Bad Influences

On Saturday, while DaddyStar had the boys out for the day at his parents', Grammie Imelda invited me to the mall with her. It has been years since the two of us went to shopping without the kids. There's a reason for that.

She hadn't been to Sephora yet. When we walked in she said, "Show me everything. We're not leaving until I buy something."

And then she encouraged me to try on as many pairs of pants until I found some that I liked in New York and Co. But I really did need pants. Really.

And then there's this:


Boots. It's an illness.

Skinny Pants

I love the GAP. Really, I do. And Audrey Hepburn? There are no adjectives to describe my love for that woman.

But skinny pants? No. Skinny pants are just wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

Clothes shopping is not going to be fun this fall. Maybe I'll just spend all my money on boots.

Verisimilitude

Bali Hai Calls Mama

As I was putting away the groceries
I'd spent the morning buying
for the week's meals I'd planned
around things the baby could eat,
things my husband would eat,
and things I should eat
because they aren't too fattening,
late on a Saturday afternoon
after flinging my coat on a chair
and wiping the baby's nose
while asking my husband
what he'd fed it for lunch
and whether
the medicine I'd brought for him
had made his cough improve,
wiping the baby's nose again,
checking its diaper,
stepping over the baby
who was reeling to and from
the bottom kitchen drawer
with pots, pans, and plastic cups,
occasionally clutching the hem of my skirt
and whining to be held,
I was half listening for the phone
which never rings for me
to ring for me
and someone's voice to say that
I could forget about handing back
my students' exams which I'd had for a week,
that I was right about The Waste Land,
that I'd been given a raise,
all the time wondering
how my sister was doing,
whatever happened to my old lover(s),
and why my husband wanted
a certain brand of toilet paper;
and wished I hadn't, but I'd bought
another fashion magazine that promised to make me beautiful by Christmas,
and there wasn't room for the creamed corn
and every time I opened the refrigerator door
the baby rushed to grab whatever was on the bottom shelf
which meant I constantly had to wrestle
jars of its mushy food out of its sticky hands
and I stepped on the baby's hand and the baby was screaming
and I dropped the bag of cake flour I'd bought to make cookies with
and my husband rushed in to find out what was wrong because the baby
was drowning out the sound of the touchdown although I had scooped
it up and was holding it in my arms so its crying was inside
my head like an echo in a barrel and I was running cold water
on its hand while somewhere in the back of my mind wondering what
to say about The Waste Land and whether I could get away with putting
broccoli in a meatloaf when

suddenly through the window
came the wild cry of geese.

---Marilyn Nelson

Five Years

Five years ago today I was pregnant with BoyStar. The day before my sonogram. It was sunny and gorgeous. I didn't hear about the World Trade Center until a coworker came in and asked if anyone had heard a news report, because Howard Stern was saying a plane had crashed into the tower and who can ever take Howard Stern seriously.

But others talk about that day for more eloquently and with more immediate experience than I can. I'm going to write about what came next.

The next day I saw an ultrasound image of a big, healthy baby boy. That child was born weighing over ten pounds. And he thrived. Five years later he recognizes the alphabet and numbers and shapes. He counts and does puzzles and plays computer and video games. He manipulates his grandparents and fights with his baby brother. Because life goes on. Because babies will keep being born. Because people can survive the worst losses: betrayals and divorces and deaths, and yet life goes on. And while that life may be a different life, it can still be a good life. It's what we choose to make it.

And I think we owe it to the victims of that day to make the best life we can.

The pampered chef

My stove came yesterday. My new fancy, shiny, expensive stove. With a simmer burner and a power burner. Woohoo!

So what to make first? Brownies? Pie? Double chocolate bread pudding? Crab quiche? Souffle? Fettucine alfredo?

If you need me this weekend, I'll be in the kitchen. :D

A Reminder

The story goes that it took Elizabeth Bishop fifteen years to write One Art. Fifteen years. She tacked it up on her wall and rearranged lines. For fifteen years.

So this is what patience and determination can do:

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.