shiso mama

The first few days that F was on his business trip, Otis constantly searched for him. After I nursed him, he looked at me and asked, “Baba?” looking expectantly at the door, waiting to be carried to our bedroom. Then when I set him down near the bed, he started looking around, crouching down to the crack underneath the bathroom door, yelling, “Hey! Hey! Baba!” just in case F was hiding in the bathroom. After a few days, he didn’t ask about F so much anymore, except when he wanted to call him on the phone.

The days passed, I waited for F to come home, and I wondered what, when and if Otis thought about his Baba. Does he miss F? What does he think happened to F? Now that F’s returned, I no longer wonder. This is because since F has returned from his business trip, Otis has become a total Baba whore.

All day long, Baba is all Otis can talk about. When I go to him in the morning and cradle him in my arms for a morning nurse, he snuggles close and then pops up, asking, “Baba?” After the nurse, he giggles as he repeats, “Ba ba ba ba,” heavy with anticipation, the long night finally behind him when he is reunited with his beloved. I carry him and when he sees F, Otis leans his body towards F, asking to be held by more capable arms. He can barely contain his excitement in the evenings, chanting “Baba Baba Baba” while waiting for F to appear so that he can play his favorite bedtime game. He saw F on his scooter once, and even though Otis stared uncomprehendingly at the man in the helmet waving furiously at the time, he now perks up whenever he sees a two-wheeled vehicle, asking, “Baba?  Baba?”  He loves his Baba so much that sometimes he refers to everything as Baba, including ME.  In fact, today, he saw three swarthy construction workers hosing down the street, and he leaned towards them, yelling, “Baba!”

Otis has been sick these past few days, and has taken to fallen asleep in the car at curious times, something he almost never does. But in true Otis fashion, he fights this to the very end. I see him in the special rear view mirror, head slumped to the side, eyes fluttering slowly. But mostly, I hear him moaning, on and on, a low droning monotone, sometimes for a good 30 minutes or so until his body and mind finally give in to the sleep. And would you believe it? Yesterday while driving home, he moaned and moaned, occasionally interjecting, “Baba? Baba?” until finally finally ending my torture with a last trailing “baaaaaa……” before closing those eyes and giving me some peace.

Maybe I should go away for a couple of weeks. Not that I care if I come back and Otis starts referring to everything and everyone as Mama. But it’ll be my excuse.

Mrs. Kwong and I met the same night that I met F. The story is kind of convoluted, but goes like this: the daughter of a high school friend of my mother’s came to New York during a weekend visit from graduate school. We had spent some time together, and had talked about getting to know each other better, so she invited me out to dinner with a bunch of her friends from undergrad. Mrs. Kwong was one of them. Mr. Kwong, who was only her boyfriend at the time, was out of town. F’s girlfriend was out of town too, so he came along as Mrs. Kwong’s default date.

F had pulled an all-nighter the previous evening, and was exhausted and ready to go home early. But with encouragement from Mrs. Kwong, he stayed the rest of the evening, and he and I eventually ended up taking the F train home together to our respective homes in Brooklyn, and it was during this ride that we really got to chat. I believe he later called her to confer, and the two of them agreed that I was friend-worthy, despite the fact that they couldn’t figure out why I would tell stories and then start laughing loudly and maniacally at my own stories. The rest, I guess, is history.

We miss the Kwongs, and we’re sorry that we aren’t still in Brooklyn to grab Amelia with our grubby little hands and smother her sweet face with gross, wet kisses. I wanted to make her something that would show her just how important her mom and dad are to me. Plus, I had to make up for the fact that I basically ruined a good many of their wedding photos with the extremely un-model-like pained expression on my face that appeared in EVERY SINGLE PICTURE which might have been caused by the severe weeping that I undertook during the ceremony which led Mrs. Kwong’s brother-in-law to eventually check my pulse.

I decided to make her a quilt. This was my first quilt, and I was particularly nervous because I have that little problem of not being able to complete projects in time. And a quilt just seems so daunting. But with a LOT of hand-holding from two talented friends, Kathy (check out her amazing class portrait quilt and all her clear and easy sewing tutorials) and Elizabeth (she made Otis’s quilt), and an Otis slumber party at Grandma R’s, I finished. It’s a pretty simple quilt, with rectangular blocks of fabric. I generally dislike pink, and the Kwongs didn’t really want to go with the “girls gone pink” theme, but I have been holding onto this wonderful floral fabric forever. It’s my favorite, and I’ve been saving it for a special project. Plus, it feels very French to me, and Mr. Kwong is a reasonably serious Francophile (See, Mr. Kwong? I do think of you sometimes!)  There are lots of mistakes, and if only I knew then what I know now… but ’tis finished and has been received.

Here’s the quilt, with all the layers taped to the floor and pin basted:

On the sewing machine, while I was quilting it:

Finished!

Here’s Otis modeling it:

And here’s Otis, uh, breaking it in:

Perhaps the Kwongs will one day grace us with a wee photo of the babe and her blanket?

We went to the shmancy market today for spicy salami to make sandwiches with broccoli raab for dinner tonight.  Otis was cranky, having taken a too-short nap, and was fighting being carried in the store.  That is, until he caught glimpse of the attractive young Asian woman helping us.  That’s when he turned on the smiles and the “who me?  I’m shy” act.  A few coy looks later, he was sucking on a breadstick.  A couple more smiles and a “bah!” to her plus her just-as-attractive coworker later, we were shoved a whole bag full of free breadsticks.

After I related this story to F, he pointed out that there used to be a day when I could get away with trying to flirt with a waiter or a salesguy, and maybe he would throw me some free bread or something just to get me to stop making a fool out of myself.  Now I gotta depend on the babes.  My my, how time passes.  And no, I’m not above using my baby for free stuff.  Why do you think I taught him how to blow kisses?

While F was away, I brought Otis into our bedroom every morning, closed the door, and let him destroy everything in sight while I lazed about in bed, unable to fully commit to getting up and dressed quite yet. Invariably, he would stand next the nightstand, look pointedly at me, and then press his hand to his ear while squeezing his hand between that ear and his shoulder: his sign for the telephone.

Otis loves the phone, as all babies do. But unfortunately, his taste for the phone has grown more sophisticated over the months. It used to be enough to just give him a plastic phone. Then he graduated to the old-fashioned telephones that Fifth Aunt Grandma K brought over, turning up his nose at his trusty old beeping plastic toy. Then he just wanted to play exclusively with the real phones, handing it to you and then watching intently as you pretended to have a telephone conversation.

Now, though, Otis has graduated from all this. Those games are for babies. Now he wants to have real conversations. When he hands you the phone, he wants you to call someone now and he wants you to talk on speakerphone. No privacy allowed. If it’s only 5am, and it’s too early to call even your friends on the East Coast, and you just pretend to talk to someone, like you used to, he’ll look at you pityingly, like you’ve gone stupid in the head.

So while F was away, Otis pointed every morning to the phone and then made his sign, insisting insisting, chanting Baba Baba like a mantra until I gave in and called F on his cell phone. F was always working, so we left a series of Good luck! We miss you! messages, which I just listened to tonight. They are all variations on the same theme: Otis yelling into the phone like a drunken sailor, Otis saying Ba ba ba ba in his sweet baby voice, and then ending every call with a series of mwah mwah mwah sounds as he blows kisses and calls out Bah! (bye). He usually waved at the telephone at the same time.

F has saved all of these Otis messages. He even has one from July 2005, which involves a lot of heavy breathing and me in the background saying Agoo! Agoo! I have a few saved messages myself from when Otis goes to visit Grandma R. I wonder how long T-Mobile will let us keep these.

So F arrived home last night around 12:30ish. I was asleep, and no, I did not plunge a shiv into his heart when he leaned over to kiss me hello. He was exhausted, I was exhausted, so what’s the best thing to do in this situation? Invite lots of people with toddlers over for an impromptu dinner, of course, silly!

I guess because F’s been away for so long, and the fact that we’ve both been so busy that we haven’t really had too much time to socialize made me go temporarily insane and invite half the neighborhood over for sangria and dinner. It’ll be casual! I thought. Fun! I’m as spontaneous as anyone out there! Just watch me whip this fabulous dinner together!

Here are some things which happened tonight:

- The daughter of one of our neighbors came over and kept coming over to ask me where all the princess supplies were and looked really puzzled when I explained that Otis did not own much princess paraphenalia.

- Otis tried to practice his fork holding skills by showing how well he could hold a fork really close to the eyes of one of the neighbor kids as they all stood in a little circle around him. The mom of said kid leapt up and shouted, “No!” and then apologized later because she doesn’t really like to use the word no. Shit, I would’ve thrown her kid out the window if he tried to poke Otis in the eye with a fork. After yelling “no” repeatedly.

- No less than 35 incidents of whining, and at least 3 sessions of crying.

- I nearly became overpowered by the excessive smoke caused by a very hot BBQ fire plus too much spice rub and perished alone in my own backyard while everyone else drank and laughed it up. I survived but now smell like Korean BBQ, which isn’t too bad, actually. F said I smelled smoky, like bacon. How many different ways can the guy work bacon into a conversation?

- Other mysterious happenings which led to wet spots on the carpet, weeds in various niches in my studio, and barley everywhere.

But no, we had a great time. We may even try to get some sort of regular casual dinner thing going, especially since various people on our street work unusual hours and can usually start drinking by 4 or 5pm. Next time we may even succeed in convincing our beloved mailman to drink with us.

We used to live in New York, and so many of our friends still live there, but while F was there, he didn’t make an effort to see many of them. I gave him a hard time about it, since F sometimes finds it difficult to make time for his friends.

He was defensive. “Hey, I’ve got lots of work to do. Plus, I had to run all over town to buy presents for my wife!”

“Hmph. Nice try, but it’s not going to do you any good. I’m BITTER and I’m going to stay bitter.”

“Well, maybe I’ll just return all those presents,” he threatened cheerfully.

“Go ahead,” I muttered while playing out various revenge scenarios in my head. “It won’t make a difference anyways.”

Yes, so F returned last night and this morning cheerfully toted out all his I’m-sorry-I-left-you-for-2-weeks-while-I-”worked”-in-the-Hamptons-while-
you-contemplated-thoughts-of chewing-off-your-own-foot-in-an-attempt- to-escape-from-the-baby presents. And I’ll say that they’re not half bad presents. But it’s not like I’m saying I’m forgiving him, or allowing this kind of behavior in the future. Nooooo. Especially since he got to see Mr. and Mrs. Kwong’s baby before I did. I won’t be granting the official papal pardon until F’s taken a week off from work to take care of Otis all by himself. Starting right now, because he’s just caught the neighbor kid’s cold. Catch you later, sucka.

But you can see the presents for yourself and see whether he should be forgiven for the celebrity sightings and the beachside dinners. (Correct answer: NO)

Two books - one on Japanese papers, which I love but resisted buying while we were in Tokyo since I still have never used the paper I bought there when I visited during college; the other on art quilts, which are pretty amazing. He bought these books at The Strand, one of my favorite places in New York, and that did score some major points, since the prices appeal to the cheapskate in me and it meant that he had to really dig through all the books to find these for me.

Then he blew the money he saved on all these gorgeous Japanese treats from Minamoto Kitchoan:

Beautifully wrapped. Those are peach jellies, which you can eat refrigerated (like cold jello) or frozen (like sherbet).

Individually wrapped rice cakes.

This box had these tucked inside

The cups are also jellies, but you can drink them with a straw. And then the smaller cups on the bottom have jelly “goldfish” in them, like they are goldfish bowls.

They’re almost all too beautiful to eat. But, sigh, I will try my best to do my duty. He knows what a whore I am for all things Japanese and if he had also added to my stash of Yoku Moku cookies, then I would have melted with gluttonous happiness. So I guess I suppose I think he did a pretty good and thoughtful job. Curses! How can a woman hold onto her bitterness in the face of such consideration?