Direct Hit

Today at the creamery with its pumpkins painted like cartoon characters, where we bumped up a road on hay bales in puffs of tractor smoke, where the children fumbled up a bald dirt slope to ride a slick white slide down to a lawn with corn stalks and a field of plucked pumpkins. . .today at the creamery, within the first five minutes of our visit, Beatrix tucked up to the rusty red fence to touch the baby goats with their tufty horns and soft tails--and got sprayed by a male goat. Fore hooves propped in the rail, he sprayed all down the line of children with their hair pulled back picture-perfect, his pee a torrent of glittering beads caught in the pure autumn sunlight--

Step back! Step back! I yelled

all to no avail. . . .

Stinky, stinky Bea on my lap on the hay bales up the hill to the endless corn maze, stalks glowing papery in the blazing morning light.

Joie de Vivre

This child here is my grace, my payment, my trial, my wonderment, the subject of my resolve, my grief, my befuddlement, and my joy.

This is true about all three girls, of course, but nobody has put me through the wringer like the child you see here. Her antics have been so unbelievable as to bring me to jaw-dropping astonishment, tears, and hidden laughter (the sort where you force your face into a frown to mete out punishment and then laugh silently through your hands just out of sight before you can compose your face again).

In a way, Elspeth reflects all that is craziest in me that I've had to tamp down to be a proper adult. I'll say, "Don't you ever, ever, ever draw on the walls again," before whipping out my paintbrush and painting something crazy on a wall. I get to because I'm an adult, but she is not allowed.

And she's surprisingly different too; did you know, for instance, that my Elspeth is an introvert who will slip away from a crowded room to draw for twenty minutes? She is a prolific, unstoppable, incorrigible (a word my mother taught her two years ago that fits her like a sock).

Elspeth brings me to my knees where I beg mercy from God to help me keep a modicum of composure, to save her from self-destruction. Hone the craziness, I pray, to fine points with which she'll be able to write good stories where she is brave, wild, and creates beautiful things. You can never know for certain about your children, but you can hope and do your best.

Elspeth, too, is incredibly quick to forgive, forget, and move on with life. I'll lose my last modicum, shout, and ban her to her room where she'll cry, heartbroken. Then twenty minutes later she'll throw her arms around my neck, squeeze me like a lemon, and say, "You're my dear love, Mommy. I'm never going to leave you." That child. Freezes and melts me. Reminds me that life should be exciting, that composure and humdrum is for the birds.

Apple Days

Today dawned sparkling; the sky was perfectly robin's-egg, the air as clean as a sheet on a line. I spent the entire morning walking with Bea, my friend Sal, and her boy. We walked up hills and down hills, around neighborhood corners and across streets, over gravel, grass, brick, and concrete. At one point we puffed up a hill that Sal's boys have named "Steep Street" and gazed out over the town--the steeple of the courthouse, a graveyard on the ridge, the mine in the far distance, trees bronzing and flashing pumpkin-orange all over the hillsides. Took a deep breath and plunged into the valley again: gourds and autumn paraphernalia on porches, ghosties in the windows, gardens at their last brilliance before they begin to wane.

Our neighbor, Mr. Wilson, has already cleaned his beds; a few stragglers remain, but the tomatoes are down, nesting in dark soil--I guess he'll plow those under for compost. Our garden is popping with late zinnias, pink and orange, dense marigolds and cluttered with fading zinnias, dried dill-heads, the black domes of shasta daisy.

Time to fling open windows, simmer apples, roast squash in the oven. Time for leaf-piles and seed-collecting. Apple Days! Delicious days!

(I'm tempted to begin rhyming but will stop myself. Nutritious days! etc. Told you sunshine makes me giddy. Thankfully the snow and freeze is coming and then I'll be so depressed I'll have to write well. . .)

Sunshine

thanks be for the sheen of bird opening like a sun
for the smaller suns of glossy dew
the garden glistening & popping

Folks, it is sunny today. After three days of rain and grey. I feel my spirit flying. Hope a sun rises for you this morning, too. Or many suns throughout the day. I have to stop writing now--sunshine makes me giddy and prone to cliches.

One of my favorite suns:

And another:

and. . .one more:

Pine Box Trail

If you're headed up the steep, wooded path called Pine Box Trail, there are only a handful of reasons for your trip--and they all have to do with death and burial.

This is a fairly old (by American standards) graveyard, seemingly lost in a small clearing halfway up a mountain in Ryerson State Park, about twenty miles from our town. Most of the markers are too old and worn to read in their entirety.

From a distance, the stones seem as if they're merely littered around between trees. Many of them are falling over in the rich soil, packed about with rotting leaves and loam, but of course this is not the case. . .somebody must care for the cemetery; trees are sparse within the running fence and none of the stones have cracked in two as a result of tree trunks.

My sister and I used to hike back to a cemetery in North Carolina, and that one had a gravestone so old and neglected that a tree had hewn it in two and left it crumbling into the soil. When we visited the same neighborhood as adults, we found that the miles of our forest--tall pines, thick dogwoods and other deciduous trees, shady creeks with clear water and sandy bottoms perfect for wading--were long gone, given way to an enormous housing development. And our graveyard, the one where we used to sit on a gravestone and eat our packed lunches? Well, that was now in the middle of the development, on the top of a fenced hill with a proper little path.

I have a feeling it will be an age before Pine Box Trail meets the same fate. As we walked among the gravestones, Beatrix plunged her fingers into patches of thick green moss, the same type of moss that we'd walked over at the base of the trail; it had stretched before us into the darkness of the woods, unbelievably lush and springy underfoot.

In the glory of a rainy autumn day with the colors of changing trees glowing around us, we imagined a party of pall bearers, or more likely, a mule, dragging a coffin up the wide mountain path.

"I feel as if we should sing them a song at least while we're up here," I said, to which Martin's friend, Jeff, countered,

"I think just reading the stones pays respect to the people buried here," and I had to agree. Anyway, the trees did more singing than I could have--a song of seasons, age, regeneration, beauty. A good song.

*Martin Cockroft took all the photos.

Three Minutes of Peace

End of Monday: Martin's downstairs marinating pork from our friend Mike's, pigs, for a stir-fry. It is grey again but I am mustering cheer, for all is well at Wazoo Farm; the children are happy and the house still stands. I am determined to make a better week than the last one.

At one point last week, as I stood at my kitchen window soaping mugs (the kitchen window that looks onto my neighbor's grey house-siding, on the third day of deep, rainy grey), I felt a deep peace and sense of good-will infusing me. Why was this, I wondered, as I gazed out into the dark day. . .and then I realized: the children had been quiet for three minutes in a row. That's all I needed to feel calm again for a few instants.

The calm did not last. In fact, this is what launched off the worst morning of the entire week:

Need I explain? Baby powder. Everywhere. White footprints across the upstairs. A very old-looking two-year old. Desert sands in the children's bedroom. And this was JUST THE BEGINNING.

The morning ends with a mother finally giving into tears and despair, becoming preternaturally calm and shutting a middle child into her bedroom, who then gives into tears and despair. One mother concludes that a middle child is contrite, only to find colored sand heaped in a slipper and spread around the floor which was just cleaned of baby powder.

FINALLY all ends happily at the lunch table with the M.C. saying, "Can we just start this day over, Mommy?"

Yes, please.

Lovely ones, this dreary day I have a piece of fiction to send you to, under my name at Apple Valley Review (and check out everything else at that fantastic site). . .and if you are in the mood for a gorgeous cemetery on a hill, click on the Observer-Reporter link at right. Today we went hiking up Pine Box Trail to yet another cemetery hidden by tall deciduous trees--it was so wet my shoes were squishing by the time we reached the car again. But beautiful. The drear just makes the gold of changing maples glow more brightly.

For Keeps

Elspeth and Bea sleep and Merry sleeps soon, hopefully, at a friend's house. Martin and his life-long friend Jeff are off in Ninevah, PA, attending a meeting about UFOs and Bigfoot. We saw the gathering advertised at the local Farmer's Market and off they went. I'm waiting for the report.

Tonight, tucked up in my bed, I read Elspeth an old favorite, "Little Bear's Friend." It's a green hard-back book and pictured on the front, Emily (in a straw party hat)sits across from Little Bear (in a striped, peaked party hat); on the table sits Lucy the doll, who has not yet broken her arm by falling out of Owl's tree.

Inside the cover of the book, I found a red, circular stamp: THIS BOOK IS BELONGS TO HML * HEATHER MARIE LONG; underneath, in large letters printed in blue crayon: and Kimberly Long. The stamp (grammatical error and all) was made, I'm sure, in Bangladesh, and the book is copyrighted 1960, so my sister Heather and I must have been about eight and six, respectively. The pages are yellowed and brittle but wonderfully familiar. I found myself almost choking up as I read the last chapter, which tells the story of Emily saying goodbye to Little Bear:

Mother Bear said, "Let us eat up all the cake. If we do, then it will not rain tomorrow."

"Let it rain," said Little Bear. "Emily will not be here tomorrow to play with me."
(Little Bear's Friend, by Else Holmelund Minarik, Harper & Row)

Then there's that wonderful bit where Emily, moved by her love for Little Bear, hands over Lucy, her dearest possession, and tells Little Bear she wants him to have Lucy for keeps. Little Bear barely responds before Emily pulls Lucy back again and says she forgot, but she has to take Lucy to school with her. Minarik is particularly perceptive in this book; we long to show our love in the face of impending loss, and yet we hold fast to the things that make us secure in the face of change.

Two big tears run down Little Bear's face after Emily and Lucy leave, and Mother Bear scoops him up into her lap. What Elspeth didn't know as I read the story out loud, what she has not yet experienced, is the bittersweet pain of leaving dear ones and dear places; what my childhood was filled with; what I felt when I saw my sister and my child-names in the front of this book.

Escape

This morning, as I leafed through my writing notebook in search of enough blank pages to record an interview, I came across this statement, alone on the paper (but for some kid scribbles):

In moments like these, I plan my escape.
Martin, in his getaway boat

I'm not quite sure what was going on the day I wrote that--an exhale in the midst of an endless grey wintry week, perhaps? Another incident involving children howling, crayons and walls?

As my friend said today after we hauled four children through Walmart, "Some days I just feeling like applying for a new job." Yup. Don't we all, some days, no matter what we're doing.

And. . .speaking of Walmart, I ventured into some unchartered territory today: the men's restroom. Bea split and made a beeline for the restrooms, inexplicably veering around a corner into the land of urinals and big fellas not-fully-clothed. I had no choice but to follow--my first instinct was to close both my eyes, just in case, but I realized in a split second that I could not, so I compromised, closed one eye, and grabbed her by her hot pink hood, sputtering, "Sorry!" at the same time. As I held her around the waist on the way to the car through the dreary parking lot, I laughed out loud. All in all, it was a much finer experience than running after Merry and Elspeth while I was heavily pregnant with Bea--also in Walmart. There's something about that place in particular--I don't go often but when I do, the gods punish me.

Now I've started to chastise myself a bit for feeling momentarily overwhelmed, thinking of all the women who have done much harder jobs than I--most every single one through history, as a matter of fact. My dear Grandma I. fed her family of six before working a night shift, and then she arrived home in time to feed her children breakfast before sending them off to school. She did this for twenty years. And I? Here I am at the computer as Bea sleeps, with a small handful of tasks waiting for me if I feel like doing them. So buck up, me. Stop complaining.

I've got a short story to tackle yet again, written in a slightly different voice than the one I'm accustomed to--for a while I felt like I was wearing clothes too big for me, suspenders that kept falling off my shoulders--but I think it's coming around. Last night I sat down, determined not to be outdone, and plowed through for an hour or so until I finished the first rewrite. And now there's yet another. And another. And another. Which calls for that many, or more, cups of tea. And a cup of tea is a small escape.

Isn't life, escape plans and all, grand?

FYI, folks, just got three short pieces of fiction published at Prick of the Spindle.
:) You can read them by clicking on that pink link up there.

And the OR column this week is my favorite so far, about this wonderful man who lives down the street from us (click on the Observer Reporter link, at right for more). I only wish I could have included all that he told me "off the record." At one point, in true Kim Cockroft bungler-style, I confirmed his wife's name: "So your wife's name is Margaret, right?" He looked humorously horrified and said, "Goodness, don't print that. She'll think I've been running around on her." (His wife's name is Nancy.)

It's a good thing I was taking notes for that interview, because after I'd taped the whole thing with my nifty new recorder, it went off independently; embarrassed at the sound of our voices, I panicked, pressed as many buttons as possible, and subsequently erased the entire thing. Machines stink. Pens rock.

Hot Blasts of Autumn

Bea and I spent the morning walking through the parks that span two of our favorite places--the library and Waynesburg University. Starting across the street at Bowlbly Library (a converted mansion with a resident library cat), we crossed into the greens of College Park and made our way across a little footbridge (stopping to check for trolls), up and around the gazebo, past the tiny pond edged with cattails. We finally edged around the fountain (full but not flowing) and up the steep path that leads to one of the ugliest buildings at the University--a big concrete block constructed in the dark ages of architecture: yellowy windows, no features at all, massive and blank on all sides. The Humanities building. Inside its unyielding walls works one of the most beautiful people ever molded, and from his glass jar we picked an orange lollipop.

It is quite warm again today--high 80's--but a wind gusts every now and then, the leaves drift across the grass, and the hills have begun to turn yellow. Merry's huge pumpkin out in the pool garden is striated with deep jade and dark orange. Tomorrow the weather is supposed to finally give up and become autumnal. High of 68 is what I hear. Now, that's something to celebrate!

I'm about to put an enormous bottle of white wine in the refrigerator. We will pop the cork, eat some Supersweet cherry tomatoes, and toast the real end of summer.

Elspea's Flights

Elspeth came back from a women's soccer game at the U full of news of Polima, who is her friend with red hair and blue eyes who lives in a white house with a black flag. And did you know that through our bedroom window, you can see not only the swing set calling Elspeth out to swing and the bright blue sky of morning, but you can see camels? Many of them, by the sound of it.

And last night Elspeth had a dream in which a throne became a wave the size of China that covered our house and all our belongings, including Merry's elephant. "After I dreamt that, I came into bed with you," she said. On first report, the wave also engulfed Elspea's Pink Bear, but that was a mistake. "I was actually holding pink bear," Elspeth clarified.

This is not to mention the reports of Elspeth's preschool teacher climbing through the roof (this was last year), the mountains of candy distributed freely at snacktime, or the horrendously scary stories some gentleman told all the children at recess.

I wish I could remember them all for you. But it's ten and my mind is trickling away. I wonder if Polima ever feels that way.

Egg Yolks

Is there anything more satisfying than the moment a taut cherry tomato POPS in your mouth?

Confession: I also love popping egg yolks in my mouth. I wait until nobody is watching and then I shovel in the entire yolk and. . .ah, bliss. This disgusts Martin. It may also disgust you. My friend Lindsay (see her blog, Light on the Ridge, in Calling Cards) just wrote a delightful piece about her family harvesting local eggs from a friend and her "girls." She's right about the difference between eggs straight from under a "girl" or an egg from a crate at market--the shells are beautiful, the yolks bright as suns. We get our eggs from our good friend Mike, who also sells pork from his "boys--" the main reason, for certain, that I am not a vegetarian. Ohhhhh, man, are his pigs deeeelicious. Even our vegetarian family breaks down and shovels in mouthful of Mike's pork or goes for a bite of his thick-cut, peppered bacon. Here's a chicken pic in return for yours, Linds.
I LOVE food. It is one of the most dear things of this life.

What is more glorious: the first golden cherry tomato of summer (or red, if you prefer), or the initial crunch of autumn's first apple, say a really good, hard Gala or the almost bitter Arkansas Black? It's almost time for a trip to one of our local orchards. This year, the kids and I are going picking for a change.

Oh, man, I am tired out tonight. I feel as though I can't quite keep the momentum going. You guessed it. Girl's Night. A walk through an uncommonly warm afternoon, spaghetti, broccoli delivered into our mouths by our fingers. Merry was shirtless and Elspeth was in her underwear. Try to figure that one out.

The girls did well, dressing themselves and each other for bed, tidying up, and obeying without too much fuss. And I am still exhausted. The powers that be forecast temperatures in the high 80s for the rest of the week. In Lindsay's blog, she's all get-upped in this darling woolen hat. I may just have to break out the girls' shorts again. It's been scorching these past months. Will somebody please remind me to water the yellowing plants on my front porch? I've given up on the hanging geranium. I'm not attentive enough. The romance is over.

Martin Loses Locks. . . AND. . . Merry Encounters Tabloids

WHO IS MARTIN AND WHO IS EZRA POUND (from Wikipedia)?



MARTIN GETS ALL CUT UP
This man cuts me up. I mean, I cut this man up, or his hair at least. I had to eat a lot of gummy letters to get through this particular hair cut. Martin began the evening by showing me a ridiculous--but informative--video on YouTube of a gorgeous woman with dark hair cutting the locks of "her man." I think Martin figured I would have received an excellent education because he confidently set up our salon in the kitchen, complete with "Arrested Development" on the lap-top. I shook open the gummy candy and turned on the razor.
BEFORE
Three episodes later. Martin and I have had an argument (consisting of his doubts being vocalized insistently that I was NOT following the video instruction)--I won because I had the clippers and the scissors. The clippers pretty much jumped up the back of his neck and sheared him like a sheep. I put those away in a hurry, my distrust of machines proven yet again. And then I set to, clipping close to the scalp, eating gummy candies, and trying not to say, "Whoops" out loud.
AFTER
Here's "My Man," lookin good, like I knew he would. Like a British folk rock star.
_________________________________________
On the way home from a friend's house this afternoon, Merry said, "Mommy can you turn [the music] down? I have something very important to tell you."

(Background: she and her friend, Cat, had gone to Walmart together earlier this afternoon.)

Merry began to explain: "Cat and I were looking at a magazine at the store, and it had a picture of President Obama on it."

"Really?"

"Yes, and it said Obama wants a baby, but Mitchell does not.

"I think her name is Michelle, honey."

"And then it had a bubble with an arrow on it that pointed to Obama's finger and the bubble said, NO WEDDING RING."

Martin and I were beginning to grin but Merry was grave.

"It said, Mitchell and Obama have a TERRIBLE FIGHT! They looked very serious. The picture said, NO WEDDING RING." Later Merry said, "Cat said they're divorced. Or they're about to be."

Merry, welcome to the beautiful, scintillating world of tabloids at check-out lines, where the world is full of endless possibilities and opportunities for gossip.