I Conjured You

Georgia turned two this past week. She has been pretty excited about it and loudly sings "Happy Birthday to me!" to anyone interested: in the check-out lane at the grocery store, to her brother, in the car, to herself. We told her the abridged story of her birth and her big brother wanted to hear his birth story too. We looked through photo books and some pictures from her first birthday - I am so glad I wrote those details down because I'd completely forgotten some of the sweet things!

Now that she's such a big girl, she likes to play with her friends Mimi, Mira, Lindsay and Mekael and Baby Fern (whom she calls Baby Wern). She has many more friends in her co-op preschool class where she goes with Daddy on Tuesdays and Fridays. I asked Teacher Christi how Georgia, the youngest kid, is doing in class and she responded, "She's doing great. She's definitely a girl who knows what she wants!"

I overheard her "reading" - backwards - through In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak, "Mickey. Kitchen. Snug-gle. Cock-a-doodle-doo! Cake. Milk. Swimming. Moon. Airplane. Up. Up. Up. Mickey. Kitchen. Make it. Mama. Papa. Quiet down there! Snug-gle. All done!"

She likes to "meep," which means specifically to draw with a black pen - no crayons for this girl. My Uncle Jim, an artist himself, watched her intently drawing, looked at her finished piece and exclaimed, "Just like Cy Twombly!"

A few more endearing things about her at the moment:

• When I give her kissy-tickles, she says, "More-again!"
• She calls her big brother Xavier, "Babier"
• She can be very demanding, saying, "I want mommy milky right now!"
• She requests oatmeal, hot and cold, multiple times throughout the day.
• "Mommy, what doing?" or 'Mommy, what talking about?"
• She insists on putting her own shoes on, often on the wrong foot, and also insists on getting in and out of her car seat by herself.
• When we are all getting ready to go somewhere, she asks, "Mommy too? Daddy too? Babier too? Me too?"
• Every time we stop at a red light while driving, she yells from the back seat, "I wanna go!"
• Her favorite PBS Kids show is Bob the Builder. She shouts, "Can we do it? Yes we can!"
• She loves doggies and doggie kisses.
• When we tell her about something, she listens and then sagely says, "Oh."
• She often grabs a lego piece from her brother, pops it into her mouth and runs away.
• Christian built the fence you see above to keep her in as she'll take off by herself to the park to go swinging.
• She likes to play animal charades with her brother and go swimming in the bathtub.
• Her father is worried she's going to be a little hellion.
• She's a hoot.

I wrote this poem a while back for her. I am still amazed that she is here, that she is mine.

I Conjured You

I asked the doll maker

to give you blonde hair

and make you a girl

dressed in shades of blue,

my own best color.

Shall I stitch her name on?

she asked.

Oh yes, please

I did not hesitate

Georgie.

I was barely pregnant

yearning for a little girl

this time.

The doll arrived

in the mail

just perfect.

You arrived months later

exactly as requested

with only a slight

delay.

Just Like That Hour Today

Today I've been mostly curled up at home on this blustery Sunday feeling very sick with a sinus infection, but happy too, as it's my birthday. Despite having to cancel the babysitter for dinner out last night, a brunch party with friends this morning and a debate dinner party with friends tonight, I'm still feeling surrounded by love. I got to read in bed this morning while my husband made breakfast and my kids made birthday cards for me downstairs. I built Lego with Xavier and read stories with Georgia. We went for a slow walk through our neighborhood park and the kids splashed in the creek. Family and friends called, skyped, emailed and texted. Xavier and Christian baked a cake while Georgia and I napped. Christian roasted a chicken for dinner and we watched spellbound as Hillary beat Trump soundly in the second-to-last debate. Champagne remained corked in the fridge, but that can be enjoyed all the rest of my birthday month.

I think about this somewhat ordinary day in my beautiful life and I feel so grateful for all of it. My extended family and all my friends are healthy and happy. I hear my kids laughing and calling, Mommy, Mommy! I have a warm home in a safe neighborhood. I feel so lucky, so blessed and I don't ever want to take this for granted. 

And in a sweet bit of serendipity, the book I was reading in bed this morning? Joyce Sutphen's poems. A few hours later my friend Kat sent me this poem by Sutphen I'd never read before, which captures the beauty of moments in a life. Yes, it does make me want to go write a list poem of memorable moments in my life. Thanks, Kat. Thanks to all of you for your love and friendship, today and everyday.

Book of Hours

There was that one hour sometime

in the middle of the last century. 

It was autumn, and I was in my father's 

woods building a house out of branches 

and the leaves that were falling like 

thousands of letters from the sky. 

And there was that hour in Central Park 

in the middle of the seventies. 

We were sitting on a blanket, listening 

to Pete Seeger singing "This land is 

your land, this land is my land," and 

the Vietnam War was finally over. 

I would definitely include an hour 

spent in one of the galleries of the 

Tate Britain, looking up at the

painting of King Cophetua and 

the Beggar Maid, and, afterwards 

the walk along the Thames, and

I would also include one of those

hours when I woke in the night and 

couldn't get back to sleep thinking

about how nothing I thought was going

to happen happened the way I expected, 

and things I never expected to happen did—

just like that hour today, when we saw 

the dog running along the busy road, 

and we stopped and held on to her 

until her owner came along and brought 

her home—that was an hour well 

spent. Yes, that was a keeper.

~ Joyce Sutphen

And Then Even More Sky Comes

Thursday night was the kick-off for Seattle Arts and Lectures Poetry Series with the talented Ada Limón. It was a wonderful night all around as she read from Bright Dead Things. She talked about how "Poetry is an art form that is literally telling you to breathe, and breathe." She said she composes mostly out loud and encouraged all of us writers in the audience to "embrace your weirdness." She loves big endings and admitted that while they can be her crutch, they are important to her and she always wants "to stick it like Simone Biles." On stage, Limón was as fiery, funny, charming, strong and feminine as she is on the page. I could have listened for hours.

How to Triumph Like a Girl

I like the lady horses best,
how they make it all look easy,
like running 40 miles per hour
is as fun as taking a nap, or grass.
I like their lady horse swagger,
after winning. Ears up, girls, ears up!
But mainly, let’s be honest, I like
that they’re ladies. As if this big
dangerous animal is also a part of me,
that somewhere inside the delicate
skin of my body, there pumps
an 8-pound female horse heart,
giant with power, heavy with blood.
Don’t you want to believe it?
Don’t you want to lift up my shirt and see
the huge beating genius machine
that thinks, no, it knows,
it’s going to come in first.

~ Ada Limón 

And this one I loved too, after my own happy days spent in Montana:

Someplace Like Montana

Now when I go to the grocery store,
I’m amazed at the wide aisles of bright
food and food-stuffs and it’s nothing like
the bodega I shopped in for years
in Brooklyn between the bars we liked.
Once when I was going for groceries,
I ran into T, and we decided we needed
to drink, rather than shop, and we did.

There were a lot of beers on tap,
and the taps were all different like toys
in a dentist’s toy chest, so I said,
“I’ll have what she’s having,”
and maybe it was snowing out,
and it seemed to be at a time when
every shirt I bought at the secondhand store
would turn out to be see-through,
but I wouldn’t know it until it was too late.
So, a lot of conversations would start,
“Is this shirt see-through?” And it was.

We talked for a long time, grocery bags
empty on the chair, and we both talked about
moving to someplace like Montana
and how sometimes it would be nice
to see more sky than just this little square
between the bridges and buildings,
but then we’d miss Brooklyn and each other,
and we ordered another beer.

T was writing a play, also some articles,
and we both just needed some money,
and maybe to make out with someone
who wasn’t an asshole. But also, we wanted
to make great art. T was really good at naming
things so we decided she should be a “Titleologist”
and she liked that, so she agreed.

“What would we do if we lived in someplace
like Montana?” “We’d go for walks, and look at trees,
and write and look at the sky,” “Yes, and we’d cook
and go to those huge grocery stores that have toy cars
attached to the carts so kids can pretend to be driving,”
“Yes, and we’d probably have kids too.”
All of this seemed really far off and not like us at all,
so we ordered another beer and said, life was long.

Now, I’m walking around the grocery store,
in Kentucky and I’ve just looked a trees, and sky,
and I should write something, so I ask T to tell me
what to write about, she says, Saturation, and I think
of that feeling when you’re really full, or life is full
and you can’t think of anything else that could fit in it,
and then even more sky comes and more days
and there is so much to remember and swallow.
I ask T what I should call the thing I write about
Saturation, because she’s a titleologist, and she says,
“Someplace Like Montana.”

~ Ada Limón 

How Small A Thing Can Be Pleasing

It feels so marvelous to get out into the woods. We love the familiar sight of Mt. Rainier rising above Seattle in all her surreal glory, but we haven't actually spent much time there - crazy, I know, since the National Park is only two hours away. We had a very good excuse this last weekend to go exploring as we were invited to a dear friend's birthday gathering. I was happily reminded that the best kind of therapy is tramping around in mountains. Watching yellow leaves falling in the sunshine trickling through the forest and remembering "how small a think can be pleasing..." as Wendell Berry muses below.

VII Again I resume the long lesson: how small a thing can be pleasing, how little in this hard world it takes to satisfy the mind and bring it to its rest. Within the ongoing havoc the woods this morning is almost unnaturally still. Through stalled air, unshadowed light, a few leaves fall of their own weight.                                        The sky is gray. It begins in mist almost at the ground and rises forever. The trees rise in silence almost natural, but not quite, almost eternal, but not quite.                       What more did I think I wanted? Here is what has always been. Here is what will always be. Even in me, the Maker of all this returns in rest, even to the slightest of His works, a yellow leaf slowly falling, and is pleased. ~ Wendell Berry, from This Day