Up Toward Ohio Pyle Park

Last Friday we took a long, long drive up toward Ohio Pyle Park so Martin could purchase his Rock-Collecting Permit. Ten tons of rocks from State Forests for five dollars a ton! Not a bad price, really, if you love collecting rocks. More about that later.

The drive started beautifully, dipped into Ugly and stayed Ugly for a while. But then Beauty rewarded us for enduring dreariness as we climbed in altitude--hills lush with rhododendron, ornamental pear trees still blazing orange, running fences and horse farms.

After a brief stop at the Park Office, where Martin obtained his rock-collecting permit (first one ever issued) and the girls flirted with a huge statue of Smoky the Bear, we drove a short way to Lynn State Park where we piled out of the car for our mile hike past Lynn Falls. Seemed as if it would be a simple hike until we realized that the thick carpet of leaves hid jagged rocks. We held the two little ones, since every time they began running they fell flat on their faces. Near the end of our hike, Elspeth chanted from my hip: "Stumble, trip! Stumble, trip! Stone man! Stone man!" I joggled over and around all the hidden rocks. As we hiked the light shifted through Canadian hemlocks, delicate fans of needles like frost patterns. The light began to take on a wintry quality as the sun fell. Underneath the leaves and among the rocks we saw thousands of acorns with hats lying askew. What lazy squirrels had missed these riches?

Occasionally, a crashing in the brush would make me look up for another human or a deer, but a little striped back would disappear over a rock--all that noise from a chipmunk! I wanted the children to see the little chaps but they moved too quickly and the children were too loud.

Night was falling quickly as we drove back toward home. Running colonial-style fences, constructed of crudely hewn black lumber, fenced in a field of dun colored sheep. On the hill behind them, black cows grazed; behind them hills rose, covered in bare armed trees against a the bright pink streaks of sunset. Trees arched over the dipping roads as we passed old stone farmhouses, bright red barns. A man outside his door stretched his arms out as if he were welcoming the warm evening.

And then we were back to Ugly again--bars and roadhouses forced us to stop at Wendy's, where we grudgingly ate our junky food under blue and red balloons given to our children by a clown dressed up with fake eyebrows and perky braids as Wendy. I glanced up from my bacon cheeseburger to see a giant cheeseburger passing by the window on the side of a semi.

Ugly shook us into Eerie as we drove by the powerplant with its huge towers white against the night sky, billows of white steam chugging from gaping mouths. We looked at a city of lights and electric spikes so close we could have tossed our giant Wendy's diet coke cup over the fence.

Ugly, Beautiful, Eerie, Exhilarating and Sad. That's our piece of America, rural coal mining country. Today as Martin collected ancient rocks covered in moss, he listened to the sounds of mining across the street, looked up to see the twisted stumps of recently felled trees and the deep tire tracks of excavators that bare mountains to dirt.

Post script:
That Friday night a magnet from the Forestry office, discarded on Martin's bedside table, advised me to "Get My Smoky On." What does this mean?

Greene River Trail

The Hiker in early spring
Bea in her green longjohned legs sprouting out of her sparkly pink nightgown, damp hair. . .she should drop off to sleep quickly. She gave a good, May Westish "Buh-bye" and then blew kisses indiscriminately as we walked up the stairwell. We had a funny sort of supper--tons of leftovers--but I told the girls they were having a four course dinner (better than what most princesses can boast) and they were utterly delighted: first course, scrambled eggs; whisked away to be replaced by beef stew; a plate then instead of a bowl and they ate up a piece of pizza; and finally I gave them each a rice bowl full of whipped cream for dipping their fruit.

We spent such a lovely afternoon by the Monongahela River--a tugboat pushed two barges down the water, which was so still it looked like a lake; the girls played in leaves and Martin built a rock fence by the Hiker, who was made entirely out of scrap metal by an ambitious boyscout. The Hiker signals tea time, but when we spread our blanket in his shadow I realized I'd forgotten our mug. This gave me the pleasure of a very brisk walk to the car and back whereupon I fell at the Hiker's feet and ate chocolate cake with my fingers.

On our way back Bea crouched down and crawled after a tiny cricket, marking his progress with her animated exclamations. At one point she became puzzled because he had suddenly disappeared; it turned out that he was rather squashed under her fat baby hand. I think he may be crippled for life, but how he was adored! At our right the hill rose up into a fringe of trees. At our left the horizon smoothed away in the glassiness of the still river. The air was unseasonably warm, but as we passed by the waterfall, a cool, muddy breeze blew down at us. We stopped and drank it in--the change was so sudden it was as if we'd passed into another world, another season, a memory of our childhood.

Then back home through the golden light spilled over the hills, the old beautiful houses and cows grazing and the smoke of a leaf fire. Finally the sheen of late sunlight was behind us; there was home and our funny dinner and baths and loud noises of children thumping up our stairs on their way to bed.

Hide and Seek

I observed Elsepth and her sweet friend Ben yesterday playing Hide and Seek. They were both hiding; nobody was seeking. At least nobody I could see. As they crouched in the front hallway behind a heap of shoes, Ben said, "We're hiding from God."

"People have tried that before to bad results," I said. Watch out for large fish with capacious mouths.

Later I reflected playing Hide and Seek with a three- and four- year old is probably a bright spot in God's rather serious schedule of disasters and dreary requests from the rest of us. Ben told me God can't see through doors, so maybe he turns that off as a sort of handicap to level the playing field.

In other news, I have a new nephew! Born this morning to my sweet sister-in-law Caroline: Jacob(nobody knows?) Guerra.

Martin's already announced his intentions to call the boy "Yakov." Caroline's husband, Ilich, is Columbian and named for a character in Russian literature, and Martin thought it only right that the tradition continue. Congratulations, Guerras! Welcome, Yakov!

My Friends

I lost my three half-days a week, and though I mourn the absence of our dear friend who is now student teaching, the cut in hours has been good for me. Now my nurturing friend (Bea thinks of her as another of her mommies) takes the non-school girls for two mornings a week, and those two mornings are so precious to me that I do not squander a single minute. If I have three hours, I sit down and I write the whole time. I am glued to my chair, no getting up or lollygagging unless I am DESPERATE to urinate or my three-baby bottom falls asleep. I write two new chapters a morning. Having limited time (say, over the past seven years) has produced one very important characteristic in me: Gratitude. I don't take even ten minutes of writing time for granted. I imagine that's a key: not having too much. Generally speaking, having just enough and making the most of it seems to be one of my keys to contentment. And what do those keys look like? Do they gleam like ice or are they dull from burial? I suppose it depends which day you catch me.

My dear Maple Mullihan and her oddball family feel, like my friend LJI in Missoula reflects about her novel's characters, like good friends by now. I hear Martin playing a song ("Dancing in the Moonlight") and I think, "That's a song the Mullihans would LOVE. I bet they're singing it." For a while there I felt all caught in the morass of publication (I had missed my by-the-time-I'm-thirty-I'll-have-a-book deadline) and then I turned a corner, and like Arnold Lobel's Frog, I spied spring! Why do I write? I asked myself. And I answered: Because I must to be happy; because I enjoy it! And so I jumped into the rather brisk waters of the new book and splashed around like a happy idiot. I must admit there are fairly muddy eddies here and there where I'm not sure what's on the bottom and I'm afraid to put down my toes. But why do something if I can't find a shred, or a hunk, or a whole lot of joy in it?

My girls are always spinning such delightful tales, and they have no use for time lines or inner pressures to produce. Elspeth turned her face to me at nap time the other day and reported in all seriousness: "Mommy, when I was born someone threw a pie in my face."

That's good stuff.

So is the warthog story from my dear friend Rachel that you must view. It's not every day warthogs eat your hand cream.

Driving

Hello, lovies.

I've a peeling nose from overblowing, a full heart, and a swollen gland. I just finished my morning goal of writing two more chapters on my Maple Mullihan sequel (never mind the first book hasn't yet been accepted--a mere detail!) and I'm rather happy with the sunshine filling the whole of my window pane. I'm rather less happy with the rotten fish smell outside, but that's different mining-town Pennsylvania story altogether. I did want to share an account of my mystical drive to church yesterday while my gratitude for it is still fresh in my innards:

I left the children with Martin yesterday morning. With my travel cup of coffee and my materials for Sunday, a sandwich and pumpkin cookies in a crumpled paper bag, I left a screaming Elspeth and headed down the front steps. I'd been complaining a bit about making the drive by myself, especially as Martin seemed fabulously comfortable in his slippers, but as soon as I sat behind the wheel of our Subaru, I knew I was in for a happy time. I banished NPR, my usual background noise to the cacophony of children, for the silence that sat beside me companionably as I pulled out of town and onto the highway toward Morgantown, West Virginia.

The highway cuts in between rolling hills, which were once mountains of the western america magnitude, but are now comfortable and more like an old grandmama who is a bit saggy and droopy but all the more beautiful for the marks of her children, who have eroded all her sharp edges. Occasionally you spot a house on a ridge line or in a valley, and occasionally there's a blight, like a box store or a car dealer, but mostly there are just endless trees, curving upward and out until you find the horizon. The morning of my solitary drive, the sky was clear blue, the sort of blue that makes you wait for contrails and swooping birds.

The deep green and thrumming reds of our autumn seem to have burned away to give way to a golden blaze. As I drove down toward the edge of Pennsylvania, the maples burned on all sides. The trees seemed to have drunk up all the summer sunlight and were alive with gold. The maples were like a blast of music, ringing in my head, bringing tears to my eyes, when suddenly the road curved upward into a cloud.

All the singing hushed, and everything was white and soft and far away, echoing out on all corners of the road. I thought the mist would last only a few seconds and then I'd plunge back out into the color again, but it went on and on. I turned on my headlights. The cars around me slowed a bit. The mist moved through the hills and as I moved more deeply into it.

It wasn't until I was in West Virginia that I realized the fog was gone. I don't know when I drove out of it, but suddenly I noticed I could see the striated browns of the rock walls to the left of the highway. Shafts of water darkened the rock in solid waterfalls. Then it was out of the mountains back to the rolling color, the spheres of yellow and red, the flickering of leaves, the dipping of the road. I increased speed to that good old West Virginia pace--78 and curving through autumn, descending finally to my exit and to the university traffic and to the responsibilities of people and noise.

A Full Tea Kettle

Here is my short Friday wish list:

A full tea kettle always ready to whistle but not screaming. Perhaps I should like the heft of the kettle under my palm and fingers, enjoy the filling. Still I wish it were always full.

Also a silent person who puts the tea cup, with perfectly blended milk and no sugar, at my elbow, whom I do not thank but who knows I am thankful.

Beds that change their own sheets.

More tunnels.

I think maybe I would miss the snap of the sheets and the way I feel my mother is with me, at my elbow, watching every time I tuck a hospital corner. I would perhaps miss bobbing the tea bag by its string in the hot water, watching the swirls drift into the corner of the cup.

So I'll whittle my list down to one:

More tunnels to beautiful places.

And add one:

A yard full of mature maples and pines. I awaken one morning and there they are, standing in my yard like old uncles, hands shoved in corduroy pockets. They have always been in the room.

Autumn, Continued

Bea's face looks like mine when we take drives these days.
New England may be fine, but our autumn is pretty glorious, too. I wish you all could be here to see it. Today I cooked up an acorn squash and my o my but there isn't anything better, especially with a little cinnamon, brown sugar, and apples.



Lest you be tiring of the odes to autumn, I do have a luscious piece of news: my man Martin just got a poem accepted at Beloit Poetry Journal! Pretty proud of that guy. So proud, in fact, that I whipped him up an acorn squash tonight. That's the kind of wild way we celebrate around here.

Autumn Now

For my parents in Bangkok and Martin's parents in Houston, here's a little of what you're missing:





Our first hoary frost lay over everything--the stroller, railings, car, trees--zapped the zinnias, but melted quickly to give way to a perfect autumn day. Beatrix's favorite new thing: chasing squirrels in the park. One threw down nuts at us today as we waited for Martin. My mother has always had a particular knack with squirrels--one at the Episcopal Church in Maryland chatted regularly with her.

Are there squirrels in Thailand? I won't list what I'm missing by NOT being in Bangkok. Martin cooked Thai noodles tonight, so it's almost as if we're there. Hmm.

Zippitydodah! Hoorah for yellow and red! And for Thai noodles!

The World According to Elspeth, Age 3 1/2, in Photos

I just downloaded some pictures with the intention of creating yet another ode to autumn. . .and then I found that Elspeth had been quite busy with the camera. I actually found myself loving her photo journal, though of course she's not technically supposed to be running around with our only digital camera. Technicalities like these have never stopped her before. I wish I could include all her takings, but I've chosen just a few. Without further ado, then:





You'll note that focus is also a silly detail she doesn't pay too much attention to, which tells you much about her: she is ALWAYS on the move. Most of our pictures of her are out of focus for that very reason.




The first set of photos are from one evening and the next set are from a following afternoon.




We end with a self-portrait.

Writer's Bird

This is Elspeth's photo of me, when my head was taken in glory. It was a great trip. I missed my body. Someday I will write of it.

So here I am. I don't have writer's block, exactly, which is a dumb name and makes me think of laxatives. We don't want writer's diarrhea, either, just. . .well, I'll stop there. I have these lovely shards to a story and I'm not brave enough to throw them all into the fire.

Maybe it's not cowardice, either, that stops me--maybe just laziness, or weariness, or the water is too cold to jump in all at once. What I need to do is just plunge in like those fools I've known who whoop like gorillas and beat their chests and whip around their wet cold heads like buffaloes in heat. They are not fools at all. They are brave.

I wet a little bit of my body at a time, afraid of the full hit of coldness. . .and then the story is gone. This is not how I usually operate. Usually I write like mad for four hours and then sit back with my scissors and begin snipping. Martin comes in with his chainsaw and takes off all the appendages, leaving maybe just the head. Or maybe just an ear. "There's your story!" he says, holding up that one ear with a grin. A small silver loop dangles. I hold the ear, despair for a minute, and begin mixing up the plaster to construct a body around it again. If I am brave.

I think all the reading of Sylvia Plath's journals has taken it out of me. I looked at a mushroom today in the grass on the way to class and I wondered, "How would Sylvia have described this mushroom?" And low and behold if I didn't open my book at random in class and read, "A mushroom's black underpleats."

What is that high buzzing in my office? I hate high, constant sounds. They get behind my eyes and stick themselves down in my throat.

Maybe, just maybe, I will start that story. As soon as I finish this exceptional cup of tea. Then. And maybe when that buzzing goes away. A black bird just flew past the blinding, sunlit clouds, like the blur of a waving hand in an overexposed photograph. . . .Actually, not like that at all.

Vegetables Make You Feel Lovely

Whether it was the perfect autumn day, a measure of my surrender to weariness, or the simple meal of vegetables I ate for dinner, I feel so content. Green beans and local purple potatoes and peppers that a farmer and retired professor showered into my lap (with a gruff, 'don't want to take these home') and I carried around in my capacious purse all afternoon. . .onions, a little tomato, and a long simmer.

I never feel this happy when I eat meat, except perhaps turkey, and that's the sleepy drug kicking in, I suppose, and the fact that I always eat it with family on holidays. I feel vegetarianism at my heels again. I've become picky and paranoid about meat lately, even local, all-natural, no-hormone meat. And then, the other day, this happened: We were driving along, almost off the interstate, almost into the bosom of our little town, when a big semi passed by. It was one of those with slits in the walls, and through the slits we could see great big soft, dirty black cows.

"Where are they going?" the girls wanted to know, delighted that, Richard Scarry fashion, they'd seen a truck full of cows.

"I'm not sure exactly," I said, not untruthfully, since I didn't know WHICH slaughterhouse they were bound for.

"I think they're going to the fair," one daughter suggested, and then another said they might be going to a great big cow park, and then Elspeth concluded they were headed for a field of flowers.

That would be nice. Ug. It was like a knife had plunged itself into my liver. All I could see was the death-agony eyeroll that accompanies a cow being slaughtered.

The sticker on the back of the semi said I [heart] LOVE BEEF. I did not read it aloud.

I think I'm a vegetarian, I said to Martin. That clinches it.

In other happier news, for the first time I saw a semi with its bed full of apples--not crates of apples or bags of apples. Just the naked spheres tossed in. There must have been thousands and thousands, piled to the top. It brought to mind another Richard Scarry fantasy: the overturned truck with apples strewn everywhere and the truck driver, in happy resignation, setting up a stand with "Apple Cider" advertised on a jolly sign.

Here's a cup of tea and some dahlias for you, be they a bit out of focus:

Enjoy!

Monsters and Free Will

This morning over Cheerios, Elspeth (3 1/2) asked me if we were like Playmobil figures and Jesus just played with us and made us do whatever he wanted. She illustrated her point: So when P-- comes over tonight, it will be like this. . .

She extended her arm, pretending she was holding a figurine, and plopped it along the table: Plu, plu, plu, she said.

And tonight we rehashed a much replayed bedtime theme: MONSTERS. I tried to explain that her imagination belonged to her, and she was in charge of what sort of monsters came in. I told her a story about a little girl who plays so happily with her friend Fleurfleur that she never realizes Fleurfleur is a monster. Well, one day Fleurfluer comes over to play and her mother opens the front door and shouts: Ahhh! A monster!

To help Elspeth, Merry shared her memories of being afraid of monsters jumping out of her closet--she just imagined that any flick of light, in the house or on the street, would dissolve the monster, and so she was no longer afraid. When I came to kiss her she confided, Actually, I am still afraid of monsters sometimes. But (with a shrug) I just go with it.

And Elspeth made me alter the sign next to her bed so it now reads:

NO MONSTERS ALLOWED.
Only nice monsters in E's imagination.
WATCH OUT! JESUS IS WITH ELSPETH!

I heard her reading the sign out loud, presumably to the monsters assembled outside our front door, angling to get in and hide in closets. It doesn't matter how many times we repeat there are no such things. And why am I afraid to go into the basement by myself at night? And why are you?

letters to the dead, dahlias, and other daily things

Outside the wind has calmed a bit and the air is cool and buzzes with crickets. The sunflowers are heavy with seeds and rain; their faces almost brush the grass.

On my desk is a plate with the remains of an apple cake Bea and I baked this morning (she sitting on the counter, dropping whole apples into bowls and batter--I saved my hand-beater just in time) from orange, green, yellow, red local apples. Also there is the copy of my book for young readers (the first page scrunched by a zealous baby), an empty tea cup the color of an ostrich egg, a blinking answering machine, and an envelope, unaddressed. Inside the envelope is a letter Elspeth wrote last night by herself. I believe the page is covered in orange scribbles. She folded it up messily and asked for a case (envelope). After licking the flap multiple times and with great spirit, she sealed the letter and said, "It's for Greatgrandpa because he's dead. It says, 'I'll see you in heaven.'

So there it is. What to do?

Elspeth wrote a letter to a dead person and now she fully expects us to send it to him in the mail. Is the USPS up to the task, I wonder?
I close with a dahlia bestowed upon us by the lovely lady across the street.

If such a flower is REAL and actually grows upon a stem, surely a letter to a dead person can be delivered.

Cusp of Autumn

Autumn, I adore you! Hurrah for your golds and apple reds! For cold nights creeping under warm window sashes, for birds polished shiny as nut shells!

For children in slippers

Grandfather trees

Bowing sunflowers

A late raspberry on my tongue

Autumn, dear bearded one, come and simmer cider with us. Stay long! I do not feel as kindly to your successor. Why do you never come alone? This year, O Autumn, leave Winter behind!

For Slugman MD

Whether ‘tis nobler to drive your tractor
into a nest full of yellow jackets
and by opposing them not end them.
To sting, to sting—
One more—and by the third or tenth end
the stinging and make way for the natural shocks
and swelling. To swell, to smell of Benadryl—
aye, there’s the rub,
for in that stinking comes the verse of friends
who think: instead of almost shuffling off this mortal coil,
by bearing the whips and scorns of yellowjackets,
you should have paused
turned heel and run like hell,
plunged into your septic tank
or water well
with a bare bodkin! Who would fardels bear,
but that dread of bees, their great buzz
from which nest no traveler returns.
Soft you now,
The swollen Slugman!

Shed Update, in Pictures

A little red. . .

A lot of lupine. . .


Won't this be a cheerful sight on a bleak winter day?

It's almost done! Just got to paint the floor and get the doors up!

First Day of School

Finally! Here are first days!

Merry's first day of 2nd grade: she declared she didn't want us to drive her to or pick her up from school. Ms. Independence with stoic face and determined stride.

Elspeth's first day of preschool: she'd been chomping at the bit for weeks, and Martin could barely get her attention to say goodbye once they got there.


They left without a backwards glance, both of them. A sign of things to come, I think.

Bea and I went home, danced for a while, and then had some tea and cake with a friend. Hoorah!

Big Nosed Me

Elspeth, while snuggling with me last night, said, "Mommy, you look like the child-catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang."

"You mean I look like Truly Scrumptious?" I queried, hoping I had misheard.

"No, like the child-catcher." She paused and continued matter-of-factly: "You have a big nose."

All these years, struggling to accept my great big Finish honker, and the child tells it like it is. I am proud to say I laughed, and it was a good laugh from my tummy, not a sad laugh. I do have a big nose.

As an unrelated postscript, I made a cake for our lovely babysitter, decorating it with icing balloons, until I suddenly realized, "These don't look like balloons! They look like sperm!" Truly, green sperm swimming all over her cake. Thankfully Elspeth covered the images in such layers of sprinkles that you can't even see them anymore.

From a Mama Letter

You see above my mama with crazy-haired Baby Beatrix. Here my mama is saying, "You're just the funniest looking baby--" and Bea was with her hair always on end--now she's just the littlest of the Cockroft nesting dolls.

And below is a little excerpt from a letter I just wrote to my mama, who is very very far away today.

September 16, 2009

Dear Mom,
How strange to think of you so far away today. You are perhaps on your way to Lamu, that East African island fabled for its clear pristine water and white beaches. The night you and Dad were flying across the ocean toward Amsterdam and then onto Nairobi I slept badly. Maybe it was biology that made me feel bereft as you went further and further away. I thought the next day what it would be like to be without you completely and I am thankful that is not so.

I remember when I was ten or so and Daddy took Heather and me off to Ecuador, and how melancholy I felt looking out of the plane window at the clouds tinged with pink, thinking of you being very far away, back in Georgia with Kenton. Of course I had a wonderful time but I missed you every day. I still remember well how, after one of our vehicles rammed into the side of the mountain on a narrow road, Daddy let me walk through a field, heavy with dew or rain (I don’t remember which), and though it had looked Romantic to me and I had pictured myself picking a bouquet and wandering happily through the flowers, the whole excursion mostly produced anxiety about fat bees and soggy shoes. In the end I was a discomforted little girl who reproached herself for the rest of the trip until her shoes dried. Would you have let me walk through the field if you had been there?

So you are off to Lamu with Dad, continents and time zones away from our house, and I am here in my office, with the warm autumn sunlight filtering through the window screen. Outside the garden is at its mellow decline, alive with the sound of crickets. The sunflowers are heavy and will soon be bereft of all their seeds. Elspeth and I went out early yesterday morning to harvest the sharp, black cosmos seeds and the last of the raspberries. Some of the berries were half eaten by wasps and bees, and the lower ones were absent due to the vigorous munching of our groundhog, Grassy Sam, who is as fat as ever. He is more of a friendly presence in our garden than the renowned pest most people think of. I actually find the sight of his big wiry bottom disappearing down our hill comforting.

We have come to be more and more at ease about the garden, a bit more zen-like in our approach (though perhaps that translates to lazy), and we share our produce with the critters pretty happily though I must admit annoyance when the deer chomp down our lovely fruit trees to stumps on a regular basis. Then I am inclined to make myself feel better by thinking of all the trouble fruit trees could be: prone to disease, and having to be harvested year after year, and so convince myself that even the deer’s damage is okay. Isn’t it easier just to buy apples at Farmer’s Market, after all?

Well, that’ll do me for now. Beatrix is about to climb up my chair and stage a coup.

Groundhog? More like Life Coach

I have Grassy Sam, our resident groundhog, to thank for getting us out of the house this afternoon.

I had just finished complaining to Martin that I was getting The Cold, I didn't feel like making supper, I just felt like laying around, etc., etc., when I looked out the window and saw our substantially tubby groundhog, on his hind legs, devouring our red raspberries.

To tell you the truth, it was kind of adorable. I rapped on the screen but Grassy Sam was not deterred. So out I went, ordering the girls to turn off the TV and get outside.

The afternoon was mellow and lovely. The leaves on our Black Walnut were tinged with yellow, the sunflowers heavy with their seeds, the raspberries (black and red), hanging full on their stems. Beatrix immediately soaked herself in mud and then beat a path down our hill to the swings. Merry and Elspeth climbed on their slick sleds and slid down the hill (yes, they slide on grass, incredibly--its either the sleds or the red wagon, and the sleds go so much more gently).

I picked about four cups of raspberries, enough for another batch of jam, and I pushed Elspeth on the tire swing and made Beatrix laugh and scolded Merry for her "campout" debris still in the yard, made it up the stairs, and arrived at the house with enough energy to cook. Merry, my queen-girl, took the other two girls upstairs, poured the bath, bathed them, and brought them down freshly dressed.

I got to listen to NPR while I cooked dinner.

And it's all thanks to Grassy Sam, happy groundhog and life coach.

Name that Girl

Can you sort out who is who?

Elspeth or Bea?

Evidence of

I just had one of those experiences that makes you want to crack right down the middle because you are so full of goodness you can't contain it anymore. It's been a happy day, full of good people. After dinner I fed the baby ice cream while the girls went out on the porch swing to eat theirs in little flowered bowls. Martin drifted off to the piano in the hallway and began to play. Beatrix, stripped down to her diaper, swayed in time as she ate her ice cream, babbling companionably. Then she climbed down from her chair and began running up and down the hallway. The sun coming in the front door formed a column of shining light that stretched down the hallway. As Martin played she ran back and forth, her body aglow, her fat, turning legs silhouetted as they moved. When I looked away, I found my eyes were blinded with the light, and the sunspots were dark in my sight.

And I thought: Is this what happens to the magic? It masses inside us, it blinds our eyes, it leaves its marks on our soul, so when we look away into the darkness our sight is changed forever. So that when I am very old and the clarity of my happinesses are but impressions, like shadows left by a bright sun, someone will say, "There is evidence that this life was filled with great joy."

Miss Potter Letter One

August 25, 2009

Dear Ms. Potter,

I hardly know how to begin a letter to you. I don’t admire many people the way I esteem you; neither do I feel inspired by anyone who has already died, except maybe a few saints, my own relatives, and Jesus. And by living gratefully, I do try to pay homage to all women who have written and mothered and found joy in daily life and in the earth of their gardens. And I try to honor women like you—headstrong, determined, lovers of the earth and all that lives there.

I suppose we have very little in common. You were never a mother, and I married young. I value community and a full but simple life, and I believe your life was less peopled, though full. I am American, though I lived most of my life overseas. I have never made any real money from writing, so I do not have any resources to be a philanthropist like you. I cannot draw small animals. I do not really like touching small animals, including rabbits, and I never filled my room with leaves and sticks and small woodland creatures as a girl, as you did.

To tell you the absolute truth, and I hope you don’t mind—I don’t really read your picture books very often. I enjoy looking at your sketches, including the beautiful pictures of fungi. I love your illustrations, those with flowers, gardens, and especially geraniums (though it’s ghastly the way Peter has been marketed, I’m sorry to tell you—he nibbles his carrot on all sorts of places: baby blankets, silverware, cups, cards, probably even on diaper, or nappy, pails). But your books are a little dense these days even for my oldest, Merry, and they are sometimes frightening, as when Jemima Puddleduck’s eggs are eaten by the fox.

But I greatly admire your frank handling of farm and country life, and the girls think it’s very interesting that Peter Rabbit’s father was baked into a pie by Mrs. McGregor. Just today at the lunch table we were discussing the source of our ham—Merry thought maybe the pig just lived a long life, died from natural causes, and then we ate him—but I put her right. Maybe she will be a vegetarian. I was for a while, but then my love of meat convinced me to try to be a responsible eater—only animals who have been happy and healthy appear on our plates. I try to eat local food, conserve the earth, and. . .but this rather boring all in all and I’d much rather tell you about my friend the robin who keeps me company while I garden in the spring, who jumps down the rows, cocking his head and thanking me for fresh worms. At times like these, when I feel hidden from the rest of the world, with my hands in soil, quieting myself with things so other than myself—then I feel most at peace. This is one reason I admire you, a naturalist, so much, though I, being scatterbrained, will never be a true naturalist myself.

I love to picture you in your farm house, drinking tea and organizing important matters of property, discussing farm details with your husband, and adjusting an outfit for a mouse or a duck. It must be nice to belong to a place so completely, to love that place, and then to leave it to a country who will love it. We moved so often, and though I treasure the diverse experiences I enjoyed, I often longed to belong somewhere. I think you would like the country around the little town where we live now. It reminds me a little of England, though it’s heavily wooded and the hills are quite close together. We barely have a level space even for our garden.

Before I close, I do want to tell you that our last child is named Beatrix, after you, Ms. Potter. My husband and I both thought of your name, independently and without discussion: “Do you know what we should call her [the new baby]?” I shouted to the next room, my hands clasped on top of my pregnant belly. “How about Beatrix?” my husband called back, and since that was just the name I was going to suggest, we felt it was a sign.

Must get the girls to sleep now! It’s been a busy day and the night is finally cooling. Thank you so much for your time, Ms. Potter. I am very

Admiringly Yours,

Forsythia Fern

Shed

In the dark last night, Martin nailed in the last wall of our shed. Here's him a week or so ago working on the roof:

Tomorrow, Merry starts public school for the first time! She's excited! More later. . .beautiful day outside--in the 70s, sunny and breezy. I don't want to miss it!

Here are Some Brave Men

SWIMMING in the Puget Sound this past summer. . .rather chilly-o.

Here at home: chocolate cake, banana bread, tea on its way. Yes, FINALLY it's cool enough to turn on the oven. And I'm SO very glad it's Friday. What a long week it's been. There's rain, which makes me feel cozy and brings back days in Kenya during the rainy season. Makes me long for Fall, which may be foolish since that season is a brief pleasure before winter buckles us into our sweaters. But I love autumn; I love what happens to the garden; I love the way everything ripens and deepens and begins to glow around us. I love the cozy nights and warm nightgowns on the girls and feeling good putting my feet in socks and slippers. I love brown sweaters and gentle rain and the nutty smell of the earth and the way it softens under my tread before freezing.

This will be a different sort of Fall, since it sees Merry go off to the public school for second grade, sees Elspeth start preschool, and me working part-time and attending a class. Yes! Yes! Yes!

A Brief Hop and Skip Through Bliss

Summer is waning, though you wouldn't know it around here. . .It's been warm, warm, warm!

I finally downloaded pictures from last summer, so here's a brief hop and skip through our wonderful, wonderful, time. Thanks to many of you who read this blog, we had an incredible season. Thank you!

Here's Bea enjoying a view of Mt. Rainer from the Edmonds Ferry:

And my nephew 'Siah and I among the lupines in the Cascades:

Martin in fabled "Cicely" from 'Northern Exposure,' which is NOT in Alaska, but WA!

Then there was a short but time-of-souls-meeting with Merry's godparents and princes of godbrothers,

and with Elspeth's godmother and my dear, gentle friend from way back. . .

Getting reaquainted with Missoula (not a hard task):

and meeting this sweet house and garden for the first time:

Back in Washington, beaches and breathtaking coastline, cool nights, good food, good beer, good company

Lots of lovin'

Cousins who are sweet friends

Grandparents devoted to their grandchildren (and vise versa!)


And a freezing dip in the Puget Sound

. . .Of course you saw the trip to Texas in part; more later! The kids want to watch 'Leave it to Beaver.' I have lots to catch up on!

Back Again to a New Shed

We're back! After a long gorgeous summer in WA, MT, and TX, and here and there on the way back to our own honey corner of PA, here we are.

It's truly too late tonight to go into any interesting detail, but I told Mama I'd get a few pics up to show her Martin's new 'do and our shed, which Martin and his dad worked on last week (there's now more to show but I have to upload the roof and one piece of siding):

Didn't they do a rather lovely job on the frame?

and--can you find--Martin (looking oddly respectable)? Merry's gap teeth? Elspeth's happy face? Bea's pixie eyes? Me smiling like I just went swimming in TX in my in-law's beautiful pool?

Thanks to Dad C for the pics since mine--including everything from this summer--are still on my camera.

Maybe I'll actually start bloggering again!

Peas Roses Lavender Strawberries +Bea

Little Creepy Animals

Let's see. . .it's been about four days since Martin left for Kentucky, with four days to go. Thank all heaven that my mother is here with me since if she weren't I would be stark raving mad by now. . .

Last night, after our eight installment in the British miniseries that Mom and I have been devouring hand over fist, I went down to collect some sheets from the drier.

--What is that smell? I asked. The entire laundry room reeked.

--Smells like skunk, she said.

Turns out that Mom had left the door to the back yard--teeming with life and all manner of small animals--to air out the basement. And what had crawled in and made itself at home? I know not.

--You should go look around, I said.

--No way, she replied.

My feet felt crawly and jumpy and I was glad to go upstairs and pull the covers over my toes. Thankfully Mom had kept her bedroom door closed all day, but as I drifted off to sleep, I thought of all the horrible creatures that could be hiding down there in the basement workshop. Groundhog, skunk. . .

Can raccoons turn door handles? I wondered, imagining a giant raccoon sneaking into Mom's room as she slept.

Also I mulled over the black snake sighting not long ago. I was clearing out the back porch when a long serpentine form appeared from nowhere and slithered away into the brush. Who knows what's living down in our basement? Please, God, don't let me find it in the dark. Let Mom find it instead.

Elspeth's Doctrine

The girls pretty much have doctrine sorted out. Yesterday Elspeth told me that Jesus lived in Seattle. "That Jesus," she confided as we lay on the pillows in my bed, "Has a red cape. There's a green Jesus too and also a brown one."

We went on from this to talk about death, which has come up at regular intervals since Great grandpa went to heaven.

"When will Jesus pick you?" she asked me (Jesus picking you means you're dead).

"Not until I'm an old lady," I said.

"When will Jesus pick me?"

"Not until you're an old lady."

"Why?"

"Because then your body will be all tired out."

"But Mommy," she said, stretching out on the bed, "My body IS all tired out."

When Merry was this age, she had it figured out, too. She compiled a list of facts about death and presented her findings in this pithy sentence: "First you get old, then they put you in a chair, and then they put you in a box."

(The chair was of course the wheelchair and the box of course is the coffin.) Merry also gave a sermon one day from a perch in an IKEA display: "Jesus Christ was born in Montana!" she yelled, with all the right intonations of a Southern Baptist preacher (we were living in Texas at that point). "He died on a cross in Iowa!"

Well, seems he's risen from the dead and now resides, clad in a red cape, in Seattle. Maybe we'll see him when we visit.
* * * *
Garden Update: Baby peas; lots of strawberries; a resurrected peach tree; a riot of yellow evening primrose; stunning climbing roses; sweet lavender. . .and no camera. Martin ran off to Kentucky with it.

A Day at Wazoo

It's been a strange day here at Wazoo Farm.

PART ONE: IN WHICH I BRAVELY SAVE A SHIH TZU
With a jauntiness in his step, Martin strode off to work for the day and the girls and I spent the morning in the garden. From where I pounded stakes for flowering tomatoes and Beatrix stuffed herself on strawberries from our patch, I could see the sad, blinded shell of our Subaru waiting for facial reconstruction. Deer hair still covers its little bumper like a spotty mustache. I kept an ear perked for the phone, hoping that our insurance representative would call back in good time so I would not be housebound for the next two weeks.

The phone did not ring, but about midmorning I saved a recently shampooed dog named Tucker from becoming mincemeat. In my reconstruction of Tucker's escape from collision with a midsized sedan, I hold off traffic as I bravely dash into the middle of the road to grab Tucker's leash. I do not know if Tucker will bite me, but I cannot stand by and see him flattened.

I did feel brave and noble, but considering Tucker is just a sweet little shih tzu and the two cars were rather far away and moving slowly, my deed was sadly unremarkable. Bea had a wonderful time grabbing his tail and I had a friendly conversation with the lady who came by searching for him. She parked her car in the side yard and I handed Tucker over the deer fence. We were chatting amiably when our erratic neighbor, who likes to drive around in his car all day swearing and cussing at the top of his lungs, found Tucker's car in his way and started doing what he does best off his meds: Yelling obscenities. This cut our chat short, since Tucker's lady was anxious to move off before he squeezed by her car again, and I went back to pounding tomato stakes.

PART TWO: IN WHICH WE MEET ANOTHER GARDENER
The rest of the day was marked by normal activity: Beatrix standing on tables, Elspeth helping herself to candy, Merry embodying perfection. We walked to work, picked up Martin, and headed home. As we were strolling along the smallish valley road before we hit the hill up to our house, a man on a Harley came motoring by. He slowed his bike and backed it up, one foot keeping balance, until he was level with Martin and me. This guy was clad all in army fatigues with cut off sleeves. His long white hair was smoothed back under a stars and stripes do-rag, and he had the typical white handlebar mustache. Did I mention he was covered in tattoos?

Martin was in a white shirt and tie, and we said hi to him over the stroller. He peered at us through his tinted glasses and said, "Hey, I've got about forty melon plants. You want some?"

"Sure," we said. We'd never met him in our lives, but he evidently knew where we lived.

"If you're not home, I'll just drop 'em off," he said, and then he soared off on his bike. A few minutes later, he drove by again to tell us,

"I had all these sunflowers in the basement on germinating tables, and my cat ruined them all." We expressed our sympathy, and he repeated that he'd drop those melon plants off. "If you're not home," he said, fists on the handlebars of that big bike, "I'll just leave 'em on your porch."

We stopped again at the rise of the hill to watch a neighbor filing down wooden spoons in his workshop. As he encouraged us to test different weights of oak and walnut, a woman came tearing down the sidewalk, trailed by a little black terrier. She informed us that a boy younger than this girl here (indicating Merry) had thrown a rock at her window.

So we finished our walk.

PART THREE: IN WHICH ELSPETH GIVES HERSELF A MUTTLET

There were messages from the car rental and the insurance agent when we got home. As Martin got those details straightened out and removed Bea from the top of the kitchen table repeatedly, I chopped cauliflower and a sad head of broccoli for dinner. Elspeth wandered into the kitchen and I looked at her.

"What have you done to yourself?" I demanded.

"What do you mean?" Martin asked.

"Just look at her."

"Where did she get those scissors?"

"Could they be--did she use my sewing scissors?"

"I don't know where they are now," Martin said, after casing the play room, which was covered in Elspeth's hair. Just then, Beatrix toddled in with a big pair of orange-handled Fiskar blades in her mouth. Mystery solved.

I sprayed down Elspeth's hair with a useless spray bottle that has been sucked and chewed on too often by little girls. "Elspeth has given herself a muttlet," Martin said to Merry, using the term Merry approximated long ago for that becoming hairstyle of short-on-top and long underneath.

I spent the beginning of dinner attempting to save the remainder of my middle child's hair. Merry sat in her seat and ate two helpings of vegetables and Elspeth finally got rid of all the tiddly hairs down her neck and ate her dinner in her underwear. Still, there was so much noise and ruckus that I tried to instill some order by saying enthusiastically, "Let's ask Daddy about his day!"

So Martin recounted his walk to work that morning, and how he had stopped to speak with our spoon-whittling neighbor, who had told Martin all about his car which was missing from his driveway.

"He was driving along toward the apple orchard," Martin recounted, "When he smelled plastic burning. So he got out and opened his hood, and his engine was on fire." The girls, who had been silly and loud, were suddenly quiet as mice. "He called the fire department," Martin continued, sipping his beer, "But by the time they arrived, the whole car was engulfed in flames." A great silence fell.

"Will our car ever catch on fire?" Merry asked, and Elspeth said in a low voice, "Tell that story again, Daddy."

Martin told the story two more times. It was worth it for the quiet of the two older girls, though the spirit of chaos still resided over our kitchen table, since confined and unhappy, Baby Bea energetically wailed in her chair. She spilled water in her tray, pooh-poohed her vegetables, and lost two of my spoons, so by the end of dinner I was scooping up rhubarb pie with my fingers.

"Are you happy NOW?" Elspeth asked me from her seat, where, by Jove, she was actually looking pretty good.

"I love you," I answered.

"Yes," she said slowly, looking down at her broccoli, "But are you happy?"

I paused. "Yes, I am," I told her. "I'm happy to have a girl like Elspeth."

And so I am happy to be here in this crazy, unpredictable world, with shih tzus and unlikely gardeners and precocious little girls at every turn.

Flying Through the Air

"Mommy, my heart is blue. Sparkly blue." Elspeth said this, and I'm glad to know her heart is not melancholy but glorious like the ocean at noon.

Tonight we hit a deer on the way back home from Washington, PA, where we were celebrating my making a deadline for a short story contest (just a submission, understand, but making a deadline is no small thing for a parent of three). The children were safe at home with a babysitter, and we were chilling to some Flaming Lips songs, when

Gracefully, rapidly, like a ballerina with muscles rippling under smooth brown skin, luminous eyes--

WHACK!

We've never hit a deer before, and we count ourselves as lucky, since we lost only our right headlight and now sport an enormous dent that continues back to the passenger door. A minivan next to us just missed contacting the doe, and the driver pulled over immediately, and then, somewhat casually, strolled back to see us.

"I knew it was going to get one of us!" she said with a smile. "I've hit two before! I'm from West Virginia and they've got to do something about the deer population. There are people starving. . .how about opening deer season for an extra week?"

In the cool weather I was trembling but Martin was smooth and sensible until we reached home, whereupon he shuddered twice and put on the tea kettle.

Elspeth was still awake upstairs, and when I kissed her goodnight, she said, "I wish I could fly through the air back home." (Her babysitter reads the girls installments of Wizard of Oz).

Then the baby awakened, and when I went in to feed her, I was glad that I was there to hold her in her distress. And tonight, I'm just glad we didn't fly through the air, and that we're safe at home.

Peonies and Piano and Early Summer

Martin's downstairs, spinning out a soothing piece on the piano. The rain is soaking the thirsty tomato plants and curling peas and strawberries.
The roses began to bloom two days ago, and we broke in our new picnic table yesterday with friends who sat around our fire ring, chatted, swung on swings, played badminton, and tore around our yard, yelling and playing soccer.
The days have been hot, hot enough for hours of water play in the Children's Garden under the Moses Rock.


The children have covered themselves with sand on multiple occasions and we've all browned in the sun despite good coatings of sunscreen.

We've been to the Children's Museum twice

(This is Texas Grandma making a spiffy man with the huge Light-Bright)

and the zoo twice, once with my sweet folks and again with Martin's sweet folks. The Pittsburgh Zoo, by the way, is the best I've ever experienced, anywhere. The only thing that beats it are the game parks in East Africa!


We've been eating perfect garden strawberries and salads of our own baby gourmet lettuce.

A few holes in the greens means ORGANIC goodness! Yeah! Our friend John M. (of the Rooster Sauce Brothers) ate a slug with his meal the other night. . .on purpose. He has eaten goldfish in the past, not a kind thing for the fish but a little extra protein for our friend J.M.-the-Slugman.

The baby thinks she's seven, and the peonies smell sweeter this year than any year before. My mother agreed to come while Martin's away in June for ten days, thus ending my blind panic. All in all, it's a happy time here at Wazoo Farm.

Here's a peony for my sweet Aunty Phyllis, who celebrated her birthday last week. Aunty Phyllis reminds me of a peony, and not just because she smells rather nice.

Martin's moved on to the guitar. . .I sense big projects this week, since (o joy!) our neighbor has lent Martin his pick-up for the entire week. He's tripping over himself in the delightful prospect of filling the bed with huge rocks from the cemetery . .I just need to get some writing projects wrapped up. And some burpless cukes (doesn't that sound LOVERLY) planted.

Lost the Tomatoes

Tomatoes, RIP. Blackened by frost. Even though I tucked them into little paper bags, they were weak.

The children survived, however, snug in their own little beds.

So I collected two baskets of sheets and blankets and hope I won't have to put them out again.

Cause for celebration: the strawberries, green fruits and blossoms and all, were saved. Not too bad, all in all. And two bitty pumpkins gone. The roses are feeling sorry for themselves, but they'll get over it.

Yes. We have a good excuse to shop at the nursery again. And no more frost in the forecast! Huzzah!

Thanks to Martin's Dad for the pictures! We had a good visit with you folks! Come on back soon!