Dangermond.org

We’re here – stuck in Indianapolis – I said this to the cashier today: we’re trying to get out, and she said why? If I have to tell you then you wouldn’t understand is what I thought but didn’t say. We got a duraflame log from the front desk and lit it in our fireplace. The biggest news around here was that we moved Tin’s schedule up by a half hour because it was too late for us in the evening. Woo hoo.

I bought an electric menorah at Target today. We lit the candle of the second night of Hanukkah via a flickering bulb that sits in our window overlooking the parking lot and the HVAC system. Joy to the world.

But we had us some fun despite. Tin is totally into the dogpile custom in our household so when I was on the floor then T laid on top of me then Tin came and laid on top of both of us. Dog pile!

Most likely we’re not going to get sprung from the midwest until next week sometime – as they say across the U.S. – get used to it.

Anyway, major accomplishments this week include but are not limited to Tin is going to bed without fanfare as of the last 24 hours, we say night night and do our ritual of reading, kisses, elephant lullaby and put him in his crib. Tin is drinking his formula and eating food like a champ – the effects of nutrition are amazing. Tin eschews store bought toys for remote controls, boxes, and magazines. Tin received two new books from Hanukkah Harry today – Goodnight Moon and Are You My Mother? and reading before bedtime began in earnest. Tin’s dry skin is being creamed away, his hair is growing like a weed now that he is off the Hawaiian Punch, and the other tooth he was cutting is starting to break the skin – hallelujah!

On the other hand, glamour has fallen from our grasp – T is running around with baby spew on her pipis, my tired eyes are a dead give away I am not getting sleep, Tin has gone from dressing pretty spiffy to this evening chilling in his pipis with a shirt and bib on, and we have come to prefer the inside of these four walls to venturing out to someplace like the swanky sushi restaurant in town.

It’s not even been a week since Tin came into our lives and yet, I can’t imagine him not being here.

Li Po

There is the watery, uneasy feeling, that one has been there before, has encountered that reservoir of emotion, some other year, under one’s fingertips if one could only remember when and where; and how often of late I find myself seeking it in the utterly useless as if I were, as I sometimes feel myself to be, the ancient Chinese poet gazing at the moon’s reflection and longing for comrades of old from the other side of the mountains. Having been or having thought myself to be committed to the useful, I now find myself wandering into patches of sunlight for no reason but to be there, looking down for long stretches at the arrangements of moss on stone, floating on my back in a pond looking up at clouds. Uselessness is the purview of the very young and very old whose gift is the finding out of these reservoirs—even time falls off the edges, unrelated to anything and especially not to you.

MARTHA RONK

It seems in every culture there is a saying like this Jewish one: “A child arrives with manna under his arm” and there is another saying that seems universal like this one from Montenegro, which a dear friend sent from Croatia: “A glass of bitterness comes with a spoon of honey.” Or there is a Turkish one my father used to say: “From the blackest night comes the brightest day.”

I’m feeding Tin mush, changing his diaper, and rocking and kissing him. Days ago, I was feeding my mother mush, changing her, rocking and kissing her. My greatest loss yielded my greatest gift.

While I keep trying to stop and take stock, sitting in the tub with Tin last night, T on the floor next to us, and knowing that the moments when his little hands curl around my index finger are short lived, remembering the moments when I could kiss my mother would pass quickly too, I can’t help feel my heart is stretching beyond its girth, my thoughts floating above their level, and my life’s book is being written for me based on older passages from books older than me.

I was walking through Target for yet my umpteenth baby necessity run (there is another list started already – been there so many times my bank called thinking it was fraud) – and I turned onto the pet food aisle and had this sudden attack of missing Loca. Last I heard she was curled up in the Womb chair and had chewed the note of condolence that a friend had sent. She misses me and I miss her! One time when my mom was housesitting, she tripped and fell in the bathroom and Loca curled up next to her just like this and stared into her eyes until she got up. She never could get over that – neither can I!

This child wants to go home and so do we!!!

We are trapped like rats out here in Indianapolis awaiting clearance to go home and learned this afternoon there is yet another glitch – another piece of paperwork that we don’t have that we require to leave the state and go to our state – so today, the son of our Indiana attorney took us to Shapiro’s – a Jewish deli – and brought his menorah so that Tin could have his first Hanukkah and receive his first Hanukkah gift – a truck, his first boy toy.

December 11, 2009

1. Taurus (4/20-5/20)

   The speed at which you’re experiencing some surprising emotional shifts should give you pause.

In the adoption we were working on before Thanksgiving, we ran into federal con artists, and Bob Marley came up as the patron saint of the birth father.  I am not going to hold that against Marley. I found this Jimi Hendrix tee shirt at Target and since Tin likes to shake his butt so much just like his Mommy, music will be our universal language.

I watched Colin Powell speak at a conference a few years ago where he was talking about the great new digital world. He said his grandson sits on his lap when he is working on the computer and at 3 years of age, his grandson is now hardwired for the future.

Watching Tin Skype with T’s mom in Croatia made me me think of this wonderous world – an infant boy is introduced to me via an Iphone photograph and then on Skype sees the grandmother he has yet to meet – no matter what you think of the digital age – we’re in it.

The night T received the phone call that my mom had passed, I was sound asleep in New York and T was hosting her final Spanish film class at the LaLa. Right at the moment the call came, T and her students were watching Almodovar’s Habla Con Ella. The scene takes place during WWI:

Katerina: hablando sobre su futura obra de ballet “Las trincheras”

“Cuando se muere un soldado; emerge de su cuerpo su alma, un fantasma; y esto es una bailarina. Lleva un tutú, clásico, blanco pero tiene macha de sanfre; en rojo. De la muerte emerge la vida. De lo masculino emerge lo femenino. De lo terreno emerge lo etéreo, lo impalpable, el fantasma.”

For nine months, as Tin was struggling to start his life, mom was struggling to end hers. And although my mom always told me she was never going to be a babysitting grandma, nor be called grandma, I know she and my son are tied together eternally. So when I’m rocking him in my arms, I talk to my mom constantly.

Habla con ella – Talk to her.

Katarina is speaking about her future ballet and says when a soldier dies, his soul rises from his body like a phantom, and that is the ballerina. The ballerina wears a tutu, white, classic, but it is covered in blood. From death comes life. From the masculine emerges the feminine. From earthly emerges the eternal, the impalpable, the phantom.

Like a Spanish friend told me – Alucinante! Se me ha puesto la carne de gallina. [Amazing, you have just given me goose bumps]