On Vacationing with Baby Girl

We have returned from our tour with the ROCKSTAR, aka Baby Girl in which Lovey Loverpants and I were total roadies, seamstresses for the band, if you will, and that little dahlin' gave many an encore performance wherever she went. The tour covered:

4 states 3 sets of grandparents 1 college reunion 1 wedding Many new friends

Because life is ironic and too poignant for words, the part of the week I was dreading most actually reserves its spot as Most Treasured Memory from our first family vacation. I hadn't seen my Nana in 3 years, largely because I am the queen of [chicken]hearts. The last time I saw her, she was lucid and hilarious and just meeting my fiance, Lovey Loverpants, for the first time. After that, quite rapidly, her ninety-two year-old memory started to evaporate. I was scared. I let everyone else visit her. I stood cowardly in the shadows, preserving my memories of her forever, circa 2005.

She now lives with my Uncle Drive-by. (We call him Drive-by because of some very medieval events that merited it). Nana is so happy with Drive-by. She has dementia and she has happiness at the same time. Thus, introducing her to Baby Girl was bittersweet. She was so touched to lay eyes on this sanguine little doll. She had no idea it was her first great grandchild. It gave me so much pride and joy to share this blessing with my grandmother. I called her Nana and she didn't ask why.

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Nana, Baby Girl, C'est Moi

Nana, Uncle Drive-by, Lovey Loverpants with Baby Girl

Tirade

Lovey Loverpants sent me an article today, with a message that summarily said "This could have been me." The article is essentially about the troubling disconnect between Vietnamese teenagers and their immigrant parents, and how rampant gang violence and drug use among the teens are forcing this population to take a long look at itself. And Lovey Loverpants, the son of Asian immigrants who still work all night to get their work done, he could have pitched this article. Lovey Loverpants, a boy who grew up to become a therapist, a profession that his parents did not understand for so long -- he could have written the article without interviewing another source.

This disconnect is important because no one talks about it. This disconnect is particularly endemic to Asian cultures. Yes, I said it. Because no one was saying it after the Virginia Tech shootings. No one asked if the parents of the shooter - who hailed from Korea - knew exactly how broken their son was before they sent him to college. I haven't seen any books hit the shelves recently about how it's damn hard to be an immigrant and to work tirelessly to give your children a better life, but how all that means nothing if you don't make yourself accessible to your child.

I have tremendous respect for the culture of my in-laws, the culture that gave my husband his roots. I wouldn't have attended a Korean church for six years if I did not. But I take issue - in a way that might make me sound entitled - with sacrifice that sacrifices too much. I object to working to get ahead when the hearts of your children are left behind. I get downright huffy when I hear about language barriers as viable excuses for not connecting with one's kids.

I know I've been a parent for all of five minutes, and even if I wanted to connect with my kid, she doesn't exactly possess the vocabulary to tell me how she's feeling. But if I'm allowed to have a few tirades in this life, I think this is one of the ones I'll pick. It may take a village to raise a child, but sometimes the villagers are scary. I really hope I have the wherewithall to keep mine close to my tent for as long as possible, and to know what she's up to in her little cubby before she ventures out into the village....

Y Tu Mama Tambien

This is not my first mother's day. I was pregnant at this time last year but did not yet know it. Or perhaps in my heart, I already did. A week later, I would board that airplane from Columbus, Ohio to Boston, Mass. and as the story goes, I would feel the turbulence within before the plane had even left the runway.... This is not my first mother's day. But it is the first one in which I will wake to the cries of a ruddy-faced infant who will immediately recognize me as I hover over her crib, as I do every morning. She will recognize me, perhaps as nothing more than the dairy queen who speaks in high octaves and who seems to keep within a three foot radius from her at all times. She does not know that I carried her for ten months and have the stretch marks to prove it. She has no memory of the time we got stuck in a snow storm for seven hours in a car and all we subsisted on was a power bar and water and my running commentary to the nutjob Santa on the radio. She does not know that she has exceeded my every expectation of what a small whirring suck monkey could do, and that's make the world a better place to live. Or maybe in her heart, she already does.

This message is not political, it is not pro-choice or Republican or green. It is pro-miracle. I don't know how God could think to create life out of the love of two people, to make it possible for one human bean to incubate a smaller human bean, to lodge that growing life just below the beating heart, so that as the wee form moves face down like a trapeze artist, she hears the steady pumping of her mother's heart bom-boom bom-boom bom-boom, I am here, I love you, you are mine.

This Mother's Day, I will wake to the sounds of tears, followed by a sweet voice from beside me, "You got her? You sure?" I will be sandwiched by two of my favorite people on the planet. If you listen close, can you hear our heart?