HOPPY EASTER

There was once a ridiculously cute baby bunny rabbit whose mother never wanted her little bunny to grow up so she attached a camera to the end of her own hand so that she could take pictures ad infinitum of the bunny rabbit so that she might always remind herself of the wee bun bun and ward off the influences of the world that would cause the bunny to grow into the kind of girl that should no longer be wearing a bunny suit. The End.

Special thanks to the Sousa Family for supplying the props.

When Korean/Irish Eyes Are Smiling

Sometimes I wonder if Madigan will come to identify with either of her dominant ethnicities, Irish and Korean, or if she will draw more from a regional influence or religious. She came into the world with a pretty hefty backpack as far as the above is concerned. But perhaps she'll have unpacked it before we can impart very much at all. John's cultural identity is one that he has allowed to evolve for him, and I admire him very much for this. To borrow a phrase from Eric Liu's Accidental Asian, my husband grew up assimilated -- he didn't have to adopt a new culture. However, he still had to negotiate the Korean he spoke at home with the English that was spoken in school. He still had to learn the nuances of interacting with non-Koreans. and their parents. He also attended a Korean Seventh-day Adventist church for most of his life. That's a hefty backpack, too.

For me, the line is blurred as to where my Irish heritage begins and my Catholic upbringing ends. One elides into the other. But where beer drinking and mass going are no longer a part of my cultural or religious practice, I consider what I can pass on to Baby Girl that will impart to her who she is in a cultural context. The one jewel that stands out is Irish step dancing. My mother put me in lessons when I was five. I quit when I was fourteen after my parents made it plain that it was time to hang up my soft shoes. I never practiced and they weren't paying for lessons for something I only took half-seriously. But I loved the dance - the costumes, the competition, and most of all the music - and this is something I hope one day to share with Little Miss Shamrocks herself:

Hard Day's Night

The last couple of days and nights were hard. I know "hard" is the same word second graders use to describe math when you have to start carrying the 1, the same word to describe the ground of a campsite. Hard. And while as an adjective it's about as lame as they come, the last couple of days in our house have felt like a second grade math class that suddenly got a little more puzzling; they've felt like waking up on the cold crumbly ground.

Baby Girl is usually one cool customer like her father. Even in the hospital, she'd be chilling in her bassinet among a whole nursery of wailers (not to be mistaken for Bob Marley's band) and be perfectly self-content. But the last couple of days, she's had spats of inconsolable discomfort. I know that's expected of a baby, and I really have so little complain about since my parenting co-captain is John Be Quick/Nimble and is always at the ready to lend a hand or a shoulder or a stubbly cheek. Thing is, my body has just felt wrecked. The sleeplessness and the bending over and the boobfeeding has just all caught up with me at once and I now am firmly convinced that any parent that attempts to do this solo is a superhero saint Muhammed Ali caliber greatest kind of a person. They should be exempt from library fines and should totally get to go to the front of the line at the DMV and should get free milkshakes for life. Because they've really got it hard.

***

I started my graduate internship today. It took me two hours to get ready and I still forgot things, like, oh, the powercord to my laptop, "Hi, I'm the new intern. I came to work for an eight hour day with one and a half hours of juice on my laptop. Also? I'm really capable and detail-oriented. " It was my first day away from my little dumpling, and thankfully, she got to stay with her daddy, praise Jesus, or I would have been a basketcase.

Rumor has it they had a pretty solid day of crying and eating and walking and bonding. Oh, and papoosing. So much papoosing.

I thought about them all day and felt like I walked around feeling like I had left a major appendage at home. As I made my way home on the train, I couldn't contain my dreamy grin, just thinking of the good fortune of having this wonderful family to come home to, to have this job of being someone's mama. Maybe it's not my favorite at times, but I can say with no reservation that it's the most fulfilling thing I've ever done. And no paycheck can possibly leverage this reward: