Baths

I took a bath with the two younger girls tonight. Highlights included Beatrix grabbing the support bar with both hands and jumping up and down on my stomach, Elspeth dumping cold water on me, and Beatrix making surprise lunges for num-nums. Gone are the days when a bath meant a magazine and sweat pouring blissfully from every pore, candles flickering and a cup of herbal tea. No more, no more.

I insist on my baths without the Crayola dye tablet (see above) and without excessive amounts of Dora the Explorer bubbles. The girls are pretty flexible--they seem to be perfectly content with luke-warm to cool water. Maybe it's my Finnish heritage, but I like to look as close to a lobster as possible when I emerge from the bath. So I kept on warming the water until the little ones were sitting on the ceramic edge of the tub and grinning at me. "Sit down!" I said for the hundredth time, "In the bath!" Elspeth looked a little sheepish: "It's a little warm," she said, and then I realized that indeed the steam was rising from the surface. I remembered years ago climbing into my mother's bath after she was out. The water should have cooled by then, but it never had. I sat there, head bowed, overwhelmed by the heat and not enjoying myself at all. What was up with my mom? How could she stand it?

But I had no idea how relatively peaceful our bath actually was until something happened. Let me give you a little background: we used to have a mouse problem at our house. It was horrible--the little creatures ate through everything they could get their paws on, including the Christmas chocolate stashed in my bedroom closet. But then we noticed the mice were gone, and it was not due to our persistent efforts to trap them--no, it was because several enormous cats of indeterminate breed had taken over our garden. Occasionally I watch them from the windows as they follow their habitual routes down our garden paths, but they never approach any of us, preferring instead to streak off down the hill to who-knows-where.

I did not know that the cats had also taken over our roof, but even if I had, I still would have been surprised when, during a quiet moment of splashing, the ceiling above us ruptured, light dappled the crowns of our heads, and a humongous ginger cat, claws outstretched, wailing, crashed down into the bathtub. You can imagine what happened then; I grabbed both children and streaked out of the bathroom, water pooling beneath us, slammed our pocket door shut, and listened to the racket in our bathroom while the girls shrieked--Elspeth because she was scared, and Bea because she loves animals. "Meow-meow!" she announced, pointing to the door. "He like Bath?"

And now I know that the three pieces of advice my mother, the hot-bath-taker, always gave me were right on the money. When trouble or stress bothers you, you have choices:

a. take a hot bath
b. drink a cup of hot tea
c. go to bed and sleep
or d: all three.

I am endlessly and ridiculously grateful for any of the three. They all produce a long sigh of oh-finally-this-is-SO-good. I never, ever take them for granted.

I'm not sure the hot bath does the trick with two little imps crawling on your back, jumping in and out of the tub and poking your stomach fat, but it won't be long until only one of us will fit in the bath at a time. So a tub of three is a happy thing, too. A tub of three WITH a cat is NOT a happy thing, neither for us or for the cat, who finally tumbled out of the bathroom and down our stairs, straight out the open door Martin held for him. The girls and I watched from our perch on a desk, and after the cat was gone we turned to the wrecked bathroom, singing a hymn of thanks that it is April and the first after all, and the cat had never actually come except in the world of fools.

Ha! Thus spoke my good friend, Zarathustra. Ha!

A Spring Song

During a lengthy pre-nap spell (as I tried forever to sing Elspeth to sleep) I wrote this spring song--for Elspeth, but of course it's for all three girls:

If I could be any flower,
Maybe I’d be a hyacinth,
Blooming purple in the sunshine,
In the garden in the springtime.

Maybe I’d be a daffodil,
With my bonnet all of yellow,
Peering up at the sunshine,
In the garden in the springtime.

Maybe I’d be a sunflower,
Rising up to meet the morning,
With my petals all of yellow,
In the garden in the summertime.

Maybe I’d be honeysuckle,
Tasting sweet to the children.
Rambling over the swing set,
In the garden in the summertime.

But it doesn’t really matter,
As long as I can be a flower,
Coming up next to Elspeth,
In the garden in the springtime.

Yes, I could be a little earthworm,
Making tunnels in the wet earth.
Coming up to meet Elspeth,
In the garden in the springtime.

But it doesn’t really matter,
As long as I can be a flower,
Coming up next to you, dear,
In the garden in the springtime.

Good Night this Monday

I do truly love this time of night, when the sweet-smelling girls with their silky hair are tucked in and quiet. Finally. Oh I love them and I love it when they are sleeping at the end of the day.

More rain today so no trees planted. More rain! Sigh. Bea was such a pepper-pot; she demands excitement at every turn and when none is offered she throws a grandiose fit, beating her high-chair tray or her head or whatever is available with her little powerful hand. She has started to say an enormous amount of words, which is both good and bad, as those of you with prattling offspring can testify to. She is head-over-heels in love with my friend Sally and her family and talks about them incessantly, even in knock-knock jokes. Sally is the kind of kindness that makes you want to scratch your head in wonder; she's got really good snacks; she picks up Bea and her heart still melts when Bea makes her sad face. I, on the other hand, who see many, many sad faces a day from this girlie accompanied by a keening wail at the injustice of her world--I am no longer moved. So Bea finds solace with Saeey-- Saeey, as she says, as often as possible.

I love this prayer poem of Rilke's.* It starts with these lines:

I am, you anxious one.

Don't you sense me, ready to break
into being at your touch?
My murmurings surround you like shadowy wings.

If you have not picked up Rilke's Book of Hours, do so immediately, in this world that is young and rainy again, in these days of swelling buds and daffodils and deepening grass.

thanks to my dear friend Kara for this pic of Merry from last year--or was it the year before?

Tomorrow I have a group at my house, so I've burned two dozen berry muffins in preparation. It's the least I can do, really!

And I'm off to bed. Love to those of you who are lonely tonight, and to all of you, I wish you a seamless slip from your reading or your worries into the peace of sleep.

_____
*From Rilke's Book of Hours, translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy (Riverhead Books, 1996).

Baby Trees in Green Plastic Bags

There are so many things I should be doing rather than sketching our sweet row of baby trees on Paintbrush, which has to be the Donkey Kong of computer graphic programs. It is my way of procrastinating this cold spring morning. The girls are off with Martin at an Easter Egg hunt. I stayed behind under the auspices of cleaning house but I have yet to clear away our breakfast dishes. Cleaning House is terribly boring, only rewarding for a few moments before everybody piles back in and slops it again. It can definitely wait.

The world is so green again! The forsythia bush at the bottom of our hill is in its first flush of gold and the daffodils are about to ruffle out. Our ten new trees this year wait patiently in their green plastic bags and burlap to join our family: redbuds, an American sycamore to replace our sad, split Big Snow tree, one dwarf pear for the children's garden, a crabapple, and three dark-leaf ornamental plums for the inside of the side garden. I love trees more than animals and desire them far above puppies or kitties or even the soft downy ducklings running around in the black tub at Agway. Trees ask so little of us and give so much; they are endlessly graceful and patient; they don't scramble up on my lap and lick my face and most of them will outlive my petty and enormous troubles and joys. . . .and I can love them all for 14.99 a piece. Can't beat that!

I really must face the breakfast dishes so I can go on unfettered with my Saturday morning life. I do believe last night was our last freezing night for a while. Martin reports that the microgreens are up in the pump garden, hundreds and hundreds of tiny leaflets that will, in a matter of weeks, fill our salad bowls. So first, the crumby plates and coffee dregs--next, the whole green thrumming world!

Detatching and Humble Pie

I wrote a short story set in Kenya that I made myself return to--I didn't feel like finishing it and I didn't feel any particular emotional attachment to it. Turns out that this is a good sign for me.

It's in the editing process now but it's the first story Martin has ever been 'blown away' by, if he could ever be described that way. I was so ambivalent about it, too--while I naturally jump to a first person narrator, for this story I went with a more objective, omniscient pov--and it was a good stretching exercise for me.

Of course I know you're never supposed to expect good writing out of extreme emotion, so I try not to write about anything too volatile unless I'm just venting. But I am unused to feeling quite so detached from a story. The more I edit the thing the more attached I get to it.

I try to apply the same detachment to the kapows of rejection letters, too, and I do keep my humor high. Most of the time I am very successful in that endeavor though occasionally I bow my head in a sort of melodramatic melancholy: O WOE IS ME. . . I WILL NEVER AMOUNT TO BEANS. . . .I STINK WORSE THAN GYM SOCKS. Etc.

Today I am going to be a guest speaker in a Publications Class at the University. This is my chance to bake up a big stinking humble pie so I can serve everyone a slice. These are my themes: Balancing writing with life, Rejection, Corresponding with Editors, Rejection, Juggling, Rejection, Chocolate, Rejection, Proposals, Rejection, Submissions, Rejection, Cover Letters, and--oh, yes, did I mention REJECTION?

Of course I have had some successes, and whole heaps of "almosts" and "we like you--but--" These are like tiny sprinkles of sugar sparkling on top of the enormous humble pie. This is how I will cap my talk, by cutting the pie into large slices and sliding them across the table to the students. "Eat hearty," I'll say with a wink and a guffaw.

Short Fiction

Today I've been working on some short fiction experiments and I'm enjoying that form so much. Some journals take only 500 or less words and others will take pieces with up to 1000 words. It's such a rewarding exercise--I love boundaries that push me to write better, to choose words carefully.

And then I get on this blog and try not to be too sloppy.

The sky is darkening outside. In about five minutes I will see the bus drive up and flash its lights as Merry climbs off--she always waits for just a moment and then she shoots down the road, backpack bobbing behind, all the way down our greening side yard, and through our gate where she slows down, giving me enough time to rush down the stairs to welcome her. In winter she'd pause at the bottom of the porch steps to stuff as much snow as possible into her mouth, furtively because I don't like them eating too much snow. I'd stand there in the shadows of the hallway, watching her shovel mittenfulls past her lips.

Our yearly ten trees are leaning against the shed, waiting for a dry, warmish day--only one fruit this year as we have as many as we can handle.

Oh, there's Merry now, turning a little twirl by the fire hydrant, so I'd better hurry!

Chickadees

A dear friend of mine who is going through a very hard time right now told me about a chickadee who sings to her every morning. (The very sad rendering above, scribbled on Paintbrush, is for her with love.)

I've been thinking about the chickadee, about the way it perches outside my friend's room and awakens her to a new morning with its repetitive, insistent call.

So I looked it up and listened to it here and felt as though I was in my own garden. How many bird calls I hear every day, especially in spring time--a whole chorus of avian voices that form the background of my seeing and movement outside.

This lent I keep on coming around corners and hearing bird calls. In winter I followed the birds, bright feathers of hope and promises of spring, and now that spring is here I delight in the absolute noise they make outside. I'm tempted to write that the bird songs are full of joy and gladness, but I don't really think that's true. A bird sings the way she sings because she is a specific type of bird. Of course, in the case of the chickadee, there are aggressive calls and mating calls but the chickadee still sings in a chickadee's voice, not a blue-jay's voice or a robin's voice. A chickadee is perfectly content being a chickadee.

This lent I have been reminded by bird calls and other voices to be content to be who I am. I wish this were as simple for me as it is for the chickadee. Most of us have to struggle to find our voices in the first place, and when we finally do it is hard to sing our calls contentedly and loudly all the time. It is easiest for me to sing when others are appreciating my voice, but it is hardest to sing when I feel slighted or alone, and it is near impossible to sing when my voice sounds ugly or ordinary.

The other day at our Mennonite Church I came into the little room filled with four-year-olds and I was in a bit of a huff. Why did I have to be here with kids when I am with kids all week? I thought. Why doesn't anyone else volunteer to do this job? Do they think that because I chose to be with my girls more or less full-time that I love being with kids more than anything else? Well, they are completely deluded. Etc. You get the drift.

I was rather surprised and encouraged when the four-year olds seemed to love the story I was telling--Samuel, almost asleep, has to push back his covers and plod down the hallway to ask Eli again and again why in the world he keeps calling him out of his bed. They ate it up, especially the part at the end where Samuel sits up in his covers and says, "Here I am! I'm listening!"

In the end I was shaken by the story myself. Here I was, in that warm room with three four-year-olds who were hanging on the words of the story, and I was so full of complaints and noise that I couldn't listen myself.

And now I've got my metaphors crossed. So I'm supposed to be still and listen and also sing like a maniac in my own voice, whether others are irritated or happy or bored or could care less when they hear it. Or maybe I listen to receive the grace and direction to sing like a chickadee.

It all has something to do with my daily life, which is sometimes misunderstood and brushed over by professionals, though it is as much based on my own choices as their lives are. Here's the other thing I realize as I flip through journal after journal of stories and poems: my voice is my own voice. It does not change whether or not I am rejected or accepted by editors. It has, I hope, with practice and discomfort, become stronger, but it is still particularly mine, and I have it for a reason, and I have to keep on keeping on.

Through the years I have found that it is a grave mistake to find my sense of worth from any one source, whether that be from parents, my spouse, my children, editors, colleagues, or friends. I must not look to others to solely define whether I am worthy my singing is any good. My mother always said, "Never apologize for your voice before you sing," which proves to be one of the best pieces of advice she ever gave me. A chickadee is a chickadee, designed especially to sing like a chickadee. A chickadee has innate worth because it is a chickadee, and that's it.

So that's been my Lenten lesson this year, and I have almost made myself nauseous with this entry; it so borders on being didactic I can hardly keep typing. I hate lessons. I suppose it is good to think on them occasionally though not so often that we become unbearable, and that is one reason why I love fiction and poetry and not devotional books.

I had a dream the other night that I was standing in the back of our church singing at the top of my lungs. And my voice as I let it sail up out of my lungs felt like freedom; it felt like I was standing on the edge of a pier with a salty wind full in my face. When I'm not plodding through the morass of a story but I'm near a peak, I get the same feeling: this sense that I'm wide open. Maybe it is the same for birds in spring, diving into trees like crazy things and spanning their wings and waking people with their loud voices.

Day for Ducks, or Ducky Day

Martin spent blissful hours in the front beds planting tons of sugarsnap peas; then this morning we had a rain and now the sun is out again. I think the peas are terribly giddy.

This morning we were grumpy in the grey, late to drop Elspea at preschool and Martin and I were stressed and alternately snappy and apologetic. I listened to a Polish pianist talking about Chopin as I drove to Giant Eagle, where I strapped Bea into a filthy car and we went gliding around the aisles. In the tea aisle "God Bless USA" played over the speakers and then in the ice-cream aisle, Paul Simon's Graceland came on, which was sadly interrupted for a banal announcement about Giant Eagle caring about the safety of children. . .and then we trundled off to the check-out where the woman weighed my sherbet and ice cream just out of curiosity to see which was heavier--"I knew it," she said. "I just thought the sherbet weighed more!"

Then home we drove in the blue Subaru across the railroad tracks; we sat in the driveway listening to Bach and staring at clearing skies as the ice-cream melted in the back of the car. . . .

And it's all sun again and I remember that winter is truly ending, that a gray morning does not mean an inevitable slip into a week of melancholy, and the peas are stirring and the crocus on fire and the lilacs about to open a thousand purple eyes. . .and I am about to be late again for Elspea. One should not have to be on time in spring; it is against the spirit of the season, and for that matter against the spirit of every season.

Hmmm

So Martin and I are downstairs with a huge pile of pancakes and coffee. The girls are watching Madeline for Treat Day. Martin and I are talking about stories and publishers and so pleased that we're alone to talk, right?

And then it dawns on me: Bea is not here. She's upstairs--we hear rattling and banging. How is it that she has kept herself so busy up there?

Martin comes down with a report: Bea has stripped her clothes and diaper. She has started a bath for herself, pulled down the bath toys, and is squatting in the tub. On the landing: a perfectly laid turd.

Happy Saturday, everybody!

Today: Martin plants sugarsnap peas, the kids play outside in the garden and under the tree that split in The Snow (here with our friends the T. children), and I frost two dozen cupcakes for a violin recital.

Right Now: Six robins and a squirrel beckoning us to leave the pancake dishes and run outside!

poetry vs prose

Martin is a pencil point
I'm a stack of scrawling scribbling ink blots

This is Martin writing poetry: 24 lines
Here am I writing a short story: 24 pages
And I have a sneaking suspicion his story is better

It's nice to hold one sheet of paper
with a body and soul on it
I've got a fan of characters
and plot shimmies and blasts
If I let it go in the wind
it would be lost forever
on hedges and in gutters
and in pedestrian faces
if Martin let his go
we'd pin it down
easy as one foot stomping
one short laugh as he bends
folds it in four
sticks it in his pocket

____________________________________________
ps. the picture above is actually a photo of when Martin and I organized his book of poetry for submission: we used the entire living room floor and crawled around among the pages, rearranging--what a good feeling, to be with poems in such a tactile, physical way.

O-O-O-O-Being ALONE

There are fireworks of crocus in our front bed by the brick path: deep purple with golden centers. . .the tulips are pushing up strong and thick and the daffodils are wisps of green in the front garden. The forsythia bush, though bent and bed-headed from the drifts of snow, is covered with buds.

I just wrote a letter to my mother--here's a very brief portion that explains how wonderful life felt this morning:

The babysitter came after a long time away and I felt almost giddy as I stood in the sunlight in my own room, alone to write for four blissful hours!!!! Hallelujah, there is nothing so good perhaps as that feeling--even when I'm most happy over the girls it is a more complicated happiness, a happiness that includes still being responsible for them and concerned for their welfare and one that is mixed with a little sadness that they are growing up so fast. . .but the bliss of being alone for the first time in a long time with sunshine and a computer and your own room--oh, it's so uncomplicated and so good.

Currently there are three girls in the bath; it is almost eight and Merry has a spelling test tomorrow. Elspeth has been screaming because Merry is threatening to put her in the dungeon and the floor is flooded with discarded clothes--so I'd better go.

"Martin" Lookalike Stars in "Mentos Commercial"

Click here:
MARTIN LOOKALIKE APPEARS IN KNOCK-OFF MENTOS COMMERCIAL

But, Honestly. . . .

The blast of light caught us all by surprise--after a month with three documented days of sunshine. The hands that had held us so tightly in their dark palms finally opened and we found there was a world outside!

Today is grey again, and I resigned myself to the fact that the sun was sleeping again (as Bea says). I slogged through the puddles in the supermarket lot this morning, shopped in the florescent glow, and urged myself to be patient and enjoy myself as the shopper in front of me chatted at great leisure with the check-out woman. It is one of the charms of a small town, after all, and when my turn came the checker greeted me with similar ease and asked how old Bea was now, and then we had the conversation I've had one-thousand times since the birth of my first daughter: how time flies, how you turn your head and your first child is twenty-four, and how you can't keep your eyes off them or you'll miss it, it's so fast.

And the air was cold and wet and heavy with the smells of snow-melt and exhaust and mud.

Tomorrow, my friend Sally tells me, sunshine will return. I looked up with a jolt: really? I had forgotten sunshine comes back faster in March!

So with my children: so much of life, like last night when Bea broke eight eggs all over the freshly mopped floor and Elspeth fell of her chair and then down three stairs, and Merry was full of a sense of injustice--so much seems endless, a long winter of enduring. And then there are these bright, blinding flashes of light--small hands on your face, the down of a child's head under your palm--and you realize that life is a privilege that you are given. Turn your head, as the checker said, and you miss it. And the realization of the gift socks you in the stomach and you think, I will never forget this feeling of gratitude; I will remember to treasure every moment. But then a long grey day comes and the cuffs of your pants are all muddy and wet and you wish you were on the other end of it.

The trick is, I guess, to somehow embrace all that as well. This is the hardest discipline I have to master: embracing and living with all things, whether easy or hard, happy or miserable, anticipated or unexpected. Sometimes I come across someone I think has that gift, and I am always disarmed by their shrug and the smile that spreads across their face, their admission that they only have it down some days and not others. Some days are diamonds, as Kenny Rogers says, some days are stones. I add: some days are winter, some days are spring.

Though honestly, folks, let's be honest: aren't we ready for spring, now? For the season of waiting to end? Who doesn't want the sun-blast? ME! ME! I want it and I want it now! Lent, finish! Easter, come!

Rites of Spring

Last Week
This Week

Snow Eaters and Sun

A much-spotted, red Snow-Eater at Wazoo Farm:


Now--
Sun for two days straight! Is it to be believed? March, I adore you! There is nothing, nothing, like awakening to sunshine on your pillow.

Coming

I wanted to grab a robin
bury my nose in his feathers
take his head between my fingers
search his serious black eyes

Now don't fool with me mister
You do know about spring
how it is coming down from those snowy hills
about to steal over sidewalks and redbuds

Instead I watched as he burst into the sky
all warm feathers and claws

Pick up a bird

Pick up a bird by its bony head and ring it like a bell until it's springtime!

There are such things as exploding birds. As we drive into the hollows of our snowy county, a bush KABOOM sends a cloud of cardinals rising into the air. So maybe it is the bushes exploding with birds!

I noticed while I was in my bird-obsession not so long ago, that EVERYBODY writes about birds. But nobody loves birds the way I do. Nobody, no sirree.

Martin and I have been sending piles of poetry and short stories and essays off to journals and yesterday was a record day: four rejections between us; three of them were mine; two out of four were fairly stock rejections; Martin's had a note he described first as 'snarky' and then as jolly good because it referred to his poetry as "high energy" much as a tired parent might refer to their toddler. I got a great rejection from the Missouri Review asking to see more of my stories, so now I just need to write more. And I stayed up almost until midnight getting two more submissions ready, so as to make up somewhat for the rejections. It's a rewarding process :).

I have to say, it's much more fun to be rejected with someone else than by oneself. We almost bought dinner out to celebrate but we thought we'd wait: as Martin says, if we keep buying ourselves dinner every time we're rejected, we're going to be broke (between the two of us we've got, say, about 100 plus things out). Maybe we'll wait for an acceptance. There was that bright week when we both got accepted to two diffferent publications. It is a nice memory and we're swimming in our rejections with humor and comraderie. So far today neither one of us has been rejected, except by our children, which makes us feel all is right with the world.