Ruby Tomorrow

acquiring sound

2017-02-09T11:48:00.001-05:00

We had an early intervention assessment last week because the little dude is proving slow to talk. He's fine, though, really, and none of us have any hard worries [about that, anyway]. It's only been a week since he was pronounced borderline delayed, and already since then he's been trying his little darndest to figure out how to make his first (almost only) word--'cat'--have more of a rounded 'caaa' sound at the start instead of the 'taaa' it previously was. Man, he tries. And he's just started to fling these slightly husky 'mama's around, too. He'll point at me, smugly: 'mama.' I point back.

it is what it is

2017-01-27T10:08:00.001-05:00

I noticed that I often start my emails with 'Yes--' even when if you read further on you will find that my answer is actually kind of 'no.'

Within four days this week I completed a 1000-piece and 500-piece puzzle all on my own, though the 1000-piece puzzle turned out to actually be a 999-piece puzzle so maybe that's why it came together so quickly. I do what my mom does and what her dad did and circle on the box where the missing piece should have been. 1 missing.

My husband is a super man and superman and we are again in a period of heads-down. The thing about that is we've done it before and just like last time I can't seem to resist feeling like it's all about me when in fact it's all about him. He works very very hard and sometimes all I do is fold laundry and sometimes not even that.

I wish I were raising my son more like a second child than a first child. It is really not fair to him that I don't know what I'm doing, and that my attention is laser focused even when it doesn't need to be and sometimes I totally overlook what I think in retrospect, oh I should have been noticing that. I am both showily permissive and showily anxious. I think if I had five kids I'd be less showy, anyway.

We are in debt, a lot of debt. Can you be in space debt? As well as time and money? I have a strong sense (a born optimism) that eventually we'll be ok. I'm very lucky to feel that way. Eventually there will come a shift back to national sanity. Eventually will come graduations and larger paychecks and hopefully enough savings for a house and a larger family. I can't plan for Eventually, though. I am stuck planning for this weekend (sleeping off a night shift, refreshing Twitter over and over, getting out of the house, groceries, diapers).

I keep saying, 'it is what it is.' This makes very little sense to me, but I don't really want to actually use the number of words it would take to say what exactly it is.

mirrors

2017-01-17T14:15:00.001-05:00

Sometimes the most devastating part of raising a toddler is how
desperately
he
wants
to please me.

flabby mind

2017-01-12T11:28:00.002-05:00

I have three half finished [cold] hot drinks and a sense of righteous anger on your behalf and a rubbery, uncalloused brain trying its hardest to multitask.

I have not yet had time to take a breath.

flight

2017-01-11T09:01:00.002-05:00

I dreamed last night that an airplane fell from the sky and landed across my abdomen, heavy and cold.

reflection

2016-12-20T11:58:00.002-05:00

I'm still kind of distracted by continuity and identity and the illogics of my heart. I think nobody TOLD me I'd never be April again. Maybe they did and I forged on anyway?

This week I'm alone in the office at work sipping mint and playing Lucius on repeat.

This week I'm victorious and paying attention to detail and punishing myself at every turn.

Honestly, I'm fine--was fine--will continue to be fine--. What I lack currently is a. unclaimed time, and b. willpower. There's always a chance willpower will spontaneously burst from the soles of my feet sometime in 2017.

I'm very lucky. I suspect I'll get to the next decade of my life with only a few more callouses and bruises from lashes of Weltschmerz. There are things I'm good at, like catching a wiggly, dripping toddler fresh from the bath when he leaps into my arms.

faster

2016-11-15T09:25:00.000-05:00

This week has been a high speed zigzag, and a time of clinging. I am so very, very lucky to be who/where/what I am, because my biggest immediate pains have been my loss of desire to stream NPR all day at work and to read dystopian novels in the evenings. I feel this keenly.

I really like being a niece, but this week I was seized as a mascot between aunts and uncles, a target on one side for vocal affirmation and on the other for denouncement. It's never happened before, and it feels weird to block family-in-law from being able to send me facebook messages, but here we are. 2016 has never happened before, either.

2016 is liminal at work, too. There are many ways this is true. Sometimes I am shocked that I am still here, but there is an appeal to being the pillar (for me). There is an appeal to being a pillar slowly shifting, but not too much at once. In this week of mourning and fear I have been grateful for the minutia like web conferences and staff meetings and prepping for end-of-semester maintenance.

Oh and I'm a mom to a toddler who is tall and clever and draining, who doesn't talk but squawks, who lights up the room with his joy and silliness. He's predictable and glorious and I get really worn down by him sometimes. There is still that wedge of my soul that thinks from time to time, was this a good idea?? But then, his existence could never been called into question. He is, he was going to be. We're going to laugh and cry our way through his childhood.

me too, but silently

2016-03-16T10:10:00.001-04:00

Sometimes even when I'm thinking ME TOO ME TOO ME TOO I don't want to open my mouth to say so.

I knew not sleeping well was part of the bargain. It's still jarring, sometimes. Mornings at work are hard. Work is not hard, but being here is.

I would like a time machine, please.

I would like a donut, please.

self care

2016-02-05T09:34:00.004-05:00

lying flat on my stomach on the living room floor listening to Bach

140 minutes of brisk walking

casserole an hour late

amazon prime

dark chocolate, hot tea, animated movie, asleep halfway through

extra coconut oil

not folding laundry

honesty

audiobooks

sleeping pressed against S with as many body parts as I can manage

bringing the baby into bed with us in the wee hours

bluetooth headphones

conscious un-jealousy

conscious un-googling

shoulders back, chin up, straight forward

all ear

2016-02-02T09:26:00.000-05:00

Sometimes when I'm in bed at night I think my ear is growing to take over the whole side of my head. 95% asleep, with the up ear completely alert. I keep waking before the squawking starts. My ear lies awake too long after the squawking stops. Full of phantoms.

snow days

2016-01-26T14:53:00.000-05:00

I have a clanging head and a sense of displacement, because I’m at work after a snowed in four day weekend, most of that time without S, who was snowed in himself, away from us, at work.

I’m really tired.

And still in the stage where I actively resent the lack of sleep, self-government, and out of the box spontaneity that life with a baby has brought. Oh man, a blizzard without a baby would have been so different. Wading through the snow banks, diving down deep. Sleeping in late, watching movies, reading books, putting together a 1000 piece puzzle. I’d probably have baked bread, which I do about once a year, on a snowy day. There may have been too much wine and hiking over to a good friend’s apartment up the hill to share it, and the bread.

With a baby, especially with THIS baby, at THIS time, I was sleep-deprived and deep in poop-covered laundry instead of snow drifts, down on my knees on the kitchen floor picking up chunks of sweet potatoes, stuck inside.

It’s still ok though, actually. It was very ok.

I watched the clock and thought to myself: 42 more hours of solo parenting, 33 more hours of solo parenting, 17 more hours of solo parenting, 5 more hours of solo parenting. But by the end, when S finally made it back home, I was still ok to keep on loving, being a primary lover, being the reader of signs and soother of tempers. I hop out of bed right away.

We sat by the window and watched the snow plows. He’s wonderful, you know. He has wispy hairs that stick out over both of his ears. He’s so curious, so wiggly and wily and sweet. He’s got such a great gummy grin and he can do things like pick up and feed himself peas. He naps the best when I hold him. It was so good to have the time available to hold him. Rock in the glider for an hour, and then two, while he snuffled and sucked his thumb in sleep. I hold him until my arm falls asleep and then keep holding him because that’s how I get to watch him in stillness. I try to count his eyelashes. He’s mesmerizing. He’s so kinetic while he’s awake. He can’t quite crawl but tries really hard. He rocks and he rolls and he lunges and grabs and dances and can pull up from his belly to his knees to a sitting position on his own. He splashes in the tub, he kicks his legs on the changing table. He cackles and yells and demands and giggles and coos and pulls hair and comes at my face with his mouth wide open, conking into my nose or my cheek or my forehead with what I’ll call a kiss, though it’s borderline abuse. He wakes up noisy and hungry with every muscle in his tiny body taut. He’s insatiable. He’s beautiful. I really just can’t even quite believe he exists.

The pull in both directions is about equally strong—I want to always be with him. I want to still be my own person. It might sound like this is balanced, but it’s not. It’s impossible. I’m doing it anyway.

He is a hard thing. He is the hardest thing. He’s impossible. We're existing anyway. We're really lucky.

glad about

2015-12-16T11:17:00.000-05:00

My kid is my favorite baby and he hasn't made me cry lately, at all.

I've had tears, sure, but they've been from laughing, or wind symphonies, or from the teeth cleaning last week with the buzzing at the roof of my mouth, or from listening to the finale of the Hamilton soundtrack, very loud, in the library's delivery van.

I'm glad about things, like new relationships, warm Decembers (shh, I'm denying things), baby butt wiggle proto-crawling, brownies, Amazon Prime.

And my truth-seeking, thoughtful, responsible, affectionate, bread-winning husband. I'm glad about him all the time.

traveling heart

2015-12-15T11:04:00.002-05:00

Here is what makes me sad today: the kind, warm, sparkly-eyed pastor who performed our wedding ceremony four years ago has just had his ordination stripped for recently marrying a same-sex couple. I am hanging by a thread--a THREAD--here, people, and the more things like this keep happening to the people in the church who actually speak a language I'd be able (to want) to echo, the more likely my mask to become more of a mask, and my heart to keep journeying off on its own.

hand face

2015-11-20T15:58:00.001-05:00

He sucks his thumb like a real baby, fingers curled around his nose, and last evening we were lying on the floor together and he kept grabbing my hand, my pinky in his right hand and my thumb in his left, and pulling it to his face and scream-laughing into my palm. It was the funniest thing he's ever done. Oh man.

helpless

2015-11-19T11:30:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I get overwhelmed by the thought of what it must be like to be in your first few months of life. Locked in a tiny body that can't properly express and can't properly contain nascent emotions and needs. If a baby is in pain, lonely, cold, hot, overwhelmed, hungry, wet, tired, all they can do is scream and hope someone (some dumbass amateur parent, who is just as new to this as they are) hears, can guess the problem, and is willing to help. It's horrible to be stuck in a state of discomfort and to not know that it will ever end. Hungry and unsure if you'll ever be NOT hungry again. Even minor inconveniences would be almost unbearable when you have no ability to problem solve on your own steam. What if my baby has an itch somewhere?? I'd never know. I think it's good that memory doesn't start sticking for a few years. I think it's a good thing M won't remember how miserable he is every time he gets stuck on his side against the wall of the crib and can't kick his way back to comfort. Ow, my heart.

this week

2015-11-11T09:13:00.000-05:00

I haven't been writing things down, but I want to remember looking at S across a table full of Mexican food while we talk about the ways we need to love.

The vase of slowly fading mums on my desk at work, and the reasons why fall is (still) so good for my soul.

The quivering, sensitive, almost-crying face my son makes when he's overwhelmed and the way my heart echoes back.

The way it feels to mash my feet into the pedals of the bike, pistoning my legs faster and faster down the hill so I can crest the top of the next one at a glide.

The raspy laugh of the baby's hilarious, cotton haired great-great-aunt, the one who mispronounces 'peony' and to whom we are (what's yours is mine) in debt.

Sore wrists. Nodding off at my desk. Bare feet even in the cold.

babies who keep secrets

2015-11-04T08:57:00.001-05:00

Yesterday was kind of gloomy, so today I'll mention a dear friend whose pregnancy is 40 weeks behind my own, who found out about their little one days after my little one was born, and who whispered her tiny baby's existence into my tiny baby's newborn ear, and who later announced the pregnancy out loud to a group of friends through a game of pictionary, and who keeps bringing food, her husband, and her good company over to our home. This is ungloomy.

lagging

2015-11-03T10:57:00.000-05:00

I think I'll always feel a sense of loss when I think of the laundry list of [laundry] and everything else between the baby's bedtime and my own early one, and the way I used to be able to... not.

I don't wish I wasn't working because I like my job, we need the money, I like being out and about, I felt trapped at home with the baby.

I wish I wasn't working because I'm always tired, I'm always in a loop, I'm always in a loop, I'm always in a loop, I miss my kid, S and I are on different planets.

There's been this shared head cold thing for the past week. There's been night shifts and long nights and early mornings and miscommunication and snot. We are two solo parents. This is really hard.

I am not really a perpetual motion machine. I am not always in go-mode. I am (I was) pretty good at knowing when I needed to say no, or back away, or take some time to myself. But now I'm trying to fake it and stuff down my instincts, because now I'm not on my own payroll.

I'm wondering how to find restoration. Do I have a secret pocket of unsinkableness?

I had --HAD-- this thing where I'd just poof and go for a solitary walk for an hour or hours when I needed to clear out my cobwebs and level out my emotions.

I had --HAD-- this thing where I'd spend an extra hour in bed in the mornings and read, or I'd go spend an evening at a thrift store.

I had --HAD-- this thing where I'd make a week's meal plan and shop and cook and clean up the kitchen afterward.

Now what I have is... guilt and irritation and heavy eyelids. Frozen pizza and cereal and stagnation.

Now what I have is a wonderful, snotty, iron-willed baby, who squawks and flails and laughs and is a spit up houdini and who smells like old cheese/baby shampoo/poop/heaven and who needs me, and whose care and affection necessarily trumps everything I'd be doing instead.

What a trade.

asking for it

2015-10-30T09:18:00.001-04:00

Honestly, I was really asking for it when I made a dump cake for the staff Halloween party and then biked to work with it. It dumped.

And I was asking for it when I spent the last few hours of the night on the couch with the baby, even though the bed was wide open, S working the night shift. Sleeping on the couch with a white noise app supplanting my alarm, snuffly sleeping baby supplanting my desires to even roll over to check the time.

Oh, and I know full well that sitting in the bumbo seat makes the baby poop. So I have no one to blame but myself for putting him in it while I was running late, trying to get his diaper bag ready for the day, already dressed, both of us.

800 miles

2015-10-26T14:06:00.000-04:00

My favorite nickname for the baby is Moolos. Also I really like referring to him as The Smitty. There's no reason for either.

He has his first cold. He's dripping rubber cement and sneeze-coughing-gurgling. He cries and he grins through the discomfort and my heart bumps. I would always always let him sleep a night on my chest.

He makes traveling difficult! We drove about 800 miles with Moolos in the back seat. On the way back his voice was froggy when he cried. He makes traveling kind of better! He is a good side kick. He makes a good trio out of us.

I say: thanks for not being an asshole. Thanks for being patient. Thanks for being mine.

I say: thanks for being quirky. Thanks for being up and down. Thanks for being warm and sweet in your sleep.

I am very lucky to have friendships that span decades, already. And brilliant weekends to celebrate and share and get lost in the fall and plan for the decades to come.

this-is-for-now

2015-10-20T08:48:00.004-04:00

I need to not forget gloves.

I need to wake up at 2:22am without a sense of dread.

Yesterday the small one earned his first $10 by sitting on my lap in the university's cognitive development lab. He watched images on a screen; he was watched. I am always wading through all-campus emails that say, 'volunteers needed!' or 'do you have a child under the age of...' and I usually blink them away, but this time, I DO have a child under the age of.... I DO have a child.

I think, no, I know, that the way to get through this whole kid thing in tact is to not make assumptions and to not read new-normal when it's really this-is-for-now.

He rolls over. And then he gets stuck. So, you know, there are lots of things to laugh about.

12.5 weeks

2015-10-06T08:39:00.000-04:00

My person is different. My PERSON is different

I am deeply, deeply, disturbingly in love with a tiny human that came out of me

He is fussy and intense and really likes when I sing to him and taking naps draped all over me and going on walks and being on tables

He is amazing

He is strong and in a state of perpetual motion

He is expressive and weird and grins a lot and sounds like a jaguar when he's overtired or overhungry

He is a mini S and I love them both so much for being rooted in each other

I have been awake since 4:45 and I think this is just how it's going to be

Wearing patterned shirts only, or no shirt at all, if I want to not change outfits later

I am squashy and sore and my lungs are deep deep

I am biking again, and pushing not to push too much

It's hard not to give 100% with a bike

I know I have to cool it at first and work up to flying

It's hard to give 100% at work

I have been away from work for a lifetime but also it was only a few days, to me

All I want is a sleeping baby in my arms and not a stack of bound periodicals

But I still really love my job because of what it feels like and how it fits and who it surrounds me with

I'm very glad to be here

I hate that I'm not at home

There's a picture of my baby on the wall above my desk and looking at it makes me tear up

I have cried more in the past 100 days (88 days of mothering, a few extra thrown in before the mothering started for good measure) than the decades that came before

This is all drudgery

This is all something I miss when I'm not drudging

S and I are trying to find a rhythm and it's not there yet

He's either on or off, and I'm both

Everything is either rushed or too serious

I talk too much and repeat myself over and over

I worry

I overflow with pride and delight

I go to bed too early and fall asleep too late

I get restful sleep, I think, in only two ways: when I'm asleep with the baby on my chest and when I'm alone in bed when S is up with the baby

They are the only circumstances when I can relax enough for deep sleep

The baby's WITH me, or he's WITH him and I can stop my alarm system

I have grown a keen alarm system

Marriage is hard, after a baby, when it was easy before-- or should I say being a wife is hard, after a baby, when it was easy before

We have run out of toothpaste and I haven't cooked in weeks and S had to wear un-laundered scrubs today

Our kitchen smells like old coffee and formula

I am a bad cow, thus the formula

Maybe if I have a second baby I will be a better cow?

Maybe if I have a second baby I will cry less?

Maybe if I have a second baby I will love him/her with a calmness, instead of terrified desperation?

It took, oh, eight weeks this time

THIS IS A TIME WARP

All of these things I'm doing, I don't really have another option

This is hard to accept

This is hard

This is somehow unnaturally natural

This is my kid, this is my kid, this is my kid.

life getting stronger

2015-03-12T13:05:00.002-04:00

Fog is burning off of the massive round of transition that is rapidly approaching my tiny family. That's the thing that matters to me--seeing the transition, not the transition itself. I have a constant chronic case of needing-to-know.

Well, now I know things. Things, she says. Type of human, timing of changes, level of income, a place to nest, a career for S.

I'm caught up to where my heart is! The baby--the boy, he's a boy!--is dancing in me and I'm glad to be getting to know him. I'm past early doubts to unconditional gratitude. S is brilliant, and the pride I feel for that man as he approaches the last months of school with a job offer in tow is chokingly strong. I would choose him over and over and over and over. I'm safe and lifted and content and picturing him as a father until the choking pride turns to choking tears. He works so hard to make sure I know I/we am/are loved. Oh, how I/we love him back.

The long winter has finally extinguished, and blue skies and squelchy mud and hints of regrowth are calling me to my feet, dragging me off the couch again. It's good to move, to move within movements. My insides move, too, in flutters and taps. We all feel the promise of life getting better and stronger. We all do.

grounded

2015-02-03T09:35:00.001-05:00

One of the most grounding things I can do is to think about family trees. I'm pretty predictable--you can always, always tempt me to stillness with a family photo album, even for families not my own. I love hearing the family lore, I love leafing through the daily diary of a grandparent, I love tracing family resemblance through a stack of sepia toned portraits. I'm currently pleased with the fact that I can trace back one arm of my family tree--the Miller one--back six or seven generations. Ernest Miller, an immigrant from Switzerland sometime in the mid-to-late 18th century, who was the father of David Miller, who was the father of Martin Miller, who was the father of Reuben Miller, who was the father of Alvin Miller, who was the father of Harold Miller, who is the father of me. Next generation currently brewing. This, the the mind-blowing odds that each of these men survived and thrived enough to pass on their name, that they mated with my lady ancestors at just the right time, each time, to produce someone who would repeat that so very tenuous process all the way down to me, all the way down to the half-child in my uterus, all of which was happening simultaneously on so many other branches of my family tree... THIS is what gives me a sense of purpose. More people than I could ever possibly count, or ever possibly organize into a chart, have gone into the making of me. I am adding to the multitude. If I'm lucky there will be generations that take a veer through me. This. This will never not be the way I find awe and gratitude and the value of the fixed space and time I occupy. I am a part of something so big, connecting to so many. Literally everyone is. I mean.

between concept and reality

2015-01-16T10:59:00.000-05:00

The thing is, I’m pregnant, and it is not what I thought I’d be. I didn’t (don’t?) have a built-in baby meter, or a hole in my life that needed one. Life goals: simple living, contained adventures, flowers, a bird feeder, happy husband, good books. There wasn’t BE A MOM on the list. Though I’ve always been the person to not want (or claim to not want, out loud) the big things in life until they were falling on my lap. I said to everyone (except that one friend who got under the me vs. you barrier) that I wasn’t totally sold on the idea of getting married, but then S popped up and patiently wormed his way into, well, everything. I can’t imagine anything better than being married to him, forever, now that I have it. I am banking on the same thing happening with the little being swimming in my womb.

Pregnancy switched from a maybe someday it would be ok thing to a well I’ll give it a try but won’t mind if it’s not in the cards thing to a yeah, let’s do this thing over the course of last summer. I think a turning point was my grandfathers funeral and the subsequent family reunion in July. Something in the combination of a revered generation blipping out of earthly existence and the new generation of children turning uncles into grandparents was stark enough to fix my place in the family tree into place in a way I’d never really understood before. I’m an archivist by nature, and I want to pin these things down. The times, the relationships, the stories, the photos. And that’s what brought to the forefront a desire to add to the story, if I can. I want to validate the existence of my grandfather by continuing his line. I want to give a gift to my parents. I want to solidify the fact that I exist, and here’s a way to do it. Are these good enough reasons to move forward? It’s too late to check myself now.

After a few months of discussion and bargaining and assuring each other that this won’t happen overnight, we pulled the prevention plug. And it happened overnight. This is why when I found out, I cried, and I cried for a week. I need time, so much time, when plans change to let my heart catch up, and I was banking on time between starting to try and succeeding to let that happen. S was sanguine and calm, I was convinced that I’d made a mistake and not-calm.

There is time built into the pregnancy process, and I’m very glad. There were the first few weeks of disbelief and buyers remorse and doubt and niggling joy when it was almost as possible that the pregnancy would fail as that it wouldn’t. And then another few weeks of nausea and exhaustion and apprehension and audible bursts of joy when it seemed that the pregnancy would stay real, after all. And recently, besides audible joy there have been audible heartbeats and calm and almost wholehearted excitement and almost wholehearted certainty that we’re actually going to have a baby. I can’t possibly wish to rush this process along (yet), because I still need space to get on board with my body and the body it’s holding. I still need space to just be me, to just be S + me. And I’m so grateful that there are still 5+ months left to have these things, and time.

I think all is well, so far. Check ups have been normal, bodily wholeness seems granted. My stomach had a few rocky weeks but not much since then. There are odd aches and twinges and sensations that I’m not always enjoying, but that I accept. There’s a curve beneath my already curvy belly. S palpates my abdomen at night and says, ‘woah, that’s your uterus.’ It’s ballooning up like a bottle, and what’s in it now is the size of a fist, or an apple. I can almost tell myself I feel a flutter from time to time but I won’t be sure until it’s more than from time to time. We’ve picked out names and are sitting on them patiently. In a month we’ll know which to give it.

I have a web of worries about the baby’s health and safety and a web of worries about the timing of things (this summer is going to have to have a graduation, a job or else, a new place to live, a baby, within two months). I have a head cold that won’t die and hair ties fastening my pants, and no impulse to buy baby clothes or baby things. So far I’m nesting only with books. There’s a lot to figure out. But in the meantime, I’m also finding myself able to soak up the reality of the situation bit by bit, and to revel in the fact that without my knowledge, without my input, my body is able to just do this. Uterus, how do you know how to make a placenta? How?! I’m in a whole new room of the house of my body, one that I didn’t even know existed.

I’m feeling loved and supported, most by S, who has sworn off raw onions, though he loves them, because the smell of his breath after onions is enough to make me want to smother him in his sleep. He buys me milkshakes and cooks solidly nutritious and comfortingly bland food when that’s what my stomach needs. He holds me and reassures me and dreams with me and refers to me in the plural. He practices kissing without letting his beard scratch, for the baby. He reads books on fatherhood and can answer almost any pregnancy question I hit him with using his maternal and pediatric nursing textbook. He’s going to be such a wonderful, strong, engaged father. I have never for even a millisecond doubted this. I’m incredibly lucky. Beyond our marriage, I’m supported by excitable, cheek-kissing, hopeful families. Grandmothers, aunts and uncles who will babysit. Gifts of time and money. Tangible elation, encouragement, and love. And this other gift, which may be my favorite thing about being a proto-mother: I find myself in the middle of a whole cloud of other expecting mothers. This is the year of having a baby, and to be sharing the process with an unusually vast number of others I love who are going through this adventure at the same time is such a treat. My phone is full of messages about babies and prenatal checkups and symptom comparisons, and my arms are always full of hugs from or for them. This is another thing I couldn’t have planned, and I can’t always comprehend, but it’s easier and easier for my heart to catch up with my own situation, when there are just so many other woman for whom my heart is bursting.

That’s where I’ve been--in the weird middle between doubt and certainty and between concept and reality. I’ve been eating a lot of fruit.