I just found Bea in her room (where the little angel is supposed to be napping), trying to clean up a sea of baby powder from her floor with a red bandana. And the baroque music plays loudly as she wipes in time to the harpsichord! It's enough to make a mother like me, who has a truck load of work to do, impatient. A shuffle, paper flipped by an imprecise hand. She's reading. Guess that's better than a million particulates in the air. Speaking of which, I wonder if she can actually breathe in there. . .

O blast it all.

Today is the third in a series of gloriously sunny days that peak in the mid 50s to 60s. Bea and I both have colds and were driving each other a bit batty this morning so off we went on a walk up through the neighborhood hills. We stopped for a while at Nancy's house, and I broke some leaves off her kale plants. Bea fanned the air with one; they were riddled with holes but still very beautiful. You can't tell we plucked any; the bushes are so dense and ruffly, planted right at the front step where I often sat with her.

And then I weeded. Nancy would have been sad to see the grass choking her bearded irises--she always gloried in their full, citrusy smell every year. She planted them in a wet corner of her yard along with purple echinacea (coneflowers) and something else feathery and green--fennel, I'm guessing. The echinacea has gone to seed, black spiky balls, and I left those, because I think they look pretty covered in snow. I made a small mountain of grasses and Bea ran up and down the lawn, eating (I later found out) at least one tiny purple berry that I think is poisonous. I watched her for signs of convulsions but she seems to be fine.

It was good to be alone in Nancy's garden with the plants she nested in the ground last spring. I pulled up the dried black stacks of basil, still redolent with scent. Bea picked the last of the tiny tomatoes and ate them and I walked home, the back of the stroller filled with kale leaves, which will be all the sweeter now after the first autumn frosts.

Across the street, a brown circle in the grass where the neighbor's inflatable swimming pool sat all winter. A Japanese maple weeps red on the lawn, the peonies I left in my mind are brown and papery. I need to go outside.

wednesday mishmash

I know this is bizarre, but I'm thinking how nice it would be to lower myself into a cup of hot cocoa, loop my arms around the edges of the cup, and push my face into a melting marshmallow.

Kind of disgusting but o so warm and sweet.

I interviewed two very intelligent zealots today who are leaders in the push for water quality, regulation and rights of land owners. I can't get them, or the issues, or the huge job of distilling almost two hours of interview into a few short columns out of my mind. Even when I was whacking back the hedges today--it was sunny and warm and perfect for outdoor work--my head spun with all I had heard. The chemistry is completely over my head but the urgency of the situation hits close to the heart, or should I say, to my mouth that I open to admit water, which, though it's filtered, is not as pure as I'd like and is certainly not good enough to give to my three daughters.

Sigh. Sometimes I think I was made to be just a poet and fiction writer. This journalism stuff is stretching me like taffy--see? What a terrible simile. It must be the stress.

One last thing. Last night I was taking a shower with the pocket door slid tightly to keep the bathroom as hot and steamy as possible. Suddenly, Elspeth, who was supposed to be sound asleep, burst through making a racket deserving of a large land mammal. "Mommy!" she said, as my precious steam leaked into the cold hallway.

"Mommy, Merry won't read me her WORDS and I want to hear them!"

Elspeth teeters at the brink of elementary fluency and not being able to read like her fourth-grade sister frustrates her sometimes. But I knew what she was talking about--Merry's teeny tiny journal--so diminutive, in fact, that Merry can fit only a few words on each page.

"She doesn't have to read you her words," I called from the shower. "She's writing in a diary, and diaries are private. You can have a diary too if you want, and then nobody can read what you write."

"Merry has a DIARY?" Elspeth was incredulous. "Like from her BOTTOM?"

"Go back to bed, and close the door after you." I had to grin, though--the lowest types of humor never fail to tickle a funny bone, even if its a hidden one you pretend you don't have.

16 oz jar: 13.25

Only three left in stock on Amazon.com.

But I bought mine at $2.50 a jar at Target a week and a half ago. Martin scoffed to see the kitchen counter covered in a small army of Smucker's creamy and chunky. But we'll see who's making fun of whom when February comes and peanut butter is costing us over ten bucks a jar.

Panic struck my peanut-loving heart when my mother arrived two weeks ago and informed me a peanut shortage was just around the corner. The farmers in Georgia did not have a good year.

I love a good PBJ with a glass of milk. I love peanut butter on pancakes, in cookies, smeared on apples. I left a token two jars on the store shelf, but I greedily scooped the rest into my cart. And now I'm glad I did, because the price on Amazon has doubled since I checked last week. Find your favorite peanut butter, people, and stock up. The day of reckoning is near. Read more by clicking: PEANUT BUTTER PRICES SKY ROCKET

World Concern, where my dear dad works, got a pretty great shout-out from the NY Times. Read about the good they're doing through food vouchers in a Somalian town struck by famine by clicking: World Concern

Last night, after the girls organized their heaps of trick or treat candy, Bea seized a Peanutbutter Cup and retreated to her Secret Place. (We trick or treat on Thursday--strange? Yes. It's a town tradition).

Secret Place is behind an armchair in the sun room. It looks as if Merwin the Mouse has taken up residence but it's Bea who discards candy wrappers, hides cell phones, and squirrels away her sisters' small toys.

Elspeth found the orange Reese's wrapper and produced it triumphantly. "Bea stole candy!" she announced, to which I responded with a stock line, drawn from many stock lines that I say to be a good parent even though they bore me:

"Well, since Bea chose to enjoy her treat early, she doesn't get any later."

Bea's face crumpled. "Mommy," she choked out, "You bweaking my heawt."

"What?"

"You're breaking my heart, Mommy," she said, beginning to sob.

So now I'm a heartbreaker. Better get used to it, girls. It won't be the last time.

We saw God today and I mean that literally

"I just saw God," Beatrix declared calmly. I looked around the shelves of budget books for a kid's Bible.

"You mean you saw him in a picture," I said.

"No. I saw him."

"You can't see God," I said. I was tired and feeling less imaginative than usual.

Bea smiled. "Yes, you can." She wandered toward the poetry section and pointed. "There he is!"

A man with a white beard and a button-down shirt stared at the spines of books.

"That man there?" I whispered. "That's not God."

She nodded her head and crossed her arms. I'd just read her Aladdin, King of Thieves, most awful of Disney books. I was ready to browse a little myself and go. Martin was engrossed in the poetry section and I'd replaced several pink Christmas books and sat on a tiny chair and sang nursery rhymes as Bea plunked on an electric piano. The books were of middling quality but they were cheap. And God was apparently interested in a deal, because he was there.

"It is God," Bea insisted.

"Let's go ask him," I said, pulling her over to the bearded man. I thought it was odd that Bea had picked out a white bearded man, the classic image of God from Michelangelo to the 1950's, especially because we have never presented her with any like images, preferring to leave the physical God qualities up to her. It's hard enough to explain "spirit" to an adult, let alone a three-year old who demands, "Well, where? I can't see!"

But she had found God now, in the stacks of Half Price Books.

"Sir?" I asked. "Excuse me, sir?" I stepped closer. "Sir!"

He looked up. "Yes."

"Sorry, sir, my daughter would like to know if you are God."

He smiled. Mildly. I was surprised--I thought he'd put his head back and roar with laughter. I would, if someone asked me if I were God. He acted as if he got this question all the time. Bea was just one more in a long line of kids who thought he might be God.

"No," he said. "I'm just an engineer. And I forgot my flip-up tie today."

What's a flip-up tie?

He went back to browsing.

On the way home, as I told Martin about the encounter, Martin said, "If you asked God, would God answer you directly?"

"Maybe not. The man said he forgot his flip-up tie."

"That's probably just what God would say," Martin said, flicking on cruise control. We had thirty minutes to get back for Elspeth's school party.

"He did say he was an engineer," I said. "I guess that squares."

As for Bea, her faith remains unshaken. When I put her down for a nap, she pointed to a picture of a man in a yellow robe that hangs on the wall of her room. "That's God," she says. "And he has a beard."

Which may explain why Merry, who easily feels guilty, was always terrified of men with beards.

On the other hand, Bea has never singled out a bearded man and called him God before, and we see plenty of beards in our parts. If God did make an unexpected appearance at a discount bookstore, I missed the biggest chance of my life. I would have asked him some questions and I would have waited while he answered, even if his answers were as weird as the flip-up tie. And if you've read the Bible, the chances are pretty good that the answers would have been full of bizarre. Still. . . .

My column this week seems to have stirred the pot a bit. Read it by clicking on the geranium at right. What do you all think about the gas boom in our part of Pennsylvania?

My father, who is currently waiting with his pants rolled up to his knees in Bangkok, wrote that though he was distracted by the flood waters rolling their way, he was nevertheless sorry to hear about poor Merwin's destruction.

Dad, Merwin's not DEAD. Merwin lives, at least he did when we slipped him from his black box, the clever TIP TRAP. Merwin enjoyed his tasty peanut butter snack until he bolted like a flash into the underbrush by our favorite cemetery, the one where Martin once fled from a threatening buck and where a stained glass woman with strange eyes and foreboding mouth terrifies college students. THAT cemetery, the one to which I hiked with you and Mom one sunny Christmas afternoon when the house was heavy and somnolent with pumpkin pie and turkey smells. We stood in the crisp air among the stones on the hill, watching the red-roofed houses sleep off Christmas dinner. On the way back you trapped yourself on the banks of Purman Run creek, rolled up your pants, threw across your keys, wallet and phone, and proceeded to wade the icy, rushing waters.

Turns out that western Pennsylvania adventure was good practice for now, now that you are waiting for a flood that hopefully won't reach you. Why do you end up in floodwaters? Wasn't Mozambique enough for you? Perched on a roof, throwing children and women into helicopters, didn't you decide then, "This is a thrill but perhaps not one that I should repeat." ??? Is mouse-catching and disposal and the thrill therein not enough for your sense of excitement? Must you go to Thailand for MORE?

In all seriousness, we're glad you're there helping; we hope you do not see water coming your way; and not to worry, Merwin lives and you can now concentrate your energies on survival. I thought I'd put your mind to rest.

I remain
your faithful daughter

PS. The kids and I wish you were here eating apple cake and pumpkin cookies.

Dear one,

I surprise myself: I miss you. Will this letter find you out in the grey cemetery? It's raining tonight, and I'm thinking of you, hoping you've found a warm place among the dripping goldenrod, beneath the deep sweet mat of maple leaves.

The night we finally realized you must leave, I made you a last meal--your favorite. Pouring peanuts into a bowl, Martin laughed at me for grinding them for you, but I knew you'd enjoy it. You never really appreciated my cooking but by golly, I knew you loved peanut butter.

The next morning, leaning over the long black box where you lay, we knew it was time to ease you into the car for our first and last trip with you. The box was so dark, we could barely believe you were inside. The girls wanted to come, but I told them I would describe the moment of your departure, and I vowed to memorize the trees, the way the road curved up toward the skyline, the way we said goodbye to you. I even brought my camera, but it would be to no avail--you left us much too quickly.

We thought it would be a safe place for you, the quiet of the grey stone. From the hill, you can see the whole town with its towers and steeples laid out before you like a sea full of ships. The morning was cool, the sky bright through layers of mist.

We stopped the car and stood around your box for a while. And then we said goodbye, and you were gone in an instant, dissolving into the underbrush. We got back in the car and drove slowly away, and the sky in my rear view mirror filled with illuminated clouds, so bright I stopped the car, jumped out, and watched them, wondering that they could look so much like another world passing over this one.

At home since you've been gone, I miss your face in the evenings, the way you stopped and turned your head as you looked at me. I miss the sudden sound of your entrance when you joined us in a room, the feeling that I was never completely alone with you nearby.

You were such a fastidious, unassuming presence here, dear Merwin, but it always seemed as if you should not be with us. And now you have gone and there are no more Merwins, no shadows of you, as I once thought. You, with your sleek brown face and cunning manners, were one of a kind.

I have to admit, I half hoped that perhaps you had thumbed your considerable nose at us and stuffed the box with a decoy, and that when we reached the cemetery we would suddenly find that it was not you inside, but some impostor, a limp doll or a scrap of blanket. I had faith in you, Merwin, as someone of letters and intellect. But I was mistaken.

I hope this epistle reaches you somehow, Merwin, and I hope that you have not wandered too close to the buildings next to the cemetery hoping for respite. I have heard they are cold-blooded killers there waiting for you and your kind. Much luck, Merwin, and may you have a litter of twenty, twenty times over.

Yours,

K Cockroft, Wazoo Farm

The Southeast Review's latest issue is out and my story, "Patron Saint of Trees," is inside. Click HERE to go to the site.

Season Change

In the garden, still a few globes of color
whirling in gusty breath that shakes trees,
catches bristle-tips of squirrel tails,
flickers like candles in gathering dusk.

Now is the fat time
before all is still
and winter holds the earth,
all the quiet beasts,
even fishes ice-suspended.

And I began to exhale until the release
is too much and I grasp it all up again,
the black pencil-lines of cosmos,
corn silk, raspberry stain
and like a child hoarding toys,
I hate winter--
softened now by summer days,
bare feet, rosemary hours
and the old maple, a grandmother
suddenly young again, her leaves
so tender and cool. I wanted dense
shade, rain, clockless evenings.

Some of us get fancy

dandy lion or

their version of Dandelion (original by Don Freeman)