Writing under the influence...

First, my apologies to everyone for my absence this past week. I've barely managed to read and comment, let alone figure out a post or anything resembling a perfect post review for the many deserving posts I have had the opportunity to read...Blog Antagonist, as always, is awesome, as is the vibrant Pendulum. Lildb...well, you floored me. All I can say is, thank you, thank you, thank you for all the times you've lifted me up out of the quagmire. I loved reading your blog, and I will miss you. I hope you'll still be around. I hope someday to buy your work and read your prose again. Good Luck!

Writing now is tricky for me, particularly when a small impling insists on interrupting every five seconds to ask for tape. Because it is the bandage of choice, for books, for her easel, for Dr. Cow, our little squishy stress cow dressed like a doctor. Where do we find these things? Dr. Cow is a favorite around here.

“tape Dr. Cow!” a mantra. Tape is everywhere.

It's been a hazy couple of weeks. Trying to write has been like carving my way through a thick fog with nothing but a spoon. I can't even write a good simile. Thick thick thick. This is my brain. This is my brain on pregnancy. Any questions?

Well, now that I brought it up, there probably are some questions. So here are the answers. Yes I am baking baby #2. I am only10 weeks along. I am queasy, I am exhausted, and I'm finding it very difficult to write. Like wringing water from stone. Oh, joy, I managed a completely overused simile. At least I could remember it correctly. At least I spelled simile correctly.

So slowly, tortuously, sentences emerge.

Part of my reticence is probably denial. I have another little BOP (Bundle Of Potentiality) growing inside me, cells dividing, brain developing (drink that water), little limbs and eyes and noses and ears forming, everything going through the miraculous transformation from fetus to baby to person.

Wait a minute, you may be thinking. How can you differentiate a baby and a person? And my answer to you is, it is the difference between a being utterly dependent, with no free will, and a being who has smiled on her own, in response to another human being. Hrm. This is all sounding pretty cold and cerebral. I'm not doing a good job of expressing this.

Pause, stare at the keyboard, listen to the Toucan Pirates singing Yo Ho and the Impling reciting “The Owl and the Pussycat” My strain of thought is gone. I wonder why?

We went to the arboretum again yesterday, and I soothed my depressed mind with the sounds of the wind in the grass, and the trees, and our little Impling wandering around with a big stick used alternately as a walking stick and a quarter staff. Little John, eat your heart out. Phrase of the day: (since she was playing with sticks) “Don't poke your eye out”. She said this over and over again in immense amusement, as we couldn't help laughing whenever she said it. This little girl now knows what it is to be funny, and she knows what she finds funny and fun.

The little creature growing inside me has no such sense of self. I can wonder, and hope, and dream of what it may become, if all goes well, but it is “stuff as dreams are made on”. I search for any sort of seed of love in my heart for the little BOP, but it is simply not there. Guilt consumes me. I must be a horrible person. But then, I look again at the glory that is my daughter, and my heart overflows with love. Somewhere, after that first touch of my finger to her wet head as she struggled out into the world, after that first look into her dark deep eyes, frowning in intense challenge, the hopes and dreams and wonders were actualized. Love became real, not imagined. Love became vital. The Impling became part of humanity, expressing her wonder at the world, her frustration in her limitations.

It just hasn't happened yet for the BOP. It is floating around, growing and becoming a more and more complex being, but what I feel is anxiousness, that all will go well for this little one. That I will do by him (no I don't know that it is a him, but for whatever reason, I've been thinking of the BOP as the “little guy”) as I have done for the Impling.

It's no accident that the quote running through my mind now is from The Impling's “namesake” play.

“We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.”

And sleep is what I should undoubtedly be doing at this moment.

Good night, all.