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| Tuesday, March 02, 2004
It wasn’t that long ago that I had thought of Ruby as only a distant dream. Don’t get me wrong, she was a wonderful dream, but there was no reality to her. I am glad that the choice was made to call this space Ruby Dawn, however randomly it happened. It seems much more appropriate to me now. She is a girl on the horizon, and I do see the brilliant white light of her approach. She isn’t as real to me yet as the noon sun, but everything is falling into place, and the light of my world is significantly and momentously changing like it does in the mountains at five am. I am sitting still, and I can see the shadows moving. I just received a wonderful email from a dear old friend. Jeez, am I old enough to call people dear old friends? I guess if anyone in my life can fit that bill, it's Mark and April. It was great to hear from her, like it always is when you haven’t communicated with someone in a while, and she had some great responses to this blog. I realized however, that perhaps she thought that Ruby’s middle name was going to be Dawn. She's not the first person to come to that conclusion. I think that would be a beautiful name, but it is just the name of this space. Ani and I thought very hard about what to name a daughter, and it was a difficult process. We wanted something original and beautiful, but classic at the same time. My first thought was to go to the literature that I love. Arthurian mythology, no matter how much I love it, was not a real draw, because most of the female characters there are a little weak (or evil), and I am not a fan of Marion Zimmer Bradley's feminist approach (I know, a lot of people love that book, but my skin crawls at the mere mention of new agey goddes worship. Ewww.) Norse and Germanic women, on the other hand, were very cool (in literature mythology and history). In Norse culture, women were equal in the eyes of the family and the law (as long as they didn't live in a city being raided). The sagas are full of fully rounded women characters, something quite rare in medieval lit. By the time the Volsunga Saga reaches through the Nibelungenlied and into Wagner’s Ring Cycle, Brinhyld is a valkyrie and a shield maiden as well as a love interest. She is, in many ways, more powerful and definately more interesting than the Sigurd/fried character. It doesn’t get much cooler than that. Alas, who wants to go through life named Brinhyld? Norse mythology is full of those kind of strong and intriguing women with unfortunate names: Frigg, Skeggjold, and Herfjotur don’t exactly roll off the tongue. Celtic names are a bit more sonorous, but the coolest Irish woman of all, Rhiannon, had her name used in a Fleetwood Mac song. That would just be too weird. Ani liked old movie names. Her list included Stella, Nora (taken by our wonderful dog), and Lily. She also had a large number of Latvian names that were very pretty. I think Ani’s mom’s name is one of the most beautiful women’s names I’ve ever encountered: Zaiga. That’s a powerful name. I think somewhere deep on Ani’s list was the name Ruby. It was pretty, simple and had that fun vintage ring to it. The Ruby Mountains are beautiful and almost sacred to us. We have had some of our most memorable and wonderful times together there. Just thinking about waking up by that lake at ten thousand feet next to Ani makes me want to go wake her up right now (1:42am) and give her a kiss. The name Ruby just seemed to fit. I’m not sure, but we think she’ll have two middle names: Angiolena and Leja. My grandmother is named Angiolena (misspelled by the non Italian notary deep in the Nevada desert) and Ani’s last name is Leja. I haven’t told my grandma yet, I think we’ll wait until Ruby’s here. I really wanted to honor her and that part of my family: she and my mom have been very important to us. Ani is the last of her line, and they are also great, so it’s important that she has some part of them to carry with her. We are still deliberating about whether or not two middle names are too cumbersome, but she can go by whatever she likes… We’ll see. It doesn’t matter; She’ll always be squidge to us, but that’s another story.
The pregnancy situation is in limbo. Ani has been oscilating between statements like: "I think it's gonna be soon" and "I dread the thought that it's not gonna be soon." I personally think that it's maybe gonna be sorta soonerish or laterish. You can hold me to that. I've been making some progress with my drawing. I owe any improvement to my friend Paul. He has a mastery of skeletal, muscular, and vascular anatomy that would awe some med students. He's scary good, and I figure I may as well take advantage of him while I can. I’ve known Paul for a long time; he’s a pretty amazing guy. I’m thankful that Ruby will get a chance to know him. Working with him has made me realize just how poor the art instruction that I recieved in school was. I’m all for the "free flowing draw what you feel" thing, but why would you go to school for that? What's there to teach? My art teachers were babysitters who wanted to keep me occupied and unlearned. In the last couple of weeks, I have learned more from P than I did in four years as an art student. Weird. Here are a couple of Paul's drawings: The first one is a pretty big painting, maybe four or five feet tall. The second is a drawing from one of his sketch books.
I’ll upload some of mine when I get my scanner hooked up again. Maybe… Saturday, March 06, 2004
A Toyota!
Race fast, safe car. A Toyota. Monday, March 08, 2004
This guy was running the entire single track in Evan's canyon at a pretty good clip, and having little trouble navigating his stroller. For those of you familiar with Evans (or Gumby) canyon, this is the top of the canyon, near the marshy bit just north of the yellow mine tailings pile. It's fairly impressive that he got there! He said that it handled pretty well on most of the single track, and that he just had to be careful in a couple of the wet spots. Of course, babies have to be able to sit up on their own before they can use these joggers, but then again, I will have to be in much better shape to be able to push one of these and run, so Ruby and I will work toward that goal together. In the mean time, I have seen lots of people hiking with the baby bjorn pack things; I'll make that work for me.
I also took a little hike today with the Dink. The entire time I was imagining that I had a baby strapped to my chest. I was pretending to point things out to a wee one.
I feel like I’m caught in a pre-birth limbo. Time is distending and expanding exponentially, like it’s part of Xeno’s paradox: expressed by repeatedly going halfway to one’s destination, but never actually reaching it. Each step towards parenthood is smaller and takes an amount of time that is unperceivably shorter than the last one, and yet I am more conscious of it. We are still not reaching our goal. Each day now is a déjà vu. We have to repeat ourselves over and over. Whenever the phone rings, and this happens much more often than usual now, I say: “Nope, she’s not here yet. I’ll call as soon as possible.” Every time I call someone, for whatever reason, before I have a chance to say, “we’re still waiting,” the voice in the telephone receiver asks: “Is she here?” Ani tells me she’s avoiding the break room at work, dodging the questions. Ruby has to arrive sometime. I need to be patient. I wish I could just concentrate on my breathing or a word and let these moments fly by. Om. Om. Ohm. Instead, they engulf me and expand around me until I can’t see beyond their limits. Come on r00b33. Saturday, March 13, 2004 I didn’t mean for that last post to be so maudlin. I don’t know why I’m bitching; Ani is the one with a fully formed person in her abdomen. The dink and I just went for a hike. There’s nothing like the desert and a little exercise to take care of existential angst. We just found this:
It is dedicated to
people who preserved "a portion of Reno's backyard for the perpetual
use and enjoyment of its citizens."
I'm off
to work, where I guarantee, the first words out of my mouth will be,
"nope, not yet." Sunday, March 14, 2004 Thursday, March 18, 2004 Ani's belly is a warm and inviting place.
I took this last night while my mom was over for tea.
Thursday, March 18, 2004
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