Little Drummer Boy? Nah, It’s All About the Little Cello Girl
Posted: December 20, 2011 Filed under: Bach, Childhood Development, Classical Musica, Motherhood, Music Appreciation, New York City, Upper West Side | Tags: Bach, Classical Music, Music, New York City, Upper West Side Leave a comment »After twenty plus years of living in New York City, I would like to believe I don’t shock easily. I have kept a game face when the guy with the beat up saxophone comes into the subway train I’m riding in and proceeds to press all the keys with no rhythm, rhyme or reason, producing offensive honks and hoots to exort money…ah, I mean to elisit donations from passengers. I have managed to keep my head buried and focused behind a book when gymnastic, break dancers work their moves between subway stops, and passengers, landing inches from my feet. And in some cases, my lap. However, a recent photo sent by my nanny of Julia broke my streak.
The short of the long is, at the age of forty, I began studying the cello. I love its rich, lush sound—a tone my teacher once described as the closest in tonal quality to the human voice than any other instrument. While the act of playing gives me great satisfaction, I’m no Yo-Yo Ma. I just go at it in my living room, sans audience. And unless you’re hot-guy-single-guy, don’t even ask to listen in. In fact my daughter hasn’t seen or heard me play, for anther reason than shyness. Since Julia came into my life, my extra hours go to writing, not, at the moment, playing Bach.
Miss Julia's First Recital
So, a few Tuesdays ago, music class day on the Upper West Side, when a fresh new image landed on my iPhone, I didn’t even check it right away.( I was in a meeting.) My phone always pings around 11:30, with an image sent from the nanny. But this shot made me gasp.
Look at that bow hand!
That posture!
I’d always had a little fanasty that one day, I’d play my full size cello, and my kid, a quarter-size model, that we’d create music together…seems like that vision is catching up to me. Sure, Julia might be sawing on might a violin, and not a mini cello. Maybe. But either way it leads me to wonder what other tricks does Miss Julia have up her onesie.
Good Thing She’s Cute
Posted: October 25, 2011 Filed under: Childhood Development, Motherhood Leave a comment »A large portion of being a new mom is spent watching your tiny person; grow into a small person, who is headed, in time, to full-scale adulthood. After Julia’s one-year birthday, she shape-shifted more and more each day, feeding herself, babbling, touching, and walking around the apartment as she glazes at me, to ensure I am observing her big girl activities.
However, the not so warm, gooey side of new motherhood is the ability of small people to get into big problems. First the 1920s drawing of lilies, crafted by my friend Rebecca’s Grandmother back in London took a hit, crashing against the corner of Julia’s changing table with the kind of alarm that made me jump from my bed like the house was engulfed in fire.
The First Major Fatality
I ran next door into Julia’s bedroom. I should have known right off trouble was a foot. She was facing away from the door, not toward it, which is her morning, default-setting. At the start of each day, Julia bounces up and down in her crib, like Nureyev, doing little baby reviles, as she and I delight in seeing one other, since the previous night. That morning she faced the destruction, beyond her crib, the wounded glass of the frame, the ruby flowers imprinted on the forest green carpet, sprinkled with a fine dew of glass.
So it should not come as a surprise when I report, a month after I bestowed my daughter with that moniker, Julia ripped up two pop-up picture books, (sorry Grandma, I really did not think her little arms could reach them from the crib on the neighboring chair). Then she snapped the fine links of two bracelets, followed by two necklaces—the last, a golden birthday gift, that slithered from my neck the moment my butt had settled onto the sofa,at the adoption agency during our six month check-in back in August.
Destructo Relaxing After a Long Day of Work
As I worked to shape the picture of single baby mama confidence, I felt a hard, sting tug against my neck. Then, the snap.
“Oh, Julia, “ I groaned.
“Well, you can’t blame her,” Stella, the social worker, said. “Since you’re wearing that bright shinny thing.”
“Past tense. I was wearing that bright shinny thing,” I said through gnashed teeth, which, fortunately, Stella interpreted as a rough smile.
After all, Julia was just living up to her name. After smashing a wine glass at her God Mummy Kim’s house over Labor Day, (don’t worry God Mummy Eula, she’ll be over to bust up something at your house real soon…) and a few breakables at our home, before and after the holiday, somewhere long the way, Julia broke her nickname too.
She simply stopped braking stuff. Now Julia devoted all her time to sussing out stuff, right about the time she transformed into a mobile bi-ped. Instead of trying to grab on to the world, she could invade it, along with the protective coverings of wall sockets, Kitchen cabinet handles, stove knobs, my bookcases, her bookcase, even a wet umbrella tossed on the kitchen floor called for intense study. The world is a classroom. Then came, shoe obsession.
After a toddler can toddle ten, good solid steps, unaided, toddlers need a proper shoe fitting and proper shoes. Julia and picked out a great pair of rose-colored Mary Jane’s, and stylish, purplish, lavender pair of ankle boots. 120 dollars later, I keep a tight lock on those little wee shoes.
So does Julia.
She apparently loves the feel of fresh air between her toes, because she will remove her socks and shoes at the slightest provocative breeze. Men who use to check me as I stroll the streets are now too busy retrieving the shoes my daughter has tossed away. For years, before I became a mom I had no idea why I found so many little shoes in the middle sidewalks like Hansel and Gretel’s breadcrumbs. No longer.
So as Julia and I stood on the sidewalk at 102nd Street and Broadway, after a lovely, post church brunch with Auntie Charlena and Zia Carla, I looked down at my darling daughter. She looked back up at me, smiling, beaming, waving a tiny white sock in her left hand, and a wee shoe fuchsia shoe, in her right. Julia doesn’t garner enough satisfaction taking off her footwear. She has to know that I know she has taken them off. She waves them like warning flags for rip tides.
I sighed and said, “Well MacGyver, I don’t know what I’m going to do with you.”
Just then, a seventy-something snazzy, African American Grandma strolling by, stopped.
“What a beautiful baby,” the elderly lady said. “Did you say her name is MacGyver?”“ Nooooo, her name is Julia,” I said suppressing a laugh threatening to crack one of my ribs. “I just call her that since she can get into just about anything. Besides that would be a funny name for a little girl.”
The old lady looked straight in the eye and said, “Well, I don’t know that actress did name her baby, Apple.”
“ Stand corrected,” I said.
I give. No more nicknames.
But the shoe war wages on.
The Ultimate Internet Hook-Up: Free, Private Sperm Donation
Posted: October 8, 2011 Filed under: Conception, Sperm Donors 2 Comments »
Newsweek, October 4th, 2011
A recent Newsweek cover story, “You Got Your Sperm Where?” filled me with silent, slippery gee: Free sperm donations now available on line? You gotta love the Internet.
Before I tried to conceive with a real, live man, in a real loving relationship, I spent six months or so, in sperm donor hell. The event left me so tramatized, I wrote an essay about the experience:
http://www.lemondrop.com/2010/11/05/no-black-sperm-my-long-winding-journey-to-becoming-a-mom/
And the second of the one-two punches that leveled me came with the cos of sperm: 800 hundred bucks for two hits of seed. That’s right, two. And that’s 2007 prices.
“ They test the sperm for disaeses and wash it to increase the mobility,” the fertlty doctor had told me back then.
“Ohhh, okay,” I replied. It seemed fair and reasonable. High-tech efforts were working with me towards my goal of conception. Then, a month later, I learned that donors, on average, were paid 25 dollars for their, ah, donation.
And I thought, milk had a crazy, high mark up.
The fact of the matter is, conceiving a baby out of the typical manner, is expensive, and shows no signs of slowing. When you take the bouncing baby bundle out of the equation, and examine the hard facts, it’s a business. Supply and Demand. So anyway one can cut down the pile of money straight couples, gay couples, and singles spend trying to get into the concepetion game, I have one thing to say: batter-up.
The Sum of a Hard Truth
Posted: September 7, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »In the five or so months I tried to conceive with a sperm donor, a few years back, I had suspicious, niggling little fears regarding the process. Now a September 5, 2011 New York Times article has confirmed some of my deepest worries, making adoption seem even more of a blessing than before the beautiful Julia came into my life. Please view:
One Sperm Donor, 150 Offspring
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/06/health/06donor.html?src=rechp
The Play Date, Date
Posted: August 16, 2011 Filed under: Childhood Development, Ethiopian Adoptions, International Adoption, International Adoption, Ethiopia, Single Adoption Leave a comment »Sunday afternoon, Julia had a sort of combo play-date-get-together with Theo, my friend Collette’s ( another single baby mama) son. Her beautiful little man, adopted from the same orphanage as Miss JT. The children were born, roughly, six weeks apart, a little over a year ago. After an introduction, followed by a few minutes of butt scooting and crawling across the wooden floor, murmuring between the two babies started up. Then they stopped. Julia and Theo slowly faced one another on the polished-parquet floor, each leaned forward from the waist, and kissed. On the lips.
Two old friends reconnect and share tales only they understand.
After the lip-lock, Theo and Julia moved on to more important activities—sorting through the toys littering the area rug in the living room, multitudes of stuffed animals, trucks, dolls of every size, weight and color then they set out to chase Molly the dog’s long, hairy tail, flipping-flopping across the surface of the thick, carpet patterned in soft watercolor-like light blues, pinks and purples.
Collette and I sat puddled on either side of the large rug, staring at one another, sharing a God smacked moment of silence.
“Ummm,” Collette mumbled, “do you think they remember each other?”
I moved my head around in a whirl of confusion that mirrored the calculations ripping across my brain. First to the left and right, no they couldn’t have recalled that they started life in the same place, the same Hossana orphanage, on the same play mat. No. No way. Then my head moved up and down, this time more defined, as I watched our children move and play in their connected bubble of bliss.
For the balance of the afternoon, I couldn’t help thinking of the essayist’s Robert Lynd, thoughts on coincidence, the perfect truth for this perfect moment. “It is only in literature that coincidences seem unnatural.”
And playdates.
The New View
Posted: July 29, 2011 Filed under: Homelessness, Infertility | Tags: Homelessness, Infertility, Miscarrige Leave a comment »This morning, like most mornings, my travel path intersected hundreds of other commuters, a hand full of them working the subways for spare change, spare food, and even at times it seemed, just a bit of acknowledgment from another human being that they too were still alive.
And this morning, like most, just after the one train pulled out of the Times Square station, a small, worn-looking brown-skinned woman set about a typical soliloquy of solicitation from myself and the other passengers. After a few minutes, over the edge of my book, under her extra-large-emerald-green- t-shirt, I made out her baby bump.
In the years that I’d tried to conceive, homeless women ripe with pregnancy, with a frightening regularity would find their way to me, our lives crossing paths. One memorable day, less than an hour after the stain of red had announced that we’d failed to conceive yet again, I spotted a middle-aged woman hugely pregnant excavating the trash can for dinning possibilities, a block away from my home. I stood in awe, bathed in tears, as a woman with less financial stability, no heath coverage, no access to a fertility specialist, manged to achieve what I could not.
Today, five years later, I saw, mostly, a sad broken soul bringing a new soul into the world. Today my heart cracked for her, and her alone.
The Agony of the Car Seat
Posted: July 21, 2011 Filed under: Single African American Mother By Adoption, Single Motherhood, Uncategorized Leave a comment »I’ll just get right to the point. Yes, I know car seats are important. Yes, I know they save lives. Yes, I know infants, babies, toddlers, and children up to the age of eight in New York State must use them when traveling. (And “if the child is eight years old and is under 4’9″ tall or weighs less than 100 lbs, it is recommended that” I “continue using a child restraint system.”)
Yup, got it.
But the big old fact is they’re one big pain in the booty. Bulky. Heavy. And let’s face it, ugly. And you need a PhD to install the damn thing in the car, that is, if I still owned a car.
About four years before I actually became a mom, I’d started thinking like one before Julia arrived. And one day after I’d driven to the fine state of New Jersey for the high-end, luxury shopping experience found in The Short Hills Mall (I still get missy-eyed at the memory of the Nordstrom’s shoe department) I came to the realization after —I’d survived alternate side street parking, made my peace with forking out some of the highest gas prices in the nation, toughed it out among the city’s fleet of Kamikaze taxi drivers— however my car and I ,must part.
That day, as I had done so many times before, I came out of the mall, loaded down with bags in a post shopping hangover only to shriek“ Somebody stole my car!” then discovered a monster-SUV-gas-chugger had parked beside my mini ride. So after a six-year run of cruising with the top down, shifting like a pro, and sing a-longs to Prince, I sold my Miata, a vehicle easy eclipsed by SUVs, trucks, and sadly, most standard model cars.
Now, thanks to the car seat, I still experience car drama, without the convenience of having a car. So far, after getting a dark grey, super padded, Peg Perego back in April, the beast has been taken out of the house, exactly, once, to attend Easter dinner, otherwise it has collected dust in the corner of Julia’s bedroom.
Last Sunday I freed Godzilla to take Miss J to brunch at her Auntie Charlena’s house. On the subway. With the help of Aunt Carla, another brunch attendee, who helped wrangle baby and equipment, all went well. However, on the return trip things became dicey.
“ Are you sure you’re going to be okay?” Carla asked as the subway slammed into her stop.
“Sure,” I lied. I wasn’t sure of much of anything, other that I didn’t want Carla to go out of her way anymore than she had. And that I had to get my kid home ,by any means necessary.
Thirty minutes later; at 103rd Street, we exited the train. I climbed the two flights of the stairs. Not too bad. I’d managed nicely. However I’d forgotten that the downtown train came into the station one full level lower than the uptown tracks I usually traveled to and from, home. Another two flights? Yikes.
So I set out, performing a steady climb like a Sherpa, first one set of steps, then the second set, trudging up the final angled levels, without the benefit of stopping or even pausing on the last few steps until I reached the cool, clean air of the street, covered in a warm lacquer of sweat. A wet shirt contest with a contestant of one.
As luck would have it, the one lazy doorman the building employees was behind the desk. He did not move from towards us. I did not open my mouth to ask for assistance. By then I could see the elevator, the salvation that it would deliver I, and my child to: the chilled air of the apartment. “Thank God I didn’t punk out and turn off the AC,” I thought as the lift doors closed.
The beast of the car seat in my left hand, a over stuffed diaper bag in the right, a twenty and a half pound baby strapped to my chest, if I did the weight calculation—even four days later—I’d probably weep at the total.
I pushed the door open, dumping the car seat in the hallway, dreaming of the glass of cold white wine to come, after Miss J’s bedtime, I remembered, a few weeks back to when Julia and I were at my Mom’s in Michigan. Inside the cool, musty interior of the garage in Redford, I’d nearly crumbled in a fight with that car seat. Today I’d powered on. I must have known, deep down, somewhere, it was just the beginning.
The Second Coming of Mothers Day
Posted: July 3, 2011 Filed under: Single African American Mother By Adoption, Single Motherhood, Uncategorized | Tags: International Adoption, Miscarrige, Mothers and Daughters Leave a comment »As the nation celebrated its birth, for me, it was a day of remembrance, realization and warm reality. Eight years ago, I, at a little over three months, miscarried a pregnancy, a common enough fact that affects 20 percent of women. My loss, discovered during a routine exam, became my personal 9/11. In short order, my relationship of three years died too. In many ways, like the towers that once rose above New York Harbor, the life I knew and the one I hoped to live crumbled within that black, idol sonogram machine’s screen.
The news set in motion a long, lingering, march towards motherhood, which on paper had ended on February 4th, the snowy day that I brought Julia to the United States. However, emotionally and psychically, the road ended today, Independence Day, the due date of the baby I carried long ago, a birthday we never celebrated. Together.
Today I look at myself with eyes I usual reserved for Julia, a glow of awe, honor and reverence, relieved to have arrived in the promise land of parenthood.
Let the cherry bombs pop, and the silver sparklers shimmer and the arching light flowers bloom across my heart.
And to think I came so close to missing it.
David Copperfield Goes to Hell
Posted: June 17, 2011 Filed under: Childhood Development, International Adoption, Single African American Mother By Adoption, Single Motherhood, Uncategorized, War Leave a comment »As the wait to bring home a child from Ethiopia became more and more elastic, stretching from six to nine months, to twelve, then eighteen, and finally reaching a whooping twenty-four months (two years for those of you who do not measure time in thirty day increments like waiting parents-to-be, and prisoners held in solitary confinement) the adoption agency, at one of those month juncture’s, suggested I move my application to their newly formed program in The Congo.
The pluses were numerous: the wait far shorter. The fee quite smaller. The children just as needy, just as brown-skinned, and almond-eyed as me.
A few days later, over drinks with my good friend Beryl, under a veil of tears weighing me down I listened as my news producer pal—way more plugged into the world and its woes than a heartsick writer who’d give just about anything to finally, at last, become a mother— spoke flatly over her glass of chilled Pinot Gris.
“The Congo is different than Ethiopia. The children are orphans not because of famine, not AIDS, but war. And that makes them very different.”
Now a year and a half later, I am so grateful that I listened to her with my mind, not my heart.
Please click on the link below and read the heartbreaking tale of orphans in The Congo from The New York Times courtesy of Nicholas Kristof’s blog featuring Amy Ernst.
Notes From a Young American in Congo:
Orphans on the Edge
http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/27/notes-from-a-young-american-in-congo-orphans-on-the-edge/?scp=5&sq=adoption&st=cse
The Slippery Slide of the Sippy Cup
Posted: June 14, 2011 Filed under: Childhood Development, Single African American Mother By Adoption, Single Motherhood | Tags: Child Delevleopment Leave a comment »The text arrived in the middle of my work day. An innocent click, and it launched. And, in second. A sea of woe and excitement rose from my heart. The image was clear. Julia, lying on her back, drinking from a cup, a lime green sippy cup. And just like that, she’s growing up. (Just this morning she ripped the long, rectangular, wooden, hand-painted plaque of colorful, folksy Ethiopia angels from her bedroom wall, hung within reach of her tiny arm’s because of Julia’s new big girl bed.) Well, bigger girl bed. And now the sippy cup had landed.
The Sippy Cup has Landed
It’s official I thought studying the image, she’s leaving babyhood.
Sure ,I realize of the few jobs babies have other than eating and pooping, growing is an 24/7, dedicated proposition. But as a single baby mama, there a slight, bitter coating of sadness over such highlights, the updates that come from your nanny regarding your child, your very own natural wonder.
I wanted to believe that my role as Julia’s mom was to serve as top guide, the chef introducer of all things new. Yet, as a new world voyager, like Columbus, I didn’t always arrive where I’d planned, on my schedule. As a single-baby-mama-wage earner I give and get all the glory, and all the responsibly. And as much as I would like to believe I am the Mistress of the Universe, the universe does not work on my schedule. And neither, it seems, does my daughter’s developmental progress, which often first appears, outside the office hours of 10 to 6, Saturdays and Sundays.
