Hudson's Maine welcome

This Sunday
(Lindsey had scheduled months ago, even made the reservations), Hudson's to be baptized,
or christened,
or doused,

(a loose-ish sort of family)

and read-at by all of us who've paired readings with the task at hand:
Welcoming Hudson to this world, to Maine and, there's a good chance, to fog as well.

With Sarah at the helm, Matt's amassed song requests. Our DJ will come laden with iPod and CDs. Mozart will be represented, as will Jim Croce, John Denver, Ray Charles and Andean flute players. I expect an Hallelujah chorus and maybe some Free to be You and Me to temper that.

As at Linds and Chad's wedding and Linds' memorial, cousin/reverand/friend Ashley Jansen will officiate.

This evening, I took an empty ice tea bottle down to Manhattan's western edge (under the West Side Highway and an embarrassing scramble past geese and down some rocks), and filled it up with Hudson River water. That too will play a little part.

To Maine we go, gathering bits to fete our young man.

I get giddy up there, balsam-infused posts to follow.

Love to all.

C

Hudson's village people

As if needing more evidence:
a sampling from Hudson's album.

Our intellectual

Lynn's front porch booktime happens approximately mid-morning. If you're on Hudson time, it's post feeding and diaper - when the little man is at his most placid.

And intellectually hungry.









Report more soon - catching up on non-Dallas/pre-Maine life but back in blog-swing soon.

Love to all.

C

Grandma

Grandma, almost a year ago, in Sea Island.

Linds had just told us she was pregnant, we were celebrating grandpop's birthday.

Grandma's not well. We're standing by and dear Grandpop is, as he wants it for now, on his own down there with his love and life for the last sixty some years.

The cousins liked to ask grandpop how he met grandma:

He began: "I met her at a wedding,"
And finished with a twinkle, "I thought highly of her bottom."

We love you grandma.
We love you grandpop.

C

It's Hudson time

Chad, Hudson and Mr. Stork

I leave for Dallas this afternoon. American, DFW and nap-time schedule all willing, will have the little man in my arms by 8:45, 9 latest.

Promise not to return without a smile picture.

C

Hudson at 3 (months)

Finally, a proper Dallas report.

Last week in Dallas (as the Mavericks toiled), Dad and Sarah, and then dad for almost 48 hours single-handedly, looked after Hudson. They report a charge who's nights are sublime and to schedule, and whose days are (still) on the fussy, don't-you-dare-put-me-down side. And he pooped lots, ate heartily and smiles for reasons beyond passing gas.

More recently, this in from Lynn:
"Hudson went for his 2 month check up today.
He weighed 10.6 pounds and was 22 inches.
He was perfect until he got 3 needle sticks which included 5 immunizations.
He was so mad, surprised, and hurt that he could only open his mouth wide for a silent scream. By the time he got the 3rd shot he was totally audible.
Lots of deep sighs once he quieted down. Chad was there to comfort him."

C

Visiting Mom, on Milan

Again (for reason's too mundane), I drove up from the city today.
The Taconic's not whooped me yet, but the 35 mile serpentine stretch up from the Saw Mill is testing me. My mettle's battered, but we're intact.

Again, mom's grave - close to where she and Rod had a house, sits south of my own's home's exit. So I got off at Bull's Head Road for another visit to the cemetary.

Again, not a soul there.

Sat by her embedded stone for a spell, realizing (am always the last) why we have markers, and places, for our dead.
Because it's a place to come to where - at least in our minds - we can imagine the person is. Though they may well be everywhere but, or everywhere and.
Anyway, I appreciated the site. And imagined, though Linds' ashes haven't yet come to rest here, that there was a good chance Linds was about too.

A gravestone is a steady thing, to which I attribute omniscience. Mom as oracle sort of.

Today (I lay meagre flowers on the stone - bushes at cemetary's edge in a fallow stretch and lilac long gone), there were ants about. Not much as a welcoming committee but making their way, obliviously busy, across the "0" of mom's "2002", they were strange comfort. So too the cricket hidden near mom's "N".

It was like catching a moment of Mom's now-life, her view, her day - this season for her.

As if she might observe:
More dandelions about this year.
Not so many visitors.
And it's been so wet.

C - glad for a place to go

Our duck in Dallas

Aunt Annie, in Dallas with usual 5927 Vanderbilt suspects plus gradfather Bill for memorial Day, sent this.

We really like.

Hudson maintains a fine gravitas despite/inspite of terry duck outfit.

Cheers to the man.

C

In a station

Small small - blue jay-scale entry.

Backstory:
I came upstate today (it's rained for my arrival).
My commute from the city requires a simple sequence of subway, through the grumpy day-commuters of lower Penn Station, to my own beautful Empire Line Amtrak to Hudson NY. The Empire Line runs beside the Hudson, its seats have plug points and fellow passengers look, mostly, so relieved to be shedding the city that a state of grace and gratitude hovers over the cars.

(Plus: view's stunning, cafe car's open and everyone loves a train ride.)

But the point.
On my first leg of the journey, on the 72nd Street station platform, a gentleman was singing and playing the guitar. I don't recall the songs, and he sang so avidly I couldn't ask his origins, but he sang in Spanish and with a vigor that Linds would have just loved, and danced to. He was dignified, his voice was very strong and clean; the singer/player transported my platform-segment to a New York moment of group giddiness. To a man/child/exectutive, we shared some tangible gladness to be together. And we marveled at our luck to be at that station at that moment.

Lots of smiles and dollars into the guitar case. Our train came, we dispersed - almost lonely now.

When my next leg ended, with the train doors opening at Hudson Station some 2hrs north and later, dandelion puffs filled the compartment.

C - noting with a stub of pencil that Linds was singing everywhere today.

Happy Memorial Day Linds

Dad and Sarah arrived in the city last night, coming practically straight from Laguardia to Ruslan's new apartment on 70th, which we'd moved into that day.

(R's new apartment is pretty dreamy. Blue bedroom soothing, bathroom counterspace vast, the superintedant fans out the WSJs in the lobby, crazy proximity to the park - like some hotel in the city you/we couldn't afford. But your clothes stay in the closet, your conditioner's in the shower and the Lime Diet Cokes in the fridge less than $5 a piece.)

R's doing final cleaning of the old place this morning (I'll join soon). Dad and Sarah have gone to Oyster Bay to visit with Mimi and pick up 3 decades worth of inherited National Geographics.

This afternoon, the 4 of us will drive north to the Adirondacks. We'll poke around Keene Valley, we'll canoe and make dad row us in the guide boat, I imagine we'll hike about. Maybe we'll have a drink at the Ausable Club.

We'll be missing Linds.


We were last there with the Rowan, Pyle and Brickley cousins, some time in the 90s. Too long ago - it was getting harder to gather family at far-away locations. Linds and I slept, sleeping bag by sleeping bag, on the balsam boughs of the lean-to. The grown-ups laid the fire out front. Harold made blueberry pancake breakfasts and hot chocolate with condensed milk. Harold told bear tales and packed almond hershey bars for our walks. We sought moose at night - quiet-paddling with flashlights.

I imagine Linds would have taken Hudson as soon as he was trail-ready.

Loving you Linds, and we'll be taking it in for you. And making it safe for Hudson.

C

Swaddling

Lynn with the swaddled-peanut.

And here he is up-close, in the calm seconds before he wriggles a hand free, then an arm.
For some reason, when the writhing to-be-free begins, Hudson reminds me of a furious novice monk - imprisoned in ridiculous velcro and cotton by some darker force.

Be free little man.

Be free.

Love

C

The log

Hudson's Doings is a sprial notebook kept by the chair in his room.
Lynn's divided the pages into columns:
TT / POOP / Bottle

Following gems:
No poop, FUSSY.
Finally POOP
Easy feed
Fast to sleep
MELT DOWN!!

Image of peace

I haven't done much actual reporting on my time in Dallas (prone to musings).

The truth is, Hudson was pretty grumpy for a lot of my stay. The week before the poor fellow'd been diagnosed with acid reflux - this made him unhappy. While I was there, the medicine hadn't kicked in and after an especially fussy and inconsolable stretch, we took him to his doctor to see if there might be more to be found out.

Good news was nope. Breathing, blood (taken from his toe - sad little band-aided wound): all excellent. The doctor dismissed him with a clean bill and murmurings of colic.

We started him on colic medication and hoped for peace (for Lynn's sake as well as his).

Anyway, a week later and this from Chad.

The little man is doing much better...not sure if the medicine final controlled the acid reflux, but he is eating much more comfortably these days...and I'm thankful for that. We believe he is on the verge of a real smile -- one that he controls and is reflective of his good mood at the time. It should happen in the next week.

C - promising you'll get the first smile news here (first)

Man in motion

A series of classic Hudson moves.

A whole lot of cute slumping.

I miss him.

C

Lynn Brown

There's a reason that life at 5927 vanderbilt is running as smooth as it is: that Hudson never wants for swaddling or burp cloths, that his dad returns home each evening to calm and sorted mail, that part-time interlopers like myself can hit the changing table/formula duty with confidence that belies fear+ineptitide.

That would be Lynn.

As much as I love spending time with Hudson (and so miss him), I also loved time with Lynn. And learned. And admired.

Hudson's got a remarkable grandma in his corner.

C

How to explain

I returned late last night from Dallas. R received me, my gushing. At one point in my baby-babel, I claimed that H might be something divine. Like divine divine.

Maybe a reach (I still have Hudson's dribble on my shirt shoulders and my sleep cycle enmeshed in his feeding one), but, as I confirmed with Sarah on the phone last night, Hudson imparts some light.

Faced red and screwed in rage, diaper filled, fists clenched (with little bits of crap and lint stuck in their folds - smelly "like belly buttons" as Lynn said), baby acne on his nose, arms springing free of swaddling, hair malleably greasy - even in this state he imparts something wonderful.

Looking into Buddhism (a free-ranging believer's wont), there are the Bodhisattvas. Divine beings who've elected to stay on earth until we all can attain nirvana as well. Or, neatly put:
"If I know how to swim, and even one other being cannot, then it is right to remain behind in this world to assist them until they know how to save themselves from drowning."

No more Buddha-babble after this post (and apologies for my hunt-and-peck version here), but I'm sharing.

C - who has so many more pictures to post and Hudson tales to tell.

Stay tuned.

Focus

FOCUS

Hudson has it, occasionally.

Mr. Whoozit (I think name of target thing with tuck-in appendages that make noise) had him breifly beguiled.
So did the shaky chair with the aquarium window that plays music (Twinkle, twinkle fine, hadn't expected Midnight Oil Sometimes plinked out).
He can be utterly glued to plays of light and shadow - liked looking up through the branches of the tree.
And when he eats he, for the most part, gives his undivided attention to sucking.

Excellent report card I think. And he starting to grasp at things, a little...

C

Reclining

(pre-changing, he's majestic)

C - smitten

(so much more to report and write but he's been all-engrossing)

Fresh from the crib

Promise, doesn't get fresher.

More from me when the baby's in another, longer, gap between feeding and pooping and wiggling and freeing himself of swaddling.

Any minute...

Love, C - in Dallas (I can see Hudson from here)

We're here

I arrived an hour ago. Hudson and I are alone in his sunny yellow room, in the house (Lynn's gone to do errands).

The little man's sound asleep - he's been since I arrived. Car movement, car-seat and a morning of fierce crying wooped him. We'll wake him at noon to feed.

His room is quiet, gentley sun-shined and full of gifts and baby ephemera. Lynn will walk me through it all later - it's mystifying to me now.

UPDATE

I fed him, burped him, and had a very satisfactory diaper change. Now (I type one handed, he sleeps across the other), he's back fast asleep. Quick breaths, little grunts, passing ghosts of toothless smiles.

C

It's been a month of Hudson

Dad and Sarah have checked in nightly from their post.

They're having a ball - applying the same problem-solving-in-the-field expertise to the micro of feeding/changing/resting Hudson. They've spent careers getting the good to the people; now they witness the good itself.



We've progressed quickly from the backward diaper debacle. Our Dallas team, with the tools and tips handed over by Lynn, have achieved some grace. That comfort level - when the needful becomes rote - has allowed them to bask (just bask) in Hudson's glow.

This from Sarah:
We are enjoying the simply incredible pleasures of early grandparenting with a newborn, even under the dark clouds of Lindsey's clear, and unchangeable absence. There is a hole in the house and in our hearts. But we carry on.

I have Hudson in my learning laboratory on the bed, with lots of books around about one month olds. I have assembled all of the black and white toy objects for him to sample. He is beginning to grab a little, or am I imagining this? His arms to flail about, he gazes, and he whimpers, cute little sounds. He is very alert for his age cohort group.

He gulped down 4 ounces for the 10am feed. We have fun playing togehter, and all thing remotely global, like problems in Belarus, the issues in Myanmar, the hell in Darfur, have oddly escaped me for a few days. I feel the true meaning of 'presence' in the buddhist sense, in a new way, with my grandson.

Love C (must note that Hudson is captured here in a downward-tight-fetal-sleep posture not unlike his aunt's...)

Month-Day

I got all rambly in the last post and forgot the real news:

Our man Hudson is 1 MONTH OLD today.

By all accounts, he is charming, forgiving, fond of walks in the neighborhood and well-supplied in diapers and formula thanks to generous friends. Ditto the above for Dad Chad plus: Chad played in the Byron Nelson Pro-Am Gold something yesterday, is almost getting enough sleep, is fed and supported by a ring of friends and (my observation) is growing a goatee.

Hudson has a doctor's appointment tomorrow. I will give exhaustive details of that visit as soon as I have them.

C (image is just a cute, purely random - possibly imaginary - Indian animal. A birthday animal.)

Hudson's boys

That's Chad and Dad of course.

Why they're looking sinisterly suspect at changing-table-side - black seeming an odd choice for the task - I have no idea. I get these pictures (c/o Chad) - there's no backstory.

So - to your imgaination then.

(All men looking fine though.)

Love

C

Linds and Mom

I drove up from the city yesterday: Henry Hudson-Sawmill-Taconic and got off an exit early, at Bull's Head Road. Which was the Wayson exit - mom and Rod's old house.

Take a left on Bulls Head, pass Field Road (past Wayson and her barns, still spectacularly set though a plastic swingset's been added, still missed) - it's about another mile to Milan Hollow Road. Take a right and follow its swooping course.

Unheralded, just past the umpteenth pasture and farm, keep an eye out for the tiny cemetary that sits on either side of the road. There's no sign announcing it - I think it's offically the Milan Hollow cemetary but I'm not sure. There's a protected noticeboard - I suppose for annnoucements - but the last pinned-up papers have faded to white. I've never seen other mourners. The still-legible graves date to the early 1800s.



Mom's grave sits a little ways up the hill. We buried her ashes there a few years back. Along with a pair of jade rings and a tennis ball used by Jefferson. I don't go often enough. Bill and George go regularly, and often bring a potted plant of the season.

I realized no one had told Mom about Linds (though I imagine they've already met up), so I brought the earthly news. I laid out the Linds memory book we made, some lilacs, and left the two together.

Love C

Changing of the diaper-guard

at 5927 Vanderbilt,
Dad and Sarah, went down to Dallas.

(A baby-guard's life, is terribly hard, said Lynn.)

Dad and Sarah flew down to Dallas Saturday, relieving Lynn from her active duty and a post - of comforter-to-all and caretaker-to-Hudson - held since April 13. She'll be back soon, I hope she rests well and is looked after.

No big reports yet from the new team in place. They'd assumed nominal duties Saturday when I spoke to them but should be well in the swing of baby-minding and 3am bottles by now.

And, I hope, since there are two of them (v Lynn's one), one will photograph as the other attends to mr. hudson.

C (reporting live from dallas next week...)

Changing of the diaper-guard

at 5927 Vanderbilt,
Dad and Sarah, went down to Dallas.

(A baby-guard's life, is terribly hard, said Lynn.)

Dad and Sarah flew down to Dallas Saturday, relieving Lynn from her active duty and a post - of comforter-to-all and caretaker-to-Hudson - held since April 13. She'll be back soon, I hope she rests well and is looked after.

No big reports yet from the new team in place. They'd assumed nominal duties Saturday when I spoke to them but should be well in the swing of baby-minding and 3am bottles by now.

And, I hope, since there are two of them (v Lynn's one), one will photograph as the other attends to mr. hudson.

C (reporting live from dallas next week...)

BATH!

Okay - I'm doing the best I can with Hudson photos but the feedback is overwhleminly for more. I'm not there yet (another 2 weeks)...but, grandparents Dad and Sarah are en route to dallas now (armed with camera) so I hope to have fresh shots to post soon.

What I love: Hudson's anticipatory RAGE. Fists clenched, body going crimson and entire face crumpled into the yell. The man has a lock on communicating emotions.

C

The cousins (mom's side today - dad's tomorrow)

One of the wonders of my family, and an era past, is photo albums. Mom chronicled and kept our pasts in order. And dear dad, when he cleared storage recently, made me keeper of a good portion of them.

Linds has some too - the later years. I have, thankfully, the early ones (best to forget my circa '80's haircut).

The following 3 photos are for our dear Stephenson and Gates cousins: our growing-up-together years.



It's clear looking back that we were lucky. Our then all-still-married parents were a posse of grown-ups, headed by grandma and grandpop, who on our behalf:

Laid easter egg hunts each spring in Sea Island
Constructed cardboard Burger King stands on Christmas eve in Westwood (and chose christmas present themes including the featured: sunglasses-and-bathrobes-for-all year. There was a beanbags year too.).
Photo-propped us on grandpop's mower at Meadowlark Hill.
Raised us 7 as a collective.



The cousins, now extended outwards and with another generation advancing (Hudson the latest) continue to be a collective. Their support throughout has been run through with our shared memories.

Linds loved everyone, but she had an extra-sliver alotted to the cousins. They were, and still are, Linds' people.

C - sending them so much love

Hudson fix

Lynn, intrepid at cribside, reported yesterday:

Hudson had his first bath-bath (I think the others have been sponge-based?) and loved it.
Went to the doctor to redo the molds on his almost-perfect ears and was a doll.
Cure-all for Hudson upsets continues to be the pacifier and a butt pat.
And to fall asleep, cuddling works.

C - noting as I post Hudson's solemn hand-grasping-chin-heavenwards pose.

A rhythm to the days - and so the posts

Mom, Linds and me in Turkey (Lake Van, Ahktamar Island) in the 70's (bowl cuts).

In the hospital, almost three weeks ago (?), we traveled between Linds and Hudson. Between grim life-support, drawn faces and the hush of the ICU, we would pass (via Baylor Hospital's labrynth of lightless corridors), to the elevator past the pastel windows of the Breast-Feeding Boutique and then UP. To the 7th floor and the construction papers cut-outs, easter baskets and fresh young nurses of the baby wing. Death into life. We'd arrive for Hudson "fixes", after vigils by Linds.

Life. Flip. Death.

That's what these days have been like (people have been asking). Up and then something triggers and you're once more, peering into the loss.

When I look at this photo, I see mom and Linds holding hands.

Flip - now they're both gone.

Like that.

C

Then there's the flip-side

Hudson, cradled by the not-so-much-bigger, cousin Bailey Brown.

Bailey was very taken with Hudson. Hudson seems - if not taken - then comfortable in her arms. Baley's parents, Chad's brother Matt and miraculous wife, MK have visited alot.

The beginnings of an extended family. Good stuff.

C

A considerate man

 
I had to look hard through my files to find one of dad on his own. As sarah said of him when they first met (and we first were falling for Sarah):
"Your dad keeps his light under the basket."

(she's done a lovely job of lifting that basket, or widening the chinks, or whatever - dad's a-shining).

I'll post a link soon to dad's remarks at Linds' memorial - soon.

But today dad did something that deserves immediate posting.

With his amazing office/friends at JSI (where dad's been for X years; since Linds and I attended a JSI christmas party in Boston and received Born to Run tapes as gifts.) they organized a Lindsey Fun Run/Walk.

It happened today, was closed with a finale of fritos, and raised some fifteen hundred dollars for KIPS and Tietze Park. Which JSI's director doubled and dad matched. Total somewhere around $7,000 in Linds' name, and a slide show shown, and a wonderful poem read.

Pretty neat. Pretty dad. Thank you JSI for being his extended family and our collective support (and all the good work of course).

C - warming up for father's day 

Better than an easter egg

The latest sleeping pose for the under 1 month set (who resemble easter eggs).

Hudson's channeling Linds: arms thrown high and open, let the world come as it may.

(Chad forwarded photos this morning. Will try to get many more up and a link to them. So many Hudson with _________ - don't want to leave any fan out.)

C - awed by the sleep-posture-gene

Ways he's lucky

That's grandpop - Lindsey's grandpop - and so, Hudson's great-grandpop.



Though he sleeps, the hug across generations, must make it sweeter.

C