Elspeth's Monologues

Sunshine today; slant of light on Elspeth's hands, catching the little copper pot on the dining room table, making it a tiny deposit of summer, bright, gleaming. The girls are playing with new birthday presents: wooden cookies, a pink tea set. There's a bit of a battle raging between the two oldest, who are spreading and organizing perfectly with an eye for precision, and the youngest, who is grabbing all she can, stashing it, trying to share as well but failing, resorting to petty violence, such as whacking her older sister with a wooden lollipop. Martin's unloading the dishwasher and listening to the Car-Talk Brothers, and we are all full of french toast and caffeine and feeling fine despite the columns I have to write/collect information for before leaving for Seattle next week; the sporadic squabbling of the girls; and our varying states of physical unreadiness for the day.

I would like now, fine readers, to enrich your lives with a spot of nonsense, or rather, a storm of nonsense, which was imparted to the small Wazoo world last week by way of Elspeth's mouth as she sat at lunch table. I regret that I only began recording her monologue after she'd been going for a while, but at least I got this--let me set the stage--Elspeth sits across from me, and she's talking to everyone and no-one, and verbalizing this list, for unknown reasons, unless it was just for the joy of saying everything that came into her colorful, candy-like brain:

"Lamp-posters, little monkey tail, a little piglet, a pen with writing, a noodle poster, a washcloth, a tin can, spaghetti and cheese, nose posters, polar bear ears, a hairy, hairy head, an elephant trunk, top of a lamp, a fan, a lamp, a little person's head--"

[at this point she broke into song:] "A boy is made out of nails and yucky stuff! A girl is made out of lovely stuff, like polkadot tails and--" [she narrows her eyes pouts her lips, drops her voice to guttural growl:] "A ROCK STAR!"

[She continues in falsetto:] "How did you ever learn how to use thunder? How about a looky-looker? Where do noodles learn to dance? WHO? Knock-knock door? I definitely forgot about the witch. Haven't you seen the monkey swinging with no tail on? Yes, and how did YOU learn to dance? Anyway, I'm going to give that to a love-wench."

We transitioned here, possibly to nap-time, otherwise the rapid-fire monologue might have continued. And here, dear ones, in the sunshine, the intermittent screams of tension and purrs of contentment, in my Smart-Wool socks and my syrup smells, I leave you. Happy Saturday.

Lovely Gleaming Bit 'O Magic

The more I write, the more I realize how very narrow and well-trod are the paths through my brain.

Last year, I heard a sixth-grader give a report on writing; one of the steps to good writing, he said, was to make a list of your "go-to" words and forbid yourself from using them. There are words that I use as often as I wear my ratty, long, balled sweater in the house; there are images I turn to easily, as I'd turn to one of my children. . .yeah, yeah, there's always the bird, feathers bright against snow/feather bright as blood/etc. image. The gleam of wood/hair/etc. under lamplight. "Gleam" is a favorite word for me these days. It tastes good on my tongue and makes me warm, too, like tea. . .maybe it's a winter word.

Then there are the words I use about a thousand times a day in correspondence and conversation. Lovely is at the top of my list. Fabulous, wonderful. "Brilliant," not quite so bad. A "Jolly" once and a while.

It's absolutely (oh, I use that a lot, too, absolutely, absolutely I do) painful to listen to the recordings of my interviews for the paper, because I have to listen to my own grating voice saying, "That's great," and "Oh, that's so nice," about twenty times every few minutes. I sound like a bumbling idiot, usually because I'm trying to jot down notes as the subject is speaking. Still, it's a terribly (oh, that one too) humbling experience.

Are signature/overused words okay, do you think, in common speech and repartee? Are they like comfortable clothes, after all, or a familiar scent, or do they just stink after a while, like a mouse in your pocket?

Just got good news: one of my poems, Geometry, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and will appear along with two other poems in the upcoming issue of Lamplighter Review. Special thanks to my fabulous in-house editor, Martin B. Cockroft the Magnificent, who pushes me to spare language, simplicity, and good form.

Do heffalumps and woozles like honey?
Well, do they? Elspeth just climbed up on my lap and asked me this.
It's snowing.

One hour later:
Elspeth reached up to hug me tonight and sighed, Mommy. I like you with a pinch of salt.

Naming Things

At nap time today, I was reading Bea a book by Sandra Boynton where the speaker introduces all his pets--they're all named Bob, except for his turtle, who has a long, fancy name in curly script. Elspeth, who was gathering up her books on my bed, overheard me singing the book out loud and swaggered into Bea's room, singing her own version of the text:

"I've got an eyeball named Bob, and a head named Bob, and a shirt named Bob, and a dirty sock named Bob!" Bea broke into giggles and Elspeth, fueled by the approval, continued throughout Bea's room, picking items up and naming them all Bob, shaking her hips and popping her eyeballs in mock astonishment for effect.

And then, right before I put Bea in bed, Elspeth ran down the hallway, calling, "Who wants sanitizer for breakfast?"

I love this craziness, this sense of humor of hers based in total randomness. The other day she threw up her hands and said, "Oh, my Clara! I mean, it's impossible!" Absolute nonsense. And to me, probably because I'm her adoring mother but also because I get the biggest kick out of misnamed things, misplaced words, strange, erratic shouts, and things that go "Kablam! Piddle! Pop!" in the midst of a chaotic room--I think it shows the flashes of brilliance that I want to wrap up in several scarves made of macaroni and push, by their bumpy shoulders, into my stories and poems and conversations. Like a prince who turns into a frog. Or a witch who lives in a house made of candy. Or something brand new, like a dirty sock named Bob.

Wait for it. . .

Our band's last gig at the Harvest Festival, photo courtesy B. Randolph
Martin's beside me, picking out chords and trying to play Kings of Convenience's "Gold in the Air of Summer." The alternate tuning sounds really nice, even though he just stretched on new strings--the ends are sticking out like six lethal whiskers. New strings always sound cold and tinny, but he's warming them up.

Our friend Amy was just here practicing with us for our band's slot in. . .wait for it. . .the Faculty Talent Show at the U! Tonight Amy said we should all just quit our jobs and go on tour--our three girls and her daughter could ride along in the bus, do our accounts, set up and tear down for us. Who needs school? Tonight, over tomato soup and grilled cheese, Merry tried to get Martin and me serious about becoming famous. "You could go on the Prairie Home Companion," she breathed, her eyes round, "Or Mountain Stage!" (When you don't have TV reception, radio provides all points of reference. When asked at school to name a famous person, Merry named Carl Casell, who among other things, is the official scorer for "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me," the NPR news show. . .and he IS in the Radio Hall of Fame.)

I said, "Merry, if Daddy and I were famous, we wouldn't get to spend so much time with you girls."

She took this as a valid point, though she finally concluded that Martin's and my dreams were old ones, and we'd probably fulfilled all of them already.

In a flash of warmth, Martin told her one of our dreams was to have three girls, and we did, and one of his dreams was that he would marry me, and he did,

to which I said, "That was one of my dreams, too." (I meant, to marry Martin, of course),

and Merry looked at me and asked, "You wanted to marry YOURSELF?"

I said, "One of my dreams was to have a smart-aleck eight-almost-nine-year old, and that came true." And she grinned.

I am losing any cohesive thread that might have linked this blog entry together. Oh, well. The girls get school off tomorrow for. . .wait for it again. . .the first day of hunting. They will not be hunting, but most of the county will. I will be doing laundry and writing an article and praying for the deer.

Peaceful Family Outing

A woman with a beautifully dark complexion and a thick mass of hair that hangs down past the ties of her green apron just came and cleared my table. "Got left with the dishes," she commented.

"That is a GOOD deal," I said. "Left with the dishes but no kids. I'll take that ANY day."

I stood up and tried to help her load up the black tray and succeeded in tipping over plastic cups and wadding a bunch of white napkins in one fist. "We had a bit of an incident with the hot chocolate," I explained. (Was I twitching? Was my eyelid fluttering uncontrollably?)

"That's what a mop is for," she replied, waiting as I fumbled with more dishes. Finally she said, as I swiped at a storm of crumbs all over the table, "And we have cloths to mop off the tables, too."

Now the woman is wiping off the rack of gift cards by the check-out, her hair lustrous under the recessed lighting--and I realize that she's pregnant, close to her due date. Is it her first child? Heh, heh. Life is about to change forever, lady.

Another couple just came in with a baby strapped in a car seat--the man, an older guy with trendy glasses and hiking boots, just paused from working on his Blackberry to tuck in a striped green, white, and blue blanket back into the seat. His wife, also working on a Blackberry, speaks low in German. Goopy, spineless, relaxing music--high female voices singing indecipherable but probably Christmassy lyrics-- spread over us all like a vague blessing. . .the man utters a long stream of oogie-boogie--ahs and unearths his son, a surprisingly chunky kid, suited up in shades of blue, from the depths of the blanket. Now, over the loudspeaker, there's a disturbingly operatic cover of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah.

Just a few minutes ago, this corner of the box bookstore up on a hill just over the PA border in West Virginia was a blur of hands waving soup spoons, smashed bagel pieces, crushed green straws, and an arc of hot chocolate that spattered two out of five family members--Bea had already speckled her white turtleneck with chocolate and Elspeth, who dropped the cup, missed the fountain entirely.

It was shortly after the chaos that Martin offered to take the girls to the children's section and the woman with the gleaming hair came and saved our table from its sad state.

And there you have it. Just another peaceful family outing. And still the Christmas music streams on--now a 1950's beat, a perky female voice, and lyrics that include: bells, ring out, Christmas every day.

It's a magical time, all in all.

Now Italian, a duet of two of the world's most full-throated tenors.

PIE

I just had a happy thought: Pie! Pumpkin and pecan, rummy whipped cream, in glittering foil south of the milk jug.

We carried home this treasure from our Thanksgiving home up on a ridge. This friendly fellow, J, roasted a turkey covered in fat-back. Oh, my. Can the spits of heaven hold anything more succulent?

I just chatted with my brother-in-law and their turkey, when they cut into it, spurted blood and was still partially frozen. Though I missed family this holiday, I am rumly satisfied to think that I ate the far superior bird. (Thank you, J, T, and kids, for a lovely feast!)

Martin and I have spent this guest-less holiday writing in the evenings. "An hour and a half!" he said tonight, and we sat down with our laptops and fell to. I feel as though I should be working on another short story or my article for the paper, but I've been swimming through the warm waters of poetry instead. Perhaps it's the changing weather--instead of knitting I'm turning to the tight link of words, though they haven't been particularly warm nor cuddly--mostly just strange.

But there's nothing strange about pie and I'm just waiting for Martin to give up so we can shake off the silence and eat.

I give thanks for Ogden Nash, my old friends, my father, etc.

I'd like to thank my father for reading Ogden Nash to me. At least I remember his boyish face, his eyes alive with the impending mirth, the expectation that Nash would bend us double with laughter. When I actually read Nash poems, I wonder if my memory is correct: "Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker" is one observation I don't think my father ever shared with us as he sat on the edge of my bed. And I was a young adult when I read about the clever turtle being so fertile, and I was older still--just turning NOW, as a matter of fact, when I found the gentle account of Miranda turning thirty: "How old is spring?" the poem finishes. And it was only last winter that Martin gave a splitting reading of that fabulous fable, "The Boy Who Laughed at Santa Claus."

But I am not giving a shout-out to Ogden, but to my father. Actually, scratch that. WHAT HO, OGDEN! YOU ROCK! It's not every man who can write a two line poem about a cow that makes me laugh out loud. Make yourself thankful for belly laughs this year and go read some zappy shorts. Please, I beg you, do not skip the one on parsley.

Leave dear Ogden for a minute, jollyish reader, and return to my white-haired, bushy-eyebrowed, laughs-through-his-nose father. He read to us for hours when we were children, mastering voices and even singing when called on by the text, though his singing voice sounds like Winnie the Pooh's. He read us everything from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, (where I first heard about menstruation) to the entire Lord of the Rings series, which we stretched out over our interminable summer car rides when we were on leave from Kenya. Go back further than that and I have my father's voice calling out the islands of Maine in Robert McCloskey's Time of Wonder --his voice is imprinted so strongly on those words that I still cry every time I read it to my own children.

My father travelled quite a lot, and I remember the smell of his suitcase as he unzipped the old, fake leather and threw it open. Nestled among his socks and toothbrush were small gifts for us. If he'd been back to America, the open suitcase smelled like ziplock bags and drugstores and my grandmama's house in Pennsylvania. If he'd been to Thailand or Dacca, the suitcase was damp with humidity and smelled of sweat, dust, and spices.

I just chatted with my mother on the phone as she floated across the Puget Sound to join my sister and her family and my brother for Thanksgiving. Here I am, sitting at a table covered with my mother's old blue tablecloth, spun in India; the white stripes in the cloth start at Martin, who works at the other end of the table, and flow all the way across to me. Silver sage from our garden dries among candles; there's a painted leaf Merry brought home from school and a paper with an upside down heart and the word MOM that Elspeth presented to me this afternoon. A box of Kleenex (Bea has a cold), the roar of the heater, lamplight glowing on our mantle clock. The sounds of my father's voice deep down inside of me, my mother's laugh fresh in my ears. I give thanks for all of it, for the glitter and drop and water-flow of so many stories, for the way they fill me with color.

Being Paper Stinks

Just before bed, Beatrix came downstairs and said, "Aw. Paper can't draw."

I thought she was being particularly empathetic. In our world, where half of our household is drawing constantly, I never once stopped to think about the poor, sad plight of paper: assigned to passivity, made to carry adornment and art, good and bad. The pencil or pen or crayon--now, they've got the good jobs.

I suppose Bea suddenly had a flash of awareness into another creature's plight; that the sympathy was directed to an inanimate object just made it more charming. I love how children twist your head around on your shoulders like that.

On that note, Elspeth's friend Ben (who comes from a balanced, nonviolent household)educated me today as Martin and I made the kids lunch. "If you lose your head," he explained, "You're dead." He clarified: "If someone slices your head off with a sword, you're dead. But if they cut your hand off, you're okay." (Also, he added, a foot or a leg would be okay, too). A few minutes later he told me: "God is everywhere. So if you play hide and seek and God is counting, he'll tag you really fast."

There are No Monsters in This House

In the past few months, Beatrix has developed a complicated relationship toward Monsters. Like my big sister, Heather, who loved volcanoes and would bring home loads of books picturing explosions and decimation but who also hid them in the bottom of her closet at night, Bea both adores and fears Monsters. She jumps at books depicting anything with fur or horns or a scary or dopey (Jim Henson variety) face; she loves the book A World Full of Monsters, that shows that in the 'olden days,' monsters were plentiful but now only fix and clean things at night (Martin has major issues with this book as he says it reads like social commentary).

The other day Bea got a simperingly sweet look on her face and said, "Aw. Monsters best friend to me." Pit this against her panicked dive into pillows in the Play Room and the trembling that accompanied "I scared, Mommy. Monsters!" I watched her run into a room and pause, whispering to herself in a somewhat unsure voice, "No monsters!"

Tonight some friends kept our children so Martin and I could cram unbelievably big pieces of Spider Roll soaked in soy sauce and wasabi paste into our mouths. Bea came home freshly bathed and in her little friend's pyjamas. As soon as we stood in our front hallway, she requested that I remove her p.j. shirt, which sported a picture of a T-Rex. No monsters!

Before bed, she mentioned monsters again. Now, some parents may use Reason or a big can of Monster-Off to comfort their children, but Bea and I have together developed a song. If you have monster problems in your house or in YOUR HEAD, you can also employ this little ditty, adapting it to your needs, of course.

Chorus:
There are no monsters in this house!
There are no monsters in this house!
There may be a tiny mouse,
but there are no monsters in this house!

Verse 1:
There is a Beatrix in this house.
There is an Elspeth in this house.
There is a Merry in this house.
But there-are-no-monsters-in-this-house!

Repeat chorus.
Add verses as needed.
Sing until heart palpitations are less insistent and fear is less quivery and sleep is. . .imminent.

Got to share: a poem, Postscript, about leaving Kenya, accepted by The MacGuffin this morning. Also, my last column in the Observer-Reporter (click on geranium at right)may finally cast some clarity on your next career move. It helps to live in a sunny, warm climate, I expect, though our hot dog guy manages just fine in PA. See. . .if you can catch the grammatical error I overlooked as well as the tricky idiom (misplacing, mistaking, grasping for idioms runs in my family). Martin has given me plenty of roughing up over the O-R one, though I don't think it's as bad as my mother announcing that "some guy was going to sue another guy until his pants fell down." Mom, I know you told me not to tell anyone you said that, but the statue of limitations is up.

Poetry in the Church Kitchen

Tonight, I read Babar's Family, The Gardener, and Yesterday I Had the Blues to Elspeth. I made my way through that beautiful, gentle book, The Year at Maple Hill Farm, by Alice and Martin Provensen, and it might have been as Elspeth and I studied the cows snuggled into the hay that sleep began knocking on my head. And then I was gone for two hours. My Martin just awakened me to drink tea. Falling asleep early is a Sunday night tradition for me, especially after a weekend like this one, where we partied. And partied. And then partied some more. Our Mennonite Church had a big anniversary bash all weekend. We attended the coffeehouse Friday night, skipped the hymn sing Saturday, and came back for a full day today. In the afternoon Martin and I strapped Bea into the car for a short nap before he and I led a workshop on poetry as prayer.

The workshop was small but good, in a tiny, airless room with bright frogs on the wall. We looked over a diverse group of poems Martin had compiled, from Rilke to John Berryman, sacred East Indian verse to Denise Levertov, and some great ones by Maurice Manning, where he addresses God as Boss. We'd just started into our own writing exercise--I had begun:

You are the great huge boulder I saw
as we drove past broken-down houses
and bars with cold neon signs
Fast food wrappers clogged the gutters
and a woman staggered across a bridge past sealed cars

I had the boulder fixed in my mind: immovable, striped black, in the middle of a wide creek banked by bare trees--the water lapped and beat and foamed and streamed over the rock. . .I was looking forward to getting that boulder on my page. It had so delighted me as we drove a depressed, ugly part of town. That was during our drive where Bea slept--and just as I wrote To my, a little girl in a purple dress popped her head in to say Bea was crying.

And was she ever. Her little chest heaved against me when I lifted her up, her face was streaked with tears and snot, and she wanted to go home. I couldn't blame her--it had been a long day. She smeared chocolate on her face as I arranged a platter of cookies for the post-workshop reception, and soon other women from the Poetry workshop appeared in the kitchen, arranging things on platters, filling white coffee pitchers. I helped find a broom and a dustpan to sweep up the shards of a broken mug in the hall. I never got to finish my poem, and when I stopped back in with a clinging Bea, Martin was finishing up. I was disappointed at the timing of Bea's breakdown.

Now, looking back, I realize that there was a really good sort of poetry happening in the kitchen--the story of community, the movement of people in a kitchen, a smeared and broken child sitting on the counter comforted at last, food being placed carefully on plates and a stream of hot coffee filling pitchers. It's such a old, familiar poetry, and one I know well from growing up in churches--love becoming tactile, feeding and being received by hungry people. Poetry, incarnation, food--these together are good.

Just A Small Town Girl

I have had the Journey song, "Don't Stop Believing" stuck in my head ALL DAY LONG. I kid you not. As I type, it's reeling in the back of my brain like the handle on a meat grinder. I am about to be driven to distraction. I am about to. . .

break open another Troeg's Dream Weaver Wheat Beer. I'm afraid the song "Dream Weaver" is not sticky enough to displace Journey, though. Blast it all. If I could only. . .

hold onto this feeling.

Attended an eight year old's birthday party today; there were all these young children running about in fairy wings and stuffing red velvet cake with black-green icing into their mouths. The icing covered an Eight-dollar Bill Cake, embossed with the birthday girl's head. Also on the cake platter: three or four cupcake coins in the front. I hear that we will see evidence of this bright and delicious cake tomorrow at noon. They tell me this is something I can look forward to, since Thanksgiving is still some days away. It's the next big thing.

Don't Stop!

Oh, man. This is worse than the hiccups.