Christmas traditions: Ornaments

Decorating the Christmas tree is always one of my favorite Christmas traditions. I like pulling out all the different ornaments, remembering where they came from, and finding the perfect place for them on the tree. This year Adriana helped decorate, and it was fun to give her unbreakable ornaments to hang down at her level.


In fact, we had so much fun decorating with her that the week after we did our tree, we went up to my dad's house to help him with his. There, Adriana was less interested in hanging the ornaments than she was in going through the ornament box and telling other people where to hang the ones she picked out.




While we were at my dad's, my sister and I sorted through ornaments, selecting the ones that we wanted for our own trees, since even with an eight foot tree that we decorated on all sides my dad had more than enough.

I came home and hung the "new" ornaments on the tree and thought of how much these things all mean to me. I realize they are all just things, but I love the way pulling them out of the box every year brings back so many memories.

I bought this glass ball at Appalachian Spring in Georgetown the year that I was pregnant with Adriana. I love beautiful glass ornaments and this one reminded me of one that my mom had when we were growing up.


When we were sorting out ornaments at my dad's, I found the one I had been thinking of. I hung them near one another on our tree.


That same year I also bought a lot of cheap ornaments at the Crate & Barrel outlet in Old Town Alexandria. I like these ones because they're sparkly.


Last fall, I was eager to find the perfect "Baby's First Christmas" ornament to personalize for Adriana. In my head it was silver and engraved. Then I found this china giraffe that was absolutely perfect.


At one point when I was in elementary school, my mom let each of us pick out an ornament at Macy's one year. I chose a wooden rocking horse. Every day as Adriana studies the tree and points out ornaments, she smiles at this one and exclaims, "Neigh! Neigh!"


The first year that Brian and I were living together, I insisted on picking out a seven-foot tree for our little house, even though we weren't even going to be there on Christmas day--and even though we didn't have any ornaments to put on it. Remembering ornament projects from preschool, I began saving yogurt lids, and with those, a stack of photographs, some construction paper, and some glitter glue pens, I made a bunch of ornaments. I'm not a very crafty person, and the ornaments do have a bit of the preschool project feel to them, but we still have a lot of them around, and I love them because of the pictures of our friends and family, and also because it's nice to remember that first Christmas together. I meant to make more this year, but it will have to wait until next year, I think.


When we first visited the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, I noticed in the gift shop a pretty little ornament that outlined the shape of the Cathedral's rose window. I didn't buy it and later wondered why. So when I saw a similar one at National Cathedral I of course purchased it. And then at St. Paul's I found one that outlined some of the iron work in the Cathedral. I try not to buy too many little trinkets when we travel, because I don't like to have a lot of clutter (not that you could tell that from looking at our house), but ornaments make perfect souvenirs: we get them out once a year, pretty little things that remind us of the fun we had on different trips.


I love hummingbirds, so I was pleased to pull out this pretty little one that Brian's mom gave me last year.


For the first week that we had our tree up, Adriana would point to it and sign "bird," and she was talking about that hummingbird. But after we brought home ornaments from my dad's house, she is much more interested in my favorite ornament from childhood, Big Bird.


I loved Paddington Bear when I was little, so my sister handed me this ornament to take home. But the real reason I was pleased to take it is that some friends in Washington really adore Paddington, and seeing this little guy on my tree reminds me of them.


That first year that we were living together, Brian perched a sock monkey that my friend John had made for my 21st birthday on top of the tree. It started as a joke, but that we left him there. When I was pregnant with Adriana and we were finally getting our own tree again, we bought a pretty star to put at the top of the tree but ended up returning it. We just liked the sock monkey better.


The tree skirt wasn't anything I ever really thought of when I was growing up, and it wasn't a decoration that was important to me. But when Brian and I got married, his aunt embroidered a tree skirt for us, and every year I take it out of the closet and marvel at it. The little details are so perfect, and it's so special to me because I know that Aunt Janet made it just for us. It reminds me of her, although she lives in Florida and I've only met her a few times, and it reminds me of when we were just married, right after Christmas, and what a special time that was in our lives.

November 19

1979: I am told that on my first birthday, I try to grab the flame of the candle on my cake and burn my hand.

1984: My sixth birthday is the first I really seem to remember. I had a big party and there was a clown. 

1987: For my ninth birthday I get a new scooter. It's lavender with handbrakes. After school, Grandma Ruth comes over and we take turns riding the scooter up and down the sidewalk in front of the house before dinner. The next day at school when I tell people what I did for my birthday I am told that "grandmas don't ride scooters."

1989: I have a slumber party with a few other girls to celebrate my eleventh birthday, and my new friend, Cyndi, and I have a jumping contest: who can keep jumping the longest. Too much sugar anyone? It was the last time I had a slumber party on a Saturday night, because Cyndi and I become best friends, and she has to go to church every Sunday morning, which means that even after being up all night literally bouncing off the walls, she has to get up early and leave. We start having sleepovers on Friday nights instead. 

1990: For my twelfth birthday, my mom takes me to get a second set of piercings in my ear. My mom already has one in one ear and two in the other. She gets her ears pierced at the same time. I don't remember if she gets one more in each, or just one, in order to even them out.

1993: I celebrate my fifteenth birthday by having girlfriends over for a fondue dinner.

1994: The evening of my sixteenth birthday is spent babysitting, because money = good, and I can go out with friends the following night. 

1997: When I turn nineteen, my friends Jeff, Mica, and Tara take me out for mud pies at the Saturn Cafe. I am trying to convince myself that I have a crush on Jeff, failing miserably, and flirting anyhow. He claims later (perhaps only out of politeness) that I didn't make a fool of myself and didn't even notice the flirting.

1998: I get a group of friends together to go bowling on my twentieth birthday. I make sure I am in the same lane as Brian, who I have a terrible crush on, but who is still recovering from his own crush on my friend Christie, whose new boyfriend is occasionally managing to buy drinks for those of us not old enough to buy our own.

1999: I make tacos and sangria at Brian's apartment, so I can celebrate with friends who aren't yet 21, and then those of us who are go out to drink some more. I throw up after my third drink at the Red Room. My friend Christie brings me a birthday card she made, with my name spelled out on the front in pictures of vibrators cut out of a Good Vibrations catalog. Jeff brings me a stuffed monkey that I name Weed, in honor of Jeff's girlfriend, Mary Jane. My friend Rachel's boyfriend brings me a sock monkey that he made. At some point in the evening I realize that he must be drunk because he keeps hugging me. Then I realize that I must be drunk too, because I am rather enjoying it. 

2000: Brian makes reservations to celebrate my twenty-second birthday at Pearl Alley Bistro, but they are terribly crowded, so we say we'll walk around downtown and come back in a bit. We go try on hats in a store down the street, and when we return they are still not ready for us, but they give us nice glasses of wine on the house while we wait. Our dessert that night, a flaming chocolate souffle, is also free because of the wait, and I am amused because just wandering Pacific Avenue, hanging out in the crowded restaurant, and enjoying a late dinner after the restaurant quiets down a bit is actually a great deal more fun than if we'd been seated on time.

2003: I spend my twenty-fifth birthday in California, attending the APHA's annual research meeting, while Brian is in Boston for work. My dad takes me and a couple of friends out to a fantastic Italian place on College Avenue in Berkeley. I can never remember the name. 

2004: Brian takes me out for my favorite pumpkin ravioli when I turn twenty-six. The waiter keeps pouring more wine into my glass and I completely lose track of how much I've had until I stand up to go find the restroom a nearly wander (fine, stagger) into the kitchen instead. Afterwards, we contemplate skating at the rink right outside the restaurant but somehow have the good sense not to.

2007: When I turn twenty-nine, I joke that I should just tell people that I am thirty, since no one believes people who say they are twenty-nine and I have no objection to being thirty anyhow. I don't expect to do anything on my actual birthday, because we had dinner with my family to celebrate the weekend before. But Brian comes home from work and suggests take out from Amber India, and we open a bottle of wine from our trip to Italy, and it's a nice little celebration. The baby even goes to bed at a decent hour.

2008: Today I am 30. I have a dentist appointment in the morning, playgroup in the afternoon, and my second knitting class tonight. Do I know how to party, or what? But I think it will be a good day. Once the dentist stuff is over.

Gloaming

Reading in the car while the baby slept (bringing her into the house usually wakes her up, so I just carry a book around in the diaper bag) recently, I paused when I saw the word "gloaming." Another one for my list, I thought, and my mind began to wander. "Sunset" had made my list, and when I saw "dusk" on Eleeza's, I realized that "twilight" should have been on mine. Considering how so many words for the same thing make me happy, I decided that it must be something about that time of day, some kind of magic to the sinking of the sun, the ending of the day. And I think that magic seems stronger this time of year as it becomes apparent that we are on the other side of Solstice at last. In the winter it becomes dark before I've had much of a chance to notice, but as the days begin to lengthen, I can appreciate sunset, dusk, twilight, the gloaming. I can indulge nostalgia for other times when I've noticed that particular time of day.

I remember drawing with chalk on the back patio and playing on the swingset and picking plums off the tree and eating them in the evenings--a whole series of memories I can't quite place in time, all mashed together in my mind.

I remember playing outside after dinner with our new puppy when I was ten years old, my brother and sister and me, all chasing and being chased.

I remember walking home from the house of a friend who lived up the hill from me, my clothing damp and leaving me just a little too cold because the sprinklers had come on while we were sitting outside and we thought it would be a good idea to run through them, even though we were old enough to be too cool for that kind of thing.

I remember coming up the slope from McHenry, probably sometime in spring of my junior year of college. I was alone and it was quiet, and as I passed the (hardly used) student center I felt light and happy. The sun had mostly set, but color still streaked the sky and the bay.

I remember sitting on my front step in Alexandria, watching neighbors climb off the bus and take their dogs for a walk before dinner, while I read poetry.

I remember holding hands with Brian, while he wore Adriana on his chest and we took a walk when he was returned home after work last spring.

Parkfairfax

Sometimes I am surprised by what it is I miss about our time living in DC. I wasn't surprised to miss my friends or even some of our favorite restaurants, but I wasn't expecting to miss my old neighborhood. When we "lived in DC," we weren't actually in DC--we were in the Northern Virginia suburbs. I went out a month before we moved to find a place for us to live, with visions of a cute basement apartment in Georgetown or a row house in Adams-Morgan, or maybe some sort of apartment in Dupont Circle. But the reality of all those things wasn't exactly what I'd pictured--the Georgetown basements I looked at were dim and cramped, Adams-Morgan was out of our price range, and the one Dupont high rise I checked out was...a high rise. I was soon calling about listings in Arlington and Alexandria, and on the morning of the second day of my househunt, I took a bus from the metro to a development in Alexandria which had cute, colonial brick condos, plenty of trees, and even parking. I called Brian afterwards to tell him I thought I'd found us our place, excitedly telling him that it was large, full of light, and not a bad commute for either of us, although it wasn't on the metro. I'd lived my whole life in the suburbs, and, in spite of romantic ideas of city life, apparently that wasn't going to change any time soon.

We lived in that neighborhood, Parkfairfax, for all of our five years. After three years, when we wanted to move to a place with an extra room and a washer/dryer (and when our landlord wanted to sell the unit we were living in), we moved just down the street from the place I originally picked out. Parkfairfax was built during the 1940s, just a little south of the Pentagon. There were some things about the apartments that let you know that the place had been built that long ago--weird wiring for the light switches, and original wood countertops in some kitchens. There was a condo association that kept everything looking rather Camazotz, I suppose--they had an azalea sale every May and a bulb sale every fall, so that most people's gardens were similar, and there were rules about what you could have out on your patio--but it did seem sweet and even sort of quaint. As a Californian, I was amazed that the large lawns weren't watered--they just stayed green most of the year--and by the brick buildings, which I was pretty sure meant we were all doomed in the event of an earthquake.

Mostly I miss Parkfairfax in the evenings when I close the blinds in my bedroom so that the people in the next building five yards away can't peer directly into our windows. I miss my Parkfairfax bedroooms. In our first apartment there, our windows were at ground level, but they were partially hidden by large azaleas. I could lie in bed and peer through the bushes at our little patio. Our second place in Parkfairfax lacked a patio, but the bedroom window was perfect: nearly right up against it was a dogwood tree, and an oak towered over the open space below us. In the winter the trees were bare, and we could sort of see across to other apartments, but they were far enough away that we couldn't see much. In the spring the dogwood bloomed, and then it and the oak leafed out, keeping our room relatively cool and shaded--in fact, I hadn't realized how much darker our room was in the summer until I stood there just before we moved and remembered how bright our room had been as I'd laid in bed in labor with Adriana back in January.

But what started me thinking about this was something that completely took me by surprise. When I went to vote on Tuesday, I missed voting in Parkfairfax. I loved getting ready for work a little earlier than usual and then walking over to the nearby synagogue to stand in line with my neighbors while we waited our turn. Even if I didn't know many of them by name, we recognized each other from our bus rides (I think half the neighborhood rode the bus to the Pentagon Metro every day) and walks, and we would all nod and smile politely. The last time we voted, when I was quite pregnant, we waited with a man who lived across the street from us and rode the bus at the same time most mornings, and as he stood with his two-year-old in his arms, he joked with Brian about doing curls to get ready for our baby. When I was sent to wait in another line because when we'd moved the previous year I hadn't changed my address but the registrar somehow knew about it, I wasn't the only one in that line who had to change my registration right there because I had moved within the precinct. Maybe I'll feel differently when we've lived here a bit longer, and perhaps the fact that not working means I was able to vote after lunch, when there wasn't any line, rather than before heading in to the office. But I definitely missed my old community this week.

Sentimental

A few days ago, walking through the Stanford campus, I inhaled the scent of the eucalyptus trees, and was suddenly surprised by a memory of a night nearly exactly seven years ago. My mother had just died, and Brian and I had returned to Santa Cruz. We were invited to the home of some friends, and I reluctantly consented to go: I knew I needed to get out of the house, and most of our friends didn't know yet, so I wouldn't receive too much sympathy that I wasn't prepared to handle. No one said anything to me about my mom that night, which was something of a relief, but our host walked us out to the car and gave me a rib-crushing hug. Imprinted in my mind now are the intermingled sensations of the cold, coastal night air, the scent of the eucalyptus trees along Western Drive, and the almost-painful embrace of someone who understood.

This morning I sat at the kitchen table while the baby napped, sipping hot chocolate and watching the rain. The image that came to mind was my first day in Madrid in May 2001. A bright, refreshing morning had given way to a gloomy and wet afternoon, and Brian and I wandered through the narrow, winding streets, which are bronzed in my memory by the rain of that day and the time since then. Lost and wet, but still having a good time because it was the beginning of our trip and everything was exciting, we took refuge in a crowded cafe where I ordered a cup of the rich, thick Spanish hot chocolate, and immediately fell completely in love with it. I don't remember the rest of the day at all.

At yoga on Friday there were two new moms--one had a six-week-old baby, and the other was the mother to a three-week-old. I had my normal reaction to seeing little newborns--basically a longing for the days when Adriana was that wee and squooshy. Because, you know, what I really need around here is another baby.

But I was surprised by what hit me next: a very intense series of memories of how crazy I felt those first few weeks.

I remembered being in the hospital room alone with her the day we were going to go home. I carefully dressed her in the sleeper that was to be her going home outfit. Then, studying her as she lay in the bassinet, I panicked, afraid that she wasn't my baby. I quickly undressed her again, checking the name tags on her wrist, both her ankles, and her umbilical stump. And then I held her and cried because there was surely something wrong with me if I didn't recognize my own baby.

I remembered standing by myself in a dark room, looking out the window at dusk, while Brian held the baby in our bedroom. It was only a few days after we'd brought Adriana home from the hospital--she must have been a week old at the most--and I felt helpless and scared. I cried, wondering if I loved the baby enough, if I loved her too much, if I would be able to be her mother. I felt that Brian was handling being a new parent better than I was.

I remembered cradling her in my arms in the middle of the night and, seeing her eyes shining in the dark, having a sudden fear that she was possessed by demons. I bit my tongue and made a conscious effort to keep holding her, knowing that I wasn't being rational, and telling myself that the fact that I knew I wasn't being rational was a good sign. But I didn't tell anyone--not Brian, not my midwife, not my closest friends--about that moment for fear that someone would try to keep me from Adriana.

I remembered an intense fear that there was somebody in the house. I knew I was not being rational, but to reassure myself I checked closets and under the bed, the baby clutched tightly to me. For a couple of days I wouldn't leave the baby alone in a room by herself even for a moment because I was afraid that whoever was in the house would steal her away if given the chance. I clung once again to my knowledge that my fear was irrational, telling myself that reading Outside Over There as a child had somehow scarred my psyche.

I remembered my first day home alone with Adriana. I nursed her and changed her diaper and set her down in her little chair. I sat in front of her and looked at her wondering what to do next. She wasn't hungry, wet, or fussing--just awake and looking at me. Surely there was something else I was supposed to be doing. But I didn't know what it was, so I sat and cried.

Adriana was nursing as class ended on Friday, and then she needed her diaper changed, so we were the last to leave. As I was rolling up my yoga mat, the instructor and I talked about those early days and how sweet they are, and then I tentatively confessed a couple of my moments of postpartum panic, forcing myself to laugh them off. It felt good to finally say them out loud.

Character

Now that Adriana is pulling up all the time, yet another level of our bookshelves are being cleared daily. This morning I picked up the books of poetry she'd pulled off the shelf, glancing idly through the pages of an Adrienne Rich collection before returning it too its place. The next book I picked up was my copy of Backroads, my high school's fine arts magazine, of which I was a co-editor my senior year. While the baby napped, I sat and read, flipping back and forth through the thin book, looking at the crazy collection of fonts, remembering faces and conversations as I saw the names on each page, and smiling at the words of teenagers. I remembered the classroom where I'd sat with my creative writing classmates, sifting through submissions--poems scratched out in pencil on wrinkled notebook paper, carefully typed poems with careful meter and rhyme, drawings tucked carefully into sturdy envelopes, and black-and-white photos printed in the school's darkroom. I remembered designing pages, and having staff hand me little floppy disks with their pages on them. I remembered the sense of accomplishment when the other editor, our advisor, and I took the final pages to the printer, and how afterwards Ms. Logan took Meghan and me for an ice cream and then taught us how to parallel park.

I thought about the creative writing class. That last year (I took it for three years) my cousin sat behind me. We were a little clique--Sky and me, Jaron who I'd known since pre-school, Andy who was a friend of both of them, in a band with Sky. I sat and wondered what became of Jaron and Andy as I read their poems, trying to recall when I'd last seen either one of them, and made a mental note to ask Sky. I stopped again as I came across the name of a tall, thin quiet boy from the class, a couple of years younger than I was, someone who I'd completely forgotten about, and I wondered what happened to him; and then what became of the girl whose poem is on the page before, a girl who was good at math and played one of the lead roles in the school production of Three Sisters for which I was stage manager. I read a poem by the woman who edited the magazine the year before I did; it was a good poem, and I hoped that she was doing something interesting, that she was happy. I passed over a poem by a girl I hadn't liked without reading it, and smiled as I read a funny poem by someone from my journalism class. Then there was one by someone I saw a couple of years ago at a wedding, and one by my best friend, who I have been meaning to call for weeks.

And then there was my name at the bottom of one page. I stopped there, looking at my name for a moment, almost afraid to look up at the words above it, words I couldn't really remember. Then I read over the prose-poem. It was a bit trite, I thought. I tried to remember writing it. Was I sitting on my bed? Did I begin it sitting at that corner desk in the creative writing class? Was it something I'd scribbled while sitting at a table in the school library during a free period when I was meant to be doing my trig homework? I stared at the words, but I couldn't recall. I tried to imagine those words coming from me, the memory wouldn't come. It has been too long, as if the words were written by another person completely.

I flipped through the pages again and found another poem I'd written, this one with a sing-song sort of rhyme to it but a similar theme. Again, I thought it was a little trite, but cute, something written by someone else entirely, it seemed. I thought there was probably one more, and I scanned the contents page until I saw my name again. The title listed by my name didn't mean anything to me. I tried to remember writing something with that title, but couldn't. Finally I turned to page 60, and saw the poem. Now I remembered. I still didn't remember writing it, but I remembered the poem. Reading it now, more than ten years later, was strange. It was the only really personal poem of the three of mine in the magazine. I read it over a few times, wondering what I was thinking. It's kind of a funny poem--as if I was simultaneously trying to write out how I saw myself at 17 and trying to define who I wanted to be at that moment. Perhaps I was trying to reconcile the two. What was I thinking when I wrote it? What did my mother thing when I brought home the copy of the magazine? Did I read this poem out loud when we had our reading when the magazine was published? I doubted it, but I couldn't remember.

Adriana woke up from her nap, and I read through all three of my poems again as I watched her play. Will she write poetry as a teenager? Will she someday read the poems that I wrote as a teenager and laugh at how silly her mother was? What would I have thought at seventeen if someone had told me where I would be today?

Writing these down now to help me remember later

Most of the time Brian can calm Adriana when she's fussing, but sometimes she just cries and cries, and then when I take her she calms right down. Usually I think it's because she knows that if I am holding her, she is going to get some milk. One night recently, Brian went to Adriana when she first woke up (an hour after I put her down--it's the most predictable thing about her sleep), but after awhile I went in because she wasn't calming down. As soon as she was in my arms, the crying stopped, and I sat down to nurse her. Sitting there in the darkened room, I suddenly remembered one evening when she was about a week old. We were eating dinner in shifts because the baby, in spite of a full tummy and a dry diaper, was a bit fussy, and after I finished my soup, I took Adriana from Brian and the crying stopped. She relaxed against me, and I paced the room with her in my arms until she fell asleep. Eventually I sat in the armchair and just held her while she slept. I think it may have been the first time I felt competent as a mother.

Two nights ago, Adriana woke up just as Brian and I were going to bed. That's not unusual, and most nights I simply nurse her and put her back down in her own bed, but on Tuesday night, she was wide-eyed and ready to play. Finally I decided that one of us might as well get some sleep, and that it might as well be Brian since when the baby woke in the morning he would be the one to get up with her. So Adriana and I went into the dark living room, and I settled into the rocker with her on my lap. I recited every one of her books that I knew in a slow monotone, and she eventually leaned her head against me. My mind began to float, and I remembered holding her as she fell asleep when she was a few weeks old. In particular, I remembered holding her with her head on my shoulder as I stood at the bedroom window, rocking from side to side. It was winter, so the trees were bare and I could see the beginning of the morning commute traffic down on Glebe Road--bright headlights winding their way along the streets before the sun came up--and the first flights beginning to take off from National. Adriana was completely asleep and I was exhausted, but I stood there a little longer, trying to burn that moment into my mind.

Eight things

Eight things you may not know about me, brought to you by Ann and my insomnia:

1. I've had the same recurring dream about someone breaking into my house since I was a child. Well, it's not exactly the same every time, but close enough: someone comes to the door and I know I shouldn't open it, but I do and they force their way in. It's been going for so long now that when I'm in the dream I realize it's a dream, except then it turns out it's real life and it's really happening. Except then I wake up. It does make me nervous about answering the door sometimes.

2. I have this thing about socks: specifically, I don't like the way they feel. I am very specific about what socks I am willing to put on my feet because of this. Brian does not have this concern, so he has many socks that feel "wrong" to me. Because of this, we have a crate in our bedroom that I throw all socks into when I'm putting away wash. That way I have to touch them as little as possible. Although it does mean that I have to dig through the yucky feeling socks sometimes when I need to find some. I am so glad it's summer and I get to wear sandals all the time now.

3. There's a major part of me that doesn't want to be vegetarian anymore. I frequently decide that it's too much work, that it makes me seem ridiculously picky, and that since I don't really have ethical issues with eating meat, I should just give up vegetarianism. Then I realize that this would require me to actually put meat in my mouth and chew and swallow, and the whole idea makes me feel rather ill.

4. When I was little I was afraid of the dark and liked the hall light left on when I went to bed. When I was in the second grade, firefighters came to our school to teach us what we should do in the event of a house fire, and one of the things they told us was that we should sleep with our bedroom doors closed. Such a dilemma: I was terrified of fire, and I thought keeping my door closed would keep me safe, but then my room would be too dark. My fear of the dark won out.

5. I have "internet friends"--a group of women I met on a public internet message board. There are 12 of us and I've met 5 "in real life" now. The other six I still consider friends, and I will sometimes say, "my friend said..." and then realize that I'm talking about someone I've never actually met. And when someone asks me how I met one of these friends, I'm always embarrassed to admit that I met them online.

6. In the summer after dinner my dad would sometimes walk us up to Baskin-Robbins for ice cream. I nearly always picked Gold Medal Ribbon. Brian and I walked up to Baskin-Robbins after dinner the other night. I considered the Gold Medal Ribbon, but went with World Class Chocolate instead. I felt sort of guilty.

7. I like movies where people talk a lot and nothing much happens. But sometimes I think the best moments in those movies happen when no one is saying anything. And just so I don't sound really boring, I also really like alien invasion movies, so long as they're not too scary.

8. I love the oaks and dogwoods and magnolias and cherry trees here, and the way things blossom in the spring and burn with color in the fall, but I have missed the cypress trees that show you the shape of the wind. I am looking forward to seeing those more often.


Why, yes, this is the bloggy equivalent of a chain letter. Nevertheless, I am tagging:

Christie
Eleeza
Champ

New Year's Eve

I don't quite remember how old I was when I stayed up all night at a slumber party with girlfriends to celebrate the New Year, but at the time I was pretty sure it was the best New Year's Eve ever.

Other New Year's Eve celebrations sort of blend together in my head until one when I was in college when I went out to dinner in San Francisco with a guy I had a huge crush on, and then met up with a group of his friends for one of the big hotel parties. I was pretty sure that was the best New Year's Eve ever.

After college, Brian and I were living together, and we invited friends over for New Year's Eve. We had a spaghetti dinner at our house, walked along West Cliff, then went down to First Night Santa Cruz to count down to midnight at the clock tower. In the morning, eating breakfast with Brian and our friends, I felt content, pretty sure it was the best New Year's eve ever.

In 2001, Brian and I decided to get married on New Year's Eve. We planned a small wedding at his parents' house, with just family and a few close friends. The ceremony began just after midnight. In the morning when I woke up beside him at a hotel in Marina del Rey, I knew I'd just had the best New Year's Eve ever.

When we told people our wedding plans, many warned us that we would never be able to celebrate our anniversary properly because of the New Year's celebrations. I informed them that our anniversary was actually going to be on January 1, so it wasn't really an issue. But for the most part we have spent New Year's Eve celebrating our anniversary. Neither one of us is a big partier, so we generally just fix a nice dinner at home and drink a bottle of champagne. Sometimes we don't even make it until midnight. Then, sometime in the days just after New Year's Eve, we go out to a fancy restaurant to celebrate again. It's exactly the way I enjoy spending New Year's Eve and my anniversary.

Today is my due date. The baby seems uninclined to make an appearance any time soon. I've done even less to plan out a nice dinner for tonight than usual. (We did go to Rasika last weekend to celebrate in advance, in case the baby did deign to grace us with her presence in a timely manner.) We don't have gifts to exchange--no wood, nor silverware, or anything else--because it didn't even really occur to us. The odds of me staying awake until midnight are slimmer than usual. All we care about is spending all the time we can together while we eagerly wait for our new family member.

I'm pretty sure this is going to be the best New Year's Eve ever. And an even better year lies ahead.

Grandma Ruth's birthday

When I wrote the date, I realized that today would be my Grandma Ruth's birthday. I'm glad I remembered, because it brought back such good memories of a wonderful grandma.

The way I always describe Grandma Ruth to people is to explain what happened the day after my birthday when I turned 9 or 10. I received a new scooter for my birthday that year. It was lavender and had hand brakes. I don't know if my parents gave it to me or if Grandma did. But I remember that after school on my birthday, Grandma Ruth came over for birthday dinner and we took turns riding my scooter up and down the sidewalk up front. But the real memory is from the next day, when someone at school asked if I had had a party for my birthday. I told them that we'd had dinner and cake and ice cream, and that Grandma Ruth and I had played on my new scooter. "Your grandma? Rode a scooter? Grandmas don't ride scooters," someone said. And I was baffled, because of course grandmas could ride scooters. What kind of boring grandmas did this person have?

Grandma Ruth was our main babysitter growing up. She played with us, read us stories, and tucked us into bed. More than once I got out of bed and went to tell her I had a bad dream or I was scared, even if I wasn't, because I knew that she would come into my bedroom and rub my back until I fell asleep.

She made apple pie with lots of cinnamon for Thanksgiving, and ham with scalloped potatoes for dinner on Christmas Eve. I have a memory of standing on a chair in her kitchen helping to make cookies.

She played golf and liked the color red. She collected giraffes--everything from stuffed toys to jewelry to prints to dish towels. When we were little, my brother and sister and I made a game of counting how many giraffes were in Grandma's house. The number was well into the hundreds. When I was in Buenos Aires last year, I bought a wooden carving of a giraffe, thinking of it as a gift for Grandma.

She worked at the police station in our town. Sometimes my mom would take us down to visit her there after school. She always had lemon drops on her desk. I can't eat a lemon drop without remembering her.

When I was in middle school and my mom went back to work, I spent the afternoons at Grandma's house doing homework and watching television until my mom could pick me up. Grandma was working (right down the street), so most days I didn't see her. Until she got sick and had to stop working. Then she would be there in the afternoons. We would have Reese's peanut butter cups and A&W root beer for a snack. I remember that we would sit and talk, but I don't remember any of our conversations.

I remember that she got sicker and sicker. That instead of being in the rocking chair or at the kitchen table, she would be in bed when I got there. That eventually we would go visit her, but I wasn't spending afternoons there. That the house was full of people--relatives, friends, hospice workers. That I took home a stuffed giraffe a few weeks before she died.

She died just after Valentine's Day in 1992.

I wish Brian could have met her. I wish I could see her holding my baby this winter.

Memory: August 22, 2003

It was a hot Friday, and the last day of my summer internship. I left the office at noon, saying goodbye to my boss, and walked from Dupont Circle up to Georgetown to do some errands on campus. I stopped in at my graduate program office to refill my water bottle and check my email. I mentioned to the guy at the computer next to me that I was planning on going to the ceremony at the Lincoln Memorial for the unveiling of the engraving that marked where Martin Luther King, Jr., had stood when he gave his I Have A Dream speech at the March on Washington, and he said he would come with me. There was to be a larger event on the Mall over the weekend, marking the 40^th anniversary of the march.

We walked across the Key Bridge to the Rosslyn metro station. There was something of a breeze as we crossed the Potomac, and I felt a little cooler than I had for most of the day. We went one stop to Foggy Bottom and then walked down 23^rd to the Mall.

There were chairs set up at the Memorial, but not very many people were around. Josh and I tried to figure if we were allowed to sit anywhere we wanted. It seemed strange that we were allowed to sit so close. We had both finished the water we had brought with us, and Josh went to buy more. I sat in my folding chair, feeling sweat trickle down the backs of my legs, while I watched a little boy and his dad as they studied the cardboard copy of the marker. The man was white, but the little boy had darker skin. He was full of energy, and seemed not to notice the heat.

I remembered a story told by a professor I had worked for at Santa Cruz. I was a teaching assistant in his course on the Civil Rights movement, and he told us about a friend of his who had been at the March on Washington. It had been horribly hot that day and his friend had left early—before King spoke. I had wondered at the time I heard the story how anyone could have left such an important event. Now, sitting in the sun on an August afternoon in Washington, I completely understood. Finally Josh came back with two bottles of water for each of us, and I held one against my forehead for a minute. I wanted to lift my hair off the back of my neck, but I was embarrassed to raise my arms and show the stains that I was sure were there.

By the time the ceremony started, I had already finished one of the bottles. There were speeches, most of which I don’t remember. I know John Lewis spoke, and Eleanor Holmes Norton.

Then they played part of the speech. I sat on at the Lincoln Memorial, looking up at icons of the Civil Rights movement, listening to Martin Luther King’s words booming over the loudspeaker. I cried. I wasn’t the only one.

When the ceremony ended, everyone climbed the steps to see the plaque. I am glad I was with Josh. He was more assertive than I was. I started to hang back a bit, but he said “Come on,” and I followed.

We walked up to the plaque and I stared down at it for minute, somehow able to tune out the jostling around me.

I HAVE A DREAM

MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

THE MARCH ON WASHINGTON

FOR JOBS AND FREEDOM

AUGUST 28, 1963

And I looked down over the Mall, trying to imagine being there when it was as crowded as I had seen it in black-and-white film footage we’d watched in class at Santa Cruz.

Suddenly, I was shaking hands with John Lewis and listening to Josh speak to him, although I don’t remember what he said. I turned and there was Coretta Scott King. She saw me looking at her, smiled at me, and reached out to shake my hand. A moment later, a photographer—from the AP or the Post, I think, was asking people to move around a bit. He took some pictures of the VIPs, and then one of the little boy I had been watching earlier. I leaned around people, trying to take some snapshots of my own.

Rituals

The last time I celebrated my mom's birthday with her, it didn't feel like much of a celebration. Five years ago, my dad, brother, sister, husband, and I crowded into her hospital room with a little cake we'd picked up at a bakery. We sang to her, and she managed a few bites of cake. She seemed better than she had over the past week when I'd spent hours sitting in her hospital room watching her sleep, talking to her, encouraging her to take a lap around the hall, but she was still obviously quite sick from the leukemia and the chemotherapy. Nevertheless, I was feeling less scared for her when Brian and I drove back up to our little house in Santa Cruz the next day.

She died three weeks later.

The next year would have been her 50th birthday. I spent time that day talking with my aunt about her. Every year since then, I have been aware of her birthday, but I haven't done anything to acknowledge it. Instead, when I've been in Southern California for Christmas, I have driven out to the hospital where we celebrated that last birthday, and walked through the Japanese garden where she liked to feed the koi when she was feeling well enough to go outside. I didn't make it out to the hospital this year, but in Northern California, my sister invited me to join her at Fort Point.

Every year on December 29, my sister has gone to the Golden Gate Bridge to wish our mother a happy birthday. This year I stood beside her at the base of the bridge, looking out at the water, the boats, the fog, remembering. The last birthday. The last visit in the hospital. The day we scattered her ashes from a boat, just inside the bridge. It was chilly and grey out, and those were the first memories to surface, matching the weather and my mood. I suppose it is part of my own ritual of remembering her each year to accept those memories, and then to remind myself of older memories, ones in which she is happy and healthy. Seeing her nurse my little brother. Getting into her bed at night when I was little and had a bad dream. Learning how to dip tortillas into enchilada sauce before filling them, and then rolling them just so.

I rested my forehead against my sister's back, and she dropped her head back to rest it on top of mine.

First date

Among the forgotten things I found in the back of my closet over the weekend was the journal I’d kept in college and just after. I glanced through it, distracting myself from all the chores of moving for half an hour or so. It is primarily a record of the depression I was struggling with and the guys I was dating. Some what I’d written amused me, some of it was embarrassing, and some entries just brought back fond memories.

The most interesting entry was about my first date with Brian. It wasn’t interesting for its own sake—more for the fact that it doesn’t match either Brian’s or my memory of that night. Both of us remember the date being somewhat awkward. I remember him not talking much during dinner. He remembers being nervous, not knowing what to say, and being afraid to look at me because I was wearing a sexy dress, and he was worried about being caught staring (which was really the whole point of the damn dress).

But the day after that date I didn’t write about any nervousness or awkwardness. I wrote about what a good time I had, how comfortable we’d been, how we talked and talked and talked forever over dinner. I can’t say with certainty which is the more accurate description of that evening. I’m inclined to think my memory is correct. Maybe it was just the euphoria of a new relationship that made me write what I did. At the time, that night was apparently absolutely perfect.

Moving

I am in the middle of moving. We’re literally moving just down the street, to another apartment in the same development. I’m excited about the new place—it’s much bigger, it has more “upgrades” than my current unit, and I will have my own washer and dryer, so I no longer will have to constantly bug the supermarket clerks for quarters.

Even though I am glad to be moving, I am not having fun this weekend. I hate the whole process of moving, even though the end result is usually pleasing. I hate having to put my entire life into boxes. I hate all the cleaning. I try to think of it in a more positive light. Even though I hate all the cleaning and sorting involved, it’s good to go through everything and purge things that aren’t necessary, random things I’ve been dragging around during various moves that I really don’t need.

I’ve thrown away a lot of stuff, including about 500 pages of photocopied journal articles I’d used for my senior thesis, and birthday cards in which the senders hadn’t written any notes, just signed their names. There are boxes of things that haven’t been touched since I moved into this apartment three years ago: a box of snapshots and cards and other small things from my wedding, and one of miscellaneous cords, many of which are probably from electronic equipment that’s been tossed.

Yesterday I found a large manila envelope that had slipped behind the shelves in my closet. It was a random collection of stuff:

• A yellow notepad, mostly used
• A copy of my senior thesis
• A photo Christmas card from my half-brother’s family, from several years back
• A photo of me and my friend Mark at Porter College—taken in July 1998 according to my note on the back
• A black-and-white photo that my friend Lynn took of me on the carousel at the Boardwalk in 2000
• A dollar bill
• Six pennies
• Print outs of classifieds from the Washington City Paper from my apartment search when I was first moving to Washington
• A copy of the first issue of the New Yorker to come out after September 11^th
• A hot pink Post-it note: “Call Jeff: B-day 7/22”*

I clearly haven’t looked at this envelope since I left Santa Cruz. Some of it I like—I saved the card, the photos, the magazine. But I’m unclear on how some of it ended up making the move, like the Post-it note (I moved in August, so I didn’t really need the note about Jeff’s birthday at that point) and the ads.

At any rate, the move is taking more time and energy that I’d planned. I’m trying to be philosophical, though, about the whole (miserable) process. Brian has entered some sort of organizational euphoria as he unpacks our kitchen stuff, trying to find a place for everything, repacking things we don’t really use (or that he thinks we don’t need to use) because I won’t actually let him throw away most of it. He repacks it all into carefully labeled boxes that will go up into the attic. I am trying to think of the process of moving in the same way: I will weed out what I don’t need, eliminate things that are no longer necessary, put aside what I am uncertain of, to deal with at some point in the future. I can see some benefits to having a philosophy of life that purges what is unused and organizes everything into carefully labeled boxes. I’m just not sure if it’s an appropriate philosophy for me, personally. And I still hate moving.

*That’s coming right up, isn’t it?. Happy birthday, Jeff!

Before and after

There was a line in Jon Carroll’s column recently that made me think. I liked the whole column, the metaphor of the trapeze artist and all that, but what caught my attention was when he said that his daughter needs to “understand how to feel the moment just before and the moment just after” the trapeze’s momentum changes.

Sometimes I try to record a moment in my mind—-usually when something good is happening. I focus on the moment, hoping I can commit it to memory to pull up again later. I’m not entirely sure it’s successful. There are moments burned into my memory as clearly as if they had been recorded on tape, and I’m sure there are other memories that I’ve tried to preserve that have been pushed aside.

But what about the moments just before and just after the times that I am trying to hold onto? When I pause to say to myself “I will remember this,” do I remember what happens just before then or just after? Maybe.

Our first winter in Washington, it snowed in January, after Brian and I returned from a visit with our families in California. We went down to the Mall, because I wanted to see the Vietnam Veterans Memorial covered in snow (the Korean War Veterans Memorial was actually even more striking that day). We had a snowball fight in Constitution Gardens. I remember that moment clearly, and I remember being out of breath and covered in snow, thinking “I need to remember today.” But what happened before and after? Those details aren’t clear.

But Carroll is talking about the change in momentum, and the times that surround that change. My life was not frozen for an instant at a momentous occasion that day on the Mall. What happens when the momentum in my life changes? When I tried to think of an instant when my life’s momentum changed, my mother’s illness and death about four years ago were the first things that came to mind.

I called my mom to ask her about a recipe one evening. I remember where I was sitting. I remember that the room didn’t have enough light. I remember the notebook on my lap, where I wrote down the instructions for the acorn squash. That was the moment before. And then she told me she was sick again. Her leukemia was back. I remember the sound of her voice, but not her words. I don’t remember afterwards. I must have hung up the phone and told Brian the news, but I don’t remember. Did we make squash with dinner that evening?

I remember when I first was told that she had died, only a few months later. I was still in bed at my in-laws’ house, before they were my in-laws. My father-in-law came in and told me that my mom had died. I remember that moment clearly, even though I had just woken up. But then I remembered the moments just before. The ringing of the phone woke me, and I knew what it meant. I curled up against Brian’s back and pretended to be asleep until Andy came in with the news. But just after? The moments just after are less clear. I remember eventually going downstairs and calling the hospital to talk to my dad. I reached the nurses’ station, and they found my aunt for me. I don’t remember what I said to her. I don’t remember if my dad came to the phone. I remember my hair being wet from the shower when we arrived at the hospital. And that is all. The rest of the day, up until my brother and sister arrived that night, just isn’t there.

Those memories of the moments just after are lost in the trauma of the event. With happier memories it is easier. I do remember the moment just before my wedding: I was standing in the entry way at Brian’s parents’ house, with my dad beside me, looking at our friends and family gathered in the living room, and thinking “Am I really going to do this?” And I remember the moment after, when we kissed and the music began. I remember that moment every time I hear that piece of music. And, truthfully, I don’t actually remember the actual moment—-the reading, the lighting of the unity candle, the vows-—all that well. There it is the moments before and after that are important: standing beside my dad, and then not wanting to let go of Brian.

With the happy memories and with the sad, I don’t think I was conscious of the moments before and the moments after, at least not in terms of their importance as being the moments before the pendulum swings. And I don’t know how I used those moments. Maybe these aren’t the kind of moments that Jon Carroll is talking about. But reading what he wrote, I understood that the moments just before and the moments just after are something to be conscious of. Perhaps in the future I will become conscious of how I can use those moments. Right now, concentrating on those moments, just for their own sake, is enough.

Early morning quiet

I’ve almost always been a morning person. It’s not that I always want to get up and do something, or even that I'm always in a great mood as soon as I wake up. The peace of that time of day simply appeals to me, whether it comes in the dark and cold of winter, or in the bright mornings of spring and summer, when the sunlight is a beautiful color that it doesn't have any other time of day.

When I was growing up, I liked to be up early, with the house mostly to myself, enjoying breakfast quietly with my dad, as he read the newspaper and worked the crossword. My mother took advantage of my early morning wakefulness early on: by the time I was in the later part of elementary school she had taught me how to make her coffee and put me in charge of packing lunches for myself and my siblings.

I tended to sleep in during the first couple years of college, but after that I started getting up early again, and those are some of the mornings I remember best. I enjoyed the quietness of the world at seven in the morning. The expansive campus seemed nearly empty, aside from deer, rabbits, and the occasional early morning cyclist or jogger. I suppose I could have had a similar sense of quiet and aloneness wandering through campus at night, but in the early mornings I was free of fears of mountain lions and bad guys. In the mornings, there was just cool air, clear sunlight, and damp grass. I would sit outside in the quad to read the paper without disturbing my roommate, or take walks through campus.

I still get up earlier than some people think is reasonable, even on the weekends. I like to have my alone time. For some reason, I enjoy the early morning quiet more than quiet time during the day when I am home alone. Sometimes I have my orange juice and read the paper or a book. Other times, I make the shopping list, pay bills, or mix up batter for pancakes. But no matter how I’m using that time, God help the husband who rises within an hour of me on a Sunday morning and interferes with my peace and quiet.

Yesterday morning when I woke up early and couldn’t get back to sleep, I figured I might as well go to work. The days are getting longer, so when I left the house around 6:30 it was already light. The bus was crowded and when we got to the Pentagon, there were plenty of people already waiting to go through security at the entrance to the building. It wasn’t until I came out of the Metro at Foggy Bottom that things felt different. The hot dog cart wasn’t there yet, nor was any other vendor. The Post Express man wasn’t there calling out good morning to everyone as he handed out papers. Only the Washington Examiner man was there with his free papers, and he didn’t say anything. I wasn’t caught up in a press of people heading toward their offices or the next bus. Washington Circle wasn’t its usual mess of honking cars. I didn’t have to wait for a long traffic signal or dodge cars as I crossed Pennsylvania Avenue against the light on the way to the bus. In the middle of Washington, I had the same sense of solitude and quiet that I used to have on a path in the center of the Santa Cruz campus, watching a doe near the library, or sitting on a slope near the music center, looking out over the town and the bay.

It’s not that I want to be alone in the world. I remember being absolutely terrified by a book I read in middle school, probably something by Christopher Pike, in which the characters woke up and found that everyone else in the world had disappeared—I don’t remember how or why or what happened after that (although that was probably scary, too), just that these characters were alone. The idea still scares me. But somehow I enjoy being awake while the rest of the world sleeps, and feeling everything else come slowly to life around me.

Postcard from another time

I leave things in books—letters from friends, notes I write to myself, “important” pieces of paper that I don’t want to get wrinkled in my backpack. Sometimes I mean to keep things in a book for awhile; sometimes I mean only for the storage to be temporary. I am a re-reader, enjoying the familiarity of books I have read before and the pleasure of discovering new things in stories that I know by heart, so I always find whatever I had left for myself. And I am usually careful to thumb through the pages of a book before I lend it to someone or trade it in at a used bookstore.

Last night it was still light out when I came home from work. It was one of the first spring-like days we’ve had. I had walked the two miles between the Metro and work, and spent an hour outside with coworkers at lunch, wanting to spend as much time in the fresh air as possible. I’m glad I did, since, in early March, such weather is unlikely to last—and today it is snowy and cold. But last night at six, it was still 60 degrees, with the clear blue sky deepening into lavender, so I fixed myself a small snack, picked up a book of e. e. cummings’ poetry from the shelf in my living room, and went out onto my front step to read.

The book opened to where a postcard was stuck between the pages. I turned it over, knowing what it was, but surprised to see it. It was from a young man I’d been completely infatuated with when I was about 19 or 20. I read over the card—the writing covered almost all of it, with space left only for the stamp and my address. The date of the postmark was illegible. I looked at the poem on that page. The same young man, on a different card, had copied down the first stanza of that poem.

Had I really not opened the book in six or seven years? I supposed that was possible, since it was Selected Poems, and most of the poems in it are in other books on my shelf. I don’t remember finding the card there before. I wondered if I had put the card in between those pages intentionally, taking the book off the shelf and finding the right place. Maybe I’d had the book with me when I picked up the card in the mail room, and after reading the card, had just tucked it inside, but that seems unlikely. Interesting that it was this card I had placed in the book and not the one with the lines of poetry on it.

But maybe the card had been some place else only a couple years ago—tucked into a journal or another book, perhaps. Maybe I had found it, wherever it was, and slipped it in between the pages of the book. I could have done just that when I was packing for my cross-country move, intending to put it with other cards and letters when I unpacked. I concentrated, trying to remember, but the memory wouldn’t come to me.

Without rereading the poem, I put the postcard back in the book, between those same pages, and turned to another section to read. The next poem I found seemed fitting for the warm day:

in time of daffodils(who know
the goal of living is to grow)
forgetting why,remember how

in time of lilacs who proclaim
the aim of waking is to dream,
remember so(forgetting seem)

in time of roses(who amaze
our now and here with paradise)
forgetting if,remember yes

in time of all sweet things beyond
whatever mind may comprehend,
remember seek(forgetting find)

and in a mystery to be
(when time from time shall set us free)
forgetting me,remember me