Never Go Anywhere Empty-Handed

We're past that initial exhilaration and desperation, and somehow, those first months are already fading in my memory. When I think back, I can only seem to muster a handful of extremes. Short on sleep, pain of nursing, drowning in adoration, all spent in either whole days on the couch or what seem like whole years on the road, nursing and changing you in rest area parking lots, behind gas stations, corners of park-and-ride lots, staring at the front of outlet malls. You're sleeping on your own, soundly, only nursing about four times a day, and seeming more and more contented to drift a little further away.

So it seems like a good time to begin offering little bits of advice and life philosophies and all those things that you'll be hearing from me constantly and not really be interested in until I'm dead and you find yourself saying them to your own children. And there's no better place to start than your namesake's favorite - "Never go anywhere empty-handed."

Your great-grandmother said this all the time. This could be because when I knew her, she lived in a beautiful split-level house that was positively state of the art when your grandfather built it in the late 1950s or early 1960s. (I know it was state of the art because there's a newspaper article somewhere of your grandfather standing with his cows in the field that refers to the house and it's "state of the art" or "latest style" or "up to the minute" or something else equally valued in the 1950s....) Anyway, this meant that you walked in to a wide tiled entryway (which was always the coolest place in my world in the summer - they had central air and we never did) with a "rec room" off to the left ("rec rooms" being a must in 1950s homes). Straight ahead, and this seemed completely normally then, but completely strange now, was a half bathroom where your grandfather could scrub up before really coming into the house. The strange part is that there was also a file cabinet in there with a roll-top desk where all the household accounts and documents from his businesses were stored. Anyway, from there, you could go down seven steps to the basement (which always smelled so good because your great-grandmother used gallons of fabric softener - your grandmother never did - and she line-dried all the sheets) or, from the hallway, go up seven steps to the living room, dining room and kitchen. The three bedrooms and only full bath were up another flight of seven stairs.

Anyway, living in a house where you had to go up seven steps to go to the bathroom or down fourteen steps to do laundry probably made her very efficient. As a result, if she had to up to use the bathroom, she'd take the shampoo she bought at the store. When she came down, she'd bring the dirty laundry. If she had to go the basement with the dirty laundry, she'd come back up with the cans of tomatoes she'd need for dinner. Once we got big enough to do her bidding, she'd send us to the basement for potatoes or frozen vegetables from the chest freezer, but before we could dart off, she'd press something into our hands with instructions on what to do with it on the way.

Like most good instructions, it seems simple on the surface of things, but only deepens with examination. To never go anywhere empty-handed requires forethought, planning, awareness, and remembering. It fostered in my small self a sense of intention and later, it served well as social advice too, reminding me to always bring a hostess gift, a willingness to help. "Life's complicated," it says, "so think about what you're going to do, make a plan, and go out into the world prepared." The world is full of people who show up, metaphysically and literally, with their hands empty, and I don't want you to be like that. Show up with something to offer, show up with your hands full.