Bicycling With Children

Staying up late feels so wonderfully secret and quiet at night and then I crash about 3:00 the next day. Then I must either steal some sleep or stoke myself with strong tea for the rest of the afternoon.

Elspeth and the girls performed a play for me this afternoon that mostly consisted of endless costume changes under the table. Elspeth was terrifying as a wicked witch, shrugging her shoulders up to her ears in a self-conscious way and grinning: "I'm bad," she said, "Ha, ha, ha, ha!" Two of her friends took up the cry and sang a snippet of Michael Jackson. Then there was yet another interminable costume change.

Let me tell you all something: this period of highly concentrated children in my life is all good and happy except for the noise, noise, noise. . .someone is constantly at my elbow asking me a question or telling me something charming. Occasionally I want to gag them, not because they're being bad but because they know a language and facilitate it often. Writing has become the flag behind my old banana-seat bicycle, tattered and worn and familiar. I pedal furiously around another corner and another and another. My wrists are strained by the handles of grocery bags. And my bicycle basket is full of children, legs akimbo, eyes squinting into the wind, teeth plastered with flies. We're moving THAT FAST.

Better wrap up. Merry's home.