Capering

Right now it's so easy to be a heroine in mu daughter's eyes. We go to the playground and I run in circles around her as she stands there giggling, or I start skipping, or climb up on the big blue plastic hippo. She thinks I'm hilarious. She admires me because I always have the solution to every problem - I can disentangle the strings, find the right hole for each shape in her puzzle, and even tie my own shoes. In just a few years, maybe she'll think I'm dumb and out of touch. She will notice things like, my shoes have holes in them and are the same pair I've been wearing since 2002.

If only, someday when she's a teenager, I can win her back by capering a few laps around the playground.

Bellyaching

If I see one more banner ad with a 19-year-old model who has never been pregnant looking down at her perfect concave stomach in mock surprise and delight as she holds up the ends of a measuring tape (as though it measured any different from the last time or the time before that)... it'll be one banner too many.

Alas, here we are many, many months after the baby and even after I finished breast-feeding (after which, I promised myself, I would go on a strict diet and get back my girlish figure). I've been doing crunches almost nightly since April, and recently started running again. I'm a few pounds below my pre-pregnancy weight (the same weight that I was all through college and my twenties). My breasts are nearly nonexistent. But I still have a belly that looks like I'm about 3 months pregnant. Why, oh why, is my body hoarding fat there? I have exactly one pair of pants that is comfortable and that I wear continually up until the moment I must leave the house, when I put on a pair of pants that cut into my stomach. I don't understand why most women find it so easy to get back their flat stomachs after the first pregnancy (the second one, though, seems to be a different story) - but apparently this hasn't happened for me. When I run, I can feel my belly wagging slightly from side to side in front of me. Ugh.

I guess part of this angst is just my unwillingness to accept that I am getting older. I don't want to admit that I can no longer blend in on a college campus, and wear all the same clothes with the same ease that I did back then. I want to present an appearance to the world (as some women are capable of doing, and real women, too, not just celebrities) that says, "Child-bearing didn't change me. Here I am, still the same lithe and beautiful person as ever." But, clearly, child-bearing did change me. I have the marks of it all over my body - more stuff sags, more stuff is stretched out, there are pale, feathery marks all over my flanks. I wanted to manage the whole biological event with the utmost of grace. Instead, I have daily reminders that I am mortal.

Separation of Church and School

I was talking to a blow-hard recently about kids and schooling. He has some young kids he's planning to enroll in Catholic school. His reasoning was, "It's too confusing for kids to get the different messages from home and school. I don't want my kids being told these contradictory things, and having to go to their teacher with, 'but mommy and daddy say this,' or 'my priest says this.' " I felt a sudden, quick, burst of sympathy for teachers who might be faced with such children. If I was a teacher, my blunt reaction would be, 'So what? I don't care what your priest says, this is how it really is.' It's not that I'm anti-religion. I just think that a lot of it is parables and poetry, and I don't have patience with people trying to substitute it for reality.

The blow-hard's other complaint about public schools was that science class never goes into the morality of certain issues. I guess he means sex ed doesn't tell the kids that premarital sex is sinful, or gay people are evil. I suggested that there was no moral consensus across cultures and that morality wasn't a scientific judgment anyway, so that was why schools didn't go into it. But I think my words fell on deaf ears. I know some people do emerge from the private school system with intact logic and reasoning, and a few even go on to become scientists. One of the smartest guys I know attended Catholic school. But I feel like a school that could mix morality with science (in fact, that deliberately planned curricula to do so) would stack the deck against its students. Oh well. If this guy wants to spend the money to send his kids to private school, I guess there's nothing I can do to convince him otherwise. I just feel a little that the kids aren't getting a fair deal.

Journey

Today I was thinking how awesome and bold my husband is. I've lived in this same city all my life, including for college, and have never been more than a short drive away from my parents (who are still my best friends, and whom I still visit at least once a week just to hang out and chat). But my husband left his family of origin eight years ago and created a new one, in a totally new environment. He came east to attend a school hundreds of miles from home, where he didn't know anyone. He found a place to live, learned where to shop, learned how to get around on the public transportation system, made friends. He found a wife and started a new family. It seems to me that he's so brave for building a new life like that. Maybe it's easier for men to strike out on their own that way, and maybe it's easier for people who aren't quite as close with their parents. But he still gets props from me for doing it.

An Actual Serious Question

This might come across as frivolous, but here's the burning question that is currently occupying my mind: How many kids should a couple have, for optimal happiness?

The whole time I was growing up, I worried a lot about the environment and the population crisis and vowed that I'd never have more than one or maybe two children, to avoid adding any more burdens to the earth.

Then the night my daughter was born, I was so over-the-moon full of joy I remember thinking, "That was great! I did it! I want to do it again - I'd love to have about four kids!" And so far parenting has been the best time of my life. I love being with my husband and my daughter, taking care of our family. I feel like I'm so much better at that stuff than I am doing my jobby job, earning my way in the world. In my daydreams I quit my job and stay home with the kids (lots of them) in a big rambling house in the country, and we all make our own butter and cheese, and the kids tend a vegetable garden, and we're all happy as clams.

But realistically. I'm too old to have a bunch more kids. And the environmental problems are still there, including climate change which threatens life as we know it, and is a menace no generation has ever had to face before. And even if it was guaranteed that the world we love is going to go on forever, and will be safe for our children to grow up in, I'm not sure my husband and I could afford to have more than one more child - not and provide the quality of life that I want for them.

So a lot of this speculation is just that, just hypothetical dreaming. If we *did* want to have two more children, the time to get cracking on that would be right about now, since I'm already 32 and I wouldn't want to take the risk of pregnancy past age 35. One of my friends who had her baby about the same time that I did is now eight months pregnant with her second child. I'm amazed. I haven't even gotten my period back yet. I'm physically incapable of becoming pregnant again, and here she's almost done carrying #2!

Anyway, back to the question of the hour. I can see that having one kid, even if it's a lot of work and fundamentally changes your life together, still leaves time for snuggling and the occasional date night and all the little joys. And one kid is portable - I can get around town on my own, carrying her and the stroller and her bag of stuff, and it's doable. But if I had two, I don't know how I'd manage to go anywhere. I just don't have enough arms. I can also see, based on the couples we know who have two young kids, that two soak up all available time - not that there is a whole lot remaining after the first one. These couples are in crisis all the time, slamming through the days, constantly struggling to keep food in the fridge, keep the house from descending into chaos, and collapsing into bed exhausted every single night. No more date nights, for sure. One tired mother told me, "One was fun. But two is just - I mean, we love him, but - we don't have a life any more. We're just hanging on and hoping it will get easier in a few years." Which means that three kids is a level of madness I can't even bear to contemplate.

But! but but but. Having a baby, the first time, was so great. And I loved watching her grow and learn. I couldn't even tell you what my favorite stage was. Wouldn't it be wonderful to get the chance to do all that again? and again?

So, back to the question again, which is: Have there ever been any scientific studies to determine the optimal number of children a couple should have in order to achieve or maintain happiness? The research would have to be relevant to young urban/suburban Americans living in environments similar to mine, of course. And the outcomes would have to be various, including both marital happiness for the parents and long-term happiness and positive feelings about their family for the kids. I wouldn't want to have a family where the kids leave home asap and never want to return even for holidays.

My hope is that if you sample enough families a pattern emerges, like - two kids bring about the perfect balance between adult and kid pursuits within the family, whereas three kids make the marriage strained. Or, three kids are optimal for allowing different personalities to flourish within the family and to create a well-rounded whole. Or, four kids is just right for creating that warm tribal sense of belonging. I just don't know.

I would be really interested to learn more about this. Maybe I'll check out the department of family and child psychology at the local university and see if they have any leads.

Sanctuary

This lion cub was rescued by Wild Animal Sanctuary from a Mexican circus where she was being mistreated. She's living on the Sanctuary grounds now. Some of the rescued dogs that also live there serve as her adopted litter-mates - giving her opportunities to play, socialize, and feel comforted. Usually I don't go for super-cutesy pictures of puppies and kittens cuddled up together - it just looks staged or anthropomorphic - but this is real, two real animals that have suffered abuse, have been rescued, and are deriving comfort from one another now. It's a good thing that organizations like Wild Animal Sanctuary exist.

Small is Beautiful

I always complain about how our apartment is so small. It is, I think, the smallest living space of anyone we know. I'm already worried about how we're going to serve dinner to the couple we invited over in a few weeks' time, because we don't have a table. We usually just eat sitting on the sofa or standing up in the kitchen. Ah well, we'll manage. Maybe they'll think it's charmingly bohemian to sit around on cushions on the living room floor.

But - three things I really like and appreciate about this space, and will miss when we eventually move out:

1) It's always warm in winter. It's one of those old-fashioned apartments with radiators, and it's super-warm even when we don't turn them on. We can walk around barefoot in comfort and even crack a window open for some fresh air. Normally I would worry about energy use and the environment and all, but it's out of our control. Someday when we get a house and are responsible for our own heating bills, I will probably feel compelled to turn the thermostat down to 60 degrees all winter.

2) It's easy to clean. There's just not enough space to get dirty. I can whisk through and pick up clutter, wipe down countertops, sweep the floors, and have the place looking decent in only a few minutes. With a big house, the cleaning must be never-ending.

3) It's only two blocks to the grocery store. I'm used to dashing out to get something for dinner, or going to pick up milk in the morning before work. Most people have to get in the car and drive somewhere to get groceries.

So, with these things in mind, no grousing. :)

Biophilia

My daughter's really into animals and animal noises lately. Things she knows:

Bears, lions, tigers, and - what the heck, most other animals - go "rrrrraaugh."
Cows go "mmmmmmmm."
Cats go "mmmmew."
Elephants go "aroooo-ugh." (based on my pathetic imitation of a trumpeting elephant)
Dogs go "eh. eh. eh."
Snakes go "ssss."

Things she doesn't know:

What a bear, lion, tiger, cow, elephant, or snake actually IS. She only knows their pictures in books. Doesn't she wonder sometimes, "what's the point of all this? Why do they drill me on this stuff, asking me 'What does the cow say?'" How do pictures of elephants - or even real live elephants - have any relevance to her life?

I should be teaching her useful stuff. Like, for example. what a table is. Or how to differentiate between a cracker and an apple. Or how to put on her socks.

We have an inordinate number of books with titles like Farm Animal Babies and Milo Goes to the Zoo lying around the house, either because most books for babies have animal themes, or because she's indicated an interest so those are the books I keep getting out of the library for her.

If she does just naturally incline towards animal pictures and noises, even without exposure to animals in her life, it suggests that there really is a kind of innate biophilia.

Teaching

As a kid, I always used to think I might make a good grade-school teacher. I used to pretend that I was my teacher, Ms. Koster, and imagine how I would organize the lesson. I still get a kind of wistful happy feeling when I'm on school grounds. On Election Day, I voted at the local elementary school. The hallways smelled of crayons, chalk, and lemon disinfectant. The lines of voters wound past bulletin boards displayed "Our Super Stars" and essays on "Why I Like to Exercise by Mrs. Kimmy's Class." It seemed like such a friendly, cozy environment, one where I could thrive.

But maybe not as a teacher, maybe more as a school secretary or something. Teachers have such enormous responsibilities. They have to be attuned to the individual academic and socialization needs of an entire roomful of children. If anything goes wrong they're the first to be blamed for not noticing or following the proper protocol. And they're stuck in the middle between an administration that sometimes doesn't understand their needs and parents who are fiercely, insanely defensive of their children. It's scary to have any profession where you're responsible for other people's children.

Maybe that's not how they see it. I was at the school playground yesterday, after school hours, and 20-some kids ranging in age from 5 to about 10 were romping around the junglegym and swings while three teachers supervised them. I guess they were waiting for the parents to pick up their kids. It was a pretty chaotic scene. The kids were constantly hitting each other with sticks and jump ropes, getting in minor arguments over whose turn it was, tripping and bumping their noses, running off into the woods. My only job was to supervise one individual kid, my own, who is only a toddler so easy to catch and unlikely to hurt anyone else. But I felt slightly stressed even doing that because there was just so much going on. The other kids were all over her, wanting to touch her, asking me how old she was. I had to keep a sharp lookout and physically deflect the occasional frisbee or ball that was about to hit her, and keep her from getting kicked or run over as she toddled around. I felt like if I was the other teachers, responsible for about 7 kids each that were constantly in motion and in danger from themselves and each other, I'd feel pretty frazzled. I tried to keep track of one little girl for a few minutes but she was zipping around like a chipmunk, I kept losing her in the fray. Yet two of the teachers weren't even paying attention to the kids. They were chatting together and laughing. The third teacher was comforting a kid who had grazed his knee and was periodically calling out things to other kids: "Ramon you put that down." "Kelsey, it's Diane's turn on the swings." "OK Amy, that's enough." She didn't seem frazzled either, but calm and in control. All I could think was, if I had her gig, I'd need to really chill out from where I am now.

YEA!!!!

We finally got it right. I am so happy.

Fabric Dreams

On my way back to the office after my lunch break I stopped in at the fabric store. It's such a tactile experience, I felt like a toddler again, enjoying using all my senses instead of just my eyes and ears. I spent a happy ten minutes running my hands over different fabrics - lifting shimmery silks, testing the pile on thick velvets. For some reason I always seem to be drawn to "old lady" fabrics - dark, flowered velvety material that looks gorgeous on the bolt but that I can't picture using for anything besides pillow coverings in a fussily decorated parlor. Back when I used to work as a cashier in a fabric store, I would wait until fabric like that went on extra discounted super sale - and then buy a yard of it, just to have. Then there were the notions. I lingered over shiny buttons, iridescent reels of ribbon, and bowls of thimbles. I'm probably the kind of customer they hate because I touch everything but buy nothing.

No one I know makes their own clothes any more, but the store where I worked was always full of people (okay, women) with craft projects. They were buying Halloween print fabrics to make costumes for their grandkids, tartans to make skirts, yarn to knit caps and socks, fleecey fabric to make coats for their dogs. They all had more ideas for projects than they had time to do them. And just in case a customer walked in who needed inspiration, every season the store was redecorated and we'd put out the new seasonal print fabrics, notions, and catalogs.

Perhaps now that the economy is in the toilet there'll be a return to old-fashioned ways of doing things and more people will frequent fabric stores. Not to make coats for dogs, but to make coats for kids. Which sounds sobering, but really it can be a good thing. I'm all for home haircuts, home cooking, and homemade gifts, so why not clothes, too?

The Right Stuff

Sometimes it seems like all of life is a quest to acquire and keep the right things. Get the right house, the right commute, the right job, the right shoes to go with that particular dress. Find the right man. Pick the right names for your children. Try to use up or wear out things that you don't especially like, like that hand lotion that smells of irises and chemicals, or the pasta sauce you bought five jars of because it was on sale (that, you discovered the first time you tried it, was on sale for a reason). Try to find clothes that work for you - when your shape, size, and style are a moving target. Try to find a circle of friends who are fun, reliable, share your values, expand your horizons, and enjoy you as much as you enjoy them. Comparison-shop to pick the right appliance. Find a brand of guinea pig pellets the pig likes. Get your money invested in the right funds. Use the right toothbrush. And all the time, figure out what to do when people give you things that don't fit, that you don't like or can't use, that fill up the space you have and make it wrong. I wonder how many more years it's going to take me to finally get it right.

Just Saying

It's 1 am and the apartment is quiet. I can hear the wind rustling leaves outside the living room window, and some kind of night-insect creaking away. It sounds like autumn. A good time to catch up on reading, writing, and blogging, so here I am, typey-typing away. In the bedroom, my husband is curled up on the bed with the baby, giving her a bottle.

After a while, I hear some gentle snores from the bedroom, so I suspect he has fallen asleep on the bed with her. I should go check on them. But I keep typing. Then I hear her making a little noise of wakefulness: "eh, eh" like she's starting to thrash around. I hop up and go into the bedroom - just in time to see her roll off the bed and hit the floor. She lets out a scream of pain and surprise. I scoop her up and rock her as she continues to scream. My husband lifts his head; he was stretched out full-length on the bed, facing away from her, and sound asleep. She was down by his calf when she rolled off.

There are many things in this parenting game that he is better at than I am. He's better at playing with her, making her laugh, giving her baths, and figuring out what she wants to eat when she's in a fussy mood. He's more patient with her and more humorous. He is a wonderful dad who does his share and more.

But. She slept in our bed for the first six weeks of her life, nestled up close to my flank. Each time she woke in the night, I would breast-feed her before she even had a chance to cry. I protected her with my body from my husband's occasional roll-overs. I knew there was no risk that I would roll over on her myself. I was so alert to her that the slightest movement or noise from her would bring me fully awake, instantly. I would never have let her roll out of bed or have fallen asleep with her in a dangerous position. And the very first, only, time he slept next to her, he did. Of course, she wasn't really hurt. I soothed her and put her back in her crib, and she fell asleep immediately.

Just saying.

Tightening My Belt

Everyone is in cutting-back mode. It's tough, after a few flush years there - the economy was booming, I was working full-time, there seemed to be plenty of money to go around. But now I'm reminded daily that I need to be conserving.

I started writing down everything I eat and everything I spend these days, because I read somewhere that this is a proven effective method for reducing such activities. It's supposed to give you the willpower not to reach for that extra cracker or make that impulse purchase, because you know you'll have to write it down later. Alas, it does not seem to be working for me so far. I just gamely list my consumption at the end of the day: "3 handfuls potato chips, 1 slice cheesecake, Heath bar..."

Another strategy is to be willing to put even the smallest bit of food back into the fridge. This is what my parents do (and they're not even trying to cut back). When I visit them, I find things in their fridge that I would never have bothered to put away - like two spoonfuls of pasta sauce in a little Tupperware container, or a slice of apple. I would just scarf that stuff down and wash the pot.

Then there's the strategy of finishing everything in your cupboards and fridge before you go shopping. It's supposed to ensure that you really use what you buy, instead of letting it expire.

Finally, you can always just be too busy/tired to fix something to eat, which is how I am today. And it's only Tuesday.

Mama Bear

Now that my daughter is walking, trips to the playground or around the neighborhood are potentially a lot more exciting for her, because sometimes I let her out of the stroller to walk part of the way. It takes roughly 10 times as long, of course, because she stops to investigate every leaf, crack in the sidewalk, piece of litter, or ant that she sees in her path - and often stops dead in order to point at a dog or squirrel, or turns around and walks the other direction. But she loves it. She'll toddle down the sidewalk doing little shrieking giggles of joy that she can get places under her own power, and is being allowed to do so.

Then we get to the playground. When she was little, the only thing she could really do was sit in the swing while I pushed her. Now she can toddle around in the sandbox, pick up toys, climb the steps on the junglegym, even go down the slide on her belly. All of this stuff is so much fun for her. I stand around watching her with a stupid grin on my face, or sometimes try to make conversation with the other moms there.

The other kids are often a pain though. Part of the reason we go is for her to see some other people her age and get some socialization practice. But there are usually some kids just a little older than her, like 3-year-olds, who are stuck in the "Mine!" phase and aren't much fun to play with. When they see her coming, they immediately grab away all the toys and glare at her. If she does manage to get her hands on a little plastic shovel or something, she generally goes up to the closest other kid and holds it out. She assumes they'll take it and say "thank you" and then hand it back in a minute, the way we do when she gives us stuff. But the kids never hand it back, they just snatch the toy away. She stares at them, then looks up at me in bewilderment, plainly saying, Is that okay, what just happened? Or are you going to do something about it?

I always wonder - am I supposed to step in? Should I pull a toy away from someone else's kid, possibly making them scream or cry, in order to give it back to my kid? Because I'm a nonconfrontational sissy, I usually just smile encouragingly at her, as though nothing happened. Or I try to find something else to give her, but often the older kid immediately snatches that from her too. Grr. I want to kick sand in those kids' eyes.

Then there are the kids in the 5-7 year age range who are roughhousing, who are so busy chasing each other around the playground that they occasionally run right over her, knocking her down. Usually boys. But there was a girl last week who, in a fit of pique, threw a toy at my daughter's head. And there was a kid of unknown gender who threw open a gate, smacking it into her so that she fell to her knees. I rushed to pick her up and comfort her as she sobbed. The kid's mom was right there and I expected her to at least tell her kid "oh be careful honey," but she didn't.

I think I'm so used to being easygoing and letting other people call the shots in social interactions that I'm expecting, all the time, the other parents to do something about their little darlings' behavior. I know if my daughter took a toy away from some other baby, I would take it from her and hand it back. But the other parents never seem to step in. And I just feel weird about disciplining other people's kids. I'm scared that some kid will go running to his mom: "That lady took my shovel!" What's wrong with me, that I'm afraid of 3-year-olds? Where's my fierce mother instinct?

Holidays

I was thinking of "home for the holidays" the other day, and I got an amazing rush of holiday nostalgia. Winter sun slanting in through the bay window in the living room. Music playing from the stereo, so lively and bright in the morning that no one wants to sleep in. The smell of bread and cookies baking. The cheerful, warm clatter of activity in the kitchen, my mom emanating a sense of comfort and peace as she bustles around. The knowledge of days off from school stretching ahead, and the prospect of family meals, presents, or other special activities. Most importantly, all of us being together. It seems like we need a special occasion to all join in a common pursuit. Normally my brother disappears into his room, my dad is watching TV so unavailable for conversation, and it ends up being my mom and me chatting in the kitchen - which is nice, but I like it when it's all of us.

I wonder if you ever manage to recreate that feeling of comfort in your second family - the one you build with your own spouse and children. So much of feeling happy at the holidays, for me, was basking in the sense of being cared for, of being a small cherished piece of the family unit. When I'm in charge of recreating that for my child, I can do it, I think - but will it feel as comforting for me?

Maybe I'll just enjoy it vicariously through her. I've noticed that many of the joys of parenthood come from living vicariously as your child discovers things. It sounds like it wouldn't be as good as experiencing things yourself, but actually I think it is. I get this huge glow of pride and happiness whenever she's happy.

Starvation

I just came across a picture online that breaks my heart. When I saw it, I almost started crying. It's a photo of a baby in the last throes of starvation, all heavy head and stick-thin legs, trying to crawl toward a United Nations food camp while a vulture watches in the background. The baby looks too young to even know how to crawl yet. According to the caption the camp was a kilometer away. I wish I was there so I could pick up that baby and carry it to the camp myself. Or adopt it. I can almost feel how its bony little body would feel in my arms, how I would be afraid of cracking a rib as I carried it.

How can photographers take pictures of things like that and then just walk away? (As this one did - he apparently left the scene immediately after taking the picture so no one knows what happened to the child.) I know their job is only to document misery, not to alleviate it, that they don't have the resources to save every starving child they see, that they can't save one and leave others behind... but still. How could he not have intervened this once to carry the child that 1-kilometer distance that meant the difference between life and death? I know it's not that he wasn't affected by the scene. This particular photographer committed suicide just a short time later, alluding in his suicide note to the overwhelming pain in the world. He's right about that. The capacity for suffering in this world seems to have no limit.

Why I Don't Mind Paying Taxes

Baby on my hip, I walked cheerfully out of the bank, holding up my car keys and jingling them to amuse her. "Keys," I said cheerfully as I unlocked the car. I tossed them on the front seat to have my hands free for buckling her into her car seat. Then I kissed her on the forehead and slipped into what biologists term a fixed action pattern: locked the car doors, shut them firmly, and walked around to the driver's side, reaching into my pocket for my keys as I went. Oh no. Oh, no, no, no! There was my baby, grinning up at me from the back seat. There were the car keys, sprawled on the front seat. There were the four doors, firmly locked. Ahhhh!

As the first jolt of panic hit my heart, I ran around the car trying the doors anyway. Of course none of them opened. Then I ran back into the bank. There were tons of people standing around in the lobby waiting, but my stride got the attention of the employee at the main desk, who glanced up at me in alarm. "I just locked my baby and my keys in my car! Can I use your phone?" I blurted. The phone didn't have a long enough cord to reach the counter, but he was nice enough to dial the number for me and hand me the receiver.

Quickly, I told my husband what had happened. He has the only other key for the car. "Can you come meet me?" I asked. But how? We only have one car, and we live about a mile from the closest train station. He would have to catch a bus to the station, then it would be a 45 minute ride to the closest station to me, then he still would have no way to get to the bank. As we talked, I thought of the sun beating down into the car. Of course, I had parked in the sun. "There used to be a spare key hidden on the car," he remembered. It was in one of those magnetic boxes you stick under the front bumper. "I'll go look," I said, and hurriedly hung up.

A few minutes later, I was road tar and oil up to the elbow, and my hands were bleeding from brushing over the fragments of glass embedded under the bumper. I couldn't find the box, though. I think it probably fell off years ago.

Next I sized up the car windows and tried to decide which one to break. If I could smash the little one in the back, I could probably reach in and unlock the door. But I couldn't see anything in the parking lot that looked sturdy enough to smash a car window with. No rocks or chunks of asphalt or anything. I also felt anxious about putting a rock through a window when my daughter's car seat was right there - even if it's supposed to be safety glass.

I ran back into the bank. The bank guy winced slightly as he noticed the oil and grease all over my hands, but he dialed for me and handed me the receiver again. "I can't find it!" I told my husband. He advised me to call the police. So in a minute I found myself speaking to a 911 dispatch operator. "Is the baby in distress?" she asked. "Not yet," I said. In fact, the baby had fallen asleep at this point, but that didn't diminish my panic much.

It probably only took a few minutes for help to arrive, but it seemed like ages. I leaned over the back of the car and tried to block the sun with my body while I waited. Inside the car, I could see my daughter's face was red and there were droplets of sweat beaded on her brow. She flopped around uneasily in her sleep. Finally, in the distance, I heard a siren - gradually getting louder - oh my gosh, is that for me? I had expected a single cop car. Instead, there was a giant rescue squad ambulance van, about as big as a fire engine but without the ladder. It took up most of the parking lot. A couple of guys in their early twenties hopped out and came over to the car, and, with a nod of greeting at me, started working on the problem.

First they wedged a tool that looked like an ice scraper into the side of the door and levered it open as far as possible. Then they used a pump to crack it open even more. With a wire they tried to roll down the window or jiggle the lock mechanism open. Minutes passed. After a while one of them glanced at me and spoke for the first time, with a sheepish grin: "It usually doesn't take this long." At least now I know the car is hard to steal. It took multiple tries with different tools from their kit, and about 10 minutes of work, before the door suddenly popped open. "Yes!" one of them said.

Quickly I opened the back door and hauled the car seat out so my baby could get some air. I gushed some thanks to the rescue guys, who were all business ("all in a day's work, ma'am") as they headed back to their van. The bank customers who were standing around watching the scene dispersed. I drove to my parents' house, which was nearby, so I could call my husband back and reassure him.

Later that afternoon, I got a couple of spare keys made. Of course, this will probably never happen again. But if it does, I'll be ready. And in the meantime, yea for 911 and emergency rescue services!

Umbrella Angel

When I stepped out the front door, it wasn't raining. When I got on the bus, it wasn't raining. But on the way to work, the skies opened. By the time I arrived at my stop, it was a torrential downpour - water sluicing off the top of the bus down the windshield, wipers barely able to keep up - and I didn't have an umbrella. I scurried over to a nearby cafe and took shelter under their awning while I tried to figure out what to do next.

My office was three blocks away. First I thought I should just make a dash for it, but I saw a few people splashing along the sidewalk without umbrellas, and they were soaked to the skin. One guy was wearing a nice suit, plastered to his skin. I didn't have any dry clothes at the office that I could change into. I tried holding my backpack over my head and made a quick foray out, but the rain was so intense that after only a few steps I ran back. I wondered if I should just wait it out, but worried that it might be a while.

While I was standing there in an agony of indecision, a woman walked up to the cafe under a big umbrella. I barely glanced at her, but envisioned a perfect world in which she would just give me her umbrella. In this world she would say, "Hey honey, would you like my umbrella?"

Then she said it again, "Hey honey, would you like my umbrella?"

I turned and realized she was actually talking to me. She said, "You can bring it back later. I'll be here until six." She gestured at the cafe and I realized she was an employee there. I said, "Really?" I couldn't believe my luck. Here was a total stranger offering me salvation. I practically fell over myself thanking her. It was a good umbrella too, one of those great big ones that stretches out about two feet on all sides.

Walking toward my office, I felt flooded with gratitude. Whenever something happens to make me think that people aren't particularly nice - like that boy in the library - I get a reminder that indeed, most of them are, and that nice things happen far more frequently than not-nice things.

The office routine was petty, and my boss was in a foul, vengeful mood, as she has been for the past few months. But I felt like I was just floating above it. Nothing could touch me. I took the umbrella back at noon, and passed it over the counter to her along with a bunch of flowers. She's my umbrella angel.

Recapturing the Innocence

The other night we went out to dinner. Usually I check to see if I'm wearing a clean shirt as we head out the door and that's it, but this time I felt like dressing up a little more. I put on a flirty little dress from my college days, and some makeup, and even a necklace. I felt like I was trying to be pretty for my husband to remind him what it was like when it was just the two of us out on a date.

Of course it ended up being our usual dinner out, tag-teaming, one of us eating while the other held the baby and tried to keep her from fussing. It was late and she was tired and fidgety. No romantic gazes across the table; we were too busy keeping water glasses out of her reach and snatching forks and knives from her fretful grasp. No stimulating conversation either; we talked about her nap schedule and how many Cheerios she'd eaten that day. As soon as the check came, we hustled out of there. That's life with a baby.

Next week we're going on vacation - without her. I'm going to miss her terribly. I won't be able to just let go and enjoy this trip as fully as I did our honeymoon (the last trip we went on) just because part of my heart will still be at home. But it will be good for us to get away and reconnect.

In a way this trip will be about recapturing that time when it was just the two of us. But I don't have any illusions about those days. People always sigh and say about their pre-kid life, "Oh, it was so great." In reality, I remember feeling pressured and anxious all the time, worried that he wouldn't want to marry me, that I was getting older, that we wouldn't be able to have children. Overall, despite the stress of everyday existence, I'm happier and more relaxed now than I was then.