only a plain old letter

Dear Aunt,

It is snowing again. I always thought we got plenty of winter in NYC, but I’m beginning to understand now why people head to the tropics in February.

J *****and I go to an “Itsy Bitsy Yoga” class on Saturday mornings. Today was special because Daddy came, too (good thing, too, because otherwise there would have been only two kids and two moms, and that’s kind of boring). J*****’s friend I*** was fascinated to see a Daddy doing yoga. It isn’t really yoga in a strict sense; it’s more an introduction to the traditional yoga asanas with some improv thrown in. (So Steve was really good at it.)

I used to do yoga regularly before J***** was born, but I haven’t done any at all since he arrived on the scene. There are such things as pre-natal yoga classes, and at times I think I’d enjoy that but the closest one seems to be in Bedford, which is a town north of here. Since I only have a limited window of time when I could participate in such a thing (basically the short time when J*****’s at school), I haven’t seriously investigated. Years ago I did Kundalini yoga for a while, which is supposed to elevate a certain awareness in the practitioner. As far as I could tell, it only elevated my heart-rate. I do know that one of the most difficult things I have ever done was the “breath of fire” in the bow position. This is where you lie on your belly, grab your ankles with your wrists and attempt to straighten your knees while you balance on your pelvis. Then you hyperventilate. There’s no way I could possibly do this now, since it would flatten my fetus into my backbone, among other things. But I can’t remember why I ever wanted to to begin with. Luckily, “Itsy Bitsy Yoga” is more about the kids having fun than performing any of the asanas correctly or attaining a higher level of consciousness.

I feel vaguely guilty because I can’t wait for this child to be born, not so much because we’re excited about his arrival (which of course, we are) but because I’m so damn tired of being pregnant. The first time everything was new and it was something of an adventure, and even the uncomfortable stuff was tolerable because it was all part of the experience. This time I feel like a breeding cow, or something. OK, being cooped up in the house all winter doesn’t help. But the inconvenient stuff is more inconvenient than the first time, and I find I don’t have as much patience with J***** because I’m tired and clumsy and I don’t want to crawl around on the floor fishing toys out from under the sofa. And I don’t want to yell at him for being a toddler, so I just get morose, instead. It has been an unremarkable, routine pregnancy up to this point, and for that I’m grateful, but I could still do without the daily heartburn, the annoying Braxton-Hicks contractions, the muscle cramps that rudely wake me up from a deep sleep with my calf muscle in a steel knot, and the hideous maternity clothes. Of course none of this is the baby’s fault. Pregnancy is just an undignified condition.
“Glow,” my foot.

I guess I don’t “do” pregnancy well. There was a woman in our co-op in New York who told me she really loved being pregnant, complications and all. (I haven’t failed to notice that she only did it once, though.) A few years ago there was a book that was really popular called “The Girlfriend’s Guide to Pregnancy.” The author apparently “did” pregnancy excellently; she did it four times. Now she’s written “The Girlfriend’s Guide to Toddlers,” and “The Girlfriend’s Guide to Birthday Parties…” I’m waiting for “The Girlfriend’s Guide to Menopause.” Can’t be far off.

The apartment still hasn’t sold, and it’s now cost us tens of thousands of dollars and every new delay makes smoke come out of my ears, but there’s not a lot I can do about it. The buyer is offering to put down 60% of the sale price in cash, and the last thing they did was request his most recent W-2, which wasn’t required in the submittal package. What are they so freaking worried about?! I don’t want to sound as desperate as we actually are, and I don’t want to p*** off the Board and prompt them to drag their feet even more, so all I can do is sit here and stew. And because we spend most of our time indoors because it’s so cold outside, I see every little thing that needs to be painted, stripped, sanded, redone, replaced… and there’s no money to do it with. Sometimes things just don’t go the way they were supposed to. It should be an exercise in acceptance, or patience, or something. I would make a lousy Buddhist. Thank God I’m just an Episcopalian.

I guess I should go check on the boys. They went outside to shovel and they seem to have disappeared. There’s only two inches of snow, so I know they didn’t fall into a snowbank, but the last I saw of them they were talking to a neighbor and his Irish setter and the neighbor and the dog have gone on their way and it’s started to get dark. So I’ll try to write again another time.


Love,