Obama Date Night, NYC

photo taken from MSN newspage

Her dress is amazing, her hair perfect, his smile brilliant, their happiness enviable, their couple-power undeniable.
I love this man. And his wife's not too shabby either.

There Has Been A Loss

French painter Émile Friant [1863 - 1932] Le Doleur (Sorrow). Le Doleur currently hangs in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Nancy, France

We are preparing the children and ourselves to leave early tomorrow morning, a three and half hour drive ending somewhere past Los Angeles, to attend the funeral of Mr. Curry's Aunt Linda. I have known Linda for a decade, not well, but the way extended family does, in the undercurrent of some measure of intimacy, bound by blood and marriage: ' Your husband has known my husband since birth, birthdays and parties and gatherings and reunions, therefore you and I have a common bond. ' Linda and Jim, Mr. Curry's uncle, had four daughters, three together and one from Linda's previous marriage. All six of them came every year to the desert trips in Ocotilla Wells, the girls, Trish, Laura, Anna and Jaime, and their parents, Linda and Jim. The girls and their mother all had an easy similarity, outfitted in tight jeans and riding boots, slim figures and long brown hair. Linda braided their hair and rode quads with them and sat around the campfire laughing.

After a long, terrible year, Linda killed herself a few weeks ago, far away from her husband and her daughters, and even farther away from the person and mother she was for the years of raising her girls. The youngest, Anna, is about 21. The reasons why a woman would cleave herself from family and dive furiously into drug abuse and despair are Linda's to know, for our speculation only. We can only support her husband and daughters as they come to grips with what most likely is something that cannot gripped- suicide, a concentrated and purposeful turning from any and all help or love, and into pain. To imagine what a person must be feeling to take their life, with four beautiful children and a brand new grandson she will never know... I can only imagine she had an inner wound that had been held at bay in the raising and loving of her girls, and when the youngest was old enough, the wound grew all encompassing.

There is an blog mommy that just found out her four year old son, Ezra, has luekemia. And another who lost her son and wrote a book about it. And on, and on, as we live, unless we are very, very lucky, we encounter more and more tragedy in our friends lives and eventually in some way, in our own. At times the stillness of grief fills me. I will look out the window of my sunroom and pause. I will watch a bird or one of our cats or just the leaves of the large bushes up against the glass. I will remember my childhood, brief snippets of suffering that I still marvel I escaped from. I grieve my sister, who I have not seen in six years. I grieve for the child I was. I grieve for my Grandmother and my Grandfather. I understand what kind of hurt can cause a person to take their own life. I understand the blackness and pointlessness that can fill a person, unbearable.

I think about my children, each one, Dakota and his long limbed beauty, his newly shaved head, his incredible intelligence and deep understanding of the world, the sweetness of his nose, Ian and his sweet hearted tenderness so carefully hidden, his long, long eyelashes, the incredible brain that gives him A after A, Lola, her delicious 'creampuffs', cheeks, her sweet kisses, her incredibly infectious laugh, her endearing awkwardness, and this new baby, this mystery, this tiny life that moves inside of me already. And I will just shake my head. Because I have no answers. I have no understanding of how, if you lose someone you love like I love them, like most parents love their children, like a husband can love his wife, how you do anything but lay on your bed and wail, and wail, and wail.

I do not believe in God. I look out my window and think I only know two things about this. One is that I have a deep and unreasonable belief that life itself is precious and mysterious and that it is somehow my duty, simply because I was born, to make the best of it that I possibly can. I have always felt this way. Even then. Two is that I want my children to have the same belief , to move forward in joy and in pain. So- We may not move on but we move, damnit. We put our feet forward. We breathe in and out. We eat. We love who we can love as well as we can. We think of those who are gone and perhaps they fill us every second of every day and sleep or awake is the shadow of their loss like the great cancerous warning of an MRI, but in some kind of dedication- however faulty and ugly we are as we go- that can be the fine bravery and beauty of human life, we keep living.

12 Weeks

We spent the day at Del Mar on the beach. Del Mar is like a mini-vacation, like Coronado Island is for us, only 20 minutes away and another world where breast implants are more common than coffee shops and the atmosphere is filled with the kind of indolent relaxation that money can bring, when no worries of car payments, water turned off, affording birthday presents or necessary medication cloud an otherwise beautiful day. The shoreline was busy, like I like it, but not overly crowded, something Mr. Curry dreads. It is pressed up against a bustling and beautifully architected stretch of shops and restaurants that overlook the ocean. We bought KFC, potato salad, red grapes, Oreos and let the kids each pick a soda at the local gas station. Mr. Curry and I spent ten incredibly hot minutes in the bathroom with the door locked before we left, and we both were glowing like babies in the sun. We had a Breast Implant Counting Contest and I won, counting 7 over Mr. Curry's 2. Of course, I started the contest before I informed him it was happening. I wore a Billabong turquoise bikini with gold hoops on the hips and one gold hoop in the Cleveland (as I call my cleavage) and felt like a sexy but slightly insecure and self concious preggo. I kept calling images of celebrities on the beach to mind to make me feel better. Sad? Or a cool commentary on the influence of US Magazine? I've been very lucky in that the worst that has happened to my body in my 34 years and 3 pregnancies is some cellulite on my ass and thighs, but no stretch marks or egregious weight gain. I work hard at eating healthy and staying active so I like to think I'm holding strong. Of course, I nearly crapped my pants when I went to Dr. Tseng (before I knew I was pregnant) and found that I weighed 146 instead of the expected 135. I'm 5'7 and 135 is the top of comfortable poundage for me, and I had been working out and eating smaller portions, so WTF was not a strange reaction. I'm so glad I hadn't been doing anything crazy like a pineapple diet and draining my body of it's nutritional stores before I knew I was pregnant.

Lola Ian and Dakota played well after a good half hour of complaining about various issues including the wind (which soon died down and relented to the sun) and Lola's concern that she would not make it back in time for her playdate/spend the night with her best friend Kaylen. YES LOLA WE KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS. Holy persistance, Batman. Ian and Dakota boogie boarded and Mr. Curry jumped around with Lola in the water while I basked ( 30 sunblock over evere inch of my fair skin ) in the sun and watched some frat like guys get busted for drinking on the beach. The five of us went down the beach for a walk and laughed hysterically as a small boy chased a barking leaping black dog down the beach, who pulled a Marley and stopped to squat, IN THE WATER, and take a gynormous POOP. We ended up eating Oreos and grapes and being completely uninterested in the rest of the food we bought. Dakota again was the chosen one to be buried in sand, and Lola and Ian spent a good hour doing so. Our car holds about 2 pounds of fine Cali sand now, and who knows what our pipes look like.

The baby is now moving. My doctor has told me this is unusual so soon but not unheard of for sucessive pregnancies, and I also have a very small abdominal area- it's wide enough, I have hips, but it's very small in width, so my uterus is pressed right up against my tummy, and I can feel, for the last week, the baby fluttering or contracting in there. The nausea is better and I am only occasionally throwing up, which I can control mainly with Sleep, Gatorade, Eating Regularly and Protien at every meal. I am finally able to eat vegetables and fruits again without puking and am feeling much less guilty.


yours,
maggie may

11 Weeks

Due Date: December 2, 2009

Ultrasound Experience: The midwife rolled the vaginal ultrasound wand this way and that, which was much less unpleasant than it sounds, greased and smooth, not bad for a clinical vaginal poking, and there was our baby; the midwife exclaimed ' Oh! Mongo Baby! ' and so, the clunky nickname was born. Apparently she is used to seeing babies not so far along as mine, but she scared me there for a second. Peanut ( as I much prefer to call him/her ) is One baby, and beautiful, we saw the little hands, feet tucked, round head, booty- heartbeat. Mr. Curry held my hand, we rejoiced.

Kaiser Maternity Care: Blamzooey, steamroll, too much information too fast many appointments, you get a different doctor every time you go, no they can't tell you who will deliver the baby, sorry, and make a TB appointment, and oh blood draw in a different building, and the midwife walks in and doesn't look at me when she says hello, but directs her rather frantic attentions and long nail clickings to the face of the keyboard, entering my data without seeing my face.

State of Mom: My thyroid is a concern so I have to see a ' high risk pregnancy specialist '. Thyroid has been swinging wildly back and forth the last year, I've always been hypothyroid but it's stayed stable with the medication, it could hurt the baby, this scares me, I see the specialist in 6 weeks after the med. change settles in my body and we access where I'm at with it.

Sex of Baby: To be found out July 17, if I remember. I think this is the same day Harry Potter comes out. AWESOME. This will be an epic day for our family- all the kids are going to this appointment, plus Grandma. We are rabid Potter fans, and the high of finding out the sex will roll right into the movie theatre with the troop.

Answers To My Concerns: None. I'm going to assault the specialist. Someone needs to talk to me about the scar tissue I have from endometriosis and 3 surgeries, how difficult this makes pushing Peanut out. ( Mr. Curry can try all he wants, but I'm not calling the baby Mongo ) For the first time ever, I plan on using pain managment, to deal with the incredible back pain I experience due to the adhesions from endometriosis/surgeries. I'm afraid of using the epi, but more afraid not to. However, with the epi and the scar tissue comes the risk of being 'forced' into a cesearean, an option I'm not interested in just to speed things along when other options are available. I need to talk to them about this, but don't have one doctor to talk to. I am interested in stretching therapies, yoga, hypnotherapy and acupuncture. With Lola the midwife used massage and tea but it didn't help enough.

Dakota Wolf is on his school wrestling team now, and we went to his first match last Saturday. He was awesome. I think it's cool because John Irving ( a favorite author of mine ) writes so much about his wrestling experiences and frequently includes it in his novels. I have a good impression of it's effects on a kid. He is also and still doing MMA. He is busy, this is good. He is beautiful and bright and incredibly emotionally acute and intelligent. He has a maturity, depth and wit that blows away every adult he meets.

Lola Moon is in Brownies. First Grade so far has been progressively better and better, with the exception of the incredibly bitchy and mean girls in her classes. Not that she is picked on, thank God she's not (yet, could happen, yes) but the things these girls say ( her friend Ashley came over for a playdate last weekend and called another girl a 'slut' when she didn't know I was listening. They are SIX. Lola, Daddy and I had a talk that night, yes, in which Lola said that every time she remembered Ashley saying that she ' got a stomachache, Mommy' ) and the way they treat each other is depressing. Boys aren't like this. They get pissed off and fight and call names and it's over or it's not, but they don't insinuate and snarl and bring you in and leave you out the next day and manipulate and wear shirts that say ' FLIRT '. I am talking to Lola a lot about why people act mean or cruel, she is picking it up slowly. She says ' I think Anna is lonely for her Daddy, he's never home and she misses him and she's been acting really mean lately. ' Connections made, good.

Ian Oliver welcomed a new baby brother into his other family. His mom had a little boy, William, with her husband, and so Ian will have two siblings born within a year of each other. Ian is getting straight A's in school, writes like a little poet at times, does math that no one in my family can do, and reads constantly. He is 12, so he is very, very, very sarcastic. He is 12, so he is very innocent still, despite his attempts at adult dismissals.

Mr. Curry is a super breeder

I have quite thoroughly impregnated my impossible to impregnate wife. I realize you would all like to know my special formula. But if I published my secrets I would just be an average breeder. Not the super breeder I am now known for. So you may just sit back and look upon me with awe. If not for my super breeding, then for the fact that a woman so beautiful, talented, and SO out of my league chose to spend her life with me. Just thought you should know.

Mr. Curry out

My Poem Now Out in OPIUM 8

My poem ' after your phone call ' is appearing in OPIUM 8 Print Magazine, which has a 'microsite' HERE I am very excited to be featured in such a quirky, intelligent, talent crammed magazine!

That's Why I'm Easy Like Sunday Morning

Pregnancy erupts. It interrupts, it consumes, it sweeps through the blood with the intensity and finality of an end -stage disease, pushing and gurgling through the body, saturating each and every cell of my being with the new DNA information that urgently gets passed from nucleus to nucleus: A baby- there is a baby inside- Full Systems Go. The truth about children for me was in a poem I wrote: " every night recognized a little more the essential draw of parenthood: life goes on, life goes on.." I am invited to see newly, right when I felt so old and tired. It would have passed without a pregnancy, of course- but with the pregnancy, not only did it pass, it was swept away with hurricane winds and the sky and trees and dirt and faces and love and life all have a crackling, electric energy about them. The nausea is less and the keen heightening of senses more.

I am cleaning corners and sucking down cobwebs with the vacuum extension. I am planning for Mr. Curry to paint. I am having Mr. Curry take things, bumbling old smelly furniture and things that clutter, to the dump. I am pondering a new kitchen table from IKEA. I am plowing through a bag of donated baby clothes with Lola. I am lovingly hand washing the recesses of our tile floor. I am aware of the moment without as much effort as it normally takes my neurotic mind to extend. I am making room for one more.

A bizarre side effect from this pregnancy: my puss smells like honey. It really does. Thanks, Kid.

Today I wore a long flowery dress, strapless, with turquoise print. I bought it at Target months ago, before I knew. My stomach swelled out underneath my breasts and everyone remarked the way everyone does when you are pregnant ' how sweet, how beautiful, how lovely, how exciting ' and I felt great. Later I cried for no reason in the bathroom and almost vomited lunch while the mirror remarked how tired and exhausted and old I suddenly looked, and I felt crappy.

Our cat Hermione had kittens, four: Black, Grey, Siamese colored (that's from Grandma Kagome, also our cat) and light orange tabby. They roam about, almost a month old, in their room, close to their box and their mother, their adorable fuzzy faces curious and frightened and thrilled and horrified. I'm feelin that.

The count of people asking if I'm having twins has now risen to Six, including one Mr. Curry, who when seeing my baby bump today in the new dress sucked in his breath and said ' Oh God, maybe you ARE having twins. ' Uhhmmm. I gave him the look and he stuttered ' Probably not, honey! ' Yeah.
Say that again. I dare you.

xo
maggie may