After all, what mother hasn’t cooed with pride over their infant’s first mecomium stool, that greenish black slick that is all the evidence an anxious new parent needs that their darling new baby possesses the very same digestive track as all other healthy babies the world over. There is comfort in this sameness. Expectations fulfilled. One off-colored elimination and the entire family is exhaling a collective sigh of relief.

And then there is the issue of the new mother’s own ability to defecate. Without a proper bowel movement, she is a prisoner in the maternity ward. More stool softeners are administered. Nurses talk in hushed whispers about her inability to poop as if it is a sign of this mother’s mental weakness. They have forgotten just how startlingly and scarring it is to pass a watermelon size creature from the vagina. They are focused on forcing this poor woman with the stitches to produce yet another expulsion that will surely tear her insides out, will lead to internal bleeding and the end of a perfectly good birthing experience. There is a stand-off. Armed guards stand at the bathroom door and order her performance. She will weep softly and pretend she has shat. They will rush in and insist on seeing the evidence and the new mother is forced to admit she has lied. Back to toilet for another attempt. Hours drag on before she achieves the successful void which is celebrated and admired and practically wrapped up along with the flowers and the teddy bears and the swaddled infant as souvenir of this important life changing event.

Now safely home with baby in arms, the true shit talking begins. There are long battles waged about whose turn it is to drag themselves from bed to change yet another diaper, change the whole outfit, the entire crib, in fact, because another runny infant stool has crept beyond the gathered leg pleats of even the most absorbent nappy and has stained the sheets and spoiled the cute footy-pajamas with the moons and stars.

This ritual grows tiresome, like Ground Hog day with diaper genies and Huggies’ wipes and changing table pads.

And somehow, in all its shit-filled sameness, life just sort of flies by until a person finds themselves suddenly parenting a child capable of crapping their pants at a zoo-themed birthday party even though they’ve been ‘potty trained’ for months. Just as quickly, they are Mom to an eight year old little boy who is crying as he clutches the porcelain, ‘It hurts Mommy, it hurts. Make it stop.” And without reaching up there to extract the compacted stool herself, she is powerless to help the child experiencing the distinct pain of his first anal fissure. Apricots are administered. A Sids bath is drawn. There is hand holding and supportive cheers while the boulder of poop is finally excreted. It is a monumental turd that refuses to be flushed away. It threatens to remain their as evidence of the ill effects of too many chicken finger/french fry combos for time eternal until someone gags their way through the process of breaking it up into flushable sized portions.

Because this defecation thing is something we all must do on a regular basis and because we parents have become sort of inured to the relative disgustingness of such discussions, 225,000 copies of What’s Your Poo Telling You? have been sold and the Poo Quality Index has become a popular topic at dinner parties, on episodes of Oprah and at play groups alike.

(I am happy to report that I have yet to discuss the PQI with anyone over tapas and dirty martinis or while standing attentively just to the right of the monkey bars. I’m not sure the suburban town in which I reside is ready for discussions about feces. But have no fear, I will probably make this social blunder very soon as I have a compulsive need to bring up shocking matters at regular intervals just to ensure that I am not too well liked in this town of 30,000 judgmental mom-types.)

Perhaps I am so comfortable with discussions of colon performance because I endured months and months of undignified testing in order for doctor’s to determine that my intestines are truly unique and mysterious and that no matter how many colonoscopies are conducted or stool samples collected and placed into small vials and stirred with little plastic spoons in preparation for lab analysis, no one is going to be able to determine the exact reason for my inner turmoil. The ability to sit in a room with a male doctor and exchange colorful commentary about one’s recent performance on the seat-of-ease is definitely an acquired skill. No matter how professional and gravely serious this doctor is about the topic, initially, there is that awkward silence that is you trying to determine just how much is too much information. I mean he’s asking but does he really, really want to know?

There is a distinct feeling that anything you say or do in regard to your bowel movements can and will be used against you in a future episode of Candid Camera. Such is the nature of the topic. But the success of the book and my ability to discuss poop for an entire and lengthy blog posting is evidence that we’re all in this together. To void or not to void has never been at question.

I have really, really liked his cool factor from the beginning. But last night stunned me. This guy is the real deal. I love it. I love that show for introducing us to talent like his. And I just hope that the ten year olds propping up David Archuleta will somehow grow the hell up and recognize the true rock star in the bunch.

For those of you that are not Idol fans just tune in here for a second and see what I’m talking about.

Mizmell has tagged me and I am supposed to grab the book nearest to my left elbow and open to page 123. I am to find the fifth sentence on the page and copy the next three sentences after the fifth here in this blog. And while three sentences in the middle of a book aren’t usually all that telling or descriptive of a novel or a writer’s talent as a whole, when I selected the book nearest me and opened to the designated page, I liked what I found. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Amy Hempel is a wizard with words and even the sixth, seventh and eighth sentences of the 123rd page do her justice. I keep her compilation of short stories on my desk beside the laptop. I begin my day with her. Opening the book at random and finding inspiration in the way she strings a sentence together.

This is how it looked: a car in the driveway, a light on upstairs. But nobody answers the door. I know what I would have done as a child if there was somebody home on Halloween night who did not bother to answer the door. I would have come back with shaving cream and eggs, with toilet paper and friends.
~Amy Hempel, The Collected Stories

She’s nailed it. It’s a simple thing but she has conjured memory: me and Megan Cisneros tormenting the neighbors who failed to produce adequate loot on Halloween night with mailbox pranks and doorbell ditching and all manner of obnoxiousness well into November. Now, twenty year’s later, I can only think that the citizens of Fredrickson Road can thank their lucky stars that paint ball had not been invented in 1983.

But there are other books here in the stack beside my laptop and I can’t resist the urge to see if these authors, the ones I begin my day with, like stretching my calve muscles or exhaling deep breathes, the ones who help me prepare to write, will they manage the same brilliance on a random page, mid-story?

Next in the stack is Lorrie Moore’s Birds of America.

“Bill, divorced only once, is here tonight with Debbie, a woman who is too young for him: at least that is what he knows is said, thought the next time it is said to his face, Bill will shout, “I beg your pardon!” Maybe not shout. Maybe squeak. Squeak with a dash of begging.”

Okay, I allowed for four sentences but they were short and the fourth really just modified the third and seemed too brilliant and utterly necessary to Bill’s character and predicament to have left it out.

I could go on like this forever. The stack of books beside me is rather monumental. I could open each at random and see what wordy treasure lies within. It’s an enticing way to spend a weekend, but, in the interest of time and because memes are supposed to be short, slap dash, even whimsical, I’ll just do one more. It’s here and it’s handy: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers.

“I have donated to the couple from the women’s shelter, and to the little boy from the youth group, to the woman from the Green Party, the kids from the Boy’s Club, the pair of solemn teenagers from SANE/FREEZE. The Berkeley-ness of Berkeley, so charming at first, is getting old. The bell rings.”

The bell rings. Did you read that? Of course the bell rings and Eggers has me reading on to see who will answer the bell, to find out which needy pan handler is on the doorstep. This is the beauty of Eggers, I think I’ll read three sentences and a half hour elapses and I’m well into page 150 when I remember that I’ve got a post to finish.

And just for kicks, I want to see how I stand up to the professionals. So I randomly select a page from my own story, Habeas. Since I have not written 123 pages, I settle for page 43, five sentences in:

“The interior of my mother’s car her true reflection, a jumble of paper coffee cups, packages of wasabi peas and soy nuts, a full ashtray, discarded tank tops and blousy skirts, windows clouded with road salt and the dingy filth of cigarette smoke, the windshield hazy and opaque with neglect. She bends forward over the steering wheel and her arm shoots out in front of me at every stop as if to stall my possible trajectory through the front windshield. I am forever ten year’s old in her mind.”

There’s my shameless pitch for my own writing and for that of Hempel and Moore and Eggers and of course for Amazon book sellers and all things reading related. Go forth and be literate. (I’m supposed to tag some others, so Jennifer, Slouchy, Xsd and Ron, if you’re having a slow week and feel like sharing a passage from the book beside your left elbow, please play along.

First, I feel somewhat responsible for this lovely thing blooming in the dining room. One thing I miss about South Florida is the easy cultivation of an astonishing array of orchids: phalenopsis, vandas, oncidiums, rhynostachys. I carried all these complicated lady friends with them with me to Massachusetts and watched all but two shrivel up and die. But here in New England I can grow Cymbidium orchids which shun the humidity of the tropics. Every February I am glad for this consolation.

Next, I finalized my Ben Franklin Presentation Board for the third grade history class I am taking right along with my eight year old son.

As evidenced by the expressions in the photograph, I seem to glean greater pleasure from the end product than does my son. He is slightly embarrassed and confused by my obvious pride only because he has yet to become a parent charged with seeing that his third grader read books, take notes and produce a visual presentation on an eminent person of whom the child has never heard, all while explaining the complicated historical significance of the Revolutionary War, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

Finally, we made snow people. Okay, I made a snow seductress with her ample bosom and her flowing skirts and the kids rebelled against such liberties taken with what was supposed to be a very basic, male snowman and created a snow child minus the realistic anatomy.

In the evenings I read or watched movies. Three films later, there’s only one I can recommend. Half Nelson, starring Ryan Gosling is definitely worth the rental. I loved this film for its lack of simplistic Hollywood-style messaging. It does tackle the popular mega-flick concept of redemption but in a manner so ambiguous and conflicted that the viewer can’t decide whether to hate the protagonist or envelop him in a huge hug and take him to bed. By degrees, you’ll love him and loathe him and feel like this guy is someone you know, someone possessing charm and intelligence and a disgusting drug habit – a combination of good and bad that makes him human and vulnerable and all together believable. Gosling nails the performance. The director, Ryan Fleck resists the urge to throw in voice overs or obvious narrative tricks. He allows the viewer to manage their own feelings about the characters and their plight. No stirring sappy scores or soft focus imagery. It’s all just harshly illuminated and begs the question, can a person save another if he cannot save himself? Both Gosling and his co-star, Shareeka Epps were nominated for academy awards for their performance in the film. And the soundtrack is pretty solid as well, featuring two tracks by Broken Social Scene.

Well, those are the good things. And there’s just one more. A completely wonderful post was written last week highlighting the emerging role of blogging in a modern day mother’s life. I am mentioned in the post and am most grateful to have been recognized for my contributions to the new art form. But mostly I’m just excited for all of us Moms and writers and bloggers to whom this post pays tribute. It’s all of us. Three cheers for Ron at RWorld. Your recognition of the thing we do here, and at sites all over the blogosphere, day after day, is much appreciated.

I just love a happy coincidence and, today, I learned of one that makes me inordinately glad. Last night My Better Half and I watched Once on our DVD player and both fell in love with this simple, sweet and beautiful story told almost entirely in song. This morning I received an e-mail from My Better Half’s uncle saying he had sent me the very same film for X-mas and, in the shuffle of the holidays, the gift had gone to the wrong address. It will be here soon. And though I can’t quite break it to him that we’ve already watched the film, just last night, because I know how much he wants to be the one who gives us the gift of this movie and its music, my heart still bounded just a little upon learning that I would soon own a copy. Placing the Netflix version in our mailbox this morning felt like a sorrowful parting. I will be overjoyed when it crosses our threshold again.

Without giving too much away, I need to mention that most of the film is a sort of music video. I guess one could call it a musical. But I loathe most musicals and found this one completely worthwhile, from start to finish. If your heart doesn’t just brim and over flow to the poignant strains of Falling Slowly as the two main leads play together for the first time in the back of an abandoned music shop then you are dead to me, someone I can share nothing with in the future.

I have already downloaded the MP3 version of the song released by The Frames, an Irish band whose lead-man Glen Hasard plays the main character in the film, and have been looping it non-stop all morning. Damn it makes me want to be a musician, to pick up the guitar and strum a sorrowful ballad. Fortunately, for my immediate family, we have no stringed instruments in near proximity. Otherwise I’d be fully engaged in making an complete asshole of myself right now.

Instead I urge you all to go get this movie or, at the very least, watch this clip of the two leads performing the song as part of the film’s promotional tour. Though story doesn’t end the way I really, really hoped it would, it’s the best thing I’ve seen in a few years. I shed a few tears at the end but that’s the way I like ‘em, with a slow poignant burn.