cawwww

I live in Seattle. Not born, but bred—I've lived here since I was nine—and I love my town. And we've arrived at one of those rare moments in history when the country is craning its neck up and to the left to see what the hell is going on over here. 

Normally we're invisible. We shuffle around shrouded in fog, the Nerds of the Nation, the honors students that the students on the other bumper stickers are going to be Serving Fries To™ one day, the ones getting beaten up in the other bumper sticker.

But! See these guys? 

Those are the guys a guy hired to beat up—I mean, play football against—the other guys, the guys of the cities who forgot about/hate our city! Those are our guys! They knocked those other guys down a LOT. And now we're goin' to the Superbowl!

Before I say anything else, you need to know that I love those guys. It's senseless, it's sentimental, but it's real. Like, I weep. I weep tears of pride about these boys. I'm like all of their mamas and girlfriends and wives and little sisters and big sisters rolled up into one. It's creepy, look, hey. Totally. I didn't pick just one thing to be, and now it's creepy but life is creepy so get over it. 

(((LIFE IS CREEPY LET'S CELEBRATE IT)))

And, for the football fans who are all I bet you only became a football fan a minute ago, put a dollar into your own tip jar! You're right. I only re-got into football last year when the Seahawks started doing well. I got into it a few years before, when the Seahawks were doing well, and then I was into it for a couple of weeks about thirty years ago, when the Seahawks were doing well and I watched them with my dad. I'm one of those what-you-call bandwagoners. Would you like to see my I-don't-care dance? You can't see it because you're not in my living room but I'm doing the Worm all the way across the floor and now I'm taking it up the wall. My love is perfectly good. If I walked it up to a Seahawk right now he'd take it and kiss me on the head. 

But I haven't just fallen in love with the team. I've developed feelings for the game itself. Like, I'll watch games that don't have any Seahawks in them, even. And for this I have to thank Sportsvision, the company that created the yellow 1st and 10 line we see on TV superimposed on the field. Before that yellow line was there, when I was but a maiden, I couldn't figure out how far the big men had to go for everybody to get all excited. They made the ball go...THERE. Yay? No, that's bad. Now they only made it go right there and everybody's losing their mind. What's happening?? I'm cranky. Change the channel. But the yellow line made it all so clear, and now I can re-route all the energy that went into feeling confused and channel it into YES YES RIGHT THERE BAM GOT IT.

What I'm saying is no, I'm not the best football fan who ever lived. But I just don't think that matters. Fuck it. This is a golden time for my little Seahawk-loving heart and the heart of my misunderstood and I frankly think underappreciated city (which I will sing odes to another day). We're losing our minds up here and it's beautiful. 

But I want to talk a little bit now about the Holy Trinity: Russell Wilson, Marshawn Lynch and my one true love, Richard Sherman. (We've been steady since he took it to Tom Brady last year.) Let's start with Russell Wilson. 

I'm not going to talk about what a good football player he is, mostly because that's the province of people who understand the game better than I do. I'm talking about the man himself. I watched an interview with him where he was talking about his dad, and how his dad always said to him, "Why not you?" and "Don't be afraid to be great." That's so simple, but it really got to me. Here's this guy who's been working like crazy to be the best, but in this sort of super-clean, humble way. The idea that it's not arrogant to go for greatness shot into me courtesy of Russell Wilson during that interview, and it came as news, and it set something in me free. I'm hanging it out here for you, you know? I don't want to be glib about this. I'm letting open a little window so you can see what I've projected on to our boys here, because that is such a powerful thing with sports, and with our heroes in general. They're out there carrying something personal for us, and that's why we love them. There were times in my young life when I purposely didn't try hard at this or that because I was afraid I'd be good at it and outshine somebody else and make people sad. For me, I adore how thoroughly Russell Wilson has gotten out of his own way in this life, and I'm taking a lesson. This little light of mine! I'm gonna let it shine! etc. 

Okay, next up. Beast Mode! Our beloved Marshawn Lynch. You know, he didn't catch my eye right away. He's quiet and so I didn't find a personality hook with him. No, with Marshawn, it's the sheer joy of the power of the human body and the will not to be stopped. He's like a natural wonder. He's like Yellowstone. I gawp at the force of him, as well as his pure balletic grace. A great bear ate a cheetah who ate Baryshnikov who had just absorbed a radioactive Weeble Wobble and so it was that Marshawn Lynch came to be among us. Also, his parents had sex. I like to think of Marshawn Lynch going through his day with five guys strapped to him all the time: trying to bring him down on the way to the toaster, trying not to let him get at the shower gel, forcing him away from the mailbox. Meanwhile he's just making toast and getting clean and opening bills and it's no biggie. Plus here comes the greatest quote ever from a press conference yesterday. Man doesn't like giving interviews. Here it is:  "I ain't seen no talkin' win me nothin'." Fu-hu-hu-hu-hu-hu-huck yes! And blackout. 

And lights back up because here we go.

My very own. The man. My boyfriend, Richard Sherman. You've heard enough about him in the last week, so I don't have to tell you about his skills or his volume or his background. All I'm saying is hell, yes, honey. Don't you dial anything down one bit. This is a man who doesn't give a fuck in all the right ways. He's got his eye on the prize and he's taking it, and he doesn't have to be loved every second on the way there. And beware that brain. He has your number, whatever you are. Obviously, since I love him the most—so hard, so much—he's carrying a Very Special Message just for me. I've been scrambling to be liked/not get killed for most of my life for whatever stupid reason, and Richard Sherman is how tired I am of doing that. Self-censorship for crowd approval can go fuck itself. And we're in the Super Bowl. What I'm saying—and I'm just going to go ahead and merge with him—is that Richard Sherman and I are the best corner in the game. Don't you ever talk about us. Crabtree. 

(Plus, come on. He's fine. I mean, we're fine. Have you seen us? Please.) 

There are so many others I didn't talk about: Golden Tate, Doug Baldwin, Kam Chancellor, Earl Thomas, the mysterious and fascinating Percy Harvin. Papa Pete Carroll. I hate leaving people out. I could write a little haiku for everydamnbody but it's late. 

So on Sunday I'm going to yell myself hoarse as the shattered parts of my own psyche, otherwise known as the best defense in the NFL, go up against our brand-new arch rivals, the Denver Broncos, who have the best offense and about whom I have no feelings and so I'm going to just call them The Banality of Evil. I'll be letting the Seahawks carry all my dreams and aspirations for a few hours, which makes no sense and feels so weird and horrible and great. I'm going to be a wreck, slightly drunk and splattered with guacamole and blue corn chip crumbs (team colors!) and so alive. 

field notes

I’m sitting at the pharmacy waiting to pick up some medicine for my brother. An old woman with a white ponytail in a bright coral sweater and pants sits down next to me and exclaims, “Oh, it’s nice in here!” I look over at her and she elaborates to no one in particular, “I thought it was so dim but then I took off my sunglasses and now it’s really nice!” The handsome young pharmacist calls out a sing-song “Hi, Roseanne,” and she sighs and says, “You people know me here. It’s so nice. You won’t let me die!” He laughs and assures her, "We’ll always give you your medication.” Then Roseanne gets up and has a bit of a one-sided tête-à-tête with him. (Her tête is all the way in the game, he’s phoning it in a little by necessity.) I want to sneak up close and hear every word because I’m clearly missing good stuff. Some poor girl she knows isn’t having much sex with her husband, I pick up that much, and “It really is a shame”, and then Roseanne says, “I was lucky. I had a fantastic guy. I was worried that he wouldn’t want me because I couldn’t have kids, but I told him that, and well, he married me anyway. And guess what? We were so busy running around that we never got around to it! And now he’s dead. Why did he die? Why did he have to die?” You have to understand that Roseanne’s sunshine wasn’t dimmed when she was asking this; she was just plain wondering, like maybe the pharmacist had the inside line on death in general.

**********

I wander outside in the early evening, under the tall rhododendrons. As soon as I get up close, I see it. There’s no other way to put this; the bees are fucking those flowers so hard it’s startling. And it’s everywhere. Every single purple-pink bloom gets hit by a sex-drunk bee overtaken by the spirit of Prince, going for broke. Showy, unselfconscious thrusting. Bees may be struggling the world over, but not now, not in my yard. Pure triumph.

**********

Driving home from the grocery store, I see a crow flapping frantically, taking off into the air from the sidewalk. In his mouth is a huge hunk of Dick’s Deluxe cheeseburger, still halfway in its orange foil wrapper. GOT IT NOW MOVE MOVE MOVE!  

**********

It’s the first time Dave and the kids and I have gone to the beach since I got sick and got better: something I fantasized about so often, something that seemed so out of reach for a while there. And now it’s right in front of me. We never end up at Golden Gardens when the temperature’s exactly right - we end up sweaty and burned or windblown and chilled - but this time the weather is spot on and stays there. We go on the spur of the moment so we have no beach supplies or spare clothes for the boys. Fred is wearing black jeans that get heavier and heavier as the water line travels up his legs, and his pants descend inch by inch under the weight. 

We walk all the way to the end of the beach, which we've never done before, but we're lingering extra long today. What have we been thinking? The far end of Golden Gardens is the money stretch. The shore turns from rocks to soft, unspoiled dark sand, a little tree-rimmed cove away from the crowd. Finn writes our names in the sand with a stick. MOMY. DADY. FRED. FINN. A turtle is spotted and stalked for a while, a group of ducklings shrieked at and chased. 

The afternoon is getting ready to tip into evening so we make for the car, walking along a grassy field scattered with constellations of daisies. Past the field is the playground, where Dave gives the boys a last hurrah, but at the end of the field fifty or so people are gathered on folding chairs, and a couple of guys in gray suits are shuffling in their spots at the front of a blue glass installation/backdrop. A young blonde woman stands ready to officiate. I’ve been up to my neck in contentment all afternoon, and now there’s going to be a wedding? That’s it. I invite myself, and sit on a rock at a discreet distance and watch. The guests are smiling and craning around in their chairs to chat, looking stylish. The light is deep sideways and golden by now, the air is that perfect temperature that’s barely noticeable on the skin and I'm just about in heaven. Then the opening notes of “Come On, Eileen” ring out over the field and I'm knocked all the way in. We're starting. The groom and his parents take their places. The world’s smallest functional ringbearer - who apparently just learned to walk that very morning - is aimed down the aisle in his tiny dark suit. Will he make it? Is he a strike or a gutterball? Let’s watch...he’s a strike! Everybody claps and cheers. Then the music switches to that Hawaiian version of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” (which I usually can’t get with but today I’m all benevolence) and the bride appears at the edge of the field. She makes her way to her groom treading over those little daisy patches and I'm done for. The tears come. The beach gave it up for me hard today. I’m drenched in luxury.     

**********

It’s almost night-time. Fred’s been given a plate of dinner that he objects to. We’ve all moved on to other things, and then Fred storms into the room where Dave and I are hanging out and watching tv. He informs us with maximum grumpiness in his baby voice, “I’M NOT GOING TO EAT MY DINNER. I’M JUST GOING TO EAT THE CHIPS. BON VOYAGE, LOSERS,” and he stomps away. We wait until he’s out of earshot and then laugh until we’re crying, we’re dying, we’re dead.

where i've been

I'm just going to jump in as though we're mid-conversation.

 Last August, I got sick. And I finally got better, oh, a little less than a month ago. Truly better, up-and-around, drive-a-car, live-life-normally better just within the last couple of weeks, although I'm still in the process of rebuilding strength. 

We don't know what caused it, but it was brutal, and it morphed every month or so into a new form. There was the month where I was coughing, the month where I could barely breathe, the month where I was so weak I could scarcely talk or lift a utensil, the month where all my lymph nodes were swollen and I couldn't get comfortable in any position, the month where I was nauseated and couldn't eat, lost 15 pounds in three weeks, and eventually couldn't even get fluids in. And then I was in the hospital and then I got better. 

I'm shortcutting this extremely because I don't really want to describe it much more, not right now. It's done. I survived it. And it was so significant, so gigantic, and so recent that I don't have a handle on it yet. I'll be unpacking it for a long time to come. There was no way for me to come here and pick up blogging again, though, without saying it. If you've been whisked off your normal planet, dumped on some hell world for a few months and then returned home without explanation, you mention it.  

What a superb time to be reborn, though, spring. I'm exhausted, existentially, but I'm also drunk on physical existence. Luscious world! Drunk on my family, my children (the boys! withheld from me for so long! they're not getting described in parentheses, forget it), drunk on the outdoors. The sky! After months of ceiling, the sky is dizzying. Today, the sky was showing off in one of my favorite ways. A mixed-up sky, not quite overcast, with massive clouds, some dark and heavy, some tall and white and stacked up like cotton castles, with pocket-y vistas of pure blue, like advertisements for some far-off vacation destination. A huge, busy sky.  

I feel a little like a post-tornado Dorothy, dropped astonished into this technicolor world. Except Dorothy didn't want to stay, and I do. And I'm not the same as I was before, I know that much. The results aren't all in yet, but I've been shoved into my body and shoved onto this planet in a way I never was before. I want to stick my fists into the soil, plant things, sleep on the grass. Whatever ideas I had about God, the divine, whatever you want to call it, they've abandoned my brain. No more abstractions. I don't want them. I'm not interested. I just want this, and this, and this. I don't want to believe anything. If there's anything I need to know, it can meet me here.

j. crew emergency teams and procedures

As you will see, Team/Color Names have been updated to reflect current trends. However, the actual colors have not changed, so please refer to the swatch you were given at Orientation to find your team. In case of emergency, Team Leaders will put on a lanyard with the Team Color Swatch, so that you can find your leader and move smoothly into action.

Team Aubergine

Aubergine is in charge of First Aid/CPR.  Remember to treat J.Crew cardholders first, in order of accumulated Rewards points.  If the customer doesn’t have his/her Rewards card, you can look it up in the computer. If the computer is down (or destroyed), then treat according to severity of injury. 

Team Dusky Eggplant

Dusky Egglant will shut off the gas main, if necessary. If the gas main doesn’t require shut-off, Dusky Eggplant will add customers to the mailing list.

Team Roasted Eggplant

Roasted Eggplant will monitor and comfort children that have been separated from their parents.

Team Grape

If the store collapses, Grape is in charge of beating out morse code in the wreckage to alert emergency teams to the number and location of survivors.

Team Old Grape

Old Grape replaces any greeters who are on Team Aubergine that are actively involved in the distribution of first aid.

Team Cabernet Grape

Cabernet Grape distributes oxygen masks, if necessary. 

Team Prune

Prune determines whether oxygen masks are necessary.

Team Winter Plum

Winter Plum communicates with/guides our deaf customers to safety.

Team Blackberry

Blackberry is a floating group that provides verbal encouragement to struggling teams.

Team Blackest Plum

Blackest Plum ensures our staff retains their professional look. Duties include neatening hair, removing lint/dust/bloodstains (club soda is in fridge in staff room), “zhuzhing” sleeves.

Team Dark Violet 

Monitors and keeps ample supply of club soda in staff room. Dark Violet should know the location of several area supermarkets/mini-marts, in case supply needs to be replaced mid-crisis and the closest supermarkets are collapsed. Starbucks also has some sort of bubbly water for their Italian sodas. There are two Starbucks in the mall, but their bubbly water is pricey, so avoid if possible.

Team Smoked Violet

Smoked Violet should be able to look at the emergency food supplies in the staff room and come up with 10-12 appetizing recipes for whatever’s on hand. It’s recommended that Smoked Violet spend a couple of minutes of every break just looking at the supplies and mentally combining flavor profiles.  Don’t be afraid of unorthodox pairings. Let the muse run free!

Team Cool Smoked Violet

Cool Smoked Violet will function as sous-chef to Smoked Violet.

Team Joni Mitchell Plum

If devastation is severe, Joni Mitchell Plum can automatically reduce all of the rhinestone hair accessories (ponytail holders, headbands) to clearance, so our inventory will reflect the somber mood of the times as quickly as possible.  

I originally wrote this piece for the online humor journal "Mattress Police", but that baby's gone. So it can live here now.

after newtown

First the shock. Then the alternating waves of rage and grief. Then the grief rises and rises and rises, shaking and howling, until it breaks open into something else. It becomes something calm and immovable. It becomes resolve. It becomes something more enduring than rage and grief. It becomes resolve. There are words to say, everyone is saying them, and they're correct, and ferocious. Gun control, non-negotiable. But that is only the smallest corner of the resolve I'm talking about. Call, write, demand, yes. But you're not done. You're not done there. You're not even close. We are not separate from what happened. It did not happen "over there" to "someone else". The pain that lives in each of us unresolved is all of our pain. You have to find your pain, you have to examine it, you have to loosen it, and you will have to find a way to set it free. You can't wait. I'm speaking to myself as well. There is no more waiting to wake up. There is no more waiting. Find what is broken in you and do not stop until you have become whole. I don't know how long it will take, and it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how daunting it is. And you can't start tomorrow, because there is no such thing. Today. Today you resolve. It's not out there. It's not someone else. It's not political. We need laws, yes. Yes. Demand them, get them. And that is the tip, the very tippest tip of the iceberg. We're not done there, we're not done. Hug your children, cry, call, demand. But then start your real work. Come alive. Wake up. Set yourself free from all the accumulated poison in your system from being alive in this confused world.

From the NY Times, referring to the possibly bogus but useful set of words attributed to Gandhi, "Be the change you wish to see in the world":

The closest verifiable remark we have from Gandhi is this: “If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. ... We need not wait to see what others do.”

Here, Gandhi is telling us that personal and social transformation go hand in hand, but there is no suggestion in his words that personal transformation is enough. In fact, for Gandhi, the struggle to bring about a better world involved not only stringent self-denial and rigorous adherence to the philosophy of nonviolence; it also involved a steady awareness that one person, alone, can’t change anything, an awareness that unjust authority can be overturned only by great numbers of people working together with discipline and persistence.

I remember one of my old acting teachers, Robin Lynn Smith, talking about  the inside-out versus outside-in methods of acting -- interior life first, and then exterior expression/manifestation, or vice versa -- and she said, "It doesn't matter which one you use as long you make the whole trip."

And that's what I'm saying. Make the whole trip. Demand change outside, band together, and also demand change within. Don't let your grief and anger flare up and die down. Follow them all the way until you quietly know that this world is yours, and nothing short of our full, balls-out commitment to waking up will help.

The assignment isn't all grim destruction, either, although you'll have to suck some (a lot) of that up. Yes, you have to let go of old illusions, fears, pain, and concepts. There's a bright side to this very serious work that you, you reading this right now, you can't and mustn't avoid. You have to/get to/have to learn to understand what joy is, where it comes from, and how to distinguish it from mere pleasure. And you have to learn how to find it and/or generate it. You have to learn how to generate it even if there's no reason for its presence. And you have to generate more and more and more and more of it, and peel off all the needless suffering -- which is most of the suffering. Peel off the extraneous mental suffering. There's enough to work with without the suffering we generate ourselves. We have to stop generating our own. And then get familiar with the feeling of genuine joy and freedom, and cultivate it ruthlessly.

I see so much "we're helpless, it's hopeless" and it makes me want to grab every last person by the shoulders and shake them furiously until their heads fall off. You are NOT helpless. It is NOT hopeless. Stop repeating that toxic, soul-killing, planet-harming lie. We're connected to each other. It's not a metaphor. What takes place within one of us affects all of us. If you genuinely don't like feeling helpless, then rejoice. You're not. Get to work.

can an old blog learn new tricks?

Dear Gallivanting Monkey,

It's nearly seven years that you and I have been together. I don't think this is a breakup letter - it's more a State of the Union address, or couples therapy (except only I can talk - sorry!) - but you and I both know that things haven't been the same. So here we are. You're important to me, and I want to see if we can be saved. But I think it's important that all options are on the table, including destruction. We have to at least face down the possibility.

I want to offer you a glass of wine or something to ease your nerves, but that's the kind of thing you'd do, by which I mean that's in line with your persona. You've taken on a persona, even though I think it's dangerous for me to try and describe it. A little too bright in places, wide open and trusting, emotional. Very conscious of the impression you were making. Funny enough sometimes that you became self-conscious about saying anything again, because you didn't want to let people down by reverting back to something unfunny or dull or sentimental or sad. Always conscious of what might let people down, or turn them off. Too tethered to whatever you imagined your audience's expectations were. You've always been truthful, but in a carefully proscribed way that left room for lies of omission. There were topics that became appropriate for you, and topics that remained forbidden, and that hardened into this too-narrow persona, which is something like a lie.

The one thing that is good about you/us is that we've always been a little all-over-the-place. That's going to help us now, I think. Though we've edited parts of ourselves out, we haven't always demanded one tone. We never decided that we were a humor blog, or a mommy blog, or any kind of topical blog. We gave ourselves some room to move with "personal blog". Blogs like this don't tend to take over the world, especially when their authors can't be bothered to try and take over the world, particularly since they feel like encyclopedia salesmen the minute they think about crafting their content to take over the world.

I did almost destroy you, though. (I almost destroyed my memoir, too, but then I decided it was okay if everything I've written so far is nothing more than a bunch of styrofoam packing peanuts for a different book.) The idea seemed so liberating. We've had fun at The Gallivanting Monkey, but what does it matter? Nobody needs it -- let's kill it! Delete blog. I have to tell you, it gives me a pleasant kind of vertigo to contemplate it. I know there are a few people who still read this thing whenever I climb out of my coffin to scrawl something, but they're not legion. And then if I start a new blog, I can do whatever I want with it. Nobody would know and love it, which would be sad, but nobody would know and love it and want it to stay the same, which would be freeing.

This is all because I'm changing, blog. For the last few years, and especially in the last couple of years, I've been changing at an accelerated pace. The work I'm doing in the world is different, and getting different-er by the minute. My old ways of relating to people, a lot of them fear-based, are dropping away. I don't want to feel obligated to wear an old face just so I'll look familiar to the people around me. My old face kind of makes me sad. A people-pleasing, non-boat-rocking, self-effacing face. 

But then I think about what my writing mentors Jack and Bob say to their compatriots. Don't throw yourself away. The thing you wrote took you more than the time it took to write it. It took your whole life, the living of it, that which provided you with the words in the first place.

I still don't know how to post now. But at least I've explained why I'm so quiet. And maybe I'll have the nerve to come on here and open up some of the forbidden topics. I think that maybe ought to be the only way I come on here. But let's not create pressure like that. Now that I've got my subtext up top, maybe we can try some new things, and maybe I can still do some of the old things, and maybe it'll feel okay.

Love,
Tina

that didn't happen

For all of you sneaky bastards who subscribe to an RSS feed and think that what you may have just seen was the actual Oscar Dress review post, forget it. You accidentally caught the post in its underwear. Please forget what you think you may have seen.



Now I've hypnotized you to forget what? Forget what?

Also, now you've quit smoking.

paper anniversary

It’s one year now since I decided to write a book. (It’s also my seventh wedding anniversary tomorrow, but there’s no need to do a State of the Union there. We’re slicing through the years with good momentum.)

How’m I doing? Well...ho. I’m still in it. I’m trudging forward. My momentum isn’t anything like steady, but words are accruing. The snowfall’s erratic, but what’s falling is sticking. That doesn’t mean that all or any or most of these words I’ve written will appear in the final text. (Final text! What a hilariously far-off term. Feels funny to even use it.) It just means that my understanding of this book is slowly taking shape.

Snowfall is maybe the wrong metaphor. Pregnancy is better. Because the accretion I’m talking about isn’t static. The substance doesn’t remain the same as it increases. The life force in the thing is growing along with its size.

Oh, I like this pregnancy metaphor. Yes, ma’am! You know why?

First trimester. Oooosh. That’s where I am, easy, and I’m still pretty early in it. The morning sickness. The occasional disbelief that I’m growing a book. The thrill and revulsion of facing the material. The amoebic nature of the thing itself, how it doesn’t look anything like a book in the ultrasounds. It’s not cute yet. And it’s still vulnerable: vulnerable to doubt, to inertia (the cells need to keep dividing and multiplying at a rate conducive to life), to the toxic chemicals in straight-up fear.

And this thing is a memoir, which is wicked radioactive. It’s a family memoir, too, and a spiritual memoir. So that’s easy. I bet it’s tough enough to write a “My Year in Tuscany Learning to Make Pasta” memoir. This is all teeth and murk and neurosis and slipperiness and heat.

I’ve written 102 pages of material to date, single-spaced. 57,000 words and change. I’m nowhere near structure. (Oh, structure. Someday, it’s you and me. That’s the second trimester. The golden trimester, where material becomes a draft.) (I think.) I’m writing for understanding right now. I’m writing to find out what the hell I’m trying to say. I’m writing to unearth the spine of the story. I don’t even know if I’m doing that yet. I’m just vomiting up material until my stomach’s empty.

Not empty yet. Not even close. And I resist sitting down to write the way you resist emesis, because while it feels great to have it over with, it feels like hell when you admit it’s going to happen. (Once I’m actually writing, I’m fine. It’s the moment before when my stomach lurches.)

I daydream about structure, though. I do. I try on various futures with this book. We’ll frame it like this! Oh, that’s beautiful! I pretend that I understand the story I’m telling already and I woolgather, arranging this piece here and that piece there and it comes together so neatly. And I admire it for a while, and then I remember....oh. That’s fake. I can’t build that. None of those pieces really exist, and they may never exist in anything like those forms. Damn.

Stop trying to pull the fetus out and cuddle it. It’s not helpful.

I’ll tell you what I do have going for me, and that’s midwives. Midhusbands? Bob Ray and Jack Remick, that’s who. These guys host a writing group at a bakery here in Seattle every Tuesday and Friday, and they’ve done it for twenty years. You just show up and write, and if you’re lucky (and I’ve been lucky), Jack and Bob will give you feedback. Head this way. Think about this. Try this. Beware of that. They’ve each published many books, and taught writing for years. A friend of mine pointed me in their direction when she asked how my book was going and I gagged in her lap. (As it turned out, Jack had met my parents through mutual friends -- even had lunch at their house! the house where I grew up! -- and is familiar with some of the people and places that show up in the story. I tuck that kind of synchronicity into my pocket like a talisman.) These guys are wonderful. Funny and wise and experienced and incredibly generous. And they both genuinely seem to care about what I’m doing here.

Now I feel like I’m not going to have to give birth in a taxicab, you know? There are people standing by who know what they’re doing, and want to see that baby come out alive.

And so that’s my report. I know this has been a record absence, friends. Between parenting and wife-ing and starting in on a new line of work and stabbing away at this book, the old Monkey’s had to lay fallow a while. I want to promise that I’ll be back soon, but I’d rather promise to finish a book for you. But I think I can safely say I’ll be back before then, because that’s a long way off.

captain phillips rides again

When Dave was a kindergartener in Australia, he fell in love with a little blonde girl in his class. Her name was Cathy Phillips, but that's immaterial, because she was that girl. She didn't need a name. Dave never spoke to her, but he told anyone who'd listen that he was going to marry her. Those long, blonde, swaying pigtails....there's nothing else to say.

In a jaunty -- if slightly wack -- romantic tribute, he rechristened her Captain Phillips, after the first governor of New South Wales. (After some googling, it looks like he should have actually called her Admiral Phillip, but let's not nitpick.) I hope she caught wind of it and made it legal. "Captain Phillips" is clearly a thousand times cooler than "Cathy Phillips", and it would have cemented her femme fatale status forever, like a female James Bond.

In any case, she's still alive and she's still five, only she's changed form, switched hemispheres and enrolled at Finn's school. She has a beautiful name, every bit as cool as Captain Phillips, but I'm not going to use it here. I'm going to protect her privacy. We'll just call her the Admiral, since the title's free. It's high time she was promoted, anyway.

The Admiral caught Finn's eye on the first day of school, when she showed up wearing a pretty white cotton dress. Remember, Finn's a sucker for a good sartorial move. And the Admiral is a star sailor to her bones. (A star sailor isn't just someone in a good outfit. A star sailor has to drip with innate style and coolness. And then top it off with a good outfit.) One day after school, Finn and the Admiral hung around the playground together and became fast friends. They're both half-day kindergarteners, two of the only three in the whole school, and so they bonded over being sprung at 12:30.

For a time, they were inseparable. (I should say they were voluntarily inseparable, but I'll get to that.) Finn's always been adamant about remaining half-day, but when the Admiral mentioned to Finn that she might be going full-day in November, suddenly the wind changed direction. He mentioned it idly, played it cool. "Mom, I think I might go full-day in November." No reason, Mom. Just feel like it. Oh, and maybe the Admiral is doing that.

Whenever I asked him who he'd sat with at lunch, it was the Admiral. Whenever I asked him who he liked best at school, it was the Admiral. He used the same fervent tone for her name that he'd used early on when he was talking about R.J. (for whom the flame has faded, although they were playing together today on their first field trip - ! - to a pumpkin patch).

Oh, but the course of true love never did run smooth. I picked Finn up one day and his mood was stormy. He didn't want to talk about it at first, but then he burst out, "Sometimes she says she doesn't want to sit next to me, but I know she really does want to sit next to me, so I sit next to her even if she doesn't want me to!" I hesitated a little and then said that there is this thing called personal space. "What's personal space?" he asked. I didn't have the heart to tell him that his bold moves were backfiring, so I told him to ask his dad. (Passing the buck is one of the best things about being married.)

Some days it's terrific with the Admiral. But the Admiral is capricious. She invited Finn to be a part of her club, but then revoked his membership the next day. He said that she was being mean. I advised him to locate some friendly people and play with them, then. After all, did he still want to play with her anyway if she was mean? He responded wearily, as though I were the biggest moron ever to walk the earth. "YES." And I suppose that was a dumb question, considering everything I've ever learned about being alive.

Finn and the Admiral are still close, though the Admiral still holds most of the cards. I say most of them, because Finn has plenty of mojo with the young ladies. The class played "The Farmer in the Dell" one day, and Finn told me he'd taken the Admiral for his wife. Apparently there were some other girls who'd wanted the job. There's a group who rush to hug Finn goodbye every day, and you can practically see the cartoon hearts take over their pupils. One little lass grabbed his hand once and gave it a kiss as he barreled past her. The thought bubble is clearly visible over his head. What the hell is happening? Meanwhile, rows of girls go down like dominoes. Dave and I have both witnessed it. It's frankly remarkable.

He had a tough one with the Admiral yesterday. There was something he didn't know about how something worked at school, and the Admiral said he was ridiculous. And then another girl said "YOU'RE sitting with your GIRLFRIEND", referring, of course, to the Admiral. But Finn held his own. He said that he didn't like that bit about a girlfriend, and he told the Admiral that he wasn't ridiculous. He hasn't been to school before, is all, and he's just getting started.

yar

I had the alarming realization lately that I’m going to be spending nine months of every year driving to and from Finn’s (and, someday, Fred’s) elementary school until I'm 51 years old.

Holy fuck.

First of all, that means I’m going to be 51 someday. It’s nine years off, but it’s more true than it ever was that this is going to happen. It's more true because I can visualize half an hour of each of these ensuing days perfectly. I’m tethered to the brick facade and royal blue railings of Sacajawea, and they’re pulling me closer and closer to my death.

I’m having a difficult time remembering that I’m not actually 51 now. GOOD CHRIST, I’M 51! Oh, wait, no.

Note to the 51-and-over crowd who may be reading this: It’s not you, it’s mortality.

That’s the thing. If our lives are a horizontal timeline that reads in classic Western style from left to right, I feel tucked over to the right a little more than before. I remember feeling myself on the left-hand side of that timeline. I had forever to figure out what I was going to do or be. I could blossom in my own sweet time. I didn’t have to nail it down. The right hand side of the timeline felt positively wide-open and breezy. Horizonless, almost. The map just faded off.

But now I can feel a wall over to my right. I’m not about to bump into it or anything, but I’m aware of its presence, kinesthetically. My body knows its there.

And that brings me to my topic. The body. My body. The ol’ vessel. I’m going to sail in this thing to the grave, and I’m realizing that I’m at some sort of turning point. Here’s a Philip Barry mash-up, from that old beauty, The Philadelphia Story:

My, she was yar...It means easy to handle, quick to the helm, fast, right. Everything a boat should be, until she develops dry rot.

I’m dedicated to the whole notion of yar, inside and out. It’s something to shoot for, that fineness and agility in all the domains that matter to you. But for most of my life, I’ve been focusing on my mental or emotional or spiritual yar. The inner yars.

A few years ago, after I had Finn, I made my first serious run at physical yar. I’d joined a nearby gym to drop the last bits of baby weight. When you joined this gym, you got two free sessions with a personal trainer to get you going. I remember looping away on an elliptical, waiting for my trainer to nab me for my first session. And then somebody tapped me on the shoulder, and I turned around and there was Niles.

(Niles, wherever you are, I salute you. Move back to Seattle so you can train me some more.)

Niles was -- as it can never hurt a trainer to be -- ridiculously handsome. His chiseled features were the stuff of Roman coins, truly. And as we embarked on what would turn out to be a year of thrice-weekly workouts, it became clear that Niles was also a deeply good, decent, searching person. We talked about all sorts of things as he made me stronger, enjoyed a shared philosophical bent. He was just a good dude.

And also, he was really, really good-looking. I got 2.5 times stronger than I would have with another trainer, because when your trainer is that attractive, you put out at least 2.5 times the effort. I should really say that I got 9 or 10 times stronger than I would have in other circumstances. It's instinctual. It's why birds have bright feathers.

It was frankly hilarious, how much I was fronting during our workouts. You see, when I was growing up, my family was engaged in a constant competition to see who could be the biggest wilting lily. Whoever was the sickest or faintest or most exhausted won the day’s sympathy prize. But we were lavish with sympathy for anybody’s pitiful old complaint. One of us would collapse in the front door after, I don’t know, going out to buy a stapler, and give the traditional extravagant Kunz family announcement/groan, “I’m HOME,” and then proceed to lay out the tiny physical indignities of the last hour and a half that had done us in. We expected -- nay, felt entitled to -- and received! -- three sets of rapt and understanding ears for our litanies.

We were lame.

But you’d never know it from my sessions with Niles. I gave the mythical 110% every step of the way. Niles would have me down in a plank, and he’d have his little timer out, and I’d hold that goddamn plank until my muscles were all screaming “WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU?!” (Shh, muscles. Zip it. We’re somebody else right now.) And Niles would exclaim with real joy, “That’s great! That’s thirty seconds longer than you could do it before!” And I’d be giving off the vibe, pshaw, well, hey. That’s just me. I’m all heart. I never say die. I just don’t know how to do it another way.

Dave, of course, if he’s reading this, is snorting into his soup. I can’t escape my childhood completely. Every day, all day, I’m like “Oh, my finger” and “Ouch, my hip” and “I feel dizzy” and “The back of my neck is killing me” and “I have a little sore throat”. And the Rowleys are a different proposition altogether. Dave’s mom, Larraine, is the quintessential Rowley tough nut. She lives out her days in bona-fide screaming back agony from a botched surgery she underwent thirty-plus years ago. But she powers through it and does whatever she sets her mind to, and will never, never let on that she’s in pain unless she really can’t move any more. When you see some slightly pursed lips and she admits out loud that there’s a little pain, you can bet that anybody else alive would be screaming for an ambulance. So it’s safe to say that Dave is not impressed with my frequent bids for physical sympathy. Let’s say that he’s visibly unimpressed.

Me: “My finger!”
Dave: Blank look.
Me: Pregnant stare.
Dave: Eventual grudging nod. Not of acknowledgement. I-have-to-do-this-or-she-won’t-go-away. That nod.
Me (a vibe): That’s it?
Dave (a vibe): Oh, that’s it, all right.

Okay. Okay, but if I die of possible minor floating arthritis in the next few minutes, you’re going to feel like a real heel. Play “Little Wing” at my funeral, by the way.

Anyway. Working with Niles for that year -- up until I got pregnant and then miscarried and then got pregnant again with Fred -- transformed my body, for certain. I was as slender as I’d ever been, but this time I had muscles, and all kinds of physical verve and confidence. And I became one of his favorite clients, one of his real success stories. But, most happily, for the first time in my life I felt that my exterior matched the best of my interior.

When I was growing up and going through my young adult life, I always had this feeling that my forties were going to be a really excellent time for me. 40 was my target age. Things were going to start to get good. The right side of the timeline may have been amorphous and foggy, but I felt something glowing waiting for me right around that age range. I pictured myself like some sort of warrior elf queen, strong and bright and agile. Maybe carrying a spear of some kind. Wearing some kind of killer boots, invariably.

After I had Fred, all my work with Niles was lost. My fraught pregnancy had me tethered to bedrest, and I kissed all of those core muscles -- as you do -- goodbye. And then last year I had surgery, and it’s been a long road to recovery from there. Eight weeks stuck in bed watching Netflix and eating vanilla wafer and Scharffen Berger sandwiches is not a recipe for vitality. It’s a recipe for a super fat ass, is what it’s a recipe for.

But forces are at work now, finally, pulling me back towards yar. One, there’s that wall over to my right that keeps whispering to me, “Now or never.” This is when I’m forging the body that’s going to contain me for the rest of the ride. I can extend the ride, I can make it more fun, I can give myself more energy, I can give myself a prettier vessel. I can make an elf queen suit.

And two, two is mysterious. Let me give a foundation for this. Eight years ago, I met Dave on a yoga retreat on Maui, and within five days we were practically engaged. One night at dinner, there under the stars with Dave and all our fellow students, I couldn’t eat a thing. I couldn’t even speak. I felt like my body was being filled with light, like my being at the deepest level was being refined by some force I felt but couldn’t comprehend. I felt something humming in me, transforming me, right there in front of my untouched plate. Like something wanted a better life for me, and was cooking me right there in order for me to receive it.

In a much quieter and less dramatic way, I feel like the same thing is happening right now. My diet has spontaneously changed. My sweet tooth, a powerful thing, has all but dissolved. My attraction to crappy food of every stripe has vamoosed. The leftover Fred/vanilla wafer weight is coming off. I’ve begun making these smoothies for myself, gulping down mountains of greens. I can’t recommend this enough, my friends. I’m even going to give you the recipe for this insanely good thing. It feels like the most magical elixir. A cup and a half of greens, packed tight. A banana. A kiwi. Some mango. 2 tablespoons of protein powder. (The hemp sort is really good, not chalky at all.) 2 tablespoons of coconut butter. 2 cups of water. Blend away. Drink it on an empty stomach, otherwise it won’t feel good. (Do believe me about that.) On the one hand, it's a smoothie. It's just a smoothie. But on the other hand, it's a message to my body, a message to my life. I don't even want to articulate it and cheapen it. It's precious, whatever it is.

I really do think there’s some kind of quickening going on. I feel it personally, and I’m seeing it everywhere. Something’s turning up the heat under us all, I think, cooking us a little faster. And I’m feeling those two forces so keenly. The increasing nearness of death and some insistent life force in reply. There’s a call, and I can’t resist trying to answer it, and now I’m trying to answer it with everything I have, even this old shell.

the star sailors of sacajawea

Finn likes to relax with the latest issue of Vogue when I'm tucking him in bed at night. We flip through, working at a quick pace. We know what we don't have to waste time on, and we know just where we like to linger. His taste is sure, and when he sees a spread that pleases it, he shouts "STAR SAILOR!", pointing extravagantly at the page -- sometimes so extravagantly that I accidentally get knocked in the face.

Up with bright color and flowing, feminine, ruffly shapes. Up with glossy red lipstick, up with perfume samples. Up with Drew Barrymore and her lush features, her pearlescent, peacock-toned Cover Girl eye shadow.

Down with/boo to/spit on neutrals and all black-and-white photography. Down with boring, business-y shapes. Down with severe tailoring. Down with plain handbags. Down with minimalism. Execute minimalism, gangland-style. Toss the gun and stroll out into the street, cape fluttering behind you, never looking back.

Finn is the love child of Martha Stewart and Ziggy Stardust, the love child of Lord Byron and Kramer. He's the Black Stallion, he's a hothouse orchid. Brains coming out of his ears, and an almost wasteful amount of physical beauty. And I don't want to talk about the sensitivity, lest I disturb it from all the way over here in the other room. He's a one-off, I'm trying to tell you. I rarely talk about him here because he taxes my descriptive powers too much. You can see how much I'm revving the engine already. I promise you that these are the most accurate, least over-the-top descriptions available to me.

All children are totally special. I know it. I know. I really do. No "but" here.

But* I'm just watching my now-very-heavily-described, indescribable firstborn go out and interact for the first time in a big way with a world that is not exactly tailored for his...do I call it a type?

*because it's down here

Anyway.

Kindergarten!

Today was day seven, and it was the first day that Finn went into class without crying and clinging to us. To Dave, I should say. After the first three days, it became abundantly clear that I shouldn't be anywhere near his classroom entry. I was already taking a quarter of a Xanax in the morning to try not to cry when he cried, and that dose was starting to look too small. (You're probably like, right, because: a quarter of a Xanax. I'm small, see? And, uh...sensitive.)

Finn would be fine first thing in the morning. No problem getting ready for school. We have a mixed CD in the car that's all Finn's favorite songs, and we'd listen to it on the way there. No problem during "Chicken Grabber". Looking good through "Staying Alive", especially while Fred bobs his head to the music. ("Staying Alive" is Fred's signature tune, has been from the first minute he heard it and began rocking out, and holy shit, does it suit him. Fred, my little man, you're a story for another day.) Not bad even through Booker T. Jones, as we're pulling up to the school. Things would start wobbling up on the playground as we waited for the school bell -- though he'd be maintaining -- and then as soon as that SUPER FUCKING LOUD STARTLING AIR RAID SIREN* of a bell rang, he'd shoot into misery.

*none of this aided by the fact that whenever the bell rings, all the children instantly scream.

When the bell blasts, all the kids line up outside their classroom and get ready for their teachers to throw open the doors for another day of totally! fun! learning! -- and for the other kids, that's exactly what it seems like. They're grinning and bobbing around and ignoring their moms and dads because they have all been to preschool. But, as I said in an earlier post, Finn only went to preschool for three days. (Topic for another day, if ever. To sum up: Hey, moms and dads! Send your kids to preschool!)

Bell rings. Finn crumples fast and hard. He's crying, grabbing on to me. I'm patting his head and rubbing his back and talking brightly to him while invisible gangs of thugs kick the shit out of my heart. I gesture for Dave to take over, since Mama is a more primal pull -- I've got that womb, see? -- than Pops. I stand a few feet away with Fred, blowing kisses and making little thumbs-up and tough-fist "You can do it!" gestures as the line moves forward -- forcibly, for Finn. Dave is moving him toward the classroom. Finn is trying everything he can. He's digging his feet into the asphalt and pulling backwards, and when that doesn't work, he's hanging off of Dad's hand with his feet off the ground, getting airlifted to his doom. It would be hilarious if it weren't so heartwrenching.

As soon as Dave has him in the classroom, I squeeze Fred in my arms and the tears come flying. Other moms hover sympathetically nearby, offering encouragement. I laugh-cry-talk with them, and pretty soon they're welling up, too.

I've never, with either of my babies, been drawn to do anything like a parent's group. That always seemed like far too broad a stroke. Parent's group? Mom's group? It felt like it was casting the net way too wide. "Hey, honey, I'm off to people group!" But in the last week and a half, I've changed. If you are the mother or father of a kindergartener, we are bosom buddies, a priori. I don't need to know one more thing. If your child has been in kindergarten for seven days like mine has, we might as well be buried together, you and I. We are that close.

And I have to say that this group of parents seems particularly delightful. I'm starting to get school spirit, frankly. Sacajawea Elementary and all associated with it kick ass as far as I'm concerned. Finn told me excitedly today that the principal, Barry Dorsey, stands on the playground and yells "Laaaaaaaaadeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeez and......" and all the kids scream out "GENTLEMEN!!!!!!" And then...something? Finn didn't feel like telling me anything else, so I don't know what comes next. But just that nugget of information is perfect.

Where are we? Right, Finn's inside. And this little illustration stands for five out of the seven days he's been to school. He's in the Peace Corner. The other kids are patting his back, holding his hand. (I die at the sweetness.) A pretty little girl named Trinity who sits at his desk is telling him, "You don't have to cry EVERY day!" (Dave reported happily that yesterday Trinity began her wifely ministrations with Finn, telling him all about the good things they would get to do that day, even going so far as to reach over and adjust the zipper at the top of his jacket like she was straightening his tie. Finn, all what is this girl doing? -- and ever the smoothie -- kicked her lightly in the foot. Trinity said to Dave, "He kicked me!" but it was clear that she didn't mind and this wouldn't stop her.) (Oh, Trinity. Be safe out there.)

But let me cut to the chase. He's doing better! When I pick him up every day, he does not look remotely like a guy who's been to hell. I ask him about his day in the car on the way home.

I ask:

"What stories did you read this morning?"

and he answers:

"The Napping House. It was something about a Grandma and some animals and a boy."

or he answers:

"A very important story about little kids." "What happens to the kids in the story?" "I don't know."

or he answers:

"STAR WARS. I HATE STAR WARS. I don't like all the fighting." "Who was fighting?" "Nobody. It's Star Wars Alphabet."

or he says:

"Some story about a bear whose name begins with a C."

I think he's making friends? Maybe? I'm not sure. In any case, a lovely thing happened. I was asking him about the kids in class, and it came out that there was a boy he hadn't talked to yet that appealed to him. R.J. is his name. He murmured it fervently to me, hiding his face in my arm. "R.J.!" That's who he wanted to be friends with. I didn't know who R.J. was, but then Dave told me he's a little guy with a limp and a withered hand. And then Finn told me a couple of days ago that he'd become friends with R.J. at lunchtime. R.J. sat with him and point-blank asked him if he wanted to be friends, and Finn said "sure". I yelled the story to Dave as Finn relayed it to me, and when I got to the part where Finn accepts, I fucked up the story (of course) and said that Finn had said yes. Finn set me straight. "No," came the adjustment, "I said SURE."

Now, I have no idea if Finn has spoken to or hung out with R.J. since then. I asked him who he played with at morning recess today, and the answer was "A jump rope." He just ran around the playground by himself, dragging a jump rope. And that's what he was doing when I picked him up later in the day. Just playing by himself, as he always is when I pick him up, dragging a jump rope around. He's not with the other kids, he hasn't fallen into a game with anybody, and I can't see R.J. anywhere, or Ian, who seems to have made some tighter friends. But he doesn't seem distressed about it. He's just playing. It's cool. It's at least cool enough.

He told me this morning -- before his triumphant, not-traumatized entry into the classroom on his own steam (!) -- as we were getting him ready for school, "You know, by morning recess I'm usually fine." And he asked me how long it took me to get used to kindergarten. I have no idea how long it took me to get used to kindergarten, but that's totally beside the point, which was that it was time to begin bullshitting. "Let's see. What day of kindergarten is this for you? Day seven? I think it was...yeah. Right around seven days into it." He was satisfied, and breezily continued getting ready.

Tonight we looked at Vogue briefly before bed, and as I sailed past a page, he asked me to go back. I circled back a few pages, and asked what he was looking for. He said, "I thought I saw somebody who looked like R.J." When we determined that R.J. was not featured in this month's Vogue, we turned off the lights and I sang him to sleep.