forgive me, distant wars

liz. gam zeh ya'avor.

[elesheva]

mostly i don't think about the fact that last winter, a woman put on her saddest voice to say into the phone i don't want to give you false hope about my baby, my baby! my perfect, beautiful bald daughter who hates to sleep because she wants to know where we are, what we're doing, what we're eating and if she can eat it, too. i have to dig deep to muster up the feelings that used to float on the surface around the clock -- the terror and preemptive grief and how angry it made me that no one was taking seriously the possibility that she could be okay. i wanted a note put in my file: this woman understands the gravity of the situation and does not need to be treated like a fool. when she was born and released into our care almost immediately, found by america's fucking foremost experts to be as hale and hearty as any other newborn, i texted my therapist i was right and she texted back you were right!! with two exclamation points and that was the end of that. but the other day the baby took her first steps in the atlantic terminal chuck e cheese, her sock feet landing heavily on the worn carpet like they were being dropped there, and it was so entirely absurd that i began to weep, holding her in my arms while she laughed and laughed about her newfound power. i was right. two exclamation points.

[elesheva]

my secret is that i think the new york city dmv is fine, actually. everyone who works there is incredibly competent and efficient, two of my favorite characteristics in a person. they did not invent the archaic rules by which you are both operating; they simply want to steer you through the process like charon across the styx. it's air conditioned and there's no music playing. you expect to wait, unlike when you pop into the grocery store and the person in front of you in line is like, buying an avocado for the first time in their entire life or whatever. it's fine! bring a book!

[elesheva]

can someone tell the me in the past that if you have a kid you can buy the two of you matching mood rings? she’ll want to know

[elesheva]

yesterday was lauren's birthday. it is, at this point, cliché for me to tell you that marrying her was an unbelievable stroke of luck, that i would make the decision to offer her the rest of my life in exchange for whatever of her time i can have over and over again. but i do think, having spent a lot of time lately absorbing front-facing video content from women who are married to (sorry,) men, watching them negotiate with themselves and each other about what they deserve, what they can demand, what they can tolerate, that it is worth offering a counter. that you should know that the person who makes dinner while i put the big kid to bed is also one of the smartest people i know, and so while i am curled up in a twin size bed with a four year old and his assortment of stuffed animals, listening to the sounds of cooking downstairs, i am anticipating not only a warm meal but her thoughts and opinions, which i will, after more than ten years together, simply never predict in their entirety.

[elesheva]

the baby and i stop to watch a brass band that has come for the first open streets saturday of the season. back when we weren’t sure if she would ever be born, when every doctor we interacted with was careful to talk about the pregnancy but not the baby, we went to a funeral where a jazz trio played, and she kicked furiously inside of lauren. the baby likes jazz, we said to each other, over and over. a talisman, a prayer. it was the first thing we knew about her, and maybe the last. now she watches, rapt, absently pulling on a lock of my hair where it’s slipped from my shitty little ponytail, as the band plays tequila, and when everyone shouts the titular word, she looks up at me, her tiny brow knit not in fear but in frustration: does everyone know something that i don’t? was this party happening before i arrived? no, i want to tell her, or yes, but it wasn’t nearly as good.

[elesheva]

i'm editing the romance novel that i started on parental leave, and i just can't believe how much i love this book. if no one ever wants to read it, or if everyone who reads it thinks huh, not quite for me, that's entirely fine because i really did write it just for my very favorite girl: me.

[elesheva]

among the lovely surprises of my life is the magnolia tree that bloomed in our backyard in the period between when we first looked at the house and when we moved in; having only toured it in the wintertime, you can imagine our delight when we arrived to find a sweep of pink stretching all the way up to the clear blue sky. now every spring we track its movements as closely as you would an infant's milestones: first bud, first blossoms, first sprouts of green. we collect clippings for a friend who wants to make magnolia syrup, and the next day our neighbor comes by with magnolia ice cream she made by hand. the relief of spring after a long, cold winter is, i think, a gift worth waiting for, no matter how long it seems to take to arrive.

[elesheva]

i keep trying to write something about how becoming a parent installed a short circuit in my brain that malfunctions when i read or hear about a kid getting hurt or worse, but it's becoming clear that what i really mean is i am very, very afraid all the time

[elesheva]

i am so grateful for the therapy and wellbutrin and solidcore membership (shut up i know i said i wouldn't go again) that keep the chemicals in my brain balanced enough that when the four year old asks on the way to school are you a happy grown up? i can say with total honesty kid, i am the happiest grown up you know. my mortgage is too high and my back hurts and i get angry when there are too many small wet pieces of winterwear on the floor and i wish i had more time to use my brain for things other than solving the many quadratic equations of working parenthood, but when lauren went out of town for four days she arrived home to find everyone hale & hearty & bathed & kissed & thrilled to see her. i wake up every morning in a house full of my favorite faces and my favorite books and the tulips we picked up on the way home from the playground on saturday still blooming on the mantle. i didn't like being a kid, i say as we round the last corner to the colorful little school. but i like being the grown up in your childhood.

[elesheva]

the baby learned how to say her brother's name. or rather, the baby learned how to make a sound that we think is supposed to represent her brother's name because she makes it when she sees him, her whole body twisting and kicking to get closer to him as he comes around the corner. this morning, after not nearly enough sleep, lauren and i held the baby between us in bed, and her brother left and returned over and over, trying to get her to make the sound that means she's happy to see him, and when she did we all laughed, and then she laughed, too. last night in the final stage of the ceremony that is a child's bedtime, the four year old said to me i want to keep being alive, and i said me too, bud, and i think we were both kind of talking about mornings like this one.

[elesheva]

i have an ice skating injury and i'm so pleased about it. yes, i fell learning how to do something new, and when i fell i was having fun, and then i got back up and tried again and that was fun, too. what a miracle! what luck!

[elesheva]

baby’s first remote learning day ✔️

[elesheva]

my whole life i didn't want to do stuff. i wanted to be left alone, i wanted to prepare but not actually execute, i wanted to know exactly what each day would be like. i wanted to read a nice book on the couch for, god willing, eighty-odd years. then i somehow married someone who loves doing stuff and it turns out that doing stuff is, sorry, way more fun than not doing stuff. i like having friends over even when i was planning to lie flat and look at my phone. i like starting projects instead of waiting for the timing to "feel right." lauren created an ice rink in the backyard to combat general winter sadness and the bodies-remember-anniversaries of last january -- and i'd love to clarify that she did all the work and i just said that's so great and didn't complain about the box of farm-grade tarps sitting in my entryway -- and when she said do you want to try ice skating? i said yes even though i thought it would be hard and that i'd be bad at it. it turns out that like most activities a person would invite you to do, it's incredibly fun, and regardless of whether i was good at it, it was a miracle to leave our sleeping children inside and sneak into the backyard with the person i like being around the most, wobbling around on my not-so-weak ankles and feeling a flush build in my cheeks.

[elesheva]

i was out for a run with the baby yesterday when fat snowflakes began to fall. she fell asleep in the stroller, face slack beneath her many layers, while i pushed her down and up the hill, letting snow accumulate in my eyelashes and across the bridge of my nose. in long meadow, dogs leapt and snapped at the sky, and the other runners and i grinned at each other as we passed, as if to ask can you believe this? and i assumed it would be the most transcendental moment of my day and perhaps even my year, until the cast of mamma mia on broadway, having taken their bows, began to sing dancing queen again and there was glitter on my face and my mother in law and her beautiful daughters joyous beside me and the cosmic vibe flavor celsius and edible (first half at dinner, second half during intermission, and it was the perfect timing) in my body joined forces to make me the single happiest girl in new york city. flow state achieved.

[elesheva]

war is over (we have paid our last enormous tax bill from our illustrious freelance-only careers)

[elesheva]

this morning, a mere three point seven five hours of sleep under the ol' belt, i said to lauren you know when you're so tired that you feel your headache in your stomach? and she said no, which is how i learned that isn't universal. i only know two or three songs when i'm holding the baby at three am, so reduced am i to the small lizard center of my brain. unfortunately for george one of them is sunrise, sunset from fiddler on the roof. unfortunately for me the other one of them is for good, which means that in addition to being medically exhausted, i am also listening to my own creaky voice mumbling for good in a möbius loop wherein i keep forgetting which verses go where and ending up back at it well may be so i am tragically forced to engage with like a handprint on my heart while the baby angrily arches away from me, desperate for me to understand that mine is absolutely not the body she wants to be held against. anyway sleep training is going great, thanks for asking.

[elesheva]

the baby was up puking until 2 am so i don't really have a coherent thought on this, but if i have a 2026 resolution it is to be cautious of getting my creative fulfillment from domestic tasks. i speak not universally but personally: i will simply never make any art if i allow my brain to ping with too much satisfaction from deciding what we're going to have for dinner in the first half of january or aligning the perfect summer camp schedule for my child. some satisfaction is fine! no need to create misery! but in my old age i do not want to look back at decades of basic care tasks and think well, it turned out that this was, in fact, my body of work.