Two

We celebrated Cora's second birthday on Saturday. It was a cozy morning party with friends. I spent last week remembering childhood birthday parties while thinking about the small details of Cora's party--things like cupcakes or cake, what sorts of brunchy things we'd serve, ways to get toddlers to dance, things like that. More, though, I was imagining picking Cora up in the morning with a full heart and a pronounced sense of my daughter's babyhood ending. I didn't feel that way; I was just so excited to celebrate her birthday--more excited, maybe, than she was.

The thing is, her birthday party wasn't on her actual birthday; she was born two years ago today. So I was a little surprised to feel all those feelings this morning. She sat across from us in the kitchen, spooning oatmeal and yogurt and wearing beads around her neck, and I stared at her while remembering pacing around the Seattle University's track near Swedish hospital, trying to get my contractions to speed up. And now she is a little person with opinions and stubborn behavior who is able to gracefully maneuver a spoon of milky oatmeal into her mouth.

She's growing up.

To make matters more oddly emotional, I dropped her off this morning at the new nanny share we're trying out Monday mornings for a few hours. I'm tucked away at a bookstore trying to get started on the next chapter of my novel, and a baby is crying nearby. A woman just walked by with her bundled seven-month-old who is placidly sitting on her hip and staring at everything she stares at--no squirming, no begging for down, no sudden launching into space and beyond with strong legs.

It's not that I am sad to see her grow. It's that the growth is sometimes astonishing, and I wonder if I'll ever get over the growing pains from the joy of watching her turn into herself.

Cooking Green

Cora has been healthy for three weeks. Her current spirited vitality has brushed away the cobwebs cast over our lives when we learned about her IgA deficiency. I like to imagine it's because she's been fixed, that the problem doesn't exist and the tests were wrong.

Regardless, I think we're out of the woods for awhile and it feels great.

I feel like myself again. For one thing, we've slept a lot more these past few weeks. Rather than thinking about sniffles and coughs and diarrhea (and tending to such ailments several times a night), I am thinking again about writing, and food, and fun things to do with a toddler during a rainy spring season in Seattle--more difficult to do than one might imagine considering that we've sworn off indoor play areas. No more public petri dishes like the Zoomazium or the Children's Museum or kid-friendly coffee shops filled with cute but dingy toys handed from one hand and mouth to another.

That is one big frustration of late: I never, ever wanted to be one of those moms that cleans things all the time, and now I carry hand sanitizer and wipes wherever I go.

I am also much more focused on food now than I ever thought possible. As a vegan macrobiotic, homeschooled child who grew up on an island alfalfa sprout farm while listening to my mom talk incessantly about yin and yang, and as a gluten-free person since the age of 12, I feel steeped in food lore to the point of ridiculousness. But there is always more to learn, and I am enjoying the independent process of discovery--searching food blogs, thumbing through books, seeking recommendations from friends, and tinkering around in our kitchen whenever Cora will allow.

My sister recently told me that I am a better cook now that I am a mom. She also told me, years ago, that I am a better person when I am with Brian.

I've always teased my sister that she has a way with words. She used to tell me that, no offense, but my hair really looked quite awful. Or a few months ago on our way to a therapeutic spa day together, she confided in serious tones that my streak of gray hair aged me at least 10 years and advised me to go to a professional to get it fixed.

Of course the cooking reference was a compliment, but I went to bed grumbling; why was it that just because I talk more about food these days I'm a better cook than I once was...because I was pretty okay before, wasn't I? Think of the tortellini salads, for goodness sake!

(Your guess is as good as mine as to why on earth I thought of tortellini salads. Was that really one of my most creative ventures? Surely not. I finally conjured up my years of invested shopping and cooking--chopping a million different ingredients into gigantic salads, grilling salmon and potatoes, rolling homemade sushi, baking baguettes and serving them hot with melted brie and sauteed mushrooms, frying kale in sesame oil and soy sauce.)

But as with many of the things my sister says, the meaning lingers and I have to pause and consider. Has my hair ever really resembled a little dog atop my head? (She really did say that once.) Before she convinced me to get layers, is it possible that I did, in fact, look like a lampshade and a pair of legs wandering down the street? (She actually said that, too.) Does the grey really age me beyond an age I am comfortable representing in my early thirties?

I can agree that I have had a few more bad hair days than the average lady. And as far as being a better person because of Brian, I have to agree. One thing I know for sure is that it is useful to feel so much love, and to feel so loved. It feeds a nice cycle of give and take, making me more likely to smile magnanimously at the grocery clerk than if I were stuck in my head thinking about my latest thwarted attempt at something.

I have to admit that my sister has done the sisterly duty of helping me look a little bit more presentable--no more lampshade 'do, no more little dogs, no more college fare of parmesan cheese quesadillas heated up in the microwave.

So maybe she's right; I can certainly credit my daughter for being a more conscious cook. But am I a better cook because of that?

Several meals I made this week would pretty much convince anyone I was clearly on crack if I thought I was versed in the art of culinary adventures.

After having Cora, I suppose I did have a bit of a coming-out party about my love of food, and I certainly read more recipes these days than I ever have. Before Cora, I felt uncomfortable trumpeting my interest in the food-health connection. Now, because there is a small person's health at stake, I seem to feel more invested in discussing what I am sure is an intrinsic link. Still, I'm not really a better cook, I'm just more aware of food in general. I think about it differently, and I am more focused on whether it's useful--good for our bodies, good for our planet, good for Cora's future.

And lately, I have become far more interested in the iron and vitamin B content of foods than ever before. But I also have to be conscious of how to serve foods in such a way as to convince Cora to love them. And, of course, I want the food to taste good, too.

For example, I want her to eat more green things. Green vegetables are high in vitamin C, iron, B vitamins, and the simple component of chlorophyll, which helps speed oxygen through the bloodstream. She loves broccoli and green beans, and she likes peas because they are so fun to pick up and pop into her mouth. We've tried kale and nori seaweed with some success. Other green stuff? Not so much.

So, what I guess I'm trying to say, as I sit here writing after trying to entice Cora to eat a kale and broccoli grilled cheese sandwich with omega 3 mayonnaise (ha, not a success), is that I plan to adventure into the world of green food a great deal in the coming weeks. And I can't guarantee it'll be a delicious journey, but I'm hopeful that at least it will be an educational one.

And I'll have to convince my sister to come over for dinner so I can try out some of my new wares on her exacting taste. I know she'll let me know what she thinks. :)

Reflections

As most parents often say, having a child brings a lot of laughter and love into your life. (And, often, too, a lot of sleeplessness and exhaustion.) As Cora starts her foray into toddlerhood, I am discovering a new kind of connection to her. Having a baby is very parental; it's very much focused on taking care of and changing and swaddling and rocking and soothing. Having a near-toddler is a new phase, it begins to brush against my own memories of being a wee one, navigating around my home and getting into mischief. It's when memory started. All the little connections started firing away and I began to see the world as something I was a part of, something separate and yet connected, a vast and exciting world of discoveries. Everything is new to Cora! Sometimes I can't get over that. She just keeps growing and stretching, everything is getting bigger--even her little hands and feet are noticeably wider and longer, more able to grip things and walk upon.

Nearly every morning when she wakes up, one of us will get up and bring her into our bed, where I will nurse her back to sleep. She snuggles between us, looking infinitely secure and so small next to her 6'2" dad. This morning I got up for a glass of water, and when I crept back into bed I had one of those moments when it all becomes so clear for the briefest of instants: this is my life. Those two people are my family, the ones I love more than anything else in the whole world, would break to pieces without, wait for at the end of a long day, look for in the mornings, want to hold and squeeze and cuddle. In the quiet of the morning, while light crept through our curtains, I looked at them while total gratitude ran through my veins. This is our life: three linked people--two grown-ups and a little helix of us sleeping softly between.

As I watch Cora grow into her adamant self, I find myself reflecting more on my own childhood. If I stop and ask myself to define the first memories I associate with being a kid, it is so easy--immediately I remember exploring the woodsy acreage on Bainbridge Island, the stomping ground of my first 12 years. We had the immense luck of having a 40-acre, forested backyard owned by a reclusive rich lady who never used her land. I think I spent the majority of my childhood exploring the mossy interior of those woods, making booby traps and keeping a nature log and writing bad poetry. I often set out with my sister or my friends, but what stands out the most are the days when it was just me and my dog Valley, snuffling through the land looking for fairies and gnomes, listening to the birds, making bouquets of trilliums (until I learned, to my horror, that they can take up to 15 years to first produce a flower, and, if you pick the bloom, it can take up to seven years for it to flower again), and feeling the world roll at my feet. These spaces of solitude continue to define happiness for me. I think I have been searching for that place ever since we left. I also remember getting into a lot of mischief with my sister, stealing stuff and making prank calls, trying to smoke tea bags and almost burning down our backyard. And while there are countless memories of adventures with my family, going camping on Orcas Island or Shi Shi beach, walking on rocky beaches, or helping my mom cook in the kitchen, those aren't the times that stand out first and foremost.

All the time and attention that we pour into our children is for the purpose of helping them thrive on their own. We spend their young lives trying to fill them with our love, hope with all our might that they will search for experiences that mirror the love and trust and security we hope they felt as a member of our family. And if they are able to wander into the world by themselves and feel a sense of awe, and give something of themselves that comes from a place of security, then perhaps we can credit ourselves a little bit for that. Or perhaps it is entirely to our children's credit.

I waffle on this point because we all have such different experiences. What breaks one bolsters another. What defines one is only peripheral to another. I mention this because, interestingly, sometimes my most vivid memories of my parents are negative ones. They are the breaks in the fabric of an idyllic existence, ones that began to unravel everything until our perfect home on the island became tattered and worn out, exhausted and dangerous. It has taken 30-plus years to revisit those tough times in my head and look at them with adult eyes, to understand the network of stuff that slowly broke everything down. So I wonder if there is some kind of cadence to it all, a process by which we filter through all the good and all the junk and arrive at a balanced equation that defines us. There was obviously a huge amount of good in my childhood, so many moments that surprise me when I remember them, so much dedication and kindness, so much attention and care. I give my mom and dad great credit for the parents they wanted to be. They put effort into it. I have huge respect for that.

And with the tough stuff, I got perspective. For better or worse, it makes me, me. Admittedly, when I lie on my pillow and look at my slumbering baby and incredible husband, and think about everything around me, from the memories that are so vivid they are like fixtures, to the walls of our house to the food in our refrigerator, I feel...lucky. I remember closing my eyes and wishing wishing wishing.

It is all so deeply personal. That's what I continue to arrive at. We all have our own stories: stories that we tell ourselves, stories that happened to us, stories where we become the heroic protagonists of our own fate--stories that define us in ways that inspire our present and shape our future. And at some level, we can't help comparing ourselves to each other, because that's what we do. As human beings, we look inside and then look out, and somehow place ourselves somewhere on that trajectory. Some people are so fascinated by the similarities and differences that exist between people or countries or solar systems that they make it their life work to analyze them. Some focus on our psychology, studying inner realities and drawing connections to outer experiences. Some, like my husband, are artists, have trained a huge section of their brain to memorize lines and light, shape and form, and they create new worlds for us to enter quietly, helping us play and imagine.

For some reason, I like to tell stories. Was it because my mom used to tell me I was a good writer, would sit with great attention while I read her my stories about squirrels and rabbits in the woods? Is it because I liked the quiet time, or because I have escapist issues, or because I like to study people? When do our dreams begin, and what starts them? What is the energy that draws us to our life work, and what sustains it?