Birth! Day!

So far,

I've snuggled with my family (sleepy kids had to be persuaded),

had a Bossa Nova-fueled workout untrammeled by school dropoffs (the university is--so conveniently--on a midterm break), 

had my hair washed by Big A, 

napped,  

had a midday cocktail, 

helped Big A bake my birthday cupcakes (I dropped the paper cups into the cupcake pans),

decided to abandon the Joyce Carol Oates after 20 pages in (NOT birthday reading!),

picked out a color to paint the hallways (which may be revised post cocktail buzz), 

danced,

had a discussion about Mos Def,

can't wait to pick up the kids, 

and get sushi (and maybe sake?).

I haven't even opened presents yet :). The thing is... on any day--and even today--just one of the things on that list would make me as happy as I can get. (Joyce Carol Oates and Mos Def respectfully excepted.)

_

She was there

Today started off fairly normally and then I ended up at dinner with Jennifer Finney Boylan.

Back up: I should say that meeting her wasn't entirely unexpected--I have after all planned to take my class along to hear her talk for, lo, all of two months. Jenny is amazing. She is the author of She's not There Anymore and the forthcoming Stuck in the Middle With You (her schtick--she says, self-deprecatingly ignoring her writing skills and her jaw-dropping experiences --is naming her books after bad pop music).

Trans experience is something that students frequently don't understand; a concept that becomes, and stays, intellectual--and so something that you just get or just can't wrap your head around. My admiration for Boylan has been mostly on a gut level--mostly for her courage and her sense of comedic timing, so I was so happy to see these translated into a great *show*. Jenny worked the audience: making them laugh with her, at her, making jokes about them, getting them to care about her, getting them to extend that interest and affection to all trans people, to all people. It was breathtakingly, heart-achingly beautiful.

She is so articulate about growing up as male and female also, parenting as father--and now--mother, that my question had to be about the way her parenting would differ if she were parenting daughters instead of sons. She knelt beside me in the audience as I put my question out (smirking, "this is just between us") and gave my question way more attention and honesty than it deserved.

So, when I was invited as a last-minute addition to the dinner table, I couldn't wait to accept. My students were all starry-eyed at the end of the talk; I can't wait to debrief with them on Tuesday.

Ananya

Princess NuNu,

thank you for finding every dragon in my bedroom

and telling them all

they couldn't stay.

Thank you for talking to all the snakes

and letting just the nice ones stay.

(But only after you made them promise to behave.)

(But actually, I don't want any of them.)

Thanks for agreeing with me

that you are an amazing, awesome NuNu.

("Yes!" You say, as if, "of course!"--

throwing your arms out to embrace this too.)

And thanks for tucking me in around 6 p.m.

It's cozy in bed.

_

No point

Rushed into shameful big-box store to buy a couple six-packs of Ensure. (Yes, Li'l A is back on the Ensure after I discovered looking for a lost form in his backpack that he hadn't actually been eating the lunches we'd packed for him. I couldn't even be that mad at him, because that's what I used to do, and the reason he does this is probably because my mother used to lament that I'd never understand how much i hurt her until I had a kid who refused to eat. Who knew my mom's curses would work! I drank Complan, my child drinks Ensure.)

But this story isn't about family. Not right away. While ringing up my Ensure, Anne, the cashier asks me my name and tells me that I look old enough to be her granddaughter. The granddaughter is 21. That's when I begin loving Anne ;). Then she asks me if I'm from India, and tells me she knows Hindi and rattles off several words in a flawless accent. I love her more now.

She tells me she's tired of English, and casually throws out--"I already have a couple of degrees in English so I want to learn a different language now." A couple of degrees. Wants to learn another language. Really love.

And that's when--rather symmetrically in our ephemeral relationship--she began to remind me of my Gadadoss grandmother also. The grandmother who didn't have a single college degree.

The grandmother who was tutored at home after menarche, was married at 16, had my mother at 17.

The grandmother who would be reading pulp fiction in English when I dropped in on her after classes at Stella. The grandmother who would then carefully put a bookmark in her book and put away the dictionary she'd been using to help her read. And the notebook that she'd used to log the words she'd looked up in the dictionary.

It feels strange to think that I won't be able to visit her on an India-trip anymore. I don't really even believe it.

_

The Speeches

I cannot
speak about this morning
I could not
speak this morning.

Black with bliss and
alone is early day.
Sky slides to light
after that I cannot talk.

Promises are spatial
words partial, outbid,
like unsexed spittle.
Words dare not bend.

Could I be more surprised
if the faces of my children
had changed at end of night--
I cannot talk.

I cannot.
Some words have wings
monstrous and clamorous,
wild as swans

that alight, fly awry
If I had no need for words
for all words to wait, watch
I would never want at all.
_

Party, Pythons

Partied really late last night. I got a cheek-ache from long stretches of laughing while playing "Dialogue." (Making fantastically fake dialogue to conversations too far away to hear. It's fairly rude, but Big A always does his in a British accent so it sounds posh.)

N drove us home--we should go back and retrieve the Mini from his house on "the only hill in Ohio" sometime today.

Although, there's not much of "today" left; I got out of bed at 2:30. Big A had taken the kids out to breakfast and then haircuts, leaving me free to finish reading my book in bed, take a shower, and yearn for my family. (Usually they're around so much, I never get to yearn.)

I haven't seen Big A since early this morning when we woke up with match-y nightmares. Big A's was about a python that had spawned a baby python on his alarm clock on the nightstand. Mine was about a big, rubbery, lipstick-y mouth called an "a-poco-lips." Get it? Get it? My subconscious makes jokes that are as stoopid as my awake jokes are!

_

Plan B: Use Wills

Did the grown up thing and signed our wills today. Then I was in a bad mood for the rest of the day. All our year-long vacillations on the appropriate/possible/perfect guardians for our kids in case both of us should die together were missing. I already feel the need to rewrite it.

For now we're sticking with Plan A, which is to not die until the kids are old enough. And given how I still need my parents all the time, that could be a long, long time.

In the meantime, Baby A's decided that dinner is Banana Stew and Apple Fries. Li'l A's look of panic (we've been letting Baby A's imagination dictate the form of dinner for a few weeks) will keep me in heart-healthy guffaws for a while and the hippy healthfulness of the menu should only help.
_