It goes so fast...so, so, so fast. I recently took some "same shot-different year" photos of Owen and the difference was shocking to me. In the continual glow of every day I can't see him grow at all, but the strobe light of photos makes it all too real. I feel like I want to record some of what it's like to be his mom (Margie's too, she's just not that funny yet...)

On agriculture: "Mom, I've thought up a great nickname for horses. Hors. If we don't have time to say horses, we can just call them hors."

On success: "Ella said the gold medal was the best, but I think if I was the best I would get the red medal instead."

On family closeness: "When I grow up to be the king I will need a queen. Mom, you will be too old by then, so Margaret can be my queen."

To P.J. by Sonja Sanchez

if i cud ever write a
poem as beautiful as u
little 2/yr/old/brotha,
I wud laugh, jump, leap
up and touch the stars
cuz u be the poem i try for
each time i pick up a pen and paper.
u. and Morani and Mungube
our blue/blk/stars that
will shine on our lives and
makes us finally BE.
if i cud ever write a poem as beautiful
as u, little 2/yr/old/brotha,
poetry wud go out of bizness.

I've never known that I could ache so much with joy instead of pain.
This beautiful gift from my womb, from my husband, from my God.

I know don't deserve it - and to be honest I don't think I ever really understood grace before. All my life I have tried to be really good and obedient and there was always some part of me that thought I was worthy of all the good things in my life because of it. Not this. I can't explain this, and it shines the light on everything else I didn't deserve. It turns out that for me grace is two feet tall and smeared with oatmeal. Who knew?

I wanna have a baby
Sometimes I think that maybe
This old world's too f*cked up for any firstborn son...
- Over the Rhine

What will I tell my boy when things go terribly wrong? What do I tell myself?

Watching the hurricane and aftermath, I couldn't help but put myself in the place of the mothers with tiny children. While the grownups were becoming increasingly agitated, angry, and afraid, in the footage I saw of children they were quiet, waiting, resting, trusting. They knew they were small and that their parents loved them and would do whatever could be done for them. Why am I so afraid sometimes...

Okay, so I just about can't describe all that has happened in my life in the past year and a half...I guess I could let some photos do the talking. This is my little O-bear at five weeks old...

And this is my big boy a couple of months later. I can't believe how much they change in such a short period and how masterfully God designed this trial by fire to shape parents as well. I have always thought of myself as fairly under control - maybe too much at times. I was not prepared - in fact, I never knew I was even capable of either the shocking love or the devastating anger this tiny bundle has brought out in me.

When I recall Graham and I getting ready for his arrival I just have to laugh. We were so...thorough. So precise. Somewhere we figured that if we bought all the right products and arranged everything just so and planned everything out that Owen would just emerge and snap into place with a satisfying click and we could get on with our lives, only richer and happier for the addition. I guess that after five years of living together and, with a few exceptions, shaping our lives around comfort and convenience and laughter...it's hard to change. We talked about it - really, we did- about how much we knew our lives were going to change, how this is the last time we'll get a good night's sleep, how we would have to learn to relate to one another both in light of the boy and as a couple (not just one or the other), all of that stuff we covered in our minds. But that was really just another way in which we were "covering the bases" and getting fully prepared, not realizing that there was no preparing for this type of thing.

Maybe for some people it is different - I imagine that there are some people young enough or wise enough or soft enough that a baby just slides into their lives and everything shifts easily to accomodate it and gels back together - but for the architect, the planner, the critic, the know-it-all...not so much. It would be insufficient to say that these qualities don't lend themselves to sea change in general or to the unpredictability of an infant in specific. Wow. Thank you God for grace and for letting me break into your hands. You have certainly showed me how one can, as the song says " grow in weakness, not in strength."

Y'know, I like taking personality tests quite a bit. Sometimes it gives me insight or affirms something I suspected, or makes me feel less alone if 3.1% of people share my world. But then I wonder about the fine line between understanding myself and others, and being obsessed with the Me Show ("All me, all the time!"). Regardless, the results of this Myers-Briggs one seemed pretty on.

INTP - "Architect". Greatest precision in thought and language. Can readily discern contradictions and inconsistencies. The world exists primarily to be understood. 3.3% of total population.

Take Free Myers-Briggs Personality Test

Yeah, okay, so it's only the first week of December and I'm already Christmassed out. I think a big part of the problem is my mom; she just loves to spend extravagant amounts on us. I'm talking monthly-rent-and-possibly-utilities-in-a-good-month amounts. Each. It raises the bar for the presents we give each other, and it makes me feel embarassed and greedy and highlights all the problems I have with materialism in the world and in myself. And it is hard to deal with knowing that G and I are tens of thousands of dollars in debt having a hard time keeping the dog in squeeky toys, and she insists on buying only fabulous, frivolous things we would never buy ourselves. I think when my father was alive he kept her check (not directly, but just due to the fact that he was so down to earth and confident), but now she has been unleashed and cannot be stopped.

Why not just ask her for a small present or a subdued holiday this year, you ask?

Naive fool!

She claims that this is the only thing that makes her happy and why would we ingrateful children deny her this, her one joy. There is this part of me that feels like she is attempting to buy the love of her son- and daughter-in-law, or build up a debt between us so that we won't leave her alone when she is old. The fact that she thinks this is possible makes me feel so sick to my stomach.

I know that she grew up really, really (did I say reallly?) poor, and that when she saw the Christmas celebrations of middle-class families they seemed like such unimaginable abundance...and she is trying to recreate that overwhelming feeling starting from the lives of material wealth we already live, and it just gets out of hand.

I love her so much and I wish she didn't feel like she had to buy anyone or work up that holiday feeling of fullness and joy by sheer pocketbook power. Aand I deeply hope that I will be able to have a really different set of traditions within my own family. Sigh.

So it's about to be Thanksgiving, and I still don't know where we are celebrating tomorrow. Graham's family is really sort of struggling now that Margaret has died, and I don't know if they'll pull it together or if we'll eat at Jim and Betty's - which is really what I'd rather do anyway.

Today I wore a green sweatshirt imprinted with a big ferocious cat leaping through the letter 'R'. Since this shirt cost me $2 at K-Mart, I do not think it is official merchandise of any real team, so I am going to make up a team to root for throughout this football-heavy season. Lets hear it for the Rockfort Sabers! A banner on the bottom of the logo assures us of "Victory".

Sabers got the rhythm
Sabers got the claws
Sabers got the victory banner
So Up Yours!

They're a profane lot in Rockfort.