that one has completely fallen off-course.

Today, frankly, I feel like I've lost my bearings and the pedals at the same time.

And now the baby's up from his nap.

The Strong, Silent Type

I know that I'm supposed to jump for joy when my baby utters his first word--"Dada" or "Mama" or "Awesome!" or whatever it happens to be...and I'm sure that I will; but part of me will miss his mute expressiveness--his ability to say such a variety of things with such a small repertoire of gestures and vocalizations. The way that he holds something to me (a recent behavior) and smiles gently when I take it in my hands--the pleasure he's starting to take in sharing things with me. The knowing giggle he emits when I do something silly, like put his pajama pants on my head. The peremptory, forceful protest he delivers, a loud "HuuUUUH! when I'm not doing things quickly enough to suit him. Yes, even the occasional piercing shriek he utters when excited. It's not that I'll miss the shriek; I'll miss the feeling he conveys that he's bursting with excitement to express--something.

I'll miss this time; but I know that even when he speaks, part of this phase of his life will endure--both in his memory and in my own. We'll look at each other and say things without even saying them.

Desire

Why does it surprise me, every time I see the strength of my son's desire? Not so much the desire to eat or sleep, which has always been with him; I mean, the desire he now possesses to touch things, to open and close flaps in books, to bring a piece of cheese to his mouth and taste it; to turn a cell phone over and over in his hands, studying it intently; the desire he possesses to take in the world, as fully as possible.

This hunger for perception hasn't developed yet into a hunger to know things; but I did see a light go off in his head (please excuse the pun) earlier today, when he flicked the switch to the light in his bedroom and the room suddenly became darker. His eyes flashed something like delight, and sudden comprehension. He turned to the light, then to the switch; he raised the switch and watched the light go on.

Perhaps because everyone goes through so many years of schooling where the main focus is on knowing things, the hunger for knowledge isn't so surprising. But the hunger for perception that he's exhibiting--how many of us can remember this time of being nine months old, when we are so keenly hungry for every sensation? It's a surprise and a privilege to witness it in my son.

Music Fatigue

The kid attended his first music "class" today. Held in a medium-sized hall in the back of a church, the "class" was really a playtime session for children age 5 and under, involving music, various simple instruments like bells and drums, and the adult caregivers dancing around and waving their hands in the air, and yelling "whooo" at the end of most of the songs.

I don't mean to sound disparaging; it wasn't a waste of time by any means. But the sounds in that hall reverberated like crazy; and with all the parents jangling their bells and singing in that overly-hearty way that parents adopt when they're trying too hard to have a good time, I was developing a headache after ten minutes. I don't think the little guy was faring much better, as he was turning to me and making protesting noises halfway through the session.

When my son was much younger--2 or 3 months--I could plant him in a little bouncy chair he owned, for a good 15 or 20 minutes, and play the piano for him. Now, I have nowhere to put him while I'm playing; he's long since outgrown the bouncy chair, and the one playpen he has is not easily transportable to the room where the piano is located. But I'm thinking, for my own sake and his, why don't I find some sort of solution and play for him again? (I could put him on the floor, but for various reasons that's not a great option in that particular room...but I'll have to find a solution.)

Children's music isn't fatiguing; but I do find that the way that it's dished out to children, especially babies, can be rather annoying. More on that in the near future.

That Big Grey Thing

Watching a baby's eyes light up with wonder, delight and curiosity is one of the best parts of being a parent (and yes, I said yesterday that I would write less about my son's exploits, and less about motherhood, so that I could return to a focus on more obscure thoughts...thoughts that normally occupy the background of my life; but there it is, I can't help it: sometimes my son takes up the background as well as the foreground). Today, watching him discover a huge grey exercise ball--slapping one palm against it while balancing precariously on his little feet and opening his mouth wide in excitement--filled me with a profound sense of the possible. We all need that Big Grey Thing in our lives.

Blogging Blues

Recently it's been difficult--almost impossible--to get to this blog before 9:30 or 10 pm at night, when I'm usually exhausted and longing to curl up in bed with any sort of reading material for 15 minutes before drifting off to sleep. And I've certainly failed, recently, at taking my son to unexplored, quiet corners of the city for a leisurely stroll; this week, for instance, I seem to have about ten different errands and major chores to accomplish; on top of that, I've been taking the boy to more playgroups; thus we seem to have very little time for wandering.

As I wrote about previously, I don't see this blog as a place to fret about or celebrate new-motherhood, while discussing all the different problems and possible solutions involved with raising a baby. At least, I don't see that as its primary raison d'etre. And yet, baby problems often become the focus when I sit down, exhausted, at 9:30 or 10 at night. Because that's usually what's in the foreground of my thoughts.

I started this blog to explore the background, the less predictable side of my psyche. The city strolls have to do with that as well: I'm interested in the less predictable aspects of San Francisco, the non-touristy, non-yuppified, less orderly pockets of life that one can still find here and there. Hopefully, future blogs will reflect a return to this focus.

Make 'em Laugh

I've come to feel that good parenting is often about timing and rhythm. In that way it's like being a good comic; you know when you have an audience's attention and interest. In the same way, I know when my baby is bored or frustrated with whatever I'm doing; he lets out an exasperated sigh or, if really fed up, just starts yelling. (I try to anticipate those moments and time activities so that he doesn't reach the point where he's lodging a full-throated protest, though it's not always possible.) And conversely, when I'm able to make him laugh, he laughs with his whole being, his eyes shining, the chuckles erupting out of him in a delightful, infectious manner. Watching me throw towels over the curtain rod in the bathroom, then pull them off again, struck him as hilariously funny today. That loosened up what was becoming a tense situation in which he was holding something he shouldn't (the cell phone, I think) and I was trying to get it away from him. He's a great audience at this point; although what he's going to laugh at is rather unpredictable. But sometimes my job as a parent is just, make 'em laugh.

Togetherness Anxiety

When my baby wails because I leave the room for five seconds, then beams with delight when I reappear, my first thought is, "How little you know me."

For a few seconds, I also feel like a goddess of some sort, I must admit.

It's a confusing welter of emotions: disbelief, delight, a vague sense of power, and a more acute sense of horror.

The horror comes with the realization of who I really am: not some goddess, but a horribly flawed individual that doesn't deserve such adoration.

I know that what he's experiencing has a clinical name: separation anxiety. And that it's a phase almost all babies go through, which will soon pass. And certainly, by the time he's sixteen he'll pretend he doesn't know me when I surprise him in the hallway at his school.

Nevertheless, I can't help but feel nervous about the intensity of his need for me at this phase of his life.

Call it "togetherness anxiety."

Poetry and Babies

Poetry and babies would seem to be antithetical to one another. Poetry requires wide open spaces in the mind; babies require constant attention, a narrow focus...or do they?

Is it possible to raise a baby poetically? Just a thought.

I've read that somewhere between the ages of 8 and 12 months, most babies start to understand the meaning of words like "No" and "Don't touch." In a way, the hard part of parenting begins now--when I have to start teaching this new human being that his world is far more limited than he thinks.

But the hard part isn't really saying "No." (The world is limited--but let's face it, limits make life more interesting.) It's saying "No" in a way that implies, "That's right, you can't do that--but isn't it great that you want to?" Even when he's tried to bite through the cords on the Playstation for the hundredth time, I should be able to say "No" in an encouraging, loving way. We'll see.

Communication Frenzy

To continue the topic from yesterday: the same chapter in Nurture Shock that says parents should respond immediately and frequently to their babies' first efforts to verbalize also says, don't overdo it. Don't respond so much that it drives the baby frantic. Give them some down time.

I see this in my son: there are times during the day when he's happiest just lying around vegetating, munching on a piece of soft toast, for instance, or halfheartedly tearing apart a section of the newspaper. And I can't say that he's making dramatic efforts to verbalize at this point. He has a few cute sounds in his repertoire--perhaps the best one is a throaty "YEAH" that comes out when he's both pleased and excited. He's not repeating syllables yet, as they say many babies are doing by his age.

On the other hand--he communicates up a storm in other ways. And he's definitely listening. I'm already using some of the techniques for communication discussed in the book, such as dancing an object in front of him and repeating the word for it several times and with different intonations. And he seems intrigued by my efforts, offering me a curious, smiling look as if to say, "Who is this delightful idiot that I have for a parent?"

Communication

One interesting chapter in Nurture Shock talks about the advancement of speaking skills in babies; it says that communicating with one's baby is of primary importance. But not just talking to them. One needs to listen to their sounds and immediately respond, with a word and a caress or a touch; physical contact is especially important. Studies are showing that if mothers (and fathers) respond quickly and consistently to their babies' attempts at communication in this way, it can have a profound effect on how fast the babies learn to speak.

It seems pretty obvious that if someone smiles and hugs and caresses you, you're going to talk to that person more. Yet none of my parenting books pointed out the importance of this; they all just said, "Talk to your baby all day." I'm sure that's important too, but it makes sense that even for young babies, communication needs to be a two-way street. (And surely, Mom babbling on and on, all day long, could make even a baby tune out.)

Hypocrisy

I'm sitting here staring at the children's book Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear? and thinking about my own hypocrisy.

Earlier this week I read that scientists are now predicting that the polar ice cap will disappear completely during the summer by the end of the next decade. This will not necessarily contribute to a rise in sea levels (unlike the rapid melting of Greenland and Antarctica), but it serves as an especially dramatic indication of the growing danger of global warming. And it doesn't bode well for polar bears and other arctic creatures.

Yet I drove my 9-month-old son around for over an hour today, merely to allow him to continue to nap in the car. My only, poor excuse for this was that (1) he'd had a somewhat rough time sleeping last night, and (2) it was frigidly cold outside, so I didn't want to take him out of the car for a spin in the stroller.

How do I justify this behavior? I don't.

I'm also thinking right now about what I saw yesterday at the corner of Hayes and Divisadero. A cheap fast-food chicken place, not Kentucky Fried Chicken but similar: at 4:15 in the afternoon, at least twenty-five people were waiting in line to place an order. On the window, a simple ad: "99 Cent Tuesdays: drumstick and thigh." It happened to be Tuesday. People were lined up out the door and partway down the street. If anything indicates the dismal economic times we're in, that does.

And yet, a few minutes later, I was at Andronico's buying expensive takeout food because I was too tired to cook.

The Right Stuff

Wasn't sure whether to take the baby to a playgroup today because it's one of the coldest days of the year, and it seemed so far away (though it's only around twenty minutes by car), and we were running about fifteen minutes late. It's not the playgroup I've been attending recently, but one held in a much smaller room; I imagined the room would be crowded by the time we got there and we might not even make it in. But I did make it there, finally, and to my delight, only three other mothers were there (six people total, including babies).

The woman running the playgroup was excellent; knowledgeable, friendly and professional. She asked me right away where my baby was at in terms of his development, then knew exactly what sorts of activities he should engage in to encourage and stimulate him. She had the same good advice for the other moms, whose babies' ages ranged from three months to six months. And she wasn't just a fountain of advice; she really watched all of the little people, to pick up ideas on what they needed, based on what they were already doing.

Listening to her, I was reminded of how powerful a combination knowledge and passion can be. Someone in the right profession for their temperament, bringing good ideas as well as passionate devotion to their work--they get so good at what they do, that they don't have to brag about it; it's obvious.

Photo Frenzy?

I've recently heard mothers talk about how many thousands of photos they're taking of their children, adding that they spend time each week sorting through the new ones, choosing the best ones and downloading them to their computerized photo albums--perhaps cropping and resizing them as well, and regularly emailing them to loved ones. I've done some of that, but my efforts have been feeble in this regard. Yes, I've also bought a cheap wallet-sized video camera, and have used it, but with nothing like the fervor and dedication that other mothers have expressed. It's not that I'm disinterested--far from it; but it's just taking low priority right now. And I'm starting to feel bad about that.

I've thought about hiring a professional photographer. But a recent peek at some of the local baby photographers' portfolios left me hugely discouraged. Most of them charge a fortune for cutesy photos that look so posed, all the personality is sapped right out of the images. Just get a baby to smile a little, or even, just look in the general direction of the camera, and heaps of personality will be expressed; that's one of the marvelous things about babies.

These mountains of photographs and videos everyone seems to be taking these days--are we becoming more sensitive to the visual image because of it? The evidence on YouTube is not all that positive in this regard. And what about our aural sensitivity? I've always wondered what our increasing obsession with the visual has done to our ability to listen, to really listen to the people and things in our immediate environment.

Having said this--I still need to take more photos of my son. But I should also purchase a quality tape recorder and sit down with him in front of it, encouraging him to express himself in his inimitable, non-verbal way.

The Arboretum, Sasha

Sometimes one has to wonder what passes through a baby's brain, when a certain look plants itself on their faces and remains there for more than an hour. My husband and I took the little guy for a stroll in Strybing Arboretum today--on one of the coldest days of the year, but it was the afternoon and we had him well-bundled (and "cold" in San Francisco is nothing compared to "cold" in places like Minnesota or Massachusetts). We put the much-hated winter hat on his head--he tolerated it, but just barely. Then he seemed to become sleepy, with that glazed, fixed look of a baby about to fall asleep--but he never did, not for the next hour and a half. Instead he gazed out at the world with the hat pulled down to his eyebrows and his bomber jacket zipped up to his chin--he seemed content to let his mind drift, to not move for long periods of time, to let his arm trail down out of the carseat/stroller--at one point he leaned forward and let his face rest against the blanket in front of him, not in frustration but in a strange reverie; he also tolerated it when we leaned him back again; he was peaceful about everything and remarkably distant from us; he looked, somehow, like a well-fed, half-drunk Russian nobleman, being carted across a frozen field by servants while his mind reviews the debauch of the night before.

The Cinema

I'm not a rabid film viewer, but I do enjoy the experience of going to a movie theater and plunging into an alternate universe for one and a half or two hours. It has been at least a year since I've had the chance to do so.

Why is a movie theater still attractive to me, when sitting on one's own couch munching or drinking whatever one pleases and popping in a rented DVD is so much more convenient these days? Because the big screen offers so much more of a complete immersion than anything one can set up at home. It's partly the whole ceremony of paying for the ticket, finding the right seat, looking around at the decor and the other patrons, watching the lights dim as the sound comes up and voices hush, then watching the world change before one's eyes--it's that ritualistic aspect of being at "the cinema" that still holds an appeal for me; then there's the magic of the first moments, when the film starts to cast its spell (hopefully), with either a faint tremble or a rush of music, or words, or noises, or--something.

But the primary reason I remain interested in the whole movie theater experience is the sound aspect, something that can never be recaptured in a home setting (and I've heard some of the best home theater systems--it's just not the same)--it's that gorgeous sound that keeps me interested in spending time in movie theaters, more than anything else. Lawrence of Arabia, Casablanca, Star Wars, Gladiator--how greatly these films are diminished on a small screen, and how sad for the younger people today who've never seen them in a theater.

Sometimes, these days, it does feel like I'm too old and too motherly--too wrapped up in baby-related concerns--to sink into a film and let it penetrate my psyche the way that I used to when I was twenty. But I'd certainly enjoy giving it the old college try.

Reflection and Redirection

As the baby nears 9 months, I'm reevaluating a lot of areas--the organization of his day, his toys and books, whether I'm providing him with enough stimulation and time with other babies his age--and making adjustments. He's halfway through his babyhood, if it's true that toddlerhood begins at 18 months; I see how quickly the time passes, how damn precious every day is, how much there is to do. Today, for instance, I have to buy him some pajamas and/or comfortable clothes for him to sleep and play in, he's sorely lacking in that regard.

I'll continue taking him at least once a week to a playgroup I've found (it's actually a course in child development offered through the local city college, but it's open to all mothers and babies 8 to 15 months of age), but once a week is not enough for him. Another playgroup offered at a local baby store doesn't provide much space for the children to roam around. I'm sure there are other possibilities out there. This kid is becoming so aware of the world, so curious, so hungry for new information--it's obvious. My big challenge over the next 9 months, I suppose, is keeping up with his hungry growing body and his equally hungry mind.

Nothing Extraordinary...

Was accidentally swept up into a support group for mothers with 3 to 6-month-old babies today; the details of how this happened aren't that interesting, so I won't give them. It was painful in a sense to revisit that difficult time; it seems to me that very nearly all mothers go through a form of unconscious hazing from the baby during those second three months, either with sleep issues or teething or feeding problems and so on. And by the second trimester of the baby's life, the fatigue factor is so high for most moms that...I don't even want to think about it.

Be that as it may--it was interesting to compare this support group with the only other mom's support group I've ever attended. I went to one of these ten months ago, in which the babies' ages ranged from seven weeks to three months; I was still pregnant, and was just there to see what kind of problems were emerging for the new mothers. It turns out that the complaints and problems expressed by the moms in today's group were almost identical to the ones expressed by the mothers ten months ago. "My baby wakes me up five times a night"; "He just cries and cries"; "I have breastfeeding issues" and so forth.

Attending these two groups reminded me of two things: the extraordinary difficulty of parenting a young child, and the utter ordinariness of it. I'm sure that women five thousand years ago were communicating to each other about the same sorts of issues discussed by these two groups. I'm sure women have been exchanging advice on teething, colic and sleep in every generation since men and women came into existence. Yet, this sort of discussion doesn't lose its vitality.

It has been my experience that whenever crucial information is being exchanged in a group setting (and I do believe that with some mothers, the information they receive in these groups, or even just the verbal support, saves them from depression or nervous breakdowns), you can feel it; the mothers are listening keenly, and asking a great number of questions about every subject that comes up. A lot of information is exchanged in a short time, and sometimes, you can see the relief flooding into a mother when she receives a piece of information that solves a major problem for her.

Come to think of it--I learned today about a teething remedy, Camelia, that I'd never heard of before--they claimed it works wonders, so I'll definitely try it the next time my son is having teething problems.

What's in a Lie

Reading Nurture Shock, that hot new book about parenting, at the moment, along with two other books about child-rearing; the other books appear to be eminently forgettable. Nurture Shock lacks a bit in terms of organization and coherence--it seems like a series of articles slapped together, and even the individual articles have a helter-skelter feel to them. But some of the points made along the way are original and interesting.

The chapter on kids and lying (basically stating that kids lie a lot more, and a lot earlier in life, than parents think) has me contemplating, in a broader sense, the moral upbringing of this child of mine. Will I be able to deliver the difficult messages, even when it's hard for him to listen? Will I be able to see his mistakes clearly and then, teach him how to deal with them directly? Will I make excuses for any shoddy behavior on his part? Will I, myself, be able to behave on a regular basis as I would want my son to behave?

And what about morality in a broader sense--our responsibility to the rest of humankind? When I was a teenager, and all through my college years, I obsessed about the possibility of a nuclear holocaust--like a lot of other young people in the 1980s--and worked hard for anti-nuclear groups. I told myself that I would support this cause for the rest of my life, or until the threat of nuclear devastation was behind us. What am I doing in that regard, these days? For the threat certainly still exists, whether we like to think about it or not.

This October in Paris, I happened to encounter a woman from Pakistan who had been living in Paris for many years, but whose relatives remained, for the most part, in her native country; "Pakistan is going to hell," she bluntly remarked. What if a country with nuclear weapons is taken over by some ruthless, amoral, despotic leader--as could very well happen with Pakistan in the very near future? Not that I could do anything directly about that, but what should I be doing about that--for the sake of my son, and everyone in his generation?

I don't have any answers to that--although, perhaps the first step is to understand a little better than I do right now, how terrible the situation is in that region of the world. Encountering this woman at a Paris cafe (one of my favorite cafes as it turned out) jolted me a little bit out of my complacency in this regard.

Certainly, complacency is one of the worst enemies of morality--and one of the most insidious.

Old Lullabies

The other day at a playgroup, I met a Japanese woman, maybe in her early thirties; I mentioned that my mother, who died last year, was Japanese. "Do you speak Japanese to your child?" she asked. "Well, my Japanese isn't really that good," I said, "But I do sing this lullaby to him once in a while." And I sang the opening bars of a Japanese lullaby that my mother sang to me when I was young.

"That's an old song," she said in surprise. Apparently, Japanese mothers aren't singing that song to their children any more.

"Yes," I said; "my mother was 38 when she had me, and I'm 45 now."

She looked at me with eyes open wide. "You don't look that old."

And at that moment I felt, not so much old and decrepit, but a sense of closeness to my mother--and to my grandmother on my mother's side, raising my mother and seven other children in Japan, over a span of time stretching from the mid-1920s to the early 1960s. Time telescoped for me, as I looked at this young Japanese woman; I felt that I could see my grandmother in 1920s Japan, so different from today's Japan, singing that same lullaby to her own baby girl, my mother.

Pricey Preschools

An op-ed article in the San Francisco Chronicle this weekend talked about the extremely high cost of San Francisco preschools: a price tag of somewhere between $12,000 and $20,000 a year is normal these days. The writer of the article is outraged and wants to start a group to campaign against this. The precise actions this group could take are unclear to me, but I fully agree with the author's sentiment. I wouldn't be thrilled to pay college tuition-level costs for my child to go somewhere for finger-painting, juice and cookies and nap time. I know that some of the better preschools offer much more than these simple activities, but whatever they offer, $20,000 or even $15,000 is too much.

The high cost of preschools, combined with this city's absurd lottery system for K-through-12 education, as well as the lack of adequate play and recreation areas for children, signals the deeper, overarching problem: this city does not really look out for kids, in spite of whatever song-and-dance the local politicians are giving us. And because of this, a high percentage of parents--even, the majority, I'm willing to bet--decide to move their families to the suburbs by the time their kids reach the age of four or five. It's definitely something this family is considering.

Prelude to a Crawl

Yesterday I wrote--a little anxiously, perhaps--about how I might have hampered my baby's development in terms of his motor skills, specifically, his ability to crawl. Today he seemed determined to prove that, damn it, he's going to crawl sooner than I think. He was doing everything but crawling--transferring from a sitting position to all fours; remaining on all fours for several seconds; getting up from his stomach to an all-fours position, and so forth. And I realize, as my husband's pointed out, that there's absolutely no reason to be anxious about whether or not my baby crawls tomorrow, or a month from now--or never crawls at all.

I realize, moreover, when I see my baby get on all fours, then stop and think about what to do next--what a complicated and beautiful thing it is to be alive.

A Crucial Moment

My baby seems to be at a crossroads in many ways; we're buying new products like mad, just to keep up with his tremendous rate of growth. He needs all these items, right now: new onesies, new pajamas, new shirts, new carseats, new stroller(s), new baby carrier. We're hiring a baby-proofing expert who will install gates, corner protectors, door latches and so forth.

The little guy isn't crawling yet, but he seems to be getting close; I suspect it'll happen in another couple of weeks. He's very nearly too big for the front-facing baby carrier, which is a damn shame because he loves it. He also loves his cheap carseat/travel system and has slept beautifully in it. Perhaps we've relied a bit too much on these items, and this has hampered his development where crawling and being mobile are concerned, but I'm not so sure...he's a very large (and long) baby, and it's usually harder for bigger babies to learn to crawl.

Whether or not he's crawling, he finally enjoys sitting up, even in his playpen (he hated sitting alone in the playpen just a few weeks ago, in fact he wouldn't stand for it). He can sit by himself and play with various store advertisements from the newspaper for a good fifteen minutes. Watching him sit there and study the pictures, then tear them up, is both amusing--he looks so serious as he does it--and deeply touching.

I suppose what I'm realizing is that he's no longer a young baby; it feels like one major stage of his life is coming to a definite close, and he's entering into a new realm: still a baby, still quite helpless in many respects, but much more his own person. (And as big as most toddlers!) It's exciting, and a little bit sad. I'm sure those same feelings will reemerge at every new stage of his life, from here to college.

Nearing 100

As I approach the hundredth posting for this blog--well, actually, I have very little to say on the subject of the blog itself. It is what it is. I've tried to write about being a mother without describing the details of every purchase I make, or the cute habits of my son, or the beauty of motherhood and so on and so forth. I suppose that I've been semi-successful.

I've also chosen, as a major theme in these postings--wandering, both in the mind and on foot. La flanerie. By making a point of getting "lost" in some lesser-known part of San Francisco, and getting "lost" in my thoughts here on the electronic page, I've hoped to give the practical, motherly parts of my brain a rest, and to reactivate the impractical writerly parts. I suppose that has only been marginally successful to date.

Be that as it may...I'll switch subjects and talk about Rilke.

And about childhood. In Letters to a Young Poet, Rilke says: if you're a writer and you feel you've run out of subjects to explore, go back in your thoughts to your own childhood, and describe what that was like. Everyone has an endless amount of material to explore when they go back far enough, he says.

I've never felt how true this was until now, after months of observing my own son. Just watching him play reminds me of what life feels like when everything is new.

He has a way of clasping his hands together, before reaching for some object or set of objects and embarking on a new project--clasping his hands together and pursing his lips a little, as if in eager anticipation of discovering something--that reminds me of just how new everything is to him, and how much fun.

One way that his imagination is catching fire: like all babies I suppose, he's endlessly combining two or more unrelated toys and making some new, unlikely toy out of them. A stainless steel bowl and a miniature piano; a cloth bird and a spoon. Just to see how two things go together, or don't go together--isn't that half the fun of being alive, even for adults? And yet we forget this, so comfortably ensconced do we become in our predictable daily routines.

Kids wander. In every sense of the word. They are the best surrealists.

Land's End

We went hiking today at Land's End, that marvelous, wind-blasted cliff area overlooking the Pacific and the Golden Gate Bridge; perhaps the best hike within a major U.S. city. The baby was in a frame backpack designed for carrying little ones; strapped in a little too tightly perhaps, but once we got moving, not unhappy with the whole situation, and towards the end of the short (1/2-hour) hike, lulled to sleep by the warmth of my husband's back and the rhythm of his steady gait. I used to live near this marvelous place, and would jog to it from my house, then jog a little ways down the trail, feeling liberated from all cares and responsibilities as soon as I looked out on the Pacific. Today that feeling was replaced by concern for the baby's well-being (his nose grew red from the cold, and the wind was blowing in his face, and my husband came close to the edge of the cliff once and so on and so forth)--I will never feel completely "liberated" any more, perhaps, but to put it bluntly--I'll never want to be.

Three Faces of the City

In Laurel Heights today, wandering past some especially elegant houses, I felt--as I often do--that there are really three San Franciscos; the San Francisco for the very wealthy (those making over $250,000 a year), the San Francisco for the comfortably middle class (a family of four making $100,000 to $200,000 a year), and the San Francisco for the poor. I don't think there's much gray area involved in the demographics of this city, in other words, not much room for a working-class population, not to mention artists and young entrepeneurs, to carve out a meager living. If they do exist here, they must be falling through the cracks right about now--or they're living four to a room. And the "comfortably middle class" is growing less comfortable--unless they're in one of those recession-proof job categories (whatever those are--health care, I guess).

This is one of the least attractive aspects of this city--these stark divisions between rich, moderately rich, and poor. I don't have much to say on the subject tonight, really; but it does make me feel uncomfortable when I think about the fact that I'm building a life here. Does "here" really exist in any satisfying way?

Downtown SF

Had the rare opportunity to walk through downtown San Francisco today, with the baby...I remember so vividly, various temp jobs I endured as a young adult, in that same part of town. Various cafes I visited and dreamed in. Those great old buildings, like the one I was in today, the Shreve Building...though they can be hot and dusty in the summer, or even in the fall (the office I visited today was stifling), these stylish old structures feel like places where people come to live, to relax...my baby relaxed in the office we visited, in fact, and I ended up changing him on the floor of the women's restroom. Sometimes babies really come through in a pinch; he seemed happy as a clam resting on that cold marble floor. (With a changing pad under him of course; but a thin one.)

I must revise what I wrote about San Francisco and enervation...yes, what I witnessed today was just the normal bustle of any financial center, not a sign of great cultural vitality...but the streets were bustling. I miss that workaday atmosphere. And I wish some of that energy could be transported over to my neighborhood.

Enervation

I used to go to cafes in different cities just to pick up the vibe of a particular place. I think I became fairly adept at keying into the local culture by observing and listening to the clients in any one local cafe. Now, of course, I have almost no time for this; but I do still make it into a San Francisco cafe now and then. The word that comes to mind when I think about the atmosphere in local cafes is, enervation. The people sitting around in cafes in this town seem strangely absent, strangely disconnected.

It might be that I'm comparing today's cafe scene with what it used to be like, twenty years ago--before the Internet and cell phones and Netflix started taking over our lives. At that time, cafes were still meeting places; nowadays, people meet there only for informal business meetings or first dates. It's more common for people to be sitting alone, working at their computer or sending emails or text messages. With all that solitude, it's no wonder people in cafes seem more disconnected to the immediate world around them; and I'm sure that's happening in cafes everywhere, not just in San Francisco.

But I'm talking about something more subtle--a palpable fatigue hanging in the air. Random conversations between people sitting at neighboring tables rarely start up these days, whereas I used to hear those all the time. People don't seem to have any energy left for striking up random conversations.

If the scene in local cafes can be taken as a bellwether for what will happen to an entire city, I'm not sure San Francisco, culturally speaking, is heading in the right direction.

Relaxation and Trauma

Parenthood involves trauma; it's not a pretty thought, but trauma, hardship and generally unpleasant experiences just come with the territory. (As well as joy, excitement, love.) The problem, of course, is when one becomes so steeped in one's fears of some potential disaster that one refuses to let the child take the first steps towards independence, and also inculcates the child to imagine that the world is full of bogeymen at every turn.

I was deeply fearful that some disaster might occur during our trip to France. A seven-month-old baby seems like such a fragile thing--not yet crawling, not yet able to sit up, basically relying on us to care for him at every moment. During a distracted moment, in a house we're not familiar with, what might he reach out and pick up while we're holding him in the baby carrier--something sharp or hot, something we didn't notice? Or, rushing through the airport, trading off the baby between us, what if one of us doesn't communicate well enough with the other to tell them that their grip on the baby is less than firm? These scenarios and many others played out in my head multiple times before our trip.

As it turns out--not one single disaster occurred; the trip was blissfully uneventful in that respect. One of the reasons was undoubtedly, my heightened vigilance and that of my husband. Another was just plain dumb luck.

This sort of vigilance takes its toll on a person; though I also realize that as a parent, one is never entirely free of it. This Sunday afternoon, my husband volunteered to watch the baby for a few hours. I used the first hour to clean up the kitchen, dining and living areas, picking up after the baby--both because these rooms had been trashed by a busy, curious little 8-month-old, and because I was afraid one of us, holding or not holding the baby, might slip on something. The second hour was spent attempting to relax on the couch with the Sunday paper and not being terribly successful.

I know that I've written about spates of manic activity in recent weeks, during similar three-hour breaks...the simple truth might be that I need to learn to relax, even while remaining vigilant. This, for the child's well-being as well as my own.

Bad Novels

Reading a not-very-good novel at the moment, which, however, attempts something interesting and important. I won't describe exactly what it's about, but it has something to do with motherhood. The way that it's bad is interesting: the writer has a certain facility with language, but can't seem to avoid the occasional line of purple prose. As I'm reading, I start to sink into her characters and their situations--then, one of her sentences stands up and shouts, "Pay attention to me!" instead of blending with the other sentences around it. This might be interesting if the novel were about itself, in proper postmodernist fashion--or about language--but it's not.

What is interesting and important about it? It describes a mother-daughter relationship in which the daughter pursues the mother's dream career, a career the mother wanted, but did not have the talent or determination to pursue; the complexities of their connection to each other are well-described and lead to unpredictable yet plausible outcomes. The characters themselves feel strangely flat and predictable, they just aren't all that carefully fleshed-out, but their conflicted feelings towards each other are well-portrayed.

Sometimes bad novels aren't so bad.

Mothers and Energy

Yesterday, walking with the baby near Japantown, and again this evening, because one of my aunts called from Japan, I've been thinking about my mother. A dynamic, fun-loving person who never seemed to lack energy. When I think about her, I see her in motion--cooking furiously in the kitchen; mending something at the sewing machine; laughing in her adorable, raucous way that made everyone around her smile, even if they didn't know what she was laughing about; energetically climbing the stairs at her house, pounding her feet into each step. I never knew, and probably never will know, someone who got as much pleasure out of eating, drinking, sleeping, and hearing a funny story, as my mother did.

When I think about this five-foot-tall human dynamo, who died last year and is watching over my son and me from some lovely place with a very soft bed to lie in and plenty of good food to eat, I wonder how I'll ever measure up as a mother. I'll never have half the energy she did. Sometimes her energy tilted over into something a little more negative. She could be very demanding and overbearing at times. But most of the time, she was a furiously devoted parent. And could be as funny as hell.

She did also tell me, many times, that being a parent involved more work than I could imagine. "Some day you'll know," she often said, her voice taking on a slightly ominous tone. Yes, Mom, I do know, now. It's an incredible amount of work. But every time he smiles, laughs, grabs my hair, talks in his excited, baby-talk way, or stamps his little feet on the floor while I'm holding his arms--he reminds me of you; of you and your amazing, tenacious, enthusiastic grip on life. And I feel a little burst of energy, as well as sadness, just thinking about the two of you, and what it would have been like to see you two together.

Shortest Post Ever

Going to bed. Enough said.

Advice vs. Help

One thing I can say for sure, after more than eight months of experience with this--new moms tend to receive heaps and heaps of unsolicited advice, but very little actual help. For all the times that I've been told either to let the baby cry or to not let the baby cry, I wish that at least one hour of childcare had been donated--that would have meant at least forty hours of blissful time to myself. Stretched over the thirty-six weeks my baby has been alive, that would have meant at least one long bubble bath each week.

The advice does seem to center around this issue of letting or not letting the baby cry. I don't want to delve into that thorny issue too deeply right now, although I could discuss it at length in some other post. The point here is--why do people assume that their own experience with a baby, or babies, will be just like someone else's? And why do they assume that a mother is eager to hear their advice, when she hasn't even asked for it?

These assumptions are wrong in other situations as well, of course. For instance; too often, adults assume that all children will be just like they were as kids, and that their advice will apply perfectly to a child they know, when sometimes it applies horribly and the child doesn't want to hear it.

It might be a good general rule of thumb, in fact: don't offer advice if you can offer help instead.

West Portal mayhem

Found myself criss-crossing the West Portal neighborhood this afternoon, with the baby sleeping in the French-designed stroller (his first outing in it--I think I said I wouldn't mention strollers again but okay, one more time: it's a wonderful stroller and he slept beautifully in it). The neighborhood was going a little beserk because of the closure of the Muni line between Castro and West Portal, due to a train derailment early this morning. Police officers and Muni officials were everywhere, the extra buses shuttling Muni passengers back and forth were causing traffic snarls left and right, and the hordes of people exiting the buses doubled the level of noise on the main thoroughfare, West Portal Avenue. Not the most relaxing walk. Even on a good day, without Muni problems, this particular neighborhood strikes me as more than a bit noisy; but today the noise was bad enough to feel oppressive.

Be that as it may: West Portal does manage to convey a certain amount of charm in spite of the noise; it feels like a small town, somehow, with all of its knick-knacky shops and unambitious restaurants, with its cozy-looking houses, with its slightly dilapidated movie theater. Is it a "lost" part of the city? Not really. People there look too purposeful, too focused in on their environment, for this neighborhood to be designated as "lost" in the sense that I'm using that word in this blog.

Nevertheless: during today's stroll, I passed a large parked sports utility vehicle with a family inside it, or at least, a mother and her two sons; she had her head back against the headrest and appeared to be sleeping, while her two young boys, perhaps somewhere between four and seven years of age, sat in booster seats in the back, just staring out the window. I felt bad for all of them--exhausted mother, bored little kids in back. But I do admit, I mostly felt for the mother at that moment. I think I've even done what she was doing, in that same neighborhood.

Perhaps the universal symbol of parenthood is a certain glazed-over, fatigued, just-barely-holding-it-together look that I've only seen on the faces of mothers and fathers trying to keep up with their energetic little ones.

Green Cities Part 2

Just a brief continuation of yesterday's entry. One point I was trying to make is that a city should not give itself over entirely to cars and the kind of lifestyle they encourage: individuals and families as isolated, self-absorbed units, people rushing here and there to make money or to spend it. A city should open itself to the twenty-year-old wanderer, the defenseless and curious young child, the old men playing chess on a park bench. In other words, city planners have to create spaces for sloth, for idleness. For dreaming. For wandering.

Paris, France cannot be held up as a model green city by any means; and yet...Bertrand Delanoë, the current mayor, seems to understand the importance of incorporating idleness into the city plan. He created Paris Plage, a summertime beach installed right on the banks of the Seine with temporary sand; he designated bus-only lanes on the more popular thoroughfares; and now Paris has Velo Libre, or "Vel Lib" for short--a fleet of perhaps several hundred bicycles available free of charge at various street corners throughout the city. Paris has always been an ideal city for people who like to wander and daydream in slow-motion, given its plethora of parks, gardens, benches and stairways, plazas, passages and lazy-afternoon cafes. But now it's an even better city for the bicyclist, the bus-taker and the Sunday sunbather.

Whenever a city's ecological proficiency is evaluated, people often forget to ask, "Are we having fun yet?" Delanoe seems to understand this. I'm not sure San Francisco's own city planners always remember how to incorporate fun into their projects.

Green Cities

More on the "Pavement to Parks" program, and other greening projects. Gavin Newsom touts himself as a green mayor, and certainly, San Francisco's sustainability program is one of the best in the country. Their "zero waste by 2020" goal is laudable, and they've taken a lot of concrete steps towards that goal--apparently we reuse, compost or recycle about 72% percent of our waste at this point. But part of "greening" a city has to do with making it more user-friendly for those on foot, on bikes, and taking public transportation, and in this regard, San Francisco still leaves a lot to be desired.

Why not have certain streets permanently designated for bicycles and pedestrians only, and more bike lanes on some of the wider streets? Closing JFK Drive on Sundays is all well and good, but that's just for recreational activities; there should be a better way for bicyclists to cross the city during commute hours. Moreover, our public transportation system is just so unpleasant to use--it seems like even the newer buses are noisy and uncomfortable, and the Muni cars are loud and ugly and, sometimes, desperately slow. Especially in comparison to the Metro in Paris, the subway in New York, the Tube in London, Washington DC's fantastic municipal railway system, and other systems in places like Boston and Portland, taking the bus or Muni in San Francisco is a depressing experience.

On a more aesthetic level--San Francisco just doesn't have enough good public places. Golden Gate Park isn't bad in spots, like Stow Lake or the Strybing Arboretum; but too much of the rest of the Park is dominated by the noise of passing cars. Downtown San Francisco has a surprising number of rooftop gardens and miniature plazas where people can take a break from work or eat lunch in the sun if they want, but in the residential neighborhoods, one is often hard-pressed to find a good public place to relax.

Why is this important? A place for the young to meet, mingle, and flirt with each other, without being propositioned by drug dealers or gang members; a place for an old woman walking home with her heavy bags of groceries to sit for a few minutes, take in the sun, and watch the city go by; a place for a mother out for a stroll with a growing, curious, 8-month-old baby to stop and bounce him on her leg and introduce him to a passing dog or another mother and her baby--such a place, however humble and small, serves a vital function in any neighborhood. We just don't have enough of them, and many of the ones we do have are just too poorly designed.

In The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs writes about the problems created when a city neighborhood is not designed for mixed use--some commercial and some residential, for instance, or goverment offices mixed in with shops and movie theaters, so the neighborhood does not shut down completely or become threatening at night. She used San Francisco's Civic Center as an example of a neighborhood that lacks this kind of diversification. And it's true. Nobody feels like strolling there, even during the daytime. It's not the fault of the homeless, although one does have to run the gauntlet of aggressive panhandlers at times. It's the whole layout of the place, where one is walking across empty pavement or past grey government buildings for what seems like a mile before one arrives anywhere. The only time this environment changes and becomes somewhat bearable is when there's a farmer's market in the plaza--then the place comes to life, but only for a short time. Mixed use, or the lack of it in many parts of this beautiful city--one key problem with this place, I think, that many of the environmentally-minded types that live here do not think about often enough. Or if they do think about it, their solutions (see yesterday's post on Pavement to Parks) leave much to be desired.

Stroller as National Symbol

I'm getting carried away with this stroller theme; but one more time, and I'm done.

Miracle of miracles--my husband found the stroller I loved in France, i.e. he found out that it is sold here in the U.S. It's sold by a different company, but it appears to be very nearly the same stroller--seat that reclines as a unit, magnificently comfortable for a baby, well-built, handles well. Everything I loved about the stroller in France. It's expensive, but worth it I think, if I use it every day and the baby enjoys sitting in it for at least a year. They just started selling it in the United States in June of this year.

As I was searching for the best place to buy this French-designed poussette, I stumbled upon video reviews of several different strollers. It was interesting, the emphasis the American reviewers placed on things like portability and cupholders. "And this stroller finally comes with the cupholders we Americans love," one reviewer mentioned while talking about another European-made stroller. In the baby supply store I visited last week, the young woman steered me towards a stroller with a big tray and cupholders--"I just have to have cupholders," she said. Not stopping to consider if I ever said I needed them. Why are cupholders so important for so many mothers in this country? And the review of my preferred stroller didn't even mention the critical feature that makes it so radically different from nearly all the other strollers sold in the U.S.--the fact that the seat reclines as a unit.

The strollers made in the U.S. are not designed with a baby's comfort in mind; they're designed to keep the mother hydrated.

Stroller Hell Part Two; Pavements to Parks

Just spent a half-hour downloading and looking at photos from our trip to France. A few of them show our baby in the French stroller belonging to a relative of mine--he's just beaming with pleasure. It fits him perfectly, is well-padded, reclines beautifully (when the back reclines, the bottom tilts up; in other words, the whole seat moves as a unit when it reclines--not like the American strollers where the back reclines by itself). I'll never find anything quite like it in the U.S. and that thought is killing me. I have yet to decide which front-facing stroller to buy for him, but I have to make a decision soon. He's just getting so big, and needs to see the world so badly.

Back, however, to the theme of lost places. I happened to be in the Mission District today, with an errand to run. The baby had fallen asleep in the car, so after parking, I decided to go for a stroll with him on the outskirts of the Mission, where it meets Bernal Heights and Noe Valley. A lost area only in the sense of its not being the Mission any more, but not clearly being anything else, either. That vague area on the other side of Cesar Chavez, before 30th Street, and between San Jose and Dolores.

I happened upon an interesting little spot--not much to look at, actually, but it's a work still in progress--a small experimental park, where San Jose intersects with Guerrero. Big cut-up logs and police barricades are blocking off access to San Jose from Guerrero, and behind the barricades, someone has installed large planter boxes filled with, well, rather ordinary-looking plants, as well as a few white plastic chairs and one uncomfortable-looking wooden bench. As I said, not much to look at; but the idea behind it is called "Pavement to Parks," a project to take little sections of the urban landscape that aren't being used for much of anything, and make mini-parks out of them.

They just created this particular space in September, and are giving it a six-month trial run. Apparently they have this "Pavement to Parks" program up and running in New York, and are just starting to implement it in San Francisco. I think it's a great idea, although the execution of the idea, at this particular location, leaves much to be desired.

What's intriguing, in the context of this blog and my search for "lost" places--they took this forgotten little part of the Outer Outer Mission, and did something with it, and lo and behold--it looks even more forgotten than ever. Every city needs its forgotten places--but a carefully planned one--that's a new twist.

Beautiful November

So much to do this month, involving items to purchase and activities to pursue for the little one (won't give details because it's not that interesting, except for the most diehard baby fanatic). It's driving me a little frantic.

So I need to stop and appreciate--this month; the clear, brilliant blue sky today; the sudden chill in the afternoon air that always makes me feel more motivated and ambitious, somehow; the way that my son cuddled with his grey velour top (formerly his mother's, but claimed early on by him, and now his favorite soothing item) just now, while settling down into his second nap of the day; the way that he looks in profile, lying on his side in his crib.

Chaos

Watched a sad incident today between a father and son at a local playground, one that probably occurs several hundred times a day at playgrounds across the country. The boy, maybe three years old, was being carried away in his father's arms, and didn't want to leave the playground or was upset about something else his father was doing. He exploded in rage and frustration, kicking his legs violently. Then he suddenly slapped at his father's chest as hard as he could. The father, embarrassed or perhaps just too tired to react, rolled his eyes and continued walking.

Childhood is so full of small disasters...What we can hope is that we are fully present, as parents, during those moments. Easier said than done, I know.

I'm not sure if it was the mother talking, or a friend, but a woman said, watching the boy throw his tantrum: "One moment he's happy and calm, the next moment he's a devil child." Chilling language, thrown out casually at a children's playground.

Veteran's Day. My husband's watching a program about valiant soldiers. War is, to me, largely an exercise in stupidity and chaos, no matter how courageous the soldiers are.

Childhood is not (by any means) a war, but the desperation a child feels when things are out of control in his little world must be similar to the desperation a soldier feels when things are out of control on the battlefield. Will we be able to step in, as parents, and impose something like order, grace, clarity? Just as a soldier, taking the right action to protect his fellow soldiers, imposes some kind of order, no matter how crazy the circumstances?

Don't know. But tomorrow will be absolute chaos if I don't get to bed.

Bel Canto, Bella Fortuna

I had high hopes for this novel, Bel Canto, which sold more than a million copies, and which combines two very disparate subjects, classical music and international politics, in an interesting way. I certainly wasn't entirely disappointed; but by the end of the novel I was still wondering why she'd written it. It has its entertaining and lyrical moments, but the plot meandered and left me unconvinced (especially the surprise ending), and the main characters never felt all that believable either. However--hats off to Ann Patchett for picking such an off-the-wall subject and, well, at least trying to pull off something original.

A peaceful day, in spite of a trip to the doctor (for the 8-month checkup) during which the little one received a shot in each thigh (second flu shot, and Hep-B). He was a trooper, to say the least, only cried for a few seconds.

I've been griping a lot about fatigue recently, and yes it's true, I've been horribly tired (still am); but I've got to remember, some part of me has got to remember, how damn fortunate I am to feel this tired. And anyway--it's getting better; slept for almost seven hours last night.

Fatigue, Once and for All

Fatigue means, every part of your body feels heavier than usual. Your eyelids, your arms, your feet, your toenails.

Fatigue means, you feel like crying when you can't find your sunglasses.

Fatigue means, second-guessing every step you make and every goal you've set yourself.

Fatigue means, everyone who comes up and talks to you feels far away, or is vaguely irritating.

Fatigue means, reality spins on an axis.

Fatigue means, saying no to every non-essential activity that does not involve you being able to sit down or lie down somewhere without talking too much.

Fatigue means, not remembering what it feels like to sleep eight hours straight.

Fatigue means, forgetting what you were saying if you jump to a different subject for even a few seconds.

Fatigue means, your IQ dropping about thirty points.

Fatigue means, suddenly jumping into manic activity for about forty minutes.

Fatigue means, eating comfort foods and not being comforted by them.

Fatigue means, your limbs ache.

Fatigue means, you should be in bed right now.

Manic Fatigue

I've reached a new stage in this fatigue saga (I feel a bit like Knut Hamsen's character in Hunger at this point). Every bit as tired today as yesterday, I chose to spend two free hours this morning (the baby was napping) looking at various strollers online. And for two more free hours this afternoon (the husband was watching the baby, to give me a break) I started cleaning the kitchen and dining room, then organizing the baby's room and certain parts of the living room. Why I've become so manic, I couldn't say; weird things happen when one is really tired. But it does feel good to know that at least part of the house has attained a functional, manageable level of filth and disorder once again.

I did end up buying a stroller today; far from being completely satisfied with the purchase, I'm just hoping that the little guy will not protest too much when I take him for a walk in it. It was an agonizing decision in the store, as I sized up three very different strollers and had to decide which defect was the least offensive (for they all had defects, none of them was perfect)...was fairly exhausted when we got home, but took the baby for an hourlong walk anyway, then, as I said, went into a manic cleaning and organizing mode.

Maybe I'm unable to relax because I feel like a house with a shaky frame: a certain amount of constant pressure and tension might be all that's holding me together at this point.

Stroller Hell

I'm perhaps more tired today than any other day in recent memory. I'm also tired of writing "I'm tired," so I'm going to make this extremely brief. I spent part of the afternoon trying out strollers in a famous baby store, wishing one of them looked at least half as good as the strollers I'd seen in France. The baby loved it--at least, the first part of it--sitting in a big stroller with arm rests, he chortled and yelled excitedly as I pushed him forward. I'm dying to buy him a forward-facing stroller, as he is so in love with the world right now--our car-seat-travel-system stroller just doesn't cut it any more; he can't see anything but my face and whatever's visible above it. And the large jogging stroller we bought recently is too big for his purposes right now; his head just rolls around or forward when he sits in it, and his whole body slouches down in a way that is painful to observe. But it's hell, shopping for strollers. There are just so many different kinds out there, and so few of them are any good. But I have to get it done...will try again at a different store tomorrow.

Perhaps the only interesting phrase I've written today is, "my baby is in love with the world"--it's astonishing, the connections he's forming with everything, just everything he sees, hears, tastes, feels and smells, during this part of his life. The sound of the lotion tube, with the air wheezing in and out when I squeeze it, was an intense pleasure for him this morning. Yesterday it was watching and hearing the spray come out of a spray bottle as I cleaned the mirrors. His laugh, when he's really tickled by something, bubbles out with so much energy, and his eyes light up with so much joy, that I really stop whatever I'm doing and remember how lucky I am to know him, every time he laughs like that. I see that I've migrated far from the subject of strollers and hell--to the subject of laughter and heaven. Good enough place to stop for the day.

Atmosphere

Extremely fatigued though not as dispirited as last night. Was up most of the night, either caring for the little one or reading Bel Canto. Yes, the book has grown on me. It was ridiculous of me not to sleep more last night, but I must admit that I've gotten swept up in the novel to some extent. Patchett took on a difficult topic and handled it, for the most part, skillfully.

One weakness in the story: none of the adult characters ever argue or fight with each other, even though they are either hostages or hostage-takers. In fact her characters feel, for the most part, rather two-dimensional and predictable. But she does know how to create an atmosphere. (A very unusual atmosphere at that: the scene is that of a large group of very diverse people being held hostage at an embassy in some unidentified Latin American country.) I suppose I'm reading it mostly for the atmosphere. It's a "poetic" text in that way--very thin plot, weak characters, strong setting.

In an earlier post I wondered out loud if the era of novels had come to a close. I felt as if we were satisfying our need for stories through other media--films, television, the Internet and so forth. But perhaps the real problem (did I touch on this in that earlier post?) is, the canvas on which a novelist needs to create, if their novel will speak to any sort of contemporary audience, has to be almost impossibly wide--has to cover a vast range of experiences and outlooks, to seem real to us in this media-saturated society.

Perhaps. Or perhaps the correct impulse is to move in the other direction: to paint on an impossibly small canvas.

Whatever the answer is, right now I need to go crash into my bed...once again, so tired that the world is spinning before my eyes.

Fatigue, Again

Very tired these days because the baby is still readjusting to our time zone, after one week back from the trip overseas, and is waking up in the middle of the night then staying awake for a good hour and a half to two hours. Last night he woke up twice; the second time, at 4 am and he never went back to sleep, poor little tyke.

Fatigue is the biggest killer of literary inspiration that I know about, and I'm experiencing that tonight. Thinking, however, about the whole subject of getting "lost," which was the point of this blog--and not, describing the intricacies of caring for a baby and all the personal traits of this particular little boy. So I'm writing a blog to, in a sense, get as far away as I can from the "mother" role that I'm playing most of the day. Is it working?

I'd have to say, for the most part, yes...though I tend to drift back to the quotidian banalities more than I should. At least, however, I've managed to indicate what this quality of being "lost" means to me, both as a mother and as a writer. It's not an escape from reality, so much as a distancing from it to see it (hopefully) that much more clearly.

But fatigue makes any kind of reality itself seem to drift--that's what's so scary about being extremely tired. And so, on that note--I'm off to bed.

Bel Canto

Currently reading this novel by Ann Patchett. I love the clarity and precision of her writing; I'm not sure why she felt compelled to write this novel, however. What was the burning question she was trying to answer? I know I'm not the first one to say this, but I'll say it anyway: all novelists are trying to answer one penultimate question in their novels--one issue that has always plagued them, something having to do with human relations or animal-vegetable relations or relations of some sort. One question, or at the most, a set of related questions.

Novelists are obsessed about--something. I don't know what Ann Patchett is obsessed about, except, perhaps, observing how people from very different walks of life react to each other. Her novel works as a diversion from quotidian life, a way to relax a little before going to bed. But it also feels like someone moving players around on a chess board. After a while, watching chess pieces move about can seem very dull. I want to know more about what the pawns and bishops and kings are thinking and why they're thinking it. And when a novel burns with the novelist's unanswered question, the reader can feel that urgency in each line of the book--it runs through every sentence like an electric current. I don't feel such a thing occurring with this novel. Each time I put the book down I wonder whether I'll pick it up again.

Needless to say, I have very little time these days to read novels. Yet I've also felt, recently, a desperate need to plunge into different worlds. Even if it only lasts about fifteen minutes, this escape into a novel means that I can stop functioning on the very practical, hyper-aware level that motherhood forces on me. So--yes, okay, Ann Patchett isn't Tolstoy, Steinbeck, Kafka or Austen; but she's good enough to take me out of myself, for brief snatches of time. And Bel Canto tries to combine two disparate subjects, music and politics, in an interesting way. I'll probably keep reading.

Panhandle Daze

Found myself wandering with baby in tow, north of the Panhandle, then through the Panhandle--soaking up the sun on what might well be the last warm day of the year--not heading in any particular direction. Somewhere in the NoPA area, maybe near Broderick and Grove, an elderly woman in a wheelchair, her arm in a sling, her feet in slippers, was slowly inching up the street. She would put her foot down and push forward on it about half a foot, then wait several seconds and try it again. It was painful to watch--a sort of epic journey in ultra-slow motion. I nodded at her and she barely acknowledged my greeting, which gave me the feeling that I ought to do something. "Do you need help?" I asked. She nodded and smiled weakly; then she turned and smiled and cooed at the baby. "Okay, I'll push him forward first, then you," I said, explaining too much in my nervousness. "Yes, the baby first, always the baby" she said with what seemed to be a Russian accent.

The challenge was getting across an intersection. "I'll take the baby across first," I said, and did so, leaving my child on the other side of the street as I raced back for the woman in the wheelchair. Which felt wrong, immediately. Too trusting, too dangerous. I had had to make a split-second decision about how vulnerable I would allow my child to be, and I knew, instantly, that I had made the wrong decision. Not that it was an especially wide or busy street; and nothing happened to him. But no matter. I had crossed a line. At the next intersection, I asked a passer-by, a woman, to take the elderly woman across; she did so without any hesitation.

So much rests on these sudden decisions...I don't want to overdramatize, but it can be wearying sometimes, just thinking about all the quick decisions one has to make throughout the day to prevent a catastrophe from befalling one's child.

But not to dwell on that...for one thing, after dropping off this woman at the entrance of her care facility (it appeared to be a care facility for elderly people with health and mobility issues), I overheard moans passing through one of the high windows of the place--obviously, an elderly person in deep pain. The moans were steady, rapid--like someone completely consumed by his or her pain. I know that I'm just a few decades away (if that much) from the possibility of such an existence. It doesn't make the job of caring for a baby any easier, necessarily; but it does make it seem a whole lot more positive.

Subtle and Not-so-subtle Changes

The little guy is going through many subtle and not-so-subtle transformations these days. The most noticeable--it started during the last part of our stay in France--he's sitting up, not just for a few seconds at a time but for three or four minutes. It's still wobbly--he's got a very long torso and a thin neck--but getting better each day.

More subtle--he seems to observe what we say, especially the way that we say things, and our facial expressions, much more than he used to. If I'm rubbing my eyes repeatedly in a gesture of fatigue, for instance, his own eyes express genuine concern. Repeatedly during the day, I catch him staring into my face, studying it as if trying to guess what I'm thinking. It does give me the feeling of being on point--which has its positive and negative aspects, I suppose.

Another change--beginning today or maybe yesterday, he curls and uncurls his fingers, staring at them, as if saying to himself, "Fingers--what a concept." I'm sure this is a common development among babies, as I noticed many little ones in strollers in France who were entertaining themselves by staring at their fingers and opening and closing their fists (why I hadn't noticed this same behavior before in the United States, I'm not sure). However, I find it a particularly interesting and touching development--one day, he's just moving his hands about--the next, he's articulating his fingers and thinking about them. Does any other body part, aside from the brain, mean as much to us humans? And when a baby starts thinking about and using his fingers--what a monumental change in his ability to function in the world. It's as moving to me to see him do that as it would be to see him stand and walk on his own, I think.

Portable Baby

No blog for almost three weeks because we were out of the country--Paris and environs--and I had little access to the Internet during that time. My short, excited blog on the 13th was done at the airport, just before we boarded the plane. The baby did more than behave himself in the airport--he charmed just about everyone in our waiting area, kicking his feet and chortling happily and smiling at everyone who smiled back, as if the whole scene there was a show put on specifically for his benefit. And then on the plane--in the most difficult of circumstances, where he slept on an incline, lying with his back against my husband's lap and stomach, or in my arms with his little feet almost lying in the lap of our neighbor, his head awkwardly balanced against my husband's arm--and with all the noises of the airplane and passing stewardesses and stewards and banging food carts--he was just amazingly calm and well-behaved. He was somewhat less placid during the return flight, but still not bad--just a few short outbursts of discontent.

As for the time change adjustment--yes, we all suffered from jet lag during the first part of the trip, and the first night (when I stayed up with the baby from 10:30 pm to 5:00 in the morning) was not fun. But what mostly happened was, the baby went to sleep around 11, woke up once during the night, and we played with him, rocked him, and/or nursed him back to sleep--say, from 1 to 2 in the morning; then he'd sleep until around 10 or 11 am, and I'd sleep during that time as well. I ended up getting as much or more sleep during this vacation than I do at home.

We abandoned, for most of the trip, the sleep rules we'd established for him before leaving--just too hard to follow them in a rented apartment in Paris--for instance, we couldn't let him cry it out if he woke up during the night, as we sometimes do here at home. And for the last two nights, since our return, he's also been "spoiled." Since he's still very clearly adjusting to the time change, and is sometimes wide awake at 3 am in the morning, there's not much point in retraining him to sleep through the night, yet. But that will start happening in a couple days, I think.

I did keep a diary of sorts--but my writing was remarkably uninteresting during this trip--just too busy to concentrate on writing, I suppose. So I'm only going to extract small pieces of what I wrote, as follows:

Oct. 15--2nd day of our trip to France. Staying with my husband's parents in a suburb of Paris. First time, yesterday, that I didn't post, since starting this blog...oh well, I'm not out to set any records here. Now I'm lying in bed, "posting" with a pen...as luck would have it, we left San Francisco on the day that the biggest storm of the year, of the last ten years, perhaps, blasted Northern California with torrential rain and 60-mile-an-hour winds. Our plane was only about an hour and fifteen minutes delayed, however; and the baby was great in the airport terminal, during the long takeoff, and during the flight itself. Although we were seated at the bulkhead and a baby bed was provided (one that was attached to the wall in front of us), the baby did not enjoy lying in it; for one thing, it was a couple inches too short for him. So he stayed in our laps the whole time. In spite of getting only about six hours of sleep, he remained cheerful and calm for nearly the entire flight, with just one or two very short outbursts. Right now I'm waiting for the baby to wake up (it's around 11 am--he didn't go to sleep until 5 am or so). Staring out at the lush green backyard, with apple trees and roaming cats and chickens...a lovely quiet place. A good start to our trip, much better than I'd anticipated.

Oct 16--Took a walk in the large forest bordering my husband's parents' property yesterday; we saw a couple chevreuil--small French deer--and two wild boars--small, dark, and vaguely human-looking. Beautiful leafy linden, oak and chestnut trees--for a forest, and compared to most of the forests I've seen, it's a gentle-looking and well-lighted place, made slightly more dramatic perhaps by the presence of these snuffling wild pigs. A couple beefy-looking joggers passed us--Regarde, les poids lourds my wisecracking stepfather-in-law commented as they passed. Poids lourds [heavy load], my husband explained, is the phrase on the back of semi trucks on the French highway; what my stepfather-in-law said could have been taken as an insult. But the joggers merely huffed out a greeting, realizing no doubt that this small elderly man was just joking with them, and continued on their way.

Oct 17--A strong desire to write. Not just this--many other things. A strong desire to embark on new projects. Traveling does that to me, sometimes.

Oct 18--We've moved, from the parents' house to the 3rd arrondisement in Paris. Too touristy here for my husband's taste, but I don't agree; I think that's just what you find around the Place des Vosges and other specific locales. The drive into the Marais was comical--much of the area is blocked off to cars on Sundays, something none of us realized; but my husband's stepfather convinced a policeman to move one of the blockades to let us through; our progression, through a river of well-scarved, well-tailored elite Parisians out for a Sunday stroll (our baby screaming his displeasure in the back seat) was a unique experience. The baby just didn't like being cooped up in a very slow-moving car. The Paris look--I mean the look on people's faces, not so much their clothes--there's a tightness in people's expressions, as well as a thoughtfulness, and, in some people, a look of superciliousness...anyway, that was my first take on the whole scene, looking out at the Marais district's Sunday flaneurs.

Oct 19--find myself planted for 20 minutes in a cafe, about 10 minutes by foot from where we're staying (an apartment we found on Craigslist). When I stepped up to the entrance of the cafe, the smiling waiter playfully took me by the arm and escorted me inside. This has never happened to me before. A lot of small things are happening during this trip that move it out of the realm of normal experience--that always happens when one travels of course (and it's half the reason we travel, isn't it?)--but what's different this time is, just going to a cafe, any cafe, is so much more of a novelty to me (as a new mother) that someone taking my arm and escorting me in feels even more remarkable than it normally would.

Oct 20--It feels a bit unreal to be back in Paris--site of so much longing, angst, and delight during three previous trips, a couple lifetimes ago--it's wonderful, but also a bit sad. I can't say the magic of Paris has faded, but perhaps I've faded, a bit--can no longer plunge into this scene as I used to--but I do feel the old pull, the desire to linger here. Paris is an old city, steeped in history and tradition--and that very fact draws Americans to it, just as it repels, somewhat, many of its French inhabitants--at least, if my husband is any example.

Oct 21--Finding it hard to write here; just too busy, and with our habit of sleeping until 10 or 11 in the morning, the days are so short that I barely have time to sit down and relax for 30 minutes. We've not been to any museums or any of the normal tourist-y places. And today is a grey, wet day--all I did was run errands of the most banal sort, to the laundry, the grocery, the boulangerie. (Though those short trips can be fun in Paris, nothing particularly remarkable happened today.) Did manage to contact a couple friends who live in Paris--will see them over the next few days.

Oct 22--Forgot to write yesterday about visiting, the previous day, the old private bibliotheque where I did much of my research for one portion of my doctoral thesis. As I was attempting to take a picture of the plaque marking the entrance to the library, a man stepped out, dressed in wine-red velour pants and a slightly shabby-looking, dark brown smoking jacket; a satin-y dark blue scarf was loosely draped around his neck, and with his distant gaze and his long flowing brown hair, he looked every bit like someone plunged in thoughts about his research on some obscure French poet, as well as someone about to smoke a cigarette. I felt instantly how strange it was to be standing there, in my new guise as a beleaguered mother, and not in my old one as a beleaguered, uncouth American graduate student; I also felt, instantly, lighter than air. Somehow, the two disguises, mother and grad student, had just cancelled each other out. I can't explain it, but it was as if, with the appearance of this poetic-looking stranger, my whole existence shrank to a point in space. It felt wonderful.

Oct 23--Paid a visit today to my old French instructor, who lives just a few minutes from where we're staying. He lives, like most French people, in a very modest apartment, three rooms (not including the tiny kitchen and bathroom), where he raised two children. The building he lives in is impressive with its huge old stone walls, the sense of solidity and quiet in one of the most bustling neighborhoods in Paris. He's the same--a small, gentle, unassuming man--extremely polite (though we're about the same age, we use the formal vous with each other). I must admit to being somewhat frazzled by, of all things, my baby's digestive problems--the formula in France is too dense for him--indeed much of the trip seems to have centered around the baby's pooping and sleeping habits; yet it does have its comical side, as when the baby pooped, straining mightily, while my husband and I were chatting with the French instructor. The lovely man was totally unphased and insisted that we use his dining table to change the little one (which we did--providing a plastic cover for protection, of course). We invited him to stay with us any time he's in San Francisco.

Oct 24--my husband's not a big one for dining out, even in San Francisco; so the only really good things I've eaten since arriving here are the items we've purchased from the local boulangerie and grocery stores--red wine, brie, baguettes, chausson aux pommes--but one can live richly on these simple foods. And I'm not likely to gain any weight while over here.

Oct 25--writing nothing but banalities these days. It's not writing, it's scribbling. More tired at this moment than at any other during the trip--slept only about three and a half hours last night. More because of my own insomnia than anything else. A sense of restlessness. Thought a lot about my (non-existent) career. Will I keep it on hold for another couple of years, or try to plunge back into something by the time the baby is one year old? The latter probably makes more sense, although I'll probably be working mostly from home for the next couple of years. I just don't like the idea of sending my baby to daycare until he's at least two and a half years old.

Oct 26--Sometimes, if one is extremely lucky, a conversation with a treasured friend comes at exactly the right time in one's life--this happened to me today. Though I see this woman infrequently--in fact, we've only had a few extended conversations with each other--they've been remarkably important encounters for me, each one marking a turning point, a moment of decision. To some extent I think they've meant the same thing for her. Talking with her in the same cafe I visited during my first full day back in Paris (and once again, the waiter was remarkably friendly--perhaps a bit too friendly but no harm done), I felt so good (it's partly because she's an amazing and perceptive listener) that it seemed the scene out our window was even more unique than it already was--the people took on a more positive glow, and life seemed to click, somehow; whereas I'd been, too often of late, ground down by my daily routine of baby care, even here in Paris, and couldn't see the magic or the positive side of anything. She restored all that, for me.

Oct 29--just didn't get to the blog, these past couple of days; hectic to the extreme. On the 27th we spent much of the day with my husband's stepfather's sister and her husband, and their three middle-aged sons. Yesterday, we moved back to the husband's parents' house and then were busy the rest of the day with them. Today I've made one last solo dash back to Paris on the RER, my husband graciously agreeing to watch the baby for about five hours. I'm sitting at the Place de la Bastille, in the Cafe des Phares, watching the noisy, bustling crowd and marveling at the ease with which all the chaos melts away when one is sitting at a cozy table in a warm, inviting cafe in Paris. The middle-aged women sitting alone at nearby tables seem to feel the same--the calm way they're reading their menus or eating their meals tells me that. Oasis. Yes, I love lounging in Paris cafes--my husband hates it--but these women around me understand. Something so liberating for a woman, any woman, this act of getting lost in a crowd.

Oct 30--the baby was not as angelic on the return flight--but was still remarkably good. Except for his constipation and jet lag (both not really his fault), he's been a trooper, this little guy--if it's possible, my affection for him has only grown during this trip. I know babies are more portable than a lot of parents tend to think--but this baby has been vastly more portable than I could have imagined. Having said that--we're going to give him a break for the rest of his babyhood, and not make him go through this again until he's much older.