For inspiration, take a look at a post by Tanya from a few months back.
By the way, the project I'm working on is a book, a memoir, of our Anasazi year. I just sent off a book proposal to a small publisher. We'll see what happens.
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Remembering Anasazi
I'm collecting memories, Anasazi memories. I'm picking up an old project I've picked up several times before and I would like your assistance. Any of you out there who worked on the trail or who knew me, Elizabeth (Liz), Tanya, Laura, Sunny, Joe, BJ, Ezekiel, etc. during the year of 1999, please send me a list of memories associated with Anasazi. And by anyone, I mean family, friends, anyone who may have encountered us during this time. I just need some memory joggers; I've forgotten a lot of stuff. I don't care what format the memories come in; go ahead, just puke them onto the screen in a comment to this entry or send them to me at my E-mail address: elijoal@yahoo.com.
For inspiration, take a look at a post by Tanya from a few months back.
By the way, the project I'm working on is a book, a memoir, of our Anasazi year. I just sent off a book proposal to a small publisher. We'll see what happens.
For inspiration, take a look at a post by Tanya from a few months back.
By the way, the project I'm working on is a book, a memoir, of our Anasazi year. I just sent off a book proposal to a small publisher. We'll see what happens.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Spring is still sputtering along, trying to get some traction. I've started commuting to work on my (sometimes Elizabeth's) bike. It is a little over eight miles each way and it has been pretty cold in the mornings. The forecast is still calling for rain/snow for tonight and tomorrow, so I thought I would rebel against the weather and post a few photos from a warm, sunny day we had a week and a half ago. My oldest sister, Kristinia, and Damian, one of her sons, came to visit us for a few hours on their way back home from my younger sister's wedding. Kristinia and Damian live in Phoenix and they seemed to bring some warmth with them that weekend.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
So much of my reality has to do with perspective.
Sonora has usually seemed like such a small person. She was a baby and then a toddler, and now she is a kid, but still small and very much a child. However, since Rowyn was born, Sonora suddenly seems much older and much larger. A few nights after Rowyn was born, Elizabeth heard Sonora crying and went in to comfort her. Elizabeth took Rowyn with her and set Rowyn down on the foot of the bed and picked up Sonora in the darkness. Elizabeth panicked, because the girl she struggled to pick up wasn't Sonora at all, but some giant child a kidnapper must have put there after he stole our child. Of course, it really was Sonora, but she suddenly seemed huge after holding an eight-pound baby. For a few moments, Elizabeth's body coursed with fear and adrenaline when she thought someone had swapped kids with us.
A few days ago, I was chatting with Howard, my brother-in-law, about how I was frustrated with how cold of a spring it had been so far. That is, I was frustrated until he reminded me that our nephew, Bryant, who is in eastern Russia, would probably love to enjoy the kind of weather I was complaining about.
The other day, I wrung my cold hands in front of my boss and explained to him that the room I had just taught my class in had been at a temperature of 60 degrees for the whole hour. He acknowledged that there was a problem with the heating system, but also mentioned that many countries, including Japan (I have not verified this) don't heat or cool their classrooms. Their students and teachers simply adjust. Our building is heated using natural gas, he reminded me, and natural gas, when burned, produces carbon dioxide, which contributes to global warming. "Americans are going to need to become a lot tougher in the coming decades," he said. I agree with him.
Food prices in the U.S. have increased substantially, including the prices of rice, wheat, and other basic foods. Elizabeth and I were lamenting the fact that to build up our food storage will now cost us noticeably more than it would have a year ago. I heard a report on the radio yesterday that in Haiti the price of a bowl of rice had recently doubled from 40 cents to 80 cents. Most people in Haiti live on about two dollars a day. People are rioting to eat.
Sometimes I grasp that that which I have mistaken for forever is really only today. Sometimes I am shocked to realize how abnormal my idea of normalcy is. Sometimes words such as "deserve" and "need" taste like poisonous opiates.
Sonora has usually seemed like such a small person. She was a baby and then a toddler, and now she is a kid, but still small and very much a child. However, since Rowyn was born, Sonora suddenly seems much older and much larger. A few nights after Rowyn was born, Elizabeth heard Sonora crying and went in to comfort her. Elizabeth took Rowyn with her and set Rowyn down on the foot of the bed and picked up Sonora in the darkness. Elizabeth panicked, because the girl she struggled to pick up wasn't Sonora at all, but some giant child a kidnapper must have put there after he stole our child. Of course, it really was Sonora, but she suddenly seemed huge after holding an eight-pound baby. For a few moments, Elizabeth's body coursed with fear and adrenaline when she thought someone had swapped kids with us.
A few days ago, I was chatting with Howard, my brother-in-law, about how I was frustrated with how cold of a spring it had been so far. That is, I was frustrated until he reminded me that our nephew, Bryant, who is in eastern Russia, would probably love to enjoy the kind of weather I was complaining about.
The other day, I wrung my cold hands in front of my boss and explained to him that the room I had just taught my class in had been at a temperature of 60 degrees for the whole hour. He acknowledged that there was a problem with the heating system, but also mentioned that many countries, including Japan (I have not verified this) don't heat or cool their classrooms. Their students and teachers simply adjust. Our building is heated using natural gas, he reminded me, and natural gas, when burned, produces carbon dioxide, which contributes to global warming. "Americans are going to need to become a lot tougher in the coming decades," he said. I agree with him.
Food prices in the U.S. have increased substantially, including the prices of rice, wheat, and other basic foods. Elizabeth and I were lamenting the fact that to build up our food storage will now cost us noticeably more than it would have a year ago. I heard a report on the radio yesterday that in Haiti the price of a bowl of rice had recently doubled from 40 cents to 80 cents. Most people in Haiti live on about two dollars a day. People are rioting to eat.
Sometimes I grasp that that which I have mistaken for forever is really only today. Sometimes I am shocked to realize how abnormal my idea of normalcy is. Sometimes words such as "deserve" and "need" taste like poisonous opiates.
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
The Birth
Saturday the 5th was kind of a sad day for Elizabeth. The night before, she had had false labor; at one point in the day, she was crying. "I thought we were going to have a baby by now," she said when I looked inquiringly at her. So that night, when she came out of the bedroom and said she was in labor, she was a little suspicious of her contractions and their regularity. She didn't want to be let down again, and she didn't want to bother Margaret, our midwife, and have her drive down from Spokane for a false labor.
She did call Margaret, though, and then timed her contractions, which confirmed to her that this time it was real. Margaret began the drive down, and we waited.
A few months ago, when Elizabeth expressed her desire for a home birth, I had some misgivings. What if there were problems? What if the midwife gets here too late? After all, Spokane is kind of far away. Will I have to do more stuff? I'm not that good at doing too much stuff. Sort of like a missionary, Elizabeth resolved my concerns and even showed me a documentary, The Business of Being Born, as well as several YouTube videos of at-home childbirths. Somehow, my anxieties disappeared and by the time Margaret arrived, having a baby at home seemed like the most normal thing to do. Now I'm really glad Elizabeth was persistent in presenting to me the beauties of home birth.
Around 1 A.M., Margaret and her assistant Teri arrived, and Elizabeth and I climbed into the hot tub. I felt a moment of husbandly pride; I had fixed the hot tub a month or so earlier. I'm not all that helpful during birth--I usually just stand near Elizabeth and wait for her to tell me to do something--so having at least the hot tub to contribute eased my existential guilt somewhat. The water was pleasantly warm and I mostly just sat there while she moaned her way through two hours of contractions. She checked on me several times, asking if I was doing okay. I thought it was a funny question: How hard is it to sit in a hot tub for a couple of hours and hold somebody's hand every few minutes?
It was during the hot tub hours that I really felt that this whole home birth thing was pretty great. We were outside, under the clouds and stars, having a baby. The midwife and her assistant checked on us every once in a while, but it was just Elizabeth and I most of the time. At one point, about an hour after we got into the hot tub, a distant coyote yapped several times. Cool, I thought; we are still wild.
When Elizabeth started feeling the urge to push, we went inside the house and she continued laboring in the bedroom. Another of my concerns about having a home birth had concerned the messiness of it all: What happens when her water breaks? What about the blood? What do we do with the placenta? It seems many people have had these same concerns, and a month or two before the birth, the midwife sent Elizabeth a list of things to do to prepare for the messy part of birth. Earlier in the evening, we put new sheets on our bed, then we put a cheap shower curtain over those. Next we put an old fitted sheet over the shower curtain. Everything else was pretty much the way it had been at the hospital for Sonora's birth: the assistant kept putting those blue absorbent pads under Elizabeth to catch any fluids, and it worked.
When we came back into the house, I suddenly felt an urge to look after our guests. They weren't really guests, but that is the category my mind placed them in. In case they wanted to take a nap during lulls in the delivery, I pulled out the futon, put on sheets and blankets, and then I got snacks and drinks ready. Of course, I probably should have been concentrating on Elizabeth, but I suddenly felt the pressures of being a host. This feeling persisted throughout the rest of the night until they left shortly after dawn, and at times this innate obligatory sense became oppressive: I wanted to be with Elizabeth, to share in the experience, but I also felt compelled to look after the well being of the two women who had come to look after Elizabeth's and the baby's well-being. If there were any drawback to having the baby at home, this drive to be accommodating would be it. At the hospital, I knew it was someone else's job to make everyone comfortable, and I didn't worry about it.
Elizabeth finished laboring in the bedroom. At first, she lay on the bed, and then she moved to the foot of the bed, where she knelt on the floor and rested her head on a pillow on the bed. When the contractions came, she screamed or moaned into the pillow, but even muffled by the pillow and bed, she was pretty loud. At one point, Sonora came tottering in from her room. She looked disoriented and half-asleep. Afraid that she would prove to be an annoying distraction to Elizabeth, I rushed Sonora back to bed. The next time Sonora came in, Elizabeth was very close to delivering the baby. I didn't know how close, or I wouldn't have left to put Sonora to bed again.
A minute or two after I put Sonora back in her bed, the midwife's assistant appeared and whispered "Baby, baby," and gestured excitedly for me to follow her. While I was out, Elizabeth had delivered the baby and, with a little assistance from Margaret, had caught our baby with her own hands and carried her into the world. I arrived back in the bedroom at 4:15 A.M. to find Elizabeth kneeling on the floor, her naked body embracing a mewing, vernix-covered newborn baby. Elizabeth seemed to be trying to embrace the baby with every part of her, to enfold the baby with the outsider of her self the way she had done with the inside of herself. "Go ahead, lift her to your chest," the midwife said; "there's plenty of cord." Elizabeth straightened and lifted the baby nearer her heart. Later that morning, I overheard Teri, Margaret's assistant, telling Margaret, "it was a beautiful picture, the way she held that baby; her face just lit up with joy and amazement. It would have made a great photo." And she was right, when I walked in, I saw an expression of rapturous disbelief. From the look on Elizabeth's face, she was experiencing one of those moments of pure, mostly inexplicable emotion.
After Margaret clamped off the cord, I cut it and then held the baby while Elizabeth delivered the placenta. After that, my memories blur somewhat. At some point, Margaret stitched up a small tear Elizabeth had sustained in the delivery. The big stuff was over, everything had gone well, and we were all tired. But there is a moment after that that stands out. The baby was a few degrees too cold, so Margaret said I needed to lay her on a heating pad or initiate skin-to-skin contact. I took off my shirt, unwrapped the baby, and laid her on my chest. I think it is then that I realized I have a new baby too. This isn't only Elizabeth's baby. With her head on my sternum, the baby whimpered occasionally, but didn't cry. She tried out her fingers, flexing and un-flexing them, lightly scratching the skin on my chest with her tiny fingernails. When Margaret came to wrap up the baby and do the initial inspection, I felt sad to part with her.
Margaret measured and weighed her, looked at her skin color, tested reflexes and tone, gave her a vitamin K shot, and wrapped her up again. The hand-scale she used said the baby weighed 7 pounds, 10 ounces (though a few days later, a digital scale put her at 8 lbs. 10 oz. She had gained weight due to Elizabeth's two milk factories, so initially she was probably somewhere in between those two measurements). She was 21.5 inches tall. Elizabeth lifted the baby to her breast and after a couple of failed attempts, the baby latched on well. She has been eating well since.
After everything was done, Teri cleaned up, and we removed the sheet and the shower curtain. A friend of ours took Sonora. Elizabeth, the baby, and I slept in our own bed in our own house. It was a very good experience overall. We hadn't had a bad experience in the hospital when Sonora was born (we had a great midwife then, too), but it was relaxing, comfortable, and somehow fulfilling to have the baby in our own home.
At first, we decided to name our baby Juniper, but after a couple of days, we decided on Rowyn. Her full name is Rowyn Leavy Lee. Leavy was my maternal great-great grandma's name. She was a pretty amazing woman (her name was spelled Levy, but I didn't want people to think of tax levy, so I added an a in to the mix).
A couple of days later, Elizabeth's sister Vanessa and our friend Kathryn came to see us. I took a couple of photos right after the birth (I've included a few of them here), but all of the cute ones below were taken by Vanessa.
Saturday the 5th was kind of a sad day for Elizabeth. The night before, she had had false labor; at one point in the day, she was crying. "I thought we were going to have a baby by now," she said when I looked inquiringly at her. So that night, when she came out of the bedroom and said she was in labor, she was a little suspicious of her contractions and their regularity. She didn't want to be let down again, and she didn't want to bother Margaret, our midwife, and have her drive down from Spokane for a false labor.
She did call Margaret, though, and then timed her contractions, which confirmed to her that this time it was real. Margaret began the drive down, and we waited.
A few months ago, when Elizabeth expressed her desire for a home birth, I had some misgivings. What if there were problems? What if the midwife gets here too late? After all, Spokane is kind of far away. Will I have to do more stuff? I'm not that good at doing too much stuff. Sort of like a missionary, Elizabeth resolved my concerns and even showed me a documentary, The Business of Being Born, as well as several YouTube videos of at-home childbirths. Somehow, my anxieties disappeared and by the time Margaret arrived, having a baby at home seemed like the most normal thing to do. Now I'm really glad Elizabeth was persistent in presenting to me the beauties of home birth.
Around 1 A.M., Margaret and her assistant Teri arrived, and Elizabeth and I climbed into the hot tub. I felt a moment of husbandly pride; I had fixed the hot tub a month or so earlier. I'm not all that helpful during birth--I usually just stand near Elizabeth and wait for her to tell me to do something--so having at least the hot tub to contribute eased my existential guilt somewhat. The water was pleasantly warm and I mostly just sat there while she moaned her way through two hours of contractions. She checked on me several times, asking if I was doing okay. I thought it was a funny question: How hard is it to sit in a hot tub for a couple of hours and hold somebody's hand every few minutes?
It was during the hot tub hours that I really felt that this whole home birth thing was pretty great. We were outside, under the clouds and stars, having a baby. The midwife and her assistant checked on us every once in a while, but it was just Elizabeth and I most of the time. At one point, about an hour after we got into the hot tub, a distant coyote yapped several times. Cool, I thought; we are still wild.
When Elizabeth started feeling the urge to push, we went inside the house and she continued laboring in the bedroom. Another of my concerns about having a home birth had concerned the messiness of it all: What happens when her water breaks? What about the blood? What do we do with the placenta? It seems many people have had these same concerns, and a month or two before the birth, the midwife sent Elizabeth a list of things to do to prepare for the messy part of birth. Earlier in the evening, we put new sheets on our bed, then we put a cheap shower curtain over those. Next we put an old fitted sheet over the shower curtain. Everything else was pretty much the way it had been at the hospital for Sonora's birth: the assistant kept putting those blue absorbent pads under Elizabeth to catch any fluids, and it worked.
When we came back into the house, I suddenly felt an urge to look after our guests. They weren't really guests, but that is the category my mind placed them in. In case they wanted to take a nap during lulls in the delivery, I pulled out the futon, put on sheets and blankets, and then I got snacks and drinks ready. Of course, I probably should have been concentrating on Elizabeth, but I suddenly felt the pressures of being a host. This feeling persisted throughout the rest of the night until they left shortly after dawn, and at times this innate obligatory sense became oppressive: I wanted to be with Elizabeth, to share in the experience, but I also felt compelled to look after the well being of the two women who had come to look after Elizabeth's and the baby's well-being. If there were any drawback to having the baby at home, this drive to be accommodating would be it. At the hospital, I knew it was someone else's job to make everyone comfortable, and I didn't worry about it.
Elizabeth finished laboring in the bedroom. At first, she lay on the bed, and then she moved to the foot of the bed, where she knelt on the floor and rested her head on a pillow on the bed. When the contractions came, she screamed or moaned into the pillow, but even muffled by the pillow and bed, she was pretty loud. At one point, Sonora came tottering in from her room. She looked disoriented and half-asleep. Afraid that she would prove to be an annoying distraction to Elizabeth, I rushed Sonora back to bed. The next time Sonora came in, Elizabeth was very close to delivering the baby. I didn't know how close, or I wouldn't have left to put Sonora to bed again.
A minute or two after I put Sonora back in her bed, the midwife's assistant appeared and whispered "Baby, baby," and gestured excitedly for me to follow her. While I was out, Elizabeth had delivered the baby and, with a little assistance from Margaret, had caught our baby with her own hands and carried her into the world. I arrived back in the bedroom at 4:15 A.M. to find Elizabeth kneeling on the floor, her naked body embracing a mewing, vernix-covered newborn baby. Elizabeth seemed to be trying to embrace the baby with every part of her, to enfold the baby with the outsider of her self the way she had done with the inside of herself. "Go ahead, lift her to your chest," the midwife said; "there's plenty of cord." Elizabeth straightened and lifted the baby nearer her heart. Later that morning, I overheard Teri, Margaret's assistant, telling Margaret, "it was a beautiful picture, the way she held that baby; her face just lit up with joy and amazement. It would have made a great photo." And she was right, when I walked in, I saw an expression of rapturous disbelief. From the look on Elizabeth's face, she was experiencing one of those moments of pure, mostly inexplicable emotion.
After Margaret clamped off the cord, I cut it and then held the baby while Elizabeth delivered the placenta. After that, my memories blur somewhat. At some point, Margaret stitched up a small tear Elizabeth had sustained in the delivery. The big stuff was over, everything had gone well, and we were all tired. But there is a moment after that that stands out. The baby was a few degrees too cold, so Margaret said I needed to lay her on a heating pad or initiate skin-to-skin contact. I took off my shirt, unwrapped the baby, and laid her on my chest. I think it is then that I realized I have a new baby too. This isn't only Elizabeth's baby. With her head on my sternum, the baby whimpered occasionally, but didn't cry. She tried out her fingers, flexing and un-flexing them, lightly scratching the skin on my chest with her tiny fingernails. When Margaret came to wrap up the baby and do the initial inspection, I felt sad to part with her.
Margaret measured and weighed her, looked at her skin color, tested reflexes and tone, gave her a vitamin K shot, and wrapped her up again. The hand-scale she used said the baby weighed 7 pounds, 10 ounces (though a few days later, a digital scale put her at 8 lbs. 10 oz. She had gained weight due to Elizabeth's two milk factories, so initially she was probably somewhere in between those two measurements). She was 21.5 inches tall. Elizabeth lifted the baby to her breast and after a couple of failed attempts, the baby latched on well. She has been eating well since.
After everything was done, Teri cleaned up, and we removed the sheet and the shower curtain. A friend of ours took Sonora. Elizabeth, the baby, and I slept in our own bed in our own house. It was a very good experience overall. We hadn't had a bad experience in the hospital when Sonora was born (we had a great midwife then, too), but it was relaxing, comfortable, and somehow fulfilling to have the baby in our own home.
At first, we decided to name our baby Juniper, but after a couple of days, we decided on Rowyn. Her full name is Rowyn Leavy Lee. Leavy was my maternal great-great grandma's name. She was a pretty amazing woman (her name was spelled Levy, but I didn't want people to think of tax levy, so I added an a in to the mix).
A couple of days later, Elizabeth's sister Vanessa and our friend Kathryn came to see us. I took a couple of photos right after the birth (I've included a few of them here), but all of the cute ones below were taken by Vanessa.
Saturday, April 05, 2008
Times have been a little strange since Elizabeth got back from Utah a couple of weeks ago. She has been "nesting" the whole time, except when she was too exhausted from sinus infections, ear infections, and bronchitis to move around. I've been quite impressed with her stamina and energy lately, though. She goes to bed early and then I stay up much too late reading. The next day, I feel tired and wonder how my wife, who is due to deliver a baby in less than a week, is able to clean the house, organize craft and entertainment bins for Sonora to have constructive stuff to do when Elizabeth is occupied with the newborn, cook and freeze dinners, and organize baby clothes and diapers. At the end of almost every day last week, I felt guilty when I realized I hadn't done very much to help Elizabeth. Sometimes I think I'm a pretty great husband, but lately, when I realize I've spent most of my time at home watching my very pregnant wife work, my positive image of myself is shattered. Today Elizabeth made a list of things for me to do that included fixing a couple of things around the house and washing the windows. I completed the major things on the list, made dinner, and spent a lot of time entertaining Sonora, while also at least sort of listening to all the sessions of conference. So, for one shining day, I felt like a good husband again. It won't last; my lazy side will win out. But it was nice having at least one day during which I didn't feel the slightest bit guilty. The nesting bug must be catching, if only temporary.
Spring is coming rather slowly to the Inland Northwest. It is supposed to snow throughout the night. A Dar Williams song says "February was so long that it lasted into March." This year, February is lasting until April. Our garden is mostly ready for planting, but this is definitely not planting weather. Unfortunately, I really want fresh garden produce right now; I want to make gallons and gallons of fresh salsa. Ripe tomatoes seem like an eternity away.
We've had a couple of visitors. Elizabeth's sister Vanessa came down with her kids from Spokane and also transported Elizabeth's sister Carrie and her son. I had fixed up the old hot tub that came with the house and the kids had fun in it. Unfortunately, I hadn't gotten the water chemistry part of it down yet and the water was pretty murky. The kids didn't mind, and I haven't gotten any reports of weird skin rashes, so nothing was lost, but I felt a little uncomfortable inviting our guests to enjoy our cloudy water. I've since gotten it right and Elizabeth, Sonora and I have been enjoying a clear hot tub.
Carrie and her son stayed for a couple of days. I think they were our first overnight visitors at our new house. There is something validating about having people come to see you. We live in a pretty out of the way place, so there will probably not be many people coming to visit. We got some good tractor (that's what we call our riding lawnmower) time in on a day that almost felt like spring.
Well, Elizabeth just walked out of the bedroom and said "Okay, I'm in labor," so I'd better go. We need to contact the midwife and give her time to drive the 75 miles from Spokane to get here before the baby arrives. Because of a mixture of sicknesses, a marriage, and people moving, virtually all of the people who otherwise might have been here for the birth or helped out afterward are not going to be around, but I think with all that nesting Elizabeth has done, she has prepared us pretty well.
Spring is coming rather slowly to the Inland Northwest. It is supposed to snow throughout the night. A Dar Williams song says "February was so long that it lasted into March." This year, February is lasting until April. Our garden is mostly ready for planting, but this is definitely not planting weather. Unfortunately, I really want fresh garden produce right now; I want to make gallons and gallons of fresh salsa. Ripe tomatoes seem like an eternity away.
We've had a couple of visitors. Elizabeth's sister Vanessa came down with her kids from Spokane and also transported Elizabeth's sister Carrie and her son. I had fixed up the old hot tub that came with the house and the kids had fun in it. Unfortunately, I hadn't gotten the water chemistry part of it down yet and the water was pretty murky. The kids didn't mind, and I haven't gotten any reports of weird skin rashes, so nothing was lost, but I felt a little uncomfortable inviting our guests to enjoy our cloudy water. I've since gotten it right and Elizabeth, Sonora and I have been enjoying a clear hot tub.
Carrie and her son stayed for a couple of days. I think they were our first overnight visitors at our new house. There is something validating about having people come to see you. We live in a pretty out of the way place, so there will probably not be many people coming to visit. We got some good tractor (that's what we call our riding lawnmower) time in on a day that almost felt like spring.
Well, Elizabeth just walked out of the bedroom and said "Okay, I'm in labor," so I'd better go. We need to contact the midwife and give her time to drive the 75 miles from Spokane to get here before the baby arrives. Because of a mixture of sicknesses, a marriage, and people moving, virtually all of the people who otherwise might have been here for the birth or helped out afterward are not going to be around, but I think with all that nesting Elizabeth has done, she has prepared us pretty well.
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
Monday, March 03, 2008
When Elizabeth leaves, I get all sappy and kind of sad. I held out for about a week this time by reading at night, but now I'm really noticing her absence. It's a weird sort of sadness that settles over me when she is gone, and it is deepened by music. Slow, heavy music becomes more appealing at such times and all music seems to be more meaningful and heavier. This auditory weight seems to take on mass and settle into my chest cavity, widening the absence. Right now, I'm listening to that kind of music.
In a way, this feeling is strangely enjoyable. It is similar to that sadness that drove me as a teenager to get on my bicycle and ride for miles along the only paved road that ran out of the village I grew up in and then, miles from my house, just as night was setting in, get off my bike and yell out the name of the girl I had a crush on as if she could hear me and feel my longing. Or the feeling I would get as a teenager that would draw me out of the house to wander, again at dusk, the dusty fields that bordered the Ute reservation, wondering if there really might be an edge where the world drops off into nothingness. Or the time I drove all night from Mesa, Arizona to Colorado because I had a feeling my dad was going to die. He didn't die, but I had many invaluable conversations with my parents because I thought I might never see one of them again. I also climbed onto the roof of their house and watched a sunrise from up there; it was a fiery orange and yellow and to watch it felt strangely like listening to heavy music, like listening to a poem I could feel but not quite understand.
At times like these, my mind inevitably turns toward death. I wonder what it would feel like to lose her and the unborn baby and maybe even Sonora. The emptiness in my chest grows and the weight gets heavier. My arms feel as if they will sink through the chair, through the floor, stopping only at the earth. I picture my inner self falling, collapsing, and then lying like a slug on the ground, letting everything else go, letting emotion spill out like water from a burst balloon. I don't allow myself to fully imagine these possibilities because I don't want to feel that bad and I know that, until it happens, I will never have any idea really how bad that would feel. These thoughts come about any time Elizabeth and I are apart for more than a few days. But as I said, I don't mind this feeling so much because it reminds me of the connection we have. It is a sadness that reminds me that our separation is only temporary, the pain mostly of the imagined sort.
And it carries with it a certain creative energy that makes me want to at least partially see past the superfluous, as happened the time I went to visit my parents in Colorado. In a way, it is cleansing and re-focusing. Part of me wants to get up from wherever I am, whatever I am doing, and go to her, to wander through fields at dusk or ride a bike down highways until I get to her; it's like some kind of weird magnet that my conscious mind is only partially aware of, something I can feel, something my self can feel but that I don't totally understand, though understanding it isn't important somehow.
I'm going to describe an experience that is unabashedly cheesy, but that ties into what I'm feeling right now. A few years ago, Elizabeth and I went to listen to a well-established author read from one of his books. The reading was held in a building that had a lot of artwork--paintings and sculptures--scattered about. Before the reading, we viewed and pondered on the art works, admiring some of them. At one point, I scanned the whole room, took it all in. There was one image that really stood out to me in that survey, but I couldn't remember which one. I just knew that I found it to be beautiful, sublime, and moving, and it somehow made me feel almost giddy. I re-surveyed the room, trying to find the piece of art that had made me feel that way, but I couldn't find it, so I went through the catalog of images in my mind. I realized with some delight that the image that had so moved me was Elizabeth's face as she stared at a work on the wall; I had unconsciously swept her up in my survey of the art collected there and she had made all the other works pale.
Since she has been gone, along with the feeling of sadness and weight, I've been having feelings similar to the Elizabeth-as-art feeling. I might see a photo of her and for a brief instant, before my mind fully recognizes her, I will feel a rush of positive associations with the image. The same thing happened when I saw a picture of my daughter this morning, a picture in which she is making a funny face. Before it registered that I was looking at Sonora, I had a flash of emotion: love, fun, protectiveness, adoration; in the next instant, when I realized I was looking at my daughter, I had a sudden urge to chase her around the house and then swing her on a blanket and toss her onto the couch, to read her a book and teach her a few more German words. But then I realized she and Elizabeth were gone and I stored that urge away; I will retrieve it when they return.
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