15% Brain

Since 85% of my brain right now is baby pudding, I am feeling lazy and tired and sort of sanguine. Here's where the other 15% percent of my brain is:

• Holy god, I am going to get the diabeetus, but I'm mainlining chocolate and cookies and Jello cups like there's no tomorrow. I think maybe it has to do with breastfeeding, but it's unreal.
  
  
  
• I like our house, but I don't love our house. It's creaky, it always smells like weird soups (thanks, upstairs neighbours/landlords!), and there always seems to be some new structural deficit being uncovered. From blown fuses to gas leaks to negligent downstairs neighbours who set fires to underheated rooms to rotting back decks, it has some...problem areas. And the joys of being a renter means we can't really fix them. But since we just moved last fall, and we have a new baby, there's no real point in focusing on the negative. I just daydream about moving into a place where we have all four walls to ourselves.
  
  
• That being said, I find myself really homesick right now. I love my husband, I love our new baby, but I kind of just want to curl up in Stratford. I miss small-town libraries, local coffee shops, walks in the woods, car rides. I miss downtowns. I miss small-town high school kids, because their punkishness and their art-school airs never fail to make me nostalgic for my own shitty adolescence. I miss feeling like a big deal, because it's possible to feel that way in a small town.
  
  
• On that hometown thing: I think I actually miss the relative safety net of living at home and being taken care of. I'm feeling drained by the emotional work of just being around a baby all day long. The constant feedings, begging my screaming baby to tell me what's wrong, booking all the people who want to meet the little one, the lack of good sleep. It's exhausting! M is terrific at taking care of me, don't get me wrong. But right now, Toronto seems overwhelming in a way that Stratford doesn't. Plus: I miss my parents. Double plus: I'm now back at work, and I can't say that I'm stoked.
  
  
• The guy I had a major, red-alert crush on in high school has authored a children's book. I mean, come on. The last time I saw him, I literally hid from him in an art supply store, because it was like seeing a celebrity and I froze. I am such a bonehead sometimes. Anyway, the children's book thing: I've decided to not let it bum me that he's a fancy author; I'm going to use it as inspiration to follow my own dreams. Maybe one day, I can hide from him at a writer's convention!
  
  
• I can't wait to get back into working out. Not only is my post-baby gut a major bummer, but I'm getting all stiff and achy from sitting around all the time. But the upside to this enforced sedentary lifestyle is that we're burning through Parks & Rec in record time. Leslie Knope! I love her.
  
  
• I want to get a tattoo. I keep badgering M about getting something matching, but I also want one for me. I feel like it's nearly time.
  
  
• I have a new writing project. Details to come... 

Image via Fuck Yeah Paganism

Creative Juices

Maybe it's because I'm literally tethered to the baby seven hours each day while I nurse him, or maybe it's because I'm awake at weird hours, or maybe it's because hanging out with a one-month old baby is sort of tedious (they are terrible conversationalists, honestly), but since NS was born, I've been experiencing this burst of creative energy.

I keep thinking about tattoos I want, 'zines I could make, blog posts I want to write. I'm designing the floor plan of my forest getaway house (it includes a wall of books, an outdoor hot tub, and space for the three of us to chill on the deck). I'm thinking about writing, a lot. I'm thinking about how and where I want to make my money, where I want to live, the animals I want in my life, the people I value, the aesthetics that please me. And I'm thinking about how all of that reflection gets synthesized into making and doing, eventually. (Not now. Right now, I need another nap.)

This time in my life feels like a huge reset button. It is not a restful time or an easy process, and I'm resisting parts of it. Instead of feeling like a "mom," all natural and easy-breezy, I feel like this baby has crash-landed in our cabbage patch and I've been randomly selected to take care of him. I feel conflicted and confused by a lot of this new identity. Like, I want mom-friends, and I also feel like an asshole for seeking out people just because we happened to have birthed a child at roughly the same time. I want to adore this baby whole-heartedly, and I also find part of this time deeply boring and stressful. I want to be part of the crunchy-mom scene, but I have to use a breastfeeding pillow and my kid seems to hate being worn. I want to be free of things like despairing over my post-baby body, and yet, I look at myself and I think, "You fatty." I had a baby 24 days ago; my brain is not what it once was.

I think a huge part of becoming a parent and a mom is processing all the weird, hinky little details that have come up. For example: I have not yet mastered putting the baby into a stupid ring sling, even though it's literally a strip of fabric and there seems to be no real way to screw it up. And yet, here I am, screwing it up, listening to NS scream in my ear every time I try to jam his little feet into the carrier. I feel like a bad mom, that I can't intuit all these details about mommy-ness.

And I want to talk about it! I want to create art about it. But not just about motherhood. I want to make up more baby songs, but I also want to remember and reconfigure who I am as an adult outside of the baby-ness. Maybe I'm fooling myself by thinking it's possible to separate myself from this child right now, but there's a part of me that really wishes I could do that. And I think this creative energy, which is centered around stuff that I like and stuff I want to do, is part of that. It is daydreaming, it is fantasy, but it is necessary for my sanity.

A few weeks ago, when I was hormonal as eff and crying on the phone with my mom, she said, very kindly, "You have to put your own oxygen mask on first, you know." I've been struck by that—I have to take care of myself on the very basic levels (getting enough water, for instance. Breastfeeding leaves a bitch parched), but also on some of the higher levels, too. I need to read The New Yorker in bed, and I need to write, and I need to dream. And some of those dreams are family affairs, and some of them are just for me. They are my oxygen mask these days.

Two Weeks

 Things I know now that I didn't know two weeks ago:

Breastfeeding is hard. When I was a little girl, I yearned for big boobs. What I got were big, soft, large-areola'ed breasts that are more matronly than sexy, but whatever, it's fine. But those same big soft boobs are damned difficult for this baby to get a latch on. Every time I breastfeed, it's a complicated process of getting my hands, his head, my nipple, his mouth, all exactly in alignment. Also, I have ton of milk, so the poor little dude ends up getting sprayed, or choking, or getting his teeny shoulders hunched up with stress. It breaks my heart. This is getting slightly easier, but it's definitely been a challenge, and I can anticipate it continuing on that way for a while.

Postpartum sweating is a thing. Holy mother of God, I have never been sweatier in my life. I wake up to a mattress that has been soaked through; I get hot flashes when I nurse. I don't know why (I think it has something to do with the body shedding water weight?) but it's freaky-deaky.

TV you can ignore is key. We rewatched the first two seasons of Brooklyn Nine-Nine and then moved on to Arrested Development. Having seen them all before multiple times, there's no real imperative to not fall asleep during an episode, but having the white noise and the comedy has been a real boon.

Having great friends and family is a treasure. In the past couple weeks, we've received soup, chili, cornbread, banana bread, cookies, macaroni and cheese, chicken stew, lasagna, quinoa salad, a fruit delivery, Polish donuts, nursing apparel, a hand-knit hat for NS, baby outfits, rides to appointments, and a slew of visitors who respect the fact that all we can do right now is 30-45 minute hangout sessions, and that I probably won't be wearing a shirt (#nursinglife). FYI: not having to cook is basically the best gift you can possibly give to new parents. When in doubt, bring food.

C-section recovery sucks. Surgery + no sleep + intense fatigue from labouring + emotional whirlwind + nerve damage + pain + coping with an unexpected procedure + figuring out how to process the loss of the birth I thought I would have = THE FEELS, both physical and mental.

Milk coming in = hormonal rollercoaster. A woman's body will produce colostrum, a super-awesome early milk that only shows up for the first few days of a baby's life. After that, she starts producing actual milk, but the transition between the two is a little bit...weepy. Okay, a lot weepy. Okay, I cried pretty much non-stop for 36 hours, including all over the baby.

The baby is going to cry. Our little dude is pretty mellow, but in the last couple days, he's really upped his squalling game. Why? I have no idea. Gas, probably. Or he's upset that Trump is leading the polls in New Hampshire.

I have never loved my husband more. Watching M these last fourteen days—the 3 AM diaper changes, the little songs when he's trying to soothe him, the dishes that get done, the snack bowls that appear beside our beds, the water glasses that get refilled, the chuckles when the baby farts, the gentle petting of my stretch-marked and scarred stomach—has filled me with such love. He's such a good dad, and it's amazing to me that, just a few days ago, he wasn't a dad at all.

I have Googled everything. Every time the baby does something, I Google it. I look it up in our childcare books. I text someone. Every damn time the kid does something new, or different, or makes a sound, or doesn't make a sound, or blah blah bah into the baby-related abyss, I'm right there on the Google-machine, trying to figure out if it's normal or if he's dying. (Spoiler: he's not dying.)

My instincts are actually okay. Everything from soothing to swaddling to sleeping, I'm like 80% okay at it. My encounters with breastfeeding experts (two lactation consultations, two midwives, multiple seasoned friends) taught me that nearly everyone subscribes to a slightly different school of thought, and will follow slightly different protocols. For example, the midwives told me to breastfeed every two hours; the lactation consultants said every three hours; the books I read said twelve times in 24 hours, whatever that looks like; my mom said don't wake a sleeping baby and the kid will let me know when he's hungry. By the end of my first week, I was a mess. But slowing down, and figuring out the timing that worked for us, really made a difference. And NS ended up gaining back his birth weight in a week and a half, a benchmark and milestone that made me incredibly happy.

This is the long game. The first two weeks have been a blur of cuddles and panic, of late nights and early mornings, of naps and walks, of trying to survive and thrive. We are learning this little baby; he's learning us. It occurred to me that I'm going to know this person for his entire life—aside from my younger siblings, there isn't anyone else I can say that about. And it fills me with joy, and nerves, to know that in a month, a year, a decade, there will be milestones that seem now like they're on the moon, and those days will come to pass before I can even catch my breath.

The Baby, the Birth Story, and the Love

Noah Stanley Kochany Cinovskis! The son, our sun, the boy wonder, our sweetpea, our little guy, our tiny friend, the kiddo. Noah.

They say that birthing a baby is like running a marathon. In my case, I feel like the marathon route unexpectedly zagged through a raiding party, and at mile 24, we had to wrestle a bear. Basically, if birthing was a movie, I am Leonardo DiCaprio in The Revenant, and I would like my Academy Award now, please.

I started labour on a Thursday. At first, it felt like nothing, or maybe something...it was hard to tell, really. Mild back pain, coupled with some prodromal feelings of unwellness—the kind you get before you come down with a cold—kept rolling through me. Instead of having coffee with my mom, as we had planned, she just walked with me up and down Saint Clair Avenue for an hour, which was nice. Every now and then I would say something like, "Maybe this is how it starts?" and she would say, "This baby is coming!" and then I would put my hands on my back and walk some more. It was a sunny day, it was cold, I was hugely pregnant.

Over the next few days, things started to form. The back pain went from being vague—was that a twinge?—to very much present. My mom told me that contractions felt like her belly was being squeezed by a blood-pressure cuff, but my "rushes" (thanks, Ina May) settled in my back. Still, we were able to work through it. M put on David Bowie and we slow-danced to "Kooks," I read about art conservation in The New Yorker, and while it wasn't quite pleasant, it felt constructive. It was intimate. When a contraction hit, M would talk me through it—"Breathe, breathe, letitgoleitgoletitgo," and time them. My job was to just keep my head down and yes, breathe. It felt doable

Saturday night, we called the midwives, who came to our house and informed me that I was three centimetres dilated. This apparently was not quite large enough to pass the watermelon that was coming down the pipeline. Also, distressingly, my contractions, though increasingly painful, hadn't formed themselves into a rhythm yet. They were still five, six, seven minutes apart, coming haphazardly. They advised me to keep labouring at home, and they left at about 2:00 AM.

Sunday was...a blur, but I do know Sunday night was awful. It is almost literally impossible to describe this pain. I felt like I was being tased while I had the flu. I couldn't always stay upright; sometimes, I would sink to my hands and feet and moan, or shriek, or curse, or just pant like a dog. Sometimes, I would throw up. Sometimes, I would have to kneel on the bed and press mightily into the small of back, or along the tops of my hips, trying to relieve any kind of pressure that I could on that area. Sometimes, doing that was agony. My knees were bruised, my back felt swollen, and the "space between worlds" that one holistic birth site talked about felt like it was full of demons.

Monday morning, we went to the Midwives Collective office for a fetal non-stress test, where they monitor the baby's heartbeat for twenty minutes and see how my labour is progressing. Now, every position change triggered a new contraction. Sitting up, standing up, walking up stairs, sitting down, peeing, getting in and out of a car. I threw up cheerful little chunks of optimistic melon on Bloor Street walking to the midwives' office.  There, I found I was now six centimetres dilated—progress!—and despite not being in that five-minutes-apart rhythm, we could go the Toronto Birth Centre. There was a huge tub there; for weeks, I had wanted to labour in that. I was dreaming of that tub. That tub was going to solve some shit for me.

The Birth Centre is beautiful, but I don't really remember much about being there. I have flash-memories: sinking to my hands and knees as soon as I got into the birthing suite, hit by a blinding wall of pain; being petted gently by my husband and midwives as I screamed, labouring on my side in bed; my whole body shaking underwater as a contraction ripped through me in the tub and I wondered, briefly, if I would drown; just hating the birth stool (which the hippie part of me thought I would love!). My lips were chapped raw from breathing so hard. I threw up again. I made noises like a horse, a cat, a distressed and frightened animal. The tub wasn't the balm I had hoped for. Nothing was.

At three PM, after about five hours of labour, the midwives asked me if I wanted to keep labouring at the Birth Centre, or if I wanted to switch to Mount Sinai for another non-stress test and to start a pitocin drip to see if we could get the contractions more regular. I asked if I could have an epidural along with the pitocin; I cried when they said yes. My mom, who had appeared at some point, marched into traffic on Dundas Street and held her arms out like a warrior so we could pull out. I would have laughed if I could have.

At this point, I had been in early labour, or pre-labour, for nearly 80 hours. Here's how exhausted I was by then: I fell asleep during the epidural. For those of you who have never had an epidural, it involves shoving a long needle into your spine, and then a catheter the size of a pencil lead in along the same path. It is not exactly a back massage. And yet, by then, I was so ruined on pain that I barely felt it. The midwives were still with me, having switched from tee shirts and jeans to hospital gowns, but now I also had an anesthesiologist (two, actually, whom M described as "bro-y," and we agreed they were incredibly kind), and an OB, who wore pink-rimmed glasses and reminded me of my best gal Liz: competent, funny, and completely unwilling to fuck around when it came to health.

Now, finally, things were starting to happen, although not exactly in a way I might want. The baby's heart rate started to dip after every contraction; the OB discovered meconium in the amniotic fluid (meaning our little dude had taken his first momentous poop inside the womb), and now, instead of administering pitocin, we would all be heading to the OR for an emergency c-section.

I will pause here and say that, while I had visions of beautiful natural birth—himalayan rock-salt lamps! tub! birth stools! a sweaty, healthy glow!—I'm not an idiot. Birth isn't an emergency, and I would have preferred a natural experience, but the only outcome that I cared about was a healthy baby. The narrative around modern birth is, or can be, problematic and overmedicalized, but I am so happy that I live in a time where what happened to us wasn't a death sentence for our baby. It kept occurring to me that, one hundred years ago, it would have been. The thought makes me nauseous.

In any case, back to the OR. The whole thing would take about 40 minutes. They administered the numbing agent through epidural pathway, but this time, they wanted total coverage. M waited outside while they prepped me, and the midwives stepped to the side as the surgical team worked. I started to shake uncontrollably, and then my hands went numb (they use the same amount of numbing medication no matter how big the patient is, which meant that 5'1" me was frozen right up to my neck), and I could barely speak, my jaw was clenched so hard. When I told the anesthesiologist I felt fucked up, he helpfully told me that it was because my uterus was "outside my body and upside down," which, like, I am all for knowledge, but that was TMI.

In any case, the baby was born! The respiratory therapists aspirated all the poop-water from NS's lungs, M got to cut the cord, he introduced me to our son, I clenched and shook, and then somehow we were all in the recovery room with our parents, with everyone crying and laughing and me topless. (Everyone—and I mean everyone—related to this process has now seen some combination of my vagina and boobs.) When we introduced him to my parents, my dad started to cry—Noah Stanley is named in part after him—and everyone else started to cry.

And we were all happy. And we were all healthy! And we are now all home, after two days in the hospital, after lurching to the bathroom on unsteady feet, after kind nurses and lactation consultants and pediatricians, after learning how to swaddle our son, after M sleeping in a chair for two days, we are home, in bed, resting and sleeping and nursing and watching The X-Files in bed and trying to hang on for dear life as my post-partum hormones surge and pulse.

I won't tell you that it was easy. But I will tell you, without a doubt, with no hesitation whatsoever, that it was all worth it. This kid is great so far: warm, cute, a good sleeper, a healthy cry-er. He sleeps with one eye slitted slightly open, just like his papa, and looks terrific in hats, just like his mom. We are a family. We are all doing just fine.

Details

Babywatch update: no baby yet.

I've been using this time to hang out with M—yesterday, we poked around the Salvation Army and went for scones, ate macaroni and cheese and played a board game—and also goof around by myself a little bit. It's starting to sink in that, what with having a baby, and with my husband being on parental leave, it's likely that this week will have the last few moments of alone time for a very long time. Which is...scary? But also interesting?

In any case, I'm feeling lazy, so here's a sort list of things other than "Was that a contraction? Was that a contraction??" that are occupying my brain:

• Every few months, I realize that my insides and my outsides don't match in a very specific way, which is the way of fashionable accessories. I have a couple girlfriends and chums who are very good at putting the finishing touches on their outfits—beautiful bangles, dangling necklaces, glinting little rings, even a slightly elaborate hairdo—whereas I just wear the same tiny necklaces and tunnels and big buns over and over and over. I've been trolling around, looking at glorious necklaces and interesting little rings, but I am also Dust Bowl-levels of broke right now, so it's not the most opportune time to invest in, um, frivolities. But I want to! I want to. 

• I am super into my Himalayan rock salt lamp, which has a place of pride beside my bed. I'm sort of convinced that it has mystical powers, which is great, because in addition to being overdue and grumpy, I currently have a head cold. But my lamp is crazy pretty and I love its soft pink glow. 

• In internetting news, I am here for The Toast's morning link round-up, which is where I get probably 90% of the interesting stuff I read on a daily basis. It is consistently well-curated: a mix of politics, gossip, isn't-THAT-weird articles about missing people or genetic disorders, animal pictures, and misandry. Even the off days are worth checking out. 

• I'm super relieved and excited that my parents renewed my subscription to the New Yorker (also, I am happily in the club of 30-something women whose parents buy them expensive magazine subscriptions, and it's great), so I get another full year of amazing articles like the one about weather in literature, or girl rock climbers, or the weekly restaurant review (which, frankly, I live for). I plan on reading the meal write-ups to the baby every Tuesday.
  
  
• I have a cold. The less said about that, the better, but suffice it to say that I've been mainlining tea with honey and ginger, swallowing zinc tablets like whoa, and trying to sleep about 14 hours a night. I've also been putting my face right next to the salt lamp, because mystical powers??
  
  
• This morning, M and I woke up early (just kidding, we woke up at 8:30!) and then read in bed for a while—him about Drake's new club at the ACC, me about medical workers in the Himalayas—and ate grapes and had a cuddle, and it was all very nice indeed. I felt very cozy and civilized, like we had sailed off into the middle of the ocean. 

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.