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.

Off to Red Barn Farm

We spent last Sunday at Red Barn Farm, a self-sustaining dream come true. Jeannie Williams, a burnt-out preschool teacher, was inspired by Barbara Kingsolver's "Animal, Vegetable. . ." and went to work with an astounding energy. I wanted to glean a couple of articles so I carried around my tape recorder all morning, in the chicken coop and goat pens,
up muddy hills, and in the warmth of a hoop house lined with spinach, bak choy, and other gorgeous winter crops. Look at those nannies, so protective of their kids; they could hear them from across the barn and would charge off looking for one, nosing it back safely among the other babies. Here's Elspeth standing in front of a cunning structure built by a local artisan, all by hand with stone, into a hillside. It looks like a hobbit should live there but it's actually a cellar where Jeannie Williams stores her jams.

To read the sweet, syrupy story of our trip to Red Barn Farm (which is mostly about Llew Williams' maple tapping operation), click here.

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.

My fingers are stiff from a walk (I carried tired Bea the whole time) though it's so blue and sunshiny you forget how cold it is. I came home, put on the teapot, and watered plants. I found a nice gift waiting for me at the end of a brown peach tree cutting I'd whisked inside after pruning some weeks ago. It wasn't a blossom--those have already appeared--but a slender green leaf, tightly rolled and just beginning to unfurl. I remember my first year of college, when the Women's Chorale left Chicago and headed south on tour. The flowering trees were lovely but it was the leaves that filled me with joy--I remember wanting to eat them by the handful.

So maybe the leaf wasn't waiting for me at all--leaves and stones and sunsets don't, really--but maybe, without knowing in, in my weariness this afternoon, I was waiting for the leaf. And I found it.

I will cap this pleasure with a hot cup of tea and move from there to wine, and then my happiness may very well be complete.

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.

Tall Order

Last night, as Martin slept, he dreamt that he was a waiter in a diner. His sole customer, a woman and a novelist he had never seen before, slightly older than he, demanded pancakes. When he brought her the plate she snapped, "I wanted burned pancakes."

"They are burned," he said, lifting one to check.

"I wanted them burned on both sides," she said, and waved him away.

Poor Martin took the plate back to the kitchen and explained the order to the cook, who grumpily threw them back on the skillet and began burning the other side.

"I want eggs, too!" Martin turned around and found that the woman novelist had followed him into the kitchen. She fixed him with her beady eye and specified: "A cooked egg within an egg."

This morning we were eating a much less complicated breakfast--Cheerios and muesli--when Martin recounted his dream. I, chief dream interpreter and magician of the Cockroft household, spun this explanation: the woman, who is unrecognizable except as a figment of Martin's imagination, is Martin's creative spirit, or Muse. She's a pushy spirit, asking Martin for things he must go to great lengths to provide, even the impossible and enigmatic Egg Within an Egg.

He performs drudge work and even still he is unable to please his Muse, whom he both wants to please and feels bitter toward.

Why? Because these days, we have no time or energy for creative writing. None. Neither of us have written a poem or story in months. We've been writing of course--Martin sketches syllabi and lesson plans and I've been writing for the paper, and both are important and rewarding in their own right. But we both feel utterly divorced from our creative writing, and the muses are getting grumpy.

Martin felt this when he arrived home yesterday evening and groaned, "I'm so tired. I feel absolutely drained." On closer inspection of his day, we realized he hadn't eaten breakfast nor lunch--an involuntary fast due to a hectic, packed day.

And here I am now, typing away when I should be working on a story for a magazine or at least catching up with our Everests of laundry. But I need to toss my hungry Muse a little scrap now and then to keep her from devouring me. . .though I don't know whether I'll ever be able to fulfill Martin's tall order. That's up to him and his spirit to settle.

I just found out that I know one of Boston's "Singular Sensations," a guy Merry used to call, in her tiny lisp, "Uncle Kurt." To those of you who know the man, I'm sure you'll agree he's pretty special. To see him, click the link above and scroll down until you get to the most dashing person, and it will be Kurt.

Rocky Raccoon came into the room. . .

Martin said that Beatrix fell asleep as he was reading the second chapter of a new book tonight. What better way to drift off, he said, and I agreed with him. I was off in the evening to my friend Sal's house, who turned another year older today, and am I ever grateful she was born and is tucked up in the same corner of the earth as I. I see her almost every day; she provides sanity and joy to our family and is truly a generous auntie to my kids and godmother to Beatrix.

Rocky Raccoon is busy in the trashcans outside so Martin is rapping on the window and yelling in a fake, gruff voice. Rocky knows Martin doesn't really mean it. He's tenacious, that animal--he found a tiny hole in the top of our can and persevered until he had pulled a plastic sack through it. Our neighbors have a live trap ("We heard you have a problem with coons, too," they said, and reserved our pick up truck to drive into the country in case they catch one). A man who lives by the creek not far from here and has been gardening for forty years or so told me this story in an interview. It was "off the record" (of course--the best ones always are).

"The coons kept eating my garden," he recalled with a twinkle in his eye, "So I caught them all and took them up the hill to my friend's property and let them go. Well, my friend comes down and he's all surprised and says, 'Harry (not his real name), I opened the door to my pick up this morning and guess what was sitting there staring at me? A coon! Now, how did he get there?' I just shook my head and shrugged. 'I have no idea,' I said."

This cloak-and-dagger operation has got to be better than another of our neighbor's solutions--that was, shoot the coon and drop him into the trashcan (which they kept four feet from the side of our house). In 85 plus degree weather, you can imagine the wretchedness--it smelled like a morgue until the sanitation crew came for regular pick-up, and. . .no, I'll stop there. It's too awful.

Martin said Rocky's tail flashed as he ran off just now--but he'll be back, poking his black-gloved fingers in the hole in the top of the can. And if that's the way he wants to pass his evening. . .well, so be it. I'm just grateful not to be nocturnal, especially as tomorrow holds an interview with about two hundred elementary school kids. And an hour of photos and flats of plants. Should be fun.

For the first time, my articles appear in three places on the Observer-Reporter page. I disclosing this information mainly for my family, who will read anything I write. See if you can find my articles, Mom and Dad (both sets of you)--three places (click on any of them for the main page): Pinewood Derby, "Nourishment and Hope," and "Love at First Sight."

The rest of you, read if you'd like; and remember your days of glory in the Pinewood Derby (if you raced); or if you're like me, recall your brother's first, and last Pinewood Derby car.

A postscript to my mother: Remind me to clip and send the article to you of the toothless bankrobber. I didn't cover that story but I enjoyed it.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

THE MAN IS 36 TODAY

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.