Rosanna Dell 6/11/17 Rosanna Dell 6/11/17

This is a picture of the little katydid that came in with my herbs for my salad and kept hopping on me and waving his antennae around like he was trying to talk. He has nothing to do with the blog post, I just like this photo.

Last night my mom comes into the kitchen and sets a little rock in front of me. "Do you know what this is?" she asks.

I look at it. "Yeah, it's Nettie's little 'watermelon' rock. I mean, it's actually a piece of a glass marble I think, but we call it a rock."

She nods. "It was in my cupcake at the birthday party," she says.

I stare at the rock-marble. Then I stare at her. I remember, fuzzily, that Nettie helped me make some of the white cake batter. "Oh! She helped me make the cupcakes. She must have dropped it in...... Why didn't you tell me before?"

"Well, I didn't know if you could handle it right away," she says. "I didn't want to shake you up."

I consider this a moment. I mean, I am a little horrified and definitely shocked. But I think I could have handled it. I wonder how tenuous my sanity seems to my mom. It's strange that out of all the people at the party, and all the cupcakes (I think I made almost 100), she picked the specially-filled cupcake, and here I'm assuming that my sweet little helper didn't have any other small objects in her hands.

"I think it was God," she says.

I roll my eyes. "Nettie will be glad to have her watermelon rock back. She really likes this one..... Oh, and I'm really glad you didn't break your teeth out or eat glass shards," I say. It's only what any loving daughter would say to her mom after feeding her a half of a marble in a cupcake.

A very small portion of Nettie's rock and tiny thing collection

...

An excerpt of a conversation Nettie and I had a few weeks ago:

R: Please take those sprinkles out of your pants.
We don’t put sprinkles in our underwear.

N: We do! We DO put binkles in our underwear!

R: No, I don’t think that’s a good thing to do.
Please take the sprinkles out of your pants.

N: I willn’t! I willn’t take them out! I like them there!

R: But Momma doesn’t like them there.

N: But I do? I want to put them in there and walk around?

R: No, please give Momma the bottle.

N: I willn’t. I keep these binkles in my pants!
(runs out of the room with the sprinkles in her pants)

end scene

...

...

The world's first pygmy white-tailed deer fawn

Also a few weeks ago at our house. After dinner, Dave is washing dishes and I am picking up the living room.

D: Sweetie, come here!

R: What?

D: Come in here and look at this!

R: What?

D: There's like the tiniest baby deer in the yard!

R: What?

D: There's like the tiniest little fawn I've ever seen out there! You won't even believe this!

R: Where?

D: (pointing) Right out there under the pear tree. The mom must be someplace close. I don't know how it even got there. It looks too tiny to walk.

R: (looking out the window) No way! It's like the size of a kitten! Is that how small they are when they're born? That can't be right!

D: (both looking out window) I don't know. Maybe it's like a dwarf or pygmy or something.

R: Does that happen?

D: I don't know.

R: (going out the front door, standing on the porch) Do you think it's okay?

D: (going out the back door, with the camera) I don't know, I'm going to take a picture. (creeping closer, taking pictures.) What? What the - - (a pause while he puts down the camera) Oh my god! It's D.D.! It's effing D.D! ((D.D. is Nettie's stuffed deer toy.) Bent over double, laughing hysterically)

R: (also starts laughing hysterically, comes out into the yard) Holy crap. We're the biggest idiots in the world.

D: Yep, the biggest.

R: (looking at the camera) You got some good pictures of D.D., though.

end scene

...

We're keepin' it real here, people. Hope you are, too. And remember, sprinkles are a festive topping for tasty treats, not for putting in your underwear.

Rosanna Dell 5/11/17 Rosanna Dell 5/11/17

turning a corner

why I can't stop writing mediocre poetry

Since Nettie's been born, I've wanted so badly to write about her and about motherhood and all the little moments that I don't want to forget. But I've had a serious writer's block there. I keep a very straight-forward journal, which is written as daily notes, nothing more. I've tried many times to start a poem or a bit of prose about something that touched me. It just hasn't been accessible. I don't seem to make any headway and what I manage to write, I hate.

All of a sudden, though, I find myself starting poems in my head in response to something funny she said or some bizarre situation we find ourselves in. Then when naptime comes, I run to the computer to try to get it down. They aren't my best work, but they are something. They hold a bit of her, they make a memory.

So much of the first two years was just really physically and emotionally hard for me. Nursing was so precious, but so exhausting, and honestly, it was always a source of stress for me. I worried about my supply and my diet all the time. And having a little person who is completely physically dependent on you is wonderful and I never want to forget all the snuggles, but it is taxing, especially for an introvert like me who needs alone time, time to unplug from people.

I ran out of milk about a month ago, right at her birthday time, and though she still asks to "see if Momma has milk" a few times a day, (and we do), we are both doing fine with the fact that I don't. That has brought some separation and some relief for me, and I wonder if it's this separation that has allowed me to start writing about her. Most of what I have felt these first two years has been so intense and overwhelming, and so mixed with angst and fear, that articulating it was too much. I have a dear friend who wrote a beautiful poem about walking at night with her infant son, at least twenty years after the fact. It is so intimate and captures the moment and the feelings so well. I thought of it many times when I was up nursing Nettie in the night.

Maybe in five or ten or even twenty years I'll be able to come back to my daily journal of these first two years and make something more beautiful of it. I don't know. For now, I'm just happy to be capturing any little part of my sweet, kooky girl.