The Afghanis

I was pretty depressed the years I kept not conceiving a child. The usual fixes were sought: the services of a reproductive endicronologist, a therapist, an anti-depressant medication, a new life direction (grad school), and everybody’s favorite suggestion for combating being mopey, volunteer work. (It must be said, though, that with all this, the only thing that really made me feel better about not being able to get pregnant was getting pregnant).

I decided to teach English as a Second Language to refugees and got hooked up with a family of Afghanis who lived in the run-down apartment complex not too far. Twice a week for a year I tutored them in their home. Despite spending so much time with them I never did get to know everyone very well in terms of demographic details–names, ages, familial structure–due to linguistic and cultural constraints as well as what I suspect was a sort of purposeful lack of forthcomingness and clarity on their part that I decided to respect and let go, being aware their previous and current life circumstances were not altogether happy and might not be enjoyable or simple to recount. I know at least one child of the oldest couple present had been murdered, and that mention of the Taliban made everybody drop their eyes.

What became very clear, at any rate, was the kindness of the family, and the exotic tastiness of their food (I remember a lot of almonds) and their tea (I recall a beautiful tea service). What never became clear, to them at least, was much of what I tried to teach them. The kids all got up to speed in their schools, but the adults, particularly the women, seemed so baffled by not only the language but the process of participating in educational efforts, that it felt like every week we just repeated the lessons of the week before. I had taught ESL to illiterate adults before, or at least tried to (it’s by far the most challenging instructional environment imaginable, bar wartime, disability, and total apathy), and had some tricks up my sleeve, but I’m not really sure I left them much better, English-wise, than I found them.

But I know I helped them when I went grocery shopping with them. I know I helped them when I navigated the school system with them on behalf of a child who was having trouble. I know I clarified some impenetrable INS paperwork (to the best any human was able). I know I got one lady to stop applying her nasal spray to her ears, having totally not understood the purpose of the medicine her doctor had prescribed her. I know I made them feel more at home in a new country, a friendly, American face who kept showing up, smiling, carrying confusing worksheets and insisting cheerfully upon their memorizing their phone number and address (not that anybody ever did).

My dad asks after them a lot; once I took him to meet them and he had some sort of wordless bonding with the patriarch. I wish I had kept seeing them, but I gave them up when I was sickly pregnant, working two jobs, and in grad school full-time. I don’t know if they fully understood why I stopped coming. I wonder where they are, how they are doing. I know they would have loved to see Little Girl. They would have been so happy for me; they had always seemed so concerned that I didn’t have children and my family was not close by. To them, I think, nothing (possessions, comfort) could be an adequate replacement for family ties.

Med

My grandfather was a surgeon and another close relative is a pediatrician. I never strongly considered medical school myself, mostly knowing I was not up for the gargantuan effort, and besides, I was jonesing for a baby as early as late college, but I appreciate medical arts and sciences and have had good experience with its practitioners and, yes, pretty much believe most of what my doctors tell me.

Sure, I wish medicine were more evidence-based and scientific and I recognize the unfortunate influence of drug company lobbyists (while being grateful for medications themselves, one of which, metformin, I take daily and which has hugely improved my health), and I know that my c-section wouldn’t have been considered necessary in many other countries, and that sometimes doctors make mistakes or don’t keep up with current research and have biases and strong attachment to preconceived notions just like anybody else.

Yet on the whole I am very cognizant of my good fortune in having access to experienced, educated, and kind medical practitioners, and I believe they mean my family well (insurance companies not so much). Medicine is one of the big perks of being human, and I see it as one of the super-neato ways that human intelligence and capabilities have developed in such a way as to guide our further evolution. No longer does shitty eyesight mean starvation! No longer can a small cut you weren’t able to keep clean potentially spell death! Now you can (sometimes) reproduce even against your body’s own inclination! Now, conceivably, we could be selecting for more subtle traits (in practice, though, the typically more scaled-back fertility of the more successful population–by some definitions–is the antithesis of how natural selection usually works. Now it’s survival of the least-apt to use contraception).

My appreciation of medical advances extends to topics like immunizations, so when the pediatrician finally got some H1N1 vaccine in, I immediately made an appointment. Little Girl’s not in school or around society at large much usually, but we’re about to go on a multi-state, multi-hotel, multi-tourist trap Thanksgiving trip, so I’m glad to offer her some additional protection. And to participate in the larger societal effort to reduce disease.

I don’t know. Titles can be such a hassle. I admire those who do away with them entirely.

I am totally fine with Obama’s peace prize–surprised but pleased. I think it’s largely symbolic, more based on who he is than what he’s done, and that’s cool with me. Obamania is a huge improvement over being embarrassed by our leader, and frankly I think he deserves it, and it sends a message I’m comfy with. Remember, I stood in line FOR EIGHT HOURS to vote for him, and did a lot of campaigning, so I feel some ownership over his success, and it’s heartening for him to have more. Plus, I figure it’ll help his re-election chances and, uh, I think he’s gonna need another four years to get through all his plans.

We’ve had a very busy week. We had a roof leak and had to get quotes on that and then get it fixed, and we have some tree problems we had to get quotes on, and we got quotes for refinishing a table that turned out to be veneer anyway and so not worth 2k they wanted to make it look not much better, and quotes on a yard service, and quotes on getting the driveway redone like my mom wants and basically what this means is I met a lot of men this week and also that I have learned a few things: a) life is expensive; b) quotes get higher the fancier your neighborhood; c) I miss women. Things I have not learned: a) what the family trust that owns the house is paying for and what we are, and b) how people come up with those quotes anyway–they vary so much.

After losing my glasses to the sea I had a new eye exam before getting another primary pair, and during the appointment, the doctor told me I was a good candidate for LASIK. I ran the numbers and if I continue to lose a pair of glasses about every three years, as has been my habit, and I live for at least another fifty years, LASIK would actually be a lifetime savings of thousands of dollars. Plus, I swim so much that glasses are this huge hassle. It’s kind of unpleasant to think about, having lasers put to one’s eyes, but they give you Valium and anyway I’ve had a c-section–my uterus has been removed, set on top of me, manhandled, and shoved back in–so a little minor hacking at my eyeball, or whatever they do, isn’t much more alarming. No one I know has had the surgery. Opinions? Also I need to figure out if it would be any cheaper in Sweden.

Okay, to set up my next anecdote, let me tell you that we’re about to go to my hometown for my mom’s birthday luncheon, and then a complicated series of maneuvers are happening involving moving car seats around and etc. and the result is my mom will be at our house, so there has been a lot of cleaning in preparation. Got it? So Little Girl happened to see me washing my diaphragm (you know, my diaphragm), and she asked what I was doing, and I told her just that, and she took the logical next step and verified, “You making it all clean for grandmother to see?” That’s right, little buddy!

New little cousins and how they grow

So my sister-in-law’s baby, S, is two months old now, and I keep getting emails about her development from her proud pappa. There’s a kind of hilarious element of competitiveness with them. Like: “S weighed 14.55 pounds and she was 24 inches tall at her 2-month visit. Exact same numbers as [other cousin A] when he was 3 months. How big was [Little Girl] at that age?” (I went ahead and emailed him her growth chart from birth to age two for his convenience.)

I’m happy she’s doing well. I imagine it’ll be fun to watch her grow, once we finally get to Sweden and meet her, and I’m sure Little Girl will enjoy it. My brother-in-law and his wife asked us to be S’s godparents, which of course is very sweet of them. I just wish I knew what that entailed in Swedish society. From what I gather it’s pretty informal, but there is her baptism coming up in November that we’ll have to miss. Too bad: I’d like to see a Croatian-style baptism done in Swedish. (S’s mom is a first-generation Swede. My other brother-in-law is Serbian. My mother-in-law is Finnish. It’s a very international family.)

For the move I divested myself of most of Little Girl’s multitude of outgrown clothes, and kept only one bin of items too precious (too cute, too imbued with memory, too fancy) to part with, for in case I ever have another girl. But then it seemed silly for them to be sitting neglected when S could use them, so I asked them if they’d like the hand-me-downs. And they said no! They only want S in the new clothes they buy or are given! Apparently they also turned down clothes from S’s cousins on her other side, who are all girls. Goofy. But then these are the people with the nine-hundred dollar pram. I knew enough of my sister-in-law’s personality to ask first and not assume they’d want the clothes. What’s kind of funny to me, on reflection, is that several of the items in that bin were themselves originally hand-me-downs.

Little Girl absolutely thrives having lots of family around. Nothing stimulates and delights her so much. It’s definitely the big plus of Sweden. At least for her. Growing up the only children of only children of only children, for me the benefits are largely theoretical at this point. Do you like a lot of family around?

Chatty

Normally as soon as I put down the book and turn out the light I go to sleep, but lately I’ve had some miserable insomnia. Or it could be trouble returning to this time zone; when I talked about this with my dad, he told me, “That gets harder the older you get.”

I seem to be getting a lot of these sorts of comments lately, by the way, about my rapidly advancing age. Some lady at the airport even assumed my dad, a good thirty-five years my senior, was my husband. I mean, I know I have that one wrinkle on my forehead, but really. Of course I also recently realized that those cute natural blonde highlights at my temples? Are not blonde at all.

Now my daddy’s special lady friend is about to turn fifty, though she looks half that. All those vegetables and all that yoga–she does it five times a week. She’s an interesting one. I’ve mentioned before I feel a bit sad for her, having, in my opinion poorly, chosen to be with my dad rather than to have children, since he hasn’t wanted more (the only child in me says, “And why would he, when I’m totally fulfillingly awesome?”). But she’s really done a great lot of very interesting things–fellowships in Switzerland, yoga weeks in LA, all manner of degrees in languages and arts and literature, and she’s just written a novel–that would have been hard to do if she’d had kids. She dotes on her cat, a creature we only saw the tail end of once the whole week we were there. It’s a timid one. Honestly for a while there I suspected perhaps the cat was fictional.

Speaking of cats, our Pudding has stopped crying in the night so much since her brother’s death, but has, instead, become insanely, incessantly talkative. About 85% of the time I’m sure she’s just reminding us of the existence of canned tuna, and informing us of her interest in eating some (or really in sniffing at it, maybe taking one or two bites, then stalking off), but she’s probably also still lonely and maybe confused (Pudding never was the bright one–I ever tell you about the time she had some, uh, pooping situation, and every time an, uh, attack would come on, she’d be newly, wholly surprised at the events happening in her nether regions, and run off, as if pursued?). She’s started sleeping with me at nights, something that used to be Tang’s department.

Which reminds me–the insomnia. So I’m up hours into the night worrying about the move to Sweden, or the renovations in Sweden (which are NOT proceeding apace; the government’s 50% off home improvements deal has, as you’d suspect, been quite popular, and it’s impossible to get anybody out to the house to actually do anything), and then giving up and reading, and having a snack, then fretting some more, finally sleeping fitfully, constantly plagued by squeaky fan sounds or electric lights, only to have to get up just a few hours later, and spend the succeeding day with a nearly migraine-level headache.

And while we’re talking about my physical ailments let me inform you I’ve mostly cured my toe arthritis pain issue–via painkillers, so I guess technically that’s not a cure–but there are still only a few pairs of shoes I can wear without pain, except that I’ve worn them so much now they’re wearing out, and replacements I’ve tried of the same brands don’t stave off the pain in quite the same way. Maybe only really worn-in shoes help? It’s quite a problem.

Wait, how many words has this been about my arthritis? Maybe there’s something to all the comments about my age I’ve been getting. I do have a birthday coming up. I plan to get new bedding, though what we really need here is new dishwasher since the current one is just ancient and has to be practically bribed and fondled to get it to wash anything even half-way.

Art for the blind

And…we’re back. Actually, we were back in the wee hours of Friday, and then that day I had a big conference call, and then the start of my new class, the response at enrollment for which was so vast that I’ve been asked to tack on more hours to accommodate the students. And we did so, so much on our trip to Seattle–mountains, beaches, skyscrapers, libraries, fountains, attractions, parks–that it’s a bit overwhelming to recount. Then there’s the special comedic chemistry my father and I create when together, leaving us laughing so hard we’re almost silent, stomachs aching, buckled over, or on all fours, on the sidewalk, concerning Little Girl.

For example: During one morning walk through the neighborhood there was a donation truck for a charity for the blind making a similar route, driven by a gangly, hatted, plaid shorts-wearing guy listening to NPR. Some people had left collections of items out for him to pick up, and we passed one tidy box of electronics with a little hand-lettered sign: BLIND.

I peeked in: They’ve got some good stuff in there.
Dad: You could say you were blind if anyone asked.
Me: And I just walked by, and happened to see these items and the sign?
Dad: Maybe Little Girl is your specially-trained seeing eye toddler.
Me: That I carry? What, does she direct me by flinging her body in one direction or the other, causing subtle shifts in my movement?
Dad: Maybe she communicates with you with American Sign Language.
Me: Right, that makes sense, since I’m blind.
Dad: Look, they’re donating a picture! For the blind to put on their walls and enjoy!

On the other side of the country

Yesterday my three-year-old and I flew diagonally across the country to visit my father. The trip was a little more than 12 hours door-to-door, and honestly was easy compared to our trips to Europe, especially thanks to two things: a big bag of snacks and a DVD player. Since I also dared to bring a little box of milk for Little Girl, not trusting the airline to provide it, they made us undergo extra searching. They even patted Little Girl down. I was more bemused than upset, but that’s pretty absurd.

At any rate, we’re here, the weather is amazing, I’d forgotten how gorgeous it is in the Pacific Northwest, and I’d also not realized how wonderful it would feel not just to see my dad, but to spend time in his space again. It’s a place populated with picture and posters, books, mini-shrines, mobiles of whales and butterflies, exotic music and scents, details everywhere that remind me of this whole other section of childhood I had with him among these items, be it in Alaska or San Francisco or here in Seattle, so far from the single mother/Country Club/southern belle/overly academic upbringing at my mother’s.

And Little Girl is loving it, too. We woke up on a familiar futon this morning and she pointed out all that she could see: Art, mommy! It’s a heart! I see mountains! That telephone has stickers on it! Plus they gave her a helium balloon, set up a tent in the yard, and my father has endless interest in sharing narratives with her, and my common-law-stepmother keeps making all kinds of wonderful foods. Very good trip so far.

Homefront

We’ve come to visit my hometown for a few days. I like to try to visit pretty regularly–it’s only a few hours away–and plus I was getting pretty lonely with Husband gone for basically a month straight. And since soon enough I’ll be very far from my family, and my grandparents are in poor health, I try to see them since I can.

But while I know my mom likes us to come, and my stepfather seems to, despite the fact that this time I brought every last one of our pets (though we’re down from a high of seven to merely three), and my grandfather does as well, the visits are not actually that enjoyable for my grandmother.

Her Alzheimer’s advances apace, and she’s now wheelchair-bound when she leaves the house (for restaurants and doctors’ visits) as she can barely walk, and she’s starting to mix up fantasy and reality. Recently when watching an old Western (the TV is always, always on there), my grandmother began to weep because she thought that my grandfather had had a baby with an Indian princess in the film. I’ve sat with her while she thumbed fumblingly through a magazine which she started to see as an old scrapbook, and she kept trying to connect the images–ads featuring bananas, pictures of people riding bikes–with events from her past. And the fact was that she had turned to that magazine rather than talk to me, sitting right there, ready to visit with her, since holding a conversation can just be too taxing for her.

And sweet-faced Little Girl is pretty overwhelming. My grandmother will get peevish about some little, innocently little kid thing she is doing–pretending her fork is an airplane, examining a small, pre-existing rip in her placemat–and scold her and try to wrestle the item away from her. Little Girl requires rationalizations for these kind of interventions, and doesn’t understand why she’s getting on her case. She’s learning that she just has to do whatever my grandmother says when she’s worked up, even if it doesn’t seem fair or reasonable. My grandmother simply can’t be reasonable anymore, after all. When they enjoy each other, it’s brief and simple, as when they’re playing with stuffed animals, or clapping along to the fight song from the state university’s football team as sung by an animated plush bulldog, or Little Girl climbs up on her knees for a hug. So we keep visiting, looking for those moments.

Not to mention that being at my mom’s means I don’t have to come up with any meals.

Tears

You know sometimes, you read a post, and the comments are all, “you brought me to tears, that was so ___” and I always figured that for hyperbole, maybe a figure of speech. But then I read something about how women on average spend 2.5 hours a week crying, and wondered. Is crying really that common? I was pretty hysterical when I realized my cat, Tang, who just died, was so sick, and I had cried a bit (maybe about ten minutes?) the night before the surgery for my miscarriage.

In fact, I can tell you about every time I’ve cried at least since getting married: when my rabbit was killed; a bunch of times during all the infertility stuff; the newborn phase, mostly for breastfeeding reasons; and weaning. That’s it. Evidently, compared to most people, that’s not a lot.

I understand each tear contains the hormones related to the emotional upset, and shedding them releases your emotional burden (I’m glad this is a blog and I don’t have to find a citation for this assertion–but I read it somewhere respectable enough). It’s possible I just don’t get as emotional about things as others, but more likely that I’m just not showing it. I’ve had enough therapy to realize that it all stems from my problems with my mother. With her, my way to assert myself was nonchalance. Whatever, mom, it doesn’t matter what you say. I was all about the sangfroid.

Husband can’t stand this about me. When we’re arguing and I’m being condescending about his upsetness instead of being hurt myself, he thinks it means I don’t care about whatever the topic is, or his feelings. That’s not true, but I also can’t let myself show any vulnerability. The way I was raised, showing your feelings was the quickest way to get them pummeled further. So now, for the most part, I do sadness as anger, and injured feelings as brittleness.

I’m trying to teach Little Girl it’s okay to be sad, but I know actions speak louder than words. Maybe her father–who is never afraid to show his feelings–will be her guide there.

In therapy, in court, and in second grade

I was about seven the first time I was sent to talk to a therapist. My parents, having divorced not long before, were in the middle of one of those epic visitation court battles that make you wonder how it’s possible for so many people to be so irrational, and then you remember the lawyers are getting paid so they don’t have much incentive to calm things down. I gather my mother suspected my father of abusing me in some way and wanted proof so she wouldn’t have to let me go stay with him for six weeks in the summers in Alaska.

It’s never been clear to me exactly what she had against that–I do know she was stridently alarmed about the hitchhikers he would pick up with me in the car, and now I can hardly blame her. And it’s true that in many instances over the years it became clear to me that my father’s desire to lay down parental law was quite lacking, either through philosophical opposition, cluelessness, or apathy, which lead to some rather inappropriate situations, like taking me to “entheogen conferences” (aka drug parties for aging hippies) in the Marin Headlands and then letting me, at sixteen, date a 35-year-old civil engineer I met there (before this anecdote disturbs you too much, let me assure you that he didn’t take advantage of me, and I was absolutely complicit in any smoking up and making out that may have ensued). But she couldn’t have known all that then, though clearly she had her inklings, and wanted to do her due diligence.

The therapist asked me what kinds of games I played with my dad, and I listed the normal stuff: kite flying, reading books, taking walks, visiting friends, playing horsie. “Can you tell me more about ‘playing horsie’?” “Uh, yeah, my dad gets on all fours and I ride him, or climb under.” You know, duh, lady, horsie. I could tell from her reaction that she didn’t think playing horsie was nearly as fun–and innocuous–as I did. She was also obviously displeased to learn that my father didn’t take me to church–not surprising, since the therapist was less a mental health professional than the counselor at my mom’s church. But in the end she concluded, rightly, that nothing untoward happened with my dad. I wonder how that was for my mom: Yay, my child isn’t being abused! Crap, I have less ammunition against him!

As part of the court proceedings I was asked to speak privately with the judge. My mother had coached me on the reasons I was to give as to why I did not want to spend more time in the summers with my dad. Nobody ever asked me what I actually thought, so I’m not sure I ever really considered the question myself, but judging from my vivid memories of talking with the judge–sweating with nerves, sitting straight up at the front of the high-backed chair wearing the water blue moiré dress my mother’d made for me to wear in a wedding–I don’t think I was very convincing with my monologue: “Um, I want to swim at the Country Club, and…go to Vacation Bible School…uh…” and in the end my dad won the visitation battle.

My mom kept saying she thought he’d paid off the judge, or that her lawyer was too old to be competent, but I think the judge did right. And it couldn’t have hurt that these reasons I parroted were lame ones not to have a relationship with my father. I also believe, in retrospect, that lamenting to a black judge in the deep south that I wouldn’t get to spend enough time at the white-only Country Club pool couldn’t have been a smart way to bolster my the judge’s empathy for my mom.

Plus my dad was really fighting to be with me; sure, he’d moved nearly as far away as possible, to Alaska; sure, he (reportedly) was extremely tight-fisted with child support and didn’t pony up for any extras, like piano lessons; sure, he didn’t help pay for college. But to his credit my father has always tried to spend time with me; has always written me long letters every week, called me for long talks, been there for me emotionally in the same way I can always rely on my mother physically. As parents, my mom and dad are yin and yang. On the whole I treasure the time I had with my father, and value it as an antidote to my mother’s completely opposite style of upbringing. I’m grateful the therapist and the judge didn’t find a way to stand in the way of that.

My new niece

Recently Husband’s little brother’s teeny tiny wife gave birth, one week late, to a perfect baby girl, Saga, who weighed nearly ten pounds. Laughing gas and a vacuum extractor were involved which I think is pretty typical from Sweden (at least it’s been the story with both sisters-in-law so far). She looks just like her father except she’s got her mother’s distinctive nose. She likes to sleep and eat. You know, the normal stuff. Living in Sweden as they do, her parents have literally years of maternity and paternity leave to divvy up and take like they will from their typically Swedish jobs at a state-run daycare and Ericsson. They’ve just bought their first home and move in next month, and have scrapped their crazy plans to renovate the kitchen immediately, what with the tiny human they have now.

Although I was obviously aware a baby was on the way, when she was finally born, the sadness totally surprised me. I mean, I was supposed to be having a baby, too. Part of the reason I had wanted to get pregnant last winter was, semi-consciously, because V was. She’s always said she wanted to time her first baby with my second, a sort of shimmery, pretty idea that proved too perfect for real life. First she miscarried, then I did. But now we both have little girls. And after my initial reaction, I’m very happy for her, for the whole family, that this new little person we’ll get to watch grow (and whom I do not have to wake up with in the night!) is here. She and Little Girl have visited over the webam several times already, and as Saga snuffles in her sleep, couched in her father’s arms, my girl likes to sing her melodies that eventually all turn into “Twinkle twinkle little star.”

Road trip

It’s a three-hour trip between to my mom’s along back roads in rural South Carolina and Georgia. Tumble-down shacks, house fires that leave only lonesome fireplaces, cars brown with age. But also high corn fields, so much sky you can see a rainstorm miles away but where you are it’s all yellow, tiny white churches, dense pine forests, long enticing driveways to abandoned plantation homes. I love it.

When I was eight, my dad and I drove from North Carolina to Alaska. It took weeks, and a lot of the time I was sprawled in the hatchback with My Little Ponies flying against the backdrop of the rear windshield. I remember North Dakota as a chant: “rocks and trees, rocks and trees.” For several days we were stuck in little Fort Nelson, British Columbia, due to an avalanche, where we scored the very last hotel room in town and discovered the humongous pool complex the place had rewarded itself. It was the first time I’d been in a sauna. We lingered in Chicago, we ate biscuits and gravy in Indiana, we posed with totem poles in Alberta. We mostly camped.

When I was 15, we enjoyed another epic road trip through the southwest. I remember sleeping in the desert on top of the car, freaked out about snakes, lightning on faraway mountaintops; prostitutes’ graphic fliers in Las Vegas; the haze of the Grand Canyon; the jet skis on Lake Tahoe.

Recently, I wondered if you could drive from Sweden to Africa. Just curious. For all practical purposes you can’t, and you definitely shouldn’t, but it’s only 1 day, 9 hours according to Google maps to Cadiz. That’s nothing! Our diagonal trip across North America was pegged at 3 days, 1 hour of straight driving. Shit, you guys, when we move, I can drive to Spain! And it’s only 16 hours, 41 minutes to London! Rome: 21 hours, 34 minutes. Oslo: 3 hours, 53 minutes (closer to us than Stockholm in fact). Paris: 15 hours, 24 minutes. Istanbul: 1 day, 21 hours. If I were crazy enough, I could drive to motherfucking China! Awesome! I mean, obviously we would fly or take the train generally, but my brother-in-law recently drove to Croatia (20 hours, 19 minutes). It can be done. Sometimes people go the slow way.

Just imagine the sights.