Billowing Curtains

Sitting on the toilet, the fresh September night wind floats the brown floral curtains in fulsome billows, and you are crying for me, in a broken, midnight wail: soft. A moment ago, I had scurried upstairs to respond to your plaintive waking. Soft night terror: Something had woken you up, and you clutched me tight and feverishly- we pressed torsos together as we hadn’t done since you were infant co-sleeping bedmate. Relaxed immediately, from fear to comfort, breathing and sleeping into sleep. I could stand there and hold you forever, , rocking side to side like a gentle boat and remembering our puzzle piece interlocking, but I knew I know if I bring you into our bed you will fight and arch to get back into your own equilibrium. So I place you gently down into your crib, and you fuss and pull into your new comfort: Water: Water Bottles: at least two. Full, and please with ice “in there”. Not one but two, clutched to your chest, and I leave brokenhearted, to sit on the toilet and listen to you softly chant, Momeeee. Mommmeee- an idea but not really a request. Not: mama. Not the open ended Mama of your first utterances of the idea. Somehow over the months I have moved from source to object. Momeeeeee. With the winnowing of your tongue comes the muscle of ownership. Mom. Me. Mine and Mine and Mine. You are mine, as we grow towards our own separate, desperate longing for each other.

almost twosies

I should be fired. I am alarmed at how much time has passed since a posting! And this is IT, this is the time- that SO MUCH is changing. Literally, every day a metamorphosis.

Well, let's not waste time with regrets, but just jump in.

Okay. You are almost two. Your brain is startlingly elastic. You can count almost to ten. For a long while, it was "one..... two..... one, .....two!!  And we laughed about breaking the "three barrier", of that mythic future moment in which you were going to be able to jump off into the void and finally land on three. Then, one day, just like that, you said it. Like it was nothing. Then about a week or two later, you were playing by yourself and i heard you quietly to yourself, "six, seven... eight!"  So we are up to eight. Sometimes I hold up the counting cards and ask you how many bears there are on it, or balloons or whatever, and you nonchalantly answer the correct amount. I have no idea of whether it is a guess or not, but .....I have to remind myself of the voracious ability that you are, right now.  Jamba is better at testing you, challenging you, and I have to remember that now is the time for that sort of thing. That this is when all your synapses are wildly overconnected to each other and you can LEARN things in a way my mind has completely forgotten.

A few weeks ago, we got back from a trip to California, and I would like to write about it. Shame that there were no words put down in the moment, but that is how it goes. The long and short of it is that we took a plane, (for the first time all three together as a family) and first we went hot-tubbing at Harbin Hot springs, taking turns swimming with you in the kiddie pool and taking our own solo dunks in the hot and cold pools, camping along the banks of the trickling stream at the base of the hill (where a frog sat sentinel on the rock we had to jump on to cross) where you got to spend your first night in a tent under the starry night, and we saw a pack of deer, with baby fawn, on our walk up to the pools and met a little boy on the deck outside the cafe who was the self-appointed guardian of a mama robin who was sitting on her eggs in a nest they had (foolhardedly? wisely?) built right off the side of the deck, so they were at perfect eye height, a touch away, and he had studied all there was to know about their patterns and the birds who threatened their eggs and performed his robin whistle for us, and then we drove back to SF and got into a car with Rachel and drove up to the woods for the annual reunion of all our Bay area friends along a river up in the Trinity Alps.

And something happened, there, for you. One day, in that wild place- the closest you have been to true wilderness, with the butterflies thrumming the skies and the forests so alive with their forestness, and the clean clear streams that you were actually allowed to play in- and we noticed this remarkable transformation.

It might have started the moment we got out of the car... Four year old Chloe, daughter of Jim and Giulietta, had been asking her mother eagerly all day for the baby girl she had been promised would arrive, and so she excitedly ran up to the car when we pulled up. She put out her hand to you, and you took one look up at her and fell hard. You took her hand, and the two of you just walked off together into the metaphorical sunset, which was then being performed by the trees of main camp. That image of you two, hand in hand and walking away without a look back, will be seared in my mind forever. Her tall and willowy, you a plump little peanut. The cuteness factor was a little outrageous.

So the two of you played and played, and swung in the hammock together and ran around with the dogs and you helped her not to be afraid of the doggies, and you twirled together in a world of your own, under the gaze of the adult world. It was what I have always wanted for you.. a tribal situation in which you and your friends are the undercurrents of the rippling and dynamic stream of community (forgive the cheesy metaphors) and not just the sole focus of our attention. Anyway, after a day in the fresh clean air with such a special friend, you came back to the tent with us to be put down for the night, and we were all snuggling on the air mattress and suddenly you sat up and started, just SPOUTING language. Sentences, nonsensical syllables, all connected in a stream of language, came pouring out of your mouth where before there had only been single words uttered in slow punctuation. You were just kind of blabbing. Talking, pointing at the walls of the tent, and then you shrugged your shoulders up in a kinda "i dont know!" way, and then continued on.

It was absolutely stunning. We were floored. We waited for you to finish and then we both said, "Sava, where did you COME from?" Oh my god we are both so in love with you. It was wonderful, also, to see you fall in love with a friend more your own age, because up to this point, you have existed side-by-side with some playmates, without forming any attachments. But you fell in love with her instantly, and it was so nice to see that side of you. That ability to form friendships.

So much more to write about our trip to California, but I will leave it at that for now. All I know is that, sitting in front of the statue of Quan Yin at Harbin Hot Springs after a dunk in the cold pool, I made a solemn vow to return to this place so that you could grow up blessed with the same contact to the natural world that I had. I want you to know these places in your bones.

Okay, so now you are starting to play with sentences- the big puzzle right now is how words fit together.  You are starting to get ideas like subject verb agreement, and concepts like "I and You". However when you want me to pick you up and hold you, you say "I hold you". I ask: "Sava, do you want me to hold you?" and you say "No, I hold you", as you lift your arms to be picked up. It is so cute. I am going to miss the passing of some of these twist-ups. For instance: wardawn has officially passed on. Sometime after California. You charmed the pants off everyone there, by calling "water" "wardawn" (which your dad finally figured out was because when you used to be in the bath, he would ask "Sava, do you want the water on?), so that people were starting to use it instead of the real word. And then we came back, and one day you woke up saying "water", just like the rest of us. I never got a video of you saying wardawn, and now you won't say it anymore. It is very sad.


You are incredibly athletic and bold in your skin. So full of energy and life that it is very hard to get you to sit still. In the mornings, Grayson, Emi and Kim sometimes gather together on the lawn to do Bagua together. They will be standing in a circle crouching and circulating their chi in a series of poses and breathing exercises, and I will come over and let you loose on them. They love it: you are like the distillation of all the chi they are attempting to generate. And you must feel something from their energy circle: because you just start going crazy: giggling, turning around in circles, falling down on your head, chasing Nico around and screaming with glee. They doing all these serious joyful poses with the widest grins on their faces.

You love nothing more than to jump from great heights into my arms. A current favorite game is to climb up on the back of the blue velvet couch and jump into my arms from there. You have complete trust in your physical prowess (for which you boast many a head bump and scrape and splinter, but luckily so far only minor injuries) and your favorite state is naked and with no shoes on exploring the different surfaces of the planet with your bare feet: sidewalk, asphalt, wood floor, grass, mulch, thicket. I worry about worms penetrating your tender soles and scan the vicinity for broken glass, but i feel somehow that this early experience with unfiltered walking is the more important thing to protect. I try to stuff my worry inside and hope that you continue to find the world a safe and welcoming oasis.

I have to go now, to my studio to spend a few moments painting, but I will be back, and I promise to write more. I love you
Mama

Rare Moments

It’s been a long week at work. I sit for hours on end staring at spreadsheets. We’re trying to build a language course for Spanish learners who are also paramedics or firefighters. It’s not hard work, but it’s sometimes difficult because it takes skills I’m not always certain I possess. Today is Friday, which means that with your mother’s new schedule (she’s working evenings as a hostess for a local restaurant), I get to watch you directly after work.

It was a warm day, and the humidity was probably 70-percent or higher. So when I drove down to pick you up, I was sweating the entire way. You were playing outside when I arrived. Your nose was running and your pretty little dress was covered at the top in snot and buggers—another sign of your recent invention: nose picking. The babysitter told me she needed a check for the week so we drove all the way back home then all the way back there. Then we went to the gym, but daycare was closing early so we only got about 30 minutes. We walked around the track (you love pulling the wagon around the running track) and then we went into the basketball court. You love balls and this is where they keep most of them so consequently you love the courts. In fact, you squealed when we walked into the courts. Then you ran over and picked out a purple basketball and started kicking it around and chasing after.

You’ve started this new thing. Moonwalking, really. You tell me I can’t squat and wait for the ball, I need to stand up. Then you get back to throw me the ball, but instead of throwing it you moonwalk. Back you go. Back. Back. Back. Then you throw the ball…and it creeps across the floor in my direction. I pick it up and ask if you’re ready…and you moonwalk for a while before saying yes. I roll the ball, you pick it up, and then the entire process begins again.

After this we stopped by the bike store and looked into getting a trailer for you and another bike for us. But we no sooner got there when you started breaking down and crying to go home. Off to the house we went. I put on a movie for you (your new favorite, Nemo) did the dishes, put food on the stove, fed Nico, cleaned the floors, straightened the living room…and then you were in the kitchen asking for food. Just in time, too. I plopped you down, but not before removing your dress because I somehow knew that with Russian dumplings and soup you were going to be covered in it all. Sure enough, you had soup dripping down into your lap and into the highchair. And the dumplings covered in Russian sour cream, oh man. You were drenching your fingers in it and stuffing your entire hands into your mouth. You LOVE cream and sauces of all kinds, but you really love Russian sour cream.

I was able to do a load of laundry, clean the stovetop, cook dinner and start a bath before you snapped out of your revere. Then it was into the bath. But something happened during your bath. The humidity cranked up to 90-percent or higher and suddenly Nico came running into the bathroom and tried getting into the tub with you! I pushed her back, but she was insistent so I picked her up and literally tossed her out the door. It didn’t take long before the thunder alerted me to the issue at hand. Nico hates lightning. She was shivering on the floor and scrambling to get into the bath, on top of the counter or in anyplace she felt she might be secure. And at that same time, you noticed a leaf in the tub and were full sure it was poop. “Poop! Poopoo!” you screamed. You stood up, wanting me to take you out, but Nico was now cowering on the floor in front of the tub. I tried getting you to sit. I tried getting Nico to leave the room. No such luck.

I took you wet from the tub and carried you out of the bathroom and upstairs to change your diaper and brush your teeth. But you wanted to play a game with brushing your teeth. Every time I came close with the brush you backed away and closed your mouth. Okay. No tooth brushing tonight. We read a little in the room, which you loved and then I basically started blacking out with exhaustion and so popped you into the crib then walked downstairs to change the laundry, wipe down the counters, and dry the dishes.

Ah, but where had Nico gone? It seemed obvious that she had tried to get into the tub without realizing there was water. I followed the footprints out the bathroom, across the kitchen floor and out the side door! Nico was out there in the storm that was now raging with lighting and thunder and pouring rain. Out into the rain I went. Eventually I found her in the backyard and brought her back. But the bleach I put on the stove was beginning to smell up the house so I had to go and clean that while Nico tried jumping onto the counters.

Finally you were down, Nico was under a bed somewhere and the storm was finally calm enough for me to open a beer and sit down on the front porch to tell you how beautiful it is right now, and how happy I am that we get to spend these busy and difficult times together. I went and checked on you to make sure you got to sleep okay. You were laying there wearing the one sock you insisted on wearing to bed. Your little body is getting very long. Soon you’ll be sleeping in a real bed. I just want to say that you are a little angel, and if this is how it has to be right now, this is how it has to be. We’re dreaming about another future as artists with more time at home, but that’s exactly why we’re working so hard at the moment. I just hope we all survive the overfullness of it all happening at once.

Love,

Dad

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