ever-fixed mark

One of the huge advantages of a $20 camera is that you’re not afraid to take it kayaking. If it goes overboard, then you can buy another. Not that we go around throwing $20 to the four winds, but it’s not like losing the digital or the 35 mm, both of which would hurt to replace.

In honor of the first pleasant day of summer, then, I give you this shot of Dog hunting frogs. It’s from my first batch of color photos with the Holga.

A few more days like this, and we’ll have ourselves a real summer.

I joined a new book club. (If you’re just joining us, you may not know the backstory on this.) A few weeks ago, I was out walking with Minor one day and ran into a woman I sort of know just from seeing her at kid-friendly functions around town, and she and her friend invited me to their meeting that week. I went and enjoyed myself; it’s good to have people to talk books with.

With book clubs, selection is always problematic. We were tossing around a few ideas, and I mentioned that the New York Times Book Review had recently convened a panel of authors to select the best American novel of the past 25 years. (Beloved won.) I had been pleased and surprised to see one of my favorite books of all time, Norman Rush’s Mating, given honorable mention.

Upon hearing my assessment, the book club expressed an immediate desire to add Mating to their list, but I balked. What if they hated it? A strong recommendation can seem pushy, almost aggressive, and one that does not live up to its promise can only produce resentment. I wasn’t willing to take that risk with a bunch of people I barely knew, so in deference to my feelings they chose something else instead. (A few said they would check it out on their own, though.)

The quality of a reading experience is not dictated solely by the reading material. It’s influenced by who you are, where you’ve been, what you have in common with the text, the shape and feel of the book, who gave it to you, where you read it, and (of course) the cover illustration. (For example, I can’t enjoy a classic that has a movie still on its front cover, even if I loved the adaptation.) I read Mating when it first came out in paperback, in 1992, when I was in the Peace Corps. Book clubs were not yet in vogue, but the volunteer community was like the best book club ever: a few dozen people who loved to read, had lots of down time with little else to amuse them, and were forced to circulate a limited supply of books. The “book of the month” was whatever was in someone else’s backpack the next time you saw him.

I had one friend, a boy I dated occasionally, who berated me for picking up the occasional Patricia Cornwell or Jonathan Kellerman. (I always replied that when he got his master’s in English then he could criticize my reading choices; but, you know, in recent years I’ve come around to his way of thinking, and I almost never pick up junk anymore.) It was he who got me to look at Wuthering Heights in a new way by pointing out the humor and the cinematic quality of the narration. He tried, less successfully, to get me more interested in Vonnegut, Heinlein, and Marquez. Our tastes were obviously not completely similar, so I took his recommendation of Mating with a grain of salt, but I couldn’t resist it because it was a newly published book, a rarity in our reading universe. He had gotten it from his real (non-volunteer) girlfriend, an American who was now living in Paris, whom he had visited.

His girlfriend, knowing that he would read the book, had annotated it with little messages to him in French, which I spoke (poorly, but well enough so that my eyes popped a few times at her references) and he was learning. It was jarring and yet fitting to move from the romance between expats in Africa on the page to the romance in the notes, both of which inolved me, another expat in Africa, as voyeuse. But I just adored the book.

I had been surprised to see Mating given runner-up status by the New York Times along with the multiple DeLillos, Roths, and Updikes, because it seems so different in character. I found Mating completely delightful and entertaining, whereas Roth and Updike have struck me as good but depressing, and the few paragraphs of DeLillo I’ve read have just been exhausting. I also read a lot of Roth when I was in the Peace Corps, starting with Portnoy’s Complaint, but my relationship with Updike’s books goes back high school. Updike set his Rabbit series in the city where I was born, reimagined as “Brewer” in the novels. There weren’t too many literary efforts connected with this dying city, so I was practically obligated to read them. (Although Reading, PA can also boast Wallace Stevens.)

None of this really has anything to do with Mating, except that when we were talking about the New York Times list, one of my new book club compatriots said, “John Updike and I go to the same dentist.” It turns out that life has brought both of us from our beginnings in Reading to this same little corner of New England. This weekend’s NYT Book Review features an essay by Updike in which he mentions both the city in which I was born and the city where I currently live. Small world, eh? Call me, John! Maybe we can hang out at the gym, where our other famous local novelist and I both work out.

Updike also has a new book, Terrorist. I’m imagining Rabbit plotting to blow up the Pagoda.

Jody’s recent post on Raising Weg exposing the sexist underbelly of children’s clothing retailers got my attention. I don’t shop for girls, so I’ve never noticed the issues she raised, but I have been haranguing the local boutiques about their inability to stock infant boys’ clothes in any color but baby blue. I get mostly blank stares for my efforts.

Then, a very cool new shop opened downtown in the square that also contains the playground, a perfect location. One of my friends bought Minor this exceedingly cool t-shirt there:

When I was in high school, the Stones played a concert in Philly. I remember the controversy over the song “Under My Thumb” (feminists objected) and how the administration tried to convince kids that they would be in big, big trouble if they skipped school to go (didn’t work). I didn’t go myself, not only because I was not a concert-T-shirt-wearing, school-skipping kid, but because the Stones were not on my top-40 radar at the time. Amazing to think about it, but they were old news even then. Sure, that was right around the time of Tattoo You–they still had a lot of life in them–but there were plenty of hits under the bridge.

The hullabulloo around the Stones’ appearance intrigued me, and I started eschewing the local hits station for the album-oriented rock stations in Philly, both of which still exist. (Now, I believe that format is referred to as “classic rock.”) I bought a copy of Hot Rocks, which I recorded onto a cassette tape and listened to on my boom box. And I eventually saw the Stones in concert, during one of those big fund- or consciousness-raising festivals in the ‘eighties. I think.

Can’t you just picture Minor seeing this photo of himself fifteen years from now and saying, “Wow, the Stones were around back then? They’re playing the TD Banknorth Ameritrade Price Waterhouse Coopers & Lybrand Garden this weekend!”

Our next-door neighbors also have two young children, newborn twins. Yesterday I saw them out and about in full foul weather gear, each with a twin tucked under a jacket. When I ran into the male half of the couple later, I remarked, “You’re getting out in spite of the weather, huh?”

This man, with whom I’ve never exchanged anything but polite pleasantries in the past, barked, “Screw the weather. Fuck it.”

I venture to say he speaks for all of New England.

Weather, you’re on notice. We’re tired of it. We won’t be pushed around any longer. Summer is going on with or without your cooperation. Beach outings, long runs, barbecues, picnics — we’ll do them in the pouring rain or oppressive humidity if we have to. Do your worst. Wet grass? Flooded streets? Mosquitoes the size of plump pigeons, whose bites require emergency intervention? Bring. It. On.

Sooo tired. Minor is sleeping a normal amount, but at abnormal times. Often, he’s awake for an hour or two in the middle of the night. He doesn’t cry, just insists on being entertained. We haven’t been able to establish a good routine for getting him to sleep. Just when we think we have something down, the next night it ceases to work. Sometimes he likes the pacifier, but other times he wants the bottle, even if he’s full. Sometimes he needs to be walked around in the Bjorn. But the next night, the Bjorn won’t do; he has to be held. Occasionally, a car ride works. More often than not, it’s the stroller that lulls him to sleep. Between the hours of 4 and 6, you can often find us trying one of these gambits.

There is a woman in my town who has a daughter Aitch’s age. Every afternoon between 12 and 2 you can spot her walking around town with her daughter in a jogging stroller. One day, I greeted her, and she responded in a whisper, explaining that her daughter would only nap in the stroller, and that she has to stroll her around for two hours daily if she wants her to take a nap.

I smiled and nodded, of course, but in my heart I was committing a little mommy drive-by: “She should teach that kid to nap in her bed!” I thought she was being overly indulgent. Now I’m the one strolling my kid around the block at 4 a.m. I definitely want to teach Minor to sleep in his bed, but I feel like I need to get to know his sleep patterns better first, so I can do it without a lot of trauma. I’m not averse to “cry it out,” but he’s still too young and too new yet. So in the meantime, there is sleep deprivation. There’s a reason they use it as a torture technique.

Basically, I feel pretty wide-awake most of the time, but the past month has felt like one long, uninterrupted day. I feel disconnected to time; hours pass more slowly than usual, but milestones sneak up on me. I’m not as organized or sharp as usual.

For example, last Friday I suddenly realized that I was supposed to be in Philadelphia on Monday, a trip I’ve known about since my abstract for the meeting was accepted at least 6 months ago. Here is a partial list of things I forgot:

• My contact lens case
• My iPod
• My phone charger
• Pajamas
• A hotel reservation

One of these things is crucial to a business trip; can you guess which one?

So all weekend I tried to get a hotel room, but Philly was full, thanks to the convention, and there was nothing to be had that wasn’t in Northeast Philly (where, believe it or not, I’ve never been, and why start now?) or upwards of $400. Since I was paying for it myself, this wasn’t an option. So I made a backup plan to stay with a friend who lives 50 miles away and resigned myself to spending my one child-free night waking up at 4:30 to leave by 5:30 to beat the traffic to get there by 8:00 to speak at 8:30. I was pretty grumpy about it.

During the flight I suddenly realized that the meeting organizers had never reimbursed me for a hotel room for a previous meeting, for which I had been on the committee. So when I checked in I kind of casually mentioned it, adding, “I don’t suppose you could help me find a place to stay tonight, could you?”

They directed me to their housing desk. The woman ran through all the local hotels, getting the same results I had gotten. I just kept standing in front of her with a bright smile on my face. Finally, she said, “There’s one last thing I can check.” One of the staff had canceled at the last minute, and her reservation–at a nice, nearby hotel–was available at the meeting rate. It took a few minutes to make the reservation desk understand that I wanted to convert one night of her reservation for my own use, but shortly I was checking into a lovely hotel on the water.

I did find a toenail in one of the beds, which was absolutely disgusting, but I was too tired to care. I slept eight hours in the other bed. Eight consecutive hours. Best business trip ever.

Years ago, when Husband and I were dating, we took a trip to Aspen with our ski club. We were having drinks at a bar and listening to some live music when Husband said, “That singer looks so familiar. He looks just like this guy who used to play at a bar in Brooklyn we used to go to all the time.”

At the break, Husband approached the singer and asked, “Are you…?” He was. They reminisced about the old ‘hood for a while.

This week, Husband is at a conference in San Francisco. Last night he was having drinks at a bar and listening to some live music with his colleagues when he thought to himself, “That singer looks so familiar.”

You guessed it…same person. But — wait for it! — he was no longer a he. The guy had had a sex change.

So my husband, the man who

• couldn’t pick one of my friends out of a line-up
• can never remember which of his nephews is his godson
• doesn’t recognize the neighbors unless they’re accompanied by a dog
• continually embarrasses himself at work functions by failing to remember former colleagues, and is probably this very moment smiling brightly and saying, “Hey! Nice to see you, you!” to an old co-worker

not only recognized a man he’s seen only twice in twenty years, but did so in spite of the fact that he’s now a woman.

Every Korean child adopted through Holt International who is escorted to the US arrives with a Holt “blue bag.” These diaper bags hold clues to the babies’ lives before us, such as a hanbok and pictures from the foster family, as well as practical items like formula, bottles, wipes, and baby ibuprofen with Korean packaging.

Minor’s bag contained about 15 “Cutie” brand diapers from Korea. Just last night, I got around to transferring these diapers from where they landed three weeks ago when I unpacked the bag to his changing table. They look similar to any other diapers, with cute (as advertised!) little baby motifs printed on them:

(Uh, yeah. That’s a cell phone.)

Look closely, though, and you’ll see a yellow stripe up the center. The meaning revealed itself this morning, when I changed Minor: it turns blue when the diaper is wet. A fuel gauge, of sorts. Well, this explains it better than I could.

Google tells me that wetness indicators are already a standard feature on adult diapers, but they seem to be available only on infants’ diapers made in China and Japan. Given all the options for US disposable diapers — cruisers, overnights, swimmies, gender-specific, and the like — I’m surprised the idea hasn’t jumped the pond.

When you think about how you use diapers, though, it hardly seems like a crucial feature. You change a baby on a rough schedule, particularly just before any event you don’t want to be interrupted by a leaky diaper — naps, bedtime, car rides. If you’ve gone to the trouble to undress the baby, you’re probably going to change him even if his load capacity indicator is near “E.”

What would be really cool is a sensor wired to a button or pacifier or some other external object that would alert you instantly to any imminent breaches of diaper integrity. How about it, Cutie?

Ahhh, baby time. Almost continual activity–feeding, walking, bouncing, playing, soothing–punctuating by sudden, unpredictable lulls. It’s impossible to get anything done on any kind of schedule, so you learn to take advantage of the down time when it comes. Until recently, this meant trying to do laundry or work while Minor slept, only to be frustrated when he woke up crying, wanting to be held. Then I had an epiphany: if he insisted on my being still, I would be still. Books, TV, napping — I could think of lots of things to do for serial enforced quiet periods.

So I finally picked up The Da Vinci Code. I don’t know whether I should be embarrassed that I’m the last person in the country to read it, because I was too cheap to buy it during its amazingly long hardback run, or if I should just be embarrassed that I read it at all.

As a mystery/thriller, it was pretty schlocky. Someone actually utters the phrase, “Arrogant fools!” But I enjoyed all the intellectual-lite detail about the paintings in the Louvre, the suppression of the divine feminine in Christianity, and the practices of Opus Dei. As a baby-nursing book, it was a thumbs-up.

Two friends of mine tell stories about the summer they were hired as chief cook and bottle-washer for an Opus Dei retreat house. (This is the point in the story where we all break into raucous laughter, because one of the pair is notoriously undomestic and has spent most of her adult life living abroad mainly so she could afford to have someone else cook and clean for her.) They enjoyed their summer in the beautiful house, where responsibilities were light and they were allowed to use the pool.

One of their jobs was laundry. The housekeeper was very strict about the right way to do it. She specified that all the woman’s underwear had to be sprayed once in the crotch with a shot of Spray-n-Wash before laundering.

Do you think contact dermatitis is one of the mortifications to which the Opus Dei subject themselves, like the cilice? (Amazingly, if you Google “Opus Dei” and “Spray ‘N Wash,” there are hits, but nothing particularly enlightening.)

For the record, the men’s underwear was not likewise pre-treated.

Whew.  We are finally settling down a bit with Minor, only to be hit be another string of typhoons, effectively preventing us from doing anything fun. (I’ve decided on “Minor” as his blog name, after the English public school practice of calling brothers “Lastname Major” and “Lastname Minor.” So Tom Brown’s Schooldays was not a total waste. Too pretentious?  Well, it’s the closest he’ll ever get to a private education, as we are spending all future tuition monies on a basic remodel of our attic, a topic for another post.)

After Minor finished his course of antibiotics, his stomach settled down and he became a lot less fussy. Unfortunately, at the same time he stopped allowing us to put him in his crib to sleep at night. Add that to the fact that he pretty much didn’t allow us to put him down during the day, and you get one crabby set of parents.

I Googled “baby won’t sleep in crib” and found myself on a series of message boards where “attachment parents” congratulated other attachment parents for never, ever putting their babies down, while excoriating “detachment parents” for utilizing strollers, cribs, and other “baby buckets.”

Now, we’re not averse to “baby wearing” here. We’ve been wearing the dog for years.

(It promotes feelings of security and attachment in the dog, and allows us to tend to his needs readily without consigning him to the isolation of a “dog-bucket.” And, yes, we are planning on homeschooling Dog.)

I’m perfectly willing to hold the baby all day and all night. Where I draw the line is between the baby’s bedtime and mine. What do you attachment parents do with yourselves between 7 and midnight? How do you put your other kids to bed, eat dinner, recharge your batteries? Self-righteous attachment parenting advocates: bite me. I’m too tired to be politically correct.

If you can’t hold the baby, then obviously the next logical solution is to have someone else hold him. I have no shortage of babysitters and mother’s helpers hanging around, but as I’ve mentioned before there’s this theory in the adoption community that only the parents should hold, feed, or change the baby for the first few months. So an adopted baby is likely to be needier than a non-adopted baby, but not only are you not supposed to put him down ever, you’re also denied any practical support for those first critical months. Self-righteous adoptive parents: see instruction above.

My playgroup mothers were a much better resource than the Internets. Every single one of them has had a second baby, gotten pregnant, or started the adoption process for a second child within the past few months. The piece of advice they offered over and over was, “Let him sleep in the car seat.” Unfortunately, we never got a detachable car seat for Minor, since we thought he would be older upon arrival, and I wasn’t about to uninstall the mammoth Britax every time he needed to take a nap. I finally broke down and bought the cheapest infant carry seat I could find, banishing my guilt by muttering, “It’s for sleeping, not for NASCAR.”

We have a new routine, then. Just before Minor’s last feeding before bedtime, we pop him in the car seat and give him his bottle, ignoring the adoption commandment that says you are supposed to hold baby and make intensive eye contact during feeding. He drifts off to sleep, and we leave him cocooned there until he wakes up for the 2 a.m. feeding.

Coincidentally, this study seems to give support for the “moderate” approach to baby-wearing, but no one is (or should be, anyway)making parenting decisions according to studies. The important thing is to find what works for your family.

I have three strollers, and not one of them has a decent sun canopy. Luckily my friend, who has triplets and is knowledgeable about baby gear, turned me on to this little aftermarket modification. For 15 bucks, your baby can practically travel around incognito.

Below is a picture of my Phil and Ted’s stroller, in its single configuration, modeling the sunshade. Look closely and you’ll see the tiniest bit of dappled sunlight on the baby’s toe, even though I carefully adjusted the shade and oriented the stroller prior to taking the picture. There is no perfect solution, unfortunately, except to put him in a wetsuit.

When we travel around town in this thing, we pretty much own the sidewalk.