my daughter

-my daughter-

The soft beauty of a child

gathers about you

as you take her in your

arms.

Knowing the fragility of her blood

the remorseless march of her

seconds

you hold her tight, rocking to

your own inward winds of fear.

You two are one tower, one great

leaning together of stones resisting

time as best the two of you can-

A man is immortal, fearless when

He holds his daughter is

silhouetted

against the edge of the horizon,

Black shapes on grey, when he holds

her

tightly in his arms he is very

strong

*this was my christmas gift from my father in 1980. i was eight years old.

glurk

It's been awhile. We started on our roof project (replacing the entire thing) and have wound up with a 1700 square foot skylight covered with plastic and an impending week of snow/rain.

When the roofers got the roof off, they discovered that the only insulation was (literally) 9.5 tons of dirt and some some pumice with various pieces of cardboard and metal trash strewn in. Three men took off all that dirt one bucket at a time as they couldn't get a vehicle close enough to the house to unload into. As bizarre as it sounds, dirt and straw used to be typical insulation for these flat roofed houses ABOUT A MILLION YEARS AGO!!!! Anyway, the tarps we attached to the ceiling inside were not sufficient for the job and the entire house is a giant dust/dirt storm... And I have a head cold/fever bug.

But fortunately we have Jono's studio which is all set up with kitchen, bedrooms and everything we need to be cozy. It's actually been really nice to be up here because Jono is working on the extremely time consuming process of mixing a record with a deadline at the end of the week. We've been able to sneak in little visits and eat meals together which definitely wouldn't have happened if I was staying in town. AND last night was the first time we could see/feel Natanya moving from the outside! It was so exciting and it was great because we were lying in bed together and so Jono got to be there too. Major magic! She then proceeded to roll around and kick about all night long...

So, all is well as long as I can keep the great things in perspective while I imagine our house rotting away under rain & snow through the haze of a gooey head and logy chills...

Natanya's books

I spent the afternoon clearing a bookshelf and organizing Natanya's books from young adult to non fiction and then to fiction in descending reading levels. Even though not much nesting can happen until we get the roof replaced, it's exciting to start putting little things in order!
I've been filled with fantasies of making Halloween costumes and reading together and having dance parties in the living room... I've got plans for easels and art tables and snowmen and cooking together... I don't give much thought to tantrums or tears or exhaustion or impatience though I know those things will occur in between the fun...

I've got a shed full of teaching materials to go through when it warms up a bit. Aside from lesson plans there are puzzles and games and all kinds of treasure. It will be awhile before we get to these things I know but I've been saving it all for her and I just can hardly wait to share it...

GIRL!

We went to a friend's house concert/birthday party last night. I had received an email from him earlier in the week requesting that I be one of seven people in the audience to dress up in any way but to be a "character" and show uniqueness... I of course took it on whole heartedly and spent a lot of time dreaming up the easiest way to portray springtime and got enthusiastically dressed up for the event. When we arrived, it became clear that I was the only one who was in any sort of costume. My friend said he'd forgotten to send me the memo that said he was bagging the costume idea!

That said, Jono and I had just come from having an ultra sound where we saw our baby all perfect and extremely active and beautiful... We found out that she is a she (although an ultra sound is not definitive) but I went in so convinced that she is a she that I would have been surprised otherwise.

I was so elated by the time we got to the party that I felt like the embodiment of springtime and of joy and of life and I had great fun being dressed up!
I've spent the day ogling the little blob pictures that they give you from the ultra sound images. I always wondered why my girlfriends seemed so excited about the non-descript, grainy, barely distinguishable pictures and now I know. When it's your baby, it all looks very important. The blob of pixels here shows telling genetic information and the blur of darkness there is life in motion...

It's all so vital and so essential...

My heart is expanding along with the rest of me but at a much faster rate!!!

MY SWEET VALENTINES!!!

4 months!

a weird, wonky week. maybe it's time for winter to be over. maybe the stars are needing a nap. maybe the mornings are aching to be a little longer and the nights want to be longer too. maybe love is storing energy for it's big day on sunday. maybe the purring and the whirling of it all just got momentarily out of whack and will have readjusted by the time we all wake up tomorrow... i just feel grateful that no amount of wonk can shake my joy these days. i am still inside the growing glow of life-ness which has the power to bring me back to bliss if i begin to stray. my thoughts are with you, those of you who have had medical emergencies this week and those of you who may have gotten pulled however subtly or dramatically into the wonkness.

Dear George,

When talking about memories or perceptions of events with my father we''ll frequently discuss, debate, argue until at a certain point he'll pull out the old "Do you want to know the truth or what really happened?" It does seem that truth should be certain in the most consistent, concrete and undebatable of ways but then you throw in that wily aspect of the human heart/mind preference and truth becomes a slippery thing. There are realms of truth. The material world is more quantifiable but even there, truth is what one chooses to agree with. During the Bush years (and always in politics), we've seen first hand how if you call an apple an orange for long enough and with authority, masses will believe that an apple is an orange and start naming it so... Therein lies the power of media, cults, education....

I've been thinking a lot about Howard Zinn, a hero of mine who recently passed away. I was fortunate enough in high school to have had his book, A People's History of the United States as my history text book. He was a man who knew a completely different truth from the one that he like most were taught in school. I identified with the information he presented and incorporated it into my truth. But in America that truth is believed by a minority. How can truth be a subjective matter? If truth is subjective than it can't by definition exist. And so I refer frequently to that thing my father says to sort out the discrepancies between my mind/heart and the world around me. Do you want to know the truth or what really happened?