100 times = beginner status: thoughts on breastfeeding (and poetry)

I had the wonderful good fortune about two years ago to be invited to the intimate living room of Donald Hall, multi-award-winning poet and writer, and poet laureate of New Hampshire from 1984-1989. His wife, Jane Kenyon, also a poet who died way too young, could be felt in the house as well, her spirit saturated into every wall and room, decoration and memory, clinging like a ghost.

Mr. Hall spoke of his writing and revision process, explaining how he edits his poems a minimum of 100 times before considering them good and on the way to finished. I could not believe it when I heard this - 100 times! I can't say I have edited my own poems more than a handful of times, if that. His reworking speaks not only to his commitment to writing and refining his craft, but also to the process of a poem's birth itself...how it emerges in stages sometimes, and becomes its own animal whom you must get to know bit by bit.

Two days ago, I realized it was Lucinda's "day 10" in the world. I was thinking if we practiced the breastfeeding together about ten times a day, that would make 100 times already finished at the process. (Generally, methinks it is best not to tally these things, especially when one is lacking sleep and feeling like a veritable prisoner in one's own house, at the whims of a tiny little queen who only just days ago appeared out of nowhere...) And suddenly I remembered what Donald Hall said about his poems. And I thought, "Practice, practice, practice, and now I am only just a beginner"...which was strangely comforting.

We - Lucinda Grace and I - are getting the hang of this new job we share (me in feeding, and her in eating and processing the food). Breastfeeding is hard work and does not - contrary to popular myth - come naturally. You have to learn how to do it, and figure it out with your baby, and then work at it until it becomes natural. It gets easier every day and we both feel more confident now that we will be able to accomplish our goals.

I am thinking about practice in many contexts now. And realizing that 100 times at practice are just the start.

Let us give ourselves a break as we learn new ideas and activities. Let us consider ourselves both babes to this world and struggling poets, who will one day be discovered for our genius, but in the meantime, we will do the toil of practicing. It will pay off, I just know it.

Blessings to you Donald.

~Ally

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An old life

by Donald Hall

Snow fell in the night.
At five-fifteen I woke to a bluish
mounded softness where
the Honda was. Cat fed and coffee made,
I broomed snow off the car
and drove to the Kearsarge Mini-Mart
before Amy opened
to yank my Globe out of the bundle.
Back, I set my cup of coffee
beside Jane, still half-asleep,
murmuring stuporous
thanks in the aquamarine morning.
Then I sat in my blue chair
with blueberry bagels and strong
black coffee reading news,
the obits, the comics, and the sports.
Carrying my cup twenty feet,
I sat myself at the desk
for this day's lifelong
engagement with the one task and desire.

A Birthday

by Christina Rossetti

My heart is like a singing bird

Whose nest is in a water'd shoot;

My heart is like an apple-tree

Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit;

My heart is like a rainbow shell

That paddles in a halcyon sea;

My heart is gladder than all these

Because my love is come to me.

Raise me a dais of silk and down;

Hang it with vair and purple dyes;

Carve it in doves and pomegranates,

And peacocks with a hundred eyes;

Work it in gold and silver grapes,

In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;

Because the birthday of my life

Is come, my love is come to me.

Mombie

Mombie: Zombie mom, ala Night of the Living Dead; wandering soul who cannot distinguish night from day, complete simple sentences, or recall if teeth were brushed; state that leads to inability to remember baby's name, puffy eyes and frequent bouts of crying (the baby cries too), and ironically, the inability to sleep.

~Note to other Mombies: Do NOT attempt to assemble helpful electronics or install batteries at this time...can lead to throwing away of said electronics and random thoughts of hatred.

~Note to Non-Mombies: Frequent bouts of crying may also be joy related. There's really no way for you to tell. Keep a few feet between you and Mombies at all times for safety. And if approached by one, feed it before proceeding.

Ally

:)

My best news all year!

See Scott's post...

Love, Ally

True Love

A love poem from the very center of life—from that mid-stage that is so often rushed and undefined, but is memorably chronicled in the poems of Sharon Olds.

---

True Love In the middle of the night, when we get up after making love, we look at each other in complete friendship, we know so fully what the other has been doing. Bound to each other like mountaineers coming down from a mountain, bound with the tie of the delivery-room, we wander down the hall to the bathroom, I can hardly walk, I hobble through the granular shadowless air, I know where you are with my eyes closed, we are bound to each other with huge invisible threads, our sexes muted, exhausted, crushed, the whole body a sex—surely this is the most blessed time of my life, our children asleep in their beds, each fate like a vein of abiding mineral not discovered yet. I sit on the toilet in the night, you are somewhere in the room, I open the window and snow has fallen in a steep drift, against the pane, I look up, into it, a wall of cold crystals, silent and glistening, I quietly call to you and you come and hold my hand and I say I cannot see beyond it. I cannot see beyond it.

Surprising - guess it's only us old ladies propagating the myth that everyone's waiting to have children...

Poll Results from PlanningFamily.com

How old were you (will you be) when your first child was born?
Under the age of 20
33%
21 to 25
35%
26 to 30
19%
31 to 35
9%
36 to 40
3%
Over 40
1%

Beauty

Snowy Night

by Mary Oliver

Last night, an owl

in the blue dark

tossed

an indeterminate number

of carefully shaped sounds into

the world, in which,

a quarter of a mile away, I happened

to be standing.

I couldn't tell

which one it was -

the barred or the great-horned

ship of the air -

it was that distant. But, anyway,

aren't there moments

that are better than knowing something,

and sweeter? Snow was falling,

so much like stars

filling the dark trees

that one could easily imagine

its reason for being was nothing more

than prettiness. I suppose

if this were someone else's story

they would have insisted on knowing

whatever is knowable - would have hurried

over the fields

to name it - the owl, I mean.

But it's mine, this poem of the night,

and I just stood there, listening and holding out

my hands to the soft glitter

falling through the air. I love this world,

but not for its answers.

And I wish good luck to the owl,

whatever its name -

and I wish great welcome to the snow,

whatever its severe and comfortless

and beautiful meaning.