neighborhood watch

I used to spy with my little eye an older gentleman, walking up and down my street on his way to and from the market. His gait was painfully slow and difficult to watch. If I was outside as he passed, Blain would say hello, offer a pleasantry, and generally be neighborly in what now seems like an old-fashioned way. He once told me he was 77, but his body always seemed much more worn down than that. Often, when I saw him turning the corner on his way home, I would join him for the last hilly stretch of his trip, carrying his bags and offering an arm to lean on for the occasional breather. We would talk about the neighborhood, about how the students drive far too fast over the crest of the hill, and, naturally, about the nature of New England weather.

I didn't see him last winter. I kept hoping he would take up his walks again over the summer, but maybe I missed him. Now, the leaves are almost all down, and the weatherman is talking about snow squalls and flurries again. It's been almost a year, and I haven't seen my old friend.

halloween langoustine

kid in dirt

bananers suit him just fine

minute revelations

On a patch of dirt at the end of a bed of Swiss chard, Henry and his nine-month-old colleague, Mori, occupy themselves on a blanket while Mori's mom and I work to save the chard from the weeds. The two boys look one another in the eye, reach for each other's toys, and try to grab a handful of someone else's ear. They are incredibly busy noticing everything. The feeling of a fistful of grass, poking between fat fingers. Sun in the eyes. Dirt in your mouth. Every day, something new.

Because everything is new to them--it's such a basic fact, but I can hardly imagine what that must be like. Sometimes the realization stops me in my tracks. When a hawk screeches across the sky, right overhead, its wings stretch tip to tip. Both boys stop what they're doing and look up. Mouths hanging open, their heads follow the bird as it floats from west to east. So this is how the world works, they must be thinking.

products of my basement

Bursting with pride today at the sight of our crib and the story of its making on the nursery edition of Apartment Therapy. Burton spent so SO many hours in his basement workshop building, sanding, painting, sanding, painting, sanding, and painting that crib (then he sanded it again), it’s a crying shame the thing is hidden upstairs. Not so the Burgie, also featured on the site, created and designed by Burton and my mom, and the most pleasing piece of furniture in my dining room.

you say tomato, I say that just looks bad. real bad.

According to the parenting literature, Burton will develop his own ways of doing things with the baby--ways that will be different from mine, but not necessarily wrong for that reason alone. Just different. On the whole, I can buy that. But somehow I can’t bring myself to tell Burton he’s done a good job when he dresses Henry. I just . . . can’t. It is not right.

on open-ended questions

A woman sits on a city bench. “Spare some change?” she says, as passers-by pass by.

A man in a suit zags in her direction, digging into his pockets. “How much do you need?” he asks, rattling around his change.

“ . . . Uh, five dollars?”

from opposite ends of life

Melissa and I are having a bite to eat, the babies asleep in their car seats. At a table near us, two older gentleman have been keeping up a conversation at a good, healthy volume: old friends determined to maintain their gift of gab, despite a loss of hearing. Having finished their meal, they start making their way to the door, the ambulatory one pushing the other’s wheelchair. Their faces brighten as they approach us and our piles of babies.

“Oh!,” says the one on wheels, visibly excited. “There’s TWO of them! Are they twins?”

As I explain that they came from different owners, the twosome peer into Owen’s car seat, both craning to get a good look through their thick glasses.

“What’s the name?” wheelie asks.
“Owen,” Melissa says with a big smile.
Wheelie leans in close. “MAUREEN?” he shouts, to confirm.
“O-WEN,” Melissa says in his ear.
“HELEN!” he says. “A beautiful name! So how old is baby Maureen?”

Melissa does her best to respond with appropriate volume and the necessary hand gestures to illustrate ten weeks. Owen hardly notices, but the two gentlemen coo like a pair of pigeons over his tiny face. Eventually, they pull themselves away and wish us well, wide smiles on their weathered faces.

Henry and baby Maureen

ode to a baby

A bit of talcum
Is always walcum.

--Ogden Nash

fresh eggs

What I remember most vividly about having chickens as a kid are the smells: the dry hay, the poop, the heat of the coop in the California sun, and the sweet, cool dirt scratched up by our four hens. And most delicious: the smell of eggs before they’ve seen the inside of a refrigerator.

Popping my head into the barn of a local farm to snap these photos last weekend, I was slapped by the smell, all old and familiar.

babies babies everywhere

Three babes born to three friends in three weeks. Pictured here is their first meeting. I can’t say for certain, but I suspect they were all drunk.

Kinkos? KinkNO!

When I managed to find a parking spot within car-seat-hauling range of the Harvard Square Kinkos, I thought it was a good omen. But it must have been just a spot of plain-old dumb luck, because it all went to hell from there. Off we go:

I find the only Mac in a sea of PCs, only to discover that it costs 40 cents a minute, whereas PCs are a relative bargain at 25 cents a minute. “Why?” I ask.

“Because this is a design station,” I’m told, as if that clarifies the situation. I look down and notice that the “design station” comes equipped with a keyboard blackened by a thick patina of grime. (If Antiques Roadshow has taught the nation that a natural patina increases the value of a fine piece of furniture, it must be understood that there are exceptions to the rule.) “Let me know when you’re ready to print,” the guy adds.

It’s a simple enough task that I’m there for: Print my document on card stock. But I sit down and immediately start to panic about my per-minute fee. The baby helps things out by fussing. Can’t hardly blame him, though, because he’s still bundled up for the cold, causing him to roast in his own juices like those turkeys cooked in plastic bags (a question for another day).

With the document ready to go, I look for the guy with the power to print. “He’s gone downstairs for a few minutes,” I’m told. “But he’ll be back.” In my mind, I see a giant digital tally of my mounting fees, like the tickers that calculate the national debt. But before too long, he’s back, attempting to connect my “design station” to the “printer.” Without luck. We reboot. Twice. Finally we’re ready to go, but what’s this? Someone else is printing out what can only be a copy of War and Peace, double-spaced in Courier. “I guess we’re gonna have to wait,” I’m told. On my dime (and nickel and quarter)? There goes the kid’s college fund. But, wait! It’s finally our turn. He loads the paper, I hit print. Paper jam. We do it all over again.

“I guess you can’t print on this paper,” he decides, after the page comes out smudged but unprinted.
“Whaa???” I stammer. (Henry backs me up with a “WAAAAH!” of his own.)
“I guess you could buy our card stock downstairs and use that.”
“But I want to use this card stock, the card stock that I’ve already paid for,” I say. (Henry is a beat behind in the conversation: “WAAAH!”)
“Well it doesn’t work in our printer.”
“ ,” I say.
“ ,” he replies. “Or I guess you could try using this other printer,” he finally volunteers.
“There’s another printer?” I say. “Hook me up!”
“It costs twice as much. I guess because it’s a color printer.”
“But I’m printing in black and white.
“Yeah, I know. . . . ”
“But it’s still twice as much? For the same thing?”
“I guess so, yeah.”

In the end, I declined the offer. I didn’t buy their card stock. I didn’t pay extra to print my black and white document on their color printer. And the kind young man generously offered to credit me for the whole 20-minute transaction. So I collected my stuff, including my crying baby, and walked out of there none the richer and none the poorer, either. Except I did score 20 minutes of free “design” time.

The lesson? Next time, hire a professional.

stay-at-home torture

There are few things worse than being pinned to a chair by a nursing infant while the radio, within earshot but out of arm’s reach, broadcasts an NPR fund drive. Make. It. Stop. Please?

he must have been late the day they handed out necks

unnecessarily exclusive coverage

“Only Entertainment Tonight follows Anna Nicole to her final resting place.”

As much as I wish that show would take the big dirt nap, is it really worth the ratings?

there was much rejoicing in the land . . . and then the hospital bill arrived

If Henry were a chicken for sale at the grocery store, his cost per pound at birth would work out to be $2,625.98. Per pound, people. And there were seven and a half of him. Fortunately for us, we send an indecent percentage of our take-home pay over to the folks at the insurance company, who are finally earning their keep.

The damage, incredibly, came to $19,957.42. That figure includes $376 in pharmacy charges, $11,700 for “semi private obstetrics,” and $386 for a labor room that was used only to store our bags while the baby was delivered surgically in the $4,538 operating room (where I received $1,159 worth of anesthesia). Had I known, I would have done a more thorough search for sample-sized shampoos or other value-add souvenirs in the labor room; $386 seems steep for three hours of luggage storage.

from the glad-it-wasn’t-me department

If, on a Saturday morning, after your wife has been awake for several hours feeding and soothing and entertaining the newborn, she taps your arm and asks you in her please-won’t-you-help voice to change the diaper, and you promptly fall fast asleep for another hour and a half, then wake up and ask your wife if she isn’t ready to hand over the baby so you can go ahead and get that diaper changed, but then the baby starts crying on the changing table and you’ve lost your marbles and you put the kid back in his pjs diaper-free, please don’t register shock or awe when the baby pees on your chest.

genetics

Burton’s eyes are Caribbean blue; mine are poop brown. We’ll have to sit tight for a few months before discovering which way Henry’s will go. But one inheritance, at least, is clear: That boy is wearing my furrowed brow.

fool for love

Never have I been so impressed with someone who offers so little. Honestly, if he were to post a personal ad, it might read: “SWM: eats, poops, and pees. Usually enjoys gas, except when it makes me cry.”

And me? Hopelessly fallen.

the footling arrives!

Henry Calder Flint, not willing to wait around, was born on Jan. 30. Seven pounds, nine ounces, and ten delicious toes.