Sky Bluesky: Friends and Family

Sleep in Heavenly Peace. Please?

Fri, 30 Dec 2005 05:50:23 GMT

Let me talk about sleep for a minute, and then we'll talk about Oliver's Christmas. I promise, we'll get to the good stuff soon. But first, let me explain why sleep and Christmas were so interlocked this year. (Here's a cute picture to hold you over.)

Yes, yes, Christmas. The lights, the festivities, the nog. Tidings of comfort and joy. Except we were terrified.

See, we had started sleep-training Oliver just a couple of weeks ago. We got tired of holding him for thirty, or sixty, or ninety minutes at a time during his naps, and wanted to move him toward sleeping by himself. "Where" didn't matter - he could sleep in the crib, in his co-sleeper, on the bed, under the Christmas tree. I didn't really care, as long as he was sleeping on his own.

So we started working on him, and started seeing progress. (For those of you taking notes at home, we're using Elizabeth Pantley's book, The No-Cry Sleep Solution.)

We could get him to sleep successfully for twenty or thirty minutes by himself on the bed, and on rare occasions, as long as forty or fifty minutes. Not fabulous - we were still bouncing him around on our red rubber ball when he wasn't on the bed, but it was progress.

So Christmas was coming. and it meant two days of driving - one day down to Oregon and one day back - and three at Uncle B and Aunt N's house, including several hours spent at someone else's house for Christmas dinner itself. The car rides, we decided, would be somewhere between pleasantly surprising (he might sleep for a good long while) and horrific (screaming, screaming, screaming.) We were convinced his naps would be whacked out, because he would be in a strange environment. We brought all of the things that he needed for sleep - his white noise machine, his lullaby CD (which plays at the same time as the white noise machine, for reasons that only make sense in my own brain), his two swaddle blankets that we use to double-swaddle him. We borrowed a balance ball from our hosts - too small, but at least it was a ball. We thought we were in for a miserable four days.

The ride down was no picnic, but it wasn't bad. We drove a rented car, which was big and luxurious and smooooove. Oliver slept for a while, woke up and played, and then screamed and went to sleep. R fed him on the road in the parking lot of an Arby's. Like I said, not bad.

He slept like ... well, like a baby ... on that first night. He woke up often, and because we were in a full-size bed, he slept between me and R, so both of us were kept awake. But it wasn't awful.

Naps, amazingly enough, were hardly an issue during the entire ordeal. When it was time for him to sleep, he went down with a minimum of fuss and slept quite well. One of us or the other sat outside his door (terrified that he'd roll off the bed). But surprise, surprise, he was great. Even on Christmas day, when he was bombarded by sensory overload, he slept surprisingly well.

We must have looked pretty funny every time he went down for his naps. Whoever had sleep duty would come up and say the same thing. "He went down really well, he slept forever by himself. I couldn't believe it." Yet, each time it was true. Each time, we couldn't believe it was working.

I even had a couple of episodes where I put him on the bed before he was completely asleep (deep breathing, no body motion at all.) After a little tossing and turning, he would settle right down and conk out by himself. This may not sound like much, ye non-childbearing people, but it was a big big deal for me and R.

And Christmas itself? Yes, it was fabulous. There were clothes, and toys, and clothes, and toys, and more toys. My grandmother knitted him two sets of mittens and stocking caps. (I love my grandma.) And another relative, sort of a grandmother-in-law, went to the trouble of making him an enormous quilt of his own, with dozens of tiny patches of things like Bugs Bunny, kittens, trucks, Tiggers, and other kid stuff. It's an amazing piece of work, and R and I both got a little teary when we saw it.

We have a dozen new ornaments that we can tell him came from his very first Christmas, including one adorable piece with a photo of him in his little red union suit, looking for all the world like Santa's littlest helper.

The best present of all, though, was experiencing all of the sights and memories of his first Christmas. I loved helping him "unwrap" each of his presents. I would find a loose corner of wrapping, let him grasp onto it, and pull the present in the other direction, so the wrap would come off in his hand. He got to meet his cousin Cutie-Pie for the very first time. She's a ripe old 2 1/2 now, and talks and walks and uses sippy cups by herself. (He suddenly has taken an interest in using his own sippy cup, and I think it has something to do with cousin envy.) His grandmother on R's side was there, and everybody just took so much joy in seeing him and playing with him. We have fifty squijillion pictures of him. R actually made several photo books for our faraway relatives with pictures of his first six months, and every one who received one was awestruck and touched. (Yes, he's that cute.)

I'm already excited (and a little exhausted) in anticipation of next year's Christmas. And his first birthday. And his first real Halloween. And his first real Independence Day. And the first summer where he can run around barefoot. Holy cow, he's got a big year coming up.

Mother's Day

Sun, 27 Mar 2005 15:35:55 GMT

I couldn't write about this yesterday. This morning, I will try. I'm afraid to write about this, because I know my brother reads this and I don't want to open up the old wounds again. But the wounds have been open for the last couple of weeks. Every time I look at that woman in Florida, I think about her, and about my mother, and what could have been, if my father had been less brave than he is.

It was twenty-five years ago yesterday. That means that today, twenty-five years ago, was the first day of my life without a mother.

It wasn't really the first day, not really. She was the inverse of Terri Schiavo, the woman who kept wanting to die when so many people wanted her to live. I remember one day, when I was very small, maybe not even in school, when we found her in the bathroom unable to stand. We called Dad in a panic at work, told him that something was wrong with Mom, and minutes later they came bursting in, in blue satin jackets over solid muscular bodies. I remember them the way people remember hurricanes, or earthquakes, or tornadoes ripping the roof off their mobile homes. Paramedics exploded into our house, and I remember standing in the hallway and screaming, because everything about it frightened me. Our home had turned into chaos, and there was screaming, and there were EMS crews, and somewhere in the bedroom, my mother tried to die, but nobody wanted to let her yet.

It wouldn't be the last time that chaos and anarchy took possession of our house.

She tried again. She tried several times, I think, but I don't remember many of them. She filled her coffee cup with Valium - was it this time, the paramedic episode? Was it another time? I think there were some episodes that I never even knew about.

Our young life, when I think about it now, was a series of moves and returns. Mom takes the kids to Massachusetts, where her mother provides her with sanctuary. Dad flies out and brings the family home. Mom leaves (on New Year's Day) to Kansas. After months? a year? she returns, with a Triumph convertible and a new sense of herself that doesn't seem to last.

Then Dad moved out, into the basement of his cousin's house and then into his own apartment. We moved in with him. We ate Little Ceasar's pizza, watched tv on his black and white set, played poker with pennies that Dad kept in an old Bugler tobacco tin. One day I put down my father's address at school instead of my mother's address, and they told me that I was out of their school district. I tried to explain what made perfect sense to me, that sometimes I lived with my mom and sometimes I lived with my dad. That was just how it was. What's the big deal?

And still Dad kept an eye on his wife, the woman he pledged to live 'til death do them part. I have an image of my father bringing bags and bags of groceries to the house (their house, which was now only her house) and putting them away silently in the cupboards, then walking into the bedroom to check in on his wife, who was dying, dying, dying all the time and unable to end it because too many people needed her to live.

Manic depression was the old name for the disease now called bipolar disorder. The second term sounds too benign for the assault that my mother endured. William Styron, in his memoir "Darkness Visible," used the term "brainstorm" and expressed regret that the word had already taken on another meaning. My mother's mind was under a storm of negative energy, sadness, gloom that kept pushing her to jump off the cliff. One day she jumped, and the dark wind took her.

Mom was a medic, and she understood basic toxicology. She drank methyl alcohol after my father had left for work - I think he was working graveyard shift at the steel mill - and only we knew what was happening. We didn't know she had poisoned herself, but we knew that something was wrong because she was wailing in the bedroom, wild banshee wails of pain and terror and maybe victory. I dreamed that night of the truth - that my mother sounded like she was dying.

When my father (who was also a medic in the Air Force) found her, she calmly explained what she had ingested hours ago, and told him that it had already poisoned her vital organs and done irreparable damage. It was too late. They both knew it.

She went to the hospital. They did the best they could. And at some point, my father told me years later (there are conversations that a father and son should never have), they asked him the question. They might be able to keep her alive on life support, in some form, but she would never recover to be the woman she once was.

They had talked about living wills, and he knew what she wanted. He told them to take the life support machines away, and he said goodbye to his wife, the mother of his three children.

I spent ten years with a mother, and have now spent twenty-five years without. My father stepped in heroically (although not without stumbles) to raise us on his own, with lots of tv dinners and boil-in-bag dinners and lots of overtime at the steel mill. Our lives got better. We moved away from the house where everything had happened. I grew up well, went to college, married a wonderful woman.

But I have dreams sometimes. Just a few weeks ago, I dreamed about my mother, and about loss, and about a house with no garden and no grass, only barren soil in the front yard. I woke my wife up and cried like a child for my mother, who hasn't been there for over two decades, and who has never truly left my mind.

Would I have wished it differently? I would wish for my mother to be healthy, to have a mind unclouded by fatalistic impulses, to wish for her life. But do I wish that the machines had kept Mom alive, a prisoner of her hospital bed? I do not. Dad carried out her wishes, and even if she was still "alive" to this day, she would have been nothing more than a body, a thing, a husk that I would try to pretend was my mother. I prefer the memories of my living mother, as faint and distant as they are, to the idea of a ghost living eternally in a comatose fog. My mother let go then, and my father did the right thing by allowing her to leave the ground, catch the ill wind, and fly away to the resting place she needed so desperately.

Tue, 04 Jan 2005 03:39:58 GMT

Very ... VERY Happy Kitty

Here's a weird question. Is there anyone out there who's had kids, and had a cat while they were pregnant?

Was your cat more affectionate while you were expecting? Like, a lot more friendly?

This is Chloe. And boy, is she lovin' Mrs. Bluesky right now. (The Mrs. is shown wearing a grey sweater, which Chloe has happily sunk her claws into.)

She's always been an affectionate cat, but boy, she's just turned into a little cuddle machine in the last couple of weeks. Maybe it's pheromones. Hope it translates into warm feelings for little O when he arrives.

Sun, 02 Jan 2005 03:19:19 GMT

Happy Holidays

We took down the tree today. The lights have been unplugged, the bowl games have been played, the egg nog has been drunk. Pack it all away for another year.

This is the last holiday that me and Mrs. B will have all by ourselves. Next year, we will barely matter - all of the gifts will be for little O. He's already getting presents, and he doesn't make his debut for another five months. He's got books, CD's, even a few ornaments. Even furniture - the in-laws down in Oregon have given us the crib and playpen that their daughter Cutie-Pie no longer uses.

Anyway, in the spirit of holiday merriment and peace on earth and all that, let me share this picture, which, I assure you, is neither a picture of me nor of Mrs. B. So, no nasty comments out there. Happy New Year, y'all.

Fri, 31 Dec 2004 05:24:21 GMT

There Are Too Many Bodies.

I've watched the Iraq stories for months and fumed at the way American broadcasters frame the news. Twenty Iraqis die and it's the third story. One American dies, and it's the lead. American lives are just more valuable, the way American music, American movies, American pop is more valuable. Our currency is on a different scale, even when it comes to death.

I was so incensed, because one death is as tragic as another. Every person is a son, a daughter, a brother or sister, the center of a web of connections no less significant than anothers.

But the other thing that gnawed was the sense that Iraqi bodies were just that - bodies. An endless supply of other-thans that could be reported as if they were sports scores. "At halftime, it's 15 insurgents to 13 Iraqis."

And then the waves crashed on the shores of Thailand. And Indonesia. And more - countries that didn't exist for most of us, and now are fields of death and the byline for terrifying home movies - the apocalypse made real, shot on location in paradise.

The bodies stack up like cordwood. Sixty thousand. Eighty thousand. One hundred twenty five thousand, I heard this evening.

How to even imagine it?

I try to compare it to cities I know. Everett, Washington equals 85,000. More than that. Tacoma equals 180,000. Not that many - not today. So imagine two-thirds of Tacoma, wiped clean by the wet hand of God, and that's what happened. But it doesn't work, because the mind cannot erase entire cities, highways, families, decades of history, like shaking an Etch-a-Sketch.

The media has tried to reduce it to single stories. The Swedish boy. The distraught Canadian boyfriend. The supermodel and her boyfriend, who is still missing. The designer and his euphemistic friend, who still remains missing. The action hero who cheated death. It doesn't seem real. We're all keeping it at arm's length, and so am I. Death on this level is mind-shattering, and so it almost needs to be reported as a running tally, because if we do otherwise...

if we try to bring it home...
if we imagine the one person who we love more than anything, more than life itself...
and imagine that they've just been obliterated,
assaulted by the very sea and the howling rage of nature,
their body only identifiable by tattoos and birthmarks,

and then imagine that their entire family is also gone...
and ours is also gone - our brothers, sisters, our father, our aunts and uncles...
and every family we ever knew growing up...
and every person we worked with or ever worked with in the past...
every flirtation, every close friend, every science class partner...

imagine your entire photo album of friends and acquaintances, all of them, every one,
destroyed utterly. Dashed like kindling against trees and houses and fences and the earth,
shattered like pottery.

The mind cannot comprehend. The grief is so overwhelming it robs us of the ability to think, to walk, to breathe. The grief and shock becomes a raging wind that howls in our ears, knocks us to the ground, robs flesh of everything but pain, all around, everywhere, so much pain and nowhere to go to escape it, nowhere to be safe, nowhere to be whole again...

God help the survivors. And God help all of us to get through this torrent of grief and horror.

I will give money to the so-called relief effort. I will show up in church on Sunday. I will hold my wife harder than usual, and kiss Oliver good night and pray for him to be safe. Please, please, please, let him be safe.

The Big News

Wed, 29 Dec 2004 03:37:27 GMT

We had our ultrasound on Monday. You know - the big one. The one that checks out the little one's kidneys, heart, spinal cord, amniotic fluid, blood flow, facial features, and just about everything else.

And oh yeah. They check the gender.

So everything looks pretty good, as far as internal organs and all that goes. Mrs. B has something called placenta previa, which means her placenta is blocking the door. So to speak. It can be a problem, but 90% of the time, it rectifies itself naturally, so I'm trying not to worry. Mrs. B's doing enough worry right now for both of us. By the way, if anyone out there has any experience with the aforementioned condition, let me know.

But aside from that, everything looks fine and healthy and great. Legs are still kicking, and both little hands look good and fully formed. And yes, we did find out the sex.

Oh, did you want to know too?

It's a boy.

You can just call him Oliver.

We have a genuine ultrasound pic of the litlle man, with a huge (by comparison) arrow pointing to his um ... boyness. I might have to save this one for his high school years.

Wed, 22 Dec 2004 15:40:48 GMT

Hey, look what Santa got me!

Actually, I'm lying. I got it for me. Mrs. Bluesky decided that the only Xmas gift that made any sense was an iPod, as I'd been scanning eBay for weeks looking for one. So she gave me the gift of letting me buy my very own iPod. I know it's a little odd. But we seem to do this with Christmas a lot - we pick out our gift, identify the store, and do everything but buy our own gift. So this isn't a big stretch from our standard m.o.

Mrs. Bluesky, by the way, got a very lovely watch. She is very pleased with it.

We'll be down in Oregon for Xmas, so this will be a very quiet blog until after Xmas. I'm sure I'll have new political updates then, as the Washington governor's race will finally have a hand recount total. An official count - even though Paul Berendt, head King County Dem, has already declared victory.

While I'm gone, talk amongst yourselves. Anyone else do a yankee swap for Christmas?

Any cool presents I should know about?

Any tragic/comic iPod stories to share?

Happy holidays, y'all.

On the Other Hand

Tue, 30 Nov 2004 14:34:06 GMT

Maybe there's another reason I'm not reacting to leaving my current organization. I've got other things to be thinking about. Things like this.

Yeah: new job. Financial malfeasance. Whatever. I'm gonna be a daddy.

Tue, 21 Sep 2004 14:47:38 GMT

New Life Waiting

May of 1987. My life had just reinvented itself. After 12 years of school buses, World History, Algebra II, and life first in a Detroit suburb and then small-town Colorado, things were about to change. In one eventful summer, I would let go of Phase I of my life - high school, virginity, living at home - and move on to Phase II.

Phase II: moving cross-country to New England, where my only relatives were my mother's family, whom I hadn't even seen in years. It was time for self-reliance and self-discipline, classes called Poverty and Wealth , Chicano Autobiography, and Labor History in the United States, the development of my writing skills in an environment that would both nurture and challenge me. The development of my work history, and the realization taht I wasn't like the kids at my private college. Most of them merely drove their Saabs back and forth to class: I took the bus to one or two part-time jobs and tried to hold down my classes at the same time, not always succeeding.

In Phase II, I became a worker. The only jobs I had held in Phase I were pulling rye for two summer months and tutoring other kids at my high school. I learned responsibility, accountability, made many, many mistakes, and became an adult. I settled into my routine: my happily married life, my music, my blog, my nonprofit career.

In May of 2005 Phase III will begin. We found out on Friday that we're expecting our first child.

I've seen those words hundreds of times, and the impact of the written words never matches the intent. A new life is growing, right there in our apartment, right there in my wife's abdomen. When she eats, she feeds a second life. When she sleeps, the first germs of a second human being lays dormant on her side of the bed.

Suddenly, all the stuff we've been telling ourselves about saving money, about doctor's appointments and childproofing the apartment are real. We've got some advantage, because our in-laws will give us a lot of Cutie-Pie's older stuff. She'll be about 2 years old when our little one pops out, so we'll have lots of good hand-me-downs.

Phase III has already begun. I'm already realizing that I hide myself on the computer too many nights instead of sitting next to Mrs. B. I need to be more connected to the family. And my questions are endless: what color eyes? boy or girl? will she play sports? will he love to read, or write, or dance? Then, of course, the questions that you don't dare put voice to, the questions you think in the middle of the night but never say out loud.

I am ready for the next phase. Welcome, little one. Welcome to our world, soon to be yours.

Mon, 06 Sep 2004 02:54:33 GMT

Hurricane Frances

Maybe I'm new to this, but are Weather Channel reporters always this stupid? Standing in driving rain, water pouring down their faces, their stupid plastic jackets flapping in the wind.

I thought they actually took themselves seriously - I mean, most of the idiots standing in the hurricane are called "meteorologists." Is this what they wanted when they went to ... um ... meteorological school?

I'm genuinely worried about the latest Hurricane, because Mrs. Bluesky's father lives in central Florida. Last time, he got off pretty lucky, but this looks too big to miss him. But I can't help being distracted by the nuts standing out against the wrath of God in their rain slickers and handheld mics.

Now, the Weather Channel's doing a montage of the worst footage of reporters being blown away by the hurricanes. It's like the greatest hits of people who are too dumb to come in out of the rain. The dry, warm, smileyfaced anchors in the studio are chuckling at the poor bastards standing out in the maelstrom.

Mon, 16 Aug 2004 15:45:23 GMT

Southern Comfort

We had a wonderful weekend, me and Mrs. R, in Port Townsend. I wasn't sure I would when we arrived.

It took us six hours to get to Port Townsend from Seattle. I left work at 2:30, and ran home to pick up R so we could make the 3:45 ferry. Good idea, except for Friday traffic. By the time I got home, picked up the wife and got through the line for the ferry, two hours had gone. We made the 5:30, and instead of a luxurious dinner on the waterfront, we ate at the surreal Mickey D's near the ferry dock.

The ferry took off late. Then, another hour of driving, and we didn't even arrive until after 7. I was surly already. The innkeeper was a southern military man from Georgia who had lots of WWII flight books and model planes all around.

I thought to myself, "Republican. Don't talk politics."

Then we went upstairs to our room. And I saw it. "It" was a poster advertising an old Victrola, with a picture of an old black man and a verse from "Carry Me Back to old Virginny."

Carry me back to old Virginny,
There's where the cotton and the corn and tatoes grow,
There's where the birds warble sweet in the springtime,
There's where this old darkey's heart am long'd to go.

Deep breaths. We've already paid for the rooms. I'm just going to swallow it, and pretend I didn't see it, and after a nice long walk on the waterfront, I was starting to feel more at ease. Except every time we walked upstairs, I saw it, and I'd get that acid feeling all over again.

The house was a beatiful old Victorian, and the stay was magnificent. The furniture was overstuffed, the dressers were antique, the breakfasts were sumptious. I had a great time. Just what I needed. And we'll probably be back. My initial kneejerk reaction was to pull up our stakes, find a hotel for a couple of days. But I didn't. I didn't even complain to our hosts (it turns out we barely saw Mr. Military Guy over the weekend - his wife hosted the breakfasts and provided the company. He'd show up every once in a while to refill our orange juice glasses.)

So what's the lesson? That even good-natured people can accidentally hang racist memorabilia? That you shouldn't judge a book by its cover? Or is the lesson that I let it go - that when I was hit with something upsetting and offensive, I chose not to worry about it because the muffins were top-notch? (Maybe I shouldn't be so upset. After all, it is the state song of Virginia.)

I can't decide if this is a good sign or a bad sign because I'm calming down the kneejerk reactions. I just can't decide. Honestly, I think I needed a peaceful weekend badly enough that I refused to let anything get in the way.

Sun, 01 Aug 2004 05:29:09 GMT

Cutie Pie Comes to Town

This is Cutie Pie, our beloved niece. She came to visit with Mom for a few days. I was working during the day, so R. and mom and baby got to spend lots of time together.

I got to go out to dinner with her and play at night, and this morning.

R. and I have been (here comes the euphemism) trying to start a baby for the last couple of months. It's amazing what you see in your apartment when you have a mobile baby running around.

All of the extension cords.
All of the balls for the cat, that are just big enough to floomp into a baby's throat.
All of the photo frames on low tables, that babies can easily pick up.
All of the book shelves and CD holders at baby-hand level.

the other thing I realize, having Sabine around. It's exhausting! She's at the age where she demands attention pretty much non-stop, and always wants to play or talk or get in trouble or turn something over. I almost fell back to sleep after Mom and Sabine went back home.

It was great having them up here, though. I think Dad appreciated a few days of rest (he's working much more than 40 hrs/week at his company, and they just finished moving), and I know Mom and R. enjoyed shopping and talking together.