Discovery 3
My daughter is obsessed with her own hands. Even before she was born, she covered her face and appeared to suck her thumb in the ultrasound pictures. Now that she’s here with us, she wrestles her hands out of any swaddle we put her in, and when she eats, she balls her hands into fists and keeps them near her cheek, except for when she’s holding my hand. When she’s mad, she waves her outstretched hands like talons, and she has managed to claw my neck and snatch some of her father’s chest hair. I think her nails must grow abnormally quickly–no matter how much we trim them, she always has a new sharp one to stab us with.
But her hands are perfect, these tiny little palms with lines already stretching through them. When she was born, they were wrinkled like Benjamin Button’s, but as she has grown, the wrinkles have started to stretch out and smooth into these long, tapered fingers, smooth palms, and pointed nails that are going to be excellent for manicures, once she can figure out how not to use them as weapons and we don’t have to cut them every day. Baby hands are amazing, these beautiful pieces of potential. Her father looks at her hands and sees a guitar player, or a basketball player. Her Aunt Kristi thinks maybe she will play the piano. I picture those little hands all chubby clutching a pencil and laboriously writing her name, pads of her fingers tapping a keyboard, palm clapped over her mouth as she laughs, fingers wrapped around a set of car keys, and one day, holding steadily to her daddy’s arm as he walks her down the aisle. Right now, only God knows who she will be and what she will do, but I can’t wait to find out.
Another day…
My daughter is wonderful. She really is. Even on days like today, when everything possible has gone wrong–she wouldn’t sleep, she went through a million messy diapers (including one where she seemed to mistake my husband’s UK football shirt for a clean diaper), she threw up a lot, she developed a wheezy breathing pattern, and we ended up at the pediatrician’s office with me sobbing outside the lab door where my husband was holding on to her tiny arms so she could be x-rayed.
Thankfully, nothing really turned out to be wrong with her, but what I discovered today is just how panicky being a parent can make a normally sane person. Only this morning, my husband was commenting on how cool and calm I was about changing her diaper fifteen times, and how she wouldn’t eat. I felt calm and collected too, and then mere hours later I turned into a basket case, and I still haven’t really recovered from it. I start crying again every time I think about my tiny little girl on the cold table surrounded by giant machines. She’s just so small. And she depends on us for everything, and although it’s totally unreasonable, and we did the responsible thing by taking her in, it’s hard not to feel like we let her down.
She’s so wonderful, and I want to do everything right for her. But I keep remembering what my grandmother told me when she came to see me in the hospital: You want to do everything perfectly for your kids. But then you mess it up, and you have to figure out what to do with that.
I’m back.
I have definitely let my blog posting lapse lately. It’s been ages–I honestly kind of figured I was just done with this blog and should let it die. I’ve been really busy with work and and home and working on my masters degree. Oh, and having a baby. (Okay, so that part just happened last week, but it’s a pretty big deal to me.) Plus, I just hit one of those spots where I couldn’t think of anything I really wanted to say.
But when I checked my Google reader recently, I found a blog by one of my favorite authors, Silas House. He has committed to discovering something new every day for a month and blogging about it. The idea inspired me, and although I can’t guarantee that I will be able to post every day, I decided to try to share some of my discoveries here on the blog. Probably most of my discoveries will have to do with parenting, since figuring out how to be a good mom and spending time with my beautiful daughter (I love how that sounds!) are occupying most of my time lately.
I had no idea how much I would love parenthood. There are a million tiny things every day to discover and wonder at. One of my favorite things over the past week is watching her learn to breastfeed. She’s so trusting and loving in everything she does, but especially in her eating. As she eats, she reaches behind her ear to where my hand is supporting her head and she wraps her tiny fingers around mine, or she just touches my hand. It’s so humbling to watch her reach back to find security in my touch, and to see how much she depends on me to fulfill her basic needs.
Music Lover
I think I’m addicted to my iPod.
When I first started making a fuss about wanting one, Joe groaned. He thought I just wanted one because it was cool, and we would spend a lot of money on it and I’d never use it. To test me out, he bought a cheap imitation MP3 player on eBay. It came with badly translated-to-English warnings not to “damage the auditory” by playing it too loudly, and it had a real affection for Paul Simon’s “Graceland.” Every time I turned it on, it started with that song and usually returned to it several times. Even when you skipped to a new song, it usually came back to “Graceland.” Maybe it was trying to tell me something. You had to push every button five times before ANY song would come on, and I never did figure out how to actually put music on it. Joe had to do it, which probably contributed to his willingness to buy my iPod.
I used the crappy little player for months, tucking it in my pocket while I did household chores, always making sure Joe could see that I was using it. So for Christmas last year, he caved. I now have my slender, perfect, bright pink iPod, which made me as happy as if he’d bought me jewelry.
I figured I would use my iPod while cleaning or exercising, or maybe as something to help me on long car trips when Joe refuses to switch the radio off the bluegrass station. I had never really been one of those people who just sits around and listens to music, unless I was driving. If I’m just sitting around, I am probably reading. I like singing along with music while I cook or clean, walking to the beat while I’m on the treadmill. I like having it on in the background while I grade papers. But as I used my iPod more and more, it became kind of like a security blanket. I loaded it with all the songs that I thought I might ever want to listen to, and organized a ton of playlists to fit each new mood. I started downloading podcasts and radio shows. My iPod has become another thing I make sure I toss in my bag before I leave the house, with my phone and book and journal.
Joe makes fun of it, a little. Being the music snob that he is, he scoffs at the slight loss of sound quality that occurs when music is transferred to the tiny player. I don’t really hear the difference. He also gets a little paranoid at the idea that iTunes and other online music stores will cause the ruin of the CD and the destruction of independent music stores. I have to admit, that one stops me a little. I can’t stand the idea of not being able to walk into Ear-X-Tacy and browse through hundreds of albums I’d never think to look for online. I’m uncomfortable with the thought that I may be helping to put them out of business, but I think, for me anyway, my iPod has had the opposite effect. It’s made me enjoy listening to music more, and has made me eager to try new artists. It’s given me a way to test out new songs without making my husband’s ears bleed. We buy a lot of CDs still, and the only difference is that many of them now end up on my iPod, where I listen to them a lot more than I would have in the car or while washing the dishes.
So yeah, I am addicted to my iPod, but it’s actually probably improved the quality and quantity of music that I listen to. But sorry, Joe–I’m still drawing the line at bluegrass.
Oxford, Mississippi
Joe and I took a brief fall break trip to Oxford, Mississippi, this weekend. That little town has become one of our favorite places in the world, for reasons neither of us can clearly articulate. It’s a beautiful place, for one, and a friendly community. We always check out Rowan Oak, William Faulkner’s old home, with its stately, tree-lined drive and tall white columns, the room that has one of his novels outlined on the wall, and the walls that smell and look slightly like what I remember from Granny’s old house. We love the food–Taylor Grocery is a must at some point for anyone who loves southern food, and while I know it’s just a little greasy spoon, I’ve never had better coffee anywhere in the world than at the Beacon. It eases me slowly into my day and makes me a happier, better person. Then there’s the shopping. I always spend hours wandering the shops on the square, dragging Joe in and out of dress shops, stationery shops, and bath shops, trying on sunglasses and bracelets and buying oversized bags. No trip is complete without multiple trips to Square Books and Off Square Books, which may be my two favorite bookstores in the world. I could sit all day on the balcony at Square Books, reading and writing, watching and listening. It’s a gorgeous, relaxing, calming place for us to be, and I love it more than I can say.
This time, we started our trip with a visit to the Thacker Mountain Radio Show. Joe saw an episode of the program on his first trip to Oxford, and he’s been anxious to get me to it ever since. Basically, on Thursday nights, Off Square Books clears its floors of books and sets up 200 folding chairs so the audience can watch a live, literary radio show. A house band plays a few songs, and then artists come in and read from their books, or play some of their music, or just talk about whatever they do. It was beyond cool–so interesting, and then the artists relate to and react very well with the audience. I wish I could be there every week, but since I can’t, I will just have to pick up the live feed on their website.
On Saturday, we went to an Ole Miss football game. Joe was pretty fired up about it, and I have to admit that I was excited too, because I’d heard a lot about Ole Miss school spirit, and tailgating in the Grove, and all that. We were not disappointed. It was homecoming, and we couldn’t even get a room in Oxford that night, or in any of the surrounding towns, so we ended up 50 miles away, in Tupelo, driving back in for the game. Oxford was packed. I wondered if it could have possibly been more crowded the week before when the first presidential debates were held in town. We parked at the town’s decrepit mall (it always makes Joe gleeful that this town has a thriving downtown and a falling-apart mall) and joined the throngs headed through campus toward the Grove.
It was amazing. I knew going in that I would be massively underdressed in my jeans, Chucks, and Ole Miss t-shirt, but I had a long drive home that night and really didn’t care. Even so, I was awed at the extent to which people dress up for football there. Everywhere we looked, there was a girl in a sundress. Red, white, and blue tents stretched as far as the eye could see. Beneath the tents, southern women put on a spread that put my church’s homecoming banquets to shame. Like I said, I knew going in that tailgating was serious there, but since the only live football I’d ever really watched before was at Western Kentucky and UK, I was kind of blown away. I wanted to pull up a blue Ole Miss chair, grab a red plastic cup, and join in the party.
The game itself was pretty cool. The stadium is a little bit crummy, and our seats were in the end zone, but they were low enough to have an awesome view of players coming in for a touchdown, and the football whizzed over our heads every time an extra point or a field goal were kicked. Fans were spirited and fun. I got a monstrous sunburn and look a little like an alien today, but it was worth it.
Every time I go to Oxford, I watch “For Sale” signs, idly dreaming of packing it all up and moving down there, studying southern culture at Ole Miss, writing and reading and drinking a lot of sweet tea. People always look at me oddly when I say that this town tops the list of places I would be willing to retire too. I tell them, go there sometime. Then you’ll understand.
Long Time Coming
Life has been crazy lately. I have felt for the last week or so that I was hanging on by a rope. But every time I felt my hands begin to slip, God knotted the rope around my fists and I could hang on. It’s been good, but very stressful. I’ve been so busy I’ve barely had time to breathe, and this weekend, when I finally crashed, I was so exhausted that I felt my body wasn’t so much experiencing sleep as just gulping it down. But things are more calm now. I’m on fall break for two weeks, and I have a relaxing Sunday afternoon before me, the first one in several weeks. I’m lying on the couch, surrounded by books and magazines, a sweet little nap in my immediate future before I make lasagna for dinner. I should be able to post more often now. Life is good!
Joe and I went to the UK/WKU game last night in Lexington. I know it makes me a traitor, but I’m really glad Kentucky won. I didn’t go to Western for its sports program anyway, and in this family, if I’m going to be a fan of anyone, it better be UK. It was a fun game to watch! Hard to believe I actually like football now, but I definitely do.
The only down side to the game was the absolute morons behind us. I think I attract these people. They were foul-mouthed and ignorant, and I felt terrible for the parents with young children around us, because their language belonged in a rated R movie, not a family setting. At first I was embarrassed, because they were in red, and I thought, Great. The idiots are from my alma mater. But as their conversation continued, they revealed that they were in fact–you guessed it–from Louisville. And once again, all is right with the world.
High School Flashbacks
A while ago, I wrote a blog about elementary school memories. Today, since I have to spend my afternoon grading papers, I have high school on my mind. Here is a list of some unforgettable high school moments.
1. The first day of school, riding the waves of students through the crowded halls. I finally spied an upperclassman I knew from band and suddenly felt at home.
2. Helping to push that huge couch from room to room during Author’s Banquet so my friend could sit on it while she gave her Emily Dickinson presentation. I was Jane Austen. I wore a very flattering bonnet.
3. A teacher who recited a list of the curse words we were never allowed to say in her class.
4. Managing to get over the whole permed-hair craze. I had some very unfortunate experiences with perms in middle school.
5. Reading the Christy Miller books again and again and again and sighing with my friends about how our school had no one like Todd.
6. Staggering off the field at a band practice, nearly passing out, because I had only eaten M&M’s for lunch. I did things like that frequently–not really eating lunch, I mean. Because then I could save my lunch money and buy magazines. Sigh.
7. My friend sitting behind me in Algebra II, flicking my hair with her pencil and fuming because she couldn’t find any split ends.
8. Riding in the back of someone’s truck to Amanda’s house after a band practice. She took a big drink of water and spit it over the side of the truck, only we were going fast and the whole mouthful hit me in the face.
9. Getting my permit and crying because I’d been too busy reading for the previous 16 years to notice how to get anywhere in my small hometown. This infuriated my father and he refused to give me any directions, so we drove in circles while I bawled.
10. And finally–just for you, Marla–the noisy clicking eraser that I used to annoy my friends. I never said I was cool.
GO CATS!
I never would have guessed it in a hundred million years, but I really like football. When Joe and I first started dating, I made fun of him for his slavish devotion to the Kentucky Wildcats. I was incredulous that his idea of a perfect Saturday afternoon involved sitting in front of a TV with a pizza. And yet, somehow, slowly, I have been converted. I realized on Thursday night, when I hurried home from parent-teacher conferences so I could watch the South Carolina game with him, that the SEC has thorougly sucked me in. There’s still a ton about football I don’t understand, so no way am I going to make a big commentary about it here, but it’s by far my favorite sport to watch and talk about and learn about. I’d much rather watch UK than anyone else, but any SEC team will do. So I’m pretty fired up today, after going to Louisville yesterday to watch the Cats beat UofL. I’m looking forward to the rest of the season. Go Cats!
Weekend Frustration
I just have one thing on my mind on this bright and beautiful Sunday morning: LOUISVILLE FANS SUCK.
Those of you who have been reading Joe’s blog already know that we went to see Springsteen in Nashville on Thursday night, and that it was a fantastic concert. Bruce is an amazing showman. It was a great place to see him because everyone there seemed to be there to see Bruce. When he talked, they got quiet. They sang along with songs and got on their feet and danced, but even a short person like me never had any problem seeing the stage or not getting trampled on. People were very considerate.
In contrast, last night we went to Louisville to see Dylan. It was actually just outside Louisville, across the river in New Albany, but it’s still close enough that Louisvillians swarmed the place. It was a horrible show. The concert was outdoors, so people had plenty of room to move, yet they didn’t want to move to the music–they just wanted to move their mouths. The people behind us and beside me would not shut up. They carried on the most idiotic conversations at top volume during every song, discussing important things like who was going to go on their next beer run and how much beer they really wanted. We couldn’t even hear Dylan sometimes. At one point, we moved down a seat to try to hear better, and the guy next to me immediately leaped into my seat. Joe leaned across me and shouted at him for a few seconds until he aplogized and scooted back down. He quickly volunteered to get away from us for more beer for the group, but of course very little changed when he got back. The whole experience got me thinking about my frustrations with Louisville fans in general.
The thing is, I love Louisville. I lived there for the first three years of my married life, and I still think of it as my adopted hometown. It’s a fantastic city. I just don’t understand why people who are normally so civilized and pleasant to be around can so entirely lose their brains when they get in crowds of people. The last Dylan concert we saw in Louisville, in the parking lot at Jillian’s, was typical of this fan base. Dylan’s performance was great–at least what I could hear of it. It was another outdoor concert, but the fans somehow still managed to drown out the music. People were smoking everything but their shoelaces. Stinky, sweaty, beer soaked men were everywhere. One man waved a copy of Catcher in the Rye and begged his friends to burn him with cigarette lighters. By the time Dylan reached the middle of his set, I had beer running down my legs and splashed on my shirt. Incoherent screamers were out in full force.
I considered that maybe it was just the Dylan crowd–he does bring out some odd people, although these two Louisville area shows were definitely the most miserable of the six Dylan shows I’ve seen. But then I remembered the year we had season tickets to U of L football. Every game could have been a Dylan concert–the mood was the same. People showed up drunk and just kept drinking. Fights broke out at almost every game. When people wanted more beer, they threw empty cups at the beer vendor. They screamed obscenities at no one in particular, causing parents to hurry their little children down the bleachers. The team wasn’t bad, but the fans made the games a misery. Last year at the UK/UofL game in Lexington, fans couldn’t buy beer inside the stadium, so people in red stood in clumps grouching about the inherent unfairness of expecting anyone to watch football sober.
I know people go to games and concerts to have a good time, and I’m all for that. There’s nothing inherently wrong with a little beer and conversation with friends. But when I go to a game or a concert, I want to SEE what I bought the ticket to see. I don’t need to have people blocking my view so they can re-count their beer orders three times, or listen to someone cussing at the top of his lungs for the sheer pleasure of hearing his own voice. Have some consideration, people. That’s all I’m asking.
The Perfect Job
Good Morning, America! Watching GMA is one of the highlights of every vacation for me. In fact, I am such a huge nerd about it that I asked my husband to make sure I was awake before he left for work today, to ensure that I got to watch at least an hour of it. I don’t really watch straight through–being the ultimate multi-tasker, I pretty much don’t do that with any TV show anymore. I read, write, check e-mail, and, of course, eat cookies through the whole thing, but I love listening to it even when my eyes aren’t on the screen. And I love GMA because there are always a couple of stories that catch my attention and draw me away from whatever else I am doing while watching.
This morning, one of the things that caught my attention was an interest inventory Robin Roberts did to analyze her personality and predict the other careers she could have had. Aptitude tests always interest me, because I like having someone tell me about myself. I know what I think about me, but I tend to be incredibly short-sighted about myself. I always overlook a lot of possibilites, and usually these tests smack me with some insight about why I behave the way I do.
I realize that’s ironic, because the tests themselves are often very-short sighted. Of course Robin’s results didn’t tell her she should be a host on GMA, and she’s brilliant at it. There are too many amazing jobs out there for a test to be able to cover them all, so they tend to stick to generics. Be a coach, a computer programmer, a chef, a radio announcer. A teacher.
I’m bothered by the career aptitude tests though, because I dislike the myth that your job defines you, that there’s one perfect job out there that will make you happy forever. I love my job. I spend a lot of time and attention on it, and it’s very fulfilling. But there are many parts of my life that have nothing to do with it, and I find those parts to be extremely satisfying too. I’m grateful for my job and feel very lucky that I get to do it. But ultimately, contentment has to come from God.
September 29, 2008. Tags: career, Good Morning America, interest inventory. Commentary. 2 comments.