The Bywaters in Maine

Looking back: Belfast Poetry Festival 2009

2010-01-25T10:59:00.000-08:00

Here is the first in a short series of posts to make up for my complete lack of posting this fall! A few really cool things happened this fall that I want to make sure to capture, for myself and anyone reading this. The event I want to write about here is the Belfast Poetry Festival, an incredible small town event that's been going on here for a few years now.

I had the honor of serving on the festival's committee this year, which was put together by our beloved poet laureate, Linda Buckmaster and gave me the chance to work with some wonderful other poets from the area. The Belfast Poetry Festival is, as far as I know, unlike any other, in that it pairs Maine poets with Maine visual artists in all mediums to create original collaborations which are then highlighted at the festival. The poets and artists can do whatever they want: sometimes the poets write about existing art; sometimes the artists make work about existing poems; sometimes they just create alongside one another; and sometimes they make something wholly new together. It's pretty incredible. This year the teams included a poet who read while accompanied by choreographed modern dancers, a poet who read with a jazz drummer, a calligrapher/book artist & poet pairing, etc.

Because I was on the committee, I got a little bit of an insider's advantage and had a hand in choosing the artist with whom I was matched. I got the painter/sculptor/installation artist Paul Oberst, and we immediately fell in love. We'd never met before, but when I visited his studio in Freedom, we had all these instant connections that I found in his work: grids, the idea of spirit and soul, quilts, folk art, tabernacle imagery, text/image juxtapositions, gold-leafing, and on and on. We had a long talk, and I took notes, and the result was a poem in which I tried to speak through Paul's work back at him. Much to my delight, he was thrilled with the poem, and used it to mirror my words back at me through new letterpress sheets and sculptures in response to my response! It was this incredible, trance-like loop of our shared inspirations. (Paul also reminded me a lot of one of my dear friends and mentors, the poet Michael Burkard.)

Paul also got hugely inspired to turn our collab into a public art work, and petitioned the town to allow him to post professionally fabricated lamp post signs of words from my poem all over the town, as if my poem was some sort of local marketing campaign. It was so cool. He also made "picketing signs" of my words and these were carried all over town during the festival, and cryptically put signs in the store windows of the downtown as well.

And then Paul had the brilliant suggestion of bringing in another element of collaboration: a local musician named Dan Beckman. So then Dan and I did this sound performance of my poem together, complete with samples and sound effects, live at both the festival and one "rehearsal" run. This was also a match made in heaven, and Dan and I had a great time (and later I became the childbirth education teacher for Dan and his partner and fellow artist Amy!). Maybe I'll figure out how to upload the sound file here sometimes.

You've got to come to this festival sometime if you can. This year also featured a jazz improv poetry brunch, where anyone could get up and try their hand at a Beat tradition; an "old home" night for poets from across Waldo County, and other fantastic events. Oh, and did I mention most events were PACKED?! With audience for poetry?! On a Saturday in a small town?!

I'm so grateful to all my fellow organizers, especially for putting me in touch with Paul and Dan. I love collaborative art-making, and am hoping to work with both of them again in the future.

One year since our arrival

2010-01-20T18:16:00.000-08:00

I'm so sorry to have been away from this blog for so long, but my absence is an accurate reflection of our lives toward the end of 2009: too busy to fit in everything we wanted to do. As those of you with small children know all too well, it was just one illness/school vacation/Rob work trip/pick-your-mundane-disruption after another.

But there was plenty of wonder and beauty and joy in all that busyness as well. For example: we got really involved with an amazing group of folks who are starting a cohousing project; I started teaching childbirth education classes in the community; the Baby's First Year support group I started in September developed into a lovely and tight-knit little bunch of regular attendees; Willa went apple-picking with school and we pressed cider for the first time on an antique cider press; our winter CSA of root vegetables and squashes and things began, from our friends Maia and Jacob at After the Fall farm; we trick-or-treated around Belfast; we hosted a locavore Thanksgiving; we celebrated Chanukah as darkness fell around us; I read poetry in Belfast's New Year's By the Bay; I finished my first ever knitting project, a scarf, and took a rug-hooking class; and on and on.

And Jem learned to crack himself up, sit up on his own, and just generally is continually getting cuter and sweeter and funnier all the time. He's a social kid with an easy laugh and an eagerness for fun. He and Willa think the world of each other. When he pulls her hair (and he pulls hard!) or bites her face (and he bites hard! his third tooth is coming in now!), she just laughs with pleasure.

Oh, and I was a participant in (as well as on the committee of) the Belfast Poetry Festival in October--that was incredible. I'll have to dedicate a post just to that.

And jeez, did I really never blog about the Common Ground Fair back in September?! I'm heartbroken about that. I'd love to go back and try to conjure it up, because it really is just about the greatest thing on earth, to my mind. I will save that for another post as well.

Before I go for now, though, two observations about life here in small town Maine: first, the connection to the seasons continues to amaze and nourish me. When the winter solstice hit, wow, was it dark. (Literally, but also metaphorically: it was the second anniversary of our son Day's burial.) Everyone feels the darkness in a deep way. The snow came with it, and basically has not left since. But everyone gets out and cross-country skis and snowshoes and watches the ice on the ponds and it's pretty magical. And even now, in January, people comment on how it's still light at 4:30 PM, and what a gift that is, and how we really only have a couple more months to go, and isn't the snow beautiful, and it just seems like such a healthy and reverent attitude towards the season. Secondly, our interconnectedness with the community continues to deepen. Rob and I were thrilled when we came back from our winter vacation, went to the Co-op, and not only did the woman at the deli counter know us by name, but the cashier knew our member number by heart. We've really arrived!

And with this feeling of true "arrival," we've also started to think, bittersweetly, about our departure this summer. People stop us all the time and ask, "When are you going back? Wait, you're going back? What do you mean?" Today someone said to me, "I heard you're moving to Chicago!" No, I explained for the millionth time: we live in Chicago; we always planned to be here for a year and a half. But it's amazing to feel like our presence is so felt and might actually be missed. You don't really feel that so much in a city of three million people.

One last note: last night I skimmed through Amanda Soule's The Creative Family, which I got for a holiday present (thanks, Margy!). Soule is a Maine mama and blogger, and though the book is sort of a coffee-table thing in some ways (lots of gorgeous styling and photos), I still did find it genuinely inspiring. The slowed-down, mindful, small-pleasure-filled life she strives for--and seems to achieve: her family does things like keep track of "gratitudes" at the dinner table, hang up kids' art and postcards and leaves and things on an "inspiration wire," and use the top of one bookshelf for a seasonally-changing altar of natural, found materials--is one that appeals to me immensely. Maybe in 2010 I'll get a bit closer to it. I do feel like in some ways, for all our hectic pace and Jem's arrival and our never-ending overthinking, I got a little closer to it in 2009. Baby steps.

And here are a few photos for you, too, because I can't resist posting photos of my kids. Many more to come.

October begins

2009-10-04T09:30:00.000-07:00

Just a quick post to report this exciting news: this weekend I canned my own baby food for the first time! Not only did I can it, but I made it from start to finish--other than planting the tree. We harvested pears from the tree in the backyard, ripened them, then I cooked and pureed them and canned them so that a few months from now, when Jem is ready, he'll have baby food fresh from our own yard! And it came out DELICIOUS, if I do say so myself: miles away from standard (even organic) baby food.

Hope to post about the Common Ground Fair soon. One thing I'm pleased about was discovering locker hooking, an Australian rug hooking technique that makes really lovely Berber-like rugs from wool roving or fabric strips. I got a kit. I'm also taking a traditional rug hooking workshop in November. I've been in love with folk art, antique hooked rugs for years, but they're expensive, and I thought it'd be fun to learn to make them myself. And now I am. Yay!

We all have colds here and are dealing with the change to chilly, rainy weather after a gorgeous, clear September. Yesterday was the Church Street festival in town, a long-running, grassroots parade put on by the woman who runs the children's playhouse downtown. It's apparently always been a goofy, hippie, magical event--you show up at Mary's house in the morning, get a costume out of her barn, put it on and walk! We were told it was not-to-miss, so we went out for it, even though it was raining and we were sniffling. It's just another one of the many enchanted Belfast traditions. Here's a photo of us. Willa is dressed as Pippi Longstocking--she plans to dress as Eloise for Halloween--and is carrying a sign made by the artist Paul Oberst, my collaborator for the Belfast Poetry Festival coming up later this month. More on that soon, too, I hope--we had a trial run performance of my poem with Paul's work installed all around us and live sound accompaniment by local musician Dan Beckman of Uke of Spaces Corners at Roots & Tendrils gallery on Friday evening as part of the Art Walk. Um, yeah: art walks, bands, sculptors. Belfast is pretty darn cool.

Fall

2009-09-24T07:43:00.000-07:00

Willa's first day of school, 2009

Sorry not to have posted in awhile! Fall has come to Belfast, and we have all been happily busy getting into the rhythm of the new season. Willa is back in school in the 3-6 Chickadee classroom at Cornerspring Montessori, Rob is at work for various colleges and private high schools on new campaigns (with a little travel coming up), and I'm diving my time between book projects, the sabbatical project (the oral history of the new back-to-the-land movement), office work at Morningstar Midwifery, keeping in touch with Columbia College, volunteering for Citizens for Midwifery, various little poetry gigs (sending out manuscripts, readings upcoming at Bates and the Belfast Poetry Festival, at which I'm collaborating with a visual artist and a musician), and on and on. And Jem is learning to laugh and grab. To keep us all relatively sane, I've devised a household schedule that is timed to within an inch of all of our lives. But it's kind of working.

And part of the schedule (and point of the schedule) is to make sure we have enough time for reading, crafts, open play with the kids, and cooking good food. All of which are also happening, happily!

Tomorrow is the beginning of the Common Ground Fair, put on by the Maine Organic Farmers & Gardeners Association and the social event of the season here in Waldo County. We are attending all three days of the fair, volunteering at tables and shopping for Maine-made goods and produce, attending workshops and lectures and joining in the contradancing and kids' vegetable parade. Every single aspect of the fair is so exciting to me, from the sheepdog trials to the spinning demonstrations, from the talks on social justice and permaculture to the workshops on baking bread, not to mention all the FOOD, all of which is organic and grown and made right here in Maine.

Below, some pics from the past month or so, including evidence of Ravit and Gabe's wonderful visit at the end of August, complete with country fair (and my first canning experiment: Ravit and I canned nine jars of blueberry jam made from wild organic local blueberries!); our friend Ava's Labor Day, outdoor wedding; our egg share from our friends at Fail Better Farm; and more.

Kids with the newlyweds Uncle Gabe & Aunt Ravit

Beautiful eggs from Clayton and Kendra at Fail Better Farm

With the Union Fair Blueberry Queen

Jem, also known as WonderchubBlueberry jam I canned with Ravit!

Rob and Jem at Ava's wedding Willa running barefoot in the field with Ava's dog Tipper at the wedding

August

2009-08-21T14:45:00.000-07:00

Jem, four months!

With Safta and Sabi.

Contradancing at the VFW.

Summer at last

2009-08-06T08:22:00.001-07:00

Well, we had to wade (literally) through July, but August is now here and it's a doozy. Ocean breezes! Country fairs! Blueberries! Above is Willa on a ride at the Rockland Lobster Fest. Somehow lobster prepared in the middle of a hot day on a fairgrounds doesn't seem so smart to us, but thousands of fair-goers can't be wrong.

Here's Willa at the beach when we went to visit Josh and Rachel and co., who were staying on Cape Elizabeth.
This shot of Willa and Rob at a sheep farm in Union on Open Farm Day in late July gives a sense of our mostly gray, chilly summer. Still beautiful, though.

As is this guy, now 3 1/2 months, smiling and cooing and snuggly...

And then also often quite serious and thoughtful (I would not call him a jolly baby. Certainly calm, but not jolly.).

Family is coming soon to visit (yay, guests! finally!) and I feel very excited to show off our little bit of seaside paradise.

When are you coming?

July thus far

2009-07-06T08:19:00.000-07:00

Rob and Willa canoeing on an ultimately stormy July 4th at the Sanborn Pond camp of our dear friends Donna and Ellie.

Willa picking strawberries from our own backyard by the bay! I made a strawberry rhubarb crisp for the 4th.

Jem has really been practicing this whole smiling thing and getting it down pretty well now. Here's the first time it was captured on film, sort of mid-grin.

I know I'm biased, but is this kid a looker or what?! Age 10 weeks.

A few things I love about living in Maine

2009-07-05T17:52:00.001-07:00

Barely any time to post lately, with the adjustment to two kids and Willa going through some hard older-sister/four-year-old stuff, but I wanted to catch a second to post a few things I've been grateful for in our lives here these days:

1) Small town living. I love that we know people wherever we go, that we always run into a friend at the co-op or library, that everyone is so interconnected. It is profoundly reassuring. Gossipy, and I can imagine it becoming claustrophobic, but it also really feels like people in this area matter to one another in a deep way.

2) My waffle iron. I got a waffle iron, because Willa has been eating a lot of frozen waffles for breakfast lately--at her own request, and the health store kind, but still, too much frozen food! So I got a waffle iron, and today made my own waffles. With local eggs, milk, and flour, of course. And they came out really well, too. I'm very excited to make waffles for our upcoming visits from family!

3) The view. I take it for granted sometimes, but it's pretty incredible to be able to watch sailboats, kayaks and tugboats go by in our "backyard," the harbor.

4) Our CSF (community-supported fishery). We pick up a share of delicious, just-off-the-boat fish every week from a lovely cooperative of friendly fishermen and their families. The price is great, it supports a true Maine economy and sustainable fishing practices, and we eat so well and so healthy.

5) Constantly meeting new, cool, like-minded young families in Waldo County. Where do they all come from?!

6) The fact that a new, hip arts space and music venue selling locally-made crafts and a new independent record store (do we still say "record store"? Well, I guess I do!) just opened up in town! Yay!

There is much more, but I'll stop there for now. And I will quickly say what I do not love, which is the constant rain of late--I was cheerful about it for a long time, but now I'm over it. Luckily, today was partly sunny, and I think we're getting more sunny days this week. Hurray!

And tomorrow, I hope, I will post my new photo of The Boy, who is cuter every day, and now officially smiling.

summer begins

2009-06-20T15:24:00.000-07:00

Our life is a bit too crazy and exhausting right now for me to post much, but I did see something the other day I wanted to blog about: a guy, in his 20s, barefoot, sitting on a picnic table in the park that overlooks the harbor, masterfully flying a kite high above him. Pretty cool.

Last night we had a ritual to turn our friend and doula Ava into Jem's "fairy godmother." We crowned her with a wreath of wildflowers Willa and I picked in the backyard in the rain, presented her a fairy wand we made from a piece of driftwood, and gave her wings (which we bought from a Hollywood costume company online--nothing too idyllic there!). The midwives were there as witnesses.

Here's photos from this and other recent events, including Jem at 8 weeks. (At his six week postpartum visit he weighed almost 12 lbs.--he's huge, and starting to hold his head up really well. But no smiles-on-purpose yet...we're waiting and hoping maybe the first one will come on Father's Day tomorrow.)

June pics

2009-06-12T07:35:00.000-07:00

more Jem

2009-06-02T09:13:00.001-07:00

This is what Jem looks like awake, which he is more and more often lately. Five weeks old!

Memorial Day

2009-05-26T04:46:00.001-07:00

Yesterday was the latest perfect spring day, and we took advantage by heading down to New Harbor, a remote fishing village, and going on a seal watch. And we saw actual seals! Here they are, plus some cute humans, too. Plus, evidence of Jem's potty abilities!

Jem's song

2009-05-24T07:31:00.001-07:00

Willa made up a song for Jem, to the tune of Rockaby Baby:
"Jemaby little,
Jemaby cute,
Jem is a train
that goes toot, toot, toot"

An update

2009-05-23T05:04:00.000-07:00

Sorry I haven't posted much lately: we had a baby, so it's been a bit busy!

Here are just a few notes from the Bywater household:

At his two-week postpartum visit, Jem weighed in at 8 lbs, 4 oz, which is pretty much the maximum weight gain one could expect in that timeframe. And he is already outgrowing the sweet preemie things we got him since they were the only things that would fit him for those first few weeks. But now he is definitely filling out and fitting into regular newborn clothes. Go, Jemmie!
Jem has already used the toilet several times. Rob (who is charge of all things diaper-change) has been encouraging him to pish outdoors, off our balcony, and now into the grown-up toilet, and he's doing it very consistently, immediately, and well. Is he precocious or what?! Go, Jemmie! Go, "Elimination Communication"!
Nicknames we have been using for Jem: Jemmie, Jemedy, Jemolo, Little Tiny, Sweet Pie (the last two are Willa's. This morning Willa also called him Gorgeous, as in "Hello, Gorgeous.").
Speaking of gorgeous, the weather here was in the 80s and sunny, with a cool ocean breeze. Yesterday we walked to the farmer's market in town, saw our friend Morty juggling to a live performance of 40s standards, and bought Cyprus-style cheese, local greens, and a loaf of rye bread and had a proper ploughman's lunch. Yum!
Midcoast Maine is starting to open up for tourist season. Everywhere we pass is getting landscaped and painted for the summer, all the stores and restaurants are getting going, and we're starting to see some out of state license plates (besides ours). It will be interesting to be here as "residents" once it starts to feel like Vacationland.

Jem, week three

2009-05-20T06:50:00.001-07:00

At Ravit's request: more photos! Hope to post some actual commentary soon...

new photos

2009-05-08T16:08:00.000-07:00

From Willa's many birthday celebrations, today's Mother's Day tea at her school, and Jem's second week of life...enjoy!

Rachel's homebirth video

2009-04-30T16:34:00.000-07:00

Have you all seen this? It's the homebirth-promoting movie my friend Rachel made after having her third. She just revised it to enter in a maternity video contest. Check it out; it's really fantastic. Then rate it highly!

Eventually I hope to make my own, though I don't have film footage--it happened too fast for me to remember to call my friend next door who films births!

More of Jem

2009-04-28T07:56:00.000-07:00

These are in reverse chronological order, today through Sunday, two to four days old!

We also think he looks a bit like this guy (shown here with a younger Willa):

and a bit like this guy:

Jem's birth story

2009-04-26T12:38:00.001-07:00

We are so thrilled to tell the world that Jem Cady Bywater has joined our family!

Here's the full story:

My water broke Friday evening, walking home from a delicious and apparently fortifying meal at Chase's Daily with Rob's mom Margy, who was in town for a B&B weekend we got her for Christmas (lucky timing!). We got about a block when I said, "Oh!" and went into the library to check that indeed, as I suspected, my water had broken. Willa said, "I'm a little bit worried about you, Mama" and Margy offered to go get the car, but I felt totally fine and we walked the lovely, short walk home in beautiful spring weather with my water breaking all along the way. I explained to Willa that our baby might be coming in April instead of May as we'd thought, and Willa said, "I hope this baby keeps swimming, Mama"--a reference to her stillborn brother--and commanded, "Keep swimming, baby!" as she has many times before.

We arrived home, and Rob and I put Willa to bed, sent Margy up to Searsport and stared at one another in amazement. Were we really in labor?! It didn't seem possible! Two and a half weeks early! And we were not ready!

So we called the midwives, who said it seemed pretty likely we would have our baby in the next few days, if not that night, and said they'd go to bed and wait to hear further. (They also reminded me that I was sneaking ahead of three mamas actually due in April!) We also called Ava, our doula, to let her know what was happening. I caught my dad and sister Ravit before shabbat started to let them know. And then we hustled around cleaning the house, ordering a car seat online, and various other things we had yet to take care of. My water kept breaking throughout the evening, but I felt totally fine and relaxed. I was having some bloody show, too, which was thrilling since it took days of labor before I had any with Willa, and seemed like a sign things were actually closer than they felt. We watched 10 ceremonial minutes of A Room with a View, since it's the movie we were watching when my water broke at the beginning of Willa's labor, and then went to bed. Rob fell fast asleep but though I felt calm and wasn't having any real contractions yet, I sort of lay there restfully waiting for what might happen next.

By 12:30 AM or so, I was having contractions that were getting a bit hard--not terrible, but not so fun to lie down through. I waited to see if I had a few in a row, and when I did, I woke Rob up and we started keeping track of them while reading in bed. We did that for about an hour, then called the midwives to tell them what was up. Since my contractions were still really manageable, we said we'd check in with them again in a little while and Rob started getting the tub set up. About an hour later, the contractions were getting a bit more difficult, and we realized our tub liner had ripped and Rob couldn't get the hose hooked up, so we called them back and told them we were ready for them to come, and Ava, too. (Ava was also going to be Willa's birth buddy, and we were a little worried Willa might wake up in the night, so we wanted Ava there as soon as possible.) My contractions were between 4-7 minutes apart and lasting 45 seconds: a textbook early-active labor for me, for once!

By the time everyone arrived--my midwives Donna, Ellie and Anna, and Ava--it was probably 3:15 AM and I could not talk through my contractions, though I have to say they still did not feel so horrible to me and I didn't believe I was particularly close to having a baby. During each contraction I wanted to moan, lean on someone and have someone else press on my tailbone. I went around everyone in turn. In between contractions I felt FINE and we were all having fun, telling stories and joking around. They also kept checking the baby's heartbeat, which was perfect every time. At one point I asked, "Do you think I'll have this baby before it's time for me to go back to sleep?" because I wanted to put my contact lenses in to see the birth but not if I was going to be told to go back to sleep first! And after Willa's incredibly long labor, it seemed possible this kind of labor could last for days. But everyone looked at me like I was crazy.

Pretty soon after that the contractions were hard enough that I decided I wanted to get in the tub, even though I was worried it was still too early since I'd have so long to go (it was probably about 4:45 AM by this time). I called my friend Rachel in NYC and told her she should take the first morning flight from NYC if she wanted to come, even though she'd "probably" miss the birth.

The tub felt great, though they had to keep filling it with pots of hot water from the stove because our water heater kept running out. The baby was moving throughout labor, jumping and twitching, which was very reassuring though strange! (I don't remember noticing whether or not Willa moved during labor.) My contractions, which had been getting more intense and closer together, slowed down a bit when I first got in but then picked up again. Then they started getting harder, and I started feeling "pushy." I was making a lot of noise: calling the baby "down down down," growling like a warrior, moaning "yes yes yes." I saw that Ellie was taking a stethoscope out and asking for a baby hat which seemed to mean they thought I was close but I still couldn't believe it, even though at this point the contractions were quite hard to bear. In between I still felt totally normal and lucid and was keeping track of everything going on--Ava giving me wonderful counterpressure during every contraction, the morning light coming in, with an incredible sunrise over the bay right outside the double doors where the tub was set up, birds chirping, the conversations everyone was having. I even made a joke about Maisie, our dog, who slept in a corner in her bed the whole time. I said, "She's thinking, I had SIX at once. What are you complaining about?"

But finally, at the very end, I was serious even in between contractions. I felt very much in charge of what was happening--my midwives mostly stood back and let me do what I was doing, though at one point I asked Donna to check me, because I still did not believe I was very close. She told me I was pretty much fully effaced and the baby was at +2 station, and that I would be having my baby very soon, but I remained unconvinced, even as I started working on visualizing my baby descending and summoning all the power of my contractions to go low and out. I felt like I had a choice: I could either fight the pain and pressure and energy and tighten up, or I could surrender to them and bring my baby out sooner. I chose the latter. I both tried to push and release as much as I could and do it gently. I screamed--really screamed!--through several contractions, calling out "I love you, baby!" Later Donna told me I pushed for about 40 minutes.

Finally I felt the head and said, "It's coming!" It was really painful but also so exciting. I told Ava to go wake Willa up and they came back in (about 6 AM, her normal waking time, and she actually slept through the night and all our company and noise, which was a blessing!). Then I pushed the head out which was a huge relief and then waited a contraction and birthed the rest of my baby. Donna and Rob had their hands in the tub to catch him, but ultimately we think it was me who gently brought him to the surface. He was born at 6:12 AM.

Once again I had a baby with a strong but uncommonly short cord (this has been true for all three of my kids, and we don't know why!). It was maybe a foot in all. He was crying a bit off and on but not as much as Donna and Ellie would have liked, so Ellie suctioned him a bunch of times with the DeLee and an aspirator. This went on for a few minutes, which was a little nerve-wracking: I kept asking if he'd be ok, even though it also seemed like he was definitely fine, since he was moving around and squeaking. My contractions came back and I birthed the placenta really easily very shortly thereafter. Because of the short cord we clamped and cut pretty soon--Willa did the cutting--and then we asked Willa to announce the gender once we flipped the cord back. "It's a boy!" she said. Wow. We couldn't believe it.

The midwives checked me out--I was fine--and then turned to him. He did look like a baby due May 12--he was covered in vernix and fur and had floppy ears and smooth feet and was a little small at 18 3/4 inches long. But when they weighed him we saw that he was 6 lbs. 12 oz.: not bad! The midwives cleaned up the house, made me tea, made sure everything was in order and went on their way. Rachel and Margy both arrived shortly thereafter.

It took us most of the day to decide that the name we'd picked out awhile back--Jem Cady--would work for this surprising, early arrival. I think Rob and I were both still in a bit of denial and also were not actually anticipating a boy! But finally we knew we didn't like any other name as well and it was bothering me not to call him anything. Willa said, "He's Jem Cady!" and so he is. "Jem" is from To Kill a Mockingbird, a book (and film) Rob and I both love and which I reread in the days just before Willa was born: Jem is the name of Scout Finch's older brother, a boy who grows to care deeply about social justice. It's short for Jeremy, though Harper Lee (and we) don't use the long version. Cady is from Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a social activist in abolition, suffrage, feminism and mothering. We felt that if we had a boy it was important to link him to issues of gender equality. Plus we like the name. Jem Cady: a little bit farmer, a little bit cowboy.

Anyway, he's here; everything's going well; he seems to have a real knack for nursing, much to his mother's relief; today (his first full day of life) was unbelievably gorgeous here in Maine and we're looking forward to adjusting to our new life as a family. We are extremely grateful to our midwives and doula and friends and family near and far who have supported us and "held the space" for us during a sometimes anxious time of it after our last son, Day, died at 31 weeks in utero. We think Jem looks quite a bit like what Day would have looked like. We feel so blessed to have this new boy with us.

Really? In April?

2009-04-24T17:33:00.000-07:00

My water broke about an hour ago. No other signs of labor yet, but I've been feeling close for a few days and apparently this means it could be soon. Hmm. I sort of don't believe it. Wow. Really? Could this baby come in April?

I'm full term, so there's no concern about that. I just thought I had at least a week before I got to start thinking about having this baby.

Wow. Wow again. Send all your healthiest, liveliest baby thoughts our way...

I'm in the paper! Again!

2009-04-22T14:20:00.000-07:00

Me and the poetry blog I'm doing with Rachel--which we should have an exciting announcement about soon!--are covered in the local paper today.

I have been in the local paper--just mentioned in passing, mostly, or with Willa, but still--an alarming amount, considering we just got to town a few months ago. I'm just glad I haven't been in the police blotter yet.

Blessingway

2009-04-11T18:34:00.000-07:00

My midwives hosted a beautiful Blessingway for me today, a ritual held to help women prepare spiritually for their births and the crossing over into mothering a new baby. It was an incredibly special day.

The women gathered, my closest friends here in Maine, were all mothers themselves, and all except one had homebirths (the one who didn't had a birthing center birth during which she crawled around on all fours during labor and caught her own baby in a squat, so she's right there with us homebirthers!), and some of them had homebirths in homes without running water, and two of them were homebirthers who had babies who died.

It was actually really important to me to have these friends there whose babies had died, because honestly, we're in a special sort of club, those of us who have children after having a child who died, one that moms who have not had a stillbirth or a neonatal death can't totally comprehend, I think. And my Blessingway would not have felt complete or honest without this very genuine understanding that I am not another kind of mother: I am a mother who has had a baby who died. I am so grateful for all the friends who were there today, because all of them are examples to me of mothers I admire and respect for a variety of reasons, but I am especially grateful to my friends who have been to the place I have been and could see me through this next part of my journey with that experience shared between us. And to my midwives, who are the kind of midwives who have likewise been able to be present and attentive to the possibility of death as a part of birth. (Not even all midwives are able to do this!) And the kind of midwives, and friends, who made me a Blessingway loaded with meaningful ritual and powerful female energy.

So now I have a twig wreath full of symbols and gifts from these women hanging in our bedroom, and a necklace strung with beads that these women chose for me to represent their own children and families, and string bracelets on both wrists which were connected to lengths of string that all of these other women are also wearing to protect me and be with me through my birth. I feel very blessed indeed.

I have more or less one month to go, folks.

Tomorrow, since everything around here is closed for Easter and we have no other plans, I think we're going to do some prepping for the birth and baby--set aside some birth supplies, order some stuff online, etc. I'm so excited to be in this place at long last, the place where I have to start getting ready for the possiblity of a new addition to our family.

* *

Oh, and we just celebrated Passover, and hosted two seders, which was a first for me (and obviously for Rob!). It was fun, though I missed being with my family. But Passover--and Easter (Willa participated in the Belfast egg hunt today, held in the park just blocks from our house, and had a great time even though it was gray and cold)--mean spring is coming, and new life, and flowers are starting to sprout all over town, and today on the way to the Blessingway I passed a field with baby lambs nursing their mamas, and as it was with Willa, it's such a lovely time to be thinking about bringing a new baby into the world.

Now if it would only get above 48 degrees for once.

Happy National Poetry Month!

2009-04-06T10:59:00.000-07:00

Linda Buckmaster, Belfast poet laureate, and I launched our Poems Downtown project yesterday. I chose poems appropriate to 22 businesses in downtown Belfast (which is about four blocks long) and the merchants put them up in the windows, and then yesterday Linda and I went around and read them as part of a "spring is here" downtown business celebration. (There were also wandering minstrels in the form of a large fiddle band, and some women dressed in masks, and the stores were giving out cookies and such--fun!) We began in the cafe of the food co-op: Linda called everyone to attention as they were eating their lunches and I read Wendell Berry. Everywhere we went, people seemed to be really happy to hear poems. Wonderful Belfast!

Here are some shots from the project:
Sandburg's "The Hammer" at the hardware store; a Lucille Clifton poem about her mama for Yo Mamma's Home decor store; Linda reading Molly Tenenbaum at The Good Table.

Ron Padgett's "The Love Cook" for Darby's restaurant; a poem about knitting for Heavenly Socks Yarn store. And a Denise Levertov poem about a broken sandel for Colburns Shoe Store, the oldest contiunally operating shoe store in America.

Another funny Willa/homebirth propoganda story

2009-04-02T17:46:00.000-07:00

So we met a woman who asked us, "Do you know if your baby is a boy or a girl?" (Everyone loves to ask this.)

Willa answered, "No, because we haven't been to the hospital." (I've explained to her that people who know whether their baby is a boy or a girl have to go to a hospital and get it checked on big equipment.)

The woman said, "Well, no, you haven't been to the hospital yet. You will when it's time for the baby to come!"

And Willa answered, "No, we're not going there to have our baby, either! Tra la la!"

And yes, she actually did say "tra la la."

The woman just said, "Oh...."

New pics (even ones of me!)

2009-04-01T18:03:00.000-07:00

I promised photos in my post earlier today and here I am, delivering on time (let's hope the baby follows suit).

Here's Willa in her fancy party dress (sadly, the only time she's worn it so far!) on her way to her friend Abi's birthday party with her Dada while I was in Wyoming. Note, too, the birthday bow, complete with rainbow-colored cupcakes on it.

Below are some photos from Maine Maple Sunday, an all-state celebration in late March of the running of the sap. We hauled up to Steuben, in Downeast Maine, past Mount Desert Island, on a very chilly day, to Painted Pepper Farm:

where we heard a folktale about maple syrup in a tipi and petted some of the resident baby Nubian goats, from which the farm family makes fudge, chevre and artisan goat's milk gelato (oh, yeah, this is Maine, alright!):

We underdressed Willa in cotton socks and rain boots, and her toes got cold and she had a meltdown, but was luckily healed by the restorative powers of gelato.

And, because you asked, here I am today, at thirty-fourish weeks, all dressed up for a screening of a birth film at the local library that I organized for tonight:

I'm enormous, n'est-ce pas? This is one sticky-outy baby!

Happy April Fools' Day!

2009-04-01T12:41:00.001-07:00

Here we are celebrating April Fools' Day because it means we're in APRIL and we're that much closer to MAY and spring and the baby and all the rest of it. It also means we're in National Poetry Month. Hurray to all of that hopeful stuff!

Not much news to report: Rob and I are just trying to get through as much work as we can before the baby comes, and I am inching ever closer to being able to order up my cloth diapers and the rest of that fun stuff. Willa is teaching us songs she's learned from Montessori. Maisie is eager to get outside and sniff the grass under all the melted snow.

For April Fools' Day I posted a satiric message through the Citizens for Midwifery grassroots news message. Anyone interested in a political birthing moment click here.

I am huge, huge, huge.

Hopefully, pictures of me, pregnant as all get-out, and of the super-fun Poems Downtown project I've done with Belfast poet laureate Linda Buckmaster to follow soon.

Prenatal, 32 weeks

2009-03-18T15:29:00.000-07:00

According to my midwives, I'm fully at 32 weeks, which means scary week 31 (when we lost Day) has come and gone. It's kind of hard for me to believe--by one measurement, I'm still in the midst of week 31--but it is starting to feel like there is some light at the end of this tunnel of anxiety over another stillbirth. I'm already feeling a little less worried, and more excited and focused on the fun end-of-pregnancy stuff, like ordering my birth kit and finding a cool new diaper bag and thinking about where to set up the tub and that sort of thing--things that actually indicate there's a baby on the way, which, believe it or not, I have yet to entirely embrace (out of fear and worry and superstition, mostly, but also just that disbelief that all pregnant women have: "no way there's a BABY coming at the end of this! how is that possible!").

Anyway, I'm doing well: plenty healthy, plenty big, everything as it should be, and getting close to entering the final stretch. Hurray!

I have another prenatal, just a brief one, next week, mostly to assuage my fears (and because my primary midwives and Rob are all away and so it's a touchy time), and then we're on to the biweekly and then weekly prenatal exams where actual fun stuff starts happening: newborn protocol handouts and supply lists and home visits and all the rest. Woo-hoo! I love homebirth!

More small town/rural life moments

2009-03-17T16:06:00.000-07:00

Found poem from The Sap Pail, the local rural paper put out by a young back-to-the-lander, from an ad for Second Wind Farm, Nigerian Dwarf Dairy Goats:

FREE Advice.
FREE Manure.
(might be the
same thing)

a few new photos

2009-03-10T07:39:00.000-07:00

Here's Willa and Rob at the Owl Head's Transportation Museum this past weekend, working on Willa's foam glider, which she named Liliya.

Willa's hair is long enough for ponytails!

Baby update

2009-03-02T05:34:00.000-08:00

We had a prenatal appointment on Friday and everything seems to be going well--I'm measuring a bit ahead, which is normal for me and could mean the baby might come a bit earlier than its due date, and my blood pressure and the baby's heartbeat and all of it are right on target.

And I'm feeling a lot of movement these days.

Even so, this is a worrisome period for me. I'm 29 weeks, and Day died at 31. Every day I feel a bit fearful and anxious about whether or not this baby will make it. I have it in my head that maybe I will start feeling "safe" again when I get to about 34 or 36 weeks...basically, the further I get from 31 weeks the better I think I'll feel. We'll see. In any case, the next 5 weeks or so feel dicey, and those 5 weeks include some travel for me, a trip that takes Rob away for 4 days, and a 10-day vacation for our midwives, so all of that just contributes to the worry. Send your most protective thoughts!

In other news, we are in the midst of yet another snowstorm bringing a foot of snow. Another snow day for Willa. I think it's our fourth such snowstorm in as many weeks. I think we've had about 85 inches so far this winter!

Spring has to come eventually. And hopefully, with it, this baby, alive and well. Both things feel somewhat unreal.

Maine Museum, Rockland, Natural Birth Dollhouse

2009-02-23T12:25:00.001-08:00

Some new photos...

A vacation week trip to the Penobscot Marine Museum...

Dada and Willa playing skittles.

A trip to Rockland, on which Willa fell asleep in the car...

And then we went to an excellent Japanese restaurant and Willa enjoyed sorbet made from local blueberries and a Japanese fruit.

Willa is on board with the family philosophy of homebirth and lactation:

A Playmobil family has a homebirth attended by midwives in a Fisher-Price dollhouse.

The mama nurses her baby directly after birth, with big sister standing nearby.

Sad news

2009-02-19T06:58:00.001-08:00

We had some very sad news about a dear friend last night. It's not my news to share, and most of you reading this don't know our friend, but it is affecting us deeply, as it is news about fetal loss.

Feeling anxious and sorrowful this morning, and in deep mourning for our friends.

It's been a dark winter in some ways. Too much death. I am hopeful that the spring will bring with it new life in the form of our baby, but sometimes it seems too great a wish to have come true.

Intentional communities!

2009-02-17T17:35:00.000-08:00

I'm all hopped up on intentional communities because we went out to the JED Collective today to interview some folks there and had a great time. I came home and did some research and found out that there's a great online directory of international communities where you can search and see if there is one, or one forming, in the place you want to live. I was happy to know that there is a cohousing group forming in Chicago.

Rob is out tonight interviewing yet another back-to-the-land family, in the appropriately named Freedom, Maine...

Willa's in the paper...again

2009-02-13T13:06:00.000-08:00

The photographer for the local paper seems to looove Willa. There was a big photo of her at the MLK Day celebration in the paper a few weeks ago, and now here's another one of her making valentines at the Cohousing open house last weekend.

On tap for this weekend: having Jewish friends over for shabbat tonight; the Camden farmer's market; postering for some upcoming birth films I'm helping organize for the Maternal Wellness Center; another back-to-the-land interview we're doing as a family; and horse-drawn sleigh rides on yet another farm. Maybe some prenatal yoga and knitting with my friend Sara, too. Hopefully we'll have some photos from all this to share soon.

Oh, and:

Rob conducted our first new back-to-the-lander interview out on a farm this morning with our new lovely voice recorder, and it came out great!

And I got tenure!

And my sabbatical got approved by the sabbatical committee (it still needs approval from the Provost)!

And a publisher wrote to ask if I have an agent for my midwifery book and indeed I do and they're going to meet soon! And I'm getting the proposal off to the agent very soon!

Big week. Meanwhile, I'm hitting a wall pregnancy-wise, starting to feel a lot slower and more tired and muddle-headed. I better get while the getting's good.

This weekend

2009-02-08T13:54:00.001-08:00

This weekend included the following only-in-Maine activities:

Shabbat in the Wild on the land of a shamanistic couple who led singing and drumming in their hand-built yurt (a beautiful round structure with a skylight and woodstove), followed by a snowshoe hike through the woods on their vast land with stops for songs and prayers and a potluck Tu B'shvat (tree festival) lunch afterward back in their farmhouse, with apple-pear juice they pressed themselves. Three different folks brought kinds of coleslaw, for some reason. And of course there were lots of dates and figs and citrus fruits in honor of the holiday. We met some really cool people.

And then today

A CSA (community-supported agriculture) fair. They're happening in towns all over Maine today, and you go and get info about all the different farms in your area offering this amazing option of getting fresh produce, eggs, flowers, bread, meat, etc. straight from the farm throughout the growing season. We have a CSA we love (a kind of famous one--there's a documentary film about it and a cookbook from it) in Illinois but even with Chicago as big as it is, there are only a few CSA options there. At the Belfast fair alone we met at least six or seven different farm families (all about our age, with kids the same age) offering amazing-looking CSAs. We don't know how we'll choose! (Here's one typical website.) But it was a great opportunity to meet folks for our oral history project and we got a lot of names and are going to try to start setting up interviews next week.
A make-your-own Valentines workshop at the arts center sponsored by the cohousing community that we've spent a lot of time with. Beautiful art supplies and decorate-your-own cookies were great activities for Willa, and a guy was there playing guitar and took all of her requests. The local photographer who took a picture of Willa at the Martin Luther King Day celebration we went to that was in the paper also took plenty of her today, so she may well show up in the paper again!

Local news, volume 2

2009-02-06T05:07:00.000-08:00

A local radio show will start broadcasting a show by a local woman called "Positively Moody Blues." The show will feature only music by the Moody Blues, along with astrological information about the band, an astrological forecast, and the weather.

She can't start broadcasting yet, though, because Mercury is in retrograde and she doesn't want to be plagued by technical problems at the outset.

Pictures of the house, finally

2009-02-05T07:22:00.001-08:00

At long last, I took some shots of the place we're living right now to share with you all. Here's Willa in her room, with french doors that open to the living room.

A view to the street from a window. That's our little table in honor of Day, a kind of altar.

The living room. Note the wood stove.

The front hall.

The dining room part of the kitchen. Note big deck, currently covered in snow, but overlooking the harbor.
The kitchen.

Our bedroom, with a tiny deck and view of the harbor.

The belly, at 25 weeks (yikes!).Gratuitous cute dog shot.

Prenatal, 25 weeks

2009-02-04T13:27:00.000-08:00

Just got back from our second prenatal with Donna and Ellie, a nice loooonng talk about all my fears and hopes, plus of course the regular midwifery appointment gossip about real estate and mutual friends and stuff like that. And Anna, the new midwife on board, gave me some good herbal advice and is looking up some other ideas for me related to the (very minor) issues I've had related to this pregnancy.

Anyway: blood pressure normal; pee stick looked great (it never looked this good with Willa, so I must be eating better this time around); nice loud baby heartbeat heard on the Doplex. In other words, I'm a regular old pregnant lady.

And I've been feeling really well, if occasionally battling the feeling that I just don't quite believe there's a live baby for me at the end of this journey. I am very hopeful and cheerful, but part of me just can't totally buy it. As Ellie said, this is probably not a bad self-protection strategy.

I also told the midwives my goal for this birth, which is to enjoy it. I really love giving birth and this will probably be my last time out and I want to savor it, have it feel fun and joyous and just like a good time.

All signs are pointing to Girl--this pregnancy closely resembles Willa's in many ways, much more so than Day's, and the midwives are also guessing girl based on some stuff I won't go into here about conception...and all this probably means it will be a boy. I'm fighting the urge to find out.

Nor'easter

2009-01-29T08:50:00.000-08:00

So far we've been blessed (?) with an honest-to-gosh Maine winter, the kind the locals are saying they remember from way back when. Yesterday dumped another foot of snow onto the foot or more we already had, and along with the snow came window-rattling gales and sleet. Today, though, is sparkly brilliant gorgeous, well into the 20s. I wish we could get out for some x-country skiing, but Rob isn't back until tonight.

Still, Willa, Maisie and I got out to shovel a path to the driveway and show off the mountain of plowed snow in our front yard.

News in a Small Town

2009-01-24T17:49:00.000-08:00

The following items actually appeared in the weekly paper here:

Nonny, known to be the state's oldest cow at 21 years, died recently.

And a woman wrote a column in which she asked if anyone would like to split an order of Guinea hens with her, since they must be ordered in a minimum of thirty, and she doesn't want that many herself.

A new project for a new era

2009-01-24T16:59:00.000-08:00

I'm very proud to announce that my Rachel (she is much more than a friend or collaborator or fellow poet or doula or whatever...she's just another category altogether) and I have launched a new project, Starting Today: poems for the first 100 days. Every day for the next 100 days we will post a new poem by a contemporary American poet—a poem written for and during the first 100 days of this new administration. Check it out. It's pretty cool, if I do say so myself.

Living here

2009-01-21T19:18:00.000-08:00

Mostly we feel like we haven't even had a chance to start living here yet--it took awhile for our stuff to arrive and for us to unpack, and then Rob was on the road for so long, and then his dad died, and now he'll be gone again, and we had that rough snap of subzero temperatures, and switched Willa's school schedule a week after it started, and on and on. We really just want to settle into a routine, to settle in.

But occasionally I have glimpses of small town Maine life here that are so sweet, and I did want to share a bit of that.

For one thing, seemingly no one locks their doors, car or home or otherwise, which I can't get used to (though I will say that not locking one's car door does save precious seconds when running errands in the freezing cold!).

Everyone you pass smiles or nods or waves or otherwise acknowledges one another, whether walking or driving. I can't get used to that either.

The lady at the dry cleaner (the only one in town) and the guy at the cafe that makes amazing wraps and everyone else basically knows everyone who comes into their shop by first name.

It is unbelievably quiet almost all of the time, and the stars and moon are incredibly bright and clear.

Today I met a woman, a yoga teacher/doula mom from Massachusetts, and she's going to teach me how to knit. Because, as she said, I'm the first person she's met in Belfast who does NOT know how to knit. She makes amazing wool pants for her 18 month old. I'm going to try a scarf. I'm very excited.

Our good friend Nicolle, who lives next door with her son Leo and is a homebirth activist and filmmaker, comes over every few days with baked goods: maple scones, a vegan pie. We watched the inauguration together and she brought really good kale.

Something about Belfast makes a person want to make things with their hands, makes a person want to knit and bake and grow food. Once we finally get settled in, I am really looking forward to some cross stitch by the woodstove.

There's also a cheesemaking workshop offered in a nearby town, where in two days I could be making my own chevre and feta from scratch, and a rug hooking workshop I'm also really hoping to take.

Oh, and the cohousing group in town has bought their land and is moving forward, and has plans to try to build a pathway from the land (150+ acres), which is 3 miles out of town, into the downtown, so that, as the organizer said, "the kids could ride ponies into town." Because she and her family just bought two Shetland ponies, which they'd share.

Can you imagine Willa riding a Shetland pony into town?!

Joseph Day Morris, 1940-2009

2009-01-18T14:43:00.000-08:00

Rob's dad died. Rob was his only family, and will be heading out to Ohio later this week.

Here he is with Willa last summer when we visited him on our way to Maine.

Talk about "rusticating"!

2009-01-13T19:23:00.001-08:00

Our lovely rented home has no bathtub in the part we're staying in, and Willa vastly prefers a bath over a shower, so I came back to what is becoming my mantra for our time here: What would Maine homesteaders do? And I went searching (online) for an old-fashioned galvanized washtub. No plastic. No parts. Just a steel tub that I hoped would be big enough for a kid.

It came today. It worked really well.

(Maine has always been a place where people "from away" came to get back to nature--the first waves of tourists who came up to hunt and fish with traditional Maine Guides were called "rusticators." Hence, my post title.)

Also today: received a Chanukah gift from Aunt D'vora, who sent the much-requested Colorforms set of Willa's dreams. Willa, who has not been known for her talents at representational art, made this on her first-ever Colorforms try:

I was super-impressed, I must say. And then we had to put all those teeny tiny vinyl pieces away.

Rob's in Louisiana, comes home Thursday. I can't wait for a full week with every member of our family in the same place! It's been, let's see, about three weeks since that happened.

Pancakes the way they should be

2009-01-11T08:17:00.000-08:00

During the lovely snowfall we're having here today, I made blueberry pancakes.
Almost all the ingredients came from right here in Maine, and I bought them at the co-op which is a few blocks away. And of course it's almost all organic.

The butter is made fresh daily in Old Orchard Beach, Maine.
The spelt flour was grown and milled through the Crown of Maine cooperative.
The eggs were laid and collected at a farm up the road (don't have the name of the farm here, but it's right near town).
The blueberries were grown and packed at Blue Barrens Farm in Columbia, Maine.
The (sea) salt came from Marshfield. I don't actually know where that is in Maine, but c'mon--the salt is local!
And we topped them off with maple syrup from Kinney's Sugarhouse in Knox, which is just a few miles away.

Yum!

The views out the back of our house

2009-01-11T08:13:00.001-08:00

The sunrise over the bay we can see from our bed every morning.

Our "backyard" in winter.

One--no, two--more amazing things

2009-01-10T16:23:00.001-08:00

Last night as we walked home in the freezing cold from the kabbalat shabbat, Willa said, out of the blue, "Every night when I go to sleep, I think to myself, I am in the universe. And every morning when I wake up, I look out the window and think quietly to myself, I am in the universe."

And tonight there is a full moon, as clear as anything, over the bay, casting light across the water, all of which we can see perfectly from our windows.

Our first (incredible) Friday in Belfast

2009-01-09T17:05:00.000-08:00

It's been a sort of amazing day.

After we picked up Willa from her Montessori school this morning, we all went to a winter farmer's market held twice monthly during the off-season and bought amazing goat cheese and Vietnamese vegan curry and salsa and fresh pasta, all of which was grown and handmade within miles of where we live, and which we bought from the makers themselves. The chevre is the best we've ever had. Yum.

And at this exact moment, Willa is snug in bed while I type this and Rob is out at a men's group organized by another homebirth dad we've met before, a homesteader, and the group is held at the Morningstar Midwifery offices where I'll be helping out, and where we were earlier today for our first prenatal, which was lovely and low-key, much more about chatting and catching up than anything medical, which is the way it should be. (Maine's state slogan, for those of you who don't know, is "the way life should be." Indeed.)

All my physical stuff is fine--I'm not even anemic, which is sort of amazing, and everything else seems perfectly normal. I'm measuring slightly big for my dates, which is typical for me, and my blood pressure and all that are fine, and the baby's heartbeat was heard. We have another appointment in three weeks. The great thing about homebirth prenatal care (well, one of the great things), especially for a woman expecting her third baby, is that there really isn't much to do or say if things are going well, but it doesn't make for the most exciting reports. Sorry about that!

I meet again with the midwives next week under my other guise as an assistant, hoping to help out in whatever ways they need me to learn more about what they do and be of use.

And we're already meeting so many new folks to interview for my sabbatical project, the oral history of the new back-to-the-land movement here. We were talking about with the midwives about a guy we hope to interview and Ellie whipped out some photos of the recent homebirth of his first daughter, and then found photos of the guy himself as a little kid at the homebirth of one of his younger siblings! As she flipped through the photo album, it was like an alternative phonebook for the town--"oh, here's the woman who runs the craft store, and here's the folks who own the pizza place," etc.

Then after the prenatal we went to a kabbalat shabbat (sabbath celebration) that happened to be held in town through this cool, progressive synagogue in Rockland (about 40 mins away) that holds different events for its members all over the area. The couple whose house it was live 3 blocks away, literally, and are really nice--the wife is from Queens, and I felt right at ease with her right away. All the people there, who included a librarian who lives on an island with about 400 other people and has a 2 yr old, were extremely amazing. One couple, the wife is Jewish and the husband is a former surfer and they live off the grid and have their own organic fish farm and greenhouse. People were asked by the rabbi to share their thoughts about the week and it was very beautiful, ranging from someone who was worried about the war to someone who was happy they went skiing for the first time this winter. Willa said she was thinking about the baby which of course got a big aww. I said how grateful I am to be here and started crying. Sadly, we had to leave early to get Willa to bed and Rob to his men's group--it's quite the social whirlwind here! But we hope to get together with a lot of these people again and exchanged info.

Oh, and sometimes this group has "shabbat in the wild" which is at the home of a couple who was there tonight and apparently involves chanting in a yurt and trekking through the woods by moonlight!

All of which is to say, Belfast in our first week is exactly as we hoped it would be.

Happy New Year from Maine!

2009-01-06T20:22:00.000-08:00

We made it! We're all here! Although right now we're split up, since Rob, Willa and Maisie are in Belfast and I'm down in Freeport teaching at Stonecoast. But tomorrow, barring bad weather (which is indeed predicated, of course), I'll be headed up to Belfast, too, and then we will all be there in our new place, and awaiting the arrival of the truck with our stuff on it.

We'll also have our own Belfast phone number soon (woo-hoo!), so stay tuned for that.

In the meantime, we all had a lovely visit with Margy in Brunswick, and now I'm having a wonderful residency at Stonecoast, Willa's started at Cornerspring Montessori, and Rob is busy getting things settled and visiting with the amazing friends we already have in town before he jets off for the Deep South next week (he's working for Louisiana State U.). Louisiana should be quite a change from Maine, and he just got here! Ah, well. By end of January, we should have all our Maine stuff in Maine, all of us together in one house, and everything starting to feel like a new, normal life...just in time for the joys of a Maine February.

And guess what? Two of the Belfast "fab four," a group of women poets in town, are at Stonecoast, and they've invited me to read with them in February, so they can introduce to me further to the town. (Although Rob and I are not sure there's anyone left there that we don't already know!) I'm really honored and touched to be asked to join these amazing women and to be welcomed into the community, and the poetry community, in this way. See how magical Belfast is?!

Pictures of the house and our family altogether to follow...

Rob has left the Midwest

2008-12-31T19:11:00.000-08:00

Rob is officially on the East Coast--partying it up on New Year's in Chicopee, MA. He made it without incident through IN and OH, the most notoriously boring stretch of this particular trip, and then hit snow in upstate NY (who would have guessed?!), but is safely only hours away from Maine. Hurray! With any luck, he will be crossing that blessed bridge from Portsmouth, NH into Maine before lunchtime tomorrow.

Crossing that bridge always makes us cry, or shout in delight, or both. I wish Willa and I were there to cross it with him.

We, however, are still cozy in Evanston. Our playgroup friends and across-the-street neighbors Elise, Glynis and Elora came by to keep us company for awhile, which was so nice of them. We didn't leave the house--it was about 14 degrees here today--so the diversion was very much appreciated, as was the chance to say goodbye.

I have spent the evening internet-window-shopping when I should be doing other things. Joanna (also a playgroup friend, by the way--we couldn't be making this move this comfortably without our dear playgroup!) has the most wonderful German linens in her house, and I'm pretty obsessed, and trying to find available facsimiles. Willa likes them, too.

In transit

2008-12-30T07:35:00.001-08:00

Rob left Evanston just a few minutes ago--wish I'd taken a picture of the car, with hardly a spare inch of room--and Willa and I are happily hiding out at Joanna's: Willa's reading all of Zora's book and I'm reading Joanna's fashion magazines, yippee! Ravit will be over soon to keep us company, and then Wills and I will hole up for the new year and then be headed on our way by plane on Friday morning, weather permitting.

We met our tenants yesterday and they are lovely. Willa talked the ear off of their 11-year-old daughter, quite enthalled to her. They're moving in this morning, and they've got our old phone number, so don't call it! If you need to reach us in the next few days, Rob's got our cell phone and you can email me for Joanna's number.

A little weird to have our stuff scattered all over creation--some with me, some with Rob, some in a truck somewhere, some in our friend's basement, some in our Evanston apartment...We'll be glad when all this limbo is over.

Meanwhile, the baby is occasionally moving very gently. Seems to be a calm one.

Send clear-road vibes for Rob and clear-sky ones for us on Friday, please!

Whoops!

2008-12-26T06:12:00.000-08:00

We forgot to wish everyone who does that sort of thing a Merry Christmas! And to all a good night!

If anyone asks

2008-12-25T20:28:00.000-08:00

I've resolved that from now on, if someone asks why we're going to Maine right now, I will say, "I have chosen to return to the country for my confinement."

It comes from something said about a pregnant character in the Emma Thompson film version of Sense and Sensibility, which Rob and I watched again tonight, and wept at again tonight, for the millionth time. A perfect movie, in our opinions.

I have chosen to return to the country for my confinement.

Packing

2008-12-25T16:24:00.001-08:00

Amidst the chaos of packing--

Willa enjoys rediscovering old things--

and we still find time to celebrate Chanukah.

Join us, won't you?

2008-12-20T16:54:00.000-08:00

So today begins our journey to Maine for the next year and a half, in that tomorrow we move all the stuff we won't need for the next year and a half, and that our tenants don't want, into our friends Marjory and Eric's basement. Thanks, Marj and Eric! Thanks, Ravit and Gabe, for helping us with this part of the move!

The logistics are confusing--believe us, we know--so just FYI, our tenants move in on Dec. 30, at which point Rob drives off into the sunset...I mean, sunrise, since he's headed due east...with Maisie and our car loaded with stuff. Not that loaded. It's a very small car. With lots of bumper stickers. If you look carefully, you can tell which one is ours when it passes you on I-80/90.

Anyway, Rob and Maisie and the car leave, and Willa and I stay at our friend Joanna's place (with Ravit along for some sleepover fun) until January 2nd, when we fly to Portland and meet up with Rob. Who will hopefully be there, assuming he does not get caught in a snowstorm. Which is a big assumption, since he is driving the actual snowbelt, around Lake Michigan, past Lake Erie, and over through the brutal Buffalo-Syracuse corridor we know so well.

Then we'll all be at Margy's in Brunsick for the weekend, while I teach at Stonecoast, and then Rob and Willa and Maisie and the car head up to Belfast on Sunday the 4th, while I stay down until the 7th to finish up the residency.

Phew! The basic idea is: we all hope to be in Belfast together by January 8. And we are hoping that our truckload of stuff arrives shortly thereafter.

Between now and then: Chaos. Packing. Chanukah. Lots of takeout. Some fetal movement (let's hope). One three year old with a cold that will go away soon (let's hope). Two very tired grown-ups who just want to be in Maine already.