Sitting folded up in the car, knee knocking the gearshift, writing on paper (!) by the light of passing traffic. The last time I wrote in blackness was at 3 AM the day after the twins were born. With the familiar swell of milk I was victorious, yet terrified of the coney-island babies two floors below who would be unable to digest it. To look at the notebook later you’d almost never know it was written blind except for the 14-point penmanship that swerved drunkenly, one line bleeding into another.

One side of me is no harm done, the poor thing, and I went and unleashed a shitstorm, and the whole thing was just ridiculous, and all she needs is help.

But then eyes are narrowed, arms crossed. She’d done it before. She’d been given discreet chances multiple times by multiple people. She lied and tried to cover her tracks. She made me feel violated in my own space, dammit. She got what was coming.

What came of all this? Into the ether I pumped contagious anger, fear, frustration, creeped-outedness. Justified—and I’d do it again—but still. I may have sent scores of already-skittish bloggers and flickrers either running for their pitchforks, or for off-grid cabins in the deep woods. But to say that an episode like this is typical of sharing our lives is to say that disease is typical of kissing. And I’ll risk a little herpes simplex for the sake of community like this.

My initial outrage was satiated by yours. But it was at the expense of a living, breathing, very troubled person. That’s the one thing we know for sure, other than what else has come to light.

The relative truth of the facts as supplied by her isn’t really that important. We know that she needed escape. What she needs now is a quiet space in which to grow more comfortable in her own skin, regardless of what she is or isn’t. Let’s give her that and call this chapter closed.*

*and get really, really good at defensive googling.

+++

A bell needs to be rung.

How do you go about living who you actually are?

When could you have smothered what you really need—because it would have been easier—but didn’t? What happened, and what did it teach you?

A few months back, in the beginning, tofu and I had a kitchen throwdown.

Steeling myself in front of an extremely un-foodish, colourless block that looked like it had been transmogrified by a spaceship replicator accompanied by a wheesh and a beep and a robot voice saying HUMANOID-FOOD-UNIT-AFFIRMATIVE.

Hesitating, knife in hand. I can’t do vegetarian without tofu. Not healthy-vegetarian, anyway, without floating away all blown up on nonstop cheesy beanpower. So I’m gonna cook it and I’m gonna eat it and it’s gonna be DIS-KUSTING.

And no buffer, either. No sauces or marinades or intravenous tastebud bypassing. Just. plain. tofu. Cut into slices, thrown in a pan with sesame oil. Indoctrinating myself on the basest of the base.

If I can’t force myself to eat it simply, this isn’t going to work.

I was turning vegetarian, after all, the sum of my transformation reduced to the following:

meat = gross.

Why, though? Where did this revulsion come from, after 34 happy years spent noshing on sausage with breakfast, bacon on my sandwich and any random yet absolutely necessary slab for supper?

I knew, foggily, that it had something to do with what happened in between the before and the after of meat=gross: losing Liam.

People would say Why would you want to go and do a thing like that? and I would mumble about maybe being a little crazy, about distraction, about needing to exercise some control over my life where so much had been taken away from me.

They’d stare at me blankly and I’d hear the words come out of my mouth and think this isn’t making any sense. So I’d fall back on what I figured was the most obvious evasive action: because it’s better for you.

Oh yeah? they’d reply, bristling.

—Do you feel any better? You don’t look any better. You look the same.
—My grampa lived til he was 95 and he ate meat.
—Vegetarians can’t get it up.
—I only eat meat from animals that were happy. Happy until… well, you know.
—But WHAT ABOUT PROTEIN!?!
—I hardly eat any meat. (burp)
—I only eat meat so rare I have to tell it to quit twitching 'cause I’m hungry. Stick that in your carrot juice and drink it.
—All the vegetarians I know look… weird.
—You’re a pain in the ass.

At this point I’m usually burying my face in the nearest ANYTHING. I’ve never been a symbol before, a walking counterpoint. I really, truly don’t care if you eat meat. Not only do I not care—I don’t mind.

(My only real purpose is to be a pain in the ass.)

So then how did I end up here, alone on this other side? Better schmetter. We believe whatever we need to believe.

++++++++++

One day, driving in the car, I was Jean Luc Picard and Justin was the Borg.

I hit him with the thing about lutein and then blammo! he zaps me with iron. So I stump him with heart disease and he gets me with the classic But-What-About-The-Cavemen bit. And we both feel the way we always do, each of us attacked.

Exhausted, the real reason tripped out.

It’s just… it’s just… we know death. We saw it up close and we smelled it and held him through it. I never want anything to do with it ever again. Not if I can help it. Meat is something that’s died. And if I don’t need to eat it, why would I?

I feel peaceful every time I eat because there’s no carcass. I don’t need it, I don’t miss it. I never want it again. The fact that it is (or isn’t, depending on how tightly you cling) healthier is a bonus. I just want peace. It just feels really, really nice to get the fuck away from death.

Oh, said Justin. Alright.

And then—not a word of a lie—we rounded a corner to find ourselves driving directly behind a half-ton truck loaded with slaughterhouse scraps for a solid two hours. This was in Maine, our beloved Maine, where The Gays can’t marry but your vehicle can OOZE BLOOD.

Kate: Look. I see snouts.
Justin: Ugh. Stop it.
Kate: Do you think that’s legal, a load like that, uncovered? I bet he can’t see out the back. Are those… are those hooves?
Justin: Looks like it might snow.
Kate: Vegetarianism is ten million different kinds of awesome.
Justin: He must have… dogs. Hungry dogs.
Kate: What’s that say on his truck? ACME Hot Dogs?
Justin: Now you’re just being mean.

++++++++++

I can’t get enough of the stuff—and I’ve not even gotten past the straight up.

I feel like the proper Scotsman who, when asked what he’d like with his Scotch, replies scornfully I’d like Scotch with my Scotch, instantly making every other icecube and soda-swishing man in the room check between his legs to see where his balls went.

Six months ago, the notion of me having to moderate my indulgence of tofu cravings would have been about as unlikely as, say, me having to moderate rampant jogging.

But lo! It’s a staple. It makes being vegetarian easy. And so I can count on feeling peaceful, at least in some small way, three times a day.

Or more, depending on the traffic.

There’s a reason they call it retail therapy. It feels good.

Feels good in the same way that a 4 AM streetside donair helps to ward off the spins when you’re 23 and drunk and crave greasy, garlicky, mystery meatiness, ten minutes after which you burp, grimace and think to yourself now THAT’S not going to sit well.

No one was ever allowed to eat one of those bad boys inside the car so I’d hang my head and one donair-gripping arm out the window like a dog, dribbling a wind-blown stream of King of Donair juice down the entire broadside of someone’s mother’s sedan.

Then regret, always regret, accompanied by intestinal distress and four straight days of incurable kitten breath.

The retail equivalent of the 4 AM streetside donair can be found at Winners (and its American counterpart TJ Maxx and the like) and other big boxes like Wal-Mart, the ultimate man-behind-the-curtain of the western world, the fat controller with its own gross domestic product and restless proletariat.

$29.99 gets you everything from small appliances with expiry dates to more godforsaken plastic for the kiddies to a Whole New You, and you may as well, because it’s only $29.99, right? And it gives you a rush, the thrill of a successful hunt. Fruitful wandering, meditative value in shuffling through aisles upon aisles of stuff you don’t need, feeling swishy and indulgent, driving away with that rustlingly pleasant sensation of superfluous loot in the trunk of the car.

This is how you end up owning not two but ten of everything: dish sets and teapots and identical jeans and vanilla explosion bath bombs. Material wealth — stuff sucked in and pushed out of our homes in a transient, tidal flow — accessorizes our disposable, replaceable, gizmo-laden life.

Have you ever cut up a credit card? Not from self-censoring but after years of dogged overpayments and scrimping, because it’s finally down to zero? That’s a good feeling that lasts, leaves you feeling free and purposeful and healthy and downright clever.

I don’t want to live on borrowed funds, on money that hasn’t been earned, on credit that stinks like a bad fish for years after purchases have long since gone to goodwill. That’s the good intention. Sometimes followed, sometimes not. But now, at least, I’ve got a second source of Antistuffitude beyond the immediate personal and financial.

The fortitude that lingered after watching this is as close to a new years’ resolution that I’ll get. Take twenty minutes and do it now.

Fuel, inspiration, a match.

Update: it would seem the Story of Stuff site has its own brand of indigestion... not surprising. This viral kick-in-the-butt has likely been swamped with traffic.

Here's an alternative. Not nearly as elegant, but the whole thing is now on YouTube, chapter-by-chapter. Click here to start at the beginning.

You're not strong, she says. Someone told me about your blog so I come here occasionally. My sister lost a two year-old and she doesn't blather on like you do. I bet no one in your real life says nice things to you like all these strangers do, because you don't deserve it. You need to go take care of your gorgeous husband and your babies and get over it. Get a life. You're not strong. You're just like everyone else.

She was gone so fast, I have to paraphrase her for your benefit. Sorry, suzymomof4. I've got a twitchy trigger finger.

You're what most people would call a troll. Elevating your words and responding to them is against policy. But you're a nice one, because you said my husband is gorgeous. So that makes you a troll with great taste in men.

You might be seething now, figuring yourself proved correct that I'm an attention whore who can't handle anything but gushing support. I'm too tired to try and convince you otherwise, even if it wasn't completely pointless to try.

No one should have to go through what your family's been through. You try to shame me because you've been hurt. I don't know if it made you feel better, this scolding. If that's all you've got for release, then I hope it helped, even at my expense.

Some people jog. Other people drink. Other people visit therapists. Other people implode into themselves and never speak of pain, even when that piece of themselves turns gangrenous and crippling. Other people write to cleanse, to get it out.

You don't understand how public writing can be necessary, and healing, because it doesn't do those things for you, or for your sister. Fair enough. But I hope that if she ever does need you to listen, you won't tell her to quit blathering. I hope she's got some kind of safe place she can either be heard or be peacefully silent, whatever she prefers.

For me, this is it. It always has been, even without an audience, long before our car crash. And that's in addition to Having a Life, not instead of it.

++++++

A while back, I tripped over this. Interesting, the prospect of redefining blogging and participation and the point of it all. How freeing that would be — no comments, no stats, no reciprocity. Just a screen and text that facilitates no relationship between the writer and the readers, or the ego and the strokers, if that's how you'd prefer to see it. Just pure Out There and nothing else.

And then I was pissed that I couldn't leave a comment.

I wanted to see a dialog spring from it. I wanted to see reaction from others, and then to hear more from her. I wanted to witness a conversation, not just a dead-end (like this post, which can be only that).

Still, to be commentless strikes me as some elevated form, a barefoot monk as compared to a high catholic priest with crosses swinging from his belt and incense and yards upon yards of purple velvet.

If I did that, I'd miss out on so much, and so would you. But then, at least, no one could accuse me of being a self-centred twit.

And that would be lovely.

++++++

Comments are off on this post for her sake and for mine, and because I want the Internet to be bigger than this, and not so toxic, even if toxicity is justified. That's all.

Just knowing you're out there in receipt is plenty good.

In a hundred years or maybe less they'll all say Can you believe people used to walk around with cellular telephones RIGHT NEXT TO THEIR BRAINS?!!?

The mortal peril of such behaviour will be as evident to them as it is to today's us to dig out a grapeshot wound with a rusty blade (and then use said blade to trim beard, spread butter, impale enemy, and pierce desired chicken leg from serving tray of buxom wench).

We click our tongues and shake our heads back and forth, marvelling at the blatantly obvious dim-wittedness of generations past. Then we clean up after PB&J assembly with an electric blue liquid that comes with a skull and crossbones and a small print warning that says DANGER: THIS STUFF IS, UHHH, POISON.

They say the average woman absorbs five pounds of unregulated chemicals through her skin every year thanks to lotions, makeup, shampoo, deodorant. Just like the ordinary guy who gets bitten by the radioactive spider and his DNA goes all crackly like lightening bolts and he can suddenly scale tall buildings. Except when our DNA goes all crackly like lightening bolts all we suddenly get is chemotherapy.

Burt, take me away.

You know that it's-just-gotta-be-bad miracle gel inside disposable diapers that makes it able to absorb 300 times its weight in pee? Listed as an irritant that requires protective gear for handling, this is the same stuff that was banned for use in tampons thanks to toxic shock syndrome. Not to mention the other nastiness hidden behind the Tigger on your kid's crotch — dioxin, one of the most poisonous and carcinogenic substances produced on earth, tributyltin (a hormone disruptor) and bleach.

Until now, I'd spent my child-rearing days thinking Us? Cloth diapers? HA! Not going to happen, seeing as I DO NOT PLAY THE BONGOS.

Thinking if disposables were really, truly harmful, they wouldn't let us continue to use them.

Right?

(silence)

Uhh… RIGHT?

(silence)

Kinda like if the war wasn't really, truly necessary, we wouldn't be there.

+++++++++

'Until now' means 'until we became unoblivious'. The event that splits the before and the after, that rendered us into who we were meant to become through pain.

Now, I'm what Justin would call a frantic hippie. Overcome with a need for action, an unfamiliar state for the oblivious me, the lazy me who would prefer to obediently gulp down whatever The Man offers (and whatever Wal-Mart sells) because being obedient requires less effort than being contrary.

A frantic selfish hippie, struck with wanting to purify our most immediate life. Selfish only because I'm not yet occupied with Darfur or melting icecaps, because those problems are too worldly compared to the individual turmoil caused by an instantly actionable, offending bottle of Windex.

I used to roast chickens purely for the aesthetic pleasure of being wrist deep in raw poultry butt. Always bubbling just underneath the skin a discomfort for the slug trail meat leaves in the body, for the heinous tactics of commercial meat production.

The fleeting thought: imagine how that would feel, to eat less meat. That would be nice.

Then the carcass wrangling would always resume, the cold slappy juiciness, because it always has, and conviction is for other more passionate people.

Then Liam was taken from us.

And I found myself sitting on the couch of the most lovely mama, patient and smiling as she walked me through the hemp and the bamboo and the prefolds and the stuffers and I said okay, show me the diapers that are for people who don't play the bongos.

And she did. And they're not only righteous, and totally effective, and easy to clean, and kind to his skin. They're ADORABLE.

I just feel so damn good putting these on Ben's bum. I hang around after the mini-load of laundry starts, inhaling a steamy cloud of good, clean baby poop and tea tree oil. When the buzzer goes I race to the dryer for the sniff 'n stuff 'n stack, giggling like an anarchistic schoolgirl with a system-bucking buzz-on.

Then I made my own cleaning spray with balsam fir and rosemary essential oils, and vinegar to disinfect, and was about to never shave my armpits EVER AGAIN when Justin walked into the kitchen and said it smells like fish and chips in here.

Some kinks to iron out. Don't like tofurky. Still stand there impatiently in front of the microwave with my nose pressed up against the glass, reversing the polarity on the flux capacitor in my brain with every beep. Fighting the urge to use the skincare equivalent of a flame thrower, in a state of shock that the lemon-poppyseed tortise wins the race.

Some starts more profound than others, but all starts nonetheless.

This is the beginning of living vividly, I think. Taking steps to be one of the passionate ones. To not waste any more time, nor blessings, nor health.

Thank you, sweet lili, wherever you are.

+++++++++

A proactive addendum: I'm far from enlightened, and I'd never want to make someone feel any lesser for not using cloth diapers or loving steak or relying on the fabulous lather of Sodium Laureth Sulfate. All these chemicals and toxicity in our personal worlds... it just quite suddenly and unexpectedly pisses me off.

I wish we could devote the same energy to coming up with safer alternatives as we do, oh, I don't know... inventing new kinds of rectal seepage-causing diet twinkie sweeteners.

Don't you?

…I'll most likely kill you in the morning.

The chosen course of action in flickrgate: deferral. It's Ben's five month (a.k.a. two month) birthday today, after all — and I can't quit photo sharing pre-portrait. And Evan's hair is getting scruffy again. And then there's Halloween.

All I'd hoped for from you was a chorus of familiar confusion because I know, as you do, that there aren't any easy answers. Aside from taking the usual precautions we have safety in numbers, in sheer volume, in each individual one of us being needles in the biggest haystack the world has ever seen.

+++++++++++

I'm so humbled, so proud to have readers like you. You teach me with your eloquence and thoughtfulness and wit, and the grace of interaction you have with each other. I absorb every single comment, see who you are, feel thankful and honoured for every one of you.

On a recent post (update: two recent posts) my troll-free stretch was broken. This space was a factory proud of its safety record, with the gate sign to prove it: 255 NUMBNUT-FREE POSTS SINCE 2004 AND COUNTING.

We all sit together laughing and crying and sharing and listening, sometimes drinking piping hot tea, sometimes something stronger, in front of a crackling fire by the sea. Then some pitifully transparent, frustrated soul kicks in the front door and insults you, and then me, in my space, my house, on the same pages that capture the memory of my son.

I don't mind debate. I've been so invigorated by it here, and you've often made me change my mind or point of view. But I haven't got the patience for me or anyone else to be verbally abused, drive-by-style, by those who can only express disagreement — lacking coherent, sensible words — with nastiness.

Here's the policy. If anyone like that shows up here again, we respond with deafening silence. We are an unpokeable bear. Nothing they say would ever upset me, so don't let it upset you. The only required response is chirping crickets and tumbleweeds and a lone voice whispering, Did you guys hear something? I thought I heard a squeak, but I don't speak numbnut so I can't tell for sure.

And we carry on, and they slink away in search of more infestable shores.

Can whoever goes out past the shed next grab some kindling, and bring in another plate of whoopie pies from the kitchen? I need me some cream cheese icing, twinskin schminskin, and I don't think I'm the only one.

+++++++++++

I can't seem to string together two coherent thoughts for Ben on his fifth month. I'm shaken, as I always am on the eve of the day they were born, feeling like I've been wearing my skin inside out all day long.

Justin's 95-year-old great aunt gave us an antique mirror and I stood with Ben inside of it, pulling faces. Then in the shaded murk of the old glass I was holding Liam, darker than his brother.

Sometimes I want to be haunted, and sometimes not.

It's apple pie without cheese is like... in case you're wondering.

Or, blogging without photography.

Since a photograph of Dutch's sweet Juniper was stolen last week by a parenting media outlet that should know better, I've had the sleep-depriving honour of discovering the horrors of Orkut, Google’s pedophilish home to countless images of children ripped from Flickr and crafted into fake profiles and fantastical relationships. Also last week, randomly browsing an anti-Orkut site for a total of five minutes, I found a picture of a photographer-friend's five-year-old daughter set up as a pervy profile. Of all the millions, there was one child I knew — one I've met and played pirate and blown bubbles with.

I am not a paranoid parent, imagining windowless unicorn-airbrushed cube vans waiting in the bushes to snatch my family and hold us ransom until Harrison Ford comes to our rescue with a hologram diversion and the blueprints to the evil lair of our imprisonment.

But even I am starting to get the queebs.

What are you going to do, stop going out in public? You can't prevent strangers from seeing your child and thinking whatever they think any more online than you can walking down the street.

I've always sloughed off concerns about sharing our photographic life here.

The creative challenge (and the creative distraction, particularly during our life in the NICU) has been more profound than the risk of perviness, which I felt was remote thanks to the sheer vastness of the Interweb.

Plus, I've always done Flickr as safely as possible: I never use descriptive tags or titles, rarely post to groups, block my images from public and third-party searches, click 'all rights reserved' and set download options to nil.

But so did Dutch. So does Jeanette, who even uses watermarks. And countless others who have found their toddler's 'Little Miss Chocolate' Brazilian profile, seeking 'friends + more WINK WINK LOL!'.

I am a flea's pimple to the traffic of Dooce, and she's light years more prolific than me. If she does it with 20,000 views on a single photograph, surely it's alright for me, flea's pimple.

Then BING! A Flickrmail.

"Hi sweet | salty,

You are Ghαyέb 7αßέby [QTR] يالله طلبتكـ's newest contact! If you don't know Ghαyέb 7αßέby [QTR] يالله طلبتكـ, Ghαyέb 7αßέby [QTR] يالله طلبتكـ is probably a fan of your photos or wants a bookmark so they can find you again."

Who is this? Hmm. Ghαyέb 7αßέby's contacts: 2,453. Jeebers. Smells like scam.

Ghαyέb 7αßέby's testimonial: "walllla i love u sooooo muuuuch ... ur HOT ...sexy ... etjaneeeeeeen mashaaalllla 3allich rabi y7f'9iich inshalllla BELEIIVE ME ENTY A7LA MN elissa 9iiJ TSHBHEENHA bs walla enty a7la :p ur photooooos raw3a keep on going 7ayaty misssssed u alooooooooooooooooooot umaaaaaaaaaaa7 (L)(K)(K)(K)... XxXxX :p =D.. ashooofch soooooooon qallbi .. take care qalbooo .."

Ghαyέb 7αßέby's photostream: stolen images, watermarks left partially intact to read "taken by (photoedited) GHαYέB". Some kids, some not, complimented by laughable poetry, if laughing was an option.

No offense to the folk of Quatar, but I'll eat my own head if I’ve got legitimate readers there.

There have been a few like this, just a few. I block them, stop them from commenting and linking, remove myself from their contact lists.

But with a public stream I have no control over them looking, or taking a screen capture and repurposing pictures of my sons if they so choose.

So now, what to do? I don't believe that an anonymous creep in Quatar translates into real-life danger — at least no more than the real-life danger of being attacked by killer bees in my front yard just as the crew of TLC's APOCALYPTIC INSECTS drives past.

Still, these images are sacred, these moments and visions that made me a mother.

The act of sharing them with you, as a follow-through of words, wraps up this therapy and creative discipline with a bow. It helps me to be understood, and to be understood in this state of exquisite vulnerability is to be soothed.

For an unwanted eye to break into this relationship with ulterior motives — it's infuriating.

My instinct is to lock my Flickr stream to 'Private', accessible only if you send me a contact request so I can verify that you're not akin to Ghαyέb 7αßέby. But not everyone belongs to Flickr, nor are they inclined to sign up — and to be added as a friend, you have to have an account. Even though it's free, this is an obstacle to people seeing our photos, family included.

Then there's Typepad — maybe I should go back to the old-school, static, blog-hosted photo albums. That would limit exposure somewhat, making sure that the only way to see our photos would be for people to know about the blog first. More so, I could do a photography post every now and then, embedding many fewer images on the main page for the same reason as above, to narrow the pool of viewers to readers only.

But it should be readers-only on Flickr as it is — there's no other way for people to find me without knowing me, with the precautions I've taken.

So where the frig are they coming from? Not just for me, but for all of us?

Swarms of carpenter ants, big, shiny, black, crunchy fuckers, rattling around within the walls of beloved spaces and communities, always on the edge of breaking through and making us all throw up in our mouths a little bit, knowing they'd been there all along but now seeing them and really knowing, because now they're at our party and I turned away from my pumpkin spice cookie for ten seconds and now it's scurrying away by itself.

I feel a shift, a stink in the air. Flickr is spoiling, filling up with pervs and creeps and sneaks. Is it not inevitable?

Coincidentally, I've just been invited to contribute to a soon-to-be-announced womens' photoblog and community being launched by a greatly admired mama-photographer. I'm thrilled and honoured, proud to be the Rachel Ray with a plate of cheez-whiz on celery sticks at a party of Martha Stewarts (totally kind, loveable Martha Stewarts) piping towers of cream-filled croqembouche.

But for me to come to the table all Flickr-freaked, hesitant to share? Not so cool.

Damn them. Damn the pervs and the trolls and the creeps, running amok and souring this space for the rest of us.

So I put it to you: other than stating what seems like the obvious to non-photo-enthusiasts ("Never post pictures of your children online, asshat!") — and understanding that public photos are sometimes as important for many of us as public words — what would you do?

Is there a lower-profile alternative to Flickr that allows some degree of interactivity and tracking but without all the garbage and roving Babble photoeditors?

As readers and viewers, what would work best for you — tempered by what you'd do, if you felt this way?

Do you feel this way?

Damn them. Damn the pervs and the trolls and the creeps.

I need feedback, friends, and quick. I don't want to stop, but I do need to sleep soundly.

She’s a natural, you know. She is competent to a fault, emitting a swift, cheery self-sufficiency that makes people think she’s not in need of anything. But there is something she does need, especially now: you.

She needs you to come home asking for her, for the baby, dropping your stuff in a pile at the door and calling to her I’m just washing my hands! in that way that tells her without seeing your face that you're smiling, like you’ve spent the day at the office willing the time to pass so you can get back to your girls.

She needs you to trust her, to follow her lead. By virtue of time logged this child is her domain. It won’t be like that forever but it is, now. Even if she’s at a loss, pretend she’s not — for however long it takes for her to find her feet.

She needs you to know, beyond any doubt, that the isolation and responsibility of her days and nights is infinitely more draining — emotionally and physically — than how you spend Monday to Friday, 9 to 5.

She needs you be at her side in this love affair, to see you as baby-drunk as she is. Because there’s almost nothing more appealing than to hear Come quick! Come see what he’s doing! and to witness the baby you made together in his daddy’s lap, and to see concentrated joy there.

She needs you to get dirty. She does.

She needs you to be patient. She is.

She needs you to be proud of her. Most days, kneecapped by self-doubt, she’s not.

She needs you to know these two things and send them back to her, received and absorbed and agreed as sure as a reflection:

1) It is not easy to be a baby — to have no understanding, no context and no control, physical or otherwise. To feel an almost constant sensation of vertigo, of falling and startling. To be hungry for milk and to not know for sure, regardless of past evidence, that someone will put something in your mouth.

2) It is not easy to be the mama of a new baby — to have no understanding, no context and no control, physical or otherwise. To feel an almost constant sensation of vertigo, of falling and startling. To be hungry for validation and to not know for sure, regardless of past evidence, that you are not alone.

For all this: such is the mark and the duty of a good sort of man.

A commenter on the last post drove by and with her head lolling out the window like a golden retriever she barked Lordy, this is depressing! and I’d never seen her before and then she was gone and it got me to thinking about declarations and litterbugs and a few other things.

What’s depressing? Losing a child? Well, yeah. Sure.

Among many other things, some of which I may or may not encounter in life: divorce and sickness and wasted years and squandered opportunities and addiction and falling in with the wrong sort and living uneventfully but never being brave and the soul rotting away from disuse and mediocrity and chronic lack of stimulus.

All tragic, earth-shattering, consuming fires that burn inside all of us right alongside I have GOT to start drinking more water and please tell me my nose is not as big as I think it might be and if I don’t get some exercise at some point in this life I will lose the ability to move at all and vines will grow on my stillness and pull me into the earth and that will be the end.

We’re all struck dumb with wanting more, wanting to be more, speculating endlessly on the turns of our storyline.

But this state of productive dissatisfaction is what motivates us to act on 5% of our complaints, or learn from 1% of our mistakes. And that’s something. Or to spend 90% more than we should at discount outlets in search of outfits that our better self would wear, as if that would be enough to spark that better self into being.

(For me it was sexy, clicky shoes. I was always more successful, wearing those shoes. Which is why, sidenote, we just threw out our holeysoles (a.k.a. crocs). Justin wanted to put them on the barbeque to see what would happen, to send them to the next world in a blaze of glory. But then no, because after all, they are shoes THAT MELT and what has our grass ever done to us to deserve being cursed to a lifetime of being tip-deep in coagulated croc-goo?)

A roundabout way to get to the point, croc-disposal included, of PERSONAL GROWTH and SELF-BETTERMENT. The pursuit of which is a really, really good thing: even if it just means that this year I managed to reduce my intake of alpha-getti by two cans a month.

I like seeing those words in all-caps, akin to the instant cures you could buy at a turn-of-the-century general store. McCALL’S SLIPPERY ELM ANTI-SLUG TONIC. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, be not paralyzed with the balm of contentedness!’

We’re clumsy things, humans, out here trying to dodge bullets. But you can’t, can you? As sure as you can’t dodge the weather. We’re all destined, in one flavour or another.

Accepting this isn’t necessarily pessimism. It’s a healthy sort of resignation, the kind of thing we need to get out of the way before we can open ourselves up fully to a breadth of living, as messy as it can get. To be doggedly open to mystery and beauty and possibility in spite of what conventional wisdom would call being dealt a shitty hand.

We have to plod ahead, keep putting one foot in front of the other no matter what unfairness crashes into us. To keep seeing and tasting and breathing in gorgeousness whenever it graces us, despite demons in the dark.

That’s why it surprised me, the drive-by.

What happened to us has been like the peeling of a cloudy film off my eyeballs. I see things now in such vividness, in Liam’s light. And it’s beautiful. Sometimes achingly so, but not remotely the sort of thing you could write off with one measly word. I hope you can see that. Can’t you?

The greatest gift — the thing I’m honoured and duty-bound to give to my elders and those who have passed before me (Liam included) — is to not be a source of worry. To keep exploring and appreciating and moving forward, to not be defined by passerby as drowning in rain.

On Monday night I finally fell asleep at 4:00 AM and was back on-duty by 6:00 AM. On Tuesday night I finally fell asleep at 4:00 AM and was back on-duty by 6:00 AM. Last night I finally fell asleep at 4:00 AM and was back on-duty by 6:00 AM.

Adrenaline rather than rest is what fuels you, inexplicably, through baby bootcamp (that and plentiful grammies and grampas). By lord, the boy grunts and snorts all night. Trying to sleep in the same room with him is like trying to sleep in the same room with a 600-pound wild boar up to his gizzard in a fieldful of truffles.

After all the trash talking <smile> and pastlife lusting <sigh> of recent posts, you the chosen childfree and yet-to-be-parents must be thinking why in the name of all that’s sensible would anyone choose to procreate? a) wow, am I ever right to wait for senility OR b) wow, am I ever right to politely decline altogether OR c) perhaps I should begin making my intended sperm/egg deposit technician sleep on the couch.

If you really want to know the answer to that most justified of universal questions, you could go here or here.

Or for the short version, you could always watch this.