baked goods

“We’re out of flour, Mom,” the barefoot girl calls from atop the kitchen counter.

“How can that be?” I ask and peer into the canister for myself. Good thing she just finished the dinner rolls. Less than a quarter cup remains. “How many batches of yeasted dough have we made since you got the new cookbook for Christmas?”

“I don’t know—six maybe?” Hmmm. Each day she asks to bake I remind myself, she may not always have this desire, and it’s a good desire. If I can make it happen for her, I will, despite the supervision required. Her cookbook insists “the adult” melts the butter for the dough, then again for the sticky bun topping. “The adult” boils the water for pretzels and lifts them in and out as the timer rings. “The adult” puts the pan in the oven. Six batches, usually divided into half for two baking projects. A whole lot of white flour, which doesn’t hurt her as much as it does me. I encourage her to use the whole-grain flour she ground by hand at her friend’s house, mixed with the white flour.

My grandmother was a talented cook and a caterer, known as “the finest cook in the county” for her fresh dinner rolls and her pies, her mashed potatoes and hand-rolled noodles. I worked with her because she paid me well, but I gave little attention to the food, and more to serving and cleanup. My brothers both absorbed her cooking style and remembered everything. I was dreamy and distracted. I taught myself to cook a decade later, but I wonder what else I’d know if I started earlier, and with a guide.

I do remember how to squeeze the yeasted dough into small rounded balls, three per dinner roll, into the buttered muffin pan. We butter our hands and do it just the same way, setting the pan aside for the rolls to rise one more time.

Madeleine’s fancies come and go, and I don’t know if she will stick with baking. She shows a level of confidence in the kitchen that I learned in my thirties, mixing the yeast and watching to make sure it’s “alive.” When I tell her I’m making spinach lasagna, she says “I don’t even like eating it, but can I help?” Yep. I pull the chair over for her to stand at the counter with me. I chop spinach and carrots in the food processor, then mix with cheeses and an egg. She layers the noodles. I pour the sauce over the layers.

“The art of teaching is to make the enjoyed moment serve the whole life,” I read earlier today, a quote attributed to A. C. Harwood. “The enjoyed moment” is what my fourth-grade daughter brings home from school. Joy. I envy her pure joy of learning. She sings as she works, not some sweet song but some song about pirates losing limbs merrily. She dances as she works, too, and stops to repeat “Go hang a salami, I’m a lasagna hog” so I can see that it’s a PALINDROME. (Spelled the same, backwards and forwards.) “A man, a plan, a canal, Panama.” Another palindrome. She asks excitedly if I know how many words can be spelled from the letters of PALINDROME and we laugh that someone Googled to find 531 words, while her class could only come up with 149. The enjoyed moment lasted 149 words!

The article continues “if math and painting are taught with humor or warmth… and through a process of beauty, then the ‘memory’ of math and painting lives far more deeply in the person than just the memory of ‘how to do it.’ …Then even if specific information may retreat from the conscious memory… appreciation for all subjects remain with the person for life.”

I consider how to make the enjoyed moment serve the whole life, as a parent, when it’s mid-winter and I am grouchy and struggling to make headway on my projects. Warmth, humor. Specific information retreated long ago. I remember my Grandmother and I feeding kitchen mice little scraps when we catered one cold winter evening in a rented kitchen at the Lions Club, how surprised I was to see her eyes brighten as we watched.

Madeleine asks if she can go play after I pop everything into the oven, and I turn to survey the flour on the kitchen table and counters, the sink filled with measuring cups and spoons and bowls, caked with flour and butter. “Please?” she says. “Brendan is playing a game I want to play.” Okay. I’d like her to learn to clean up for herself, but I’d like her to feel like cooking is more “play” than a chore. This enjoyed moment has passed and dinner will be a little later than usual, but it’s a little more special than usual, too. She leaves her apron on the back of the chair and I push up my sleeves and start the hot water running in the sink.

“Pssst.” She calls to me and stands by me at the sink.

“Yeah?” She crooks her finger to draw me closer to her whisper.

“Go hang a salami!” she quips. My educator.

“I’m a lasagna hog,” I reply, and we wink at each other. “Let’s try it the other way: Go hang a salami.”

“I’m a lasagna hog. But not really. I don’t like it much.”

“Do you think you’ll eat a little?” She nods.

Does it serve her whole life? It’s hard to say. Maybe. Does the enjoyed moment serve my whole life? Definitely.

“Have a fun game. I’ll call you when dinner is ready.”

avgolemono

I'm down with the flu, after a lovely Christmas-- the bug held off until after dinner on December 25th, thanks be to God. I found this in my draft file, though, from a few weeks ago.

The narcissus begin to open. I purchased a small basket at the beginning of Advent, maybe six bulbs total, but the stems are prolific, more than ten bunches and only the first two pungent sets stretching out today. The advent calendars came out late, after my papers were turned in for the quarter, but flower bulbs are all about waiting, watching, stretching upward.

I haven’t tended my neighbors for a long time, disappearing in plain sight for the past few months, but when I pull my minivan into its space, Wayne pops out of his door to offer “lemon-chicken soup—I have too much.” (The last time he spoke to me was to taunt me about my car maintenance again, because I could’ve prevented that rust, tsk, tsk… Soup gifts, now that’s more like ‘neighborly’.)

I open the container, hungry, to find it’s avgolemono, not merely lemon-chicken soup but something really hard to do well, a taste I’ve not enjoyed for more than a decade, and still I remember it. I warm it gently, to not curdle the frothy layer on top. As it warms I think of the Greek restaurant in Vancouver, the window view on the busy street where I’d wait for my friends to finish with classes so we could visit, 1989 I believe, the place to finish with rose-petal jam on ice cream.

I pour the bowl too full and slurp it from the rim, my bowl of luxury this day.

I planned—really planned—an excursion to the outlets, an hour north, for underwear and pajamas, for my children who insist they truly want underwear and pajamas for Christmas, along with toys. The weather report seemed daunting, but it’s never to be trusted, honestly. I found myself oddly resistant to leaving the house, and sure enough, the snow is pummeling, now, beauty dropping from the sky, my reward for sluggishness today. While a sluggish homebody, I’ve begun to read three books for the next quarter—it begins in January, but ten books in ten weeks is too much of a challenge, so I’d best get a head start. Besides, this stack of books is irresistible.

I am counting blessings, reading email, glad for no looming deadline, when a bitter, bitter taste fills my mouth—and I spit out the hull of a genuine lemon seed. I need to eat other people’s cooking more often. Even the bitter is a delight: real. This soup is real.

The snow builds—I’d best find layers and boots and all the acoutrements. Scraper? Hmmm. Shovel? Adventure. The bowl goes to the sink and I’m off to find the wool socks.

the winter window by morning and night

The arc of the sun is so small these days—I watched the sunrise at 7:20, while I hustled children into snow pants and checked for lunches, admonished children to finish breakfast. By seven-forty I needed to turn off the heat, the morning sun blazing in for my morning cup of coffee.

Children left for school and I headed north for The Big Shopping Trip: I make one trek per year to the Hanna Anderssen Outlet, a little more than an hour away, just past the border of Maine. No traffic, beautiful snow-lined highways, a gorgeous day for driving. While a minivan on the highway is not the best way to take in sunlight and sky, some days it will do. I arrived today to find everything I touched listed as “an additional 50% off,” so I doubled the quantities of children’s underwear, socks, tights. I meant to buy pajamas but the clothes were actually cheaper than pjs, and likely as comfortable.

I looked up from the parking lot of The Gap Outlet and gasped—I come here once a year, maybe twice, and I’ve never noticed the town is located alongside a beautiful tidal river. What a sad waste of beauty, this world of parking lots. My two shopping hours were over, though, so I left the river and the parking lot with my stash of practical goods.

Of course, I have a parking lot, too, and it’s useful. My kids are sliding on the ice below, now dragging the sleds up the stairs. I just dropped three cups of navy beans into the pressure cooker with a half a gallon of ham stock, frozen from last Easter. When the whole pot is cooked I’ll see if I need onions and carrots, cloves and orange zest—or if I put in good flavors long ago, in which case it will need nothing but cornbread. We’ve eaten luxuriously over the weekend, and I’d like nothing better than this simple soup. Others may hold different opinions.

The last of the winter-pink sky is nearly gone—it’s five p.m. The moon shines brighter than the last remnants of sunlight, still glowing to the right of my window perch. The pressure cooker hisses and the window steams. Time to call them up, to begin the daily rounds of drying out boots, mittens, snowpants, socks. Tomorrow when they leave for school I will see how my stuff stacks up, what treasures I've collected through the year. Treasures from my Santa Fe trip for each child, from August. Other treasures hidden from view while I shopped in Indiana, right beneath their noses, in October. I need to learn to tune a ukelele for a girl who likes to sing (shhhhhhh! Don’t tell!), and how to hide the paucity of gifts for mama and daddy, always a challenge.

Five-ten p.m. and the sky is pure night, now. Kids moved to the snow in the backyard, unwilling to let the day go. The soup smells like perfection to me, though it needs another twenty minutes or so. If my nose is any judge, I added the good flavors at stock-making time. My mother would laugh at me asking "what kind of wine goes with ham and bean soup and cornbread?" (My mother would say, there's no such thing. My answer is, the bottle that is open...) Time to preheat the oven and set out ingredients for kids to make cornbread. Time to set up things for the evening routine of baths, violin practice, homework, and construction of Christmas gifts.

I’m unwilling to let the day go, too, it seems, sitting here typing into the dark. Red wine, shiraz, that is the bottle that is open, and a good choice to go with winter dark and smells of home.

the window that frames the view

THE window.

Madeleine sketched our windowsill, with all the fun details: dried orange pomander on the upper right, solar-spinning prisms on the pane itself, and the terracotta pot of rosemary, spearmint, parsley. Soon it will be strung across the top with red yarn to hold Christmas cards, and already the pane is edged with paper snowflakes crafted by Brendan.

On the other side of the window, I see below, I see all ten buildings in my neighborhood. I see businesses to the sides, savory and unsavory, and I see Main Street. Through the open window I hear the hiss of tires on wet pavement, half a block away. Beyond the street is a boat lot, and beyond the lot is Gloucester Harbor, alive with boats at all hours of the day. Seals, sea gulls, lobstermen in bright orange waders on their green boats...

I watched children from my window this morning, sledding down the front terrace and hurtling into the parking lot-- the third "two-hour snow delay" in two weeks. The house is filled with drying snowpants, coats and mittens, while they wear "the other set" of snow clothes to school. I've used up all the milk for rounds of hot cocoa, all the bread for cinnamon toast to go with the hot cocoa. I love how it makes them happy. And now I love the quiet, the break from watchfulness for a few hours.

I love snow. Which is good, because the policeman said we are no longer allowed to park our minivan in front of our house when it snows-- some local ordinance about car size and street corners. I'm fond of my parking space. It'll work out. But for now I better go watch for the snowplow and make sure he doesn't have me towed...

doppelgangers of Diana and Katherine

I think I saw us today—three women crossed the footbridge to Good Harbor Beach, two dark-haired and one red-head, and two of them wore baby front-packs, while a third pushed a sleeping child in a jogging stroller. The sand had washed out from the ramp, so all three moms stopped to engineer the careful drop of the stroller to the beach.

“She’s not turning over as well as she should,” said the red-haired mom. “I’m concerned that she’s not where she should be, developmentally.” I looked at the infant sleeping in her front carrier, who seemed like any other baby girl.

“Have you spoken with your pediatrician?” the stroller mom asked, focusing hard on her task and on the question.

The third mom frowned in concentration. “Are you sure? There’s such a wide range of normal, you know.”


Turning over! Remember when the big worry was the baby turning over? I know it was all-consuming, and I know we were all so sleep-deprived and exhausted from nursing, but doesn’t it now seem dreamy to be worried of when a baby turns over? She’s not mean to her classmates, she doesn’t claim to hate math, she does not battle over what she will not eat for breakfast. You don’t need to demand that she brush her hair.

I almost said hello to them, needing to pass along the same footbridge they were maneuvering, then I realized they didn’t see me at all, as if they were blind to anyone without a newborn attached. I smiled to myself, instead. I was passing us, after all, or our trio of doppelgangers, ten years younger. So earnest—so absorbed. As I’m sure we were.

I miss you, Katherine and Diana. Congratulations on our children’s tenth year. I’ll be thinking of those two New Year’s parties, the night before at Katherine’s place overlooking The Headlands, and the day after potlucking at Martha’s house: the line of three infant carriers, and Brent turning green over Maxine’s diaper. There’s a lot NOT to miss about those days—but there is also a lot to miss. I’m glad we’re all off to other adventures but I want to pause a moment to honor us, as we were.

secrets of a sneaky mom

I spread the newspapers on the table, and place the rolling pin in the center, with the dry bundles of spearmint stems Madeleine picked last week with her friend Merry. I start the tea kettle and set out the willow-ware teapot and cozy.

“Wait! Are we making the tea from my spearmint? I WANT TO DO THAT!”

“Oh, you want to crush the tea leaves? Okay. Grab an apron.” I hand her the rolling pin. The first fish is reeled in, ah!

In the calendar of the children’s year, the weather has turned and the clocks have turned. The light lasts for perhaps an hour after we arrive home. We watch for pretty sunsets at four-thirty, then light a candle or turn on low lights. It’s the season for hands-on projects—without an on-going project, each child degenerates, forgets all house rules, begins practicing the high kick with slip-on shoes and giggling heartily at whatever breaks in the process. Without projects, I find a girl shrieking that her brother is shoving her, and he swears he did not (he’s been arguing that he is NOT pushing for all the years since he could talk, often arguing even as he is evicting whole families of people from warm and cozy beds or favorite seats on the couch.)

I tend to speak needs clearly—this is what I’ve been trained to do in the adult world of communication. I state. But as a mother, I state and I state and I state, and clearly I am talking to myself. I ask. I tell. I repeat and I raise my voice. When I am lucky, I remember the futility of this method before I launch.

My children are not direct-eye-contact beings. They are not, primarily, rational beings, though they do reason fairly well in some instances. They are Not Suggestible. They will tell you all the reasons “why not,” to exhaustion. As it has always been, if I accidentally ask “would you like to?” the answer will be a resounding NO. Projects must be employed, but a certain amount of stealth is required. When I am lucky enough to forget my communication training, I turn. I tempt. I sneak up. I appear, as if from nowhere, with a chore that is no longer a chore but instead A Great Mystery.

Within minutes, Brendan insists it’s his turn to use the rolling pin and I interrupt the bicker by placing the mortar and pestle squarely in the center of Brendan’s work space. The rolling pin is trumped and somehow a trade agreement is worked out by both children. I take a spoonful of the crushed leaves into the teapot and pour hot water, cover the teapot with a cozy, right next to the table. I set out the honey and three tea cups.

I lift the newspapers and aim the pile of crushed leaves into a small jelly jar. Plenty of leaves remain left to be crushed, so I spread the papers again and pour cups of tea laced with obscene quantities of honey to reward my sweet-toothed workers. Two armloads of spearmint leaves fit easily in the jar. Some of the mint is actually crushed into dust, lovely green dust that rubs into the aprons and skin and the children still smell of mint for the rest of the evening.

Madeleine skips off to find fabric scraps and scissors, and the jar is then “capped” with a pretty floral cloth and a rubber band. She haphazardly writes “Mint Tea” in silver Sharpie pen on the former jelly label, and a late afternoon is saved by an hour and a half of good-smelling work.

Scott looks at me to offer a silent “thank you,” and I think of other ways to rope them in, after dinner. I set up a shallow bowl of soapy water and the basket of cookie cutters for Madeleine, while Brendan takes a bath—we agree that she can experiment with my loose wool to craft ornaments for Christmas gifts. When Brendan emerges from the bath, he is eager to choose cookie cutters and do the same project, “felting wool inside a form,” which I wrote about for Living Crafts. He crafts several ornaments from a house-shaped cookie cutter and she crafts hearts and Christmas trees, while they sing Beatles songs.

Scott made the mistake, last weekend, of reasoning instead of tempting—he announced he needs button replaced, and stated clearly where he would put the shirts. I will remind him of the trick, soon, of baiting hooks and placing them carefully for small imaginations: put out the button bin, a threaded needle, and make convincing gestures that you are about to do the work yourself. Then disappear for twenty minutes. Stealth doesn’t work every single time, but often enough, I get lucky.

I place sandy shoes on newspaper beside my son’s workbench this morning, with an old toothbrush. I start to remove the dirt imbedded in my sneakers, tsk and move onto making breakfast. Sure enough, I look up and sand is everywhere, but he is vigorously at work, happily scrubbing off the sand and soil before his breakfast. When I ask Brendan “for a favor,” he answers “first I have to know what it is,” and he invariably says “no” or asks how much money he can make from this. (I’m a cheap date—I often offer a quarter if all the million socks are folded and put away, or a penny per towel folded.) But there is no argument today. I get three pairs of shoes cleaned enthusiastically and thoroughly, because it sort of looked like fun.

When I am thoughtful with stealth, I become Tom Sawyer and harbor my own desires secretly, and instead of words I focus on gesture, temptation, disappearance, mystery. Alas I cannot fish them into folding towels or other non-mysterious tasks, but for some things, baiting and waiting is just the communication I need. I need to think ahead for the evening and consider what project might reel them in, today.

I put the idea in the back of my mind. I need to sneak up on myself and get some work done.

a saturday breath

Any minute now the door will swing open and my children will stumble from their bedroom. A friend tells me of a Polish mother’s proverb that says “one is none, but two is a million,” and mine will sound like, feel like, precisely one million, entering into my Saturday morning quiet.

But not yet. For now it’s me and the gull cries and the prowling cat, so pampered and pretty. The rainbow-throwers hanging on the window have Satchmo stalking, stalking those shimmers through the house. The white haze tells me the day will be hot. But not yet. For now, breakfast and coffee, in quiet, celebrated.

I slept last night—a mercy. I’ve experienced a strange bout of insomnia for the past six weeks, and find myself scrambling, cutting back caffeine, plotting nightly cups of tea laced with a calcium/magnesium brew, following the drowsy instinct whether it hits at eight-thirty or eleven, finding ways to invite sleep closer. My friend Katherine tells me I’ve successfully reinvented myself after age 40, and that I’m just beginning, and perhaps that is the tumult keeping me from sleeping. I don’t feel reinvented—“culmination” comes to mind, though that may seem presumptuous. I’m pulling all the threads together, into one life. I expected I’d uncover a storyline when I started writing. I didn’t expect such an unusual sense of power to it, though. Graduate study, pulling away from other’s needs to serve my own needs, travel, running at freelance opportunities as fast as I can… okay, I’m reinventing my life, while tending the same children, home and husband, in the same tiny condo by-the-sea. Neighbors ask me “what’s new” and I start to laugh maniacally, considering how to respond, how to translate seismic shifts into a “hi, how are you” conversation. “I’m still here. Everything else is new.”

One pajama boy emerges from the bedroom, but one is none. He asks for Daddy and sneaks across the hall for a sleep-in. The coffee is still warm and my stack of books can stay right here on the living room floor. I hope the two of them will find a way to be, together in the next room. The boy can be exceptionally demanding.

One pajama girl emerges, greets Satchmo and she heads to the bathroom. I overhear Brendan asking Scott “why” and “how” questions about baseball technicalities, which means both are happy. Scott’s voice moves steadily and patiently through definitions and fine points of distinction. “Does that make sense?” he asks after each concept. “Uh-huh,” Brendan answers, satisfied, and the questions end for awhile in the quiet of the morning.

Madeleine settles into the couch behind me, with a new book about girls and bodies—her friends are growing rapidly, though she will be a late bloomer like me. There is treasure in waiting, even in being “last,” but I felt left out of so many things as a child, not wanting to change to be like the boy-chasing girls, as I saw them. Madeleine’s childhood is completely different—she is a happy and social girl who makes friends easily, and she is quite comfortable with boys, unlike me at that age. This book is nothing like the book my mother handed me, which covered anatomy and anatomical processes. Madeleine’s growing-up book has colorful illustrations and talks about friendships, differences from one girl to the next, clothing choices, and the anatomical details are tucked in, just like normal conversation. It’s nothing we haven’t talked about already, but as an American Girls title, the book holds some weight of authority. Unlike the book handed to me, this book makes growing up seem quite normal and not catastrophic.

Brendan emerges with a copy of our school’s yearbook, and sits quietly on the other end of the couch. His mouth shows evidence of last night’s dessert and his nails need trimming, both topics to pursue—but not yet. The quiet is all. My back is propped on the same couch, at my laptop. All is good.

One question I hear, in good writing, is the question, “what is at stake?” I understand that some stories are powerful, and I know a powerful story when it is happening to me. Often, though, I want to write and write when nothing is at stake, nothing at all. It’s a strange impulse, I know, but I feel sure it will serve me.

Like this moment serves me, the gulls, two children who are not yet a million, a sleeping husband in the next room over. This day is unlike any other. Nothing is happening. We are just here, contented and the world is open on a quiet Saturday. My friend Kellie tells me, “All I have is this breath.” As soon as I say it, I breathe deeper and taller, hear the whir of the rainbow-thrower and the gulls overhead. I breathe in the scent of pinon coffee from Valerie, the scent of pulled pork simmering in the crockpot for later, and sea salt. (The pork is leftovers, raised to glory—don’t tell my family, okay?) I do not ignore the scent of the compost that needs to be emptied, and I am relishing all scents before the cat is fed, the worst scent of the day.

As a Christian, I have so much more than this breath, the whole created order and all of history… and this breath, right now. Make it a good one, I remind myself, make it good.

Scott lumbers out and moves the laundry along, and the questions about what to do and how we will do it, begin. I don’t say the spell is broken—this breath is all I have, still, though conversations fly and breakfasts need to be addressed, the dryer tosses its contents and Satchmo begs loudly for his fishy-smelling stuff. The million emerge from the no-longer quiet.

And that's alright. I have this breath, and I am ready.

reversible bowler-- the blue sea side

working portrait

My children and I sifted through just a few layers of The Finished Art Box-- the magical box where art "ages," and after a series of months it no longer holds the same emotional impact on the artist. The art-makers needed to find me a grocery bag full of shredded paper for Paper-Making in my fiber arts workshop at Art Camp. (Art Camp is very small, very zany, and my children are madly in love with all things Camp just now.)

A few inches into the crammed box, the grocery bag was quite full of shredded artworks and lovely scraps of origami paper, when we discovered this "journal entry"-- it's written from Brendan's perspective, but Madeleine obviously wrote it for him in the format her school uses for The Sentence of The Day.

That's me-- I'm the one connoted by dark curly hair. I'm working on a table covered by a white tray that collects water in a trough that drops below the edge of the table: see?

On the date noted here, Brendan and I crafted a reversible bowler hat by layering a small basketball with carded wool. The inside design is an orange sky with a bright bluebird singing over pink flowers, and the exterior design is an ocean of goldfish and purple fish, with bubbles and some seaweed. He wore the hat for a week, to church, to bed, everywhere, before he became so protective of it that it's no longer allowed to leave the house!

To craft the hat, the wool designs are topped with a stretched stocking, then the ball is rolled for a very long time in the tub, atop a layer of soapy water. Later when the ball is removed, there's still a lot of scrubbing to shrink the hat to a very hard felt. Brendan worked about an hour and a half on it, and I scrubbed after that.

The hat project is from Harrisville Designs-- the kit makes two hats if the wool is divided carefully. Harrisville writes terrific directions and I can't commend them enough.

Great project for a rainy day!

I'll try to find a photo of the blue bowler to add here...

weavers of rainbows

Photos to match earlier stories:


Weavers at work on a set of scarves for winter.

This is a well-crafted heddle loom for children, small and sturdy. The heddle lifts or lowers every other piece of yarn throughout the whole weaving, when pulled up or down with every other row, so no "over-under" calculations make for some really speedy weaving.





The bar nearest Madeleine winds the finished weaving in a roll, while the bar furthest away holds the rest of the warp, wound carefully and ready to be woven. It's an impressive little system! I like that the loom comes threaded, so the weavers can start without the hard part of learning to set it all up.

I need to learn to do the set up on my own, now that we've finished that project.














The Signature Quilt, written about in the story about a coverlet to match, last month.

he doesn't understand irony

Brendan, age seven, spent half a day building a stunning pirate ship, complete with a billowing sail on a mast, all the while singing that the hills are alive with the sound of music-- at the top of his lungs and with deep sincerity. Looting and plundering, doe a deer a female deer.

A year ago Madeleine opened her extra special from-every-living-relative American Girl doll on her birthday, which is also Christmas night. I'd set aside one last present for Brendan to open, too.

"A BOAT?" He demanded with a shout, "A DUMB OLD WOODEN BOAT.... wait, what is that guy's funny hat? HEY IT'S A PIRATE BOAT! A COOL, COOL PIRATE BOAT WITH A CROCODILE!"

Madeleine asked what pirates do, and Scott quickly quipped, "We're not quite sure, but we know they love their mamas."

A few, just a few of my favorite pirate things, these.

my summer job as a mom

A week and a half into summer break and my children and I are cloistered in the room with the tiny air conditioner, pumping its heart out. The summer so far has featured long stretches of icy days reminiscent of spring, interspersed with wicked hot days like this one, high near 96. A week ago we were struggling to find long john pajamas and jackets.

Madeleine and Brendan heard about a neighborhood yard sale, and rather than part with any precious item from their belongings, they are drawing elaborate sheets of paper dolls to sell. It’s a brilliant idea that keeps them very, very busy and will likely net them only a few pennies. I try to insert a practical word now and then, such as “most people look at a yard sale as a reason to sort through their stuff and get rid of the extras.” I warned them of the same, last fall when they gathered and sold seeds around the neighborhood, and they netted twelve dollars plus some really interesting seeds. People want to pay these hard-working children, and who am I to argue against their entrepreneurial instincts?

Last week, we inaugurated summer vacation with a five-day whirlwind trip to Pennsylvania, where we met Scott’s dad for a few slow days of scooters, roller blades and porch swings. I walked into a dusty coffee shop and entered my childhood, but that’s another story for another day. Then Scott drove south with his father on an errand to Florida, while kids and I slowly meandered through the green hills in our small Jetta, stopping for a spinning wheel museum, for hours of baseball and dog walks with friends Steve and Aidan. Friday morning baseball followed until we could stay no more, yearning to move toward home. One trip to Madeleine’s favorite organic farm yielded cheeses and breads from heaven, and a final visit to dear friends who’ve moved across the state. Although technically we were home on Friday night, I worked late into the night with my “day job” online, so we slept through half of Saturday. When we visited with my out-of-town friend Byron over lunch at a neighboring college, it still seemed like we were on vacation.

And it still does! A small heddle loom arrived in the mail and we strung it up with a rainbow warp—one winter scarf was completed entirely by my children and I’ve started weaving the second scarf as their energy turned to paper dolls. They are so happy to be home, to be free of schedules and hurry. For now it’s blissful parenting. Children engineered smoothies for lunch, made of cantaloupe and peaches. St. Peter’s Fiesta will find us sailing down three story slides and riding the giant ferris wheel by the end of the week.

In another week and a half I’ll be teaching at the kids’ arts camp, then preparing for my first writing residency in Sante Fe. Until then I’m reading my homework (homework! It’s been a long time), working on repairs and sorting, and drinking an ice cold smoothie in front of the air conditioner.

a two-shower day

I begin the day tiptoeing toward the shower before anyone wakes, and laying out my favorite summer dress and my best red shoes, tossing my tiny makeup collection into the purse. The children need to dress up, too, for eighth-grade graduation, and when they are moving, they will take up all of my attention.

I end the day showering off the farm dirt with a poison ivy soap, then washing off the scent of the poison ivy soap with a second shower and lavender/hemp oil soap. As I sit down to do a little work at the computer, after the children are finally settled, I top off the day by pulling a tick from my scalp. In my mind I continue the baby book of firsts: age 45, my first tick. He only chose me because my delicious children were too far away, I know. They are tick veterans. I’ll check the children again in the morning. I hope I got all of him.

The true end of the day, though, lying in bed and sorting through the days pictures, the candids not caught on camera but in my mind.

Brendan has been looking forward to this day for a long time. Simon, his eighth-grade buddy, has helped him carve a pumpkin, pour beeswax into a sand-casted candle mold, and has held Brendan’s hand on the walk from the train to the circus. The dads who acted as official circus chaperones joked that they had nothing to do—Simon was clearly revered and in charge. He is not a demonstrative boy, but he takes his responsibility as a role model seriously, as the children hang from his arms and legs.

Brendan has also been looking forward to this day for another reason: The Suit.

We don’t shop for children’s clothes—we rather collect them from some wonderful Good Karma conduit of children’s clothing. My attic houses girls’ clothes up to size 14, and boy’s clothes up to size ten. I shop church rummage sales for the shoes some other boy grew out of too quickly, knowing my son will outgrow them quickly, too, and each year near Christmas I buy fresh white tshirts, socks, and new turtlenecks—but mostly we “shop from the attic” when each season changes. When the children outgrow clothes, we label bags “for Lila,” “for Eliza,” and “for James” if they are still good, and “grift shop” for the way my children used to mispronounce thrift shop. The bags are then stacked by the door, for the next stop on the conduit.

One exceedingly pastel boy’s outfit, apparently purchased for a ring-bearer in a wedding then never worn, hangs in the back of the closet, where it’s been hanging every summer since Brendan was four. We’ve never had an occasion and a “fit” at the same time. And that’s been fine with me, but not with Brendan. He’s fascinated by this little suit.

I am from the Midwest, where men brave pastels only after the age of thirty, and even then some men never don anything that could remotely be defined as “pink.” This little suit is not pink, but instead it is a pale yellow pair of Little Lord Fauntleroy shorts, with attached suspenders, over a white polo with yellow and pale blue accents. When he wakes he rushes to put it on proudly. The outfit is topped with a tiny blue- and yellow plaid vest. My son looks astonishingly like a catalog ad from the 1960’s, astonishingly like no self-respecting Midwestern boy would ever look, ever. Good thing we live on the East Coast. He leans back with his belly out, and looks three years younger than his age. He looks very handsome, in his preppy-boy-wearing-pastels sort of way. He needs to run back to change underwear because the little bees printed on the first pair were quite visible. He rushes to change, and returns with his comb and Madeleine’s apple-scented detangler hidden behind his back. I stop him before he douses himself a second time. Good thing he hasn’t learned about after-shave.

Somehow we’ve inherited a pair of Doc Marten oxfords, just a few days ago. He’s been itching for a pair of dressy shoes, and we had nothing to remotely match the pastel boy suit. Brendan tucks his handmade graduation card into his pocket for Simon, then asks for an apron to wear while eating breakfast—a brilliant idea.

Madeleine wakes more slowly these days. She is changing quickly, this young girl who is still quite slight in comparison to her classmates. She needs to sleep later, is prone to slamming doors and stamping her foot over small injustices. She, too, though is enchanted by the rare opportunity to dress up, when we have such a huge selection of Good Karma dresses in the closet. She chooses the pink gingham, which arrived in the same bag of treasures as the Doc Martens, earlier this week. We tussle over the white cardigan with the lace collar, over the cream-colored fisherman’s sweater. She fishes out her frilly socks with the shell beads crocheted onto the cuffs, and locates a headband covered with pearls. And she asks for an apron to eat her breakfast, too.

My bright dress looks garish next to these delicate flower children— if I described it, even though it is quite pretty, you would see something entirely different in your mind. It involves a print of red peonies, more subtle than they sound. Topped with a black short-sleeved shirt, the dress’s collar looks like a matching scarf. The dress is my favorite because it is long, but light as a feather, the perfect hot-weather dress. It is also made by my favorite dressmaker, who went out of business this year—I have five Anokhi dresses, collected over fifteen years, and this is the last of my collection, purchased, as the others, during a sale, but this one—okay it is apple green with red peonies—only caught my eye after the “75% off” was announced. Suddenly apple green was worth trying. The red of the peonies makes it less… green. It loves the red shoes and cries out for a shade of red lipstick I’ve not yet found. My everyday lipstick will have to do.

The morning is sweet and teary, with ethereal music by students and faculty, and speeches by each graduate. Brendan was hoping he’d be mentioned by name in a speech by his favorite eighth grader, but he contents himself in the part of the ceremony when the first-graders gift their eighth grade buddy with a long-stemmed rose. In his yellow and pale blue short suit, his lip trembles as the music plays. I don’t falter, myself, as his lip trembles—if he cries, the whole room will fall to pieces, because he doesn’t cry small and will fall at the tall Simon’s feet. Luckily, something distracts him and makes him smile, and we all make it out of the room alive.

I drop by the school for a quick meeting, and Cecilia grabs me on the way through the door.
“You don’t look like you are dressed for raking,” she says.

“Am I supposed to be?”

“Did you get the email? The third grade farm plot is going to be plowed, but it needs raking to get it ready for next weeks planting. I hoped to have help this afternoon, but I don’t think anyone is coming.”

“I can come after school,” I said. What would we be doing, anyway?

“Can you pick up Helen? That way I can get some work done this afternoon.”

“I’ll be forced to buy them ice cream, you know, to fortify them. Then I’ll meet you around three-thirty, with rakes.”

I drove straight north, stopping to run errands while still in my comfy dress, then grabbed a salad, a rare luxury to celebrate a good year of my own work on these solo days. Home, then, to pick up farm clothes and tools and cash, then straight south toward school and ice cream. Then further south to the organic farm, to prepare the fields for a “Three Sisters” planting of sister crops corn, beans, and squash. The third grade girls talk on and on about the afternoon with the older grade kids, playing Capture the Flag for hours.

They are already flagging when we arrive, with the ice cream long gone. They proudly carry rakes and hoes across the road, across the field, past the blueberry patch—then they drop to the ground exhausted in front of the shed built by their class. They offer twenty minutes of work before finding a stray dad to take them to play in the pond. Three moms and an assistant teacher rake and hammer stakes for another hour, strategizing the best location for four ten-by-ten foot plots, building model mounds for planting next week.

I sneak into the farm stand to pick up zucchini, plums, pink lady apples and a bottle of iced tea. The children have already shared juice boxes. I pack them up and drive home, phoning Scott to please pick up pizza and meet us at home.

“Graduation is funny,” Brendan announces. “Because it’s really happy and really sad. You’re happy someone gets to go do something else, but you’re sad because they won’t be part of the school anymore. Some people cried to leave their friends.” We talk about it a little more, our favorite parts of the day, the dress-up part, the family of snakes living near the field we raked.

Although they assure me they are starving, Madeleine and Brendan vote resoundingly for me to drive by the ocean for a look at the surfers. The icy breeze is startling and we quickly drive home, for the required poison ivy soap scrub, followed by the hot pizza and the welcome baths to wash off the poison ivy soap scent. Followed by much silliness and bedtime reading and finally sleep, so I can get a little work done.

A good day, between my two showers. A little work left for me, then, and a good sleep, next.

a day in the 'hood

Five years ago I decided to throw weekly "cooking" courses for the neighborhood kids, hoping to endear them to myself and hoping to get them to crowd someplace other than my house. Since they don't look like this anymore, I feel safe enough to post their beautiful faces online, complete with cheesecake.

Now I miss the crowding-into-my-house days, as the tall teens ramble with their friends, outdoors. They talk loudly and rudely, until the small ones run down from the houses to join them-- they clean up considerably, then, and become responsible and kind, teaching how to kick a soccer ball and how to fill a water balloon.

I joke with friends that I alternate between Martha Stewart and Atilla the Hun. This-- the cheesecake day-- was a Martha day.

an unfinished egg description from last week

With ten days to go until Easter, I pop open the luxurious carton of Jumbo White Eggs. Have I ever seen eggs so large? It’s been awhile. I snip open the new egg-blower from the school store and quickly pierce four tiny holes in the large ends of four eggs. With only fifteen minutes until Scott and Brendan leave for school, I’m forgetting the learning curve with new technology. The squeeze bulb is not gentle enough—the egg bursts and the shell is as valuable as any other broken eggshell. Into the compost pile, and I purposely crack two other eggs into the bowl with the other raw egg, with a dollop of milk. The butter is already sizzling in the pan.

When the school boys are out the door, Madeleine joins me examining the new egg blower and I pull out the box with the very-tired-old egg blower. She is home with a slight fever for another day, but she loves German and she giggles as I give a dramatic reading from the back of the box. “Sprecht und hygenisch!” reads the label. Bohren, Pumpen, und some multi-syllabic word for rinse that is just too cruel to print. The “old” Blas-Fix blower is yellow plastic, with a long hypodermic needle on the end. It has a tiny “bellows” that fills with air, and blows slowly and evenly into the tiny opening in the egg. The eggwhite streams fairly easily out of the egg, but the yolk is tricky. After a few pumps, I look closely at the opening to find out why the egg doesn’t flow more easily, and just as I turn the end in my direction a stream of egg yolk releases in a spray across my pajamas and onto the floor. Oh yeah, I forgot that sometimes happens!

After pumping out the egg contents, the old German egg-blower fills with water to rinse the inside of the egg, and this is when the bellows leaks streams of water in four directions. That’s why we replaced it. Unfortunately, the new egg-blower is not nearly as controllable or effective. But it looks indestructible, as it blows a side off of one, two, three eggs in a row. (They are fun, though, and we will find other uses for these unconventionally-broken eggs. One is shaped like a baby bassinet, another like two boats, a third has a flap, like a submarine hatch that opens and shuts.)

Three eggs for scrambled boy breakfast. Three broken, and six whole eggshells, blown and rinsed. One dozen jumbo white eggs.

My children love Ukrainian egg-dying and we will get started tonight, dying one egg after dinner each night in a series of colors until the whole range is visible on the egg. It calms them and focuses their energy before bed, and it’s good for me, as well. Hopefully they will blow their own eggs free from the scrambled innards, soon, but it’s best if I get a good headstart.

she sheds slippery sleds down by the seashore

Finally! A little tiny welcome winter! That's the Atlantic back there, Gloucester Harbor-- even the sledding is scenic, here.

designer gifts

Brendan designed and created these bookmarks for two classmates. I want one!

the parenting waltz

My children are at a good age right now: after bedtime, my husband and I congratulate each other and fall onto the couch to decide what is next: chores, or bed, or reading or watching a movie. There will be no bed-wetting, no diapers, no needing a bottle of milk, no waking, most nights. We’ve been parenting toward this for a long time.

So last night we offered to care for Lila, a three-year-old neighbor. When she arrived with a huge diaper bag, complete with pull-up diapers, toothbrush, pjs, a blanket and a teddy bear, we parents turned to look at each other. Oh, yeah, I remember what that was like! Yeesh, what if we mess up?

Everything went smashingly up until bedtime. Lila gobbled down our homemade chicken soup, a pile of strawberries for dessert, and proudly showed us how she brushes her teeth. We found Brendan’s outgrown folding bed in the attic, and outfitted it for a sleepover. She enjoyed the ritual reading of Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. She did not mind the dark and remained quiet for a long time. Half an hour passed, and then I heard the wail, “ I WANT MY MOMMY!”

Uh-oh. I picked her up quietly, trying not to rile up my two (impossible), trying to settle her in. “Do you need to go to the bathroom before bed, sweetie?” She nodded. Madeleine took this opportunity to discuss bathroom habits at length until I was able to hush her. Lila and I walked quietly to the bathroom, where she told me she “goes by herself.” I held her hand as we walked back to the darkened bedroom and once again I halted Madeleine’s lecture.

With a sigh, I picked up Lila and put her head against my neck, rocking to a slow waltz rhythm. Twenty minutes passed. When she went limp, I stood up to put her in the bed, which of course woke her, so we were back to the chair. “I am too hot,” I thought. “I have independent children so I don’t have to do this. I was just in the middle of a project.” I considered the near-slavery I felt during bedtimes past.

Then Lila offered the tiniest yawn, and then a second one, and her lightness in my lap reminded me of the goodness of near-slavery, of having no choice but this: to care for a warm little being in need. I sat in the corner chair with Lila for another hour, in the dark with my own thoughts and this little rhythm lulling. Her mother arrived to take her from my arms. We draped her in the blanket for the walk home.

Warm and sleep-drunk myself, I skipped my project and went to bed, too. The old days: that’s exactly what happened in the old days.

sick house

“I can’t possibly drive us to pick up Madeleine,” I gasped to Brendan. “I look green and sick.”

“No, mama. You look um-pletely reg-a-lur,” Brendan insists.

“Not sick?”

“Tired a little, but not sick.”

“Well I feel sick.”

“But you look reg-a-lur. Just the same. Get in the car.” Brendan and I have spent the last two days together, and I’ve gotten used to him bossing me around. Usually I remind him he is not the boss and may not speak to me in that tone, but this time he’s talking sense. I get in the car. Someone needs to pick up the girl. We visit a drive-up for the first time this calendar year, to fortify ourselves with hot chocolate for Brendan, and hot cider for my blazing throat.

And we drive. Brendan is sick enough that he doesn’t ask a single question for the twenty-minute drive. We make the turnaround as quickly as possible, and he doesn’t ask a single question on the way home, either.

I stayed home yesterday to nurse Brendan through a cold, and silly me, I caught the cold myself. I managed to find Madeleine a playdate after school, feeling satisfied to keep her away from our sickhouse—now of course her playmate is home with the throw-up flu today. I’d be nervously watching for symptoms, if I wasn’t too sick to care right now. It’s just a cold. Just the aches. Just the sore throat that won’t end. Just something.

The funny thing about parenting while sick? I do the exact same things as when I’m not sick. Empty the dishwasher again, move the laundry again, make dinner again. Same tasks, but without much joy. I daydream of my mother, feeding me toast and tea, changing the cool cloth on my head, and of sleeping, sleeping, sleeping until I feel better. Not for me—not today. If she were alive I would call her to elicit sympathy—but there is no one to call except other moms, who know this story well and live it everyday.

I’ve gotten a lot done this week, strategizing to publish my writing, talking shop with other writers, proposing stories, writing publishers. I’ve uncluttered vast swaths of my condo, one section at a time. Four bags of paper to the recycling, two boxes of stuff to the thrift shop, hunting down hand-looms on eBay for a friend, and teaching children to weave. I’ve given my cat a stringent refresher course on using the litter box, at the price of a few nasty blood-lettings. Even in weather below freezing, I’ve gotten kids out to play for a bit of fresh air, almost every day.

And last night we ate chicken pie for dinner, one of those miraculous combinations of leftovers, a pie more delicious than all its ingredients. I’m feeling very smart, now, that I baked two pies, so the spare pie is tonight’s dinner. My imagination exited hours ago, but that buttery crust and the mashed potatoes on top will taste just as good tonight, with the chicken, carrots and peas in gravy. It's not quite chicken soup: it's glorified chicken soup.

The children have the nerve to ask me what’s for dessert. I don’t know. I’ll make it up as I go along. Just a few more hours and we will all be in bed, with me dreaming of my mother, toast and tea, and them dreaming of another day at school, if we can only manage to all be well tomorrow

winter comfort food: hot cocoa

Brendan stops pushing his little trucks across the floor when he hears the bounce of the soccer ball on the stone terrace at street level. It’s been a long damp stretch of weeks when we’d normally have snow, but the weather has merely been cold, and precipitation has been rain or sleet. So his brows raise and he scampers to the window. I’m trying to train our cat to sit in a chair with a human being, which can only be achieved by scratching his chin so much that Satchmo closes his eyes, so that he forgets his skittishness for a few moments.

“It’s Isaac!” Brendan says, and Satchmo jumps as quickly as he can wiggle free, onto the big bay window where the horses stand in their wooden barn. Each is carefully saddled with a purple ribbon sash, and all are looking out the barn windows, out of our window.

“Ask if you can play.”

He is weighing his decision. Isaac is twelve, tall and confident. His new afro makes him appear taller, and shows off his dark eyes. Brendan caused a whole neighborhood scuffle a few months ago, by demanding to take back his whiffle ball and halting a huge ballgame. Sometimes Isaac has friends visit, also. Sometimes Isaac says no, which is his right. He is twelve. He doesn’t have to say yes just to be nice.

Brendan runs to the porch, calling, “Can I play with you, Isaac? Can I play?”

He returns from the porch. “He said yes, mama. But I don’t know. There are so many things I could do inside, too.”

“Go, you! The sky will be dark in just a few minutes. You haven’t played with Isaac in a few weeks. You don’t want to miss it.” Brendan puts on his coat and chooses his slippy-soled shoes—he’s dying to free his feet from the heavy thermal hiking boots he wears in case of snow and mud. “Stay where I can see you from the window,” I call. The “okay” trails off as he scampers down the steps.

I peek out the window just as Brendan snags the ball and Isaac greets him with a big grin, nodding at the small boy’s play. Brendan has learned a lot about soccer in the past four months, now that he is playing on a team in a league. And he looks taller and more confident, himself. I walk to the stove to scramble up a dinner.

Just the children and me tonight—Scott is tutoring, so I make kid-friendly foods. Tomato soup, a leftover baked potato cut in wedges and browned in butter, red pepper rings and slices of a delicious pork loin steak. For a treat, we will follow all the healthy foods with tortilla chips served with peach salsa (my favorite) and sour cream (Madeleine’s favorite). Three vegetables, a bit of protein, salty crunchy things, perfect. Dinner will require a lot of dishes but there’s very little preparation.

Madeleine peeks up from her book and looks out the window. “No soccer for me,” she said. “Wait, is Mariah coming out?” I watch her run for her coat and hat, and I turn off the heat under the potatoes and the soup. It will wait.
Madeleine and Brendan have known these neighbors all of their lives. Isaac and Mariah visited on New Years Day, the year Madeleine was born. They were each four years old that first winter we lived here. They visited often, as soon as Madeleine was old enough to walk and play toss. Madeleine’s first word after “mama” and “daddy” was “kids!” which she would shout out the window of our third floor perch. Brendan, born two years later, called them both “I,” then later “I and Ri,” with a fun mispronunciation sounding like “Ay and Wye,” also shouted out the window. Both children spent hours setting up Brio train tracks and eagerly gobbling my snacks while entertaining my little ones. I was sad when I needed to describe, later, that big kids need to play with big kids sometimes, and while they love us, they sometimes choose to play with others. Neither of those “big kids” has siblings. Both are endlessly affectionate and kind, especially for adolescents, but they are no longer an everyday part of our lives. We take them when we can get them.

So I postpone our little beggar’s feast of dinner offerings until it’s too dark to see.

When I finally call them, they run in the door, hurriedly washing hands and starting the tub running (in advance of a post-dinner dip). “Something smells YUMMY,” gasps Brendan. “I am one hungry mungry,” Madeleine whispers with her eyes wide. A candle-lighting, a table grace, and they tear into everything with great glee.

After our little supper, Brendan heads to the bath and Madeleine pulls the violin out for her practice.

“Just so you know, we want hot chocolate for dessert,” Madeleine calls, as she begins Ode to Joy.

“Is that something like ‘please?’” I ask. She nods brightly. “It’s covered,” I say. The pan of milk is already heating on the stove.

Heavy cream and maple syrup go into the whipping bowl on the counter. A quarter cup of sugar and a heaping spoonful of German cocoa go into a mug. The sugar and cocoa are mixed in the mug with a bit of hot milk, then poured into the pan and whisked. The cream whips into peaks after a minute in the food processor. A splash of vanilla goes into the hot pan and a dash of wintergreen into my mug and Madeleine’s, then I haul the dinner dishes into the dishwasher and sink. When the cocoa steams, I pour it in mugs, topped with big dollops of whipped cream and a last sprinkle of cocoa. Brendan already has donned his pjs and comes running. Madeleine’s violin is tucked back into its case. We gather around our candle and talk about our day for the length of one slowly sipped mug of chocolate.

Then it’s Madeleine’s turn in the bath, and Brendan makes his bed and practically falls into it. There is no time to choose tomorrow’s clothes—both children are tired from running and the cold evening air. They insist I “tuck them in,” which is actually me hauling their sleeping bags closer to the heads of their beds. It’s a silly request, but they won’t be asking me for this attention in a few years, so I oblige them with a hug and a smooch.
And it’s another day.

I’m having a long argument with winter, this long drizzly winter without snow. I’m having a long argument with the God who has gifted me with this love for writing, though no corresponding gift of income, as of yet. But I have no argument with my role as a parent these days. Whatever their needs and whatever the hassles, it’s a good season for parenting, for simple dinners and long mugs of hot cocoa drunk around the light of a single candle.