ephemera

That's the word for all of these plateaus of being you are continuously reaching and tumbling off of. Ephemera. It's the language of transition. Methexis in Greek. The participle which divides and generates a relationship based on division. Think of the transitory state of all the still photos that go into creating a movie. Each frame is both an image and a division; the consistency of the whole relies upon movement and divisions the way an utterance relies upon the word and the word the sentence.

Your childhood is ephemera. Not because it's not precious, but because it's too precious. There is an archival issue holding onto the change itself, but it's precisely what we're trying so hard to capture. Your first words, your temporary fascinations, your first jump on the trampoline, your first forehead dent, the last day you were still small enough to wear your yellow dress, the cuteness of you wearing your mothers tank top as a dress, your fish and shark and bunny rabbit imitations, the sign language which comes and goes, your love of black olives, tattoos, lotions, toothpaste, and anything you can sit in, stand on or wear.

A participle is a non-finite verb. It is not affected by categories; not yet tied to mood, structure or gender. And while you are also not tied to any one mood, structure or gender, at the very least the participle anchors itself in language while we struggle to capture the individual frames in this paper flip book animation of your becoming. It's a beautiful tragedy to experience what can never truly be captured: the film role of these moments put together which keeps us continually in awe, in love and continually on the edge of our seats. 

It's difficult watching these precious moments scattering into time as quickly as we can weave our narrative nets to capture and rein them back together into some semblance of a story about the awesomeness of your childhood. But Sava, sweetie, it's not this. It will never be this--these blog postings, the photos and the memories. And it's precisely because of the ephemeralness of being. What we're trying to net is your wildness, the attitude that brings up such deep and tender emotions one moment, and leaves me wanting to shout obscenities at god the next. It's in the flashes between the words and the photographs. The furled brow or the new expression that flashes across your features. Your various state of undress. The foodstuff in your hand, sauces on your person. The anxious expressions of the household animals in your presence. The various odors we must track down. It's the orchestration of these occurring in harmonious simultaneity. Then it's over to make way for the next image we'll foreshorten into a story about this or that. And if there are gaps in our archive you'll have to be patient and remind yourself that it's the result of our absolute engagement in these flashes of perfection.

Soon you'll be talking and reading and borrowing the car, but for now it's transition after transition after transition. Soon enough the moments become minutes, the minutes decades and the memories become photographs and coins at the bottom of a box--concrete ephemera to fill the once of absolute wonder and movement, the dance of letting go and holding on and letting go.

It's exhausting to be in multiple frame-rates at once: watching the reel, capturing the breaks, playing the father, the employee, the student, the husband, the tenant, landlord, the co-curator of the Miss Sava Lue sort-of archival project, the exhaustee and  translator/bodyguard in your junior explorations. . . .

But I know it's important to try.

Love,

Dad

Sava . . . the poem

I found this poem "Sava" written by Sibelan Forrester, a professor at Swarthmore College

Sava, you flow like sweet green sleep,
easy to fit my steps beside.
I always thought your name
was the name of a saint,
or of a girl whose wicked brothers
used the name as bait
to lure her gullible lover --
but Sava you carry no death for me,
nor any heavenly perfection,
only a reflected sunset.
On the embankment above your waves
I walk as if I could walk for days,
for nights with no need to rest,
and never stop -- to Serbia, to Syria,
to the walls of the wine-dark sea.
Sava, love is sharp in my heart,
and time is failing to heal --
Sava the name of my love wounds me
with every step, with every breath.
If I wrap my bodu in your green waters,
if your waves lap and lave my skin,
will you bear the pain away?
Sava, my goddes, my verdegris sister,
draw me somehow into the future,
where today's love will be long gone,
and only as sad as a story,
only as sad as a song.

Spring 1987

- Dad

Sava in Spring

 

Sava in Springtime: Assorted notes. 

For my birthday party, we had an Easter bbq in the backyard, and we strung the tree with a bunch of plastic easter eggs that Emi had filled with jelly beans. We left them up for a while. I wonder how this event is going to imprint on your brain, as you have now had weeks of an experience in which candy really does grow on trees. You see the tree and you point and squeal "yay!" while nodding your head up and down vigorously. This is your main method of manipulation at present: you have learned to present your case with the utmost conviction and affirmative body language. So it is, "Mommy + (sign language for milk) + (nodding head vigorously) + "Yesh!"  You reserve that special "yay!" though, for the easter egg tree, and the easter egg tree alone. There are four jelly beans left. 

Your language skills are becoming ridiculously good. It is to the point where I can say almost anything and you will try to repeat it. Even conjunctions. Two syllable words. "Armpit" "Elbow". My favorite words to hear you say right now are: "Horse"  (Whoarse)  "Butterfly" (Bird-fly) and.... "Elephant" (alollyluhlalala)

Our favorite You-tube video is "Giraffe Baby". You point out its eyes, its ears, its mouth (mouw) its nose, and its tongue. With books and games, it is mostly now this game of pointing out things you recognize and naming them. Goodnight Moon is a favorite- you like to call out the socks, the shoes, the moon, the kitties (titties) the cow (moooo). You have recently become very aware of trains... and every time  you hear a train whistle blow (which is often around here) you perk up and squeal "choo choo!" You seem to have amazing hearing... can pick it out even when it is subtle and dwarfed by other noises. So I found this amazing vintage edition version of "The Little Engine That Could" and it is your new favorite book. You point out the giraffes "graff" and the elephants and you can also find the tiny little monkey in the middle of the pile of toys and you go "hoo hoo hoo" as you curl your arms up to tickle your armpits in a perfect imitation of a moneky. So monkeys, choo choo trains, and horses are big right now. I have a book called Horses- basically an encyclopedia of all the different types of horses in the world- and your dad likes to walk you through the book. "Sava, what's that?" (Whoarse!) "Okay. What's that one?" (Whoarse!). "Hmmmm. This one?" (Whoarse!). You are tremendously patient with him and will answer him endlessly, with the same degree of enthusiasm. Another game he likes to do is to point to a horse and ask if it is a kitty. Or a dog. Or a fish. And you say "nooooo", each time, very patient with your (by all appearances) dim-witted father. 

Nico is "Doh" and Noble, (when Lauren and Tyler came out to visit last weekend for Jamba's birthday) was "Momo".  You are starting to enjoy counting, but usually chime in on the "two" which sounds more like "dew" and fall off the wagon around "twee". But you are really good at pointing at your fingers while doing it. And a couple of times, when we asked you how many things were on a page, you answered with the correct number. Luck or brilliance.. who knows? Who cares?

Games

Here are four favorites... one's that you even initiate by yourself when you are bored or want to liven up the situation:

1)Your dad invented a game during car rides, when one person says "ummmmmmm.......... "and then blurts out the first random syllabic word nonsense that comes to their minds. For Jamba and I, it is usually "ummmmmm.... pencil fart! donkey breath! swizzle stick" or some other such nonsense. You are more of a minimalist and a true nonsense poetic genius. "ummmmmmm..... dert!" "ummmmmmm....twollylo!" Jamba and I have agreed that the moment in which you are saying "ummmmmmmm......" with your little nose and upper lip pulled down over your mouth, is the absolute cutest Sava moment that has ever been.

2) You got really excited about yelling "uuupppp,  DOWN!" for awhile. For example, while getting your diaper changed, you would lift your legs up, and then yell "Down!" as they were falling down. 

3) Jamba would point up to the ceiling to get you to look up when he wanted to tickle you under your chin, and so now when you want to tickle somebody you point up and say "Der!" and then go "tee tee tee" while waving your little fingers at their body parts.

4) "Shh Shh, Hi!"  One time we were all lounging in the bed in the morning and you suddenly said "Sh sh, Hi!" and I couldn't figure out what you were saying, until I realized that you were telling us to "Shush" and "Hide!", because you heard Nico clambering up the stairs on her way to jump on the bed, and now it is our favorite way of initiating a sudden mad dive under a pile of pillows.

Our Little Crow

You are picking up funny little turns of speech.. whenever you want something to come along with you (which is often), you say " 'mon" as you are looking back over your shoulder. (I guess I say "C'mon Nico!", "C'mon Sava!" a whole lot).  Jamba had congestion for about two months so there was a lot of throat clearing around the house, and you started mimicking him whenever you heard it. He would be upstairs getting dressed for work and clearing his throat and you would be downstairs eating breakfast with me and start doing it between bites of yogurt.

Bee Poop

Jamba got a bag of bee pollen and has been feeding you spoonfulls of it... he says "Hey Sava, do you want some bee poop? Sava, do you want some "bzzzz plllop" And you just love it. He has gotten you to make the sounds when you want to eat it.

Trust

Total lack of fear. Total trust both in the universal friendliness of all dogs and in your physical prowess. The ability to do an amazing amount of things that should be beyond your physical ability. Like jumping on the trampoline for minutes without falling... catching yourself in the middle of stumbling and righting yourself. The other day I was gardening and I turned away for one minute, and when I looked up you had made it clear across the garden and had climbed up the chair and were wriggling onto the trampoline of your own accord.  You are so fast it is frightening. Not surprisingly, you have been accumulating battle scars.... scraped knees and elbows and bandaged digits and even one blackish eye (from running into the bookcase with your face). We are going to have to send you off to Amy for capoeira boot camp soon. Your dad is really worried.

Fear

The only thing you seem to be afraid of right now is puppets and little boy penises. Mom gave us these cool hand puppets...I guess they can be considered scary (one is a three-headed dragon called a hydra, the other is a two-part puppet where one hand plays the frog and the other the prince.) You were totally into the frog puppet and gave it a bunch of kisses, but when i pulled the prince around and started talking, thanking you for transforming him into a prince in a very elaborate, silly voice, you got real quiet and solemn, and in a really small voice said "no", while you backed away. It was the same little "no" that you gave when you saw your first little boy penis, in the wading pool with your neighborhood friend Elliot.

Gender Lines

Although you get really excited whenever you see a truck, and yell "truck!", I have to admit that you are aligning yourself along standard party lines. For instance you are totally absorbed with babies.. You have about three of them of various sizes and squishiness at present. You love watching babies on youtube videos. You are extremely interested in feeding your babies and giving them water. Especially putting them in the booster seat for a little snack. (But really, you like to feed and water all of your toys. You have tried on a number of occasions to give your little horsie some breastmilk, graciously stopping mid-nurse to bob his head at my nipple (while making little slurping noises).  I said, "oh honey, one day you will learn that you can lead a horse to ... " oh, never mind.)

Your obsession with shoes continues... and also your maddening drive of de-shodding yourself constantly... especially whenever in the car seat. I do the same amount of shoe changes that a mother of quadruplets would. Choosing new shoes and demanding that these be the ones that are put on now. You are constantly with one shoe on, and one shoe off. I have no idea that such a thing could be a genetic trait. 

And lastly, you call "socks"  "gocks"

-love, Mom

"Mommy, I draw!"

My Sweet Sugar Monkey, 


It was a warm evening. The sun was shining into the studio in the backyard. The studio side door was open, and the ivy that usually grows up the door was now laying beautiful and emerald against the dark wood of the flooring. 


You were completely naked; your face was filthy and your hands were colored with various pastel colors. Acoustic music was playing on a laptop (Gregory Alan Isakov, the music that played when you came into this world) and you were taking turns hopping, spinning, dancing and making little pastel chalk marks on a canvas Erin had propped up against the door frame.


You were too busy with this routine to give me little more than a few big smiles. Then you hopped several times in a row, rushed to the canvas to add a bitty purple line, and then smiled up at us and spoke your first real sentence: 


"Mommy, I draw!"  


We cheered and did a little dance around the room, which you loved, but after than you went right back to single syllable words:: "shoe" "eye" "sick" etc. 


It's beautiful and poetic: Mommy, I draw. 


I love you, 
Dad