I live in a bubble. It shimmers in the sun and casts pale rainbows on everything I see: my husband, my two sturdy boys, our life together. Most days, I carry on as if the bubble’s not so fragile, but of course every once in a while, something I read or something I see will remind me that this is a very delicate state in which to live. It’s not, in fact, real. I can’t close myself off from the sadness of the world with walls of soap, because if I did, I’d be closing myself off to some real joy, too.

I was reminded of this reading the new anthology edited by Literary Mama columnist Jessica Berger Gross, About What Was Lost: Twenty Writers on Miscarriage, Healing, and Hope. When I mentioned to a friend that I was reviewing the book, she asked, “Why? Why would you choose to read something so sad?” Why, indeed? I’ve never been touched closely by miscarriage, why sign up to read about an experience I’ve managed, so far, to skirt?

Because I didn’t expect that the book would be only and irrevocably sad (and it is not). Because I expected to find in the book some beautiful, deeply-felt writing (and I did). Because miscarriage is hushed-up—although twenty to twenty-five percent of pregnancies end in miscarriage, did you know that? (I didn’t)– and I wanted to do some small thing to speak up about miscarriage. Because miscarriage is something that happens to women and families, and they grieve, and then learn how to carry their grief along as they move on in life. I wanted to read about that.

I read about the secrecy in which we shroud miscarriage, still, even though we know it happens so often. David Scott writes ruefully, “The world of miscarriage was a secret society we’d joined by accident, by living.” Emily Bazelon takes some small comfort in this, that this unwanted experience has moved her into a quiet community: “As I unraveled—there was a long time when I didn’t think about anything else—I held on to the idea that I was joining a sad but wise tribe.”

I read about the physical pain of miscarriage, its terrible perversion of labor. Jessica Jernigan’s doctor tells her that miscarrying will feel like bad menstrual cramps (which by now we should all know is a lame euphemism for tearing agony); instead, she writes, “It was much worse, and each time the pain came, I felt the urge to push, and this travesty of labor was worse than any physical hurt…. The doctor had also told me that I wouldn’t recognize anything resembling a baby. He wasn’t quite right about that, either…I recognized the gestational sac when I saw it…I held it in the palm of my hand. It was small and round and dark, like a plum.”

I read good ideas for helping women and their families endure miscarriage. Joyce Maynard reminds us to just, please, take it seriously. “However it occurs, under whatever circumstances…it is a death, and nothing less. It leaves you one child short, once again.” Dahlia Lithwick recalls the end of her pregnancy in the hospital’s labor ward, and comments bitterly, “I’d have preferred to have that surgery in a hospital broom closet or the damned parking lot. In hindsight, it’s unbelievable that any modern American hospital would not have a soothing, non-ironic place to minister to the thousands of pregnancies that end as mine did.” And so she suggests simply “that hospitals, which thoughtfully offer massages and hot tubs and music for the new mommies, could also provide spaces—both physical and psychological—for the almost-mommies as well.”

I read about the aftermath of loss, and the need to carry on for one’s family, as in Sylvia Brownrigg’s wrenching story of a trip to Lake Tahoe to memorialize her son Linnaeus: “As with so much of our experience with Linnaeus, my husband Sedge and I were accompanied by our son, Samuel, not yet two, and my stepson, Henry, seven. There was a certain need to keep up appearances… It’s a funny kind of family vacation, a trip that’s part fun and frolics in the snow, part ash-scattering.”

And I read about moving on. Susan O’Doherty’s “The Road Home” concludes the collection with her intertwined stories of becoming a mother after many losses and resuming a writing career. After reading to her son’s class, she writes, “A serious-looking girl raises her hand. You’re a mother, and you’re a writer,” she says.
I wait for her question, but there doesn’t seem to be one.
“That’s right,” I say.
She nods. “That’s good.”
I nod, too. “Yes,” I say. “It is.”

Thank goodness for all of these writers, sharing their stories and offering understanding sympathy to people grieving miscarriage. They map out a sad terrain, but suggest, too, some routes toward hope.

This month in Literary Reflections, Amy Mercer remembers how she loved solitude as a child, and describes how she longs for it now as a mother and writer:

But now, married for almost ten years and the mother of two children, I fear I’ll never be alone again. I check email with a child on my lap. I cook dinner with a boy on the ladder next to me, making “salt and pepper make-up” (water, flour, salt and pepper) in a mixing bowl. I shower with my two year old, shampooing with one hand. I carry a boy on each hip to bed, where we read, cuddle, get more “choco” (chocolate milk), and when I tuck them in for the third time, I’m weary of others. Collapsing onto the couch with a magazine or a book, I read someone else’s story. I am alone at last for as long as I can stay awake.

Someone else’s story reminds me of my own. Alone with my children, I banish them to their playroom, so I can write. I let them play computer games for too long, so I can write. I buy them new DVD’s, so I can write. Will asks for a snack while I struggle for the right word, and Miles pulls on my arm as I type. Alone in motherhood; in the hours of laundry and cleaning and cooking and telling everybody else what to do, I am connected to the rest of the world when I write. With Play-Doh spread across the table, Will cutting and Miles eating, I write about trying to relax. As they eat dinner at the kitchen counter, I write about the McDonald’s commercials, and my struggle to keep our family healthy. While the boys take a bath, splashing water across our new tile floor, I write about my definition of home. After I read them books, I sneak out of their room, and if I’m not too tired, I write about giving birth to readers.

Read more about how Amy Mercer plays Solitaire.

Sunday morning, early, everyone still in pj’s. Mary J. Blige on the stereo, Ben doing laps around the kitchen, strumming along on the mandolin, Eli sitting and coloring at the table, Tony making a cappucino and I’m on the couch with the newspaper.

A nice way to start the day.

I was so sad to emerge from my flu haze this morning to learn that Molly Ivins has died. Her writing offered the very best combination of smart and funny. The best way to memorialize her, I think, is to keep on writing against the war in Iraq.

From her last column:

The purpose of this old-fashioned newspaper crusade to stop the war is not to make George W. Bush look like the dumbest president ever. People have done dumber things. What were they thinking when they bought into the Bay of Pigs fiasco? How dumb was the Egypt-Suez war? How massively stupid was the entire war in Vietnam? Even at that, the challenge with this misbegotten adventure is that we simply cannot let it continue.

…

We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. Raise hell. Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous. Make our troops know we’re for them and trying to get them out of there.

Rest in peace, Molly Ivins.

I was recently asked to write the story of Eli’s birth for my doula. She’s an accomplished photographer, assembling a book of birth photos and stories. It was a nice project for me; I’d written quite a bit in my journal about the day, but fleshing it out into an essay, with feedback from my writing class, was a terrific writing experience.

But after I wrote it, I thought, how much of this is true? What I remember of the day now is what I wrote in my journal a week or so after the fact, by which point some details were probably already lost. When did I start turning the day into a story? While it was still happening? I don’t think I had the wherewithal for that, actually. I do get through a lot of stuff by thinking about the story it will make later, but not labor! But it did start to become a story before I even started telling people about the day, while Tony and Britt and I were all still huddled around brand-new Eli, marveling about our experience. And then I started telling people about it, and then I wrote it down, and now I’ve written it again, and, and, and…

I thought about this particularly because after I wrote this latest version of Eli’s birthday, I gave it to Tony to read, and wondered how much of it he’d remember, or even agree with. But he’s an excellent partner to a writer, knowing that whatever I write is my truth. He can write his own version if he wants.

This is all a lengthy lead-in to a quote that struck me from Julian Barnes’ essay in a recent New Yorker:

My brother remembers a ritual—never witnessed by me—that he calls the Reading of the Diaries. According to him, Grandma and Grandpa each kept diaries, and in the evenings would sometimes read out loud to each other what they had recorded five years earlier. The entries were apparently of stunning banality but frequent disagreement. Grandpa would propose, “Friday. Fine day. Worked in garden. Planted potatoes.” Grandma would reply, “Nonsense,” and counter-cite, “Rained all day. Too wet to work in the garden.”

I just love this. Love picturing the old and crotchety pair reading to each other from their diaries (diaries like my father keeps, of weather and garden reports). Love that they both keep diaries. Love that they disagree! It just cracks me up.

Barnes goes on:

My brother also remembers that once, when he was very small, he went into Grandpa’s garden and pulled up all his onions. Grandpa beat him until he howled, then turned uncharacteristically white, confessed everything to our mother, and swore that he would never again raise his hand against a child. Actually, my brother doesn’t remember this, either the onions or the beating; he was just told the story repeatedly by our mother. And, indeed, if he were to remember it he might well be wary of it: he believes that many memories are false, “so much so that, on the Cartesian principle of the rotten apple, none is to be trusted unless it has some external support.” I am more trusting, or self-deluding, however, so shall continue as if all my memories were true.

And so this is how I write. No, I’m not presuming to claim I write like Julian Barnes, just that I’ll write as if all my memories are true, and go from there.

We took the boys to see Dan Zanes today. I love Dan Zanes – love the music, the politics, the raucous energy of his shows. We have several of his CD’s and a concert DVD. Ben has two guitars, a ukulele, a mandolin and assorted other musical instruments with which we have concerts at least once a day. “Concert in the living room!” Ben will shout, “Dan Zanes and friends!” And he assigns us all roles. He’s Dan, of course; Tony (who actually knows how to play guitar) plays the part of singer David Jones; I’m Cynthia Hopkins, the accordion player; and Eli is Baby Colin, the drummer. We make a joyful noise.

The first time we saw Dan Zanes perform, Ben was nearly three. He sat still for the hour-long show, shushing us when we tried to sing along, pulling us back down when we stood up to dance. He studied the show intently and then, when it was all over and we asked him what he thought, said only “They shined lights on Dan Zanes!” When we got home that day, he asked us to shine a flashlight on him as he strummed his ukulele on the hearth.

Eli was a baby for our second Dan Zanes show, so he mostly napped and nursed next to his quietly observant older brother. I was wondering how he’d react to the show today, given that he’s now at that exuberant toddler stage, running full-throttle into everything. But no, he was pretty bowled over by the experience, too. He moved from my lap to Tony’s, not objecting to our bouncing him or singing along, but not really grooving, either.

Were Tony and I like this as children, I wonder?! Our boys were the only two kids in the theater who didn’t get their wiggle on. But we all had a great time, and I’m sure Ben’s going to bust out a few new moves and a bit more patter for tomorrow’s concert.

This is from Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life, a wonderful book that I recently re-read:

Several delusions weaken the writer’s resolve to throw away work. If he has read his pages too often, those pages will have a necessary quality, the ring of the inevitable, like poetry known by heart; they will perfectly answer their own familiar rhythms. He will retain them. He may retain those pages if they possess some virtues, such as power in themselves, through they lack the cardinal virtue, which is pertinence to, and unity with, the book’s thrust. Sometimes the writer leaves his early chapters in place from gratitude; he cannot contemplate them or read them without feeling again the blessed relief that exalted him when the words first appeared—relief that he was writing anything at all. That beginning served to get him where he was going, after all; surely the reader needs it, too, as groundwork. But no.

Every year the aspiring photographer brought a stack of his best prints to an old, honored photographer, seeking his judgment. Every year the old man studied the prints and painstakingly ordered them into two piles, bad and good. Every year the old man moved a certain landscape print into the bad stack. At length he turned to the young man: “You submit this same landscape every year, and every year I put it on the bad stack. Why do you like it so much?” The young photographer said, “because I had to climb a mountain to get it.”

There’s an essay I’ve been writing, off and on, for about three years now. I realize that I’m hanging on to sections of it just because I’m used to them, they have Dillard’s “ring of the inevitable.” I’m not sure they have much place in the essay anymore. They served a useful purpose for me–they got me to the more interesting place in the essay that I am now–but I don’t think the reader needs them. Time to set them aside and dive back in.

How could I not make this cake? It has 3 of my Top 5 Favorite Food Words in its name! (The other two, for the record, are glazed and chocolate.) And I’m sorry I didn’t think to take a picture before we’d eaten half, but here it is anyway, in all its crackling-sugar-crusted glory. Yum.

I thought to make this after last week’s olive oil cake, the recipe I could have (but didn’t) find in Deborah Madison’s Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone; I was reminded that she’s got some nice looking cake recipes in that cookbook. Which I’ve never tried! So now I’m going to try them all (there are only five, so it’s a much easier project than baking one’s way through Nigella’s chocolate cake hall of fame, a chocolate-y journey in which I am stalled, because of the chocolate fruit cake, half way through…)

Anyway, this is a very nice cake. It’s really not terribly sweet, and because of the yeast and eggs, it turns out tasting rather breakfasty, which is to my mind an excellent quality in a cake. I think maybe next time I’ll stir it together in the evening, let it do the first rise in the fridge over night, and then bake it in the morning. It is the kind of cake you want to serve with something, though. I made an orange compote, which was good but would have been better if I hadn’t been so lazy about cutting away all the pith. Warmed-up raspberry or blueberry jam would make a fine sauce for this, and a dollop of whipped cream wouldn’t hurt, either.

The Cake
2 1/4 t yeast (1 envelope)
1/4 c sugar
2 c flour
1/2 t salt
1/2 c warm milk
2 eggs room temperature
4 T butter, at room temperature

other nice additions to stir in with the eggs: 1 tsp lemon or orange zest and 1/2 t vanilla; or 1/2 t crushed anise; or 1/2 c ground almonds and/or a drop of almond extract

The Topping
2 T butter, softened
1/4 c light brown sugar

Stir the yeast and 1 t of the sugar into 1/4 c warm water and let stand until foamy (about 10 minutes). Whisk together the flour, remaining sugar, and salt in a mixing bowl. Add the yeast, milk, and eggs and beat until smooth. Add the butter and beat vigorously until the batter is silky. Scrape down the sides, cover, and let rise till doubled, about 45 minutes.

Lightly butter a 9″ tart or cake pan. Stir down the dough. Now Deborah Madison tells you to turn the dough out onto a floured counter, shape it into a disk, and place it in the pan. My dough was, well, it was batter — way too runny to handle like that. So I just poured it into the pan and it was fine. Either way, once the dough/batter is in the pan, dot or spread the top with the softened butter, sprinkle the whole with the brown sugar, and then let rise for 30 minutes. During the last 15 minutes, preheat oven to 400.

Bake the cake in the center of the oven for 20-25 minutes; the surface should be covered with cracks. Let cool briefly, then unmold and serve, still a bit warm, with fruit and ice or whipped cream.

Tony and I found this recipe in the Sunday Times magazine a few years ago; the first time we made it, we realized halfway through that neither of us really knew how to fry eggs! A quick consult with Irma rectified that situation, and now this is a standard part of the dinner repertoire. It’s particularly quick if you happen to have roasted red peppers and capers in your pantry.

2 red bell peppers
1 tbsp capers, rinsed
1 or 2 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped fine
1/4 c finely chopped parsley
3 tbsp bread crumbs
1 lb spaghetti
5 tbsp olive oil
2 eggs
grated parmesan

Roast the peppers, peel and slice into thin strips.

In a small baking dish, combine peppers, capers, garlic and parsley. Season with salt &pepper.; Sprinkle the bread crumbs on top. Set aside until you’re ready to finish the dish (ie, this can sit all day…)

Bring pasta water to boil and preheat oven to 350.

Drizzle pepper mixture with 2tbsp olive oil and bake 10 minutes, while pasta cooks.

While pasta’s boiling and pepper mixture is heating, fry 2 eggs, sunny side up, until whites are set but yolks are still runny.

Drain pasta and pour it into large serving bowl. Toss in baked peppers & eggs, using a couple forks to break up the egg.

It didn’t hit me when, after seventeen hours of mostly calm and gentle labor, my baby, the child I was thinking of as Charlotte (or maybe Josephine), burst out with a splash, my waters breaking with the head’s emergence. I heard my doula exclaim, “Look at him!”

It didn’t hit me when Ben came to visit us in the hospital the next morning. I couldn’t take my eyes off my first born, so suddenly grown-up next to his baby brother, so proud in the button-down shirt Tony had chosen for the occasion. Ben didn’t even glance my way; he went straight for the plastic terrarium and hovered his hand over Elijah’s soft head, unsure about touching this unfamiliar creature.

It didn’t even hit me the day I was changing Eli’s diaper on the bathroom floor while Ben was sitting on the toilet, and Eli took advantage of the diaperless moment to shoot a pale fountain in the air, and Ben started laughing so hard he missed the bowl and oh, it all hit me. But it didn’t hit me.

It didn’t hit me until Tony and I went to see The Squid and The Whale (Noah Baumbach, 2005), several weeks after Eli’s birth. Watching the film’s mom talking to her boys, calling one Pickle and the other one Chicken, I leaned over to Tony and whispered, “Hey! I’m the mother of sons.” And Tony gave me a look that said, “Well, duh!” and ate another piece of popcorn.

Read more about The Squid and The Whale in my column at Literary Mama.