whiskey in a teacup . com

A despicable heat has descended upon Boston, with the result that Leif and I have drastically reduced our time spent outdoors.  Today this was making us both restless, so we went for a drive around town, reasoning that it even if it wasn’t exactly better than being stuck in the house, it was at least different.  Midway through our trip he started to protest, so I pulled over into the parking lot of a Dunkin Donuts and discovered that his diaper was wet.  I then set about the harrowing task of changing him in the backseat of the car with my ass sticking out of the open door, hoping the guy in the box truck next to us wasn’t planning to back out anytime soon.  After performing this task, I was dripping with sweat, so I packed Leif back into his carseat and decided to go through the drive-through for an iced drink.  As I started the car he began to wail.  Thinking quickly, I queued up some music, and within ten seconds the intro to “Night Moves” had lulled him back to a state of calm.  The notion of my sweet little baby finding comfort in a crass tale of emotionless teenage screwing is pretty hilarious.

On a related side note, for the first few weeks of Leif’s life I would try to sing him lullabyes to get him to nap, but two things kept happening: 1) I realized I don’t know the lyrics to any lullabyes and 2) literally the only song I could think of, every single time I wanted to sing, was “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” by The Band.  If that weren’t stupid enough, I couldn’t even remember the lyrics in sequence, so I would just sing him the same few mangled verses over and over.  He seemed to like it well enough, but what the hell?  I guess the fog of new parenthood had temporarily disabled the very large portion of my brain normally reserved for song lyrics.

In any event, it’s reassuring that he already shows a clear preference for rock and roll.  Though it’s weird that, with any luck, a lot of the music he’s into when he’s older will be stuff that came out not just before he was born, but before his parents were born.

We drove up to New Hampshire yesterday to visit some friends, and on the way back I forced Jared to play 20 Questions (or, really, Infinite Questions) with me to pass the time.  It took him several dozen questions to guess that I was thinking of a golf ball.  It then took me less than ten questions to guess that he was thinking of South African actor Sharlto Copley.  Jared’s analysis of the situation was that Sharlto Copley was “too easy”.  Easier than a fucking golf ball?  Feh.  Full disclosure:  We have a bit of a running gag involving Sharlto, but STILL.  I am the best at 20 Questions, or at least notably better than Jared.

At some point there was also a discussion that ended with us singing “I found my thrill on Hamburger Hill“, but the less said about that the better.

I hit a rough patch shortly after Leif was born; I wouldn’t call it post-partum depression, because I don’t think hormones had anything to do with it.  My family was being terrible towards me.  My friends, on the other hand, were wonderful–coming to visit the baby and loving him instantly–but their goodness threw my family’s awfulness into unbearably sharp relief.  All day my predominant thoughts were “No matter how hard you’ve worked, no matter what anyone tells you, you come from shit, don’t ever forget it.”

Then there was my little medical mystery, there was adjusting to being unemployed, and trying to study for classes while taking care of a newborn.  There was the guilt of my good fortune, and the resultant anger at myself for not being able to enjoy that good fortune.  I can’t really find the words to describe how I was feeling.  I would look at my son, and instead of feeling joy and reveling in his beauty, I simply felt a profound, excruciating hopelessness. I’ve been low before, but I’ve known few experiences as cruel as that.

It got better, for various reasons, and on the balance things are great.  But last night my father once again violated the estrangement that I have tried to maintain for the past nine years, and I lost it.  After a very brief conversation, I was not just shaken but literally shaking with rage.  I punched the nearest door for a bit, then collapsed onto the floor and wailed, and then, in an instant, realized how many minutes and hours and years I’ve spent feeling this way because of him, and I stopped it.

Leif wasn’t in the room to see me freak out, and of course he’s too young to remember things yet.  I know he’ll see me get angry and he’ll see me make mistakes, but there’s a certain line that should never be crossed with children.  Children should not be made to feel afraid that their parents have lost control, or that their safety and security are compromised by a parent’s anger.  That leads to a kind of pain and fear that never, ever goes away, and knowing that truth as well as I do, I would die before inflicting it upon my son.

Sometimes I’m afraid that I’ll go crazy one day, that the genetic odds are so stacked against me that it’s inevitable.  Sometimes I wonder what the ratio of nature to nurture really is, and if I can keep Leif from inheriting the family curse.  For the most part, I believe in the concept that other people can’t make you feel this way or that way, and that you are responsible for your own reactions.  I’m not sure if that entirely applies in the case of an abusive parent-child relationship that spans decades, but let’s say that it’s up to me not to become violently enraged no matter what my father does or says.  I can’t.  I’m not a good enough person.  In that way, I carry on his shameful legacy.

So the solution is what it was nearly a decade ago when I left his home:  to cut off contact completely and permanently.  Many times, my pity for his dismal situation has lead me to see him or talk to him, to question my decision to cut him out of my life.  But as the years keep passing, he’s not changing and neither am I.  There’s an idealized notion that with enough time, all wounds can heal; that you can ultimately let go of the past.  I can’t let go.  I can forgive and gain perspective, but I can’t let it go.  What I can do is try my damnedest not to perpetuate it, despite the terror and self-loathing, and do what everyone claims they’re going to do and give my child a better life than the one I was given.

I blather at length so there’s a public record, however meager, of my intention to try my hardest every day, forever.

Leif’s umbilical cord stump fell out yesterday (just one of a series of events that left me sobbing inconsolably in the fetal position!), and I wasn’t ready to throw it out right away so I set it down on the table.  Later in the day I walked into the living room and asked Jared what he thought we should do with it.  It so happened that just before entering the room I had grabbed a handful of trail mix from the kitchen and, immediately after my query, put a dried cranberry in my mouth, inadvertantly leading Jared to believe that I was eating the stump.  The really funny part of the story is that he didn’t seem particularly shocked or disgusted, just vaguely confused.

While making plans to meet my mother for lunch, I suggested a town that’s roughly midway between us.  “That’s pretty far for me,” she said.  “It’s pretty far for me too,” I replied.  “I’m too nervous,” she said.  Then I recalled that my mother does not drive on highways or certain major thoroughfares.  When she was eighteen she was in a car accident in which she was ejected from the driver’s seat with her foot stuck under the gas pedal and dragged a ways before the car came to a stop.  When I was a kid we would take weird circuitous routes to get places so she could avoid the scarier roads.  As a result I am a very cautious driver (that’s good!) and have a very difficult time being driven by other people (that’s bad!).

My estranged father called me last night; he had things to say that I was willing to listen to, but he infuriatingly chose to open the conversation with a casual, “Hi, let’s get together sometime!” type of attitude that completely denied the many, many years of devastation and distance that mark our relationship.  When he expressed that, despite having been a hateful and selfish parent throughout my life he wanted to be “involved” with my baby, I responded with something along the lines of, “I often wonder what fucked up genes I’m passing on to the baby from you, and how I’m going to avoid hurting him the way you hurt me and the way your father hurt you.  That’s how you’re fucking involved.”  It was actually one of the least painful and more produtive conversations we’ve had, which tells you something about why I choose to be estranged in the first place.

On my way home from work today, the song “Lady Willpower” by Gary Puckett and the Union Gap came on the radio.  I was jamming along, as you do, when I was struck by duel realizations.  1) Every time I hear that band’s name, I say to myself, “Gary Puckett and the Anion Gap!  Haha!  Someday I will share my hilarity with the world.”  Like, I think it’s pretty funny, but let’s call a spade a spade here:  it’s a lab values joke.  And I’ve been making it to myself, consistently, for years.   2) The lyrics to “Lady Willpower” are vaguely threatening, and the concept of the song roughly translates to, “You’d better fuck me now, because I’m tired of waiting.”  I’ve been singing along to this song for years, since I was just a young girl in the wilds of central Massachusetts, and that sinister undercurrent never occurred to me before.  If you watch the aforelinked video, you’ll notice that dude’s eyes are sort of…rapey.  They make you want to say, “No, Mr. Puckett, I will not let you give me yours.”

Reflecting upon this, I thought about some of the other hits in Puckett’s catalogue.  Obviously there’s “Young Girl”, which is more blatantly pervy but always struck me as okay because, like, he’s turning her down!  He’s not going there!  But then if you listen a little more closely, you notice that he has actually already hit that, and “now” it hurts to know the truth.  Hm.   Later in the song he desperately implores his own personal Dolores Haze to leave “before I change my mind”.  Woah there, stallion!  Are you a gentleman or aren’t you?  You aren’t.  Maybe this could have been overlooked back in the sixties, in the era of free love and whatnot, but if you watch this video you’ll see that Puckett is still singing this song today, only now he’s all old and has a bouffant and it’s that much more unsettling.  Apparently at some point he stopped worrying about how Young the Girl was and penned “This Girl is a Woman Now,” possibly the ickiest ode to taking a chick’s virginity I’ve ever heard.  “She cried a single tear?”  The hell?  There’s not supposed to be any crying in sex, Puckett…unless you’re, you know, doing it with a “baby in disguise.”  And let us recall, Gary, that I am someone who recently publicly defended Roman Polanski…and even I think you’re gross.

I could go on, but I’ll leave on this note:  “Woman, Woman” is the same goddamn melody as “Young Girl”…but it does appear to be about someone who at least has grass on the field.

Last night I dreamed that the baby was a collection of sock-puppet snakes and that his kicks were the snakes’ way of telling me how to handle the nefarious stranger I had just met at Target.  Fortunately, his kicking was so persistent that it woke me up and took me out of that inane plotline.

Today we had a prenatal appointment, and it was the extra-crappy one where you drink a bottle of sugar water so they can screen you for gestational diabetes.  The drink made me feel sick (and caused a minor argument because Jared thought I was yelling at him when in fact I was jumpy from the sugar).  While waiting in the exam room for the midwife to come in, I decided to pee (in the bathroom, that is).  When I came back, the midwife had arrived and Jared was telling her about my various near-fainting spells over the previous weeks.  “Oh, I’m much better now,” I said with a confidence that verged on boastfulness; “I’ve been taking iron and things are fine!”

Several minutes later I was struggling to maintain consciousness as I was hit by a grotesque wave of nausea and dizziness and my vision started to go black.  I mentioned my plight, and for the next couple of minutes I lay there like a useless, sweaty lump while the midwife put cool compresses on my forehead and somehow managed to turn me onto my side (I heard her asking me to turn over, but couldn’t quite make sense of the request).  Jared took my hand and announced that my palms were wet; a nurse took my blood pressure, which was 72/48 (down from 110/70 when I first arrived).

I recovered quickly and was able to stand up and leave shortly thereafter, and it really wasn’t a big deal at all.  (I was able to complete a forty-minute workout last night, so I am really not as pathetic and dainty as it may seem.  I am just occasionally pathetic and dainty.)  In fact, the only reason I’m even mentioning this is because I’ve made the tough decision to add a second theme song to this pregnancy.  I don’t know why I like or even know this song, and it could do some serious damage to my credibility, but I’ll take the easy way out and blame it on “the hormones”.  So, let it henceforth be known that the official wiatc.com Blacking Out or Nearly Blacking Out While Pregnant Theme Song is “Low” by Flo Rida!  You might have thought lyrics like

she hit the floor, next thing you know
shorty got low low low low low low low low

were about sexy girls “dropping it like it’s hot”, as the young kids like to say, but to me they will always be about falling and/or lying down as my blood pressure plummets to dangerous levels.  In much the same way as my mother constantly tells me about the nightmares she had after seeing E.T. while pregnant with me, I hope to one day bore my son with frequent re-tellings of this hilarious tale.

Posting has been light around here lately, mostly because my mind has been occupied with one particular thing for the past couple of months.  So let this day live in infamy, for today I announce my pregnancy to the internet at large!  (You can picture the baby, all two and a half inches of it, brandishing a spear and shouting “THIS.  IS.  UTERUS!” in the manner of the dude from 300, if it helps you.)

I am twelve weeks along, and today we had the surreal pleasure of seeing the little one on an ultrasound screen, bouncing and shimmying around and apparently amusing itself verily.   It would push off with its little feet, float around, sink back to the bottom, wave its hands around, and do it all over again while we gazed at it and laughed.

Please enjoy Road to Nowhere, the official theme song of my pregnancy thus far.  I play this for my little passenger sometimes, and though I don’t know if he/she can hear it yet, I know he/she is dancing away in there.

Six years ago today I showed up on Jared’s doorstep for our first date.  Save for business trips and the occasional sulk, we’ve been together pretty much every day and night since then.  About two years ago we got married, so that anniversary is the one we celebrate now, but this date remains just as significant to me.

I don’t know if it’s possible to love someone more and more each day, as the platitude goes, but I notice a definite increase every few months or so.  Jared is my partner in everything, a continuous source of laughter, a balm for my open wounds, and the only person in the world whose presence makes me feel more like myself.  I just plain wouldn’t be who I am if not for him.

Dig it!

I let myself get worked up by this song* before bed, and was startled awake at 2 a.m. by a terrible nightmare:  I had been in a horrible screaming fight with a family member, and to escape the chaos I propelled my wheelchair (I don’t think I was disabled, but with dream logic, who can tell?) outside.  Once on the sidewalk I pushed down on the joystick, and suddenly the chair took flight, and away I soared, as fast as I could.

*Forgive me this transgression into teenage girlness, but if you’ve got sorrowful family dynamics like I do, that song is pretty darn cathartic.