mood: listening | drinking: sprite
Sonar
From the depths, you
tap out a signal
just for me.
To think that once
there was such silence,
and now
always
I’ll be listening
for you.
*****
-Lo, at week 28.
Down on the farm
mood: sleepy | drinking: water
There is something about going back to the farm that never gets old.
I haven’t lived there for at least 15 years now (and have no intention of moving back), but I love to visit. Of course, the actual farm I grew up on is now home to strangers, and the big grey house where all my childhood memories took root is now painted a trendy shade of purple.
My parents moved to a different farm, 8 or 9 miles away from our old home, when I was just a year or two out of college. But they’ve been there long enough, and I’ve visited often enough, that it’s endearingly familiar.
This time I went back with Bean in my belly, and my sister and nephew in tow. The little guy is now nearly 3, and old enough to get really excited about things like tractors and horses and big piles of sand.
Every day we were there, as soon as my nephew saw my dad he’d say, “Papa, I ride tractor? I ride big tractor? I ride bucket tractor?” And my dad, the ever-obliging grandpa, would prop Jude up on his lap and drive a never-ending series of tractors up and down the driveway.
Watching my parents as grandparents is delightful. Although, as my sister pointed out on this visit, my mom would never have given us all those sugary treats when we were kids. We had to suffer through “chocolate chip” cookies festooned with nasty carob droplets. But my nephew? He gets the real thing. Plus brownies. And M&Ms. And ice cream cake.
Now that grandchildren are making their appearance, my mom and dad are beginning to rearrange their lives in preparation for an eventual westward move to California. Even if Jude were the only grandchild, they’d make the move, but now they’ve got Bean due to show up soon, and later this fall we’ll meet my sister’s second child.
It will be amazing to have my parents just an hour or two away, instead of thousands of miles. Just to be able to make impromptu plans that don’t involve plane tickets and rental cars would feel miraculous.
But I’ll admit it, I’m going to miss showing up at the old stomping grounds. I’ll miss the red barns and the Midwest accents and drinking “pop” instead of soda.
I’ll miss the thrill of seeing, after years of absence, sights that used to be as familiar to me as my own face in the mirror.
I’ll miss the sense of history embedded on every backroad. Here is where I learned to drive, as did my father before me. Here’s where I had my first kiss, where I earned my first paycheck, where I ran barefoot chasing lightning bugs.
I love San Francisco, and I have 10 years of history here, now. And soon Bean will be making all of her childhood memories here, in our little house by the sea.
But part of me will always be a farm girl, able to scale fences and bridle horses and remain totally unfazed by the presence of poop. And I wouldn’t change that part of my history for anything.
-Lo, back to the city life.
Making Room
mood: excited | drinking: nope
I’m minutes from leaving on a jet plane, headed off to Illinois for a baby shower my Mom is throwing for me.
But before I go, here’s a little update… the latest poem in what’s becoming known as the “Fruits & Veggies series” because the title of each poem corresponds to the fruit or vegetable that most resembles the size of the little one.
This week’s veggie is an English hot-house cucumber, according to BabyCenter.com. I have no idea what an English hot-house cucumber looks like, actually, but I’m assuming it’s on the large side, as cucumbers go.
Last week’s vegetable was a Rutabaga, and here it is, in sevenling form:
Rutabaga
We are busy making room for you, redefining
our borders and relegating sharp objects
to the safety of high shelves and dark corners.
But it seems there is not enough room for my spleen,
and my gall bladder also has been displaced, small
squishy organs summarily relocated
by the push of my ever-expanding heart.
*****
-Lo, who has a boarding call.
Nesting Instinct
mood: busy | drinking: water
On average, I’m not doing too well with all the old wive’s tales about pregnancy. I’m not garnishing my ice cream with pickles, I’m not excessively bitchy or weepy, and I haven’t yet noticed my fingernails growing at an alarmingly fast rate.
But this nesting thing? Yeah, I’ve got that hardcore.
Even when I’m exhausted, it’s hard to sit still. I’m constantly ticking off a mental list of things I need to get done. Last weekend I painted the nursery, with the help of a couple of friends. It’s now resplendent in shades of aquamarine. (I’m going for an ocean theme, since we do live just steps from the beach.)
Boy and I sat together in the soon-to-be-nursery on Sunday afternoon and plotted out where everything is going to go. Chiffarobe over here, crib over there, bookshelf on the wall up there. My nesting instinct has forced Boy into overdrive, too.
Our house was a two bedroom, and the second bedroom was an office. But baby and camera gear don’t make the best bedfellows, so Boy got busy carving out a niche in the garage for his new office. He’s very handy like that, and his new space turns out to have even more storage than the old one.
The weekend after we returned from our adventures abroad, Boy and two of his burly pals (yes, Mike & Chris, you’re burly) moved all the office paraphernalia downstairs. And now I have this wide open space that’s going to quickly fill up with a crib, board books and a large family of stuffed animals.
I find myself sitting at work making lists of things that I’d rather be doing at home. Safe to say that my brain is entirely elsewhere. But in my defense, having a tiny person kicking your navel out is a bit distracting.
I guess I hadn’t counted on that. When I first found out I was pregnant, I thought I would continue to be a well-balanced person, with lots of other things occupying my brain. I thought my blog posts wouldn’t center wholly around what was happening inside my belly. But I was wrong.
Becoming the carrier of a whole new person, it changes you in ways you can’t predict. I mean, I’m still me. But I’m also a mother now, as hard as that sometimes is for me to believe. And the larger my stomach grows, the smaller my focus gets.
I just want to shut out the world, everyone but me and Boy and Bean (and LeeLoo, too), and hunker down inside our little house to feather a fabulous nest.
But I can’t shut out the world completely, not yet. I have three more months of paychecks to earn, an epic cinepoem to finish (one more shoot and then we start editing!), and people who need my attention.
So I’ll make every attempt not to go into complete seclusion yet.
But if I sometimes get a far away look in my eye, you would be safe to assume that I’m trying to figure out how many mermaid bookends are just overkill in an ocean-themed nursery.
-Lo, who has only purchased one set of mermaid bookends… so far.
The Babymoon Tour
mood: rested | drinking: always
Boy and I have been away. Far, far away.
Which should explain the lack of updates here. I considered writing from Prague but really, it’s better to be out there seeing the sights than sitting indoors blogging about them.
We have always loved to travel, and we vacation well together. Which is to say that vacations have typically been a pretty blissful experience for us.
Since 2009 was a crazy year, full of upheaval, change, and a new house, we figured we’d probably stick close to said new house in 2010 and not really go anywhere exciting.
And then that plus sign showed up in January, and our world went a little topsy-turvy.
So we decided that we’d take one last big hurrah before the Bean arrives. One last solo world tour, just the two of us. When Bean’s old enough, of course, we want to take her touring with us, but we know that for the next few years at least, we’ll probably be lying low.
The itinerary wasn’t too hard to figure out. We wanted to visit some places neither of us have ever been, and Prague was at the top of my list. So we connected the dots from there.
We flew out of San Francisco on April 13, landed in Frankfurt, Germany, very early the next morning, and immediately hopped a train to Munich. From Munich, we continued south to Innsbruck, Austria, then from Innsbruck to Vienna, then on into the Czech Republic to Prague, and finally back to Frankfurt to fly home. We were gone for two weeks.
The Babymoon was amazing, not only because of all the beautiful places we visited, but because Boy and I got to just hang out with each other, exploring each day as a new adventure. Truth be told, though, this trip was quite a bit different from the other times we’ve traveled internationally. Usually we don’t check out strollers and buy baby clothes.
But our first day in Munich, Boy became enamoured with the cool-looking strollers. (Europe just does baby gear so much better than the US. Everything looks so mod.) And of course, we brought a boatload of goodies home for Bean–an adorable stuffed pony from Munich, the sweetest little dress from Vienna, and an amazing marionette from Prague.
One of my favorite memories will always be the picture above, our literal mountaintop experience. While in Innsbruck, we took a funicular and two gondolas up to an Alpine peak called Hafelekar. It was gorgeous up there in the clouds, and very hard to come down.
Boy will probably remember the giant steins of beer in Munich, and I was as giddy as a little kid to see the Lipizzaner stallions perform at the Spanish Riding School in Vienna. Prague was full of beauty, and that’s where we decided to take a few belly shots of my 5-month bump. 
It was an amazing time, and we’re so glad we took the trip. But now it’s back to reality–which is itself pretty damn good.
As our friend Michael said, “If you have to come home, at least you get to come home to San Francisco.”
And speaking of coming home, we got lucky with the volcano from Iceland. It erupted while we were in Austria, and of course we were keeping close tabs on all the airport closures and whatnot. We met many fellow travelers who were stuck, and marveled at the way an ash cloud from Iceland could keep everyone in Europe on the ground.
But the airport in Frankfurt re-opened on a Thursday, and we flew on Sunday, so everything worked out.
As fun as it is to leave for adventures, I’m very happy to be back home, too. And now I’ve got my plate full with some new poems and shooting part 7 of our 8-part cinépoem, The Tyranny of the Mirror. Not to mention getting ready for Bean’s arrival. So I’m not going to be bored at all.
-Lo, with vacation afterglow.
Sugar and Spice
mood: ebullient | drinking: water
…and everything nice, that’s what little girls are made of. So they say.
(Although I remember being a little girl and I wasn’t always sugar and spice. There might have been a puppy dog tail or two thrown into my recipe.)
From the moment that plus sign appears, you find yourself wondering who this new creature will turn out to be. And “Boy or Girl?” is right up there at the top of the list of questions. It’s certainly the thing people most want to know, right after they ask you when you’re due.
Finally, we have an answer. The Bean is a bean-ette.
I made the ultrasound technician check, twice, to be sure there were no beans and frank hiding anywhere. She was quite positive in her diagnosis, though. “No suprises,” she assured me, “It’s definitely a girl.”
This whole time, I’ve tried very hard not to want a girl over a boy. Because what if Bean turned out to be sporting a penis, and then later he found out that his mum actually wanted him to be a girl? That would suck.
But let’s be honest. I’ve been stashing away girl stuff for a very long time now, just in case. I really, really wanted to have a daughter. 
Of course, there’s no guarantee that Bean will turn out to be the kind of girl who will even be interested in the trinkets and goodies I’ve been saving for her. But maybe, someday is good enough to go on for now.
The day before the big reveal, I wrote this poem to capture how I felt before I knew the answer to the gender question. I hope someday Bean will like this, too…
Heirloom Tomato
(week 19)
Wishful thinking will not change
the tint of your eyes
the grain of your hair
the Xs or Ys of chromosomes.
You already are whoever
you are going to be.
In a windowless room at the office
I lay on the graying carpet
and let a woman string a ring
on a strand of my hair.
She held it motionless
above the mound of belly
where you swim.
If it swung in a circle,
you would be a girl.
Perpendicular, a boy.
In my impatience to meet you
I have imagined a whole wardrobe
of bright cotton dresses. I have drawn up lists
of names. (The page for girls is longer.)
Your aunt has entered birth dates
into gender calculators,
all of which predicted
you will be my daughter.
But today the ring swung
in a line, not a circle.
I want you to know, now,
before we inspect you
with sound waves,
that you are loved
exactly as you are.
-Lo, amazed.
Turn off Twitter
mood: hungry | drinking: not yet
This article dovetails nicely with my previous post. Written by Anne Lamott, it was published in the April 2010 issue of Sunset Magazine…
Time lost and found
-Anne Lamott
I sometimes teach classes on writing, during which I tell my students every single thing I know about the craft and habit. This takes approximately 45 minutes. I begin with my core belief–and the foundation of almost all wisdom traditions–that there is nothing you can buy, achieve, own, or rent that can fill up that hunger inside for a sense of fulfillment and wonder. But the good news is that creative expression, whether that means writing, dancing, bird-watching, or cooking, can give a person almost everything that he or she has been searching for: enlivenment, peace, meaning, and the incalculable wealth of time spent quietly in beauty.
Then I bring up the bad news: You have to make time to do this.
This means you have to grasp that your manic forms of connectivity–cell phone, email, text, Twitter–steal most chances of lasting connection or amazement. That multitasking can argue a wasted life. That a close friendship is worth more than material success.
Needless to say, this is very distressing for my writing students. They start to explain that they have two kids at home, or five, a stable of horses or a hive of bees, and 40-hour workweeks. Or, on the other hand, sometimes they are climbing the walls with boredom, own nearly nothing, and are looking for work full-time, which is why they can’t make time now to pursue their hearts’ desires. They often add that as soon as they retire, or their last child moves out, or they move to the country, or to the city, or sell the horses, they will. They are absolutely sincere, and they are delusional.
I often remember the story from India of a beggar who sat outside a temple, begging for just enough every day to keep body and soul alive, until the temple elders convinced him to move across the street and sit under a tree. Years of begging and bare subsistence followed until he died. The temple elders decided to bury him beneath his cherished tree, where, after shoveling away a couple of feet of earth, they found a stash of gold coins that he had unknowingly sat on, all those hand-to-mouth years.
You already have the gold coins beneath you, of presence, creativity, intimacy, time for wonder, and nature, and life. Oh yeah, you say? And where would those rascally coins be?
This is what I say: First of all, no one needs to watch the news every night, unless one is married to the anchor. Otherwise, you are mostly going to learn more than you need to know about where the local fires are, and how rainy it has been: so rainy! That is half an hour, a few days a week, I tell my students. You could commit to writing one page a night, which, over a year, is most of a book.
If they have to get up early for work and can’t stay up late, I ask them if they are willing to NOT do one thing every day, that otherwise they were going to try and cram into their schedule.
They may explain that they have to go to the gym four days a week or they get crazy, to which I reply that that’s fine–no one else really cares if anyone else finally starts to write or volunteers with marine mammals. But how can they not care and let life slip away? Can’t they give up the gym once a week and buy two hours’ worth of fresh, delectable moments? (Here they glance at my butt.)
Can they commit to meeting one close friend for two hours every week, in bookstores, to compare notes? Or at an Audubon sanctuary? Or a winery?
They look at me bitterly now–they don’t think I understand. But I do–I know how addictive busyness and mania are. But I ask them whether, if their children grow up to become adults who spend this one precious life in a spin of multitasking, stress, and achievement, and then work out four times a week, will they be pleased that their kids also pursued this kind of whirlwind life?
If not, if they want much more for their kids, lives well spent in hard work and savoring all that is lovely, why are they living in this manic way?
I ask them, is there a eucalyptus grove at the end of their street, or a new exhibit at the art museum? An upcoming minus tide at the beach where the agates and tidepools are, or a great poet coming to the library soon? A pond where you can see so many turtles? A journal to fill?
If so, what manic or compulsive hours will they give up in trade for the equivalent time to write, or meander? Time is not free–that’s why it’s so precious and worth fighting for.
Will they give me one hour of housecleaning in exchange for the poetry reading? Or wash the car just one time a month, for the turtles? No? I understand. But at 80 will they be proud that they spent their lives keeping their houses cleaner than anyone else in the family did, except for mad Aunt Beth, who had the vapors? Or that they kept their car polished to a high sheen that made the neighbors quiver with jealousy? Or worked their fingers to the bone providing a high quality of life, but maybe accidentally forgot to be deeply and truly present for their kids, and now their grandchildren?
I think it’s going to hurt. What fills us is real, sweet, dopey, funny life.
I’ve heard it said that every day you need half an hour of quiet time for yourself, or your Self, unless you’re incredibly busy and stressed, in which case you need an hour. I promise you, it is there. Fight tooth and nail to find time, to make it. It is our true wealth, this moment, this hour, this day.
-Lo, turning the computer off now.
The Elusive Muse
mood: antsy | drinking: h2o
Every writing workshop I’ve ever attended encourages you to carve out a hole in your schedule: an hour in the morning, a chunk of the afternoon, and sit there with your pen and paper, your keyboard and screen, and wait patiently for the muse to show up.
Sometimes, they say, just sitting there writing nonsense, pouring out your stream-of-consciousness rambling, will suddenly turn into something productive. Something that you’ll read later and say, “By Jove, there’s something good going on here!”
And it’s true. It works. If you can force yourself to find the time and then sit there, quietly.
But there’s another tactic that I’ve been considering, since my quiet times with blank pages have been few and far between of late. I’ve decided that perhaps you need to get off your ass, go out there, hunt down your inspiration, drag it home by the tail and make it your bitch.
Sally forth, armed with pocket-sized paper pad and tell yourself, “Today I WILL find something to write about. I will inspect every nook and cranny of my day until a whisp of an idea creeps from the corners and makes itself known.”
Perhaps I’ve decided to go on the prowl because it sounds easier, somehow, than adding another task to my to-do list that says, “Sit still.”
Perhaps I’m in denial of my need to stop moving, stop doing, just stop for a second.
Perhaps.
I’ve been so busy, for the past several years. Poetry book, cinepoems, film festivals, new job, new house, and, of course, the ever-expanding bun in my oven.
But even if I weren’t busy with all my various and sundry extracurriculars, I’d likely find a way to fill time.
It’s funny, isn’t it, how all these time-saving technological wonders have spawned such a wealth of ways to waste time.
Facebook, while a great way to connect with long-lost friends, enemies, and people you barely remember, is also an incredible time-suck. Even if you don’t subscribe to the Farmville/Mafia Wars/Vampire Attack drivel.
It’s like the more we invent to make our lives easier, the more we remove ourselves from the actual living part of life.
We had friends over recently and at one point in the evening I looked up from my laptop to see at least four of us with heads bent over computers, and the other two had their iPhones out. Yeah. We’re a fun bunch.
I’m not against the interwebs, obviously. And I’m not against smart phones, either, although my own phone remains a small, sad little phone-only device. (I don’t want to be constantly connected.)
I just think that unless we consciously unplug, disconnect and shut down for awhile, we might miss out on something truly spectacular that’s happening off-screen.
I’ve been unhappy with my poems lately. They have slowed to a trickle, and all I seem to be able to write about is the unknown little person inside me who is slowly but surely rearranging my life.
I suppose it’s not really a bad thing that my poems have such a singular subject–after all, this is a pretty monumental thing that’s happening inside me. But there are other things happening outside of me that I’d like to pin down on paper.
So perhaps I’ve just talked myself in a great big circle back to the beginning of this post. Perhaps I’ve just convinced myself to sit down and shut up and see what the muse brings to the table.
Or maybe I can do both… Maybe I can be aggressive and hunt my inspiration down one day, then sit passively by and listen to the ether the next day.
It’s worth a shot. Let’s try it and see what happens.
-Lo, who just likes to say that she’ll make something her bitch.
We are family
mood: busy | drinking: water
The Mama & Papa Witmer were just in California for a visit. (They’re pretty adorable, no?)
I always look forward to the parental visits. Having moved so far away from the place where I grew up, I don’t often find myself reminded of my childhood.
But seeing my parents always brings back a flood of memories, and we usually end up around the table swapping stories that start with, “Remember that time…”
I have no doubt that becoming a parent myself will alter my view of my own mom and dad. For the first time, I’ll be standing in their shoes, forced to make some of the same decisions they had to wrestle with when my sister and I were tiny.
Boy and I have already started talking about how to let Bean be whoever she (or he) will be. How to let her (let’s just go with her for now) grow up to be confident in who she is, even if that “who” isn’t quite what we expected.
I’m sure when I was a little two-year-old tow head running around pulling puppy dog tails, my parents didn’t expect that one day I would change my hair color a ridiculous number of times, date a boy in a band, stop going to church, get tattoos and buy a motorcycle. (Not necessarily all at the same time, of course.)
I’m sure, when they tucked me in at night, they had very different ideas of who I would become.
But they have let me grow up with grace. They let me make decisions they didn’t understand. They let me disagree. They let me go.
It couldn’t have been very easy for them.
But the freedom they gave me has made me a better me. And I think it’s one of the many reasons I actually get excited when my parents are coming to town, while many of my friends live in dread of that day.
If we start now, and we practice really hard, I hope that Boy and I can give Bean the same freedom and let her fly.
-Lo, who somehow also grew up to be taller than both her parents.
Blueberry, Kumquat, Lime, Apple
mood: impatient | drinking: vitamin water
I’ve become quite familiar, over the last weeks, with the use of fruit as a metaphor for the ever-changing size of a fetus.
First it was beans, limas and lentils. Then we moved on to fruit. Now, at 15+ weeks, the being we’re currently calling “Bean” (because that’s what she looked like when we first saw her) is now the size of an apple. My bump, on the other hand, is the size of a large cantaloupe. Mmmmmmm. Cantaloupe.
In the weeks when Boy and I were keeping the secret to ourselves and a small group of friends, I wrote a few poems that I also kept secret.
But now that the cat’s out, I can share a couple with you…
Proof of life
In the space
where they say
a heart will grow
a tiny light flicks on
off-on-off-on
faster than
hummingbird
wings.
It’s been only me
in this skin
for so long.
Now suddenly,
strange alchemy.
I am just learning
to share.
(Written on January 20, after our first ultrasound.)
Week 10
On the way to the doctor’s office
I nearly convince myself you are dead.
(I like to prepare for the worst.)
Not for the last time,
you prove me wrong
because when we see you
on the Toshiba screen
you are standing on your head
and dancing.
You wave webbed fingers
and thrash your stumpy legs
to the thrum of your wee heart
as if you haven’t a care.
And you don’t.
The worry
is all mine.
I eat walnuts by the handful now
just to make you smart.
I switch to decaf so you’ll grow tall.
I lie awake obsessing
about unpronounceable genetic anomalies
that could ruin you.
I haven’t even gotten to the part yet
where you get a driver’s license
and a boyfriend in a rock band.
*****
-Lo, who has been told this is only the beginning.
LaDonnaWitmer 