Prettying up the Poop

When J and I were preparing to get married a few years ago, I spent an ungodly amount of time and energy thinking about the way that everything looked. I committed that common sin of thinking about the wedding instead of preparing for the marriage. Fortunately, it turned out mostly fine on the marriage front. I mean, I have every day to think about that. I probably spend too much time thinking about that. In any case, I spent all this time—as people in my cohort tend to do—thinking about table settings and escort-cards. I believed that if I chose the perfectly representative escort-cards, they would signify “Anneness” so much so that I’d hardly have to be physically present. I remember earnestly wanting to strike this balance between outdoor ease, casual refinement, and crafty, DIY elegance. You can imagine why I spent the week of the wedding popping Xanax and why J and I still have never looked at all our wedding photos. My aesthetic desires collided with pressures of time, budget, practicality, and reason. But at the time it felt so important...

And so as I approach all of the preparations for the birth of our first baby, I’m trying to force myself to remember this lesson: that there needs to be some sort balance between aesthetic desire and pragmatic need. But it’s more complicated than that. At this point I’ve spent far, far more time thinking about the baby—reading about the baby, journaling about the baby, talking to the baby—than I have spent thinking about the way child preparation and childrearing appear. Maybe I’m maturing...

But still, I backslide. Take, for example, my project of the last couple evenings: sewing cloth diaper wipes. [I suppose I should preface this whole discussion by noting that we plan to cloth diaper the wee one. If you’re grossed out by the idea of poop in our washing machine, best to skip to the next paragraph]. I decided that if we were going to devote time to cloth diapering, we might as well cloth wipe as well. So I went to the fabric store on Monday and bought a few yards of cheap flannel, cut it up, and began stitching around the perimeter of each wipe to prevent fraying in the wash. This was supposed to be a grossly utilitarian product. These wipes will become, of course, poop-stained before too long. And yet...well, I couldn’t just leave it at that. So I found myself changing the thread and bobbin every few wipes. I told myself that I was doing this to stave off the boredom of sewing squares of fabric, but as my pile began to resemble a rainbow, I knew I had deceived myself. This was intentional. I knew what I was doing. I wanted my damned diaper wipes to look just right. How nuts is that?

And then there was the matter of the crib bumper. Bumpers are no longer, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics in 2011, recommended. They have been potentially, loosely linked to SIDS and suffocation. I found this out in the middle of my bumper-sewing weekend a couple months ago. Any reasonable, sane person would have received this news with glee and thought to herself, “great, one thing off my list.” But not I. Instead, I almost mourned the news and then decided that as I was nearly finished with them, I might as well complete the job. I used the same logic when I put them in the crib last week: I might as well see what they look like. Frankly, I’m worried what this logic might turn into: I might as well see what they look like during the day and remove them each night for sleeping. [I have to admit, by the way, that I’m a little confused about the suffocation threat for a baby who cannot even roll over, but why go there?]. In any case, here again aesthetic desire trumped practicality...and maybe even medical science.

There’s also the list of 22 more things that I want to make or finish before he arrives. Instead of getting shorter, the list keeps growing and growing. Sometimes I think about just breaking down and buying some of the things instead of running a continuous one-woman-sweat-shop in my off-hours. But somehow each time I search etsy or amazon, I get this queasy sensation in my stomach and feel like I’m doing wrong by my child, that lump of flesh and bones who will, in all likelihood, never notice my efforts, at least not for half a dozen years. And so I’m left to reason that I’m doing all of this inane stuff not for the baby, but for myself, in order to continue to tell myself a particular story about myself, one that is just now translated into the setting of childrearing. It’s the wedding all over again.

But that explanation feels somehow insufficient. I think it feels so because on some core level, I believe in the therapeutic benefits of carefully constructed environs. Our home, of course, is truly modest. Our decor is, to say the least, humble. Our rooms are not the spaces of design magazines or interior blogs. I often look at them and fantasize about what I would do with $5000 or even $500. As simple as they are, though, they convey a certain feeling of comfort to me each evening when I get home and each morning when I wake up. I see their flaws, of course, but I also take pleasure in their small triumphs. This is, I know, one of the most elementary facts of homemaking. I’m not breaking any new ground here. But nonetheless, this simple lesson feels urgent in the context of child preparation. I neither want to abandon the commitment I’ve made to my own aesthetic environment nor do I want my child to inhabit a space that feels wrong or haphazard.

I don’t kid myself that what’s happening here is anything but a kind of bourgeois rejection of the accoutrements of mainstream child-rearing in favor of a different, but no less culturally-constructed, aesthetic.** I don’t want plastic in my house. I don’t want battery-operated flashing lights in my living room. I don’t wants chemicals and crap littering my spaces. I don’t want that stuff because somehow it feels like a violation of the environment that I’ve spent so much time cultivating. It may be wasted time, but it’s time nonetheless. The question is why don't I balk at wooden dollhouses, felted balls, rough-hewn play kitchens, homemade mobiles.

Everyone seems to suggest that once the baby arrives, I’ll no longer have the luxury of having these boxing matches in my brain. That may be so. But it doesn’t seem totally wrong to try to establish some sort of organizing principle for myself in terms of the aesthetics of child rearing here in the middle of Kentucky. Any advice?

**This starts to get at a much larger question/problem that’s been kicking around in my head for the last half dozen years about embedded class and cultural implications and assumptions of aestheticized childrearing on mommy blogs. A problem that I’ll surely inhabit in coming months and years...

Together

For the first time in fourteen or fifteen years of teaching, I’m doing it with someone else. That someone else also shares my house, my dog, and the baby currently crowding out my internal organs. J and I have talked for a few years about wanting to teach together, but this semester, we’ve finally taken the plunge, and I wanted to be sure to leave a record for myself about how this has worked and what it feels like on most days.

We’re teaching a class on the Civil War and the American imagination. It looks a lot like a course I would teach without J and it also looks a lot like a course he would teach without me. We’re reading novels, poems, autobiographies, and other primary sources. We’re also looking at movies, engravings, and photographs.

So far we’ve met four times as a class, twice to talk about Uncle Tom’s Cabin and twice to talk about Tony Horwitz’s Confederates in the Attic. The class is lively; all of the 23 students have been vocal and they actually talk to one another, instead of just to us. We’ve already contended with the rebel flag, “southern pride,” Uncle Tom, hardcore reenactors, and the general seepage of white supremacy in the South. We’re not moving in chronological order, which has J crawling out of his skin, but me feeling liberated from historiographical norms.

In just four classes, I’ve already had a chance to observe just how gendered our individual styles can be. After the first class, J observed that I seem to be “obsessed” with conveying my own authority. Damn straight. He also observed that I needed larger clothes to cloak my whale-like form from our students. Recovering from the punch to his midsection, he conceded that he has male privileges in the classroom. He doesn’t have to think about how his body is on display nor does he have to convey authority in order to forestall critiques of female intellectual incompetence.

It was during our meeting on Tuesday when I watched—during a particularly heated conversation about racial violence—as he knitted his brow and repeated, “I don’t know. I don’t know. I just don’t know what to say about that.” He then dramatically fell back into his seat, whipped off his glasses, rubbed his eyes, and loudly whispered (his choice mode of sounding smart and urgent), “I just don’t know how to respond to that.” It was, of course, all for effect. He did know how to respond, but he could recur to this rhetorical ploy because he is not liable to be considered an airhead or insufficiently mature. If I were to try it, I can only imagine the titters of students, “Does she know anything?” He can exercise a full range of approaches: the fool, the doubter, the dunce, the devil’s advocate. I, on the other hand, do indeed feel the need—but perhaps not the obsession—to convey authority.

I’ve also noticed that male students pose questions directly to Josh, but that’s an issue for another day....

Holiday Scenes 2012

We’re back in Kentucky and have begun another semester of teaching and writing. Our holiday travels were long and refreshing; we drove to Michigan and then flew to California for J’s Dad’s 70th birthday celebration. Homer enjoyed two uninterrupted weeks of pleasure with his pal Lucy in Traverse City. I flirted with various unfinished projects and finally put the final stitches in a pair of felt elephants (doesn’t every child need felt elephants on the bookshelf?) and a hooded sweater for a friend’s boy born Monday morning. We walked the beach and stared at the unending Pacific. J and Homer traipsed through the northern snow and we decorated cookies late one night in December. Now we’re settling in for ten more weeks until the little man makes his appearance.

The making, take 1

For the better part of a decade, I’ve cast on cardigans and cables for the babies of friends and family. In the process—whether sitting on an overcrowded Delta flight to LAX or in a  stuffy jury room in Center City, Philadelphia—I’ve tried to imagine the little creature for whom I’m crafting. Usually this means imagining a miniature version of my friend or my cousin, and inevitably, when I meet the child, I’m struck by just how wrong my image was. The child is some other version entirely, a creature all her own.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Bronson Alcott lately (father of Louisa) and his contention that “the child is the book.” Channeling European romantics, Alcott believed that every child arrives already endowed with the essence of her being. The truth of her soul is always already there. The parent, then, becomes a guide for the child’s process of revelation, revelation to the parent and to the world of that soul, of that “book.”

I’ve been thinking about Alcott as I scour the local used bookstore for children’s classics, like Mog, the Forgetful Cat (what a gem!). I’ve been imagining J, and Homer, and the baby snuggled together on the teal couches, reading Mog again and again. I’ve also been thinking about Alcott as I keep my needles in constant action. I shouldn’t admit this, but I’ve been simultaneously knitting and reading term papers.

There are many projects to catalog here, but I'll start with just one for today.

This little number is the puerperium cardigan. It's a free pattern on ravelry. A friend in my knitting group who is expecting a boy in January tried it first and I thought hers rather ingenious. So I pulled out a lovely, variegated skein that I bought this fall in Vermont (my treat to self after just through a talk). It's smooth and tiny, just right for a late March baby.

But I mention Bronson Alcott and puerperium cardigans in the same post because knitting for my own child feels a strange mix of wanting to impose a certain aesthetic from the start (I do romanticize the age of homespun) but also being weary of imposing too much. I suspect that this will be my biggest challenge as a parent: wanting to heed Alcott's advice but being a bit too anxious to always let that soul emerge organically.

Rebirth

It’s been a long time. I won’t make excuses. I’ve turned to other places, other venues to exorcise my angst and my creative energies this semester. But I still feel drawn to writing here, if only in fits and starts. My most recent hesitation arises from an inevitability. This blog, one that was born shadowing my solo life in Philadelphia and then gained only a tentative hold on my married life in Kentucky, is soon to morph into a story of another sort.

This one. I know some will mourn the transition of this space into yet-another-mediocre-oversharing-mommy-blog, but I figure there are so few still left reading, that I can simply reinvent this modest space without too much resistance. I've long been intellectually interested in mommy blogs and what better way to explore their strangeness than participating in the genre? At the very least, I figure this little person (who appears to be a perfect mini replica of J) might well give me back some motivation to scribble here.

Having single-handedly kept the Amazon.com child-rearing and natural birthing sections in the black for the last couple months, I’m confident that I’ll have absolutely nothing new to add to the conversation. But I do need an outlet for knitting projects and children's literature ramblings. And our stumbling through parenthood this spring may prove amusing, if nothing else. Take, for instance, our visit last month to the doctor. Seated in a back waiting room, J and I looked up to find this watching over us:

This was the punchline after a long, tiring week of navigating the Kentucky maternal healthcare system. Ultimately, everything turned out just fine and we expect a chromosomally-appropriate baby in March. But twice in one week we were told to “have faith” and to “trust God,” at the doctor's office. The Lord walked precariously close to each of these conversations as well. When we asked routine questions about the health of our baby, we received cryptic messages about the beauty and the magic of the limits of human knowledge. When I tried to press the case, I experienced bald sexism that would have seemed a parody had I not been its object. I've spent the last few weeks fantasizing about surreptitiously adding neon label to my medical file. It would read: “Feminist, agnostic patient married to a Jew. Resist the urge to frame diagnoses with any of the following: God, Jesus, magic, salvation, mystery, faith, or Walmart.”

Ah Kentucky, ah reproduction.

A year of Homer

When J and I were out walking this afternoon, I asked him if he thought that we constantly raved about Homer because he was objectively great or if we were just hopelessly, slavishly in love with our first shared dependent. Had we become those parents who are blinded to their children’s deficits? Had we lost all reason in the face of our beloved?

J said that he thought Homer was an archetypal cute dog. He leveled the evidence of random passersby who tell us how beautiful our little mutt is. He didn’t, though, start out this way. When he came into our lives one year ago—after a fortuitous rescue on the side of a road—he was bald with mange and bug bites. He was malnourished and probably dehydrated. He may have been left behind by a pack of wild dogs. He may have been turned outside by owners once they knew he was sick (this is common practice in Kentucky). Even though friends called him the ugliest puppy ever, we instantly fell for this mangy mutt.

His hair began to grow back as soon as he was treated for mange (it wasn't the contagious kind, but rather, the kind that all puppies inherit from their mothers, but that most with healthy immune systems can keep in check). The disease came back in December and so he recently completed another three-month course of medicine.

Homer's most primal love is the water. He swims every day at the creek during our runs. He also loves, loves, loves the bath. I think that we first discovered this in November. Once it gets cold, I love taking a bath each night. As it turns out, so does Homer. He first casually sauntered over and licked the water during that inaugural bath. Then he backed up, galloped, and flung himself into the warm tub with me. Now it's a real chore to keep him out of the bath (sometimes a lady likes bathing alone!).

Homie began life by sleeping in a crate. He then graduated to the blue couch (now known as Homer's couch), and then about a month ago—and without prompting—he decided that he'd prefer to sleep on the tempur-pedic with us. He mostly likes curling up between us or at my feet. We momentarily talked about breaking this habit, but really, who can resist this guy?

The best part about Homer is that he's so loving. After spending more than a decade with an aloof (albeit marvelously devoted) hound, I'm really enjoying sharing my life with a pup who just wants to be cuddled and kissed. And cuddled and kissed some more.

We're looking forward to many, many more years with this guy. Happy 1st anniversary with "your people" Homer!

USPS love

This summer has been all about small improvements around the house. I love having the time to check things off my list and I should have gotten to this one much sooner. When we moved in, we had this rusting beauty right out front: 

It stayed just like that for an entire year. I had planned to replace both the mailbox and the post. But the box itself was completely rusted to the post and the post is absurdly secured in cement. I thought about simply cutting the post off at the ground, but decided to just see what I could do with a little spray paint. The stakes and my expectations were low.

What an improvement three cans of spray paint and some new numbers (from here) made! I'm loving the clean, modern numbers and I like to think of this as my little aesthetic gift to my postal carrier who is surely assaulted each day by horrible fonts. The post still leans back a bit, but we're living with it for at least another year. Three cheers for the miracle of spray paint!

After a lovely, much-needed visit to college pals in Omaha last week (what a fabulous place to live!), I returned yesterday to host a surprise baby “sprinkle.” It certainly wasn’t a shower: no edible turds, no due date games, nary a word about bottles or diapers or strollers. Instead, it was just the women I’ve come to know through our weekly stitching group gathered for a quiet celebration of a friend’s upcoming delivery.

I’ve wanted to write about my stitching group all year. I’ve thought about surreptitiously photographing the gang, but subtlety is not my strong suit and I suspect this gang might shy away from the camera. Mostly, I’ve wanted to photograph all of the fabulous things that get made each week and each month over the course of the year. For this occasion, I invited each of us to make a little something for our expectant member. I wish I had taken pictures of all of the fabulous treats she received: reversible pants with beautiful hand-dyed indigo, felted teething rings with a lovely wooden handle, a plant-dyed (in about nine shades!) soft toy that was stunning, and a little striped cardigan that I whipped up from my stash.

I clumsily (again, subtlety not my thing) got our guest of honor to reveal her favorite kind of cake a couple weeks ago. She was unhesitating: flourless chocolate cake and anything lavender. I had no experience with either, but I snipped a few lavender sprigs from another member's garden and infused the cream before chilling it. After reading countless flourless cake recipes, I went with a smittenkitchen recommendation of this one. Everyone raved about it, so unless they were lying, it will be my recipe of choice from here on out. It's really a small miracle that cake. And of course, I needed some babies for it:

J and I woke up a bit early and made three grainy, hearty salads. I should post the recipes, but save for one from my bible (Supernatural Everyday), everything else was from J's head. We did a chickpea, carrot, radish one on local greens, a not so potato potato salad, and a quinoa and lots of fresh herbs salad. Another member made a loaf of fresh bread and brought lemonade. It was a tasty spread for a surprise Memorial Day-not-so-baby-baby-sprinkle (and I had an excuse to use my beloved cake plate!).

In bloom May

I've been wanting to record our early summer blooms, especially because this is the first real year of my garden and I want to keep track of what works and what doesn't. Foxglove, planted in the fall, seem happy in Kentucky and I was feeling particularly proud of these guys (I have three) until I went on the garden tour and realized that my foxglove are the wimpiest in town. I'm hoping, though, that they magically multiply before next spring. They started to bloom in late April and are just about done now.

We inherited both of these with the house. The modest top guy is bronze fennel (surrounded by some unknown variegated ground cover). My friend Katie gave me more of the fennel, so I'm not sure which is hers and which was here to begin with. It smells wonderful and I can imagine that if disentangled from its captors, it could be quite beautiful on its own. The day lilies were everywhere when we moved in, front and back. I dug up half a dozen huge clusters in the front and gave them to a friend in March. In retrospect, I probably should have transplanted them to the back. But I was feeling generous and she was in need. J and I agree that day lilies look terrific for about a week once a year and like spindly crap the rest of the time. The back is largely neglected and so these have gotten a stay of execution for at least another year. 

Last fall Molly and I transplanted two or three enormous grasses from the side yard to the back (photo to come). We broke the two clumps into six and they're thriving, but last weekend I added this purple veronica between them (because they were 50% off at Lowe's and added some much-needed cheer to the grass). I'm worried that they won't get enough sun back there, but we'll see.

There are also two big pots in the back that my Mom and I put together when she was here in April. Unfortunately, I can't remember any of the names of these annuals, save for the racist "china town" (the two red spikes in the back). We bought all of the annuals from an Amish family in Crab Orchard, Kentucky. And I may or may not have gotten us lost trying to get there... 

I've spent most of my time thinking about the narrow front beds. They're about two and a half feet wide and totally flat. It's hard to get many floral conversations happening in such a narrow space, especially if you incline toward the overgrown cottage look. This year I'm just trying out things, knowing that I'll move a lot at the end of the season. I have two varieties of bell flowers (middle photo), one purple and one very, very light lavender, a few nasturtium from the college plant sale, and deep pink yarrow. I also have a yellow and white section with daisies, tansy, feverfew, and tickseed, but those aren't yet in bloom.

Mom and I also bought (thanks Mom!) two knock-out roses. These bloom and bloom and bloom. They may lack the character of older, more fragrant varieties, but I'm sold on their ability to produce constantly. In between the roses are two squat butterfly bushes that are also in bloom but which I don't have a good photo.

There are also a bunch of random orphans that I've thrown in willy-nilly. I love yellow yarrow and I wanted to pair it with the daisies, but I couldn't fit them together. Instead, I found this shorter orange zinnia at the farmer's market. I like the grouping, but it doesn't work as well with my neighboring pink roses. So the yarrow may move after the season is up.

There's a nice little cluster under the mailbox: cat mint, rosemary, butter and eggs (photo to come), and a bit of gooseneck lysimachia.