From the category archives:

we are family

Since you asked

7 March, 2010

in commentatrix, in Aotearoa, we are family

Over at The Hand Mirror, Julie raises the question of what a citizen’s to do when encountering personal questions about one’s fertility, pregnancy, and family plans more generally, and the general social judginess and boundary-crossing such queries often evoke.

At five months pregnant, I am somewhat in the thick of such experiences myself; hence using my own webpages rather than posting a comment on-site to consider the matter.  My impression has been that conversations around fertility and natality fall into two broad general groups.

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A Short History of Stuff: DIY Edition

6 March, 2010

in at home, dogs, in Aotearoa, we are family

The hard work that produced this state of affairs on TwitpicDespite being New Zealand-born and having lived in this house for nearly eight years, I have done little in the way of renovation and redecoration.  There has been some moving of beds, some purchasing of couches, and some routine maintenance, but not a lot else.  I tend to caution, renovations-wise, I think, since in the back of my mind there’s always a worry that I’ll run out of money, time or taste.  I haven’t minded living in a house that’s in effect a period-piece, since most fixtures have stayed in reasonable order, save some harrying by the dogs.

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Anniversary Labours

17 February, 2010

in O internet, at home, commentatrix, dogs, in Aotearoa, we are family

Adventures with Average Baby

This spring-and-summer pregnancy is already twice the length of its winter predecessor, and as different, thereby, as two things of the same kind can be.  Not least among these differences was the way in which we passed the first eleven weeks in a kind hopeful lockdown, wary to put too much pressure on the future to carry hope that might yet be redundant again.

The brain, the spine, the beating heart that was our gift before Christmas opened the door to a different kind of experience, territory as unknown as the very notion of being pregnant was the first time around.  The tremendous good fortune whereby my morning sickness (a most inadequate moniker) receded by New Year has given me back my old ability to think about anything other than how terrible I feel (and the accompanying certainty that nobody understands or cares sufficiently) and something of a hopeful forward-gaze.

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Like the Spanish City, to me

14 February, 2010

in dogs, in Aotearoa, the social round, traveller's fragments, we are family

A word to the wise, said a colleague of mine a fortnight or so ago, the mother of two very lively young boys.  Take as many weekend breaks as you can before the baby’s born, because after that comes a period in which you are more or less housebound.  By this collegial advice was the decision that the señor and I should spend Waitangi weekend in North Otago further strengthened.  As the pregnancy fog, which I understand is said by most researched accounts not to exist, continues to envelope my mind, it felt also like an opportunity to do something involving fine-motor skills — such as driving — before my previous accomplishments of coordination and logical sequences of thought desert me completely.

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My own land; she makes things

19 January, 2010

in O internet, at home, commentatrix, in Aotearoa, we are family

As someone who does neither gardening nor baking, it surprises me the extent to which I enjoy reading online about the gardening and baking of others, particularly since in the past I would have berated myself for my lack of competence and enthusiasm, respectively, in both areas.  (I put this down to something like the general settling of life that has come out of being married, with our mown-lawn harmony and store-bought treats.)

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I am from the streets of Queen[s]land, Australia

10 January, 2010

in O internet, at home, commentatrix, traveller's fragments, we are family

I’ve emerged from the last fourteen weeks as if from a haze of nausea-induced amnesia, homicidal crankiness receding as the passenger within shifts its focus to consuming all the calories I ingest.  This bilious mélange of ailments has given me some insight as to why earlier societies might think women were cursed by god or gods.  As someone who has lived a brain-in-a-jar existence for much of her adult life, it has been a rude shock to be thrown back into continual consciousness of the body in this way.  You’ve read enough of these pages to infer what it did to my mental health as well.

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Memento Memori

31 December, 2009

in commentatrix, dogs, in Aotearoa, the social round, we are family

The (contestable) fact of a decade passing has been slow to come to my attention, and it was only really the appearance of the obligatory lists (particularly by writers whom I admire) that alerted me.  I have nothing in particular to rank — and what would you gain, gentle reader, if I told you that 2007 was better than 2002, for example? — but have been trying mentally to compile some chronologies that might sum up my experiences of the last ten years.

Normally I ignore the contention, both reasonable and logical, that a better measure of a decade is one that begins with 1 and continues through to (1)0, but on this occasion, this would be a more meaningful division for me.  I handed in my PhD in mid-2001, a fortnight or so after I started working in tertiary preparatory programmes, and defended it in either November or December of that year (I forget which).  This was the end of a period of continuous study that had various markers of “beginning” in the compulsory and non-compulsory sectors.  Since the ‘01, therefore, it’s been a different game I’ve been playing.

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Gravidity

29 December, 2009

in at home, meta-diarist, teaching & learning, we are family

So, yes; I’ve been quiet at these pages for several weeks because I’ve been pregnant, and working under a twofold limitation: the physical self-obsession that this generates and the shadow of our July loss.  The first shrank my usual range of narrative topics and the second meant that what remained could not be written about anyway.  This may not have been such a bad thing, interest-wise, since I’ve been exhausted, emotional and, as Grinderman has it, “so thin and sick“.  You may imagine me as a shadow of my bridal self, waking up with groaning and panic attacks, eating desultory handfuls of dry crackers and lacking, in every way, a sense of perspective or humour.  I am grateful for the online honesty of others, particularly Brenda, in this regard; their forerunning of my own experience has offered, if not hope, then something like solidarity.

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Family 2.0

13 November, 2009

in at home, we are family

Yesterday harvestdad bought one of these and I bought one of these.

It seems inevitable, therefore, that our afternoon should be spent taking pictures of ourselves with our new technology and sending them to each other, and inevitable too, furthermore, that in between we should talk on the phone and by email about the pictures we have taken and are sending.

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Donkey-Deep

13 November, 2009

in at home, commentatrix, we are family

Because of reasons, I am not at present in a state of sparkling mental wellness.  All signs point to this continuing for some time, after which it will likely stop, and I will explain.  My affective experience is probably closer to mild cyclothymia than my usual gloom of varying greys.  Sans doute this is an experience of dread and frustration, even if only temporary, but has all the drear of the high-functioning life: no-one can tell you’re ill unless you tell them, and even then they might not believe you.  I’m long past the ritual outing of myself at work and find it a drag when I need to do so, even if the few who know what’s going wrong have been reasonably sympathetic in their response.

I am fortunate therefore in my husband (reader, I married him) who takes in his relative stride his crazy wife, and I take perverse refuge in the language of ableism, which does much, in its deficit rhetoric, to account in private for the extent to which I feel impaired at present.  These are not so much stories as dots on the map; come midsummer there may yet be lines to be drawn.  Until then, I’ll continue with the task of saying something else here.  There’s always the fun of the rickroll, (for which a hat-tip to @doompony).

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