Tag Archives: Alex

Personal

33

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“Thirty-three. This was the year they got Him.”

Thanks, Mom. I was already thinking that.

All my Christian friends have taken their 33rd birthdays pretty heavily. Not midlife-crisis heavily, talking about death all of the time like a fifty year old, but hard nonetheless. It’s natural, if you strive to model yourself on Jesus, to ask the difficult questions now. In particular, the really hard one.

If I died now, what will I have done? Will it be enough?

Nobody expects me to die this year, much less rise from the dead. But whenever you hear of a contemporary dying (usually a celebrity), you ask yourself these questions. It’s kind of the reverse of my stocktake at the end of last year.

OK, this is what I have received. What have I given back?

I don’t know. I have a half-share in the birth and raising of Alex, who I hope will leave the world a better place than he finds it. That’s something. I try to be a loving wife, a good friend, smart and competent at work, a responsible citizen and a compassionate stranger. I buy fairtrade and take public transport instead of owning a car. I argue for peace in times of war, and for justice in times of greed.

But is it enough?

Personal

I’m Rich

Rich, I tell you!

No, no, I didn’t win the lottery.

Last night (Sunday, December 29) was the annual Almost New Year’s party of one of our dearest friends from our university days. And after living so long in a country that doesn’t celebrate Thanksgiving, I find I have moved the date of my annual stock-taking, the day that I count my blessings and review the past year. Now I do it at Paul’s party. This has the added advantage of moving the stocktake after the solstice, when the balance of the year has shifted toward the light, when I know [Seasonal Affective Disorder|my mood] will get better now before it gets worse again.

Here’s this year’s tally:

· We are all healthy, sound in body and mind.
Oh, yes, we all three of us get ill from time to time. I have a cold as I type, Alex has been coughing nights, and Martin isn’t doing too hot either. But these are passing things.
· We have a nice house
It’s pleasant, on a good street, with good neighbours. The mortgage is affordable, and will remain affordable even if interest rates go up.
· We have secure, well-paid jobs in these times of redundancy.
I hope I’m not tempting fate by saying this. But we’ve both survived one round of redundancies in our workplaces. We’re even paid enough to be able to work part-time and still have enough money for our needs and our desires. We are, to use the phrase of one of my former colleagues, hardcover book rich.
· We have time
Working part-time means we each spend entire days with Alex. I get two days a week with him, Martin one.
We even have time to spend on our hobbies. Martin does web-type stuff and plays the drums, and I bind books.
· We have love
Martin and I are heading for our tenth anniversary. The years have not always been easy – no long-term relationship is universally smooth. But even in the worst times, we have never stopped loving each other.
Now we have Alex, not yet two, and we love him more than we can express. He loves us too, though he does not yet understand the concept.
We have loving families – brothers, sisters, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, a whole network of relatives. We may disagree from time to time, but that never gets in the way of the love that ties us together by marriage and blood.
And we have dear, dear friends, some we see often and some we see less than once a year. (A fair number of them came to Paul’s party.) I have friends I have never met in the flesh, but still am enriched by (and ones that, I hope, I enrich).

And so many things that we have, that so much of the world lacks, don’t even make it on the list. Our water is safe to drink, we have plentiful food (more than plentiful – I need to lose weight). Our home is safe from confiscation and our health from epidemic disease. We have a voice in our governance, and the right to say what we please in public. Realistically, we fear no violence in our daily lives. We even have access to cheap public transport and good quality health care.

What can I say? We are rich.

Family

“Bye”

Originally entered as a daylog on E2 on July 18, 2002.

He left me today.

We were hanging out the laundry in the back garden. Or rather, I was hanging out the laundry while he explored the principles of clothespegs. At fifteen months, such things are very interesting.

Then, quite calmly, he closed the clothespeg bag, picked it up, and stood up. He slung his burden over one shoulder (it still nearly dragged on the ground), then turned and gave me a solemn wave. “Bye,” he said, exhausting his vocabulary. He waved again and turned, still clutching the clothespeg bag. Then he walked to the back door.

Sadly, he was too short to reach the handle, so I never saw how far he was determined to go.

It was a cute game, however abortive. He’s exploring the ideas of separation and departure in his own way. His ability to control his movements, to leave at will, gives him the power to flirt with these difficult, dangerous notions.

Watching him, I saw the shadows of future departures – off to school, leaving for college perhaps. Driving away with all his things in the trunk of his car. Walking up to the altar with his true love.

A cloud seemed to cross the sun as I thought of another departure, me from him or him from me, more final than any of those bright futures. That’s the leave-taking he dreads, looking back so anxiously as he goes, just to be sure that I’m still there. He doesn’t know about death, of course, but he fears loss nevertheless.

The sun came out again as he came toddling back. He threw his arms around me and gave me a soggy, open-mouthed kiss. The shadows of future departures, both good and bad, vanished in the delight of the present.

I love you, Bobo

Family, Personal

June and lovin’ it

I’m aware that I don’t blog enough. Martin’s always got something new up, and my last log is from March. Sheesh.

The thing is, when it’s winter, I’m struggling to cope with the ordinary demands of life. Commenting on the way things are going, or even standing back far enough to observe how they’re doing, is low on the list. I’m just too tired.

Then summer comes, and I’m doing all the things I couldn’t do during the dark time. And somehow, I get so absorbed in all the things that are going on that once again I can’t step back and describe them. I seem to be too busy.

Now is a good example. My mother’s over for a fortnight, getting her Alex time in. As with my Dad’s visit in January, Martin and I aren’t taking any time off. But we’ve taken Alex out of his nursery for the time she’s over. So I’m being a working Mom, a daughter, and a hostess all at once.

Plus I’m binding her a blank book as a birthday present. We’ve already been to the tannery to pick out the leather for the covers, and I’m most of the way through the bind.

But even when we don’t have visitors, we’re pretty busy. Not that I’m complaining – I only “work” (for pay) 3 days a week. Martin works 4. We both get to spend a lot of time and energy on Alex. On the one hand, it can be hard work – he’s well into toddlerhood, walking all over the place, demanding things to play with, and throwing the odd (brief, mercifully) tantrum when he is denied. On the other hand, time with Alex is tremendously rewarding, whether he’s sitting at his little table typing on a spare keyboard (just like Mom!), or sorting pebbles in the front garden. And he socialises well, riding in the backpack as I go around town or do lunch with family and friends. He’s even helped me with a geocache I’ll be posting soon. There’s a lot of hard work in there, but when he turns to me and gives me a huge kiss, I can’t seem to mind.

The days I spend at work are rewarding as well. I’m in a department I like, working with people I enjoy dealing with, on a steep learning curve. I can even wear black – unlike my previous department, where I felt too gothic, I’m rarely the only one all in black now. There are stressful times, but all in all, I find the work days flying by.

My current hobby – bookbinding – takes up a good deal of time as well. I’m entirely self-taught so far, and after six months I’m finally producing things that I’m willing to give away without apology. They’re still not perfect, but I no longer feel my recipients are being charitable by taking the books I bind. I bind for the pleasure of making things, of creating something beautiful. Being able to give them away is a bonus, and keeps me from drowning in blank and rebound books.

And somewhere in there, in hugs at the sink and long chats after the lights are out at night, I still have time to be amazed at the man I married. We spend a lot more time as comrades in nappies rather than smitten lovers now, but watching the way he delights in Alex is just another way of falling in love with him.

So this is a busy time, but every aspect of it holds some reward. And I have to get my joy in quick, like a grasshopper, before the winter pares me back to the bare minimum.

Family, Personal

All change

It’s the beginning of March, and life looks so different than it did in December.

Not the politics. Don’t even get me started on politics. No, it’s the rest of life that has changed.

First of all, it’s getting lighter. The weather may still be wintry, but the days are longer. The difference in my energy levels is dramatic; it’s like the difference in a coffee addict between waking and finishing the first cup. My brain no longer feels wrapped in cotton wool, and I can think again. The payoff is all around me, in my relationships with Martin and Alex, in the way I run the house, in my work.

Work. There’s another area of change. I’ve been back at work since the new year, but I haven’t truly settled in. I’m doing a three-month stint in my old department. After Easter, I’ll be changing divisions within the Bank, moving to a team I worked with during Y2K. It promises to be a challenging time, with a steep learning curve. I should be intimidated, but every time I think about the work, and the people, I smile. I feel like a runner at the starting gate.

Going back to work has changed the shape of my life enormously. I’m only working three days a week, Monday – Wednesday. But those days are really tightly scheduled. My focus has to be on getting everything done that needs doing, getting enough light to stay sane, then going to bed early enough to get the sleep I need. It’s like being a hamster on a wheel. How do full-time working mothers do it?

Still, the working time has its rewards. Martin has Wednesdays off, so Alex is in day care for the first two days each week. He is has settled in well, but he does miss us while we’re away. So every day he’s at nursery, I pick him up (Martin does the dropoffs, I do the pickups) and take him home, and all he wants to do for the first half hour is cuddle me, flirt with me, and play with my earrings. It’s an enormously rewarding time, like having a whole day’s attention in a short spell.

One of the real pleasures of the last two months has been the learning curve with my bookbinding. Martin got me a couple of books on the topic for Christmas (at my request), and since then, I’ve been binding non-stop. (See the previous entry for a list of what I’ve done) In addition to the books themselves, I’ve made a lot of the hardware I need, including two different types of book press.

I can hardly wait to see what spring will bring.

Family

Sutherlands Hit London; London Survives

So here we are in London.

M, as he has indicated in his daylog, is here for a web usability conference. B and I just came along for the ride. And what a ride it’s been. We’ve been relentlessly social.

  • On Saturday, we arrived at Stanstead and made our way to London. To my astonishment and amusement, the hotel we’re staying in (Jury’s in Kensington) is right opposite the hotel where I once had a course (the Regency in Kensington). To B’s astonishment and amusement, the elevator has mirrors on all sides, producing an infinity of B’s to flirt with.
    Jules arrived just as we were settled into the hotel room. After some dithering, we all went out to the Science Museum, just up the road from our hotel. It was disappointing in places – it could have done with more interacitvity. But B loved the working steam engine, big as the ground floor of our house, red, hissing and clacking!

  • On Sunday, B and I met up with James (M was at the first day of his conference). At my suggestion, we went to the Victoria and Albert Museum, “the attic of the Empire” (James’ term). Amazing place. They have full-sized plaster casts of the fronts of cathedrals. There’s a plaster cast of Hadrian’s Column, in two pieces (upper and lower). The plaster casts take up only two rooms; the rest of the museum is full of equally grand, disassociated things.
    I was worried about how James would react to B. He’s not automatically charmed by babies and children, from what I hear. But B took one look at him and gave him a huge grin, after which James was his devoted slave.
    M joined us for dinner, as did Guy (after some dithering). We had a wonderful time in the pizza restaurant, talking about the good old days (and telling Guy all the embarassing stories on James) for ages.

  • Yesterday, Monday, B and I went to Highgate to meet up with Gritchka, a friend from my online community Everything2. The three of us had a great time: we wandered around Highgate cemetery, where Gritch pointed out the graves of obscure but interesting people. Then we went on to Hampstead Heath, peering at an 18th century house on the way. The weather was bright and crisp, the scenery good, and the company excellent.
    We had planned to go visit Jules in the evening, down where he lives in Guildford. But it became clear that B was overstimulated, after 3 days of constant interaction with half of London. So we stayed at home and let him roll around on the hotel room rug.

  • Today, B and I took advantage of the fine Tuesday weather to go to Hyde Park. I had noticed that there was a horseriding trail marked on the map, and I thought the bunny might like to see some horses. We were most of the way there when M called; he was on an extended lunch break, and could he meet us? We got sandwiches and went to the park.
    B saw a whole menagerie’s worth of animals today:

    1. Ducks, gannets, seagulls and pigeons, when I distributed the bread from my sandwich by the Serpentine
    2. A parrot, two rabbits, and three rats in the pets department at Harrod’s
    3. A horse, from a distance
    4. Numerous dogs

    Of all of them, the horse made the least impact.

The days have been great. Good weather, Bunny a comforting weight in the backpack, a virtuous soreness in my legs and feet form all the exercise. The nights, on the other hand, have been difficult. He isn’t sleeping well. I don’t know if its the hotel cot (rickety; if he could stand in it it would be unsafe), the room (occasionally too hot), or the overstimulation, but he wakes up crying loudly in the middle of the night. Repeatedly. Last night wasn’t too bad; the deliberate choice to spend an evening in seems to have had a good effect.

It worries me, because the trip to California is going to be a series of day-long meetings of the Alexander Beowulf Fan Club, what with all the residents of the Piedmont house. He may very well wig out under the excitement; we shall have to allow decompression times to compensate.

Family, Personal

The Advance of the Darkness

Ah, Seasonal Affective Disorder.

City Time (the time zone calculator on my Palm, which also gives sunrise and sunset times) tells me we got only 10 hours and 22 minutes of daylight today. Sadly, the daylight we did get was pretty dim, dulled down by clouds and drizzle.

I can really feel the lack of light. Keeping going on a day like this is like trying to swim in an undertow. The darkness drags at me, pulling me under, unless I fight to keep my head up. And the depression is insidious, discouraging me from treating it. It would be so much easier just to let go, stop struggling against it, and give in.

This is one of the phases I go through every winter; I am used to it. My mood will track the weather until the time change, when I tend to go through a deep low and have trouble getting up in the morning. Then things will get better for a while thanks to the thrill of the holiday season (helped this year by the extensive travel we’ll be doing in November), then at about New Year’s, I’ll sink again. Usually, it’s just the post-holiday blues, but I suspect going back to work will contribute to a lower low yet. Then it’ll be onto the long upslope as the days get lighter, each one better than the last, until spring comes and I can put my light box away.

What I need to remember, what I always try to remember, is that this is temporary. It’s one of those glass half full/half empty things…is summer just an intermission between winters, or is summer the rule and winter the exception? The best thing I’ve done for my SAD this year has been to reform my thinking, to try to see summer as the default state. Winter is a falling away from that ideal, a hiccup in the essential lightness of life.

No doubt I’ll reread this in January and think it hopelessly naive.

On the food front, I have been making a lot of soups lately. They’re for the whole family, B included. He doesn’t get salty food yet, so I can’t just throw a stock cube or two in and build the flavor from there. Instead, I’ve been making my own salt-free chicken stock, then adding vegetables and pearl barley to turn it into a soup. Oddly, I can’t taste the chicken in it until I add salt; then the flavor comes zinging out.

B has eaten both the soups I’ve made with gusto. We use a little hand-held electric blender to whizz his food into mush, since his gums are probably not up to bits of chicken and pearl barley.

Cooking for the baby is a powerful thing, by the way. M and I have both felt it over the last couple of months. Every step, from browsing for another flavor to try him on (harlequin squash? pumpkin?), to cooking it up, to mushing it and spooning it into his toothless little mouth, is deeply satisfying. It’s even more fulfilling than breastfeeding, probably because the preparation process is conscious and deliberate.

We don’t just cook for immediate consumption, either. We tend to make enough of whatever the new food is to freeze 10 or 15 ice cubes’ worth of mush, plus a meal’s worth to eat fresh. Subsequent meals are easy: pop 4 or 5 cubes in the microwave, heat, thicken with baby rice if needed, and serve. I make a game of it with B, letting him chew on the Tupperware lid while I discuss the flavors he’ll be getting.

He has yet to taste commercial baby food (a point of pride). This will change when we start travelling next month.

Personal

A date! A date!

Night out last night, without B for once. We took Scott and Angela up on their standing offer to babysit and went out to AI. Having a night out was pleasant, but the movie itself was disappointing. I suppose it was inevitable. A life-like, live action science fiction film where characters go searching for Pinoccio’s Blue Fairy so she can turn an android into a real boy cannot end with success. As the characters chased the dream further and further, the plot felt like it was too far out in front of itself. There was no possibility of a satisfactory resolution.

Since it was a Spielberg movie, though, AI made up for what it lacked in plot with emotional drama. We were pulled through visions of uncondional love between parent and child, loss, and abandonment. Emotionally, it was powerful. Intellectually, sadly, it was not. Of course, it didn’t help that my mood was already somewhat precarious before we went into the cinema. Martin has a colleague who was 20 weeks pregnant; she just lost the baby. He told me in the takeout Mexican restaurant before the film.

I remember being 20 weeks pregnant. We were in California, and B was already kicking. The 12-week danger zone was past, and I felt much safer. The anticipation was wonderful – I was looking forward to days like today so much. To lose that would have been devastating. Harder even that the miscarriage at 8 weeks last January, and that one nearly broke my heart.

We got home to find B awake but exhausted. He had behaved beautifully for Scott and Ange, but that didn’t extend to actually going to sleep. He went into hysterics within minutes of us coming home, hysterics so strong that he wouldn’t nurse at first. He sounded overtired and overstimulated. And between his stress-out and ours, we decided that this was a night to share the bed with B.

It was a sweet idea, and it started well. I fed him lying down, and he dropped into a deep and reassured sleep. We positioned ourselves carefully, so our pillows were nowhere near his head and the duvet was safely low, then prepared for a shallow but satisfying night of family sleep.

Alas, it was not to be. M had a nightmare and woke up screaming. B slept on, but I was awake. And then the niggling back muscle that had been paining me all day exploded into agony. I couldn’t move without gasping and whining, couldn’t turn, and certainly wasn’t getting any more sleep straight away.

M was a star, rubbing my back, helping me move to the guest room, then rubbing again so that I could sleep. He put B back in his own crib. Family sleep had lasted about one hour; then we were spread across three beds. I was somewhat better in the morning, but still had to be careful about picking B up (he is over 17 pounds now, after all). M came home early to help, proving once again what a wonderful guy he is.

Developmentally, B continues to charge ahead. He crossed from the living room to the kitchen on Monday, overcoming a psychological barrier that had baulked him for a week or two. I don’t know why it mattered so much to him; perhaps he had not realised the two spaces were truly connected?

He is still not crawling; his tummy stays on the ground as he moves. He uses a swimming motion, like a man breasting his way through molasses, and gets the most amazing amounts of lint on himself in the process. I vacuum and dust mop almost constantly, but he keeps finding more dust to pick up.

He has also discovered peekaboo. I started doing a large “bye bye” production when I left the room about a week ago, in response to his increased fretfulness upon finding himself alone. And the corollary to “bye bye” when you leave is, of course, “hello” when you return. Peekaboo is just a tiny step beyond that. He loves it, even though I am not sure he has really grasped the idea that I still exist when I’m out of sight. Maybe he percieves it as a game of destruction and creation, not hiding and return?

The odd thing about it is, he seems to like controlling the game as well. Twice today, he was the one moving in and out of sight, once with the hem of my skirt and once with the kitchen doorway. Maybe it was unintentional…but if so, the fun he had doing it will probably get him to try it again.

Politics

Daylog on Everything2

Daylog on Everything2:

My great-uncle /msged me last night…part of the exercise of contacting all the family (an exercise I know well from my days of living in an earthquake zone). Possibly in reference to my daylog yesterday, he said:

Concentrate on the baby, don’t think of such things.

I can’t.

Everyone in the situation, the airline passengers, the people in the buildings and on the ground, even the terrorists, was some mother’s baby. So are the civillians the warmongers are advocating bombing. Everyone was once as innocent, and as trusting, as the five month old curently creeping across my living room floor. Somewhere deep inside them all, before they died, that core of gentleness remained.

Loving one baby, I cannot help loving them all. Take care, beloved sons and daughters of your mothers.

And a thought strikes me. How much is all of this going to cost, in monetary terms? Billions?

I wish the US had spent those billions before this happened, bringing economic prosperity and justice to more of the world. Writing off third world debt. Feeding the hungry, helping the poor. Thinking beyond its own borders. Being good global citizens.

Would this terrible loss of life have happened then? Maybe, but maybe not. And even if it did, we’d have a much better moral position, even with people who don’t like the US.

Can we start paying the next large sum now, spending the money to create a world with greater justice and honor? Please?

Personal, Politics

Death and more death.

Death and more death. Destruction. Despair.

When I woke up this morning, I thought, “My mom and dad have been married for 35 years as of today. Today my son is 5 months old.” I looked forward to lunch with my husband, and to maybe hearing from my great-uncle, newly on my web community, E2.

Now it’s all shattered. Looking down at my sleeping baby boy now, I wonder what sort of a world he will inherit, because of today. It makes me want to slap the hawks who are howling for blood on every channel. Revenge won’t bring back the dead, just deepen the hatred that the assailants already clearly feel. Then they’ll strike back, then we will…I don’t want to live like that. I dont want him to live like that.

I bury my nose in his soft, fragrant skin, and wish for this morning again.

The above was my daylog on Everything2. The only other thing I would say is that we, as Americans, must insist that our officials pursue a course of justice, not revenge. The relatives of the people killed will be howling for everyone who might possibly be involved to be bombed to slag, in chorus with a fair slice of the American political spectrum.

This is a bad idea because:

  • Revenge breeds revenge. The allies and relatives of the people we unjustly avenge ourselves on will be out for our blood. I’ve seen enough of that in the news on the Middle East and Northern Ireland.
  • Most US politicians, and many US voters, identify themselves as Christians. Now is the time to put your beliefs in action, guys. Vote to turn the other cheek. Yes, it’s hard. If it were easy, it wouldn’t be a test of our committment, would it?
  • Now is our chance to set an example of civilisation for the world to follow. If the US is to have any credibility but that of the neighborhood bully, we must act responsibly, even in the face of violent provocation.

I don’t hold out much hope that we will pursue such a mature, responsible course.

I got this email from the US Consulate General in Edinburgh:

Dear American:

Following today’s tragedies at the World Trade Center in New York and at the Pentagon in Washington, DC, we encourage all U.S. citizens to maintain a low profile, vary routes and times for all required travel, and treat mail and packages from unfamiliar sources with suspicion. In addition, American citizens are also urged to avoid contact with any suspicious, unfamiliar objects, and to report the presence of the objects to local authorities. Vehicles should not be left unattended, if at all possible, and should be kept locked at all times. U.S. Government personnel overseas have been advised to take the same precautions.

We recommend that Americans continue to monitor the media channels for further information and refer to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the following websites: www.fema.gov and www.usembassy.org.uk respectively or our toll free information line: 0800-0279890. Please understand that very limited information is available at present.

American Consulate General
Edinburgh, Scotland
September 11, 2001

I do not consider myself at much risk.