June 27, 2023 (Tuesday) – Crete

We’ve been in Greece for ten days now. Our fridge is starting to look like the fridge of residents rather than of travelers. We’ve done laundry seven or eight times. The kids have grown tired of the beach. I almost threw a tantrum when Teenie expressed this to me the other day. Why? I demanded. I don’t want to get sandy, she said. Well, should we just go home then? which is what I always say to her when we’re traveling and I’m upset. Because it’s just beaches from here on out, I added. Only beaches? Her eyes grew wide. Yes, the Philippines is more beaches. I don’t remember how the conversation ended except that I didn’t blow up. Instead I told Panini we ought to lay off the beaches for a bit. We haven’t been in four days. Today I saw Beanie staring at the water as we walked by the harbor in town.

I know! What if we go to a beach with no sand?

I should not have trivialized her discomfort so. I am always wanting them to bear through their discomfort. I wonder if my mother was ever so impatient with me. I remember a trudge–or multiple trudges?–through the mall, complaining of thirst and tired feet. My mother took me to the mall with her fairly often. I was forever hiding in clothing racks. It’s a wonder I was never bored. Maybe I just liked being with her and away from my dad. She bought me ice cream. We went to McDonald’s and I had a Happy Meal with chicken nuggets and fries. Everyone did, back then. Or at least that’s what I thought. We rarely buy the kids ice cream. We tell them regularly how bad sugar is for them. So much anxiety. One day the researchers will say it’s the anxiety that’s bad, not the sugar. Or they’ll say sugar is bad but anxiety is worse. Then what will we do?

You know what I miss? I miss the simple quiet doing of things in solitude. Joyful to carefully put a room to rights, feeling the wood of the table, the cold hard of the bowl, touched by fingers and yet felt in teeth. To see everything orderly. To sip a cup of tea and actually taste it, to notice the soft silky slither of it down your throat. To put out a new plate gently on the counter, have it hold one thing, eat that one thing slowly, feeling it crumble against your teeth, chew quickly but then remember to slow. To notice your mouth is dry. To fill it with liquid so limpid it feels round in your mouth.

Sometimes I think it’s all too finicky, this way of being. Others come into the space, into my mind, like a herd of elephants–no, like a stampede of wildebeest, for elephants actually seem slow and careful in their movements, unless they’re panicked. Or maybe all animals are like that. We’re the only ones going around all the time as though we’re panicked.

Reading Mary Renault’s The King Must Die I feel sunk into a time (and place) when humans were more keenly aware of their senses. I mean that these senses seem more alive in the mind. Maybe because we were closer to God. I don’t mean the Christian God nor a single being nor a multiplicity of beings nor even an idea except that it was something unimaginably large and always present, and holy. And when I say holy I think I mean something beyond understanding. No matter how important we were among other humans, we knew our ultimate smallness, our part in the whole. And now that is lost. Or lost to me, at any rate. I was born without it, and now I’m trying to recover it, but this age makes it so difficult for humans. You have to seek and seek again.

And finding it is not even everything. It’s only an important beginning.

I deleted Instagram again. I am confirmed in my suspicion that it was getting bad because now that it’s gone I find myself swiping four pages left just to see where it isn’t and thinking, Now what do I do on my phone? I check my email. Nothing new there. I open a book and read a paragraph. I put the phone down.

Today at the playground Panini ran around with the kids. I sat on a bench in the shade and read. Periodically I would look up and watch them. I felt guilty for not joining in. But Teenie had asked for her dad to play, not me. I couldn’t have run on my bum knee anyway. Still, it was a relief to have that excuse, which meant I didn’t want to play, of course not, I wanted to read. It was hot. There would have been no joy in movement.

I was also worn from ushering them through town, avoiding feces and cars and motorcyclists, dragging them out of tourist shops full of overpriced breakable bric-a-brac, ignoring their cries for ice cream. Teenie doesn’t even like ice cream, but here she’s decided she does again. They are hot, they are thirsty, they are hungry, they are full, they are bored. One wants to explore, one wants to return, one wants to play, one wants to visit the toy section at the grocery store.

The grocery store itself is a trial. I got the pasta. Panini got everything else on our list. I thought I would make risotto. I found the carnaroli rice, I found the butter. Both took me a long time, deciphering symbols and matching prices to products. I almost bought wine but didn’t (the three-euro bottle that was the cheapest or the nine-euro bottle of the wine Panini had put on our list, one of three options, should I keep looking? what if the other two I can’t find yet are cheaper?) But I couldn’t find any broth, not even with the help of the store clerk. The best he could do for me was a packet of bouillon cubes stuffed with MSG. In defeat, I returned all the items back to the shelves.

For dinner we ate Cretan Graviera cheese alternated with watermelon slices. Panini and I finished the whole block of cheese with a little help from Teenie. I never could resist a French dessert.

June 26, 2023 (Monday) – Crete

What if all I do is write about Sheila Heti instead of writing like her? This book, How Should a Person Be? she wrote when she was younger. Her form is more creative–in a way, more jocular. She might be a character from Portlandia if Portlandia were slightly more serious (which would make it something else entirely).

This morning when I came out of the room and upstairs Panini was up already. The hood fan was on and he told me he got distracted–he was going to make an omelette, but then he discovered the car battery was dead. It had died because he had left the car turned on when he rolled down the windows two days ago–turned on but not started–and now there was no starting the car. He knew about roll-starting manuals, so we tried that. He let the car roll out of the driveway, and then I pushed it part way down the street until it reached a downslope. I was terrified. Then Panini told me to let it go, and I ran after it as it slowly gathered speed, but I didn’t hear the engine turn. Before he reached the big road, he abruptly stopped the car. It hadn’t worked.

I eventually called the car rental company, and after an hour or so, someone arrived to swap out the battery. There was confusing talk of payment to be collected upon return of the car–perhaps we would get reimbursed, perhaps not. Or partially reimbursed.

Why the experience should have shaken me so I have no idea. Up until we went on our hike, I felt sick to my stomach. There was no reason for it, but there it was. We went outside. We parked at the monastery and sneakily picked mulberries for Teenie. Cars carrying portly older men drove up and left. Three women talked and laughed together, one wearing a habit-type of outfit, or something dark and religious-looking with an unusual head covering. No one said don’t pick the fruit, there were no signs posted, and yet it seemed somehow…transgressive to do so. But everywhere the mulberries were dropping, ripe and uneaten, swarmed by sugar ants. The Chinese in me exclaimed, What a waste! Later, after our hike, Beanie noted that it wasn’t a waste–after all, the ants were eating them. Nothing in nature is wasted.

The first part of the hike was paved with cobblestones and led to a series of steps. We took many detours because we couldn’t read the signs. One of them brought us to a religious alcove carved into the rock. It was cool and moist inside. Beanie seemed frightened and kept trying to get us to leave, but Teenie was curious. I think this has to do with traditions, she decided. People come up here–she paused, uncertain, figuring–for their traditions. Yes, I agreed. That’s what it’s for. At a different alcove she twirled and swayed and asked me if she were a good dancer. I wouldn’t answer her straight. I enjoy your dancing, I told her, but I’m not one to judge. It just matters if you like it, I told her. Were the ballerinas good dancers? she asked. I’m not sure. They looked good to me, but I can’t tell. They were all good, she decided.

Eventually we reached the Metamorfosi Sotiros Monastery. Up until then the path had mostly been shaded, but now it became exposed. We trudged up a wide, rocky path with panoramic views of farmland and groves and Chania and the sea. The children were mostly indifferent, focused on listening to the audiobook we use to coax them mindlessly onward. When we arrived at the crumbled fort, the path disappeared into the rocky landscape. The goat dung was so profuse there was no escaping it. We treated it as so much dirt. We wandered around for a bit but eventually found our way with the aid of the AllTrails app. Then the kids made a game of searching out the red-and-white painted trail markers on the rocks and they were off! We climbed further and further into the hills, more evidence for Beanie that we were not, as we had promised him, in a gorge. Earlier he had said, We’re going up! Gorges don’t go up! And Panini had replied, Look to your left, what do you see? Mountains! Look to your right–mountains! What does that mean? We’re in a gorge! Beanie had retorted, Look in front. What do you see? Mountains? Look behind, what do you see? Mountains! What does that mean? Sometimes eight-year-olds are fantastic.

Teenie would have gone on, but Beanie wanted to turn around. So, for that matter, did we. The descent was rapid, but the children flagged. My knee ached. When they took a break, I hobbled ahead. Later, waiting for them, I saw them emerge from around a bend, Beanie on Panini’s shoulders because his toes hurt. I always get annoyed when the kids complain. The other day Beanie didn’t want to walk because his leg hurt from a mosquito bite. Panini has more sympathy.

Back at our starting point, the monastery seemed empty. We glutted Teenie on mulberries and went home.

June 25, 2023 (Sunday) – Crete

I know some happy people–people who were born happy, didn’t suffer much, and are still relatively happy–and I’ve discovered I can’t be good friends with them. It’s not that they’re shallow–or, at least, I wouldn’t put that down in writing. And, there’s nothing wrong with them. But there’s just some lack of understanding about the unhappiness in the world. They aren’t the types to read, they’re not that curious, so they never find out about unhappiness. Who can blame them? (I do.) But these people are useful, I think. What are they useful for again?

We didn’t leave the house at all today. We were going to go to the beach, but Panini yelled at Beanie and then conked out for a nap because we didn’t leave early enough and by the time we were ready it was close enough to lunchtime that we figured we would go after lunch. Only, after lunch, Teenie didn’t want to go, and Beanie was reading. I ended up making Teenie walk up and down the street with me in the midafternoon heat. She said she thought she was going to get heatstroke, and I didn’t respond, so she kept repeating it until I said, Yes, I heard you complaining, and she said, Oh, I didn’t know if you heard me because you didn’t say anything, and I said, Sometimes I don’t say anything because I know if I say something I’ll get angry, and she said, Oh, and then I clarified, Or, it’s more like I’m already angry, but I don’t want to speak angrily, and she said oh again, or maybe she said nothing. After that I pointed at a three-story house in the distance, which reminded me of the book series The 13-Story Treehouse, which she used to love, and she spent the rest of the walk counting up by 13 until we got to 169, which we thought would be a good place to stop because it would make sense for there to be 13 books about a treehouse that always grew in multiples of 13 floors.

There was no place to take her really (or so I thought at the time), so we came back home, where she discovered a troop of ants carrying their larvae from one hole to another. We called Beanie out to see, and eventually they turned their attention to shaking lemons out of the lemon tree. Now we have nearly 50 lemons stacked in a bowl on the dining table, and more that have spilled out and some on the counter waiting to be washed.

Later, Panini suggested I take a walk to the monastery, so I took my phone with me and listened to K’s message. When I got to the monastery I noticed that the ground was littered with squashed mulberries. No one was around, so I picked a handful–most of the berries were out of reach–and then I stalked the grounds looking for more delectables, but there was only a fig tree with tasteless figs and another with fuzzy fruit I couldn’t identify, so I left with my loot, eager to gift it to the kids, and then the day was salvaged.

The monastery, a 20-minute walk away, was only the beginning of a hiking trail that leads 12 km to Theriso. I felt so lucky to have a trail so near our house, an unlooked-for boon. Another day, I thought, I could walk that. It’s a gorge. The island is full of them. Tomorrow we’ll drive an hour and a half to walk a different gorge. Beanie wants to eat his hiking gummy worms, and Teenie her hiking bag of chips. But there’s a gorge right here, practically in our backyard.

June 24, 2023 (Saturday) – Crete

What would it be to lead a simple life with pure emotions uncomplicated by thinking? What would it be to run purely, as the body wants to, not to huff and puff in a slow jog, laboring our corpuses into submission? What would it be to cry without shame, to feel joy untinged with dread? What would it be to accept our desires and to howl wildly when we felt like it and to not know the sense of filthiness even when we are dirty?

The sun is setting behind the hills which are themselves behind the mulberry tree that shades our patio. If you rent a place for a month, can you call it yours? Can you call it home?

On Saturday evenings there is…a restaurant, says Panini, that plays music late into the night. Apparently it also sets off fireworks. The sky is big above us. You can see some stars, but not that many tonight. A dipper, but I’m not sure which.

Oh. I’m reading another Sheila Heti book. The time I think…I don’t know how to follow her. Yet.

Beanie says, Pain is just a feeling, and you don’t have to be afraid of feelings. I’m not sure where he got that insight, something it took me nearly forty years to see–and I still can’t remember it when I’m feeling anything stronger than neutral. Maybe it’s from all his sun time, which he insists is meditation. Well, to have that knowledge is one thing and to apply it is another. Anyway, he’s only eight.

I’ve been a mother for over eight years now. Closer to nine, really. I helped them, I grew them from such tiny things into the strange, wild beings they are today. When J is frustrated with her daughter, she calls her a feral child. It’s a fear of hers, of mine, that children be ungovernable. That’s us at our most constricted: tiny, closed off, puckered little assholes. That’s the mental image I have.

It’s fascinating, peeking into the lives of childless people. S said she was going to embark on a “summer of me,” to get to know herself again, to learn how to be comfortable alone. What goddamned luxury! A summer of me! I envy her her solitude, her freedom, lonely as it may be. Summer of me. I think she was going to take up a pottery class. Well, me too, by golly. Me too.

June 23, 2023 (Friday) – Crete

Today we went to Iguana Beach in town. It was just Teenie and me at first–Beanie wasn’t up for it, so Panini took him grocery shopping. The beaches in Crete are not so different from one another. They are all more or less crowded, sandy, “organized” (meaning they have umbrellas and chairs that you can pay for and often a shower). Some are slightly warmer than others, some have pebbles in addition to sand, some are prone to windiness, some have slightly rougher waves, some have a few restaurants, some many, some none. At Falassarna yesterday our sun tent was no match for the moderate winds that frequently gusted sand into our eyes. At Iguana Beach today I set up the tent on my own. Teenie and I spent all day there, a good six-and-a-half hours. Panini said it was practically two beach trips because she’d been ready to go in the middle, when Panini came with pizza he’d heated at home. If she leaves the beach for any reason she must de-sand herself, and then she’s loathe to go back. We had to coax her, but once she’s there she plays happily in the sand and water and won’t leave. Then we have to coax her again to get her back out. Sometimes it’s not worth the effort. Today she cried because I wouldn’t keep building tunnels in the sand with her; my wrist hurt from digging. She got over it, but I see that she has more fun with Panini.

6 months, 2 days

Your First Two Weeks (continued)

You seem to like it when

There’s no “seem” about it. You like it when we hold you, as every newborn does. You like it when there is a light to stare at. And (here we go) you seem to like it when Grandma sings to you, the same lullaby she sang to me, to your brother–Brahms’ “Good Evening, Good Night.”

Fifth and Sixth Months

You’re changing

you’re well into your Thumper stage now. Your sleep has consolidated. You cry less often. You smile more. Sometimes you even grace us with a laugh, your low chuckle.

And now you can

roll over, but, unconventionally, from back to belly first (and still not the other way around). Swallow solid food, which seems to intrigue you. Suck your feet with concentration and gusto. Sometimes chain nap cycles. Sleep through the night! Hooray and thank you!

You like

being kissed, being talked to. Sucking your fingers and toes, my fingers, your lower lip, your pink bunny, any piece of fabric you can reach. Gripping objects with your surprisingly strong little fist. Watching Beanie. Going to new places, which entrance you so much you refuse to sleep or eat. Taking long afternoon naps in our arms. Talking to us in your private, vowel-ly language, looking so intelligent that you’re almost intelligible.

And I’ll never forget

bringing you cherry-picking. I had some fantasy that we would recreate one of the photographs we took with Beanie where he had fallen asleep in the carrier, and Dad had piled cherries on his neck. But you never fell asleep (granted, we never put you in the carrier). It was a stiflingly hot day, but you didn’t complain, just swiveled your head around looking and looking and looking.

5 months, 28 days

Your first day home was

It’s six months later, and I no longer remember. There are pictures of you looking impossibly delicate, a blinky creature who doesn’t seem used to air yet. We set the whole house roaring with heat for you. Grandma came. Someone must have picked her up, probably Dad. Huckleberry stood aloof, watching, withholding. That night we must have put you in the Rock n Play. Or did we take turns holding you?

Your First Two Weeks

A day with you is

You sleep well. You sleep all the time. If we hold you, it seems there might be no end to your sleep. You suck heartily, too, until you drop off to sleep. You are stubborn in your sleep, unresponsive to foot-tickling or ear-rubbing. But at night, when we put you down, you don’t like to sleep but cry cry cry until we pick you up.

You wake up

when you sense that you are no longer being held. Even in the Rock n Play, you will only last 15 minutes before it hits you that something is, undeniably, up.

You’re very active when

it gets dark. The late evening hours, in particular. You are a night owl, a party girl.

5 months, 15 days

“The Story of Your Birth Day”

Oh I love telling this story, the story of an adventure, though it seems unimportant to everyone else but me. I slept downstairs at the time because the pubic symphysis pain that started during pregnancy made it painful to climb the stairs. Dad slept upstairs to be near enough to listen to Huckleberry. There had been many false alarms the prior few weeks, so when contractions woke me in the early morning, I waited a while before phoning Dad. When I did, he wanted to leave right away for San Francisco. What? And wake his mother? And charge about in the middle of the night getting everything ready while I was supposed to relax and get back to sleep? I told him no, not yet, and prescribed myself a bath (Aunt Kali was in Greece), which Dad irritatedly opposed at first for fear the sound would wake Huckleberry and then, giving in, proceeded to double-down on the noise-making and vacuum the upstairs in preparation for Ami’s stay. All the while the loudness was making me anxious, and I had to remind myself to relax into the lukewarm bath until I thought sleep was possible again. Sleep I did, but not late into the morning as I did with Huckleberry. We asked Ami to come, but Dad neglected to tell her why, and for some reason Huckleberry decided to sleep in until 10:30 that morning, which he almost never does. Perhaps the sounds at night did wake him up after all. The contractions steadily grew more intense as Dad raced around the house cleaning and preparing until I finally demanded to be taken to San Francisco, already in considerable pain. Ooo, let me eat something first, he murmured, and then I decided I would eat something, too, and it was significantly longer before we got to the Berry condo where I was supposed to have undergone most of my labor. The car ride was excruciating–the constraint of the seatbelt, the awkward position, the curves, bumps, stops, all the while timing my own contractions and thinking, I’ve still a long way to go, I’ve still a long way to go. Then I could barely get up to the condo. When I did, I was so weary I wanted to rest, and nothing seemed as lovely as being on my back, though I knew it was a position that would slow your arrival. Our doula, Erica, gave the go-ahead by text. For half an hour, I slept the sleep of the exhausted. Then back to work. The pain in my back worsened. I feared through the last few weeks of my pregnancy that, though head down, you were faced the wrong way, and the back pain seemed to confirm this. Dad suggested that Erica might come now. I demanded the shower, remembering how last time it was the only thing that provided relief. I made it hot hot hot, which concerned Dad a little, and then after a while I got dizzy and demanded to be out. Deep inside my animal brain now, I was communicating solely in tense, one-word commands; when questioned or asked for clarification, all I could do was repeat the word at increasingly desperate pitches. Dad laughed, and the part of myself that could detach and still reason laughed with him, for I sounded exactly like Huckleberry. Around then, Erica came. I labored hunched over a chair while Erica tried various squeezes and insisted that I give out low-pitched groans. When my groans became screams, she reminded me again, low, low, low. It was Erica who wondered out loud when we should go to the hospital, Dad who asked me, and me who became flustered wondering why someone wouldn’t just tell me what to do. Eventually, I decided yes, yes, let’s go, because the thought of enduring the car ride in even more pain filled me with dread. At the elevator, we encountered a young woman with a dog who stared wide-eyed at me. Can I get out first? she asked, frightened. Yes, yes, I nodded impatiently. I suspected I looked like a fat banshee. The short car ride was too long. Then the hospital. A man came to me with a wheelchair. I waved it away but then decided I wanted it but then got up again because it was unendurable. Dad laughingly apologized. Up another elevator. The nurses at the front desk asked what we wanted. Wasn’t it obvious? Well, don’t do it out here, one joked. Later, she apologized. They took me to triage, where the resident made me get on the bed for a cervical exam. 7 cm, she announced. I think you should stay. Gentle laughter in the room. She would like to push on hands and knees, Erica told someone. I couldn’t hear what they said. Oh yes, of course, Erica responded. The contractions came, wave after wave. I hunched over a bed. Someone asked if I would like to sit. No no no. They needed to move me. Though the hospital seemed silent, apparently all the labor and delivery rooms were full. I was to go to a different triage room for my labor. Why not the triage room I was in? I couldn’t ask because I couldn’t speak. They shunted me off to another place where they pondered, IV? No! I shouted. O-kay. Chuckles. Before long, one of the nurses asked me if I was feeling pushy. Yes, that’s what it was. I thought again that I had to defecate, but it was probably that, like last time, you were coming. Cervical exam again. Too soon, I thought. Miracle of miracles: You can push! they told me. Some discussion of breaking my waters. I looked to Erica. Is that okay? Is that natural? Yes, yes, everything was yes, yes. But then they broke on their own anyway. I made myself flip over onto my hands and knees. Perhaps my arms and legs were shaking. Someone offered me something, but I declined. Panic flickered at the thought of moving or changing anything. I grunted, I groaned. Low, low, low. In my head an image of myself as a horse, foaling. There was something undignified about it all, but I couldn’t care less. Where was Dad in all this? I barely remember. Part of the crowd. There seemed to be so many people. My body racked with pushes. I braced myself for a long struggle. But then a slip, another slip, and out you tumbled, tiny and alive.

5 months, 14 days

“Seeing you for the first time was…”

Incredible. Ten little fingers and ten little toes and all that, but just the very fact of you, no longer a nebulous floaty thing but something physical, your very own being. You had hair. Eyes. Fur. Not only agency but urgency. Hunger. That we all start like that, a hundred and seven billion human souls since the beginning of time, cannot dampen the miracle.

5 months, 8 days

Today she sucked her toes for the first time. It had been weeks of the happy baby yoga pose and then, suddenly, pop! Into the mouth they went.

She was tuckered out. Beanie is stretching his will, particularly at nap and bedtimes. What should take five minutes ends up taking fifteen. Thomas this and Gordon that and James, too, and no no no Knuffle Bunny! I don’t want to go to sleep! He sounds like such a professional speaking in complete, grammatically correct sentences that I almost feel guilty forcing him. But then Teenie was waiting, ever so patiently, for her meal and nap. Alas, I’m afraid that’s her lot.