Stay classy, San Diego!

30 weeks!

Only 7 - 10 more weeks and we'll have this little munchkin.

Greetings from San Diego! All accounts of the amazing weather have been true. It's super sunny, but not unbearably hot. Gorgeous to look at surrounded by hills and mountains. Then there's the ocean, which is...an ocean. What's not to like?

The people.

Sooo, maybe I hyped San Diego up a little too much in my mind as a magical wonderland, but I somehow thought people here would be friendly and awesome. I told myself it would rival Disneyland for the title of "happiest place on earth" and our baby girl would be born with magic unicorns hovering overhead. Um, they're not. Well, maybe the unicorn thing, but not people being friendly. In fact, they're downright standoffish. We've tried waving feverishly at our new neighbors to be ignored or petulantly waved off. We actually live in La Mesa, which is a suburb about 10 miles from downtown San Diego. The neighborhood we live in is really nice and residential, but we were starting to wonder if we both had boogers hanging out of our noses as sometimes when we're out shopping or living people can be a little gawky. At first I thought, maybe our time in Virginia made us unrealistic about how friendly people could/would/should be given the southern sensibilities of that place. But, then today I was out walking our dog and I ran into a man just mowing his lawn. He had a dog too, so we struck up a conversation. I told him we were new here, and he said he was from Southern California and had lived in the area off and on for 20 years. He asked how we liked it here, I asked how he liked it here. He said he was hesitant to tell me since I was new here, but the people aren't terribly friendly. How relieved I was to hear that! I told him I was starting to think it was us. He assured us that it's just the culture.

In other news, since we got here a week ago we've been busy! I had to meet with a new Primary Care Manager so that I could get a referral to OB care. I'm seeing a civilian doctor because there was no availability at the military facility (boo hoo). She was kind of a tool, but she did give me a referral to the birth center that I want to use. We had our appointment there earlier this week, which went great! I was really nervous that they might not accept me because you have to have zero risk basically, and some of these places have restrictions on BMI and blah blah blah. But, everything was perfect! We had our first birth class and we're just plugging along to have a natural birth with our baby girl. So. Relieved. They even offer water birth and exactly the type of environment I want to deliver this new life into. Some people think hospital birth is essential. I'm of the opinion that having a baby is not a medical problem, so there's no need to be in a hospital.

All in all, I feel pretty freaking good considering I just sat through a 5 day road from Virginia to California and spent the last week sleeping on an air mattress while 7.5 months pregnant. I guess I'm just so happy that we had already found a house to rent before we arrived, and I'm on track to have the birth of my choosing. I'm a little tired, but I'll take it.

And look at me looking all pregnant!

Mothers

27 weeks!

It's almost time, y'all. We're moving to San Diego, CA in just over a week! I feel like I should be running around mad doing things, but mostly I'm just laying on the couch surfing Craigslist for a place to live in San Diego. Some days I take the dog for a walk. Some days I don't.

Even though I feel like a lazy sloth, I've actually gotten a lot done. I've been advertising our current house for rent, and doing showings. Last week we found a really nice family moving to the area that will be our new tenants. I can't even describe the huge weight that lifted off of my shoulders.

My dear wife just returned after having been gone for a month. During her absence my mother came to visit for a week from California so that I wouldn't have to be alone for so long. It went really, really well (read: terribly). That was a job in itself. She came to make things easier for me, but I have to say (mostly because I know she'll never read this) that it was sort of like a job dealing with her. She's a lovely person and all that jazz, but we have your classically complicated mother-daughter relationship. It got me thinking a lot about the kind of mother I want to be. The legacies that get passed on within families, and the choices I'd like to make about which traditions to continue and which will end right here and now.

There's always been an epic power struggle with my mother. We both gripe with the same old tired complaints that have become scripted since I was 16. I think my mother is too overbearing and controlling, she thinks I'm ungrateful and disrespectful. I was reminded of this on her recent visit when she told me in our discussion (read: fight) that "We are not equals. I'm above you."  I remember reading an article/blog a month or so ago on the Adrian Peterson fracas and what it revealed about the racial divide in parenting. The themes from the article certainly seemed to be showing up in my relationship with my mother. Her unending need to assert this boss/subordinate dynamic between us. Unquestioned submission, even from an adult child.

This was the relationship she had with her mother, a woman who grew up in rural Mississippi, picked cotton, and never learned to read. Now, present day, she expected me to duplicate the same relationship. Even though, that one was fraught with so much pain and disconnection right up until her death 4 years ago at age 89. I could understand why Big Mama (my mother's mother) had those ideas. She grew up in a space and time where Black parents had to demand absolute obedience from their children, it was training for the world they would inevitably encounter. Born in 1921 in the deep south, there was no room for insolence or even the perception of it. There was no room for self-hood or confidence. It was a world where men were eternal boys. You obeyed, unequivocally. Your very existence depended on it.

But this is now. I grew up with a hippy mother from Northern California. I spent my weekends listening to the drumming circle at the Ashby flea market in Berkeley as the scent of incense wafted by and mother waxed poetic about her astrological chart.  My mother reared her girls to be independent, outspoken, educated. She very consciously brought us up to question authority and speak our minds. She expected critical thinking and opinions on the things that mattered. She encouraged us to fly the nest and explore the world knowing we always had a safety net with her. Yet, on this, she could not see that tradition isn't always what's best. Sometimes, it's just what's always been done. When tradition stop serving your relationships, perhaps it's best to reevaluate them.

Nearly 7 months pregnant with my own daughter I think about these things. How can I improve on what the last generation accomplished? How can I give my daughter a new gift? Children, of course, need guidance and structure. But, is it our job to lord over them? Beat them into submission? I don't know what it will mean to actually raise this baby. Maybe I've got a lot to learn from my mother. Maybe we both do.