Translations

Last session one of my English as a Second Language students, a skinny 17-year-old full-time dishwasher who moved here a year ago from Mexico, had a habit of memorizing English phrases spoken to him that he didn’t understand and asking me later for translations.

“Wa da ya min no,” he asked, wanting to understand. I figured that out to be, “What do you mean, no?” I could tell him what the words meant, but I needed more context to explain why it was said. It turns out that at work a cook had asked him to do something (he wasn’t sure what), and he, not knowing what she said, had guessed a response and replied, “no.” He apparently answered incorrectly. We talked about why she said that, the power relationships implicated, and sarcasm.

This kid is particularly bright, curious, and motivated. I tried to work with him to consider, once he knows more English, completing the free GED program offered. But his work schedule changed and now he isn’t attending English classes anymore. When I think of him, I see him running along the highway on his way home after classes, no car, no money for the bus. I think of his coming to the US as a teenager and finding work, supporting himself, enrolling in class, buying a picture dictionary I recommended, doing his homework, saving up questions, raising his hand, all alone. I want to mother him. We live a world apart.

He’s so brave and despite all his hard work, he’s generically maligned as an illegal immigrant, like many of my students. He wants to learn English and improve himself, send money back home, and contribute to his newly chosen society, which is so hard to do while subsisting on below minimum-wage, living on the fringe, underage, undereducated. It’s not such an easy thing for immigrants to “just learn English already.” But he shows great promise, as do others. This nation’s history, a fantasy of opportunity for many, is full of daring and dedicated people like him, and its future will be shaped by them, too (like it or not, truly). Often for the better.

But retitled for a mother

1789
Songs of Innocence
Nurse’s Song
by William Blake

When the voices of children are heard on the green,
And laughing is heard on the hill,
My heart is at rest within my breast,
And everything else is still.
“Then come home, my children, the sun is gone down,
And the dews of night arise;
Come, come, leave off play, and let us away,
Till the morning appears in the skies.”

“No, no, let us play, for it is yet day,
And we cannot go to sleep;
Besides, in the sky the little birds fly,
And the hills are all covered with sheep.”
“Well, well, go and play till the light fades away,
And then go home to bed.”
The little ones leaped, and shouted, and laughed,
And all the hills echoed.

Can’t really complain

So we’ve put Baby on an elimination diet to track down her allergies. She’s mostly eating beans, sunflower seeds and butter, fruits, including avocado, veggies, oatmeal, and rice cakes. I’ve already screwed up a few times (like when I guess I forgot that wheat germ is, um, made of wheat). She’s also drinking rice milk mostly instead of formula but I just don’t think that this diet is good for very long in the protein and fat departments (though she’s honestly wolfing down the sunflower butter, so who knows?) It’s kind of tricky figuring out what to feed her with these limitations, and so far no change on the eczema front, but we’ll stick with it.

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Now that I’ve accepted a non-teaching job for the summer, the local colleges are starting to call me. But given our upcoming trip to Sweden, I couldn’t have taken summer jobs there, anyway, so I’m interviewing for the fall. I have been thinking a great deal on the working/not working issue, and will post something about that soon.

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Went to the local indoor community pool today with my mothers’ group. We took turns watching each others’ little toddlers so we could do the big, tall, fast grown-up water slide, which was wonderful. Baby didn’t want to be held, so we could only stay in the shallow end since I didn’t feel like letting her drown, and she spent most of the time obsessing about trying to go up and down the stairs without holding onto anything. This little girl is exhausting sometimes.

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Maybe it’s because he’s from Sweden, I don’t know, but Husband is apparently unaware of the cultural norms surrounding Mother’s Day. Last year he didn’t really do anything (until I got upset, and then he did stuff the following week), and this year I could tell wasn’t going to be too different, so I told him what I wanted (a handprint stepping stone made by Baby) and, well, went out and bought the relevant kit (look, I had a coupon). I’ve already done his Father’s Day present (Baby and I painted a mug at a make-your-own pottery place) and made a clay bunny (at the same place) for my grandmother, and created a photobook online (at Wal-mart, just 18 bucks) that I am extremely happy with for my own mom of Baby’s first year (now that she’s almost two, it seemed fitting). Anyway, I did tell him of my disappointment and he plans to abscond with the baby tonight to come up with something on his own.

+++

I’m getting excited about going to Sweden. It’s so relaxing and beautiful in the summer, and I do enjoy all the hiking and seeing the various relatives. I am going to campaign for a short trip to Paris that probably won’t happen, but it’s worth a shot. Now I thoroughly understand that the flight over will be hell, but it’ll end, and then we’ll have two weeks there.

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I got a sub and Husband is taking off so for Memorial Day weekend we’re going to the beach for a nice long time. This is also quite exciting.

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We went and saw the newest new baby we know a couple of days ago, and Baby seems mostly to have gotten her fill of newborns and mostly left the adorable, remarkably alert little thing alone, and instead played with his older sister, baby dolls, and the baby’s bouncy seat, swing, etc. This means I got to hold a baby uninterrupted! Yay! A baby that can’t run away from me or tell me “no” or kick me in the glasses during a diaper change, giving me a blood blister on the side of my nose!

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So, basically, things are good. My research work hasn’t gotten started yet (the tech people are taking their time getting me set up and I am not complaining) so I’ve had lots of time to do whatever I want. I’ve been sewing buttons onto things, getting stains out (use GOOP for grease stains, even set-in ones!), finishing crafts and sewing projects, reading novels, cleaning shelving, etc. I’ve been working, also, on spending less time on the internet (read this if you think you spend more time online than is strictly necessary–of course by clicking that link you will be furthering that problem) so have completely stopped going to some sites I used to read all the time (not blogs), and it’s actually nice to have less mental clutter.

Progress

Frequently these days new articles come out talking about advances in technology, from time to time involving cloning or gametes in some way. People like to become very upset with the various possible related ramifications: “How unnatural!” “Think of what people will do with that technology, what horrible things might come about!”

Of course, yes, unsavory things might happen as a result, sometimes, but really, flying in airplanes is “unnatural.” And bad things sometimes occur in consequence. Same with cars–even more so. (Note that you don’t see the fundamentalists walking instead of driving because the Bible doesn’t mention cars, but then they get all worked up over IVF). Same with telephones–now we can harass people from afar! And with every other technological innovation. To me, I just don’t see these other types of advances as necessarily harmful. Frankly, whatever helps people have the children they desire sounds fine to me, or whatever works to cure disease.

Over time humans have evolved to be wonderful tool makers and users, with creative, flexible minds (in some ways, anyway), and recent scientific advanced are just more examples of us putting our abilities to work. Instead of leaving our bodies as we found them, we can determine where we lead them—-to controlled reproduction, to the rewriting of them to suit our vain, medical, or whimsical purposes, to healing the sick. It is up to us to put our superbly programmed brains to use to figure out how fix the disease-causing mistakes our genes never worked out, or to figure out how to increase mutual respect, or run cars on less expensive and more environmentally-friendly power, or make loved babies, and many more things that we will dream up as we go along.

Back where I started

For several years before I started grad school in 2005 I worked for a research consulting firm doing, well, researchy-type stuff with, you know, numbers and words. Bored to tears, I decided to go for my Master’s which is in a subject area that basically focuses on how to teach languages. I thought this would be good since it would theoretically serve me well when we move to Sweden, and I’d taught English and Spanish in a variety of settings since 1999 as a volunteer, so I knew I liked it.

I’ve now finished this degree. And I’m teaching ESL, yes, but not at a place that requires a graduate degree. And thus far I have been unsuccessful in getting a part-time teaching job at a more upscale place, though partly this is because ESL programs don’t hire adjuncts until they have more information on enrollment, so it’s no surprise they wouldn’t be hiring now for August. Still, it’s been a little discouraging.

So when my old boss at the research place asked me last week if I could do some part-time from-home work for them, as apparently a person who had been hired to take over some of my old responsibilities had “left suddenly,” I said yes. The project should mostly be for this summer. It won’t be thrilling or even interesting, but, well…

Actually, I don’t know why I said yes. Partly just to help them out, I guess. But it’s frustrating to go back to my old job. Why did I even go to grad school, anyway? And it’s not that we need the money; that sounds a little obnoxious to say [I guess it is also obnoxious to complain about easy part-time work-from-home offers], but mostly it’s because I just won’t be making that much doing this. Though, to make my graduate degree seem even less purposeful, I’ll still be making more per hour in research than I am in teaching. Plus I was kind of looking forward to having my evenings more free with the absence of schoolwork to get good at sewing, and reading and exercising (well, “looking forward” may be the wrong word for that last one). But I said yes. At least I don’t have to go back to my sad little office; I can work from home. Maybe I can even watch TV while doing it! Oh right, we don’t have TV now. Perfect timing!

Baby fever

I don’t have it; Baby does.

It seems like half the people I know are in possession of babies, especially newborns, these days. When we see them I like to hold them a couple of minutes, maybe make some funny sounds at them, comment on their cuteness, perhaps help coax out a burp, and then I’m done, ready to pass the squalling, floppy things back to their tired mommies.

Not so Baby. She rather insists on getting to hold them, hug them, kiss them, pat them, burp them, love them, squeeze them, ad inifinitum. Why their mothers prefer to hold them themselves, perhaps nursing them, or keeping them in their little car seats, she doesn’t know and finds intensely frustrating. She knows she would be awesome at holding them. She reaches out her arms, indicating, “Just hand him over, he’ll be fine, give him here!” For crawling babies, she’ll follow them around trying to hoist them up, or drag them into her lap. This is especially funny as some of them weigh more than she does. When she has had the brief opportunity to hold a newborn, or sit with an older baby, Baby is, indeed, gentle and sweet, intensely curious, quick with the kisses. It’s darling. But eventually we take the baby away from her, and her disappointment is quite clear. She simply does not agree that, as a one-year-old, she is not an appropriate caretaker for a zero-year-old.

Though I don’t usually post pictures of other people’s kids, one newborn is largely indistinguishable from another, so here is a hilarious picture of Baby holding a (really big) three-week-old, who looks quite alarmed about this turn of events (though honestly Baby was doing a great job holding him; I can’t imagine what his problem was).

In related news, she also enjoys holding kitties:

The siblings of these babies aren’t nearly as obsessed with babies as Baby. Maybe they want to hold them or check them out from time to time, but then they find other pursuits. But Baby is never done with the babies. And since seeing all these newborns recently, she’s been particularly into her dollies. For many of her waking hours Baby will cart around her baby doll or a humanoid-looking kitty cat and a doll bottle with fake milk. She likes to check their diapers and burp them. Perhaps it’s a phase. It makes me even more glad, though, not to have a newborn in the house of my own. Running interference all the time would be exhausting and sooner or later that baby would get toted around by its neck and then dropped; I can just see it. Yet another reason to wait until Baby is three, or four, or never, to have another baby. Baby will just have to wait!

Allergies

Baby seems to have food allergies, or at least some serious sensitivities. She’s always tended to eczema, having a persistent patch on the back on one thigh and others which pop up from time to time on her hands, face. Then a few months ago I noticed that after eating tomatoes she would get a red and irritated face which cleared up with some Aquaphor applied overnight. I have a slight skin sensitivity to tomatoes myself which isn’t a big deal, and figured the yumminess of tomatoes was worth having to risk a little skin irritation from time to time, so we kept feeding them to her (she loves tomatoes and tomato sauce). We also noticed that whole milk seemed to be giving her absurdly water poop, so we put her back full-time on formula and that seemed to help. Though I’m not sure if she has a problem with them now, she had effects from citrus when I was breastfeeding.

A couple of weeks ago, while eating eggplant parmigiana, Baby started crying, flipping out a little. Her poor hands were covered in weird white raised welts where the food had touched her. It was scary. We washed her hands, applied Aquaphor (I use that for everything), and wrapped her little hands in gauze and the welts were gone within an hour. She’d had eggplant before, but I thought maybe that was it, since she’d never had that problem with tomato. But the next time she had food with tomato sauce in it she got the welts again. So no more tomato.

Ever since then, though, the eczema on her hands has just been horrible. And then a couple of nights ago Baby got the welts-on-hands problem again from eating some (tomato-free, seafood-free) paella. I can’t imagine what she’s reacting to. From time to time she’ll get red rings around her eyes and on her cheeks. The Aquaphor isn’t helping and neither is the prescription anti-eczema medicine she has, partly because it is very difficult to apply it to her hands. We’ll put some on, wrap the hand in gauze and secure it with tape, but Baby really needs her thumbs to sleep, and the bandage will somehow end up around her wrist by morning, the medicine presumably wiped off. This weird raw redness (maybe it isn’t even eczema) is the worst on her thumbs, I guess because of the thumb-sucking. Her doctor gave us a prescription for her to have Claritin several months ago for seasonal allergies, noting a slight cough and the red around Baby’s eyes, but I never filled it as that’s pretty serious medicine for what seems to me to be run-of-the-mill runny nose pollen-allergy stuff. I think the issue is food, and I’d like to treat that issue by eliminating whatever food it is. How can I figure this out? What can I do?

Socializing

Husband and I recently went with another couple to a participatory mystery comedy dinner theatre show. It was sooo fun and I got sooo drunk (it has been years and years since I have had the opportunity to utter that sentence; also, by this I mean I had a glass of wine and a third of a glass of Long Island Iced Tea). Husband and I stood up in front of everyone (with a few others) and sang. There was lots of laughing and misplaced pairs of reading glasses.

We never go out like this. I haven’t been to the movies since the middle of 2006. We’ve gotten a babysitter to go out for pleasure only once, and that was really against our will; we just felt like we were supposed to. An exotic evening involves chess. This isn’t at all the result of Baby’s arrival; we, as a couple, have always been homebodies. I’d be somewhat more willing to do fun things out and about, particularly if they include Baby (I am not into the whole sitter thing); Husband can be a bit more misanthropic.

Baby and I go out a lot during the week to various events, however, and we get together with friends and I talk on the phone and have blogging, so I have lots of interaction with others. Husband, though, doesn’t seem to have any really good man-friends at the moment. He used to be buddies with my best friend’s husband, but that sort of waned, which is just as well, since I think being couple friends can be kind of hard. One of his best friends is from an old job is now his superior at work (this guy hired Husband away) which makes their friendship a little more touchy, I think, but they still work out together. Husband really misses his brother who is in Europe. Everyone needs a best friend to bitch to, but Husband thinks that complaining about me would be disloyal (though I’ve encouraged it). What’s sad is he hardly has time for friends, anyway, what with work and school. Poor Husband.