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Interview on Reading My Tea Leaves
Somehow in the hubbub of last days of pregnancy, I forgot to post the interview I typed up for Erin Boyle’s blog Reading My Tea Leaves. Here it is! In preparation for the publication of her book Simple Matters she interviewed several small-space livers. I found the other interviews fascinating! And by golly I really tried my best to keep mine candid and helpful.
Living in a small space with children who love paper found on the street, admission bracelets given to them at museums, stacks of old artwork…I promise it’s a constant project. But when it’s working, it’s working so well.
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6 / 52
Lux: she’s very sensitive about being sensitive. If she gets hurt, she doesn’t like sympathy and she doesn’t want to talk about it. It was soothing to all three of us to get her into the tub to clean up, then some ointment, then two bandaids. Phew.
Alma: smiling mysteriously this week. It passes over her face and her eye’s register just a flicker of smile-momentum.
Joan: got a bang trim so this is the last week of those wispy, omnipresent locks in her eyes. The hair stylist asked me if I was sentimental about hair since I waited so long to trim it–“no, just absent minded.”
So much pale winter skin in these!
This week I googled news of zika nearly every morning. In December I thought about pregnant women every time I saw a naivety scene or read The Legend of the Poinsettia to the girls. I thought of pregnant woman as strong, brave visions for the future. Now in February, I think about all the countries where they might be feeling fragile and vulnerable instead. What a horrible plague to pray over.
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retelling
None of my clothes quite fit in a way I like, so I got bangs instead. I need a little high self-maintenance in my life.
The girls love to have their nails painted. Joan manages to stay at the table and let them dry for fifteen minutes after I paint them. Later she comes back with three of them completely rubbed off from activity. “You forgot to paint these,” she says.
I’m reading The Magician’s Assistant. The main characters names are Sabine and Parsifal. So pretty. I think Ann Patchett might be my favorite light fiction. It’s still beautifully and carefully written, but the stories are fast and the relationships are so engaging. This title was briefly $2 for kindle edition, a fact I found out from this lovely list.
The girls have started retelling stories of good and bad things. “Remember that silly guy?” “Oh yeah the one with the hat?” “Yeah.” <laughs, giggles> But also, “Remember at the playground, that mean boy who said ‘I’ll push you if you don’t get out of here?'” <solemn faces> Again and again. Until playground = mean kid. Who was there but once, who at the time they simply shrugged at, but now he has managed to sweep all other memories aside. It frustrates me. After the twentieth retelling “Ok,” I say, “We’re not telling that story anymore. Lots of other nice things happened at the playground. We’ve met so many other friends there.” I’m not sure what else to say–ideas?
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5 / 52
Joan: at the contemporary art museum she said right away when she found an exhibit “too scary for me.” I would say “oh ok” and we’d march away.
Lux: deliberating a move in one of the brief games of chess she plays with Joe. Face so old, hands so young.
Alma: still taking photos of her sleeping, but I’m spending much more time trying to get her there these days.
This week Alma has blossoming teenage acne all over her face. It’s the strangest thing (that happens to all babies everywhere, I know). For this week at least, if I soothe her to sleep and then set her down, she wakes up after ten minutes. So now I tuck her in and then soothe. I’ve noticed Lux has become a bit of a surrogate mom to Joan. I used to suggest “Maybe Lux can help?” Now Joan just asks Lux to do it from the first. The things she wants me to do: listen to her side of an argument, give a hug when she’s crying, sit really close and read her books, prepare/present her food the way she feels is extremely important.
People say the thing about three is that there’s always a need. That’s true. But I’ve been surprised to find myself happy to switch from need to need. When Alma’s all set I fairly sprint to one of the other girls to talk to them, ask them if they want to read a book, tell them they look beautiful in their eclectic outfit for the day with bed mussed hair. .
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these daze
Alma is asleep on the bed. We’re moving forward with the assumption she loves to sleep with noise! The girls tell me those chess pieces are watching a movie. I have fallen down a rabbit hole of obsession with Jenny Gordy of Wiksten. She makes incredibly beautiful perfectly lovely things for her daughter. And she writes brief and candid captions. Do follow.
I’m re-reading Momma Zen. It’s so good and soothing, I want to quote the whole darn thing here. The thing that always strikes me about this book is that Karen Maezen Miller only had one child. And yet she just caught it all, all the difficulties and transitions and wisdom to be gained, the first time around. Impressive.
When you have a baby, the boundaries of a day are not boundaries at all. What you thought was a day–daylight followed by an evening meal and assorted frivolities–is only one half of the day. A true day goes on much longer! A true day is a night and a day and a night again. A true day never ends.
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4 / 52
Lux: I needed to order new ballet shoes and tights for her–the old ones had gotten so little! She convinced me to throw in the components of a white swan costume. She asked me every day when I thought the package would arrive. She’s so proud of the elegant long tutu.
Alma: mid-yawn! Caught it at last.
Joan: Delighting in a crazy confetti colored Italian cookie from the North End.
This week I’ve been thinking about the basketwork of nursing. If nursing for nine months, or a year, or whatever you manage, is a finished basket you can place on your shelf and smile fondly at later, now is the rough work of pulling it together. Binding reeds and callousing soft fingers. Weaving in and out exactly the same way over and over, picking it up again and again before you’re through. Dropping your soft body into the mold of new habits with gusto: drinking so much water all day, yet gasping for still more as soon as you begin nursing again. Shifting time from twenty-four to three hour cycles (or much, much less, early on). Stretching achy shoulders, massaging small hot pockets of pain here and there, losing half your wardrobe, adjusting to the milky smell that surrounds you when you wake up each morning.
With Lux and Joan I always thought I’d stop nursing at nine months. But then I reached nine months and everything mentioned above had become so normal, that settled in and did it for three more months!
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3 / 52
Alma: last days of napping willy nilly. Now she must be swaddled to stay asleep.
Lux: during her quiet time. Listening to Boxcar Children, probably.
Joan: loves to go outside. She is still the first one dressed every morning.
We’ve been completely inundated with food from friends in a wonderful way. I’ve started eating entrees for breakfast: spicy chicken lasagne, tikki masala with rice and chopped kale, wedges of roasted sweet potato peppered all over. It’s my hungriest meal of the day, I start thinking about food at 5am when Alma wakes up, so why not?
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2 / 52
Lux & Joan: They both like to hold her for about 60 seconds and then they get a vaguely repulsed and overwhelmed look, and sigh with relief when I take her.
Alma: Those tiny, absentminded, infant face scratches! It’s impossible to keep the nails trimmed short enough. 1.5 weeks old here.
I’m in the everything-is-an-experiment stage of newborn-parent relationship development. Will she wake up if I set her down. How long will this nap last. Swaddle, or no. Pacifier, or no. On me, or on the bed. Needs to burp obsessively. Doesn’t need to burp this time.
It’s fun as long as you don’t worry too much about it. -
1 / 52
Lux & Joan: I don’t think I’ll be getting many shots with them individually this year. Gosh I’m so proud of them.
Alma: the only thing I can type when I see this photo is “coo.”
Every year Jodi inspires me with her talk of a folder full of weekly photos at the end of the year. Why not start anew with a new babe? I just finished The Wright Brothers and am feeling rather optimistic about everything as a result. So inspiring, those boys.
And Joe gave me a new lens for Christmas; my second Canon pancake (= slim, light). I love it.
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homedrawn calendars
Lux and I sit down and make these calendars fairly often. The lines are forever uneven and many times the last few days of the month have to be squeezed into one square due to lack of drafting. The symbols are rudimentary and would be meaningless if she hadn’t been sitting next to me as I drew, and explained them.
They allow for anticipation (the best part of any event!), and also preparation–like in the case of December having far more babysitters than any previous month.
They comprise what I refer to as my growing collection of mom outsider art. Outsider Art is a term I was introduced to by my art-major friends in college. They kindly said it described the charm of my half-life stick people and extremely rustic sketching abilities. As a term it’s not that popular to use any more (it can be seen as needlessly discriminatory–why not just call it art, though it was created in the backwoods of Mississippi?).
And it wouldn’t have applied to me anyway because though I have no skill, I could have been trained, or at least I lived within the potentials of being trained, social-economically, mentally, and geographically.
ANYWAY. These calendars are very helpful to us whenever something is too distant in the future to discuss usefully. Like when was Halloween approaching and I was going to die if I had to tell her one more time how far away it was. So I would simply remind her to consult her calendar and count the days herself. And my plan with “movie day,” was to eliminate all queries about movie watching throughout the week. Friday was decided and marked on the calendar. I made a four day one when we went away and my mom came. And a shorter one for a long weekend when I was out of town.
They content most, if not all, of the repetitive questions that come as a verbal assault on my daily kitchen calm. Lux just asked me to make a brand new one for January, a very apt thing to do in the new year.
