here i am

the other morning, when you called me with your news i was opening almond butter and spilled the oil all over my kitchen rug this morning as i was spreading my toast, i looked at the bottle and noticed that it will expire in february by the time my almond butter (by then likely to be long eaten up) no longer serves little fingers and toes and nights and tears and joy tuck in and grace your bedroom you'll go from the girl in glasses and mens shirts and belts i met in class the sexy smart woman my friend my confidant the intended the beautiful bride to being the mama of someone like i am this tender earthshatteringly lifechangingly awestriking journey that neither of us thought we'd ever be on i want to offer you every wisdom i've come upon so far but all i can think to tell you is to rest quietly and drink slowly every single heartachingly beautiful, tough, tender drop of the biggest love you'll ever live

she's 11 weeks old today. more smiles as big as her face, more chit chat, especially in the morning. she does this great thing where she pumps one leg up and down and up and down when she's excited. she's bursting with amusement. i am feeling a little sad because i don't think i'm enjoying it as much as i could, because i've hit a wall with sleep deprivation. the other night i took someone's advice - nursed her, pumped a bottle, and let her have a sleep over with papa on the living room floor so i could get eight rich, delicious hours of uninterrupted sleep. i felt human again. i need to do it more often. even though she missed me a little the next day, even though she was a bit clingy. even though co-sleeping is best for us, i do sleep more deeply alone. not as hyper-vigilant. that sort of one-eye-open sleep is not restful. so it's a trade-off. because i'm a better mom when i'm rested. plus, dad's pretty fun too! so ... more res...

i place my finger in the spot where the beginning of her chin joins the bottom of the bloom that is her lower lip. there's a space in time where my heart comes to rest when i do that ... it feels so holy, so sacred, that small peaceful hollow. m

thank you murph - i'd been meaning and meaning and meaning to get here. 'will write more soon' is fast becoming my mantra, deeply as i am immersed in the work of nurturing a little one. she was born a little over eight weeks ago (three weeks early), peacefully at home. things got started with a leaky bag of waters and two days of mild early labor contractions. after a heavy duty acupuncture treatment, active labor went so quickly that it was over almost before we realized it had started! the midwives arrived when i was at transition, and once they finally convinced me to lay down so they could check my dilation, i was complete and she was born two glorious pushes later. and she's a miracle and a marvel and i'm a little less exhausted today than i was the first few weeks, but only a little. but i never ever thought i could be this in love. i never thought smelling someone's head over and over again would be the supreme height of happiness. but it is. from ...

ugh. so it's taken me this long to get back for a few different reasons ... one, i just wasn't in the writing mood. two, i was having trouble logging into my account for some braindead reason, and just now had enough desire to persevere and figure it out! so, sorry for the long delay. but now i have to go fold laundry and so i will just say that i am well, baby is well (we've got a little over two months to go before we meet) and life is life. more soon. promise! m

last night, i found out that i'm pregnant. as it was unexpected (but not unwelcome), there is a wonderfully complex swirling of emotions and thoughts inhabiting me today. before i found out, when i was still just wondering, worrying ... there was an anxiety inside of me ... and now that i know, it's still sort of there, but less so. it's turned into a sort of wonderment. there's nothing to fear; everything just has to work out now. i'd been inching ever closer to feeling that i wanted children - from the 'no way, not me' of once upon a time, to the 'well maybe someday' of a few years ago, to the 'yes, i'm pretty sure i do, but not now' ... to 'yes, i do, soon' to ... well, today. sometimes life chooses you. things are definitely not perfect. i'd like to be richer. i'd like to have insurance. i'd like to own a home, or at least a shot in hell at doing so. i'd like not to have just started a new job and hav...

the people across the street are moving out today, and so am i. i've spent the past month whittling down my accumulated possessions to the point where i can zip across the country with everything i need in my car. they have their suv crammed full and a semi parked in front of my house. i don't think i'll ever be a grown up. i'm going to be 32 in a couple months and i still don't have an urge to own a dining room table (what symbolized to my once younger self one's having arrived at 'grown-up-ness') or a house (what i now realize i should want if i really want to live like an adult). when i was in college, i vowed never to own or accumulate or become attached to more stuff than i could move in my car. then i got married and filled a house full of stuff. then i got divorced and got rid of half of it. now, after a garage sale and some craigslisting and good-willing and painful sorting-tossing, i'm back to a carload. and it still feels right to ...

i was watching some of the director's commentary on the dvd of laberinto del fauno the other night (after watching the movie for the 3rd time), and guillermo del toro was talking about the idea that children are ambassadors from another culture (and have perfect personalities until we screw them up, essentially) and we can learn so much from them. how different our world would be if everyone thought and acted so. i know this, but it's easy to forget when we get dragged down by the day-to-day of things. i'd like to become more mindful of this in my teaching practice. it's easy to forget how marvelous they really are and turn things into a power struggle as we so often do with things in life when we feel we must control them rather than cede to their being-ness. one of my favorite quotes is by jung - 'where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. the one is the shadow of the other.' he was talking about oth...

i'm lost. totally, completely lost. lost. m

there was a time in my life when it would have been impossible (laughable, really) to imagine myself smiling and listening to ronnie milsap as i clean the kitchen and cook a pot of beans. yet here i am! m

so i'm moving. far away. to start a new life. to another country. to another continent. in a few months i'm leaving all of this and all our past behind. and since i told you this, and maybe even before, you've been keeping a studied distance between us, and understandably so. i don't expect anything different. i know there are things we still haven't talked about. things you feel, i feel, that we just don't get to. i gave you that distance and accepted the fact that our friendship has changed. it has no other choice. it feels strange, lost, hurts - all that stuff that i have no right to but nevertheless just is ... to be so far away from someone to whom i've been so close for most of my life. but you are still struggling with what if and where did i fail and how did it all go so wrong and what's he got that i couldn't give you ... and on and on ... and so it makes sense for you to not be able to be chummy and go out for pie and a chat li...

i'm impressed all over again by more evidence that often times the only way to learn something is by doing it. i always approach my teaching practice this way, because it's so clear that this is the way very young children learn best - always showing, doing, exploring, experiencing. but i forget this is also the way i learn. i was having trouble with tango. i had various problems, but they could all be tied to my inability to let go and be present - be in my center and from there be ready for anything, but also not anticipating anything, or deluding myself into thinking i knew what was coming next. i was stiff, heavy on my feet, off balance, difficult to lead - in short, a disaster. i was talking to a good friend and sometime tango partner about it, and he reminded me that it's about trust. i hate ceding control; i have a deeply ingrained inability to trust another person to guide my steps. all of my control freak tendencies stared me squarely in the face and i had t...

i haven't written much here about being in love, because after such a tumultuous experience in the world of post-divorce dating, i didn't want to jinx this. but somebody has to say something about the elephant. it's killing me. it's hard to believe being in love once you've been in love once and it's failed. it makes you mistrust your own instincts and perception. what does it mean to have thought you had the right thing, and have it turn out not to have been? it haunts every next right thing you may ever have and warns you away from trusting it. or at least from talking about it - declaring it to be true. so this is my disclaimer ... m

i have a sinus infection. i have the sneaking suspicion that i've had it for a while, but i tried to deny it. i have been sick off and on and off and on and quite miserable. they run in my family; my dad suffered them for years before his body miraculously developed some sort of immunity to them. i've been plagued with them more often than is pleasant for a while now, too. i hate allopathic medicine and doctors and most all of what they stand for and perpetuate, but i finally had to break down (after diligent use of my neti pot, all manner of vitamins, herbs, holistic and homeopathic treatments, and torturing everyone around me with twice daily consumption of raw garlic), admit that my body wasn't going to take care of itself this time, and go get an antibiotic. since i'm allergic to penicillin, i normally end up being prescribed strange and frightening synthetic antibiotics. no exception this time. mysterious, mutant, resistant strains of sinus infections requ...

today was a sunday. sundays are sundays. i didn't get anything done. i rested and watched some soccer and talked on the phone and ate some fruit. i always have big plans for sunday. somehow i never accomplish any of the things i plan to do on sunday. and then i feel sort of guilty and lazy. somehow they seemed like all the good plans to change my life and my person for the better, and not having done any of it means i've somehow failed and i'm doomed to mediocrity. that's the strangeness of sunday. if it's cloudy, it all seems more momentous than it really is. m

call your boyfriend on the phone to ask him to help you double check your ingredients list, and have a 20 minute discussion of just what the hell a broad bean is and what might be its closest english translation. (decide, without telling him, that you'll just get frozen lima beans and hope they're close enough). go to the co-op and get way more organic arborio rice than you need, and don't look at the price per pound. try to play off your 'holy crap!' eyes when you see the total ring up at the till. go to the regular grocery store where all of the veggies are not organic and therefore don't cost a million dollars, but spend a million dollars anyway buying what you think will be enough veggies for two paellas, since you are teaching a girlfriend to make it on saturday and want to do a practice run. get way more veggies than you actually need, even for two paellas. so many veggies that the bleached blonde teenaged asian checker with dangly, sparkly earrings ask...

eres tanto eres mas de lo que puedo decir te quiero gigante como nubes grandes flotando por un cielo azul un día soleado como café con un panecillo con queso de nata un domingo como límonada te quiero como feliz te quiero como playas y sonrisas y todas las buenas cálidas cosas del mundo te quiero como el abrazo más grande que se puede imaginar

tall trees wide streets my bed thrift stores cricketsounds slow driving stop lights (vs. traffic circles) the oldies station my brother my friends big kitchens my pantry morning edition my plants the salseros the tangueros no dust roll up blinds my bed cool shady expanses wide open prairie dorky midwestern friendliness my students the sound of my keyboard non-detachable shower heads staring out my kitchen window while doing the dishes big tubs of plain yogurt my co-op driving my car linoleum olvi the fish

fig yogurt movie theatre popcorn in old school cartons hanging laundry on the balcony grilled sepia in ajo y perejil the mamas and the bebes hanging out in plazas and parks dads leaning in to tell you a story with hands and shoulders fully engaged the cedar trees moving in the wind of the courtyard long meandering walks just for walking's sake big loud happy family dinners round happy pictogram highway signs scooters cool old white, yellow, or navy blue 600s little old men with black hats and canes cotton ball clouds the architecture the sea drying off in the sun on the beach after getting dizzy from water in my ear after doing a somersault in the sea tortillas de berenjena walking to the store good cotton sheets public spaces public art terraces of cafe bars tiled surfaces churros con chocolate staying up late waking up late dust short trees fresh fish at good prices good gazpacho good bread the corner fruit stand my baby

i've been challenged by kind murph to break my silence. i have just been sort of uninspired to write lately. more busy living than thinking. i think. sometimes when i experience incredible things, i like to try to keep them inside of me for a while rather than spilling them out into the wide world. it seems like somehow trying to put words to them cheapens them. like there aren't enough words, or the words or the experiences don't fit. and i don't want to try to make them fit only to see how miserably i've failed. i feel like then i have somehow betrayed the experiences by leaving them behind, the words left there to represent them sort of hollow and dusty and inadequate. or maybe all of this is just an excuse not to try harder. it probably is. i need to do the write something every day again challenge. hmn ... thanks murph. i'll be back again soon. m