My Page: Jennifer Savage

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Column: Savagemama

Canning serves for me this need to make sure we have enough. When I look at the jars of sauce sitting in a perfect row on our kitchen shelf I know that in February when the hills here turn white, then brown, then white again, we’ll have something warm to eat. I know when the nights come early and stay late, we’ll eat cherry preserves and taste briefly the lake in summer. We’ll remember that the cold darkness will pass and another growing season will come again. When Eliza drift off to sleep she’ll taste in our sauce warm wind and I’ll know as she drifts off to sleep that our work has served her well. [more]

Column: Savagemama

Eliza's growing is starting to hurt, not her but me. Wasn’t it just yesterday that I pushed her out of me on a warm summer night? Wasn’t it yesterday that we brought her home and lay, the three of us, for days on end in our bed, time stopping for us? Wasn’t it yesterday that she screamed her way through the night with colic?

No. It wasn’t yesterday. It was nearly a year ago. I have to remind myself. [more]

Column: Savagemama

Eliza started swimming lessons this week and I was a total wreck. As I treaded into the water to join our class I looked around and not one other mother in the place was wearing a two-piece bathing suit. Just me. All the other mothers seemed to be taking cues from the same fashion trend. Ill-fitting plastic-type shorts layered over a dated one-piece bathing suit. They all seemed to know that this was the swimming lesson uniform for moms. I somehow missed the memo. So I got under the water as quickly as I could. [more]

Column: Savagemama

When Eliza is fussy, I do cheers for her. Like short-skirt-and-ponytails kind of cheers. Gimme an E – L –I –Z –A kind of cheers. And, yes, it is more than a little alarming to me that this is my instinct, the first thing I pull from my bag of tricks in the face of a squirming, teething baby. We mamas all have our bag of tricks, mine just happens to include pom poms. [more]

Column: Savagemama

A few weeks ago I felt a little dirty going to Wal-Mart. All the years of avoiding it made it even worse to go that day. I felt sad for the people that work there, nostalgic for all those sweltering summer days in the South when my mother and I found refuge in our local Wal-Mart, and I felt more than a little hypocritical. [more]

Column: Savagemama

I never thought I’d be one of those people who made my baby’s food. I always figured some company had perfected recipes and processes and that I as a consumer would benefit from their years of research and trial and error. So when Eliza started eating solid foods we bought jars off the shelf of our local grocery store. It went on like this for a month or so, grocery bags with jangling jars inside. There is a sign in one of our local grocery stores that reads, "organic doesn't mean clean," and in the case of organic baby food I would argue organic doesn't mean tasty either. After a while, I noticed that most of this food was pretty bland, even for baby food. So we steamed some carrots one day, put them in the blender and within a few tries, came up with a creamy, sweet, electric-orange meal. We've been making her food ever since. [more]

Column: Savagemama

There’s a Lucinda Williams song that goes something like “I think I lost it, let me know if you run across it.” That’s how I’ve been feeling lately about my own game. It’s missing, on vacation to somewhere warm and sandy and, I’m convinced, may never return again.

I’m afraid I’m turning in to that woman. That woman who walks around just plain dirty with a just plain dirty baby in tow. That woman who trades hip and sexy for fashion-tragic comfort. That woman, as we say in the South, who has “just let herself go.” [more]

Savagemama

Last week we planted carrots and greens. I sat Eliza in the dirt and moved quickly making rows in the soil I’d turned the week before. As I sprinkled seeds, Eliza grunted to be picked up.

“Just one more row,” I told her over my shoulder.

Her grunts turned to whines then to cries. It took us all day to plant one bed. Saturday we planted potatoes and onions. In the middle of planning the potato patch I turned to look and Eliza had a handful of dirt in her mouth. [more]

Column: Savagemama

“Trust your instinct,” a friend said.

It’s such a simple concept and one that we new mothers often forget. We’re inundated by advice – some well meaning, some not so much – and we want more than anything to do it right, to make sure our children are OK. And the fear and guilt that come from the newness of this endeavor make us vulnerable even to concepts that seem foreign, concepts that go against everything our gut is telling us. [more]

Column: Savagemama

Last summer Eliza was born and our poor dog Imogene has had to take a back seat both in terms of time and affection. I tell her to be quiet when the baby is sleeping, I won’t let her lay on the rug because she gets muddy paw prints on the baby’s blanket. Dinnertime is no longer the begging free-for-all it used to be, I usually tell Imogene to get out of the kitchen because she is just one more thing in my way. She stays outside most days now; she sleeps in the laundry room instead of our room. We’ve even talked about having her sleep in the garage.

Imogene’s status has shifted without any of us meaning for it to happen. She’s still the baby dog but there’s new angel-faced girl in the house. Lately it seems as though we’re treating Imogene differently. We’re treating her like a dog not the go-everywhere-we-go companion she’s always been and somehow that’s strange. [more]

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