Pregnancy in Three Parts

I have now been pregnant for 39 weeks and three days, or, if you're measuring on emotional time, since the Reagan administration.

I've learned some things in the last 39 weeks. I've learned that, if I cry hard enough, I will have a great big nosebleed in public. I've learned that maternity clothes are actually a necessity. I've learned that stretch marks can lead me down a dark and self-loathing garden; I may compare my belly to the alien heads from Mars Attacks! I've learned that sex becomes something other people do—I recall it fondly, the same way Martin Scorsese recalls the New York City of his youth. I've learned that carbohydrates are truly a non-negotiable part of this process, and any attempt to fend them off will end poorly.

QED: Pregnancy is a beautiful, disgusting, competitive, life-affirming, lonely, amazing process.

First Trimester
Terror level: I will probably have a miscarriage

The first trimester is all about secrets. I have a vivid memory of riding up to my parent's farm in a packed car, five weeks along, and utterly terrified that I was going to have a miscarriage right there on the highway. The car was full of friends, gossiping and laughing, and I was gossiping and laughing right along with them, but my skin was absolutely buzzing with anxiety. No-one knew I was pregnant—at that point, telling people felt astrologically unlucky, as if revealing the pregnancy would make the tiny magician growing inside me disappear.

This was a few weeks before morning (or, in my case, early-evening and every-time-I-opened-the-fridge) sickness began in earnest, but I was already feeling averse to farmhouse dinner classics like steak, and booze was off the table for all the obvious reasons. Over the next weeks, I boomeranged from a Paleo-ish diet to one that was 80% carbohydrates. Rice noodles, potatoes, perogies, macaroni and cheese—soft, white foods for my soft, white body. Red meat was disgusting, vegetables doubly so. I had to pretend like it was all normal, like I was my usual self. But keeping up appearances, all while trying to secretly process this massive life change, was exhausting. I was cranky and sore. I said mean things. I went to bed at 9 PM.

When we finally started telling people around week 12, it was a huge relief. It felt like I had accomplished something, even though the only thing I had done was be healthy and genetically on-point enough to make a bundle of cells multiply without any major disasters.

Second Trimester
Terror level: The baby is dead inside.

All the books I read mentioned this phenomenon of waking up one morning and feeling just dandy. Morning sickness would have vanished overnight, and the four or five pounds over the last few months I'd gained wouldn't yet be noticeable. I'd be normal again! Hooray! The books also mentioned that, for some personality types, this sudden shift would provoke a feeling of dread—they stressed that no longer "feeling pregnant" didn't mean anything sinister was happening inside; my body had stopped fighting the fetus as a little intruder and had instead distracted itself with Twizzlers and sleep.

One of the biggest hurdles I've faced in this pregnancy is coming to terms with the fact that I am very, very, annoyingly, normal. For years, I believed I was exceptional, and that the rules of nature and man didn't really apply to me. I took eight years to do an undergraduate degree, but dagnabit, I did it! I peed in the streets and never got caught! I was the only writer in the history of the world who struggled with her own worthiness! I was the most jilted of exes, the most damaged of drinkers, the most sanctimonious of bank customers. I was a unique and special snowflake!

Yeah: no. My pregnancy has been textbook. I have suffered all the aches and pains of the childbearing sisterhood—no more, no less. I've had the emotional rollercoaster, the sleep issues, the back pain, the leaky boobs, the nosebleeds, the mood swings, the stretch marks, the anxiety, the separated abs, the nesting instinct, all of it. (My only exception was a greater reliance on mental health resources—after we moved in September, I spend three weeks weeping and imagining myself walking out in front of a Mac truck—but even that faded with time.) One of the great realizations of my adulthood, coming late in the game and awash in hormones, is that I am not special. I can't escape that I am part of the crowd, and my experiences are firmly mid-pack. I didn't invent, or even improve on, any aspect of this process.

Thanks for that great reveal, baby.

Third Trimester
Terror level: I will go into labour any second now.

I biked until I was seven months pregnant, and I walked until there was too much ice on the ground for it to feel safe. I reveled in my luxurious pregnancy hair, and marveled at how clear my skin was. I rubbed lotions and oils onto my belly, massaged cream onto my poor chapped nipples, and finally started eating vegetables again. I wore black; it was slimming. 

I still feel disgusting. It wasn't just the weight gain, although that was definitely challenging. It's all the auxiliary events. For instance, I started lactating at five months along, and have woken up most nights since with either a wet shirt or stained sheets. My crotch is perpetually swampy. I've had heartburn so bad it's left me in tears. Getting out of bed in the morning is a full-body spasm of tight muscles and hips that feel like they might just explode out from under me. And my back! My poor back. Sing songs of remembrance for my back.

In some ways, this trimester has been easier than the others. I'm sleeping okay, even with the heartburn, which is a blessing. The baby is big and active, with lots of sea-monsterish kicks and rolls. (Hello, you are alive!) My husband has been an absolutely dreamboat, reassuring me that, yep, he still thinks I'm beautiful. He's thanked me for doing this with him, and we have been more tender with each other than ever before. I'm also shifting into feeling ready to be a mom—to have this tiny stranger come live with us. To teach them things, to learn things in return. Even labour, which I had been dreading, is starting to seem more like something I can actually do, not just a torture I will have to endure.

***

Everyone says that having a baby will change everything. I believe this is is true, but I believe it in the same way that leaving home changes everything, or the illness of a loved one changes everything, or gaining or losing a lot of money changes everything. These things have an impact on us. This is a step, a change. We'll lose some things—and maybe some people—and gain others. What, exactly, that entails, remains to be seen.

For now, I'm looking forward to nursing in the soft pink glow of my salt-rock lamp. I'm looking forward to sleepy baby yawns. I'm looking forward to exercising again! I'm looking forward to sleeping on my stomach. I'm looking forward to watching M chat with the baby as they cuddle on the couch. I'm looking forward to seeing the little sneaker grab for our food. I'm looking forward to naps, to walks, to figuring out the baby carrier, to pouty lips, to first words. I'm looking forward to my parents becoming grandparents! I'm looking forward to reading Where the Wild Things Are to our child, and being able to see their little face when we do it.

We'll eat you up, we love you so.

Image via Creative Thursday

Graceland, and Other Problems

In 1986, Paul Simon released what was widely regarded as one of the albums of the year, if not the decade. Graceland, which debuted at #1 in the United States, regularly topped critical top-ten lists that year; it remained important throughout the rest of the century, appearing as #81 on Rolling Stone's Top 500 Albums of All Time list, as #69 on the Guardian's 100 Best Albums Ever, and on NPR's 300 Most Important Records of the 20th Century rundown. It moved more than five million copies in the US, and went platinum five times over in the UK.


Graceland, which was Simon's sixth studio album, wasn't without its critics. He recorded with South African musicians during an apartheid government; as a result, he was denounced by the ANC for breaking the cultural boycott that had been in effect since the 1950, which was enacted to bring attention to the plight of Black artists living under the regime. While the UN supported Simon—and his stance that he was working with the musicians, not the government—others saw the album as creating solidarity with Pretoria.

The album is a deeply personal expression of loneliness and loss enmeshed withing a global sound. South African musicians like Ladysmith Black Mambazo share billing with American artists like Linda Ronstadt, while the musical influences range from straight-up mbube to N'awlins-flavoured zydeco. Simon fuses these sounds with his own boy-from-New York sensibilities; in the end, Graceland is one of those albums that defines an artist and a moment in time.

Okay, so: why talk about Graceland in 2016?

Because I don't think Graceland could have been made in the 2010s. I don't think Joe Strummer and the Mescalero's excellent 2001 album Global a Go-Go could have been produced in 2016. Our world has become more global and more tuned-in to injustice, both historical and on-going, and we've become more politically correct. We're much more willing to point to cultural appropriation when we see it happening, and say, "hey, that's not right."

But I'm struggling with something: exactly how, in this moment, do I tap into things like hip-hop music, or yoga, or reggaeton, or Asian fusion food, and not seem like I'm stealing something? Globally influenced music produced by white people is one of the easiest things to point to in this category and go "hmmm," but there are lots of others.

Tina Fey was in the news this week when she talked about "opting out" of apologizing for media—in her case, it was the Jane Krakowski-is-a-secret-Native American storyline on last year's Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. Fey told Net-A-Porter that from now on, her jokes would speak for themselves. This week's episode of movie podcast The Canon focused on Gunga Din, the 1930s swashbuckling adventure set in colonial India—drink every time the hosts said the word "problematic" and you'd be soused before the commercial break—but they spent a lot of time wondering how to fit older, less evolved media into our current understanding of the world. Do we discard it? Do we keep it in the history books, albeit with an asterisk? Jesus, what do we do with Flula's cover of Macklemore's "Thrift Shop"? A uber-white European dude, aping a white Seattle rapper, aping Black hip-hop?

We live in a global world. Hell, Toronto is one of the most diverse places on the planet, and it would be weird to have so many different types of people mixing together all day long without someone influencing the other. But I'm also aware that "mixing" is a relative term here—Toronto still struggles with the ghettoization of immigrants and people of colour, of queer and trans people, of poor people—that creates this false impression of diversity without ever creating real challenges to people's expectations of others. We can pat ourselves on the back for creating Drake, while still allowing Black men and women to suffer the indignities and injustices of racial profiling by police.

I'm a white lady, living a comfortable lifestyle, and I know—I know—that a lot of this could be read as "but I want my yoga class and my Ethiopian food and my hip-hop jams!" But the truth is, I feel a bit frozen. I don't want to be an asshole. I don't want to take, or take over, something that isn't mine. But I also don't want to feel like the only stuff I can believe in in an authentic way has to spring from the potato-girded loins of my Polish foremothers.

When I was in high school, I started getting into hip-hop in a big way. I read books, watched documentaries, listened to dozens of different albums from the late 1970s through to the present. I was fascinated by the genesis of the genre, because when I was sixteen, the idea of being alienated and underrespected, of having no job and no money, of having friends and music and of needing an escape, were things I saw in myself too. I was obviously not running from the cops, or enveloped in a systematically racist society, or living in a drug epidemic, but there was some overlap. It met my emotional needs in a way that, say, N*SYNC did not. And now I wonder, was I being appropriative? Or appreciative?

I want to consume media and culture from the people who make it, not the people who ape it. This seems clear, and morally and ethically okay. For example, buying terrible Native American rip-offs from multinational chains is bogus, and can easily be corrected. (Just buy your Native art from actual Native people, jagoffs.) There are weird blurred lines, like all the Korean-run sushi places on Bloor street, where someone is ripping off someone else, but it's not up to me to get involved. And then there are moments where I just need to stand in solidarity: post the link, make the donation, push for the interview, but know that the community members are leading the actual work under their own auspices and priorities (see: trans* activism, for example, or #BlackLivesMatter).

But when there's collaboration and crossover—when Graceland happens—the waters become murky. And I don't really know what to do! Can I appreciate, or participate? Or is my role to stay on the sidelines and witness? This is maybe the only actual instance of "white people problems"—how to move through the world without causing more problems, compounding the sins of the people who look like me, who act like me, who are me.

Intentional

I love making New Year's Resolutions, but because I'm human, I am truly terrible at keeping them. They're a perennial (literally) favourite of mine! And, not to brag, but a lot of the resolutions I've set for myself over the past few years have come to pass, even if they were sort of by accident. I've made my peace with my body (or at least I had; we'll just have to see what a post-baby incarnation looks like and what kind of spirit work it requires), which means I no longer "need" to lose x-number of pounds. I've accepted my Coke Zero habit, mostly don't eat junk food, and I quit smoking ages ago.

But that doesn't mean there aren't things in my life that wouldn't benefit from some changes. Resolutions, adjustments, goals, habits to break or create, things I need to examine or challenge, and all the other work that goes into the improvement of a human being. In the spirit of the new year, here are some of my 2016 goals:

1. Set a monthly intention. A friend of mine does this, and I think it's pure genius. Whether it's practicing more gratitude, getting outside more often, working on a relationship that needs some TLC, or some other goal, holding it in my mind for a month seems doable. I'm a person who, every so often, will "make a five year plan": this is literally just a half-baked spreadsheet with columns like FINANCE and LOVE and I'm stumped on how to fill out the cells. I do much better with short-term goals, like giving up sugar or social media for a month, and I often find that these experiments act as a window into my priorities. Like, giving up sugar was horrible, because it tapped into the obsessive, punitive part of my brain. Better to just have a bit of chocolate and be cool with it, you know? Anyway, a monthly intention may just be enough focus in a year which I'm sure will have its share of hairiness.

2. Stop taking everything so damn personally. I am...not very good at this. From other people's weddings to celebrity bodies, it can be a real challenge to remember that these things are not happening at me, and I don't need to react to them as though I've been personally wronged. This happens literally all the time, from the mundane (I didn't win an Instagram giveaway! I am bad at Instagram and am also a loser!) to the meaningful (before I was married, unchecked jealousy over other people's engagements left me feeling like I'd been doused in lye). Being able to celebrate people's milestones and accomplishments is the mark of a healthy soul, and it's something I need to cultivate in myself before I shrivel up into a husk. I've been working on this for years already, so this is more of a reminder to, you know, keep at it!

As a corollary, if my husband happens to have a grumpy face when he's talking to me, he might not be grumpy at me (although he definitely might be: I have been known to push a button or two). I want to be able to hear past an angry tone, an interruption, or a misspoken word, and not weaponize it and turn it back onto the person. I want to be able to hear the message without getting all bent out of shape about the delivery. Personal criticism is vital for growth (prune the dead branches, etc), but it doesn't always come in an embossed envelope, delivered by singing baby angels.

3. Stop swearing (in conversation). I love salty language. I've peppered my speech with forbidden words since the fifth grade, when I realized that my parents weren't actually in class with me and couldn't do much about it (my big transgression? Telling a classmate to shut up, which, along with hate, stupid, and dumb, was definitely Not Allowed in my house). I swear like a sailor with my friends and my therapists, and I love it. It's fun! But, if I'm being perfectly honest, swearing is also sort of déclassé and aggressive. I hate that I'm more likely to drop an f-bomb when I'm angry, or when I'm trying to come across as cool or tough. Removing rough language from my speech doesn't mean I don't feel angry, or want to seem cool or tough; it just means I don't have a convenient crutch to lean on to convey those thigs. And I can definitely keep using the whole dictionary, including the R-rated entries, in my writing. Sometimes, a sister just needs to write fuuuuuck, you know?

2016 is going be a nutty year for a lot of different reasons. We're transitioning from a two-person family to welcoming a third. My parents and siblings are in flux right now, and "home" is undergoing a radical redefinition. I have creative projects simmering in my brain, but they've not yet come to full boil. And, as the year passes, time will stretch and slow like it always does. The days will be long and the weeks short, and vice versa. "One day at a time" is such a cliche, but even cliches have their usefulness.

The Girl and the Bird

 Once upon a time, there was a girl who lived in the city. She was a happy girl, more or less: she had friends and family near and far, and she had a bike to ride, and good food to eat, and a happy boy by her side. The girl was a wild one: she wore feathers in her hair and rode her bike on the empty streets of the midnight city, daring the world to come up and meet her.

Most often, the world did.

One night, the girl was riding her bike when she happened across a tiny bird in the middle of the street. The bird did not fly away when she pedaled towards it; instead, it cocked its head at her and blinked. Despite its tiny size, it seemed fearless. The girl slowed her bike down. The streetlight pooled orange glow across the road, and the moon rose slowly beside them.

The girl looked at the bird. The bird looked at the girl. Nothing around them moved. Even the treetops were still. The girl smiled gently, silently inviting the little bird closer. The bird hopped, once, twice, then stopped. The girl smiled. A tenderness flew through her, unexpected on this ordinary night.

Then the bird let out one small sound, and its body fell to the side. Its tiny talons curled up, and its eyes closed.

Dead? Dead.

The girl let out a cry she did not hear. Without thinking, she scooped the little bird up into her hand. It weighed barely anything at all: it was lighter than a rose in bloom, smaller than a handful of snow. It did not move as she held it near to her face. She looked through tears for signs of life.

Nothing.

The girl was still astride her bicycle, still in the middle of the street. Because she didn't know what else to do, she swung leg over her frame and carried the tiny body over to the sidewalk. She placed the bird gently on the pavement, then stood and looked at it from her full girl's height.

It was so small. Surely nothing this small could have suffered for long.

The girl sat on the curb and allowed her sadness to rise up. A sob slipped out, then another. The night around her blurred into orange light and shadows. The moon's full face disappeared under her tears. The bird lay beside her, quiet in death.

Then the girl heard a sound. Another bird had landed, cheeping madly at the girl, at the tiny body beside her. Then another bird landed. Soon, the girl and the body were surrounded by a tiny quorum of birds, all crying into the night.

The girl pushed herself back up to her feet. The birds fell silent for a moment, watching her rise. Then they turned their attention back to the death at hand. It was impossible for the girl to know—were these other birds friends? Family? Perhaps a lovebird, drawn to the scene by the tidal knowledge of death? All mourning in their own raptorish way?

As the girl watched, each took a turn running its beak along their fallen friend's feathers. It was a gentle thing, made strange and beautiful under the orange glow of the streetlight. The birds paid her no heed as they tended to their friend.

The girl walked back to her bicycle and looked once more at the birds on the sidewalk. They were silent now, looking down at the tiny body.

The girl did not smile as she rode away, but neither did she cry. Instead, she felt the love she held in her heart for her own flock rise up over the city like a wing on the breeze.

Image via Karl Martens via My Modern Met

Things That Happened in 2015

January: We kick off the year with a gorgeous sunny day and two feasts. Brunch is, and probably always will be, one of my favourite meals to eat outside the house (and, to be honest, inside the house and also beside the house and pretty much anywhere, let's be real), so when Julia invites us over for a New Year's Day brunch, and it's bright and sunny, how can we say no? A few hours later, a group of us troop over to Mother's Dumplings in Chinatown and eat our body weight in dumplings and Chinese broccoli; then we all decamp to our place to watch Blade Runner. This is the way every year starts now, and it's one of my favourite traditions.

February: I head up to the Beaver Valley to spend the Family Day weekend with friends, while Mike stays home to play catchup with work. The weekend is relatively uneventful—board games, homemade dinners, reading the New Yorker in bed—except for the afternoon I spend nearly freezing to death on the side of the road.

The story? The general store, which is across the street from Emmett's house, does not carry pretzels, and when I ask where is the nearest store that does, the clerk waves her hand and says, "About eight minutes up the road, just out of the valley." I figure, hey: I'm dressed warmly. I've got a backlog of 99% Invisible episodes queued up on my iPod. I'll walk to get some pretzels! So I set out. It's sadistically cold outside, but the sun is shining and it's all okay.

After about fifteen minutes, I'm halfway out of the valley and there has been no store. After about thirty-five minutes, I am fully out of the valley, picking my way down the side of the road, grimly determined to come back with pretzels, dammit. Roman Mars drones in my ear. After forty-five minutes, I give up. There are no stores, barely any houses, and I am way, way out of town.

When I turn around, I realize that I've been walking with the wind at my back. Now, the -38 windchill racks my face, shooting into my hood, stinging my eyes, ruddying my cheeks immediately. I get a chill that has nothing to do with the temperature: it's my body recognizing that I am in serious trouble a half-second before my brain does. I have no phone, I don't know Emmett's number, and I am deeply fucked. The snot running down my face freezes, but I'm too cold to feel it.I can barely catch my breath.

By the time I get back to the top of the Beaver valley, the sun has begun to set. By the time I get back to the general store, the temperature has dropped another few degrees. The clerk looks up as I re-enter the store. "Did you get your pretzels?" she asks cheerily. I ignore her question and say, "When you said 'eight minutes,' did you mean walking or driving?"

She has the good grace to look stricken. 

To punish her, I buy a very expensive gluten-free butter tart and a warm can of Diet Coke, and return to Emmett's. He and Hannah look up when I come in. "Where'd you go?" he says mildly.

"I need to sit in front of the fireplace for a while," I say. My face is red and the skin around my mouth and nose is raw and heedless of touch. It will stay that way for nearly a week.

March: I quit my job! After five months of working with a boss who doesn't understand the difference between an executive assistant, an office manager, and a 24/7 on-call mindreader who is expected to know the difference between ahem and aHEM when he clears his throat/asks for something, I'm ready to move on. Also, the ceiling in our apartment's bathroom caves in. The two are not related.

April:  I get my first writing commission, I start a new column at Torontoist, we meet an astronaut, I start writing for Yonge Street Media, and I can do two and a half minutes of burpees without vomiting. I am terrified that I will never have any money again, but things are happening, and it feels good.

May: Pregnant. Pregnant! Pregnant. PREGNANT. We are pregnant. I am pregnant. It is the weirdest thing. I feel totally normal—I keep working out, I keep riding my bike, my appetite is pretty good—and I assume, like an idiot, that the entire pregnancy will progress this way. Somewhere, the goddess rubs her hands together with glee and engraves several lightning bolts of Truth and Calamity with my name.

June: Ah, here we are. I feel like garbage. I get an ultrasound, and yes, there is a tiny human jellybean inside of me. It has a heartbeat. Later in the month, I vomit on the sidewalk in front of a bar. I'm definitely pregnant.

July: My dad has cancer. A melanoma that was not-quite-excised from his cheek six years ago has hid quietly in his body; now, it's back, with lumps under his arm and in his lungs. I tell him that I love him. Later that night, I get up and go into the bathroom and weep. Then I write down all the things I know about him: memories, sayings, advice, his story, his life. I force myself to write it in the present tense.

I tell some friends, but not many: the process of telling people is exhausting. My dad is vibrant, vivacious, funny, and very much alive. Cancer, especially melanoma, is widely regarded as a death sentence. I realize that telling people means comforting them, and I am too exhausted to do that. I keep the news mostly to myself. He starts treatment, an immunotherapy that turbocharges his blood and allows him to keep his quality of life high.

August: The bar below our apartment begins extensive renovations. We are awoken most days at 7 AM, and work often continues past midnight, seven days a week The demolition is loud—think tile drillers, concrete drills, jackhammers—and we receive no notice that it's happening. Contacting the landlord reveals nothing. I end up texting with the site foreman, who is livid on our behalf that we weren't told in advance, or updated...but the landlords are also his bosses and they want this job done yesterday. Our fire alarm rings at odd times. The water periodically shuts off. Contractors show up unannounced at our door to fix these problems, and leave having broken the fire alarm. I feel like I'm going insane.

September: We move. Our new place is on a residential street, on the ground floor of a house. We have a tiny playground just down the road, and all of Saint Clair West to explore. It's a nice place to have a baby. But also: I throw my back out lifting boxes, and it takes weeks to recover. My pregnancy hormones are through the roof. Our new bathtub is too small for me to sit in comfortably, so a major self-care ritual disappears from my life. All I want to do is cry. Instead, I call my midwife, and she refers me to a prenatal psychiatrist. I do not feel better, but I feel like I could feel better, and that's good enough for now.

October: My dad finishes cancer treatment. I go to Stratford for a week to spend time with my parents, and to visit my out-of-province sister, and I drink champagne with him. We listen to  miraculous baseball games on the radio. We cheers—"To life!" every time—and sometimes we cry. Things could be good, or maybe bad, but for now, we're all together. It feels close enough to normal, but of course, it's not.

When I get back to Toronto, our downstairs neighbour falls asleep with his deep-fryer running and starts a fire. At 11:50 PM on the Monday of the Thanksgiving weekend, we are on the sidewalk, frantically trying to figure out where we might sleep that night, because our apartment—our new apartment!—is full of smoke.

Later that week, we have a gas leak in our apartment. It is impossible not to think dark thoughts.

November: I spend three days with my mom, driving around Prince Edward County, swimming in salt water pools, eating fancy-ish meals, and just feeling held. I take many baths. I read several issues of The New Yorker.

We get the test results back for my dad: the lumps under his arms are gone, and the ones in his lungs are much smaller. It is possible to feel like things might be okay, at least for a while. Okay, and a while, are enough.

The baby is kicking, moving, tumbling through me. I check out books about natural childbirth from the library and do not read them. January feels close. I look down and I don't see a pregnant body—I see a fat one—and I realize with a start that, even though I've been pregnant for six months, I still haven't internalized it. I am flooded with terror about motherhood, and about delivery, and about change. It's a huge feeling, made huger by the fact that I didn't really know it was there. It's like opening your door one morning and discovering that you now live on the top of a mountain; it's still possible to do stuff, but the commute takes longer and you're tired by the end of it. M is so supportive. I have fallen in love with him in a deeper way, and this takes me by surprise.

December: We are doing our best to prepare for baby, and also save money, and also finally unpack everything from the move, but things are slow. In lieu of shopping or cooking, I knit like a fiend. Socks and baby hats and tiny sweaters fly off my needles. I listen to hours and hours of podcasts. We offer to host Christmas dinner. We take prenatal classes. We lie in bed and read to each other. My back hurts, so I sleep on the couch. I take pictures of my stomach. M and I see Star Wars: The Force Awakens and he is pleased. I do the crossword. We eat perogies and burritos, rum cake and stir fry. We invite people to our house to watch Blade Runner on New Year's Day.

The Force

Full disclosure: Star Wars, as an experience, wasn't really part of my childhood vernacular. I think my parents—my dad, probably—sat us all down at some point and showed us the original movie. In some ways, this was likely along the same lines as "sometimes we go to church," or, "yes, you have to learn fractions": just another thing to teach your kids so that they grow up to be well-rounded adults.

I have a distinct memory of being utterly confused by the trash compactor scene in Star Wars: I had somehow missed their descent down the chute, and I was flummoxed by the eel-thing that seemed to live there, and frankly, the whole idea of compacting a room full of wet garbage was just weird enough for me to not really grasp wtf was going on. As the movie went on, already-familiar pop culture icons like Darth Vader shared the screen with ideas that seemed to make no sense, like blowing up a moon-sized space station by firing into an exhaust pipe. (I mean, say what you will about George Lucas, but he honored the shit out of the sanitation department in that movie.) I remember walking away feeling sort of confused, and maybe a little let down—that was what the hype was about?

I don't remember if there were follow-up home screenings of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. I was sixteen when the prequels started coming out, and I remember leaving the theatres with that same sense of let-down-ness: was that it? A bunch of dudes in housecoats flipping around with light sabers, interminable political "drama," and Natalie Portman dressed in either parade floats, or a midriff-baring fighting ensemble? This was what everyone had been waiting for?

Actually, no. I know now that the prequels are widely regarded as terrible, but at the time, I wasn't sure enough in my own critical voice to make that statement. In the face of high school nerds, who wield a powerful nerdery indeed, it seemed impossible that the prequels might not actually be any good. And, in 1999 (much like today), the hype machine around these movies was absurd. Besides, there were always the old movies to fall back on, with Lando and Boba Fett and the cantina on Mos Eisley. You know: the good ones. The blemish of the prequels couldn't mar the original trilogy; if anything, it heightened their importance, making them even more precious.

In 2010, I lived with my parents for a summer, and I undertook a crash course in film and pop culture: I watched Michael Fassbender's Hunger and the X-Men movies, I watched a jillion Westerns and Hitchcock flicks, and I watched classic cartoon. I rented out half the video shelf of the local library, figuring that, if they thought these were worth spending taxpayer dollars on, I should probably see them. It was that summer I decided to revisit the Star Wars universe.

Again, they failed to imprint themselves on my heart. But at least this time, I could kind of figure out why. As a pop-culture phenomenon, Star Wars isn't designed for 26-year-old women who are killing time before they have to go wait tables; it's meant for people who can obsessively comb through the entire universe, learning the names of various minor characters, robot models, and alien races. It's meant to introduce the Western and the Ronin and the Opera and the Love Story to kids and tweens, to show them that stories, no matter where they're set or who they star, often have the same skeletons under their skins. It opens up metaphysical questions around good and evil, and the choices we make about those forces, but leaves the concept of God or a church well outside the frame. It is storytelling 101, each building block neatly lined up beside the next one, and just different enough from anything that had come before to seem fresh and important.

Which brings me to The Force Awakens. A girlfriend recently asked me, "On a scale of zero to ten, how many fucks do you give about Star Wars?" I conceded that I give three fucks: one for the sheer intensity of the pop-culture phenomenon; one for my husband, who loves these movies; and one for my curiosity about if these new installations are going to live up to the original trilogy, or bottom out like the prequels did.

I would love to spoil The Force Awakens for you, but I will not. But I'll say this: the new movie is fun. It doesn't really matter if you're heavily invested in either the original trilogy or the prequels—as long as you have a passing knowledge of characters (which is pretty standard in 21st century life), you'll be fine. This movie is darker and more explosive that the loins from which it sprang; it's also funnier, more beautiful, and more feminist than anything that came before it. It is silly and serious, important and also a trifle, and very fun to watch. It's definitely a 21st century Star Wars, but I think that makes it better: it fits into the original canon but doesn't try to match it beat for beat.

If you want to introduce your kids to Star Wars, don't start with the Force Awakens. Start with the original trilogy, and let them (maybe) be bored and confused. Movie-making has changed dramatically in the last forty years, and going from Star Wars to The Force Awakens shows exactly how much. But same bones of story—family, adventure, new romance, ancient forces—are still vibrant and present across all the movies. The old ones are still relevant, even as they get a little creaky; the new one, despite its whippersnapperish peacocking, is more than able to hang with its ancestors.

Oh, and it goes without saying: skip the prequels. Nobody's kids need to see that.

Master of Some

Aziz Ansanri has never been "my" kind of comedian. Despite him being pretty much exactly the same age as me, I think of him as belonging to the 20-something set, maybe because his jokes are in the "modern foibles" category of comedy: lots of raised eyebrows at relationships, texting etiquette, and what-does-it-all-mean personal identity questions that dog most of through our formative years (and, in my case, waaaay beyond).

In what is probably his most famous role, Tom Haverford on Parks and Rec, Ansari played the archetype of a self-proclaimed big fish in a small pond. He was especially adept at playing the businessman-dreamer, which only really works when you're in a tiny town and you think your insane ideas are viable business options because you haven't seen the inevitable New York City iteration hit the skids.

Ansari is funny and personable, both as Tom and in his stand-up persona. His Wikipedia page proclaims that he's a feminist, which, in an age where male comedians constantly interrogate female comedians, and women generally, on their ability to perceive unfunny boys'-club "jokes" as anything other than subtle violence, is a relief. He's been on critically acclaimed shows, like Flight of the Conchords way back in '07, and done voice work for Adventure Time and the Venture Brothers. He was on Scrubs, acting as a bridge between the JD years and the terrible, best-to-be-ignored intern-centric reboot. He's made good choices!

Last month, he launched Master of None on Netlfix. He plays Dev, who's sort of like Hannah Horvath's to Ansari's Lena Dunham: Dev seems like a lightly fictionalized version of Ansari. Dev's single, a foodie, an emerging actor with a few commercials and a role in a terrible action movie under his belt. Ansari cast his real-life parents as Dev's parents, further blurring the line between reality and fiction (and, despite his mother's total inability to not look at the camera, their scenes are hella charming). Dev often speaks in the sing-song cadence that Aziz adopts in his stand-up sets, and has the same interest in surface/sparkle/shine that he embodied with Tom Haverford.

For the most part, I liked Master of None. It forefronted some interesting questions around race, in big ways (why don't we see more minorities in the media?) and in smaller ones (the "black virus" movie). It was especially smart around its treatment of second-generation immigrants—the kids whose parents might be intimately familiar with how to kill a chicken, but for whom chicken comes in nugget form only.

And yet, I can't love it unreservedly. It falls for a couple stupid sitcom storylines—kids will ruin your life, dummy! your relationships are doomed for failure!—and, despite their racial diversity, Dev's friends aren't actually characters we haven't seen before. The dialog feels stilted sometimes, as though the actors are reciting lines written by fourth graders.

We are in an age of comedian auteurs. People who started in stand-up or in other people's writer's rooms are now producing and starring in their own shows. With Louie or The Mindy Project or Master of None, we see autobiographical details bump up against the fantasy world of television. Someone, and I can't remember who, wrote that Louie is what happens when you actually dramatize the hyperbole that makes stand-up sets so funny; likewise, The Mindy Project is best understood as a rom-com, with all the meet-cutes and false barriers and redemption arcs that genre embraces. If I had to guess, I would say that Master of None works on upending our expectations of race and relationships? Or maybe it's about Millennials? Or...something else?

I can't quite put my finger on why I don't fully connect with Master of None. At first I thought it was because I am now an old grumpy pregnant married person, and this show is about being Young, Hot, and Fun™, but I watch plenty of shows that aren't directly about who I am in this current moment. But Master of None is so much about surfaces that it can be a little distracting. 

The best moments on the show are when he decides to dig a little deeper—ask his parents about their immigrant experience, instead of keeping them at arm's length, or actually care about the experience of the women he works with, instead of assuming he already knows what their lives are like—but there are also so many moments when he focuses on the outward appearance of his life. He wants a relationship that's 100% perfect at all times; he wants the cleanest apartment; he wants the nattiest outfit. The idea that perfection and surface sheen are desirable, let alone achievable and maintainable, is barely examined. His sing-song cadence reinforces the notion that life is a thing to be performed rather than lived, and it's only in the last episode that we start seeing actions that challenge that, and there's precious little emotional work to go along with these changes. 

Master of None is a good show—not a great show, but a good one—and watching it was a pleasure. Ansari raises interesting questions, and answers some of them adeptly. But still: I just wish there had been more there there, you know?