The Teeth of Night

People laugh when i refer to my son as a Were-baby.
I laugh too.
It's a joke I made up because the day I went to the hospital to be induced was December 11th, and it was 60 degrees farenheit. I remember stepping out the back door with my hoodie and coat on and realizing I probably didn't need the latter. I was anxious, and I stood on the porch, while Beard finished packing up things and tending to the details, a talent with which he is exceptionally gifted.
I watched as a long, slow tendril of fog unfurled across our driveway and spread thickly over the backyard. The sky was a flannel kind of grey, and if I had been inside looking out I would have expected it to be a good twenty degrees chillier. In fact I had, hence the coat.
I placed a hand below my bulging abdomen, and felt the taut skin stretched to capacity over the overripe moon of my belly, and I remembered the phrase, "werewolf weather" a term we used anytime the fog was of this particular quality and the air felt somehow wrong.
I hoped it wasn't an indication that things were going to go poorly in the delivery room.
Then Beard came out, and we got in the car to drive toward the future.

When Bastian was born, it was between moons. It wasn't full, in fact, I think it had been full a week earlier, and I'd been disappointed that the celestial event hadn't tugged my stubborn uterus into action, but just the same, as I lay in a daze in the early hours of Saturday morning, with my newborn son clinging to my chest, I reached a hot, pink finger down to stroke the backs of his perfect, folded little ears, and noticed a fine layer of black hair coating them. There were similar stripes of this fur on the backs of his shoulders, where feathers might be if he had wings. Beard laughed at them, and I did too, but secretly, I repeated to myself, "werewolf weather".

Six months (and a little bit) later it is a full moon in Bastian's birth sign of Sagittarius. It is also the summer solstice. The shortest nights of the year are passing by as quickly as bright yellow sheets on a post it calendar that we tear off with sweaty abandon, crumple and toss, not caring in the heat if they make it to the trash basket. These days of summer are so forgettable in their miasma of pollen in its ochre death throes, the New England meteorological disposition making good on its humid reputation, and the nights are so fevered and the stars so bright, they make sleep a kind of brief attempt at respite from the burning blue flame of a midday sky. Night is a navy tongue that lashes briefly across the earth, searing with salt crystals, and then retracts so quickly, we small animals have no chance for the long consideration of the peppermint midnights of winter, or even the smoky, pensive twilights of fall.

Here, inside these days that are millennia long, and nights that are crackles and flashes of darkness, my baby boy is growing his first teeth.
Long gone is the black fur of his birth. The down rubbed off in his second bath, and I didn't even noticed its disappearance. Teeth are another story. Their entrance is fraught and preempted by months of struggle and discomfort. Indeed, we have yet to see a whitecap break the surface, but Bastian has been drooling and chewing for months now, growing slowly in fervor until we have reached this point in his transformation where there are only brief flashes of respite, when he eats or sleeps, brief and teasing as those swipes of night we get in this early season, and the rest of his waking hours are spent squirming and gnawing on anything he can get his hands on. His pudgy fists clenched like claws around any object he can lift, always straining, always pulling, always working toward bringing the thing to his mouth in the effort of seeking relief from the eruptions working their way to fruition inside his gums.

Alone in the wee hours of the brief night, when he stirs and quiets himself, and I, being the adult, cannot find sleep as readily available as exhaustion would have you believe, I search the internet for possible ways to soothe him, for symptoms I can compare to his, for reassurance that the bairn is experiencing a typical rite of passage.

Only page after page of testimonials, diatribes, and dialogues between mothers reveals over and over that the first teeth a baby breaks are always the two in the front, either bottom or top, making for that hilarious and precious kind of pudgy, hairless, gopher look that is so adorable in a largely pink, and harmless infant smile. And Bastian is not cutting his front teeth. Those, in fact, are noticeably not a source of discomfort in any way.
Instead, when I slide my hot pink finger into his jaws, I feel the gleaming point of an incisor working desperately to come through the top right gumline, and diagonally across from it, on the bottom left, its mate struggles to break the surface in a bulging lump of flesh with the telltale bud of sharp, new bone, a translucent white beneath.

I lie awake in the brief snatches of time when the moon is wide and watching through our window, and I let my werebaby child chew harmlessly on my hand in his sleep, wondering when the change will happen, when the elements will align, and that first shard of bone breaks out of its pink prison, and draws blood.

The Mythical She

Who is this mythical She?

The one who the 80's held up on a platform, shoulder pads and crisp waterfall bangs, diane keaton in a box suit selling applesauce to spite James Spader, boom, this baby's got fangs...
Who is SHE?
The once overachieving college student with a 3.8 GPA and an eating disorder, and bruises on her back from where she doesn't know how to lie down anymore
without shivering.

Who IS she?
And What does she do now that the roles she fought so hard again are suddenly her definition
and she doesn't want that definition
like the cross fit yoga mom infantry
surging across the horizen with their SUV strollers all looking each other up and down to see
whose spandex is bunching here
and whose latte cost more
and whose eye bags are bigger
and whose baby has the colic worse
and which of them  might have sneaked some gluten when the rest of the group wasn't looking?

Does she have an instagram account
she can be taken into account for?

Can I recognize the filter she used to make herself look less tired
and more productive
her house a little more expensive
her bowl of food a little more appetizing
her child a little more precious
her slip of the tongue
her forced ubiquitous sharing
her contrived colloquialisms
filling her and filing her into the boxes she once tore apart with the back of a hammer
in a room filled with sawdust and iron filings on mister america's promise of a dime coming back
as long as she pursued her dreams in an equitable manner.

Once
she was locked in a space
padded with expectation
she convinced herself she was mad
and the doctor reassured
HER
that she could swallow
she could
swallow
she
could
swallow
down her insecurities
this pill
those fears
and anything else
he might offer her
in exchange for
a good
night's sleep.

who is THIS mythical she?
The gossiping mongrel
breathing wine vapor through lipstuck teeth
and veloured decolletage
thumbing her mental lexicon for the
hip
hipp
hippest
build my sisters up
and tear them down
as I pick myself apart
brick by brick
because nobody likes a BRaggart woman
nobody likes a
happy woman
nobody likes
a woman
to be loud unless she's laughing.

And even then...
there are people who frown
who shake their heads because
mirth is the new girth
and obscenity is the new obesity
and feminism is the new diabetes
with every talking head
floating on a screen
saying hot button
push button
this button
words
like
I'm with her
I'm withher
I'm wither
I'm withered
down
by your demands
to the point of desiccation
to the point of being a woman sucked dry
by all that I can be
SHE.
Who
is she?
A destination?
A final resuscitation?
A last
gasp
at what we all wished when we were little
and someone told us we mattered.
Do you remember the last time someone looked you in the eyes and said
You matter?
Do you remember the last time someone
looked you in the eyes?
Do you remember the last time
you were able to look in the mirror and say your own name?

She
is walking down an alley and she wears your name on the back of her wrist in dayglo ink stamped on by a sweaty security guard with too much hair gel and she sees a shadow that is bigger than it should be and she is suddenly so filled with terror she can barely breathe.
But her mind
an anaerobic reflection of the day
is chastising her
for wearing that skirt, and those shoes.
You know the kind
the kind
you can't
run in.

She
is quitting her job because she can't come back from maternity leave because her child is still sick at 12 weeks, and because she doesn't even know if she's a person yet because so recently she was split in two like an atom, and we for some reason expect her to be the same afterwards,
as though someone can set off a nuclear bomb and see the same country reflected in their rear view.

She
is taking the misogyny in stride so that she can move up a pay grade, so she can get the corner office, so she can become partner and then, she is promising herself, then she won't take their shit anymore.

She
has a prayer for every student
has a picture of their homelife
has a portrait and a card and a drawing that they did on her wall
and she also has a bulletproof vest in the cupboard with the markers
just in case.

She is everywhere
and she is
you
and she is
me
and she is
STILL GOING TO BE HERE EVEN AFTER EVERYTHING YOU'VE DONE TO HER
AFTER EVERYTHING SHE'S BEEN THROUGH
AFTER BLOOD
AFTER WAR
AFTER POVERTY
AFTER FLEEING
AFTER VIOLENCE
AFTER VIOLATION
SHE
STILL
IS.

And always will be.
She
the mythical
SHE.

Ravenous Upon the Joy

So back when my little BooBoo had the colic real hard, my Dad and my Beard's Mother were leaning on me super heavily to give him rice cereal in his bottle. Or as my slightly still English Dad put it,
"Just a little pear puree, my darling. The young man is perfectly capable of handling it I'm sure."
This of course, during a time that the young man in question couldn't handle any presence of wheat in my breastmilk.
So here we are, three months later, colic firmly in the rear view mirror (THANK ALL THE DARK POWERS OF FISHER PRICE OR WHATEVER), and all the baby lit both electronic and printed states that BooBoo is ready for his maiden voyage on the good ship solid food as soon as he has reached the following milestones:

1. He is six months old or older
2. He is interested in food and actually grasps at what I am trying to eat
3. He can sit up unassisted

 In a little less than a week, we will have unlocked level number one.
He's been trying to hijack my fork since about four months old, so we're good on number two.
But number three is still not quite nailed down.
We can sort of hold ourselves up if Mummy is there to provide back support, but the moment she takes her hand away, we list somewhat violently to port or starboard, and the ship does not sail on.

So let's talk about Mama then. Since we might not be starting the pear puree for another couple of weeks, Baby is still exclusively breastfed (or as the cool kids call it ebf), and this means my little wad of cookie dough, who is pushing twenty pounds is SUCKING THE LIFE RIGHT OUT OF ME.
Seriously though.
Before I got pregnant, I considered myself somewhat of an amateur distance runner.
I used to start with three and four mile runs in March and by mid to late summer I would run a half marathon, then scale back down as the bad weather encroached, and take Late December to March off because eff New England's treacherous sidewalks, and eff treadmills in gyms. Eff gyms in general. I've never been able to get down with the spectacle, theatre in the round, bread and circuses bullshit of working out in a cement box with other showy-offy humans. We're grunting, heaving, pushing ourselves to do things that we probably shouldn't, and there's a good chance at least one bodily fluid is going to come out of us during the experience. Why the hell would I want to do this around other people, let alone in the bizarre stadium set up of the modern gym?
Anyway...I digress.
So around August, when I was in peak running form, I would turn into a metabolic wonder.
As a sluggish teenager with severely sedentary reading and brooding habits, I never experienced the joys of a speedy metabolism. I never had that insatiable teenage appetite, or anything like it. My idea of a big meal was setting up a full tea service, bringing it to my bedroom, and working through it over the course of Sunday afternoon while I did my homework. Yeah...I had so many friends.
So the first summer I ever ran real distance, my need for food surprised me.
I HAD to eat.
I had to eat a lot.
And I had to eat the right stuff. Lots of white carbs for running fuel, plenty of protein for building my muscles, and heaps of bananas for potassium and recovery.
Yeah...so cake and peanut butter mostly.

Of course, when I got pregnant, I shelved the running shoes, and paid very close attention to my diet.
I wanted to build my baby out of the best nutrients I could.

Which brings us to here.
Now.
I am juicing my melons at least once every two hours into this kid, and he is gaining steadily.
I am also incapable of satiating my hunger.
Sure, make all the delicious virgin sacrifice jokes you want, and anytime you want to swing by my place with a spit-roasted sixteen year old with an apple in his/her (I'm not picky) mouth, you are welcome, but seriously, I am dying here.
We theoretically start solids in two-ish weeks, after the doctor appointment, the okay go ahead, the sitting up without lolling over like a drunken old man, etc.
But for the next two weeks, how the hell do i survive?
Turns out eating without wheat is hella difficult.
Like all I want is pizza.
Always.

Oh, and dear national donut day,
go fuck yourself,
love,
me.

Shit that I never even craved while pregnant is sounding better and better because just in case you were wondering, smoothies last for about an hour, trail mix, unless eaten by the pound, also lasts about an hour.
I can consume a salad the size of my child with cheese and chicken and avocado, and about two hours later, I am crawling out of bed and scavenging the fridge for leftovers, often times I settle for a container of greek yoghurt with a generous spoonful of peanut butter stirred in. It's cold, creamy, and shuts up the tummy demons for about three hours, and then...well...then I'm creeping again like some kind of terrifying scavenger bird with a baby hanging off one boob.

Anyway, this is more of a whinge than a blog, and I guess a cry for help?
If anybody has the terrible misfortune of being celiac or has to be wheat free for other reasons, and has some magnificent secret they feel like sharing, please please please share along.
Because I'm one brazil nut from turning into a squirrel.