Reverberations

My sister and I used to stay out in the driveway with my father long after the sun had gone down and the chill had returned to the air. We would bounce and dribble and bang the ball against the backboard mounted just below our bedroom windows, and the whole house would reverberate. Sometimes my mother would join us, challenging my father to hit as many free throws in a row as she did. We would play Around the World and HORSE, the cold ball almost painful in our hands, until we could barely see the ball anymore and we’d head inside to eat ice cream and watch Telly Sevalas or James Garner or Carol O’Connor.

In general I don’t think of our single parent family as missing anything, of being different from any other family. I drop my kids at daycare or pre-school and go to work. I come home at the end of the day and cook something resembling dinner and shove food in to their mouths. While they run around and destroy the living room I rinse spaghetti sauce off dishes and sweep up blueberries and mop up milk and place the errant shoes and coats back in the foyer near the garage.  I get down on the carpet and do puzzles and play tickle monster and ride in imaginary spaceships while aliens try to catch us.  I change diapers and pull off dirty clothes and replace them with clean (although probably stained) pajamas.  I read books about furry kittens and the colors of the rainbow before rocking Eva and placing her in her crib.  I do Lego and Tinkertoys and drawing games with Sam before reading his three bedtime books, books that lately have been about animals-- sea tortoises and poison frogs and jelly fish.  I stand my ground when he begs to stay up for one more story or one more bedtime snack or one more drink of water.  I change cat litter and heap laundry into the washing machine and dig through piles of unsorted clean laundry looking for matching pink socks for the next morning. Once in a while I remember to bathe my children or trim their growing nails.

And during all of this, not for one second do I think that our family is missing anything.

But lately I’ve been reading blogs and watching other 4-year-olds, and when I lay in bed at night trying to fall asleep I feel a pang of something resembling sadness.  On my friends blogs I see fathers who have time to toss a ball to their son and teach him to catch.  I see fathers who play basketball out in the driveway for long stretches, dribbling and tossing and lifting their kids up to the net.  I see fathers bent over holding hockey sticks while their kids guard the goal.  Is Sam missing out because I simply don’t have time to give any more, because there are two of them and one of me?  I want my children to know the love of sport that my father taught me.  I want my children to stay out long past bedtime throwing a cold baseball into worn gloves or swinging tennis rackets at balls they can barely see.  I want my children to be part of family that plays.

I know my memory of my childhood is probably more idyllic than reality, but is there anything wrong with wanting my children to have the idyllic memory too?  Why is it that as parents we want to give our children everything right now?  I have to remind myself that Sam has years ahead of him to learn ball and chase his sister in the cold grass as the sun goes down.  He’s four.  And if he doesn’t play ball until he’s 7 or 8 or 10, it doesn’t mean he’s behind or that he won’t ever have the same love of sport and family and cool spring air that my father instilled in me.  In the mean time I’ve signed him up for T-ball and I’ve upgraded our faded plastic basketball hoop and I’m ready to admit that I’m really missing my dad.

This story originally appeared here.

Dad Calling

Thanksgiving, early 70's

I owe a lot of the inspiration for my new post at The Next Family to my friend Kate whose own brave and honest and thought-provoking blog post (that asks questions like "What would happen to these dears if something were to happen to us? Would they remember how loved they were just from pictures?") inspired me to wake up in the middle of the night and write this:

Is He Calling?
By Barbara Matousek

Maybe it’s because the Packers are 7-0 for the first time since 1962, or maybe it’s because my sister and I will be together for Thanksgiving for the first time since a few years after Dad died, or maybe it’s because my son is attending a Catholic preschool and brings home things like “A Christian pumpkin,” or maybe it’s because I recently re-read my friend Katherine’s book about her battle with cancer, or maybe it’s because I watch my mother aging and realize how really tiny our family is, or maybe it’s because I’m developing a friendship with a woman who has complete faith in God the way my father did, or maybe it’s because I’m raising my children surrounded by families with good fathers. Maybe it’s all of these things, but I find myself missing my dad a lot lately.

Last night I had a dream. Dad and I were in a hotel room casually packing up the last of our things after having spent a few days traveling together. We were getting ready to re-enter our normal lives. The time and place of our adventure weren’t clear, but it was clear we were accustomed to traveling together and had been traveling for several days. We had our routine. I was going through the drawers, finding little things we’d left behind and shoving them into one of my smaller carry bags. Dad said he was going to make a trip down to the car with the big bags.

“Take your time,” he said. “I’ll meet you down there,” and he left. Just like that. Casual.

Read the rest here.

Kalamazoo, circa 1972


Snowshoeing during the winter I lived in Creede, Colorado (2004)


Hiking in Kauai

Watching the sunset from the south shore of Lake Superior

We Should Get Another One

Grandpa Jim with Baby Sarah, Christmas 2003

This morning in the car:

"Mommy, why don't we have a grandpa?"

"You do. But Grandpa Jim is dead. Remember? He's up in heaven."

"Then we should get another one."

"Good idea. Where should we get one?"

"Maybe out there in that field. That farmer might know one."

I think my son is psychic. So often he brings up subjects that are on my mind without any leading from me. And since Dad went in to the hospital on June 14th and left the world as we knew it on July 4th, I think of him a lot during late June every year. I wish he could see these beautiful children that remind me so much of him.

Missing Him

Running on the treadmill during a rainy day last week I was watching the highlights from the Chicago-Miami matchup, torn between my love of Dwayne Wade and my ambivalence towards LeBron James, when I started thinking about my father. I do every year at this time. If Dad were here he’d probably feel as I do about last night’s Dallas victory, happy for Nowitski but really never happy to see Mark Cuban’s team advance. My father was like that. He had a love-hate relationship with a lot of figures in sports, and over the seven years since he went in to the hospital for the last time, I’ve speculated about how he would have judged the sports figures of today. Brett Favre. Tiger Woods. Aaron Rodgers.

Dad went in to the hospital for the last time in June 2004, and the night they did the MRI on his brain, he and I celebrated the Pistons victory in the finals. We sat in his hospital room and watched the confetti fall and smiled despite knowing the diagnosis that would be coming the next day. I miss him (and Chauncy Billups) every year during the playoffs. But I also always look back on the time I had with my father and feel grateful. I see the sparkle of his eyes in Eva’s big blue eyes and I see his smile when Sam sings the ABC’s and looks at me waiting for the praise he knows is coming. Every single day I miss my father, but every single day I am so grateful for the time I had with him and the two children I have now that will carry his spirit into the future.

Photo by Tammy Hoeger of Capturing Moments

A Giant in the Sky

“Maybe there is a big giant watching us,” he says as he pops the last of his cupcake into his mouth.

“You think so?” I say, pilling the dishes into the sink and wiping the counter in front of him with a damp rag.

“And he’s moving the wind and the clouds so that sometimes it rains and sometimes it doesn’t.”

“Maybe that’s God,” I say.

“What’s God?”

Since before Sam was born I’ve been prepared for discussions about why our family doesn’t have a daddy. I’ve made books explaining his conception and our story and what a gift he is. But I’ve never even mentioned God to him? God hasn’t ever come up when we snuggle at bedtime and talk about things we’re grateful for or the people we love? Nobody has ever mentioned God to him? How did this happen?

When my best friend was trying to figure out how to teach her young boys about God, whether to bring them to church, I admired the balance she struck between her beliefs and her husband’s beliefs, the way she wanted to educate her children about what others believed without forcing them to believe anything in particular.  A decade later when my sister grappled with the decision to send her son to a Lutheran pre-school, I understood her reluctance.  She and I had stood up during her children’s baptisms and vowed to raise her children in the Catholic church but at the time we both had our doubts and questions about religion and God.

Standing in the kitchen with a wet rag in my hand, all of my earlier pronouncements to my friends that “I want to teach my children about spirituality, not religion” come back to me.  How do I teach my child about God if I don’t know what I believe about God?

In Buddhist teachings there is a description of a huge net reaching in all directions called the Jeweled Net of Indra.  This net teaches about the interconnectedness of us all.  We are all part of something bigger than just ourselves, part of a whole that includes plants and animals and friends and neighbors, people across the world and people right next door.  What we do to the least of our brothers we do to ourselves.  I know I believe this, but how does my idea of God or a creator fit in with this?

I was raised in a Catholic home and from the distance of my adulthood I look back gratefully for the tradition and the community and the center the church gave our family.  My earliest and most pleasant childhood memory is of my head in my mother’s lap as she stroked the hair back behind my ears as the priest’s voice droned from the pulpit.  I look back and see how no matter what was going on in our lives, we made time for God on Sunday.  We got out of bed and got dressed and rode in the car together, whether it was raining or sleeting, whether we were healthy or sick, whether we were getting along or fighting.  Every week we traveled the short distance to St. Peter and Paul Catholic Church, and we sat in the pews together.  My Sunday memories include silver dollar sized pancakes at The Village Inn, peeling apples for pie, and watching football in the family room.  Together.

I’m still forming my ideas about the spiritual traditions our family will follow, but when I think about what I want my children to know about God and religion and spirituality, THIS is what I KNOW I want them to learn:  that we are a family, the three of us as well as the greater human race.  That there is no “us” and “them.”  That each human being has as much value as the next.  That those who have a different skin color or speak a different language or form families with two moms or ride in a wheelchair or follow the teachings of Mohammed or believe that Christ was the son of God or don’t believe in God at all are all human beings.  I want them to learn that families can come from anywhere, that what we do and say can influence others and we don’t always see the effects we have on others, and we’re all in this together.

I stand in the kitchen and look at the frosting smeared into Sam’s hair and the blue sprinkles caked to the corners of his mouth, and I do not even know how to begun to talk to him about God, how to even put a human word to something I consider to be so grand and awesome that even the act of naming it diminishes the greatness of God.  But I know that it is time for our family to begin forming our spiritual traditions, our Sunday memories.  Better late than never.

“God is love,” I say.  “God is all of us.  Together.  Love.”It’s not perfect and it never will be.  And as my son grows he will develop his own ideas about God and religion and community and tradition and humanity and love.  So while it may not be perfect, it’s a start.  We are finally talking about God.

This story originally appeared here.

More This!

Sam takes a bite of a homemade strawberry-kiwi popsicle

Because I see them together so frequently, it’s easy to speculate what genes Sam got from my mother (the eyes, the love of fruit and reading), but whenever he eats there is no doubting that Sam is genetically related to my father. Sammy may not have that same one-bite-of-each-food-around-the-plate method that we all teased Jimmy Joe about, but Sam definitely loves food and he consumes it with a passion. Today while I cut up the ingredients for salsa he insisted on taking a bite of the onion.

“You won’t like it sammy. It’s hot.”

“I want it.”

“I don’t think you will like it.”

“I want it!”

He chewed on the chunk of raw white onion and swallowed and smiled even though his eyes were watering.

“I tried it, Mommy!” he said with pride.

Same with the lime from which he sucked every last fiber of pulp.

And the peppers.

But the big surprise of the day was when the hot turkey sausage that turned out to be hotter than I thought went down with hardly a pause between bites. I needed to follow each bite I took with a chip or a drink of milk, but not Sam.

“More this,” he said over and over again pointing to the empty place on his plate where the previous serving of hot turkey sausage had been. He inhaled two entire bratwurst-sized sausages before Mommy made the executive decision that his tummy might not be able to handle more than that. And he was not pleased when I told him he could eat as many strawberries and grapes as he liked but there was no more hot sausage.

Unbelievable. Jimmy Joe’s stomach reincarnated.

What if This Never Happened?

After reading a recent study about how imagining if something good that happened in your life had never happened can actually help you feel happier, I decided to take that plunge, to spend a few minutes on that exercise and see how it made me feel. How would my life be different if Sam hadn’t been born?

Imagining a life without him definitely makes me grateful for what I do have, but it also challenges me to feel grateful for mundane things like diaper genies and pre-moistened wipes and the bigger things like Family and Growth and Community. And imagining what my life might be had Sam never been born fills me with awe and gratefulness for what an incredible personal journey I’ve entered into since he arrived. This little man has changed me and my life and the relationships in my life, and the enormity of the life transition we’ve been through together is incredible. Here’s just a few of the things I came up with if Sam had never been born…

I wouldn’t get to creep in to his room in the morning and sit on the floor next to his crib and watch him stretch and groan until he opens his eyes and sees me and immediately smiles and tries to do peekaboo around the thick edges of the crib.

I wouldn't get to see Jimmy Joe reincarnated every time Sam shovels blueberries into his mouth.

I wouldn’t get to snuggle and hold him every single night right before he falls asleep.

I wouldn’t have a guaranteed date for every national holiday.

My mom wouldn’t travel to see me as often, and I wouldn’t get to watch her and Sam play and laugh. I wouldn’t get to see her hand him a paper towel and ask him to help her dust. I wouldn’t get to see her teaching him how to pick raspberries or how to load dishes into the dishwasher. I wouldn’t get to watch her do the Tickle Monster and hear his belly laugh while he makes the sign for “more.” I wouldn't get to watch the two of them chew on lemons and raw potatoes. I wouldn't have experienced that window into my own childhood and how my mother must have been with me.

I wouldn’t slow down and see the possibility in a simple stream of water running across a dry pavement and changing the landscape right in front of me.

I wouldn’t have a refrigerator covered with musical magnets of a purple cow and a pink pig and an orange horse.

I wouldn’t be reliving all the old nursery rhymes from Found a Peanut to Hickory Dickory Dock to Polly Wolly Doodle all the day and How Much is that Doggie in the Window.

I wouldn’t be falling into bed every night knowing that somebody is relying on me to take care of him and make him feel secure while at the same time encouraging him to take risks and challenge himself. I wouldn't feel challenged to become the best example that I can be.

I would probably spend my weekends as I always have, in some sort of solitary activity like reading or writing or sitting alone. A friend of mine sent me an email when she heard of Sam’s birth that said only, “Welcome to The Club.” If Sam hadn’t been born I wouldn’t have been so warmly welcomed and supported by so many people I never knew before, people who are parents and know the challenges and know that sometimes all it takes is for someone to just say “Oh yah. We went through that too.”

I wouldn't get to see Sam's face light up as he races across the room when I arrive at his daycare, and I wouldn't know how it feels to have a little man who loves me unconditionally hold on to my legs as if I am the only thing tethering him to the earth.

I wouldn't have learned how incredibly hard and underappreciated my sister's job is and how truly lucky I am to have a younger sister who did all this before me and will always support me as I make my mistakes.

I would not have discovered my love of avocados and fresh mango and organic blueberries from The Berry Patch.

I would not have challenged myself to be a better person, to learn patience and calmness and resilience in a crisis, to look beyond myself and out at the world at large and see how incredibly miniscule my problems are compared to millions of children living in poverty surrounded by disease.

I wouldn't eat a healthy dinner full of vegetables every night.

I would not get to find fun and joy in the process of digging in the mud while pulling the weeds in the garden.

I wouldn't own a bottle of spray n' wash.

I wouldn't have a crab-shaped sandbox in which I can fill little molds and push shovels and rakes and remember imagining entire worlds built of sand when the DeGrave boys were little boys that followed me every where.

I would not get to creep into Sam's bedroom before I lay down at night and see his little frog-covered butt sticking in the air while he sleeps soundly like a child without a care or concern in the world.

I wouldn't realize how simple it is to build a fort with just a sheet and your head or how a wooden spoon and an empty popcorn tin can make the best drum set.

I would not have met some of the people in my life that became parents at the same time I did, friends who have since become supportive of my WHOLE life, not just my life as a parent.

I would not have learned to forgive myself for my imperfections.

I would not have realized how incredibly challenging and exhausting and full and rich the lives of parents all around me are.

If Sam had never been born, my life would not be the amazing life it is!

Take a moment to think about a good thing that has happened in your life. A marriage, a child, a pet, a job, a career. How would your life had been different if it hadn’t happened?

More Kauai 2009

Swimming with Auntie Ann

Favorite things from our 2009 Kauai trip:

Sarah running up to me after dark one night as everyone else was busy making dinner. "Aunt Barb, Aunt Barb, Aunt Barb," she said. "I have something you MUST take a picture of." And then she led me to the horse sculpture in the garden by the pool.

Aunt Judy asking Uncle Ron if he had a Lau-wili-wili and his response of "Go fish!" Who knew a child's card game could be so fun for adults?

TT sitting at the breakfast table having a conversation with Sam while he inhaled an entire banana and asked for more.

Aunt Judy leaning over Sam (in the crib) and patting his butt while singing The Old Rugged Cross.

Uncle Ron saying "Was TT here feeding you before?" after a little bird swooped in to check us out while I ate four cheese quiche and drank my double shot latte on the Hyatt balcony

Zackary soaking his feet in the hot tub with me while the full moon floated in and out of the clouds above the resort.

Sitting at the dining room table after dinner our last night listening to Zachary and Sarah laughing and laughing in the bedroom with TT and Uncle Ron.

Watching the sunset (or lack thereof) with Uncle Ron one night, sitting there long after everyone else was gone talking about Jimmy Joe and war and tragedy and how really, really grateful we are for our lives.

The way Sam's hair got curlier and curlier with the humid Hawaiian air.

Sarah singing Dancing Queen and other songs from Mama Mia in order to distract me from the scary parts of the movie playing on the screen near the pool one night after dinner. "I'll tell you when the bad part's over," she kept saying as she looked back over her shoulder at the movie.

Laying in the sun drinking mango daquiris with TT while Sammy zonked out in his stroller in the shade

Inhaling 2 perfectly grilled hotdogs while forcing my elders to watch the season premiere of The Biggest Loser

Letting the buttery, cilantro-pesto-covered opakaka melt into my mouth at Roy's Poipu Bar and Grill, a family tradition

Watching TT walk with Sammy into the deep end, continuing to carry on their constant conversation as she dipped him in and out to get him used to the water

Peeking into the bedroom on the second day to see Sammy sprawled out on his back in the crib, sound asleep and perfectly comfortable in his little blue and white striped Elmo Explorer bib overalls that TT bought him for Christmas

The taste of that first lime daquiri that only TT can make just right

Red dirt and fresh papaya and super sweet pineapple and full moons over the ocean and the sound of the surf and the tradewinds in the palm trees that keep me coming back over and over again.

As promised, photos of some of these moments and more are here.

Jimmy Joe Junior

If this isn't evidence that Sam is Jimmy Joe's grandson, I don't know what is. (Big smile at 40 seconds.)

Door County Part Two

Taylor, me and Uncle Ron at Cave Point Park

When I got to Door County Friday I did the usual hugs, and I even let Aunt Judy rub my belly. Just a little. We chatted for a little while, all of them giving me their input about names. (Uncle Ron suggested that I name my son Samuel with a middle name that starts with an A so his initials would be S.A.M. I told him that was exactly the joke Jimmy Joe would have told.)

Inside Taylor and I rolled our eyes and watched the circus of the three grandparents cooking, TT and her sister singing and debating over how to make Ann’s famous dill sauce while Uncle Ron escaped outside to grill the fish (your mother’s idea, Johnny). We sat down to a dinner that started with TT’s famous fresh summer salad and ended with Mom raving about the fish and the dill sauce over and over.

“And I don’t even like fish,” she said as she took her fourth piece of tender, pink salmon.

Mom, Uncle Ron, Taylor and Aunt Judy before digging in.

After we were full, we sat and picked at the remains on the serving dishes and mom continued to dip her finger in the dill sauce (“I could put that on the steak tomorrow,” she said). TT and I argued over who would sleep where. She insisted on sleeping on the couch and giving me her bed, telling me that last night she woke up to read at 11, 1, 3, and 5 anyway… and in between those times she got up to pee. “Odds I’d read. Evens I’d pee,” she said. I told her THAT was going on the blog. It seems we're on the same schedule.

The three of them laughed about how this family always enjoys talking about bodily functions and how much fun it’s going to be to teach that to my son. Taylor went to the living room to watch TV, and I rolled my eyes and started washing dishes.

After dinner we sat around a beach bonfire and played a round robin story-writing game that resulted in a tale of a spaceship coming down from the sky so aliens could urinate on our fire and compare the smell of morning breath to a skunk.

The evening ended with Uncle Ron and I sitting by the last embers of the fire while the moon that peeked through the clouds reflected off Lake Michigan. I could hear the waves slapping the nearby shore, and as Uncle Ron told me about the miracles of his grandchildren – the way Taylor focuses at basketball, how he knew how strong Jack was and everything with him would be okay, how Malia brings him to the big front window to watch motorcycles on Ravine Road—my own child put the flutter-flutter-flutter behind him and moved on to his first real firm kicks. Uncle Ron continued to tell stories of Julie and Johnny and Michael and how proud he was of each and every one of his children, and I sat content with my hand resting on my belly feeling the solid kicks that had me imagining a real knee bending and unwinding to connect a foot with its surroundings.

Earlier in the evening Mom and Aunt Judy and Uncle Ron had joked about who the matriarch and patriarch of the family were and who would be in the future, who would outlive who. And as I sat there feeling amazed by my son unwinding to punch and kick, I realized how much I love and enjoy these people, and how much I hope all of them are still around years from now so my son will get to love and enjoy them as much as I do.

The Soapbox My Parents Taught Me

The Matousek Clan circa 1982

Someone sent me a diatribe allegedly written by Jay Leno about the way Americans need to be more grateful for what they have and stop paying attention to media. “Shut off the TV, burn Newsweek, and use the New York Times for the bottom of your bird cage,” it said. “We are among the most blessed people on Earth and should thank God several times a day, or at least be thankful and appreciative."

And the question I have to ask is: If I am grateful for my own life, does that mean I shouldn’t care about others who are less fortunate?

I remember when Kelly and Brian were planning to have children and Kelly told me that one of the reasons they knew they wanted to have kids was because the world needed more responsible people, more people who would take care of others. (She doesn’t remember this conversation, so perhaps I made it up a decade and a half ago when their first child was born.) Kelly and Brian looked at the world and knew they wanted to help raise the next generation that would continue to do good work and be compassionate and responsible and work for change in our world.

I have been thinking about this a lot as the 4^th of July comes and I remember the last days I spent with my father. I am so grateful for the time I had with him and the things he taught me. And I have been thinking about what things that my parents have taught me I will pass on to my own son. Compassion. Integrity. Responsibility. Courage. Nourishment of the Soul. Knowledge.

And because all of that is just under the surface of the emotions of what I’m feeling about the anniversary of my father’s death, I couldn’t help but get angry about this email that told me to throw away my Newsweek and stop paying attention.

I am very, very grateful for everything that I have. I appreciate so much about my life and understand how incredibly lucky I am to live where I live. But that doesn't mean I don't want things to change. That doesn't mean I don't want things to be better. Since the beginning of time the major positive changes we've seen in our world were because there were people who said, "We can do this better. We can do this differently." Our country exists because there were people who left Europe knowing they were willing to risk a lot for a better way of life. People who looked at things and said, "I am happy with MY life but I want things to be better for others” are responsible for the end of slavery and the end of the Holocaust.

I read Newsweek cover to cover every week. Not because I am looking for reasons to be unhappy about my life, but because I want to be informed about what is going on in the world. I want to look at the good, the bad and the ugly. I want to know about the genocide going on in Darfur and the millions of American children living in poverty and the millions of American citizens who have to choose between putting food on their table and paying for their medication because they have little or no health care coverage. I want to know about people who are treated with hate because of the color of their skin or their income level or their country of origin or their sexual orientation. I want to know about people around the world living in conditions so much worse than my own so I can understand and help to put people in power who want to do something about the working conditions in China, the living conditions in North Korea, the oppression of women in Afghanistan. I read Newsweek cover-to-cover every week because I want to look at those that have less than me and say "What can we do? How can we change this? How can we make this better?" The alternative is to turn and look away and say "Hey, I'm happy. I have everything I need. Who cares about the rest of the world?"

By and large the media is NOT a negative media. It is a media that wants us to see what is going on in our world, to reveal the truth, to not look away because our own lives are good. Jesus Christ wouldn't ignore the poor and the weak and the suffering of the world, and neither should we.

Both of my parents have taught me by example to be grateful for what I have (when we whined about wanting something others had Dad would say, “Don’t be a me-tooer), to help those who are less fortunate (as kids we had penpals in third world countries that we sent letters and money to), to give a helping hand to those who need help (we took in friends who were having difficulty and gave money to causes we believed in…Ann and I both put money in the collection plate at Mass every Sunday), to have compassion for people whose circumstances have not been as blessed as our own, to stay informed about what is going on in the world (I was probably only ten years old when my Dad brought me to see Gerald Ford speak at the Brown County Memorial Arena), to be the change I want to see in the world. Every single day I am grateful to have been raised by parents who believed in me and taught me these things at a very young age, and I hope that I will be as good at passing on these messages to my child(ren) as they were. The world is going to keep on changing, and I want to teach my son the tools he needs to change it for the better… as my parents did for me.

Evidence of the Insanity: Kwik Trip Vs. Whole Foods

One of these things just doesn't belong

I used to come home from my weeklong writing workshops and rave about the food… the baked salmon, the foaming lattes, Pam’s famous ceviche, Jo’s pumpkin butterscotch muffins, Martin's homemade pies with cinnamon ice cream, caribou burgers laced with garlic and spices and parsley. Jim said to me one day, “It’s not about the writing at all, is it? It’s all about the food.”

The first time Jim met my parents was when they came to visit for Easter in 2002. We sat down to a meal of steak and lobster and grilled veggies and before Jim had the time to tuck a napkin into the neck of his shirt, my mother, my father, and I were already on our way back for seconds.

When I told Ann about my nearly constant craving for steak, she said it’s because I’m having a boy. (But that doesn’t explain the fact that I’ve craved red meat since my first trip to the Ponderosa down on University Avenue or that I learned the proper way to cut a medium rare Porterhouse with a knife while other kids were still living on macaroni and cheese and bologna sandwiches.)

The question is can I blame the boy growing inside for me what happened Friday night, for the way I slinked up to the counter at Kwik Trip and slid a 26 ¼ oz can of Spaghettios with meatballs towards the pimple-faced cashier and gave him a dollar and told him I needed a bag? (Ann once told me that when she was pregnant she ate an entire can of Spaghettios right from the can without cooking it.). As soon as I got home, before I’d even taken off my shoes or checked the mail or fed the cats, I poured the contents of the can into a saucepan and turned up the heat. It wasn’t long before the bubbling sauce brought back memories of my childhood, fighting with Ann over who got the extra meatball when there was an odd number in the can (me, of course… I’m the oldest).

Can I blame the boy?

I wondered if something that permanently stained the white spoon orange could possibly be good for me, could have any nutritional value. And I was surprised to learn that each serving does have 10-15% of the daily recommended values of Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Calcium, Iron, and Folic Acid. Perhaps I can use that as my excuse for why I bought another can the next day at Econo Foods.

Sunday Rhonda and I walked around Lake Calhoun (slowly, we noticed…. The first time we did this we were passing everyone, but this time everyone was passing us… two pregnant women breathing heavy and trying to avoid getting overheated) and then made a trip to Whole Foods. I loaded up on all the foods I love but avoid because of the pesticides, filled my cart with organic peaches and pesticide free raspberries, organic cucumbers and strawberries and spring mix, my favorite organic vanilla yogurt and farm fresh organic brown eggs. We tasted a sweet basil pesto that we both ended up buying, and I broke it open as soon as I got home. I ate half a loaf of organic whole wheat bread smothered in pesto before I came up for air.

And for dinner I sat down to a delicious seasoned black angus prime ribeye and steamed organic zucchini. Dessert was half a pint of soft, ripe raspberries whipped into the creamy vanilla yogurt.

A month ago I was amazed at how good food tasted when I came back from the Davis farmers market and Pam filled my belly with salmon and tomatoes and baby turnips. Since then I have struggled to keep food down, living on lime popsicles and toast. A few weeks ago I fought nausea the day after I gorged myself on ribs and mom’s potato salad. And this weekend as I make my way from the first to the second trimester, right on schedule the morning sickness has subsided and all I want to do is eat. Considering that Jimmy Joe loved food as much as (if not more than) he loved basketball, it seems kind of fitting that on Father’s Day, pregnancy has become all about the food.

Fasten Your Seat Belts

Several months ago, a friend said to me. "Life is a roller coaster. Fasten your seat belts and keep your arms and legs inside the ride at all times."

Yesterday was definitely a roller coaster of emotions for me. I started my day with 45 minutes of toe-tapping and sighing as I watched pregnant woman after pregnant woman get called back into the OB/GYN clinic exam rooms at the Minneapolis Park Nicollet Clinic. I studied each one, wondering how far along they were, how much bigger they were going to get, how much bigger I was going to get. A Spanish woman in a gray jogging suit stood next to her husband at the appointment desk and said she needed to make an another appointment for next week. “And you’re 40 weeks right now?” the receptionist asked. She didn’t look that big. Maybe I won’t be huge. But maybe she was a tiny thing 9 months ago.

During the last week as my pants have started tugging at my waist and my abdomen has continued to expand, I’ve started to realize that I’m not going to be able to hide my pregnancy that much longer. I’ve only gained 3.5 pounds since those little embryos were transferred back in, but I must be losing it somewhere, because I’m definitely gaining in my boobs and my belly.

“You ARE getting bigger,” Brooklynn says, “But you’re not too big yet.”

Last week Dr. Brown explained that the progesterone in my system relaxes all the muscles and ligaments which allows my body to enlarge and make room for baby. Even if I have gained little weight, the progesterone has caused my rib cage to loosen and expand (allowing my bra to dig deep into the skin of my back) and helping my uterus to grow to the size of a large grapefruit or a small melon. In the next week that little melon will move up and out of my abdomen and away from my bladder… which should allow me to finally sleep for more than a few hours without getting up to pee. However, that shift is definitely going to make it harder to hide my pregnancy.

I told Kelly yesterday that I’m freaking out about that, that I am really kind of terrified of having perfect strangers know that I’m pregnant, having people I don’t know walk up to me and start talking to me about my pregnancy. I’m an introvert for God’s sake. Please don’t touch my belly unless you actually know my name. :)

After my long wait in the lobby, Sheela Solomon’s nurse called me back to an exam room, and we went over all the same forms I went over with Dr. Brown last week (“No, I am not allergic to latex.” No family history of genetic diseases. Just Diabetes. Cancer. High blood pressure.) She weighed me. Commended me for only gaining 3.5 pounds total in the first trimester. She took my blood pressure. 92 over 66. Lower BP is typical during this stage in pregnancy. She gave me pages of emergency phone numbers and helpful hints for dealing with nausea and a brochure on mercury levels in seafood. And then I got undressed and wrapped a gown around myself (“Open in back”) and waited. And waited. After 20 minutes I started kicking the table beneath me and speaking out loud. “Jesus Christ. This is ridiculous.” When I see Dr. Brown I never have to wait. At all. When my appointments are with Sheela the nurse practitioner, a 30 minute appointment always stretches into two hours of mostly waiting. I’m not a patient patient. Eventually, after I had read every damn poster on the wall explaining all the different techniques that a dad can use to comfort a mother during labor, I did what a lot of women do when they get angry. I started crying. And crying.

When Sheela finally arrived it was all business and she again went over all the same forms. (“Get used to it,” Ann says. “They ask you those same things at every single appointment.”) Sheela had trouble finding the heartbeat with the hand held Doppler device, and I said, “If we don’t find it, I’m going to worry so I’m not leaving here until we hear it.” Dr. Brown found it last week. She told me that Dr. Brown was right across the hall so if she couldn’t find it “we’ll just go get him to do it.” She doesn’t like me.

She got a new machine. She found the heartbeat. I exhaled.

On my way out she told me to make an appointment for July with Dr. Brown and an appointment with her for August “unless you’d rather see Dr. Brown every time and you can do whatever you want,” she said, “You’re the boss.” It’s mutual.

On my way home I got a call from Kathy at the perinatal clinic. She told me the CVS tests were good, that the baby had all the normal chromosomes which eliminates Downs syndrome and trisomy 13 and trisomy 18 and some of the less severe birth defects related to the sex chromosomes. “So that’s all we tested for,” she said, “and everything looks great.”

“Can’t you tell gender?’ I asked

“Yes I can. Do you want to know?”

“Absolutely.”

“It’s a boy.”

“Yay!!!!!”

I exhaled. In a big emotional frenzy I told her that was fantastic and that was what I was secretly hoping for. I had told everyone else that I would be thrilled with a boy or a girl (which is the truth) but Tuesday I admitted to Pam that I really was hoping for a boy.

I called Ann. I called Mom. I called Kelly. I was so excited. And then I put the phone down and thought about my dad, wanted to call him so much. A boy. God, how thrilled he would be.

And so I sobbed for a little while and thought of all the times I’ll sob in the future. Just like Ann did that first time Zachary stepped up to the plate at a T-ball game.

I called and texted a bunch of my friends to tell them it's a boy. Pam said she would take him to football games. Tami, who claims she never uses text messages, sent me a message with the teenage abbreviation "OMG!" Kae told me that now she "can start picking out cool baby things I see for him." John said "awesome" and Jim said "Jimmy Joe Junior" and Karen said "Hurrah!" and Jezail said "I told you so."

My friend was right. "Life is a roller coaster. Fasten your seat belts and keep your arms and legs inside the ride at all times." Thanks so much to all of you who have been a form of seat belt for me through all the ups and downs during the last year… and the 39 years before that. I am so incredibly blessed. And I’m going to have a son. :)

For those who've been wondering when the emotions would kick in...

I’m a little sad today. Not that overwhelming, gut-wrenching, down-to-the-core sadness that can paralyze you, but just a general build-up of tears that is usually released with an all new episode of ER. As I’ve watched the Pistons fight in the series against Cleveland, I’ve been missing my dad a lot, so that’s part of it. After Tuesday night’s game I wanted to call him up and ask him what he thought of Chauncey’s decision to go for three, and I wanted to tell Dad how much I’ve come to dislike Gooden. I’m sure we’d also talk about how Kobe Bryant is a big whiner and trade him to any place but Detroit. :)

As I approach the end of the first trimester and start to feel more and more secure about this pregnancy, it’s sinking in that I’m going to be a parent. And I’m going to be a single parent. I thought through all of this ahead of time and I definitely know it’s what I want, that it’s the right thing for me. But as with most expectant moms, I’m starting to realize the enormity of what that’s going to mean.

During my commute down the river valley this morning, I listened to NPR, and as always they had a lot of coverage of the war…. military officials saying this summer is going to be particularly bloody, academics saying that what is ultimately going to dictate how this war turns out is the lack of forces (we’re simply stretched too thin), soft pieces about the funerals of local hometown heroes. This morning they broadcast a recording of a phone call between two parents whose sons had recently been killed by an IED near Baghdad. A mother who laid her son to rest this past Memorial Day weekend spoke with a father whose son’s body arrived Tuesday. They had barely said hello to each other when I started bawling. They talked for several minutes about how they understood how the other felt, how they were proud of their children, how the pain of losing their children was the same as it would be whether he died while fighting in a war or while painting the house. And I continued to bawl long after the story finished and Kathy Wurzer started talking about Northwest Airlines coming out of bankruptcy.

Yesterday my friend Sarah was telling me about a nightmare she had in which her little boy was drowning and she was unable to reach him, to save him. I remembered when Mom called me early in the morning ten years ago to make sure I was alright. “I dreamt that we found your dead, naked body in the garden,” she said. “It was so awful and so real, that I had to make sure you were okay.”

Tuesday night I had a dream that I was driving home from a night out with friends and I started swerving. I suddenly realized that I had had too much to drink, that I shouldn’t be driving. And a second later I thought, “What the hell am I doing drinking? I’m pregnant.” I woke up in a panic that something was wrong, that my baby was hurt.

From what everyone tells me, this is the beginning of a lifetime of these kinds of fears… balancing your desire to protect your child with your desire to see them grow in to secure, responsible adults.

And of course, this makes me miss my dad. He would be as excited as I am that the Pistons are headed back to The Palace to set things right in the NBA.