joannahood

i just got the birth announcement for my niece. she's four months old. in the accompanying picture, she's all squinty, as if suspicious of the myriad unknown eyes staring back at her. i bend my neck to as close as 90deg. as possible to have the same orientation--me the quirky aunt who's about to fall off her chair in her cube and she the investigative yet relaxed baby lying on her blanky. it's so crazy. i love this baby girl, even though i haven't spent much time with her. it's not that i don't love manny and benice; ask anybody who knows me, and they'll tell you how sometimes i really need to shut up. they all know by now that manny's favorite song is "beyond the sea" and that benice was a lion-bear for halloween `05. but there's something about clara, and i can't put my finger on it.

maybe, in a sense, i'm fascinated by little-girl-ness. if i want to get very psychological about it, i would have to bet that i'm searching for my own girlhood when i see clara. i still try to come up with "what it means," what my childhood and girlhood have added up to when creating my mehood. i have this little album on my shelf at home, and it's full of pictures of me over a period of about 20 years. occasionally i've thought that keeping such an album is a bit odd, perhaps egotistical, but, every time i go through it, i find that i'm still searching for myself and even trying to get something back that ostensibly was lost.

a lot of times, i struggle with "why am i this way?" it's as if i'm trying to slowly rewind the surveillance tapes to pinpoint the moments and the faces that influenced my course. i most often do that with my mood disorder. but that's largely a biological and spiritual question. but anyway. if i was looking at some of those pictures right now, i'd say that i was happy, lively, outgoing, friendly. and cute. (sorry, i can't help that, but my baby pictures really are adorable.) so maybe i really haven't lost much. or if i have, a lot of it was chaff that needed to fall by the wayside in order for me to become who i am now. maybe that's more important than figuring out what it all means, or maybe that's what it does actually mean.

so look at some of the pictures of me now, and see if i'm still happy, lively, outgoing and friendly. you can also fill in the cute part if you want. :)