The Gnome Gnotebook

In October of 2006, my mom came to visit as she usually does around my birthday every year. This particular visit was special because Sean and I had just moved into our very first home (the same one we're in now) and of course, we needed my mom's curtain rod hanging expertise and designer's advice (are you sensing a pattern here? I promise she's not ill-used). Come to think of it, my mom's birthday visits are always timely--the year before was pretty special too, as it was the weekend just after Sean and I had gotten engaged and we were able to go to Suky Rosan to pick out my wedding dress. Good timing, mom! Anyway...

She always brings a bag of beautifully wrapped birthday presents--usually handmade scarves and jewelry from her friend Carol's store, Badawang, or candles or a bound journal or a really great book or two. This time she also brought The Gnome Gnotebook. In the living room of the house on Briarwood where we lived from the time my brother was born until I went to college, I often saw this book sitting on one of the built-in shelves that flanked our fireplace. But I never really knew what it was, I don't think. It didn't have pictures, and therefore, it didn't interest me. And besides, we had another book of gnomes that was far more captivating.

In any event, I suppose she thought that the buying of our first home together signified that Sean and I were ready to start a family, and what better way to acknowledge that than to hand off the record of that very same time in her life? Er, actually, she definitely thought that, as I just realized that the inscription from October 2006 reads "...and now that you and Sean are getting closer to starting your own family, I thought this would be the right time to finally give it to you." (I'm very insightful.) There were no blogs in 1978, after all, and so she had to hand write everything in pen in this little hardbound journal. The pages are ruled in blue with pink margin lines and a little drawing of a reading gnome sits in the lower outer corner of each page. There are 100 pages all together. The first page lists the vitals of my birth--time and date, weight, length, location, a description of my hair and eyes, and this: "with all 10 fingers, 10 toes, and lungs in very good working order!" At the bottom of the page is a tiny lock of hair.

The first entry is dated April 30, 1979, when I would have been six and a half months old. It's a recounting of the day before (my aunt and uncle's wedding), the day of, and the day after my birth. Clearly, enough time had passed that her memory of events had been veiled in the haze of euphoria that is new motherhood (read: exhaustion or denial, or both). She writes, "...the doctor told me to "push." Then, at 12:06, POP! You showed yourself to us for the first time." She also describes my Grandma and Dad, red-faced and perspiring, and says, "as hard as we worked, they worked even harder!" Woah, mom. The truly amazing thing is that I bet she really believed that, too. She was probably even apologizing at the time for the terrible inconvenience.

My family's pediatrician, Dr. Sundaresh, told my mom a poem when he came to examine me. The poem goes a little something like this:

A son's a son
Till he finds a wife,
But a daughter's a daughter
The rest of your life!

Huh? Sweet, I suppose, for 1978.

There are so many revealing entries in this journal--I can't wait to explore more in future posts. And I guess it stands to reason that a lot of what's written is about my mom being proud of me as her daughter and about our relationship as mother and daughter. It would have been a completely different story if I'd been a son. Revisiting the Gnome Gnotebook and seeing it from this perspective has made me think really hard about the sex of our baby. There was a slim possibility that the tech could have determined the sex from yesterday's ultrasound, but it wouldn't have been conclusive until later anyway. I think about whether I have a feeling, one way or the other--whether I have the slightest inkling or instinct about what the sex will be, or whether I have a preference. Part of me, a very large part, hopes for a girl because I am girl--a first born to a first born--and that has so shaped my relationship with my mom, which has in turn been so central to who I am as a person. I think in so many ways and for so many reasons that I'd be a better mom to a little girl because I KNOW it, I lived it. On the other hand, every person is different. Even if my first born is a girl, there's no telling what my relationship with her will be like since her personality will be different than mine, and mine as a mother is different than my mom's was. We're also in such completely different places in our lives, my mom having me at 20 and me having my first at 30, and with completely different family situations, my mom being surrounded by her family in her hometown and me not having any family nearby at all. Too many variables to guarantee that anything would be the same.

Then there's the part of me that's always imagined having a son that I could raise to be tough and sweet, smart and wise, and who would teach me to let go a little more. I've often thought about what it would be like to have had an older brother to stand up for me and protect me and to look up to. I also think it would be an amazing insight into the secret life of my husband--the part of him that I don't know because I didn't know him when he was little. He is an oldest son, and to watch him parent an oldest son would be like having a window into his life that he couldn't possibly know how to open otherwise. Talk about a two-for. That would be a really amazing gift.

I guess the point is that it doesn't matter, which is probably the conclusion that most expectant parents come to nowadays (since hopefully there aren't too many people espousing the sentiments of my pediatrician's poem anymore). Still, it doesn't make me any less curious!

A Two-Thing Day

My dad is full of Lamprosisms, some that he's coined and some that were made famous by Papou (his dad), but all of which have become a part of my family's vocabulary and are used in casual conversation as though other people might actually understand what they mean. Sometimes the context of the expression belies the meaning (e.g. "Bear ate the last of the smokies and Jess was so pissed, she had a serious heenie! I thought she was gonna blow..."). Other times, the meaning is totally lost on the uninitiated.

I had this experience the other day. I was soooooo tired! I was so tired, I wanted to cry, and I had just gotten to work. I must have been pouting or slamming cash drawers or something, because someone asked me what's "wrong" (a euphemism for "crawled up your ass and died") and I said with an obnoxiously loud sigh, "It's a two-thing day. That's all."

A two-thing day?

Yes. A two-thing day. And it was! I had to go to work AND walk the dog! A prospect that, in my delicate condition, seemed utterly overwhelming. I'm not exaggerating when I say that I was on the verge of tears because of it, either. Poor Sean, because of all months, this month he's out of town three weeks out of four and he feels terrible for it. Anyway, the reasons for the sentiment are beside the point. It's the expression that I'm talking about. And it's such a good one. There really was no other way that I could communicate what I was feeling. "I'm tired" wouldn't have done it, nor would "Sean's out of town so I have to leave to walk the dog," nor would "uh, I'm pregnant, stupid." It was a two-thing day, and that's all there was to it.

The same goes for the aforementioned "heenie" or "heanie" as it is alternately spelled (my dad, as the conceiver of some of these phrases and a ghastly speller has a tendency to change their phonetic spelling regularly), and for the following:

"faat" (fot)
"lay dead"
"get the marmalade"
"gizminkus"
"going halfies"
"who you gonna tell?"
"hotter than Kelsey's nuts"
"how'd I know that? huh?"
"you're the best one"
"what are you waiting for, an invitation?"
answering a phone call with "Telephone?" instead of "hello"

Then there are other Papouisms that were just plain silly. My favorite was always the cheer he insisted that he and his friends actually used back in the day, that goes like this:

"Ra ra ree!
Kick 'em in the knee!
Ra ra rass!
Kick 'em in the....
other knee!"

That one always made me laugh. As did the telling of the only two dreams the man apparently ever had in his life. One was about falling off a very high cliff, and when he woke up, he was on the floor. (Bah-dum-dum.) The other was about eating the biggest, most delicious and fluffy marshmallow! And when he woke up, his pillow was gone. (Thanks folks...I'll be here all night. Try the veal.)

The list really could be a mile long. But a lot is in the delivery, so admittedly there's something lost here on the page. In almost every case, though, the phrase was born of necessity and really is the only way to express that particular sentiment. Funny how so much of the way my family feels has a Yonkers accent. Even my mom, The Jewess (it was affectionate coming from my Papou. Jesus was a Jew, after all. How'd I know that? I'm smart.) still uses Lamprosisms regularly, ten-plus years after she and my dad parted ways.

My Ya-ya had her own list of sayings that we razzed her about, and that we continue to throw around when we're together, mostly I think as a way of remembering her without having to be sentimental or mushy about it. When Sean and I walk into the house late at night after driving all the way from Jersey, my dad asks what he can get us to eat, and says "There's pizza, and I got a roast in the oven. I know, kiddo, that's not enough. Here--I'll put some rigatoni on the stove!" In fact, lots of the Ya-ya jokes are about being force-fed, like when my brother pushes his plate away after eating a full meal and my dad says, "What, you're not hungry? Let me get the sling-shot..."

Other Ya-yaisms were just plain mistakes--innocent ones--that we never let her get away with. The one I remember best is when she was trying to think of the name of a famous baseball player she'd just watched a documentary on. You know, the one who used to wear socks. Or one sock. Or a black stocking. That's it! "Stocking-foot Joe!" No..."Black Stocking Joe!" Wait...that's not it... I got it! "Footless Joe Jackson!"

I'm hoping that this kid ends up learning Lamprosisms by osmosis--just because they're a fact of his/her life, like they were mine. Hell, Sean doesn't need a translator anymore when we go back to Cleveland, and he's even started using some himself. It might sound silly, but it's even better than having pictures of Ya-ya and Papou around.