Hot Mess

Years ago, I worked at a lovely, rustic wedding venue out in the country. The chefs and owners, Jane and John, had five wonderful children that worked alongside them. While John was a bit surly, Jane was just adorable. She was petite with messy cropped blond hair and an enormous smile. And she was constantly baking. While folding napkins, I would watch her out of the corner of my eye as she simultaneously pulled a rack of hot scones out of the oven with one bare hand and swatted John on the behind with the other. She was so much fun and always had a good joke or a piece of wisdom on the tip of her tongue.

Some of the other girls and I were in the kitchen one afternoon when she offered us some advice. "When it comes to children, just remember this one rule," she admonished. "Make them adaptable. We took our kids everywhere, and they learned to be happy and entertained wherever they were."

Nine years later, I still think of Jane, her five children, and her advice. I remembered it when I was pregnant with Tate and trying to get my head around the idea of becoming a mother, I remembered it when Tate was two weeks old and I took him to baby yoga (!?) and I remembered it when he was 2 months old and colicky and I took him to Jazzfest(!!!???) We all try so hard to be the good mom, the cool mom, the "right mom", the best mom. And we grasp at all the little hints of wisdom that women we respect say under their breath, hoping that they will guide us in the right direction.

But today I can say that much more than I have made Tate adaptable, he has made us adaptable. Really, there is no other option. To make a child do what you want without considering their readiness is not only unkind, it is not smart. They cannot be coerced into being less tired or in a different stage of development. When they're done, they're done, and you just have to respect that and hang up your own plans for awhile. I have found that when I let Tate lead the way and I surrender my own agenda, I become someone new - someone that I wasn't planning on becoming, but someone that is genuinely in tune with my son's happiness, state of mind, and development. And we have a great time together.

Until today.

Today I really, really wanted Tate to be on my agenda - not only because it would be fun for me, but because in my mind, it would be fun for him. The plan was to leave Mandeville at 2pm, drive an hour to New Orleans, go to a birthday party from 3 until 5, meet up with Bekah at 5 in the park, and then with Sara and Kate in mid-city. Oh, and stop at Whole Foods to get some vitamins. And then make the hour drive back. A little ambitious? Eh, YEAH. Like baby-yoga-at-2-weeks-ambitious.

So at 2pm on the dot, we hit the road. He had on his new threads and I was freshly scrubbed and ironed. The gas tank was full, the presents were wrapped, the cell phone was charged. At 2:56, we descended on New Orleans -- early! Perfect! Always trying to squeeze the most out of the minute, I decided to hit up Whole Foods now to get the vitamins and snacks. After we quickly cruised the aisles and played "no thank you, we don't touch that" in the bathroom, we were ready to check out. I opened my purse and peered inside. I do not exaggerate when I say that what I saw inside my leather purse resembled a cesspool. What appeared to be a quart of water pooled in the bottom of my purse and coupons, receipts, lipstick, almonds (??), my wallet, and cell phone bobbed up and down in it. The culprit? Sippy cup: overturned.

With dripping purse, broken electronics and baby in tow, I headed back to the car. It was HOT and Tate was already getting antsy. We would be at the park within minutes. Our goal was to make it to shelter #12, at the corner of St. Charles and Walnut. No problem. I have lived in New Orleans for years and don't need to ask or look at a map or even look at a street sign...please, I'm practically a local. We found a perfect parking spot and I put Tate on one hip, my diaper bag on my shoulder, the present wedged between my armpit and waist, and off we went into the 90 degree heat. It should only be yards now....Oh blessed be, we were on the WRONG SIDE of this enormous park. Tate was nearly doing a backbend out of my arms and sweat was running in rivers down my back. But we were already parked and committed. Must...keep...going...

When we finally arrived, I just wanted someone to hit me over the head. We were exuding a micro-climate around us that must have been 10 degrees hotter than the rest of the city. But we got there in one piece. Tate found another one year old named Tate, and the two of them played in a baby pool full of balls under the branches of the Live Oaks with cupcakes smeared across their faces and thought that they had indeed found heaven. But my Tate was getting redder and hotter with each passing minute, and we still had a one mile trek back to the car and an hour long drive ahead of us. SHOOT. I really wanted to meet up with Bekah, but alas, my phone was now drying in the sun on the dashboard of my father's car and I couldn't tell her I was here. I would wait for her near the swings.

We said our goodbyes to the birthday girl and began our pilgrimage back, hoping to spot her. With the acuity of a bald eagle, Tate saw the swings from the opposite side of the park and began grunting and wriggling out of my arms. I held on tighter and began singing. No, he wanted DOWN, NOW. OK, let's walk for awhile. Oh life is so exciting for a new toddler. He wanted to chase the dog, the squirrel, the cup blowing down the sidewalk, the old man, the shoelace, the dried crackly leaf, all at the same time. On a normal day, I would just go with it and let him explore. But he was obviously getting overheated and exhausted and this could go on indefinitely. I grabbed my water bottle and began dousing him with it. Oh boy, now THIS was fun. He screeched in hysterical laughter and began toddling away, soaking wet, towards the swings.

When we finally got there, I saw approximately 95% of New Orleans, but no Bekah. I knew she was there, hidden in the crowd, but we were simultaneously cell-phone-less, on a sugar high, soaking wet, chasing dogs, laughing, crying, burning hot, and needing a nap. So, after a few minutes, we left. No Bekah, no Kate, no Sarah. Just me and Tate, trucking back home on the Causeway, singing "She'll Be Coming Around the Mountain When She Comes" and pointing at birds all the way home.

I just talked to Bekah and she too had an overheated daughter and they couldn't wait around for us very long anyhow. We have been trying to get together now since I have been in Louisiana, but when you have two mamas that both want to adapt to what their babies want, well -- it's hard. It's not about what we want - it's about what they want. Which slowly and strangely, becomes what you want too.

Tate n Boo, sans Boo

Now that Boo is no longer part of the Gilman household, it doesn't really seem appropriate to keep him as part of the blog name. It's actually making me a little blue to see his name up there. But I feel committed to it and like the idea of this blog chroniciling Tate's adventures with an adorable, bouncing puppy. It just didn't work out that way. So the time has come to change the name of this blog. Here are some ideas:

The Adventures of Tate and Boob. Just one letter change, and entirely appropriate since he's still breastfeeding. Would be hard to forward my posts along to my grandparents, though.

Greening of the Gilmans. This is appropriate too, since the City of Portland is determined to whip all of us into eco-friendly submission. But it sounds like we are becoming martians.

I went to a website that generates band names, and here we their suggestions:

Glorious Gilmans. (A little too self-congratulating.)
Eating Gilmans. (Ewww.)
Gilmans on Nicotine. (Serioiusly?)
Contemplated Tate. (Never.)
Focused-Tate and the Hypno-Nation. (Doesn't Chad have their record?)

SO, I will continue to roll this around in my head while going about my day. I may just leave it, as a tribute to a good dog.

Wide Open

Tate has entered a new stage of babyhood. This is the stage that most babies are born into, but that Tate altogether skipped during his early frantic months that were instead filled with writhing, screeching, arching, howling -- defying all expectations of what newborns are supposed to do.

(Apparently, they sleep. What??)

He has entered the stage of cuddling, and it is bliss. He has never let me truly hold him until now. I mean "hold" in the sense that his body goes limp, his head rests heavy against my shoulder, his little hand wraps around my neck, and he just drifts off to la-la-land.

Perhaps in his maturity he has become more, not less, dependent on me to soothe him, but for now I am eating it up. I know that this stage will soon pass and he will be too busy running or digging or splashing to just let me hold him, so I am savoring every second of it. Right now, he is wide open to me and to the world - arms, eyes and heart.

The new and improved life of Boo dog

I haven't mentioned Boo dog in quite a while. And of course the reason is because I have been ashamed to admit that we found him a new home. It was a very hard decision because despite my blog title above ("the very bad dog") he was a very good dog. Like, maybe the best dog. He was RCA-dog cute. He was loving, loyal, eager to please, and most of all - Tate loved him and he loved Tate. We just couldn't manage to provide him with the exercise or space that he needed. Tate always came first, Boo came second, and it wasn't fair to a growing pup.

We gave him to a sweet, shy 16 year-old girl who now sleeps with him in her bed, surrounded by stuffed animals. He now has a sidekick, Pancho the Beagle, with whom he spends his days. He *smiles* in photos.

Maybe one day, we will get another dog. But until then, we will stick to pet rocks and maybe one day when we're feeling confident in our ability to take care of another living creature...a fish.

Barefoot in Louisiana

I have been a terrible blogger lately. Tate and I are on a 3 week sojourn in Louisiana, and we are loving every minute of it. There is not much reason to blog when the person I mainly blog for is downstairs. I love visiting my parents in old Madisonville. The long walks under the big oak trees down to the Piggly-Wiggly, the boat rides down to "The Redneck Riviera", the acoustic music down on the water front where there is actually a musician that specializes in playing a metal tub...it is so peaceful, sleepy and warm.

While Chad and I both truly love living in Oregon and specifically Portland, there is something about the city of New Orleans that lights up our eyes and tugs at our hearts. We have only been gone for a few months and it is incredible to see how much change has already happened in such a short time. I feel like the city is on the fast track to becoming one of the best places to raise a family in the country. I am trying to be careful about not passing judgement about what place is better. I know that if I let myself go down this path, then I will either be steeped in regret for making such a huge move across the country, or I will be dwelling on the negative aspects of a wonderful city that I only want to be positive about. It's like looking back on a past relationship and either regretting ending it or remembering only the bad parts about it. Forgetting the good is dishonest and doesn't honor a valuable part of your life. In that spirit, I refuse to regret, choose or judge which is better. Both are wonderful places and I feel blessed to have been a part of both. In short, life is good.

When Chad and I were in the Quarter last Friday, I ran across the work of an artist that really struck me. We were waiting for Don and Judi's wedding to begin and ducked into a gallery on Royal Street, where we came across the work of Holly Sarre. Her paintings depict scenes from Hurricane Katrina, but in a light that is hopeful, peaceful, resilient, and graceful - in typical New Orleans style. Look at the details of the image below: the church, the power lines, the cat, the flowers, the musician, the stars and moon, and the floodwaters surrounding it all. Beautiful yet devastating, another example of the contradiction that is New Orleans.

Good Friday

This post has nothing to do with Tate or Boo, both of whom are knee-deep in their own adventures. It is a long post, written about an experience that I had in Georgia that I hope to submit to a literary publication here in Portland. I thought that it would be appropriate to share today, Good Friday, as we reflect on our faith.



George lived on a mandarin orange farm in a town called “Fig.” Or rather, that is its English translation from the Georgian word “leghva.” George himself always mispronounced his town name as “lekhvi”, so people thought that he lived in a place called “Puppy.” Maybe it was details like this that made it so easy for people to rob people like us, and that eventually left George in an open field with no cell phone, no wallet, no shoes nor belt, watching his taxi driver speed off into the distance through a cloud of mandarin dust. But the great thing about living in a town called Fig that grows mandarins is that people are always giving you bags upon bags of free fruit, particularly during the fall harvest. So, when Warren sent out a text message to the four of us, suggesting that we go hiking during one of the incredibly abundant fall school holidays, George offered to bring the mandarins.

We came from all parts. George, who grew up on the rowing team at an elite preparatory in Connecticut now lived in Leghva; Ross, the harmonica-playing Catholic-Buddhist from New York now lived in a tiny village near the war zone of Abkhazia; Warren, the nearly 7 foot tall balding and perpetually smiling Marylander was now a resident of an idyllic mountain town that was covered in lilacs each spring; and I was a 24 year old former Texas sorority girl that now lived in a debunked Soviet cement factory called Kaspi (meaning “Windy.”)

The four of us headed out in the early morning mist through the town of Kazbegi and stared up at a little brown square perched atop the mountain: Tsminda Sameba, an ancient cathedral and the goal of our morning hike. We were going hiking because we wanted an invigorating morning workout, because we enjoyed each other’s company and light banter, because we wanted to take in the incredible views on our ascent and because we wanted to feel gladiators when we finally reached the summit. But most of all, we were going hiking because we were young, happy and healthy Peace Corps volunteers that donned steel-toed hiking boots and double-lined North Face jackets, and because we could. Needless to say, we didn’t encounter many Georgians along the path – not that there was an actual “path” to mention. Yet, about a third of the way up the mountain, we did encounter two.

We had stopped at an outcropping of rocks that offered a generous view of the town below and leaned our backs against the sundrenched boulders, catlike, trying to warm up. As George passed around the water and mandarins, we heard a voice. “Ah! Hello, young people!” a woman’s voice sliced through the mountain air. We looked down to see the owner of the voice, a darkly dressed middle aged woman, and a young boy making their way towards us, slowly and methodically.

Georgian women never ceased to amaze me, particularly when they were hiking. Wearing perfectly pressed long skirts and sweaters and with their dark hair perfectly coiffed, they clamored over rock and stream clad in spot-free, high-polished heels. They never stumbled, fell, swore, or even sweat. It was sort of inspirational and disconcerting at the same time. Our fellow hikers approached us with shy smiles, amused to see others, particularly Americans, along this arduous and lonely trek. We offered our mandarins to them with outstretched hands, mirroring their own custom back to them by begging – even ordering – them to SIT! EAT! PLEASE! They politely refused and continued on past us, woman and boy, swinging a large straw bag between them as they went.

We sat a little longer, gathering our energy and mandarin peels, of which we now had enough of to start a productive compost pile, and started again. It was another two hours before we finally reached the summit, and when we did, we were greeted with howling, icy winds that found all of the secret places that our coats and socks forgot to hide, and chilled us to the bone. The sky was blindingly bright, and the country of Georgia unfolded before us: its hills and valleys that rolled in hues of greens and browns, its wisps of smoke rising upwards from wood stoves that warmed houses and cooked hot khachapuri, its rivers that flowed and converged rapidly downstream and snatched children off of my town’s riverbanks each summer, the street vendors that sold petrol and notebooks covered with pictures of Britney Spears and unfiltered cigarettes, all in one place. I zipped my coat up over my nose and looked up at the magnificent structure that loomed over us. It was erected in the 14thcentury and stood solid: neither its design nor its construction have been altered since. It was made of stones measuring two feet thick on all sides, and stepping inside it was like entering a tomb: cold, silent, holy, and dark. The only light that entered was from tiny little rectangular holes that dotted the tops of the walls, letting in beams of light that fell softly onto the bare earthen floor.

I stepped over the threshold and onto the cathedral floor, and as my eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness, I made out a figure. A woman. I blinked and saw that tiny candles had been lit all around the room and were pressed against the stone walls, wax silently dripping into little golden puddles on the floor. The woman, the very woman that we had met along the trail, stood hunched over, bent at the waist, feet dragging along the dusty floor. She did not look at us. She was chanting in a low, moaning voice - a voice that sounded desperate and pleading, that was strained from a tightness in the chest that only comes from deep sadness. She was wearing a long, thick black iron chain around her neck that dragged on the floor behind her as she trudged across the floor. Each link was the size of my palm. I had no discreteness, no politeness, no ability to conceal my awe, like a child that sees a deformed figure for the first time and hasn’t yet learned how to conceal his curiosity or amazement.

George, Warren and Ross turned and left, but I stood still, awestruck. She continued moaning, chanting, and dragging, walking slowly around the interior of the church’s perimeter, stopping at times to cross herself or to kneel along the wall beside the candles. I began to cry for reasons I did not understand – I was witnessing something very intimate between this woman and God, a ritual of corporal mortification that was obviously physically painful but also beautiful in its rawness and purity.

She encircled the church three times. Then she took the chains off and began to pack them back into her bag again, the ritual complete. The boy stood up from the corner where he had patiently been sitting and watching, and dusted off his pants. I don’t remember exactly what I said to her, but I think that in my colloquial and broken Georgian it came to something like, “Excuse me, my dear woman, but is it all good?” She explained that her sister, the boy’s mother, was dying of breast cancer, and that it was believed that this church, Tsminda Sameba (Saint Trinity) had the power to heal her. She had been instructed to fast for three days, and then walk up the mountain with these heavy iron chains, put them around her neck, and carry them around the three corners of the church, three times. This, she believed, was the only thing that would be able to save her dying sister: this physical manifestation of ardent and unwavering faith. I walked outside, shaking and humbled, not able to utter why I was so affected by this woman and her act. I had nothing to say.

The four of us decended from Tsminda Sameba silently, finding our forgotten mandarin peels along the way, and tucked them gently into our pockets and backpacks. We walked down off the mountain, packed our bags and headed back to our respective villages: Leghva, Kaspi, Sagarelo and Zugdidi.