Passage West

November 1, 2009

Dearest and Closest,

I did. I said I wouldn’t fill up your inboxes with deathless prose and that I was done done done. And I sort of was…but then I started surreptitiously posting little bits to my blog site and then it seemed like I could, maybe, say some more…and today is such a beautiful day (at least here in Maine—the perfect leaf fluttering fall day with blue skies and warm sun and golden leaves of the sun all over the place) and you’ve got an extra hour anyways because of daylight savings, that I thought, why not tell you all these things I’m full up with and could almost not contain as I took Hopper for a run (our fourth this week) this morning.

The problem with the jogging (which if you saw Hopper and me you might consider to be more like funny looking high step power walking) despite the added emotional benefits and the fact that I might just be able to melt the last seven pounds or so of baby weight as I run, is that, these days, I wet my pants. No matter what I do. It’s embarrassing. I want to put a sign on both sides of my shirt, like one of those racing numbers people wear in marathons, that says “Post-Baby Leakage. Look away!” Because everyone is looking, or I think they are which makes me neurotic,  but what am I supposed to do? Not run? Short of putting one of M.’s diapers on I’m sort of stuck…and believe me I’m wearing black and today I tied Dan’s long sleeved t-shirt around my back, at least, but still: I had to run by a little klatch of thirty something guys who were standing around talking about girls and I felt really silly. Thank God I’m married and Dan is stuck with me, because otherwise, in an urban area, this would really be too much. Please don’t tell me about Kegels. I know. But has anyone ever tried to do a more ridiculous exercise?

Other than the trickle down effect of my running, our lives are, finally in some kind of zone that’s sort of wonderful. Don’t get wrong, I still have the Herculean task of writing an ENTIRE book in what is now four months and counting, but thanks to having an agent who forced me to write outline after outline after outline despite the fact that I kept saying “I have the blog, that’s an outline,” I sort of know what I’m doing in the sense that I’m appropriating Winston Churchill’s famous saying “When you’re going through hell, keeping going” and I’m just writing forward, typos and spelling errors bedamned. I’m on chapter eight about crazy Claire upstairs and how she thought Dan was Obama and then she started harassing me when I was alone and Dan was in Tucson and I was puking my brains out with pregnancy poisoning. So, other than the writing and the fact that I have not yet received the first installment of my advance so that we can, truly, set our lives up with some baby sitting help and pay a few more bills, we did borrow some money form some friends to close the gap here, so to speak, and Dan quit his bartending job at Caiolas. He told me he was sort of sad about it (not so sad he didn’t want to do it) because, he said, it was the most ideal bartending job he’d ever had. Can you really blame him for feeling this way? I mean many many people pay high prices to hang out and eat Abby Harmon’s food, and here he got to shoot the shit with her and eat her creations all evening long while hob nobbing with foodies about wine and food and getting paid to do so. Even so, Dan’s home much more when he’s not in school and there’s a calm that’s starting to come over our lives and our marriage as we carve out this structure of him making his work and going to school and me writing and our lives spinning around M. and Hopper who are truly the our centers of gravity.

This past Monday we went apple picking and M. picked his first apple and held it clutched in his fat little hand like it was a prize he’d won. Hopper ran around him like a mad man with the biggest Jack Nicholson grin and Dan hauled the apples. All the way home M. gummed his Prize winning Jonah Gold and twirled it like a hot potato in his hands and was apoplectic whenever it fell to the side of the car seat, invariably on Hopper’s head. We picked so many apples it was a bacchanal of the apple harvest, just us alone in the orchard an hour’s drive from here, in Turner, with the mountains surrounding us and the light golden shafts of honey. This week I made applesauce galore and canned it and then I made four apple pies, three of which went in the freezer and the fourth Dan and I polished off yesterday morning in bed as M. took his morning nap.

Apropos of cooking and canning for the long winter, I’m rereading the Little House on the Prairie books and writing about westward expansion and the American psyche. I’ve also been writing about Ellison. It’s so odd to write about her—I’m writing, my head down in my computer and I can almost touch her with my words, feel her, smell her, hear her, and then I look up and M.’s making wake up noises through the baby monitor and my heart literally breaks when I see she’s not here.

Last week I left M. alone with Dan for a night—the first time I’d been away from him for so long—and went to Connecticut for Vanessa’s fortieth birthday party. Taking the train down New England to Westport, having had my first real cup of caffeinated coffee in almost ten months, I was elated and it felt so good to be alone, on the train, reading and writing and just…well, I was hopped up on caffeine so I felt amazing, kind of like what I imagine the first hit of cocaine might be like. The night before I left, M. appeared to have said his first word, “Dada” and have connected it with the tall skinny blond guy kicking around our apartment. But, of course, I was skeptical. When I came home, “Dada” was indeed the word of the hour. Luckily, though, two days ago, M. had the sense to say his second word and he said “Mama.” So. We’re even. Sort of. He’s got two teeth, a third coming in which kept him up all night last night until he finally slept on my chest and a fourth, fifth and sixth ready to pop. It’s all or nothing in the teeth department, poor chap.

In other news, despite the fact that I wrote a teary post that our spider, Charlotte, outside our kitchen window had died that freezing weekend in the middle of October when it seemed more like late November, she seems to have been resurrected (who says fall is all about death?) and is spinning new webs daily and eating bugs. She’s our Teflon spider. More news is that my dear friend Craig Pospisil did the amazing gesture of dedicating his newest collection of plays to me (Check it out, it’s called “Choosing Sides” and many of them were commissioned, edited, staged and directed by me) which was such an honor I still get giddy every time I pat the cover, which I do often. Even bigger news in the Craig world is that he asked his partner Alix to marry him and she said yes (smart woman). Also, M. was baptized on the most beautiful fall day and we truly celebrated his birth with Aran and Margot here all the way from Mexico, Vanessa from Connecticut and Craig and Alix from Manhattan. Rob McCall, who married us, did the service out in the field where we were married with a little clutch of family and friends standing by. This year,  I’m actually looking forward to the holidays, which never ever happens, and I don’t know if it’s because I’m so glad to be home in New England on terra firma and I can’t wait to see snow or, if, and this is more likely, it’s because of my child with whom every event, every tradition, every new moment is like the best Christmas present ever, only every single day.

So, all that is what I wanted to say. Also I wanted to say to Sarah in Kansas thank you so much for writing in and staying with me on this journey—I almost feel like I know you by now!-- and I tried to write you back, but the email was returned.

Love to everyone. Caitlin, Dan, M. and Hop.

The spider out our kitchen window, whom we've been watching since we moved here in late August, is dying. We've watched her every day assiduously build her web, kill flies and suck their blood, pick out the body parts and start all over again. It's been cold the last few days, feeling more like November to me than October and she's slowed down. Today she didn't come out to rebuild her web. When Dan got up this morning to get ready to go shoot a documentary he's been working on, I handed him some coffee and said "I've got sad news, our spider is dying." "No," he said. "I just checked on her last night." We have been waiting with a screen we've wanted to put in that window until she died--not waiting with baited breath, just unwilling to disturb her with our human need for a little more circulation in our kitchen. Now, we get the screen, but a friend is gone. A sad day.

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Some of you may notice that this blog has become...much more bloggy. I just don't have the head space while writing the book to write those long essay like pieces--I hope to come back to that soon, and, in fact have mapped out a whole concept for a new blog I want to start once the book is done.  I really believe in putting real WRITING in these things. But now, instead, I'm writing my thoughts as they come, sharing the world as it hits me. Bear with me.

Love, Caitlin.

Tonight before bed as I walked Hopper around the block and past our old apartment with a wistfulness reserved for late nights and long stories, I felt the air, cool like ice water on my cheeks, the sky so black above, the stars sparkling and I wondered how this native daughter could have ever left her terra firma. Usually around now I feel depressed as summer ends and the awful holidays loom only to give way to winter and more winter...but somehow, and maybe it's having a child and the excitement and wonder that unfolds every day, or maybe it's being home...but I'm loving every second. Like Hopper, I didn't want to come in to bed. But I felt silly (he didn't) wandering and spying on the remnants of my old life.

We hung most of our artwork tonight and set up more of the apartment. Finally, we're starting to carve out a home. The walls feel charged with art and the place seems to pulsate with our things, some of which have been packed away for almost two years now. Tomorrow our friends from LA, Andrea and Harlan are coming from Boston. We can't wait to see them on footing so much more stable then when we left them in LA last April.

This morning I finished a chapter which was about our road trip west--in my writing Ellison was so close I could almost touch her, except...when I looked up from the computer she was nowhere to be found.

Good night. Sleep tight. Open your windows, the air is so fresh and full of dreams.

Caitlin.

I actually got to write today. For the second day in a row, I did about an hour. This, compared to what most writers do--four hours a day is a standard people toss around like it's a minimum--is a joke. How am I ever going to write this book???? Between nursings and naps and walks in the stoller and Hopper and feedings, the day gets very very small.  Tonight was hilarious. Mr. M. was totally against the idea of bed at his usual time, 7 PM, didn't want to nurse down, didn't want to rock and then my step mother's grandmother's  rocking chair ACTUALLY broke while we were rocking--as in pieces fell on the floor.  I kept putting M. in the crib and rubbing his back and singing and then walking out of the room with the door cracked while he he stood in his crib and talked and yelled to me and at me for an hour and a half while I made my own dinner of black beans simmered with hot peppers, poblanos, onions, garlic, lemon juice and salt and pepper and a sprinkling of Parmesan on top (the odd things we eat when alone), washed out a drawer, read the Super Baby Food book for a few moments, put some laundry in the bathroom, had a beer, ATE my dinner while standing at the counter, wished Dan was not bartending and could be home to see this whole hilarious thing of our son talking and yelling and having for the first time in his life NO INTEREST in me nursing him to sleep....and then, finally, he put himself to sleep. That's NEVER happened before. I went in, pulled the cream colored with brown edging quilt his Godfather Craig gave him over his shoulders and closed the door. He made me laugh so much tonight--he was in a great mood--no crying, just smiles and chatter and yelling and playing with his stuffed animals. I love him more than I ever thought possible. And to have loved him through such a hard time with no money, no home that's our own, with all the time we've spent in the car--my heart breaks with deepest love for him and respect for his patience with me.

I've started re-reading the Little House books. One, because I am writing about reading them as a child and also again as we went west. BUT, also, because, as I write my own book I can't handle much else. I was struck last night as I started Little House in the Big Woods, all the killing that is involved in homesteading and how removed from the death of the things we eat we are now, thankfully. Also, it's interesting how Laura sets Pa up to be someone we like but are also a little frightened of--he has an aggressive edge. Later, we love him for his heroism and how big his dreams are. But in this story, in the beginning, he's a little scary.

Ok. Thems my thoughts. Our apartment is STILL after two months not set up--with Dan in school 3 days in Boston and bartending 2 days and my focus on work...I never thought I would exist in such chaos. Here I go to do some dishes....

Love, Caitlin.

I know I know I know! I said I was done. I was. Done. And then...I just had more I wanted to say. Like I wanted to tell you how silly it feels to have sold this book but that I can't find anytime to write it because ....I'm too busy being a mom and Dan is gone all the time at school or bartending...and somehow I want to just do dishes when I get a second or take a nap, none of which is very fruitful because whenever I think I'm going to do either one my son takes a 45 minute nap, so I just lie there with my pillow over my head listening to the monitor with dread and KNOWING I should be writing. But seriously,  is this a normal reaction? Shouldn't I be culling through all my old blogs and writing writing with every second I get...? Maybe I'm recovering from so much stress I almost can't do more stress until I can...so I'm existing or something...Anyway, here I am sitting down to write you. I've decided, despite saying it's over...well, I'm waffling and I may keep going here. Fall has come. We baptized our son this weekend with our friends and family around us--my brother Aran and sister in law Margot came all the way from Mexico and Vanessa and Craig and Alix all the way from NYC to stand around and bless our child on a cold, gorgeous, trees aflame day. Now I'm trying to figure out how to write under the gun...and how to also be a Mom which if you ask me is a more than full time job but there's this career/book thing that also needs to be a full time job....So, this is a learning curve...a new journey begun.

Lots of Love, Caitlin.