June 28, 2007
we're thinking of buying tickets to hell
We’re a little culture starved around here, snug within the benign mycelium of silicon valley. Granted, if I’d just know where to look around here, I’d find something interesting on exhibit. But the truth is that I’m just acheing to go to a fussy art museum where I can feel the music of terrazzo under my feet and experience air conditioning without a trace of retail and ride that fabulous chase from security guard to security guard, close behind Chas, always on the fringe of expulsion as he tries to weave fast arcs around freestanding sculptures. Art is, after all, mostly about the personal experience one has with the piece, and with Chas there is no exception. He loves sculpture, it FASCINATES him to discover giant colorful pillars shooting from the ground or brushed-steel geometry shining in the sun. OH! The joy! Must scream and run circles around them all!
There’s one exhibit in particular that I’m planning on taking them to see sometime soon, the Matisse exhibit at the SFMOMA. Ford is a collage guru and I figure it might provide a springboard for translating some of his 2D work into a new dimension; specifically, creating something 3-dimensional that his younger brother might be tempted to play with (especially if it’s made of paper or papier-mache). But again, really, I’m just sad that we haven’t been able to go for so long, for fear that we might die during the struggle to patiently corral our children politely through a quiet space for art.
I think it’s more important that they experience art from a very young age for several reasons. First, I think it’s fun for them to see how some people have translated emotions or themes into art. Secondly, I like for them to understand the value and purpose behind the art process. Thirdly, I want them to grow to respect the work of others as well as their own art, because the enduring value of art is that it has the power to change the future in many ways: it can alter a person’s perspective, create controversy, quiet a restless mind, you get the idea. Lastly, I want them to evolve quickly within the rigid confines of the art museum institution so that they naturally respect that paticular environment as they would a shrine, an that is mostly because I’d LIKE TO ENJOY THE MUSEUM, TOO.
So, this weekend I’ve requested we pay the MOMA a visit, take our chances, hope for the best. There’s a book I heard about that recommends certain tips for taking 5 year-olds and older children to the museum, How to talk to children about art: is the title. As an art teacher, I feel qualified enough to come up with my own suggestions (which, in all it’s conceit, is actually true) but I’m still curious about what it has to say and am ordering it anyway.
Wish us luck! Double that for the MOMA.
Posted by Steph at 07:00 AM | Comments (5)
March 04, 2007
Squinting in the sunshine
I am traversing the eastern slope of Fremont Open space, and I'm walking along a terrace once trafficked perhaps by laborers on this former orchard as they roamed from tree to tree during harvest. What kinds of trees? I don't know. Today their gnarled, leafless, stunted silhouettes stand arabesque upon the hill above me, black and static amid the flowing grasses, beneath the hovering falcon. Birdsong travels like a current over the terrain, bees are busy buzzing in the clover mats, hummingbirds fighting in the treelimbs. I stop along the trail while Seti sniffs the newspaper; it's Sunday and the weeds hang with dog pee here and there along the worn trail. The entire hillside is tense with new life. You can almost feel the warm ground quake beneath you, a mycelium overtaking winter's rot, aerating the bedrock, paving the way for shooting rhizomes and weeds. Little yellow wildflowers sway with glossy grass. If I were to try drawing three square inches of this space I might scream; beneath the mat of green urgency lies an even tinier world, a lilliputian army of plants and fungi working together to hold the soil firmly against the hillside. A linear delight, it reminds me of Dutch painting and discovering the architecture of dandelions and drawing for hours on end, without interruption. But today I'm plodding onwards, at times tugging the dog to urge him faster, so I might get back to unpack yet more boxes, and break down more boxes, making space in the mudroom for this naked and young morning light to pour into our house and penetrate the walls with its warm yawn.
Posted by Steph at 11:09 PM | Comments (1)
February 18, 2007
35
Birthdays. They just keep getting sweeter. Alis and I celebrated our birthdays tonight by having a fondue party up at her place in the Santa Cruz mountains. I think we both might be missing the absence of the yearly Red & Chocolate party, which used to include a few more guests than just the ten of us that were there tonight. It's normally such a wet, cold time of the year here, especially up in the mountains, where the rain freezes and sometimes turns to snow. But the weather is warmer this year. I cut a quince branch, already in flower, and attached it to the bow on her present. Fruit trees along the Saratoga avenues are white with blossoms, rolling hills at the open space preserve, where I run, are adorned in special corners with tiny pink and white buds, showering petals along the path. It's already Spring and it's righteous.
Every time I think it's a beautiful day down here in the valley, I'm blown away when I step out of my car in her driveway up on Skyline ridge. For starters, there's the quiet outdoor air there that's almost deafening, like the sound of nighttime in the suburbs after two fresh feet of snow. After the birds have gone to roost, near dusk, I can almost hear my ears ringing (thanks due in part to Chas and to a lesser extent, Ford, the loudest children I've ever known). And then there's the view. The breathtaking view that, were it not for the fog, would include the Pacific, beyond Santa Cruz.
Birthdays are sweeter and sweeter. I can cook in the same kitchen with my college buddy, smile about where we are right now, and look into the living room to see benchmarks we've left over the years since we met: solid ties with men that became important to us along the way; the three beautiful, vibrant children that this love made possible; our two little dogs who are getting older, followed by the ghosts we've grieved to tell goodbye, recently: three other dogs, a horse; a mother, a grandfather.
Turning 35 this year is the sweet little nudge in the arm, reminding me about babies and books and other priorities that can't wait behind my hedonism. But I think this year I might start lying about my age. Alis and I made a deal: it's not important for anyone to know. Except for the clerks at the grocery store, but I'll tell them my age any time because they still card me when I buy groceries (which, I now realize, tells me that I buy entirely too much booze). 35 used to be old. But I've never carried myself better (thank you, yoga. why didn't we meet sooner?) and my smile, most often, has a careworn grace to it that I am proud of, suggesting achievement and the attainment of purpose. I think motherhood did it to me.
...The rest of time I think I'm frowning, though, and I can attribute that to motherhood, too ;)
Damon, thanks for the photos! You're getting gooood!
Posted by Steph at 11:18 PM | Comments (4)
August 28, 2006
School Blues
As it turns out, Ford hates school. He dreads it like a fat set of immunizations, asking every night whether the next day is a school day, telling me that he’s already feeling sick; he asks me every morning if it’s a school day, and tells me that he’s not going to school; he runs away from the classroom on some mornings, bolting back towards the car. This is a lot to pay, on top of tuition, for the three hours each morning that he is in “school.” In his defense, Ford says he’s “bored,” and that he doesn’t like the teacher, and the schoolroom “sucks,” along with the toys.nThey, apparently, “really suck.” Straight from the horse’s mouth, four going on fourteen.
And I just don’t know what to do about it. I thought this would do him a world of good. After all, I loved my Montessori years: feeding the animals, teaching myself to ride a bike, learning about different countries and fiedltripping to cotton gins and post offices. In fact, the only school years I like to reflect on are those freeform, user-paced, friendly three foot-high days. Really, my heart is in unschooling him and raising him on experience and one-on-one “lessons.” But we aren’t able to freewheel it around the globe for years at a time, immersing ourselves in the daily rhythms of various cultures, learning to make our rope hammocks in Bali, build fishing boats in New Zealand and forge our own stainless steel toenail trimmers in Germany. Who has that kind of independent wealth? If you’re in this group, don’t bother raising your hand because it’s already pressing my angry buttons.
I also don’t know whether Ford is telling me the whole truth. When I ask him,
“Ford, what did you guys do in circle time, you know, right after I dropped you off?”
“We didn’t do anything. We just sat there and stared at the walls.” Is his immediate and nonchalant reply. And when I asked him about the red bump on his noggin, he told me he got hit with a rock, “and no teacher noticed. Nobody cared.” Yeah. And when I asked him whom he sat with at lunch, on the second day of school, he replied: “Nobody. I didn’t sit next to anybody. Nobody cared about me.” Uh, huh. He follows with this raised eyebrow, sideways-glance. It looks like this: C’mon, Mom. Buy it! I’m so convincing! And you’re soooooo gullible!
For the record, I sat in today and watched the little rugrat in circle time. Lo! He did sit and stare at the wall. Complete disinterest! And I’m beginning to see why. He’s the eldest in his class, eccentrically focused on resistors, capacitors, stratacone volcanoes and molecules. He could care less about “learning to roll a rug” (which, according to Ford, he has practiced in circle time three days in the past week) and “how to walk in a line” (today’s lesson—something I thought he’d learn if he ever entered public school).
So, I’m in a conundrum about what to do with him. I’m a neurotic, borderline schizophrenic parent who plays devils advocate with herself and her decisions. I can’t decide what’s best for Ford. I think I’m deciding for my own reasons, at this time, since those few morning hours are well-spent laughing uninterrupted with Chas, helping him learn to pour rice down a funnel and into empty cups, feeding the chickens, reading books and brushing little teeth. I like this time alone with him. But the situation is not ideal for all of us, and I’m left feeling guilty at the end of the day that I just can’t figure out what’s best for my child. After all, isn’t this really my job? I can’t seem to get the hang of parenthood; it constantly throws me curveballs.
I wonder, staring across the house while I do dishes: how do some parents exhibit such
conviction in their decisions? What makes me so neurotic? Is it all a matter of self-esteem, for my part, or is it just pigheaded perfectionism? With the huge parent market out there, it seems that keywords such as “THOSE CRITICAL FIRST YEARS” and “HOW TO BUILD YOUR BABY’S BRAIN” and “DON’T YOU WANT WHAT’S BEST FOR YOUR BABY?” have anchored in my brain, flailing wildly around the canyons of doubt, to echo, “DON’T FUCK THEM UP! IT’S ALL UP TO YOU! DON’T FUCK THEM UP!” Even though my teeny rational brain, tucked away in my frontal lobe somewhere in a fold, is meanwhile repeating the mantra in a soft whisper, “It’s not up to you, how the kids turn out. I mean, it’s your job to give them security and love, but they will evolve for themselves out of experience—it’s not what you hand them, it’s how they process what they’ve got to work with.” Or something like that. It's hard to tell, because I can't really hear it under all that screaming.
So...I guess the pivotal part of my job becomes clearer amid the conflict: staying sane.
Posted by Steph at 10:29 PM | Comments (11)
July 29, 2006
Roots
We've lived in this rental house for a year now, and the place is finally beginning to fit like a glove. Though a temporary rental (we begin building this year on a lot down the road), we have given it our patina. We have adopted and lost two pet fish here, but also begun raising the chicks, who have, for their part, done a tremendous job connecting us with the outdoors. In mid-July. In Texas. Which seems entirely difficult, given the heat, but by God we have learned to enjoy it and sweat it out. By the bucketsful.
Today in a tube dress, straw hat, pigskin gloves and flip flops, I cut and nailed rolls of galvanized builder's cloth to the pesto-colored poultry tractor. As I tatted away in the shade, the little chiquitas chased each other for earwigs, sometimes peeping quietly by my side, asking for a wing. Boo, the bold one (because they really do have different personalities), flit perch-by-perch to my neck, where she inquisitively pecked at my moles and freckles. The other two weaved around the timber, little Buffalo shortshanks they've become, content to scratch around my workspace, dusting themselves occasionally in a patch of dark topsoil, peeping their quick, velvety peeps of contentment.
I've gotten to know the deer, who rarely make themselves seen anymore, much less sleep with their twin baby fawns out in our front yard (they did this daily, last year) but still continue to eat the runner beans, flowerheads, morning glories, sweet potato vines and god-knows whatever gourd/pumpkin/squash seedlings I tried to grow from seed. They continue to surprise me, sometimes grazing feet from me as I jog along the trails, with their fawns stumbling close behind them and at other times, sneaking about like elves in the moonlight, grazing tiptoe across the lawn.
I am finally proud of the boy's room. Finally, because it has never felt, no matter where we have lived, to be their own-- it has always been a post between travels: en route from the bathroom, to fetch a toy before going to the living room; the halfway point between breakfast and brushing, where they can dilly dally five minutes while I clean, playing with forgotten toys. Never has their room been theirs in the sense of belonging until we added the bunk bed. That was two weeks ago.
In the time that's passed, since the purchase of the bunk bed, the room has taken shape into a sleep playground and a place to stay and play. The quilt my mother made during the 1972 summer Olympics (when she was pregnant with me) is now draped over the top bunk rail, making Chas' lower bunk the sleep fortress. Before naps I lay there and read to them as they scramble over me like lion cubs, and I, heavy with exhaustion, lay there and read. At night, I sit at the foot of the bottom bunk, reading Grimm and Anderson by the light peeking out of the closet. I'm surrounded by goose down and log pillows and quilting and childbreath and the warm pads of feet resting against my legs. Ford is content to lay in the bunk above while I read "because there are no pictures in the book" but also because he delights in his new space to sleep. The sleep king, who has to be awakened in the morning because he is so heavily renewing his energy during the night.
When I pause mid-Ugly Duckling, I ask "Ford?" and listen for an answer. Only the soft sound of a stuffed nose: slowly in, slowly out, waltzing in the summer nightmusic of the air conditioner, turning pages and other little snores here and there (I think Damon must be asleep, too, now). I reach over to rest the book under the bed. The floor beneath the bed has become a charter library: The Story of Pooh, The Story of Ping, Aeson/Grimm/Anderson classics, Baby Animals, Hedgie's Surprise, Make Way for Ducklings, Blueberries for Sal. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek makes a cameo appearance.
The place feels like home in the way I'm starting to settle in: a mixed bouquet the color of sunrise on the kitchen table; the way I can make stovetop coffee blindfolded; clothespin artwork to the back deck's lattice, and hang my jewelry to a piece of driftwood in a windowsill in the bathroom; I smile to see Damon shepherding his harware in the garage, replacing stagnant unused stuff with the stimulus of welders and grinders and routers and saws, all in singlefile attention. Some people settle in quickly to a new domicile, but I think we've grown jaded to constant change. After all, we lived for a year in a 22-ft. trailer. With a baby. We want a sense of permanence so badly against the the tech industry flux. Here, we can at least afford to stay; it's now only a matter of believing that roots are, beneath all our lingering doubt, indeed growing.
Posted by Steph at 09:11 PM | Comments (7)
July 18, 2006
Free-Range
I was a free-range child, roaming on foot and bike throughout the neighborhood like most kids did. We were barefoot with scabs on our toes from the Big Wheels, flags forever flapping behind us on our bicycles. We came home for popsicles. There was a corner of the yard where we corralled box turtles, but we were always hunting for more. But we sold other reptiles: anolis were 10 cents; geckos I sold for twenty-five cents in class. I kept them in coffee cans. Back then, I thought the smell of the coffee cans was gross, like metallic urine.
Free-range days continued once we moved to Houston, but the experience matured quickly. I discovered perverts in fourth grade when a man approached me and asked me to follow him to his van. Sitting on the bench opposite me and my brother, he smiled confidently and touched my hand. Asshole. Sadly, he was only the first jerk to taint my adolescence, but I'm still alive and I was never seriously molested as a child. But I read stories all the time about those less fortunate than me.
I can smile as I look out the window at the boys in the backyard. They run half-naked around the house, building mud volcanoes on the deck, lava plumes in the rivulets running off into the woods.
What will I do when they're able to bike around our neighborhood? What will I do when I can't supervise them?
Posted by Steph at 05:16 AM | Comments (3)
July 14, 2006
The Quilts of Gees Bend: The Soul of the Quilt
I arrive in Houston at six o'clock, scarf down a plate of italian sausage and spaghetti and my parent's house, and escort mom to the Gees Bend exhibit at the MFAH. We have an hour before the museum closes and I get momenntarily lost navigating my way to the museum's new addition, through the same corridors I used to browse with a trail of small children in my teaching days at the Glassell School, across the street. It's embarrassing and I smile to an Asian security guard who doesn't seem to remember me this time.
The glossy terrazzo floor reflects little observational discussions, the tapping of fancy shoes and the muted cast of each bold, vibrant quilt in this collection. And boy, are they something. If the colors and assymetry of the quilts don't immediately make you smile, look closer.
If you have a sensitive conscience, then you have questioned the way we live today: the overlooked luxury in each car parked in the driveway and the way you can choose your way each day, the piles of fashion magazines and the excess clothes, garages filled so full of crap because the house is spilling over and space is limited-- this is the typical American family way of life (not that I am the exception) and this is a way of life that starves people of happiness and groundedness and peace. I think about this a lot and was brought to tears when I listened to an interview with one of the quilters as I scrutinized a soulful patch of denim in a quilt, a piece taken from a pair of worn-out blue jeans, that included the dark blue ghost of a pocket, the reminder of the fabric's former life. I wanted to run my hands along the seams, feeling the backbone of handiwork and sweat and conversation that birthed these colorful objects. I cradled the idea of reuse, inspiring the happy purist in me.
I thought about the stiff smell of rows upon rows of fabric bolts, the angst of shopping for the perfect hue, specialty scissors and quilting stores with basketfuls of fat quarters in every imaginable print: cats drinking milk, cats dancing, cats pouring milk, cats stargazing, cats chasing balls of yarn, cats chasing mice, cats napping, cats making me dizzy with a cascade of possibilities, for some reason(pardon me if cats are your thing--and I still think cats are cool). I thought about my own sleeping, shelved monster of a fabric stash. I thought of the closetful of clothes in my bedroom that I will never wear again but refuse to give away, holding them for some special deconstruction but not finding the time just yet. And so they sit there, looking stale. And smelling about the same. I think I vowed right there to boycott the purchase of any more fabric from a store or supplier for a good, long time--at least until I can manage to recruit much of what I already have. You know the old adage, Waste Not, Want Not. I mean, I value the use of new fabric for projects (and man, can some of you SEW!) but for now, I will value myself more if I downsize.
Plummer Pettway 1918-1993 "Roman Stripes, variation (local name: "Crazy" Quilt) cotton twill, denim, cotton/ polyester blend, synthetic knit (pants matieral), 86 x 70 inches.
These isolated women had only the outgrown and worn-out clothes and bolts of local fabric (I think Sears once gave them bolts of the avocado fabric that shows up in nearly one hundred of the collection's quilts). One of the quilters, in the interview I was listening to, struggled as she tried to convey what it was like not to have much of anything to work with. Work shirts, blue jeans, feed sacks--nothing was wasted. Nothing.
I smiled to read little excerpts about the children, sitting on the front porch beneath the quilting table, watching the needle poke through the underside of the quilt. I told Ford about the way the children (who became the artists of these quilts) picked up scraps of fabric that had fallen to the floor and began making little quilts of their own, right there on the floor. "We didn't have much, but we was happy" echoed similarly among them. And I still get tears to remember one woman share her surprise in knowing that someone else besides herself appreciates them, not to mention put them up on a wall.
Missouri Pettway, 1902-1981. Blocks and strips work-clothes quilt, 1942, cotton, corduroy, cotton sacking material, 90 x 69 inches. Missouri's daughter Arlonzia describes the quilt: "It was when Daddy died. I was about seventeen, eighteen. He stayed sick about eight months and passed on. Mama say, 'I going to take his work clothes, shape them into a quilt to remember him, and cover up under it for love.' She take his old pants legs and shirttails, take all the clothes he had, just enough to make that quilt, ahd I helped her tore them up. Bottom of the pants is narrow, top is wide, and she had me to cutting the top part out and to shape them up in even strips." --both quilt images from Auburn Universitys: Quilts of Gees Bend in Context's website.
Posted by Steph at 11:24 AM | Comments (9)
June 14, 2006
Renewal
On June 14, 2005 I quoted one of my favorite artists, Georgia O'Keefe:
I decided to start anew -- to strip away what I had been taught, to accept as true my own thinking. This was one of the best times of my life. There was no one around to look at what I was doing, no one interested, no one to say anything about it one way or another. I was alone and singularly free, working into my own unknown -- no one to satisfy but myself. I began with charcoal and paper and decided not to use any color until it was impossible to do what I wanted to do in black and white. I believe it was June before I needed blue.
I started this blog one year ago with one mission: to document another quickly passing year before my memory fades. The kids are growing like beans, their life compressed in a blur of wonderful, remarkable moments of discovery. If not for myself, I've been motivated to return to the page every day (or maybe not as often, while I always try) knowing that a grandparent or a travelling Damon may be curious to see what we are doing from day to day. It's a powerful tool, this added external pressure.
A year has already whirred by and I'm ruffled in its wake. But I'm finding a new perspective in this drift, like one does when the painting is turned sideways, and I'm finding that there's room for more than me:
There's the mother I've never met who wakes up on a Saturday morning, or the mother who takes time during her child's naptime and spends a minute not only to read my latest post, but to comment on it. There's the wonderful writer I admire who, at every post, encourages me to keep writing by leaving constructive criticism. And then there's the enormous mass of you who may never comment at all, but who I am AMAZED and flattered to know spend their time coming back to pick up whatever peanuts I've left on the blog. Our humble life here in central Texas plays out to the swirling symphony of children and crickets and a running dishwasher and lo, I'll be damned if there isn't someone pulling up this blog on his or her computer every few seconds. The comments are flattering, and every single one is cherished, but the actual traffic (the stats I pull up and analyze--and I do!) just blows me away.
Thank You.
And now, it's time to renew. I thought it would be nice to make a list of blog priorities:
1. I need a gallery.
2. I need to share more creative catalysts, soul vitamins. Tutorials.
3. I'm still going to relentlessly catblog about my children, no apologies
4. The blog is getting a spa treatment, as time warrants
5. To be fair, there will probably be plenty of house-building drama this year. Add category.
6. And when I need mental vacation, like a long-winded haiku I will continue to post a moment of zen from the day.
7. New category: (drumroll) Home. Schooling.
( Hark! Rattling crickets! Frantic nail-biting!)
Peace. And thanks for stopping by,
*s
Posted by Steph at 11:52 PM | Comments (7)
April 28, 2006
Spring Sprang
Spring covered up what stood bare months before. Under a moonlit sky, dark circles drape the lawn and driveway like velvet blankets, shadows under the unfurled crepe myrtle and ornamental plum. I whack my head in the night’s shade on a low branch that is heavy with young foliage, and walk out, cursing, to my car.
Layer upon layer, Spring spackles up the landscape where Winter fails to slough. Years pass. The prickly pear cactus has budded and bloomed into an agglomeration of ovals, a colony. Little green pup ears stand atop careworn gray sections, each pup is topped with a flaming yellow flower.
There is some serious primping going on.
Night sounds have multiplied. The mockingbird’s soliloquy rambles like a long ribbon across the tapestry of night music, over the tiny drone of crickets and the clicking of bats. Sometimes the Chuck Will’s Widows interrupt the peace with their harrowing calls, hammering from cavernous throats. White Wing dove keep cooing after hours, still love-drunk.
Day sounds too, they have bustled out of bounds. It’s a denser panorama, a flourishing of things everywhere: the chortling of swallows and Purple Martins, hissing wrens, bossy jays. After a rain, the Cardinal leads the symphony with its intense love song. Focused, the calls are sculpted, intricate and metered like gingerbread on a Victorian cottage. And while most female birds silently acknowledge their mate’s serendades, the female cardinal responds clearly, without upstaging her man.
While she broods, I watch the male gently stuff her mouth with little morsels. I wonder if it’s appealing to her, what he’s brought to the table. Does she even care? Before Chas was born, I requested sushi and beer to be delivered bedside after his arrival. Instead, we shared a bag of cold Egg McMuffins. I guess we get whatever’s available in the wild, or at 5am in the hospital.
…You know, he still could have filled that order later that evening, or the next day, damnit. But I never got the damned dinner I asked for. And that’s where I differ from the cardinal…
….I totally forgot where I was going with this.
Posted by Steph at 11:48 PM | Comments (2)
April 20, 2006
I Have Cabin Fever and I Need to Vent
It's a crapshoot, this pediatrician's office business; in my experience, one visit to the doctor's office has the power to precipitate subsequent visits in the following weeks. Still, I had two kids with a high fever on Tuesday morning and I was forced to take them in to the pediatrician; Chas boiled in the bed at 105.4 F the night before. Still, take one immunocompromized child to an infirmary and he's bound to pick up another bug. Which is why this visit to the doctor's office on Monday was not the first visit but our third in the past week.
The previous Monday, I brought a happy, robust Chas into the office for a well-child visit. We walked around the huge lobby aquarium while we waited, patted the glass, scrambled over magazines, dumped jars of otolaryngoscope tips, pocketed tongue depressors for our garden (they make good labels) and dug through the children's books before receiving a clean bill of health among those agonizing tears of hurt and betrayal that accompany immunizations.
Three days later, Chas was drowning in phlegm, trying to cough it all upwards yet forced to swallow it back down . After dropping Ford off at a playdate, Chas and I kept driving down the road towards the doctor's office. Presenting with nothing but a happy disposition and a chunky cough, we returned to our car after our quick visit with a prescription for an antibiotic and meds to treat acute bronchitis.
My brother John's wedding and Easter Sunday came and went, and so busy we were with all the drinking, barbeque-feasting, egg-dying, visiting and mayhem that it was hard to notice both kids getting progressively sicker. On Monday, we were all slumped over. I tripped three times while jogging, and nearly fell over in yoga while trying to find a focal point on a bleak, gray wall. Atticus spun in circles around Ford at the lake, as my poor kid sat on the diving platform, it seemed the entire neighborhood had converged at the lake to revel around him and his blah expression. By Monday night at midnight, Chas had developed the high fever to push us near the edge, on splinters, until morning came and we could take him to the doctor.
Dragging Ford along was difficult, more so than usual. But we made it through the door of the lobby, and Ford found the nearest bench on which to lie. I suggested the nurse to pull both kid's charts.
This technique works well with siblings: I told Ford to demonstrate for Chas how to cooperate with the doctor's exam, even though we were at the doctor's office "only to treat Chas." And do you know who had the fever? Who tested positive for influenza? Ford. Chas' results were difficult to read, but we were intructed to treat both kids for the same thing, the flu.
I think I was wiser when I used to take Ford to the Texas Department of Health & Human Services for his routine immunizations. For one, it's cheaper. The wait is usually less than twenty minutes. The nurses are always efficient, soulful black women with impeccable technique. And the best part? No sick kids to bump into. As for the "well child" portion: who can't measure their own child's dimensions and follow a developmental checklist?
It makes sense: $15 for immunizations at a clinic, with a 15 minute wait
vs.
$20 copay + ($100 abx & esoteric meds+ $20 copay) + ($40 copay + $40 addition meds) and HOURS lost. Am I right?
Posted by Steph at 05:27 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
April 14, 2006
Illustration Friday: Spotted
On the granite coast, I kneel down to see layers of round shapes in a tidal pool: the glistening curve of blue beach glass, ground shell, bits of marl, littoral litter. It is the texture of a cold and unhemmed coastline, a study in extremes.
Here, you have to hold on to your life. You have to blend in to avoid being hunted, unbruised by the pounding waves, while managing to stay wet in the face of sun and wind, maintaining your heritage by staying pretty in order to attract the opposite sex. Your existence is hinged on the passage of time, good genes and pure luck: will you survive until high tide?
This little intertidal oasis, paradoxically gorgeous, has a rainbow of life crawling within it: red, brown and green tranlsucences, bumpy lumberers, glittering gems, but it is growing stagnant by the minute. At noon, the water is warming up under the intense sun; in fact, it's so sensuous to lie in the small ripples at the rim of the pool that you can hardly tell, with eyes closed, where the water ends and the balmy air begins. Then a breeze reminds you, as a shadow sheds some cool on your skin.
The estuary beyond the dunes, nursery for marine life, reminds me less of motherhood than these beautifully unprotected cavities. Here, time is compressed. Weeks become seconds. With little time to think, intuition develops. I slowly begin to trust my intuition as it gains conviction, but the experience that feeds it is time that's lost: will I still be here by high tide?
Posted by Steph at 06:44 PM | Comments (18) | TrackBack
April 11, 2006
Oops
I'm scraping dried droplets of Danimals yogurt off the monitor and keyboard on our old iBook that we retired to Ford. It has served as his personal, portable Harry Potter and Bil Nye cinema for about six months or so, and it's seen better days: like, when responsible adults used it. Chas has popped off the keys many times; I've rescued some letters from the dustpan more than once. And in the center of the browser I see a large rainbow-colored diffraction that is likely a dent made by a Matchbox car. My guess is that Chas disaggreed with the content?
At any rate, here I am using the kid's laptop, because my Powerbook's hard drive died. Blip. Just like that.
One drawback to blogging in the wee hours, as I do, is that my time is short at the computer. I sit down, type, nearly fall asleep, and then fall asleep. Hopefully, somewhere in there, I've recorded something important about my children or my daily experience (I'm trying to remember little things that I might otherwise forget, if I didn't take the time to write).
So, while I've been dutiful to record moments of firsts and little epiphanies, nature walks, whatever, I've been forgetting to do the necessary backup work: I've been forgetting to back up my work. And I can't say I haven't been warned. Damon's raised eyebrows more than once, pointing his finger at the hardware before going to bed. But it's in his nature to back up his machines every night, to dock into that little corner of his office, rejuicing fones and updating files, compiling this and that, reconfiguring hard drives, installing this, extracting that, blah blah blah. It's all so left-brain.
But look at me, the right-brained artist, the distracted mother, using the high-maintenance, technical, inorganic hyperjournal. It's like asking a Moose to gether nuts for ye coming winter: sure, it can be done, but why bother? And what do moose eat, anyway?
What I need is a good squirrel, I guess. To keep me from losing another six months of priceless data. Actually, and FYI: some data may be recovered for $500-700. Just to drive the point home: Don't be a moose. BACK IT UP!!!
Posted by Steph at 01:11 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
April 07, 2006
Turbulence
I am sitting on the grassy slope, keeping an eye on the kids and our bikes. Chas is lying on his back, arms wide, laughing at the twilight and the moon. Ford is networking with another stranger. They're wild and free. I'm in a funk, but Damon encouraged this bike ride. And here we are, downtown, waiting for the bats. Emotional management.
A colossal thunderhead looms over downtown, rolling south. It's insides churn with lightening. We pack up the kids and head back, weaving through pedestrians on the bridge. Half of them are holding camerafones to the sky. Passing them, we feel a headwind as the storm sucks up our warm air, wafting guano up from beneath the bridge: intense and murky, like cultured warm beef agarose.
Faster we pedal back, past the biggest pillowfight I've ever seen, diffusing with hoopla under police megafone. I want to be in it, to detox. I can't clip through the shadows fast enough for all the angst. Instead, I whiz through the trees wondering whether my kids will grow up as moody as me. While some parents hope their children become pro basketball players, I hope my children become rational problem-solvers. Fortunately, I am married to one. The odds are even, I guess.
Posted by Steph at 06:06 AM | Comments (8)
March 25, 2006
The Butt of My Brain
We meet our friends every afternoon to play at a playground. It's a standing date: around 4pm every day. By that time, at least one of the toddlers has taken a nap, and the big boys have built up considerable steam. They scamper, laugh, and shout potty talk like nobody's business. Polly and I stand, exasperated, torn between roles of shadowing the little ones as they teeter on the edge of tall perches and jumping into the storm to interrupt the trashy talk. We wonder why they can't just use other words, when quiet time at home consists of lengthy discourse on subatomic particles and static electricity. Why Ford can't make any word substitutions when he's so clever to point out that "I don't like to snuggle in the bed like a pack of batteries." Instead, we hear endless "BUTT-HEAD!" and "BOOTY BUTT-HEAD!" and "PENIS HEAD!" in the drone of play combat that orbits around the playscape following a stampede of little feet.
To make matters worse, Chas loves to follow them around the playground, bouncing and roaring, tumbling every now and then as he tries to keep up, but occasionally shouting, "BUTT!!!!" He bends forth with a red face to proclaim the profanity as loudly as possible. It's hard enough trying to get him to say normal words, like "sock" and "help" and "horse," but I get so irate when I catch Ford leaning into Chas' face, to teach him to properly pronounce "BUTT." At the playground, when people hear "BUTT-HEAD" coming from Chas, they turn to me, surprised and amused. At these times, my eyes try rolling back into the nether region of my skull, to a place where fading dreams linger: where my house would always be tidy, where I'd ride horses while the kids napped, and where my boys would grow up perfect.
Posted by Steph at 08:56 PM | Comments (5)
March 19, 2006
No Swimming Today, the Pool is Closed for Cleaning
On Wednesday morning, I awoke with a fever and an aching body. Chas sat up beside me, with gloriously knotted bed hair, and began to pat my head with thundering blows. Ford, still asleep, snuggled closer, raking his razor sharp toenails along the back of my leg. I remember searching for a focal point, questioning whether I felt more like puking or finding a hole to crawl in.
It was another bout of mastitis, and I spent the rest of the day in bed, rolled up in layers of flannel and fleece. I am lucky to have a husband who can occasionally work from home, and a good friend who can watch my children while I sleep.
The following day, I recovered enough to make the weekly trip to Costco, babysit and help the neighbors move in. It amazes me, the body's will to recover when the mind is still feeble. It bounces back with surprising memory, catching us off guard as we try and coordinate our muscles to the impulsive drive to do more.
Yet, despite the quick recovery, the wellspring of creativity has slowed to a trickle; I find myself cleaning toilets and attempting to tighten ship, as if I were ready to set sail. Actually, we are driving to Dallas tomorrow morning, and I need to finish packing our bags. Maybe once the dust settles in the car, on the way to Dallas, I will find the focus I need. I'll bring a skein of yarn in a lollipop colorway, and coast on autopilot while my brain sorts things out. Knitting is good therapy, like cross training for the brain. I know this much: cleaning the toilets hasn't really helped much. And Lysol toilet bowl cleaner smells HORRIBLE!!!! I'm getting my money back. yuck. There has to be a greener way to clean toilets.
Posted by Steph at 05:37 AM | Comments (2)
March 06, 2006
The Brutal Curiosity of Youth
The lake today breathed a joyful sigh of peace before spring break arrives, next week, to slosh her with boat fuel, beer and music. Polly and I stood thigh-deep in the cold water, prattling about this and that, while Atticus and Ford rollicked on and off the diving platform. Chas and Tabitha teetered chest-high in the wakes from the occasional ski boats, the water slapped playfully against the banks and the youngsters, who didn't seem the least appalled. What I thought was a minnow and then maybe a tadpole turned out to be a mayfly larva, swimming like a snake an inch below the surface. As I lifted it out of the water atop my palm, it walked along walked along my hand with surprisingly deft strength against the water's surface tension. In order to take a closer look, Ford did something I cannot do anymore: he lifted the insect between his fingers and carried it away.
Most children enjoy letting slugs wander across their arms, caterpillars creep over fingers. Dad brought a jar of grasshoppers for the kids to play with last summer. Chas sat and picked them, one by one, out of the jar, letting them crawl all over himself. When I was Ford's age, I remember picking up insects in this matter-of-fact way. I had Stag beetles, tarantulas, and pet grasshoppers, large, shiny red-on-black grasshoppers that I kept in mason jars. And then one day, I picked up an earthworm. It was cool, pinkish-brown and very long. I wondered at it's sleekness, imagining that it could stretch to great lengths if it wanted to. So I pulled it gently between my fingers until it cracked in two places, exposing its tragic red insides to me. I remember dropping it, as I have seen Ford abandon his kill, only I felt sick. I still feel sick. I wonder what Ford feels, when his fingers erase another small life. Lifting him over the bank, as we were leaving, I noticed a very small gossamer wing on his arm.
(Sigh.) The mayfly?
It is midnight in early March, and I'm hearing what I can't bring myself to believe: a mockingbird serenading outside on the telephone pole.
Posted by Steph at 11:55 PM | Comments (8)
February 13, 2006
Primitive
They are often called primitive for want of a better name.
They are the most sincere and most unself-conscious art that ever was and ever will be. They are what remains of the childhood of humanity. They are plunges into the depths of the unconscious. However great the artist of today or tomorrow, he will never be as innocent as the primitive artist—strangely involved and detached at the same time.
What could never have been written is there, all the dreams and anguishes of man. The hunger for food and sex and security, the terrors of night and death, the thirst for life and the hope for survival.”
Dominique de Menil, 1962
Posted by Steph at 12:21 AM | Comments (2)
February 07, 2006
And now for something completely random
Closing windows on my desktop, I was cleaning up two days worth of clutter. Beneath three Ecto layers I found a cryptic little poem. Did I write this? I sat frowning for a few seconds. Then my eyebrows lifted my face; I had written it last night, my mind replied, but I needed to string together what facts I could recall: I had put on heavy eyelids, a light shone down the hall, metered by snoring, the laptop was too warm on my lap. A car dealership ad jostled my thoughts, Forwards, backwards, backwards. I had written this in my sleep:
I'm stop an elderly gelding
White and mellow
He is standing on a tidal flat.
A poem? Or was I dreaming? Did a TV ad filter into mysubconscience?
Did something happen to Marshmellow, the grey gelding I sold in Point Reyes? I feel compelled to search for his owner and find out.
I just turned a year older while thinking this over in my mind.
Posted by Steph at 12:22 PM | Comments (2)
January 24, 2006
It rained. It rained all day, beginning with bright flashes at midnight and ending with a shroud of mist on Sunday. This afternoon, two days after the relieving episode, the grass is still moist. Is our burn ban over? Hopefully not; this morning Ford and Chas followed me outside to the garden, where they leaned over to watch me burn the raffia and summer grass that decorated the rim of Bird's fishbowl. Quickly, the straw crackled into embers, and died into crumbly strings that we blew into the rosemary, which was still dewey. Before lunch, we had bought a new betta; the new one is named Angie and he is a vigorous red. Funny, I never thought to photograph the morning.
Ford got a new bike on Sunday. Electric blue, like mine, it inspired him to go very fast. We took him to the veloway, where we could ride and skate beside him for three and a half miles. Around the third quarter, his energy began to wane, and after Ford's excessive whining, Damon reluctantly carried the squat little bike the rest of the way, while I taxied him in the bike trailer. We continued to loop for another half hour, during which I thought about my own famous fallouts. Like the time I showed up for team practice on the first day, claiming I was an intermediate rider, and spent the rest of the evening correcting myself on an overly large, very young thoroughbred who felt like a Ferrari on wet pavement. Although I didn't quit, I did nearly shit in my pants and I definitely didn't make Intermediate.
Yesterday, we took the boys to the Children's Museum, where I found this:
With the grasses outside, glorious from Fall but wet from the rain, I thought we'd make a bunch of these for a wall parade. It didn't happen today, so we'll try doing this tomorrow. It may even be a good idea to use them for Christmas tree ornaments next year? I want a whole herd of them...
Posted by Steph at 06:56 AM | Comments (0)
January 21, 2006
Wee Hour Banter: Remembering to See
Writing is hard, but joy comes easily these days. I am rehashing my way through The Artist’s Way* again after a 6 year hiatus, and digging new roots in fertile soil. I’ve been drifting about for a while, tendrils outstretched, and feel ready now to grow down instead of laterally; the plant is strong but the roots are weak.
I’ve put my mind to naming the sources of joy and I’ve found that it comes from being aware of my footsteps and playing a lot. There may be events unfolding around me, but they may as well not be there when I am engaged. Being aware, I’ve found over the years, is what has given me fullness and sanity. Oddly, I ran across a passage in week 2 of The Artists Way that refers to this same phenomenon: Julia Cameron, in describing how her grandmother “made do” with the circumstances her husband left her (financial instability and a wild ride on the waves of success and failure), remarked about her mother’s capacity to be very much in the now, a reporter of life around her. Not focusing on regrets or fearing the future, she was able to immerse herself in experience, a great way to cope and remain sane.
"Attention is the act of connection," says Julia. "My grandmother knew what a painful life had taught her: success or failure, the truth of a life really has little to do with its quality. The quality of life is in proportion, always, to the capacity for delight. The capacity for delight is the gift of laying attention."
How do other people stay sane? Here are a few obvious secrets:
I watched a documentary last night on a female stunt pilot, who enjoyed the way flying dangerously required so much focus that everything else slipped out of her periphery. Surely a big wave surfer feels the same way, risking his life each wave as he directs every neuron to the dynamic matter and energy thundering around him. I imagine a surgeon feels a similar zen, perhaps a more cerebral, fine-motor adaptation of the same principal, or a writer, for that matter (although, as Robert Cormier once said, “The beautiful part of writing is that you don't have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon.”).
Another way I find sanity: watching my enthusiasm of the outdoors trickle down to my kids, watching them web together information on the world around them, making connections that, in turn, connect them to earth. When I am outside appreciating the world around me, it’s infectous; I can’t help sharing it with the kids, with others. It hasn’t taken many brainstorming sessions to discover purpose behind this. I want others to see. I want others to experience and feel joy in his or her footsteps, trying to banish regrets and ignore to-do lists, even if for five mintes at a time. Little bursts of sanity provide hours of empowerment.
I think of other writers who have fostered this capacity for seeing: Annie Dillard, when she wrote Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Anne Lammott and Operating Instructions, Rachel Carson, and the late Provensens, who wrote my favorite picture book as a child: Our Animal Friends at Maple Hill Farm. There are others, but these are favorites. What are yours? Have you seen much lately? Assuming that, like me, you feel periodic insanity, what centers you and makes you sane?
*Other Artist's Way bloggers have been inspired by Kat's Paws. I guess I can consider myself one if I just said "others."
Posted by Steph at 11:17 PM | Comments (1)
January 14, 2006
Visions of Swallowtails dancing in my head
I cut my finger pruning today, I was so eagerly (and glovelessly!) trimming the garden in the front yard and it was especially dangerous with Chas underfoot. Nothing serious, just a battle scar, a merit badge for my work. It felt invigorating to trim the seeded grasses and the long, thin dead stalks off the perennials; not unlike the liberation I feel whenever I have a thorough haircut and bound out of the salon, leaving piles of medium blonde locks on the floor behind me staring up at the ceiling like fish beached after a red tide.
I was surprised to find tiny green veins thriving inside much of last summer’s dried stalks. Seeing this as I explored each plant gave me all the hope I needed to dream of starting another garden this Spring with the kids. I thought of the new book I bought myself for Christmas, still waiting for me to put it to use: Roots, Shoots, Buckets and Boots by Sharon Lovejoy. Not for lack of inspiration, I bought the book to validate my eccentric enthusiasm about growing gnome-infested theme gardens and cultivating what land we’ve got to best use. Thinking of ideas, I took all the clippings and reduced them further, sprinkling them over the soil like little golden confetti.
While I dream of having another vegetable garden, we don’t have the means to create a large plot. We haven’t enough graded, sunshine-filled yard or protection from the deer and we sure don’t have the backhoe we’d need to cultivate a righteous bed atop the kaliche. But we have the perfect woods for little surprises, and a corridor between the house and the forest for a fragrant moonlight garden path (we had a resident bat last year). There’s room for a teepee, and I already purchased the heavenly blue morning glories for the tarp, and Mexican Sunflowers to play off the blue and create a haven for swallowtails. In fact, I am thinking of planting the entire meadow beside the driveway in a swath of yellows and white, a sort of homecoming parade.
As far as our land goes (where we are building, down the road), I still have to research rainwater harvesting, although I’ve been putting this off knowing full well that I’ll need a couple thousand to build a cistern, irrigation system and fence. Thinking ahead to another long hot summer, shopping for new fridge easily trumps those plans.
Posted by Steph at 04:41 PM | Comments (2)
January 01, 2006
2006
It's New Year's Eve in Houston, and over the buzzy drone of Chas' snoring I hear little groups of people hollering one block away, the rat a tatting of firecrackers and guns, and the horn of a freight train downtown. Our house and much of our block is asleep. But if you walk barefoot out onto the front porch, and sit on the swing, you can see Christmas lights smiling at the raucous din of nearby celebration. The turning of a new year unfolds as I swing back and forth in the stillness. The family of gliding squirrels is probably shaking on one of the grand oak boughs above me as bottle rockets whine above them.
Being a homebody on New Year's eve never felt so luxurious. I think I got over being homebound on New Year's eve four years ago when we made Ford.
Cheers to that and a new year!
Posted by Steph at 11:59 AM | Comments (0)
November 21, 2005
Tick, tock
I can tell that life has gotten hectic because I haven't spent much time the past week in reflection. Normally, there are about five minutes of peace in the middle of a day where I can stare into the forest and listen, or watch a spider spin a web, or feel the sun warming my back. But the holidays are upon me and I feel the pressure rising. I have a gift list that keeps detailing and evolving. Chas has developed the speed with which to help Ford whirl the house into havoc, and I simply can't keep up during the day. The evenings are either spent tidying or knitting, since Chas needs new wool pants. But there isn't much time left for gift-making. And the elves begin visiting the house, what, next week? Ford is expecting a fabric Whomping Willow and a set of handmade Harry Potter dolls from the elves. Me, being the elves, of course.
Posted by Steph at 02:59 AM | Comments (6)
November 07, 2005
Fall comes, Fall goes
It is Fall in the Northern Hemisphere. I had to explain this to Ford tonight, as I hunched over the bathtub bathing Chas. Not just the fact that it really is Fall, but the part about our hemisphere facing away from the sun. He had originally asked why today was so short, and I had to explain to him that the days were actually getting shorter. He stood there, watching his reflected expressions in the mirror:
"So, Mommy, is it Fall?"
Of course, he would have to wonder, what with the confusion we're experiencing in our Spring-inspired weather. The boys spent the evening playing in the sprinkler while I tended the plants. As the sun began to set, I put them into the jogger wearing only their underwear, and we walked along yellow Chinaberry groves and scattered Black walnut, red flags bouncing in the breeze. And then, hark! we heard the unearthed drone of a cicada. Ford sat upright in the stroller and, I kid you not, said "What the hell? A cicada!"
Posted by Steph at 10:51 AM | Comments (0)
October 28, 2005
thinking of: a "My Animals" puzzle
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October 20, 2005
Argentina?
I need to recharge my sense of wonder. While I was watching a squirrel outside on a limb, I reflected on my dull reaction. I thought my appreciation would climb if I travelled to another continent on another hemisphere.
Posted by Steph at 11:37 PM | Comments (0)
October 06, 2005
Revelation
It was eleven this morning, and we had eaten breakfast, cleaned up, brushed teeth, read a book, and the next sequence (even though out of sequence) was "wash face and get dressed" for Ford. He balked, meanwhile charming his way to watching I Robot,eventually turning the movie on outright, and I started losing it, irrationally complaining that I have no control over my kids. I was so ruffled over trying to get the kids out the door by noon, for chrissakes that I was starting to jerk my weight around and complain about not having enough control all the while. Damon walked into the room and pulled my horses to a screeching halt with his lucid analysis. He told me to rephrase "I have no control over the kids" (a self-centered, gun-in-the-foot approach) to "What does Ford need right now? What needs to happen?" (goal-oriented approach). It was an amazing moment of silence in my raging brain. All the birds swooped down to the tree branches, the monkeys stopped throwing papayas at me and the "to do" list tickertape died. It's one of the things I love most about Damon, his ability to help me regain control over my temper (which translates to forgetting about regaining control over the kids), because hostility and irrational moments are part of my makeup as much as moments of clarity and calm. So thank you, again. I needed that, so did Ford.
Posted by Steph at 05:22 AM | Comments (1)
September 29, 2005
Chas is no longer satisfied with the way crayons and paints taste; now, he is interested in their use as tools. Fingerpaints are in order, although he tends to dislike using materials and tools in ways that are different from his older brother.
Yet, in so many ways, Chas is very different from Ford. Today I suffered multiple minor heart attacks as I caught Chas atop various perches, each time rescuing him from a fall: The back deck has a seat-railing around the perimeter, and he is able to climb atop the railing and prepare for launch off the other side (and down five feet to impale himself on juniper-cedar bramble). For example.
I am frustrated that we can't pile the kids into the Airstream and drive up East for the next few months. I had more serenity back then: the cabinets were impossible for a child to open, there were no "dropoffs," everything was so...ship shape. Eighty square feet of control. Minimal cleanup. Simple. Irresponsible. So much less baggage than just the two images below, in and of themselves:
The piece of land, our whole quarter acre of it--I'm so overwhelmed with that right now, I can only sit in my car to photograph it, let alone walk up to a rock on site and watch the sun set, or plant a few Cinderella pumpkin seeds in the middle of summer, or place a few good luck totems around here and there. Something about the land is haunting me and I can't put my finger on it. Am I just rebelling? Not enough shade? Too many fire ants? Burrs? Mosquitoes? Slippery kaliche on the walk down? Not enough privacy to enjoy a few minutes of meditation, what with the big peach McMansion next door? I'm disappointed that I'm just not clicking with the property, even though we've had it for a few months, now.
Posted by Steph at 10:45 PM | Comments (0)
September 19, 2005
Museum Day
Today was Museum Day in Austin, when all the museums are open to the public, free of charge. Most of them also hosted fun kid-centric activities, like making seed balls and collages at the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center. Because it was noon, and white hot outside, we decided to head on over for some masochistic martyrdom at the Wildfower Center, where we could either bake to death outside in the beautifully landscaped terrace or pressure cook till our eyes popped out in the Little House, aka Little Barely-Air-Conditioned Room Where the Children Hang. So we decided to share the best of both worlds, and I took Ford to the House while Damon and Chas kicked back in the brick oven.
Lois Ehlert is in town, and while she was signing her picture books that we left at home, Ford and I made Leaf Man-inspired collages:
While working on them, I paused to take a break and admire all the children at work on their collages. Ford had squirted huge silver dollar-sized dabs of Elmer's glue onto his paper and stuck, very gingerly atop it, thin strands of dried grasses. It was so cute. An eight year-old across the table scanned this and then looked at me, scrunching up her face, and asked "Why did he use such a big glob of glue?" Before answering, I smiled, immediately thinking of the way Ford and I laugh together at Chas' "mistakes" all of the time, and the way he in so many words, asks the same of Chas when he makes a "mess."
"Oh, Chas! What are you doing?" Ford will say, and laugh in a very infectious way.
Posted by Steph at 06:45 PM | Comments (0)
September 08, 2005
Midnight sound byte
I am sitting in my bed, listening to jazz pipe in from the next room as it ripples through the white noise of my children, in bed beside me, breathing. I think I am damned lucky to enjoy this moment, I want to cling to it knowing that I'm still here enjoying this as a refugee from Katrina sits up in bed, acheing through a wave of despair in having lost a home, a loved one, possibly a child.
Posted by Steph at 06:17 AM | Comments (0)
August 11, 2005
...
Ford and I visited the Montessori school at the end of our block yesterday morning. It was poised, pretty, just bubbling with children. They practice strict Montessori method, and I was impressed with the industriousness and self-reliance of a 4 year-old girl as she swept collage remnants with a child-sized broom into a child-sized dustpan. The place glowed with purpose and warmth and Ford (and Chas, for his part) seemed to enjoy it very much. In fact, he didn't want to leave. He was attracted to station after station, wooden baskets and utensils, glowing freshwater fish tank and sunny windows facing the children's vegetable garden.
But there are no openings until June 2006.
This might be our opportunity in disguise to travel this year and shuffle the boys out of the country for a little exploring, while we still can.
I feel as if I'm waiting for Them to come take Chas away. With conflicting travel plans coming from more than three loved ones, I find myself pushing Chas' birthday celebration nearly two weeks following his actual birthdate. Is it so much to accommodate everyone's schedules that they might be able to join us in celebration, or am I reluctant for Time to take away Chas' First Year away from me, with all of the poignant milestones? He's not going to be a baby once he passes his First Birthday, but a toddler. It's not fair that decades of dying are preceded by the short, enthusiastic pant of life in that first year here.
Posted by Steph at 11:51 AM | Comments (0)
July 31, 2005
For goodness sake, pass the sake
I can't believe it, and you probably can't either: we have never hired a sitter to watch the kids. I realized this when we were the only guests in the sushi bar this evening that had about a quart of white rice scattered on the floor beneath our table and from which a preschooler's voice echoed across the restaurant: "DABBY DOTS OF JELLY! (giggle giggle) SALTY ON MY TONGUE AND YUMMY IN MY BELLY! (ikura) LOOK Daddy! There's rice on the wall!" But this is us, and these kids are having fun eating fancy with us, being served with luscious glazed pottery and playing with the food-art. And the money we saved for not hiring a sitter pays nicely for two cold bottles of sake. DOWN THE HATCH, HONEY!
Posted by Steph at 04:03 AM | Comments (2)
July 21, 2005
Waste
Inexpensive is good. Cheap is better. But at what cost? Photojournalist Michael Wolf has documented the flipside to the euphoria of cheap and returned my thoughts towards weekend garage sale shopping and the recycling of consumer goods.
Posted by Steph at 10:50 PM | Comments (2)
June 26, 2005
Inspecting Suspects
Part of Texas' charm lies, to some degree, in its insanely diverse and bizarre bug population. I suppose this statement is purely subjective; I know an equal number of folks who think this fact is amusing and of people who think this fact is a nuisance. But it's not a question of "half-empty" or "half-full," but a matter of survival. Because when you pass things each day like, say,
You could run, for instance, but this might make you attractive to such an
Or you could stand there, frozen like a deer, and hope that you might blend into the asphalt and surrounding trees. But the problem with that is the wasp might decide to fly over and hang out on your shoulder with its paralyzed tarantuala buddy before it decides to lay its EGGS in the abdomen of the totally doomed arachnid.
Don't forget that you could also be hit by a truck rounding the corner while you stand there staring at the natural beauty.
Better yet, you could raise an eyebrow and whip out your Super Soaker (that you carry in the baby jogger when out for neighborhood walks, you know, for those roaming Cujos). But wouldn't THAT just stir things up?
YEE HAW!
Posted by Steph at 05:01 PM | Comments (0)