We have known such joys as a child knows

You know, I'd probably be writing more entries here if I could write stories about school. However, I am still gainfully employed there, and money and benefits are nice, so.

Anyway, that's not a great excuse, I know. My life is actually pretty interesting to me right now, and it's not that I don't have things to write about, I just wonder how much the rest of the world would actually be interested in things like the strange excitement I feel over prepping our cloth diapers, which is my task for the weekend. That and grading this mound of papers I've been avoiding, but there is absolutely no excitement in that -- only a hefty amount of dread and a desire to drink a lot of red wine, which I can't even do, so I guess I'll have to settle for hot chocolate.

At least it's finally hot chocolate weather. This is possibly my favorite time of year -- the rains come, the leaves turn, the air cools. My feet are cold at night again now and I bundle up in sweatshirts and pajama pants basically as soon as I get home from school. (And then I joke to my husband that he's really getting a raw deal. We've been watching a lot of Mad Men lately, and I'm no Betty Draper. Don Draper gets a wife with perfectly curled hair and a flouncy dress and doe eyes waiting for him every night -- well, every night that he's not rolling around with one of his mistresses. Matt gets a wife in pajama pants. However, Matt is no Don Draper, either, and he insists he would find it kind of creepy if I greeted him him way every night.)

My students believe this weather is unbearably cold because they are delicate little flowers, and every day they beg me to close the windows and turn on the heater. Which I don't do even when I'm not pregnant, because I like fresh air (even cold fresh air) and I strongly dislike hot, muggy classrooms, and also, I sort of think that this would be an appropriate time to wear long pants and shoes that are not flip-flops. And I'm apparently heartless. ("I'm the one who has to be happiest in this room," I tell them. It's true. Keep the cranky pregnant teacher holding the gradebook comfortable.)

(That did not count as a school story. If I could tell school stories, I would tell them about freshmen. But I can't.)

So I'll talk about my daughter instead. She's been sleeping in her new bed for a few weeks now. I wasn't entirely sure how she'd react to giving up her toddler bed for the new baby; we converted it back into a crib and moved that, along with her dresser, into the baby's room. So we really talked up her New! Bed! and New! Dresser! and read a lot of The Berenstein Bears and the New Baby, because that book is all about how Brother Bear and Papa Bear go out into the woods one day to get wood for Brother's new bed (and oh, how cute, after Mama Bear feeds them breakfast she pats her tummy in a most self-satisfied way and pops out Sister Bear sometime before dinner). Suzannah loves that book, and she seemed to enjoy "helping" us pick out her new bed. She was so excited and proud the day it was delivered.

"That's my bed," she kept announcing.

And then that night, what did we find?


Thankfully, that only lasted one night (you know there were all the predictably snarky comments about what we should have spent money on instead of a new bed if that's where she was going to sleep). She actually sleeps really, really well these days. She's going to bed at least an hour earlier than she was this summer, and she cocoons herself in blankets to the point where I have to peel back the covers to make sure there is, in fact, a three-year-old bundled up in there. (Often, I'll find something bizarre clutched in her little fist -- last week, she insisted on sleeping with a little plastic ear of corn that normally resides in her shopping basket.)

It would be appropriate to post a picture of Suzannah snuggled in her new bed, but alas, I haven't taken one yet. So I'll give you this instead:


(You can't see from this picture, but picture a very tall man doing somersaults in the hay nearby. That very tall man would be my husband, and believe me, he wasn't in there for the kids. The man had a blast, and I'm also pretty sure he had hay embedded in his scalp for the rest of the day. Two weeks later I am still picking it out of the carpet, despite vacuuming the house about seventeen times.)

Matt and I both blew off our professional obligations and went on our annual daycare trek to the pumpkin patch at Remlinger Farms. That's just not the kind of experience I'm willing to miss, and it was such a sweet day -- sunny and autumnal. The colors are brighter outside the city, splashes of orange and red and yellow in the mountains. The outlines of trees are crisp, the air sweet and smoky. This is the third year I've taken Suzannah, and what a change from the first year when I carried her all day in a sling on my hip. Now she sings "Old McDonald" with such gusto, jumps wildly in the hay, shrieks with delight on the rides in the security of her daddy's arms, exclaims over the bunnies and goats and chickens and sheep, and holds her friend Ava's hand. There was a moment when Matt and I were walking towards the pumpkins, the two little girls between us and holding our hands, a chain from me to him, and I felt such a deep, happy contentment -- maybe it was imagining this moment in any of a million future forms when we have our own two children between us.

Our pumpkin patch outing is going to be our last Big Day Out for awhile, I think. Walking around all day long was fun, but a bit much for my very pregnant body, and Matt spent the rest of the night worrying that I was going to go into labor. (I wasn't and I'm not.) He's been absolutely wonderful about making sure I get enough rest, especially in the evenings when I get more Braxton-Hicks contractions. And he does none of the sleeping-in around here. Although this morning, I didn't either, because Suzannah piled into our bed to "snuggle" and then demanded that I get up.

"Get up, Mommy," she said, tugging on my hand. "Here, I'll help you."

But it was okay, because it is Saturday and there are pumpkin waffles and coffee and my sweet girl and I pretty much just love everything about our lives right now.

In "honor" of Columbus Day...

So posting has been a little light in the last week or so -- between prenatal appointments and trips to Seattle to see Margaret Atwood (MARGARET ATWOOD! Who signed my book!) and trips to the pumpkin patch and grades being due soon, I've been caught in that place between having a lot to write about and not giving myself the space in which to do it.

But I've been meaning to post this link for awhile, and I really encourage you to check it out. My friend Nikki is one of three contributors at Irene's Daughters, and it's one of the most worthy reads I can recommend. I keep trying to come up with something even remotely adequate to say about it, and I keep failing miserably. They write about exploring race relations, systemic racism, and prejudice, and they encourage open and honest discussion, which is something we really need. It's really, really difficult to discuss race in this country. It's hard and uncomfortable and really easy to get defensive, because let's face it -- we've all got some baggage, and that can be pretty tough to confront. (Write the word really a few more times, Shari!) I feel like I'm just about ready to stick my little toe in the water, and this is perhaps a pretty good place to start.

I would say you should take some time to read through all the entries they've posted, but let's face it, we exist in the era of Facebook-style "blogging" and no one seems to have the attention span for much more than single-sentence updates these days. I do, however, want to at least point you in the direction of one of the earliest entries: A Beginner's Guide to Anti-Racism for White People. Start with that, and go from there.

Just Be

I think any mother will testify to the fact that it can be a huge challenge to take young children out into the world on an ordinary afternoon when errands need running. I've certainly experienced this; we've left more than one store because Suzannah had just had it, due to being tired, or overstimulated, or just a young little sprout in a world made for big people.

But usually, I really love having her with me. I always have. It's not always easier, of course -- it's never easier, actually. Alone, I can buzz in and out of a store (I am so not a shopper) and be done. I can be quick and efficient. But there is nothing particularly special or enjoyable about running errands alone, save for those times when I feel like I just need a moment of clear headspace somewhere and Matt keeps Suzannah while I go out, but then, that's not about the errands or anything I need to get done. It's just about needing a moment to clear my head.

I needed to buy sheets today. My favorite sheets -- our red ones -- are completely threadbare, so I've been planning to head out and buy some replacements before I have to change the bed again. Instead of running around after school and leaving Suzannah at T.'s house a little longer (which she wouldn't mind, as she is always happily engaged in reading or outside play or dress-up with her friends when I pick her up), I decided to go this morning and take her with me. What would have been a quick jaunt turned into a few hours of just -- being out in the world with my girl. The sheets were really the least of it, an afterthought tagged on at the very end before we headed home.

And it's not like we did anything extraordinary. It was actually a very ordinary shopping trip. We drove to the Supermall; we ate lunch together in the food court; we watched the kids ride on the carousel; we wandered around a bit; we had coffee (she had milk) at Seattle's Best -- and then we picked up our sheets. That's really all.

But I found myself just enjoying it. Just being. I held Suzannah on my hip so she could see a little better as we watched the kids ride the carousel and she pointed out the different animals -- "That's a zebra! That's a bunny! That's a rooster!" She wrapped her arms around me and rested her cheek against mine, and standing right there in the middle of all the bustle of a Saturday at the mall, I thought, this is good, this moment, this life. Instead of walking by myself with my hazelnut toffee mocha in hand (which was not as delicious as the picture made it look), I sat across from my three-year-old daughter and we smiled at each other and talked about things we saw -- a sweet little preview, I imagine, of having conversations over lunch or coffee with her as she grows older. We wandered into Bath and Body Works and she wanted to smell everything. ("Mm, that smells good," she'd say every time I held a bottle of lotion to her nose.) At Bed, Bath and Beyond she very seriously helped me pick out sheets and imitated me when I touched all the pillowcases they have hanging from the shelves to demonstrate what this threadcount vs. that threadcount feels like. (She seems to have a thing for texture, like I do.)

We bought our sheets, and we headed home. That's all. I can't explain what was so nice about it, except that being out in the world with my daughter, even if we're just eating lunch at a food court somewhere, makes everything seem colorful and new. I notice things and people in a way that I don't think I do when I'm just on a mission to get something done. And it feels good to just be.