So, to pick up from yesterday. . .

We began to think about leaving.  How do I begin to describe the mixture of emotions that accompanied our choice to pack up one year early?  Elation, grief, a dogged determination to work hard and quickly, dread, hope. . . .

The worst part was telling our community.  I thought we'd wait for a few days until details began to settle more quickly but I couldn't stand it.  I'm a terrible secret-keeper generally--secrets (unless they're pleasant ones, delicious to hide away until a joyful revealing) crush me like a cider press, work me like gears, until I yield them up.  And so the day after we reached home, Sally came over and I felt as if I would crack in two if I didn't tell her and get it over with. 

You must understand that Sally and I have seen each other every day for the past five or six years.  Beatrix reminds me if I forget ("I want to go to Will's--her best buddy ever--house!") but there's not much chance I could forget a constant source of sanity, irreverent humor, and tender compassion that comes in the form of my friend Sal.  She kept my life in order, reminding me of forms that were due, snack times I promised to provide and would have missed, children I forgot to pick up at preschool, and she told me the truth when it needed telling.  One especially kid and cleaning and monotonous morning I doubled over on her floor in tears: Surely there's more to life than this!  I cried. . .she consoled me and then she sent me downstairs to run on her treadmill, which did me a world of good. 

We were not of the mall-crawl moms.  We did the occasional lap around our local Walmart in the winter when all was dreary and there was no other place to go, but our days subsisted of cups of tea and library trips and watching her son, Will, dress in Bea's pink pjs and Bea dress in Will's cars pjs.  Dressing in each other's pjs was an especially highlight for our kids and they usually got busy doing just that the moment they stepped over the other's threshold.

When I was gone on the west coast during our dear friend, Nancy's passing, Sally sat with Nancy every day, rubbing her back and keeping up a flow of cheer that I wished I had been there to help provide.  I'll never forget how she told me that she was there for both of us, and when I arrived home, too late to say goodbye to Nancy in person, we cried and laughed and ate and then we cleaned Nancy's room together.  We cleaned each other's kitchens, cooked together, huffed up hills, red-faced and cursing, to try to lose a little winter weight.  She drove me on endless interviews through the winding roads of Greene County and I believe I probably owe her about a thousand dollars in gas.  She was my companion through the crazy, bizarre, hilarious, and trying young-children days.  Our families knew each other in the daily sort of way families used to and I have yet to meet more generous, sacrificial people.  We made it together until our children were in preschool, and for that I am grateful.

But I was the luckiest of all women, for I had other dear friends, too, who bound me up day after day and filled my life with the peculiar scents of their personalities and. . .also somewhat irreverent humor (there's a link here--you can't make it through parenthood without somewhat wicked friends).  Tonya is a bad-ass farm girl who butchers her own chickens and smacks rabid possums upside the head with flashlights.  She lives up on a ridge in Greene County and manages a passel of chickens, two cats, two daughters, endless laundry (of course she hangs it all up to dry on a quarter-mile laundry line), a rotating schedule of canning and preserving and freezing, an enormous garden, a part-time P.A. career, and punctual thank-you notes and social events.  She also home-schools and hunts. 

I spent one lovely evening with her up in a tree blind.  I was there to record the experience (the sound of a stream, the autumn colors, the smell of leaves) and she was there to blow the brains out a doe.  That evening, I left her crashing into the dense undergrowth in her orange vest, a rifle under her arm.  I am not joshing you.   Tonya's from good, work-til-you-bleed Mennonite stock and her house and yard is always neat as a pin.  You would think all of this would equal a totally crazed, secretly bitter woman, but it doesn't.  I love spending time with Tonya.  She's ruthlessly honest about herself and her life.  I am about to scream, she will tell me on the phone.  Do you think it's too early for Kahlua?  Needless to say one of my favorite things to do with Tonya (and her dear husband John) is drink and eat late into the evening until I almost feel sick but mostly feel blissful and sated.

Then there's Michelle, a ravishing beauty who, on her first visit to our house, sat down fully clothed on our homemade slip-in-slide and scooted down our hill to the bottom.  When I first met her at a University picnic, a fly-accompanied affair where I usually smile at people until my jaw aches, I felt that instant draw that I will occasionally feel with a potential dear friend.  My mother describes the feeling as souls leaping toward each other.  I dropped off a bouquet of herbs at her house and we--and our families--were wonderful friends from then on.  It was with them that we fixed homemade truck balls to the back of Sally and her husband, Kevin's car, and it was with her that I heard the most revolting stories of her PA experience.  I oft liked to ask her: What is the grossest thing you did today?  I liked affirming my choice never to dabble in any of the medical professions.  She took Sal and me to New York City, showing us how to move with alacrity through the subway and sharing a steaming cup of hot chocolate spiked with cayenne.  The only time she left us in that metropolis was to duck into a disappointingly-well-lit palm reader's to do a little research about how palm reading is done.  Sal and I stood outside, shivering and watching.  Maybe there's more of an art to it generally, but mostly it was a useless counseling session where Michelle was informed she'd be happy for the rest of her life.  And so I hope she will be.

There was Nancy's precious family; her children who I'd promised Nancy I'd love and care for, most specifically, her daughter Catherine, who spent much of her time at our house and had become a fourth daughter to me, bound up in my heart with my love for Nancy and my trust that I had been in the right place at the right time to wrap up Catherine in tenderness.  I couldn't understand why the non-tenure had happened, why we were being moved on from a place that seemed, for all purposes, like a place we were needed.

 And there were more good women and men and children who wove our lives up into a fabulously diverse, wonderful rope of goodness that kept us truly safe.

So that morning I sat with Sally on the porch as our kids ran from inside the house down the stairs and back again with brimming cups of water (they were making a pond or something) and I said, "I have news and I don't know how to tell you."

Her face immediately fell.  "Just tell me," she said.

"We're leaving a year early," I said, and then we both started crying.  "Are you angry with me?"  I asked.

"Of course I'm not," she said, and then we sobbed for a while.

I told Tonya on the phone and she was surprisingly calm, but then she told me later that's what PAs are trained for, and that she'd scrapped her work for the afternoon and sat on her porch, watching the sky.

Michelle looked me straight it the eye.  "Why?"  she asked, and I explained,  and nobody slept well for a while, especially because others we loved received notice, too.  It seemed that with one fell swoop our lovely, beautiful community had been mangled.

But, as I so often told Martin, big powerful people can only take so much away from you.  They can make you move and shake up your world but they can't change what's deeply true about you--and here, buckle up for a Disney moment--they can't take away your love for one another.  Our community poured more generously than ever into our preparations to leave.  From the time our house went on the market, it was under contract in two weeks.  Care for our children (my family in Washington) was already in place, so we made two trips across the US, one with the children and then another--just Martin and me--with our very pared-down possessions in tow.

I have a few favorite memories of leaving.  One is the night that Martin was gone doing a two-week job in Kentucky right before our first house-showing.  Our friends turned up just in time and we worked on our massive yard for hours, cleaning, trimming, mowing, tidying and tying up trash while our children played.  Then when twilight finally began settling in, just before the fireflies began to prick the darkness that collects down at the Black Walnut tree, we all sat in the yard and drank wine together.  Michelle's husband, Noah, said, "This is a beautiful piece of land.  I'd jump at it if I were looking to buy."

"It's like a park," I agreed.  "Maybe we'll stay here forever."  And then I laughed--a good belly laugh, not a thin, bitter laugh--because we weren't staying forever.  Our move had been decided, and for those of us who were staying behind. . .well, nobody stays anywhere forever, do they?

And that's what it is when you really love a group of people.  Grief turns easily to work and work together yields laughter, and joy, too.  And you take that with you wherever you go.

Daddy's Garden

This month, if you flip open the covers of the national children's magazine, Ladybug, you'll find a story called "Daddy's Garden" about a gentle Daddy who finds a snake in the family garden.  A girl named Merry narrates the story, and there are three more characters--Elspeth, her little sister, the baby, and Mommy, who tends to be a bit cautious around animals.

Coincidence?  Happily, no.  Though I've seen my work published many times in other venues, receiving my copy of Ladybug was, by far, the most satisfying and rewarding.

Here are a few of the photos that accompanied the first draft of the story, which I wrote as a birthday gift for Martin many years ago (check out Martin's long locks).  You can visit Ladybug's website by clicking HERE, though you won't be able to see the gorgeous illustrations (the Daddy character is especially handsome) by talented artist Betsy Wallin (visit her website HERE) unless you buy the magazine.  I had no idea what illustrations would accompany my text, but when I opened the magazine (breath held) I was ecstatic to see seven beautiful watercolors.

I just wrote an e-mail to some friends of mine about how absent-minded I've been lately (writing can make you schizophrenic). I cut this bit for your benefit:

I've been spending a lot of time with Maple [the character in my book for young readers] these days. So much, in fact, that in the car I couldn't get out what I wanted to say to the kids, which was, "Roll up your windows!" What came out of my mouth was, "Boil your seats!" I wish the kids just knew what I meant. Mental telepathy, while dangerous, could be helpful.


And then tonight when Elspeth hurt her pinky finger I said, half-paying attention, "Don't worry, honey, you'll get a new pinky soon," and she stared at me blankly and a little worried and said, "What?" Oh, man. I'm losing it.

In other news, my friend Sal fulfilled a life-long dream of mine and rented a rollerskating rink for my birthday. What do you get when you combine a bunch of thirty- and forty-somethings with a bunch of kids ten and under? We were falling like flies. One of my friends ended up wrapped in heating pads and she and her daughter, whose sprained ankle was on ice, watched a "Mythbusters" marathon as they recovered. But baby, all those years of skating on cobblestones in Kenya paid off--I had the time of my life and even remembered how to skate backwards so I could finally fulfill a fantasy--skating in my true love's arms. Martin looked a little less than relaxed and we weren't terribly close, but we made it around the rink one entire rotation without wiping out. Sheer bliss. Check out Bea 'n friends "shaking their grove thing" by clicking HERE.

Elspeth lies on the couch next to me, her eyes heavy with sleep and fever. I picked her up early from school today and she's been sacked out the couch ever since. On the way home I knew her sickness couldn't be too desperate since she suggested that the thing that would make her feel better the fastest would be a cheeseburger from McDonalds. But she genuinely has a fever, and though she chowed two bowls of mac 'n cheese and four Tylenols, she's still warm and sleepy. Her feet are nestled behind my back and her hair, swept off her face, is tinged with gold.

Outside it's beautiful and sunny; the bare redbud trees gleam in the late afternoon. Elspeth keeps saying, "You're the nicest mama in the world. There couldn't be a nicer mommy than you. Can I kiss your forehead since I'm sick?"

I've been a parent for over ten years now. The other night Merry looked up at me from her pillow and said: "I'm getting really old. In only eight years I'll be gone at college." What?

Tired of TV, we're listening to some old hymns. . .Oh, Love, that will not let me go. . .This particular rendition, gospel meets soul, is over-the-top silly ("The music, not the words, sound like something that would be on the Cosby Show," Merry commented) but the words themselves, the knowledge that I am held tenaciously by love, fill me with gratitude.

There are many things I love being about a parent, but the quiet moments are often my favorite, when one of the children slows down--and I slow down--to enter these quiet, hallowed moments when time is nothing but a suggestion somewhere else in a busy world, when the very air is charged with tenderness.

Our Favorite Family Valentine

It has to be the one my first-grade brother (who had immersed himself in the world of Calvin and Hobbes) sent to his teacher, a short sweet elderly lady named Ms. Miller.

Dear Miss Miller [he scrawled on a paper heart],

I hate you. Drop dead.

Love,
Kenton

At the parent-teacher conference that immediately followed Kenton's missive, white-haired Ms. Miller pulled the valentine out of her desk and said in a bewildered, sad way, "I just don't understand it. He's such a sweet boy."

My parents didn't ban Calvin and Hobbes, but they did have a little discussion with my brother on CONTEXT and how it does or does not contribute to humor. Or to love notes, for that matter.

Cinderella and the Pulitzer Prize

At this moment, a Pulitzer-winning poet is stacking some papers on a podium. She's clearing her throat and thanking the person who introduced her. Maybe she's smiling or maybe she's bowing her head for a moment before beginning to read. Whatever she's doing, I'm not there.

Unexpectedly, at the end of today, which has been marked by kids (like all my days are), and significantly, has been full of joy and contentment, I am now feeling a bit like Cinderella left behind at the ball. Martin rushed out the door, cup of tea in hand, to walk to the event, and I finished the dishes and sat down in the disheveled dining room (which I've cleaned up already twice today). As I sank lower in the morass of my own personal misery, I heard my mother's voice telling me to stop being such a baby and empower myself. I could have arranged to go tonight. I don't need to wait for a fairy godmother. I could have hired a babysitter.

But then I argued back: in an age when women are supposed to be empowered, why is it that we have to remind ourselves to BE empowered, when, for many men, that is already assumed? I thought about telling Cinderella: These people don't own you. Shake free of this learned helplessness. Get a microloan. Go out and start your own business, one chicken at a time.

And I told myself: Come on. Nobody's oppressing you. Think ahead and find a babysitter next time. At home instead of at the poetry reading? You have nobody to blame but yourself.

And I told myself (and this is related, believe it or not): Be more disciplined and write your book.

To add a humorous note to my frustration (by making me see myself in a more realistic light) Merry just got frustrated over a bookmark that she decorated (to enter in a contest) that she decorated with the motto: Fly Away With Your Imagination and READ!. She started listing genres on the bookmark: Fantasy, Mystery. . .She wants to add: Realistic Fiction, Fiction, Etc., and draw pictures.

"I just don't think there's enough room on the bookmark." I was pointing out the obvious, a fact that already had her worked up.

"But the judges will think I just picked two random genres," she argued passionately. "They want something more than this. These days. . ." She trailed off as if the world is a hard nut to crack. Then she got that Merry look that warns me she is overwhelmed and about to cry. "I just don't want to talk about this anymore," she said, and filed the bookmark back in her folder.

Already in fourth grade and she's feeling the same roadblocks as I do now. And I have to wonder, how many are from the world, and how many are from our own expectations of what we as women should be accomplishing, even though we accomplish an awful lot?

Just today I had to tell myself to relax and enjoy life. There's nothing you absolutely have to do today, I reminded myself. . .And in the end, I did enough today (not least of all, I drank endless cups of tea to try to cure my stubborn sinus cold), and I wrote my column for the week. . .but even now I'm chastising myself for not writing thirty minutes on my latest project and not planning ahead for the Pulitzer poet. Finally, I can add to my list: Figure a way out for Cinderella. Come up with an economic plan and the right words to make her stand up and leave the fireplace. I can't just leave her waiting around for her fairy godmother. And surely she has better places to go than to a ball.

Surprise Party

On Friday I was sick, sunk down in the squishy, hollowy depths of a cold along with Bea. She and I slept on either end of the couch for much of the morning and Martin took off work to he could bring us tea.

Midway through the day, the telephone rang. Our robotic, rather awful automated caller ID voice announced the caller: Mrs. P. I couldn't imagine why the grandma of Elspeth's friend, K, should be calling me on a Friday afternoon, but I accepted the phone from Martin.

"Hello?" I said brightly. We exchanged pleasantries and then Mrs. P said,

"I have two questions. One, what should we bring for Elspeth's Valentine's Party, and two, what time is it?"

-------------------------------------
(This dash shows what happened in my mind in the next split second.)

"Oh, you don't have to bring anything," I gushed. --------------- "And, just out of curiosity--what day did Elspeth say her Valentine's party was?"

"Saturday."

[laughter] "Of course. Well, it's 11. . .to 12:30. it'll just be a small party. K and Elspeth. We'll have a tea party. . ."

And so we did. We had a lovely tea party this morning with K and another of Elspeth's sweet friends, and Elspeth went shopping with Martin, purchased the tiffin treats, and then set it all up on a lace tablecloth. They drank from the tiny Dutch tea cups I used to as a child, and drank lemon tea out of the chipped blue teapot I used to drink Koolaid out of every Sunday at High Tea. It was very civilized. I thought, well, if Elspeth planned the party and invited her own guests without my knowledge, she can jolly well pull it off on her own.

I helped a little, and I helped happily, though Elspeth is under strict instructions not to set up dates, especially parties, without first travelling through the appropriate channels.

Bea is listening to the soundtrack of "Cars" once again, for the fortieth time this week. You think I'm joking. All I want to say to you people is: I hear life is a highway. Though the option has not appealed to me since college, I'm beginning to want to drive it all night long. Yeah!

Last night I cut my own hair. My regular hairdresser is out of town for a while and I couldn't stand my shagginess anymore. So I stood in front of the mirror and snipped away. Things turned out pretty well, considering the piles of hair that began accumulating all over the house; I'd see myself in the mirror and realized I'd missed a bit. Martin tidied up the back since I had no way of knowing how it might look. The last time Martin cut my hair, right after Merry was born, he concluded my 'do by shaving a wedge into the back of my 'bob' which later morphed into such a short hair cut at the hairdressers ("Just trying to get it even, she said, as she brought out the buzzy clipper things) that a nice old lady at the grocery store called me "sir" until I turned around. Poor lady--she seemed awfully thrown and sorry for her mistake. At this point my distressed mother took me in hand and made me promise I'd never go so short again.

Don't worry, Mom, my hair is still right around my shoulders. My days of crazy driving--impulsive flattening of the accelerator--are gone, and no matter what my brainwashed mind is telling me, I still don't want to drive all night long. A little quiet drive in the hills, maybe, or better yet, a brisk walk around the block.

Bea just sauntered in with my mother's ridiculously bright-rimmed reading glasses. There's no telling where that girl is headed.

Oh, it's back again--Bea has learned the buttons on the stereo. Hey, if you're going my way, I wanna drive it all night long. I'm beginning to see, too, that there was a distance between you and I. . .

Bea, blithely to her friend Ethan today, in response to his fear of the Abominable Snowman:

"Snowmonster? I like him. It's no problem."

(Of course she pronounced it, 'ploblem.' And she waved her hand as if she and snowmonsters are well acquainted and on tea-drinking terms). Then they embarked on a serious discussion about dinosaures being 'stinct.

*

Tonight she sat on my lap and said, "You know a boy in my class said a funny thing. He said, "When I grow up, I'm going to become a little boy." Isn't that funny?" And she laughed and laughed.

It seemed really funny at the time.

I'm watching Merry and Catherine do the Electric Slide in front of me, struggling a bit to follow a couple of dancers on the TV. Merry is tallest now, long and lean in a green dress and leggings. Catherine's flaxen hair falls halfway down her back and they both seem so grown up.

The two oldest girls cooked dinner tonight--tuna noodle casserole that we all ate up and toasted energetically. Merry's on a cooking streak--she baked two batches of delicious cupcakes over the weekend almost entirely by herself (she's still a bit timid about sliding hot pans out of the oven, which I sympathize with). This is energy I want to encourage as much as possible. Hopefully before too many years I'll be able to write her into the dinner-making schedule.

Beatrix just flipped her rocking chair over, rolled free and said, "I'm okay." When we first arrived in this town, Merry and Catherine were her age, stumping off to preschool together in the mornings, and now they look for all the world like young women.

I was told this would happen. But it happened fast.

Snowing

The girls and I spent a good hour in the library after lunch today; I felt happily surprised and liberated by the fact that my library card was clean and clear (I'd believed I had lost a book) and found a nice stack of picture books to see us through the week.

When we pulled into our driveway, I saw an enchanting site: Martin, covered in snow, clothed in red stocking hat, standing with pruners in our garden, clearing and staking trees. We piled out of the car, tipped our heads back, and stuck out our tongues; the snowflakes are so heavy today, when the temperature wavers just above freezing, that you can gaze at a snowflake some thirty feet above you and watch its slow and meandering descent down to your open mouth. Quite a few hit me in the eyes and finally I was so soggy and cold I came inside and put on the teapot.

But the two older girls still stand outside, their tongues out, busy being "Snowpeople" who are "Snowing," which causes much hilarity between them. . ."Just caught a pike!" one says, and the other: "I got a huge trout just then!"

Advantages: you don't need bait; you can stand in your boat; there are so many fish and no hooks are necessary.

Microbursts

Today Elspeth listened to the wind gusting and buffeting and asked, "Is that the kind of wind that can knock a little kid over?"

I said no to make her feel better but I think the answer may have been in favor of the wind. I've never seen wind like this, not in Kenya or Montana or Iowa or. . .anywhere. It blows up suddenly from the west--at one moment everything is still and then there's a sound like a railway train crashing on the tracks and the trees bend over like they've been struck by food poisoning. Snow swirls! Windowpanes streak!

In the summertime the wind is accompanied by thunder, lightning, and torrential rain. One day I bought myself a great treat--a beautiful rose standard that would become the crowing glory of our little fenced side garden. I planted it, tamped down the soil, lifted my head from the shovel, and, lo! The sky was the color of coal, heavy with angry clouds. I dropped my shovel and ran and from the doorway I heard above the storm, a sharp CRACK! The gorgeous budded head of my rose standard hit the ground and was no more.

A year or so later, we were potlucking with our friends under a pavilion in a park when another microburst struck us. We huddled in a corner while the wind howled to an excess of fifty miles an hour; trashcans bounced across the playground; some children buried their heads in their mother's laps and cried. My girls threw up their hands and begged to run into the rain. I tried to sing the Battle Hymn of the Republic like the Parcheesi-playing family in A Time of Wonder, but it was a pathetic solo effort. When we finally cleared up our scraps and drove home, we saw fallen tree limbs, a blown-out storefront window.

And here's the memorable microburst of all, which occurred the very first summer we moved here. Martin's parents drove up from Texas in their spanking new minivan. We were so full of excitement about the beauty of the surrounding hills that we insisted we take them out for a drive among the babbling creeks and stunning valleys. So we did, but as we entered some netherworld between Pennsylvania and West Virginia. . .you guessed it. The sky darkened, hurricane-like weather ensued. After about twenty tense minutes of narrow, winding roads, flying debris, and panic about the state of the new van, we stopped completely in front of a felled tree with a wide-gerthed trunk. I was making the best of a dubious situation and offering to get out of the car and help shift it (did I mention I was late in my second pregnancy?) Finally Martin and his dad joined forces with some guys in a pick-up truck and we could crawl forward.

At this point it seemed as if we were lost in the raging weather, but Martin had a tiny map of the county that he kept consulting. He assured us that he knew exactly where we were in the maze but then we rounded a corner and knew we had entered a different world entirely. This is what I remember: train tracks, two men on a bizarre independent car of sorts locomoted by a handle. From the car's prow a Confederate flag flapped in the wind. We were about to cross the tracks when another, and yet another, unbelievable car passed by--a whole surreal parade! At this point Martin's parents turned to us with a look of resigned disbelief. "It must be a repair car," Martin said nonchalantly, but even we, who were so insistent about the charm of our new home, were a bit shaken.

But that's what a microburst will do to you--make you feel, like Dorothy, that your house, your brain, your reason, has been jerked upside down. Thankfully, they pass fairly quickly and we're pretty used to them now, just as we are no longer afraid that the houses perched on steep streets are going to tip over.

Furthermore, we now have three children instead of one, and microbursts, weather-related or not, are common. I wouldn't classify us as storm-chasers, just fairly placid observers. Stand back, close your eyes if necessary, wait for the chaos to pass, and pray that no little kids get knocked over.

delivery

I used to order organic flour, raisins, and peanut butter--things like that--from a wholesaler. I've fallen off that wagon now but I still receive e-mails alerting me to deliveries. Nancy used to send out the news but since she fell sick, a guy named Joshua has taken over.

joshua
delivery

This is what I see in my inbox every two weeks or so, and though I never click on the e-mail I'm rather fond of the subject line, especially since it's from Joshua. It makes me think of a Biblical prophet announcing my salvation.

I have some things Joshua could deliver me out of, don't you? I'd like to give him a catalogued list sometime. But then I wonder, as Merry has in the past about perfection, if that is something I really desire. "I mean, you wouldn't have anything to work on anymore," Merry has told me. She's right. If you were practically perfect in every way, what would you possibly find to overcome anymore?

There are so many small things that plague me, but the journey to overcoming them (which is a journey without an end, as far as I can tell), is worthwhile. For instance, even though I've been a writer for many years now, starting a new writing project is still daunting for me. The blinking cursor, the blank page. I feel as if I have to take a deep breath and jump that hurdle every time. And often my shins are all skinned by the end and I have to go back to the beginning and start over again.

Maybe, too, I secretly love my vices just a little bit. Sometimes it feels really good to lose my cool and shout, though afterward I feel as if I've lost something. Again--more than just my temper.

Joshua,today deliver me from the stress of the week into a long, cool happy hour.

Ritual

Yesterday on the phone my mother described her and my father's new Wednesday routine. She calls it "Bastard Sabbath." Now those of you who know my mother will know that she never uses slang (unless she's attempting an idiom--attempting and failing) and that she always utilizes words in their original, simple meaning. I say this to let you all know that "Bastard Sabbath," though it sounds like the name of a rock band from the 1970's, means that she and my father are approximating, or interpreting, their own sort of sabbath day. They've been reading a book by a Jewish rabbi about the concept of taking Sabbath days and decided to create their own sacred day in the middle of the week when they can discard their routines in the evening and replace them with simplicity, contemplation, and a book discussion.

"We'll fast during the day--not just from food, but from the media, and then at night we'll eat good soup and hearty bread and drink wine."

"You're going to be absolutely loopy," I said. "Nothing in your stomach all day and then wine."

"We're going to drink it slowly," she said, and began to laugh. "Like Shabbat--four glasses, but slowly."

"What?" I started to laugh, too. "Four glasses? It's going to be some kind of contemplative night all right!"

"Well, maybe we'll have to rethink that part," she said.

All drinking aside, my parent's attention to Ritual is something that Martin and I have tried to adopt over the years. Ritual is different than routine. Routines are ways of doing things you fall into without thinking too much about them; they become rote, and often even tyrannical things that eventually disgust you. But to nurture Ritual requires careful forethought, an attention to space and time, and a tender attitude of love.

Our days are full of small rituals that make each day extraordinary in some way (though they don't always happen as peacefully as we hope). Martin and I love tea time together, once in the morning and once in the evening, and that has become one of our most important rituals together: putting the kettle on, heating the teapot with a splash of boiling water, steeping the tea under the cozy, and sitting down together, taking a long, precious fifteen minutes (more if we're lucky) to discuss our day, our writing, our ideas and frustrations.

At night, we get the children to bed, put the house to bed, make lunches for the next day, set the table for breakfast, and finish the writing/grading work that we have inevitably still waiting for us. Then we always meet together, to play a game or watch a program on TV. Our ritual is always the same: one of us gets Sleepytime tea for the other, someone gets a snack. As we watch TV I scratch Martin's back, and he always gets up to get me another cup of tea. It's a simple ritual that I look forward to every day.

In Andre Dubus' short story, "A Father's Story," the narrator, whose marriage has dissolved, wonders about how that relationship might have been saved:

“I believe ritual would have healed us more quickly than the repetitious talks we had, perhaps even kept us healed. Marriages have lost that, and I wish I had known then what I know now, and we had performed certain acts together every day, no matter how we felt, and perhaps then we could have subordinated feeling to action, for surely that is the essence of love.”

Emotion fluctuates from hour to hour; our rituals are like pillars in our days, pulling us back together to focus on what's real and good.

F & I

Top o the Monday to all of you good folk!

Today I must: write a letter to a man in Colorado about a guidebook he wrote about fifty years ago; interview the priest; buy more milk. And take a shower. I smell like maple syrup and I'm not sure how it happened. All last night I exuded the scent; while it seemed pleasant at first, it grew increasingly cloying, and now I can hardly wait to rid myself of it and go on with my day without thinking of pancakes every time I inhale.

It's deeply gray today, so gray in fact that I feel I could plunge my arm into the sky up to the elbow, grope around, and still not touch the hot orb of the sun. If I could I'd pull it out and bounce it across the county, sending sparks over us all and clearing our stuffy heads.

FIRE AND ICE

Merry held a late-birthday sleepover on Friday night. Two things of note happened: one, Martin, while mixing up some last minute enchiladas (Merry's choice) for about twenty people, leaned over to taste the sauce and realized he had put in two tablespoons of cayenne instead of chili powder; two, the sky decided to dump great quantities of ice upon us, so that everything looked like a set for the Nutcracker, charming until we almost killed four people on our front steps which looked as they had been dusted with a wee bit of snow but were coated underneath with an inch of ice. And the handrail was coated with ice as well, which translated to a lot of slipping and sliding and near calamity. Martin worked for about an hour to get to the rock salt I'd left in the Subaru. The car was also encased in an inch of ice which shattered like glass. Needless to say, our little guests got to stay for a while longer than planned, since nobody could get in their cars, let alone drive them along the roads. But the girls got some swift sledding in on our icy hill and we could hear the sleds swooping down even inside over the roar of the vacuum cleaner, where I was cleaning up the clods of cheese on the floor from the SECOND batch of enchiladas, sans cayenne.

Comfort at Any Price

This is how my night will culminate: trail mix, (maybe a bowl of cereal), Sleepytime tea, a little Dame Judi Dench on the TV, and my favorite red robe. Apparently I've dressed in this robe almost every (cold) night for the last thirteen or so years, at least that's what Martin claims. He seems to be ambivalent toward it, but I LOVE it.

It does not become me in any way. I found my enormous Land's End robe--red as holly berries--at an outlet center in Maine (I think--I can't remember now). It was far too big for me, especially at that time, but I didn't care. It was incredibly soft, not sensuously so like bird's feathers or spring leaves, but like a huge slipper--for my body. It has enormous pockets that are continuously filled with tiny choking hazards swiped off the floor or earrings removed at night or wads of kleenexes.

There is nothing attractive about this robe--it's 100 % polyester, bulky and voluminous; it completely hides any figure I might boast and the tie about the middle makes a big, unflattering knot. And yet it has been just the thing for three pregnancies and daughters who loved to nurse constantly and for as long as possible. It's as good as a blanket as I pad around our old, chilly house in sheepskin slippers where morning temperatures upstairs in our room waver in the 50's and 60's. I love this huge, ugly, comfortable piece of red perfection.

What's an ugly comfort you love? Give thanks for it tonight, as I shall when I wrap Good Old Red around me once again.

She will just ramble on. . . .

It's a very quiet MLK day here at Wazoo, though I just heard Merry cackle. Yes, cackle is the right word. It's supposed to be quiet time--Bea just looked outside and said, "It's very dark. It must be time to go to bed." The sky is a heavy white, a reflection of the snowy ground, though it's warming for evening rain.

Merry has saved her weekend homework until now and should be bent studiously over her tablet and book but Catherine is upstairs, too, and concentration is unlikely. Catherine is such a part of our family now that I no longer adjust my thought to fill four cups with water or ask four girls to scatter to tasks. I no longer "set an extra place" for Catherine but it is as if I have a fourth "sometimes" daughter.

It's been a short three or four months since Nancy died, but oddly it seems like much longer. In a way, death is like a boulder in a river; the river continues rushing on but there's new texture to it, an awareness of the way the rock has changed the course of the water. And, at least in this life, it's immovable. It will always be there and though everyone sees it, it is not often talked of. The first week I spent with Catherine after her mother passed away, I noticed that I did not speak of Nancy. At the end of the week, I felt convicted of the wrongness of this. Now I speak of Nancy freely with Catherine--when I see something that reminds me of her mother, I say so. When I remember something her mother loved, I tell Catherine. She must have many stories of her mother, and with these stories she will build a secret room of riches for herself. She'll need it--we all need secret rooms.

Catherine speaks easily and matter-of-factly about her mother, in the healthy, natural way that children have, or should have. It is only we adults, tied up so tightly by our own fears, who must adjust and choose to be natural instead of awkward.

I often think that we will someday realize that time is a flexible, boneless thing that wraps us now but will later be thrown from our shoulders like an old coat. It seems like such a rigid thing now--it pins us, storms at us, makes us dizzy and sad--but someday we'll find it to be a friendly, dynamic thing, with which we can play and relate and even laugh at. At least this is what I trust to be true, and it seems so much more obvious now that my friend has died, my children are growing quickly, and winter is here again, though the lilacs are already tightly budded. What if they were to bloom this afternoon and the air around them warmed until the grass went green and their corner of the garden was full of spring? Something like this happens in Oscar Wilde's "The Selfish Giant." The North Wind and Frost punish the giant for being selfish, but one day the giant smells spring blowing in the window. When he looks outside, "He saw a most wonderful sight. Through a little hole in the wall the children had crept in, and they were sitting in the branches of the trees. In every tree that he could see there was a little child. And the trees were so glad to have the children back again that they had covered themselves with blossoms, and were waving their arms gently above the children's heads." You can read the whole story, which begins with promise but ends by being unfortunately didactic, HERE.

(Please don't try to stick your children in icy trees to see if sudden thaw will occur.)

Now it feels like winter--snow flurries in furious gusts, eddies at window panes. Bea is snoring softly next to me. We are both bundled, she and I, her head thrown back into her pillow, mouth open, cheeks pink. The windchimes are making a glorious racket and the ill-fitted storm windows in the sunroom bang in the wind. It's hard to ever really wake up on a day like today, when the the sun is only a reality for others. (I'd like to be in Australia by the sea this afternoon). Sally and Kevin came for lunch this afternoon and we all sat and stared at one another. Conversation was not bright and the best I could contribute was lines of "I'll Be There," by the Jackson 5, which was to be one of the most inane songs of all time. Cloying and saccharine, it sticks to the roof of my mouth, and Bea loves the Jackson 5 beyond all others.

"Jackson 5!" she demands on a daily basis, and for TV, "Tom and Jerry!" and for lunch, "Mac-e-bo-bos!" She and I share a rather bland diet there but it's punctuated by good books and frenzied rides on her tricycle, which she can maneuver around corners with astonishing speed and accuracy.

I'm thinking of all the household tasks I now have time for: finally tackling a closet I've been dreading for years (literally); paring things down, getting rid of say, half our stuff. I have the time but none of the will, because, let's face it, it's so very dull. If Jesus were to come back and I was cleaning out a closet, (I told Kevin and Sally today), I'd feel absolutely gipped.

How in the world do you spell that word? Gypped. That's just worse. Oh, I've no idea.

The sledding hill beckons children perhaps this afternoon but not me. It's a windchill of perhaps 1 degree and though I had high hopes of becoming Pioneer Mary and taking walks in every sort of weather, I am hiding from my better self today and baking cupcakes, one batch of which was a miserable failure (despite two sticks of butter, they taste like cornbread) and the other which succeeded so well I don't want anyone to eat them.

Jipped. That can't be right. I've been literate for a while now and my spelling just gets worse. Why?

Happy Friday, and may Happy Hour rise up to meet thee.

PS. Just ran the spell check and lo and behold, Gypped is correct. What a silly looking word that is. I wonder if it's embarrassed.

Truth is Overrated, Especially When You're Six

Tonight we gathered around our kitchen table and bowed our heads over steaming bowls of homemade chicken soup. This introductory sentence might make you feel as if this was a peaceful occasion. Much of the afternoon had been relatively calm--the girls were happy, they'd decorated some cookies and rolled some biscuit dough into pinwheels I slid into a hot oven. But the chaos that strikes shortly before dinnertime had indeed knocked us all upside the heads like clockwork and by the time I sat down at the table, all I could do was tip my head back in utter exhaustion.

Elspeth wanted to pray.

She told us they always pray in school before snack. "Really?" I said.

"Yeah," she said, folding her hands together. "Mrs. E. [her kindergarten teacher] makes us."

"I don't think so," I insisted. "That's actually illegal."

"Well. . ." she hedged. Maybe you should know that Elspeth is currently telling tales about everything under the sun. . .she drops a lie as easily as sneezing or shrugging her shoulders--lies to help herself out, lies too when there's absolutely no reason to lie. "Okay," she admitted, "Ben and I pray sometimes before snack." (I can't imagine this happening since she usually sinks her teeth into anything in front of her without so much as a "Thanks, Bozo," but who knows?)

Nevertheless, we bowed our heads and Elspeth began: "Thank you, God, that I had a good day today. Thank you for my sisters, Merry and Beatrix. Thank you for this food and I am so grateful to Mommy for being patient with me and also because she adopted me. . ."

I tried not to laugh behind my folded hands because most of it was such a nice prayer, but Merry spoke right up. "You're not adopted, Elspeth!"

"Yes, I am," Elspeth said, looking up. "Mrs. E. told me I was."

That Mrs. E. Apparently I'm going to have to write a letter into the school. According to Elspeth, she is the source of all kinds of craziness. But this is the same girl who, in preschool, tried to convince me that her teachers were making them climb through roof panels onto the roof. She also spun such skillful tales of utter hooliganism perpetrated by a poor boy named Thomas that I actually believed her for a while until another mother pooh-pooohed me.

I can only hope Elspeth can manage to stay out of jail in later life. Hope springs eternal since she recently asked me, "Mommy, can I be an artist when I grow up?"

"Absolutely," I said.

"And a teacher?"

"Yes, you can choose what you want to be. You can be an artist and a teacher." (Hopefully not a convict).

She looked as if I'd handed her the keys to her freedom. "Really? You mean they'll LET ME?"

Ah, my girl Elspeth. The killer of all my parent pride, the source of much joy and delight. You'd better be a mighty fine artist, my dear, to warrant your wild childhood.

Better Late

I haven't had the heart to throw away our squatty little Halloween pumpkins. I thought they were appropriate to keep around for Thanksgiving, but after the Christmas tree came out of storage and the twinkle lights mingled with their old ornament friends, I knew something had to be done about the pumpkins. They were suddenly gauche, awkwardly crowding the counters with their generous rumps.

I kept them out of guilt. They are technically pie pumpkins and could feed a village for a day, and I felt as though I should be chunking them, roasting them, pureeing them.

And I've promised the girls, particularly Elspeth, a jack 'o lantern for the past three or four years. And we've never, ever carved one. I remember my dad covering our table in newspapers, I remember the sweet, spicy smell as my mother stirred the seeds in the oven. I always assumed they'd carry around this quintessential American memory too.

But I am mighty afeared of any kind of craft. Tell me we're going to cut out construction paper turkey feathers or tie dye tee-shirts and I break into hives. You think I'm joking? Ask the women who know me on a daily basis. They believe me when I say I'd rather clean toilets than scrapbook. So while other families sport their meticulously carved gourds, our pumpkins always remain unblemished by knife or marker.

Elspeth has made a couple attempts to take matters into her own hands. One morning two years ago, I came downstairs and found my Wustof Chef's knife, seeds, and orange guts all over the play stove. Her friend Ben cowered in the corner. "I told her we shouldn't do it," he whimpered. I checked and they both still had all their fingers.

This year Elspeth found a tiny pumpkin from a trash heap in some yard, brought it home, somehow worked off the stem, and began painstakingly fishing around in its belly with a table knife. "Don't touch my pumpkin!" she pleaded before leaving for school, suspicious of what all my daughters believe is a compulsive throw-away obsession. (Bea just found her Thanksgiving hat in the garbage can, pulled it out, shoved it down over the crown of her head and announced, 'I made this in school!' My friend Sal alluded to unpacking ornaments every year and how the children delight to see their paper Santas and pipecleaner reindeer--years of December school projects. 'You mean you KEEP them?' I asked, aghast. It had never occurred to me that I shouldn't be layering them with discarded papers and banana peels in the trashcan).

Yesterday afternoon, when our table was loaded with my netbook, papers, and crumbs still left over from lunch, Elspeth brought her pathetic little pumpkin to the table and began pulling out seeds again. Enough is enough, I thought, whipping out our paring knife. So there, on our Christmas tablecloth, without newspaper or ceremony, Elspeth and I carved our first pumpkin together. Then we carved a pie pumpkin, too, who Elspeth said was the little pumpkin's mother. We dropped in candles and Elspeth turned off the lights and put her little arms around my neck. "They're so beautiful!" she exalted. So the Advent season found our family eating dinner with the lights low, gazing at our jack 'o lanterns, happy despite the smell of burning pumpkin--someone hadn't quite cleaned out all the guts.

There was a bit of a problem with the bigger maternal pumpkin, though. I had meant to knife in some eyelashes but my attempts made the mama gourd look lost in anxiety. "That's because she's worried her son [the little jack 'o lantern with one tooth] is going to get cut up and eaten," Elspeth told me. Or maybe she's worried she's going to get thrown down the hill for the groundhog to feast upon, which she will just before Christmas. Crafts have a shelf-life, especially edible ones.

Our Christmas jack 'o lanterns. It's better late than never, right? Maybe next year I'll actually roast the seeds.

But let's not get carried away.