In which the fun begins.

OK, so the baby is six weeks old and I haven't posted at all during that time, but it's not for lack of material, obviously. Just lack of time. And privacy. And time.

It seems that I should make some weighty post about the birth of our son, but I find myself coming up short. For one thing, I find that there is this tendency to behave as if one is the only person on earth to have ever reproduced -- that one's own childbirth experience is so unique and so singular that it must be related to anyone who will listen for their own edification and awe.

When in fact there is a childbirth story for every single human being on earth, neither more nor less unique than mine. So... we had a baby. I was crying myself when he came out. A really large baby -- at 9 lbs. 9.5 ozs, my wife had a person who weighed almost 9% of her pre-pregnancy weight come out of her. We stayed in the hospital for a few days because she had a c-section. What a sad commentary on the state of American society that we were sort of glad for the c-section because it meant an extra two weeks of paid maternity leave.

The grandparents and other well-wishers paraded through. I became a champion baby-quieter. The diaper thing is not really such a big deal -- the thought of regularly working with someone else's feces was one of my qualms about daddyhood, but -- at least for a breastfed baby -- it's nothing, really. Now when he's two and eating solid foods, it might be a different story.

There is an ocean of conflicting advice on baby care. Keep him on a schedule. Don't keep him on a schedule. Swaddle and comfort him. Let him cry it out. We're still feeling our way through on that.

The sleep deprivation is an issue. He has been a largely nocturnal creature, preferring to sleep all day and stay awake (noisely) all night. That slowly seems to be changing, but Cynthia, especially, is exhausted. I went back to work after two weeks and so ever since then she has been handling the midnight-to-six duties during the week (I still jump in on the weekends). We have different attitudes towards his constant crying; if he is fed and changed, I regard his crying like the sound of the ocean, something that it's useless to rail against, but it has an actual physical effect on Cynthia and she's unable to bear it for very long. But slowly, slowly, we're figuring out the difference between crying that should be attended to and crying that should be ignored.

"Colic," I've decided, is a term for a complex constellation of symptoms centered around the absolute physical and mental destruction of a baby's parents. The baby himself seems none the worse for wear after straining and screaming and crying all night. We, however, are wrecks.

I have not engaged in any meaningful exercise since the day he was born. The morning before we went to the hospital I took a nice long run, knowing it might be my last one for awhile. The combination of baby and cold weather (because, let's be honest, my morning run has been exceptionally sporadic during the below-freezing months for the past three winters) has shut down that enterprise almost entirely. Now, my workout consists of hoisting an increasingly heavy baby in my arms many times a day.

Cynthia's mother cam for two weeks after New Year's Day. Wei-Po (the Chinese term for one's maternal grandmother) adores her grandson; we started referring to him as xiao wang-zi, the little prince, based on his grandmother's worship of him. We were very glad for her help. And the delicious Chinese food she cooked every night. So in addition to not exercising, I was consuming massive amounts of home-made noro mein and other great dishes for two weeks. Wei-Po and I would meet in the kitchen and compare notes on cooking. I showed her how to make guacamole (which she could not pronounce). She showed me how to make a stir-fry with pork, bamboo shoots, and pickles (!). The name of which I cannot pronounce. Her mother's great regret was that her breastfeeding daughter did not want to eat too much spicy food, for the baby's sake. Wei-Po is from Sichuan where the food comes in two temperatures -- so spicy it burns your lips (la), and so spicy your face goes numb (ma la).

(I think I am Cynthia's parents' favorite Chinese daughter-in-law, despite being neither Chinese nor a daughter-in-law, because I cook, work 9-to-5, and gave them a grandson. Their actual Chinese daughter-in-law is brilliant, charming, and very successful, with a better education than me, twice my income (at least) and a beautiful eight-year-old daughter. But she works a lot of hours and doesn't like cooking, cleaning, dogs, or spicy food. Who knew that my relative lack of ambition or material success could actually ingratiate me with my in-laws?)

When Wei-Po went home I felt like I should pat her down at at the airport, and search her luggage, to make sure she hadn't smuggled Axl out of the house to take home with her.

My parents are also doting... at a distance. We took Axl to their house on Christmas Eve so he could be passed from relative to relative. My mother could not leave her dogs to spend two weeks with any of her children under any circumstances. And while she would be glad to babysit Axl for a day or two, there would be no request to leave him for a week, like Cynthia's mom wanted. (What Cynthia's dad wanted is, I think, utterly irrelevant to her calculations). My mother is trying to find someone with a pony so Axl can learn to ride. I suggested that he learn to walk first. Or at least hold his own head upright.

Will he be gay? Or a personal trainer? Or both? This week his favorite activity -- besides eating -- is lying on his back in his "baby gym" and looking at himself in the mirror.

That's enough baby stuff for now.

In which the excitement builds.

Depending on which medical professional one believes, Cynthia was due either today or two days ago.  Either way, the baby is a bit tardy.  Clearly this comes from his WASP heritage, not his Asian half.  The doctor has determined that if Axl doesn't join us by tomorrow evening, he'll induce labor and the baby will be born on Saturday.  It's good to have a known date, frankly.  Not only for trivial reasons -- notifying anxious relatives, planning work outages, etc. -- but for broader psychological reasons. One way or another, in 48 hours I will be holding my son.  I find that easier to deal with than the uncertainty.

And then... and then... ???  So it's not like I'm completely out of the uncertainty business.

Cynthia, for her part, seems to swing from one mood to another.  Sometimes she says she is filled with "dread" and that she's never really contemplated anything this permanent in her life before.  I point out that I am permanent, too, and she dismisses that airily -- "you're easy."  But then a moment later she says that having an only child somehow seems unnatural, and that we will be having a second one in fairly short order.  I tell her, one at a time.  Let's see how we do with the starter kid.

Tonight we picked up some tilapia and broccoli on the way home from work and I made a a dinner designed to eliminate a lot of odds and ends laying about the kitchen:  broiled tilapia with a lemon-dill marinade (using up a lemon and some dill leftover from the Turkish lamb I made Monday), and rice with garlic, shallots, and chicken stock (leftover from the Hainan jifan from a few weeks ago), and steamed broccoli.  Based on what I hear from my friends with kids, every part of this evening will disappear after Saturday -- coming home when I was finished working, instead of at a fixed time; relaxing with a book and some music for awhile; then spending an hour in the kitchen to make a meal involving ad hoc combinations of food; and eating at 8ish.

That's too bad, because it is an excellent way to spend a Thursday night.  It's the reason why there's dust on our TV remote and -- at the risk of TMI -- the reason why Cynthia and I have a very active and satisfying emotional AND physical relationship (even though actual intercourse became physically... improbable as of about a week ago).  How do we avoid letting our relationship with the child define our relationship with one another?  We have carved out a beautiful space for the two of us, and it was so satisfying and loving that we felt we wanted to share it with a third person, and so we made him... and while I know that he will help reshape it to accommodate a trio, I can't help but feel a little mourning for the loss of this place where we are right now.

Maybe one day, 30 years from now, when Axl is about to have his own child, I'll find the remains of this blog somewhere and share this with him, and I will have something to add to this -- some coda about the exchange of our cozy space for someplace a little brighter, a little louder, a little more frazzled.

In which I enjoy the calm before the storm.

Cynthia's due date is in one week. These things are, of course, approximations. We have only a general idea of when she actually conceived, and even if we knew precisely, the timing can still be off. Our doctor is in Australia until Sunday, so we are hoping the child delays his appearance until after that time.

For the past few weeks Cynthia and I have been acutely aware of the finality of many things. Spur-of-the-moment outings. Leisurely lounging in bed on a Saturday morning. Trips to hipster bars and 9 p.m. reservations at restaurants that would not even consider having a "kids' menu." Cynthia's advanced state of ripening makes some of those activities difficult even now, of course, but we are gamely out there trying out best to enjoy the end of our twosomehood. At the same time there is not much left out there to be experienced. Coming to parenthood after age 35, we have left few stones unturned. For the most part, everything we wanted to do, we've done (especially in Cynthia's case), or else it's too late to go back and do it (more in my case). What did I want to do before having a family? Spend the 1990s traveling the globe. Not marry so young. Go to a better undergraduate school. Since I can't do those things anyhow, none of them are obstacles to raising a family.

And it is the last few sentences of that paragraph which remind me of my chief anxiety about fatherhood. The boy has not arrived yet and already I worry about falling into clichéd parenthood traps. Chief among them, the desire to relive my life through him, sans mistakes. I want him to do the things I didn't do. I want him to get a better education, to travel overseas, learn another language, play an instrument, delay marriage, fulfill his potential in ways that I never did. I keep reminding myself: he is his own person. He is not me. He is not a do-over. Sometimes I have this horrible image of myself endlessly pontificating to the lad on my past and his future, and imagine his eyes glazing over...

Cynthia's anxieties are much more immediate, which makes sense, since the baby is a physical reality to her in ways that he can't be to me. Yet. As the third trimester winds down she has had a bout or two of gestational psychosis to go with her very mild gestational diabetes. A near-breakdown over the lack of all-cotton, dye-free hooded bathtowels, for example. (Apparently the child can never get into the Ivy League if his hooded bath towels have stripes on them). Another near collapse over having too many baby clothes. I make Hainan jifan and lamb and eggplant with farfalle pasta, and it soothes her savage breast. (I think that Hainan jifan is also a treatment for post-partum depression. I hope it's not needed, but I will stock up on ginger and shallots just in case.)

People ask us, "are you ready?" Of course not. But we are no less ready than any other first-time parent. And it just may be that having this experience after the age of 35 makes us more prepared. OK, we won't do as well with the anticipated sleep deprivation as a couple of 20-somethings, but at the same time, I think we will be a little more laid-back about the problems and a little more appreciative about the good things.

Are we ready? The baby's room is painted. His crib is assembled. There is a changing pad on top of a dresser. A box of newborn diapers next to it. Glass bottles. A Pack-N-Play. A car seat. Three different strollers. We've got the whole baby infrastructure in place, at least. As for the rest... ready as we'll ever be, I guess.

We've put aside our childish things.

In which I prepare to vote.

Election Day.  I will be voting for the Maryland constitutional amendment to allow early voting, so election day rituals may soon be obsolete.

Nonetheless, Election Day involves playing lots of bluegrass.  Including the Carolina Chocolate Drops.  Cynthia wants to hear Wu-Tang "Bring da Rawkus."  No British invasion today, even though I am digging this Kinks CD I just got ("The Singles Collection," all their old Pye stuff from the 60s.)  Etta James.  Who can feel bad while Etta James is singing?

When I went running this morning I ran past my polling place and the line wrapped around the block.  Since I don't have to work today, I will wait until mid-day to vote.  Let the people who have to be somewhere do their voting first.

Election Day usually involves making pancakes, but Cynthia has a glucose test and is fasting.  So I won't torture her with pancakes she can't have.  Today I have the day off and she does not.  So while she's in the office I will finish painting the baby's room and then make a duck confit with fig and port wine reduction for dinner.

Tonight we are going to go out to watch the returns -- hoping to celebrate, unless the Republicans steal three in a row, in which case it will be planning to emigrate.  Once the US ceases to be a democracy, there's really no reason to live here.

On the downticket races, my general philosophy is "all things being equal, vote against the incumbent."  If you have no reason to vote FOR someone, time for new blood.  Ordinarily I would vote against my incumbent (Democratic) Congressman but whoever is running against him has never once asked for my vote -- not with a sign, an appearance, an email, a commercial.  I don't even know his or her name.  In that situation, I can't in good conscience vote for whoever the Republican is.

There are no city offices in play today.  Like most big cities on the East Coast, Baltimore has had virtual one-party rule for a long time.  It has worked out about as well as one-party-rule usually works out:  very effective at first, then corrupt, and then simply inept.  I would like to see a second party seriously vie with the Democrats in Baltimore; it would ensure that everyone did a better job of governing.  However, the Republican Party platform is that if you are black, or educated, or live in a city, you aren't a real American, and don't count.  Therefore, is it any wonder that the Republican Party isn't viable in this city?

I will vote against the slots amendment.

(A) It's bad policy; money spent on slots is money not spent in locally owned businesses.  Slots money is divided into three piles:  a tiny pile to the winners, a slightly larger pile to the State, and a giant pile to some Nevada-based gaming corporation.  This is a stupid, self-defeating policy unless most of your gamblers come from another state, and since Maryland is surrounded by states with slot machines, most of the slots players will be in-state.  (And the arms race continues; Delaware and PA will add video poker, then Maryland will have to, then they will add table games, then we will have to, then they will ad sports book, then we will have too...  making the citizens poorer, the local businesses more strapped, and the giant Nevada gaming corporation richer).

(B) It's bad governance; the legislature could grow a pair and pass a slots bill itself, but it's too paralyzed and chickenshit to take a decisive action.  Constitutions should not be amended except when absolutely necessary.  It sets a bad precedent to amend the Constitution pointlessly.

I will vote, reluctantly, for all the bond issues.  Candidly I think that at least one of the large public institutions seeking a bond issue is going to go under; I never seen anyone go in or out of Port Discovery.  But maybe I'm wrong, and it is viable, and just needs a new roof.

In which I feign youth.

This weekend Cynthia went to Manhattan for a baby shower. While I enjoy going to NYC with her -- being a tourist is so much more fun in the company of a native -- one of the primary advantages to the Y-chromosome is a lifetime exemption from any celebration with the word "shower" in the title. I exercised that masculine prerogative and stayed home for the weekend.

Friday was Halloween, my first in the neighborhood. From my time in Federal Hill I was expecting hordes of kids from other neighborhoods, recognizable chiefly by their skin tones, Baltimore being a fairly segregated city. This expectation was reinforced by a bit of racist idiocy I discovered a couple of weeks ago, when I found a flyer on our door advising that there was going to be a neighborhood trick-or-treat night on October 25, and to turn our porch light on if we were going to be handing out candy on that night. At first, I was bewildered. Why do trick-or-treating on the Saturday before Halloween? Especially when it was on a Friday night anyhow? But then it occurred to me -- the trembling whitebread douchebags didn't want their little (white) kids going around the neighborhood on a night when the little (black) kids from across Eutaw and above North Avenue were going to be going through our neighborhood, too.

For obvious reasons, I didn't participate in this little bit of update Jim Crow bullshit. Instead, on Friday night -- actual Halloween night -- I sat out on my steps and talked to my neighbors and handed out candy. To a mixture of kids from our little mostly-white neighborhood, and from the mostly-black neighborhoods on either side of us. And tried not to think about the fact that the neighbors two houses to the east, whose kids we like, went trick-or-treating the Saturday before. Nice lesson for your kids, you two. FEAR THE UNKNOWN! AVOID THE DIFFERENT!

I gave out four big bags of candy in about 90 minutes. No really outstanding costumes this year, sadly. Nothing from Harry Potter, for a change; a few Darth Vaders, a few sports figures, a lot of Spidermen, a few Batmen. No Michael Phelpses. Maybe it was too chilly to wear naught but a Speedo and a lot of medals.

(I mentioned to one neighbor that I had dated someone she used to work with. When I told her who, she laughed wryly and said knowingly "oh, then you know about her." I replied, diplomatically, "I'm sure she has her version of events." My version is that she was nuts.)

Afterwards I read a habeas file, then punched up "Casino Royale" on pay-per-view and watched it for the first time. It was the first James Bond movie I actually liked. I would say I would take Cynthia to see the sequel, but that's unlikely, given the fact that the baby will be born right around the same time the movie comes out.

Saturday I took the train into DC to feign youth.

Let me just say at the top that I have transit-envy for any city that makes it easy to get around without a car. Baltimore is emphatically NOT one of those cities. DC is -- it is one of the few cities in America outside of New York where it is possible to live without a car. Chicago, DC, and New York are, to my knowledge, in fact the ONLY truly car-optional cities in the US, and it's a stretch with DC. (Maybe San Fran? Never been there, so I don't know for sure).

However, even though the District is but 40 miles from Baltimore, transit links between the two are sorely lacking. There is commuter train service, but it only runs on weekdays at rush hour. There is Amtrak, which is more expensive, but it, too, is limited. Specifically, it is limited at night. There are no trains between Baltimore and Washington between the hours of 10 p.m. and 3:15 a.m.

This created a dilemma. The plan for Saturday was to go into the District, see part of the film noir festival at the AFI cinema in Silver Spring, then hit some Capitol Hill bars with a few friends. The trouble: how to get home? Do I zealously restrict my alcohol intake so I can drive back? Hitch a ride with friends? Split the cost of a sedan service with someone else? I took the train in, because when I was young, these things had a way of working themselves out.

So then the DC subway out to Silver Spring, where I saw Raw Deal, a 1948 Jack Alton/Anthony Mann noir gem featuring Dennis O'Keefe, Marsha Hunt, and Claire Trevor. And a very young Raymond Burr as the crime boss. It was followed by a short, "Grand Inquisitor," also starring Marsha Hunt, filmed 60 years later. (Did the Zodiac killer take trophies? A cursory googling doesn't say. It's not critical to the short film but might answer a question I had.)

Back on the subway to Union Station, then a short cab ride to a sketchy part of North East. Granville Moore's. More Belgian beer than you can shake a stick at. Bison burger. Old friends and new. We hopped to a few bars. The lightweights started nodding out. One by one they were poured into cabs or otherwise sloughed off. I kept saying "this is my last night out until 2026" (when the soon-to-be-born one will graduate from high school). They kept buying rounds. We drank a toast to the barmaid's ass. Several toasts, actually. (She was a friend of Moxie, one of my boon companions, whom I hadn't seen in far too long. So it wasn't as demeaning and sexist as it sounds. In fact, it was something Moxie and the barmaid did when the two of them went out on the town together. The barmaid is (justly) proud of her ass.) We talked about music and film and books and cooking. Moxie's brother is as genuine and personable as Moxie herself. An Army guy with biceps bigger than my thighs passed out. A DC cop was impressed that I knew what a "jump-out boy" was, but he, too, had to call it a night before the rest of us were through. We wound up back at Moxie's place around two in the morning.

On the way there we stopped at a 7-11 to rehydrate. Gatorade and diet Coke. Why could Moxie, her brother, and I drink Jameson's and beer all night and leave the others in our dust? Besides a lot of scar tissue on our livers? Because we drank water all night, too. Anyhow, at the 7-11 at 2:00 a.m. on the House side of Capitol Hill, a middle-aged guy was buying just a bottle of pancake syrup. I am trying to imagine what sequence of events would lead to that, and coming up empty.

Back at Moxie's place I chided the two still-conscious males in our party about their failure to chat up, or get the number of, the barmaid to whose ass we had toasted. I, I pointed out, was married, but none of them had that excuse.

Then back to Union Station at about 2:45 to catch the 3:15 train back to Baltimore. As I had thought, the return-trip dilemma had resolved itself. Except for one catch: the end of daylight savings time. The hour from 1 to 2 a.m. was played out twice that morning. And so when I reached the train station, I discovered that I would have to wait there an extra hour.

I finally got back to Baltimore at 4:15 am, Eastern Standard Time. I had been awake 22 hours. I climbed into bed, and got about 4 hours sleep before daylight woke me.

Four hours was enough. No hangover, astonishingly. Good hydration, that's the key.

On Sunday I spent money at Lowe's (we've finally exhausted the hong bao from her brother, which came in the form of a Lowe's card), painted the ceiling in the baby's room, and primed the walls of the stairway. While watching the Ravens upset the Browns in Cleveland. (At the same time as the football game, there was an Obama rally with 80,000 people. That means there are about 150,000 extra people crammed into the same few blocks of downtown Cleveland yesterday afternoon. Jesus Christ.)

Cynthia came home around ten that night with baby shower gifts, a shorter haircut, and some carefully wrapped bahn mi from my favorite Vietnamese sub place on the lower East Side. Her belly had somehow gotten even larger in the three days she was gone. I was glad to have her back. Feigning youth is fun, but being a grownup is much more rewarding.

In which I beat a dead horse.

In California, voters will cast a ballot on Question 8, deciding whether to amend the state's constitution to forbid marriage between same-sex couples.

I'm not sure what more can be said on this topic, but I'll try.

What is wrong with people?

There is no principled basis for forbidding same sex marriage. None, nada, zip, zero. I have seen many people try and none have come close. To be sure, there may be scads of reasons for any given individual to oppose it. There may be lots of perfectly sound theological reasons for a church to refuse to perform such ceremonies. But there is no intellectual, moral, ethical, philosophical, legal, or rational basis to forbid the state from granting any two consenting adults the right to marry one another. Sorry. No. We don't work that way.

But some people in California felt that the constitution needed to be amended to actually take rights away from a disfavored minority. Do you know why the favorite tactic of gay-bashers is the constitutional amendment? It's because they know that time is against them. Constitutional amendments are much harder to undo than regular laws. By amending the constitution, de jure discrimination will remain the law of the land long after it ceases to garner even a plurality of public support.

The single greatest indicator of someone's position on same-sex marriage is... age. (Well, I suppose sexual orientation might be a bigger one, but you know what I mean). The younger you are, the less you care whether two adults you don't know get married. The homophobes and haters read the demographic writing on the wall, and know that every year that goes by, more of them are dead, to be replaced by people who simply don't care about that issue.

So they seek to amend the constitution so that their cold, dead, homophobic, hateful hands can reach out from beyond the grave to keep people they don't know from getting married.

Fuckers.

In which I learn new things

I have learned a new aspect of the law of unintended consequences:  smoking has been outlawed in bars for months now, and as a result, I might have to actually pay for matches.  The free match gravy train has ended.

I have learned that I do not live in America, because I live in a city.

I have learned that pregnant women are especially flatulent.

I have learned that exercise and drastically reduced beer intake are not enough to bring back at 32-inch waist.  If I only liked salad more than cheesesteaks!

I have learned that there is no decent mass transit for intercity hedonism in the Baltimore-Washington area.  There are no trains from D.C. to Baltimore between 10 p.m. and 3:15 a.m. on Saturday nights.  There was a time when I would not have blanched at a 3:15 return train... but I question my stamina for partying that long now.  My choices for a night in DC are to either (a) end it by 10 p.m., early even by my decrepit standards; (b) keep the action going until 3:00 a.m., difficult when you have no plans on hooking up; (c) don't drink, so I can drive myself home; or (d) crash at a friend's house.  If you think (d) is the best option, you're wrong.  The only people I know to crash with are people whose breasts I have seen, and while that's all in my past, it still wouldn't be seemly to spend the night with them, however chastely, while my wife's out of town.

I have learned that I can substitute blackeyed peas for black beans in one of my staple dinner entrees.  I'm not sure if there's any dietary advantage to this, but it's good to change things up once in awhile.