40 Days of Birthday: Day Thirty {Guest Writer: Nicholas}

Over the course of the last 29 days, as husband to Amy and father to Lennon, I have been especially immersed in the writing that is this forum. This morning, Amy woke up feeling pretty lousy so we came onto the idea of having me provide the post for the day. Although not my first time blogging, this is my first post for connieandvi, so please bear with me. 

Your regular service will resume tomorrow. 

This morning’s (partial-)family adventure brought us to Gleisdreieck Park for the celebration of a second birthday for one of Lennon’s wee friends, Leila. She is the beautiful daughter of one of my childhood friends, Matt, and one of my favorite colleagues, Laura, so needless to say, we were excited. Last year, we arrived beyond-fashionably late to her first birthday party due to the fact that a six-week old baby was running our schedule. We set off early this morning, aiming to arrive at Gleisdreieck just at the invited 10:00 time, so as to avoid a repeat performance. 

Bordering the neighborhoods of Kreuzberg and Schöneberg, the historic Gleisdreieck (literally ‘rail track triangle’) area stands as a metaphor for the changing and tumultuous nature of Berlin’s past. 

Opened just after the turn of the century, in the year 1902, the Gleisdreieck area has served Berlin as a junction point for out of town trains, as a rail yard for neighboring stations and as well as an end station for trains traveling east during years in which the city was divided. In addition to an U-Bahn station, Gleisdreieck is currently home to a large urban park. The first half the park was opened last year, while the Westpark is scheduled to open in 2013.

This being our first visit to the park, Lennon and I were keen to explore its friendly confines. Entering at the southern gate, we immediately noticed the way in which the developers stayed true to the history of the site by incorporating some of the features of the rail yard into the park’s design aesthetic.

A play area allows children to enjoy the wilds of the non-landscaped park. 

The early bird checking out the spread.

The birthday girl.

Lennon’s agenda for the two hours in which we were there included:

-Playing in the cedar chips

-Playing in the sand

-Meeting new friends 

-Getting dirty

At noon we headed west towards home and the sweet boy easily fell asleep on the U7. His midday nap showed all the signs of a good morning as he stayed asleep for a record three hours, resting sweetly and dreaming of playgrounds. 

40 Days of Birthday: Day Thirteen

Today felt like autumn. Lennon wore his yellow rain coat in the stroller ride to Kita and not only was it wet, but it was cold. When my boys left, I hunkered down in front of the computer and wrote and read and sighed and wrote and read some more. Three hours flew by and when Lennon came home for his nap, I napped with him. Research can be exhausting, but I think the gloomy weather didn’t help. Also, Lennon’s been waking up in the middle of night and struggling to go back to sleep, leaving me bleary-eyed come morning. I napped hard and it felt divine.

Our plan was to hit the Martin-Gropius-Bau Museum today for the Dennis Hopper Photography exhibit. When I woke up from my delicious nap with Lennon at my side, my husband came in and asked, “Can a big nap be your special thing today?” I immediately realized the wisdom of his proposal looking out the window. For over a week I’ve been filling my days with extraordinary activities and reckon that having an indoor day is kind of “special” in contrast.

I took advantage of the extra energy the nap afforded me and did some cooking. I made this quinoa and sweet potato salad for easy lunches and a butternut squash soup for cozy dinners. I’ve made squash soup so many times now the recipe is in my head and I just add spices until it tastes as I remember it should. I will say that chili flakes and sea salt make all the difference—but I like an extra savory butternut squash soup.

Confession: I stayed in my pajamas all day today.

Confession #2: This is not the first time I’ve done this since becoming a mother. Or an adult.

Regardless, I felt good about not having really gotten out of bed today. I deserve it! My husband deserves it more, however, taking our son to Kita every day during his two-week vacation so I can have some research time. Still, he doesn’t complain. In fact, this afternoon while I was cooking, he mounted my amazing antique type-setter’s drawer to the wall above my desk. This impossible find was spotted on the way home from the Lady Castle last week at a vintage toy store down the street from our home. The tag on it said twelve euro, but I got it for ten. It’s the perfect perch for my growing collection of tiny curiosities: there are so many compartments waiting to be filled with glorious bobbles of soul-singing inspiration, I can hardly stand it!  

I’m feeling especially spoiled today.

Not Fat Enough

This weight loss scheme of mine has been working tremendously well—for my husband. He has lost all of the weight he gained during my pregnancy and has delighted in being able to wear all his slim fitting shirts again. I would be lying if I said it wasn’t working for me also, but I’ve become frustrated by how long it’s taking for me to lose the weight I want to lose. There are a couple of bits of denial I’d like to own here:

1. I did gain fifty-seven pounds during my pregnancy and no amount of earnest wishing is going to take them away overnight, though somehow I believed that’s how quickly it would happen.

2. I started out so diligent with counting and tracking my Weight Watchers points daily—a key element to success in the program, in my experience—but have of late allowed for some slacking in this area.

3. Walking to the park, the store, and the farmer’s market from the Bahn station probably doesn’t constitute a proper workout, something I’ve been wanting to believe since I moved to Berlin.

Probably the most shocking of all my lapses of reality lately was believing that I don’t look as large as my actual weight—which, if you’ve ever met me or any other woman, you’ll know never to ask me about the specifics of that number. I went to the theatre last week and found myself in the front row. The production included multimedia elements and during several moments, a live camera was focused on the audience. The feed was then played on several TV monitors on the stage, facing outward. When I located myself on the monitors I was horrified to discover that the actual width and roundness of my body was in great contrast to the cute, petite thing I was sure I had admired in the mirror just hours before. I realize the camera adds ten pounds or so, but this was well beyond lens fluffiness. What was particularly unnerving was that I was wearing the outfit I wore when I wanted to look trim and fit. I truly believed that in those garments, no one could tell that I was thirty pounds overweight. What I saw on that monitor, however, told such a dramatically different story that I went into a bit of a sweaty, panic. The camera was still on me (so clever of me to sit in the front row, eh?) and of course I had to continue to smile—my full, ballooning cheeks turning bright red. Thankfully and surprisingly, my stopgap here was to remind myself that I’d given birth a mere six months ago. Yes, some women lose all of their baby weight within the first couple months of breastfeeding, but I’d heard that there was this other lot who only ever lost weight after breastfeeding ceased. I suppose I am in that contingency, and seeing as I’m still breastfeeding, it’s no wonder the weight is still on! For all my kindness, though, I left the theatre feeling small—in self-esteem only.

But as I mentioned above, my weight loss scheme is working, even with breastfeeding. I have lost weight and continue to lose or maintain what I’ve lost each week. As of last Friday, I’ve lost nearly twelve pounds since early January. That’s not such a grand number for going on three months of dieting, but for nursing mothers (and casual walkers,) Weight Watchers will have you lose it slowly. So what’s my damage, you may ask? Here it is:

I really miss my pre-pregnancy body.

I’d worked really hard in the past few years, pre-pregnancy, to concoct a healthy eating plan that allowed me to maintain my weight. I’d also started running and had gotten into the best shape of my life—something that I really let slide during my pregnancy. In my pre-pregnancy body, I’d always claimed that I was ten pounds away from my ‘ideal’ weight, but truly, I was happy with myself. I miss the clothes that were worn on that body, now tucked away in suitcases under my bed and sullenly hanging in my closet next to dreary maternity-wear. I’m ready to put my ‘full-panel’ stretch jeans away and am saddened by the prospect that I’m not even close to doing so. It all makes me want to eat some chocolate. But of course, I cannot. Well, I can, actually, just not the self-medicating portion I would prefer.

Where to go from here: Let me assure you that I’ve been here before—on a diet, trying to lose weight—many a time. Perseverance is the only solution. This week, I’m attempting count and record every point of food I eat. As far as exercise is concerned, I’m using the start of spring to begin running again (by the way—it’s not spring yet, no matter what the temperatures say—spring starts when we get back from vacation mid-April, thank you very much!) Tonight I had just two pieces of dark chocolate instead of four, the self-medication equivalent of a Flintstone vitamin.

My husband is the biggest supporter of my efforts in every single way imaginable. He often makes dinner and weighs all of our food on the kitchen scale so I can calculate the points. Without even asking him, he portions out things like butter and oil in his cooking so it’s easier for me to keep track of what we’re eating. Probably the most valuable thing he does is let me know that there is someone that thinks I’m beautiful even if I have my serious doubts. He’s militant, in fact, about not letting me bemoan my proportions.

When I came home from the theatre last week with concerned questions about the figure flattering capabilities of my alleged ‘skinny’ outfit, I asked Nicholas a question most men would shudder to answer:

“Does this top make me look fat?”

With a loving smile and without hesitation, he turned to me and said,

“Not fat enough”








Photo: Me, River City Half Marathon, Sacramento, California, 2010, Pre-pregnancy.

Tantrum

When I come against an obstacle I find that there’s a pattern of steps I follow to find resolution. Shamefully, the most important of these seems to be one where I behave badly. I throw a fit. Once that phase is over, however, I accept my fate with aplomb and move forward. It’s necessary, however, for me to resist, like antibodies fighting a virus, in order to emerge stronger and healthier on the other side.

I performed an embarrassing, new mom tantrum a few weeks after Lennon was born. We were struggling with breastfeeding and he wasn’t gaining the recommended amount of weight. I was nursing for what seemed like every second of the day and yet it had little affect. The diagnosis was that my milk supply was low and I would need to start using a breast milk pump if breastfeeding was to continue. To increase my supply, I was meant to pump milk from my breasts several times a day for about ten minutes a session. This would provide extra milk for Lennon and fool my body into producing more milk to meet the increased, albeit manufactured, demand. I was already thoroughly exhausted and the idea of nursing this other, mechanical baby in addition to my newborn brought me to tears. This exhaustion was compounded by the new, overwhelming responsibility of trying to provide my baby with the healthiest and highest quality of everything. I was beholden to go forward with whatever it would take to make breastfeeding work even though every molecule of my sleep deprived self wanted to scream, “This is not what I signed up for! I want a refund!” I nearly said those exact words to my very patient midwife, asking her,

“Do nursing mothers just never leave the house? Do they never leave the couch? Do they live their lives as nursing machines? How in the hell do they do this?”

What I wanted and naively expected to hear from her were cushioned words allowing me to give up, saying that it wasn’t all that important to breast feed, and that no one would ever expect anyone to go through anything approaching such burdensome nonsense. Instead, she calmly answered, “We just do it.”

Right.

The next day, I rented a breast milk pump and began the process of increasing my supply and feeding my baby so he would gain the weight he needed. I really fought against the difficulty of it all, though. I fought until I didn’t recognize what I was fighting against. I fought until I looked foolish—until there was nothing left to do but the hard thing itself and be happy about it.

Last week I wrote about how I had buoyed myself up from having suffered the rejection of not being awarded the DAAD scholarship. Tragically, I failed to take my own advice. The next day I discovered that the wound was deeper than three days time and a pep talk could heal. I sat in the kitchen and explained to Nicholas all the reasons why not getting the DAAD scholarship meant that I should not pursue a PhD:

Firstly, I’m not a real academic. I attended a conference last May with other Performance Studies PhDs and discovered that I was way out of my league. They all seemed so well read in Performance theory where I’m primarily a practitioner, still learning how to slog through academic language. What business have I writing a dissertation? Twice now my project has not been awarded funding. Maybe this is a sign. Also, wouldn’t it just be so much easier, nice-n-tidy, and generally more leisurely to go back to the familiar ground of teaching theatre in a K-8th grade environment? I could leave behind the uncomfortable, knee-deep discussions of Performance theory and elevator-pitch explanations of my dissertation. Teaching grade school would also be a more Lennon-gentle route, being able to maintain clear, daytime hours with a family friendly vacation schedule. But the most penultimate reason to throw in the towel, I explained, was that I had tried to call my advisor that day and her secretary said she was very busy and would not be able to meet with me for a while. She’d be happy to send me some other funding opportunities via email, but a one-on-one would not be possible right now. I knew I was on my own with my research, that’s how PhDs are done in Germany, but at this moment I really needed my advisor—a woman of great importance in the Performance Studies world—to bolster my confidence. She hadn’t the time. Bad timing, woman of great importance. Having presented my case, I asked my husband how I could ever overcome such incredible odds? How could I continue with this PhD scheme and its difficult trajectory? The path of least resistance was surely a more sensible route. Certainly there are many who would agree with me that I just don’t have what it takes to be an academic. Nicholas listened and then said, “You can do it, Schatz.”

Fine.

I opened a book of performance theory, grabbed my highlighter, and began reading. I bought a ticket for a play by a company I’d wanted to investigate. I started to do it. Later that day, I visited the little bowl on my desk filled with fifty curled strips of paper. On each strip is one of Nancy Sathre-Vogel’s ‘50 Lessons I Wish I had Learned Earlier.’ If you’ve read more than one of my posts, you may have noted my passion for lists. About a month ago, I had printed out Ms. Sathre-Vogel’s list, cut each item from the page, and placed them in a bowl on my desk to pull from if I needed guidance. The Tao of My Desk, if you will. I glanced at the snow-white curls on top and decided to sink my hand deep to collect my fortune. The lesson I fished that day said:

47. If it were easy everyone would do it.