HMS Pinafore, Kate, and a Mama’s Fierce Love

In a lifetime that’s been characterized by obsessive parental love, Miss Kate is currently experiencing a particularly high period of maternal adoration. Or, to say it more plainly: My God, can I love this baby any more?

It would almost be sickening except for the fact that it’s just at the apex of intensity without reaching that I’m-so-excited-I-have-a-headache place.

I’ve described my pride and excitement about Kate in high school play terms before. (This probably relates to what I’ve realized as an adult was my freakishly positive and happy high school experience.) At any rate, the play thing is something I use to explain how I feel about the fact that my dad and oldest sister and a ton of other family and friends don’t get to see Kate anywhere near as much as I wish they could. To me it’s like when you’re in the high school play. You’ve been rehearsing for so long, memorizing lines, singing your heart out, putting all your extra energy into it. You get to that place where you surpass the fear that it could be terrible and even arrive at the realization that it will be really quite good. When the performances finally arrive and your family is in the audience watching, you’re so damn proud of yourself and happy and excited to have them there. It’s a total high.

Okay, so stay with me here. Having Kate is like being in this incredible Broadway performance in the lead role and singing and performing in a way that is so exceptional and impressive that it astounds even you. It totally exceeds your expectations. But the thing is, instead of getting that thrill that everyone you care about and want to be proud of you (and sure, even those who you want to impress) will come, the fact is that people can’t make it to every performance. So sometimes you’re there bursting with pride and excitement and a desire to show off, and there’s no outlet for it.

Especially with my mother gone, I get these sudden pangs of wanting her to be able to see how amazing Kate is. To even just look at her her beautiful sweetness once. Those times are this whole feeling at its worst.

So sometimes it’s like Mark and I are just here in our little house in Oakland that just seems like any other little house but if you were to look inside you’d see that there is this wonder child who is being more beautiful and smart and sweet than you could ever imagine a baby to be. Whose little naked butt when she’s standing up holding onto the edge of the bathtub as she watches the water fill it up is so ridiculously cute you need to kiss it (yes, actually kiss her ass!). And all of this is just happening in here night after night with people just naively walking by outside having no idea!

Sometimes I just have to out and tell people, like my sister Marie when we’re on the phone, “My God, you have to see this baby. Like right now.” Of course it’s impossible for her to crawl through the phone line. But I really have thought that if she knew what Kate was doing at that moment and how great it was, she’d get on a cross-country plane immediately.

I guess it’s just in my nature to want to share great stuff. In the middle of an amazing massage I spend half the time thinking of how I have to get Mark to get a massage just like it. And part is just the exuberant braggart in me who wants to shout about Kate from the rooftops. “Amazing baby here! She giggles! She points at random things and says, ‘Ba ba!’ She has soft blonde hair with little wispy curls! She puts her head down on your shoulder to hug you! She says ‘baby’ like a CD that’s skipping and it’s so damn silly and funny and sweet you’d just love it, I know!”

Sometimes when I get swept up I call Ellen to see if she wants to come over last minute for dinner. Of course it’s in the guise of wanting to see her and the kids. And sure I do want to see them. But I also just really want them to see Kate.

Anyway, most of the time the last-minute dinners don’t work out, or we’re just in our day-to-day family routine. So what happens when it’s just us is that Mark and I marvel to each other. Sometimes Mark will just look at me with his eyes wide and say, “That baby.” And I know he means, “My God she is so staggeringly amazing. We are so lucky. How could we ever love anything quite so much?” Word to that, Dada.

And thankfully we do get opportunities to see other people who genuinely share our excitement. The mother’s group mamas totally appreciate all the other mamas’ babies. We thump each other on the backs regularly about the wonder of each other’s small beings. It’s nice.

And of course, when we do get to see grandparents, we get to connect with those who are similarly afflicted with The Crazy Love Glee. In Kentucky Peggy told us how Kate held her arms out for Gary (a.k.a. Papa) to pick her up, and I know he must have just melted. In that church-basement-sharing kind of way, it feels good to be around others who share our disease.

I guess all this is one reason why having Kate makes me want to spend the holidays with extended family more than ever. I’m so excited about The Miller Family Thanksgiving (TM) just because we can all hang out and delight in Kate and Gavin and family and love and luck.

And after two years of Mark unsuccessfully jockeying for the whole “starting our own family traditions at home” thing, this year he wins. We’ll stay in California for Christmas. It’s not that I won’t be happy being with Mark and Kate. Just the opposite really. I’ll be giddy with joy and love and pride and thankfulness. It’s just that sometimes when I feel that way I wish I could have all my family and friends experiencing it right there with me, and cheering me on from the audience.

Making Client Nice-Nice

I’m living proof that there’s no such thing as a part-time job. The other night after putting Kate to sleep I was up until 11:30 reading work documents. Last night it was 9:00, composing an email to a client after a big meeting. But the thing is, I’m totally digging it.

Yesterday I went to a meeting with a client who has been less-than-pleased with some of the work we’ve done. And she’s someone who sets the bar high, which I’d totally do too if I were a client. So I’m going to meet her for lunch and I felt like the team at my office was squirting water in my mouth, rubbing my shoulders and sending me into the ring. Everyone was saying good luck as if I was chum about to be tossed in a shark tank. And I wasn’t really worried about it. But it was nice to have my new posse looking out for me. Made me feel like in the couple weeks I’ve been there I’ve been welcomed into the fold.

And the fact is, I love a good challenge. Especially when it’s about connecting with someone, getting to the bottom of what is bugging them, you know–making nice-nice with the client and turning the ship around. And it’s nothing fake that I bust out. I guess I just took the advice an old boss gave to me once years ago which was simply to put myself in the client’s shoes. At the time I was sticking up so vehemently for the internal team I’d lost sight of the fact that what the client wanted was totally reasonable.

So anyway, the night before my meeting I did my background reading. Printed out my driving directions. Carefully picked out an outfit and ironed it. And Kate even pulled one for the team by sleeping 12 hours straight so I could get a good night’s sleep. (What a peach.)

I feel like much of the time I brace myself for something it ends up being not half-bad. My meeting was totally do-able—somewhat positive and definitely productive. I heard some honest feedback on the team’s past performance, and it was neither crushing nor unrealistic. And I also think I made some inroads into determining ways I could help solve some of their problems. It was hardly a love-fest, but it felt like a solid first step toward developing a good relationship with the clients.

Of course, I’m all of two hours into working with them. The thing that’s challenging and fun and totally unnerving at times about client work is, just like anywhere else, it takes a while to develop trust and gain credibility. And at times you feel like despite whatever history you’ve established, you’re still only as good as your last presentation or conference call. But that’s what keeps me on my toes and gives me momentum to forge through late work nights. That and the satisfaction of feeling like even after a year of being out of the game, I can still give good client.

Spell Check Can Be Funny

Today spell-check identified my last name–McClusky–as a word it didn’t recognize, and therefore thought it was something I’d spelled wrong. The suggestion it made for what it thought I was trying to type was “Clunky.”

After spending a lot of time trying to come up with baby names that went well with McClusky, that really hit home.

Ah, yes. Clearly I have returned to the world of the working. I am finding spell check funny. I guess you get your work-day amusement where you can.

To Hell with Cancer

I really hate to always have something to whine about these days but the preponderance of cancer I’ve been hearing about seems a legitimate reason.

First I find out that my friend Barb has a 40-year-old friend with late stage lung cancer. Never smoked a day in her life. Then Blanca, Kate’s former Thursday babysitter, tells me her father has cancer that they first thought was isolated and treatable and later determined was spread throughout his body. Then Mrs. Demopulos, Amelia’s mom, is diagnosed, which is a crushing blow since my mother already got cancer so it doesn’t seem fair that hers should too. And also because I love Mrs. D like a second mother. Then yesterday my father asks me on the phone in the course of an otherwise mundane “how’s the weather there?” conversation whether I’d heard that my Aunt Mary has colon cancer. (I had not.)

Aunt Mary isn’t really an aunt. She was our neighbor growing up and in many ways is closer to my sisters and I than many of our blood relations. I guess the aunts that you pick versus those that you just get can be that way. I mean, not to say anything remotely negative about my “real” aunts–but Aunt Mary is an amazing special person and force of nature. She’s super positive and friendly and fun and a great cook and has tons of energy and a fabulous head of (natural) strawberry blonde hair and you’d never know in a million years that she’s 87. In fact, she’s got so much vim and vigor that she takes care of her 92-year-old sister.

I still don’t know the complete story of what the doctors have said the deal is with Aunt Mary, and with all this other cancer news and Rose having died and the new job and new nanny and Mark traveling for work a lot stress, I kind of just can’t deal right now. Hopefully maybe there is something they can do about it.

Speaking of Mark, he’s away for one night for a work retreat and I’m forlorn like a schoolgirl. I think I’m still feeling the fall-out of the world’s stressiest week last week and while we all continue to transition into me working again, I would just prefer that he be here to sit in the couch with me and pat my hand saying “there there” as needed. Next week he’s away Monday through Thursday in New York. (Don’t tell any robbers.) I may well languish without him.

Speaking of “there there,” I really want to get Kate to sleep through the night more consistently. It’s never fun to be awakened from a deep sleep to go and nurse her, but when I need to wake up at 6:15 the following morning to go to work, it’s particularly unsavory. So, the other night when Kate had already woken up once, we decided Mark would go in the second time and try to get her back to sleep sans boob.

Kate’s pediatrician told us to do the ole Ferber thing of going in and saying in an unemotional tone, “It’s time to go to sleep,” and rubbing her belly to try to calm her down. Mark has done this a handful of times and more often than not it results in Kate losing her shit upon seeing him. It’s clear her internal dialogue then is, “What are you doing in here? I want the one with the boobies! I want miiiiiilk!” She starts crying hysterically and when he comes back into our room I always say to him, “How’d that go?”, and every time I think that’s a really funny thing to say.

What was so weird/funny/great was the other night Mark went in to do what we refer to as “there there” and when he arranged her blankets nicely over her and cooed, “Time to go to sleep,” she actually did! When he got back into bed we didn’t even say anything to each other because we were both bracing for her to lose it (and of course didn’t want to jinx anything). But despite us waiting for the other shoe to drop, she just settled back down into sleep. It was divine.

Of course, when he tried it last night, she lost her shit, and a few minutes later I caved and went in to nurse her. Ah well. As my grandmother used to say with a sigh of resignation, “What are you going to do?”

Tomorrow’s a Brand New Day, Right?

Oy vey. This week has just got to be better than last week. If not, someone please send me a cookie bouquet or something. Sheesh.

So the job seems like it will be good. Smart and funny folks. And everyone is crazy friendly. At times I’ve felt like I’m back in the groove–asking the right questions, making insightful observations in meetings, and even looking natty in my new work clothes. At other times I’ve sputtered out the totally wrong word (voicemail introducing myself to client saying “See you at the lay-off meeting” instead of the “layout meeting.” D’oh!) And then sometimes I get in that kinda sleepy, slap happy mode of being too familiar and jocular with people who instead of having fun with me seem to be mildly freaked out that I’m their new boss and I suddenly realize I should cinch my personality girdle in a bit tighter.

The nanny. We’ve clashed once already when I called to say I was stuck in traffic and would be 5 minutes late and she told me in a not so friendly manner that she just couldn’t stay. She had things to do and somewhere to be. I mean, I appreciate her life and respect her time but it was the second day with a new commute and I was still trying to figure out how long it would all take.

So, in a panic I called four local friends getting voicemails all around and leaving desperate pleas could they please call me if they got this and maybe go to the house and sit with Kate for a few minutes until I screeched into the driveway clutching the steering wheel with sweaty palms and a throbbing headache? No one was home. No one called back. I called the nanny again and really what ensued is too annoying to even go into but suffice it to say I wasn’t left with the warm fuzzies for how she and I will relate under duress.

But thankfully it was a three-day work week since Mark’s cousin Dan was getting hitched in Louisville (pronounced Loo-vul), Kentucky. So Thursday morning with the new-work-and-new-nanny part of the week behind me my alarm clock went off at 4:15AM and I greeted the day by dragging excessive luggage to the car, waking up a sleeping baby and schlepping to the airport in the icy dark morning. Once there I was making a bee-line for the gate since it was boarding time, but looked at my seat number (17A) instead of the gate number (3), so ran the length of the terminal with baby on hip, stroller loaded with large carry-on and carseat strapped to back chanting internally “one foot, the other foot, making progress, I can do it” only to arrive at last at destination, exhale with exhaustion, realize my error and turn around, sweat trickling down my chest, to run back to gate 3 twice as fast since I was really late then. (The argument with the gate attendant about why I couldn’t take the carseat onto the plane for Kate, even though there were free seats, was just gilding the lily.)

In Houston we met Mark. And boy was I crazy happy to see him in that misery loves company or at least loves to complain a lot to someone you really love way. In our second flight he unburdened me of baby, luggage, and most importantly the daunting feeling of doing it all alone (hail to you, single parents!). He really stepped up for much of the weekend too.

And Kentucky was fun at times. The Miller clan is always a hoot to hang out with, and many of Aunt Terry’s Lexington posse we’ve come to know a bit. And Kate had some babies to play with, and grandparents to adore her. Three nights of parties (BBQ, rehearsal dinner, wedding) were all fabulous and social, but really I would have been well-served to sit at home with greasy hair blankly staring at the TV and feeding myself Dove Bars. Since that wasn’t in the cards I did a sort of body cleansing by inbibing excessive amounts of bourbon. Not what I needed to feel rested and geared up for Week Number 2 of New Job, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Time to sleep since I’m already cutting into my much-needed 8 hours. And I know it’s all going to get so much better, if I can just wake up for it.

Rose Horowitz 1915-2006

I got a call today that Rose died peacefully this morning at 9:20.

We will miss her.

Things Not To Do

Do not start a new job and leave your daughter for the first time with a new nanny who for all you know could be an axe-murderer in the same week when your husband is away on a business trip and on Thursday you’ll already need to take a day off and be all packed and get yourself and your baby onto a 6AM flight to go to a family wedding.

Do not get your period the morning of your first day of work and have miserable cramps. And don’t forget to take Advil before you leave the house and spend the whole day hoping that you’ll magically find some in your office in the 30 second breaks between your back-to-back getting-to-know-you need-to-make-a-good-first-impression meetings.

Do not wear a pink dress shirt under a black dress on your first day of work, thinking it looks cute until you arrive at the office and realize you look like an overgrown girl in a Catholic school uniform.

Do not take on management of a community event when you are starting a new job and your husband is away on a business trip.

Do not freak out that the nanny that you hired is possibly terrible and that your daughter no longer loves you after one day left with a total stranger who you hope she will come to like someday, but not too much.

Do not get lost on your first drive home from your first day of work and ultimately sit in extra traffic and have to call the nanny and tell her you’ll be late and can she possible stay longer–establishing yourself in her mind as irresponsible (and as having a bad sense of direction).

Do not cry on the phone to your husband after feeding and bathing a crying overtired baby who didn’t take an afternoon nap, making him feel terrible about being away on a business trip.

Do not spend an hour updating a spreadsheet for your community event planning (which you have foisted off on your benevolent friend) when all you want to do is space out and watch TV, then have your computer crash and lose all your work.

Do not underestimate the many emails and calls you got from friends asking how your first day of work was, sending heaps of encouragement, and making you feel somewhat validated that this is indeed a big transition and worthy of stress, exhaustion, and anxiety but given time could turn out to be just fine and maybe even very rewarding.

Do not give into the temptation to ask your husband to come home from his business trip early just because you miss him madly and feel bad that he feels bad that you feel bad. Do go to sleep grateful to have him and looking forward to how happy you will be to see him in the Houston airport on Thursday.

Silly Crazy Love

Last Saturday we went to our friend Barb’s 40th birthday party. Barb was my old roommate Maureen’s friend from college. So, essentially the first flat I moved into in SF–the requisite Victorian flat that you move into with people you don’t know because you’re young and idealistic and have just pulled up your East Coast roots to live in sunny California–that flat used to be occupied by three friends who all went to UC Santa Barbara. So Barb was one of the apartment’s occupants before I was.

By the time I’d made it to Vicksburg Street, Barb was off gallivanting in Australia with her then BF, now hubbie. And one of the other three gals, Laurie, was off in Africa doing relief nursing work and meeting the man she’d eventually marry. Which left Maureen to look for two total strangers to shack up with. Those strangers turned out to be Shelley and me.

Anyway, those UCSB gals are a tight crew. Not unlike any group of best girlfriends really, though they have seen each other through particularly thick and thin times. And, God bless ‘em, they always make a great showing at parties. So, unbeknownst to the birthday girl, Maureen flew in from Boston and Laurie from Canada to take part in the festivities.

A considerable amount has changed in our lives since Maureen and I shared a phone. She ended up marrying a fine lad from Rhode Island who I never knew from growing up, but who I met in SF and introduced her to. And now she has four–yes 4–kids with said Rhode Islanduh [sic], and lives in domestic bliss in The Land of the Bad Accent.

So we were talking about being parents and Maureen beat me to the comment that I most often make about the revelation of parenthood, which was “Having kids makes you realize just how much your parents love you.” Word to that, sister.

My father is in the Professional Proud Parents Hall of Fame, and he certainly isn’t totally bereft of things to be proud of, but in many cases he’s just crazed with delusional paternal satisfaction. My old college roommate used to love it about Fred. “Aw Kris,” she’d say, imitating his deep voice. “You brushed your teeth this morning! I’m so damn proud of you!” (And I wonder why I need Mark to praise me when I clean the bathroom…)

But now, having Kate, I totally get it. The girl hits her hand in the bath water to splash and I act as if she’s won the Nobel Peace Prize. I too have foolish over-inflated pride. And don’t even dare to tell me it’s for no good reason.

The thing that Maureen said that totally cracked me up was, “All those times growing up when your parents told you how beautiful you were–they really thought it!” Hilarious.

I actually did ask Mark one night if he thought that maybe Kate wasn’t cute but we were so blind with love that we thought so. Unsurprisingly he said he thought she really was cute. I guess it’s something we’ll never know. (Don’t crazy people never think they’re crazy, which is the first symptom of insanity?) Whatever the case, I think Mark and I are destined to live out our days going with our hunch that Kate is sweet, brilliant, and beautiful. It’s annoying I know, but we try our best to keep it under wraps.

So, last year on this day I was clutching the side of a hot tub (more like a tepid tub) moaning my way through contractions. I was about 11 1/2 hours into active labor (but who’s counting?) and was at a particularly “active” juncture. I remember from the strange planet I was on that I saw Yeshi, my midwife, who was reading something or filling out some forms. And Sarah, my doula, who I also saw as if through a gauzy veil, was mopping my brow and reminding me to breathe. And Mark, of course, was right there with me and earnest and excited and supportive and kept telling me what a great job I was doing and how I was amazing and strong and beautiful.

About a half-hour from now was when, after an internal exam, I was told that I hadn’t progressed really at all. That all those intense contractions crashing in on me less than a minute apart had really gotten me nowhere closer to having that baby in my arms. And so I decided to toss my drug-free birthing plans out the window and get an epidural. If after 12 hours I was in the same place, how long would it take and how hard would it be to actually get somewhere?

Suffice it to say that by this time tomorrow, a year ago, Mark and I had taken up temporary residence in a hospital room with a baby we had no idea how very much we would come to crazy over-the-top love love love and be proud of in ways that no doubt seem foolish to anyone else (but really they just don’t get it).

So Kate, I tell you this on the eve of your first birthday. I know your father and I must seem out of our minds at times, but we really do think you’re beautiful. We really do think you are better than him. We really do think a family vacation would be a fun way for us all to spend some time. Someday you may experience all this yourself, and then you might not think we’re so crazy after all.

Less Confident Now

Okay so I just opened the pattern for Kate’s Halloween costume and am totally overwhelmed. What the hell was I thinking?

There are two huge sheets of onion paper with all these letters and numbers and lines on them–and to make the costume number and size variants even more complex, it’s all written in several languages. This costume would be a great team-building activity for a UN off-site.

Under a cheery headline entitled “Simply the Best Sewing Techniques for Fur Fabrics” it says that in order to get the seams to lie flat with “heavier fur fabrics” you may need to “shear away” some of the pile and “pound with a heavy object to keep seams and edges flat.” Pound the fabric? I can’t help but think that instruction is there for us rookies to see if we actually take the bait and do something as ridiculous as that. I mean, how does Suzy Homemaker sew a costume while her kid is napping if pounding is required?

Anyway, I might not even need to pound. Is the fur I got considered heavier? What is the baseline one uses to determine where their fur fits on the heaviness scale?

And as if it’s totally easy to figure out what part of the pattern you need and what you don’t and then how to cut it and pin it to the fabric and cut that and sew it all together then actually have it fit your kid, the only instructional illustration they have in the whole pattern is a little line drawing of a woman’s hand and a mallet pounding a furry seam. Of everything required here I think I could figure out how to pound the fur, thank you very much. Now that I’m looking at it again, maybe the pounder in the drawing is a judge and she’s repurposed her gavel for fur-flattening purposes. (One never gets to use the word gavel often enough.)

Speaking of words, what the hell are selvages?

Oy. I fear that I might have gotten myself into a bit of a pickle. Ah well, I only spent $35 on all this. Probably twice what it would have cost to buy a costume that’s ready to wear.

She’s Crafty

In my waning days of stay-at-home-momdom, it appears I’m trying to overachieve and/or just prove my mettle. Give me a soccer mom of the highest rank and I will go toe to toe with her!

So, a couple days ago I went to a fabric store and put myself at the mercy of a nice gay man who worked there. “I’m a total rookie. I have no idea how to do this. Can you please help me?”

I’d picked out a pattern to make a Halloween costume for Kate. As in sew a costume. And for starters I needed help even figuring out what fabric to get, where it was in the store, how much I needed—the basics.

I could claim never to have sewn anything in my life, and I think my skill level pretty much puts me there, but I did make a red corduroy skirt once. I took a brief sewing class as an elective in Middle School and the result was a simple A-line skirt.

Oddly the skirt as unmemorable as it was, does bring up a strong memory of my mother’s mom. I’d cut out the fabric for the skirt and had the pattern pinned onto it (like you do). It was on the kitchen table one morning, ready for me to bring to school. My grandmother was visiting and she mistakenly spilled a glass of orange juice on it. I can’t remember exactly what I said, but I remember my mother being really upset with how I reacted.

It’s one of those memories that still triggers a strong emotion in me. After I said or did whatever it was I said or did I felt terrible. I’d managed to make my poor sweet Bopchi feel even worse about what was obviously an accident, and ultimately didn’t harm the fabric or pattern at all. God, the woman is long dead and thinking about that still gets me! I’m sorry, Bopchi! I know you didn’t mean to!

Anyway, I’m not sure exactly how expertly the skirt was eventually assembled but I remember I wore it a few times—so at the very least it did manifest into an actual wearable garment.

So, how hard can it be to make a Halloween costume? People sew all the time, right? The nice gay man showed me to the “craft fur” section in the store and I selected some that didn’t have a scratchy back. I got some no-roll elastic for the cuffs, and even some cotton to line one part of it. Once I was in the groove of picking everything out, it felt like I actually started the project and I was buoyed by a false sense of early accomplishment.

But by yesterday I was telling friends that at 4PM on Halloween day I’d likely be sending Mark off to Target with urgent instructions to buy a costume–any costume they have!–just so she’ll have something to wear. Of course, I was telling friends that, but it was mostly false modestly. I was secretly thinking, how hard can this be? The pattern is made by Simplicity, after all.

On Sunday, Sheryl is bringing her sewing machine over for me to borrow. Hopefully I’ll have the fabric cut out by then and she can show me a move or two and get me going. Project Runway, here I come!

I’ll have to remember to warn Mark to steer clear of my workspace with his OJ.