Second Day

Napping is still a challenge, it still took way too long. Cora is addicted to bouncing. We have instilled it in her. It's not fair, really, to ask her to quickly banish an addiction that we spent the first 11 months of her life instilling, only to try to rip it out from under her feet because it doesn't really fit anymore. It's like giving someone chocolate or coffee or heroin every afternoon and then saying, "You know, it's not really working for me anymore. I'm going to have to take that away now." I am trying to be very, very patient. It is made more difficult by the fact that I start each nap session with high hopes. I have these lofty "aha!" moments when, literally, I feel my heart leap inside my chest while I watch her eyelids slowly droop and drop. She's falling asleep! It's going to work! She's learning, she's so smart, I am so amazed, I can't wait to go down and write about how amazing she is! Yippee! And then, no, her eyes whip open and she sits up and claps. She knows some sign language, so she'll ask me to change her diaper, and I will, but it will be dry, and she'll wriggle over and try to play with her pink shoes on the changing table. I'll rock her and sway her and she'll push away, so I'll put her back in her crib and she'll stand up and ask for milk. So I try nursing her, and I am sure it will be all she needs to fall asleep. But instead she sits up and asks to read.

I promised I would write about poop, and I shall. I am realizing that Cora seems to have a morning and an afternoon poop. The morning one occurs when she is reading her books by herself, quietly reflecting on Goodnight Moon, and then she comes out to the kitchen where we are preparing breakfast, and asks us to change her diaper. The afternoon one, it seems, happens when she is trying to go down for her nap. Who can go to sleep when they have a poo brewing? So, I am going to give her more time to poop, and I am going to stop trying to put her to sleep so early. Normally she falls asleep at 10, so I thought Noon was a reasonable stretch. It seems she is a 12:30 pooper and a 1:00 sleeper.

See? I am learning about my daughter.

I finished yesterday's post with a reflection on the importance of writing, and on my recent reading of Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love. When I looked for a link for the book yesterday, I found her web site. Today I started my nap time writing session with her perspective on writing. Here is my favorite excerpt:

"As for discipline – it’s important, but sort of over-rated. The more important virtue for a writer, I believe, is self-forgiveness. Because your writing will always disappoint you. Your laziness will always disappoint you. You will make vows: “I’m going to write for an hour every day,” and then you won’t do it. You will think: “I suck, I’m such a failure. I’m washed-up.” Continuing to write after that heartache of disappointment doesn’t take only discipline, but also self-forgiveness (which comes from a place of kind and encouraging and motherly love). The other thing to realize is that all writers think they suck. When I was writing “Eat, Pray, Love”, I had just as a strong a mantra of THIS SUCKS ringing through my head as anyone does when they write anything. But I had a clarion moment of truth during the process of that book. One day, when I was agonizing over how utterly bad my writing felt, I realized: “That’s actually not my problem.” The point I realized was this – I never promised the universe that I would write brilliantly; I only promised the universe that I would write. So I put my head down and sweated through it, as per my vows."

She also has some weighty things to say about sending your stuff in for publication, which certainly hit home. Why on earth don't I send something in and just TRY to get it published? I now vow to send something in before the end of 2008. For God's sake, it's really not that hard. I have waaaayyy overblown the whole thing by worrying about it so much. It's a perfectionist thing and also a laziness thing. And, to be fair, also a busy thing. I haven't had the wherewithal to comb through my work and see if there is something worthy of sending out, let alone researching the right publication. And finding stamps, that's always so hard. Uh. But whatever. I am now taking up my own precious time conjecturing about my lack of success instead of reflecting on something more interesting.

I have been thinking a lot about my dreams. Sometimes, the life that I want to lead is so tangible I feel like I can smell it. I think I've been visiting it in my mind since I was a kid, and I've definitely revisited it at least a thousand times since I started working in offices. Every time I made myself focus on an assignment, I would think of this house on an island. It's this totally romantic and amazing place. It's a well-built home in the middle of the forest, near the ocean (you can see the water from the upper attic windows). We designed it ourselves. There are two wings: the sleeping wing and the working wing. The sleeping wing has sloping ceilings with skylights so you can look at the stars at night (and there are so many of them because where we are it is dark, and quiet, and remote). There are huge trees outside, and a tree house tucked away out back where Cora has a whole family of handmade dolls and books and blankets, and her own bed where she takes quiet naps on the weekends. Inside our house there is a huge, open kitchen filled with sturdy appliances and good pots and pans. There is an entire cupboard filled with apples and squash and potatoes and other hardy fruits and vegetables. Everything is recycled or recyclable, no plastic or waste. The kitchen opens into a cozy eating area where there is a huge, oiled wood table with benches and big wooden chairs. Handmade pottery is stacked in an an old, country-style wood cabinet nearby, and there's a big red bowl in the center of the table, overflowing with fresh fruit. On one side of the eating area is a big, old-fashioned wood stove filled with a roaring fire. On the other side is the glass-enclosed garden that sits at the center of our house, and sun and rain pour in and even small birds nest in one of the maples in the spring. Outside it is mossy and verdant and it smells tingly and salty and green, totally overpoweringly filled with life and stillness and birds calling.

And we sit in the working wing, looking out at the ocean rolling in the distance, and I write my stories and my novels and my musings. And people wait for them.