catching up

Temperatures finally hit the 70s in Portland this afternoon, so we took advantage of the brilliant weather and headed out for a long meandering walk to the rhododendron gardens near Reed College (Tuesdays and Wednesdays are free days, so we try to time it right). K joined us, as usual. It was nice to catch up. The last time we spoke was in the brief ride home from the airport last Sunday. I was in a whirl at that time, my impressions still fresh and crushed up like flowers in a heady, fragrant tangle in my brain. I am having a hard time picking them apart one by one, but I will give it a try.

My sister's baby daughter is a dream. A beautiful, big-eyed, sensitive, old soul -chubby and warm, sweet, gentle and quiet. I worry for her future if she faces it so openly, with so much trust and acceptance, so little doubt. She will bring much joy to my sister's life. The girl looks an awful lot like I did when I was 10 months, mostly because, like her, I was a giant chunk of a baby, with several rings of fat on each meaty limb. There was something curious and wonderful in seeing a child that shares my genetics and might in small ways resemble the child that I might bring into the world.

But my time with my niece was trampled by complicated circumstances. My sister has had a rough go of it these past few months. Her husband goes missing from time to time, and when he is around he drives her nearly mad with his extreme detachment and disregard. He is kind one moment, and cruel the next. One moment he claims to be trying his hardest to make things work, and the next moment he throws his hands in the air and gives it all up for lost. Fortunately, I did not have to meet him during my time in her home. I would not trust myself to be gentle.

I guess I didn't understand the depth of her suffering until I arrived and, during our first real conversation, she told me the dark tale of her recent history. The details she shared with me took me by surprise, and I admit that the sorrow surrounding her choked a bit of the life out of my visit. Her home is small and close and cluttered with the nostalgic debris of her breaking marriage, and between the business of rearing two children (she has a 13 year old son who is a delightful, intelligent young man), the sadness of her situation, and her personal intensity I was overwhelmed with emotions that I am still struggling to understand.

I remembered that my visit was meant in part to give me insight into the role of motherhood. Would my situation mirror my sister's? Did it look like fun to raise a child in that atmosphere? I almost begged off entirely from the whole damned notion, imagining what it would be like to be broke, lonely, desperate, to have no one with whom I might share the vast, difficult burden of raising happy, healthy human beings. But I have M and I do not believe for one moment he would desert me. I trust that our situation would be radically different. I suppose I have to trust in that. But in the terrible darkness of my sister's present state, it was difficult to remember this.

I might add here by way of an aside that my entire experience was no doubt compromised by the fact that I quit smoking cold turkey as soon as I boarded the airplane in Portland. No nicotine patches, no gum, no toothpicks to compulsively nibble, no secret tobacco stash --just straight-up, old-school cold turkey. So, those first three days were a bit of a sweaty, jittery, anxious blur and I am certain that had I allowed myself to chain smoke as in the past I would have weathered the rough moments without batting an eye. Smoking has always been a means of stress management for me. It has been 8 days now smoke free and I am still groping around for new ways to deal with those anxious little twinges that go with being human.

Anyhow -my sister's situation is a great, terrible, black hole of sadness for me and I cannot do it justice or accord her with the respect that she deserves in this measly medium. So I must move along...

I traveled from Colorado Springs to Alameda, California. My time with our friends J and C was not nearly so wired and strange. J and C are both old friends of ours, so our relations are easy and comfortable. M arrived hours before me and was already enchanted with our friend's beautiful and delicate little girl. She is a scrawny thing, especially compared to my sister's more robust child, and at 4-months she looks rather like a newborn, shaking, small, fragile. She is the spitting image of my dear friend C, especially around her sparkling little eyes -eyes that haven't quite decided yet if they will be blue or brown. And she already chatters, squeals and babbles up a storm, and seems certain to become a talker like her mother. J has taken to playing guitar for his little one while she swings away in the Graco. The baby stares at him all the while he plays, mesmerized and calm. C says that J has become more creative since their girl came to stay. I hope the same happy accident occurs in our home. I know how much M loves to play guitar. It would give me such joy to watch him share his small and precious pleasures with his children.

J and C love their daughter with a profound, everlasting love that is apparent on their faces when they look at her. I have a million photographs as evidence. J is not an overly expressive fellow, but with his daughter he is all wide-eyed grins and silly faces. And C is a natural mother, as I would have expected. She made the job look easy and fun, although not without its complications and difficulties (having to trudge off to work being the worst of them...I do not look forward to that one bit).

All told, we both returned to Portland a little more settled in our decision to allow a grubby little wild card into our neat, orderly, easy-going lives.

Big thanks to my friends and family for all the encouragement. We'll see if we can make this work...