July 17:

I spent a few more days with Yoshie and Moira- that's been so much fun. We had one of the hottest days ever recorded in the bay area, and Moira and I decided to head down to San Jose to see Yoshie. We didn't know it was going to be quite that hot or we probably wouldn't have gone� but it turned out to be wonderful because Yoshie has an air conditioner. My diaper service is located in San Jose, so we went to their main shop. I'd only ever dealt with them over the phone so it was really cool to go there and see their setup. They sold off-season clothes for something like 70% off- summer in SF is off season, so I got some things for a steal! Also found a clothing maker that I love- Zantanos. I also got an adorable, plush, rainbow colored ball with a rattle inside. Eva's not interested in it yet, but things I read said that balls are a good idea. Tiny Tots was so much fun. After braving the heat again to get in the cars, Moira and I borrowed some waterproof diapers for Eva and Kai, and we took them all swimming in the swimming pool in Yoshie and Brian's apartment complex. Moira had a swimsuit with her, but I'd never even thought of it (and even if I had, it's been over a decade since I last went swimming if you can believe it) so I just got in the water with all my clothes on. In hindsight, I probably could have borrowed shorts and a t-shirt from Brian's stuff, but I didn't think of it till later. I carried Eva around in the water a little bit. I've read that Babies are natural born swimmers. I held her on her back, and she did kick. Yoshie got some photos, it was a really neat feeling to hold Eva in the water and feel her making it move around her. Ellie has a swimmy thing that she floats around in. I held her to go swimming too. It's amazing to me that Ellie is already a year old, and that Eva will be that age someday. She'll be three months old next week already. Ellie had her one year birthday weekend before last, and that was really fun. She had the cutest little dress on. Then the cake came out. Yoshie wisely took her dress off before letting her have any cake. She stood there in her diapers and her little white leather shoes with flowers on the toes, with bright green frosting from her head to her knees. How do they manage to spread things that far? It's amazing. Eva did a lot of sleeping. After the party (which was in a nice little park) some of us went back to Yoshie and Brian's for food and to hang out. Yoshie is such a great hostess. Their house is always impeccably clean, and well stocked, and Yoshie is always offering the most delicious things to eat. I don't know how to be a wife or Mom or homemaker like that. It always makes me feel so respectful.

We spent the fourth of July at Hep's house. I love her kids; they are so sweet and fun to watch. They seem to like us too. When we got there, Zo� took me aside and told me that when I left, I could take Lilu and Eva, but I had to leave HER baby here. At first, I thought she meant her baby doll, but she meant Zane (who is a little over a year old). "What if I left Eva with you and I took Zany instead?" I asked her. Her eyes got very wide and serious and she shook her head at me.
"You can't take Zany" she said, " She's MY baby"
I promised I wouldn't and then everything was fine. Evan likes Eva too, in part, because her name is so close to his. Hep said that when he signed her mother's day card, he signed it " from Evan, Eva, Zo�, and Zane". We were there again last weekend for Zo�'s third birthday. Evan came up to me and was watching Eva.
"Remember when she was inside you and she was trying to get out?"
He kills me. We got them a castle for Zo�'s birthday (and some witches and wizards that were just hers). Of course, I really got it more for me- I'm sure I had more fun buying it and watching them open it then they did! I'm a goof. Evan always plays with our castle here, and I thought they'd like one of their own. And anyway, it really is a super cool castle- it's like a dollhouse, really, with a jail, and a hidden passageway underneath the castle. I wish they made toys this cool when I was a kid. If they had, maybe I wouldn't have had to dig all the dirt out from under the tree in our front yard, and use the roots as caves. I wonder if that tree has fallen down yet.

Eva's changed dramatically since I last took the time to sit down and write about her. I keep meaning to write, but given the free moment, I'd much rather watch her. I started working again a few weeks ago. Some days, it's really a struggle to find enough time to make it work, and then other days, it's easy. Eva can hold her own head up totally now, and move it from side to side. I took the head guard out of her car seat. She's started doing this very annoying and sometimes painful thing: when we are out or when anything is going on, she latches on, and then pulls off and back, and looks all around to see what's going on. Sometimes she tries to turn around with my nipple still firmly engaged. So either my nipple's being pulled like a flesh bendy straw, or it's not, and I am fully exposed to anyone sitting near me. I have gotten used to pulling my naked breasts out at any given moment. When I do get a twinge of self-consciousness, I have this imaginary conversation in my head with any nonexistent person that might be offended. "Listen" I tell them, " seeing my breast is A LOT less intrusive than hearing my screaming and unhappy baby". None has ever been offended my breast-feeding as far as I can tell, so my cobra's head goes unused and unseen. Also, Eva has yet to be that screaming, unhappy baby, except when she's in the car seat. Reality has little to no effect on my shadow boxing.

Just yesterday, Eva started doing half rolls. I don't think She knows she can do it yet, but it's just a matter of time.

Today was a wonderful day. It really started last night, when we went to bed at a reasonable hour. Usually (like now) I don't get to bed until after midnight and then I am too tired in the morning. Last night however, I had Eva and me in bed by 10:00pm, and asleep by 11 or 11:30. Ken's alarm went off at 7:30 in the morning. I got my shower while he was still here. That alone makes all the difference. Eva slept in bed, essentially alone, for an hour- I was next to her, but I moved away and watched her for half of that time, and the other half, Ken watched her while I took my shower. God, I LOVE my showers!

She woke up all smiles and giggles (as usual). I kissed Ken goodbye, and putzed around a little, then got Eva dressed and walked to Starbucks for coffee. It's a nice walk, roughly 11 blocks away. There is a caf� closer to us that I would go to, but it's gotten gross in the last few years. The coffee is always burnt, their bagels are old and icky, and the tables are sticky and smell sour- so to Starbucks it is.

Starbucks is usually playing jazz, and they have two comfy leather armchairs and one super comfy purple velvet sofa that are all great for sitting in while reading/sipping coffee/breastfeeding. This morning felt like something out of a book and I wished myself a writer. I had a book I've been meaning to start by an Italian author ("if on a winter's Night, a Traveler�"), and I had it out, but was busy wrestling with Eva over my exposed nipple. We were in the purple sofa, near the front windows. I can see the library from those windows, so I watched different people with their different piles of books, and all the traffic coming and going. The sky was pretty overcast and threatened rain, but then it so often looks like that in this neighborhood, that I wasn't in any hurry to run ahead of it (and it didn't end up raining after all). A brisk, thin, well-dressed Chinese woman came in, grabbed a coffee and headed to a table by the window. She spread important looking papers all over the table, and snapped out her cell phone. At first, I thought she was a real estate agent. I don't know why, but there was something about her that screamed real estate agent. Her name was Margaret Cho, and I shamelessly eavesdropped as she dialed number after number, setting up appointments, and making artificial small talk with people that were obviously work related.

An older black man came in and glanced at my corner of the place out of the edges of his eyes. At first, I thought he was staring at me, but that didn't fit with the way he looked and I realized later that I must have been in the spot he wanted. If I had to make up an occupation, I'd say he might have been a professor from the medical school up the hill, or maybe a librarian from across the way. He bought a simple coffee, had it poured into a stainless steel cup with a nonslip lid, grabbed the daily paper, and carefully shared the other end of my couch and coffee table. Being a nursing mother is a bit like being in a visual vortex. It's like there's this invisible black out ball around me. Most people will go out of their way to glance in any other direction when Eva's feeding� and at the same time, the second I'm done, people always seem to know and turn to smile at her or ask how old she is. Everywhere we go people are always stopping to admire her beauty or strength, or comment on how tiny she is or how intelligent she looks. Except when I get ready to feed her, and then the visual vortex descends again. The man glanced at her and at me and seemed surprised to see the book I was trying to read out on the table. Maybe I didn't seem the type to read it, with my hair bunched up in a ponytail, and my big baggy nursing tunic and leggings. Maybe it was my dyed hair or my zebra striped sneakers�and as it turned out, I didn't read it, so who knows. I was too struck by the sounds and the people all around me, and the weather and the heavy air, and the smell of fresh coffee, and Eva playing hide-and-go-seek with my nipple.

Once home again, I put her in her basket by my chair. She slept for another hour or two. I was able to get some housecleaning done and get a lot of work done. I think tomorrow, I'll start learning FLASH.

At lunchtime, I was able to put her in her little chair. It has a seatbelt and this thing that goes in front, with all these noises and colors, and things that move when you hit them. Eva's just started hitting them but hasn't yet put the whole cause and effect of it together... She's close� she's fascinated with it as long as I'm within view. So I put her in the chair at lunchtime, and worked out a little. Not enough to be sore, but enough to feel really, really good for the rest of the day. Then a package came from Mom. She made me a nursing jumper and a nursing shirt. They are great. I love that Mom has been making all these wonderful clothes for Eva- especially the sweaters. Mom also sent along a slew of letters she had written to Gram when I was 3 and 4 months old. She was 20, and 21. She was so young! Reading those letters reminded me of the way she was when I was very little. When I was 10, Mom went through a sort of early midlife crises and was a different Mom after that. She was 30, the age I am now. In these letters is a very young, naive, sweet and gregarious optimist. This was before Michigan, before the twins, before so much of everything. Ken and I read the letters together. It was bizarre to think that I was starting to crawl at 4 months! I can't imagine Eva crawling just one month from now. On the other hand, I was sleeping in my own bed, in my own room, and Mom was already feeding me baby food and giving me apple juice and sometimes even ice cream! I'm not planning on giving Eva anything other than breast milk and maybe water until she's 6 month's old! Maybe if I didn't hold her all the time, Eva might learn to crawl faster�but then I love this so much, and she has the rest of her life to learn to crawl. Let her learn that I love her now, and everything else will fall into place.

What strikes me more than the differences in the parenting details, are the radically different lifestyles and the differences between our world views. Ken and I are so much more worldly than Mom was then (than Mom is now, actually), but so much less self sufficient. At the time of these letters, she'd only been married a few months so life with Dad was still in it's infancy too. Ken said it's so odd to think about that. We've been married for over 5 years, and we've known each other for over 7. On the other hand, Mom and Dad have always been so much more industrious. When Dad had an unexpected day off, they spent the day making curtains, and cleaning the house, and gardening, and Mom writes about it as if it was a vacation� so young and so new, that time must have still had the patina of honeymoon all over it, but it's still impressive in the same way that Yoshie is impressive. That Mom wrote letters to Gram every few days or weeks impresses me. I think I've written Mom maybe once or twice in my life! She was so much less critical, more accepting, and more productive! I am at this point, more educated than she was, and have seen more of the world� How strange to see the world through her eyes. If I had written home at 20, the words would have been so vastly different. I would have given voice to the darkness that Mom refused to mention. My letters would have been full of my loneliness, and my feelings of intense isolation. I would have written of fear and shyness that overwhelmed me. And once I had that out of my system, I would've talked about all the things I was learning on my own, and in art school, how I was becoming my own person in way's I'd never imagined, how school was teaching me to see the world and everything around me with new eyes. Light as a definer was in the forefront of my thoughts, and I was seeing light and color and line and form as if I'd never seen them before and at the same time, in ways I always knew were true once they were pointed out to me. I lived in Hayward for 6 months, and it never once occurred to me to make curtains. I've been living here for 4 years and still never made a pair of curtains... I dream and I educate myself, but I am less courageous in acting than my Mom was when I was Eva's age.

July 23
Eva has started something like talking. She really babbled these last three days- definitely mimicking our vocal tones and spacings. I was feeding her at one point and she chomped down kind of hard (as she does) I said "OW, OW, OW!"� She popped off my nipple, looked up at me, and went "onhg, onh, onh" then lurched around for the nipple again and resumed eating. Also, she's doing more rolling type stuff, although I don't think she knows it. Night before last, Ken already had Eva resting on his chest when I came to bed, but she was awake and fussing. I lay down next to them. She sort of lurched towards me. I started to pick her up from Ken, but then I didn't because she seemed to be moving towards me all by herself. It took her awhile, but she managed to roll off Ken's chest (head first, I wonder if she'll take after her Uncle Brian) and sort of inchworm her way across from him to the few inches away where I was, and got herself almost onto my nipple with no assistance. She was not impressed. To her, it was just a means to the end goal of milk, but Ken and I were stunned. The few other times she has rolled, have also been non impressive to her but miraculous to us. She rolled over from her back to her front the other day, and then got really frustrated because she couldn't roll back over again� in general though, she's only rolling from side to side. Another new thing she's doing is the ability to support her own weight on her legs. I hate to say standing because I don't want to take any power away from the day where she can stand completely on her own 2 feet with no help from us. I hold her, and she pushes off a surface with her feet and manages to hold a standing position with my hands under her armpits, but my hands are just really balancing her. She can do this for a few minutes at this point and unlike the rolling thing, I thing she likes this game and likes to stand up for the sake of standing up. She hates being horizontal and this standing makes her taller and brings her closer to my eye level so maybe that's what's inspiring her. Wouldn't it be funny if she skipped crawling completely and went straight to walking?

I called Brandon for lunch on Friday and we went to Noe valley and walked around a little bit. That was fun. I like Brandon. He held Eva a lot, which was nice and gave my back a little break. I did drag him into a shoe shop for babies and bought a pair of tiny black ballet shoes with pink silk rosebuds on them. They were so cute and looked like something my prettiest dolls might have worn- the ones Grandma used to buy for me once a year. I loved getting those dolls, but I never took very good care of them. I remember my favorite one had real hair. I ended up getting her wig ripped off by branches when I went climbing with her in the pussywillow tree we had in our backyard in Michigan. I cried. It must have been something to see that sad little wig, hanging from the branches. I don't remember whatever happened to that doll- she had real glass eyes too. Anyway, I learned my lesson and won't be taking Eva tree climbing with me anytime soon. As we were walking down the street, a woman passed Brandon holding Eva, and smiled at him and said "What a cutie" and kept on walking. I saw Brandon blink twice and could almost hear the mental gears grinding " oh-she's-talking-about-the-baby"� that cracked me up. Eva seems to bring out the baby lover in a lot of people. It takes a little getting used to.

Saturday was Alisa's wedding. Alisa used to work at Accolade with me. She's warm and funny and blond and vivacious and just great. She got married to this guy she met and fell head over heels in love with almost from day one. They seem good together. We ran to get some last minute things for their wedding gift, and Eva dazzled one woman in the line next to us. Because of Eva, I end up hearing so many things about people's intimate lives that I otherwise would never be allowed to know. This woman told us all about her nephew. He is 4 months old but already 19 pounds. She couldn't get over how tiny and alert Eva is, and had to hold her. I think there was a part of her that didn't want to give Eva back. I hope I would get some sense if a scary stranger or dangerous person asked to hold Eva, but I guess I put my faith in strangers. When people ask to hold Eva, I usually say yes, and sometimes, when women come up to me on the street and seem to be so wistfully enamored of her, I ask if they'd like to hold her. People seem to love her everywhere we go. Mom told me stories all my life of the same thing happening to me at her age, so maybe I've expect it. What a wonderful thing to get used to.

We got to the church late. We sat in the back, but even so, I had to feed Eva and she made loud, embarrassing smacking noises throughout the whole ceremony. It was a catholic service. The church was really fantastic, very ornate. The ceiling had a stained glass widow at the very top, surrounded by a ring of winged cherub heads. The winged cherub head motif had a strong presence throughout the entire chapel. Angels made an appearance at the base of every stained glass window. Ken pointed out some statues of saints and some paintings depicting the 13 Stations of the Cross (or is it 12)� Catholicism is so bizarre. Presbyterians don't have any of these weird demi-gods. I felt almost like I was stepping into a modern interpretation of an ancient Greek temple with the ancient pantheon displayed before me. Also, it echoed. The service was nice, despite the angel heads. The minister was young and very human. He made mild jokes about the couple- that it was good that they knew the importance of marriage and that they both valued love over money since they were both musicians and would probably never make any. Luis is a drummer and Alisa sings (they met through their music). I really felt this deep sense of honor in being invited. She'd only invited a few other people that we knew from our old Accolade days, and most of them were strong connections in other ways. I had a chance to see Jill Higgins and her new husband and baby. Her little girl is 2 months older than Eva. She's beautiful. Of course, I expected that with Jill for a Mom. It was nice to see so many faces I hadn't seen in awhile and to be able to share some of the radiance that Alisa was beaming with. They're going to Greece for their honeymoon. I'm hoping Ken and I can take them out to dinner when they get back. As we were leaving the reception, a waitress speaking only Italian came up to Ken (holding Eva) and couldn't stop exclaiming. I don't know what she was saying, but I assume from context and from gestures that she was calling Eva beautiful, and asking, begging even, for just one little smile "like this" and it would make her entire day. I asked her if she would like to hold Eva, and she had Eva out of Ken's arms and into her own embrace in one fell swoop. Eva, being the darling but sometimes perverse child that I suspect she is, decided not to favor the woman with a smile, although I've never seen anyone work harder to get one. I got the feeling she blessed Eva in Italian too, though I can't be sure. We were probably standing there for 10 minutes or so when she finally gave Eva back. Eva smiled all the way back to the car.

Today, I woke up late. I bathed and dressed Eva, and then we played the stand up game for awhile. I started a load of laundry and then realized I was starving. I ended up picking up Brandon and we went to Sausalito to have a late lunch with Ken. Brandon is on a month long vacation. After lunch, we drove to the park in search of trees. Brandon was looking for one that bent a certain way, to incorporated into a personal project he's working on. He found a tree that was close enough. He took some pictures, and we sat there and sketched for a little while, but the fog was rushing in and it got really cold really fast. I managed to draw a lot of fleshy looking branches in Eva's sketchbook that I will probably gesso over, but just twitching my fingers was good. Then we met Ken and Trevor for dinner at a trendy little sushi place. The waitress was pretty cute and loved Eva. She kept coming over to hold Eva and be friendly. Trevor wants to rent Eva to help him pick up chicks. I feel a catch22 coming on.

When Ivy lived with us, she and I spent a lot of time talking about personal demons. I know mine are fairly tame compared to some. These days, my demons are cute and in bright colors, and they smell like Barbie doll heads and marshmallow goo. Still, they win sometimes, and when they lose, I feel powerful. I used to wonder if part of Ivy wanted her demons win� it's almost like she got used to them winning and was lonely when they lost- or bored maybe, I don't know. Ivy's demons are a lot easier to see than most � so are Brandon's. Demons are those feelings of fear and self loathing, the little voices that mock your weaknesses or your sentimentality� they talk you into going out there on the tightrope, and then trick you into looking down, and constantly tell you that you're going to fall until you give up because fuck it, you're going to fall anyway. Some people get this kind of haggard look when they've been battling their demons. With Ivy, I could practically see her demons sitting right there on her shoulders, telling her she would always fail, and that she should give up. Did I ever have demons like that? Maybe I never did, or maybe I have had more successes in my battles with my own monsters and that gives me power. I didn't always have this power and the demons used to keep me so depressed I thought I'd never make it. It got me to thinking back� and that got me to thinking about memories in general.

My memory started on my third birthday. Not everyone can remember back that far, but I made a point to remember, and carried the memories along with me for years. My parents moved to Michigan when I was 5. I hated it there. I had a story in my head that I told myself at night� Somehow, I'd been trapped in a dream world and all the years in Michigan were just in the dream. They were trying to make me forget the real world, and if I forgot, I'd have to stay in the dream world forever. If I could just remember everything though, some day I would find a way to get out, and then I would wake up and I would still be 5 and I would still be living in Arizona and my granddad would still be alive. When I turned 20, I sort of freaked out. I guess that happens to a lot of people. I just honestly never thought I'd make it that far. Part of me went "Look at you� you forgot didn't you? Now you really WILL be stuck here forever" and finally, it was ok. Being stuck in the dream world is not so bad.

The day I turned three, my mom was gone. She was in the hospital with the twins. I don't remember anything about the twins. I don't remember Mom being pregnant, or waiting for them, although surely I must have known they were coming. I don't remember missing them when they never came. I remember that Mom was very very sad for a long time, and I remember that she wasn't there on my birthday. I don't think I missed her. I remember getting to run around a lot more than I must have been used to. I remember lots of freedom and feeling special. I used to get a runny nose a lot as a kid. I loved the feeling not so much of my nose dripping, but of wiping my hand across my face, and the feeling of the mucus as it dried, tight and crunchy on my cheeks and the backs of my hands. I remember being dirty and loving that slightly sticky feeling. I remember sitting on the couch. The couch had a bright green cover. I don't remember the color- or I do, but I remember it from photos. What I remember is the nubblies in the fabric; I liked to run my fingers back and forth along them when I sat there� kind of like magnified terrycloth nubblies. They made me sit and be still on the couch. I remember the front door opened, and Granddad walked in. The Sun was setting behind him so that it was like the sun itself was walking through the door, trying to fit in through this mighty shadow. Even granddad's shadow was familiar, He wore a cowboy hat, and he always took it off when he came indoors. He smelled of Marlboros and Jack Daniels and old spice maybe, or some kind of super clean shaving tonic. He stood there for a moment, against the sun before he came in and closed the door. That moment is golden. I will always miss him. They brought me a cake with candles on it, and the candles put heat against my face. I looked around, although I can't remember anymore, whom I saw. I was happy. Someone took a photo. Mom says I must just remember the photo and maybe that's true, but I remember the photo from the other side. I blew out the candles and everybody loved me.