Glory Ho

Dear Scarlett,

Every day you drink my breastmilk and your such a good eater. I want to look down and say: Augustus! Save some for later! But you keep on sucking and slurping it up. It’s this sweet, warm, magic substance that has everything you need to grow—you’d think the Oompa Loompa’s had a hand in the whole thing.

When I come into the room, you find me. Your eyes track me, your neck cranes to see me. They don’t exactly trace me in a smooth line, but rather, jump and dart like someone who’s had a little too much rum. Daddy says the hierarchy goes like this: Mommy, fan, him.

Sometimes the wise women in my life, the ones who embraced you in my womb, come over to witness your little life taking shape. They inhale the smell of your little baby head and breathe that sweet goodness out into the world as though they’ve been given a whole tank of oxygen.

Every week, we go to Baby and Me with the big kids and you fall asleep on my shoulder, your arms flipped over your head. We sing Mr. Noah Had a Boat to the tune of Old McDonald. Everyone says you are “petite” and just such a pretty baby. Mommy learns new words like “tummy time” and “acid reflux” and realizes that no one has figured out a graceful way to carry the carseat.

And speaking of the car seat, It is clear that you are not yet friends with it yet. So I reach my  arm around and rock the bucket and sing and pump the breaks at the corner of Iowa and Logan and turn on George Strait or Amy Correia. And sometimes its in the Old Navy dressing room where you lose it, just as I’m trying to find a pear of jeans that fit, and other times it is in that stop-light-strewn stretch between City Floral and Compass Bank and then there was that time in the Walgreens parking lot when I was trying desperately to find the correct dosage for infant tylenol as you cried and cried, ripping open the box only to find that they tell you to consult a doctor for anyone under six months.

Panic? Well, yes, there’s been a tiny bit of panic. And projectile vomit.  And oh when the poop slides up your back–that’s a doozy of a day. But there are moments of celebration, too. Like the moment you first grinned at me or the day I found out that Jimmy Johns had a drive-through or the moment Daddy and I realized that the song Baby Girl had a whole new meaning.

And sprinkled like sugar are the sweet secrets just between us. I tell you how much I love you and show you the window at Five Green Boxes and put on your little leg warmers and sing Sweet Child of Mine to you. . .you and your Sponge Bob Square Face and the little bald spot at the back of your head and the way your fingers feel soft like sushi and the relief in your art-pencil-sketched eyes when I lift you into my arms.

Love,
Mommy

Dear Scarlett,

When you rose to meet me, you looked like a little old woman and a little baby bird at the same time, an old, wild soul, all scrunched up and sweet and full of ethereal wisdom, yet completely pure. There were no tears or screams, just awe and confusion on your pinker-than-expected skin. I felt every moment. Mommy was very tired and Daddy held you in his arms. Then we gave you a bath.

That first month of your life, I sat on the porch swing in my purple ruffles and sang Hush Little Baby, Old Shep and Jolly Playmates to you. I cried with confusion, exhaustion and happiness. I called Grandma Great. I called Grammy. I called Aunti Maury. I called Erin. They all told me it would be okay.

Thanks to Facebook, everyone knew about you right away. When I announced your birth, you got 57 comments and 27 likes all that first day.

I knew how to hold you, and I knew how to change your diaper and feed you. But I was still nervous a lot. I wasafraid that I will change you. You are so pure, so untouched, sun has never burned your skin. . .words have never bruised your emotions. . .guilt has never dented your conscience.

Daddy kept reading Dr. Sears’ Baby Book. We learned to shoot saline up your nose and take your temperature and with all this H1N1 stuff, Daddy got the flu and had to stay and Nonna and Papa’s for a couple days. One night, you wouldn’t stop crying. . .we were so scared, so we swaddled you and rocked you and eventually I cried with you. It was all I could think to do.

Your favorite activities were hanging out on my shoulder and peeing just as I slide off your diaper. You are a truly beautiful baby. Everyone says so. Then people say how they say that to everyone, but this time they mean it. Even the girls at Mountain Midwifery said you were beautiful. And they see a lot of babies.

On the third morning of your life, my friend Amy called from New York. We hadn’t talked in several months. Sometimes, relationships are complicated. She wanted to know all about you. Someday I’ll take you to New York City to see her. We’ll sing the TMBG song and meet my blog friend, Frances and we’ll go to a poetry reading.

But first, we must master breastfeeding.

Caitlin, the blond nurse with pixie features and Nordic skin from Mountain Midwifery came to see you last week. I was nervous for the dirty house, but Daddy said if our floors were too clean, well that wouldn’t paint us as very good parents, would it? She measured you and looked around and called you Madame and you loved every minute. She also found my Linea Negra, the faint line down my middle, a trace of you, still in my belly. It just means “black line” in Latin, but Caitlin made it sound exotic and beautiful. And to me, it was.

Do you remember living in my belly? When your sleep grins shine through, what are you smiling about? Do you hear Julie Delpy singing that waltz? Do you taste creme brulee? Do you dream about your previous life as a whirling dervish or a deep sea fisherman?

Do you like us?

Love, Mommy

In the early days of my pregnancy, I read Loving Frank, historical fiction which details the affair between architect Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah Borthwick, a feminist at the turn of the century. It was magnificent. Everything I devour. A story with some truth. Real people from the past. Womanhood. Choices. Tragedy. Bits of my local Boulder. But most of all, it was a follow up feminist meets motherhood tale.

Growing up, I always thought I would be a Mom. Wasn’t that what women did? At the time, there were no childless couples in my small world. Kate Chopin’s The Awakening stirred my senses a bit in college. The heroine had children, but she dared to be as interested in her own passions as she was in them, and that was considered a scandal. Her conclusion was important. She said: I would die for my children, but I would not give my life for my children. This seemed to say that it was possible to have kids and maintain your self, too. I ran that by my Mom once as we were driving along I-80. She agreed wholeheartedly. And I was relieved.

As I evolved through my 20s, I always felt that feminism didn’t really work for me–couldn’t I be a good Mom AND my own person (with possibly a career) too? Why did feminism have to bash motherhood and why did motherhood have to bash feminism? Why was everyone so extreme? But this was the 90s, when a career just seemed like a good idea. I had yet to evolve.

From there, I began to settle into life, becoming enthralled with various pursuits–triathlons, non-profit volunteerism, book clubs, local feminism history, my own business and Buddhism.  I became so interested in life, that I realized I would fill it up–even without kids. It was strange to consider, but the notion eventually sounded normal instead of neanderthal. I met people without kids. And I liked them. I hadn’t made any decisions, but I realized that I had a choice. My mother, afraid to pressure me, encouraged me to do what was right for me. “Maybe you guys won’t have kids. That’s fine, too.”

Then we left the country. The idea of kids hovered overhead, sometimes part of the smog we inevitably breathed, other times, the very stars we wished we could see. We talked endlessly about future plans because that’s what you do in the Peace Corps. Would we live in DC and work for the campaigns? Teach English in Korea? Spend time in India? Move back into our house on Emerson?

It was such a paradox. We KNEW we wanted kids, but they were always the leftover screw after you thought you’d successfully put together the $99 entertainment center from Target. Where did they fit? But at that time, any ideas about home were far too surreal for concrete plans and we knew nothing could really happen until we were within a two mile radius of a Walgreens anyway. We’d successfully put it off again.

But Wanderlust or Bust opened portals to worlds we’d never even pondered. And although deep down, I knew the answer, there was a shift in my thought pattern that took me from “generally agreeable” to “ready”.

At first, I thought it was when a sick, sixteen month old Ugandan baby called Innocent fell asleep against my chest when we were living in a thatch-roof hut in West-Central UgandaLake Nkuruba teaching daily Social Studies classes and evening computer classes to orphans. But that’s not right. It was a week or so later, when we visited Sarah Burke, a Peace Corps volunteer. She was young, with naturally curly blonde hair, a subscription to Sun and a very optimistic aura. I was taking in her modest African bedroom–you know, the predictable photo of girlfriends gathered on the beach, demonstrating their loyalty through linked arms and tilted head smiles. And instead of reminding me of my own college memories, I instinctively thought: I hope our daughter one day has a bulletin board filled with the celebration of good friends and good times. I was thinking about a daughter I would one day have. I was instinctively projecting my own hopes onto someone other than myself. And I wasn’t pregnant.

That was the hour I first believed. The hour I first knew for sure, that I wanted to create a new life. Creation, no matter what you’re working with, is what life’s all about anyway. Right Brent?

I was so nervous that morning. I’d even cried. Flustered by my slippery hot rollers and the client meeting which had suddenly come up and the fact that my favorite watch of all time had stopped working after seven years. Silly things, you see. But last week it had been sun glare and the absence of a parking lot that did it. I hardly minded. I am much more frustrated by the absence of tears than their sometimes unexpected presence.

At Alpine Access at 11th and Lincoln, I stood waiting for my client, Sonia, a smiling, pin-cushion-skinned, past-hippie graphic designer who lived in Bailey. I had stared through the boardroom toward a Successories-like window frame. There’s Denver, I thought. That’s where I live. The leather-colored buildings of a medium-sized city where the sun was always in attendance and the mountains were always watching . This is where my child will grow up. My daughter’s new college roommate or my son’s friend on that summer trip to Honduras or a beautiful set of eyes in a dark bar will one day ask: So where are you from? Just as I have answered: “I’m from a small town in Illinois” my whole life, my son or daughter will say: I’m from Denver. And there will be at least 18 years of identity and memories wrapped up in that one sentence.

Later, I waited in front of 1245 Franklin Street, a 70′s style building which reminded me of my dot com days in Cherry Creek. The Colorado winter weather was almost warm. I could hear bits of Spanish from the sky. Construction workers were exchanging shouts just a few stories up. Then I saw Michael’s soy-milk-colored 1969 Volkswagen bug coming down the sunny street.

On the 10th floor, we waited.

I think I was secretly afraid that I would go into the room and the doctor would poke around and then say: “Pregnant? What makes you think you’re pregnant?” It just seemed so uncertain without the medical confirmation. Had I missed a period? Yes. Had we taken a home-pregnancy test? Um, three. Had my breasts been hurting? Yep. Had I been extra tired? Absolutely. All the symptoms had added up. Still, I so needed this proof. This heartbeat. This confirmation.

But when I told them I was pregnant, they totally believed me! First Michael and the nurse practitioner examined everything that I couldn’t see. And then they wheeled in the ultrasound and it was my turn to look. There it was.  Our baby.

And we both drew in a breath of air, knowing that we would never be here, right here, again.

I had decided to drive home for Christmas. And once I put all those images of me stranded in a cornfield and then approached and kidnapped by Asgrow O’s Gold-logo’ed-mesh-hatted trucker in a locked drawer at the back of my head, it started to sound like the perfect idea. There would be pit-stops at interstate-side Subways with slow customer service. Cheap Caseys gas at the Mall of the Bluffs.  The home of Marion Morrison and the bridges of Madison county waving me on.  Signs for camping at Exit 25.   Country countdowns with Bob Kingsley. The icy Mississippi just a few feet over the edge of the I-80 bridge.

Some people find this drive one of the worst in America.  But I have found that while its so easy to see the snow-sprinkled poetry in the craggy peaks and canyons of the West, a place where image overcomes imagination, the Midwest calls for more work. It takes an ear for a story and a deeper life lens to sift through the wheat, corn and clapboards of the plains. This land made me who I am. It is my friend.  And I am secretly sweetened by the fact that it remains largely unchanged.

At home, however, while the soft corners of my hometown’s collage looked just like they always did–memories that aren’t meant to ever pass away–most everything else had changed. And at every counter, out every window, in every closet, I would undoubtedly find suddenly-grown children, a pasture no longer empty, drawers with items I didn’t recognize.  I needed that 12 hours to go home at my own pace. To watch the gradual shift from clear sticks of sun to a soft white haze. For the same reason walking the seventeen blocks from Christopher Street Station to Madison Square helps you understand New York City so much better than a subway ride, I needed to drive these roads myself.

So I filled up my Craig’s List Ford on the 19th, and in a 15 hour pocket between unpredictable ice storms, like a pioneer turning ’round, I drove back to my past.

Home was all I hoped it would be. This is significant. Because over the years, I have come to appreciate the longing and the anticipation of what’s to come rather than the object of my desire. As Rebecca Solnit says in the Field Guide to Getting Lost, “If you can only look across the distance without wanting to close it up, if you can own your longing in the same way that you own the beauty of that blue. . .”

Perhaps this strategy, which I learned from being away so long, eases your expectations.  When I stayed overnight in Omaha, after I met dear Betty and Owen, but before I saw Warren Buffet’s house, my friend Patrick also presented a wise gem. He said he’d learned to “accept love however people show it”. I thought that was important.

I made the return trip in just one day, perhaps needing a little less transition time as I headed back to the future or perhaps just eager to get back to my Michael. I lived in the present, marveling at the signs and communication that American infrastructure provides, admiring the cattle’s self-constructed still life, driving into the Colorado sunset and wondering what sign would appear on Ella Pierce Turner.

It was a +.

The water is angry and swirling from the splash of the sky, the shoebills are out for a bath, the monkeys are minding the forest and Africans are whooping and squawking along the ruddy, muddy shores while 50-50’s edge grows ever closer. I scoop the waves with futility. . paddle left, paddle right, hold on, hold on and get down, I can’t hear his orders above the thunder! What’s he saying now? Strands of hair sticking to my cheeks, the warm comfort of tears just about to break loose, glancing at Michael for reassurance and realizing I am on my own, fearing I wouldn’t hold on tight enough, considering the the distance of the drop. . how rock formations could create such rapids . .wondering just how long I’ll stay underwater this time. Silverback was at least half an hour ago now, but the waves had thrashed me in a spin cycle for what felt like at least two minutes, but was probablyl more like 15 seconds. I was so scared. Out. Of. Breath. I am still so scared. “Be loose” Michael always tells me. Let your body roll with the water, with the boat, against an oar. Alarmed by the word “loose”, I check to make sure my helmet is still there. . .that my life jacket is snapped. . .that the rescue kayaks are still with us. But I am out of time. The falls are here. I try desperately to keep the taste of drama in my mouth so the fear won’t fill it up. I whisper my trio of mantras. . .that people did this every day, that everything would be okay, that somewhere. . .I can see it, there, between the waving seaweed of my own shores, is the rush of fear which I actually enjoy but I just. .can’t. . .quite. . .reach it. Then the boat goes horizontal and all I can see are the handles and my hands and my eyelids.

White water rafting.
In a thunderstorm.
Atop a Class Five Rapid
At the source of the Nile
In Uganda.

As Lawrence would say: Fuckin’ A, man. Fuckin’ A.

Back when the TV had a knob and there were only three channels, I have vague memories of a white mustache in khaki shorts and a jungle jeep. The kind of calm which wise old men always engender. A nature show without photo-shopped colors and fast-forwarded sunrises. The cornbread-brown-and-yellow softness and silence which is the African savannah. Of cheetah teeth, faded skies and a lions mane. The whole thing had something to do with an Indian in Nebraska, too. That’s what I remember, frame by frame.

Premiering in 1963, Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom was a program ahead of it’s time. This Emmy-award winning show entertained millions of families by taking them across continents, exposing raw habitats and keeping the violence off-camera—all decades before the Discovery Channel. I was just 10 when Marlin Perkins passed the torch in 1985.

It turns out my pencil-shaded memories of the show were closest to the real thing. Our safari at Masai Mara National Park in Kenya was just as amazing as we imagined it to be. The roads were bumpy. The savannah so silent. The pop-top of our safari just a white boat in a fluid field of grass and lone acacias.

Giraffes are the calmest creatures I’d ever seen. So quiet, so unimpressed by our cameras and calamity. Their eyebrows and pip-cleaner tipped horns arched in a mock expression of surprise and innocence. A fuzzy, photogenic skin of scattered brown and beige puzzle pieces. Letting the tweetering birds land along their sloping back. Like models, a little too tall for their own good. I never thought something so awkward could be so beautiful.

The zebras, best known for their representation of the letter “Z” in first grade, were even more mythical—closer to the unicorn. Their very existence, the stripe-matched mane and wildly imperfect patterns left me in disbelief. It seemed so much more plausible that hiding behind the next bush was a gaggle of jokers with buckets of black and white paint. With fat underbellies and a skittish nature, zebra herds in the Masai Mara were as plentiful as cattle in the Western U.S.

Every summer as the grasses get thin, over two million herbivores, including 200,000 zebra, 500,000 gazelle and 1.5 million wildebeests–a coffee-colored, cow-horned animal which resembles a bearded mountain man–partake in the Great Migration, heading across the Mara-Serengetti ecosystem and crossing the Kenya-Tanzania border as they go. Not the best swimmers, and no match for crocodiles, hundreds of wildebeest perish every year, their skulls littering the Masai river banks.

Less impressive, more humorous, yet also black and white were the ostriches. These big old birds with a satiny black body, white tufted tailfeather and pink-skinned, widespread legs looked like faceless, tuxedo-donning prom-goers who’d lost their pants sometime during the night and were now searching a field in a walk of hungover shame. They made me laugh.

The vervet monkeys had lunch with us. They happen to love bananas—funny thing. They were master beggars, incredibly quick and certainly nothing like dogs, the animal I most easily associate with humans. They didn’t fall for my fake throw, knew how to drink out of a can and their little claws peeled a banana in an all too familiar way. I mean I do believe in evolution, but when you see your former self covered in fur sitting right there on a log, it’s just weird.

Eventually, we were fortunate to come upon fifteen lions who lazed in the small patch of shade about five feet from our truck. I must admit, Boudreaux and I were pretty giddy. I didn’t find them amazing, per se. I think I’d seen their mug too many times over the years. But our proximity and their apathy was a bigger deal. A whole pride of these soft, beige-carpeted cats, with flies covering their skin; these predators who spend their days murdering the zebras and giraffes could hardly be bothered to look at us. Until I sneezed. At that point, several lions wanted to know what the hell was going on and got up to investigate.

But the animals kept on coming. Elephants stashed hundreds of kilos of water into their  cracked, explorer-map skin. Baboons gathered for a mid-day meeting. Hyenas looked the only way they know how—suspicious. Hippos, with their nose and eyes just above the water, surveyed for crocodiles. Crocs, just a few yards down the beach, ever so still, waited for them to forget. Buffalo stared at us with curled horns. A little lone tortoise was buried in the eye-high grass.

And the savannah, as blue, green and yellow as a sunsoaked sea waved between them all.

Every day in Dahab seemed a lot like the one before. Every morning brought flies, breezes, heat and cats. Michael went running. I read or did yoga. Every day, Shepl would deliver our meals. Every day, Mustafa and Waleed would wash another section of rugs, positioning the pillows like crayons in a box before late-rising guests would dump them out all over again. Every afternoon, as the sexy tide pulled up its sundress to expose bits of broken boat and surface-sliding jellyfish, the haze arrived, napping between Egypt and Saudi Arabia. That’s when dozens of flipper-fitted feet walked straight into that haze to float atop a zero-scaped ocean floor and Arabian nights would splash their hoofs through the water, promising a fairy tale ride. Every day, I worked on the Penguin’s website, rewriting the redundant English text so we could get 50% off our meals, making two full breakfasts of pancakes, eggs, cheese-toast and tea less than $3. I read The Thirteenth Tale. Michael read Where God Was Born. We finally finished Beirut to Jerusalem. Every day, we reviewed the Book of World Faiths I’d borrowed from a nearby hostel, landing on Buddhism and aspiring to the Eightfold Path. Every day, we said we’d move back into the Penguin from our shared apartment with Romi over the Internet cafe, where we paid $10/night for room and unlimited online access. Every day, we found ourselves in the room once again, opening the shutters, ignoring the lopsided bed, listening to our roommates Polish-Egyptian drama and facing the Red Sea.

Every hour was happy hour. Sometimes with the Brit, Joe Berry, an aspiring author. Other times with Kent and Lauren, the Boulderites who lent us their Lonely Planet and reminded us how much we loved Colorado. But toward the end, it was with Ingie and Simon, the Norwegian couple who gave us the key to their downtown Cairo flat, a colonially-furnished clusterfuck with fifteen foot ceilings and an electrically unstable fridge full of beer. Venturing left or right down the coast always seemed an exhausting idea. We did go snorkeling once. Michael even dove. We barbequed on the beach with a couple Egyptians and drove out to a Bedouin oasis with a bunch of Dutch.

One night, we strayed ten feet south to a difficult-to-pronounce restaurant. But the name doesn’t matter. Behind Michael was a coral-red-brocade backdrop. Sconces dripped cheap jewels on the wall, toy-chest-green clap boards covered the brick fireplace, our hibiscus tea glowed like Egyptian wine. Bouquets of garlic splayed above, like sepia toned roses. Red checks, in the spirit of Italy and America, covered the wood tableaux. Jars of olives with towels across their shoulders, like my grandmother’s kitchen when she was pickling. The beams of a pub and the antique lamps of Arabia.  Oh how I wanted it all to last. . . to stay there on my tongue forever.

That night, as we sat on our pillows, staring at the moon, I looked over and said: If we weren’t already married, I’d ask you right now.

What a glory.

Wadi Musa, the village where Petra tourists complained about the smelly rooms, crap food, Last Crusade marathons and long walk to the famous façade, was unremarkable in every way. Closer to the actual ruins, the Indiana Jones café might have once been a cool Hollywood tribute, the CaveBar once a Star Wars-reminiscent freak show, if only someone hadn’t opened a café called Titanic a couple doors down, nullifying the intended effect. A line of blindfolded, unhappy horses, donkey and camels stood waiting for riders. Jordanian swindlers attacked from every side.

I also had a terrible head cold.

But Petra was a must-see. Something on a tourist list. A list I often used as fire-starters in my burning desire to damn the beaten path. But by now, though I’d become an expert at talking about the Emperor’s New Clothes, I’d also realized that whatever you find, it is what it is.

The “sik”, a 2km-long narrow fissure of raw-steak-red canyon was the first sign of intimidation. Squeezing from both sides, our smooth path appeared as I always picture the crevice bottoms of the Grand Canyon–visions likely fed by 5th grade filmstrips of explorer reenactment. But this was um, a little older. Somewhere around the  6th century B.C. these wadis (valleys) were along a commercial trading route to Damascus. The Nabateans had created an artificial oasis here, storing flash flood water for later droughts through the use of dams, cisterns and water donuits. Like fools, we kept blocking our own incredible view, taking photos we would soon erase since the non-transferable dimensions were only in the here and now.

By the time we reached the Treasury, the very posterchild of Petra, the sun had passed and this mansion sat shivering in the shade. Below the Arabs we’d come to know so very well touted their camels, a smug expression on both seller and beast. I stood as still as a tree, my head falling limply behind like a broken branch to see it all. The “rose-red-city” was a skin-defying shade of pink. In this mask of a mansion were the unweathered pillars of the Parthenon and the limbless figures of Greek Goddesses. Petra embodied the phrase, “rough around the edges”.

Yet the monastery was better. We climbed hundreds of worn steps and skirted alongside railing-less drops as animals laden with blankets and babas and cheap jewelry bumped past. Ever-attracted to the allure of anticipation, I was pleased discover that the monastery did not come into view as we climbed, but could only be seen once we arrived at the top, and then turned around.

I hate to say it, but some things must be seen to be understood. It was utterly stareable.