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Archive for the Vitals Category

Blog Break #17,000,002: Catalina

21. July 2010 by PB Rippey.

What’s not to like?

Much stimulating fun for the toddler—

and his parents.

Ocean breezes.

Fascinating California history, such as Zane Grey’s Pueblo Hotel (haunted by the author, I was informed—I can see why he wants to stay—he never missed a dawn if he could help it, watched the sea come alive).

Views everywhere.

Clear water.

Put the toddler to bed? No, no, no. Put him in his pajamas, then put him in his stroller and meander the waterfront to the pavilion, to watch the night divers and the bonfires on Descanso Beach. Once the toddler is lulled to sleep by the stroll, snoozing peacefully, covered by his favorite blankie, stop for ice cream, sit, watch boat lights twinkle, relax, holds hands, be happy.

Return to wonderful Catalina house and drink champagne with good friends (on Catalina, the toddler can be transferred from stroller to bed with no wake-ups whatsoever)—champagne so smooth and Cadillac it doesn’t give you a hangover and you can rent those several golf carts in the morning with your bloody-mary’s-in-plastic-cups-toting-friends and utterly enjoy your last hours on the island.

That’s Catalina.

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Baking—With A Rolling Pin!…

15. July 2010 by PB Rippey.

I’ve been utilizing the Weelicious recipe site of late. I’ve tried the Breakfast Bread Pudding, which my finnicky toddler actually enjoyed and asked for seconds (which he got once mama recovered from her heart attack and picked herself up off the floor). I made the Baked Zucchini Coins, which were delicious, although (grrrrr!) the toddler didn’t think so (luckily his dadda did). I baked the Pizza Muffins, which once again were a hit with the dadda, especially since I substituted tofu cubes for the chicken the recipe called for. The toddler? He licked the tops of two muffins with a suspicious look on his face, took one bite and asked for jello.

Today’s venture is Carrot Snack Sticks, which look beautiful in the picture on the site and which, around here, will be Carrot Dinner Sticks. I was very excited to use a rolling pin that I found in my havoc-of-cooking-implements kitchen cabinet. Can’t remember when or why I bought it, but how nice to have it at my fingertips! The toddler “washed” dishes while I prepared the recipe, adding about 5 times the amount of parmesan cheese due to my experiences with flour’s power to bland, bland, bland. I also added about 3 or 4 more tablespoons of vegetable oil than the recipe calls for. I’m wild, man! I’m crazy!

As I expected, the sticks did not look like the chef’s picture when they came out of the oven.

But T ate 1. Then asked for milk. Then he ate another. And I’m sure he’ll eat the watermelon slice I’m keeping out of sight as he ponders the remaining carrot sticks before him (hopefully he’ll eat more). So tonight’s dinner: Carrot Sticks, watermelon and milk. Not bad. Ha ha ha!

As I’ve mentioned incessantly, my toddler is a finnicky eater. Compared to other toddlers I know, those who only eat dry cheerios, for instance (so sorry for those mothers), he’s great. But for me each meal is a challenge in keeping cool, not worrying, not taking that rolling pin and using it to pound the many pillows on my bed as I silently scream my frustation when he refuses a recipe, any recipe, even the tried and trusted ones. Instead, I take the pin with both hands, bring it behind my head and commit 50 french presses. Right on! Cooking that’s good for the triceps, or whatever that area of arm is that waves like a banner in the wind. Ah, PB—you were born for motherhood! Peace and be well. And remember that the pediatrician told you not to worry—unless T starts losing weight from finnickiness and so far he’s way too chunky for that. Keep on cooking!

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A BIG PS. After writing this post I noticed a burning smell. The 2nd batch of Carrot Snack Sticks were destroyed. I didn’t hear the timer. Too bad, because the longer I left the sticks on his tray, the more he eventually ate. Back to the rolling pin!

Posted in Usual Drama?, Vitals | Print | 1 Comment »

Oh, PB—You’re So Transparent…

6. July 2010 by PB Rippey.

Why does having a new cell phone make me feel so content? It’s not an iphone. It’s not even smart, just—the sort of super-basic model that no one would ever want to steal. But there’s no static when I make or receive calls, the kind of ear-wrenching, in-your-canal static that makes people scream and swear they will never speak to me again until I get a new cell phone. My phone does not disconnect every few seconds. My phone has colorful wallpaper depicting a tropical reef that instantly transports me to—I don’t know, let’s frikkin’ say Kauai, every time I look at it. My phone’s ring is a Latin woman singing a lazy bossa nova. I don’t know who the artist is. I don’t know what her words mean. I only know she makes me smile when I hear her voice, which reminds me of margaritas on the rocks. Now, when I call people, I cut them off before they can berate me to get a new phone. I yell: IT’S A NEW PHONE! Their suspicions are put to rest as the conversation continues with me babbling on about how there’s no static. Ha ha! No static! And I won’t cut out on you, either! I add, waiting for cheers, which might or might not come. And someday, I tell everyone, my phone will have a bluetooth piece for company (to which I might receive an oooh or ahhh in reply, but that’s only if it’s my mother, who has no idea what bluetooth is or why it would have a piece). Yes. I heart my phone. Is that wrong? Or just—millenial? Am I a millenial girl? Can I be millenial without a bluetooth piece? What does millenial really mean and why am I writing about it when I have a tiny hour alone at home until the toddler and his dadda return? Why am I writing about my new cell phone and its tropical features instead of—ah. Caught ya! Avoiding my novel editing. Again! Well, you listen up, PB, and listen well (no static here!)—no phone for a week unless you stop blather-blogging this second, pull up your novel and get to work! Yes, Ma’am. And don’t call me Ma’am! Yes, um—Lady Gollum. Well, now! That’s better. Gollum. Gollum. Gollum. (Note to Self: Do not ever show this post to husband or son…)

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Really? Zzz…

20. June 2010 by PB Rippey.

Two and a half years later:

T sleeps until 7:00a.m. (vs. 4:30/5:00a.m. Maybe even a 3:40a.m. something or other frisky number that goes like this: MAMAMAMAMAMAMAMAMAMA!!!—followed by a tip-toe-tap-dance only toddlers can execute that early—or ever)…

Then, for several consecutive days, our son sleeps until 6:20 a.m. S and I are agape, totally disoriented, muttering bits like: “Rabbit hole? Us? Down it? Quantam Physics? Da Vinci Code! Miracle? What is going on!”

Then (gasp!) 7:40a.m.—a new record! I kept peeking in T’s room to see if he was breathing, if the cat was on his head, if if if. He looked happy, utterly content in sleep, in his all-nighter-well-into-the-morning snooze. I closed his bedroom door and raced (quietly) to the kitchen, where my husband had the morning pancakes on hold. We covered our mouths, jumped up and down (quietly), obviously expressing joy, hope. “I can—maybe, of course, just maybe, if this keeps up—work out in the morning again!” my husband whispered. “And you–you can GET MORE SLEEP and? And, pb, and??? You can write!” “Shh!” I responded with clearly spastic gestures. “For the love of Diego’s baby jaguar, don’t say anything else! Shh!”

There is a reason sleep deprivation is used as a method of torture.

There is a reason poems are not written, novels not edited, words are dolloped on pages vs. forming sentences entire cultures might comprehend. There are no words, or there is one word typed on a blank Word document and it’s all wrong; I can’t read my own handwriting; my hard drive burns out without my backing it up first; I use dictionary.com when I never needed to before (before becoming a mother).

There is a reason why my cell phone has dents, we have 3 loaves of bread in the fridge, the sprinkler was left on for 2 hours, the dashboard of the minivan is so coated in dust I sneeze as I drive T around, I can’t remember names of people I’ve just met or my house numbers. There’s a reason why when 3:00p.m. arrives and I haven’t napped because T hasn’t napped someone might as well have frozen me in carbon like Harrison Ford in not “Star Wars” but that other one and thrown me into a bottomless lake. There is a reason why I am not Louise Hay most days, or—any day(s), except weekends (when co-parenting explodes beautifully and we are a magic trio—and I can sleep in). There is a reason why Dora, or Shrek or Curious George DVD’s can make me cry, or that one toilet paper commercial featuring human and animal babies.

Yet—some clarification: Each second of sleep lost these past two and a half years? Better than a lifetime of eight hours of sleep a night. Or rather: BETTER THAN A LIFETIME OF EIGHT HOURS OF SLEEP A NIGHT. Yes, I shout it out, and I mean it. Because even at my tiredest, my most thereisarhinocerosridingonmyback, I have dug deep, then deeper and grasped dregs of energy that got my a** off the couch, T in the car and us on our way to an outdoor adventure—or maybe the Disney Store. So that one day, when my son is 18 and I am staring at him in awe, wondering when he grew up, wondering how it is he can be telling me he’s entering NASA’s revamped Space Program, or going to try his hand at growing pinot noir grapes, or declaring he is leaving the nest to devote his life to the fine tuning of deep sea submersibles that will one day link to deep sea state-of-the-art aqua stations where he will study deep sea extreme environments, like those deep sea smoking chimneys that amaze the world and hatch freaky, squirmy otherwordly life forms obviously related to the Tasmanian Blobster, when my son is 18 and in the polling booth next to mine, I can flash on these early years and feel good about myself, know that I tried my best to be present in our family, no matter how hard it is to keep going sometimes. nomatterhowhard…

I wonder if one’s memory returns in force after one gets more sleep—like a flock of homing pigeons, a parade of boomerangs, gas…

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Eternal Snapshots Of The Mental Kind…

13. June 2010 by PB Rippey.

My tooth falling out of my mouth our 3rd hour in kauai, as we strolled down our hotel’s coconut-husk-colored hallway, bemused in paradise, dressed for dinner, relishing the balmy air and tiki torches flaring not menacingly outside the windows. We held hands. I opened my mouth to comment on tropical delights and an upper rear tooth landed first on my tongue, then the hibiscus-blossom-patterned carpet. A dull-white crown. A dull-white crown had broken in half and fallen out of my mouth. We stared at it, then S reached down, plucked it up, handed it to me. I placed my tooth in a pocket of my purse—and on to dinner we strolled in our aloha prints and slightly wilting leis, utterly, completely—sublimely—the epitome of: On Vacation.

Each time I’m forcing myself to rise into another push-up, T kissing my arm, patting my head and saying, “Hi, Mama, hi!”.

Our first family trip to the Los Angeles Zoo, when T was 3 months old. As S gallavanted eagerly from flamingos to gorillas, T riding smack against S’s chest in the Baby Bjorn, looking, absorbing New World, I hung back, furious we hadn’t brought a crowbar to fight off the lions or chimpanzees if there was an earthquake and all the animals escaped. The entire visit I staked out snack bars, administrative offices, or sheds where we might dash for safety when the earthquake hit, certain scenes from “Jurassic Park” vivid in my mind. I vowed never to return to the zoo without a tazer tucked into the baby backpack, or a crowbar hidden in the jogging stroller’s pouch. I hated us for endangering our son’s life. I hated the zoo. I hated it.

Same thing at the Long Beach Aquarium—only no tazer, but a super-quickly-inflating life raft for when all the water gushed from the exhibits due to the glass being blown out by the massive earthquake. Life raft also integral for surfing post-earthquake tsunami to safe, higher ground, like maybe the top of the Long Beach Marriott. Also possible life raft could transport us to the Queen Mary and she could surf the tsunami to a safe harbor. Then I scratched the QM idea. Too “Poseidon Adventure”-ish. Way, way too risky…

T at the foot of the stretcher in his little stripy cap, somewhere between his Mama’s beached-whale calves and ankles as we were wheeled to our room—where S and I stared in shock and awe at our son—staringfeedingstaringfeeding…Such hours! Miraculous and insane…

Waiting for the nap to consume me—T asleep in his room, me in my bed listening to the rain on the roof, watching water filter through the trees outside my bedroom windows, the whole world vaguely musical, sense-making, my house quietly complete.

“Love is the fervor, the dullard, the Elmer’s and the Muscle.” Who said that? Do. Not. Remember. Certainly not an ex-boyfriend. No poet that I know. Not my husband. Bill Clinton? No, no. Sade? Nah. No prophet…Possibly a mommy…Yes. Must have been a mommy—on her first Date Night since giving birth. Yes, yes, I’m quite sure! Said after her first sip of chardonnay in over a year, her first sushi in forever on a gleaming plate before her. She was wearing a maternity dress, secretly grateful that empire waistlines were in style. She was staring at her husband staring at her, both of them fuzzy-brained from lack of sleep, yet—content, and—still basically terrified—not as much, but still feeling the exhausting extreme-terrification that comes with newborns. That is when she said it: Love is the…etc. Her husband reached across the candlelit table and took her hand. They looked deeper into each other’s eyes—and yawned.

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Thank-Q’s…

7. June 2010 by PB Rippey.

I am a grateful, thank-you type, especially since S and T came into my life. Huge, massive gratefulness there, never enough thank-you’s for these 2 miracles.

Then there are the things I don’t notice much—vital little things popping out at me as I’m rushing by with a wet, muddy boy in my arms, reminding me: oh, yes, I must acknowledge these ordinary miracles that keep our lives so rich.

For instance: the bananas hook. Fabulous! I’m so happy to sling my bananas on it rather than have them cluttering up and falling off (to be smushed beyond recognition by my urban-flip flops) the counters in our counters-challenged kitchen. Who thought of this hook business? A sailor? An inmate? Al Gore? They have my gratitude.

The pith helmet! So shade-providing when gardening, and also, since the pith helmet happens to be resting on it: the changing table pad! What marvelous inventions! How lucky I am to own and utilize both, even though my husband hates pith helmets and grimaces whenever I wear mine. “Why are you wearing that hat? You’re not supposed to be able to knock on a hat, unless you’re in construction. It’s all wrong! Ugh!” Huh. I suppose I could say the same when he wears his—his—can’t think of anything he wears that’s hideous. Bugger! Back to the changing pad: lucky that my toddler will lie on it without a fuss! Not so lucky the toddler is not potty trained yet, but thank goodness for the training toilet, not to mention its other uses when the toddler has obviously decided he will wear diapers until he’s a teenager.

And John Leguizamo’s screams as Sid the Sloth in “Ice-Age”. Marvelous! I laugh and laugh. I laugh more than the toddler. Ah, joy.

When I’m lying on my back in T’s room and he’s piling his stuffed animal collection on top of me for the 200th time in 10 minutes, I gaze up at the ceiling and—jellyfish! So pleasant. So Zen inducing when sock monkey is heading for my eyeballs.

Jimmy Zangwow’s Out Of This World Moonpie Adventure never gets old, no matter how many times we read it, and despite my toddler failing to appreciate the voice I use for the Martians. In my Martian voice, I ask my toddler: Why. Are. You. Put. Ing. Your. Hand. O-ver. Mama’s. Mouth… Seriously! Didn’t I used to have a therapist?

Z Bars, cantaloupe and free-from-god-awful-chemicals canisters. And, in the distance, wooden blocks that hold kitchen knives…

Giraffe doorstops.

Glow balls. I mean, come on!: Oooooooh!

Grass.

Hugely original artwork.

And now that I’ve forgotten what this post is supposed to be about, the toddler just now in the bath with Dadda (bedtime O where art thou), it hits me: I love little moments like these, between bath and bed, when I may play with words in the sudden quiet of my bedroom, computer on my lap, finches snoozing in the trees outside the windows, world calming, the calm before the week, the breath between breaths, the jellyfish AND the pith helmet, treasures all—ordinary miracles—one of a kind.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

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Mama’s Day, 2010

14. May 2010 by PB Rippey.

This year, Mother’s Day started the friday before, around 6:30p.m. From my post at the kitchen sink, scrubbing dried ketchup from T’s food tray, I watched my dearly beloved pull up and extract a huge white cage from the passenger side of the car. I slid back the kitchen window so hard it banged. WHAT DID YOU DO! I shouted quite rudely.

I’ve had some experiences with birds. More than one wild house finch has required my rescuing services, the last one just a week ago, when I pulled a youngster from Al’s mouth and T and I rushed it to the Wildlife Waystation in Calabasas. One wing was tweaked, I think tweaked before Al’s mouth tasted it, which is why he was able to catch the finch at all, because when you look like THIS, you don’t move very bird-catcher-cat nimbly. Mostly you lie around licking your large pink belly, when you’re an Al.

WHAT DID YOU DO!

Back when I was a single woman in Los Feliz, I opened my security gate one morning and there he was, Mr. Peabody, my new love, collapsed on the ground at my feet. I rushed him inside, revived him with drops of tap water on his beak and popped him in a cage I had from saving a wild finch who’s leg had been damaged by a pop-up sprinkler and who I’d nursed back to health. In went Mr. Peabody for 3 or 4 years. He died right before I moved in with my (then fiancee) husband, destroying me. I kept him in a small box in our freezer for two years (yes, creepy shades of “A Rose For Emily”), until we moved here, to the Ponderosa, and I was able to give Mr. P a proper burial in our back yard.

WHAT DID YOU DO!

For 2 years my husband couldn’t get over having a dead bird in his freezer—still can’t. He brings it up to friends and colleagues and me, when I mention my missing-of Mr. Peabody…

WHAT DID YOU—oh whatever. Givehimtome, givehimtome, givehimtome now.

Regardless of his whole frozen bird complex, S obviously took to heart how much I miss Mr. Peabody and so he got me Julian for Mother’s Day: a very young, green parakeet I plan on taming and giving free-fly time around here. We’ve hung his cage up extremely high (meaning away from cats) and in a central location, so he can see us coming and going, hear us, hear the TV, the birds outside, can be in on all the wild action in these parts.

THANK YOU!

Our son calls him “baby bird”, said with a mixture of shock and awe every time he stops and looks up at the cage, which is often. “Baby bird!”

THANK THANK THANK YOU!

So for once I didn’t save a bird, but was given a bird and it’s such a different feeling. Part of me feels, well, rude: Oh god–another animal to feed, water and worry about, NO NO NO!!! But that panic passes when I watch Julian explore his food bowl by plopping down in it, or tussle with a rock-hard piece of bagel, or when he emits those cheerful chirps and delights my son. I’m glad he’s here. I look forward to coaxing him onto my finger one of these days, when he decides I’m worth trusting.

Welcome to the Ponderosa, baby bird. Just—live a long time, okay? And prosper.

Seriously, though: Thank you.

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Posted in Ponderosa, Vitals, ANIMAL DRAMA!, BABY BABY | Print | 1 Comment »

LodylodylodyROCKINTHEWATER…

19. April 2010 by PB Rippey.

Last week I sat deep in a canyon next to a rushing creek. I was amazed by the emotion this busy bit of nature created in me. All was concurrently canyon-serene and utterly riotous. The creek was thunder and Zen, a zealot’s feverish telling and a whisper softer than bee-speak. Mind-tweaking. Very.

I sat on the flat, sun-infused boulder, watching T toss pebbles into thunder-bubbles, into the catchy, incessant water-laugh, water-rage. LodylodylodyROCKINTHEWATER, shouted my son. I glanced downstream: more boulders, domed as lazing turtles, pond-greens, canyon shadow so Chumash, so cave and tearing, water precious, dappled skin stretching into slap and roil and rage.

What were my feelings? Loss and bounty. What were my thoughts? Knots and gold beach. Focused, anyway—funneled. What was my name? My son held it in his little hands, felt it, shook it like dice, tossed it to eternity. His eyes found mine and he laughed.

We held hands and climbed up the trail, back into the sun and poppy fields. When he said, Dadda, I knew we’d both been on the same wavelength. Where else would my mind rush to after experiencing such a roughing up? Home. 75 miles South. T was checking in. I nodded at him.

And we moved amicably on to the beach. Low tide. Sweet shush, shush, shush.

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And Then I Scrub The Toilet…

7. April 2010 by PB Rippey.

Married 3 years, parent 2 years and 4 months, homeowner for less than 1 year: these simple facts are still sinking into my everyday reality, like a shoe going slowly down in a thick, bubble-popping bog. I will glance out the kitchen window, marveling at house finches perched blithely on scary-thorny stalks of the rose bushes, or I will study the front lawn the rains have given us, or I’ll clown for my son barefoot in the backyard on that new, luscious lawn and BAM, the shoe is sucked under by bog and I’m left wasted and trembling, thinking: that’s my lawn, my rose bush–I planted it. That’s my rock and my tree root and my leaf dappled walkway. Huh (I muse shakily). I’m married. That’s my child singing the “Little Einsteins” theme song as he waters the beachball. That’s my cobwebbed beam in my living room, my clunking garbage disposal in my kitchen, my birch flooring. I have birch flooring and it’s mine. I am a birch flooring sort of homeowner. I am not renting! (I muse, palms sweating, chills scuttling down my spine) I am not renting! I live in a house, my own house, I own the house. I am happily married and I have a child as wondrous as comets or spring tulips. Wow. Somebody throw me a banana.

The shoe sinks, reality hits and I, a writer, a poet, come up with: Wow. Somebody throw me a banana.

And then I scrub the toilet. Wash dishes. Wipe fingerprints from windows and computer screens. And then I fill a blue plastic bucket with water, place it on the sand and water table outdoors and watch my son go wild splashing. And then I change his diaper, take him grocery shopping or to a playdate or a park or the endlessly fascinating aisles of Target—or I’m teaching about escalators or I’m making him meals I pray he’ll approve of—or I’m riding the exercise bike or I’m paying bills or I’m waiting for him to fall asleep at night, collapsed with a glass of wine and 3 loads of laundered items needing a Puritan folding as “Chariots Of Fire” fills the TV screen and my husband utterly explains his day…

And instead of reeling from stunning, earth renting insight, I start feeling as though we’ve always been this little famly of 3 in our house in pleasantly shushed suburbs we used to scoff at when we were dating and doing radical things like seeing movies in theatres and eating at restaurants. Oh how far we’ve come.

Shoe? I know you’re bogged down, but maybe resurface to sink again if you happen to notice I’m becoming too complacent, too stressed or impatient—because finches on rose bushes, their tiny claws precisely spaced, deftly avoiding thorns sharp enough to be amputation devices—or my son in March light, cometing, vibrant—or my husband enthusiastically mowing our new lawns—such bits should never go unnoticed, never deserve a glance, but a pondering of at least a minute, enough time for a passionate savoring before housework trumpets like a runaway beast and I sink into acquired domesticity.

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Pardon Me…

28. February 2010 by PB Rippey.

O pardon me while I procrastinate Sunday’s blog post by listing books I’ve read so far this year, this 2010 stuff-of-life year, here. Right here:

Parenting Without Stress, Marshall
The Lightning Thief, Riordan
The Informers , Vasquez (yep. for book club. yep…almost didn’t survive that one…)
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Diaz (I survived, I definitely survivied—barely…)
Finding Wisdom , Bleyl (first 4 pages and then I just———————-)
The Help, Kathryn Stockett (just started for book club)
Parenting Without Power Struggles, (powerless to start)
Dearest Creature, Amy Gerstler (the cover of this book is creepy and wild, the first poems especially thrilling in a thrillingly dark manner that gets under your skin and simmers, even if you’re not sure you want to be so affected…too late!)
New Yorker each week (thanks, Pater)
Toddler Bistro , Schmidt (almost every day, despite regularity of cooking many of the recipes—I should know them all by heart by now! But I don’t sleep much—synapses/firing mechanisms on the fritz—how I love this book, it’s baked tofu and baked chicken strips and baked squash and all those other things I can’t remember, but that are so easy to bake…)

Moving on to:

The Pioneer Woman
Finslippy
The Women’s Colony (I like their rooms)

Facebook (doesn’t count, really—like calling The National Enquirer literary canon fodder)

Tea leaves (actually coffee grounds—not that I discern much from them except horrible-tasting-coffee-crunch bulls*** with my morning Joe)

Multiple lists scribbled on torn-from-crap bits: grocery, daily, weekly, life lists, most mildewing in my infernally bottomless purse with the month old goldfish crackers that spilled there and joined the 1/2 eaten and the wadded and the stuff Suze Orman would chastize me for and the simply too, too scary to ever bring to daylight again—better to throw purse away, into a dumpster with ghastly non-plumb-able depths).

The Sunday LA Times, sometimes–and then mostly the Arts and Whatever section and crossword and——inserts…

And then of course I’m always reading, trying to read, hoping to interpret, obsessively returning to this endlessly fascinating subject that I couldn’t, in my wildest dreams, make up on my own. He’s so, so aliiiieeeeeeve! Dancing around the house with thumps and vocals! Concocting hysterical sentences! Experimenting with spitting! Waking up at 5am! HUGGING me spontaneously! I’m part reader, part fan, part interpreter, part author (!!), part plagiarist (this blog), part editor-in-CHIEF, part cheerleader, part extremely important authoritarian figure trying to get it right, a part of his burgeoning novel. Little guy! S*** he’s heavy.

photo by Rachelle Mama, who is about to have her second baby. Taken in Joann Mama’s back yard, where she has trouble with eagles attacking her kiddie pools.

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The Problem With Going Home…

25. January 2010 by PB Rippey.

That officially unrecorded song by anon (performed only a few times in dark, semi-smoky locations reeking of spilt beer and wrinkled pimientos before anon’s band became snarling strangers to one another and broke up) plays constantly in my head as we’re hitting the beaches, the harbor, the courtyards, the parks in the early a.m.—parks, beaches, playgrounds 5 minutes from each other—running him, showing him, running after him, strolling him:

Heading into Santa Barbara on a 1/4 tank of gas. Dollar in my pocket, you don’t have to ask me if I’m happy. It’s written in my smile. So the highway captured me, well I turned around. Moon is at my back tonight.

Harbor lights are glowing, there’s a sunset in your eyes. With not a mile between us, you don’t have to ask me do I love you. Loved you all this time. Had a fight with the last horizon. I turned around. Moon is at my back tonight.

Sky to Ocean.

Feel my future open.

I have run from this. Leaving you behind. Had a fight with the last horizon. Turned around. Moon is at my back tonight.

And I want you to know: I’ve loved you all this time.

I want you to know: I’ve loved you all this time.

Cheesy little song. Though apt.

(lyrics reprinted with anon’s permission, because even though she forgets to water plants or remove bagels from the broiler in a timely manner, she actually remembered to copyright her songs)

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Oceans To Write…

15. January 2010 by PB Rippey.

I’ve been getting my fish-facts straight as they pertain to my children’s (middle-grade) novel. Editing for the 50th time (x 50 to the power of WTF) the fish-infused chapters and finding, to my horror, even now, facts I failed to check previously—tucked into my favorite editing place, my bed, while T naps or helps his Dadda wash dishes or is down for the night—editing, editing, gasping when finding an error (fishy, grammatical, or plot-wise)—editing, fingers tapped blue, neck stiffening despite enough pillows to furnish a Harem—still, I realize that apart from being mother and wife, this is what I love to do: Get my brain-screams on paper, then edit them into readable screamage. I could do it for hours. Weeks. Longer.

Fear lurks, though, like a moray eel slowly hunting in color-matched corals: Each time I edit, I make the story better—so even though the novel is ‘finished’, is it ever really finished? I wake up in the middle of the night muttering, GILLS, OF COURSE, GILLS, WHY DIDN’T I THINK OF THIS BEFORE, GILLS, GILLS, GILLS! If you were familiar with the heroine of my novel, GILLS would make perfect sense—and had you actually read my novel before I woke up muttering GILLS and inserted GILLS into the story appropriately, you would have thought to yourself: Huh—for the love of sea turtles, why the heck didn’t the author use GILLS in this novel? Yep. Fear.

I suppose there’s more fear, like: My novel never getting published…But that’s such a boring fear. Booooooring. As my friend L, a-real-live-NYC-actress reminds me: It’s a numbers game! You have to hang tough and keep marketing (yourself) if you believe in your material.

In between marketing and responding to LET ME SEE IT PB requests after certain agents read my (freqently more and more) mass-marketed query letter, I edit—I improve my novel and its fish-factiness. And I take my son to the beach and show him what inspires me and what I hope thrills him. I fill his bookshelves with ocean: Have I told you (I ask him, pulling out a well-illustrated, marine science-y little number) about the roughhead blenny? Come! Sit in Mama’s lap and take a look at THIS, my boy, my sweet, my precious love-cup! Ha ha!

Then back to the pillows, until what I read and edit and create loopy marginalia around puts even me to sleep and dreaming about unicorn fish and mantas that sing. To marketing, to marketing, jiggety-jig.

NOTE:

These amazing photos were taken by our dear friend, Mark Snyder, owner of starknakedfish.com. Mark spends much of his life under water, surfacing for the lecture circuit, or to travel to another exotic dive spot, or to hang out on research boats shooting, shooting away into spectacular sunsets. His website is a beautiful place to visit—like stepping into a tranquil aquarium. His innovative way of lighting the world beneath the waves never fails to ignite the imagination of ocean-nerds like myself.

starknakedfish.com

www.pbrippey.com

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On Things Growing Around Here…

18. December 2009 by PB Rippey.

If you look closely (since the zoom on our camera has frozen and I am unable to procure zoomy shots these days), beyond the cactus and hibiscus leaves there seems to be green at long last in the front yard. I am hopeful, anyway. During the last rainstorm I was outside hurling grass seed hither and thither frantically, thinking: This is it! This is our chance for a lawn! I did not wake up to a verdant Home & Garden type scape the next morning, nor many mornings since all that wonderful rain, however this morning—well, the yard was full of surprises.

The backyard, too, shows promise—the green sprouting there is quite luscious. I am hoping it will infect all 6,000 sq ft or so of land comprising the toddler’s playground, replacing the spiky, hurting grass currently in residence.

Bottom line, after having been a boat girl, then city dweller for so, so long I am simply amazed—now that I have my own dirt parcels—that things—you know—GROW. You plant them, and they grow! You give them water regularly and voila: they grow. You don’t even need a spectacularly green thumb for the things to grow. They just do! You feed a toddler healthy food and guess what? Sprouting action all over the place. A miracle! Lovely. Life, life burgeoning across the Ponderosa. I continue to be amazed. The only things that grew on my various boats were book-eating mildew and algae—never exciting.

And where there is life there is also optimism—once I uproot the weeds.

Above is what I believe to be a peach tree (sorry about the blur) though we never saw any peaches this past summer. I was told by someone who knows about such things not to panic when the leaves started falling off, that the tree was going to sleep and would hopefully wake up in a fruit-producing mood at some indeterminate time in the next California Spring. I was also advised to “cut back” the branches. After Googling this process, I’ll take it on myself to do the cutting since my husband—advised to “cut back” what we believed to be an apple tree—did this to it:

You said to cut it way down! he protested when I protested. To be fair, what my husband and I know about trees consists of burning them in the fireplaces of vacation cabins…

And so we persevere with cultivating the Ponderosa. In Winter. Spring/Summer will be so interesting, especially if we can build the deck and add the above-ground-swimming-pool. Adventures ahoy, baby! (I tell my baby). Adventures ahoy! (seriously, though, I’m so glad to be a landlubber now vs. the cold, cramped lifestyle chronically swaying sailboats offer one…)

Speaking of growing, S and I will have our 3rd wedding anniversary next week. 3 years, 1 baby and 1 house purchase later, I had no idea I could love him more than I did that day he bent to one knee on guano-spattered La Jolla rock and, as dolphins frolicked in my peripheral vision, proposed. This married-togetherness and parenting stuff—THIS is what my sisters have talked about animatedly in that strange, baffling language, the one formerly-dedicated-Singletons can’t interpret until—until everything.

www.pbrippey.com

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Zoo Parenting 101…

3. December 2009 by PB Rippey.

When you make an excursion to the zoo on a saturday and the weather is gorgeous and it’s the San Diego Zoo so in addition to locals you are in the company of a gazzilion off-season tourists taking advantage of cheap off-season vacation packages—when you are all (tourists, locals, families, random human herds) packed together in a zoo that won’t allow you to walk your kids or strollers on the wide streetways because of the double-decker tour buses constantly motoring by—when you’re forced to walk on narrow sidewalks past the animal exhibits, each exhibit creating instant gridlock, the sun increasingly hotter than the weatherpeople predicted and then there are those gnarly hills, there, at the SD Zoo, red-cheek-creating hills—let’s face it: there are going to be scenes.

My husband and I witnessed many variations on the parenting of uber-hyped-out, tantrum-throwing children of all ages. We paid most attention to toddlers acting out, many by toddling deliberately away from their parents, goofy, gleeful smiles on their faces. Some parents controlled toddler-wanderlust by attaching them to leashes resembling tails of monkeys or elephants. Others had cleverly brought along extended family assigned to race after escapees. The biggest fear at the zoo for parents with small children was not the pacing lion and whether its cage bars were sturdy enough, not the elephant lolling its massive, child-attracting weight against fencing, not whether the foamy-mouthed camels lurched within spitting distance of babies, but whether a toddler was going to dart under the wheels of one of those on-coming tour buses, or vanish forever into the hot-tempered crowds. Many times we heard the following:

GET BACK HERE!

GET BACK HERE NOW!

WE’RE NOT GOING THERE! WE’RE GOING HERE! HERE! HERE!

or the more frustrated version,

NO! NO! NO! NO!

And, eventually, as the heat bore down, as the hills grew steeper, we heard:

GET BACK HERE OR (plus a threat)

GET THE HELL BACK HERE OR (plus a threat)

ONE, TWO, THREE—(with the threat of counting to 5—and then what?)

IF YOU DON’T LISTEN TO ME, I’LL (plus a threat or stuttered gibberish as the parent melted down inconsolably, irrevocably, before God and Man)

The most disturbing meltdown occurred in the Lost Forest, a shady pathway winding past the slumbering hippos in their fantastic 3D pool, up to the tigers (though we couldn’t see them because of the gridlock) in their shady-rocky abode, past the turtles in their glassed-in-pond—hundreds of thousands of swimming turtles—past amazing, colorful birds you’d never see in my backyard (despite the two popular feeders). A woman approached us as we threaded through the crowds. A child was vice-gripped in her arms, a boy (3 years old?) curled to fetal, who knew he was in the vice, had ceased struggling because he recognized struggle was pointless. His mother’s face was bent over his. She was going downhill, we up and somehow this created an eerie time-slow effect so that I heard, clearly, every single word she imparted to her son. As the mother passed me with her large, slow-motion steps, my head turned in slow-motion, my mouth dropped in slow-motion and I watched her land on a bench and keeeeep ooooooon taaaaaalking to that boy as my brain screamed nooooooooooooo in deep, scary, slowed-down-speak. Nooooooooooooooooo.

If you don’t f***ing shut the f*** up you’re gonna f***ing make me f***ing crazy and do you know what the f*** that means?
Like at Granny’s? (responded the offending son)
Oh, you remember Granny’s, huh? YEAH like at F***ING Granny’s, that’s EXACTLY what the f*** I’m F***ING TALKING ABOUT—

And there was more, but I couldn’t listen. I fell back into real-time and sped after my husband and son.

What’s up? asked my husband when, after I made sure T was rapt before the gazzillion turtles, I turned and hugged him—hard. Did you hear that? I stage-whispered into his neck. Did you hear that woman? Hear what? my husband asked and I let it go, told him later, at the hotel, when T was into his pasta and DVD. Oh wow, my husband said and we were quiet, munching our dinner in a shared moment of sadness—and self-reflection.

Because no matter what you witness in other parents, or what horrifying stories you read concerning other parents, stories centered around some type of baby-neglect (like the guy who left his 3 month old in its carrier beside the treadmill in his gym when he was done with his workout and drove on home like he was a single guy and had never been a parent, la dee da, until a phone call from the gym had him screeching the car into a U-turn)—being a parent and therefore experiencing challenges you couldn’t possibly have dreamt of prior to having children precisely because you didn’t have children and couldn’t know, but now that you do know, you totally “get” how a breaking point such as the one I witnessed in Cursing Mama can been reached. You know what it’s like to approach the precipice of a mental-break, to teeter on the complicated cliff’s edge of your sanity, and then scrabble for an alternative—because that’s what you do—you scrabble for the alternative, find it, use it even if it is VERY, VERY HARD to do so, even if it means you CUSS AT A SLOTH instead of your child. I admit that at that awful zoo-moment I wanted Cursing Mama fenced, fenced in, securely, with electrified bars, away from her child—I wanted the zoo’s on-call Parent Meltdown Psychotherapist to whoosh in with her bag of sanity-restoring tips and a zoo margarita sold throughout the grounds. At that moment, I hoped Cursing Mama’s child would make it to 18 yrs. unscarred, because the power struggle occurring between mother and child was too intense and apparently a close second to Granny’s house and whatever the heck went on there. O Cursing Mama! How you scared me, angered me, left me feeling wasted and shaky and grateful for my parenting books—and desperate for a zoo margarita…

We headed for the exit and miniature train ride instead.

And now——this bit more:

Connection Parenting, by Pam Leo
Playful Parenting, by Lawrence Cohen
Parenting Without Power Struggles: Raising Joyful, Resilient Kids While Staying Cool, Calm And Connected, by Susan Stiffelman

Books. They don’t hurt. They can’t help but help, MOST LIKELY.

Tattling Mama over-and-out.

www.pbrippey.com

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Blog Break: Beach Cure For Colds…

22. October 2009 by PB Rippey.

So over sneezing, I decided my son and I needed a Santa Barbara beach cure. I took most of the morning packing: food, clothes, sweaters for the cold, cold North, enough supplies for a week though we were gone only overnight and still I forgot the goldfish crackers, but luckily not the arrowroot cookies and backup sippy cups and extra socks.

In October, my beach is pretty deserted, especially on a weekday. It’s an interesting place to be with no one there—like stumbling into paradise, even though of course I knew exactly where we were going. But the beach is always full of surprises and surprise thoughts and all that beauty—who has time to remember sinus blockage, poor writing habits, pressing goals, housework. All fades when faced with the urgency of beach business.

T busied himself with the rocks we camped next to, later utilizing buckets and a watering can, and then he sat on my lap, snug in a beach towel and munched cream cheese sandwiches as we both gazed at the ocean.

Pelicans dive-bombed the swell. Dolphin fins came and went. Occasionally a beach-walker passed us and smiled our way. The sun inspired a razzle-dazzle from the water. Utterly exciting: all of it.

Next thing I knew over 2 hours had passed. I loaded T into the stroller and we took off up the beach for an hour’s walk. We passed maybe 3 people. The tide was receding into a minus. Starfish were exposed on low, moody-black rock. A small, faintly pink sea urchin was alone in a shallow, sun-warmed tide pool. Crabs shifted in their dark crevices, hidden from the gulls.

Infused with air and sun, I never sneezed. T, already mostly over his cold, sang in his seat. By this time of day both of us are usually passed out in our beds. It was obvious neither of us was going to nap and that neither of us cared.

We stayed until almost 5:30p.m. It’s the best playground in the world, full of constant exploration and the only playground I’ve discovered so far in which my son will come to me for a break, cuddle, content to sit, eat, watch. Beach Magic. I wish it was my backyard.

www.pbrippey.com

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Zuma Procrastinator…

21. September 2009 by PB Rippey.

Zuma again. No man with the seagull on his head—too early in the day for him. But the dolphins are here, poking their heads out of the Fresca ocean (remember Fresca?), taking a quick peek at the loungers on the beach, then moving on. T and S kicked the beachball, filled the toy truck with sand, pulled the wagon around and tested the surf’s temperature all in the first five minutes of making camp.

Since it’s post Labor Day, my husband was convinced tourist and schoolkid traffic would be minimal at Zuma. Wrong. It’s Sunday! Everyone is here. Tourists, schoolkids and Valley Escapees like us as the weather again reaches for the 90’s, stubborn as some old-ish family member who refuses to turn the oven down to a reasonable temperature when cooking the Sunday London Broil, burning it every time.

Yes. A definite desperate attempt at metaphor as I sit in a creaky beach chair in Malibu overcast, trying to jump-start my creativity.

And what is the nagging wariness I feel here on the beach? Why do my eyes shy from those friendly rollers, that mildly churned surf?

I like Zuma—at least, I like Zuma down by lifeguard stand #13. I don’t like Zuma enough to name my next child Zuma—just like I don’t like fruit enough to name a child Apple. Or Kiwi. Or Papaya Banana Jr. But it’s beautiful here. I like it here. Very much. Still…

Truthfully, I’d like a house with a Widow’s Walk for daily private meandering—a quaintly gated widow’s walk—an open-aired, partial-turret of peace. The fins and spouts I’d monitor! The storms I’d predict and await. I’d haul a desk up there, visit it when the moment struck, then back to pacing before an ocean moodier than sky, than anything.

Which is all to say that even though Part I of my children’s novel has yet to be published, I need to start writing Part II. Even though Part I has come maddeningly, gray-hair-inducing close to acceptance, I can’t use its not being accepted (yet) as an excuse for avoiding Part II, which is packed with even more ocean than Part I, with all manner of beasts on land and sea, includes the return of Architeuthis Dux and the emergence of the Tasmanian Blobster (in pre-blob form, of course). I have begun the research, but not the writing. When I look at the ocean, I am reminded of this. And I feel nervous.

More dolphins. The Fresca has transferred from ocean to sky. The ocean, blueing deeply, flips a surfer as a pelican executes a perfect dive. When my son laughs, so do I. And the Mama-in-me kisses the procrastinator goodbye.

www.pbrippey.com

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Smile, smile, smile…

18. May 2009 by PB Rippey.

My dear friend Moot Mommy’s husband, Moot Daddy, was recently laid off. This after a duly diligent (and possibly psychic) Moot Daddy approached his CEO and asked, point-blank, “Am I okay here?”, only to be emphatically assured, “OF COURSE!!!”—but a mere two weeks later? Down came the axe. For Moot Mommy and Daddy it’s a familiar story—many people they know experience similar situations. Suddenly grocery lists grow money-fangs and roar and gnash impolitely, the land line is ditched, COBRA comes into play and the spouses do their best not to turn on each other in moments of extreme WTF. Moot Mommy takes it into the bathroom when she must depressurize the tear ducts. Moot Daddy brings on a few hard laps around the block when he must vent his WTF. They both try very hard to think of the sacking as a blessing—for instance, Moot Mommy is convinced Moot Daddy was never appreciated properly by his Management and since the sacking he’s already had several promising job interviews and been thrown some nicely paying freelance gigs. Well, all righty! Moot Daddy himself admits he wouldn’t mind a change of working venue and a pay raise. Super-duper! They are very positive, Moot Mommy and Daddy, considering they’ve lost half their income and have a toddler entering the need-my-own-swingset phase. I learn from watching them, the way they listen to each other without scorn or exasperation, even when the other is saying something completely ridiculous and irrational, like, “Maybe we should move to Vietnam,” or, “I don’t need health insurance–you and the baby can have the health insurance,” or, “I guess we’ll be eating peanut butter for the rest of our lives.” Following is a little list of Whistle While You Work-ish items Moot Mommy finds extremely helpful in this time of crisis. She passed the list on to me and I’m now going to share it with you:

1. When you wake up, no matter how you feel, smile. Seriously—you have to try it to comprehend the impact smiling when you wake up can have on your entire, entirely unpredictable day.

2. Brush your teeth (hair, not so much—but a clean mouth coaxes the psyche up from that horrid dark lake called The Blues).

3. Shout the word JOY at traffic instead of F***** or F***head or F****** A****** M***** F*****.

4. Remind yourself that you forgive everyone who ever did anything nasty to you. You don’t ever have to condone their behavior, or tell them in person that you forgive them, but do tell yourself, “I forgive everyone. I forgive everyone. I forgive everyone.” (Another trick on old-man psyche, makes him want to put on a dress and flirt shamelessly with his reflection.)

5. Play music. Often. Some personal favs are:

Madonna’s “Ray Of Light”
U2’s “Beautiful Day”
Anything by Jess’ca Hoop—music so weird your psyche doesn’t care what’s happened in the real world, it just wants to listen and pretend to be on LSD.
Jill Scott “Livin’ My Life Like It’s Golden, Golden, Golden…”
Indigo Girls “Closer To Fine”
Fred Neal’s dolphin song (good luck finding it, but if you can…)
Dixie Chicks (so many)
Beethoven’s 9th
Dvorak’s 9th

6. Look at your child(ren). No, I mean: LOOK! Those developing limbs, deft fingers, coconut-white teeth, beautiful, elastic skin. Your gift(s).

7. Flip through your wedding album.

8. Talk to family or friends, or phone, or email, or blather briefly on Facebook—just keep in touch so you don’t feel alooooooooone.

9. Pamper yourself inexpensively (cookies and milk, glass of wine, bath and a book, a new T shirt from Target, a few “minutes” at People Magazine.com)

10. Decrease the caffeine in your morning half-caf coffee (for now).

11. Don’t stop working out.

12. Say this: We have enough money.

13. And this: All is well.

14. Remember: This, too, shall pass.

15. Remember: This, too, is wicked exciting!!! Ha ha!!! (more maniacal laughter as is also good emotional outlet…)

16. Remember: Breathe.

17. Remember: Your therapist has good ideas and has seen plenty of people-in-crisis. Make an appointment to check in.

18. Remember: Tell your husband you love him.

19. Remember: Say, “Thank you.”

And finally, number 20: Remember to remember (somehow).

Thanks, Moot Mommy! Good luck to you, Moot Daddy and Hamlet Jr, my favorite little family. I know everything is going to be just fine (don’t throw that frying pan at my head, Moot Mommy—metaphorically or otherwise: all is well, all is well, all is well).

www.pbrippey.com

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Fire…Again…

7. May 2009 by PB Rippey.

Gallerina Sister took this on her iphone. The power was out everywhere this afternoon, including her gallery, so they shut down and she fled to the Mesa, to Blood Sister’s house: aka Fire Central. What should have been a 10 minute drive turned into an avoidance of city gridlock and deposited Gallerina Sister over 20 minutes later (outrageous for our small town) on a street right above Blood Sister’s. She got out of the car and walked up the precious rise of a view-ridden park—a tranquil, greeny place resembling a little piece of the top of the world. Her legs were still shaky: From her downtown gallery she’d seen flames on the nearby Riviera, enough of the fire to give her a sense of its ferocity—enough to put the shake in her legs. She’d been evacuated from her home the day before, to her surprise. She’d tried to drive up her street and was told “no,” even though official mandatory evacuations hadn’t been made public, yet. Luckily a neighbor was able to grab some clothes and things for her and for her daughter. Luckily she doesn’t have any pets to worry about. Hopefully her house isn’t burning. Blood Sister joined her at the park and they watched the drama for a bit, then retired to Fire Central and watched the Jesusita rage on TV with Blood Sister’s family, Blood Sister’s ex-husband and his dog (also displaced), comfort food and the kind of libations you choose when shock is testing your norms. They’re still watching. This fire, both of my sisters assured me, makes the Tea Fire tiny.

Tomorrow will be interesting. The winds are supposed to abate for the day and the smoke clear until the next sundowner. No one seems to know exactly how many acres and houses have burned. Talk about a reveal…

UPDATE: 5/7/09 Still no word on whether Gallerina Sister and her daughter have a house to live in. The winds will most likely kick up again later today. I can’t watch the news anymore after the reporting on horror stories about animals.
UPDATE: 5/7/09 (still!) Gallerina Sister’s house is standing. She viewed it through a friend’s birding binocs. Her daughter’s boyfriend’s family home, however, gone. Winds aren’t kicking up like yesterday, yet fire rages at the top of the mountain. There is scant local reporting and much confusion. Heartening stories of some animals being beautifully saved.
UPDATE: 5/8/09 The fire has launched in two different directions. People are being evacuated who never, ever thought they would be. If the winds come up again today as expected—-
UDPATE: Click here

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Memory Challenge…

19. April 2009 by PB Rippey.

Oh the questions spewing from my mouth when I was pregnant! I interrogated a couple of seasoned mamas, friends of mine, only to be told by them repeatedly (dazed confusion clouding their eyes), “I’m sorry—I just don’t remember.” What!!! How could they not remember vitals like how many times their babies woke up during the night in the first three months, battles with diaper rash and—so much more. Actually, I can’t remember what the heck I asked them—I had to dredge the banks for what I’ve just written here.

Because I, too, have memory blocks since giving birth, since those first three long, intense, post-C-section months. Though S took digi-cam footage and 3,000 pictures, still I can’t remember actually changing diapers that small, or dressing T in those mini-mitts we couldn’t live without. If I think too much about what I can’t remember, I turn into Tim Robbins in “Jacob’s Ladder,” when his face goes cuckoo every time he passes a mirror.

I have the screensaver on my computer that plays photographs from My Photos. Do you have that? Often, as I’m feeding T, my laptop perched next to me on my perch on the king size bed forever dominating our living rooom, beside which I’ve positioned T’s high chair—as I encourage T to try steamed baby carrots, often my eye is caught by photos wafting across my laptop’s screen, ones taken on or around 11/12/07-ish and I gasp. Who is that woman cradling that urchin? My son was never that small! My ass was never that big, surely! Where did that onesie come from? Oh yeah, his hair was black when he was born—I forgot!!! And there goes my face into “Jacob’s Ladder” mode, sproinging every which way with a sped up “yuk yuk” sound as accompaniment.

After 9 months and 1 week of pregnancy, I became fathoms-lady, swimming slowly through incomprehensible depth: birth, taking T home, calling the doctor 12 times in 3 days, showing up at the doctor’s several times a week, driving, driving (once I was mobile after the C section) to calm the strange and exotic little creature consuming my personal hours—despite all the activity, for 90 days life elongated and slowed Einstein-ish-theorem style. I delve through My Photos and the 5 photo albums I’ve filled in 17 months and I can’t believe the changes. These days, life with T in hyper-drive, we don’t even use Dreft and think nothing of putting him to bed without socks on his feet. “The baby might freeze!” “The baby could receive spinal cord damage if we don’t put extra padding in the jogging stroller!” “Our baby will never eat a french fry!” Those days are all over. Done. Gone. We are experienced parents, now, with memory loss. And I know why. There are studies and facts and findings regarding this memory loss issue that I’m way too tired to research and read (also, I forget to), but I know the bottom-line answer. It is:

f e a r

When you don’t know why he’s scream-crying even after you’ve fed and changed him, don’t know what those tiny red bumps are on his chest, his cold prevents him from breastfeeding easily and you’re terrified he’s going to suffocate AND starve, SIDS, first fever, projectile vomits…It’s hard to be a baby. Much harder than being parents. Still, the memory loss thing must be protection for mommies, a salved-up band-aid on true pain, because if we did recall absolutely clearly every single detail from birth through those first scary few months, when every sneeze means certain death, why the HELL would we ever have more than one child.

Memory loss is Mother Nature’s way of insuring the babies keep coming—bless their obviously precious cloud-pink, diaper rash prone bottoms.

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RE: The “Case” Against Breastfeeding

1. April 2009 by PB Rippey.

Did you catch the piece by Hanna Rosin? It’s in the Atlantic right now, April 2009 issue. I, like many others who read the “Atlantic”, find it an unfortunate bit; contrived; one-sided, with questionable research. And just plain sad. Apparently Hanna Rosin felt like a parasite for intimating aloud that she was so, so over breastfeeding. Who made her feel this way (besides herself)? Other mommies, she claims, breastfeeding-nazi mommies she met in a park.

As the baby books tell you, including La Leche League’s The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding and Dr. Sears (whom Ms. Rosin pretty much villifies), breastfeeding is not for all moms. Coming on the mommy-scene 16 months ago, it was my impression and still is that in the PC world of mommies and breastfeeding formula has not been a dirty word for some time. Procuring the best system for mother and child is the primary concern championed in today’s reading material, whether a book is about breastfeeding or post-partum depression or bottles or pacifiers or thumbsucking or soy milk. Get what you need! the books say, Oprah’s experts, even Tyra’s silly little show agrees, and the canny mommy-blogs, too. But the “get what you need” message didn’t fit in with Hanna Rosin’s (in part) “I-am-a-victim-of-breastfeeding-nazis” agenda. Instead of “get what you need” she makes La Leche League and Dr. Sears responsible for creating damaging breastfeeding hype and for making not breastfeeding your babe a societal taboo.

I wish Hanna Rosin had mentioned how lucky she is to be able to breastfeed at all, unemcumbered by physical setbacks, or cultural mores. She describes the lengths a friend of hers goes to in order to breastfeed, snarling sarcastically that her friend looks nothing like a romantic portrait of Eve-With-Babe because of the “tubes and suctions and a giant deconstructed bra” her friend must wear. Hanna Rosin is lucky if that trying-hard, giving-breastfeeding-a-go-despite-the-hurdles mom is still her friend. Breastfeeding can be an enormous challenge for mother and child, especially in the beginning and even if there are no physical complications involved. But if the bond created through feeding has to come via tubes and suctions or a bottle’s nipple and formula, right on. Either way, the baby Will Be Fed—and even if Hanna Rosin switches from breasts to bottles, unless she has a nanny, or unless daddy plays a part, or unless she throws the job to her other children, Hanna Rosin will be the one feeding her baby, something she obviously resents having to do all by herself.

Hanna Rosin’s biggest enemy in her Atlantic piece is herself, her inability to take a stance on what is best for her personal situation. Instead, she blames breastfeeding-nazis for her discontent and anyone, really, who thinks breastfeeding a baby is a good thing, those hype-gobbling idiots. Hanna Rosin was interested in creating an article that would cause a ruckus. Blaming Dr. Sears for “too many years of conditioning”, presenting the reader with “research” gathered for the piece via a “friend” with a password to an undisclosed medical library, likening breastfeeding to prison—if breastfeeding is making her so unhappy and resentful, Hanna Rosin would be doing her family and readers a favor by practicing an alternative, especially if such a move would change her sour mood.

Thanks, Atlantic for publishing a (whiny) gripe masquerading as hard-core reading material. In closing, I give you the photo below of the World’s Biggest Breastfed Baby.

www.pbrippey.com
UPDATE: see this response
http://www.momsrising.org/content/case-against-breastfeeding-overlooks-big-dirty-secret
Both links have excellent responses and comments and are far more eloquent than little old pissed off pro-breastfeeding-although-formula-is-not-a-dirty-word me.

Posted in Vitals, BABY BABY | Print | 3 Comments »