There were bells on a hill

Yesterday I read an article about a new study showing that South Korean children seem to have much higher rates of autism than American children.

Yesterday I got home from work, looked in the mirror, and saw a ladybug clinging to the collar of my jacket.

That’s pretty much how life seems to be going these days, swinging on a pendulum from fear/worry/angst to excitement/joy/hopefulness. I mean, it’s not like every day is a rollercoaster of emotions, but they crop up pretty regularly. It’s strange how you can want something so badly and be so afraid of it at the same time.

We’re entering the timeframe when our referral could come. Still a bit early, yes, but it could conceivably come anytime between the end of May and August. We could travel anytime between September and December, I think, if the current agency timeframes hold steady. This stage of our adoption process—which started in November 2009, when I mailed our first agency application—feels the most “real” yet. Our child is most likely born. We are eyeing every stroller we see on the street. I’m trolling around local message boards that discuss child care. We’re going to register in June. I’m going to tell my boss this month, and after that, we won’t have a reason to keep the whole thing secret any longer.

I’ve been having lots of big thoughts—about nature versus nurture, what we can control and what we can’t, about personal courage and strength, about what makes a strong marriage. What it means to be happy and just how important that really is. (I think we Americans place a higher emphasis on personal happiness than some other cultures do.) I think about those studies that say childless adults are happier than adults with kids. I wonder about that, thinking about things like getting good sleep, lounging with the newspaper, running four or five days a week, meeting friends for dinner, lingering and laughing with John at a bar or over a meal. Those things make me happy, and I won’t do them as often once we’re parents.

The thing that is taking their place will make me happy in a whole different—and, arguably, deeper and more fulfilling—way. I know that. But it will also bring worry and frustration and fear, and that’s going to mean a new way of living, a new way of feeling. Right now, we’re fortunate enough to not have any major stressors, other than the usual mild work or family challenges. I want this new life, but I also like my current, simpler life (even though sometimes it feels like something is missing, like I’m ready to move on to the next chapter). So I guess I’m just thinking my way through all that right now.

Of course, it’s not like I spend all my waking hours immersed in deep thought! Spring is finally springing in Chicago. I’m back to running outside, and I’ve decided to attempt my second half-marathon this summer, so I’ll start training for that soon. We’ve started planting in the backyard, and we’ll get our deck flowers planted soon. After almost three years with us, Stella has suddenly noticed the existence of squirrels, making our walks much more amusing. I’ve signed up for a four-week photography class, and I’m copyediting a friend’s first novel. John just learned to play “Till There Was You” on his guitar, which I’ve decided will make a great lullaby. We recently went to Michigan to meet my perfect little nephew. And we spent a fabulous weekend in San Francisco, celebrating the end of tax season and just enjoying a few days of doing whatever we wanted to, together, in one of our favorite cities in the world.

Last weekend we had brunch with some dear friends who live in the suburbs. We were standing on the sidewalk, waiting for a table at a restaurant. I was holding my friend’s blond-haired, blue-eyed nine-month-old, and a woman walking by wished me a happy Mother’s Day. “So funny,” I told my friend, “it’s not like she looks like me at all!” Then I realized, um, yes, neither will my actual child, and we all laughed, me feeling grateful for the woman's assumption. I pressed my cheek against the baby’s soft head and pretended.

Sight and touch

On Wednesday night around 9 p.m., I stood on the el platform after class (my very last class in grad school—come June I’ll have an M.A., and it only took four years!), waiting for the train. It had been a summer day in April, temperatures near 80 degrees, the undergrads schlepping around in wrinkled capri pants and rubber flip-flops (and me in my cotton grown-up workclothes, feeling old and overheated).

But now the air was incredibly, deliciously soft and warm and dark, brushing my cheeks, sliding through my hair. The city skyline was twinkling in the distance, Sears, Hancock, Aon, and the moon overhead was almost full. A beautiful night, its beauty sensed by both sight and touch…one of those small slices of loveliness that come when you least expect them.

Yesterday's weather was almost as nice, although a little cooler. I walked Moose in the park after work, my eyes unaccustomed to all the green—velvet green grass, pale green daffodil stalks, hedges covered in a light green mist. Blue sky. And for those of us who are white, pale legs and arms bared for the first time since September. The park was full of kids rollerblading and jump-roping and riding scooters. Two little Hispanic boys seemed very interested in Moose—I heard the Spanish word for dog, perro, whispered in a high-pitched voice—and so I stopped and asked if they wanted to pet him. They came over shyly, and somewhere in my mind I remembered the words: “Se nombre Moose,” his name is Moose. “Hi, Moose,” they said, stroking his head.

We kept walking, passing a young Eastern European mom and her toddler, a few homeless men, some Arab kids kicking a soccer ball, two young white joggers, the headphoned teenage boy who walks his neighbor’s ancient Bassett hound every afternoon. And then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a tall, moving, black object, and I turned to see a woman in a burka walking on another path about 20 yards away. She was pushing a stroller with a toddler in it and leading a four- or five-year-old girl by the hand. The little girls wore pastel-colored coats with their hoods up. But the woman was dressed in a voluminous swath of black.

I didn’t want to openly stare at her, but I did steal a few more glances. I see women in headscarves around my neighborhood, but never women with their faces covered. I realized that this woman wasn’t wearing an actual burka, but a long, wide black dress, a long black headscarf, and another black scarf-like cloth that covered her face from the nose down. Her eyes were visible. (Perhaps what she was wearing was a chador; I’m not sure.)

Seeing her made me remember the night before, standing on the el platform with the warm breeze in my hair and on my cheeks. And although I don’t assume that the woman wanted my pity, I did pity her, for not being able to have that experience. I wondered, if she has a balcony, can she at least step outside at night, uncovered, to feel the air on her skin? Can she open a window and lean out, close her eyes and breathe the night air? I wondered if it’s difficult for young girls to begin wearing such a garment, when the days of not wearing one are still so fresh in their memories. I thought about how I had smiled at the two Hispanic boys and how they’d smiled back. What for me is an ordinary shared moment between strangers, a daily punctuation that some of my neighbors never experience.

Springing

Winged women in Grant Park, II
Originally uploaded by strass.

Spring is springing in Chicago. Now that it’s light here until 7 p.m. (oh blessed, blessed daylight savings), Moose and I are venturing back out to the lakefront parks and beaches when I get home from work. We go slowly, Moose stopping to sniff every tree trunk and bush (and, okay, beer can), me pausing to examine a miniscule bud on a tree branch, just waiting to burst open and turn the landscape green again. But the greening has begun, actually… a dusting on the grass, a pushed-up daffodil stalk, the stem of a fragile purple crocus. I hear more birds now, or maybe I’m just listening for them harder.

April is a good month. There’s more light, more color, more tastes of warm days on the horizon. April means getting out my spring coat, even if I can’t wear it every day. It means getting home from work and not having to flip on the lights in our condo. It means opening the back door and letting the breeze in, hearing our 18-month-old neighbor giggling outside as she stumbles around under her dad’s watchful gaze. It means not having to put on my mittens and Moose’s fleece coat every time we go for a walk. It’s that first smell of freshly mown grass, of dirt, of someone grilling down the block. It’s sitting in my office on a Friday afternoon and seeing the lights of Wrigley Field in the distance, knowing the Cubs are playing their home opener, knowing I have tickets to three games this year.

And of course it’s the end of tax season, so close on the horizon. Which is always a bit of an adjustment—after all, I’ve had the place to myself on weeknights since early January—but a welcome one. Now I’ll have someone to cook me a well-balanced meal, to fire up the grill and marinate some chicken or pork. (I just don't do well cooking meat products, especially for one.) We’ll eat dinner together and go for jogs. I’ll find his softball bat lying around, and I’ll smile because the weather’s warm and my husband’s not working 70 hours a week and returning Blackberry emails at 11:30 p.m.; he’s reading and brewing beer and playing a sport that he loves with friends. Sometimes it feels like a big, heavy blanket is lifted off our lives, come April.

On Memorial Day

Originally posted to Diary-X

On Memorial Day, John and I decided it was time for the annual beautification of our miniscule back deck. We drove over to our neighborhood garden store and ambled among the outdoor shelves in the sunlight, choosing the perfect white and lavender impatiens for our railing trough and a few bright-red geraniums for our hanging pot. The place was crowded, and we waited in line with two gay men holding a huge stone fountain, sunglassed yuppies with slats of gerbera daisies and pansies, and older couples grasping carts of ornamental trees and ivy. Everyone seemed very happy, and how could they not be? Sunshine, dogs and kids and puddles from the hoses, mild air, flowers everywhere.

Back home, we crouched on our deck, with its view of apartment buildings and the top tips of the Golden Arches and a blue smidge of Lake Michigan, digging our hands in the new dirt and planting our flowers. John scrubbed all the pigeon crap off the wooden floor. We set up the trough on the railing and hung the geranium pot. Now we just need to bring up our deck chairs from storage, and voila—our tiny patch of urban summer living is ready to go.

It was a good weekend. John and I kicked it off with our first babysitting stint—we watched our neighbors’ seven-month-old baby girl, who is nicknamed Sly. Her parents were dying for a dinner out, and we were happy to lend an (inexperienced) hand. Observations:

--It is hard to refrain from using my “talking to dogs” voice with babies. (“Do you like your dinner? Do you? Do you? Oh, such a good girl!”)
--Babies in sleep sacks are insanely adorable. It’s a baby in a bag. So. Cute.
--A seven-month-old can have a surprisingly firm grip when she wants to feed herself that spinach-and-oatmeal dinner combo.
--Good God, but it takes forever to feed a baby. With every spoonful that goes in, about half comes back out, and then must be wiped from the chin and cheeks and spooned back in… rinse, repeat.
--Diapers nowadays do not have band-aid–like adhesive strips like the diapers I put on my Cabbage Patch Kids in 1984. Instead they have some sort of magic velcro that doesn’t actually look like velcro. Imagine how long it took a 29-year-old and a 30-year-old to figure this out. No, longer than that.
--A baby head pressed against your cheek is a really nice feeling.

Anyway, Sly went to sleep around 7:15, at which point we gorged on homemade ravioli and watched The Office Special while watching our friends’ cat play in a box. Good times.

On Saturday, one of my dearest college friends and her husband came for a visit, having successfully deposited their 19-month-old at his parents’ house in the suburbs. We started drinking at 3:30 and headed downtown for dinner at 7:00, returning in a few hours to pick up with the drinking again. Many bottles of merlot and shiraz (“It tastes… musty… at the back of my throat. Sort of like dust.” “I’d say you’re a Malbec-spert!”) were consumed, new words for the Oxford English Dictionary were invented, the merits of soft porn were discussed in detail. I love my friends.

Sunday was a wine hangover and breakfast out and the new Star Wars movie. Monday was flower shopping and freelancing and then, biking ten miles round-trip down to Navy Pier, where I’ve never been before because it is a-swarm with tourists. So many tourists! But it was a fun, holiday-ish place to wander around, and the views of the skyline from there are awe-inspiring. We soaked up the sun and breathed in the wafting scent of elephant ears and stopped for burgers and beers at a tavern, which did slow the bike ride home a bit, but nevertheless was the perfectly right choice.

Tax Day, and catching up

Originally posted on Diary-X

From now until January 2005, my husband will get home from work before six o’clock, not after nine o’clock. He will sleep in with me on Saturdays, and we’ll make scrambled eggs and coffee and read the paper together. O happy, blessed Tax Day! This time of year, the end of tax season, always feels like the start of my summer. Later sunsets, warmer weather, and someone to grill me a chicken breast. Life is good.

So last week was Holy Week, and…

…John, who suffers from pretty bad heartburn, had an endoscopy, which went fine (or as well as things can go when you’re sedated and have multiple tubes snaking down your throat). John has no ulcers to speak of, so the doctor’s just going to up his heartburn medicine. He also commended us for placing cement blocks under the head of our bed—apparently this is a great way to combat heartburn. I’m getting used to slowly sliding down the bed as I sleep, waking up with my feet dangling off the bottom. Oh, the sacrifices one must make in a marriage…

…I started my spring class, a poetry writing workshop. And I don’t think I’m the worst poet in the room. (This is the kind of thing I worry about, tiresome perfectionist that I am.) I’ve taken many a fiction writing workshop, but never poetry, so I jumped at the chance to learn the craft. For my first poem, I wrote about Moose. I know, I know: isn’t that something a crazy dog lady would do? But I didn’t want to share deep dark family secrets or embarrassing emotional stuff right off the bat—I hardly know these people. I was actually proud of my work (it’s not a sappy, I’m-a-freak-about-my-dog kind of thing). I’m debating whether or not to post it here. Not sure yet…

…I went to my first neighborhood block club meeting. It was held in an old Jewish synagogue. There were about twenty people in attendance—a few white yuppies, an Indian guy, a Vietnamese guy, a black guy, an older white woman, an older gay man, a grizzled guy with a long ponytail who took copious notes, and a blue-haired dogwalker wearing biker half-gloves on his hands. It was a good feeling to be there; it gave me a sense of community. And I also enjoyed being inside the synagogue, looking at the Hebrew carvings, reading the announcements for Passover events. I just finished the book Girl Meets God, so I felt like I had some understanding of what takes place in a Jewish house of worship. (I recommend that book, by the way. It’s so refreshing to read intelligent spiritual writing that’s not all touchy-feely, syrupy evangelistic stuff—and that doesn’t have an axe to grind. The author is very real, very human, and not sanctimonious at all.)…

…I went to our church’s Good Friday service alone and knelt in the darkened sanctuary, listening to the story of the Passion and, as I do every year, trying to understand the magnitude of what I profess to believe. Then, less than 48 hours later, we celebrated Easter, incense and fancy hats and smiles and alleluias and an embarrassing moment in which I actually teared up during the hymn “Jesus Christ is Risen Today,” and had to stop singing and bite the inside of my cheek in an effort to compose myself. I have no idea why that happened…

…the pigeons had babies. The three of them are mashed together in the nest, ungainly and matted with scrawny necks and big black eyes. Their mother keeps a careful eye on them from the rooftop next door. I’m tempted to walk up to the nest for a close look, but then I picture Momma Pigeon swooping in and clawing at my eyes, so I keep my distance. (She's somewhat evil looking—charcoal gray, with those glittery red pigeon eyes.) A few weeks ago I wished the pigeons were perched over our door instead of our neighbor’s, but now that I see the tributaries of bird poop running down her screen door, I’ve changed my mind…

…while I was walking Moose one afternoon, we passed a scruffy-looking man on the sidewalk who paused to ask this question: “Have you ever eaten dog meat?” When I replied that I hadn’t, half-amused and half-horrified, he kept on walking. These are the times when I’m grateful Moose doesn’t understand much English beyond "dinner" and his own name.