in memoriam

I’m sitting, well, gliding, in the glider chair, trying to help the boy take his morning nap.

He clearly needs to nap. He’d gotten cranky. He was rubbing his eyes. First I bundled him up in his fleece swaddler, popped in pacifier, and put him in the crib. Will he just fall asleep on his own this time?

Nope.

I offered him the mobile over his head. Twist twist twist twist. Lullabye, and goodnight, go to slee-ee-ep…

Nope.

But it does give me enough time to eat the oatmeal husband has thoughtfully left for me on the stove, before he went running out this morning to do some work on production of his displaysets.

So I pull the bundled boy out of the crib, turn on NPR, and begin the jiggling/gliding. He needs this. Even though he fights against it. Writhe, head shake. Suck suck. Sigh.

Yes, I soothe my baby to NPR. It works for him. He takes after his father.

Before I met Scott, I almost never listened to news or talk radio. Except for This American Life, which I would listen to via the Internet while stuffing envelopes for my P.R. job, back when we used to send 200+ press releases out for every event BY SNAIL MAIL. Stuff, stamp, address label, seal — perfect activity for radio listening. Almost as Zen as knitting. Email existed in those days (I’m not THAT old) but media folks actually PREFERRED hard copy to electronic. Yes, it was practically Mesozoic.

Scott and I listen to TAL now downloaded to the iPod on road trips. He has also introduced me to the live-radio pleasures of Car Talk, Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, the dulcet tones of Terry Gross, and some crazy AM station we listen to sometimes in bed in the middle of the night that often features authorities on extra-terrestrials, AND the rhythmic murmurs of NPR features and news.

While I was pregnant, I was well aware of the studies that said I should listen to a piece of music over and over in order to train the boy to associate it with relaxation. That the same music, post-partum, would instantly soothe him, they say.

I tried. But for some reason, I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. In high school I certainly listened to the same albums over and over and over and over. Yaz and Soft Cell come to mind. And Oingo Boingo. And The Police. Led Zeppelin. David Bowie. Prince…

Very oddly, almost all I wanted to listen to, the entire pregnancy, was national and local public radio.

So perhaps this is why the boy falls asleep to it now?

This morning, we’re gliding and we’re listening and the radio is telling us a sad story about the passing of Polaroid film. The company is ceasing production of the stuff.

You’d think as a person with toxin issues and a deep desire for us all to return to natural materials in every area of life, that I wouldn’t mind the ending of an era of chemicals and plastic.

Nope.

I heart Polaroid. I am sad, and I will miss it. Seriously considering stockpiling the stuff. Like I will also do with incandescent lightbulbs before 2012.

If it hadn’t cost $1 per sheet or more, I would have used it more often.

There were the obvious joys of instant photography, the pleasing format of square picture on white rectangle, ripply plastic coating, deeply rich colored images emerging above thumb and finger grip that irresistibly flick flick flicks the little card even though it doesn’t do a thing to speed the process.

And there was my own little piece of history. A “performance art” piece (I use the term loosely) I, ummmm… performed in the mid-90s in a small room on the UC Berkeley campus, wherein I played an audio tape of a monologue, recorded in two tracks, and while wearing a frilly dress and an apron from cooking school, I put on lipstick, scotch taped my mouth shut, made a batch of raw cookie dough (minus the eggs), fed it to members of the audience with a wooden spoon, took Polaroid pictures of them, and hung the photos up to dry on a clothesline with wooden clothes pins. Fin.

There was the birthday when I asked my Grandma Esther for a Polaroid slide printer so I could do Polaroid transfers, taking the peel-away 4×5 print of the slide — before it finishes developing, and pressing it against watercolor paper spritzed with a water/vinegar solution, and then gently peeling it away for a dreamy imperfect painterly reproduction of the image. Something not unlike silly putty and comic strips. I guess there is a setting on Photoshop that can do that now.

Even though I swore to my Grandma that I’d use it all the time, I only ever used the printer once. With slides of a walk I’d taken with my friend Lyena, who was carrying her little brother Sam in her arms. (Sam is now in high school, and not to be melodramatic about it, because she certainly isn’t, but Lyena is now in a wheelchair).

File under: Things and people the boy will know only because I tell him stories about them.