![\"\"](\"http:\/\/orangette.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/8a1eb-polajune11301.jpg\")
<\/a><\/div>\nEverything is happening at lightning speed. I have to get back to writing it down, or I\u2019ll forget.\u00a0 One morning, you wake up and you\u2019re 33 years old, with two dogs and a spouse and a refrigerator full of esoteric vermouths and amari, and the next morning, you wake up and you\u2019re 34 years old, with two dogs, a spouse, and a 12-week-old child in a bouncy chair on the floor in front of the refrigerator. \u00a0The other day at a doctor\u2019s\u00a0checkup, I actually told the nurse that I was 33, because I forgot that I\u2019d had a birthday. 33, 34, same thing. In any case, I\u2019m still a baby when I get a shot.<\/p>\n
<\/a><\/div>\n<\/a><\/div>\nWe are beginning to find moments of normalcy. On Monday, we put June in the car and drove to Vancouver to see Bruce Springsteen in concert. \u00a0He played “Cover Me<\/a>,” and it was sufficiently deafening that I could sing along as loud as I wanted without worrying that anyone would hear. I also ate a hot dog with yellow mustard. \u00a0It was outstanding. June stayed back at the hotel with our friends Katie and Kyle<\/a> and slept through the entire show. \u00a0Someday, when she\u2019s moaning about how ancient and uncool and deaf we are, I\u2019ll tell her about the days when we were seeing Springsteen and sacrificing our hearing and she was drooling shamelessly all over a borrowed hotel playpen.<\/p>\n Twice now, Brandon and I have gone on dates. Real dates, without a small person around. \u00a0Of course, these dates are on Sundays, at lunchtime, and Brandon goes to work afterward. \u00a0The first time, we went out to lunch at The Whale Wins<\/a>. (The sardine toast with curried tomato mayonnaise and shaved fennel! The whole roasted trout with brown butter and walnut sauce! \u00a0The brownie! \u00a0Eric Bordelet\u2019s pear cider!) Then we went to see the new James Bond movie, which was exciting, except that we failed to note that the movie would end after<\/i>\u00a0the babysitter was expecting us home, and that meant that we were those people<\/i>, the ones who trip on your purse while climbing over you and tiptoe sheepishly out of the theater with twenty minutes left.\u00a0The second time, we went out to lunch again, and after having three-quarters of a glass of Champagne, I fell asleep in the car on the way back to our neighborhood. When I woke up, we were parked in the lot outside the grocery store, where we were supposed to be doing our Thanksgiving shopping, and over in the driver\u2019s seat, Brandon was now sleeping. \u00a0We are pros at sleeping in parked cars. \u00a0Who knew? This past Tuesday, I had a fabulous nap in a parking lot on Granville Island, with cars roaring across the bridge over my head, while Brandon and June explored the market.<\/p>\n June looks exactly like Brandon when she smiles, and the rest of the time, or most of it, she looks like me.\u00a0Early the other morning, in our hotel room in Vancouver, I heard her start to fuss in her playpen-slash-crib, and when I bent down to pick her up, she let out a tiny gleeful scream and I could see, even in the dark, that she was grinning at me.\u00a0I don\u2019t know if I\u2019ll ever get over the fact that she exists – except when she\u2019s having a flamboyant meltdown like she did yesterday afternoon while we attempted to take a walk, and then I am pretty sure that I will definitely, without a doubt, never ever get over it.<\/p>\n When we were first thinking about having a baby, I read Anne Lamott\u2019s Operating Instructions<\/a> – <\/i>there\u2019s an Anne Lamott book for every phase<\/a> of my life! \u00a0Such a consolation! – and a couple of days ago, I decided to reread it. \u00a0There\u2019s so much that she gets right.\u00a0“Before I got pregnant with Sam,” she writes on page 60, “I felt there wasn\u2019t anything that could happen that would utterly destroy me. . . . \u00a0Now there is something that could happen that I could not survive: I could lose Sam. I look down into his staggeringly lovely little face, and I can hardly breathe sometimes. He is all I have ever wanted, and my heart is so huge with love that I feel like it is about to go off. At the same time, I feel that he has completely ruined my life, because I didn\u2019t used to care all that much.”<\/p>\n Sometimes when I\u2019m driving, because I do all of my thinking (and now, sleeping) in the car, I think about Tina<\/a> and my dad, all the people June will never meet. You\u2019d think I\u2019d be used to it, now that Burg has been gone for ten years next week, but grief always catches me off guard. \u00a0I can\u2019t believe that\u00a0June will never know my dad; that she\u2019ll never\u00a0get one of his scratchy, bracing, beard-forward kisses; that he will never have the opportunity to forget her birthday, something he was always so good at. \u00a0And then\u00a0I think about the fact that June will never really think of my mother as a twin. \u00a0I just can\u2019t believe she\u2019ll never know The Twins. \u00a0Brandon tells me almost every day that he sees them in her, and that makes it a little better.<\/p>\n It feels good to come back to this space. \u00a0It never fails me. \u00a0Thank you, always, always, for reading.<\/p>\n P.S. \u00a0This song<\/a>. (With thanks to my friend Brian<\/a> for pointing it out.) \u00a0Stevie wins again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ah. Okay. Where were we? Everything is happening at lightning speed. I have to get back to writing it down, or I\u2019ll forget.\u00a0 One morning, you wake up and you\u2019re 33 years old, with two dogs and a spouse and a refrigerator full of esoteric vermouths and amari, and the next morning, you wake up and you\u2019re 34 years old, with two dogs, a spouse, and a 12-week-old child in a bouncy chair on the floor in front of the refrigerator. \u00a0The other day at a doctor\u2019s\u00a0checkup, I actually told the nurse that I was 33, because I forgot that I\u2019d had a birthday. 33, 34, same thing. In any case, I\u2019m still a baby when I get a shot.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":546,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[221,70,95,362],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n<\/a><\/div>\n<\/a><\/div>\n<\/a><\/div>\n