Birth mandala, baby poem, and a wee announcement

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I wrote a poem for my friend, the Renaissance woman Dutchbaby, at her request for the occasion of a baby shower for a friend. Dutchbaby introduced me to the idea of birth mandalas, which take Carl Jung's concept of mandalas representing the Self, to the next level: an image for a mother to focus her imagination on the emerging identity of her baby. That's one of Jung's mandalas at the right, which I happened upon after writing the poem, with its image of paisley.

Dutchbaby colored a mandala, below (from online mandala coloring pages), in PhotoShop for her expecting friend, who has Swedish heritage. From it I feel my own connection with Sweden through Grandma Olive. The blue and yellow remind me of tole painting on a pitcher or a barn's peak, or in Carl Larsson's kitchen. Dutchbaby paired my poem with her mandala as a gift to the mom-to-be Saturday. (Bless this baby, oh universe.)

Dutchbaby did not know when she requested the poem that we have our own baby on the way. I am going to be a gramma! And so I offer this poem not only to a friend's friend, but also for my daughter Lesley, and the little poppy seed growing inside her to the great size of a kidney bean at this moment, with webbed feet, a bulging head, and joints in her/his knees. Imagine.

Don and I are over the moon, and no amount of exclamatory punctuation is enough for what I feel, so I used just the one, but picture exclam-infinity. (Bless this baby, oh universe.) How about this photo of them with my nephew's baby, Evangeline? (Bless Eva, too.)

The multi-bonus is that Lesley & Brian are moving to Michigan where he begins a teaching job in the fall (exclam-infinity). We will be close by when baby enters the world (due in January), no need for booking flights at just the right time to NYC. Just hop in the car and drive an hour and a half.

Our son Peter (right, with his sister on her 30th birthday this year) just moved to L.A. to join his band Lord Huron (all the band members are from Michigan). Such is life, the child who lived close moves far away, and the one who lived far away moves close. But we are incredibly excited for Peter and feel, well . . . expectant about this change for him.

Dutchbaby's mandala and my poem are below.

A note about koans (in the poem title): When Dutchbaby told me that the expectant mom said the baby was "sitting like Buddha" in her belly, I decided to shape the poem in koan-like questions. (The image of a sitting Buddha also made me think of paisley.) A koan is a question a Zen sage asks a pupil that does not have an answer from the reasoning mind. A famous koan is: What is the sound of one hand clapping? "The master is not looking for a specific answer but for evidence that the disciple has grasped the state of mind expressed by the kōan itself." More on koans here. Samples of koans at The Gateless Gate. If you listen carefully to the podcast of the poem, you can hear the birds that chirp incessantly outside my office window. Does a bird's song answer the heart's questions?

Koan-like Questions of a Mother to her Unborn Child

Is there something quieter than sleep?

      My whispers circle you like jasmine vine, the way

      my arms want to, when my palm will cup your head,

      my thumb in the shallow petal of your temple.

      Terrace.

Where is the pocket in the nightshirt of early morning?

      You didn’t notice just now that I turned over in bed, rolling

      first onto my right side, then onto my left.

      Leaves everywhere on blue-white cotton.

What shape are you?

      In my teardrop body you sleep, sucking your thumb —

      puzzle piece in the circle of your mouth.

      Paisley baby, paisley thumb,

      paisley me, paisley breast. Lace.

What is grace?

      I pull myself up, like a camel, into a sitting position,

      lean left, push off, grunt, rise, stand, and low into the sway

      of this me, your cradle, creaking at my hips.

      Caravanserai.

Do you remember it, that hymn from the old church

through the window as we slowly climbed the stair?

      Holding the bedpost, carved like an altar,

      my eyes closed, up from the organ

      in my chest the music — unnamed song

      through the vibrating reed of my watery throat.

      Repeat.

      Stained glass moon. Bosphorus.

Can you see me in the dark?

      My hand rests on the olive of your shoulder,

      or is that a heel? Hush, keep sleeping, don’t worry

      about positions. You are touching everything

      in any case.

      Mountain magnolia blossom.

Listen to a podcast of this poem here. (You can hear the birds outside my office window if you listen carefully.)

Poem notes: 

Caravanserai: the fortress-like hostelries for sojourners on the Silk Road.

Bosphorus: the body of water between the European and Asian sides of Istanbul; 'bosphorus' means 'throat' in Turkish; Lesley went to school on the European side, crossing the Bosphorus every morning and evening from and to our home on the Asian side.

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What is NY?

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What is New York? It's big, that's what New York is. Which means this is a big apple big post. Believe me, I tried to keep it to a minimum. I spent three days in the City last week. Yum. Wow. Fun. (That's me using small words, trying to keep it short.)

So, what is New York? What can I say, I was a tourist. This is not a deep look into the heart of the City. Just a middle aged woman's snapshots.

New York is neighborhoods. Sixth Street in the Village, above, is inhabited by many Indians, and there are Indian restaurants up one side and down the other. I spent a lot of time in Midtown Manhattan, because that's where the museums are, but I would have liked to spend more time in residential areas like Lesley & Brian's Queens neighborhood. We did get out one day to the grocery store. I heard mostly Greek being spoken, and some Spanish. Below is one of several produce markets in Astoria. Look at that hot green tomata between the mangoes and papayas.

New York is museums, and art. This was my first time to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), which I did in one day. I am a firm believer in the litest visit possible for large museums like the Louvre and the Met, focusing on a few exhibits in one trip. Besides what you see in the Met images below, I saw the American Woman costume exhibit. I wanted so badly to touch the crepe and beads of flapper dresses, or take close-up photographs of details of 1930s gowns. But the stern guards would have none of that.

At the MoMA, I limited my steps to the Cartier-Bresson exhibit on the 6th floor. Even with just that one area, I spent almost two hours, and I was exhausted at the end, emotionally and physically. You can only take so much in, you know? His portraits are enthralling, showing each celebrity in their own context and mannerisms, such as Jean-Paul Sartre with his pipe, below. His photos of street women are touching. And when I got to the images taken at the end of WWII (like the one in the lower left corner, below, of the woman in black about to strike the other woman, who had falsely accused her) and at the time of Gandhi's sudden death in India, with the crowds flocking to the train where his body swayed in a casket in the clacking train's rhythm, I could only weep. Such, my dears, is the power of photographs of people.

New York is eating out. Twice Lesley and I ate out alone together. The first was at the vegan Caravan of Dreams on 6th Street in Greenwich Village after she got out of work Thursday. (Next visit maybe we'll try one of those Indian places on 6th St.) The "live" (new term for "raw") salad was one of the most delicious I've tasted. It is a Zagat reviewed restaurant, and I give it four stars, vegan or no vegan. The other food spot she and I shared alone was for brunch Saturday at Park, under the High Line park, our delayed Mother's Day together-celebration. That is her dipping a bite of fried chicken steak in maple syrup below. Yep.

Saturday evening Lesley & Brian treated me to a dinner at the Tao that was so good I almost didn't realize I was devouring my tempura soft shell crab until it was gone. Apparently the restaurant name is pronounced with the "T" sound, not the "D" sound for the religion. And I helped myself to the lonely shrimp at the bottom of Lesley's bowl too. All that walking had me ravenous apparently. Tao was not a very religious place, but it was packed and hopping and overflowing with Euro-pop music around the big candle-lit Buddha. I loved hearing Brian tell family stories, since I am still getting to know my son-in-law less than one year after they married here on the farm. I sometimes regretted his witty humor though, because it hurt to laugh since earlier that day I fell hard on the concrete sidewalk near Union Square, bruising my ribs on my Nikon D40 sandwiched between the concrete and me. You'll be happy to know that neither the camera, nor my ribs, broke. But it frightened poor Lesley, and a nice man who waited to see if I was all right.

New York is fashion. I sweated a little before the trip, wondering what I would wear. Wanna be comfortable, but stylish enough to fit in. It's a blast to watch people in NY, of course, but all those gorgeous women on 5th Avenue, now they are really something, my daughter among them.

New York is transportation. Ever present is the question of how you will get around. How many trains does it take to get there? Should we just take a taxi? Lesley & Brian live not far from Laguardia Airport, in Astoria, Queens, so I took one of the black taxi-limos to their apartment. Well almost. The guy got confused and dropped me on the other side of Broadway (not the Manhattan one), and when I crossed I nearly got hit by a speeding turning car, me and my purse, camera, backpack with Apple Blossom and the wheeled carry-on. And there on the corner were Lesley & Brian gasping at my near demise, fresh from the subway after work, having just arrived on separate trains. It was perfect timing, at which point I was glad for the 1.5 hours sitting and waiting on the tarmac in Detroit.

C'est moi, below, waiting for the train.

New York is parks. Thank goodness for Central Park, and other parks around the City. But even with them, Lesley is getting antsy for a back yard. They don't have even a balcony at their beautiful apartment. It is easy for me to take the farm for granted, where I can walk out into Nature whenever I please.

I have been intrigued by the High Line park since it opened a year ago, and I posted about it at my Huffing-Puffing blog. The 10 blocks of elevated train tracks had been out of use for decades. They have turned it into an oasis where wildflowers and grasses grow just as they do along the train tracks of rural Michigan.

The white building below was designed by Frank Gehry. The photo below that shows the Empire State building in the distance. Polka dot lady has a Coke can handbag below that.

New York is shopping. But not for me. I think Lesley wishes I liked shopping, but she was a very good sport. Just about every woman who knew I was going to New York said something about shopping. I really, really, really don't like shopping. Especially in New York, where all the spaces are confined, and carrying bags around just takes up more space. The one thing I did shop for, and do wherever I go, was postcards in the museum shops. Besides sending them to people now and then, I use them as bookmarks. Remember me? I'm the woman who reads a few pages in many books and rarely finishes them. So, I need a lot of bookmarks.

New York is people. I was sad the first morning, acutely aware that I was not in the Midwest where strangers smile at me, and I smile back. Or vice versa. I felt lonely, in a sea of living, human waves. I adjusted by that first afternoon, but I could feel my psyche overwhelmed. I did enjoy watching people. Except when I didn't want to watch them any more. Then I just looked down at the sidewalk, like almost everyone else.

Besides Lesley & Brian, I even know a few other people in New York. It was a special treat to meet my visiting brother's freshest grandchild at his son's apartment by Central Park. This sleepy little big city farmgirl (she's in gingham, right?) is Eva. That's Papa (my brother Jim) holding her, her dad (Nathan) with her brother (Riley), and Lesley & Brian. Mom (Nancy) and Mimi (Jim's wife Wilma) are not in the photo.

You know how I love the small. And so, that is what I will end this big post with. I had such a good time. Thank you for visiting with me.

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family photo

Between eating homemade chicken and noodles and Don's Bûche de Noël (Christmas cake), playing Settlers of Catan, romping in the snow, listening to music, and watching movies ("Iron Man" for one - it's good), we managed a family pic with the help of Mr. Tripod. Peter processed this one with an old look on his Mac. We all wish you a Happy New Year! Left to right: me, Don, Peter, Lesley, and Brian.

I wore the earrings Peter picked up for me in St. John, New Brunswick that Gwen made. Aren't they beautiful? They made me feel tres elegante, like when I was a little girl playing dress-up with bobby pins clipped together and dangling from my ears, only better.

another new gig!

Who is this man snuggling with our daughter?! Clue: he makes her very, very happy.

THIS MAN IS GOING TO BE OUR SON-IN-LAW!

Having him join us as our son and a new brother for Peter makes us very happy too! Brian, welcome to the family! We won't tell anyone about the arrow and the barn (. . . for a long, long time).

Brian proposed to Lesley on a beach at Cape Cod August 30. The wedding will be next summer.

♥

When love opens a new room in your heart, you realize its effortless capacity to increase and multiply.