Pregnancy Photos

Jay and I took a trip to Santa Barbara in August, just the two of us. Well, just the two of us and Fred.

We hung out with one my best friends from college, Elise, who is also pregnant. This will be my last pregnancy, and I'm really trying hard to enjoy it, so we asked her to take some pregnancy photos of us on the pier. Jay was agreeable. At first.

He quickly became overwhelmed with the sheer number of poses. All of them featured my thumb in my pocket, because Elise told me this tactic was sure to make my arm look thin.

As if the issue was my arm.

Jay could not manage one straight face through this classic pregnancy pose of father-to-be cradling baby-to-be. In contrast, I was so devoted to the photo shoot that I managed to keep my thumb planted in my pocket throughout all this nonsense.

Maria Torres took this last photo, before we flew back to New York. I was 5 months pregnant. I thought I was huge. Now I am 7 months pregnant. I want to shake my 5 month pregnant self and scream, "bitch, you don't even know what pregnancy is!"

Pregnancy, as it turns out, is no longer being to wear either of the shirts I wore for these "pregnancy photos," because they are no longer up to the task of covering my belly.

I sense another photo shoot coming on.

Black Steam Engines

I have bad news. The thing you love most in this world, black steam engines... they are obsolete.

No one uses black steam engines anymore. In this country, they had a good 100 plus year run, but were replaced by diesel engines in the 1950s, which are faster and more powerful and easier to fix. In general, the electric motor and internal combustion engine have taken over jobs done by steam engines.

I think you are on the cusp of understanding this terrible fact. The other day we were watching YouTube videos of what else? Black steam engines. National Geographic has this series about black steam engines in India - their history, and how they have been phased out. The videos are full of sad music and artistic shots of steam engines puffing through the fog, goats being herded over the tracks, and village stations marked only by banyan trees and I admit, the first time I saw it I got misty eyed, because it really is tragic that these beautiful engines are destined for the scrap yards, to be forgotten by the world like old discarded toys.

Sooner or later you will realize: The age of steam is over. Even in the small villages of India where women still wash their clothes in the river, children carry bundles of sticks on their backs, and men use oxen to plough things, they have moved on. Is there anywhere left, save the island of Sodor, where steam engines are still the norm? Maybe China, the video tells us, but the tone implies that it's only a matter of time before China too caves to economic realities and leaves their black steam engines behind.

I don't know how to tell you. You constantly ask me train questions. Yesterday we were driving home from New Jersey when a freight train passed us by. "Black steam engine!" you shouted. The road curved away before we saw the end of the train, so you asked, "Mommy, did that train have a red caboose?" and I told you it did. Because all the trains in your stories do, and so they really ought to in real life. But the truth is that computers now do the jobs of cabooses and the men who stood watch in their cupolas, so they too are obsolete.

Sometimes it makes me mad. Why can't someone update our children's stories for the world that we actually live in? Why are we still reading kids entire series of books devoted to farm animals, when most American children will never step foot on a farm? And if they ever do, they are sure to be sorely disappointed.

The other day we were at Fairway, sitting outside eating bagels, contemplating the rusted out trolley cars that have been abandoned there since the 1920s, like we do every week. Someone locked up their bike on the tracks and you asked him to please move it, because the train would go soon. Another little boy came along with his father and sat with us. He was clearly being raised by a pack of realists, because he started telling us that the train was broke, and old, and wouldn't go, because it had crashed. You told him he was wrong, and the train was not broke, and had not crashed. You made train noises and shouted "all aboard!" and told him the train would be leaving soon. The debate raged on, in the insufferable way debates do between preschoolers, neither of you giving any ground, each of you becoming further entrenched in your own point of view.

I was proud of you. For believing in the trolley, and defending it. Just because it hadn't moved in 90 years didn't mean it wouldn't start moving any minute now, or didn't travel the tracks regularly, when no one was watching. I remember reading about a group of philosophers who argued that just because the sun rose every morning, that didn't mean it would rise the following morning. In fact, they believed the opposite: that *because* the sun had risen every previous morning, it was certain that it wouldn't rise the next. These people were proven wrong every single day, yet they still believed. That kind of faith has always impressed me.

Also, you held your own in a debate with a kid that had to be at least four.

So I shelved my plans to write a children's book called, "Really Useful Engines: Trains that Actually Move Stuff in the Year 2000." Because you've got the rest of your life to grow up and get disillusioned. To realize that the world is run on mechanisms infinitely more complex than steam engines, and full of gray areas and endlessly qualified answers. There's no rush. Let's stay here as long as we can.

Catalina

Roan,

On a Thursday morning, August 18th, we set sail for Catalina Island on the vessel Macs'. Technically speaking, we motored the whole way over, with the main sail up for stability, because there's never any wind in the morning. It was a fast crossing, only 3 and a half hours, because my Dad duck taped the throttle to the bottom of the cock pit.

This was your, Zachary, and Jay's first trip to Catalina. It's a special place for our family - when I was a girl we spent our summers sailing back and forth across the channel. In my teens I always invited way too many friends, so that we squeezed 9 girls onto a 29 foot sailboat and my father had to sleep up on deck. On one memorable trip my father traded all our food for an enormous sword fish. You can probably guess that most teenaged girls do not respond well to their Special K being replaced by a huge stinking fish.

My dad grew up on a boat, so he spent a lot of time in Catalina as a boy. My grandparents used to make the crossing in the middle of the night, so that my Dad and his brothers and sisters would wake up to the boat rocking in its anchorage, the beach and the hills just a short swim away. My parents did that for my sister and I, and it really is magical to fall asleep to hum of the motor and wake up at first light to see the island rocking just outside your cabin, to climb up into the fog, leave footprints on the dew damp deck, to brush your teeth and spit over the hull and see the fish swarm in water so clear you can see straight to the bottom. My dad wanted to do this for you and Zachary, but nobody else was willing to leave at midnight.

The plan was to spend one night in Emerald Bay and and next at the Isthmus, where they have modern facilities like toilets, showers, an ice cream stand and a bar. But there was a mooring reservation snafu, so we spent all our time in Emerald. I didn't mind. It's my favorite place. The water is clear, the beaches have pebbles instead of sand, and there's this feeling I get, leftover from childhood, of possibility, that the world is big and there is so much to be explored. In all honesty though, I did very little "exploring" - this was the most sedentary Catalina trip I have ever made. I spent a lot of time just laying at the waters edge, letting the waves cool my legs. It felt wonderful to let the water slowly take all my weight.

You had a lot of fun. Grandpa took you for rides in baby boat and Daddy took you kayaking. We played on the beach and threw rocks in the water and did a little rock climbing. Daddy and Uncle Clint fished. We cooked dinner on the boat and you loved running around the decks sticking your head in the portholes and calling "Bee-o-weep!" which is a word you made up and love to say. We ended each day with a mug of hot chocolate and you and Daddy slept together in a quarter berth. Daddy was so tired the first night that he fell asleep before you did.

Let it be known that taking your family to Catalina is a lot of work. Sailing is a lot of work. Not that I personally did much work, but I watched other people do it and it looked intense. And, keeping your child from falling off a boat is also a lot of work. I'm proud to say that I took a more active role on that front.

Being a parent I've realized that so many things that were special to me as a child were a pain in the ass for my parents. Sailing across the channel in the middle of the night. Driving to Utah in the middle of the night. Taking two young children skiing. A truly horrendous number of soccer games. Being a parent takes some serious stamina. When you were a newborn, I thought of mothering as a blood sport. Now I think of it as more of an endurance sport.

Maybe in a few years, when you and Zachary and Fred are all sleeping through the night, we'll put that midnight crossing to another vote, and Popi won't be the only one with his hand in the air.

Aunty Nub

Dear Roan,


The McClures are really big on nicknames. At one point, Erica had a rap name: E-money. Which then got shortened to Money, and then to Money Grub, because she had this habit of grubbing up any spare change left lying around. And then, of course, it was shortened to Grub.

Grub really stuck. In many ways, it is perfect for my sister. She is infamous for grubbing all the shrimp out of jambalaya, or grubbing all the M&Ms out of the trail mix - a classic Grub Move. I encouraged you to call her Aunty Grub.

Except you kept saying it wrong. You kept saying something that sounded more like Aunty Nub.

The Grub did not like this. She is a dancer, choreographer, and pilates instructor. She runs at least 4 miles a day pushing a jogging stroller. She is in excellent shape, with long slender limbs and a flat stomach. She does not take kindly to being addressed as anything resembling a Nub.

The combination of your sweet voice saying Aunty Nub and my sister's outrage was just too funny. I couldn't stop laughing. There was one evening, driving home from the beach, a 20 minute drive, where you said it over and over again and I couldn't stop cracking up. You were delighted. You had found the one thing to say that made everybody laugh! Well, everyone except Aunty Nub.

"What?" she'd say, when she could get a word in, "would you want to be called Aunty Nub?"

The Aunty Nub outbursts went on for the entire two weeks we were in California. You'd forget about it for a day, but then would say, "can I please have a banana, Aunty Nub?" and we would all fall over laughing, or Uncle Clint would remind you and it'd be half an hour of you screaming, "Aunty Nub!" while the rest of us giggled uncontrollably.

The Grub got so mad at Uncle Clint for egging you on that she got you to call him Aunty Clint. This was funny, but nowhere near as hilarious as Aunty Nub.

Even now, weeks later, just thinking "Aunty Nub" makes me laugh out loud.

Here's your Aunty Nub, Aunty Clint, and Baby Zach.

Thanks to Maria Torres for the photos, August 2011, California

Boys Club

In early August we spent two weeks in California, with my sister and her family, staying with my parents in the house where I grew up. When my sister and I were young, my Dad bought an electric train. It didn't make much of an impression on us.

Roan is obsessed with it. Every time we Skype he wants to see it. He talks to my father about it constantly, and asks him to send photos if it. To prepare for our stay my dad set it up in his bedroom, on the carpet so if Roan dropped it or knocked it down it wouldn't break (which happened the last time we were in town and Roan dropped it on the hardwood floor). There is a black steam engine with a light and a funnel that puffs steam, a coal car, a box car, a flat car, and a red caboose. It's a delicate operation - all the tracks have to be connected just so, the many wheels of each car angled just right, and the wires clipped in to their outlets, and then, maybe, the thing will turn on.

Roan spent the majority of our vacation in my parents' bedroom, playing with the train, while my dad assisted. It was an exclusive club and no one else was welcome, especially not pesky mothers trying to enforce such banalities as the brushing of teeth, the changing of diapers, or the eating of lunch. Zachary, Roan's 9-month-old cousin, desperately wanted in. He wasn't allowed. But after some nagging from my sister and some prolonged screaming from Zachary he was finally admitted, as long as he didn't touch the train. After some negotiations, he was content to sit with a backpack full of tools and rummage through them while Roan played engineer. Every time the train got derailed, or overheated, or a car was uncoupled, or Zach broke through defenses to uproot a section of track or have his meaty fist run over, my dad was there to put things right.

They literally spent hours in there, uninterrupted, my father and his two grandsons, and a finicky, 30-year-old electric train. The air in Boys Club felt dry and staticky, and after a few days a strange smell pervaded the room, overpowering even my mother's prodigious scented lotion collection. It smelled as if something had just been electrocuted.

When my dad had to work Boys Club was closed and we went to the beach. It was great to get to know Zachary and see my sister as a mom. It was especially great to see Roan develop affection for his little cousin, and get used to sharing time and occasionally have his stuff destroyed. Frequently heard phrases were: "mine, baby Zach, mine!" and "no baby Zach, you're too little," or "no baby Zach, that's too hot." But he did a decent job of sharing. Here he is at a street fair, feeding baby Zach some of his ice cream:



Another angle, where you can see April and Roscoe in the background:



And he graciously shared Roscoe's red wagon with Zach:



And some smoothie:


I regret that I don't have any photos of Boys Club. But perhaps that would violate the spirit of Boys Club, a place where boys can escape the distractions of daily life and funnel all their energy into a singular pursuit.

Tools for Zachary. Trains for Roan