Reading: Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children, though not noticeably

Swimming: briefly in the river

9 June 2002: Celebrations

Sunday morning we knocked together a schedule for the day. Emlet's baptism, some kind of ceremony for HEBD and JPD's tenth anniversary, and celebratory bits for Nisou's parents' 38th. Nisou asked if I could keep a secret, and I said maybe, and SEM was able to come, just for the day. So there would be a baptism, with both godparents there, but TJZD and HEBD didn't know yet.

Emlet likes to walk--for you to walk. If I ever sat while holding her, unless she was asleep, she'd fuss. So we walked a lot. We walked and she slept and drooled and soaked the entire left side of my bodice and I didn't mind. Merp. I walked the garden, keeping an eye out for SEM. NBM drove him over, and I didn't know if she would be able to stay but I knew she'd want to meet the baby. So the car pulled out, and I headed for it, for him, for her, and when NBM emerged I put the baby in her arms and was seized into SEM's.

After everyone was assembled, we baptized Emlet in the brook near the house. When I told folks about being a godmother (which, believe me, I did immediately and possibly incessantly), many asked if I would fly to France for the baptism. Oh, please, not France, anywhere but there! but I suspected Nisou would want something else. With her closest Usan family, with running water caught from a flowing stream, we named and welcomed Emlet. Then we sang and read passages for HEBD's and JPD's tenth, and none of us could read through a whole piece without choking up, and then it was time for the afternoon party.

Look at that smile. The red hair. Those pretty eyes. The bubbliness. Also she loves to be bathed, which I hope will translate to loving swimming.

I was so pleased to talk to the Rs, friends of Charenton for ages and my Shakespeare professors. I might have mentioned previously that I housecleaned for the heads of my two major departments (I don't really count Women's Studies, which was spare and secondary, so English and History are my major major departments). The history house was only the once: didn't offer enough moolah. Also when I admired a statue in the house, the history professor--though he didn't know that I had been one of his department's majors--explained that that was Zeus, who was the lead Greek god. Oh really. I housecleaned for the English professors throughout the summer after I graduated (the second time, with the Women's Studies major), and that was fine. Ample compensation, good company, and I had always loved the house, well before I knew who lived there.

Also I was waiting for the Beasts. And then everyone was there, so we sang more songs and did a skit and ALBF led a storm circle, which was kind of cool. We formed a big circle and, led by ALBF, rubbed our palms, snapped our fingers, and led up to a crescendo of clapping, whereupon we reversed through the less noisy snapping than rubbing and it did nearly sound like a storm. I was fondest of Nisou's song, which was song to the tune of "Michael Row Your Boat Ashore" and had funny lines--almost none of which I now remember--about her parents. In the skit I got to be the third person going up to the Pearly Gates:

First person describes to St. Peter her rough life, how she works 100 hours a week as a medical student, because all she ever wanted to do was help people, and now she's dead and really deserves a rest.

St. Peter: Sorry, you haven't suffered enough.

Second person describes to St. Peter his rough life, how he worked so hard to help people work better, get along better, have more self-confidence, and then all of sudden a rock fell on him and he really deserves a rest.

St. Peter: Sorry, you haven't suffered enough.

Third person: Well, you see, I knew these people called the -------s.

St. Peter: Oh, you poor thing, come right in.

It turned out that my Tree of Life design for the boursin was not the only one (I should have used more chives). This is the cloth painting HEBD made for a gift (and I should have used a plain background):

Also the weather was perfect. In the evening I followed the Beasts to their house, there to swim in their stretch of river. Not really a river, to my way of thinking: not the Connecticut, not even the Lieutenant or Black Hall. But bigger than a brook, bigger than a creek. PEB cleared out the boulders from one section and created a lovely channel, not very long but great for swimming. Also cold, this time of year. Also wonderful, because there is never anyone. Fisherfolk lurk upstream and down but not there. So I nearly froze myself, and then spent a pleasant hour chatting over tea with the Beasts.

During this time I happened to notice a deer tick crawling on my dress. I idly lifted the skirt to check my legs, and there was another tick lodged in my thigh. Damn it. LEB operated with tweezers, dousings of isoprophyl alcohol and then hydrogen peroxide and then alcohol again, and I figured what the hell, I've already had it, I'm already tainted and cannot give blood since Lyme Disease is equated with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease somehow; what more can it do to me?

Then I returned to Charenton and spent the evening singing with Nisou and Karen. A photograph exists of the three of us, but I guess I'm in denial about how fat I am because I have never been so repulsed at a photograph of myself as I am at that one. No, maybe the one of me charging out of the surf in on the Olympic National Seashore in 1999, when the front of my thigh (the cellulite) moved independently of the rest of the thigh. The bosom is the least of it: I didn't put my bra back on after swimming so of course. It's the hip and thigh that nauseate me.