Friday: The Birthday

The night before my birthday Beth said, “Tomorrow you’ll be as old as me.” I disagreed, saying I was always five and a half months younger.  “How old am I?” she said, and then answered herself, “Forty-five.  How old are you now? Forty-four.  How old will you be tomorrow? Forty-five. Same age.”

It reminded me of the month and a half between my sister’s birthday and mine when she used to insist we were only three years apart instead of four.  She’d even go so far as to introduce us to new people putting stress on our ages.  “I’m ten,” she’d say, “And she’s thirteen.” I would itch to correct her but stay silent for fear of sounding petty by adding “almost fourteen.”

Now I’m long past wanting credit for being almost any age.  But I don’t mind forty-five too much.  It’s where I am now and it’s not a bad place.

Last year thanks to a fortuitously timed play date I had six hours to myself on my birthday (“More Than Cheese” 5/12/11).  I can remember how luxurious that felt and I marvel it was only a year ago because now I have six hours and forty minutes to myself five days a week. It fills up faster than I would have imagined a year ago, even though I only work about half that time. I exercise more, clean more and read more than I did back then. (And I spend more time on Facebook.) When June asked me recently if I’m sad while she’s at school because I am all alone, I said, no because I know she’s coming home soon. And it’s true, I am not sad. It was very easy to get used to this schedule and even to take it for granted.  Summer will be kicking that complacency out of me soon enough, but I’m trying not to think about that.

To make my birthday stand out this year, I decided I would front-load my work this week and finish by Thursday. I opened presents before everyone left for school and work—bath salts from June and from Beth and Noah the exact three books I wanted: Are You My Mother?, Pym and The Wind in the Keyhole.

Beth and I had a lunch date so I left for her office around 10:50.  I arrived early so I had time to get a latte and read Les Misérables at Firehook bakery. I am this close (twenty-three pages!) to finishing this twelve hundred plus page behemoth I started back in February and just in time as the book club meeting by which I need to complete it is on Wednesday. Lunch was Thai.  We often go out for Thai around Noah’s birthday because it was the last meal I ate before I gave birth to him, but this year we were too busy and he’s decided he doesn’t like Thai food anymore so we didn’t go.  Just thinking about it had put me in the mood for Thai iced tea, though, so I decided I’d make that my birthday lunch.  Beth and I had a pleasant meal. We talked about the kids and politics.  President Obama certainly gave us a nice topic of conversation when he came out in support of gay marriage the other day.

On the way back to the Metro we discussed our frustrations involving Mother’s Day shopping with Noah. We were having the exact same experience.  He was rejecting all suggestions proffered by one mother for the other, but coming up with no ideas of his own. June’s more likely to have a wealth of ideas, many of them completely inappropriate, but that’s an easier situation to manage, we agreed.

Back at home I rode the exercise bike and read more Les Misérables before the kids got home.  At dinnertime we all met up at Roscoe’s and we had a plate of marinated olives and two kinds of pizza (funghi and margherita) on the patio. While we were eating we saw one of June’s basketball teammates and a former preschool classmate, either stroll by the restaurant or come in to eat with their folks. Then on the bus home, we chatted with a dad I know from June’s bus stop. That’s the kind of town Takoma Park is.  At home we had the chocolate cake with fresh strawberry frosting Beth had made at my request and my birthday celebration was over.  But Mother’s day was yet to come.

Saturday and Sunday: Mother’s Day Weekend

As of Saturday at 2:45 p.m, the children’s Mother’s Day shopping was only 25% complete. June, with Beth’s help, had selected a Mother’s Day present for me and that was it.  I got on a bus with both kids and headed for the little cluster of shops that makes up downtown Takoma.  We went into Now and Then first and got to work.  I kept suggesting soap to both kids because I knew we’d use it and they even had heart-shaped soap, which I thought June would like, but she was drawn to large, decorative objects, just what we don’t need in our small, cluttered house.  (Later Beth and I discovered she tried to get me to buy some of the exact same things for Beth that Beth had refused to buy for me.) I almost consented to the large, expensive metal flower on a pole for the garden, but only if the kids would agree to go in on it, and Noah had no interest. Finally, June honed in on some brightly colored ceramic dipping bowls in the shapes of different fruits and vegetables.  I agreed she could get two and suggested the eggplant, since Beth loves eggplant, but June wanted the strawberry and the pumpkin so we bought those, along with a mug that read “You Rock” (Noah’s choice for Beth—“because she does”) and a card.

Then June and I left Noah in the store with a twenty-dollar bill I was lending him to buy my gift and June and I went to wait for him at Takoma Bistro, where we got coffee, juice and a fruit tart. In less time than I thought it would take, Noah was back, quite pleased with himself for having shopped alone, and wanting to know if he could use the change to buy himself a pastry.  He got a chocolate diamond, and soon we were back at the bus stop. I was so happy to have the shopping successfully completed, that I didn’t even mind much when June dropped the bag and broke the strawberry bowl and we had to go back and get a new one.  We didn’t even miss our bus.

Mother’s Day did not turn out as expected, however.  The plan was for Beth to grocery shop in the morning while I cleaned house and then for us all to do something together outside, maybe take a walk along a trail or something.  But I woke up Sunday morning feeling dizzy and sick to my stomach and spent most of the day in bed. And that’s where we opened presents.  June’s gift to me was a cookbook of bean recipes and Noah got me the eggplant dipping bowl and soap I’d been urging the kids to buy for Beth.

In the afternoon Beth took the kids to Wheaton Regional Park while I stayed home and slept and read.  Over the course of the day I read three Washington Post magazines that had been accumulating on my bedside table and almost half of Are You My Mother?  So, the day was not completely unpleasant, though I was sorry to miss the outing, which had been my idea in the first place.  Beth and the kids had a picnic dinner of hotdogs, potato salad, broccoli slaw and corn on the cob in the backyard.  I ate some watermelon in bed as an experiment and then came out to join them and ate a little potato salad.

At one point in the early afternoon, noting how any strong smell was upsetting my stomach, I told Beth it felt a little like morning sickness.  “Well, it had better not be,” she said,  “Or we’d have a situation.”

Several situations, I corrected.  I suppose the absence of pregnancy scares in one’s mid-forties is one of the benefits of lesbianism.  As much as I treasure the memories of pregnancy and my kids’ infant and toddler years, it’s not an experience I want to repeat at this point in my life. I like where we are now, with both kids in school and increasingly independent.  June is reading well enough that I often find myself wondering what she’s up to and then I go find her with her nose in a book, often a chapter book. And starting next week, Noah is going to take on a new chore. He will be cooking dinner, or helping me cook on Saturdays. Seeing them grow into these older, capable kids is a treat that I get to experience every day and that can’t be lost by being sick on the second Sunday in May.

Nigel: Well, it’s one louder, isn’t it? It’s not ten. You see, most blokes, you know, will be playing at ten. You’re on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you’re on ten on your guitar. Where can you go from there? Where?

Marty: I don’t know.

Nigel: Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do?

Marty: Put it up to eleven.

Nigel: Eleven. Exactly. One louder.

From This is Spinal Tap

Wednesday and Thursday: Up to Eleven

The last night Noah was ten years old, we were busy with birthday preparations.  June had wanted to get him a book for his birthday and an attempt to find a suitable one at a local toy store earlier in the week had failed, so we needed to make an online purchase. I’d been dithering and hadn’t bought anything but the immediacy of the deadline focused my mind. I picked three titles and slightly after June’s bedtime she crawled into my lap as I sat at the computer and I showed her pictures of the covers and gave her a brief summary of each one.  “I’m going to stay up?” she said at first, and then, “I can’t believe you’re telling me about scary, big-kid books.” She was delighted, as if I was letting her in on a big secret by telling her that Something Upstairs is “about a boy who makes friends with a ghost.” That was the book she picked, incidentally.  So I printed out an image of the cover for her to give him in the morning and we were set.

Beth and Noah were making a batch of homemade chocolate chip ice cream for his party on Saturday—our ice cream maker produces fairly small batches and Noah wanted three so they were getting an early start.  They’d already made frosting for his school party the night before. (Noah and a classmate who shares his birthday had hatched a plan for her to bring in cookies and him to bring in frosting and have a frost-your-own-cookie party at school.) Beth helped Noah with his math while the ice cream churned. After he went to bed, I finished wrapping presents and listened to him toss and turn for longer than usual. It’s hard to fall asleep when you’re teetering on the verge of eleven.

Meanwhile, Beth retreated to the basement where she set to work assembling his drum set, his big present.  The drums are second-hand and when Beth got them out of the boxes she discovered several components were missing—the cymbals, the bass drum foot pedal and the snare drum stand.  The previous drummer had cut a hole in the drumhead of the bass drum and adorned it with stickers including one of a scantily clad woman posing with a gas pump nozzle.  Still, it was a real drum kit. I thought he’d like it.

We had Noah open his presents that morning before school.  He got two games from Grandmom and Pop, two t-shirts (the numeral eleven shirt and one from my sister with the symbol for pi, made up of the numerals of pi), a pair of summer pajamas, and a half a dozen books (including June’s promise of a book to come).  He wanted to linger, reading the backs of books, inspecting the numbers of the pi shirt, but Beth was concerned about getting out the door on time and she kept saying, “Next present!” and handing them to June to give to him.  When the presents were all unwrapped Beth said she thought there was something else she’d left in the basement, and we all trooped down there.  She pulled the old bed sheets off the drums and for a moment all Noah could say was “Whoa! Whoa!”

June hopped up on the stool, or “throne” as it’s called, and started to play the drums with her hands like bongo drums while Beth explained how she was writing to the store to see what had become of the missing parts and told him we could get the drumhead replaced unless he liked the sound of the cut one (some drummers do cut them intentionally, which is no doubt what happened to this one). Beth told June to give Noah a turn on his own drums and he ran upstairs to get his sticks and then started to play the drums, looking quite serious as he did so.

As it turned out, Beth and Noah didn’t have time to walk to his bus stop so they were waiting to catch a Ride-On when I came back from June’s bus stop. “Do you have the frosting?” I asked and he dashed back into the house.

That afternoon Noah considered practicing on the new drums but decided the missing snare drum stand would not allow him to practice his snare part for the upcoming band concert well enough so he used his old set-up in the study instead.  He brought the throne upstairs to sit on, though.

He didn’t have much homework, so after he finished it and practiced percussion, he had time to experiment with dying baking soda red before dinner.  Why did he need red baking soda, you might ask?  Noah had another mystery party, his third consecutive one.  He keeps doing it over and over again because although his guests have fun and he seems to be having fun as well, when the parties are over he always stews about how it didn’t go precisely as he planned so he keeps trying to get it exactly right.

This year he decided on several key changes.  He would have a smaller guest list—just four boys— and he’d assign them characters instead of having it be more of a free-for-all scavenger hunt.  He had two detectives, a cartographer and a villain.  Sasha was the villain, and as such, Noah thought he ought to help devise the story and the clues, so last weekend he invited him over to work on it.  While Sasha was uncharacteristically hesitant and deferential (I think he was unsure what Noah wanted from him), I see his influence.  Noah has stuck to theft as the crime in his mysteries to date, but this one’s a murder mystery.  The red powder was for a trail of bloody flour to be left on the sidewalk. (The murder victims were all bakers.)

I made Noah a birthday dinner of egg noodles with broccoli, carrots, butter and Parmesan cheese.  Afterward we had fancy pastries from Takoma Bistro since there wouldn’t be cake until his party. Noah chose the chocolate Napoleon of the four pastries I’d selected while the kids were at school. Beth brought YaYa’s present home from work, where it had been shipped.  It’s a Perplexus ball, a 3-D marble maze enclosed in a clear plastic sphere.

After June was in bed, Beth and Noah worked on another batch of ice cream for the party, and experimented with audio effects for the party. In between Beth talked to someone from the music store about getting the missing pieces of the kit shipped to us and Noah did a math worksheet he thought he’d left at school and discovered fifteen minutes before bedtime. And then he climbed into bed, wearing his “Rock Legend” pajamas ten minutes after bedtime on his first night as an eleven year old.

“Did you have a good birthday?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said earnestly, but then he added that it didn’t have the same “jibe” as it used to, though.  “Probably because I’ve done it ten times before.”  So I said a fond goodnight to my jaded tween and left his bedroom.

Saturday and Sunday: That Extra Push off the Cliff

The party was not until five in the afternoon because we needed to accommodate a baseball game and weekend full of Boy Scout activities for all his guests to be able to attend.  This gave us plenty of time to clean the house and work on party preparations.  I cleaned the dining room, living room, and study and swept and mopped the front porch and mowed part of the lawn. Noah vacuumed and helped me move the porch furniture onto the lawn in preparation for cleaning the porch floor.  Beth cleaned the bathroom, took June to Kung Fu and the library, ran errands (many of them party-related) and made the cake.  It was simple, as Noah’s birthday cakes go, a rectangular cake with white frosting, decorative black stripes down the sides and thirteen red dots on top, meant to evoke drops of blood. (There were thirteen murder victims—a baker’s dozen, get it?)

Noah kept saying he didn’t feel very stressed about the party.  A little more stress earlier in the day might not have been a bad thing because at 4:55 he was completely unprepared.  He’d staggered the guests’ arrival times so he could have time to give them individual instructions, but when the twins arrived, he wasn’t ready for them and they had to play by themselves in the yard and wait for him. When Elias got there Noah had only just started to brief one twin and the other was still waiting.  Fortunately, Sasha didn’t need any instructions as he’d written most of the clues and knew what was going on.  He was sent to wait in the bathroom to be found.  It’s a good thing Beth cleaned it because the party unfolded largely outside and that was the only room where anyone spent any time. In fact, Sasha spent a good deal of the party waiting in the bathroom. I felt sorry for him, but he had co-written the clues that were giving everyone so much trouble, and Noah keeps a lot of books and magazines in there and there were even burning candles for atmosphere, so I hope it wasn’t too boring for him.  At any rate, he didn’t complain.  He’s a good friend.

Outside, thing were not unfolding as seamlessly as Noah had hoped.  At his two previous mystery parties, there had been problems locating the clues—they went missing, or were discovered out of order or by the wrong team one year when there were teams.  Noah managed to avoid that kind of logistical problem this year. He’d even done a dry run with Beth on Friday evening to help everything proceed smoothly.  This year the problem seemed to be that the guests couldn’t figure out the clues. And once they got discouraged, only David was really giving it his all.  Richard was more interested in playing the slingshot he’d been issued and spraying Noah with the garden hose. Noah was visibly frustrated and not as polite as he could have been. He gave them hints that helped move the search along, but he wasn’t gracious about it and a on a few occasions he berated his guests. I think being flustered and rushed at the beginning of the party made it hard for him to keep his composure. He’d also scraped his knee and shin badly when he fell down on the sidewalk right before the party and he was in too much of rush to let me clean it.

Finally, and with a good deal of help, the detectives found the murderer, and the party improved from there. Over pizza and cake and ice cream, Noah and Sasha squabbled, in a good-natured way, over whose fault the difficult clues were (Noah had added some false leads without Sasha knowing it).  The other guests pitched in with suggestions for next year, implying that they expect him to throw a mystery party again and that they intend to come to it, so clearly wasn’t a complete disaster.  When the boys were finished eating some of them started playing baseball with a plastic bat and an inflatable Tinkerbell ball, and some of them played a game on Beth’s iPad until their parents came for them.

After the party, Noah opened his presents—a Titanic-themed Wii game, a set of night goggles, a hatch-your-own alien kit, and Lego model of the Eiffel Tower.  We discussed whether it was time to start celebrating his birthdays in a different way—a movie or dinner with a close friend or two perhaps?  We almost took this direction this year, but in the end he’d wanted another shot at the mystery party.

This morning, still thinking about next year, he admitted he wanted to let go of the mystery idea, but he couldn’t seem to do it. I told him how mysteries are inherently chaotic, how many real crimes go unsolved and others are solved only through coincidence and dumb luck.  The only really controlled mystery is a mystery story because the author is in control, I said.  And then I suggested he write a mystery story over the summer if he wanted to have that experience.  June piped up that they should do it together and now, so before breakfast they wrote a page of their mystery story. I don’t know if needing to compromise with a co-author will present him with the same challenges he’s been facing with improvisational actors, but so far it seems to be going well.  I hope it helps him move through this, because there are good ways to go over the cliff, and not so good ones.

Noah had a sketch of a bicycle he drew in art class selected for a countywide art show for elementary and middle school students. The show was at a mall about a half hour from Takoma Park, and quite near one of our favorite vegetarian Chinese restaurants, so clearly we were obligated to go to the show and then eat at the Vegetable Garden.  Late Saturday afternoon, we set out for the White Flint Mall.

The outing started off with some errands—I needed to deposit a check and the car needed gas.  While I got out of the car at the bank I dropped the camera we’d brought to take pictures at the exhibit on my seat and joked that Beth and the kids could take pictures of each other while they were waiting for me.  Beth laughed, but June thought it sounded like a good idea, so while they were parked and later as we drove around she snapped over sixty pictures—a few of me and Beth, but more of Noah who was conveniently sitting right next to her, some close-ups of herself, plus houses, other buildings, trees, the sky, her shoes, her car seat, pretty much anything that caught her eye.  Noah also took a picture of her when she handed him to camera to delete a photo she didn’t like. (Included here. Isn’t it a great shot of her?)

At the mall, we went to Noah’s school’s display first.  Each school had a very small area to use, and as Beth noted it was the same amount of space for K-5 schools like June’s as for 3-5 schools like Noah’s.  Noah was not particularly enthused about his drawing, saying he’d done others this year he liked better, but we admired it as well as those of his classmates, and then we moved on to other schools.  We went to June’s school’s display next, to see if any of Noah’s old classmates or June’s current ones had work in the show.  It was at this point that I realized we’d only told June that Noah had a drawing in an art show and we hadn’t mentioned it wasn’t only for his school.  It slowly began to dawn on her that he had been selected for an honor for which she was also eligible and she had not been.  This must have been almost inconceivable to her, because art is her thing and she’s good at it and Noah doesn’t even like art much.  (I’ve noticed, however, that even though he doesn’t draw for fun the way June does his drawing has improved a lot in the past couple years. He’s much more careful with it than he used to be.)

At first June resisted the realization, saying maybe there would be something of hers in the display.  We’d received an official notice about Noah’s drawing (as we had the last and only other time he was in the show, in the first grade for his print of the letter N) so we knew there wasn’t going to be any of June’s art there.

When we got to her school’s display, matters got even more galling. Several kindergarten students were represented. I read their names off the tags. “They’re not in my class,” she said somewhat dismissively.  The kindergarten projects were called “Art Elements” and consisted of paper boxes.  When you lifted the lids you saw wooden blocks in different geometric shapes arranged inside. June had actually mentioned this project to me previously, but I hadn’t really been able to visualize the boxes until I saw them.  June asserted that she never finished hers.  This could well be true.  She has art on Thursdays and they did have a Thursday off the week before last so her class might be behind the ones who have art on other days.  Her implication was clear, however.  This was the reason her Arts Elements box was not in the show. No one challenged June; it was clear she needed to save face somehow.

We visited a few more displays of schools where the kids’ friends go, and saw some interesting work. Beth especially liked the skeleton marionettes one school had made for the Day of the Dead.

We passed by a Gap and asked Noah if wanted to go shopping for shorts—he needs some new ones—but he wasn’t in the mood.  Just as well, I thought, because June didn’t need anything and if we went to see his art and bought him clothes it might just be too much for her to bear.

It was time to leave the mall for the restaurant, but now that June’s psychological crisis was resolved, Noah’s began.   We couldn’t leave the mall, he said, we hadn’t gotten a snack.  Beth and I were puzzled.  Why would he want a snack– we were heading straight for dinner.  We always get a snack when we go to a mall, Noah insisted.  Usually a soft pretzel, but sometimes something else.  We couldn’t leave without it.  “We wouldn’t want to mall police to come after us,” he wheedled, mostly joking but not entirely.  By now we understood well enough.  Noah had turned a pattern into a rule and he really felt as if we were breaking an unstated but important agreement.  He hung behind for a few moments as Beth, June and I headed out into the parking lot, then he gave up and joined us.

He was out of sorts but luck was with us.  Beth spotted two geese with two goslings strolling across the lot.  It was an unexpected and welcome distraction from the unjust lack of soft pretzels.  We got a little closer to observe the fluffy bright yellow and brown goslings.  A mall security vehicle was following the birds, presumably to ensure their safety.  We wondered where they’d come from, how they’d entered the lot (up the ramp perhaps?) and how they’d get back out.  Alone the adults could fly, but with their babies, they were stuck on foot.  It was like being really near somewhere you wanted to go but couldn’t get to with a stroller, I said.  Those days are recent enough for me to empathize with the geese.  At least the baby geese seemed co-operative, Beth observed. They were sticking with their parents and not complaining.

And neither were our goslings.  Despite their trials neither of them had made much of a fuss and by the time we got back into the car, they were both happy and we drove off toward soup, dumplings, fried black mushrooms and other delights of the evening.

June’s been busy the past few days. She had a four-day weekend so we filled the time with play dates, three in all, two of which featured tea parties, and she also had a birthday party to attend. But what I want to write about is her first experience with public speaking and her new Kung Fu class.

Kindergarten Roundtable: Thursday

There was no kindergarten at June’s school Thursday and Friday of last week so next year’s kindergarten students could tour their classrooms and meet their future teachers.  June and Maggie had a six-hour play date on Thursday that began at our house and ended at Maggie’s– the idea was that Maggie’s work-at-home dad and I could both squeeze a little work into the day. After they played here and before they played at Maggie’s, I took the girls to the Purple School where they and Gabriella gave a presentation to the current Tracks class about what to expect from kindergarten.  June was looking forward to the talk. She and Maggie compared notes on what they might say beforehand and they both seemed excited to go back to preschool and be the experts. When we got to school Lesley and Andrea and P.J., the teacher’s aide, all greeted her warmly.

It was only about two minutes before she was to go on that June got cold feet.  She held tightly to my hand as she waited to begin.  Lesley arranged the three kindergarteners on chairs in front of the Tracks, who sat on the bench built into the wall and on the floor.  June spoke so softly at first that her answers were inaudible.  One of the Tracks complained that he couldn’t hear her.  Lesley asked what we do when someone speaks softly.  Be quiet and listen closely someone answered.  I suspect there’s a very quiet child in the class, because the answer sounded rehearsed. After a couple questions, however, June began to relax and speak in her normal voice and soon all three girls were answering questions and volunteering information about how they got to school, where they ate lunch and went to the bathroom, what their favorite part of school was.  June said hers was listening to the teacher read stories and doing her work.  “That’s a new one,” Lesley commented. Apparently gym, art and recess are popular answers.

It was nice to be back in the cozy atmosphere of the Purple School and to see the teachers and some familiar parents– Maggie’s dad and Gabriella’s dad of course, but also some Tracks parents I know.  The Eastern Fence Lizard (whom June met at camp last summer) was happy to see June, insisting she come back in to say goodbye to him once she had left the building.

Kung Fu Kitty: Saturday

“Look at what I’m wearing,” June said to Beth, who was in the shower. I’d advised June to wear something that would allow her to move easily because in the morning she had her first Kung Fu lesson and in the afternoon one of the Purple Pandas was having a basketball-themed birthday party. As it was being held in a church gym, I suspected they would actually play basketball at the party.

Beth peeked out of the shower to see June in her pink Hello Kitty pants and t-shirt.  This was not much of a surprise. Ever since her birthday, she wears this outfit (with or without a long-sleeved tee underneath) pretty much whenever it’s clean.

“You’re a Kung Fu kitty,” Beth exclaimed and June laughed.

June is allowed two activities per season and spring will be a science class and Kung Fu. She’s taking science because I let her choose one of several after-school activities at her school and a lot of her friends have been in the science class so she wanted to try it.  The same group that teaches it has a summer camp at the community college she might try that out next summer if she likes it.  (Noah went to that camp for years and loved it.)  Kung Fu, though, was entirely her idea.  She said she wanted to take karate and this was the closet thing I could find that was offered at a convenient time and place.

The Kung Fu class meets in the dance studio of the community center. It’s a room with a full-wall mirror, which is handy for watching your moves.  We were early and then the class was locked out of the room for a while so we were all waiting for a bit before class started.  The group consisted of eight kids, three girls and five boys, ranging in age from four or five years old to maybe nine or ten. At least three of the kids were returning students.

Once we were inside the room the teacher started off right away, without much in the way of introduction; he wove his comments throughout the class instead.  He taught them how to bow and had them pledge not to use what they learned in class against siblings or classmates, and never to harm any living thing except in the defense of other living things. He explained how you have to be calm to do Kung Fu– it was not all crazy kicks like they might have seen on television. Also, this would be Jamaican-style Kung Fu, he told them, not Chinese.  The instructor learned from his uncle, a Jamaican Kung Fu master, he said. I had no idea there was such a thing as Jamaican-style Kung Fu— but you learn something new every day.

The three returning students, two of whom are about to take their gold belt test, demonstrated their skills. Then everyone practiced some poses and moves. The teacher was a stern sort of character; two students had to sit out part of class for being too wiggly in the case of one girl, or for putting his hands in his pockets then rolling his eyes when asked to remove them in the case of one of the older boys. (That boy was out for the rest of class.)  It might not have been a good class for Noah when he was six and wiggly, but June excels at paying close attention and following directions. The teacher noticed this and said she was “a wise little one.” She’s also strong and flexible, so soon the teacher was saying she was “a natural” and asking if she’d ever taken a martial art before.  I said no, but that she’s had yoga.  And ballet, though I didn’t think to mention that at the time. I think both those activities probably helped her get off to a good start.

They had to try an exercise next, squatting like a frog and then lifting their feet off the floor and balancing on their palms.  One of the experienced students managed twenty seconds in this pose. Some kids couldn’t do it at all.  (I doubt I could.) June’s bare feet cleared the floor for a few seconds.  Later she said that was her favorite part.  They did some somersaults and practiced bowing again and class was over.  June was quite satisfied with her first day of Kung Fu.

She has more to anticipate, however.  After-school science starts next week.  The theme is forensics.  She is very excited to learn how to solve crimes and as always, I’m excited for her as she tries something new. I love to see her finding her voice and finding her strength.

The Beach, Continued:

Tuesday

The next day was calmer. Despite the fact that she’d gone to bed speculating exactly where in her room at home she’d lost her pacifier, June slept through the night and made it until 7:00 without waking us (a first for the trip and in fact it only happened one other time). We visited the Crocs outlet in the morning and everyone got a new pair for summer. Beth took the kids for bike and scooter ride and this time she was on her own bike so she could keep pace with them. I stayed behind to do laundry and then I got myself a café con leche and drank it on the boardwalk, reading The Washington Post Magazine until I looked up and was alarmed to see Noah and June go zipping by, apparently without Beth, but she was actually close behind.  We all went home and I made lunch for the kids while Beth got a massage. June and I napped (her first non-pacifier-assisted, non-car-assisted nap). When Beth returned she took June on a scouting mission to see which restaurants were open for dinner during the off-season.

While they were gone, Noah and I started Something Wicked This Way Comes.  This is more of an adult book than we usually read but he’ll be reading grown-up books in his English class next fall so I thought it might be a good idea to ease him in with some Bradbury. We’re reading my father’s college copy, a paperback with age-softened pages that cost him 60 cents in 1963. It has his pencil underlining and marginal comments.  Reading it to Noah makes me feel like I’m giving him a little piece of Dad.

I went for a walk on the beach once we’d finished reading. I meant to go further but I found the ridge where the kids had played two days before and it was such a nice place to sit I stayed there.  It was still long, but not as tall now and closer to the water. The tides and children with shovels had carved coves and channels all over it.  I settled right above the biggest cove, a shallow crescent big enough to park two cars. It was alternately a flat expanse of wet sand and a whirling mass of water. It was mesmerizing to watch, so I stayed a half hour as the late afternoon light grew golden and the damp sand into which I’d sunk my bare feet grew cold.

I met up with everyone back at the house. We’d told June she could pick a restaurant for dinner because she was doing such a great job sleeping without a pacifier. And so it was that in a town known for its fine dining, we ended up at IHOP.

After dinner, we played four rounds of Splash. June won the second round and announced she was keeping the scorecard. Later I found her winning Rat-a-Tat-Cat scorecard in her bed. She’s not a sore loser, but she is an enthusiastic winner.

Wednesday

It was time for another day trip. We took the 9:15 ferry from Lewes, Delaware to Cape May, New Jersey. Noah hadn’t been on a ferryboat in years and it’s possible June never has so this was the better part of the adventure. We experienced it largely separately, however, because I am prone to motion sickness and wanted to stay out on the deck, breathing fresh air, watching the seabirds soar and admiring the beauty of the Delaware Bay on a mild, sunny day.  The kids wanted to sit inside, eat snacks from the café and cruise the gift shop instead.  June made her big purchase of the trip, a set of plastic mermaids with accessories; she chose it over a model lighthouse embedded with shells and a sparkly dolphin magnet.

Our first stop in Cape May was the lighthouse. When Noah was little (around three to six years old) he loved lighthouses so we were constantly visiting them. We haven’t climbed one in years; in fact this was June’s first lighthouse.  She took the challenge very seriously, charging up the stairs, not wanting to stop at the landings where her mothers wanted to rest and examine the historical photographs and illustrations of Cape May.  Once we got to the top, however, she was very nervous on the observation deck and wanted to go right back down.

We went to see the shipwreck on Sunset Beach next. Noah read the informational sign about the sunken concrete ship and gave us the highlights, but the big attraction was the jetty. It was a perfect jetty, made of big black rocks, just challenging enough for climbing, with only a few off-limits algae-covered rocks at the end, and a “secret hideout” where you could climb down between the rocks, and watch the waves through a window-like gap. There were barnacles on the rocks and June found a sand crab when she dug in the sand near the water’s edge.  June made friends with a girl her age and that girl’s mother found a jellyfish and everyone had a lovely time. Noah made a game of racing down the jetty, bounding from rock to rock with Beth timing him and then June wanted in on the action to see if she could beat his times (she couldn’t).

It was hard to tear them away for lunch, but we did and after lunch we went to an old-fashioned soda fountain for milkshakes.  We strolled through the streets of Cape May, admiring the Victorian architectural confections—all the turrets and fancy woodwork and intricately painted trim. We had to hurry back to the ferry terminal to catch the 2:30 ferry back to Delaware where reading and bath and dinner awaited us. That night June went to sleep sucking on an ice cube so she could have something in her mouth.

Thursday

It should come as no surprise to anyone that my day started at 5:05 a.m., with June informing me that her ice had melted. Later in the day she mentioned in casual, matter-of-fact tone that she could choke on an ice cube, or on the melting water, but people couldn’t choke on pacifiers because they’re made for sucking. Then she resumed wondering where hers might be, under the toy box perhaps? Beth patted her arm, told her she was doing great, and said she thought she was all done with pacifiers.  June chose not to acknowledge this remark.

Cape May was our last big adventure. We went out to breakfast and then Beth and June biked to the playground. Noah wanted to go with them but he and Beth misunderstood each other so they left without him and was put out. He had his helmet on and was insisting he was going to find them even though I wasn’t sure where they’d gone and Beth wasn’t answering her phone. He was looking at maps of Rehoboth and various playground locations as I tried to dissuade him. Sometimes when we travel and he’s out of his routine, it brings out the Asperger-like qualities of his personality.  (Note: we had Noah tested for Aspergers a couple years back.  He doesn’t have it but he faces some of the same challenges as kids who do, albeit in a milder form.)

I finally convinced him to come to the beach with me instead. We packed a picnic lunch of an apple, carrot rounds, cheese and water and supplemented it with boardwalk fries.  Next we visited one of the ridges. This one was down to a few mounds of sand, a short cliff and a shallow cove. Noah and I made the cliff crumble by standing at the very edge, thus demonstrating the effect of human activity on erosion, he said. He leapt off the edge, soaking his pants around the knees (he was wearing rubber boots). He found something that looked like a rain gutter and a few feet away a narrow metal pipe with bolts at the end sticking out of the sand. He tried to dig the pipe out, but the sand rushed back into the hole with each wave.

Later that afternoon while Beth and the kids went in search of turtles in a nearby pond, I went back to the beach by myself. I walked north for forty-five minutes until I came to a jetty and found a rock flat and high enough to stand without fear of getting drenched, even as water swirled around me on three sides. It was cold and windy, but I stayed about twenty minutes, until I saw a wave of such size and power and perfect proportions that I knew it was time to leave—it wasn’t going to get better than that—and then I saw a rainbow in its retreating spray.

Friday

I wanted the kids to come to the beach with me the next morning because I’d seen pools of water perfect for wading around that time the morning before, but they didn’t want to come, so I went alone.  The pools didn’t appear that day, though, and it was cold and windy; the wind was plucking bits of sea foam off the water and sending them flying through the air.

Later that morning the kids and I met a realtor and toured houses we were considering renting for our beach week in July.  (Beth elected to stay home.) Looking at properties online, we’d narrowed it down to two.  Both were further from the beach than I’d like but one was close to downtown shops and restaurants. We were leaning toward that one, but when we saw them in person, both kids fell head over heels in love with the more remote house. Interestingly, they both said right away it reminded them of YaYa’s house, even though they meant different houses (current and former–houses that have very little in common in my mind). Anyway, the house is a charming, old-fashioned beach cottage, with a deck that made Noah say, “A stage!” and white, painted wrought iron patio furniture that made June say, “A place for tea parties!” and two attic bedrooms with sloping ceilings and a walk-through closet that connects them. The kids’ enthusiasm swayed me and we booked it.

I took June to the beach in the afternoon.  It was still cool and windy but it was sunny so we were warm enough for shell hunting and sand castle making. She enjoyed jumping off the sand cliff without her persnickety older brother yelling at her for climbing in the designated jumping area and jumping in the climbing area.

That night we made our final pilgrimage to Candy Kitchen and had pizza at Grotto’s and our last full day at the beach came to a close.

Saturday

The next morning we packed up the house and went to the realty to turn in our keys and sign papers for the next house. Then we returned to town, Beth got coffee and ran some Easter-Bunny related errands, while I took the kids to the beach.  The kite shop on the boardwalk was having a customer appreciation day and there were giant fabric balloons on the beach, a caterpillar the size of a school bus and a puffer fish about half that big, tethered to the sand and inflated solely by the wind. A few kids were diving into the sand under the balloons as they bobbed around and soon Noah and June joined in.  There was some kind of narrative about the caterpillar exerting evil power over June and Noah trying to save her, but I wasn’t paying very close attention, preferring to watch the waves.  The Easter Bunny was strolling around the boardwalk, and I pointed him out to June but she wasn’t interested. Beth said earlier in the week June had been showing her toys she might like in her Easter basket “in case the Easter Bunny is listening.” This made Beth think June has the Bunny’s number, or at least suspects the truth.

Around 10:55 a woman with a microphone announced there would be races and an egg toss for kids starting at eleven and June wanted to participate but we were supposed to meet Beth at a gazebo about two blocks away right then so I told June we’d come back.  Beth still had some more errands to complete, so I took the kids back to the kite store but when we got there I didn’t see Noah.  June accepted a piece of candy from the Easter Bunny and we turned back to find her brother, who had just taken such a long time to get his shoes on he was lagging far behind us.  We returned and June decided she wanted one of the free bagels so I got one for her and when I came back, Noah was gone again. I was more exasperated than scared.  He and I had just been discussing the fact that he’d left his bike lock at the gazebo so I figured he’d gone back for it.  I dragged June away from the games for the third time, but when I got to the pavilion, I found Noah’s lock, but not Noah.  I was more concerned now and asked the man who was now at the microphone at the kite store to page him.  He did, with no result.  By the third time Noah was paged, this time with a more detailed physical description, I was crying.  Apparently, I can only lose my kids once in a week without losing my cool. A little while later, Beth and Noah came riding and scooting up to the kite store.

“Where were you?” I yelled at him.

“It was my fault,” Beth said, putting her arms around me as I started to cry harder.  She’d found him while I was in the bagel line and taken him for a bike and scooter ride out to the summer house, so she could see it.  This had been the plan all along so she thought I’d know where he’d gone, but it didn’t occur to me she’d take him when I wasn’t looking so I had no idea.  Beth guessed what had happened, though, as soon as a stranger approached them and asked, “Are you Noah?”

By this time, the games were over and June never got to play, so we strolled down the boardwalk, had lunch and drove back to Takoma, even managing to dye our Easter eggs after the unpacking and laundry and dinner and before bedtime.  That night June went to bed without asking for her pacifier. We never even looked for it.

Coda: Sunday and Monday

The kids hunted for their Easter baskets in the morning and found them full of chocolate and jellybeans.  June got stuffed red monkey that looks like one she once lost (and mourned for years) and Noah got a t-shirt from Grotto’s.  Beth went grocery shopping and I did mounds of laundry.  Beth and June started flower, vegetable and watermelon seeds in pots and then Beth raised the training wheels on June’s bike and we stood in the driveway watching her make her wobbly way around it.  It was a pleasant way to ease back into our home routine, without the pressures of work or school.

Going to bed, I had no idea what awaited us.  June wandered into our room around 10:15, sleepy and disoriented, saying she couldn’t sleep. I’d sent her back to her room two or three times by 10:40 when I heard her sobbing and Beth and I both went into her room.  Even when I got into bed with her and held her she couldn’t stop crying.  I asked her if she wanted me to sing the songs I used to sing to put her to sleep when she was younger and she said yes so I sang them for an hour until she finally drifted to sleep.  At one point while she was in the bathroom I pried up her mattress and found two pacifiers in between the bed and the wall.  I took them to Beth and we quietly discussed whether or not to give her one. We didn’t, but I came pretty close.

Beth took the kids to Round House in the morning. It was June’s first-ever experience with a full-day camp and she was excited, and a little nervous, to be joining Noah in the fun. When I picked them up, after a day of trying to write about memory and cognition through a brain-fog of fatigue, I learned the theme of the day had been the ocean.  The kids were divided into younger and older groups and they performed for each other at the end of the day.  June was a crab being interviewed on a talk show.  Noah was full of praise for her performance and one of the counselors told me she was “a good little actress.”  Noah was the Carpenter in a puppet show version of  “The Walrus and the Carpenter,” and another counselor said it was always good to see him.  Noah said he couldn’t wait for summer vacation so he could go back to Round House, and June said it was fun, but after lunch and the play period, she’d been tired and wanted to go home.  On the bus, I wondered why the kids had fallen silent and looked back to see June asleep, leaning against Noah.

We’ve made the crossing out of the territory of Spring Break. Beth went back to work on Monday and the kids returned to school yesterday.  I’m not making any predictions about how long it will take June to go to sleep easily and consistently without her pacifier but the last two nights have gone well so I’m crossing my fingers for tonight.

Prelude: Thursday and Friday

The kids’ last day of school before Spring Break was a Thursday. As Noah had no pressing homework and we were leaving for the beach on Saturday, I pounced on him as soon as he got home and set him to work, vacuuming, practicing percussion, cleaning his room.  I asked June to help with the last project and when Beth got home around 6:30 the kids were arguing about whether June was being “lazy” and I was at the stove, ignoring the row and stirring risotto.  I left the rice long enough to put my arms around Beth’s neck and say, “Thank you for taking us to the beach so the whole break won’t be like this.”

We had spring break all mapped out: Friday June would spend part of the day at Beth’s office, from the first Saturday to the second Saturday we’d be at the beach, Easter Sunday we’d catch up on chores and errands and on the second Monday, the last day of break, the kids would attend a one-day session at Round House Theatre.  Theoretically, I was going to work on the first and last day and be on vacation in between, but Friday was a fragmented kind of day, so other than some accounting, I didn’t work.

On Friday Beth took June to the office with her for two and a half hours. June helped her recycle some papers and open envelopes and then she drew pictures and read. I read to Noah and puttered around the house until 10:15 when I left to go fetch June, and  after enjoying some time with the newspaper at Firehook Bakery near Beth’s office, I met them in the lobby at 11:30 and we went out to lunch together at Meatballs, where Beth and I ate meatball subs made with lentil balls and June contented herself with tater tots.

Noah had a productive morning at home, doing math and English homework, and practicing his drums again.  In the afternoon, we were visited by a reporter from The Wall Street Journal who’s writing a story about kids’ allowances and who interviewed Noah about how he uses Quicken to track his money.  While she was at our house, she got locked out of her laptop and Noah fixed it for her, by suggesting she shut it down and restart it (always a good first step but it didn’t occur to me—Beth has trained him well).

Maggie came by for a play date soon after the reporter left, and that evening we had frozen pizza and various leftovers for dinner, Beth and I filled out our absentee ballots and we started packing.

The Beach: 

Saturday 

Less than half hour into the drive to Rehoboth I realized I had not looked for, found or packed June’s pacifier, which she’d lost the night before.  Beth and I had a whispered conversation in which we agreed not to go back for it. This would be our opportunity to wean her from her nap and nighttime dependence on it.

During a pit stop, June mentioned she was tired. I suggested she have a little nap because we were at least a half hour from our designated lunch stop. She agreed happily and as she climbed into her car seat, she asked for her pacifier. Somehow I’d failed to anticipate this. I broke the bad news.  She looked stricken, but she didn’t cry. Noah unhelpfully began to intone in a dramatic announcer-type voice, “Will June survive a week without her pacifier?”

“No, she won’t,” June muttered.

Beth sternly told Noah this was going to be hard for June and we needed to be kind to her.

I suggested he stop sucking his thumb for a week in solidarity, tapping his arm to remind him his thumb was in his mouth at that very moment. Noah did not to agree to this, so I offered not to bite my nails for a week. (I did it, too!)

June fell asleep shortly after this conversation but I warned Beth not to consider it a good sign, as the car is a powerful soporific.

We arrived at the house, unpacked and June and I hit the boardwalk while Beth went to buy food for dinner and breakfast.  I was on foot and June was on her bike, ringing the bell every few minutes.  “When I ring the bell it means I’m having a good time,” she said. As she pedaled toward Candy Kitchen, June commented, “I’ve had lunch,” in an offhand way. It was late afternoon, close to dinnertime, but I told her she could get something for later. She selected gummy teeth and perused the stuffed animals. She wanted to buy a giraffe, with her own money—despite my broad hints about the Easter Bunny’s propensity to bring stuffed animals.  I didn’t have enough cash on me, so it was a moot point and she reluctantly agreed to wait until later in the week, to see if she saw something she liked better.

It was cold, in the high forties, overcast and windy, so windy that the wind was propelling the bike forward as much as June was, and when we turned around she couldn’t pedal at all and I had to push the bike home.

That night we settled June into bed without a pacifier but with a stuffed rabbit, a stuffed cat and a baby doll.  We tucked her under her Cinderella blanket and put on her favorite bedtime CD—Peter and the Wolf.  “I have to do this all week,” she said.  It didn’t seem like a good time to tell her if all went well, she was saying goodbye to the pacifier forever.  As I left the room, she was moaning.

She couldn’t sleep. For an hour, I read The Invention of Hugo Cabret to Noah while Beth received repeated visits from June. She wanted the CD turned off, and then turned on again. Beth suggested she try counting backwards and then June came back for more explicit instructions. Finally, around 9:20, we realized she hadn’t been out of bed for ten minutes or so and I peeked in on her. She was asleep. She slept until 3:20 when I woke to her sobs.  She was standing in the hall outside the bathroom. She said she was thirsty and couldn’t find a cup for water.  I didn’t think this was her whole reason for crying, but I got her a drink and sent her back to bed.  Despite being up late and in the middle of the night, June was up at 5:45 and came into our room repeatedly until 7:00 a.m., with newsflashes like this one that woke me for good at 6:10—“I’m bored. I don’t want to play with my toys.”

Sunday

Beth and I were pretty wiped out so I went and got take-out coffee to give us the mental focus for planning and list making.  We made lists of dinner menus, a grocery list and a list of possible day trips for the week.  We thought a low-key day would be best as three of us were sleep-deprived.  Plus Beth needed to grocery shop and she had some work to do, too.

Once our week was planned, I played two games of Hex with June and took the kids to the beach. Noah, irritated that I’d taken June to Candy Kitchen without him, got his turn. He chose raspberry gummy rings while June re-assessed her stuffed animal options. She left thinking she might want Ruby, of Max and Ruby. I thought a bunny might be appropriate for Easter.

It was still cool, but sunny and windless.  The sea was calm and sparkly. We found a big plowed ridge of sand, part of a beach replenishment project. It was about ten feet high and at least fifty yards long and it gave the kids’ play a focal point.  They slid down it and leapt off it, marking their record jumps with driftwood.  June leaned against the base while Noah buried her up to her chin and they pretended she was a mummy coming back to life and breaking free of her bandages (the blanket of sand). They built sand temples and sand volcanoes.  We were there almost two hours.

I thought with her poor night’s sleep, biking to the beach and back and an active morning of running and jumping, June might be exhausted enough to nap sans pacifier, but she just couldn’t.  About fifteen minutes into her attempt, she started to cry.  Noah came into her room to see what was wrong, but she told him, “There’s nothing you can do.”  So she didn’t sleep, and I didn’t either.  I even offered to let her sleep with me, but that didn’t work either.  Beth finished her work and took June to the playground while Noah and I read on the porch.

We had an early dinner and walked down to the boardwalk for dessert. Ice cream was the original idea but the wind had picked up again and it wasn’t feeling much like ice cream weather.  Beth got some anyway (she’s dedicated to ice cream); the rest of us opted for fudge. I would have gotten funnel cake if I could have gotten someone to agree to go halfsies with me.

The kids had time for a round of Rat-a-Tat-Cat before June’s bedtime. When I left her room less than five minutes after lights out, she was nearly asleep.

Monday

Monday was one of our scheduled side trips.  We spent the day at Assateague Island National Seashore and on the boardwalk at Ocean City.

As we drove into the park, Noah asserted that we’d been there before (true) and that we didn’t see any horses (false).  Beth and I had just been reminiscing about our last trip to Assateague during Noah’s kindergarten spring break and his challenging behavior during that outing (Postcards from Spring Break, 4/9/07). “It’s like the ghost of grumpy Noah came back,” I said.

But, other than occasionally insisting we’d never seen horses before and we wouldn’t see them today either, he was in a pretty good mood. Both kids ran down the sandy path of the Life of the Dunes trail, pretending to the superheroes, avoiding the villains (us) spying on them (taking pictures).  We all enjoyed the trail, but we didn’t see hide nor hair of the wild horses (only their abundant poop). I wondered if we should have pulled over when we saw people stopping by the side of the road, photographing distant horses.

We were near the beach so the kids played in the sand before we hit the Life of the Marsh trail.  On the drive there we hit pay dirt.  By the side of the road, just off the parking lot there were three horses, a brown stallion, a brown and white mare and an almost all white foal. The baby was snoozing on the grass. Not only did we see horses, but we saw a baby horse. This was a major parenting score.

We hoped to see water birds on the marsh trail, and there were ducks and quite a few snowy egrets flying, landing and standing elegantly in the water, but there were also horses.  Horses on distant spits of land, and then a shaggy brown horse right off the boardwalk trail.  We’d have to get closer than the recommended ten feet away to pass it. We edged by slowly. “I wish I could pet it,” June said wistfully.  She was sternly instructed not to do so. When we got to the parking lot, there were five or six more horses, all reddish brown, with manes ranging from tan to black.

“No-one’s going to say we didn’t see horses today,” I predicted back in the car on our way to the last trail, the Life of the Forest trail.  We had lunch at a boardwalk restaurant in Ocean City. Noah spied the carousel horses that decorated the place and said it was a day of horses and that’s when we saw the mounted police officer out the window.

After lunch, June rode her bike and Noah rode his scooter down the boardwalk. Noah wanted to go to Ripley’s Believe It Or Not Museum, so we did, with some trepidation about its appropriateness for a sensitive six year old. It was the kind of day when we just didn’t want to say no. I steered June away from videos of people who’d survived horrible accidents (shark attacks, etc.) and was relieved when she didn’t ask about the foot-binding exhibit or the Iron Maiden. What really caught her attention was the room of statues of the tallest person ever and the fattest, and the man with extreme body modification (green scale tattoos, filed teeth, surgically forked tongue).  She was talking about that lizard man for days.  The children got their fortunes told by a mechanical Gypsy and had their portrait sketched by a computer—Noah chose the style of Raphael and June went with Rembrandt.

After we’d had our fill of oddities and careful conversations about them, we sampled the boardwalk’s treats. Beth got a shake, I got a dipped cone, Noah got a chocolate-covered frozen banana and June got a cloud of blue cotton candy considerably bigger than her head. We sat on a bench to eat and soon the kids were playing in the sand. I joined them and we made our way down the broad beach to the water. We rolled up our pants and dipped our feet into the water.  At 3:50, I glanced at my watch and decided it was time to head back.

“This was a really fun day,” I told Beth as we walked up the boardwalk watching the kids riding ahead of us. It was about to get a lot less fun.

We were almost to the intersection where we’d leave the boardwalk and we couldn’t see the kids.  They had gotten out of our sight before briefly and we’d always caught sight of them, but not this time.  We stopped at the intersection and looked all around, but they were nowhere to be seen. Beth said a bad word or rather she spelled it, as if the kids were still there and still small enough for that to work.  We conferred hurriedly. Beth would stay in front of the restaurant where we ate lunch, in case they thought to go there.  I would go down the boardwalk after them. I jogged and walked and jogged and walked for twelve blocks.  Once I saw a little girl on a white bike and I yelled, “June!” but before the word was even out of my mouth, I saw it wasn’t her.  I heard the distinctive sound of scooter wheels coming from a side street and I looked but it wasn’t Noah. Finally I came to a barrier.  The boardwalk was undergoing repairs on the other side. They wouldn’t have crossed it. Part of my mind was relieved because the Ocean City boardwalk is not like Rehoboth’s little one-mile boardwalk. It goes on and on and on for dozens of blocks. I was glad to have the search area confined to a twelve block-stretch. But another part of my mind thought I should have seen them coming back unless…I didn’t listen and searched the area all around the barrier in case they were waiting somewhere nearby, on the beach or a restaurant patio. I yelled, “Noah!” over and over. No answer.

I turned back. I was no longer hurrying, but lingering now, looking all around me. When I got back to Beth, we’d have to call the police, I decided. And then about halfway back, I saw Noah, just Noah. This could be very good or very bad. “Where’s June?” I yelled, before saying anything else.

She was with Beth. The kids had been waiting by the car, where neither Beth nor I had seen them even though we both, independently of each other, peered down that street. They’d argued about whether to remain there, June remembering advice to stay put if you were lost, and Noah thinking we might be just around the corner. He did not leave her and finally he convinced her to come and they were re-united with Beth, who was in fact just around the corner and who sent Noah on his scooter to find me. I’d left my backpack with my cell phone behind with Beth and they had no way to call me.

In case you’re wondering if I’ve learned anything since the last time I lost Noah in a public place (Lost and Found, 7/17/10), I’ve learned this: even though I’d never deliberately leave Noah in charge of June in a crowded public place for upwards of a half hour, I now know they’ll stick together and discuss their options thoughtfully. I know that when it mattered, he had her back. That’s no small thing.

The kids seemed no worse for the wear, though Noah admitted the next day to having been “a little worried.”  Beth and I were wrung out. Back at the house, Beth made matzoh ball soup, we made the kids eat their carrots and drink their milk; I bathed June and read to Noah. Beth shepherded a pacifier-deprived June back to bed several times and finally they were fed and clean and safe in their beds and so was I, hunkered down with the only one in the world who loves them as much as I do.

Our spring break adventures continue in the next post…

Here are copies of the signs he designed for the areas of the house in which the two games were played:

And here is a movie he shot of the event:

I regret any inconvenience this lack of attribution may have caused.

On Thursday morning I put June on the school bus with the instructions, “Have a good last day of school as a five year old,” and she flashed me a brilliant smile.

June is six now.  She was born right before the cherries bloomed on the Tidal Basin. She was six weeks early, and developed a bad case of jaundice so she had to stay at the hospital three days after I was released.  I hated being separated from her, even for those three days. We were constantly shuttling back and forth between the hospital and home, with bottles of pumped milk in tow.

The hospital was just around the corner from the Tidal Basin so one day either on the way to the hospital or on the way home, we made a drive-by visit. Beth dropped me and Noah and YaYa off to walk around a bit while she circled in the car (parking is often impossible when the cherries are in bloom).  We were just a little too early, but we found a couple of blooming trees for a quick photo-op and then we hopped back in the car.

The trees bloomed in earnest soon after and I wanted to go back, but once we got June home, she had to be wrapped in a phototherapy blanket round the clock, allowed out only to nurse, and we just couldn’t make it. Even though we didn’t take her that first year, I still associate the cherry blossoms with the surprising, chaotic days after her birth. We call her our cherry blossom baby, just as Noah is our iris baby.

At 6:35 a.m. on Friday the phone rang.  I wondered if it was a wrong number or an early-rising relative wishing June a happy birthday.  Instead it was Baskin-Robbins, seeking advice of the frosting color of the ice-cream cake we’d ordered for June’s party. The whole cake-buying experience was bizarre.  June had fallen in love with this cake because it had real half-sized ice cream cones on top but Beth had customer service challenges placing and picking up the order and in the end we got a cake that said “Happy June Birthday” instead of “Happy Birthday, June.”  So, just a word of warning if you’re local and you don’t like receiving business calls before dawn or scrambled messages in icing–consider another vendor.

After Beth confirmed that pink frosting was fine, we all went to the living room where June’s wrapped presents were arrayed around her new two-wheeler.  “A bike,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone. “I like the bike.” Then she tore into the other presents.  We got her a cat-themed math game, Rat-a-Tat Cat, partly because her party theme was cats and partly because it looked fun.  Noah got her a bell for her bike and a pair of headphones (she uses headphones to watch television or play on the computer while he’s doing homework and he thought she’d like her own pair). Everything else was clothes.  My aunt Peggy sent Hello Kitty pants, we got her a Hello Kitty t-shirt, a numeral six t-shirt and other summer clothes and pajamas. There were clothes from YaYa, too, including a pair of ladybug rain boots.  It was only after all the presents were opened that June really focused on the bike and decided she wanted to ride it right then.  I told her she needed to eat breakfast and get dressed and ready for school first.  In the end, she had about five minutes practice in the driveway before I put her, clad in her number six t-shirt and new leggings, on the school bus.  “Have a good day, six year old,” I told her. Again, she grinned at me.

When she got off the bus, she was holding a cardboard crown.  Her teacher does not allow birthday treats to be sent in from home, but birthday celebrants get a crown and everyone sings “Feliz cumpleaños” to them.  I’m used to more elaborate school celebrations, both at preschool and in elementary school, but June seemed satisfied.  She wanted to practice riding her bike again–she’d do it three times before the day was out and she got a little better every time.  (By Saturday morning she could pedal up a slight incline and her turns were impeccable.) She said she thought we could take the training wheels off. I counseled her to wait.

My mom arrived for a weekend visit around 4:15, and there were more presents to open.  A pair of summer pajamas with cats on them had arrived during the day (“The cat’s pajamas” I told Beth—how could I resist that joke?), as had a rubber bracelet from Auntie Sara.  It has holes in it and it has letters you can fit into the holes to spell words.  It came bearing the words Junie Dell. (Dell is June’s middle name, and mine, too. I used to call her Junie Dell when she was a baby.  It was one of those baby nicknames that didn’t stick except with Sara, but I like that Sara has a special nickname for her.)  The next day, June changed the words to “I love you.”  Mom brought all kinds of presents—a giant wooden Pinocchio marionette, a tiny vase with a purple ceramic cat attached to it, a paint-your-own tea set kit, and of course, clothes.  June selected the belt from one outfit and decided to wear it with the other outfit (a hot pink t-shirt and leggings to go under a blue sundress with pink flowers) at her party the next day.

I gave June an early bath because we were going out for pizza at Roscoe’s and I wasn’t sure what time we’d be home. It was a warm evening so we sat on the patio, eating wild mushroom crostini, marinated olives (I let June go over her olive quota for the day), salad and pizza.  They were out of gelato because their freezer was broken, so we headed over to Capital City Cheesecake for cheesecake and cannoli.  When we got home, it was June’s bedtime and her big day was over.

But the next day was probably just as exciting because it was her birthday party.  We spent the morning and early afternoon running birthday errands, cleaning the house, assembling gift bags and getting the porch ready for the pin-the-tail-on-the-cat game and the piñata. I’d originally envisioned these as front and back yard games, but rain was predicted, and sure enough it started drizzling around 11:30. Beth and June went out to pick up the “Happy June Birthday” cake and to buy yellow roses and six balloons in varying designs. One has a cat wearing a birthday hat and sunglasses.  Another is the exact Dora balloon June got for her birthday last year. When you tap it, Dora sings “Happy Birthday” in English and Spanish. The sound of the song was still etched deeply into my brain, and Beth’s, too, so she set some strict ground rules about under what circumstances one might tap the balloon to hear the pint-sized bilingual songstress go at it.

The party was at 3:00 and her friends arrived between 2:50 and 3:15.  Maggie, who is June’s only friend who attended both her preschool and her elementary school, made introductions, while the girls selected instruments from the bin and there was an impromptu concert (most of June’s parties seem to start this way).  Once everyone had arrived, we gathered the guests onto the carpet to listen as Mom read them a story The Leprechaun Under the Bed. June remembered Mom reading at her party last year and wanted her to do it again. I’d suggested The Cat in the Hat, but she knew as soon as we checked this book out of the library and read it the first time that it was the one she wanted read at her party. (Spoiler: the leprechaun turns into a cat at the end of the story.)

Next we moved out to the porch for pin-the-tail-on-the-cat.  Last spring June attended a classmate’s birthday party that had classic games as the theme–pin-the-tail-on-the donkey, sack races, etc, and it occurred to me that though you don’t see kids play them much any more, these games are classics for a reason. It was a really fun party.  So I tucked that idea away in the back of my mind, and when June came up with the cat theme for her party I was all ready with pin-the-tail-on-the-cat. June was all over it, especially since she could make the cat and the tails herself.  One by one, I blindfolded the guests and gently spun them around six times each and let them go, sometimes with a subtle correction if they left my hands going in the wrong direction.  The kids laughed hysterically as the tails went onto the cat’s face or the air above its body.  A couple of them got the tail on or pretty close to the cat’s rump—I think Talia’s was the best placed.

Back inside, it was time for games.  We had two and let the girls divide into groups and choose which one they wanted to play.  The first one was The Cat in the Hat, I Can Do That.  In this game, you lay cards together to form instructions for a task to perform with props from the story and you get points if you complete it. June got this game for Christmas and was more interested in playing her new game and most of her guests followed her lead, but I supervised a game between Talia and Megan and then started another round with Talia, when Megan had lost interest and Talia wanted to keep playing.  Beth says she wished she’d thought to get a picture of me trying to wriggle my way under a low foam arch, while balancing the fishbowl in one hand.

Mom and Noah had played Rat-a-Tat Cat with June earlier the in day so they could get the hang of the rules, and Emelia already knew them because she had the same game at home, so the card game went smoothly. Beth said they all seemed to get the hang of it pretty quickly and enjoyed it.  When the games were over, we set everyone up with paper and crayons and asked them to draw cats, as a souvenir.  Some of them drew the Cat in the Hat, others drew Hello Kitty and others went with non-branded felines.  Keller divided her paper into three sections and did one of each.

We had cake next.  The kids thought “Happy June Birthday” was hilarious, an improvement on “Happy Birthday June” really, and as Beth divvied up the little cones they were agreeable about not all getting their first choices in ice cream (each cone was a different flavor).  As we ate cake, Mom sat on the couch with Morgan’s mom and baby brother and got acquainted with her, finding out she went to Oberlin—Beth’s and my alma mater. She even lived in Noah Hall, the dorm where Beth and I met, and after which we named Noah.

I gathered up the goody bags so the guests could stash their piñata booty in them and we headed back out to the porch to smash it.  All the kids had at least two turns.  When a hole opened but no candy fell out, Megan tried to tilt the piñata (or maybe enlarge the hole) by poking her stick in the hole.  It was Noah who finally sent the candy cascading to the floor with some mighty whacks.  Morgan’s mom commented that older brothers have their uses.

June wanted to know if we could have some music while we waited for parents to come collect the guests.  When Beth put on Blue Moo, June asked Talia quite formally, “Talia, will you dance with me?” and Talia did. They danced joyfully around the living room as June’s birthday party wound down to a close. It was cute to watch, especially since I am so very fond of Talia, whom I’ve known since she was not quite two.

After the guests left, June opened her presents–a book, three stuffed animals (including a cat of course), a mermaid magnet set, and a Lego café kit.  June wanted to assemble the café right away, but we went out for Indian first, and then she set to work on it. It was hard to tear her away to go to bed. She finished it the next afternoon, following all thirty-three diagrams–less than twenty-four hours after receiving it, and impressing Mom with her small motor skills and her tenacity.

The final adventure of June’s birthday weekend was an expedition to the cherry blossoms and the new MLK memorial.  The peak bloom period is short and notoriously difficult to predict.  Mom has never caught it, though she often visits us around June’s birthday.  For awhile the predicted four-day peak period spanned the weekend and we thought luck was with us, but then a few eighty-plus-degree days accelerated the blooming and the peak period moved back, ending Friday.  I thought if we went Friday it would be too hard to get back by bedtime, and going on Saturday before the party would make for a stressfully jam-packed day, so we waited until Sunday.

Now I will say that given the choice between a few days before the peak period and a few days after I would choose after every time. There are drifts of petals on the ground and blizzards of them in the air with every breeze; there are petals in muddy puddles and on the rippling water of the Tidal Basin, and there are damp petals stuck to every horizontal and vertical surface.  In its way, it’s almost as magic as the classic picture postcard puffy pink and white blooms.  It looks like confetti strewn on the street after a particularly wild party.  So in a way it was a fitting end to June’s birthday celebration, an after party of sorts. She got to christen her new boots in the puddles, eat hot edamame from a stand, admire the trees (solemnly telling us “all trees are beautiful”), run through the paths between the tulip beds at the Floral Library, take pictures with Beth’s phone, joke with her brother, give her grandmother countless hugs, hold hands with everyone and seize the joy and the beauty of the moment and of being six.

The real test of our new morning rules came this past weekend.  All last week, June came into our room at 6:30 or later; one morning she even alarmed me by waking me and saying, “It’s 7:55,” when it was in fact 6:55, a perfectly reasonable time to wake given when we need to be out the door.  But keeping herself quiet until 7:00 on weekend mornings proved more challenging than 6:30 on weekdays. On Saturday she was in our room twice between 6:00 and 6:30 and I had to go into the kids’ room another two times during that time period to tell them to quiet down.  Finally, they went into the living room and read to each other, alternating pages from a Mercy Watson book (http://www.mercywatson.com/#books).  At breakfast, after a stern review of the rules, I praised the kids for deciding to go into the living room, because it had gotten much quieter after that.

“That was Beth’s idea. You should be complimenting her,” Noah admitted.  (She must have given them this advice while I was in the bathroom.) So much for leavening the criticism with praise, I thought.

Sunday morning wasn’t ideal either, as once both kids were awake at 6:15 they couldn’t resist talking to each other, and they only occasionally remembered to whisper.  Under the old system, June was coming to our room and Noah was reading so they rarely encountered each other, but now that she’s staying in the room with him, they interact with each other and their interactions are rarely quiet.  So we still have to figure out how to make the weekends work, but it’s early in the transition and I am not giving up on my vision of sleeping uninterrupted until 7:00 some Saturday or Sunday morning in the near future. I am ready to offer bribes, if necessary.

And speaking of transitions, the garden in the back yard has basically started without us. We have a cluster of daffodils there, an oddly frilly variety, which appeared for the first time several years ago, presumably planted by a squirrel. I’ve relocated some of the bulbs to the front yard, but I never manage to find them all. In fact it seems there are more of them there every year as I manage to separate the ones I find from too close neighbors, which makes them proliferate.

We also have broccoli and lettuce, both remnants of last year’s garden and the lemon balm and black-eyed Susan are starting to come back, too. The lettuce just sprung up on its own.  While lemon balm is known for its hardy and even invasive qualities and we’ve occasionally had black-eyed Susan come back, I don’t think of lettuce as a perennial; we’ve been growing it for years without ever seeing this happen. It must have been that the exceptionally mild winter spared the roots of a couple of the plants.

The broccoli I planted in late October.  I bought six plants on a whim when I saw them at the hardware store. I knew broccoli can be a fall crop and I was sad about the garden being almost over and thought it would be fun to extend our growing season. When I got home, I looked up some information about growing broccoli and discovered it was really too late to plant it in our area, but the plants looked sad and droopy and root-bound in their little pots and I thought they’d be happier in the ground, so I planted them, expecting they’d die before they produced any florets.  They grew a little in the next month or so, and then they stopped, going into a holding pattern for much of the late fall and winter. They didn’t get any bigger and they didn’t die (except for one that gave up the ghost in January or February).  And then they started to grow again, and all five remaining plants have produced florets.  The biggest, most vigorous plant started to flower the other day so I harvested from it and the next two biggest.  We’ll eat homegrown broccoli on spinach tortellini tomorrow night to celebrate the first day of spring.

As we change seasons, I want to celebrate it all, the transitions we work to make happen and the ones that emerge unbidden, but no less welcome.

Maybe it was because had been getting light earlier or maybe it was just one of those random fluctuations in the kids’ sleep patterns, but for a few weeks before the time change they had been waking up early.  Earlier than their usual early, I mean. They are supposed to stay quietly in bed until six a.m. and then Noah is allowed to read and June, until Sunday, was allowed to come snuggle with us in bed.  She’d been doing that with disheartening regularity, right at six o’ clock on the dot, instead varying her entrance time within the 6:00 to 7:00 hour as was her previous habit.

Now when June was three and four years old, she’d usually fall right back asleep between us, and then the three of us would get some more rest, but that hadn’t been happening much recently.  Instead, there was more kicking and pulling off of covers and chatter than slumber once she came to join us.  Coming in at the earliest allowable time also meant that on the all too frequent mornings she woke me up at 5:30 because she’d forgotten to look at the clock or she’d lost her pacifier (yes, she still sleeps with one) or she wanted to tell me about one of her dreams I couldn’t get back to sleep, knowing she’d be back at 6:00.

So some time in February I started thinking about how June was close to the age Noah was when we pushed back his snuggle time to 6:30 on weekdays and 7:10 on weekends (“Welcome to 6:47”). And I started thinking it was time for a change. The late February weekend when June woke me before six on Saturday and Sunday put me over the edge.  I realized that pushing back the time she’s allowed to enter the room would not stop the unauthorized forays to our room (and in the short run might actually increase them) but it would give me more time to fall back asleep when they occurred. When I told Beth I was thinking of changing the morning rules she said, “Please!” so I knew she was on board.

I was only waiting for a good time to break the news to June when I realized switching over to Daylight Saving Time would create the perfect opportunity because it would be easy for her to stay in bed until seven the first day and then we’d just need keep her in the habit.  So on Saturday I told her the new rules—6:30 on weekdays and 7:00 on weekends–stressing it was because she was getting older and these are our rules for older kids. She wasn’t happy about it, but I didn’t get as much pushback as I expected. Maybe I did a good job selling the big kid angle.

Day 1: Sunday

As expected, the first day was easy.  We set the clocks forward an hour and also set the time June was allowed into the room forward an hour, so it was a wash, and it felt pretty much like a normal Sunday when she popped into the room at precisely seven a.m.  I asked her how long she’d been up and she said since 6:42, so that was an eighteen-minute sleep bonus for the grownups, I suppose.

She took a brief nap that afternoon so I let her stay up until 8:20 (thirty-five minutes past her no-nap bedtime) and she fell asleep easily.  Noah said he didn’t think he’d fall asleep when I put him to bed, but if he had any trouble he was quiet about it. I didn’t hear any tossing or turning. I fell asleep pretty easily at my normal bedtime as well.

Day 2: Monday

“Mommy, it’s 6:40,” June whispered.  She was standing by my bedside in the dark, the deep, quiet kind of dark that makes anything but sleeping seem like a very poor idea.

“C’mon in,” I mumbled and she climbed in. It felt early, too early, even though I’d gotten about the same amount of sleep as usual. I wasn’t up for reading a story until 7:15, but I then I read it and we got up and everyone got to work and school on time, though it felt like a bit more of a scramble than usual.  For instance, June and I were having a leisurely conversation in the kitchen while I made her lunch when I glanced at the clock on the stove and saw it was 8:12, only eight minutes until we needed to be at the bus stop and I stopped whatever I was saying to urge her to go get dressed.  I went to check on her several minutes later and found her out of her pajamas but wearing only a pair of flowered underpants and apparently not in the process of putting on clothes.  I pulled a shirt over her head and socks onto her feet while she got into a pair of leggings, then I brushed her hair into a sloppy ponytail–“no time for pigtails”– I told her and we were out the door.

At the bus stop I listened to parents of third and fourth graders complain about their kids having to take the MSA (Maryland’s No Child Left Behind tests) on the day after a time change.  Fifth-graders don’t start the tests until Wednesday, so I didn’t have to worry about that.

The kids got into two fierce arguments that evening.  The first one was about the rules of a soccer game they were playing before dinner (longer daylight and a light homework day for Noah facilitated this game) and the second one was over ownership of a candy necklace.  Two squabbles in one evening would not be unusual but they were really mad, crying and screaming at each other and using escalating words like “cheating” and “stealing.”  I wondered if the time change was making them out of sorts.  Once June had calmed down and we were talking about what had happened, she said they’d been “bitten by the argument bug,” quoting a favorite book of hers.  I suggested a make-up hug before June went to bed and they complied, but Noah was half-hearted about it.

Day 3: Tuesday

“It’s 6:30,” June informed me before crawling into bed with me.  Too dark, too early, too dark, too early, my brain was telling me.

Meanwhile, Noah was in the bathroom singing “Fifty Nifty United States” with a good deal of brio.  Then he popped his head into the bedroom and said, as if just noticing, “It seems really dark. It must be the daylight savings time.”

I wasn’t awake enough to respond. I guess it’s going to be this way for a while, but June’s doing a great job sticking to the new rules, and I think when I finally adjust to the new time, I’ll appreciate having a little extra time to sleep in the morning. Three days out, I’m cautiously optimistic.

Meanwhile, other things are springing ahead besides the time.  June will be six in ten days and we’ve been busy planning her party.  The theme is cats and she and I spent a lot of time selecting and ordering cat-themed plates, cups and goody bag loot–pencils, pencil sharpeners, erasers, bookmarks and stickers all in either Hello Kitty or Cat in the Hat patterns, plus cat bracelets and cat rubber duckies. June drew her own invitations with pictures of birthday hats and cats and Noah made an insert with the date, time and place info, plus a graphic of the number six and an exclamation point made from Hello Kitty’s face and the Cat in the Hat’s hat. Then June made a large drawing of a cat and seven tails for a homemade pin-the-tail-on-the-cat game and Beth and June purchased a piñata while they were grocery shopping on Sunday.  The party is not until the weekend after next but June’s in a state of high excitement about it.

Spring is also in evidence in the yard, even though it’s still officially winter.  Our crocuses are finished and the daffodils and hyacinth are in bloom, with tulips and even tiger lilies putting up shoots.  We have light and dark purple hyacinth. The dark ones we got last year in a pot as a condolence gift from our friend Megan when Beth’s dad died.  I planted the bulbs and they came up in February and started to bloom in early March right when I hoped they would. On Saturday, the first anniversary of his death, they were in full bloom. I like having a small living memorial there, to let us look back, even as we spring forward.