How we deal.

Here's the thing about low-grade depression, the kind you find yourself lugging around with you after something really horrific happens in the world: it's big, but it's murky. It's hard to identify. In fact, I was thinking today that if I were a busier person, I might not have picked up on the fact that I was feeling really low. Or if I did, I might have attributed it instead to some annoyance about my day, or the fact that I was tired, rather than recognizing that yes: I am feeling depressed because of everything I saw on the news yesterday.

I have a theory that some part of the brain knows that even when we're not directly affected, the news wounds us, somehow, and we deserve to heal, so it latches itself onto whatever it can find that connects us to the tragedy, makes it relevent to us, and us to it.

For me: I keep telling people that this is a Tech town. And that's true; I would bet that the majority of the university-bound kids in Abingdon go to Tech. But does this make the situation harder for me personally? Not really. And yet, I keep bringing it up. I feel the need to establish, in most conversations today, that I live in a Tech town and that is my connection.

Here are some comments posted in response to Hode Kotb's Dateline piece, Not at my Alma Mater.

"My daughter is currently attending MI Tech. Through all of this, I have felt I am there with all those parents who children attend VA Tech."

"I'm not a VT grad, rather an alumni of James Madison University ('81), but I fully understand the sense of community, pride, and security we all felt at our schools."

"My grandfather taught and retired from the engineering department."

We did this after 9-11 too. Me? I was six miles from the Pentagon. You could see the smoke from the top row at Byrd Stadium. Did I go to the top row of Byrd Stadium, did I see the smoke? No, I didn't. I went to the stadium and changed my mind. I didn't want my connection to be quite that real, I suppose. I remember that almost everyone I knew talked a lot about people in their lives-- sometimes friends of friends of friends-- who had at one time worked in the World Trade Center. I'm also realizing how quick I am to bring up the fact that an acquaintance of mine was in the library at Columbine High School when so many of her classmates died.

I honestly don't think anyone does this to try to get sympathy or make it all about them. Or maybe we do, but maybe we're just not equipped to process the hugeness of these events as they are. The numbers don't even register sometimes. So we break it down into something we can relate to, or at least we try.

So here I am (100 miles from Blacksburg, for the record), thinking about every creative writing class I ever took, in which at least a handful of students would submit terribly dark pieces and it never occurred to me that they might be troubled (I still don't think so, by the way; I think the majority of college students who write terribly dark things are doing it to prove that their ideas are adult enough, edgy enough).

I'm thinking about tornados on campus, snipers just miles from campus, stabbing deaths on Knox Row, and the logistical nightmare that would have been locking down an institution of UMD's size.

I'm thinking about how what saddened me more than almost anything yesterday was the look on the (interim) campus police chief's face as he got pounded with questions, accusatory questions, questions he had no answers for. I guess it's my thin-skinned-ness, my fear of letting people down, doing the relating in that case.

But yeah. I can't relate to 33 dead, or 33 families suffering. And I'm not sure that will ever make any sense to me. I hope it doesn't to any of you.

Firsts!

Last week was an eventful one. First of all, remember how Lea rolled from back to front for the first time at 3 months? Yeah, she didn't do it again for a very long time. Then last week, she rediscovered this particular skill, and now she rolls like crazy. So much so, that I actually caught her in mid-air after she rolled off the corner of the bed in her room. No photo evidence of that, unfortunately.

Next big milestone: first cereal! (I'll first say that until I was very pregnant, I was always mystified when people talked about cereal for babies. I didn't get it. Cereal?? Like Cheerios?? For those who are similarly confused, here it is: baby cereal is basically gruel. It comes in powder form, usually a single ground-up grain, to which you add breast milk or formula or whatever. Like cream of wheat, except babies usually start with rice. Ok. Moving on.)

The first rice cereal feeding was a huge hit. The kid was lunging at the spoon, and grabbing my wrist to bring the stuff in faster. Since then, the novelty has worn off, and perhaps the fact that the stuff is pretty flavorless has caught on. But she still seems decently eager to eat solid food, which is a big signal to me that we are entering Real Baby Land. By this I mean: so far, life with Lea has been decently simple. We haven't required much gear, and quite a few of the typical items you associate with babies have been pretty absent from her life-- bottles, pacifier, rattles, bibs, etc. But now that she's eating something other than my milk, she seems a lot more like what I always pictured all babies to be. Messy, for starters.




Another baby item that is new to us-- a real crib! Until last week, Lea slept in our room, in the bassinet feature of a Pack-n-Play (basically a small, portable crib). We had the P-n-P right next to our bed, which made nighttime feedings so easy I practically slept through them. But the bassinet has a weight limit, which we are rapidly approaching, so we finally got around to setting up the crib in Lea's room. I had a lot of fun prettying up her room, and once it was basically finished: first night's sleep in her own crib!



Here's some other views of her room:






Oh yeah, and....

First time I really felt like I was living out a scene from The Day after Tomorrow. Snow-- slushy snow, and less than an inch-- but SNOW. On April 15th. Apparently nor'easters can find their way to central Appalachia.

Quoth Uncle Eric: Debacle-licious

At least we have a cute baby to look at after such ugly baseball.