Poop: in your mother's words

last night, i came home from work at 9:30 (so early!!) to find an overwhelming stench of human excrement wafting down the stairs. Instead of proudly trumpeting my spicy chocolate ice cream treasure to (what I had imagined would be) an adoring and grateful husband, I raced upstairs to find Jamba forlornly scrubbing the sides of Sava's cribs with antiseptic spray. The smell was noxious..I gave a little dry heave.
Me: "What happened????"
Jamba: "I swear tonight I came so close to ending her puny little life. After taking her out to buy new shoes and a new dress, getting ice cream, and then taking her to the playground and letting her go down the slides, coming home and making us both dinner, and then putting her to bed, I finally laid down on the bed in exhaustion. I heard her call out a few times, and then silence. I got suspicious and went into her room and she had, in that space of time, pulled handfuls of poo out of her diaper and smeared it all over her shirt, into every crevice of the crib, all over the walls. She even flung chunks of it across the room. It's everywhere. I thought, at least it looks like her dollies and stuffed animals escaped, but I turned them over and she had smeared shit all over their faces."
Me: "Oh my god. Jamba. I am SO SORRY! That sucks. Here, get out of here. Let me finish it up at least. Go take a walk. Ummmm.. do you want some chocolate ice cream?? It's really spicy! Maybe it could take your mind off it"
Jamba: "Yeah, I don't think I could really eat chocolate ice cream right now. But... thanks. I feel more like throwing up. Sava's lying on the bed. I made her take a freezing shower and I think I scared her a little. I was SOOOOO pissed at her. I think she got it."

There were some feeble "mama's" coming from the bedroom, so I went into our room to find Sava just lying there quietly on her back, looking up at the ceiling. Since she started to crawl, I have never seen her lie so still in one place for any length of time. I chastized her gently and then told her that I had to go finish cleaning up her poo, and that I was really really unhappy about it. She nodded penitently.

So then I spent an hour on my hands and knees scrubbing dried poop off the floor, crib, etc!!!! What fun!!! I am really glad I had a big glass of that delicious red wine after work, and that I had been in such a good mood all evening that I was still kinda floating over all the horror. And I was shaking my head and thinking about Nico's skunk incidence from last week (I got home at 11:30, let Nico out for a final pee, and she ran directly into a skunk- I was brushing my teeth at the downstairs sink and thinking contentedly of bed, when I looked down to see Nico blinking her little eyes furiously and foaming at the mouth. "You can't get rabies this quickly", I remember thinking for a foggy micro-second, and then the wall of smell hit me like a sonic boom- Fresh Skunk, I learned, smells a little bit like Skunk but more like burning rubber tires, and I ordered her into the tub in a panic (the bathroom stills smells so strongly of skunk a week later) closed the door and ran upstairs to find Jamba so we could spend the next two hours scrubbing Nico in the warm midnight air)  and wondered "What have Jamba and I done to deserve all this, these lives of toiling scullery maids???"

We acquired dependents.
Sometimes, at certain times in the weary day, I don't recommend the habit.

Just kidding, Sava- we adore you and Nico and you are worth all the pain. But seriously.. what's with the poop smearing? 

poop redux

Dear Sava,

Your mother canceled the babysitter for today so when she left for work at 3, I had to cancel my work meetings and return home. You woke up at 4 we watched Shrek together until you lost interest.

I decided to try and give you a really good day because you've done thrown a lot of minor tantrums in the last week as we approach your second birthday (13 days away!), so I took us out for ice cream. You were such a good girl. You kept your napkin on, you ate with your spoon, and when it was over you didn't cry or scream, you just pointed out some trucks to me, noticed a bird ("Bird flying!") and got back into the car.

Next we went to the store to buy you shirts, socks and new shoes with princesses on the sides and lights inside that light up when you run. You love the shoes, but in the checkout line on the way out of the store, you began grabbing everything you wanted or shouted the names of things you could identify that you wanted. This was short lived though and soon we were back in the car headed to the play park.

"Yaaaaaaayyyy" you shouted when you saw that we were at the play park. You were so happy to be there. You jumped on the colored spots that make sound, you went on the swings, you slid down the slides and you were so cute in your new shoes that the adults were pointing to you and smiling.

At home we read a book, changed you into your pajamas and put you into your crib with a bottle of milk. You had all of your babies in there with you, and a while later, when I noticed you were still awake and checked on you, I noticed you had lined them up between the wall and your crib rail. This is a little game you created when you play alone.

But by 9:15 you were still awake! I heard you cry my name one time, but didn't go into the bedroom for a few minutes ... until I heard you cry "Poop. Poop, Daddy. Poop."

When I walked in the room I couldn't believe my eyes. You were covered in poop and you were holding up your poop-smeared hands. You had rubbed poop into the railings of your crib, smeared it across the faces of all your dolls, on the backs of teddy bears, made hand prints on the walls, and what you could not immediately use, you hurled across the room so that the floors were littered with pieces of poop.

Remembering the books, I put you into an ice cold shower and held you in there (a little too aggressively, I'm sorry to say) while you screamed bloody murder, but all the while kept trying to wash you hands and body. It was a horrible, horrible moment. When that was over, I lay you on our bed and put a new diaper on you as I went in to clean your room.

How do you begin with such a mess? It was everywhere. I packed up all of your blankets, sheets, dolls and clothing into a big bag and then began with the railings and walls. Your mother came home about 45 minutes later and took over for me. When we checked on you in our room, you were so petrified that you had not moved from your spot.

Finally it was finished. I returned to the bedroom to find you in the same position as before. You looked worried. You were worried. I dressed you in pajamas and sat you down on the bed.

"Sava, can you tell me what we can play with in your room?"
"..."
"Can we play with dolls?"
"Yes."
"Yes, we can play with dolls. And can we play with books?"
"Yes. Books."
"And can we play with toys and teddy bears?"
"Yes."
"Sava, can you tell me what we CAN'T play with in your room or in the house?"
Long pause.
"Poop."
"Yes, we do not play with poop. Do you understand?"
"Yes."
Long pause.
"Sorry, Daddy."
"I'm sorry too. I'm sorry for getting angry with you, Sava."

Then you gave me a big hug and a kiss.

Cute, but the next morning it was tantrum after tantrum leading to your breaking a glass on the front porch. Ah, two.

And your not even two yet!

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