Six Quick Picks: Farewell 2009 Edition

In this week's edition of Six Quick Picks, I bring you some highlights from my own personal 2009.

1. January: Big Boy and I traveled to Orlando, Florida with my parents.  It was on this trip that his language skills really began to explode.  He started naming everything in sight.  We started having conversations.  At the time I didn't realize that this would be some of our last concentrated time together before I would be confined to bed rest for the remainder of my pregnancy.

2. April: Tiny Baby was born, making our trio into a quartet.  I remember the tears streaming down my face when I first saw his scrawny chicken body as Dr. G held him up to Husband and me over the c-section screen.  He was healthy.  He was here.  He was magnificent.  He was - he is - ours.  We were - we are - delighted to have him.

3. Summer: I first started to hear about the pregnancies and successful adoption placements of several of my beloved girlfriends, many of whom finally got pregnant after battles with infertility.  I was overwhelmed with happiness at the prospect of welcoming these women into the sisterhood that is motherhood.

4. August: I traveled to Washington DC for a girls' weekend with two of my favorite friends - and without Husband, Big Boy, and Tiny Baby.  Ahh, the glory of solo airport Starbucks, shopping, pedicures and trashy magazines, a movie, ice cream, museums, yummy food, and uninterrupted adult conversation.  I love my kids.  And I loved that weekend away from them.

5. September: Big Boy turned two.  We celebrated with a trip to visit the dinosaurs at the American Museum of Natural History.  The sheer exuberance on his face as he ran through the Hall of Dinosaurs (thank goodness it was a slow morning at the museum!) encapsulated for me both the magic of childhood and the need to bear witness to it before it passes away.

6. November: I took a class at Gotham Writers' Workshop and launched Motherese.  I started writing daily, discovered powerful and lyrical voices here in the blogosphere, and began laying the foundation of some of the most interesting relationships I've developed in some time.

2009 will be tough to beat, but I say, "Bring it on, 2010!"

Six Years

Because a holiday season packed with Hanukkah, my birthday, and Christmas just wasn't enough for Husband and me, we decided to get married, six years ago today, on New Year's Day in the city where we met, fell in love, and lived for several years - both as students and as adults.

I knew then and know today that I have found in Husband a best friend and a life companion; what I only guessed at then were the ways in which the contours of my love for him would grow and mature when we decided to bring our sons into the world.  For Husband is not only a wonderful partner, he is also an extraordinary father.  I am blessed to have found him and feel lucky that he agreed to walk along the path of this shared life by my side.

Husband and I were married in a civil ceremony.  We chose selections from our favorite poets and authors to share with our assembled family and friends.  Among those was a poem by Yehuda Amichai, "Now That The Water Presses Hard."  I'd like to share it with you today, as a reminder to myself of that special day six years ago, as a reminder of the power of love in a world of prevailing indifference, as a reminder of the hope of spring on this wintry first day of a new year, on this dawn of a new decade.

Now that the water presses hard
On the walls of the dam,
Now that the returning white storks
In the middle of the firmament
Turn into flocks of jet planes,
We will feel again how strong are the ribs,
How bold the warm air in the lungs,
How urgent the daring to love in the open plain,
When great dangers arch overhead
And how much love is needed
To fill all the empty vessels
And the watches that stopped telling time,
And how much breath,
A blizzard of breath
To sing the little Song of Spring

May you and yours enjoy a happy, healthy, and peaceful new year.  Here's to a fabulous decade!

Home At Last

Image: "Christmas Gifts," by Kelvin Kay at Wikimedia Commons via a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License.

 
13 nights,
3 states,
3 planes,
3 cars,
5 buses,
6 beds,
2 cribs,
6 Pack 'n Plays (or is it Packs 'n Play?),
2 nights of Hanukkah,
1 birthday,
1 Christmas Eve,
1 Christmas,
and 3 UPS boxes full of presents later,
I am home at last, home at last.

Thank God Almighty, I am home at last!

Has your holiday hullabaloo come to an end or are you still in the midst of the maelstrom?

A Tenth Thing We Don't Know About You

At my last teaching job, I was also the coach of the varsity girls' basketball team.  I hated every minute of it.  I hated the time it took away from my teaching and from Husband.  I hated the unreasonable expectations placed on me and my players by their parents.  But most of all I hated the fact that I was really bad at it. 

Coaching basketball at that level was the only thing I have ever done professionally that I was really, truly bad at.  And, because of that experience, I have vowed never to do another job that I am not qualified for - no matter who asks me to, no matter if refusing to do so makes me look like something other than a team player.

Have you ever had to do a job that you were bad at?

A Ninth Thing We Don't Know About You

Growing up, my family traveled almost exclusively by train.  From our Connecticut home, we made separate cross-country train trips to Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, and Seattle, among other western locations.  As a result of our train journeys, accompanying side excursions to national parks, and subsequent trips to Hawaii and Alaska, I have been to 48 out of the 50 United States.  Oklahoma and South Dakota remain.

Have you traveled more within the U.S. or outside the U.S.?

An Eighth Thing We Don't Know About You

I was a good basketball player as a kid.  This was just before women's basketball really exploded onto the scene and I managed to play pretty seriously and pretty competitively all the while playing other sports and carrying out the general business of childhood.

The peak of my career came toward the end of grade school when I was the starting point guard on a New England championship CYO team and was the state champ of an age-based foul shooting contest sponsored by the Elks.  (The local Elks club then held a dinner in my honor.  Very posh.)  I continued to play basketball in high school, but a combination of a back injury and increasingly stiff competition benched me before college.

Were you a good athlete as a kid?  Are you one now?

A Seventh Thing We Don't Know About You

Image: "Ear," courtesy of David Bebbennick at Wikimedia Commons via a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License.

My sister-in-law SEL recently pointed out an endearing, if perhaps annoying, habit of mine: I pick up quickly on unusual sayings and phrases and incorporate them readily - occasionally ad nauseum - into my own speech.  This has led me to greet that very same sister-in-law with the chorus of Lionel Richie's "Hello" for several years running.  I have more recently adopted her own signature tagline whenever telling a silly or uncanny anecdote: "Believe it."

I posted recently about my fine memory for song lyrics and I think there may be a correlation here.  Maybe it's even a diagnosable syndrome: something like Highly Impressionable Hearing Disorder.

When it comes to clever sayings, are you a trendsetter or a trend follower?