Bigger, Fatter, NOT Better

It pains me to note that the Fisher Price Little People I played with as a child were a lot sexier than the ones my daughter plays with now. It seems that Fisher Price is currently crafting their toys to reflect a more realistic America: multi-cultural and fatter than ever. Fisher Price fashions the new Little People out of plastic instead of wood, and they have them wearing hideous outfits and carrying things like cell phones and backpacks.

Here are the Little People I played with:





Just look at the 1960's mama's figure: currrvey.

And the new ones that my daughter plays with:






I almost spent $144 on a huge lot of vintage Little People, including the house, the school, the barn and the garage, but then I stopped myself because what if my daughter LIKES the new ones?

My walk down memory lane on Ebay rustled up this baby: The Kenner Tree House, featuring the Tree Tots. Mem-OH-ries! I'd love to get one of these, but they're fetching the big bucks.

It's Not Cable, It's Network TV

Tonight David and I watched the last hour of Prime Suspect: the Last Witness. We missed the first hour because we were watching Brothers and Sisters, the ABC hit written by playwright John Robin Baitz. Brothers and Sisters trumps any other TV Sunday nights at our house, not the least because of the great cast, including Sally Fields, Calista Flockhart, Rachel Griffiths and Rob Lowe. But really it's the writing that rocks. Tonight's show featured the word "slattern" and when was the last time you heard that word on prime time? Or saw two guys making out? On network, mind you.

I first saw Prime Suspect in 1991 on PBS. 15 years ago. Wow. I remember being stunned by how much it thrilled me to watch it. I fell in love with Helen Mirren as Detective Jane Tennyson, the policewoman of Scotland Yard who solves serial murder mysteries while having to deal with sexist B.S. from her male comrades. I'm so glad that she's being lauded now by the media: the New Yorker article, the cover of the New York Times Magazine. She deserves it royally.

Favorite School Teachers

Mrs. Hinton, 1st grade
Sr. Grace, 2nd grade
Sr. Mary Roch, 3rd grade
Mrs. Monahan, 6 grade
Sr. Noreen, 5th grade
Sr. Alexandra, 7th grade
Sr. Mary Martin, 8th grade
Mr. Dye, Algebra II/Trigonometry
Mr. Mohit, Math Analysis
Mrs. Berkshire, 9th grade English
Mr. Victor, 12th grade English AP
Mr. Bob Hoffman, Social Science
Mr. Perry, Choir Director
Renee Lacouage, Voice teacher
Dr. Carothers, Romanticism
Dr. Gail Wronsky, Poetry Workshop 101
Robert Reichle, Literary Theory
Jaime Stover, Dance Exercise, Yoga
Father Mike, SJ, Psychology and Hermeneutics
Paul Salamunovich, LMU Choral Director
Dr. Linda Bannister, Stylistics
Adam Zagajewski, Poetry Workshop and Modern Thought
Ed Hirsch, Poetry Workshop and Contemporary American Poetry
Dr. Sidyney Berger, Acting and Directing Theory
Rosellen Brown, Non-Fiction Workshop

First Poem

I began writing when I was about seven. I clearly remember composing my first poem while riding my bike one afternoon before dinner.

It was a typical California day: beautiful. The late afternoon sun bathed the San Juan Capistrano valley with a golden hue that made everything look heartbreaking. When the sun set over the ocean, the Western sky burnt orange, turning the hills into black silhouettes of themselves. To the east, indigo intensified the stars, the planets, the moon. I had no idea how lucky I was to live amidst such natural beauty. But I could feel the beauty in my body as I lived within it, and my body sang about it without even trying.

As I rode my bike, the pedals provided a rhythm to which I found myself setting words about birds, sky, leaves, god, flowers, heart, love, loneliness and loss. I remember being surprised by the way the poem was coming to me, fully formed as they say. It felt new and strange and definitely like a gift, and I pedaled home as fast as I could to write it down on a piece of paper so as not to lose it.

I don't know what happened to the poem after I wrote it down, but the memory of writing it sticks with me as clearly as if it had happened yesterday.

HOURS

The young man beneath the jacaranda walked home
finally because he had hunger.

Walnuts still fell each spring in the school yard.

The vicar ordered new stones for the cathedral.

Dodo died.

The sewage-flooded shores
of Southern California
were swept by children
who wanted to cure the sea.

Seven hours ago, a woman
sat in the dark, watching
a wedding and a funeral,

lovers everywhere rose from bed --

some of them wept; some devoured
bits of their dreams in windows
that faced the sea; some cursed
the dividing hour between
their toil and their taking-away,
lit a cigarette and drug
in smoke to kill time.

--1994

Best Worst Valentine

Years ago now (thank god!) I was dating a man who was the best worst boyfriend I ever had. He was handsome, smart, talented, and MEAN. One Valentine's day, he completely failed to give me any kind of special love: no card, no gift, no thoughtful meal, no nothing. As I sat with him at the kitchen table after giving him a card with lightning bolts raining down on a Southwestern landscape (I thought it was a symbol of our electrical chemistry; it might as well have been the harbinger of our going up in smoke), he droned on about what a lame holiday it was, how it was a holiday crafted by Hallmark, that whole nine-yard cliché.

I mean who the hell cares if it's a holiday created by a card company? It's still an opportunity to let your loved one know you love him or her. You don't have to buy a hallmark card to do so. And furthermore, I don't even think the Hallmark part rings true; it's just an excuse for lovers who don't really love. It's an excuse for haters.

So I'm sitting in our kitchen, crying because I've tried to make the day somewhat special -- the card, the special meal -- and he hasn't even bothered to say "Happy Valentine's Day" and give me a kiss, and I think to myself, "this is the last straw. This guy is SHIT;" still, it takes another five months for me to extricate myself from his cheating heart. And I'm crying hard because I feel his cold heart growing colder. So I drive, snot streaming down my face, to Fiesta -- the supermarket around the corner. I'm getting a bottle of wine in which to drown my sorrow. In the checkout line, I can't even look at the checker because my eyes are buried underneath my swollen eye sockets. I can only stare down at the check-writing platform and wait for my transaction to be over. Tears fall from my face to the platform, despite my best efforts to keep them in.

Suddenly, a red rose appears in my peripheral vision. I suck my snot back into my nose and look up to see the store manager extending a long stem red rose toward me. "Happy Valentine's Day," he says. He hands me the rose. "For you."

I break into a sob so pitiful three checkout lanes stop their transactions to stare at me.

I tried to thank the manager, but my heart broke so loudly I couldn't muster any words. I left the store, hyperventilating, holding the rose, completely wrecked by the fact that I'd received more kindness from a stranger than I did from my own so-called boyfriend.

Best Worst Valentine's Day EVER.

Grammar, C-

Today I actually used the word sensitiver. I told the Romanian woman who was waxing me, "redheads are sensitiver to pain." I used to be an English teacher. There's a part of me that could give a flying fuck about grammar, the same part who loves to use words like sensitiver.

The majority of me, however, loves the grammar.

Not Another Jedi Mind Trick

My father is fond of buying American Indian jewelry for me. Unless I'm with him to pick it out, it's usually hideous: kokopelli earrings with multicolored stone insets or something like that. When I visit my family in California over the winter holidays, sometimes he takes me to his favorite jewelry store in SJC, Zia Jewelry, to let me pick out my own stuff. One of my favorite gifts in recent years was a necklace, earring and bracelet set made from sterling silver and white opal: simple earrings, a "tennis" bracelet with rectangular white opal baguettes, and a silver ouroboros inlaid with white opal.

One winter night, I wore the necklace and bracelet to a theater show at the high school where I used to teach. After I got home from the show, David and I were sitting on the green couch, chatting about our day. He looked at my necklace and said, "That really is a pretty necklace."

"Thanks," I said, unconsciously feeling for the bracelet on my wrist. It wasn't there! I ran down to my car and looked to see if it had fallen off while I was driving home. Retracing my steps from the car to the front door, I replayed the entire evening in my mind, desperate to pinpoint the moment the bracelet had fallen off. I called the restaurant where I'd met David and his mom for dinner before heading off to the theater by myself. They were cleaning up and hadn't found it. I figured it must have fallen off in the theater. I would go look for it tomorrow.

That night in bed, I fretted over the loss of my bracelet. My father and I have a difficult relationship, and the gifts he gives me are loaded with complex feelings and meanings for me. In fact, I felt so bereft about the bracelet's loss that I started thinking to myself, "if I can't deal with the loss of this present from my dad, how in the world am I going to deal with the loss of my dad when he dies?" I know; it's morbid, but it's how my mind was working at the moment.

I turned to David and said, "My molecules are still on that bracelet. I'm gonna stay connected to them and I'm gonna find that bracelet."

He laughed and said, "Okay."

The next day, I went to teach my first two classes, waiting until my free third period to head toward the theater. On my way across campus, I told myself that I was going to follow the energy of my molecules. I would just let my body go where it was pulled. I had to cross the street to get to the middle school campus. When I got to the parking lot by the theater, I peeled away from the theater toward the lot where I'd parked the night before. In the middle of the parking slots was a small grassy esplanade. With a surety I cannot explain, I walked to the esplanade, took a couple steps on the grass, stopped, looked down, and at my feet lay my bracelet. When I saw it, I almost passed out. MY BRACELET! I could not believe that I'd found it not by "looking" but by "feeling." I picked it up, ran back across the street to the high school campus, straight to my office, where I tried to convey my sense of wonder to my two office mates.

They stared at me as if I were crazy. Given all my babbling about molecules and energy and finding-by-feeling, I can understand; nevertheless, it was a true, real, and mind-expanding experience for me, and it amplified my respect for psychic abilities, my own and other people's.

Girls Who Wear Glasses

When I was little, I strained to have blurry vision because I wanted to wear glasses, specifically black horn-rimmed ones. I spent 10 minutes a day crossing my eyes on purpose, hoping that as a result the optometrist would tell my mom that I needed glasses, stat. Now that I do need them, and do wear them -- still for reading only, but I could (and should) use them regularly -- I strain to focus without them, spending ten minutes a day doing eye exercises in hope that I might stall an ensuing blindness.

On Catharsis

David and I tried to go see "Volver" tonight, but it was sold out. We went to the House of Te instead, in the old Washateria on Fairview and Woodhead. The House of Te was offering free mah-jong lessons, and a variety of people, of various ages -- from a 13 year boy to a 45 year old mom -- were sitting around a large table learning how to play. We did not partake of that special treat. We sat in a corner by the window, drank our tea and talked.

I talked about how getting out of the house (my mom is visiting, hence babysitting) shifts my consciousness so that I can feel my stress in a whole different way: I get this jumpy, panicky feeling, as the stress rises through my limbs to my chest area. A feeling of relief follows as I notice the stress leaving, evaporating from my body

"Is it an enjoyable feeling?" David asked.

"It's cathartic," I said.

When we got home, my mom was watching "The Proposition." The Proposition happens to be one of my favorite movies ever, and David and I arrived home near the ending, one of the most awesome endings ever. I sat down with my mom and watched.

"Why do you like this movie so much?" she said.

"It's an allegory," I said. "Shhhhhhhh."

If you've seen the movie, then you know that the ending is like a Flannery O'Connor short story ending. The screenplay for "The Proposition" was written by Nick Cave, and the soundtrack was, too, which is why the music adds as much meaning to the story as the writing and the imagery do.

As my mom headed off for bed, I asked her if she liked it. She said "Yeah, it's a pretty good movie...what's the allegory?"

"It's about good versus evil, both evil that looks like evil and evil that doesn't look like evil. The last words the main characters, Morris and Martha, speak...." Well, I don't want to give away the ending. If I did, I'd ruin the catharsis*, and I think everyone should see this movie because of said catharsis and the message said catharsis viscerally punches into the heart.

After my mom left the room, I got up to get a drink of water, and on my way to the kitchen, I thought about the other movies I've loved because they were classically cathartic. Here are five that come quickly to mind. Please add to the list if you like.

The Proposition
Open Water
Raise the Red Lantern
A Praire Home Companion (lighter, but cathartic all the same)
Little Miss Sunshine (boffo!)

*earlier tonight, I described catharsis during my conversation with David as empathetic horror. And yes it felt good. But good because it's a release of horror, horror that I carry inside me, horror that falls under the umbrella of Stress. The feeling is one of release.

Here is how dictionary.com defines catharsis:

1.A purifying or figurative cleansing of the emotions, especially pity and fear, described by Aristotle as an effect of tragic drama on its audience.

2. A release of emotional tension, as after an overwhelming experience, that restores or refreshes the spirit.

Hot Mama

My parents divorced in 1987, but before they did, they were married 21 years. Their wedding anniversary was October 3, and sometimes on that day my mother would put on her wedding dress and greet my father in it when he came home. I remember one time watching her put on her makeup, do her hair. Then she put on her wedding dress. "Ha!" she crowed, "it still fits! How do you like THEM apples?"

My mother used sayings like "how do you like them apples," and she would use them at weird times. She'd say "Brother, can you spare a dime?" Only she'd say it like, "Oh Brother! Can you spare a dime!" Like "Geeze! Get a load of that!"

One of her more obscure sayings -- "Are you nervous, Harry?" -- she'd use at times when no one was nervous and no one was Harry.

My mom is a self described girl-next-door type. Her name, Mary Jane, might be the most girl-next-store name a girl can be named.

To me, of course, she's one of the most beautiful women in the world. All the beneficent superlatives apply: most generous, most caring, affectionate, loving, sweet, funny, supportive, inspring women in the world.

Thank you, Universe.

Homage to Garcia Lorca

20 Favorite Songs from the 70s

My Sharona, the Knack
Forever Young, Bob Dylan
You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go, Bob Dylan
Turn to Stone, ELO
Surrender, Cheap Trick
Heart of Glass, Blondie
Buckets of Rain, Bob Dylan
Help Me, Joni Mitchell
Blue, Joni Mitchell
(Our Love) Don't Throw It All Away, Andy Gibb
Boogie Wonderland, Earth, Wind and Fire
Sultans Of Swing, Dire Straits
Chuck E's in Love, Rickie Lee Jones
I Was Made For Lovin' You, Kiss
Don't Bring Me Down, Electric Light Orchestra
Hot Child In The City, Nick Gilder
I Go Crazy, Paul Davis
Boogie Oogie Oogie, A Taste Of Honey
Here You Come Again, Dolly Parton
You're the One that I Want, John Travolta and Olivia Newton John

Blue Thunder

When I turned 16, my dad gave me my first car: a 1965 Ford Ranchero. It had been the delivery truck for the NAPA Auto Parts store he owned with his brother. When he came home one afternoon and told me my new car was in the driveway, I nearly broke my leg running outside.

I don't know what I was expecting, but I certainly wasn't expecting a canary yellow truck with fat racing stripes running down the bed, and a giant, plastic NAPA hat perched atop the cab. When I saw it, I started crying.

"What's the matter?" my dad said, acting all surprised.

"Is that really it?" I said. I imagined the laughter that would follow me in and out of the parking lot of Capistrano Valley High School.

"Well goddamn, Christa," he said. "If you don't want a car, I won't give it to you."

"I DO want a car," I said. "But...."

"But what?" he said.

"But I can't drive that car, dad."

"Why not?" he said.

"Everyone will laugh at me," I said. Tears welled up in my eyes.

"Okay," he said, "I'll take the hat off."


In the end, he had the truck redone for me, the body painted cobalt blue, the cab white. He redid the interior, too. After I left for college, my brother Marco drove it.

My dad named the car Blue Thunder, because, he said, we were always storming around town in it. In truth, it was probably the coolest car in my high school parking lot, although I didn't know it at the time.

Here's a picture of the 1965 Ford Ranchero:

Long Ago and Far Away

American Duty

Every Sunday afternoon, and every Monday night in my house, the white noise of NFL football served as background to our playing, our doing homework, our fighting with one another. There was no negotiating with my father about watching something else on Monday nights. For example, Little House on the Prarie aired on Mondays, and as we owned only one television, I often wound up in tears because my father wouldn't let me watch my show.

I hated football.

Now whenever I hear the roar of a televised crowd, the clacking of helmets and shoulder pads, the urgency of the sports commentators, I feel nostalgia for my childhood, for those afternoons spent playing keep away on the front lawn with my brothers on Sunday afternoons. Every 15 minutes, they'd yell "Dad!? What's the score?" through the screened windows into the family room, where my dad relaxed on the couch, reading the paper and watching a game.

Today, Superbowl Sunday, I did my American duty: our family went to a Superbowl Sunday party. The hostess, my friend Diana, is a Prince fan, hence her justification for hosting the party. I, however, felt relief that we had somewhere to go. As much as I am indifferent to the game, there is a visceral comfort in participating in the rituals of this day: the salty snacks, the half-hearted banter, the cold beer, the half-time show, the much-anticipated commercials.

Tomorrow, NFL football will fade back into the realm of meaninglessness for me. But today, it matters; I care; and my team is winning. Hoooo Yeah!

Freedom Train

My First Poet

When I was seven, my interest in reading migrated from the bookshelves in my room to the bookshelves in our hallway, where my mom and dad kept their books, mostly antiques handed down from generation to generation, books about land surveys and war correspondences. My dad read nothing but the daily newspaper, Sunset Magazine, Time and Playboy. My mom liked John Jakes or John Jakes rip-off novels. However, she did have a small cache of literary books in the hall bookshelves, including a first edition of Robert Frost's IN THE CLEARING, and a smallish anthology of Modern Poetry.

The anthology measured 4"x 6"x3", perfect proportions for my child-hands. I appropriated the book and read it everywhere, at the dinner table, at the bathroom counter, in my bed, on the floor in the living room near the fireplace, outside on the lawn, in the white oak tree, in the station wagon on the freeway. After about a week, my mom noticed that I was attached to the book, so she read me her favorite poem from it: e.e. cummings' "Anyone Lived in a Pretty How Town."

I'm still not sure if e.e. cummings became my first favorite poet because my mom loved him or because I loved him in my own right. When I was in graduate school, nobody ever talked about e.e. cummings, as if he were some sort of eccentric carny who happened to have published a boatload of wacky poems. I kept him close to my chest, rarely mentioning him in the company of other students, guarding him in my heart's shrine. After graduate school, I read him again every day. When I lived on Pinedale, I taped one of his poems to my bathroom cabinet, the one I looked at whenever I sat down to use the toilet. Everyday I read his poem like a prayer. Everyday I blessed him for blessing me.

XAIPE, 65

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any--lifted from the no
of all nothing--human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

The Parent Trap

Earlier today I carried my sleeping 5-month old to his bed for a nap, thinking as I gazed at his sleeping face how unutterably dear he is to me. Looking at him, I felt ineffable warmth as I held him in the security of my arms. Then I returned to the family room, where I found my 23-month old daughter woofing down a bunch of tiny white teething tablets she had managed to wrestle out of their childproof bottle. As I screamed for her to Stop! Eating! Them! She shoved them quicker into her mouth; matter of fact, she raced me to them as I frantically plucked them off the floor. In a span of one minute, I’d gone from embracing mother love to hysterical mother panic at the thought that my daughter might die from ingesting – how many?!! – teething tablets. Poison Control assured me she wouldn’t die, although she might get really, really hyper from all the sugar in those Little Teethers.

“Momma,” said Michael from Poison Control, “I’ve had kids eat 100 of those things without any change in their behavior. Do you think she ate 100?”

“No,” I said.

“What’s she doing right now?” he said.

“Playing.”

“Okay. Call me back if anything changes,” he said.

At best, parenthood is paradoxical. Life and death share the same wall, a thin wall, almost made of mosquito netting. Everyday as a parent, I hold in my heart feelings of security and vulnerability simultaneously; the existential confusion this emotional state can cause is enough to drive a person crazy – and has!

Let's talk about Sylvia Plath for a moment. Everybody knows who she is, right? THE BELL JAR -- which I haven't read. I have read her poetry; ARIEL, for example. Sylvia Plath was indeed mad, with rage at least, as anyone whose read her poetry can attest to. Perhaps most people know that she killed herself by sticking her head in an oven, leaving behind two children and a philandering husband. Perhaps she is one of those people who "should never have become a parent in the first place," a phrase I've heard said about other people too often. Because if she is one of those people, then perhaps I am, too; because there have been days since becoming a mother when, let me assure you, I have known the desire to stick my head in an oven and MAKE THE MADNESS END.

But then I'd miss out on seeing my children everyday, and that would be sadder than being dead.

Favorite Quote

"The final belief is to believe in a fiction, which you know to be a fiction, there being nothing else. The exquisite truth is to know that it is a fiction and that you believe in it wilingly."

Wallace Stevens -- from "Adagia"

Assignments

Assignments are an important factor for my writing process. I need to have deadlines, even if it means that I have to wait till the last minute to meet the deadline. Word counts help a lot, too. Between 300 and 500 is a good goal to shoot for, in general for me. My friend Jason and I once did an assignment where we had to write an 83-word piece and send it to one another. We gave ourselves a deadline, too. Here is one of my 83 word pieces.

* * * * * *

I used to drive a copper-colored 810 Maxima Datsun. I drove it cross the desert with my dad to get to Houston. We stopped in Arizona to buy ice cold Lone Star Beer. We drank it in New Mexico between our bouts of fear of what it was we had the chance to do to one another. I wonder when he leaves his life if I will feel relief. I bet I won’t. I bet I won’t feel any of the ordinary grief.

* * * * * *

I like to figure out how to get the most breath, the clearest ambiguity I can, into 500 words. It requires making some painstaking choices, for sure. One wants to choose words wisely. I used to give my high school students an essay assignment where the topic was their choice but the word count had to be 500 words exactly. EXACTLY. In order to get at least a C, they had to meet the word count requirement. They were livid! "It's so hard!! Ms. Forster," they cried.

"Yes," I said, "It is."

"But it's not fair! What if I can't come up with 500 words?"

"Then you're not working hard enough."

"What if I have like 2500 words?" a star student asked.

"Then you're REALLY not working hard enough," I said.

The Sunday before this assignment was due, one of my student’s mothers called me, worried that her daughter was driving herself crazy trying to meet the 500 word requirement.

“She’s been working on the ending for 5 hours. I’m worried that she’s taking this too far. I told her that I’m sure Ms. Forster would understand if it were 439 words or 512 words,” she said.

“Actually, I want the essay to be 500 words exactly. That is the assignment, in fact.”

Silence.

“It’s just that having to meet that kind of requirement teaches a person how to use economy of expression, how to capitalize upon diction.”

In general, her daughter consistently worked harder than the other students in class. I didn’t even have to read her paper. I gave her an A without hesitation.


Ultimately, word counts and deadlines create of me a better writer; that is, they make me show up and set something in writing on the page, a something I care about, so that I can call myself a writer.

After all, as the saying goes: a writer writes.

Celebrity Crushes

Top Three Celebrity Crushes I had when I was young:

#1 John Denver
#2 Sean Cassidy
#3 Bono

Young Republican Camp: Part 1

When I was 16 years old, my parents sent me to Orange County's Young Republican Camp. OCYRC took place during the summer in a remote arroyo in Trabuco Canyon, off El Toro Road about 15 miles east toward the mountains.. The facilities sat nestled amidst live oak groves and rolling hills. Girls and boys bunked in separate dorm rooms; we ate our meals in a formal dining room; we met with Important Republicans in a conference center, screened videos in a media room, and had access to tennis courts. It lasted three nights and four days.

To begin, I didn't want to go. But my parents must have wanted me to go because they sent me despite my will to talk them out of it. It was non-negotiable. On the ride out there, I argued that I was not a Republican, and my father said, "that's one of the reasons you're going, young lady!"

My parents were Orange County Republicans. When I was growing up, they hosted several fundraisers at our home for politicians. Because my father had been the mayor of our small town, and because his family had lived in the town for 6 generations, he had some political clout. My mother had been a Democrat before she married my dad, but she finally switched due to the "if you can't beat them, join them" phenomenon. My father envisioned me growing up to become a California State Senator, and he'd be goddamned if I grew up to be a DEMOCRATIC Senator.

My father so loathes Democrats that if he told me if I voted for a Al Gore in the 2000 election, he would throw all my belongings out of his house into the street. Never-mind that I hadn't lived at home in over 20 years. One of his favorite photographs features him, his cousin Juan, and Governor George W. Bush at the Mission San Juan Capistrano. When Bush got to my father in the receiving line, my father said, "Governor, when you're president, can you give the Mission San Juan Capistrano back to the Forster family?" W. said "I don't think I can do that," according to my dad.

So Young Republican camp it was for me the summer I was 16.

To Be Continued....,

(Diego is crying and crying in the other room. I must attend....)

Favorite Foods

As a child, my favorite foods were

Flour Tortillas cooked on the burner then smeared with butter and rolled up
Bean and Cheese Burritos
Hamburgers
Knudsen's Lime Yogurt
Bologna and Mustard Sandwiches
Bananas
Carrots
Tri-tip Steak cooked by my dad
Spanish Rice with Sour Cream (I thought I had invented putting sour cream on rice)
Chicken Pot Pies
Roasted Chicken
Iceberg Lettuce Salad with my mom's oil and vinegar salad dressing

Favorite TV Shows

My favorite TV shows when I was young:

Happy Days
The Six Million Dollar Man
Little House on the Praire
The Incredible Hulk
Dukes of Hazzard
Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom
Mary Tyler Moore
Dallas
Welcome Back Kotter

Shohreh Aghdashloo

The first time I ever saw Shohreh Aghdashloo was when she played the mother in "The House of Sand and Fog," that awesome adaptation of the novel by Andre Dubus III. Ben Kingsley plays the husband/father. That movie slayed me. It was one of my favorite movies ever, mostly because of her.

Today I saw her at the MFAH, in the Hélio Oiticica exhibit. I was walking through this explosion of color, mostly oranges and yellows, and I see Marian Luntz, the MFAH's curator of film and video, walking with this GORGEOUS woman, whose voice sounds like honey warmed over glowing coals. Deep, sweet, resonant. I think, "I recognize her," and right when I think that, she sees me and says, "Hello, how are you?" And it sounds like she's truly interested.

"Fine, thank you," I say. "I adore your work."

Shohreh places her hands over her heart and thanks me. Then she says, "You have the most beautiful children."

"Thank you so much," I say. The air is warm and easy between us.

"And look at you, you are the MOST beautiful mother...your hat...." I was wearing a straw hat because the kids and I had walked to the museum on this first sunny day in a long time.

"Thank you," I said.

Then we said goodbye: she blew me a kiss, and I blew her a kiss back.

It felt as if we've known each other in another universe and here we were incredibly happy to see one another in THIS one.

And I admit that being called the MOST beautiful mother by Shohreh Aghdashloo sent me into happiness orbit for the rest of the afternoon and evening.

School Lunches

From Kindergarten to Eighth grade I attended the Old Mission School in San Juan Capistrano. We walked to school and carried our lunches with us in brown bags. From about 2nd grade on, my job in the mornings as the oldest child was to make our lunches. Sandwiches were either peanut butter and jelly, bologna and mustard, cream cheese and jelly, or tuna salad. Knudsens yogurt, saltine crackers, green grapes, tortilla chips served as snacks. We got a small carton of milk at school. There were days when my mom made the lunches because I woke up late or something, but she always put things like sprouts on the sandwiches, and that was totally unacceptable to us, although that didn't stop her. Our sandwiches were already untradable because we had to eat sprouted bread.

Tony Barilla

The first time I met Tony Barilla was at an IBP party at Greg Stanley's house on Rosedale, in a four-plex across the street from the Lawndale parking lot. He was standing in a threshold between rooms, propped against the door frame, quiet-like, watching things. He told me he was a musician, and I could have sworn he said he just moved here from Michigan. He used the phrase ex-wife in our conversation. He said the name of his band was the seximals.

He’s been a good friend for years. I hardly ever get to see him anymore, and I miss him.

Remembering the Future

Because I believe that time is not linear, that there is no hard past, present or future; that everything that has ever happened and will ever happen is happening now; because of these beliefs, I am able to remember the future. Some people may call this ability intuition, but not everyone who says intuition means it as remembering the future. Some people may call this same thing crazy.

For example, when I knew David was "the one," it was an occurrence of remembering the future. Before we were dating, we encountered each other one evening at a summer solstice party. Our hostess, a mutual friend, had been setting us up unconsciously (or consciously; she's highly intuitive herself) before that time. On a sultry Houston evening, I was on my way inside to get a drink, having left my date, my beautiful lesbian friend, C, sitting in the garden on a railroad tie. It was June 24, 2000.

On my way into the house, I hear the thought in my head: I hope I run into that beautiful David Brown. As I look up from the steps I'm ascending, there he his -- that beautiful DAB. I feel "there's the man I'm gonna marry." The next thought is "Wait a minute....WHAT?!!!???"

Once we were engaged and then married, people would ask me, "how/did you know he was 'the one'?"

"I knew. I felt it and I knew, but I don't know why I knew, how I knew." Later, now, I know that I was remembering the future.

I feel the same way about Clara -- I believe that she chose us. I felt her the morning before I got pregnant. Our house was infested with fleas. Not a few fleas: our house was infested beyond rational/natural measure -- we had moved out of our bedroom because there was a plague in there. We'd moved our mattress to our office, the mattress on the floor. One morning during the infestation, I was in the office, on the phone with my landlord, beseeching ONCE AGAIN for him to take care of the problem. He'd been trying to deal with the problem internally -- and there was boric acid (!) all over the floor of our bedroom for 10 days. I told him that I was sick of waiting, that I’d given him almost a month and a half to take care of the problem and that it hadn't yet been taken care of; therefore, the fleas better be gone by the end of the day, or else I was going to SUE HIM. I told him, "I could be pregnant, and your home remedies are not working. I may have to contact a lawyer regarding this negligence."

“Congratulations on your pregnancy,” he said.

“I’m not saying I am,” I said. “I’m saying I could be.”

Pest Control came out in the early afternoon, and the fleas were gone by the end of the day.

Clara was conceived at the start of the next.

There are a lot of other examples in my life of remembering the future, but these two are the largest ones.

At 21, I attended my first literary reading: Galway Kinnell at the Laguna Beach Public Library. I had graduated from college that June; it was August; I’d be moving to San Francisco that November. I don’t remember how I knew Kinnell was reading at the library. Orange County, California is not the most obvious place for a New York, Contemporary American poet to give a reading from his latest slim volumes of poems published by Knopf. Maybe Kinnell has a cousin in Laguna Beach, or an old lover.

If there is anywhere for lovers, it’s Laguna Beach, California, one of the most picturesque places in the world, as gorgeous – if not more so – than any coastal Italian city. However, Orange County’s milieu (if you can call it that) differs dramatically from Italy’s. In Italy, for example, a person can buy a great loaf of fresh, warm bread at nearly every corner. In Orange County, sure you can get a good loaf of bread, but you might have to drive from one end of the county to the other to find it.

Kinnell read to a small audience, and I was mesmerized by his voice, his cadences, his use of words and the way he put them together. I went to the reading alone, wrapped in one of my great, great, great, great grandmother’s Spanish shawls, an orange one embroidered with flowers -- pink, peach, lavender, yellow and green. The scarf is over 100 years old, so the colors are muted, the silk thin. And it’s huge, probably 5’x5’ in measurement. There are long, heavy silk fringes that hang down from the scarves' edges. With it wrapped around me, I felt braver than normal, so after the reading I approached Mr. Kinnell and told him I liked his poems. After I said it, I felt faint. He asked me if I was a poet. I said yes because I knew I was a poet, but rather than feeling proud about this, I felt embarrassed.

When I applied to graduate school a couple years later, I was accepted with fellowships at two places, Houston and NYU. Sharon Olds from NYU called me and said, “Galway really likes your poetry a lot. We hope you’ll come here. Where else have you applied?” I said, “Houston is flying me down next week.” I said, “I need money.” She said, “If you need money, then we can’t compete with Houston.” And that was true. So here I am.

Speaking of that: I’m reading at Poison Girl this coming Thursday, Jan. 25. Reading starts at 8:30. Poison Girl is a smoky bar. Be warned. I’m not sure what I’ll be reading, whether poetry or prose. Probably a little of both.

Make Up Class

Last night, David and I had our SECOND date in ONE week, an occurrence so out of the norm these days that I forgot to post my memory for January 20.

Today I will therefore post two: one this morning and one this evening.

In high school, every class I took bored me, except the ones where 1) my teachers were funny (both haha and weird) 2) I learned something inordinately useful like typing 3) a cute boy sat next to me. Academics were secondary of course, as they are for most teenagers, as they would tell you if they trusted you enough.

Here are the classes I do remember:

Marine Biology -- because Mr. Manning seemed really out of it, but cool, too; like he was always stoned. And also because of the ring of aquariums lining the classroom.

Chemistry I -- because Mr. Pancini let me and Michelle Fosdick clean his test tubes in the glassed off storage room instead of making us do the class work. We got extra credit (probably to make up for the tests we were bombing because we didn't know the material).

Chemistry II -- where Mr. Babb ticked and touretted through his explanations of chemical reactions and barely acknowledged when a group's project exploded on a Bunsen burner.

American History -- where Mr. Johnson, who got the most popular sophomore in our class pregnant, said (and I quote), "In this class, if you want to get up and sharpen your pencils, you better be a girl, because I like to watch the girls jiggle as they sharpen their pencils. If you're a boy and you want your pencil sharpened, give it to a girl sitting next to you to do it."

Sophomore English -- because Mike Copeland was in the class, and I thought he was drop-dead gorgeous.

Spanish I -- because the senior Brad Somethingorother thought that I would let him cheat off my scantrons. And I did. Because I was scared not to.

Algebra II -- because Mr. Dye's dry wit made me laugh, and because I was the only student who laughed at his jokes, I was his pet.

Reading Development -- this was like a study hall, only a study hall where we had to read works selected by our teacher, a woman who had cancer and came to school wearing a bandana over her bald, chemoed head. Brad Somethingorother was in this class, too, and I remember learning to loathe him beyond measure because he was a complete idiot -- reflected in his desire to derail the teacher at every opportunity, even though our teacher was DYING.

AP English Literature and Composition -- Mr. Victor loved Alexander Pope and Samuel Johnson. I did not. I loved the Romantics. He did not. But he was the only teacher I ever had who played music during class as a lesson -- Pete Seeger singing "Little Boxes", and Don McClean's "Vincent" (Starry Starry Night). He also accused me of plagiarism in my paper on Jane Austen's EMMA. I did not plagiarize; though my use of the word primordial made him think I had. This false accusation scarred me for a long time: it indicated to me that some people thought I was dumber than I actually was. It was also the first indication that my writing was better than I believed it to be.

Bedtime

I listen to Clara crying in her room, making a real drama of not being sleepy -- she just won't let up tonight -- and in my head I'm yelling ENOUGH ALREADY! GO TO SLEEP. STOP CRYING. IT'S JUST BEDTIME FOR CHRISSAKES. IT'S NOT THE END OF THE WORLD.

I remember when I was a kid that on some nights I did not want to go to bed either. On those nights, I would sneak out of bed, crawl into the living room and watch tv from behind the couch. Sometimes I would just sit there and listen to the tv, not because I cared at all about the tv, but because I wanted to be near my parents a little while longer before I fell to sleep.

recent memory

Driving home tonight from seeing IBP's presentation of today's Suzan-Lori Parks plays, Outtakes + the Three Constants, and also driving home from an Arts Initiative party at Winter Street, we hit a light at Pease and Louisana. While we were waiting for the light to change, a guy in a plaid shirt, tight jeans, a hoodle and a canvas book bag slung over his shoulder crossed the street. It was raining; the cold had lifted a little, still there was no one else out on the street there. David and I sat at the stop light for a beat, then the light turned green. David said, "It's a really weird world, and I don't understand it."

That sentence in that moment was the truest philosophy I've ever heard.

Drunk

The first time, I was a sophomore in high school, maybe a junior. I can't remember. I did it with gin, and not just a little gin, a lot of gin, a tumbler full of gin. I had no idea what alcohol could do to a person. Gin looked like water, so I drank it like water.

I took it from my parents' booze cabinet, filled a blue plastic tumbler with it, smelled it, pinched my nostrils together to keep from having to smell it again, then drank it down so fast, faster than I had time to taste it, a method which seemed the best way to ingest the stuff, it being so rank and all.

I sat in the back of my Leah’s mom’s station wagon on the way to the game. I thought: I don’t feel anything. We were headed to a Capistrano Valley High School football game. By the time I arrived at the stadium, I was swimming, like the stadium was under the ocean. People seemed nicer. I sat in the bleachers and watched the football players scramble, jump and clobber one another over a little ball. Then I sat under the bleachers and looked at the ground. Everything sounded terribly loud. Then somehow I got home, although of course I can't remember how. I don't remember being sick later -- I don't remember anything after the ground under the bleachers.

I do remember that after that I could not drink gin for at least 15 years. I finally had myself a gin and tonic one California summer afternoon with my friends Andrew and Patricia. My taste buds must have regenerated by then. The drink refreshed me -- the effect, lovely.

But my first drunk kicked lovely's butt. It lived so far from lovely, I didn't drink again until I entered college. By the time I got drunk for the second time, I'd forgotten the pain of my first hangover. The second time -- a garage party in a house down the street from LAX -- left another hideous taste in my brain, so I didn't drink again until Spain.

Once Upon A Time

Once upon a time, David and I could sit around for hours in the evening, drink wine and talk to one another about enjoyable things. We would talk about things like ART and POETRY and THEATER and lalalalalalaliiiii --things other than our children, our beautiful, stimulating children.

The love we have for them is more than we know what to do with, and this extra love can sometimes feel like a burden because there is so much a person wants to do in life. So much it seems like it might be better to travel light. Children add heaviness, and well....

Well, it's a heaviness that's worth it.

One thing I've learned for certain from becoming a parent, and this can apply to everyone, not only other parents: don't work so hard to avoid the cliché. In fact, and after 20 years of experience of being an adult, I've come to realize that they're all true -- the clichés -- so it becomes a waste of time to try to invent a new feeling. Everything that one can feel has indeed been felt before. Therefore, spend time FEELING the feelings, rather than thinking about the feelings, because finally -- thanks to clichés -- someone has already done the thinking for you. And thinking is exhausting.

Here are some clichés that drive home familiar feelings that I wish I hadn't spent time thinking about because I would eventually experience them in person anyway: Children completely change your life; shit happens: all you need is love; old age is not for sissies; ya da da da da.

The best thing David and I have done together is to create our family, brought our two children into the world. That is a certain. It's also the downright scariest thing we've ever done together. But the love that comes with this awesome reality is not to be underestimated. It's a big love, a larger reality, the impossible made possible: A real, live storybook situation.

Monica

"Hi Monica!"

During my 14th year, strangers in my relatively small hometown started greeting me this way, mysteriously often. The first few times, I felt like I must be imagining it: Did I just get called Monica? Again? After about the 8th time it happened, the mistaken identity began to bother me.

"Who's Monica?" I asked my friend Leah.

"She's that other redheaded girl," Leah said. "She goes to Marco." Marco Forster Junior High School was the public Junior High School in town. I went to the Catholic school. Leah played fullback on the AYSO soccer team where I played goalie. We'd been Brownies and Girl Scouts together in Elementary. We were also in National Charity League together during high school. Incidentally, we also went to the same college, although we didn’t room together. Leah liked nothing better than to hang out and chat with me in the backfield while our forwards were running the ball furiously toward the goal. (I owe much of my former soccer goalie prowess to Leah's sieve-like defense of the goal box.) Leah went to public school; therefore, she knew this Monica. "She's taller than you are, but you look a lot alike," she said.

Instead of playing soccer, Monica danced ballet, which explains why our paths took so long to cross. We finally met when our different National Charity League subchapters convened at a common house. The girls in Monica's subchapter were debutantes. This meeting-nay-party was all about how to give ourselves manicures -- a very useful skill, like typing, for example; how to arrange flowers; how to sit down in a chair properly and what to do with your legs while sitting. My own subchapter did community service together: we candy striped; we patterned a local quadriplegic girl who had been paralyzed since birth; we delivered meals on wheels, read for Head Start students, walked together, along with our mothers, in the Swallows Day Parade. A few times, we met with California stateswomen, like Marian Bergeson. I have to say that as noble as these things were, I remember more from that one meeting where I learned manicure skills (always file in one direction), flower arranging skills (cut the stems under running water), and sitting etiquette (back up to the chair until the backs of your legs brush the seat; sit straight down; fold your ankes around one another and let your legs lean together to one side. Never! Cross! Your! Legs!).

It might have been through our participation in this group that my parents found out about Young Republican Camp, where they sent me when I was 16. But that is a totally awesome memory that I'm reserving for a future writing.

The moment I saw her, I knew I'd met my match.

"You must be Monica," I said.

"You're Christa!" she said.

"We don't look alike at all," I said.

"No," she said.

We stood staring at one another, trying to hide our greedy need to find our difference in one another. Then, recognizing our awkward silence, we tried to start talking again.

"I guess our hair color is kind of similar," I said.

"And it's cut sort of similar," she said. Our haircut resembled the cut that Tracy Austin, the 80's teen tennis star, sported in the 70s: longish, with bangs and slight feathering around the face.

"Yeah," I said.

Monica and I didn't say anything to each other for the rest of the party, and I never saw her again.

Eucalyptus

My favorite trees are the Live Oak and the Eucalyptus tree. In Coastal California, the landscape is often dominated by one of three types of trees -- these two, plus the fir tree. There are 600 or so species of Eucalyptus trees, but the ones I like best are the ones that grew up around my childhood home -- the "ghost gums," called that because of their white trunks. These are tall, willowy trees with long, thin, fingerlike leaves that make a shhhshhhhing sound in the breeze. Their menthol scent is rich and heavy. Indigenous to Australia, they were happy transplants in the California soil; Abbot Kinney -- a famous Los Angeleno from the 1800s -- planted thousands of them in the Los Angeles basin. He was obsessed with these trees, as I am, and even wrote a book called -- no surprise -- EUCALYPTUS in 1895.

The most soothing sight -- besides the ocean -- I could find as a child was the one I had from my bedroom window of the eucalyptus trees on our back slope. I loved to watch them bend and sway against the blue sky. At certain times of the year, they would shed their bark in long strips. I loved to peel the bark, to see the smooth soft white trunk underneath. Sometimes, I peeled the tree's skin before it was ready to come off on its own. Then, underneath, the trunk was a cold, bright green. I remember feeling sad and sorry because I had hurt the eucalyptus by peeling its skin away too soon.

The Body is the Servant of the Mind

I lived in Spain from 1986 to 1987. This period was another time in my history when I almost died. In Spain, though not especially because of Spain, or at least I don't think so, I suffered from extremely high fevers (another head malady), specifically fevers that reached 106.9.

The reason....There was no reason. Another medical mystery. The discharge record from the University de Salamanca Medical Clinic said "virus," because the doctors had no name for the reason. It wasn't TB, wasn't Rheumatic Fever, wasn't HIV, wasn't anything. The doctors didn't say "psychosomatic," but other people said it.

The Spanish family I lived with in the manzana named "Calle de Espiritu" would sit around the comida (late lunch) and bemoan how I'd been so beautiful when I first arrived in Spain for the AIFS exchange student program (pronounced eyefsss by the Spaniards), but how I'd become so ugly in the interim. Physically ugly. I had collapsed into unconsciousness several times during a University class -- once in Spainish economics and once in Literatura del Siglo Oro (The Golden Age). On those times that I blacked out in class, I was carried out of the classroom by my friend Angel, the Spanish student with whom I had an intercambio (a conversation where I practiced my Spanish and he practiced his English). Angel put me in a taxi and rode home to Calle de Espiritu with me, carried me from the taxi into the elevator, and then to the doorway of my apartment on Piso 7.

I was ugly because I was homesick for the United States, America, my mom. While in Salamanca, I wrote my mother's mother several letters thanking her for giving birth to her daughter, my mother. I was singularly depressed. The fevers probably were the manifestation of my depression, which was hot, not cold.

In addition, I was anorexic: I hadn't had a period for nine months. (!).

In truth, I woke up in Spain. I woke up to the reality that the body is the servant of the mind. I remember waking up one morning in the hospital, the one I'd been a prisoner of for nine days with a brain-damaging fever and a diagnosis of "muy mysteriosa." I could see the day outside from a small window in the far corner of my room. Through that window it was violently fall. Autumn in every shimmer of light, every shadow's hue. It was screamingly beautiful, not the least because there I was stuck inside, away from it all, relegated to a hospital bed, my roommate an old woman dripping black bile from her stomach into a plastic bag hanging below the sheet line.

While looking through the window at the glorious day I was missing, I realized that I didn't want to miss any more days like the one I could see through my window. Within hours of this revelation, I was discharged from the hospital. It wasn't a coincidence; only hours before the doctors had told my parents (by phone) to fly to Spain because I was probably going to die there.

The body is the servant of the mind. I forget this a lot, but it's true. "Nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so," says Shakespeare. If I think I'm ill, then I'm ill. If I think I'm not, then I'm not.

The first few months after Clara was born, I'd be out on a walk with her in the stroller, and I felt nearly convinced that some random person on the street was going to approach me, shove me down, and run off, stealing her away from me. This feeling was a constant gnawing in my craw.

I was surprised when my sister Alicia asked me, after returning from a stroll around the block with Clara, "do you ever feel like someone is going to try to steal her away?"

"Yes!" I said. "I feel that all the time."

"It's like I kept looking at each passer-by as a potential baby-stealer," she said.

"I know," I said. "Exactly."

Today I noticed that I don't feel that way while walking with Diego in the stroller. It must be because I've gotten used to having a baby -- he being my second. I almost miss the feeling -- it belies a particular kind of new parent awe: how in the world was I granted the right to be this child's -- any child's -- mother?

Pacific Ocean on a Full Moon Night

Sitting in the back seat of the El Camino station wagon, my dad driving, my mom in the passenger seat, homeward bound on Pacific Coast Highway after a party or dinner at a local Mexican restaurant, I would stare out at the ocean, mesmerized by the way the moon broke the sea open with a path of white, shimmering light.

French Bread Bags Don't Need to Move With You

Twelve years after my parents divorce, my father is moving homes again -- from a largish tract home on one hill to a largish tract home on another hill; this one with an ocean view. My sister is helping him move the stuff in his old garage to his new garage. She calls me to come rescue her from my father's old garage, where she's sure she's picking up the Hanta virus. I arrive at my dad's new house to find my sister unloading boxes from the bed of his pickup truck. I approach them through a maze of box upon box of empty wine bottles. "Dad," I say, "this is the kind of stuff you're supposed to throw away when you move."

"God dammit Christa!" He yells. "Your mother throws everything away. This is why she has no history! My family has a history! I am a historian! I'm a saver, goddammit. In the old days, people didn't just throw stuff away. If you needed some string, or some iron fillments, the nearest store was 40 miles away. You'd have to borrow them from a neighbor!"

"Okay, Dad," I say.

My sister interrupts, "Excuse me, Dad, but where would you like me to put this?" She pulls a lone french bread bag from the pickup bed and holds it up for my dad to see.

He points across the driveway, to the far corner lined with the potted flowers he spends his days tending, "Put it over in one of those boxes with the other french bread bags," he says.

355 Days/355 Memories

In homage to, or rather stealing the idea from Suzan-Lori Parks' 365 Plays/365 Days project, I'm going to post 355 memories in 355 days. Anyone who's been reading this blog knows what a challenge it will be for me to write something on it everyday. But I'm going to try. It's my contribution to the theater.

Spell it Out

Parents often resort to spelling or abbreviating words in front of children so that the children do not get riled up by sensitive information. For example, if David and I want to say "children's museum" in front of Clara, but we don't want to go there, we call it the CM; otherwise, if she hears the phrase and we DON'T go there, she will freak out unduly. We spell out certain snacks that are special treats, like c-o-o-k-i-e-s, so that we have the option of NOT giving one to her. Like I said, if she hears a word, and the object the word symbolizes is not forthcoming, then there is t-r-o-u-b-l-e.

Sometimes David will spell something out that, in my opinion, does not need to be spelled out. He'll say, "Can you take that thing away from Clara. It's a c-h-o-k-i-n-g-h-a-z-a-r-d. Not only does it take me forever to figure out what the hell he's spelling, but also I can't see the danger in just saying the word. Tonight it was, "Do you mind if I do the d-i-s-h-e-s?" indicating that he felt like doing dishes tonight instead of giving Clara her bath. He and I switch off doing one or the other after dinner every night.

He cracks me up when he does this spelling out of seemingly harmless words. H-i-l-a-r-i-o-u-s.

Suck

Diego can't nurse right now, and so there's major mayhem over here.

I had a CTA today -- a CT Angiogram, like a CT Scan with intravenous iodine contrast, which intensifies the view of the brain more than a normal CT scan. As a consequence of the iodine contrast, I cannot breastfeed Diego for a minimum of 24 hours. Well, I could breastfeed him, but the pamphlet from the pharmaceutical company that the nurse gave me says in effect "we [the drug company] pretty much know that this contrast is passed undiluted through breastmilk to baby. We don't know what this does to baby. The mother may bottle feed baby for 24 hours."

I've heard that some doctors calmly say there's no necessary waiting period to breast feed after getting iodine contrast. But then there's the technician today who, when answering the question I asked everyone from receptionist to phlembotomist to nurse to technician, said gravely, "well...every hospital has a different opinion, but we recommend...48 hours."

48 hours is a long time to wait for a delayed flight, say, or a golf marathon to end on a major network like ABC or CBS. 48 hours is a long time for a sleepover with your best friends when you're all 13 -- and these are your best friends. 48 hours is a long time for even the most pleasurable of activities.

So imagine 48 hours of uninterrupted baby-crying. Baby's in pain because I'm denying him my nipple, offering him instead a silicone rendition of it, which is nothing like the real thing. And he knows it. And I am listening to him wail, screeeeeeching like a favorite pet being run over by the neighborhood gang -- over and over -- just for the torture. And as bad as this pet tragedy sounds, baby-being-denied-real-nipple-crying sounds worse. To me it does, anyway.

Imagine how long this event feels.

His confusion and distress create in me a frenzy -- a chaotic ache to quell my child's trauma.

I am drinking so much water right now, trying to push this iodine contrast out of my body as fast as possible. My kidneys are double-timing it.

Daddy is caring for baby right now. I think they're bonding. Daddy's all baby-whispering in there, getting Diego to take the bottle. Diego knows by now that Daddy has no boobs, so it's easier for Daddy to get him to take the bottle. But true to baby-whispering form, Daddy is doing what seems to have been impossible only moments ago: get him to suck my milk from the artificial nipple. Bless him.

Today I Die

Two caesareans, one appendectomy, one auto accident, one hard fall-down during my seventh month of pregnancy, and one brain hemorrhage later, I am here to tell you that all those cliches, all the poems, all the plays and great books about the fleeting nature of life -- life, the expanse between being born and being dead -- are true. There is nothing trite about the sentiment. I now know because by some amazing grace I recently had a brain hemorrhage and not only did I live, but I live with VERY few complicating factors as a result.

For example, I am still as wickedly smart as I was before. And funny. I'm funnier than ever now. My husband might say I'm funny in a "touched" sort of way; and he would argue that it didn't start as a result of the hemorrhage. I can see his point; for example, this morning I aerobicized around the living room for 20 minutes in my pajamas because dammit it's time for me to start losing 25 pounds. He drank his coffee on the couch and watched me while I danced and jumped jacks and lifted legs to the Breeders (without irony), the Pretenders (which kept skipping) and some Romanian gypsy music.

Recently, I watched Robert Altman's new movie, "Prairie Home Companion." Awesome movie. The backstage banter at the beginning is perfect; anyone who has spent time getting ready backstage before a show will feel the real as captured by Streep, Tomlin, Harrleson, Reilly, etc. The movie is an allegory about the nature of life -- its sweetness, the brilliance all around us that we don't see until it's too late, the cruelty of it, the darkness. At the end of the movie, Kevin Kline, playing Guy Noir, quotes a famous Robert Herrick poem "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time." Here's the first stanza:

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying.

When I taught British Literature, inevitably this poem would come up in the syllabus. I never really cared for it before, but now it plays in my head, like a happy ghost, probably 20 times a day.

My step brother recently told me about some sect of monks who wake up every morning and say to themselves, "today I die," intimating that they must live that day as if it were their last on earth. After my brain hemorrhage, I realized that each day previous to the one I found myself in might very well have been my last; the veil between life and death is thinner than I ever imagined. I mean, one morning I laid down to take a nap, and I woke up 20 minutes later with the worst headache of my life. By that same time the next morning, I had had three MRIs, two CT scans, one angiogram, and a large amount of morphine and other types of pharmaceuticals, and the only certainty the neurologists could tell me was that I was very, very, very lucky. They had no idea why it happened and told me that I was "a medical mystery."

Now I'm living as if each day is my last, because it could be. It could be yours. Really. And if it is: what do you want to do?

Here's my list:
1) Hang out with my kids
2) Have sex with my husband
4) Tell my family and friends that I love them
3) Write

Everything else is negotiable, but those four things are not.

Behold, A Son

Diego Aaron Brown
b. August 17, 2006

Clara

She's an amazing big sister.

One more stress bot....

Today our landlord came to remove this disgusting, mold-covered window unit from the window directly next to where David's head rests each night during sleep. We've never used the unit, and I figured it was inoperable, given the general disrepair of the thing. Plus, David has had too many sinus infections for the thing to be benign. Since we have a newborn coming home with us in two weeks, and will be sleeping in our room with us for a while, we pushed the landlord to remove the grody window unit pronto. He's going on vacation in the Southern Rockies for two weeks, leaving Thursday, and we really wanted him to get it out before he leaves.

So he calls and says, "I'm just about mad enough to come take out a window unit. Is this a convenient time?"

It's Clara's bath and bedtime, but I say "yes."

"I'll be up in 5 to 10 minutes," he says. In our landlord time that means anywhere between 20 minutes to 20 days.

I move the bed and get the area ready for him to remove the unit from the window. He finally arrives after 25 minutes. "I'm gonna leave in that other unit on the other side of the house, in case the compressor breaks and you need to seek refuge."

In case the compressor breaks?!?!

"Don't say that, Bob," I say.

"I just hope it doesn't," he says.

He's just trying to scare me, because supposedly I scare him. Right? Now I'm all stressed that the fucking air conditioner is going to break while he's high up in the Rocky Mountains. While we have a newborn in the house.

"Where is that unit gonna be stored, in case the compressor does break while you're gone."

"This thing is gone, Missy. If it breaks, you'll have to go to the other room."

"It's not gonna break," I say.

"I sure hope not."

Does he know something I don't know? Is the warranty expired? Doesn't he sound like a really nice guy?

The air-conditioner is not going to break while he's gone. But in case it does, I made him give me the name of the company that will come out and fix it. Jason McCann services; something like that.

"These people get greedy," he says.

If the air-conditioner breaks while he's gone, I don't care how much they tell me it's gonna cost to repair it; you can be sure I'll give them the go-ahead.

Quarterly Update

It's been too long, but I've been so pregnant. Still am, though not much longer to go: two weeks or so. The baby boy in me is big, very big, so big the doctor put me on a diet to curb him from growing too big too fast. So I dieted using strict portion control, eating lots of fruits and raw vegetables. After a week on this diet, which is a diabetic diet, I felt better than I have in 10 years. Once the doctor told me the baby's growth had gone back to normal, I tripped a little off the diet. I'm still eating much better than I was before the diet; I'm gaining the perfect amount of weight each week, says my OB. Because sugar's the only drug left to a pregnant woman, it can be abused and have a deleterious effect on her nutritional input. It did on mine, PD (pre-diet).

As soon as I started feeling better, I got a new job, one that came to me through an acquaintance. I'm recruiting sales people for positions in my acquaintance’s company. A global corporation has recently bought his company. I'm recruiting sales people in many many cities to sell a "financial solutions" product. When I took the job, it sounded simpler than it's been in reality.

Today I'm not feeling so hot, actually. I've been nauseous and headachy and winded. The August heat and humidity are hard to begin with, but the heat and humidity coupled with my having a 17-month-old toddler and being 8.5 months pregnant, makes living harder than normal. Baby boy (still unnamed) moves around a lot and uses BIG movements, grand gestures. Sometimes it feels like he's tap-dancing on my bladder. Often it feels like he's tap-dancing on my bladder. I have to pee all the time. Maybe there is an hour's worth of minutes during the day when I don't have to go pee. My dad says that this condition, typical of pregnancy, resembles the condition men find themselves in when they get older.

My daughter Clara has entered the superest cutest stage: she's extremely verbal, but not coherent in Standard English. She toddles around discovering new things -- new sights, new, new sounds, new moods -- all day long. This past Sunday morning, she pulled a paperback copy of Romeo and Juliet from the bookcase and carried it around with her throughout the day. That evening, when we got to the book-reading part of our night time routine, she picked up Romeo and Juliet from the floor and handed it to me.

"You want me to read Romeo and Juliet to you?" I laughed.

"Yeah," she said. Yeah is her one perfectly pronounced word at this point.

"Are you sure?" I said.

"Yeah," she said.

"Okay....Let's see....what should I read?" I scanned the play, looking for a sonnet or a series of lines that I could pull out and read to satisfy her whim. Not finding one easily, I settled on starting from the beginning. "Act I, Scene I," I began.

I read three or four pages to her that night, finishing at the part where Capulet declares he's having a party and sends his illiterate servant off with a list of guests to invite. Periodically, while reading the play, I'd stop and ask her if she wanted me to read Goodnight Moon (a highly poetic board book, by the way). She scowled and growled loudly. "You want me to keep reading Romeo and Juliet?" I asked.


"Yeah." She smiled and went back to drinking her before-bed milk, snuggled up in my armpit, listening to and babbling along with Shakespeare.

The next night it was the same story: only Romeo and Juliet would do. Tonight, bedtime reading started out the same way, but when we started Act II, Scene I, she finally lost interest (just when I'd found my rhythm!), demanding Easter Egg Surprise instead.

She's at a stage in her development where she has strong relationships with her cow stuffed animal and her bunny stuffed animal. She protests, like any red-blooded child, going to bed each night, but if I ask her if she wants to read Cow and Bunny a story in her crib, she acquiesces and goes gently into bed. Then she spends the next twenty minutes "reading" to her animals. I hear her in her room, reading to her animal friends wbo share her crib, and at moments like this, I can't quite believe how beautiful life is.

Monica

"Hi Monica!"

During my 14th year, strangers in my relatively small hometown started greeting me this way, mysteriously often. The first few times, I felt like I must be imagining it: Did I just get called Monica? Again? After about the 8th time it happened, the mistaken identity began to bother me.

"Who's Monica?" I asked my friend Leah.

"She's that other redheaded girl," Leah said. "She goes to Marco." Marco Forster Junior High School was the public Junior High School in town. I went to the Catholic school. Leah played fullback on the AYSO soccer team where I played goalie. We'd been Brownies and Girl Scouts together in Elementary. We were also in National Charity League together during high school. Incidentally, we also went to the same college, although we didn’t room together. Leah liked nothing better than to hang out and chat with me in the backfield while our forwards were running the ball furiously toward the goal. (I owe much of my former soccer goalie prowess to Leah's sieve-like defense of the goal box.) Leah went to public school; therefore, she knew this Monica. "She's taller than you are, but you look a lot alike," she said.

Instead of playing soccer, Monica danced ballet, which explains why our paths took so long to cross. We finally met when our different National Charity League subchapters convened at a common house. The girls in Monica's subchapter were debutantes. This meeting-nay-party was all about how to give ourselves manicures -- a very useful skill, like typing, for example; how to arrange flowers; how to sit down in a chair properly and what to do with your legs while sitting. My own subchapter did community service together: we candy striped; we patterned a local quadriplegic girl who had been paralyzed since birth; we delivered meals on wheels, read for Head Start students, walked together, along with our mothers, in the Swallows Day Parade. A few times, we met with California stateswomen, like Marian Bergeson. I have to say that as noble as these things were, I remember more from that one meeting where I learned manicure skills (always file in one direction), flower arranging skills (cut the stems under running water), and sitting etiquette (back up to the chair until the backs of your legs brush the seat; sit straight down; fold your ankes around one another and let your legs lean together to one side. Never! Cross! Your! Legs!).

It might have been through our participation in this group that my parents found out about Young Republican Camp, where they sent me when I was 16. But that is a totally awesome memory that I'm reserving for a future writing.

The moment I saw her, I knew I'd met my match.

"You must be Monica," I said.

"You're Christa!" she said.

"We don't look alike at all," I said.

"No," she said.

We stood staring at one another, trying to belie our greedy need to find our difference in one another. Then, recognizing our awkward silence, we tried to start talking again.

"I guess our hair color is kind of similar," I said.

"And it's cut sort of similar," she said. Our haircut resembled the cut that Tracy Austin, the 80's teen tennis star, sported in the 70s: longish, with bangs and slight feathering around the face.

"Yeah," I said.

Monica and I didn't say anything to each other for the rest of the party, and I never saw her again.

Fate and Free Will

Lately, I've been wrestling with fate. That is, I've been contemplating the concept that one's existence requires her to behave in accordance with the life choices she has made. I'm operating here under the understanding that the life choices people make constitute their "destiny" or fate.

Ideally, we make our life choices consciously; for example, a woman may love many, many men in her lifetime; however, when it comes to choosing a mate, she combines as much awareness as she can muster with a generous dose of dumb luck and chooses one man. What results is the life she leads as a married woman to that particular man; i.e., her "fate." Likewise, a woman gets pregnant with her husband (they are poor artists, they are "not ready," they have decided to wait; nevertheless, she gets pregnant the old fashioned way--without "planning") and chooses to go ahead and become a mother, knowing that having children will complicate her life in the deepest way. She lives, in short, with her eyes and heart open to the experiences she's having; she does not crash or thrash through her life, complaining that the life she's creating for herself -- whether consciously or unconsciously -- is unfair. She does not become a victim of her fate.


Sometimes, while contemplating my fate, passages from Milan Kundera's novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being seep into my consciousness, passages like "The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become" (Kundera 5).

Before I became a new mom/shut-in, I enjoyed an extravagant lifestyle: I played in a band; I wrote and produced original performances; I acted in plays; I taught English Literature; I traveled the world. My husband and I spent a lot of time out with our friends. We attended parties -- pool parties, cast parties, democratic parties, garden parties, galas. We even threw a party now and then. Mine was a relatively light existence, a troubled existence to be sure -- whose isn't? -- but free of irrevocable responsibility for the most part.

Not so much these days.

Recently, my friend Jason asked me if I wanted to be in a play -- the world premiere rock opera by Daniel Johnston and Infernal Bridegroom Productions. Jason is directing it. It's gonna be amazing, and I would love to be in the play more than most anything else. But I had to say no. No. No. No. Because not only am I a wife, and the mom of a fourteen month old daughter, but also because I'm carrying another baby in my uterus. These three things are major responsibilities, each one compounded by the next. Being a wife is easy; being a wife and mother is exponentially harder. Being a mother of two, I've heard, is exponentially harder than being a mother of one. Besides the responsibilities to my family, there's the reality that by six p.m., I can barely stand. The only thing I'm successful at during the evening hours is passing out from exhaustion.

Is it worth it? Is giving up this extravagant, seemingly expansive lifestyle for the limited, burdened one of family worth the exchange?

Yes. It is. I think. I hope.

I used to think of the Fate phenomenon as the opposite of Free Will. But over the years, I've learned that Fate is a result of Free Will; there is no versus between the two. They are intimately connected, in the same way all great oppositions are connected: dark/light, male/female, parent/child, heaviness/lightness. There is no one without the other.

There is no extravagance without burden.

Cut Loose

I believe I can come out now.

For years when I've gone to get a haircut, and the stylist asks me how I'd like it cut, I've wanted to say, "like Keith Richards." But I haven't said it, because I was afraid of the resulting look. And also, when I did say it once, the hairperson looked at me like I needed to up my meds.

I don't take meds; I am totally serious.

So today I went to a new place. I get my hair cut twice a year. I wash it twice a month, maybe three times. Let's say I'm low maintenance when it comes to my hair. Mostly, I pull it up into some sort of situation. Lately I've been wearing it plaited, but I started to worry that I might end up one of those old women with braids, and with that vision in my head, I couldn't wait any longer to get it cut. I heard from a good friend, a visual artist, that John Chao was the man for long hair in Houston. So I made an appointment with John Chao. Turns out, the rumor that he's the guy for long hair is fallacious. He's also the guy for short hair, medium length hair, curly hair, gray hair, hair color, etc. Apparently, people go to him all the time because they've heard that he's the guy for ______ hair.

John Chao did not ask me how I wanted my hair cut. He simply began cutting it, dry. He said that he was going to cut for a while to get a feel for my hair and then he would figure out what to do. I liked him immediately.

While he cut, he told me tricks for how to bring out the natural wave in my hair. He said, "You must begin preparing your waves in the shower." Then he launched into a step by step description of how to prepare my hair for waves. Only shampoo the scalp -- never the ends. Wash with just water at least once a week. While you're in the shower, separate your hair into sections, and let the hot water hit your scalp while you pull the natural oils that normally live on your scalp all the way from the roots to the ends. There was even more arcane knowledge imparted by John Chao, more than I've ever heard or read before. He applauded me for washing my hair only twice a month. I was charmed. Because he speaks with a thick Asian accent, I had to listen veeeery closely to absorb all his hair wisdom.

To cap it off, I left the salon looking like the rock star I used to be but never was. In fact, I look a little like Keith Richards. A ladylike Keith Richards. It was as if John Chao read my mind, discovered my secret hair wish by feeling his way through my hair.

John Chao cured me of my everlasting bad mood. I heartily tipped him. As I left, he walked me to the door, opened it for me, and said, "Enjoy your new life."

Misanthropy

I am sick of everything: internet forums, blogs (including this one), folk, cars – not only SUVs – toast, whining toddlers, do-gooders, neck pain, grandfather clocks, Baby Einstein, Walt Disney, shiny pennies, romantic comedies, Hollywood video, brick and mortar monopolies, poetry, peanut butter, stale pancakes, public and private schools, oil slicks, pot holes, refried beans. The list, of course, goes on ad infinitum. Periodically, I enter a fog of dense misanthropy, which hovers around my head for a week or so. When it lifts, I feel refreshed, ready to blaze back into the world with an open, hopeful heart once again.

If I were to read the newspaper on a regular basis, the fog would never lift. I don’t know how newshounds live with themselves and the other 6.5 billion people on earth.

Maybe they only live with themselves.