What a Trip

It is interesting to see how this blog has evolved over the last four years. What began as a place for me to muse about my impending parenthood quickly became a forum for posting a log of our daily and weekly activities as a family. Of course, this was mostly when our new baby was immobile; her discovery of perambulation slowed the blogging process considerably, so it became more of a quarterly overview. This larger perspective led to a more reflective, philosophical approach to blogging as opposed to a rundown of the places we'd gone and the things we'd seen. And, funnily enough, having a wider perspective as a writer has turned this blog back into a place where I can basically ponder or pontificate on any subject that strikes me-- it has become my musing place once again.

I prefer the freedom of being able to just write what I feel like writing, but I am starting to recognize that there was value in keeping a record of our activities, too. I miss having a sort of journal to look back on as time passes, especially as life just keeps bringing new changes. What seems mundane as I'm writing it becomes significant when, months later, I realize that mundane thing no longer happens. It is humbling to realize-- for the 4,000th time-- that I'm just not always very good at realizing what is important as it is happening. It usually takes a little time and distance for my most valuable memories to reveal themselves.

Our 2012 beach trip took place over seven months ago, but for some reason I never found the time to post the photographs of that beautiful adventure. I'm looking at those pictures now, agog at how much my babies have changed, how much their little companions Maya and Eoin have changed, and how desperately I miss having hours and days to spend in the company of my dear friends. I want to slow down or pause or rewind my life, just temporarily, so that I can catch my breath and tell myself: enjoy this day. Soak it up, wring all the love and joy out of it that you can and just forget about the rest. I knew this trip was important as I was experiencing it-- Lavender was just beginning to walk, and Geneva was exploding into a new world of imagination-- but I didn't quite grasp how important it was. 

Here are some very old pictures, for your enjoyment... and, because this is my musing place, for mine.

Bye Bye Beardie

For months now Avery has been muttering dire threats regarding his beard. He's going to shave it off. He's really going to do it. He's not kidding. It has to go.

Tonight it did.

Avery strode into the bathroom and, after a lot of very purposeful-sounding buzzing, emerged with a much shorter version of the previous beard. It was Beard 2.0. I approved.

But then he went back into the bathroom. More buzzing ensued. And then... "Oh shit." He came back out sporting stubble and a look of deep concern. "I think I messed up. They're really uneven." I admit that I was only paying half-attention at this point, but I tore myself away from Jason Good's blog and turned around to get a nice long look at my newly shorn husband. Uneven? I scanned his face. Nothing seemed horribly amiss, although he did look oddly unfamiliar without his beard. I squinted at him... and then my eyes were drawn to his right hand, which was nervously petting the hair above his ear. Something was off. He could see it in my face, and asked "how bad is it?" That was when it finally dawned on me that Avery had buzzed off one of his sideburns.

I want to stop here and stress that it doesn't look that bad. Seriously. Avery is currently sitting across the living room from me and I can't even tell. But as I looked at him, fretting over his botched haircut, no comforting words sprang to mind. Of course the longer I said nothing the more horrified he looked, until finally I did the least helpful thing I could have possibly done: I laughed.

Oh boy, did I laugh. Giggles I didn't even know I was holding in came tumbling out, and with every guffaw Avery cringed, poor man. I wish I could say I was kinder in that moment, but all I did was sit in hysterics on the couch, waving my hands feebly in front of my face as if shooing away flies. I am such a catch.

Fortunately, what Avery lacks in a supportive spouse he makes up for with good looks; if anyone can pull off the one-sideburn look, he can. While I finished laughing and weeping he returned to the bathroom to touch up his handiwork with a justifiably indignant air about him. Now he's sitting in his chair listening to Eddie Izzard. I wonder if he's forgiven me yet.

Guess I'd better go find out.

Butt Out

To the person who landed on this blog by googling "double butt crack" four separate times in one day:

Knock it off.

Thank you.

Career Musings from Geneva

"When I grow up I'm going to be a teacher. Then I'm going to be a photo-er. Then an artist. I'm going to do paintings. Then I think I'll do construction. I can build houses and bird houses and schools and all the buildings! I can do all those things when I grow up. I'm going to do a lot!"

Yellowstone

Last week my girls were sick. Lavender was merely under the weather, but Geneva was sick-- fever, headache, chills, and no desire to leave the couch. Because of this, we ended up watching an unusual amount of television, including a documentary about Yellowstone National Park. Geneva, as horrible as she felt, was riveted. When the documentary ended she asked me to get out paper and pencils; she wanted to write a book about Yellowstone. As she sat on the couch and told me about elk and geysers and birds of prey, I took dictation and then read back to her what she had written. She made a few changes and added facts as she remembered them. When we were finished, she had indeed written a book. Wow. A book.

Here it is. I know this is a braggy post but oh well. I'm just so damn proud.

Yellowstone, by Geneva Zoglman

Wolves are clever. They hunt elk. They live in a pack. They are very interesting. They can survive a hard winter.

Coyotes are as clever as the wolves. They eat elk, too. They eat little bison. Their tails are puffy. The fur is golden.

Bears are very sensitive. They hunt bugs and fish and honey. They have the same parts as people. They have a head like we have, legs, a body, and claws. We don't have claws. They live in a den or a cave.

Bison are very big. They have a big head. Bison have fur and horns. Little bison are weak, but big bison are strong. They can live in hard winter.

Rocks are very hot, because of a volcano. There are geysers. A geyser is water that spouts. They are very interesting. There are hot springs, too.

Hawks and eagles are birds. They fly and flap their wings. The eagles have wings and white heads. They eat deer. Something else killed it and they ate it.

Elk are very interesting because I like their things that point up: antlers! Elk make a funny sound. That is how they talk. They live in a herd.

Yellowstone is very interesting. People can visit there someday.


And that is why we are planning a road trip to Wyoming sometime in the next year or two. I predict it will be, as Geneva says, very interesting.

Nurse, Rock, Breathe

This afternoon after a long day of running holiday-related errands, Lavender had had about enough of that nonsense and was ready to call it quits. She wanted to be away from the people and the noise. She wanted to cuddle. She wanted to nurse. She wanted time with just me.

As we sat in the peace of our own home at last, nursing in the glow of Christmas lights, I gazed down at my blissful child and realized suddenly, painfully, that a day is coming soon when this will not be enough to make her happy. She will need more than what I am and what I can give, which is as it should be. Still, the impermanence of our quiet moment together was almost heartbreaking. She will grow, and I will have to count on others to be gentle with her heart and to nurture her sweet spirit. She will want to be apart from me, to go out into the big, uncertain world with desires that neither I, nor perhaps anyone, can fulfill. And I will let her go. How can I do that? How can I not?

Little Lavender, today you are happy just to be held. You only need what I can offer, and so your contentment is whole and complete. Here in our quiet house, nursing and rocking and breathing together, you are not thinking of anything more. You don't know that this will change. Someday you will not drink my milk. You will not want to pet my skin. You will pull away, and consciously you will forget ever having wanted those things. It is a loss-- an aching loss-- that only I will feel.

It will have to be enough, then, for me to remember days like today when you are big and far away. You will be so strong and independent that it will be hard to imagine that you ever fit in my arms, but still I will know that today was real. It happened, and nothing can erase it. You will not always feel the whole, complete contentment you feel now, but it will be there just the same. It will be a part of how you grew, of how you came to know the world. It is a memory I will never let go. And a part of us will forever be nursing, rocking and breathing.

Lavender Day

Some days I feel like little Lavender gets the short end of the stick. She's not the littlest one in the house these days, and doesn't get carried as much as she would like. She's certainly not the oldest, either, and I'll admit that most of our daily activities focus on things the three-year-olds would find entertaining or enriching. So, she's stuck in the middle, tolerating the diversion of my attention to another baby, and trying her hardest to keep up with or even just comprehend what it is that the older girls are doing. 

Some days, though, are Lavender Days. Those are days when instead of hurrying along we get to walk slowly, so her little legs can keep up. They are days when we are outside in the sun and the air, with room enough for everyone to play without being jostled. Most importantly, they are days when I choose to let other things go so that I can snuggle my little girl-- my big girl-- and watch her shine.

My Lavender, after a very full and happy day.

My Husband, Ladies and Gentlemen!

Avery: They're forecasting a ton of rain by the end of the week.
Jamaica: Really?
Avery: Yeah, they say there will be about eight inches in some places.
Jamaica: Eight inches in some places, just not here.
Avery: ...That's what she said.
Jamaica: *forehead smack*

Thank you, thank you. He'll be here all week.

Bum Bum

No, not the Law and Order music.

"Bum bum" is Lavender's ubiquitous word, or maybe I should call it her prototype word. It's the word  from which almost every other word she says is derived. For instance, "pom bum" is pumpkin, "bu' buh" is buckle, and "bom bom" is bottle. Usually. There's a certain amount of fluidity between words, and most of my Lavender Comprehension comes from context. Still, it feels really good to be able to say that my baby daughter speaks and I understand her. I can't describe how dense and inept I feel when I have a child making urgent, repeated requests of me that I cannot for the life of me translate into some form of useable English. I'm sure Lavender would liken the experience to talking to a dog: she asks a question that seems perfectly clear; I cock my head to one side and prick up my ears, or wag my tail and bark. So now, finally, I'm able to make sense of most of what she says. Most of it is "bum bum," and that's just fine. It's better than fine. We're communicating.


Here is a list of Lavender's words that sound almost indistinguishable from "bum bum." For some of them, being on this list makes a lot of sense. For others, I'm dying to see how her brain made that leap, but in the end I'll probably never know.

Buckle
Bottom
Car noise
Spoon
Bottle
Drum
Potty
Pumpkin
Crabapple

I Wrote a Poem

In my closet is a small jumble of old purses that are now much too tiny to carry my requisite daily load of wallet, keys, sunglasses, broken crayons, toys, diapers, wipes, snacks, and changes of clothing for four children. Basically, they are purses that I haven't used even once since I had kids. In this way they serve as an interesting time capsule because-- and this will come as a huge duh to anyone who knows me-- I did not empty them out before they were relegated to the closet. Today I dislodged one of these tiny purses from its resting place and a piece of paper slipped out. A poem was written on it. I read words--my own words-- that I had not read in almost four years, and went whooshing back in time.

Four years ago I was just beginning a new job in Sunnyside. I was teaching English to elementary school students, and although I loved the work it was a very challenging experience. I was assigned to a portable, isolated from the rest of the faculty, and did not share a planning period with any of the grade-level groups. I ate lunch alone a lot. The culture shock was pretty significant, too, as I had just moved from Seattle, where I had been living and working in very diverse but safe neighborhoods. Sunnyside really only had two ethnic groups to speak of: the white middle class minority, and the impoverished Latino majority. Gang violence was always looming, either as a threat (lockdowns, being unable to wear my favorite red headband) or as an actual presence (teachers gossiping about the dead body found in someone's yard, students missing school for funerals). In some ways I had never been as frightened as I was when I started that job. Not that I feared for my safety; I was terrified of letting my students down when they already had the deck so heavily stacked against them.  But it was a wonderful time in my life, too. I had just become pregnant with Geneva, I was making new friends, and Avery and I were living cozily in the back room of his aunt and uncle's beautiful empty farmhouse on the Yakama Reservation. I was happy, but I was exhausted. I worked long hours, and when I did come home at seven or eight at night I brought all of my work anxiety with me.  I needed some sort of outlet, so one day before I left my classroom I sat down, grabbed a sheet of notebook paper, and just started writing.

That sheet of paper is what slipped out of my old purse today. I decided to share it, not because I think it's a great work of poetry (it's really not) or because it shows what an amazing teacher I was (I really wasn't). It is just a very specific and very true snapshot of where I was four years ago, after my whole life had just changed and before it changed again.


One young boy's tongue sticks and stops.
His face burns red as he shakes the English words
out of his head.
One morning,
numbers tumble from his fingertips
like seeds
and sprout.
I see him clearly for the first time,
Geometry our Lingua Franca.

Glowering girl straddles her chair,
scrawls hearts upon my wall,
mouths pendejo in the air,
carves bitch into the bathroom stall.
She's learning her lesson well
that no one ever cares for grades the way they do
for love and hate.

A curious boy with a pen-and-ink voice
takes my joys and troubles home,
names them
like stray dogs.
Dear Mrs. Zoglman,
How old are you?
What makes you happy?
When is your baby due?
I know the kids in class make you mad,
but Mrs. Z, don't feel bad.
Sometimes I get angry, too.

It hurts to remember
an empty-chair day,
though she never spent much time in her chair anyway.
Her brother was shot
dead.

Too-big child, a head above the rest,
moves underwater slowly,
forming perfect empty letters.
Not language; art.
Her voice caresses every foreign syllable.
Not speaking; part of a song
she's been singing for two years
without knowing the words.

I can smell the buses leaving from my classroom.
I sit at the smallest desk
for hours
so still that the lights
automatically shut off.

Florida in Photographs

What lucky Zoglmans we are. We spent a week in early May visiting our dear friends Sylvia and George, and their children Gabriella and Micah, at their home in Florida. To borrow phrasing from Tolkien's Bilbo Baggins, a week is not nearly enough time to spend in the company of such excellent and admirable people. Sylvia and George, we love you! Our doors are always open to you., and we'll be back to see you in Florida just as soon as we save up enough money for another trans-continental vacation (read: not very soon. Insert sob of anguish here).