the day

Things I did on my & Bea's birthday included:

played racquetball (worked on my wrist action)

went for four brisk walks outside, two of those with two little kids smashed into one stroller, arms around each other, grinning into the other's face like they were on their honeymoon as we flew down one hill after the other

ate a delicious lunch at my friend, Sal's house, followed by a delectable chocolate cake

sized up the various boxes in our front hallway that arrived in the post

helped a bunch of first and second graders wipe the excess paper mache off newspaper strips to plaster their very first volcanoes

folded a load of laundry

found, in my mailbox, a glorious bouquet of purple and yellow flowers wrapped in an embarassment of pink tissue paper

paid our bills

chatted over the fence with a kind, bearded man whose three boys swung on our gate and exhanged warm hugs with a friend, T, in the windy parking lot of St. Ann's preschool

read a card from Sal that made me tear up a little. . .and opened some really beautiful stained glass butterflies

tried on my newest thrift store T shirt, Abraham Lincoln with florescent green earphones and a turn-table

proofed my short story, "Patron Saint of Trees" that will soon go to print at Southeast Review--hurrah!

dropped by two littlest daughters at Elesha's house for pizza, where I later found them snug on the couch with Elesha, looking at photos of China

sat in Dairy Queen booth, eating a huge vanilla soft serve cone while Bea covered herself in chocolate icecream and seven kids tore around, high on sugar

talked to my mother, my father, my sister, my sister-in-law, my brother, my mom and dad-in-law on the phone (six different happy birthdays!)

drank tea and chatted away a morning with my dear friend, Nancy Greenthumb

ate reheated ham and mashed potatoes on the couch with Martin while watching "Scrubs"

bathed all day in sunshine and the oceans of love washing over me from all of you, my family and friends, my whole world of goodness.

To the Day

This is how I spent my thirtieth birthday:

I'd prefer to remember it as one of the more intense celebrations I've had, and hope to heaven that nobody I know is planning anything similar for me this birthday.
*
Thirty-three years ago to the day, I started existing on this earth:

According to my mother, I was a funny-looking baby. But then again, so was the child who shares my birthday:

Here she is, catching some wind on the Edmonds Ferry in Washington State.

Check out that hair, dudes. No product required.

Three years ago to the day, Beatrix made her way down the tunnel and plopped into the midwife's arms.
I've often thought, This child is just too good to be true. But she is true, and it's her birthday.

I hope she is given as much happiness in her next thirty years as I have experienced in mine. She is blessed by all who love her, and to you, her family and community, I am deeply grateful.

This Pot's Bubbling Over

Oh, it's so grey again (sing with me). It's ever so grey and rainy today! Yesterday we spent all hours outside--even rain didn't drive the children inside, just prompted them to kick off their shoes, and in Beatrix's case, ALL her clothes.

Inside, there are three roses the color of velvet Christmas ribbon; one faces me, the other is taking in the rain, and the third faces the piano, as if waiting for someone to sit down and play. Last night our house was fairly bouncing with people and the scent of ham and mashed potatoes and homemade apple sauce--an early Easter feast--and now the table is cleared, the laundry tumbling below floor, and the children are lounging about lazily on the couch watching "educational" TV.

And my mind tumbles like the laundry too. I can't believe I sent that story exclusively to Prairie Schooner and didn't change the cover letter that noted it was a simultaneous submission! Guess who received a highlighted copy of the Writer's Guidelines in her SASE yesterday afternoon? I'm just kicking myself. Oh! A cardinal! There are horrible things happening in Cote d'Ivoire and the sadness goes on in Japan. . .I need to to e-mail so-and-so about tea, ARG! ALARM! Have not written my column yet and the deadline is tomorrow! WASH the soccer socks! Wash the soccer socks!

I will not subject you to the ongoing panic in my brain. A few of us sat outside the other week trying to answer this question: If your brain were a room, what would it contain?

Our nine-year old friend, Cat, said her brain contained file drawers. Merry accessed her brain and found two easy chairs with a table in between them (sounds good to me!) My mother swings the door to her brain and finds a giant tiramisu with endless layers of pastry that hide facts from her until she reaches in and fishes one out. Martin's brain is the craziest of all: he's got a game show host talking constantly inside, and his life-long struggle is to shut that guy up. My brain contains multiple industrial stoves with hundreds of pots bubbling. I often forget what a pot contains until I lift the lid and the steam clouds my face. Oh! Blast! There's my cloudy, misshapen column bubbling around in there. It needs vegetables, meat, seasoning! What have I been thinking, and with so many people arriving for dinner! I don't even have a recipe yet!

My dream is to climb into one of those pots and linger for a while and not go onto the next pot until one soup is finished. But it is not to be right now. Today, griping between the two youngest girls started at breakfast and continued afterward. As Martin exited the house, I said, "When you come back tonight, if you find the children plucked and hanging by their ankles, you'll know why."

As I hauled more laundry downstairs, I thought, Just wait until they're all gone, and then I realized, they won't be moving out, just going off to school, and now I amend that thought: You don't really want complete silence for the rest of your life, do you? And the image of Elspeth cuddling into the crook of my arm after she read her first book out loud yesterday fills me. She said, "I want to marry you and Daddy, and then I wouldn't ever have to leave you when I grow up." Martin and I reassured her: "You don't ever have to leave if you don't want to." And we said this knowing that the time will come when she will be anxious to leave, and she'll run off with her face turned fully toward the blooms and branching of her own life, and we'll be the ones looking after her. We'll be sad.

But not so sad we'll sit at home and mope. No, siree; we have dreams of a little retreat in Oregon with a tea pot, winding paths through forest, and two chairs on the porch where we'll edit our manuscripts together.

But for now, a shower, some column acrobatics, and a trip to the library. We will jump into the grey mist outside, and we will warm it with our happiness.

Hang the unfinished things! It's sunny and warm and I'm going out!

Overheard: in the parking lot of Eat'nPark and inside same restaurant, respectively

(A) "Why are you yelling and crying over a pink bunny cookie?"

. . .and. . .

(B) "Good thing I'm a brain surgeon, otherwise I'd be out of luck."

I overheard both of the above in the space of one hour. Can any of you come up with a story to go with either one?

It's hailing & the birds are still flying about.

O, to Catch the Perfect Words

Occasionally, this is how writing feels:
Sacrifice for the word!
Martin's finishing our taxes.
The girls are asleep and I should be writing or at least cleaning the kitchen or bettering myself in some way.
Please read my column tomorrow morning; it's a celebration of our sweet eight-year old friend, her sister and their granddad--they tapped their own maple trees and made their own syrup. I had some on my pancakes this morning, and it tasted divine. I wish, like a maple, such miraculous things could happen to me over the winter. The freeze would just make me run swifter and sweeter.
We had sleet and rain today. Anyone have spring out there? I coaxed the lilacs this morning--they're beading out deep velvet purple--Just wait, wait, wait a little longer. Maybe I was talking to myself.

It's Real

Remember Spring?

How the crocus, like a sun bursting on your tongue, shocked you into seeing again?

When robins fought you for earthworms as you sank your hands into mud,

And the sun, warmer than bathwater, collected in your socks and you flung off your shoes

in the sudden rain, and the rain like mothers singing, stirred you to dance.

Eggshell white day; a blackbird at the top of a poplar on the hill, a robin with velvet belly in the bird tree, ticking his sharp head into the pale sky, jabbering a song I can't hear over the roar of the heater. Inside the house is grey but today it feels good, intimate, and peaceful. Maybe it's the Weepies singing from our stereo: "All this beauty, might have to close your eyes. . .we travelled all night, we drank the ocean dry, watched the sunrise." They're trying to persuade me that every day is ice-cream and chocolate cake. Okay, I believe it.

The girls have hidden fifty acorn tops around the house, and now I must go find them, tiny bits of childhood they've tucked in bookcases and kitchen shelves and behind couch cushions. They're lying on the floor, eating apples and chewing with their mouths open. They are reminding me every twenty seconds, "We can't wait any longer. Come look now." Yes. I embrace my duty.

Eating Crow

I was making lunch for the two little ones while talking to Martin about the short story I've been working on, "Empress Chicken," when another call came in.

"Hello," chirped a cheery voice on the other line. "It's S--."

"Oh, hello, S--," I said, wedging the phone under one ear and slicing apples. "How are you?"

"Oh, I'm fine," she said.

It struck me that S-- was Elspeth's preschool teacher, and I wondered suddenly if Elspeth were sick. Instead S-- continued, "I just wanted to let you know that no one picked up Elspeth today."

Until that second, I had been feeling blithely in control of life--I'd taken the two little ones to the grocery store and the park, the day before I'd finished my column for the week and another draft of the chicken story. The column turned out well and though the chicken short story was borderline garbage, maybe I'd be able to salvage it. I'd finally tackled the piles of laundry that were threatening to burst the walls of our bathroom, and I had a stack of peanut butter sandwiches ready for lunch.

"Elspeth! I forgot Elspeth!" I was more than fifteen minutes late. I've always consoled myself that though I forget everything else, I never forget the children. I can't say that anymore.

"Come on, you two!" I shouted, tearing around the house to grab my keys. Though it was forty degrees outside, I grabbed little E in his sock feet and threw open the door. Beatrix skittered down the sidewalk, barefoot and coatless.

The teachers at the preschool came to the door with big grins on their faces. The oldest said, "Don't worry, honey, it happens to all of us." I did not ask how many of them have ever forgotten their children.

My week so far is indication that maybe I have too much going on. Last night, as I drove home from a friend's house on a road I've driven countless times, I thought abruptly, "I'm going the wrong way!" So I drove for a while down the dusky, twisty road, turned around and started back the other way. Not long after that, the girls said, "We don't recognize any of this, Mommy." I had to admit they were right, so i I pulled off the road, turned around again, and drove back to the place where my mind had gone south. "Have you always turned at the old one room schoolhouse?" I asked myself again, gazing up the darkening road. I pulled the car up the hill and sure enough, I HAVE always turned that way. The girls chorused triumphantly: Told you so! and I fired back, "And THAT'S why you must always put on your shoes and socks when Mommy says. Because Mommy can't drive very well in the dark, see?"

This is not the first time such a familiar road has suddenly become strange to me. This is just the (let's see) eight thousandth time.

Today as I steered the car toward home, I muttered, "I'm becoming my mother." My mother has forgotten me numerous times on street corners and, most notoriously, when I was three months old, at a party. She and my dad went home, undressed, and put my sister to bed. They showed up later at the party in their pyjamas and asked for me, who had fallen asleep on the hostess' floor. My mother and now I celebrate a long tradition of forgetfulness. My greatgrandpa showed up a day late for his passage on the Titanic. This is not a joke. Most of us who suffer from chronic absentmindism do not get such a good story and a second chance at life. Instead, we wonder, as my mother often did and I did today, if we are slipping into early onset dementia. We vow to write everything down so we don't forget it. We consider leaving notes for ourselves with obvious messages like "Don't forget your five-year old at school." And we eat crow as a regular part of our diet.

Pay Attention, Silly

Beatrix, who screamed and poured out water on her sheets all through her nap as I lay down with Elspeth, is sitting on the trampoline with a red rubber spoon, throwing pieces of apple onto the carpet. Dressed in her sheep pjs, with her hair pulled askance from an hour of keeping herself awake, she's testing my appreciation for her sweetness at the moment. Merry is firing off math problems that are impossible for me to do in my head--What's 453 times 9? And then she triumphantly calls out the answer. I think she's cottoned on to my lack of enthusiasm for mentally struggling through the fifth problem, since she just said, "MOMMY. Can you. . .look, listen? Pay attention?"

All I want to do is write a poem or work on my quirky story, "Empress Chicken," which may die in the end, but I want to find out for myself. Bea just hung upside down from the bar on her trampoline and dropped herself on her head. A pause as she assesses whether she's hurt or not. A scream. I love the children, I love the children, I love the children. Why isn't my afternoon cup of tea working?

the Ancient Grumpilo

The heater's rattling away, and if I didn't know that Martin had been out until an hour past dark starting on a new pea bed, I'd half expect snow in the morning, just out of habit.

Overrated things: thriftiness when you feel like celebrating, square-foot gardening and all other super-organized gardening methods, words like "fave" and "most-faved," bloggers who mark each of their photos with massive copyrights, pensive authors on bookjackets, inner pressure to rip out the wild violets in the front flowerbed (they can't help it that they are weeds and the leaves are so shiny and pretty), deadlines of all kinds, feeling cold in springtime, soccer practice three nights a week, rejections containing the phrase "just wasn't right" and that end, "Best of luck," people who complain endlessly on their blogs, . . .ME!

So that's enough from the ancient Grumpilo, who is residing right now in my bladder, grumbling bad talk even though the kids are in bed and my dear one sits beside me looking at photos of an unbelievable garden in Tennessee. I will expel the Grumpilo, fetch myself a cup of chamomile tea, and edit some poems. I wish I could write intricate, transcendent Indian poetry; perhaps that would send the Grumpilo packing forever. But I am not Indian, I'm just plain old pale me, paler still from the Pennsylvania winter. And I am not Greek, either, though I'd like to be, given the chance.

Martin and I sat in the car after work and as I turned the key, he said, "Maybe we should go for gyros," and I had been thinking the EXACT SAME THING (hurrah), so we drove up to the next city with the girls and a bearded man named Costas fixed us up gyros in a tiny restaurant papered with photos of the Greek Isles. Family members and friends dropped in to chat with his wife, a woman with some weight dressed in a low-cut, red dress, with painted eyelashes and such a warm manner that I wanted to be Greek, too, and slice meat on a spit onto pita bread and compare days with my nieces who dropped by on the way home from work. We are not even a tiny percentage Greek, but Elspeth found out she loves stuffed grape leaves.

This blog has no narrative cohesion, I'm afraid. The Grumpilo may be partly to blame. I just glanced despondently over at Martin's laptop and read "Composting Opportunities!" I may eat a banana tonight, and then I, too, could have a composting opportunity. I can hardly wait.

Hope the ancient and cantankerous Grumpilo stays far away from you all tonight.

Monstas are my fwends

Here's Bea, during a rare trip to Banana Republic, finding friends among the headless. She cozied up to the expressionless but well-dressed man, above, looked up at his neck adoringly and said, "Hi, Uncle Noah!" When we showed the photo to Uncle Noah, he pointed out that he does not wear flannel shirts. I think it's interesting that he commented on the attire of the guy instead of the fact that the guy doesn't have a head. Bea also enjoyed holding the hands of the women, whom she did not name (they're dressed better than I ever am, so no wonder).
Late last night, after viewing an independent film ("The Baxter," so quirky and really fun), Martin and I sat up even later pillow-talking about Bea. Oh, she's a funny kid these days.

She'll be three in a couple weeks, but with two older sisters, she thinks she's bigger than that. She loves her independence, and whether it's redressing herself several times in footie pjs, tearing around outside with the older kids, holding the egg beaters or removing something from a high shelf, she likes to announce, "See. I a grownup." Here she is, confidently tackling the crooked house at the Children's Museum in Pittsburgh, shortly before she went up again by herself and panicked at the top of the tunnel-slide. I had to go and retrieve her and felt nauseous for a while afterward. That crooked house makes me want to barf every time.

Among other things, Bea's been trying to convince herself not to be afraid of monsters. A week ago, my mother and I lingered at the supper table, but Bea was done and ready to retrieve something--probably more footie pyjamas--from upstairs in her room. But it was dim and there was nobody else upstairs.

"You can do it," we told her, and she stamped off with a little swagger, which is her independent walk. We heard her footsteps stop at the bottom of the stairs, and then she came back again.

"There are no monsters in this house," she announced, and thus reassured, she turned around and walked back toward the stairs. Back she came. "I not scared," she said, extending her hand and waving it in the air as if we were concerned. The same thing happened, and she was back again, gesturing at us and glancing off toward the corner of the room. "I a grownup!" she said finally, and then she was off again--this time she bravely made it all the way into the murky upstairs all by herself.

Last night, right before bed, she told Martin, "There are no monsters in this house." She paused and thought about it some more. "Monsters are my fwends," she said, and went on to explain that there were two mommy monsters with baby monsters whom (I guess) live in our house with us, named Cali and Cooloo.

I hope they're not hungry tonight, because I'm just planning enough dinner for five. That's not to say any of you aren't welcome to drop by, assuming you eat a bit less than monsters.

At the Eisenstat's Farm

Bea wasn't too sure about the goat kids, how they wanted to nuzzle, untie shoelaces, and taste buttons. There's our friend Mike Eisenstat, my mom, Bea, and a kid.
My mom and I provided lots of giddy, girly laughter, which just got more shrill when I found that a large butterscotch cat had jumped into the Subaru and trapped herself. She leapt into the closed windows, first to the left, then to the right, until I lifted the hatch and she tore down the dirt driveway like a bat out of hell.
When we went to see the clutch of hens, I kept feeling a phantom goat tugging at the cuff of my jeans. Who knows what psychological damage the cat incurred.

I really could write volumes, but I've already written the story of Toboggan Farm, and you can read it this Sunday in the O-R. Just click on the white geranium at right.