love from leila

angst

2009-08-25T13:33:00.011-07:00

I was lying in bed during Shaun's lunchtime. He comes home to eat lunch with us, and we all really like it. Marzieh is seven months old now, but every time I try to feed her "food" (baby applesauce) she vomits. It had been two weeks since her last "meal" and I wanted to see if she'd eat any more, because she does like the flavour of it, whether the teaspoon of apple mush would stay down.

It didn't. She vomited, over the bib and her onesie and the blanket she was sitting on. And I'm tired. Last night I barely slept, and this morning Marzieh woke up early, without warning, a banshee cry. She almost never cries. She wouldn't stop crying until I opened my eyes permanently. I wish I were joking: it was the one thing I didn't want to do to comfort her, and it was the only thing she needed. She kept on looking at my face with fear, I noticed through heavy-lidded eyes as I cuddled her, patted her back, shushed and sung prayers to her---crying at my unrecognizable face. Was she wondering where my soul went?

So I put all the soiled things in the washing machine, and then the fridge had a bit break off of it earlier, so Shaun took the baby out to the front office to deal with that, and I just threw myself onto my pillow and started to try to sleep while he was on his lunchbreak and could be with the baby.

I was so angry. Just, angry that Marzieh still wakes up several times a night, sometimes to eat. And it would help me if she didn't need me for all her nutritional needs any more, and I want her to start being able to eat things. Gnaw on a piece of bread, digest a teaspoon of pureed apple. Maybe she would sleep through the night if she were more full. It's frustrating that she doesn't.

And sleep. I think Shaun's getting to a point where all he hears is my complaints. And I try not to be only about the things to complain about, but when I'm this tired, it's hard. I think I need to be sympathized with. I want to hear that someone is sorry I haven't slept in seven months.

Part of it is my fault, even though I've tried different things, but I can't sleep immediately. It's always taken me a while, but now it takes hours. It's exhausting.

This lunchtime I was lying on the bed, seething and feeling hard-done-by. Not moving so I wouldn't disturb the comfort of the cool pillow against my cheek. And all of a sudden I remembered a smell of sodden earth. Camellia leaves and hedge clippings. Being so tired and angry, misunderstood and with my life controlled by another, had taken my olfactory memory back more than ten years.

There were the small pink flowers on my bedroom's cornflower-blue wallpaper. My single bed was wedged into the corner, the bay window to my right. I used to smoke out the windows and imagine that my parents didn't notice the smell. Or the butts I would insouciantly drop to the ground. Once my father was gardening outside my bedroom, and he called to me through the open window, "Leila, could you please put your banana peels in a rubbish bin? They don't look good lying whole among the daffodils."

I had a rough woollen blanket, mustard and persimmon colours, and I lay in bed reading "Crime and Punishment", crying through "A Tale of Two Cities", and trying not to let the sting in my eyes cloud my reading, out loud, of "Macbeth". If I ever did any real homework, I have no recollection of it. And I know I was often angry, at the world, my life. Others dictated the terms, and no one told me that they were sorry about things.

Marzieh is my choice in life. I choose this baby, I choose this life of deep sleeplessness and gummy smiles, pear-scented breath, a warm dry hand moving up and down my forearm while she nurses.

Remembering the smell of Wellington's wind---salty even up in the hills of Karori---and the refuge of my bed's cool pillows against hot and wet cheeks, I slept easily today. A little nap, just half an hour during my husband's lunchtime. I reminisced, I delved into the memory of childhood smells, the anger leaked away, and I rested.

taking some pictures

2009-08-24T23:01:00.002-07:00

If my camera is pointed away from my daughter, then is it turned to the skies? You betcha.

our hood

2009-07-09T22:21:00.004-07:00

Shaun, Marzieh, and I are chilling on the couch over the weekend, tickling her, letting her bite on our fingers, reading her stories, and making up songs to our sweet little babe. It's hot, but for the summer breeze we've opened our apartment's windows.

All of a sudden, a tweenage boy yells out the following---twice---to his friend at the top of his lungs outside our window: "F*** off, you homo!"

I turn to Shaun, and communicate all my distaste for this, as well as my sense of frustration for our lack of ability to protect our baby's ears, through a LOOK.

Shaun interprets this LOOK as though I'm seeking translation and deadpans quietly, "Apparently there's a homo outside."

That man.

even my subconscious is faithful

2009-05-10T22:08:00.002-07:00

a couple of nights ago, i dreamt that i was married to a man who is one of our mutual friends, a great person, someone we haven't seen in years.

and in my dream, i was disappointed.

when i woke up, the most salient part of the dream for me was the bit where i was grumbling to myself, "Why can't I be married to Shaun?"

foreign humour

2009-05-07T18:05:00.002-07:00

Leila: "Shaun, do you want to host a French exchange student this summer?"

Shaun: "Why? You want to have that international experience, that certain 'I don't know what'?"

these can be added to the post below

2009-05-03T09:47:00.011-07:00

Talking with someone who was complaining emphatically about a new, local politician. "What has he done?" I asked, interested to hear details of babies on spikes or whatever other version of inhumanity it was that could cause this particular brand of dislike. "Well, he's GAY. And he's given a LOT of his own money to the Democratic party."

The girls across from us had a "make out" party on Friday night. They had a list of the rules of the party still hanging outside their door when we made our way to the Ridvan celebration the next morning: Singles only; Don't get too "frisky" (i.e., "NO HAVING SEX!!!!!!!!!!!!!"); Must participate in games; Brush teeth.

(I just read these two things to Shaun, and he asked, "Oh, you didn't take a picture of the list? They took it down."
"Maybe I should just ask them for a copy of it."
" 'Hi. We're thinking about having one of those parties of our own. Couples only; NO GAYS.' ")

The first week we were here, we stayed in a lovely hotel. Next door to a Hooters.

things i want to remember about our first days in this place

2009-05-01T13:45:00.008-07:00

Suburbs of Denver

How much I'm enjoying this book.

The light brown chihuahua, belonging to one of our apartment neighbours, that accidentally got let out by a workman and had the whole complex out looking for it.

The name of the chihuahua: "Layla".

Hearing people, strangers, call out my name all day long outside my windows, weirding me out.

"Hey mamma, you're busy with baby, huh!" called out to me by a fellow resident as I headed up to our apartment instead of joining a dog-searching team.

The lonesome wail of a coyote in the field adjacent to us when some fire trucks approached our neighbourhood.

Seeing a tiny brown wild bunny the size of a guinea pig hop into a gutter under my feet when I went to check my mail today.

Asking the front office about the dog, hearing that it was eaten by the coyote, the remains of its tiny body found nearby, and that the bunny I had seen would be dessert.

Everything on every menu contains cheese, and it all comes with cheese or cheese sauce on the side. The same thing could be said for cream.

Upon meeting our baby, a lady who was showing us some apartments exclaimed, "I've never met a Marzieh before!"

A woman going for a walk, saw me applying sunscreen to Marzi's legs kicking in her carseat, stopped to coo at the baby and chat, started talking to us about the huge telecommunications business across the road that had mismanaged its finances and was now practically bankrupt, turned to me and said: "I mean, they made such a mess of it, you and I, as women, we could have run it better!"

The woman telling us that the apartment complex we were interested in was much better than the one she lives in, saying, "The police get called out to that place far less than they do where I am!"

"'Get me out of these blue clothes, mommy!'", said to me by good-humoured woman behind the cash register at the petrol station, about my daughter (wearing blue).

Getting Shaun's soda for free at the petrol station, because the woman thought Marzieh was totally adorable and Shaun was a "good daddy" for carrying Marzi in the ergo.

Getting 25% off the price of our lunch at a local restaurant as a "welcome to the neighbourhood".

A woman walking towards me on the same pavement when I went out for a walk with Marzi (in the babyhawk) switched sides, saying as we passed each other, "Let's keep that baby away from the curb!".

The lining of my nose creates a new topography every day; every morning I have to blow my nose because of the high, dry air here. There is so much bodily fluids (are? many? fluid?) leaking out of me through my nostrils. I will say no more.

The eternity between moving in here on Saturday and our internets being turned on on Thursday. TAAAAAAAAAKE FOREEEEEEEEEVER.

"My life was stupid. ... And dumb. ... And I wanted something cool."---A Baha'i in our community, new friend, on how he became a Baha'i.

Moving into a kitchen that---impossible though it may seem---is smaller than our old kitchen in Seattle. The one where I was using a bookcase for pots-and-pans storage.

Seeing this typo in our co-sleeper: "MISE EN GARED."

Going for an extended drive one day to ensure that Marzieh got a good rest when she fell asleep in the car, and accidentally suddenly finding ourselves in Boulder.

The number of bogans on the street, a sight unseen since I was last in Wainouiomata circa 1997. Weirdly, this area is a haven for strip-malls, McTownHouses, and bogans.

Not being asked where I'm from.

Inadvertently offending the two women who were showing us the apartment complex that we now live in: The first one was cooing over Marzi, and the second one said, "Yeah, she has four kids!" I wanted to say something about how, considering how much she was ga-ga over Marzieh, I wouldn't be surprised if she had even more children in the future. What actually came out of my mouth was, "And it looks like there's another one on the way!" I blame sleep deprivation.

The second instance of offence was when the second woman, after half an hour of chat and showing rooms and general interaction, asked me where I come from. I happily told her, and for some reason continued to say how much I appreciate not being asked where I come from, which is generally what I've found to be the case in the Denver area. I think I was trying to make a point about how she was the first person to ask me, and how it was nice that it's not the first thing that everyone asks. Can sleep-dep cover this situation too?

After a week of clear skies and sunshine, waking up on Monday morning to snow.

How much Marzieh's second cousins (Shaun's first cousins) loved on her at the memorial service for Marzi's great-grandma's husband.

"Her name's Matilda, right?", asked of me by a distant, older, relative about Marzieh's appellation.

The number of golf jokes that I didn't get during the eulogies.

I forgot that there was a pocket-knife, a swiss-army thing, in my purse, which I took as carry-on luggage on the plane from Seattle. My green card indicates that I have the same country of origin as Osama bin Laden. No one stopped me. I found the knife a week later when we were unpacking all our stuff into our new place. I thought for the schvorteen-teenth time about how America really needs to learn about security from Israel. Also about how glad I am that security at the airport made me take off my sandals.

The loveliness of having Shaun walk home to have lunch with us every day.

The guy who connected our internets, a sunbeaten tattooed man called Robert, telling me that he has swine flu. ... Ha, ha.

Super Target.

shaun's version of a persian dad joke

2009-04-07T10:27:00.009-07:00

Shaun (preparing a bowl of lettuce for me to eat while I nurse Marzieh): Are you sure you don't want anything else with this? Maybe some carrot sticks?

Leila: No thanks. I like it as is.

Shaun: You're welcome garaban shaw.*

Leila: Pardon?

Shaun: You're welcome garaban shaw.

Leila: I don't get what you're saying?

Shaun: You said "I like it, aziz."**

* He meant "Ghorbane-shoma".***

** Aziz = "dear" in Farsi. And you can't imagine how much I laughed at this joke. No, you literally can't imagine, because my laughter, it lasted for several days.

*** I know that spelling out the joke takes away from it somewhat, but I also know that not everyone has a working knowledge of Iranian tarof, so I'll translate: "May my life be sacrificed for you", which is often used in place of "mate".

lovely, lovely words

2009-04-02T10:46:00.002-07:00

sequacious \sih-KWAY-shuhs\, adjective:

1. proceeding smoothly and regularly
2. disposed to follow, especially slavishly

sanguine \SANG-gwin\, adjective, noun;
Also used as a noun, red iron-oxide crayon used in making drawings:

1. cheerfully optimistic, hopeful, or confident
2. reddish; ruddy
3. (in old physiology) having blood as the predominating humor and consequently being ruddy-faced, cheerful, etc.
4. blood-red; red
5. Heraldry. a reddish-purple tincture.
6. a red iron-oxide crayon used in making drawings

osculation \os-kyuh-LAY-shuhn\, noun:

The act of kissing; also: a kiss.

velleity \veh-LEE-uh-tee; vuh-\, noun:

1. The lowest degree of desire; imperfect or incomplete volition.
2. A slight wish or inclination.

propinquity \pruh-PING-kwih-tee\, noun:

1. Nearness in place; proximity.
2. Nearness in time.
3. Nearness of relation; kinship.

spoonerism \SPOO-nuh-riz-uhm\, noun:

The transposition of usually initial sounds in a pair of words.

and some unusually timely ones ...

bilk \bilk\, verb, noun:

1. to defraud; cheat
2. to frustrate
3. to escape from; elude
4. a trick; fraud; deceit.
5. a cheat, swindler

pinchbeck \PINCH-bek\, noun, adjective:

1. an alloy of zinc and copper used to imitate gold in jewelry-making; by extension, something counterfeit; an imitation
2. not genuine; fake

defalcate \di-FAL-keyt\, verb:

to steal or misuse money or property entrusted to one's care.

not as much time nor brain to read these days

2009-02-25T11:31:00.002-08:00

can you believe i'm a mother?

2009-01-13T21:20:00.006-08:00

shaun and i are now parents to a tiny little baby girl called Marzieh Eleanor. she was born yesterday afternoon.

Marzieh Gail is one of my favourite writers, and shaun has been calling the fetus "Zezia" as a nickname for months now. her middle name is for a friend of mine i met at the Baha'i World Centre, a person i think is one of the most admirable women alive (as well as one of my favourite), and it's also a lovely coincidence that several of Jane Austen's heroines---whose oeuvre of work i read at least once a year---are called Eleanor too (e.g., Dashwood, Tilney).

our daughter is extremely long, with feet and hands already the length of her father's. i know i should be sleeping when she is, but i can't help but do things like eat. shower. write on this blog.

speaking of her father, somebody has been falling in love with a certain baby over the past day and a half.

childbirth was childbirth. everything went exactly as i was hoping not to, and at the same time everything went exactly perfectly and i couldn't have dreamed of a more excellent situation if i'd tried.

i managed not to swear, but shaun says that i told him to BACK OFF more than once. it's just unbelievable to me that this is the way human propagation works. and that anyone has done this more than once. i tried to remember to give birth using my 'monkey brain', but----just---wow. my body was consumed with endless, consuming pain that made me cry pitifully to the nurse and shaun Please. Please Help Me.

but, oh my goodness, having that baby placed on my stomach seconds after she was born; looking down and hooking an arm around her purple, quivering body; and hearing the glorious sound of her lamblike, vibrato cry as i did so: my life was changed. THIS IS OUR BABY. i think i thanked everybody in the room. i probably told them I LOVE YOU FROM THE BOTTOM OF MY HEART.

oh, Baha'u'llah, thank you for this gift.

and thank you, so many of you, for your loving and enthusiastic comments here. i have loved reading them, and i hope to respond to them ... at some point.

we have some invites left to her private baby blog, and if you would like to view it, please let me know by writing me at lovefromleila at yahoo dot co dot uk.

yep, still pregnant.

2009-01-08T14:56:00.003-08:00

i might have something different to say tomorrow, though.

prayers, please! thanks very much.

sleepless in seattle

2009-01-08T14:50:00.002-08:00

junk food junkie

2008-12-15T12:26:00.003-08:00

i eat some potato chips: they stay down.

i eat a dinner of cooked vegetables with hot millet: it doesn't stay down.

i eat a bowl of sweet cereal: it stays down.

i eat a breakfast of brown-bread toast and marmite: it doesn't stay down.

i have an egg-nog latte with a bite of brownie: they stay down.

THIS BABY IS TRYING TO TELL ME SOMETHING.

because i can never sleep

2008-12-12T10:50:00.013-08:00

pukey talk

2008-12-05T13:20:00.011-08:00

at the beginning of this pregnancy, i was hit with two months of feeling like death warmed up ALL THE TIME. truly, i didn't know that it was possible to feel that sick, even when i stopped smoking and had migraines for a month and i cried because i was in so much pain and the closest i got to sympathy was the suggestion that i might have brain cancer.

i didn't know how lucky i was to not have read any pregnancy/childbirth literature in those days.

dear, dear shaun, who---among too much else---listens to me complain and who reads to the baby (still inside the belly), and who has on more than one occasion made a late-night trip to the supermarket for chocolate eclairs, who rubs my back and who makes us dinner, and who thanks me for looking after our child, also leaves my breakfast next to my bed when he leaves for work in the mornings at 6:15.

this is because, after a several-month hiatus, i once again have the morning sickness. thank goodness it is pretty much restricted to the mornings. according to my weigh-ins at the clinic, i've even been losing weight, which i don't really believe, but whatever. i'll take weight loss wherever i can find it, even if it's caused by out-of-date equipment and the vagaries of nurses. p.s. i'm full-term now and could give birth any day. who else is freaked out by that?

if i try to get out of bed before forcing something down my throat, my body will protest at the tablespoon or so of hydrochloric acid that swills around in my cramped stomach, which organ forces it up and out with what feels like maximum unecessary pain and even, if i'm very lucky, a treat like a burned tongue i can carry around in my mouth for the next day or two.

the physicality of pregnancy, the pure EMBODIEDNESS of it, is something i was not at all prepared for and has put all prayers into a new context: the actual world.

since those early months, i have been reading parent-centric stuff, including my favourite and must-read-if-you're-thinking-of-reproducing, "Ina May Gaskin's Guide to Childbirth". this book is SO empowering and calming and helpful. it definitely advocates home-/natural births as being the main way to go, but at the same time i felt like it refrained from much (if not all) of the prejudice and judgement of other writing that shares the same opinions. at least it provides reasons, rather than simply opinion, for the positions that it holds on this subject. really, REALLY, read this book if you are parentally inclined.

having said that, however, there is one thing that i remember reading in this book that i wish i had not, because my brain reminds me of it at the inopportune times of when it is hanging over a toilet bowl, i.e., every morning.

along with all all sorts of tips about how to be physically relaxed and confident during birthing, it points out correlations between parts of our bodies, like how if your jaw is relaxed then you can't be physically tense elsewhere if you know what i mean, and the author also says at one point something to the effect of,

"If you're not gracious/graceful about puking, then you will probably find yourself tensing up during childbirth too." [emphasis/imprecision mine.]

from this i have concluded: when throwing up think ballet. my body should, perhaps, arabesque as i hold up my hair with one hand and the cistern with the other.

i know that Ina May probably didn't say it like that, but it's TOTALLY how i remember it being in the book, and my brain has for whatever reason chosen to fixate on this particular combination of phrase and concept WHICH IS NOT EVEN ONE OF THE MORE HELPFUL TIPS, so this whole thing has led to this ridiculous situation of my regular matutinal, face-first visits to the toilet being accompanied by this internal, paradoxical, screaming directive:

"REMEMBER TO VOMIT GRACEFULLY! RETCH GRACIOUSLY! BE GRACEFUL! AND GRACIOUS! IT SHOULD LOOK EFFORTLESS!! OTHERWISE LABOUR WILL HURT!!!!"

i needed to get this off my chest, but ... please. don't internalize and then do this to yourself. if for no other reasons than IT IS NOT EFFORTLESS, and i can guarantee you NO ONE IS LOOKING.

two new words that i am very fond of

2008-11-23T10:16:00.001-08:00

horripilation \haw-rip-uh-LAY-shuhn; ho-\, noun:

the act or process of the hair bristling on the skin, as from cold or fear; goose flesh.

Lucullan \loo-KUHL-uhn\, adjective:

rich; magnificent and luxurious.

the sun goes down real early around here

2008-11-15T16:25:00.006-08:00

pregnancy brain

2008-11-04T11:55:00.008-08:00

DELAYED GRATIFICATION

two weeks ago at our Infant CPR and Safety class, the instructor pointed out that, should the baby stop breathing, the rate of the compressions we perform on its chest should match the tempo of that most famous of the Bee Gees' songs, "Staying Alive".

two nights ago with shaun i tried to revise the CPR procedure out loud, without practicing mouth-to-mouth on a pillow or teddy bear, and when i got to the bit where i should try to remember the tempo of "Staying Alive" when i'm pumping the baby's chest, my voice petered out.

"Wait---Shaun. It's 'Staying Alive'. Staying. Alive. For a baby that you're trying to KEEP. ALIVE. Geddit?"

"Yes, Leila. Two weeks ago."

TIME TO VOTE FOR A NEW SET OF PRIORITIES

today, opening the internet, my first thought was "Why is Google promoting cloth nappies all of a sudden?"

while i'm awake in the middle of the night

2008-10-09T16:56:00.001-07:00

reminder to self

2008-10-08T11:23:00.002-07:00

"Speak thou no word of politics; thy task concerneth the life of the soul, for this verily leadeth to man's joy in the world of God. Except to speak well of them, make thou no mention of the earth's kings, and the worldly governments thereof. Rather, confine thine utterance to spreading the blissful tidings of the Kingdom of God, and demonstrating the influence of the Word of God, and the holiness of the Cause of God. Tell thou of abiding joy and spiritual delights, and godlike qualities, and of how the Sun of Truth hath risen above the earth's horizons; tell of the blowing of the spirit of life into the body of the world."

'Abdu'l-Baha, Selections from the Writings of 'Abdu'l-Baha, pp. 92-93

(thanks, sarah.)

time to add the possessive of "Palin" to MS Word?

2008-10-07T14:32:00.005-07:00

'In a final salvo against Palin, the 74-year-old ex-star picked up on Painless depiction of herself as a pitbull wearing lipstick and said she "implored" her not to compare herself to dogs.'

(click to enlarge.) from the SMH.

this reminds me of once when i was proofreading something for work and the spellcheck in Word had a problem with the name of a person mentioned in the document, so i was recommended to change the name to "Lunchmeat".

we're having a hermaphrodite

2008-10-07T11:27:00.003-07:00

so people---and i'll acknowledge they're ones we don't know very well---are doing this thing where they ask what the sex of our baby is, and then we tell them, and then they say something along the lines of "Awwww. Are you happy that it's a ______ ?"

shaun and i were discussing last night how this is totally a weird question for us. do people actually admit that they're unhappy with the sex of their incoming child? is it another way of asking whether the sex in reality matches the sex of their expectations? and how they're coping with that difference? we don't know.

now, i know that some people who read this don't want to know what the sex of the baby is yet, so i'm going to phrase shaun's proposed response to this question with just one of the two sex options, BUT IT DOESN'T MEAN that this necessarily corresponds to the actual sex of the enchilada. there are only (pretty much) two options, though, right? i can't be more cryptic than this without sacrificing effect in the delivery.

anyway, shaun's suggesting that the next time someone asks us "Are you happy that it's a girl?" we could answer, "Well, actually, no: we were hoping for a boy, so we've just decided to raise her male."

home again

2008-09-28T19:42:00.002-07:00

Scene: This morning, over breakfast, in our bed in Seattle.

"Shaun, you drove from Denver to Seattle in two days. That's quite a feat."

"Actually, it's quite a foot ... the other one just kind of sat there."

august reading

2008-09-22T09:37:00.005-07:00