from playing dolls to kicks and falls

There are ordinary days where everything is swimming along, just a normal day, and suddenly (suddenly) you realize: the kids are growing up.

We threw out Rosey's bedraggled playhouse today. She was teary-eyed but agreed that it was time - it was ripped in a few places, and creased in others - and only squeaked a little. She kept a glittery painted piece "to have" and we cleaned out the front porch of about a million (hint: Roo does NOT EVER NO NEVER need any more Barbies) plastic dolls......

and then we put up a punching bag. So the boy can round-kick and front-jab.

Wow, they're growing up.

stories everywhere

I am surrounded by stories.

Books, yes, fables and fairies and cows and vampires and zombies and puppies and star-crossed lovers and winding country lanes and immigrant grandmothers and jockeys crashing over the finish line and pat the bunny and zorro drew his sword and there were three wise men wandering and junie b, world pioneer and yellow and blue make green and woodworking for the new century and my friend flicka and under a spreading chestnut tree, the village smithy stands and a quiet old lady, whispering hush.

And it's not just the books. My things tells stories, stories that I tell to my children in vain hopes they'll remember some of what I say, stories about Nana's charm bracelets and Neenaw's letter and the cabinet that my parents dragged in from a dumpster in a Chicago alley and refinished. How Mama came over the border to be here. How Gram would sing songs in the hallways in the middle of the night when it thunder stormed so her kids wouldn't be afraid and how their Papa always had treats in his pockets. How Granddad introduced you to Wallace and Grommit. How the first night we stayed here I woke up in the middle of the night and your fathers arm was over me and I thought huh. This is how it's supposed to be and went back to sleep.

Stories.

People tell stories, too - not only with their words or by making sentences but by how they are. Often their actions speak louder than their words ever could.  And when I see a head tilt, a flashing grin, a palm slid slowly along a countertop, I make note. I see the regret, the exultations, the sorrows, the hiding away.  I see.

People are stories too.

I've been writing lately, scribbling thoughts down (pen and paper! can you believe??) about a situation, a character that won't leave me, her thoughts and background and friends and what her grandfather wore to work each day

and nothing will probably come of it. I am a master at leaving my stories gasping and half-written.

But in the meantime, I'm having fun discovering her life and what she thinks. As you would,


if you'd only stop to see some of the stories around you.

Random, random, random

Damn, I love living here.

Spent the day carousing with my friend while B sawed huge trees down (yay for forestry!) and our children ran wild and free. They went swimming again (in May! Loons, all of them) and came home , happy and saturated with the joy of it all.

My friend and I are planning a Mothers Day event for the school, and so we've been sorting tea services, finding appropriate costumes, and finding props. (Hey, it can be hard to disguise a gym, especially without the benefits of crepe paper or the gentle blurring of dusk) so it'll be props. Props a'plenty. We're practically rummaging through attics, shouldering aside the elderly. "You don't mind if I borrow your precioussssssssssssssssss, do you?"

I kid, of course. But this 'do is going to be a very cool thing.

I'm watching a show on tv called ER Vets. Reality tv featuring sad, hurting animals that come in, are treated, and (mostly) bound off at the end, happy owners and doctors smiling  while they gambol off into the sunset.
My question is WHO are these owners that don't BLINK when the vet cocks her head and says 'I think he'll need an MRI then some Xrays, and maybe some exploratory surgery before we do that root canal.'

And (I swear) the people trip all over themselves to nod, nod, yes, yes, where do I sign, not at ALL huddling in the corner of the exam rooms weeping and caressing their Mastercards (which is probably where I'd be.)
Not that I don't love my pets. ('Cause I do.) But I love eating, too. And making house payments.

The school fight grinds on. grumble grumble grumble. This may be one of those things where waiting to see what happens next is hard but necessary. And I'm not a patient person.

I've been playing Words With Friends a lot lately. I may actually  gather up the nerve to challenge my grandfather to a game soon. (Maybe. Grandpa likes to play with words. And he's crafty.)

Told you this was random.....

it's going to be a long night

Up with a suddenly-sick Roo and remembering when she was small. Heck, I even put on an Disney film (I think it's Disney - the one with the cows that save their farm?) and curled her up on the sofa, just like when she was an eence. Fed her some ibuprofen and some ice cream, small sips of lime soda (okay, I was out of ginger ale) and patted her hair until she drowsed. She looks so little when she sleeps.

Today was a great day. Browsed a local 'old nice stuff' shop, had a lovely lunch with a friend, played with the kids outside. It was a great way to finish up a year

In the morning, I turn forty-one. I can't wait.
Well, not so much the age, because that doesn't seem to matter so much now that it's not really a landmark year, but for all the great stuff that I think - no, I'm sure - is going to happen over the next year.

I'm actually pretty excited. Now, if I could just get my daughter not-sick and off the couch....

hiding in closets with birthday boys

My grandfather's ninety-fifth birthday was last week.

And he spent most of it in the closet.

When I called to wish him a happy birthday, the phone rang and rang and rang - a little odd, but maybe they were out? Celebrating, no doubt. Painting the town red. Why ever not?
I would call back later.

I checked Facebook that afternoon and found out that not only was I wrong, I was really wrong. Not only were my grandparents not out kicking up their heels, they were huddled in their bedroom closet with towels wrapped around their heads*, worrying that a tornado would burst through their walls and send them on a spin through the countryside.

Happy Birthday, Grandpa. May this next year not be so tumultous.


*My aunt's idea, to protect from debris. A good one, even if the visual still makes me crack up a little.

i can be

 anything I want to be....

The song is a little annoying (especially when it gets stuck in your head and you're making up bawdy lyrics and humming because you can't remember the original wording) but it's unabashedly bouncy. Also, true.

Rosey has decided she can do anything. Or several somethings, all at once. She's got grit and determination, that one.  She has several terrific non-traditional female role models in our family, and I think seeing that these women that she loves and admires can 'get 'er done' is a terrific lesson for her to absorb at such a young age.

My Barbie dolls were moms or cheerleaders when I was growing up. Roo has veterinarians that rescue avalanche victims on the side. Equestrians that still wear the prettiest dresses ever to the fair. She has Barbie the Builder that fixes everything with a tiny hammer and her yellow construction hat. There are teachers and test pilots, prom queens and gypsies. It was a complicated thing to teach her, that women can do everything but that not everyone believes that, and that there will be be people along the way that will question her when she says that she can. (It's a philosophy I didn't really think I was going to have to teach my seven year old.)

But believe it she does. And is quite happy to tell you that when she grows up, she's going to be a doctor. And a veterinarian. And a fireman, too.

And somehow, I'm pretty sure she will.




Go here to read about a new website that gives girls tools to use to grow up healthy and strong and teaches them that yes, they can be....anything they want to be.

kicking it with ponies

It's been an amazing week over here. Last week, Cass went to his first judo lesson, and walked out an hour later beaming. He broke a board. WITH HIS FOOT. On PURPOSE.

This month alone, he's started drama club at school, a soccer program, and judo. He's trying new things and figuring out who he wants to be, and it's fun to watch.

Today, it was riding a horse.  It was Rosey's birthday party, and nine of her good friends came out to eat cupcakes and hop up on the ponies. Most had never been on a horse before. They all did well.

Cass is very interested in riding. Rosey is too.

She's upstairs right now, wearing her brand-new Stables t-shirt, and ta-thumping her Barbie horses (and their riders) through their paces.

Welcome, horse-mad age! Welcome!

thanksgiving

That was the best, the best Thanksgiving weekend ever.

My lovely-and-wicked-smart (and they are) sisters-in-law put their heads together and came up with a fantastic way to celebrate the holiday. Bored with the usual, they hatched a plan to get us all away from home - a way to have us all relaaaaaaaax this year.

Barely an hour from home, the spot we ended up in was amazing. AMAZING. 

THIS is the view from the kitchen of our cottage.

 And this is what you saw out the front door.

 And if being tucked into a gorgeous cabin in the woods with water and myriad shades of fall leaves around didn't clear away all the cobwebs and stress, right down the road was...

the beach.

And now I have pictures of my children frolicking in the Atlantic ocean in mid-October.

 Frolicking. Swimming. Running up and down the hard-packed sand and screeching with joy like young gulls and finding treasures and swooping from the water to the sand to where the adults sat with their faces tipped to the sun and back to the water again.

This beat turkey coma all hollow. 

Magical, amazing, incredible. 

My pictures don't do justice to the beauty of the place and don't show the depth of the absolute peace there. I'm homesick, and I can't wait to go back.

charmed, I'm sure

I was cleaning the bathroom tonight and found, coiled in one of the wooden cigar boxes that hold my mothers jewelry, something I haven't seen in years. Something that I'm so glad I have of hers. I can still remember how it looked against her neck.

It started out as bracelets. Charm bracelets. Someone - Mom? - put them together and created a necklace, a chunky, fun piece that she wore with many different things. There were charms bracelets filled with charms from Grandma Gebhart (my great-grandmother) my grandmother, my great-aunt, my mom, and a small, uncluttered piece that held the few I remember from trips we took when I was small. A silver horse and carriage from Mackinac Island. A tiny flag from the Bahamas. A hoop-skirted belle from My Old Kentucky Home.

My great-aunt Alberta had great charms - even a tiny silver cocktail shaker that when pressed, opens and a little devil head pops out. (Bertie lived through Prohibition.) There is a wee class ring from my mother's alma mater on her string, and my grandmother has a fantastic spinning top. I love telling the stories to Rosey and wondering with her about the ones we don't know.

There are a lot I'll never know about, since both Mom and Bertie are both gone.

Tonight, though, is no time for being wistful for the past. Tonight is also eleven years since I took Bear's (slightly damp) paw and promised to love and cherish him. So I have some celebrating to do!

Goodnight!

the cusp of the weekend

I hate how the edge of Sunday bites deep with the incessant chant of 'You have to work tomorrow'.

Whispering in the back of your head, tainting all the joy and fun of the last day of your weekend.

Can we do something after supper? Wow, that looks like a great show. Should I stay up and watch it?
A meteor shower? Sounds great! But....

I have to work tomorrow.

Blech. And Urgh.

Today is my Sunday - tomorrow I work at the hospital. I'm torn between making the absolute most of it (Wanna dye your hair with Kool-Aid*, Roseyroo? Cass, bet I can make soap turn into snow.** Wanna bet?) and floating, lazily and limply, in the pool.

Tonight we're having a great meal - stuff I've been waiting all week to cook, and dessert, and then...

and then the pool is mine.


*We may repeat this again some other day. It either didn't work or R's locks are too dark to show.
** Really? YES.

this is planet earth

I'm watching 'Planet Earth' (no, not the Duran Duran video, the BBC series) and listening to David Attenborough talk about baby polar bears and wondering why, for God's sakes, why, I watch these (admittedly gorgeous and interesting) nature programs when I know there's going to be at least one baby animal that doesn't make it.

Tonight's cute and cuddly snack du jour  (well, so far, we're still not sure if the polar bear cubs will survive) is a baby caribou.

And now it's on to birds, which are almost as sparkly and purty as my husband today after Rosey got after him with her Glitter Barbie makeup. (He said I could blog about it, but drew the line at photographic evidence, sadly.)

Crap. The wild dogs are after the impala. Y'know, I understand that this is real life and not a Gary Larson cartoon, but I still can't help wishing that the impalas could just catch a break.

Elephants swim, did you know? I mean, all four-feet off the ground swim? And how joyous they look, carrying their trunks over their heads and 'creek-ing' at each other.

So many creatures, all of us, inhabiting the same space.

This film makes me wonder what Lucy is thinking when she chews off the zipper pull on my purse (does the leather make her think she's hunting something?  Or is she just....delusional? However far back her 'hunting memories' go back, I have a hard time believing any of my calico house-cat's family brought down a cow.)

But then again, all things are possible here...on Planet Earth.


(And yes, I'm humming the bah,bah,bu-bah from the Duran Duran song. Of course.)

no chlorine

Rosey and I were floating in the pool night before last (before all the chlorine tabs and pool-shock and whatever else that goes in there went in there) and I was trying to explain to her how if she dipped her head back and closed her eyes and just floated, how that was like my summers were like growing up, because I grew up near a lake.  And she looked right at me and said 'Awww, Mama. You never got to go to the beach?'

(Because 'beach' to her means the Atlantic.)

It's weird how different (in mostly small and indefinable ways) their growing up is than mine. I guess I never thought about how they'd grow up as salt-water kids, thousands of miles away from what I think of as home, and from another country to boot - and how alien that would make me feel. They've dipped their toes in Lake Huron on our last vacation, but have yet to see Lake Michigan - which is strange to me, as the big fierce body of water governed so much of my childhood. I'm sure I'm idolizing the bay, but there's just something about the memory of all that water and constant fresh-water breeze that makes me astonished that they don't have that as a governing thought in their bodies too.

  last August, on the shores of Lake Huron, in one of the tiny towns that populate the lake-side there.

A better example: last night Cass told me to shush because he wanted to hear the Pledge of Allegiance on tv. (Because he's never really heard it.) And I, of course, cannot bleat out O Canada at any time.

I'm not sure them being raised as Americans would make them any better. (I think they're pretty spectacular, after all.) This is all situational stuff.  But it's different than I thought it would be.

I wonder - do you catch yourself sometimes and think about how different than yourself your children are?

Today they're out at 'the beach', frolicking at the ocean with their beloved aunt, having a wonderful time. Soon they'll be home, sandy feet, windburned cheeks, and all, bursting with stories and adventures and pocketsfulls of treasures.

We're alike in that way. I can never leave a beach - freshwater or salt - without stuffing my pockets full of momentos either.

Hm. Maybe we're not so different after all.

an afternoon of fortitude

Our property used to have a road running smack through part of it. A regular old country road, and people still remember driving it, how it wound around through the apple orchard and trees and gave you glimpses of the rushing river and then the woods and back again.

But that was awhile ago, and if you didn't know, you wouldn't know that cars used to vroom through the space where the deer now come out and graze. Wild strawberries and raspberry canes tangle where the old ruts used to be - the grass grows thick over the rest.

There is one, lone sentinel telephone pole left. Unattached to anything, it stands guard over a grove of pine trees and the edge of the watershed.

(Why is there a telephone pole at the edge of the field, all out by its lonesome? Because the power lines followed the roads.)

We had lots of long sticks left from different batches of wood-cutting and tree-thinning and the over-zealous beaver we had visiting us last spring and so this afternoon, after I got home from work and the cries of 'play with me!' started, the kids and I

the kids and I built a teepee.

It's big enough so they can both get in it and stand up.

They're pretty chuffed. Big plans of sleeping out overnight once we're finished (I want to take vines and weave them through, then toss on a couple of old sheets to cover it all.) and games of fort have already started. The doorway is on the other side, in an area shaded by pine branches, so the entrance isn't obvious.

It's much more like a real teepee that way.

third grader

for TWO MORE DAYS. That's it. TWO MORE SCHOOL DAYS and.....

and I have a FOURTH GRADER.

ulp.

chores

I swore, when I realized I was going to have kids, that I would NEVER be the kind of Mom who cleaned the kids rooms. My Mom didn't, so why would I?

(And a caveat here: I remember getting my bedroom door taken off the hinges for not cleaning it properly, and I remember trying to stuff more than God ever intended to fit under the bedskirt, and I remember staring longingly out my window while I had to FUSS with things,but I don't remember my mother cleaning my room.)

Rosey and Cass both put their laundry in hampers and bring them downstairs. They take their folded clean stuff up too, and put it away. They make their beds (okay, often.) They strip their beds on Sunday, and both can make them again, although R gets frustrated with the bottom sheet and C hates pillowcases. Rosey unloads the dishwasher when asked, Cass sweeps, they both love to mop. They take turns setting and clearing the table*. Cass feeds the dog, Rosey the cats.

Am I proud of them? Hell, yes. Am I an excellent task-master or an incredible parent or (oh, I laugh) some organized phenomenon?

NO.

My brother and I were taught from a very early age that we were part of the household, and that we were expected to do these things. So it made sense for me to carry that on with my kids.

Although, today, when I went into Cass's room and left with a bag and a half of assorted toys, old school assignments, crumpled paper, and bits of mystery plastic,  I thought for a minute I'd turned into one of those women who cleaned their children's rooms.

Then I realized I was just performing a vital safety service and making sure firemen could get to him should there be a fire, and left.

We'll see if he notices when he gets home.

Rosey's room will have to wait for a few days. But, Little Ponies? You're on warning.



*Which sounds like: 'Cass, it's your turn to....' But they DO it.

saturday

This has been both a cheese-grinder and a low, slow easy morning.

Lovely because there was sleeping in and johnny-cakes and fresh coffee sweetened with maple syrup and hard, fingernails on the edge hard because of a homework packet that Rosey tra-la-la'd her way into my bed with.

Math and trying to teach checking your work to someone who would (to be fair) reeeeally rather be hugging the cat too hard is sorta......difficult.

Especially for the cat. Lucy looked pained.

I'm beginning to see why so many of the kitchen table sessions I remember with my parents were excruciating.  (That said, I STILL remember most of the sneaky number tricks that you taught me, Dad. Even thought I bitched A LOT while you were going over [and over, and over] them with me.)

But now even the horror of realizing Rosey learns just like me (oh, I weep, I wail)  is fading when faced with a new book and a weekend of doing nothing but what I want to do.

I like being your Mom

Because you both make me laugh. Every day.

You drive me crazy, too, but I think it's part of the Kid Manual that you do that. You are stubborn and sweet, achingly tender and outrageously catty, and either one of you can wind the other up in a heartbeat.

(That does get a little tiring, actually. Just an observation.)

You're loyal to a fault and smart and compassionate, with great big hearts 

that you use to teach me new things all the time.

I love being around you. Thanks for being my kids and calling me Mom.

just a'swingin...

Eliot was wrong

April is not the cruelest month.  February is.

 A year ago, on Valentine's Day, my mother died. This year, on Groundhog Day, my father told me that my stepmother had succumbed to cancer.

We're still reeling.

Pat married into our family almost twenty years ago. I did not like her at first - was determined, actually, to find something terrible and deal-breaking about this woman who was marrying my father.  (I may be a bit of a Daddy's girl. Or a lot. But still, I was eighteen, and a hot mess of hormones and craziness.) I don't remember where we were when I first met her, only that she was kind, and smart, and not interested in being my mother at all. Peaceful is a good word - Pat brought peace wherever she went.

My brother and I soon stopped thinking of her as 'that woman' and began thinking of her as Pat.

Mum (for she became that, too) was a listener. She would set something up so she could be doing something (ironing, weaving, gardening, petting a cat or two) and listen, really listen and offer comments and sooner or later you'd realize that not only did you feel better, you'd figured out what you were going to do.

Mum believed if you were surrounded by beautiful things, beautiful parts of you came out. The house she and my father lived in is gorgeous, surrounded by flowers, filled with interesting and rare objects. She could tell you the history of every little thing in that house. She made it a home.

She made people happy just by being there, and we will remember her forever.





Also, I think it might be prudent for my family to stop celebrating holidays once and for all.
 

more blues

hurling rocks through the ice in the watershed

I love the light in the late afternoon. And hey - look, no snow!! It's a Christmas miracle! Or....something.