Today, I noticed that something has sprouted through MrMan's lower gums. By something, I mean a tooth, or teeth - still hard to tell if it's singular or plural, as he won't let me actually examine the area with my eyes. Just my finger. Maybe my boob will let me know.
Yesterday: "I think maybe he's crawling?"
Today: "He's crawling!"
Cue music, victorious and portentous, indicating an end to our world as we know it and the start of something new.
A few weeks ago, there was a story in the paper about the the executive chef of Brennan's and the restaurant's then-upcoming opening. Reading about this man, who has worked there for forty years, starting out as a dishwasher and working his way up through the ranks, was interesting. I felt like it was unusual for one of New Orleans' fine dining restaurants to hire a black man as its executive chef. While much of the great food in our city is cooked by black men, many of the positions of power and recognition, such as executive chef, are filled by white men. To me, it said a lot not only about Chef Randolph, but about Brennan's, that he is their executive chef. Reading about his cooking skills and personality made me all teary. As did the commitment to the restaurant staff after the storm. It made me want to eat there. So, we decided to celebrate Father's Day there, a morning late to avoid the crowds.
These days, at many of the city's restaurants, waitstaff are new and learning because they were new hires after the storm. But our servers this morning (we had two, seemingly assigned just to us), an example of Brennan's retention, have worked there several years and sounded happy to be a part of the restaurant's reopening. The food was yummy - I had a prix fixe: appetizer of strawberries with double cream, entree of Eggs Sardou (poached eggs, artichoke, creamed spinach, Hollandaise sauce), and dessert of Crepes Fitzgerald (prepared at our table), along with french bread (with butter), and decaf coffee. A rich meal, but not glistening with oil. (I like my calories hidden.) I wasn't hungry again for quite a while.
The staff was really nice, and attentive without being annoying. The host accurately guessed MrMan's age - apparently he's the same size as Nicholas Cage's seven month old son: they ate there last night. We were seated in a great spot - away from other patrons and close to a courtyard door, allowing us to frequently take MrMan outside. We thought he might be interested in the turtles in the pond, but what actually caught his attention were the cherub statues, maybe because they looked like people, but he could see that they weren't quite like the rest of us. (Why aren't they moving?)
It was nice to celebrate my dad, and the reopening of one of the restaurants that makes New Orleans New Orleans, with benefits to my mouth and tummy too.
Dear MrMan,
Today you turned seven months old. You also had your first swim and loved the experience of kicking around in the pool and splashing the water with your hands. Not a big surprise. So far, you embrace with enthusiasm most of the new experiences of life. These include the experiences thrust upon you (we've yet to find a food you truly dislike), as well as the ones you create for yourself. Squealing and screeching falls into the latter category. The sounds makes me think of a pterodactyl. (That's probably not a good example, as by the time you read this letter you may be under the impression that I am old enough to have personal experience with the dinosaurs.) The sounds make you laugh with delight, and squeal and screech some more.
This month you have become more mobile, giving me signs that I really need to get on the path to babyproofing. You're not quite crawling, at least not in a coordinated fashion, but you have an ability to get from point A to point B, assuming the two points aren't too far from each other. You sort of scooch about on your belly. You've also been spending time on your hands and knees, rocking about and sometimes moving a bit forward or backward, but haven't gotten the hang of moving the hands and knees, and everything in betweeen, in a way to travel the way you seem to want to. You're always trying to mooch rides off of whoever is walking past: if one of us is walking around, we're your new best friend. If we're just standing, you have no qualms about giddy'up-ing us, and have added a hand pat to the knee nudge. You've gotten better at standing yourself, pulling yourself up on us, some of the furniture, and the sides of your crib. A few weeks ago, you would spend time sitting and playing in your crib. Recently, though, you're all about standing up in the crib. Forget those toys!
There are not too many toys you're enamored of these days. You're more interested in being in my arms. I thought we'd kind of moved away from that, but in the past couple of weeks, you've become more clingy. It's flattering that you always want to be with me, but I'm assuming and hoping it's just a phase.
The things that seem to occupy you for short bits of time are things with buttons: your computer keyboard, your little piano keyboard, your recently acquired Buzz Lightyear cellphone, the remote control to anything.... You'll sit for a little while and pound and gnaw away on those things. I guess you truly are a child of the 21st century. But you do still like "old-fashioned" things like books (especially The Runaway Bunny), songs (we've recently added Where is Thumbkin? to the repertoire), and counting (in English, Persian, Chinese, and Spanish).
Last week, Maman Jan and Papa Joon went out of town for Amu Naysan's graduation. It was an adventure for you and me, since it's never been just the two of us alone for so long. It went pretty well, but you were thrilled when we picked them up at the airport: you didn't seem to know which grandparent to gaze at adoringly first. So you went back and forth, grinning with your whole body.
Last night, looking at you asleep in my arms, I was thinking about how you've changed my life. Having you in my life makes me appreciate it more fully. The laughter, the tears, it's all better because of you. Maybe it's because I'm looking at it through fresh eyes. Maybe it's because I now want to hold on tighter to each moment in time, afraid that I'll look away and miss something. Maybe it's because knowing that you're watching closely makes me want to be a better version of myself. Regardless, I cherish your being in my life.
Love,
Mommy
It's raining. That's a good thing, given that in the 3.5 months I've been here, it's rained only a few times. In New Orleans. In the spring. I know! Things are drying up, shriveling up, burning up.... Let's hope we actually have a full-on rainy day.
Um, but not too full-on. Even with Naysan here, I don't think we could get the post-storm washer and dryer up the stairs to higher ground.
Two days ago, in the time it took me to run a few errands, a family's life together was splintered and crushed by a bulldozer. How did they make the decision to tear down their home? How much water entered their house 9+ months ago? How long did it sit in the house? How much wind damage did they sustain? How much mold grew? How long was it before they were able to reenter and assess the damage? Did they ever come back to see the damage, or did they pay someone else to deal with it? Were the contents that I could see, mixed in with the jagged boards that once were the walls, once treasured, or just things that they just endured? Are they now things they associate with a lifetime ago? Do they plan to rebuild, or did they sell the property? Have they dispensed with living in New Orleans?
So many questions run through my head and I'll never know the answers. I didn't know the family, or even remember what the house looked like, but that didn't stop me from crying as I drove past - once, when half the house was still standing, again, when the lot was just a pile of rubble being dumped into trucks. It was so strange to see furniture mixed in, but I then realized that leaving it there was a rather effecient way to dispose of everything at once. It's not unusual these days to come across homes being torn down, but the street is usually closed, so you just have to guess what the bulldozer and billows of dust mean. I've thought that the street closures were for our physical protection, but now I see they protect our emotions as well.
When I was in college, I was a mostly-coxswain/sometimes-rower on the crew team. In the spring of my sophomore year, not long after we'd received our oh-so-glorious-and-so-wonderfully-light Vespoli, we received the attendant microphone. The microphone that the cox could strap on and gently speak into, rather than a megaphone that was shaped just perfectly to funnel water splashed up from the Harlem River right into the cox's mouth. I, as the most senior cox, was given the honor of being the first to try the microphone, which connected to speakers under the rowers' seats. Instead of giving a standard command (which is not, "row, row," as is often thought), or eloquently sharing how excited I was to don this cox gear, I took the microphone and uttered, "Blaagh."
To which one of the rowers responded, "Nice, Shokufeh. This is the first thing you say into the microphone?" I cracked under the pressure of my excitement, apparently.
Yesterday, I received something else lovely. More lovely than a microphone.
A MacBook. Yes, in all its beauty. I'm so excited that the only thing I can say is, "Blaagh."
My son's drool is dripping down my legs.
"Girl, you know what I saw last night at the casino? A girl, in the ladies' room... you know that sitting area with the sofas? I went in there, with my drink, just to relax a little... and this girl is in there, on the other sofa, sitting in jeans, with her backpack next to her, and her hardhat. A hardhat! She puts this little blanket over herself, and at first, I thought, 'I didn't see no baby.' I said something to her, and she tells me she's pumping for her baby. Milk. For her six-month-old. In the casino bathroom."
Yes, last night, I pumped in the ladies' room at the casino. Kind of strange (for me, and probably for the lady who sat down across from me), but it worked.
I'm now working a couple of evenings a week, painting at a construction site across from the casino. Hence, my visit to the casino, and the hardhat next to me.