Big Nosed Me

Elspeth, while snuggling with me last night, said, "Mommy, you look like the child-catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang."

"You mean I look like Truly Scrumptious?" I queried, hoping I had misheard.

"No, like the child-catcher." She paused and continued matter-of-factly: "You have a big nose."

All these years, struggling to accept my great big Finish honker, and the child tells it like it is. I am proud to say I laughed, and it was a good laugh from my tummy, not a sad laugh. I do have a big nose.

As an unrelated postscript, I made a cake for our lovely babysitter, decorating it with icing balloons, until I suddenly realized, "These don't look like balloons! They look like sperm!" Truly, green sperm swimming all over her cake. Thankfully Elspeth covered the images in such layers of sprinkles that you can't even see them anymore.

From a Mama Letter

You see above my mama with crazy-haired Baby Beatrix. Here my mama is saying, "You're just the funniest looking baby--" and Bea was with her hair always on end--now she's just the littlest of the Cockroft nesting dolls.

And below is a little excerpt from a letter I just wrote to my mama, who is very very far away today.

September 16, 2009

Dear Mom,
How strange to think of you so far away today. You are perhaps on your way to Lamu, that East African island fabled for its clear pristine water and white beaches. The night you and Dad were flying across the ocean toward Amsterdam and then onto Nairobi I slept badly. Maybe it was biology that made me feel bereft as you went further and further away. I thought the next day what it would be like to be without you completely and I am thankful that is not so.

I remember when I was ten or so and Daddy took Heather and me off to Ecuador, and how melancholy I felt looking out of the plane window at the clouds tinged with pink, thinking of you being very far away, back in Georgia with Kenton. Of course I had a wonderful time but I missed you every day. I still remember well how, after one of our vehicles rammed into the side of the mountain on a narrow road, Daddy let me walk through a field, heavy with dew or rain (I don’t remember which), and though it had looked Romantic to me and I had pictured myself picking a bouquet and wandering happily through the flowers, the whole excursion mostly produced anxiety about fat bees and soggy shoes. In the end I was a discomforted little girl who reproached herself for the rest of the trip until her shoes dried. Would you have let me walk through the field if you had been there?

So you are off to Lamu with Dad, continents and time zones away from our house, and I am here in my office, with the warm autumn sunlight filtering through the window screen. Outside the garden is at its mellow decline, alive with the sound of crickets. The sunflowers are heavy and will soon be bereft of all their seeds. Elspeth and I went out early yesterday morning to harvest the sharp, black cosmos seeds and the last of the raspberries. Some of the berries were half eaten by wasps and bees, and the lower ones were absent due to the vigorous munching of our groundhog, Grassy Sam, who is as fat as ever. He is more of a friendly presence in our garden than the renowned pest most people think of. I actually find the sight of his big wiry bottom disappearing down our hill comforting.

We have come to be more and more at ease about the garden, a bit more zen-like in our approach (though perhaps that translates to lazy), and we share our produce with the critters pretty happily though I must admit annoyance when the deer chomp down our lovely fruit trees to stumps on a regular basis. Then I am inclined to make myself feel better by thinking of all the trouble fruit trees could be: prone to disease, and having to be harvested year after year, and so convince myself that even the deer’s damage is okay. Isn’t it easier just to buy apples at Farmer’s Market, after all?

Well, that’ll do me for now. Beatrix is about to climb up my chair and stage a coup.

Groundhog? More like Life Coach

I have Grassy Sam, our resident groundhog, to thank for getting us out of the house this afternoon.

I had just finished complaining to Martin that I was getting The Cold, I didn't feel like making supper, I just felt like laying around, etc., etc., when I looked out the window and saw our substantially tubby groundhog, on his hind legs, devouring our red raspberries.

To tell you the truth, it was kind of adorable. I rapped on the screen but Grassy Sam was not deterred. So out I went, ordering the girls to turn off the TV and get outside.

The afternoon was mellow and lovely. The leaves on our Black Walnut were tinged with yellow, the sunflowers heavy with their seeds, the raspberries (black and red), hanging full on their stems. Beatrix immediately soaked herself in mud and then beat a path down our hill to the swings. Merry and Elspeth climbed on their slick sleds and slid down the hill (yes, they slide on grass, incredibly--its either the sleds or the red wagon, and the sleds go so much more gently).

I picked about four cups of raspberries, enough for another batch of jam, and I pushed Elspeth on the tire swing and made Beatrix laugh and scolded Merry for her "campout" debris still in the yard, made it up the stairs, and arrived at the house with enough energy to cook. Merry, my queen-girl, took the other two girls upstairs, poured the bath, bathed them, and brought them down freshly dressed.

I got to listen to NPR while I cooked dinner.

And it's all thanks to Grassy Sam, happy groundhog and life coach.

Name that Girl

Can you sort out who is who?

Elspeth or Bea?

Evidence of

I just had one of those experiences that makes you want to crack right down the middle because you are so full of goodness you can't contain it anymore. It's been a happy day, full of good people. After dinner I fed the baby ice cream while the girls went out on the porch swing to eat theirs in little flowered bowls. Martin drifted off to the piano in the hallway and began to play. Beatrix, stripped down to her diaper, swayed in time as she ate her ice cream, babbling companionably. Then she climbed down from her chair and began running up and down the hallway. The sun coming in the front door formed a column of shining light that stretched down the hallway. As Martin played she ran back and forth, her body aglow, her fat, turning legs silhouetted as they moved. When I looked away, I found my eyes were blinded with the light, and the sunspots were dark in my sight.

And I thought: Is this what happens to the magic? It masses inside us, it blinds our eyes, it leaves its marks on our soul, so when we look away into the darkness our sight is changed forever. So that when I am very old and the clarity of my happinesses are but impressions, like shadows left by a bright sun, someone will say, "There is evidence that this life was filled with great joy."

Miss Potter Letter One

August 25, 2009

Dear Ms. Potter,

I hardly know how to begin a letter to you. I don’t admire many people the way I esteem you; neither do I feel inspired by anyone who has already died, except maybe a few saints, my own relatives, and Jesus. And by living gratefully, I do try to pay homage to all women who have written and mothered and found joy in daily life and in the earth of their gardens. And I try to honor women like you—headstrong, determined, lovers of the earth and all that lives there.

I suppose we have very little in common. You were never a mother, and I married young. I value community and a full but simple life, and I believe your life was less peopled, though full. I am American, though I lived most of my life overseas. I have never made any real money from writing, so I do not have any resources to be a philanthropist like you. I cannot draw small animals. I do not really like touching small animals, including rabbits, and I never filled my room with leaves and sticks and small woodland creatures as a girl, as you did.

To tell you the absolute truth, and I hope you don’t mind—I don’t really read your picture books very often. I enjoy looking at your sketches, including the beautiful pictures of fungi. I love your illustrations, those with flowers, gardens, and especially geraniums (though it’s ghastly the way Peter has been marketed, I’m sorry to tell you—he nibbles his carrot on all sorts of places: baby blankets, silverware, cups, cards, probably even on diaper, or nappy, pails). But your books are a little dense these days even for my oldest, Merry, and they are sometimes frightening, as when Jemima Puddleduck’s eggs are eaten by the fox.

But I greatly admire your frank handling of farm and country life, and the girls think it’s very interesting that Peter Rabbit’s father was baked into a pie by Mrs. McGregor. Just today at the lunch table we were discussing the source of our ham—Merry thought maybe the pig just lived a long life, died from natural causes, and then we ate him—but I put her right. Maybe she will be a vegetarian. I was for a while, but then my love of meat convinced me to try to be a responsible eater—only animals who have been happy and healthy appear on our plates. I try to eat local food, conserve the earth, and. . .but this rather boring all in all and I’d much rather tell you about my friend the robin who keeps me company while I garden in the spring, who jumps down the rows, cocking his head and thanking me for fresh worms. At times like these, when I feel hidden from the rest of the world, with my hands in soil, quieting myself with things so other than myself—then I feel most at peace. This is one reason I admire you, a naturalist, so much, though I, being scatterbrained, will never be a true naturalist myself.

I love to picture you in your farm house, drinking tea and organizing important matters of property, discussing farm details with your husband, and adjusting an outfit for a mouse or a duck. It must be nice to belong to a place so completely, to love that place, and then to leave it to a country who will love it. We moved so often, and though I treasure the diverse experiences I enjoyed, I often longed to belong somewhere. I think you would like the country around the little town where we live now. It reminds me a little of England, though it’s heavily wooded and the hills are quite close together. We barely have a level space even for our garden.

Before I close, I do want to tell you that our last child is named Beatrix, after you, Ms. Potter. My husband and I both thought of your name, independently and without discussion: “Do you know what we should call her [the new baby]?” I shouted to the next room, my hands clasped on top of my pregnant belly. “How about Beatrix?” my husband called back, and since that was just the name I was going to suggest, we felt it was a sign.

Must get the girls to sleep now! It’s been a busy day and the night is finally cooling. Thank you so much for your time, Ms. Potter. I am very

Admiringly Yours,

Forsythia Fern

Shed

In the dark last night, Martin nailed in the last wall of our shed. Here's him a week or so ago working on the roof:

Tomorrow, Merry starts public school for the first time! She's excited! More later. . .beautiful day outside--in the 70s, sunny and breezy. I don't want to miss it!

Here are Some Brave Men

SWIMMING in the Puget Sound this past summer. . .rather chilly-o.

Here at home: chocolate cake, banana bread, tea on its way. Yes, FINALLY it's cool enough to turn on the oven. And I'm SO very glad it's Friday. What a long week it's been. There's rain, which makes me feel cozy and brings back days in Kenya during the rainy season. Makes me long for Fall, which may be foolish since that season is a brief pleasure before winter buckles us into our sweaters. But I love autumn; I love what happens to the garden; I love the way everything ripens and deepens and begins to glow around us. I love the cozy nights and warm nightgowns on the girls and feeling good putting my feet in socks and slippers. I love brown sweaters and gentle rain and the nutty smell of the earth and the way it softens under my tread before freezing.

This will be a different sort of Fall, since it sees Merry go off to the public school for second grade, sees Elspeth start preschool, and me working part-time and attending a class. Yes! Yes! Yes!

A Brief Hop and Skip Through Bliss

Summer is waning, though you wouldn't know it around here. . .It's been warm, warm, warm!

I finally downloaded pictures from last summer, so here's a brief hop and skip through our wonderful, wonderful, time. Thanks to many of you who read this blog, we had an incredible season. Thank you!

Here's Bea enjoying a view of Mt. Rainer from the Edmonds Ferry:

And my nephew 'Siah and I among the lupines in the Cascades:

Martin in fabled "Cicely" from 'Northern Exposure,' which is NOT in Alaska, but WA!

Then there was a short but time-of-souls-meeting with Merry's godparents and princes of godbrothers,

and with Elspeth's godmother and my dear, gentle friend from way back. . .

Getting reaquainted with Missoula (not a hard task):

and meeting this sweet house and garden for the first time:

Back in Washington, beaches and breathtaking coastline, cool nights, good food, good beer, good company

Lots of lovin'

Cousins who are sweet friends

Grandparents devoted to their grandchildren (and vise versa!)


And a freezing dip in the Puget Sound

. . .Of course you saw the trip to Texas in part; more later! The kids want to watch 'Leave it to Beaver.' I have lots to catch up on!

Back Again to a New Shed

We're back! After a long gorgeous summer in WA, MT, and TX, and here and there on the way back to our own honey corner of PA, here we are.

It's truly too late tonight to go into any interesting detail, but I told Mama I'd get a few pics up to show her Martin's new 'do and our shed, which Martin and his dad worked on last week (there's now more to show but I have to upload the roof and one piece of siding):

Didn't they do a rather lovely job on the frame?

and--can you find--Martin (looking oddly respectable)? Merry's gap teeth? Elspeth's happy face? Bea's pixie eyes? Me smiling like I just went swimming in TX in my in-law's beautiful pool?

Thanks to Dad C for the pics since mine--including everything from this summer--are still on my camera.

Maybe I'll actually start bloggering again!

Peas Roses Lavender Strawberries +Bea

Little Creepy Animals

Let's see. . .it's been about four days since Martin left for Kentucky, with four days to go. Thank all heaven that my mother is here with me since if she weren't I would be stark raving mad by now. . .

Last night, after our eight installment in the British miniseries that Mom and I have been devouring hand over fist, I went down to collect some sheets from the drier.

--What is that smell? I asked. The entire laundry room reeked.

--Smells like skunk, she said.

Turns out that Mom had left the door to the back yard--teeming with life and all manner of small animals--to air out the basement. And what had crawled in and made itself at home? I know not.

--You should go look around, I said.

--No way, she replied.

My feet felt crawly and jumpy and I was glad to go upstairs and pull the covers over my toes. Thankfully Mom had kept her bedroom door closed all day, but as I drifted off to sleep, I thought of all the horrible creatures that could be hiding down there in the basement workshop. Groundhog, skunk. . .

Can raccoons turn door handles? I wondered, imagining a giant raccoon sneaking into Mom's room as she slept.

Also I mulled over the black snake sighting not long ago. I was clearing out the back porch when a long serpentine form appeared from nowhere and slithered away into the brush. Who knows what's living down in our basement? Please, God, don't let me find it in the dark. Let Mom find it instead.

Elspeth's Doctrine

The girls pretty much have doctrine sorted out. Yesterday Elspeth told me that Jesus lived in Seattle. "That Jesus," she confided as we lay on the pillows in my bed, "Has a red cape. There's a green Jesus too and also a brown one."

We went on from this to talk about death, which has come up at regular intervals since Great grandpa went to heaven.

"When will Jesus pick you?" she asked me (Jesus picking you means you're dead).

"Not until I'm an old lady," I said.

"When will Jesus pick me?"

"Not until you're an old lady."

"Why?"

"Because then your body will be all tired out."

"But Mommy," she said, stretching out on the bed, "My body IS all tired out."

When Merry was this age, she had it figured out, too. She compiled a list of facts about death and presented her findings in this pithy sentence: "First you get old, then they put you in a chair, and then they put you in a box."

(The chair was of course the wheelchair and the box of course is the coffin.) Merry also gave a sermon one day from a perch in an IKEA display: "Jesus Christ was born in Montana!" she yelled, with all the right intonations of a Southern Baptist preacher (we were living in Texas at that point). "He died on a cross in Iowa!"

Well, seems he's risen from the dead and now resides, clad in a red cape, in Seattle. Maybe we'll see him when we visit.
* * * *
Garden Update: Baby peas; lots of strawberries; a resurrected peach tree; a riot of yellow evening primrose; stunning climbing roses; sweet lavender. . .and no camera. Martin ran off to Kentucky with it.

A Day at Wazoo

It's been a strange day here at Wazoo Farm.

PART ONE: IN WHICH I BRAVELY SAVE A SHIH TZU
With a jauntiness in his step, Martin strode off to work for the day and the girls and I spent the morning in the garden. From where I pounded stakes for flowering tomatoes and Beatrix stuffed herself on strawberries from our patch, I could see the sad, blinded shell of our Subaru waiting for facial reconstruction. Deer hair still covers its little bumper like a spotty mustache. I kept an ear perked for the phone, hoping that our insurance representative would call back in good time so I would not be housebound for the next two weeks.

The phone did not ring, but about midmorning I saved a recently shampooed dog named Tucker from becoming mincemeat. In my reconstruction of Tucker's escape from collision with a midsized sedan, I hold off traffic as I bravely dash into the middle of the road to grab Tucker's leash. I do not know if Tucker will bite me, but I cannot stand by and see him flattened.

I did feel brave and noble, but considering Tucker is just a sweet little shih tzu and the two cars were rather far away and moving slowly, my deed was sadly unremarkable. Bea had a wonderful time grabbing his tail and I had a friendly conversation with the lady who came by searching for him. She parked her car in the side yard and I handed Tucker over the deer fence. We were chatting amiably when our erratic neighbor, who likes to drive around in his car all day swearing and cussing at the top of his lungs, found Tucker's car in his way and started doing what he does best off his meds: Yelling obscenities. This cut our chat short, since Tucker's lady was anxious to move off before he squeezed by her car again, and I went back to pounding tomato stakes.

PART TWO: IN WHICH WE MEET ANOTHER GARDENER
The rest of the day was marked by normal activity: Beatrix standing on tables, Elspeth helping herself to candy, Merry embodying perfection. We walked to work, picked up Martin, and headed home. As we were strolling along the smallish valley road before we hit the hill up to our house, a man on a Harley came motoring by. He slowed his bike and backed it up, one foot keeping balance, until he was level with Martin and me. This guy was clad all in army fatigues with cut off sleeves. His long white hair was smoothed back under a stars and stripes do-rag, and he had the typical white handlebar mustache. Did I mention he was covered in tattoos?

Martin was in a white shirt and tie, and we said hi to him over the stroller. He peered at us through his tinted glasses and said, "Hey, I've got about forty melon plants. You want some?"

"Sure," we said. We'd never met him in our lives, but he evidently knew where we lived.

"If you're not home, I'll just drop 'em off," he said, and then he soared off on his bike. A few minutes later, he drove by again to tell us,

"I had all these sunflowers in the basement on germinating tables, and my cat ruined them all." We expressed our sympathy, and he repeated that he'd drop those melon plants off. "If you're not home," he said, fists on the handlebars of that big bike, "I'll just leave 'em on your porch."

We stopped again at the rise of the hill to watch a neighbor filing down wooden spoons in his workshop. As he encouraged us to test different weights of oak and walnut, a woman came tearing down the sidewalk, trailed by a little black terrier. She informed us that a boy younger than this girl here (indicating Merry) had thrown a rock at her window.

So we finished our walk.

PART THREE: IN WHICH ELSPETH GIVES HERSELF A MUTTLET

There were messages from the car rental and the insurance agent when we got home. As Martin got those details straightened out and removed Bea from the top of the kitchen table repeatedly, I chopped cauliflower and a sad head of broccoli for dinner. Elspeth wandered into the kitchen and I looked at her.

"What have you done to yourself?" I demanded.

"What do you mean?" Martin asked.

"Just look at her."

"Where did she get those scissors?"

"Could they be--did she use my sewing scissors?"

"I don't know where they are now," Martin said, after casing the play room, which was covered in Elspeth's hair. Just then, Beatrix toddled in with a big pair of orange-handled Fiskar blades in her mouth. Mystery solved.

I sprayed down Elspeth's hair with a useless spray bottle that has been sucked and chewed on too often by little girls. "Elspeth has given herself a muttlet," Martin said to Merry, using the term Merry approximated long ago for that becoming hairstyle of short-on-top and long underneath.

I spent the beginning of dinner attempting to save the remainder of my middle child's hair. Merry sat in her seat and ate two helpings of vegetables and Elspeth finally got rid of all the tiddly hairs down her neck and ate her dinner in her underwear. Still, there was so much noise and ruckus that I tried to instill some order by saying enthusiastically, "Let's ask Daddy about his day!"

So Martin recounted his walk to work that morning, and how he had stopped to speak with our spoon-whittling neighbor, who had told Martin all about his car which was missing from his driveway.

"He was driving along toward the apple orchard," Martin recounted, "When he smelled plastic burning. So he got out and opened his hood, and his engine was on fire." The girls, who had been silly and loud, were suddenly quiet as mice. "He called the fire department," Martin continued, sipping his beer, "But by the time they arrived, the whole car was engulfed in flames." A great silence fell.

"Will our car ever catch on fire?" Merry asked, and Elspeth said in a low voice, "Tell that story again, Daddy."

Martin told the story two more times. It was worth it for the quiet of the two older girls, though the spirit of chaos still resided over our kitchen table, since confined and unhappy, Baby Bea energetically wailed in her chair. She spilled water in her tray, pooh-poohed her vegetables, and lost two of my spoons, so by the end of dinner I was scooping up rhubarb pie with my fingers.

"Are you happy NOW?" Elspeth asked me from her seat, where, by Jove, she was actually looking pretty good.

"I love you," I answered.

"Yes," she said slowly, looking down at her broccoli, "But are you happy?"

I paused. "Yes, I am," I told her. "I'm happy to have a girl like Elspeth."

And so I am happy to be here in this crazy, unpredictable world, with shih tzus and unlikely gardeners and precocious little girls at every turn.