savagemama

Eliza has discovered her business, her girl parts, her vagina. She “washes” herself in the bathtub which I’m pretty sure is a thinly veiled excuse to rub the bar of soap between her legs. She wants to wipe herself and walks around with her hands down her pants. I’m not really sure what, if anything, to do about this. Our doctor asked me at our 18-month visit if I had any questions about masturbation.

“Don’t we worry about that when she’s, like, eight?” I said.

“Some people worry about it now, when they are discovering themselves,” she said.

I walked away confused. Then, not two weeks later, Eliza’s “downtown” became a fascinating place to her and I understood why the doctor had asked me about it.

I’m chalking it up to curiosity, making sure not to make her feel shameful and getting used to her walking around with her arm – up to her elbow — in her diaper.

The poet Nikki Giovanni has tattoo that says Thug Life on her wrist. She got it as a tribute to Tupac Shakur after he was gunned down. This black woman who has to be in her sixties did not know him, she says, but thought he spoke the truth. She says if she has the choice to be with the thugs or with the ones trying to bring them down, she’d rather be with the thugs. If she had the choice to be the “one swinging from the tree” or the ones looking up at him, she’d rather be the one in the tree. She says she rather be Matthew Sheppard than the ones who beat him.

Hearing the words, tears streamed down my cheeks.

She says if the choice to be with the “ones running or the ones chasing,” she’d rather be with the ones running.

Read her poem dedicated to Tupac here

Two mornings ago I woke up to Eliza saying, “Hey!” She was sitting beside me, staring down at me. I’m not sure how many times she said this before I woke up but after seeing me awake, she smiled.

“Hey!” I said as I sat up. I ran my hand through her curls, then because I’ve been waking up really congested these days, scratched my nose with the back of my other hand. I felt something hard and pointed and when I pulled my hand away I saw my nose ring had fallen out. A tiny L-shaped piece of metal, the thing was prone to stick out but it rarely came out by accident or otherwise because it was such a pain to get back in. I sat looking at it in my hand and instead of putting back in the hole in my nose I put on the shelf next to my bed. I scooped Eliza up and headed down to make breakfast. [Read More]

The other night I had a dream I took a pregnancy test and it was positive. Fear shot through me as though I was 17 years old. I woke in the early morning to the sweet it-was-only-a-dream realization that often accompanies nightmares. Then as I lay there I had a heart-stopping moment of the truly awake. It wasn’t just a dream. We are having another baby. I sat up, heart pounding, terrified.

It happens every February and every year it takes me by surprise. When we are at our grayest, slushiest, muddiest here in western Montana and I’m ready to move far, far away, the calves in my neighbor’s pasture start dropping. A few at first, they appear as slick black spots on an otherwise drab landscape. Mama cows lick their bottoms and faces clean and munch on afterbirth right outside our kitchen window. Then the eagles come and circle the pasture for a bite of that afterbirth. After a week or so the pasture is teetering with calves just finding their legs and birds hopping around in the hay behind them. Even though these births are timed perfectly by my neighbor rancher and somewhere along the way these cows have been trained to birth according to his plans, it’s still the first sign in my world that spring is coming. Come June these calves will have fattened up a bit and they will inevitably break through our fences to eat our hay, tromp on our flowers. But this year I’ll have another baby of my own to look after and probably won’t pay these calves that I’m so fascinated with now that much attention.

We’ve been tossing around baby names lately. Just like last time, we settled on a boy’s name pretty quickly. And just like last time, we can’t quite put our finger on a girl’s name. I like names that would sound good on an 80-year-old southern lady. Ada, Ruby, Ida, Adel. But I’m finding there is a fine line I don’t want to cross. Southern is one thing but I don’t want this baby’s name to sound, as I wrote to a friend the other day, like she lives in a house up on blocks in the Oklahoma panhandle. Genteel yes. NASCAR no. Ada yes. Delores no. This indecision on what to name the baby if it is a girl is the only thing that makes me think we may have a sister for Eliza floating around in my belly.

I was reading a week-by-week pregnancy book the other day and it occurred to me that I get to birth this baby that is, at the moment, turning cartwheels inside me. I’ve known this, obviously, on an intellectual level but the other day it hit me in the gut, so to speak and I got a little excited, a little intimidated. I hope it is a good birth. I wish every woman I love could have this experience and touch the blinding power we have as women. If we could channel that power into our lives everyday we would already have elected a woman president and there would be some changes to the way this old world spins around.

Last night Seth made a bed for me in the pump house and let me sleep there all night long. Alone. I haven’t been sleeping well in part because I can’t get comfortable in my ever-changing body and in part because our child doesn’t sleep. We’ve tried everything. Everything. And I’ve finally decided that it is just who she is. And I love who she is. I’ve stopped blaming myself and thinking that her lack of sleep is because of something I have or haven’t done. One day, Eliza will sleep but until then we have to stay sane. Seth couldn’t have made me happier with roses and champagne. Letting me get a full night’s sleep was about the kindest thing he could have done. It’s funny what love starts to look like.

A few weeks ago, I got my Virgo on. Somewhere in the description of what we Virgos are supposed to do and not do is something about being a perfectionist. In my life this translates (in the most obvious way) as being a neat freak.

So on this particular day, I took Eliza to daycare and set about cleaning out the room that will be hers once we finish a small remodel to the space. I organized clothes into plastic bins, I packed books based on size into cardboard boxes, I folded bedding, I recycled magazines. I loved the satisfactory clink of climbing gear as I packed it away and how neatly our mountain of backpacks looked on top of the wall of storage containers I’d built in the garage by the time I was finished. It took me all day and as I stood back to look this tidy little moment of perfection I fought the urge to take a picture. I made a mental note to threaten Seth with divorce if even thought about touching my work of art.

“The crampons, ice axes and climbing rack are all right there in that bin on top,” I told him later as I proudly showed off my day’s work. “So don’t go digging for them!” [Read More]