Nine months

Graham turned nine months old today, and we celebrated by taking a naked nap. 

Graham turns one year old on October 30, and on the Saturday nearest the 30th (the 27th, I think) we're going to throw a costume birthday party, since it's so close to Halloween, and ask attendees to dress as their favorite character from children's literature. I love Elmer the patchwork elephant, but I also love the way Graham looks in his plain birthday suit. Pictures posted three months from now will reveal Graham's costume! 

Fighting a baby

Mimi likes to say that her life was "a happening." Without exactly planning anything, everything turned out nicely for her. She married my grandfather, who took such complete care of her that it wasn't until after he died that Mimi realized she didn't know how to put gas into her car—he had always done it for her. She says that she went directly from her parents' care into her husband's. (Almost immediately after marrying my grandfather, as they drove away from the wedding together, Mimi asked, "Bill, what am I going to do if I find someone I like better than you?" And he replied coolly that he would work very hard to make sure that didn't happen.) When Mimi says that her life was "a happening," she means that she never calculated its events or outcomes. They just happened.

Feeling a lack of responsibility for—or a lack of control over—your own life is a hallmark, I think, of depression. But Mimi is not depressed. Feeling that your life has made itself without your active, planned input might amount to a sort of ontological humility:  it's difficult to resist regarding yourself as the center of the universe—although I have heard that our first-person mode of being/thinking is a construct, I truly can't imagine it any other way—but maybe being the center of things just means that influences are pressing in on you from every direction all the time. If you're satisfied with the result of the pressing, I guess you could be called humble. Maybe Mimi is satisfied; maybe Mimi is humble. 

Before Eva was born, Aron and I went to lunch with Ashley and Paul, and during that lunch Paul asked something about putting a baby on a schedule—I don't remember what he said exactly, but I think it was a suggestion-disguised-as-a-question, like, Isn't it a good idea to start your baby on a schedule early so that she can develop at least a small sense of self-sufficiency by recognizing that there are times that are for you and the baby together and times that are for you and the baby separately. Aron and I essentially said that you don't impose a schedule on a baby; a baby imposes a schedule on you. A baby is a whole universe of influences.

But ...

I did some research on Google a few nights ago and became convinced that Graham has been experiencing night terrors. (I am not entirely convinced that he has ever truly had a night terror, and no one I've mentioned his "night terrors" to has been even slightly convinced that he's ever had one. I think the consensus is that I'm being a dramatic, panicky mother.) Within thirty minutes of putting Graham to bed each night, he wakes up screaming and is, for up to two minutes, inconsolable. (Night terrors can last fifteen minutes or more, so if Graham has in fact had night terrors, I am grateful that they are the brief kind.) What I learned when reading about night terrors is that babies who have them are actually asleep during the episodes even when they appear—because of open eyes and thrashing—to be awake. I also learned that a sleep-deprived baby is more at risk of having night terrors, so for the past four days I have been forcing Graham to take at least two naps, together totaling at least three hours, each day. A couple of weeks ago Graham started fighting his morning nap so hard that I thought he must no longer need to take one, but reading about the connection between night terrors and sleep deprivation has convinced me that his need for significant periods of daytime sleep remains. So I have, like I said, forced Graham to continue taking his morning nap.

Which means I did something. Did I exert a strong maternal influence? Did Graham have no other option than to submit to my napping commands? Well, only kind of. What does it mean to force a baby to nap? It means being as patient as possible through whiny, flailing protestations. It means giving up at least thirty minutes in struggling to calm a baby who is attempting to rub his sleepy eyes and crawl simultaneously, and then it means giving up another hour to be the mattress for the baby once he has been successfully subdued. 

Ensuring that Graham gets more sleep during the day is necessary for his wellbeing. He needs sleep, so I fight him for him. He is happening to me much more than I am happening to him. I would like to claim credit for the fact that Graham almost never pees on me during diaper changes anymore, but I don't think I had much to do with that either. It has just happened to work out that way.

Feeling healed at the Farmer's Market

I went to bed Thursday night after reading an article in The New York Times about a man in his mid-30s who has been in prison since he murdered both his parents at age fourteen. The article covered his efforts to earn early release from prison, which a judge agreed to grant—partly because of strong support among prison officials for the inmate's early release—as long as the murderer's family didn't object. One aunt, the murdered mother's sister, objected, so the murderer must serve the remainder of his prison sentence before, ten years from now, being released. After reading the article, I went to bed but, feeling deeply disturbed by the story, didn't sleep very well.

And when I returned to The New York Times homepage Friday morning, during Graham's nap, I saw the news about the massacre in Aurora, Colorado. It is profoundly, inexpressibly sad to imagine the pain and fear of the victims—those killed, those wounded, witnesses, and all their family members and friends. Following the shooting, Adam Gopnik wrote an article for The New Yorker called "One More Massacre." (I have been begging everyone I know to read it, and I'll continue to beg:  please read the article.) Gopnik reiterates in his article on Aurora what he regarded as THE horrific afterimage of the rampage at Virginia Tech in 2007:  on the Virginia Tech campus, cellphones rang from the pockets of dead students as their worried parents called. I won't pretend to know how painful it is to lose a child, but I'm certain that parents and other relatives of the victims, as well as the victims' friends, are feeling so much sorrow. I've been thinking about these people. 

And I've also, selfishly but naturally, been thinking about Graham, who has already showed interest in leaving my arms and will eventually, undoubtedly make and realize plans to leave our home, which seems—coffeetable corners, electrical outlets, blankets and all—much safer than the world outside.

In the article I read Thursday night I learned that one feature common to the lives of children who commit parricide (as noted by psychologists) is that they (the children) are shut in by family and cut off from a larger, non-familial social network. I'm not worried about figuring out a way to raise Graham that doesn't involve his murdering me. I don't anticipate that being a challenge. I'm not meaning to be flippant. Being killed by Graham just truly isn't a concern I have; however, what psychologists have said about children who commit parricide has made me take seriously the possibility that my reclusive tendencies could be inimical to Graham's development. I wouldn't want him, for example, to become antisocial. I don't want to impart my social anxieties to him. He shouldn't be afraid of the world, but if he takes too many of his cues from me, he might grow up awkward, shy and frightened. (Two things I'd like to note:  1. I understand that I may be overestimating my influence on Graham, who is his own person and has his own personality; and 2. You can invite me parties—I'm not exactly a weirdo:  my anxiety is mostly internal, and beer is a very effective treatment for it.)

But it's true that I fear the world. I'm afraid of violence, car accidents, racism, guns going off accidentally, apathy, desensitization to the pain of others, contagious illnesses. I'm afraid when anyone—anyone—allows Graham to chew on her fingers. Strangers' fingers and viral rashes are just two of the things that can be avoided simply by staying home. But staying home won't help Graham know the world in a real, experiential way.

What I want to talk about is the beautiful time Graham and I had at the Athens' Farmer’s Market on Saturday. It was tremendously restorative emotionally. We arrived just after 10:00am and stayed until nearly noon, doing little more than watch families shop and play and listen to Kyshona Armstrong's gorgeous voice and guitar, live. (Please check out her website. She will blow your mind gently.) Graham and I bought an eggplant and purple okra, but the okra's purple, as you can see in the picture below, didn't survive steaming.

purple potatoes, edamame, okra, spinah/arugala salad with kiwi, mango and almond slivers

Because I drink at least three liters of water each day, I make extremely frequent bathroom visits, and because I very rarely put Graham in a stroller (he's almost always in my arms and propped on a hip), my public bathroom visits are always challenging. Wearing a dress simplifies things:  I can get my underwear down with one hand and hold Graham in the air while I pee so he doesn't get toilet seat germs on his feet. And then, somehow, I wipe. This is an unconvincing rendition of just how skilled I am at peeing in public with Graham. I feel incapable of relating all the maneuvers involved (I myself am unsure how exactly it happens), but I want you to know that I am without fail very adept at going pee while holding Graham, which I had to do during our trip to the Farmer's Market.

One hand washes the other, unless you're a mother holding your child at the sink, in which case one hand washes itself while the other hand, attached to the arm holding the baby, awaits its turn to wash itself. That's how hand-washing after peeing with Graham normally happens:  one hand at a time. But at the Farmer's Market on Saturday, another mother, with a child in a stroller, offered to hold Graham after she washed her hands so that I could afterward wash mine. I said, "Gosh, where were you when I was awkwardly pulling my panties down?!" Just kidding. I said, "Thank you." I said it three times:  once for the act itself and twice for her recognizing that someone needed help and instantly offering to be that help. I am so glad this woman exists. I am sure she makes lots of lives happy. She's such a mother.

It drizzled lightly for most of the time that Graham and I were at the market, and although the rain was soft, it fell so steadily that the ground was soaked. I saw several mothers sit themselves on the wet ground and be the dry seat for their children as they ate snacks and listened to the live music. So many moms not minding getting wet since it meant that their kids could stay mostly dry. 

There are pie, pastry and coffee booths at the Farmer's Market, and next week I plan to bring a stroller so that Graham can sit while I indulge in coffee and a treat. I am so surprised each time I use a stroller by how nice it feels to not have a sore back and sore shoulders. It's an unfamiliar feeling, but usually feeling sore is worth the closeness of having Graham in my arms. We like being close, and we love the Farmer's Market.

If I whispered "patty cake" into Graham's ear at the end of a performed song, he could clap. And he will next week, too.

Alphabet Pal and other bad influences

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

The inventory of easiness

Graham at eight and a half months

Aron and I went with Graham to the video store a few weeks ago and caught ourselves in an interesting lie. For the last two months of her pregnancy, we had been telling Ashley (Aron's sister) and Paul, her husband, to take as many naps and watch as many movies as possible before Eva was born. (Eva is now one month and one day old.) We had been warning them that once Eva arrived their napping and movie-watching opportunities would surely depart. But as we perused the new release section at the video store a few weeks ago, Aron and I kept coming across movies we had seen since Graham's birth. In total we counted four new release movies that we had rented and watched, but I also remember a week of watching only Woody Allen movies on Netflix (my favorite:  Hannah and Her Sisters)—so between Graham's first and third month, Aron and I watched eight movies. It was strange to both of us to realize that. We had both felt certain that we hadn't seen a movie since I was pregnant, but in fact we've seen several.

During our video store visit (which, before making the new release discovery, we thought was Graham's first time in a video rental store), we rented Carnage and Shame. We were able to watch Carnage over the course of three days, with the volume very low and the subtitles on, as Graham slept on top of me. I was too afraid to watch Shame around Graham. Even if it were on mute and Graham's eyes were closed, and even if his head were facing the other direction—even if he were deaf and blind. I shouldn't have rented a movie that we can't watch around Graham's eyes or ears, because we are never far from Graham or his component parts.

Graham doesn't nap alone. If he did, I don't know what I'd do, so unused am I to not being a mom mattress. And I love being a mom mattress. But I guess if I weren't Graham's bed I'd be able to watch a movie during the day while he slept in his crib. Watching movies has gotten more difficult, impossible even, because we don't want Graham to even peek at moving images or hear dialogue in his sleep. But movies are probably the only regression we've experienced since Graham's early babyhood. Everything else about life with him has gotten so much easier. 

I remember on the first day of one of my classes last semester everyone having to introduce herself to the rest of the class:  every student had to say his or her name, major and why she signed up for the class. I said my name, my major and that my new baby was the reason for every one of life's "whys." And then I was asked how old my baby was, and I remember saying, "Ten weeks." And I remember the class gasping collectively. 10 weeks felt old to me then, and now, of course, it seems so young. Later in the semester, a student doing a presentation asked his classmates to raise our hands if we had (or didn't have, I don't remember which) a smart phone, and I whispered to the kid sitting in front of me, "What's a smart phone?" and all the students sitting near me looked at me like I was an oddball for not knowing. I thought a smart phone was a brand of phones, like a Blackberry or something, not just a type. Later in the semester the word colostrum came up, and I enjoyed seeing my classmates look confused about it. 

Anyway! Ten weeks. Graham was ten weeks old when my most recent semester of school started. (Since I didn't take a semester off, Graham was only two weeks when I returned to school the very first time, but there were only a couple of weeks remaining in the semester before winter break.) When Eva was born she had skinny legs that I marveled at. I honestly didn't remember Graham’s legs being as skinny, but just two weeks ago I saw a picture of his legs at seven days old:  they were just as thin as Eva's, maybe thinner. Sometimes I think I don't remember a thing.

Yesterday Graham and I went to Publix for asparagus and granola, and Aron stayed home to work on his Italian homework. When Graham and I returned to the house, I put the granola on top of the refrigerator while I was holding Graham with one arm:  his legs were wrapped around my hip, and he was holding my chin and smiling as I made it and his hands move up and down, and he started to laugh, and then I started to laugh, and I said, "I miss you." And Aron, who was sitting at the kitchen table watching Graham and me interact, said, "Why do you miss him?" I didn't know why. I was holding him that moment, and I hadn't been away from him all day. But I did have a missing him sensation, and I realized that Graham is growing so fast, and developing so many capabilities over such short amounts of time, that I sometimes don't recognize him as my baby. My baby, for example, couldn't pull himself up on the coffee table. Graham can. My baby didn't try to eat my flip flops. Graham does. 

Making an inventory of things that have gotten easier and more impressive about Graham helps me realize that his growing up is as good for me as it is for him. Here's what the easy inventory looks like:

• SLEEP!:  Although he doesn't nap alone, Graham has grown into a stellar sleeper! During the first month, Aron and I got (or felt like we were getting) fewer than four hours of sleep each night. (I always found it difficult to follow the "sleep while the baby sleeps" advice during the day. When Graham took daytime naps, I wanted to wash dishes and fold laundry. Clutter makes me crazy.) These days Graham usually sleeps the first four hours of the night in his crib alone. After those first few hours, he wakes up and needs to be cuddled back to sleep, and I tend to keep him in bed next to me for the rest of the night, which feels easier than risking his waking up by lying him back down in his crib. I rarely get fewer than eight hours of sleep each night.
• Eating:  The past month has been the only time in Graham's life that I have felt confident that he's eating enough. (The pediatrician has never doubted that Graham was getting enough food, but I still worried.) Graham eats about thirty ounces of formula a day and six to eight ounces of solids, including stage thee meals like minestrone and ratatouille! He also takes excellent poopies.
• Sleeping/eating:  Because Graham eats so well during the day, he has started to sleep through his former nighttime feedings. Sometimes he gets hungry around 4:00am, but for the most part he sleeps from 8:00pm (minus a frantic waking or two when he needs some snuggles) until 7:00am. 
• Laughter:  Graham makes me laugh. I make Graham laugh. Graham makes himself laugh, which makes me laugh. We live in a funny house!
• Mobility:  Parents of crawlers and amblers used to tell Aron and me to enjoy having a non-crawling baby. They told us that a crawling baby is an exhausting baby. That's true, but a crawling baby is also an impressive baby. And although I am halfway heartbroken each time Graham wants to get out of my arms and onto the floor to play, I am also discovery that it's nice to be able to use my hands for something other than holding Graham. The openness of our house allows me to cook in the kitchen and still be able see Graham's adventures in the living room. And our house is small, so he's never closer to true danger than I am to him. And I'm quick, quicker than he is, for now.
• Reading:  Graham doesn't enjoy being read to as much as I enjoy reading to him, but as he's crawling around contentedly it's easy for me to sneak some poetry into his ears without him becoming a restless audience member. 
• Cognizance:  Graham is increasingly aware of the world around him. He waves to the birds he hears chirping in the trees. He waves at strangers on the street. I think he attempts to sing along when I start the the "A B C" song (though it's true that I have optimistic mom ears). In August we are going to take him to the aquarium. I am so excited to see his eyes see all the animals stolen from the sea for a profit. I'll work on developing his moral cognizance when he's a little older. 
• Games:  I try to relax and allow Graham to explore the house without constantly hovering over and redirecting him, but there are certain spots that are dangerous, and he just doesn't get it. Graham is very interested, for instance, in Aron's bike, which we keep in the hallway. I am, for Graham's sake, very afraid of Aron's bike, but there really isn't anywhere else we can keep it. Graham seems aware of the fact that he's not permitted to play near Aron's bike, because as he crawls toward it and I come from behind to redirect him, he looks over his shoulder and laughs before speeding up in pursuit of its pedals. And when I get on the ground to crawl with Graham, we take turns chasing each other. My saying, "I'm going to get you! always makes him laugh.
• Robust stuff:  Graham spends the day standing and falling, usually on his butt but infrequently he'll bump his head. He almost never cries about it. He just pulls himself up again.

But I do sometimes miss the baby we brought home from the hospital, even if he didn't let us sleep.

My boobs

When I'm clothed the right one is imperceptibly larger than the left, and when I'm naked the difference is noticeable. That could've stayed a secret between me and the shower curtain, but I figured that the declaration that my boobs are wonky would allow me to discuss them without it seeming as if I'm eroticizing them. Normally I wouldn't presume that my boobs have any erotic potential, wonky or not. I don't ever have to turn down advances:  I'm never advanced upon. I'm not hideously ineffable (I know what ineffable actually means, but it also sounds like it could be a synonym for unfuckable), but I think my aura is insecure and asexual, and I don't tend to inspire flirtation or earn stares. But today I wore a dress that pushed my boobs together and left a cleavage-y area exposed, and I received an unusual amount of attention. My boobs are on my mind for that reason.

Aron and I went downtown to do some chores:  he took Graham with him to pay our water bill, and I went to the post office right across the street by myself to ship a book that I recently sold on Amazon. As I walked on the sidewalk toward the post office entrance, an older gentleman passed me. He nodded his head in a friendly way, but it took me a moment to notice, and by the time I caught onto his friendly gesture and sought eye contact to give him a friendly nod back, his eyes were undeniably on my boobs. He was not a casual gawker. And then after I shipped my book a young Aryan frat boy held the door open for me at the post office exit. Frat boys aren't considerate people. (I know that's a generalization, but so is Cars have tires. There may be cars without tires, but that doesn't mean that I have to use qualifiers like "most" or "usually." But I can use those qualifiers, lest I offend anyone:  Most frat boys aren't considerate people usually. They don't even throw away their own beer cans. They have landscapers.) I don't want to personally attack the Aryan frat boy from the post office, who might've been a car without tires, but I also didn't want to accept a "favor" from him, so instead of directly exiting the post office, once I noticed him looking at me while propping the door open, I stopped and peered into a trashcan until he lost patience. It didn't take long.

I recognize that I may have felt looked at today because I wasn't carrying Graham with me:  maybe our being separated disrupted my emotions and made me a less reliable perceiver of reality. Or it could've been that the man looked at my boob area because he was surprised there wasn't a baby there. And maybe the frat boy opened the door because I looked as lonely and vulnerable without Graham as I feel without him. But it's also true that my boobs were on display today. 

I'm not offended or frightened when someone looks at my boobs. But that's just such a dumb place to start. As I have mentioned many times before, my boobs are broken. They didn't produce breastmilk. Looking at my boobs is like dreaming of owning a used Buick. I distrust the taste of anyone who looks at my boobs, unless it's a woman, in which case I imagine that she sees them and also sees instantly that I'm a mother, and even if she notices that my boobs are wonkily different sizes, she'll still think they're beautiful, and then she'd imagine that my stomach is home to gorgeous pudge, unless this woman is a typical sorority girl, in which case she might not think so generously.

The newspaper, part 3: tender and vicious

Mimi, my only remaining grandparent, is a widow who has a dog named Rosie. On the phone with Mimi this morning she told me that two nights ago she became overwhelmed by loneliness and looked to Rosie for comfort. I take notes during our conversations, because Mimi says funny, fascinating, awful, shocking and sweet things all the time. Because I take notes and because Mimi has a slow southern accent (it's elegant-sounding, not backwoodsy), this should be verbatim:  "I felt suddenly that there was no life left in the world. Rosie sleeps on the floor in the summer. I said, 'Rosie, get into bed with me,' but she didn't, so I said, 'Rosie, please get into bed with me.' She has a big belly, and I just, you know, put my hand on it and felt her breathing. I've never felt that way before. I don't like to feel that way."

I have a bad habit of feeling sorry for people—it's bad for a lot of reasons but primarily because it's useless and condescending. The last time Aron and I were in Atlanta I saw a blind lady stepping off a curb and into the street, and I imagined that her life must be so difficult, and then I cried about it. The idea of the woman ever being insecure or afraid is deeply distressing to me. But those feelings seem to imply something unkind:  I must think she's too weak to deal with the same emotions that everyone else deals with, and I'm sure, upon reflection, that that isn't true—and if it were true that she was weak, then I should help her instead of feeling depressed about it. Anyway, I mention my tendency to feel (uselessly and condescendingly) sorry for people so that you'll know when I say that I don't feel sorry for Mimi, not even slightly, that it's not because of a general inability to feel sorry for people. Mimi doesn't let you feel sorry for her.

(At some point the difference between sympathy and empathy started to be discussed by everyone. Sympathy and empathy really shook up the culture. Maybe it was around the same time that the song "Ironic" came out and everyone liked to boast knowing that the song doesn't use the word right. People still seem to enjoy talking about that. Anyway, I'm too afraid of being reprimanded to use sympathy or empathy. Maybe the whole point of the lexical uproar was that people who feel pity shouldn't mistake that feeling for either of the more noble emotions of empathy or sympathy. Isn't it ironic that I just now came to understand what all that talk was about?)

Mimi is very matter-of-fact when it comes to expressing emotions that may make her appear vulnerable. When she says that she felt so lonely that she had to feel her dog breathe to reassure her that life remained in the world, she says it like she's reading the ingredients of a frozen dinner:  in bed, felt lonely, called dog, watched the up and down of lungs. All logos, no pathos. But she delivered, during our conversation this morning, a passionate diatribe about President Obama, who wants the government to own everyone's life, who is un-American, who wants children to grow up with parents who are on welfare and have no work ethic, who is changing the way this nation has been for two hundred years. All pathos, no logos. "He's a socialist," she said, "and I despise him." And I said, "He's doing better, but he's certainly no Socialist yet." Mimi didn't agree that he's doing better. 

Mimi thinks that how a person treats children and animals determines the quality of her character. I agree, but I would add to that how a person treats waitstaff. Mimi thinks that once you have a child, you never stop thinking about that child. I agree, but as I may have mentioned before, Mimi hasn't said "I love you" to my dad in years. You don't want to be there after he says it to her. It's awkward.

I guess it's because my parents have been divorced for so long that I tend to separate my family into poles:  my dad's side, my mom's side. Neither side is particularly demonstrative. Graham and I are touching, or close enough to touch, each other at least twenty hours a day. He might grow out of it, but I won't. My mom's mom, actually, was very affectionate. I remember sitting on her lap and holding hands, at the same time. During my conversation with Mimi, she said, "Your grandmother Zelma always had a garden." Sometimes she'd ask me to pick tomatoes before dinner. Mimi also grows tomatoes, and I've also picked them. She grew bell peppers this year too.

I don't understand anything. In epistemology there's a group of people known as process reliabilists who maintain that if a process that produces a belief a reliable, then that belief is justified. Reliability is justification-conferring. But it's a problem for reliabilists to articulate in a coherent and determinate way just how reliable a process has to be in order for the beliefs it produces to be justified. A comparable problem exists in ethics regarding the ascription of virtues. Like, how honest does an honest person have to be? 

The newspaper Aron brought home Wednesday featured an interview with a man, Matthew, whose truck every Athens resident recognizes. The truck is so recognizable because huge confederate flags attached to poles in the truck bed fly behind the truck as Matthew is driving. Through the course of the interview readers learn that Matthew is shy, lives with his elderly mother and enjoys knitting. Maybe morality needs an algorithm. There should be a band called The Algorhythms.  

Ascribing moral virtues and failings shouldn't be a challenge for me. It shouldn't be anything. I shouldn't do it. I should leave it to the professionals, like Nancy Grace. But I often find myself in extremely judgmental moods about my family members, and I'm not satisfied to regard them dispassionately and simply call them complicated. I was thinking today that listening to Mimi talk about politics is kind of like watching a dog have a dream. I'm enraptured by Jeffery's dreams, and I don't know why. But I don't judge him for his dreams. Maybe that's the lesson. But what am I going to tell Graham?  

The newspaper, continued

I dreamed the plot of a mystery novel last night but couldn't put the dream or the plot pieces back together after waking up, and I'm sure that isn't as tragically unfortunate as it feels since the jokes I dream—even the ones that make me laugh in my sleep—are never funny once I'm awake. They're not even unfunny once I wake up—they're non-jokes. They're declarative sentences, like, "We have to deposit your paycheck before the bank closes." What I dreamed probably wasn't even a mystery story—probably the plot of my dream was that I MapQuested directions to a funeral. I remember being in a modern mausoleum in my dream, and I vaguely remember being cognizant of a twist—maybe the dream was from my point of view and I (here's the twist) ended up being the dead one. But that wouldn't be a mystery plot—that's supernatural, and that's silly.

It's interesting to me that mystery novels—or detective novels, I'm not sure what the distinction is (a dick, maybe?)—contain murder(s) without being scary; they're suspenseful without making you frightened the way a horror story does. I guess it's because logic overlays the mystery plot whereas horror stories have inexplicable nemeses, like monsters. Aron won't watch "Dexter" with me—not because the writing and acting are bad but because the violence is too conceivable, which I guess is evidence that shoots in the other direction. Aron watches horror movies without feeling afraid for even a second. I think motherhood has made me too sensitive to horror movies. I don't enjoy being merely afraid—it's like hot sauce without flavor:  a bland burn. If I'm going to be exposed to a fictional dead body, there had better be an interesting, intelligible reason for it.

Because I couldn't extract my story-that's-probably-not-a-story from dreamland, instead of writing a mystery novel during Graham's nap today I returned to the newspaper, the same one Aron brought home Wednesday. Minga's still there, killing me with her cuteness.

The newspaper contains its own mysteries. They're mysteries in the same sense that Graham's growth is a mystery:  it's not unknowable, but I certainly don't understand it. Each morning as I undress him and change his diaper, I hold his feet in my hands and behold his legs with my eyes:  they're so long and thick and straight, and they used to be short and skinny and curved. I don't know when his womb legs left, but they're undeniably, irretrievably gone. And I wonder, because I don't know any better, where this length and the flesh that covers it come from. Does Similac turn into skin? The thought that Graham's foods make him grow and become his skin makes me especially depressed about not having been able to feed him food from my body. But like I said, his growth is not mysterious. I don't understand how there is more of Graham today than there was yesterday, but that doesn't mean it's a secret:  it means I need to read a biology textbook or a Wikipedia page.

But instead I read the paper. I read about a support group called "Emotions Anonymous" that takes place at a church. I'm thinking about renaming my blog Emotions Anonymous. I once posted a secret to a version of Post Secret that some UGA women's studies students set up. What was my secret? I'll never tell, although it was cryptic enough to not be incriminating in any context. Emotions Anonymous is free and open to anyone who would like to be "emotionally well." Is emotional wellness a state? Is it boredom? Is it happiness? I want to go to Emotions Anonymous. Not too long ago—but certainly before I was pregnant—I tried to sit in on jury selection (which I thought was public) instead of going to my German class, but a bailiff told me I wasn't allowed to, so I skipped German in a coffee shop instead. (I don't think I’m unique in any way other than this one:  I want to be on a jury, badly.) I want a story. Emotions Anonymous may not contain a story, but it must contain some characters, and I'd like to eye them. I probably don't want to shake their hands.

The real appeal of the newspaper is that it contains story parts—not complete stories, and probably not even short stories, but story parts. Here's a story part that I heard for the first time just yesterday:  my grandmother and grandfather were so poor when my aunt Sandra was born that they paid the doctor with a donkey instead of money. Imagining the beginning of that story is all the fun you need for an hour.

Some jokey lines on anxiety

I know you think the world's a jungle gym

And you're right—it is:  a gym of dangers

A tangle of potential injuries

You're safe, go play, avoid the sun and sticks

Playing is traveling toward happiness

And how fingers are lost in an instant

You're mobile:  I'm so proud and full of fear

The world awaits your mind and eyes—watch out!

That pillow won't smother me, you will

One of the things you might say if you could

And you can, if you keep your mouth intact

With both legs you can leave me:  Mommy, bye.

I'm not somewhat worried, I'm worried a lot

You may think the world's a nice, safe place, but—

The newspaper

Aron brought home the newspaper yesterday, and it reminded me that there's a world out there. I fell asleep last night thinking about taco shells, or maybe I was thinking about my old job, where I both sold tacos and fried taco shells. When someone ordered a taco I'd have to ask, "Would you like your taco hard or soft?" Surprisingly often a customer would respond, "I don't care," to which I'd say, "Me either. But a soft taco costs thirty cents more than a hard one." It was an awful but interesting job—interesting to experience, not to talk about, so I shouldn't talk about it. But I fell asleep vividly recalling the sensations of taking customers' orders, which I did for two years, starting shortly after moving to Athens and ending when I was seven months pregnant, when my hormones were at such a rolling boil that I told a customer who asked the most popular menu item that I was a cashier, not a statistician.

Graham and I listen to The Economist radio program most mornings, another piece of evidence in support of the notion that things exist outside this house. We also often sit on the porch.

In the newspaper I saw an ad listed for a part-time position for something called a "program director." It's eighteen hours a week at ten dollars at hour. I can email writing samples and a résumé to the company. I could squeeze eighteen hours out of a week. It would look like the occasional pieces of spaghetti that poke through the colander holes. But my eighteen hours are at awkward times:  late night, early morning. And I have no idea what a writing sample is. "Upon an island hard to reach, the east beast sits upon his beach. Upon the west beach sits the west beast. Each beach beast thinks his beach is best." That's a writing sample:  it's a sample of Dr. Seuss' writing. The only reason I was drawn to the "program director" listing is because I doubt that it's serious but am confident that it sounds serious. Maybe on my résumé I can write that for two years I was the program director of taco shells.

The newspaper also had an ad imploring me to adopt a cat, which I have been wanting to do for as long as I've been alive. When I was pregnant, we were too afraid to get a cat. When Graham was a newborn, we were too afraid to get a cat. But I think we are all now prepared to invite Minga, who is "fine with kids," into our home. Aron is never going to bring me the paper again.

I realize that this post was about nothing. But it's my 50th post.