Happy Thanksgiving

I should count my blessings more often. 

Four generations of pie. 

1. I am thankful for my beloved and for our shared life. 

2. I am thankful for our children, for our parents, and for our siblings. 

3. I am thankful for all the members and generations of my family, whether bound by blood or love. 

4. I am thankful for friendship.  

5. I am thankful for the neurosurgeon and the nurses who fixed what would have been a disfiguring condition, had my son been born a pilgrim.  

6. I am thankful for caffeine, my daily saviour against becoming a turkey. 

7. I am thankful for the alphabet, and for QWERTY keyboards. 

8. I am thankful that so many of my relatives excel at making pie. 

9. I am thankful for my village, because a parent does not live by caffeine and pie alone. 

10. I am thankful for the love and for the memory of those who used to sit around the table, and for the gift of the years that were. 

My cup runneth over, and I raise it in a toast to your families, and to your generations. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow us all the days of our lives. 

My brain has turned into oatmeal...

This morning I forgot breakfast. Then I left my house with neither socks nor children. Clearly I am suffering from mama exhaustion.

Scientists agree that as many as 12 out of every 10 new mothers suffer from mama exhaustion. The other 6 who claim they have energy are simply lying.

By the end of this post, you may be suffering from it to. Here are the symptoms:

1. Failure at socks. 
2. A tendency to repeat yourself.
3. An inability to perform basic calculations.
4. A poor grasp of science.
5. A desire to tell boring anecdotes, repeatedly.
6. The consumption of unholy quantities of coffee to no avail. 
7. A compulsion to binge on 'Homeland' and other TV oatmeal. 
8. A verbal collapse to nothing but complaining language.  
9. A tendency to repeat yourself. 
10. A tendency to repeat yourself. 

These effects are temporary, which is a relief because I just walked outside unbreakfasted and sockless. 

There are other symptoms I'm forgetting to list, but I can't find the words right now. As Steve Martin once said: "Some people have a way with words. Other people...not have way." 

I'm told these effects are temporary. This is a relief because my feet are starting to turn blue. I could sure use some socks. Now...where are my children?

Things that go beep in the night

Hospitals are fever dreamscapes. Lights blink and machines bleep. Footsteps and meal trays fade in and out of morphine sleep and sober sleeplessness. Angels roam the hallways cleverly camouflaged in scrubs. You can hide anything in scrubs.

I've been here before. A hospital stay with a six-week old baby feels a lot like experiencing the birth again. My boy and I will have to relearn how to breastfeed, and remember how to hold each other comfortably. We will have to sleep when the other sleeps, and smile when the other smiles. 

Like the last time I found myself in hospital with a poorly baby, I am filled with the knowledge of how much worse it could be. I am amazed at how strong and brave my tiny child is, and I am so grateful for the angels in scrubs who make sense of all those bleeping machines attached to my son. 

One of the nurses tells me about a ritual of his: at the end of the night he returns home and turns off all the sound-making devices in his house. Then he sits in the pure silent dark for a good while. I can't think of a better way to return to the outside.