It's 3 a.m. . . . I Think I'll Call the White House

So the irony is that of the three of us, the four-month-old is the best sleeper tonight. I've been having some trouble sleeping lately, and I think it's the knowledge that the summer, which has been the happiest time of my life, is speeding by. I know things will work out in the fall when I return to work, but never having ridden this bike before, I only know what it's supposed to look like--I don't quite know how to do it yet myself, or how it should feel. It's hard to prepare mentally for something so new, when the immediate consequences of my doing it seem so important, as every single day is so important in how Allison Clare changes and grows.

Here is what I know so far: Sam and I set up our teaching schedules so he will teach in the morning and I will teach in the afternoon, and we will have a babysitter for a couple of hours on certain afternoons each week so I can attend afternoon meetings. Covering our classes and office hours will not be a problem.

But I would say that being in the classroom amounts to only about 15-20% of my job. It will be more of a challenge to cover all the other things: class prep, reading, mountains of grading, departmental and committee projects, advising, workshops, administrative projects, etc., much less progress on research.

This summer, as I've had day after day of largely uninterrupted time at home with Allison Clare, Sam and I have found that when I'm not working, we enjoy a really lovely life. There's room to breathe, get things done, keep our lives the way we want them: passably clean house, good meals at home, little household stress. If Allison Clare needs a long nap, she can have it; if she needs more attention on a given day, I can give it to her easily. I didn't know before she was born if I would feel like I occasionally needed time away or something, and honestly, I don't feel that way--what I want is to be with her and enjoy her littleness all the time, every precious minute.

It may sound like I want to stay at home. Truthfully, I do. But 1) I also want to work--in the future. Or at least, I am not certain enough about how I'd feel in the future if I were to give up forever my ability to pursue my profession, such as when AC goes to school herself and no longer needs me for a good part of each day. 2) In my field, it's virtually impossible to leave for a few years and return. To illustrate, there were 300-400 applicants for three jobs in our department the year I was hired; a candidate who had been out of the profession for a while would have had little shot. I could perhaps teach on an adjucnt basis, but that equates to much of the work without many of the rewards. And of course, 3) there are the years of grueling and heartbreaking work that went into obtaining the degree.

All of that said, part of me also wonders these things: 1) When she goes to school, will I regret all the more not having been with her during this time? 2) As far as the likelihood of finding aother job, I somehow feel certain that if I took the step I was supposed to take now, there would be another "right" option down the road, even if it were one I could not anticipate. 3) I'd always have the education for its own sake, right, John Dewey? (Or to take a darker tack: sunk cost . . .)

So, here I am. It's an embarrassment of riches, I know: should I stay home with my healthy, wonderful baby, or go to work at a job that I love and am way (undeservedly way) lucky to have? It's not even really a question right now anyway; I'm committed to my department and scheduled to offer certain classes this year. And we weren't able to sell my house this past year, so we are carrying two mortgages, partially offset by renting the old house out, but at a loss.

But still.

As this entry probably makes clear, I'm not getting any closer to sleep, though I am getting closer to AC's wake-up time.

The one good thing is that as a result of this open question, I think the balance is shifting slightly back to a center between the contemplative habits I had enjoyed prior to marriage/baby and the praxis (taking care of other people in a physical, practical sense) that has been the substance of my devotion in the past year. I often think of our lives and our faith as circles around us; as our lives enlarge, our faith needs to grow too. In that time when one has grown past the other, we experience an anxiety, but a productive one, one that at best drives us to our knees, whether in fear and trembling or awe and gratitude--or both.

Can't Trust Them As Far As You Can Throw Them

Hermance writes that in my post below, she thought my "suspicious looking mole" was some sort of ominous, mistrustful rodent. Hilarious!

Will to Live

Ugh. I just found a suspicious-looking mole (or rather, Sam spotted it), and now, along with cleaning the bathroom and assigning chapters on my fall syllabus this afternoon, I have to confront my own mortality.

I come from a family in which pessimism in the face of medical diagnosis is de rigueur; my mother had cancer when she was 20, and that experience led her and my dad to expect the worst at every turn. While they are not hypochondriacs, they also didn't exactly pass along a devil-may-care attitude toward symptoms, and in the days before Medline, they owned and consulted a Merck Manual, which was always good for a chilling explanation or two.

Personally, I never felt a very strong will to live before; I felt a general obligation to live a good life, a life that is . . . well, holy, if I can use that word in a non-smarmy way. I mean, I think that our lives are given to us to reflect and express gratitude for the love of God. So that shapes the purpose of our lives. But as for wanting more time, I didn't really--I felt content whether my life was short or long, with the single exception that I felt a responsibility to outlive my parents because that is what children are supposed to do for their parents.

But now, oh, how things have changed. I feel like I absolutely must live because of Allison Clare. On the remote chance that anything happened to me, Sam would be okay--sad, but okay. But who would take my Munchkin shopping and bake her birthday cakes? Or wrap her Christmas presents, and make cupcakes for her class? I now understand why all these nineteenth-century women wrote novels featuring motherless children making their way in life; it was, perhaps, an attempt to face their own mortality by imagining their children's survival without them.

To be honest, I'm not too worried about my mole as it's still very small (if unfortunately asymmetrical). But I am a tiny bit chagrined to discover how attached I have now become to my own life. This may be the beginning of a certain kind of cowardice, a loss of a certain kind of courage. Sigh.

The King and His Castle

This past week, our central air conditioning has been on the fritz. We didn't have air conditioning when I was growing up, so I consider it to be a small luxury, its absence a minor inconvenience. Thus, I didn't at first understand why I was getting hourly temperature reports from various "zones" in the house through the evening. I didn't understand it, that is, until in the morning, when Sam informed me that he had gone to bed at 2:00 a.m., temperature 81 degrees upstairs, because he figured that "by then, I was certain it wouldn't get any hotter for you and the Munchkin."

Then I realized that this was not simply an inconvenience; it was the Air Conditioning Crisis of 2008, one of a series of military-style engagements and opportunities for heroic, testosterone-driven measures (let's not say theatrics) in defense of the Home. These have become only more frantic since the arrival of the Child.

In this instance, several days were devoted to strategizing and maneuvering. First, a supplementary window unit was purchased and installed. Then, heat buildup was determined to be coming from the attic. I was given orders to call the roofer and request an estimate on an attic fan. While we awaited a callback, more Internet-based intelligence was gathered, and another approach was discovered: an insulated cap that would cover the hatch into the attic. I assumed that the cap would be purchased some time over the next few weeks, but no: we had one in our home within about 45 minutes. Next, fans were gathered and set up in a heavily theorized, mouse-trap-like sequence to blow cool air from the window unit through the upstairs.

More temperature reports followed, until the King of the Castle determined that through constant vigilance in moving the fans at the proper times, we could keep the upstairs at about 80 degrees. We all slept well that night: the baby and I because in truth the heat doesn't bother us, and the King because his mind was at ease.

But then, a second calamity ensued. The front door lock needed to be replaced, and it took several hours of banging and cursing before the old mechanism came out. It was enormous. There was very little left of the door to attach the new locks to, and of course, the old locks were not in a standard configuration. Three trips to Lowe's and 9 hours later, things were looking grim. The King was extremely distressed at the idea that his baby might sleep in a house that had not been secured. He piled books on top of a stool in front of the door and slept on the courch so that if disturbed, the books would awaken him and he could thwart any kidnappers right there in the front hallway!

Thankfully, the door has now been secured, and the air conditioning people are due here tomorrow morning. I married a gentle man, but even there: the caveman lurks within.

Baby Weight

Perhaps because it's a condition in which dramatic physical changes signify even more momentous metaphysical ones, pregnancy seems to open you up to lots of barely concealed speculation, much of which has to do with weight gain and loss.

The single advantage to four months of morning sickness was that I didn't gain much weight in the first trimester, which meant that by the end of the pregnancy, I had gained a fairly modest amount (23 lbs. See, you were wondering, weren't you?). But I can see how easy it is to gain a lot more weight during pregnancy because you're hungry all the time, and if large quantities of good food aren't available all the time, well, there's always a vending machine. And chances are it isn't vending fresh fruit.

So, anyway, I was a little disappointed that immediately after giving birth, I had only lost 11 lbs, but as it turned out, a good chunk of the rest just sort of dropped off in the first week. Over the next couple of weeks, the numbers came back into line until I was within a few pounds of my normal weight (I wanted to lose 21, since I started the pregnancy a little below normal). Unfortunately, returning to close to my goal weight led to my discovery, to my great and abiding dismay, that while I might be the same mass as I had been, I was not the same shape: everything did not settle back to the same place it had been. However, I was heartened by how much had taken care of itself, so I waited to see what would happen. After all, I was not going to exercise before 4 weeks . . . then 6 weeks . . .

My baby is now 4 1/2 months old. A friend here said that her post-baby body didn't really feel completely normal until a year later, but I noticed the gym tag on her keychain and doubted that it was a year of being absolutely sedentary, which was what I had had in mind. Of course, nursing a baby burns a whopping (and enjoyable) 500 calories a day, and pushing the stroller up the very steep hills in our town is something of a small workout.

But still. I decided yesterday, after pants shopping, that things were likely not going to get any more toned without at least some exertion on my part, and I wanted to do something while I still remembered what my old body looked like at least. So I'm taking the small step of putting my faith in a Woman's Day article that described Six Easy Steps to Tone Your Tummy. It says right there in black and white that "you should see results in about four weeks." Hm . . . I'll keep you posted.

Mild Child

From the past 4 1/2 months of observation, I'd say that Allison Clare's dominant personality trait is mildness. Most of the time, her mood is contented and observant, and even when she becomes uncomfortable, she just whimpers slightly--often I won't even realize she's woken up for her nap because she's happily lying in her crib, looking around. If I'm folding laundry or cooking dinner, I put her in her little seat, and then when I look over, she's often stopped playing with her toys and is just watching me, as if she's been waiting for me to turn around, and she gives me this sweet, affectionate smile.

All of this contentment does have a downside: she doesn't like physical exertion (wonder where she gets that . . .). She should be ready to roll over, so we try enticing her by placing toys to one side, and helping her by shifting her weight over that way. But rather than complete the roll, what our child has learned to do is to resist the process--she throws her arm out to one side to brace herself, as if that were the game. It's actually pretty hilarious. Not that we want her to be a little lump, but we figure she'll do these things in her time. Life is pressured enough . . .

UPDATE: Just after posting this, she rolled over for the first time--lazily, as if she'd been doing it forever. What motivated her? Naturally, trying to get at her breakfast.

Time Flies

Lo and behold, I am one of those clingy mothers. Well, not totally, but I am experiencing a tiny bit of grief today because we're moving the Munchkin into her own room tonight.

Thus far, she's been sleeping in a bassinet next to our bed. We had decided to keep her with us for four months because my exhaustive prenatal research on SIDS said that 1) babies who sleep in the same room as their parents are less likely to suffer froms SIDS, as long as they are in their own beds, and 2) the risk of SIDS drops significantly after four months.

But she was an incredibly noisy sleeper when she was born; she sounded like a small jungle's worth of animals snorting, wheezing, barking, growling, squealing. This cacophony has driven Sam to the guest room many nights, and he is understandably eager to return to his own bed for good. I'll be happy to have him back of course, but I find a small part of myself nonetheless mourning the loss of my tiny roommate.

I love the light in our room at her bedtime, and how the leaves create patterns on the blinds.

I love peeking at her before climbing into bed, sometimes turning the lights on very low to watch her sweet breathing: hard on the exhale with an occasional little sigh of contentment. I've even been known to find her little dumpling palm so irresistible that I've risked touching it just to watch the tiny fingers move in response.

I love waking up in the morning to her small sounds, and peering over the bassinet to say, "Good morning, Miss Munchkinson!" (Yes, I know, I know. We've already established that I can't help myself.) She responds as if she's amazed and delighted that against all odds, I've survived the night to return to her bassinet and rescue her from immobility. Who else in the world is so happy to see me that their arms and legs flail with uncontrollable joy?

Flower Girl

Mutton: It's What's for Dinner

Thanks, Aunt Juli!

:) !

Whenever I write an email, part of the process has always been editing out a bunch of exclamation points and emoticons by determining which ones are absolutely necessary. Without ever consciously thinking about it (until now), I've developed a rule of allowing myself just one or two emoticons per email, and one or two exclamation points. I mean, I don't want to sound like one of those breathless, freaky people whose emails are FULL OF CAPITALS and who end every sentence with four or five exclamation points!!!!!

Lately, however, I've been more liberal with the emoticons and exclamation points--maybe being on family leave has just made me more loosey-goosey, or less repressed, or something. Let the emoticons fly! (I just typed that sentence with more than one exclamation point and tried to leave it, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it . . .)

Life's Work

Through Facebook, I just this morning happened across the blog of another friend from grad school. She writes about writing--about dissertation-writing specifically--as well as about all the things she does when not dissertating. Reading her blog, especially past entries where she expressed how sheepish she felt about the time she spent doing other things besides work, I almost felt sad that so many of us were part of the same community, suppressing many of those things that make us most alive as people and (though I hardly ever put things in such terms) as women, for most of the things she talks about doing are expressly domestic.

When I was in grad school, I don't think I felt exactly embarrassed about my own domestic activities, but I didn't talk about them much. It seemed irrelevant and rife with the possibility for misunderstanding, so I adopted a sort of "don't ask, don't tell" policy. I did have other friends who actively tried to hide the amount of time they spent on other interests, and looking back, it seems like such a great loss that we didn't share it all freely, except in tiny huddles. Did we really think that as women in our 20s and 30s, it was more interesting to talk exclusively about the arcane communications among small groups of antebellum intellectuals than to integrate such scholarly talk with discussions of the joy we took in baking, knitting, gardening?

I don't think it was just because we were women that we sought a life outside the library, nor that our gender made it more necessary for us to exert effort to appear serious in pursuit of scholarship. But I do think that while everyone may have repressed outside interests, what we repressed was specifically feminine--and that is what seems like so great a loss.

I remember that once, a year or so before I graduated, someone we all knew who had finished up and gotten a job confided to me that it was way different beyond grad school, and that people in his department took pride in having dinner parties and cultivating a life outside of work. I remember not knowing exactly how such a thing could be because in grad school, other activities are seen as frivolous: "A dinner party? Why aren't you working?" The pressures of such a competitive job market (400 jobs for every 900 PhDs produced per year) means that people are struggling to prove their commitments all the time because sadly, even when it means you're psychologically and spiritually and even physically less well for it, the appearance of absolute commitment to the job seems like it might make the difference.

I think this may be one of the reasons I was so excited to start reading Maura's blog; one of the things I love about it is how unapologetic she is about her investment in domestic artistry. It's not only knowing that she does these things, which is fascinating and instructive, but also observing the calm integration of them into her working life as well. For myself, I've found that where I teach people do take joy in things like cooking, gardening, and housework. Last summer, I needed to set up a meeting to have my senior seminar evaluated by our interim department chair and another colleague, and when I emailed about a potential meeting date, the chair wrote back that she'd prefer to meet later in the summer because she was planning a vacation in France and had to get her herbs planted before she left.

What can I say? That's what I'm talking about!

Standing Up for (Against?) Herself

I know I've been posting way too many pictures lately, but I just can't stop myself--I now understand all those random, constant emails that you get from new parents with enormous .jpg files attached. But if I have your email address, don't worry too much--Sam would be mortified if I did not downsample. ;)

Anyway, on Thursday, Allison Clare wore her big-girl khaki capris and cool-kid cardigan, gifts from a couple of Sam's students, along with her first pair of leather shoes (little kitten Robeez given to her by her namesake, Auntie Clare). She looked so mature, especially because she has just recently gotten really into standing. She's one of those people who loves standing so much that she'll whimper from tiredness, but she won't condescend to sit. You know the type. Don't you?

A New Era

This afternoon, I went to see Sex and the City with Noel (hmm, how to do an umlaut on Blogger?). I was coming out of the popcorn line, and as I fumbled with my wallet, purse, popcorn, soda, and the jacket I brought because it's always cold in movie theaters, I thought, "Ugh, I'm fumbling around with all this stuff like somebody's mother." And then I realized, with some dismay, that I am somebody's mother, and therefore there is nothing at all witty or ironic about the observation. I love the job, but now all of my uncoolness is not even individuated or original.*

Oh well, on the other hand, my new demographic identity makes me slightly less concerned (though given my vanity, "slightly less concerned" still warrants recent extended conversations with my husband, my mother, Noel, and JS, along with emailing a picture to JS for the sheer shock value) with the fact that I am totally going bald at this point. And it's not just losing the pregnancy hair!

*I speak, of course, of mothers in general. My own mother walks that fine line between not trying to be cool and not becoming frumpy. In this as in many things, I hope to follow in her footsteps.