Relaxing on holiday at the lake allows me to remember to keep introducing Lake to tummy time. He creeps! He’s so strong! Look at him levitating!
It reached 85F here today in the shade. We stayed cool by doing air time. Living the life! Hasn’t missed a meal yet, his grandpa points out… Although he did have to take a pause and enjoy some Nana time when the wind came up.
Grandpa and I hopped in the sailing dingy and caught a few gusts. We took in the view from the middle of the lake and tacked a few times. We merrily waved to Nana when she appeared down the bay. Then we realized she was signaling and calling the breastfeeding mummy home. So we sailed back, docked, and I jumped ashore. Back on duty!
After our eventful journey to Newman Lake, we are enjoying a few very relaxing days of rest. Grandpa and Nana are keeping us fed with delicious food and lots of quality bonding time.
Next up: brother and family including nearly three year old cousin are set to arrive for the day. Boy cousins to meet and maybe splash in the lake together!
Our Northwest Seattle PEPS peeps
Monday morning we said goodbye to Daddy, and took the 44 bus to Ballard for our PEPS group meeting before packing up to drive over to Eastern Washington. We are headed over to visit Nana and Grandpa for a week of “lake time” at the family cabin on Newman Lake just northeast of Spokane. Lake Odin is the fifth generation of kin at Point Petite.
He was a great traveling companion, except for I did most of the driving. We left Seattle later than planned (of course), but we were making great time.
We drove 250 miles in four hours to Sprague Lake Rest Area before we finally stopped for a pause. Here I noticed the left rear tire was low on air. It didn’t look round. We walked around the rest area reviving ourselves for a bit, then circled back to the car. The tire looked even lower. Shoot!
The first angel appeared in the form of a couple with a 7 1/2 month old from Vancouver, WA on their way to holiday in Coeur d’Alene, ID. They pulled up next to me just as I was mulling over my plan of action, pretty sure at that point that I did need a plan of action.
Hi there! I see you have a baby too. I’m in a pickle. Maybe you can help me fix my flat tire…
I’m talking to the wife, but glancing at the husband. They are unloading baby gear to the picnic table and she nods and says to him:
Go ahead and help her.
I’m thinking the tire needs changing so I’m unpacking the entire contents of the back of the car onto the parking lot to make the spare tire available. The husband is suggesting it needs pumping up and is lamenting he doesn’t have his truck which has a big tire pump in it apparently. He takes a look at my spare tire, once I get it uncovered, and pronounces it flat as well as unsafe to take on the freeway. He says the maximum speed on a donut tire is 25 mph, and so it’s preferred to resuscitate my deflated and continually rapidly deflating tire. He suggests that the truckers probably all have tire pumps, so I’m taking Lake over toward the intimidating row of big rigs when he calls out
Wait a minute!
He produces a small electric tire pump from his wife’s roadside emergency kit. He exclaims it was at 10 psi (full is 45 psi), and pumps it up to 50 psi, then tells me he thinks I’ll probably make it to Spokane but to
Drive fast!
He estimates it hasn’t had the leak for very long, because there are no marks on the side of the tire near the rim which apparently there would be if I had been driving on the flat at freeway speeds for a while now. So it’s not a slow leak, it’s a significant one. I call Nana to update them on my progress. I ask what it would be like if the tire goes all the way flat while I’m driving, how I would know. She says I’ll know because I’ll lose control of my steering. This is highly alarming. So, I stop a few miles down the road to give it a visual check. I figure if it looks flat again at this early check point, I’m sidelining myself. Losing control of the steering does not sounds like a safe proposition I want to bump up against. Well, the tire still looks round, so I get back on I-90 and speed east through Spokane to the outlying community of Liberty Lake. Here presents the second angel.
I’ve just decided to fuel up at our trusty Liberty lake Chevron and give the tire another visual check. I get gas: 39 mpg from Seattle. The tire looks like it might still be holding sufficient air, i.e. round. I’m thinking about the air compressor, but about to just get back on the road and tackle our last bit of the journey. It’s only about 15 miles to our final destination. But it’s 15 miles of curvy road prone to darting deer. And it’s now turning dusk.
It’s right at this point that a smiling Corey, the second angel disguised in Chevron uniform, walks up to me saying they have free air and he’ll go get his tire gauge in order to help me with it. He airs the tire back up to 50 psi after noting it’s down to 20. We arrive to our safe haven and sleep soundly to the cadence of waves lapping on shore.
In the morning the tire is pancake flat.
Grandpa steps in as the third angel. He jacks up the car, removes the flat tire ad takes it in to Les Schwab in nearby Spokane to have the hole repaired. A few hours later he returns, replaces the repaired tire and we are ready to rock and roll again!
Saturday we three walked up to the University District Farmers Market to meet an old friend and shop the market together. It was fun! We were all baby carrying and optimizing efficiency as she pointed out, visiting while taking care of shopping errands. The organic apricots were definitely the seasonal highlight. Then we bumped into some new friends from the collective PEPS peeps who were also out cruising the market. Later in the evening our friend Lena came over to join us for our favorite German board game Agricola, our first post baby go of it. We talked and laughed and played and caught up on our daily vegetable intakes. As it turns out my attention was incredibly divided. I was primarily taking care of Lake. Yet even though I had an impossible time concentrating on the game, earning possibly the lowest score ever, I was grateful to be back in the game. Feeling gratitude for community!
Meanwhile Lake continues to deliver egregiously on the cuteness front.
Today my husband and I got out for a date. We chose to go on a running date. It wasn’t quite at the level of Sarah Brown’s two week postpartum Olympic trials training epic proportions, but it was my own version of the postpartum running story with husband-coach. We’re at 6 1/2 weeks and we did a leisurely 5 miles. In addition to some hill work it included bowls of steaming pho on the Ave at mile 4.6.
So, our big night out post baby was actually a midday running date. We got sweaty. Our date included joint banking errands. In spite of that, it felt great to get out on our own, just the two of us talking about this and that. And to be up and running again.
Well I did resume running at 6 weeks postpartum. It was just on the tennis court. So triumphant to get back out on the court! My Kindrick friends were incredibly supportive and maintaintained a round robin tennis approach, handing off Lake like a relay baton while I kept my eye on the ball. Last up was Papa who gave me a few solid pointers, a mini tennis stroke clinic!
It was a whole new dimension to challenge my intellect with something to focus on: technique and strategic playing. The last and only tennis lessons I had were when I was nine years old. They gave me a surprisingly respectable foundation. I’m pretty surprised at how much fun I can have on the court with the few basics I learned nearly 30 years ago. This was at the behest of my grandparents enrolling my brother and me in city parks tennis lessons over the summer at Comstock Park in Spokane. Notable for how impressionable I was at that age, and that the lessons and exposure to art, dance, piano were all well invested. Note to self for Lake.
But will he remember our visit to Woodland Park Zoo today?
Anyhow if anyone wants to play some tennis, here’s an open invitation to arrange a play date. Meanwhile now I can get back on the courts solo to practice my stroke technique. No excuses! For me though, it’s always more fun with a friend! It’s not about the winning, it’s about the playing and how much happiness tennis brings me!
Today my friend Jessica from PEPS and I walked around Greenlake. Beautiful day! She was remarking that it’s always such a nice day at Greenlake; maybe it’s a bit of a warm sunny microclimate. I joked that maybe it’s just always so nice to get out and walk around Greenlake that the weather presents as nice even if it’s a huge storm. I was thinking back to the day I killed my iPhone by walking around Greenlake the morning of my baby shower in April, taking pictures in the rain. That was a beautiful day too, but judging by the fact that I irreversibly ruined my phone it was a pretty rainy and blustery one. I have no photographic evidence remaining since I lost the pictures along with the phone.
So, today Jessica and I are walking our baby boys around and it is a truly brilliant sunny day. She has her son in a stroller and I’m using the K’tan baby carrier. We are enjoying our predictable and delightfully satisfying conversation revolving around being new mummies: daycare waitlists, bedtime rituals, baby friendly restaurants and movie theatres (Guild 45th has a private soundproof?!? two seater cry room), Kids on 45th and their dollar rack…
Suddenly this middle aged woman with pragmatically coiffed grey hair breaks her jogging stride and heads straight for me. It first crosses Jessica’s and my mind that she must know me from somewhere. I adore running into old friends, colleagues and acquaintances when I’m out and about in the neighborhoods, and Greenlake is a classic community “center.”
But I don’t know her. She’s headed directly for me with an intensity that’s a bit alarming. She plants herself in my path and launches angrily and aggressively in with
I’m a pediatric nurse practitioner and you can’t carry your baby horizontal like that. He needs to be upright. The way you’re carrying your baby leads to sudden infant death!
I’m stunned. Lake continues to grunt (coo?) non-plussed, seemingly oblivious to how perilous his very life is at the moment. And every day for the past 6 1/2 weeks. I tell her I’m offended by her attack and that I am aware of the risk as it is plastered across the carrier in a huge (scratchy) warning label. He is horizontal because he won’t stay upright. He seems content, but if she would like to show me how to wrap him in a more upright position, I’m certainly open to it.
Well, I work at [well known area children’s hospital] and we see all the worst cases. I’m sorry for offending you.
She seems affronted and spits this out caustically. After this she zooms off in her self-righteous drive-by mummy-shamer cloud of dust.
Jessica and I turn to stare at each other incredulously. Did that just happen? It was surreal in her speed of judgment and pronounced lack of desire to collaborate towards her proported safety aim. No Congratulations, I see you have a little one there. No, would you like some help? No I’m concerned. No Hello, actually.
The death of a mother’s child is absolutely a tragedy at any age. This does not, however, necessitate or justify harassment. Even for low-hanging blog fodder.
Exhibit A: offending Lake positioning in K’tan as happily modelled on Black Butte RanchExhibit B: All 10 pounds 3 ounces of Lake sprawled and lounging (aka “zonked”) at home
It was great to introduce Lake, spend time together and share Aunties and Uncles and Nanas and Papas around. We engaged in some good ol’ wholesome summer fun!
And now we made it home safe and sound. Whew! Have a good night!
A wonderful tradition of friendship and shared time together as family. Thank you for your spirits of love, inclusion, and acceptance my dears. It is special to be able to introduce you to Lake here in this wholesome relaxing environment with air smelling so sweet! My dream from our childhood friendship of our children becoming friends and sharing holidays all together is now manifesting. How beautifully life evolves when I get out of the way.
We’re on holiday at an awkward time; are we insensitive for being fortunate? I’m relaxing as best as possible with a six week old who manages to keep me in a constantly distracted state even when he’s perfectly content or passed out cold. In relaxing, I’m reflecting on the current highlighting of the fractured status of our society, fractured by racism and classism, discrimination and privilege. … And conversely: what is strongly present for me right now, given my new all encompassing experience of motherhood, is our shared humanity.
I adore the historical fiction genre of writing. My state of mind of late harkens to Tracy Chevalier’s 1999 historical novel Girl with a Pearl Earring surrounding 17 century Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer’s classic piece by the same name. The impromptu and mildly brutal piercing of the ear to hold the luminous large pearl stands out. (My visual image is the ear piercing scene from Wes Anderson’s Moonlight Kingdom.) I’ve recently experienced the opposite: I lost one of my diamond earrings the other night in the hot tub/showering facilities at Black Butte Ranch. Not in a brutal fashion, but potentially just as traumatic.
Jewelry being representative of class, status, wealth, beauty, privilege, family standing… I can’t help but feel it that way. The remaining single earring is a classic first world problem, but more than that, it feels to be a distinctly middle class problem. The “haves” would not be particularly troubled, finding it an opportunity perhaps to replace them with a more grandiose pair, and the “have nots” would not have the diamond earrings to lose to begin with.
The loss of this meaningful earring that my brother gave me as a final gift as his unmarried sister. Coming a few years after the devestating burglary resulting in the evacuation of tens of thousands of dollars of uninsured family heirloom gold, precious gemstones and jewels, all Chum, my great grandfather the dentist’s, hand forged gold jewelry which he had made for my great grandmother Echo, and all my diamonds except for the earrings which I was wearing. Still I would expect to be more distraught over the loss of one of my few remaining diamonds. Except maybe Diamonds are a Girl’s best Friend doesn’t apply to me anymore. Not when I’m on holiday with my real best friends surrounded by love, support, generosity, health, good food, and friendship. All of this loss of material wealth somehow pales in comparison to the precious gift of riches and blessings that are my friends, family, and life itself.
I attribute this response mostly to the birth of my son. All the yoga helps, but my mind is processing the earring loss so differently than the loss of my previous jewelry. Maybe it was the sheer volume before, but more probably it’s my son, the game changer. Somehow the diamonds are nice to have and to wear, especially in the setting of all other diamond wearing women honestly, but not holding the same importance now.
What feels most real and relevant is the richness of my son. And this mothers’ blessing transcends all races, classes and ethnicities. I am struck by the weight and depth of the work of bringing a new life into the world. And caring for him. I have such an appreciation for all mothers now, that I didn’t truly comprehend before. Practically half the world are mothers, let’s have compassion for each other. What we do for our children, let’s extend that towards each other. We are all in it together and all working so hard caring for loved ones. Each human was given birth to by their mother; such a profound thought after having so recently been through the birth experience. Let’s honor the mother by relating to each other’s humanity: treating each person like the precious baby that they will always be to their parents.
Somehow that thought catapults my focus past my (one) earring. It gives me an avenue to be part of the solution of compassion with every breath no matter where I am. I am free to be at home in the city or heading to the pool and the tennis court with a heart overflowing with gratitude and love.
A Perfect Day . . . 