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.