Pink is the New Black

Posted on October 22, 2009 by Steph

June has a new favorite color. Yes, it’s that one. For a year and a half, from the age of two until just a couple weeks ago, she favored yellow and I was quietly, possibly even a bit smugly, proud of her originality. I’d look around at the swarms of little girls in head-to-toe pink at the library or at music class and then I’d look at June, dressed either in her older brother’s hand-me-downs or in the dresses I’d buy her (in blue or purple or green) or in the yellow clothes she picked out. I’d think we were breaking the mold, she and I. We were in this together. No following the crowd for us.

Well, that’s all over now.

We had some warning it was coming. Last spring she started saying pink was her second favorite color, after yellow. When the Bugs class made their paper lanterns for the end of the year celebration, she chose pink paper over yellow. Her teacher Andrea, who knows her way around the preschool set (and has two daughters of her own in elementary school) told us she’d be crossing over to the pink side soon. And she has.

I took it pretty well at first. It’s just a color I told myself, not an ideological worldview. I even have a pink shirt myself, which is something I would have never worn as a kid or really until the past few years. It’s comfy and I wear it a lot. June had almost no pink clothes that fit, so I bought her a pink long-sleeved t-shirt, a pair of pink and orange striped leggings and two pairs of pink socks. I was looking for versatile pieces that could make a lot of outfits without having to invest in a whole new wardrobe.

Even Beth, who was more alarmed than I was at the pink turn of events, melted when June asked her “pwease, Bef” for the pink cardigan with little hearts on it and the pink hooded sweatshirt with the picture of Dora on the front while they were shopping at Value Village (http://www.takoma.com/archives/copy/2008/02/valuevillage.html) during their Columbus Day sale. “I love Dora,” June often says. I’m not sure if she realizes Dora has a television show or not. She may think she just adorns Band Aids, toothbrushes and hoodies.

But of course sometimes pink is an ideological worldview. Along with June’s newfound passion for pink have come a lot of stern pronouncements about what boys do and what girls do. She chastises Beth for having “boy hair.” She says the stuffed animals belong to her and to Noah but the dolls are all hers because “dolls are for girls.” This despite the fact that two of the three dolls she owns used to belong to Noah, and one was a cherished favorite of his when he was a toddler. I know this is normal. She trying to figure out the big, complicated mess of gender and to get her brain around it she needs to simplify it. This is why she has latched on to pink with such ferocity, why she points to every pink toy she sees in a catalogue and says she wants it, why she will point to a girl she doesn’t know in public and declare she is her “favorite girl” just because she happens to be wearing pink. The fanaticism is starting to wear on us and it’s only been a few weeks.

So I have been asking everyone I know with a daughter older than June these questions:

1) Did she go through the pink phase?
2) When did it start?
3) How long did it last?

Feel free to answer them in the comments. I’d love more data. So far, everyone says yes, she did, but there’s a lot of variation in the age question. When June was much younger, someone told me it would be all pink, all the time from the age of two to ten. So I took comfort in the fact that we’d made it well past three and I thought we were home free. But when I ask now, people tell me it started any time between two and four. Ending dates go from not quite five to ten. I’m hoping we can get through it as quickly as possible. Six and a half years seems like a long time to me, although there’s general agreement that the preschool years are the most pink-intensive ones.

Of course, while Beth and I see it as conformity, there is another way to look at it. Beth mentioned June’s new favorite color while talking to her mother on the phone the other day. She had her on speaker so I overheard the conversation. As Beth wondered how this could have happened, YaYa said, “She’s learned to rebel early.” And I think I heard a trace of amusement in her voice. She is going to give us the grief we dress-eschewing tomboys gave our mothers in reverse. The chickens have come home to roost.

After several days of very intense interest in what she was going to wear for the day, June didn’t seem to care this morning, so I got out a pair of jeans that used to be Noah’s, a yellow t-shirt, yellow socks and yellow barrettes. (She does still like yellow. It’s her second favorite, she says.) She accepted the outfit without comment. We went to Spanish Circle Time at the library. I noticed out of the corner of my eye that the toddler girl next to her was wearing embroidered jeans, a pink t-shirt and a pink hair ribbon. It wasn’t until we were dancing around to the music that the girl faced me and I could see her shirt said, “Pink is the New Black.”

Around here, it is. It’s just going to take some getting used to.

Note: My dad completed his chemotherapy and radiation treatment earlier this month. According to his doctors, the tumor in his throat seems to be completely gone and his vocal chords are still functional. About that, we are all tickled pink.

Look at the Sunflower

Posted on September 9, 2009 by Steph

Look at the Sunflower, he said, there was a dead gray shadow against the sky, big as a man, sitting dry on top of a pile of ancient sawdust…

Yesterday was a strange day, happy and sad all at once. June had her first day in the Leaves class and my father had his second round of chemotherapy for throat cancer. I only found out he had cancer last week so it’s been weighing on me. He’s made it clear he wants his space right now, no phone calls or visits. So I sent a bouquet of sunflowers with a quote from Allen Ginsberg’s “Sunflower Sutra” (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=179382) and I’m contemplating what to put in a care package and taking comfort in the fact that my stepmother says his prognosis is good. We haven’t always had an easy relationship, but I don’t want to go into all that now.

June came into our room yesterday morning at 6:05, asking me to come lay down with her, just as she had at 3:15 and 11:55. Alert readers may be thinking “came into our room”? at this point. Over the Labor Day weekend, Beth and Noah cleared all the toys he’d been storing up on his top bunk, put them in bins inside the drawers under the bottom bunk and drilled holes for a hasp and combination lock into the drawers and locked them up. (He was put out that Beth insisted on knowing the combination to the lock.) Now Noah’s room is officially Noah and June’s room. They were just in time with the toy relocation, too. June learned to scale the back of the ladderless bunks on Sunday after almost two years of trying. We put the ladder back and she is constantly going up and down with and without it.

On Sunday night June slept on the lower bunk and Noah slept on the top bunk for the very first time. The first night June went right to sleep (after I’d reminded them to stop talking to each other a few times) but Noah tossed and turned, unused to sleeping on the top bunk. The second night they both fell asleep a little more quickly (after I’d admonished Noah a few times to stop trying to amuse June with beams of light from the flashlight he keeps up there so he can read in the mornings if he wakes before she does.) Two wake ups during a night is within the realm of normal for June, so I think the transition is going pretty well. Now we’re all trying to call it “the kids’ room” instead of “Noah’s room” and thinking about getting some wooden letters that spell out her name to put next to Noah’s name on the wall and putting up some of her artwork on the door.

When June got up for the third time, just after six, I let her into our bed in hopes of getting a little more sleep, but she was wiggly and wide awake. I pretended to sleep while she crawled all over me. Around 6:50 I gave up the pretense and we read a couple books and got out of bed to eat breakfast. Around 7:40 I broke up a fight between the children by telling June it was time to get dressed and asking her to choose between the purple and blue striped dress and the blue and green one. She pointed to the purple one. Then she wanted to know if she was going to a party. (It was reasonable supposition since she’s only worn this dress three times and always to a party.) No, school, I reminded her, much to her delight.

Her delight turned to dismay, however, when I mentioned that she was going to wear underwear to school. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” June said. She seemed surprised, too, as if we’d never brought up this bizarre requirement before. I told her she could wear a diaper until we got to school, mainly because I wanted her to at least arrive at school in dry clothes so I could jump into my co-oping duties without having to change her. Then she surprised me by saying she wanted to put the underwear on right away. I decided to throw caution to the wind and said okay. The pink underwear, she specified.

Once she was dressed and her hair was combed, she was satisfied that she looked “good and pretty” (a recent concern of hers). After a last minute scramble for my keys and quick photo session at the front gate, we were off.

We arrived at school at 8:20. When we came in I asked June if she wanted to use the potty and she declared she wasn’t “old enough” to use the potty. (This is what she says whenever she doesn’t want to do something.) Lesley asked how old would be old enough. June held up four fingers.

“Hmm…” Lesley said in a neutral tone.

I was expecting to be the only experienced co-oper so I was relieved to find out the Yellow Oak’s (aka Ladybug’s) mom was subbing for one of the new co-opers. I thought it would be easier for two of us to show the ropes to one new co-oper than for me to show them to two. It was actually a really easy day because only half the class was in attendance. (The others will start tomorrow.) I showed the Yellow Holly’s mom how to record the kids’ journal entries and between the two of us we did journals for all seven kids. All three co-opers pitched in and did the housekeeping jobs together while Lesley led the kids in dramatic play and for the first time in my two years at the school it wasn’t a mad rush to get it all done.

During Circle Time, Lesley introduced the concept of daily jobs. One of June’s jobs was to stick the number 8 to the calendar that had the numbers from one to seven already on it. Then everyone counted to eight and Lesley asked for predictions about tomorrow’s date. No-one answered but I could see a few of them were thinking about it and from the looks on their faces when she said nine, I think they knew the answer. Next Lesley showed them the talking stick, decorated with beads and the words “Talk” and “Listen.” It gets passed from child to child as they sing their morning greeting to each other: “Hello, Name. How are you?” June was sitting immediately to Lesley’s left so she had the stick first. Lesley explained what she was supposed to do.

“I’m not old enough,”June said softly. Lesley explained again that the singing was optional. Making eye contact and passing the stick is enough. June passed the stick to the next child wordlessly. Either June’s a trendsetter or this singing greeting is really scary for three year olds just getting to know each other because they all passed the stick without a verbal greeting, though I think one of the returning girls did answer “I am fine, thank you,” as Lesley sang the question. (Almost half the Leaves class is new. Leaves is a bigger class than Bugs and we had some last-minute vacancies come open this summer so we have eight returning students and six new ones.) As the stick went around I watched the new children, June’s new crop of friends, with a warm, curious feeling. They will be together for two years, which is a long time when you are only three. I’m eager to get to know them.

When the singing was over, I had the pleasure of hearing Lesley read The Grey Lady and the Strawberry Snatcher (http://www.librarything.com/work/629786), a book Noah’s whole class loved. I remember reading it to little groups of them over and over, or rather showing them its eerily illustrated pages and talking to them about what’s going on because it has no words. In between her observations and questions and the children’s, Lesley hummed in a suspenseful way.

“Is this a scary book?” someone wanted to know.

After a snack of peaches, apples, hummus and whole-wheat pita, a session of dramatic play followed. Lesley took the kids on a magic carpet ride to the bottom of the sea and over a mountain range while the co-opers cleaned. Once I peeked in and saw June wearing a blue gown from the dress-up rack. “Let’s go to a party,” she said. Around ten-forty when I needed to go to the bathroom, I realized June was still dry. I’d been asking her frequently if she wanted to use the potty, but every time she said no.

Around eleven, the kids went out to play on the playground. I stayed inside to finish a few last-minute housekeeping tasks since I was the official housekeeping person, but every now and then I looked out the window. Every time I did I saw June tearing around the playground, the skirt of her purple dress flying out behind her. When I finished and came outside, June and two other girls were playing at being cats. This consisted of running around and meowing. Lesley said she foresaw two years of meowing, because a class’s play patterns are often established early. (Noah’s class was all pirates all the time, at least among the boys. The girls were often fairies.) During a quiet moment, Lesley asked me about my father. Before I knew it, it was time to line up and go to the front porch for dismissal. The first day of Leaves class was over.

Once we got home, I asked June if she wanted to use the potty. She did not, but minutes later, as she was standing on a stool in the kitchen, watching me make a grilled cheese sandwich for her, she announced nonchalantly, “I’m peeing.” I looked down at the stool and saw she had.

In the bathroom as I changed her out of the wet pink underwear, I told her that although she would not go back to school this week, she’d go three days next week. She grinned and held up three fingers. “Can I stay until night?” she asked. I think she had a good day. I hope June has many more days like today this fall and that my father has as few as possible.

This afternoon I went to the backyard to pick a tomato for dinner. I surveyed what we have left in the garden: a lot of green tomatoes, herbs, zinnias and black-eyed Susans, some carrots, a handful of green beans and a little bit of lettuce. The cucumber vines are still flowering but there aren’t any cucumbers growing on them. I can’t tell if they are finished or not. And then there’s the sunflower. Most of our sunflowers were toppled by a storm in early August, but the granddaddy, the one that grew to a height of eight feet or more is still standing. A week ago I thought it was dead, but now it has a few new blooms on it. I expect it to stick around a while longer.

We’re not our skin of grime, we’re not our dread bleak dusty imageless locomotive, we’re all golden sunflowers inside…

When We Were Down Beside the Sea

Posted on August 26, 2009 by Steph

There were probably more reasons not to go to the Outer Banks this week than to go. It’s a long drive, Beth is swamped at work and there’s a nursery school board meeting tonight, plus there’s an Open House at Noah’s school on Friday and Sasha’s having an end-of-summer-vacation pool party immediately afterward, not to mention Hurricane Bill had the potential to make driving treacherous. But my mother and stepfather had rented a house and invited us. I’ve been going down to Avon with them since I was eighteen years old. At first we went every year but in recent years it’s been more like every two or three years. The last time we went Noah was five and June was five months. And since I would find turning down an invitation to the beach roughly akin to chewing off one of my own limbs, we went. These were Beth’s terms: We’d come back Wednesday so she could attend the meeting and we could all go to the Open House and pool party and it would be a working vacation for her. The ratio of three beach days to two driving days was not ideal, but it was something. I said okay, probably more grudgingly than I should have.

“Beth must love you a lot,” my mom said as we were discussing her plans to spend two days driving and then most of the rest of her time at the computer. I think she does.

Day 1
We got a later start than we intended on Saturday morning because ten minutes into the drive I realized we’d left the diaper bag at home and we went back for it. (That would have been a convenient time to remember we’d left Noah’s suitcase in his room but we didn’t make that discovery until bedtime.) We arrived just before six, after a nine hour, fifteen minute drive that featured rain, intermittent traffic jams, June’s first-ever bout of carsickness and a half hour of screaming over video choices. Guess who screamed for a half hour? Hint: it wasn’t me or Beth or June. Beth went right back out to pick up enough groceries for dinner and the next morning’s breakfast, despite the fact that it looked like it was going to storm and she was feeling jittery from the stress of the drive.

Just before we put the kids to bed, I slipped down to the beach. Bill had stirred up the sea, creating waves that looked massive from the deck. I had to see it up close. When I got to the beach I saw the outer edge of the extensive dune system had been washed away, leaving tufts of sea oats stranded in what looked like the middle of the beach. Of course, the beach was a lot narrower than usual because the water was up so high. When I got close to the water I could see that what had looked like enormous waves from a distance was really a series of merely large waves, one on top of the other. There were waves close in and waves far out and waves every place in between with no breaks at all. The National Weather Service had issued a warning not to swim Saturday and Sunday and I saw why. It looked impossible.

Day 2
Sunday morning it was raining, but June, stalwart girl she is, was eager to go to the beach with me. While Beth and Noah went shopping for clothes for him, we made dribble castles in the rain, collected shells (June favored the white and purple ones, which she later presented to Grandmom and I found a sand dollar) and we compared the relative size of our footprints (conclusion: mine are bigger). We observed how quickly the water rushed up in the holes June dug with her little shovel in the waterlogged sand and I recited the following Robert Louis Stevenson poem:

When I was down beside the sea
A wooden spade they gave to me
To dig the sandy shore.

My holes were empty like a cup.
In every hole the sea came up,
Till it could come no more.

http://www.bartleby.com/188/104.html

She looked at me thoughtfully, as if surprised I knew the perfect poem for the occasion. “Say it again,” she said, and I did. On the way back to the house we saw a group of five pelicans fly over our heads.

That afternoon, the skies cleared and I took June down to the beach again with Mom and Jim. Beth and Noah were out shopping again. It turns out boys’ underwear is very difficult to find on the Outer Banks and they drove all the way up to the GAP outlet in Nag’s Head, an hour’s drive each way, to buy him some. At least they got to make a stop at Bodie Island Lighthouse (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodie_Island_Light), which he wanted to see. He was really good-natured about spending so much of his day driving and trying on clothes, better than I would have been in his place.

I didn’t stay at the beach long because I was cooking corn chowder for dinner. I’d picked that evening to cook because the no-swim warning was still in effect. Shortly before I went back to the house, Beth brought a newly outfitted Noah down to the beach and we admired his new shark t-shirt and Hawaiian print swim trunks.

Day 3
Monday I squeezed in as much beach time as I could, making four trips down to the water. On the first trip the kids made sand castle after sand castle and June lost her sunglasses. This is how it happened: The three of us were standing in the surf and Noah said he didn’t think she should be wearing them in the water because she could lose them. I don’t know why she chose this moment to listen to him, but she removed her sunglasses and promptly dropped them into the ocean. The water was shallow but foamy and flowing rapidly back and forth and as soon as they went under, they disappeared. I tried to make a grab for them, but I couldn’t see where to grab. Realizing what had happened, June burst into tears. Feeling responsible perhaps, Noah did, too. I tried to calm them both, telling Noah it wasn’t his fault over and over. Before I could tell June we’d buy her a new pair of sunglasses she stopped crying abruptly and before her brother did. “Can I get Dora sunglasses?” she wanted to know.

The kids wanted to return to the house soon after that, even though it wasn’t close to lunch time yet, so I hustled them back, showered and dressed them, foisted them off on my mother, and went back to the beach for my first swim of the trip. The water was still very rough, but the waves were spaced out so I thought I could manage. Even so, it was a difficult swim. It took a lot of patience and effort to get past the breakers to my favorite place, where the waves are swelling and just starting to curve. I did it, but after only a few waves I got pulled back into the rough surf and I decided to call it quits. (I grow old… I grow old…. I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled– http://www.bartleby.com/198/1.html.) I returned to the house, had lunch, napped with June and then Beth took a break from her work to take us all to Dairy Queen and to go sunglass shopping for June.

The swimming was better that afternoon. In fact it was the best swimming I’ve had in years. It was close to low tide and the waves were very big, but gentler now. I faced them and jumped up into them right before they broke and they sucked me up their slopes and dropped me down. On the way down, I fell through the air for several seconds before I hit the water, laughing out loud. After I tired, I placed myself just to the side of where the big waves were breaking and I stood sideways, watching the late afternoon sunlight paint their swelling surfaces silver and gold.

I returned to the beach that night after the kids were in bed. With no boardwalk lights, the beach in Avon is darker at night that Rehoboth Beach, but the darkness lets you see more clearly what light there is—the stars sprinkled across the sky with the Big Dipper in the West, the tiny phosphorescent creatures twinkling in the wet sand and in the shallow water, the lights of the fishing pier, the bonfires crackling on the beach, the beams of light from flashlights held by kids tearing around the beach looking for the crabs that come out of their holes at night. As I walked along the water’s edge, looking at the stars, I felt a rare awareness that I was walking on the surface of a planet among many other planets, at the edge of a continent among many other continents. It didn’t make me feel small. It made me feel grounded.

Day 4
Tuesday morning Noah and I went out to breakfast, just the two of us. When I was in my late teens and early twenties, I had an Avon tradition of slipping away one morning before anyone was up and having breakfast alone at the Froggy Dog (http://www.froggydog.com/). I’d always get the same special: two fried eggs over easy with grits and a biscuit. After I’d eaten I’d linger at the table, drinking my coffee and reading or writing and then I’d leave the waitress a big tip for monopolizing the table. The first time Beth came with me to spend a week with my folks at the beach, the summer after I graduated from college, I took her. I still go every year we’re there with different combinations of people, but I don’t read or write at the table any more. I chose to take Noah this year because although I am frequently alone with June, he and I don’t have much one on one time.

It was a fun meal. We talked about the upcoming school year and whether he’d prefer Spanish in the morning and English in the afternoon or the other way around (English in the morning he said, so he could ease into his day). We tried to decide whether the art on the wall was a painting of two unicorns walking in the surf or a doctored photograph of horses. (Painting he said, but I thought it might be a photograph.) He bounced in his seat along with the music, a mix of 70s and 80s pop. I wondered if I would need to explain what a “macho, macho man” was while the Village People tune played (http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/Macho-Man-lyrics-Village-People/B4F3065622CA393F48256DF20009B350), but he didn’t ask. When he needed help cutting his pancakes and spreading strawberry and blackberry jam on them, I thought about how delayed he is in self-help skills, partly due to his sensory issues and his ensuing lack of co-ordination but also because he’s in his comfort zone having us do this kind of thing for him and doesn’t often want to try to do it himself. Usually Beth helps him while I’m helping June so I don’t reflect on it much.

We walked back to the house, picked up June and we all went to the beach. I was sitting on the wet sand with June on my lap, when Noah came over and asked me a question (he wanted to know if my watch was waterproof and if I should be wearing it so close to the water). I turned to look at him and missed a big wave. June got knocked right off my lap and ended up about a foot behind me. I grabbed her out of the water. This happens to her a lot– she’s so little and the waves are so big. In fact, just the day before when I was back at the house cooking dinner, my mom was sitting in a beach chair near the water with June on her lap when a wave went right over both of them. That time she wanted to go back up to the house, but this time, she shook it off pretty easily.

After lunch, a nap and another trip for ice cream, I took both kids to the beach with Mom and Jim. I had a swim, very nice but not as glorious as the day before. Then I waded back into the shallow water and played with the kids. This time it was Noah’s turn to get knocked over. He was going in even deeper than he had in Rehoboth and jumping around in the waves. When they knocked him over he would just laugh, as long as he kept his head above water. His face went underwater once, and he came up with all his hair wet and slicked down except a dry stripe sticking up on the very top of his head, like a Mohawk. He was serious and subdued for a few minutes, but he regained his good humor quickly.

The kids moved up the beach to where Pop was sitting. They built dribble castles (together and separately) while I sat and watched the ocean. Too soon it was time to go back to the house for dinner. Noah was cold and he needed to use the bathroom, but none of us wanted to leave. Noah wanted to go deep into the surf and let three waves crash into him before we left. Then I rushed into the water and dove under one last wave, not knowing if I’d get to swim again before we left the next morning. Then as I turned to go, I heard another one forming behind me and I dove under that one, too. When I finally got out of the water and started rinsing off the sand toys, June wanted to press the pelican mold into the sand one last time.

That night my mom made peach crumble (using as topping the crumbs of the oatmeal scotchies I’d brought from home, which had gotten crushed in the car). We ate it on the deck after dinner, watching the ocean on one side of the house and the setting sun and rising moon on the other.

Day 5
We did make it back to the beach this morning for a little playing and swimming time before we piled into the car and drove back to work and meetings and a new school year. When Beth told June it was time to leave beach and go home, she doubled over and cried. “She’s your inner child,” Beth commented. Beth and Noah went on ahead to start their showers as I tried to drag June off the beach. She lagged far behind me as I called her over and over.

Our holes were empty like a cup. In every hole the sea came up, till it could come no more.

The First Week in August: A Week in Pictures

Posted on August 7, 2009 by Steph

[Show as slideshow]

I was sick and tired and in the grip of a melancholy I didn’t fully understand this week so I wasn’t up for detailed blogging. You are getting the condensed version of the rest of our week at Oglebay. I’ll throw in some extra pictures to make it up to you.

As predicted, we rode the paddle boats (three times), visited the playground (countless times), played miniature golf (twice), swam several times, roasted marshmallows in the fireplace and picked blueberries at a nearby Ohio farm. We also went to Idlewild amusement park (http://www.idlewild.com/), which was on the agenda all along, but I’d forgotten. The bubble rocket saw some more action and we saw more deer (many, many more deer, much to the delight of all four kids). I was unable to convince my kids to go on a nature hike with me, so I slipped away yesterday and took a walk in the flower and herb gardens of the park mansion.

We had Chinese takeout with Beth’s dad one night and her mom accompanied us on many of our adventures. The kids had two sleepovers at her house. On Tuesday night Noah stayed with her and on Thursday night both kids did. It was June’s very first night away from us and she did great! At first YaYa suggested one night alone with each kid, but June was alarmed by this plan and asked for Noah to come along, so he did. An added bonus was we had an easier time packing up the cabin on Thursday night and checking out this morning. Today we’re hanging out at YaYa’s house. Tomorrow we’ll drive back home, to weekend chores and work and a business trip for Beth and robot camp for Noah and whatever else the second week of August holds.

The First Day in August

Posted on August 2, 2009 by Steph

[Show as slideshow]

On the first day in August
I want to wake up by your side
After sleeping with you
On the last night in July
In the morning
We’ll catch the sun rising
And we’ll chase it from the mountains
To the bottom of the sea

When the day is over
And the night air comes to chill us
You’ll build a fire
And we’ll watch the flames dancing

You’ll fall asleep
With your arm around my shoulder
And nothing will come between us
On the first night in August
The first day in August

“The First Day in August,” by Carole King & Charles Larkey
http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/The-First-Day-In-August-lyrics-Carole-King/CC42E4EE3C2E6FC448256E2F00060EE2

As a teenager, I was fascinated with this song, with the intoxicating idea of adult life as a date that never ends. Of course, marriage isn’t exactly like this. On workdays, Beth’s away for at least ten hours and weekends are often consumed with chores and errands. Vacations are the best opportunity for uninterrupted family togetherness, but of course, that togetherness now includes two small, lovable, but very demanding people. As it happens, we are all on vacation now. We’re staying at a cabin in Oglebay (http://www.oglebay-resort.com/) with two friends of Beth’s from high school. It’s like a grown-up, week-long slumber party.

However, on the first day of August I didn’t wake up by anyone’s side, not June’s and not even Beth’s. On the first two nights of our stay here, June has slept, not only in her own bed, but in a different room than me for the first time in her life, apart from the five nights she spent in the newborn nursery under observation for jaundice. On the first night here we put June and Noah to bed in their own room together and she woke around ten and cried and Beth went to settle her down and she slept the rest of the night. Then last night she slept right through. On both mornings she has slept in until around seven or so, which makes for some pretty luxurious sleeping conditions. She seems to like having Noah in the room (she’s put out if he wakes before she does and leaves to go read in the living room where it’s light) and he says “It’s fun having Juney in the room,” so we’re thinking about moving her into his room soon after we get home.

This extra sleep came just when I needed it most. One reason Beth and I are sleeping in separate beds is that I’m sick. Our bedroom has two double beds. We’re used to a queen so sharing a double makes for close quarters for two plus-size women, even under optimal circumstances. Given the choice of room to stretch out and intimacy with my hacking cough and sniffling and the rustling of my cough drop wrappers and tissues, Beth chose her own bed. It’s certainly the choice I’d make in her shoes and I am also enjoying the roomy bed all to myself.

Our cabin-mates are Heather and Sue, each of whom is a single mom with one boy apiece. Baruc is four and Jake is almost six. Since June’s used to playing with her older brother and Noah is used to playing with his younger sister, the dynamic between them is pretty good, if quite loud. They all enjoy bouncing balls and playing with the bubble rocket, which you launch by stomping on a pad that forces air into the rocket, causing it to rise from its bed of bubble soap into the air, leaving a trail of bubbles behind it. It’s really quite an impressive sight. They also like running around on the grass outside the cabin and looking for the deer that wander through the park in great numbers. When Baruc and June proposed that the two of them go alone into the woods to “look for the deer’s house” (a plan immediately squelched by the two children’s three mothers), Jake and Noah almost simultaneously chimed in that “deer don’t have houses!”

In the morning I took June to the playground while Beth and Noah headed for Target to pick up a few things we forgot the pack (pajamas for Noah and a swim suit for me). We stayed until she wanted to leave, which almost never happens. It turns out an hour and thirty-five minutes is how long she wants to stay at the playground.

In the afternoon, while June and I napped (I slept an hour and a half on top of a rare eight hours’ sleep), everyone else went to the swimming pool. Then Beth took June to the playground again (they stopped at the nature center where June played with animal puppets and colored). Noah and I stayed home and watched Monsters, Inc. with Baruc and Jake, both of whom fell asleep on the couch in the middle.

Relatives started trickling in later in the afternoon. Beth’s mom and Aunt Carole, Heather’s mother, Sue’s father, stepmother and sister all came for dinner. They brought pasta salad, fruit salad, homemade chocolate chip cookies and two kinds of pie (peach and strawberry-rhubarb). We feasted on shish kabobs and the food the guests brought. Afterwards the kids tore around the lawn and the grown-ups talked and played cards.

We’ll be here a week. There are paddleboats and miniature golf and a marshmallow roast and berry picking expedition and a nature hike on the agenda. I’m sure there will be more trips to the playground and the pool, during this long, lazy first week of August.

On the first night of August I went to sleep alone again. I was starting to feel a little better, enough to miss Beth, just a few feet away but in a different bed. I wondered if I’d be up coughing again and how contagious I was, but in the end I didn’t ask her to join me. The endless date of our twenties, thirties and beyond is going well, I think, but I’m at a point in my life where space to myself, for myself is almost as exotic as sleeping all night with a lover was in my girlish imagination.

A Series of Fortunate Events

Posted on July 18, 2009 by Steph

A blogging friend of mine has a saying, “Good for life, bad for blog,” meaning that turmoil can be more interesting to read about than simple happiness. This is certainly part of the appeal of the Series of Unfortunate Events books Noah and I are reading this summer. The children are orphaned in the first chapter of the first book and pursued throughout the series by the evil Count Olaf, who wants to steal their fortune. It gets considerably more complicated than that later in the series, but we’re just finishing up Book 4 now.

We spent this past week at Rehoboth Beach with my mom, Beth’s mom and her Aunt Carole and there really weren’t very many unfortunate events. No life-threatening emergencies back home like last year (see my 8/14/08 post), not even a string of cold, rainy days like the year before (see 8/25/07). No one even got a sunburn. I’ve got a nice tan and June has a cute new spray of freckles on her nose. We celebrated an anniversary and a birthday. Of course, there was some occasional misbehavior on the kids’ part (they’re not angels) and I didn’t get much reading done (long uninterrupted reading was one of the joys of a beach week for me pre-kids) and there was one night of really poor sleep, but overall it was pretty much unrelieved happiness. If this sounds too tedious to bear, feel free to look at the pictures and skip the rest. I’ll understand.

Saturday: Day 1

“Do you want to go down to the beach, June?” I asked.

“Beach! Beach! Beach!” June shouted, wriggling with happiness. It had been a long, trying day for her. We’d promised the beach, but we’d been packing all morning and driving all afternoon, with no beach to show for it so far.

The walk down to the beach from the rental house was longer than I remembered and June needed to stop and pick up gravel from every driveway we passed, so it took us over twenty minutes to get to the water. To return home by six, as I’d promised, we would have needed to turn around and go straight back. Of course, we didn’t. We built sand castles, which June gleefully stomped, pressed the green plastic duck mold into the wet sand to make “a duck and its friends” and stood by the water’s edge with the waves running over our feet. We were just barely getting them wet because June was unsure about the waves. I was thinking we should really get going when she said, “Let’s go in!” meaning let’s wade further in. We did, but I told her it was almost time to go and then there was crying, (And no, it wasn’t me.) She recovered quickly and as we walked up the long sandy path through the dunes and the scrub pines she said, “I want to come back tomorrow and the next day and the next day.” It was a quote from a library book we have out (Caillou at the Beach), but I think the sentiment was heartfelt.

Sunday: Day 2

The next morning June was begging to “go for a walk on the board.” I suspected she had an ulterior motive so I asked her if she wanted to go to Candy Kitchen. She did. We were staying a couple blocks north of the boardwalk and Candy Kitchen is right at its center so it would be an even longer walk than the day before. I decided to take the stroller. Noah was still in the new leaf pajamas YaYa made for him, alternately working on a page from his summer math packet and chatting with YaYa and Aunt Carole. He didn’t want to leave the house, so June and I set out alone again, as we would many times over the course of the week. It was a long walk but we were rewarded with a shell-shaped lollipop for June, watermelon taffy for me, and chocolate-peanut butter fudge for the house. Afterward we tried out the coin-operated elephant and clown car on the boardwalk but June found the jerky movement alarming and asked to get off before the rides were over. Next we played on the beach some more. I showed her how to make a dribble castle and she got the hang of it quickly. We left the beach around 10:45, came home, showered, played and ate lunch. June told Beth she wanted to fly a kite on the beach and Beth said they could do it later. June plopped down on the couch next to her, took a few licks from her lollipop, looked at her and said, “Is it later now?”

My mom arrived around 3:30, just as June and I were about to make our third trip to the beach. (Noah, YaYa and Carole were already at the boardwalk and Beth was resting after cooking a delicious dinner of gazpacho, corn and avocado salad and spinach dip.) Mom got into her suit and came with us, which meant I got to swim for the first time. As she and June were playing a wave washed almost all the way over June, an experience she later declared, “a wittle bit scary.” After that, she sat solemnly on Mom’s towel until she was recovered enough to go roll in the sand and get herself almost entirely covered.

After dinner, we headed out to the boardwalk for frozen custard. Noah, Carole and I ventured down to the beach. Noah was running around in the surf, fully clothed and still holding his cone. I let him. “This is so fun!” he kept yelling. I felt like the meanest mom ever when I pointed out it was almost bedtime and made him leave.

Monday: Day 3

There are a couple awkward times of day for people with small children vacationing with people without them, but the most challenging one is probably the long hours between when the first child wakes and the last adult does. We were always trying to shush the kids but it never did much good. At one point on Monday morning I asked Noah in an exasperated tone what was so hard about remembering to keep quiet.

“I’m not very good at remembering,” he answered quite earnestly.

We tried to keep the kids quiet. I got Noah to read and we all drew pictures of animal-vegetable combinations. (Noah got the idea from Jack Prelutsky’s Scranimals—http://www.harpercollins.com/books/9780688178192/Scranimals/index.aspx). I was particularly proud of my Pelicarrot. The pouch was a fat orange carrot and the wings were carrot greens. Eventually, we decided to take the kids down to the beach to fly a kite. By the time we were ready to go, Mom and YaYa were already up but Carole had managed to sleep through the din, so we left her to slumber in peace.

As we approached the beach, Beth noticed a potential flaw in the plan. There was no wind. I said maybe it would be better down by the water, but it wasn’t. The kite wouldn’t fly. After a half hour of trying to get it into the air and watching the kids play and scanning the water for dolphins–we saw a few–Beth said, “I think I’ve had enough of this.” This is a sentence I can’t imagine uttering at the beach under any circumstances, let alone after a measly half hour, but Beth’s not a beach person. It’s a mixed marriage.

She wanted to get herself a coffee but I asked if she could wait long enough so I could have a quick dip. June started to wail as I was in the water. I wasn’t sure why. It didn’t bother her when I swam the day before. I pointed to June from the water and made a questioning gesture. Beth pointed back at me emphatically. I shrugged and decided to ignore the crying for a few minutes, but it did take a good bit of the enjoyment out of my swim. June didn’t recover her equilibrium, even after I came out of the water, so Beth took her back to the house. Beth never got her coffee that day, but Noah and I did have a lovely hour together. He told me about the chapter of The Miserable Mill he read that morning and we watched the ships on the water and the pelicans in the sky. We played in the surf, discussed gravity and the pull of the moon and how tides and waves are made. We talked about how he might come swimming with me in the ocean when he’s a stronger swimmer. He seemed happy with this plan as long as it was comfortably in the future. He asked me what it feels like to stand with a big wave forming behind you. I went further out, stood in front of a gathering wave and came back to describe as precisely as I could how the wave pulls you toward it, lifts you up and drops you down. On the walk home I quizzed him on his times tables and we made up silly songs including this one about a French Jewish cow, sung to the tune of “Frère Jacques”: “Rosh Hashanah, Rosh Hashanah. Dormez Moo! Dormez Moo!” We sang it over and over again at the top of our lungs. I’m so infrequently alone with Noah I sometimes forget how fun it can be.

After lunch and June’s nap, Mom took June to Candy Kitchen and I met them down on the beach. When I found them, June was seated in the stroller on the sand, eating Swedish fish from a clear plastic box with a tiny sliver scoop. I wondered if the elaborate packaging had influenced her choice. We went through the normal routine of castles and playing in the water. June complained, not for the first time, that “the water won’t let us in,” meaning the waves wouldn’t. At one point she found a hole some older kids had dug near the water’s edge and she sat in it, letting the waves run over her legs. She and Mom dug their own hole (for a bunny) further up on the beach while I swam and June got close enough to some gulls to note the red markings on their beaks and legs. Finally she impressed Mom by bending from the waist until her head touched the sand and holding the pose for a long while (not long enough for me to get a picture though). Shortly after five, she was ready to go home so we washed our feet at a footbath (always fun for a small child) and she got settled in the stroller with her Swedish fish-in-a-box and we were off.

Tuesday: Day 4

“I thought your anniversary was in the winter,” my mother said when I told her Beth and I were going on separate gift-buying errands. I explained the anniversary of our commitment ceremony is in January, but our dating anniversary is July 15. She said she couldn’t believe we bought gifts for two anniversaries.

I shrugged. “We like anniversaries,” I said.

She said it must be a female thing and implied that men could not be coaxed into buying that many gifts. I don’t know if they can or not, having never tried.

I was also hoping to find a birthday present for my mom on this outing. Her birthday was Saturday and we were planning to celebrate it on Friday since we’d be packing up and leaving on Saturday morning. I complained to Beth I had no idea what to buy, that I’d hoped she’d see something and comment on it, but so far she hadn’t been in a shopping or even window-shopping mood.

Meanwhile June was begging me to take her to the beach. I explained we needed to run some errands first. No, no, she wanted to go to the beach. As is often the case, however, her mood improved when I got her out of the house. She waited patiently while I picked up a card and a gift certificate for a massage for Beth. I sprung for the hot stone massage—buying gifts at the beach makes me generous. We crossed paths with Beth as she was coming out of Café a Go-Go, having gotten the café con leche she wanted the day before. June and I were headed into a coffee shop across the street, which does not serve coffee as heavenly but which is also not run by a stern Mexican woman who does not approve of unruly children. I kissed Beth before we went our separate ways. She tasted of the cinnamon they put in the café con leche at Café a Go-Go. I resolved to get over there myself sometime later in the week.

Our errands done, June and I strolled toward the beach. We passed two Candy Kitchens on they way. When I said we were not going in, June said, completely in earnest, “ Is there no candy in there?”

More splashing in the surf ensued. Of course, on this day when I was dressed for errands and not the beach (I’d changed June into her suit in the coffee shop) June wanted to go in deeper than she had been and jump in every wave. She said she wanted to float a boat in the water. I thought about what toys could serve as boats and asked if floating the duck mold in a hole we dug would do. She agreed. We dug a hole and waited for the sea to rush in. When it did I set the mold down and was pleased at how boat-like it looked, floating convex side down. But now June wanted it to look duck-like, with the body aligned to look like a swimming duck, not floating on its side like a deceased duck, or a boat if you were inclined to look at it that way. Of course it wouldn’t float upright. As I pondered this problem, June solved it, by waiting for wave and holding the duck in it.

On the way home we passed the kite shop at the end of the boardwalk and I realized my mother had mentioned something she liked and it had not registered. She’d been complaining about how heavy her beach chair was and saying she’d like an aluminum frame one. Once when we’d walked by the kite shop, she’d found one she liked in the chair display, but decided it was too expensive. Voila. Perfect gift.

I didn’t get it then because we’d left the beach later than I intended, then made an impulse stop for Thrasher’s fries (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64536-2004May28.html). June was warm, tired and had a bellyful of fries. Predictably she started to nod off a few blocks from home and when I pushed the stroller up to the house, she was sound asleep.

In the afternoon, when Mom took the kids to Funland, I went back and got the chair. I left it in her room, with a note, as a surprise. She didn’t find it until she went to bed.

Wednesday: Day 5

On Wednesday, while Beth was having her massage, June (my best beach buddy) and I spent another morning at the beach. We made more dribble castles and the duck had more adventures and we took a walk. (“The ocean is following us. The ocean wants to come,” she’d observe whenever a wave lapped our feet.) On this walk, June finally picked a large white pebble for YaYa, who had requested one. As we sat on the wet sand, with the waves rushing over our legs and splashing up over our stomachs, a passerby stopped and complimented me for not overprotecting June and for “letting her get used to the water.” She said she’d seen kids with floaties on, with their feet barely in the water. I’ve seen the opposite, though—parents dragging terrified toddlers into the surf. This always makes me furious. Every kid’s comfort level is different and I think it’s our job to encourage our children while respecting their limits. As for myself, I remember being small, older than June but not by much, riding on my father’s shoulders in the ocean, so deep in that the water sometimes went over his head. He was holding on tight, though, and it never occurred to me to be afraid.

There was a comic moment shortly after we came home and finished our showers. The lawn service came on the one day I forgot to bring the towels inside the outdoor shower and left them on the back porch stairs. I sent a naked June out to retrieve them and when she heard the lawn mower start up, out of sight, but quite close around the corner of the house, she dashed away, terrified, taking the towels with her and leaving me, dripping and naked in the shower and wondering what to do. I stuck my head out the door and called to her. Very hesitantly, she came back and we hastily wrapped up and went inside.

After lunch, YaYa and Carole took Noah to the beach while, Beth, June and I napped. Mom told me Noah was really active in the water, jumping around and going in deep, up to his chin at times. I was surprised to hear it since he’s always been cautious in the water and he’s not as good a swimmer as I was at his age, despite years of on and off swimming lessons. He’s been asking to start his lessons up again, though, so maybe he’s ready to turn a corner. I would really like that.

Later in the afternoon, Beth, YaYa, Carole and the kids went for a bike ride/scooter ride/walk on the Junction and Breakwater Trail in Cape Henlopen State Park (http://www.railstotrails.org/resources/documents/magazine/07Spr_DES_JunctionBreakwaterTrail.pdf). Beth rented a bike trailer for June and they rode through woods and farmland and marshes. They even picked raspberries. June was so enthusiastic about the berries that Beth and Noah left her behind with YaYa and Carole in the berry patch while they rode ahead.

Meanwhile, Mom and I lounged on the beach, she in her new chair and me on my new beach mat (a birthday present from YaYa). We talked and read and watched an osprey fly over the sea with a fish in its talons and I went for a swim. The water was calm. With no big waves to play in, I decided to float. I closed my eyes and bobbed up and down and felt the wind above and the water below. I could hear the whispering sound of the sand shifting several feet underneath me.

We split up for dinner. The older generation took the younger generation out for crepes and ice cream while Beth and I had our anniversary dinner at Planet X (http://www.planetxcafe.com/), followed by coffee and dessert at Café a Go-Go. Beth got me a book of essays about all fifty states (http://www.harpercollins.com/books/9780061470905/State_by_State/index.aspx) to remind me of our younger days when we traveled to all fifty states. We only finished four years ago, but most of these trips took place in our twenties. We talked about how strange it seems that fourteen of our twenty-two years together (nearly two-thirds) were pre-kids, and that June’s life has really been just a blip in that timeline, although of course, it doesn’t feel that way. Sometimes it’s good to remember the couple we were before we were a family.

We came home, put the kids to bed (Mom bathed June for us) and then the grownups sat on the porch, talking about matters sad (Mom and Jim recently gave up their two new cats after five months of trying to get their old cat to accept them and the old cat is seriously ill with cancer) and matters happy (YaYa and Carole’s sister Susan welcomed a new granddaughter that very day).

Thursday: Day 6

The next morning there was an early morning ice cream tasting at Browse About Books (http://www.browseaboutbooks.com/), a promotion to get people into the store I suppose. It ended at 9:00 a.m. and I couldn’t get enthusiastic about ice cream so early in the day (it not being the Fourth of July after all) but almost every one else was and I had downtown errands so we left Carole at the house and the rest of our party set out around 8:30. I bought a card for my mom when she was in another part of the store and when she left and the kids, Beth and YaYa settled in for story time, I peeled off from the group and went to pick out a birthday cake for my mom at the bakery. I deliberated between a mermaid cake and a lighthouse cake and chose the lighthouse.

I returned to the bookstore and found the stroller but puzzlingly, no relatives. It’s a big store and I figured they were browsing about somewhere, but after searching all over and not hearing Noah’s voice (that was the odd part—where Noah is, you hear him), I decided they must have gone to another store and left the stroller behind. I gave up on finding them and went back to the house. I found Noah and YaYa there. He’d gotten bored and they’d left story time early. I started to wonder if Beth and June had been in the store all along. They were, as it turned out. After waiting fretfully around the house, hoping they weren’t waiting for me, I finally headed down to the beach around 11:10 and I met them less than a block from the house. Beth had not been expecting me back at all and was blissfully unaware of the mix-up. She handed June off to me and we made a quick pre-lunch beach run.

I had no toys with me so I kept answering questions like “Do you have the ducky mold?”—“No, because I didn’t know you were coming,” ad naseum. June was exasperated when I put sun block on her in the parking lot, since we usually do it at home. (“How can grownups put sun block on people at the beach?” she wanted to know.) She was insistent about dribble castles despite the obstacle of having no pail. I decided to forget about keeping her clothes dry and we dug a hole close enough to the water that the waves ran in and we used it as a reservoir for runny sand. The only problem was that each time a wave came and filled it, it washed away all the castles we’d made. We made a game of it, though, to avoid disappointment. I even used the destruction of the castles as a timer. (“When the waves knock over all the castles, it will be time to go home.”)

At home I fixed lunch for June and left the kids in Beth’s care while Mom and I went out to lunch at a restaurant with boardwalk seating. I had steamed clams, one of my once or twice yearly departures from vegetarianism. When we returned, around two, I was surprised to find June was up unusually early from her nap. Beth and YaYa took the kids on another afternoon adventure to a water park on Route 1 (http://www.funatjunglejims.com/) where they rode in boats and went on slides and ate ice cream and had a fine time. I stayed behind and went to the beach with my mom. I swam, we talked and I read on the beach for the first tine all week and then I swam again. We came home and had a dinner of leftovers (Carole’s signature brown rice bake, YaYa’s baked macaroni and cheese and the Thai curry I brought home from Planet X). June was too tired to eat her dinner and just lay on the couch clutching her stuffed panda or sat on my lap while I ate. When she threatened to nod off right then and there, we decided to put her to bed posthaste, but we weren’t quick enough to avoid some miserable I-am-so-tired-all-I-can-do-is-wail meltdowns along the way. The upside is that both kids were in bed by 8:10. If I’d known what was coming we would have gone to bed earlier. June woke around 10:30, shortly after Beth and I had retired for the night…

Friday: Day 7

And then we were all up for the next two and half hours. June was restless and all over the bed. I kept trying to inch away from her flailing arms and legs. I tried sleeping with my head at the foot of the bed, a trick that often works, and several times I switched places with her, going back and forth between the bed and the air mattress where she had started the night. She kept following me. (It is one of the ironies of my parenting life that I can’t sleep with anyone touching me and I have co-slept with two kids into the preschool years.) At one point with all the moving around I knocked a lamp and a full glass of water off my bedside table and another time my pillow got misplaced and I had to go to the couch to get a replacement. If not for the skylight and all the windows in the living room, I would have stayed there. Before I left in search of a new pillow, I was rooting around under Beth’s thinking it might have got under there and she cursed at me, a very uncommon occurrence. I was about to take the air mattress to the back porch when June fell asleep. Shockingly, she was up for the day at 6:30, and quite chipper. I was not so chipper but I was awake for the day, too. Beth managed to doze until 8:00 or so. We never did figure out what was wrong with June. She might have been hot. It was a warm night and because it had been cool at night all week, we hadn’t put the air conditioning on.

My mom decided to leave the beach a day early to join her ailing cat and her worried husband. She took the kids on a morning outing. They returned with a toy each (a robot crab for Noah and a stuffed animal for June identified by various members of our party as a raccoon, a possum or a bushbaby—http://www.bio.davidson.edu/people/vecase/behavior/Spring2006/Rogers/bushbaby%203.jpg). June says she picked the mystery animal “because I didn’t have enough stuffed animals.” I think she was serious, despite the fact that both the toy box and the doll crib at home are overflowing with stuffed animals. Throughout the day she could be seen hugging it and declaring her love to it.

Everyone gathered for lunch and birthday cake to see off my mom. Noah liked the card, which pictured cows in birthday hats asking, “Got cake?” (“And we do!” he said.) June was very impatient for Mom to open the card. I had everyone sign it and she’d added her own scribble, which she told us said, “Happy Birthday!” “I drewed in it,” she said, just so everyone would be clear. I expected June might melt down because of her bad night’s sleep, but it was Noah who had to be escorted, crying, from the table. (He wanted his robot crab to have its own slice of cake and we thought crumbs would gum up its works.) He recovered enough to return, eat cake and show Mom a photograph of her birthday present online. It’s a painting he made at art camp at the Purple School last week. We failed to bring it but fortunately Lesley put pictures of some of the kids’ artwork up on Facebook.

After we said our goodbyes to Mom, June and I settled in for a long nap and Beth somehow found the energy to take Noah to play miniature golf. She reports he was very well behaved and played a good game. She just barely beat him.

June and I had a quick trip down to the beach. When we arrived at the beach we saw lifeguards doing pushups in the sand. “They’re doing yoga on the beach!” June declared. We dug in the sand and played a game in which she piled wet sand on the duck, who lamented how dirty it was getting and cheered for the waves when they came to clean it off. This was amusing for longer than you might think.

We had dinner out, at Grotto Pizza, and bought some t-shirts and walked home via the boardwalk. “Why is it our last summer vacation ever?” June wanted to know on the way home. The last full day of this vacation, she meant, but she sounded as sad as if she spoke the literal truth. I knew how she felt.

Saturday: Day 8

I stumbled out to the dining area of the house on Saturday morning to the sad sight of Beth filling out a survey for the realty and Noah writing a postcard for Sasha. So, it was true, we really were leaving.

We packed, said goodbye to YaYa and Carole, packed some more and checked out. June and I played on the beach one last time while Beth and Noah hung out in a coffee shop. Then Beth watched the kids while I had my last swim. The waves were tremendous, the best of the whole week. After I swam, we ate leftover pizza on a bench on the boardwalk, took an illicit shower in the outdoor shower of a downtown motel and drove off, leaving our beach week behind.

And that was the really unfortunate event.

When She Got Three

Posted on March 27, 2009 by Steph

June turned three on Monday. It was a long-awaited milestone. For months, June had been telling us what would happen “when I get three.” (Because she pronounces it “free,” it often sounded like she was planning a jailbreak.) Most notably, she was going to “get bigger and bigger and bigger.” We tried to break it to her gently that while she’s growing every day she wasn’t likely to be noticeably larger on her birthday. The day was agonizingly slow in arriving. Every now and then she would observe with a sigh, “I’m still two.”

Round One: Saturday and Sunday

Eventually, the big day was only two days away. At lunch on Saturday June asked, “Who is coming to celebrate my birthday?” It was understandable she was confused about the plans because they were complicated.

“Ya Ya and Aunt Carole will be here this afternoon and tomorrow we’ll have cake and presents with them. And then on Monday it will be your birthday and you’ll have more presents. And then on Thursday, Grandmom will be here and you’ll have more cake and presents,” I told her.

June beamed. This was sounding good.

Beth’s mom and her Aunt Carole arrived as promised shortly after June’s nap. We went to Pottery Barn (http://www.potterybarn.com/index.cfm?page=viewall&cm_pla=Brand&cm_ven=Google&cm_ite=pottery+barn&cm_cat=Search&bnrid=3360101) to look at a cabinet Ya Ya had seen in a catalog and was considering purchasing. Then we were off to our favorite vegetarian Chinese restaurant (http://www.thevegetablegarden.com/) for dinner. June was the only one in our party who wanted chopsticks. After a few unsuccessful attempts to pick her noodles up with them she settled on holding the chopsticks with one hand and pressing the noodles to it with the other hand as she guided them to her mouth. Noah proclaimed the effort “very good for her age.”

Sunday morning everyone went to the farmers’ market to shop and listen to Banjo Man and we picked up a Max and Ruby movie and The Very Hungry Caterpillar at the video store as a special treat for June. After a lunch of leftover Chinese and a nap, June went to the playground accompanied by Ya Ya and Carole. There they ran into the Praying Mantis and her mother and grandparents. We had Mexican takeout for dinner — Noah printed out place cards in fancy script for the meal — and then June opened her presents from Carole and Ya Ya. She got a glittery green t-shirt from Oglebay Park and a big pink doll stroller. I had a feeling she’d like it because when she was over at the Dragonfly’s house in January she spent quite a long time pushing a teddy bear around in her friend’s doll stroller. Well, she loves, loves, loves this toy. Her rag doll and Purple Bear have been traveling all over the house in it. They go to coffeehouses, and the post office and quite frequently, to the hospital. (They are prone to breaking their legs.) We’ve also taken the doll and the bear outside for a walk through the yard and down the block. The stroller even came to the corner to meet Noah’s bus on Monday and Tuesday. You get the picture.

After presents came the cake. Per June’s instructions, it was a vanilla cake with green frosting and cherries and a numeral three candle on top. June had been asking to see the candle several times a day for the past few days. When June saw Beth carry the cake out, she gasped with pleasure. But then she stopped and said, “But I didn’t get bigger.” Apparently, she did not feel sufficiently big for cake. She soon forgot this obstacle, however, and after everyone had sung “Happy Birthday” in Spanish and English, as the birthday girl requested, we all dug in.

Round Two: Monday

On the morning of June’s actual birthday, Ya Ya and Carole arrived at our house from their hotel at 7:35, all set to walk over to Noah’s school where he gave them a tour and introduced them to his morning and afternoon teachers. Back home, I gave June a bath and we had a pretty normal day. Just for the day I let June wear the still too-big size 7 red sneakers we bought for her awhile back when Noah needed a pair. (They’ve been in the closet for weeks and she’s been coveting them.) We took our weekly Monday morning stroll to Starbucks where we picked up some chocolate muffins to take home for an after-dinner birthday treat. (We’d frozen the remains of the cake to save for my mom’s visit and I felt like some kind of baked good was called for on the real anniversary of her birth.) We watched Sesame Street, and read and napped and played outside. I made buttered noodles with cheese and carrots for the kids’ dinner and Beth and I had pasta with spinach, chickpeas and garlic sauce. June opened her presents from us and from Auntie Sara after dinner (all except the remote-control water bug Noah picked out for her–it had yet to arrive). I think the first issue of her Ladybug magazine subscription (http://www.cricketmag.com/ProductDetail.asp?pid=5) was probably the biggest hit of the evening. We read it cover to cover twice. When Noah said to June, “You’re three!” she insisted she was still two. “If you’re waiting for a growth spurt, Juney, you’re going to be two a long time,” he predicted.

Interlude: Tuesday and Wednesday

On our way to the library Tuesday morning I explained to June that when Ms. Karen asked if there were any birthdays this week, I’d say yes and everyone would sing “Happy Birthday” to her. “Ms. Karen will sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to me?” June exclaimed in astonishment, as if she doesn’t see this happen to other children nearly every Tuesday.

Ms. Karen did not disappoint. “Are there any birthdays this week?” she asked. I raised my hand, pointed down to June’s head and held up three fingers. “She’s three!” Ms. Karen said. “I’ve known her since she was very little. Three! That’s a big one.” June was grinning. Ms. Karen was talking about her in front of the whole Circle Time crowd! Then said crowd — probably at least seventy-five kids, parents and nannies– sang “Happy Birthday” to her. Two of June’s Purple School classmates and at least six kids from past and present sessions of music class were there. A pair of twins from music class came over with their nanny after Circle Time was over and, with some prodding from the nanny, offered more birthday greetings. Then we left with a Frog and Toad book and a Sandra Boynton board book. It was a highly satisfactory outing.

Tuesday night I presented June with some new (to her) pajamas. Most of hers are getting small, so I’d paid a visit to the magic box of hand-me-downs earlier this week and washed two pairs of stripy pajamas for her. I changed her into the blue, orange and white pair. Beth made a big deal out of how big June was getting and how she now needed some new pajamas. June wanted to see if they were “good for jumping on the bed.” She tried it. They were very good for jumping on the bed indeed. As we snuggled in her bed, before she fell asleep she told me, “I’m big like you, Mommy.”

Wednesday morning, June’s music teacher was sick and class was cancelled. We went to the playground instead. As we got ready to go, I caught June admiring her new numeral three t-shirt in the mirror. When I asked her if she’d like to walk there or ride in the stroller, she said she’d walk, “because I’m big.” At the playground she wanted to try the big kid swings. I usually steer her away from these, especially when there are bucket swings available, but I decided to say yes this time. I pushed her very slowly as she held tightly to the chains with her mittened hands. When she’d had enough, without any warning whatsoever, she leapt off, landing gracefully on the wood chips.

Later that morning June and I boarded a bus and went to the co-op in search of allergen-free treats to bring to school for her birthday celebration at school the next day. There are a lot of allergies in June’s class (eggs, dairy, and corn are the big ones) so this was no easy task. Finding something wasn’t the problem; there were plenty of vegan treats at the co-op. I kept picking up cookies and slices of cake in the bakery aisle and thinking, “Ooh, this looks good,” but there was never enough of any one item for everyone and I had a feeling that bringing in more than one flavor of something could be an invitation to discord. So we headed over to the boxed cookies aisle and picked up some vegan chocolate alphabet cookies. We also rounded up twelve lollipops as party favors to go in backpacks and headed home.

That evening, Beth was studying the ingredients on the box and said, “Steph, I hate to break this to you but there’s corn flour in these cookies.” I had completely forgotten about corn! So, we had to resort to popsicles, which were already in the freezer and made from 100% fruit juice, even though Thursday was supposed to be rainy and in the 40s, not really the kind of weather that makes people long for popsicles.

Round 3: Thursday

The morning was cold and rainy, as predicted. June and I set off for school. Her bright yellow backpack, full of popsicles and lollipops, swung from the stroller handles. It was my day to co-op, so I’d be there all morning. Beth was planning to swing by for circle and snack time, to participate in the festivities. (In the meanwhile, she stayed home to do a little housecleaning in preparation for my mother’s arrival later in the day.)

At school, I had parking lot duty and then I helped three of June’s classmates with their journals. (The child draws a picture and the co-oper transcribes what he or she says about it.) Beth arrived around 9:35. “Beth’s here!” June squealed when she came into the classroom. At circle time there was such an abundance of maternal laps, June didn’t know where to sit. She started in my lap, ran over to Beth’s for a while, and then she returned to me. After everyone speculated about what the Ant, who was out of town, might be doing that day, and before the teacher read The Night Kitchen, everyone sang “Happy Birthday” to June. I watched her smile and I thought — this just never gets old for her.

While the kids ate a snack of baby carrots, pretzel rods and strawberries, I slipped the lollipops into their backpacks and set to work slicing the popsicles in half. The box was contained seven grape popsicles and seven cherry ones. I figured if there were fourteen of each every child could have his or her first choice of flavor even if they all wanted the same one. No one seemed to find popsicles an inappropriate treat. Between the eleven kids and five adults, we came close to polishing off the whole box. Beth left at 10:25. The kids spent the rest of the school day at the play dough table and on the playground. As I was getting June into her stroller, the Cricket’s mom came by to inquire how June’s birthday celebrations had gone and then she sang “Happy Birthday” to her.

My mother arrived late in the afternoon. As I finished making beans and rice and quesadillas for dinner, she played with the kids. June was taking her doll to the store to buy a balloon (in the stroller of course). Noah was the sales clerk who sold her the smiley face “Happy Birthday” balloon that’s been floating around the house since Sunday.

After dinner, June opened her final round of presents (except for the remote-control bug that’s still missing in action). Along with some clothes, Mom and Jim got her a personalized CD. Noah has a similar one they got him a few years ago. Your child’s name is sprinkled liberally throughout each song. He got it out to play it recently and June was transfixed. “The CD is talking to Noah!” she exclaimed. Later she asked me to play it again while he was at school. She seemed a bit disappointed when it played. I think she was hoping that in his absence it would address her. Now she had her very own CD. We put it on and when a female voice said, “It’s a great day, June!” before starting to sing the first song, she cried, “It’s talking to me!” Then when male vocalist began the second song she said, “Now the man is talking to me.” Later in the CD there’s a song with animal sounds. “The duck is talking to me!” reported an astonished June. Let’s just say she’s very, very happy with this CD.

After presents, we watched a DVD and ate defrosted birthday cake. In bed, June had some trouble getting to sleep. Over and over her arm stretched up, trying to reach the balloon string, which was now tied to her bed frame. She has had a wonderful week getting three. I don’t think she wants to let go. But she’s got plans for next year. This morning she told me that on her fourth birthday, she wants to bring chocolate chip cookies to school.

Let Freedom Ring

Posted on November 28, 2008 by Steph

The morning after Thanksgiving we took Noah to see the Liberty Bell (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_Bell). Last year in first grade they studied symbols of our country. That’s why we went to see the Statue of Liberty when we were in New York City to visit my dad last December. Then when we visited my mom last May for Mother’s Day, he wanted to go see the Liberty Bell, but we didn’t have time. First grade is long gone, but Noah was still interested, so on Friday morning, we left June with Mom and drove into the City of Brotherly Love.

Even with increased security, the lines were not as long as I remembered from my childhood when every out-of-town visitor and his brother wanted to go see the Bell. Either I was less patient then, or the Bell is less popular now, or we hit a lull. Once inside its spiffy new digs (http://www.nps.gov/inde/liberty-bell-center.htm), we went straight to the Bell. We took some pictures and Noah asked a ranger about the rivets at the top and bottom of the crack. Then we watched a movie about the significance the Bell has had to different people over time.

People active in a lot of liberation movements—abolitionists, suffragettes, and members of the civil rights movement—have all claimed the Bell as a symbol. I wondered briefly if the gay rights movement ever has, but if so, I’m not aware of it. (Before HRC adopted the equal sign as its logo—back when it was still HRCF—their torch logo was probably meant to evoke the Statue of Liberty. I still have a couple t-shirts that date back to those days.) My thoughts were interrupted by a clip of Martin Luther King giving the “I Have a Dream” speech; they showed the very end:

This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with a new meaning, “My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.”
And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!
Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous peaks of California!
But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!
Let freedom ring from every hill and every molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

http://www.mlkonline.net/dream.html

I’ve seen this speech so many times I expected to watch it with respect for its importance in American history and with admiration for the oratory, but not with much emotion any more, so I was surprised to find myself crying. Not just getting a little teary-eyed either, but with lines of tears streaming down both cheeks. I guess it’s going to be like this for a while. Until the reality of our first African-American President really sinks in (and who knows how long that will take?), these sudden flashes of astonishment and gratitude are just going to keep taking my by surprise.

We came back to Mom and Jim’s house for lunch and June’s nap. I lay down with her and slept deeply for forty-five minutes of her hour-long nap. (We’ve all been clobbered by an evil upper respiratory infection over the past couple weeks. It’s just the latest installment in our family’s Autumn of Infirmity. Anyway, it’s really wiped me out.) Fortified by the nap, I had the energy to leave the house again. Beth and I went to see Milk. If you exclude Wall-E, which Beth saw with Noah, and Horton Hears a Who, which I saw with him, Beth and I haven’t seen a movie in a theater since Brokeback Mountain (or was it Rent?). Either way, it’s been a long time. This was an event.

We got a bit turned around and missed the 4:30 showing. Beth was unsure about staying for the 5:40 one as it meant an extra hour of babysitting for Mom and Jim, plus putting the kids to bed, which wasn’t in the original deal. But I couldn’t get this close to seeing an actual movie in an actual theater and not do it so I called Mom and left a message with the kids’ bedtime instructions. I figured they were out at the video store. They had big plans involving making caramel apples, and getting movies and takeout pizza. I thought they’d be fine.

It has to be a coincidence, but the timing of the release of this film, which builds up to the defeat of a particularly virulent anti-gay proposition in California couldn’t be more poignant, coming so close on the heels of our recent loss of marriage rights in California after the passage of Proposition 8. On the one hand, it all seems so familiar, the long string of defeats, the raw anger, the frustration. On the other hand, the thought that we even had marriage rights in the first place would have seemed unimaginable to many of the 70s-era activists in the film. (Perhaps not to Milk, though. He was a visionary after all.) Gays and lesbians all over the United States did take to the streets again after the passage of Proposition 8, just as they did time after time in the movie. Beth’s and my days of attending every gay protest/rally/candlelight vigil have long passed, but we were planning to attend this one, even though it was at 1:30, smack dab in the middle of June’s nap. But when a cold hard rain fell that day, we reconsidered. Depriving a two-year-old of her nap and hoping she will drowse in the stroller is one thing. Expecting her to put up with all this and get drenched in the bargain seemed cruel and unusual, so we stayed home.

When we got home at 8:40, Mom and Jim had just finished putting the kids to bed. It was the first time anyone other than Beth or me has successfully put June to bed at night. She was again up at 9:50, but I had an hour and ten minutes to heat up and eat a couple slices of pizza and take a shower before I had to go lie down with her. This was an unexpected bit of freedom as well.

The inauguration is a noon on January 20, another nap disaster in the making and Montgomery County schools do not have the day off (at the time of writing—it’s become an issue of hot debate here in the ‘burbs). Beth and I attended the first Clinton inauguration so we know unless you have tickets, you don’t see anything but Jumbotron screens and the parade. Still, we are seriously considering pulling Noah out of school and June from her nap to take them down to the mall, to stand with our fellow Americans as history is made. When they’re grown up I’d like them to be able to say they heard freedom ring that January day when they were seven and a half and almost three. They may never have another opportunity like it.

Out of the Haunted House

Posted on November 5, 2008 by Steph

[Show as slideshow]

Three days before the election, we drove out of Obama territory into McCain country. Noah had a four-day weekend, thanks to a teacher grading and planning day on Monday and the election on Tuesday. (His school is a polling place.) The kids hadn’t seen Andrea since our visit to Wheeling at the beginning of Noah’s summer break so it seemed like a good opportunity to meet up with her. We chose to stay at the Wisp ski resort (http://www.wispresort.com/wisp/index.aspx) in Western Maryland, which is located in the scenic Laurel Highlands somewhere between our neck of the woods and Andrea’s. Andrea insisted on paying for everyone and said she didn’t want “to hear any backtalk.” So, I’ll just say thanks.

The transition from Obama-land to McCain-land was not subtle. Either that or I missed it while I dozed briefly as June napped in her car seat and Noah watched downloaded episodes of his favorite shows on Beth’s phone. Before I closed my eyes there were Obama-Biden signs everywhere. When I opened them it was nothing but McCain-Palin as far as the eye could see, including those annoying ones that say “Country First.”

When I commented on the shift, Noah looked out the window long enough to spot one. “That’s the first McCain sign I’ve seen in my whole life,” he noted. He wanted to know why it is that people who support one candidate or the other tend to live clustered together. We didn’t have a good answer for him.

Sometimes Noah has seemed indifferent to the election. He told us a few weeks ago he didn’t care who won. Other times, he was interested in how the electoral college worked and how voters make their choices. When his morning class had an election recently, he considered running for office, though he ended up deciding against it. (Sasha was elected class secretary.) For a while, he was pretending to run for President of the United States against Beth. They both wrote a stump speech. His was remarkably civil and even-handed, perhaps because he was running against his mother. Here it is:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=43673&l=4e704&id=508407876

I think we might be better off as a country if all candidates for elected office were half as generous.

It was late Saturday afternoon by the time we got to the hotel. We socialized in Andrea’s room for a bit, then we ate dinner at the hotel restaurant. Noah was impatient to tour the haunted house set up on the hotel grounds near the ski slopes. (There was also a haunted coaster going down the slope, but he had not interest in that.)

We asked at the front desk if the haunted house was appropriate for a seven year old. The clerk said she hadn’t been through it herself but she’d heard it was more family-friendly in the opening seven to eight hour of each evening. We were encouraged by this, but we asked again at the ticket counter. The man with the chainsaw directing traffic in the parking lot had given us pause. One young staffer with a simulated bullet hole in her forehead said her four-year-old sister had been through both before and after eight and did fine.

In retrospect, we were asking the wrong question. It should have been– is this appropriate for a seven year old who has been sheltered, who only watches PBS kids’ shows and who has never seen a PG-rated movie and whose reading material is monitored? Then again, maybe we didn’t really need to ask at all. One look at Mr. Chainsaw and Ms. Head Wound probably should have told us all we needed to know.

I overrode my gut feeling because Noah really wanted to go and because I’ve played the heavy a few times recently about things like this, most notably when I refused to buy him the blood-spattered zombie costume he saw in a catalogue and wanted for Halloween. Beth thought it was ironic I am the stricter parent here because I am a horror fan and she isn’t. But it’s because I’ve read and seen and taught so much horror that I take it seriously as a meditation on the nature of good and evil. (When it isn’t, it’s mostly just exploitation.) I think it’s wrong, and possibly even dangerous to let kids get desensitized to violence at a young age. But on the other hand, I also think facing and conquering fears through encounters with fictional, symbolic monsters in various forms can be empowering for kids. It’s all a matter of timing and temperament. Maybe it was time to let Noah test his limits. After all, we’ve read him the unvarnished versions of fairy tales since he was a preschooler and he’s on a spooky story kick right now. He’s always gotten a thrill from stories that are just scary enough. I do, too.

I asked him one last time if he was sure he wanted to do it. He said yes and Beth bought two tickets, one for him and one for me. We agreed on a code word he would use if he wanted me to take him out of the house early. It was “volcano.” We boarded the shuttle bus. The windows were draped with heavy fabric and the interior of the bus was lit with red light bulbs. The driver gave warnings about how we might not make it back. Noah giggled. He was just scared enough. But I was noticing with unease that our group consisted entirely of adults, teens and Noah.

A man in a torn and bloody shirt divided us into smaller groups and ushered us into the maze in front of the house. I made sure Noah and I stayed behind the two other people in our group so nothing would jump out at us first. There was nothing in the maze except a wrecked car with a dummy in the driver’s seat at the very end. It wasn’t a very realistic dummy and Noah seemed unfazed by it.

We walked through the door into the house itself. Immediately, a light flashed on and a man in a cage came forward brandishing some kind of power tool and shaking the bars. I didn’t get a good look at him because I was hurrying Noah away from the cage.

We climbed a narrow staircase, holding hands. The interior of the house was lit with more flickering red light. The staircase twisted and turned. Nothing jumped out at us. There were no spooky noises.

I think in the end it was the suspense that got to Noah. He forgot all about his code word. “Let’s go,” he said suddenly and urgently. “I don’t like this place! Let’s get out of here!”

“Okay,” I said in what I hoped was a calm and reassuring voice. “We’ll just go back the way we came. It’s not very far and we know what we’ll see since we’ve seen it already.”

We turned and headed down the stairs. “Let’s go,” he kept saying in a panicky voice. I squeezed his hand and kept talking. When we passed people on their way up the stairs, they made way for us. The man in the cage was silent and still as we passed.

We passed the wrecked car and wound backwards through the maze. Noah was worried we wouldn’t be able to find our way out but it wasn’t hard.

The empty shuttle bus was parked outside the house. “Are you going back?” I asked the driver. He said yes, took one look at Noah and flipped on the bus’s interior lights. It looked like a normal bus again. He spoke kindly to Noah, calling him “Buddy” and confiding to him that he didn’t make it through the house either. I have no idea if it was the truth, but it was a nice thing to say.

We rejoined Andrea, Beth and June who were waiting for us by a bonfire, drove back to the hotel and got the kids ready for bed. As I lay down with Noah he said he thought he might have nightmares about the haunted house. I told him if he did he could come into our room. (We had a suite and Noah was sleeping on a Murphy bed in the living area.) I almost never make this offer. It took Noah so long to learn to sleep through the night and June doesn’t do it more than once in a blue moon so I’m protective of my sleep. But I led him into the haunted house, so it was up to me to get him out if any little part of him was still in there.

Noah did wake up around ten-thirty, feeling sick to his stomach and calling for Beth. She got up with him (he seems to prefer her when he’s sick) and she kept him company while he vomited. I’m not sure if it was the lingering effects of the illness we’ve all had or if it came from overeating at dinner and his subsequent scare, but afterwards he went back to his bed and slept the rest of the night with no nightmares.

On Sunday we took a walk by the lovely shore of Deep Creek Lake (http://www.deepcreekhospitality.com/fr_deep_creek_state_park.asp) in the morning and swam in the hotel pool in the afternoon. Sometime in between I told Beth that she was either being very sneaky or quite restrained about checking the polls on her phone. Over the past couple weeks I’d gotten into the habit of checking the Washington Post tracking poll as soon as I picked up the paper in the morning, but I didn’t follow any other polls. Too much information can be confusing and crazy-making. Beth was unable to resist temptation, however. Sometimes she stayed up late checking poll after poll online, Now, though, she was trying to be on vacation. As we drove from one place to another, I told Beth all the McCain-Palin signs were scarier than the haunted house. I thought better of the comment once it was out of my mouth, though. As strongly as I feel about the election, I know that the supporters of each candidate are sincere about their choices. Given the demographics of the area, it’s likely the kindly bus driver was a McCain voter. We’re all trying to put country first in our own way, as we think best.

Monday morning at breakfast, Noah was telling Andrea about Mrs. E, the retired teacher who volunteers in his afternoon class on Wednesdays. “She’s older than you,” he told her. Here he paused for dramatic emphasis. “She’s older than John McCain,” he said, sounding as if it was a wonder Mrs. E managed to get out of bed in the morning and go about her business. And that did make me chuckle.

Later that day we took a short hike to Muddy Falls in Swallow Falls State park (http://www.dnr.state.md.us/publiclands/western/swallowfalls.html). June was entranced by the roaring, falling water. “The water is slipping down,” she kept saying. After a lunch of leftovers from our dinner the previous night, we ate Noah’s half-birthday cupcakes. They were marked-down Halloween cupcakes we found at the grocery store, decorated with plastic spiders and spider webs on top. He composed the following song about them:

Happy Half-Birthday to Me
My age is over three
I love my cupcakes
‘Cause they’re so creepy

Monday afternoon we drove home and Tuesday morning, we voted. Before we left the house, Noah was singing “Barack Obama” over and over again to a tune I didn’t recognize. We had some trouble getting him out of the house. It was unseasonably warm and he wanted to wear shorts. Beth compromised with him and let him wear short sleeves and crocs with no socks provided he took a jacket along. At 8:35, we walked out the front door. “Let’s go vote for Barack Obama!” Beth said.

The lines weren’t too long and we were finished in plenty of time to hit Circle Time at the library at ten. That night after dinner, we ventured out into the rainy night to get our free Election Day ice cream from Ben and Jerry’s. During the drive over, Noah asked us to explain again how the “electrical college” worked and wanted to know why in Nebraska and “New Hamster” they didn’t use a winner-take-all system for their electoral votes.

The line at Ben and Jerry’s was out the door but it was a warm night and we were under an awning, so we didn’t get wet. The line moved quickly and within fifteen minutes we were seated and eating our ice cream. It was a festive scene inside. The crowd was diverse–black, white and Asian, young and old, gay and straight. An Orthodox Jewish family discussed which flavors might be kosher. A woman pushed an infant with Downs’ Syndrome in a stroller.

After the kids were in bed, Beth and I settled in front of the television to watch the election results come in. I folded laundry and read the Health section of the Post and clipped relevant articles for Sara during the lulls in coverage. When I started watching around nine o’clock Obama had one hundred seventy electoral votes already. I considered staying up until he went over the top, but by 10:15, he was only a little over two hundred. June had been up a few times the night before with croup and I was exhausted so I gave up on seeing history made and went to bed.

At 12:40, I woke and noticed Beth wasn’t in bed yet. I stumbled out to the living room to see if it was all over yet. It was, but Beth was still sitting on the couch, searching for Proposition 8 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_8_(2008) ) results on her phone. It didn’t look good.

We woke up to different country today. June’s music teacher ended class this morning by talking about how full of hope she was for all the children in the room. Sometimes I feel that hope, too, though sometimes I wonder if we’re expecting far more than any one person can accomplish from our charismatic new President. I guess we’ll find out. I have to say I don’t envy President-elect Obama. (However much I like typing that phrase.) He didn’t lead the country into the haunted house where we’re currently lost, but he’s the one we’re asking to gather us all up and lead us out.

The House of Crazy

Posted on August 14, 2008 by Steph

Noah had almost finished his bowl of brown rice crisps on Sunday morning when he noticed, “Hey, there’s milk in this cereal!”

“Milk on your cereal?” Beth cried in mock surprise.

“What is this?” Noah said. “The House of Crazy?”

Noah prefers orange juice on his cereal. It’s a bad habit he picked up from YaYa. (Andrea has no other bad habits I know of, so I hope she will forgive me for telling the Internet about this one.) I object to juice on cereal on two counts. First, it’s gross. Second, I have to badger Noah into drinking more milk at meals if he doesn’t have it on his cereal. I hadn’t put the milk on the cereal to be sneaky, though. I’d genuinely forgotten. Beth usually makes his breakfast. I’d volunteered to feed him so she could focus on packing.

Beth’s mom underwent minor surgery last Wednesday and then a series of unexpected and scary complications ensued. The evening after the surgery she stopped breathing and had to go on a ventilator overnight. The doctors thought it might be a reaction to a painkiller but no one really seemed to know why it happened. Shortly afterward she came down with pneumonia. This was likely caused by either the ventilator or the chest compressions performed by the student nurse who found her. Unnecessary chest compressions, as it turns out. She had a pulse all along even though he couldn’t find it.

Beth was frustrated by the lack of clear answers from the hospital and antsy being away from home during this family crisis. After a few days of confusing ups and downs she decided to forgo all or part of our week’s vacation at the beach and go home. She drove us out to the beach on Saturday and helped us get settled into the house. She stayed overnight and left for Pittsburgh Sunday morning.

“You’re going to miss the House of Crazy,” I told her. Both kids were still seated at the breakfast table, singing different songs quite loudly.

“I will,” she said emphatically, though she pointed out she was headed into a potentially crazier situation.

I cried a little as I watched our red Subaru pull out of the driveway of the beach house. I felt so many emotions: relief for Beth, who was on her way to where she needed to be; worry for Andrea who almost left us and who might not be out of the woods yet; and sadness for this separation during my favorite week of the year.

I wouldn’t be single parenting, though, because my mom was due to arrive that afternoon. I’d been glad she was coming all along but now I was even gladder. On Saturday evening while Beth was grocery shopping for us, I took the kids to the beach and we got back before she did. Just getting everyone showered was an adventure. Both kids were encrusted with sand and I didn’t want to let them set foot in the house. How to get soap, towels and clean clothes into the outdoor shower with them outside? I herded them into the shower and had Noah lock it from the inside so June wouldn’t wander into traffic while I was in the house. June was not pleased with this arrangement and screamed bloody murder while I rummaged through our half-unpacked belongings. I gave up on finding the shampoo and washed Noah’s hair with bar soap. I’m reasonably competent at taking care of the kids on my own most of the time, but on new turf, out of our routine, it’s a bit harder. When Beth got home from the grocery store, both kids were clean, in pajamas and snacking. I knew we’d manage fine, even if things got a bit crazy at times.

Day 1
Sunday morning was rainy so after Beth drove off, Noah and I settled in on the screened porch to read Dragon Slayers’ Academy #6 (Sir Lancelot, Where Are You?) (http://www.kidsreads.com/series/series-dragon_slayers-titles.asp) for over an hour. He’s supposed to read or be read to for twenty minutes a day for his school reading log but we’d been so busy getting ready to go to the beach (and squeezing in a trip to the Montgomery County Fair) that we’d skipped two days. He wanted to make the time up now. June wandered in and out, sometimes sitting with us and listening, sometimes paging through her own books, sometimes rearranging the seashells that decorated the porch.

When the rain cleared up, we went to Candy Kitchen to stock up on candy necklaces, fudge, gummy butterflies and saltwater taffy. Then we hit the beach. After just a half hour, thunder rumbled, lightning flashed and the lifeguards cleared the beach. In my former life, I would have hung out on the boardwalk until the lifeguards left, then returned to the beach, relishing having it more or less to myself. But now that I’m a mom, walking on the beach during an electrical storm no longer seems like a good idea.

The rain started while we were still picking up our sand toys and by the time we reached the boardwalk, the drops were so big they looked like hail. We hid out in Funland until it let up a bit and then we hurried home.

Mom arrived mid-afternoon, shortly after June woke from her nap. Noah was finishing up the very last page in his summer math packet. He jumped up from his work and ran to the door.

“Welcome to the Haunted Mansion of Delaware!” he greeted her. He and Beth had been poking around in the basement earlier and Noah, who loves the mess and jumble of basements, wanted to pretend it was haunted.

We took another short jaunt to the beach, came home and showered with less screaming. It turns out June prefers being swung in the hammock by Grandmom to being locked in the shower with Noah. Go figure.

Dinner preparations were something of a comedy of errors. The water Mom put on to boil for mac-n-cheese was cold long after she turned on the stove. So was the burner. What was wrong with the stove? I was too preoccupied to help just then because I was trying to open a can of black olives with the kind of can-opener that just makes triangular holes because I couldn’t find a more suitable one. Finally Mom found another one and now able to open cans, if not boil water, we decided to have baked beans with veggie hot dogs instead. Noah ate yogurt. After dinner, the kids dug into their candy and everyone seemed satisfied with the meal.

I cleaned up in the kitchen, then I read to June while Mom and Noah played crazy eights. I called Beth and received the welcome news that Andrea was being moved off the ICU and might be discharged the next day.

Day 2
At nine sharp I called the realty about the stove. It turned out the cleaners sometimes disconnect the burners. I checked and sure enough they weren’t really connected, just resting on their foil-covered bowls. I plugged them in and they worked. I was relieved not to have to spend the day waiting for a repairperson.

“Beth would have noticed this,” I said.

“Jim would have, too,” Mom said.

Mom and Noah set off on a grocery-shopping expedition and I took June to the beach. This childcare arrangement ended up lasting the entire day because we kept missing each other. Mom and Noah were still out when June and I returned and June was napping when they got back. I tried to get out of bed to greet them, but June started to stir and I thought better of it. Mom and Noah left for the beach before June woke up and we passed each other as they were returning and we were headed out to the beach. Mom offered to take June so I could swim, but I didn’t want to snatch a beach outing from June a half block from the beach, so I kept her.

We built a little sand castle down by the water. I stuck a piece of beach grass in it for a flagpole and as I was searching for a bit of seaweed to tie to it, I noticed June sticking in more and more pieces of beach grass. Clearly, she thought this was the plan, so I went with it. Soon the tiny mound of sand bristled with spikes.

When we came back, Mom and Noah were assembling Mousetrap (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mouse_Trap_(board_game)). I’d seen the box inside earlier and I’d wondered if it belonged to the house or if Mom had bought it. (She did.) My first thought on seeing it all boxed up was, “Noah will love that.” My first thought on seeing the fragile-looking, half-finished contraption with many of its tiny pieces scattered around the table was “Not toddler-friendly!” I hurried June off to the shower.

After our postponed mac-n-cheese dinner, we set off for the boardwalk for ice cream. Noah wanted a shake. June wanted something yellow (it’s her new favorite color) and Mom and I wanted frozen custard. The boardwalk did not disappoint. Noah got a cookies-n-cream shake, June got a vanilla cone with a butterscotch dip (more of a golden brown than yellow but she didn’t complain), I got a peanut butter and chocolate twist with chocolate jimmies and Mom got a chocolate and vanilla twist. We found a bench and ate. I decided to let June walk part of the way back instead of riding in the stroller. Mom held her hand and she ambled through the crowds, beaming.

I’d promised Noah he could have his fortune told by the mechanical Gypsy mannequin, but we passed her and had to backtrack. Finally we found her. She passed her hands over her crystal ball and in an Eastern European accent, told him his lucky color was green as the ball turned green. “And that is your favorite color,” I told him as he stared at the fortune-teller with a look of mild surprise. The machine spat out a card, his fortune, which he guarded jealously.

As we left the crowds for the quieter part of the boardwalk, Mom heard her phone beep. There was a message. I called Beth. She was a bit downhearted because Andrea had not been released that day. Beth was hoping Andrea would be released the following day.

Day 3
Tuesday morning I decided to start dinner while the kids watched television. Mom was taking the kids to Funland in the late afternoon while I had some solo beach time. I wasn’t sure what time we’d all get home but I thought it might be late. I was making pasta with a tomato-cream sauce with mushrooms and garlic (and tomatoes from our garden). The first thing to go in the pot was the olive oil. A minute or so after I measured it, I noticed the bottle, now half-empty, lying on its side on the counter which was covered with a rapidly growing puddle of oil. It had gotten on all manner of things and cleanup was so involved–thanks for pitching in, Mom!– that I let the kids watch an extra show, much to their delight. Finally, the sauce was in the fridge and the kids and I were headed for the beach and my mom for the outlets.

After fifteen minutes of playing, Noah announced that he had to go to the bathroom. I should have been glad he told me. Due to his sensory issues, she still has problems knowing when he needs to go. He’s also more than a little scared of public restrooms. (He doesn’t like the sound of all of toilets flushing.) He actually used the bathroom four days in a row at drama camp last week so we were all feeling a bit celebratory about that. So I didn’t say, “Are you sure?” or “Can you wait?” Instead, I dragged June away from her enthusiastic digging, got her in the stroller and walked the fifteen minutes down the boardwalk to the nearest restroom and stood outside the men’s room door, nervous as I always am when he’s in a men’s room. When he came out he said he couldn’t go and he didn’t feel the feeling anymore.

“I guess we came all this way for nothing,” he said, looking sheepish.

I wasn’t annoyed anymore, just filled with compassion. “It’s okay,” I said. “I’m glad you tried.”

My sympathy lasted until we were less than halfway back to our spot and both kids started whining that they wanted to go home. The phrase “miserable ingrates” did not pass my lips, though it did pop into my brain. Instead I said in a bright and even tone, “It’s eleven o’clock. We’ll leave at 11:30.”

It was 11:10 by the time we got back to our towel. June was happy to resume playing in the sand but Noah wanted to know why we had to go to the beach anyway. Then he wanted to know why I had to keep following June back and forth between the water and the sand instead of staying in one place and playing with him. Finally, we were all in one place, peacefully making dribble castles. (Noah calls them “drizzle castles.”) Noah doesn’t quite have the hang of how to hold his fingers but he was getting a few good dribbles. June was trying it, too, with almost as much success. The kids were quiet and focused. I looked at my watch: 11:30. I decided not to say anything about it. June might melt down if I kept her out too close to nap time, but I didn’t want to lose this moment. Five minutes later I was rewarded for staying by the sight of several dolphin fins skimming across the calms seas.

On the way back to the house, Noah said with a sigh, “I wish we could live at the beach.”

Later that afternoon, June opened her eyes, blinked sleepily and was on the verge of falling back asleep when Noah’s triumphant cry, “It worked!” woke her definitively from her nap. She wanted to go see what Grandmom and Noah were doing. I carried her into the living room where we saw the Mousetrap fully assembled and working. Mom explained Noah had figured out why the finished contraption wasn’t working. They hadn’t attached a rubber band they’d assumed was just part of the packaging. Noah picked up the instructions, which they hadn’t consulted, relying instead on a diagram on the box, and found the answer. His mechanical ability is either the result of his donor’s genetic contribution, or something he picked up from watching Beth work on things or both, because he certainly didn’t get it from me.

As promised, Mom took the kids to Funland and Candy Kitchen after she and Noah played a quick game of Mousetrap. I was alone on the beach from 3:15 to 5:30. I read; I swam: I chronicled our adventures. (I am so old school I sometimes handwrite this blog.) I was just sitting on the towel watching the ocean when I heard a familiar voice say, “I think that’s my Mommy” and June came trotting over.

Noah wanted to play in the surf with me so we left Mom in charge of June. I explained that her ear-piercing screams as the waves come up over her feet are really happy ones. You can tell by looking at her face. Noah and I waded into the water. He’s going in a bit deeper this year. I told him it would be high tide in fifteen minutes. He wanted to be in the water at the exact moment of high tide. I held my arms out and he ran around me, grabbing onto one hand as he swung over and let go of the other one, circling me over and over and the waves crashed around our legs. His hands felt large and strong in mine.

I sang to him:
The tide is high but I’m holding on.
I’m gonna be your number one.
Number one, number one.

(http://azlyrics.com/lyrics/blondie/thetideishigh.html)

I’m not his number one all the time. I share that honored position with Beth and someday we will both cede it. But even as he dances around me and we loosen our grip only to clasp hands again, I am holding on. Always holding on.

I called Beth while Mom got the water boiling for pasta. Andrea had been discharged and was home with an oxygen tank to help her breathe at night.

Day 4
June looked up from her oatmeal on Wednesday morning and said, “Where’s Bef?” It was the first time in three days she’d asked. In the course of a normal weekday she asks where Beth is about twenty times so I guess she was distracted by her new surroundings. Just the day before Noah mentioned missing Beth for the first time without adding something like “so she can fix the iPod.” I told him I missed her, too.

“She’s at YaYa’s house,” I answered June. “She was sick and she had to go to the hospital.” 
June face lit up. Ever since she fell and bit through her lip and had to go to the nighttime pediatric urgent care last spring, she has been very interested in hospitals and doctors making your feel better.

“She’s home now,” I added. “She’s better. Beth is taking care of her.”

“The doctor helped her feel better!” June said triumphantly.

Well, not exactly, I thought, but I said, “Yes.”

“The doctor turned on the tv,” June said sagely. The televisions at various doctor’s offices have made a big impression on June. She’s sure they play a big part in the healing process.

Late in the afternoon, Noah and I were playing in the surf. We were pretending to be in the bubbling soup pot of a giant who thought we were noodles. “We’re not noodles!” we yelled. I tried to remember how to say “noodles” in Spanish so I could yell it in Spanish, too. (Noah will need his Spanish again in a couple of weeks so every now and then I switch over to Spanish when I’m talking to him.)

“He doesn’t understand English or Spanish,” Noah said. “He’s a French giant. Beth speaks a little French.”

“Too bad she’s not here,” I said.

This was the day I really started to miss Beth. I was tired. Physically tired because I hadn’t been sleeping well, with June rolling around in the double bed without Beth on the other side to anchor her, but also mentally tired of refereeing the kids’ bickering. I had that late afternoon when-is-Beth-getting-home feeling all day long.

At one point I’d run over to see why Noah was pulling June roughly by the arm and why they were both screaming. As I approached, Noah’s screams grew louder and even more dismayed. Apparently I was standing in a shallow depression he’d dug in the sand, the hole from which he’d just pulled June. “Noah, let go of her. You can’t have your own part of the beach where no one else can walk,” I said.

“Why not?” he demanded, as he let her go.

“Because she doesn’t understand and it just upsets her,” I said. But as I watched her run over to the hole and stamp her little footprints into its damp, sandy bottom with fierce glee, I wondered if maybe she did understand after all.

Mom watched the kids while I went for a swim. When I returned, I was informed that Noah wouldn’t stop pestering June as she tried to snuggle into the sand underneath the beach towel (yes, underneath, not on top) and she deliberately threw sand in his face. I told her that was a naughty thing to do and her face crumpled. “She was provoked,” Mom said. Remembering the hole, I thought he was, too.

The recipe I’d planned for dinner (a vegetable cous cous pilaf) took longer than expected to make. The kids were hungry and grumpy as Mom and I scrambled to get dinner on the table. I called Beth while the cous cous was soaking in hot water. She said her mom was doing pretty well and might come home the following day.

As he got ready for bed, Noah said, “I wish we were staying longer.”

“Me, too,” I said.

For the first time since we arrived, June did not go easily to sleep that night. She was up well past 9:30 (I stopped looking at the clock) crying miserably for reasons I could not fathom. I held her until we both slept.

Day 5
June woke early. I wondered if this, combined with her late night would make her cranky. I didn’t have to wait long to find out. When I rejected her suggestion of pretzels for breakfast, she fell to the floor and screamed.

At 8:05, after I’d made French toast and veggie bacon, eaten, cleaned up the kitchen and started reading The Return of the Dragon (http://www.amazon.com/Return-Dragon-Lonely-Island/dp/0763628042) to Noah, Beth called. She was coming back.

Returning from the beach for lunch, Noah decided we were superheroes from outer space. We got to work on our identities. Juney Jupiter and Noah Neptune were easy. Should I be Steph Saturn, Mommy Mars or Mommy Mercury? I thought that last one had a nice ring, but Noah thought I should use my given name so Steph Saturn it was.

“There’s no planet that starts with B,” I noted.

“Elizabeth?” Noah suggested. I shook my head.

Noah thought we should make up a planet. I was leaning toward assigning her Venus since the B and V sounds are similar. Plus, I thought, but did not say, Venus is the goddess of love. Then the answer occurred to me. “Earth starts with E” I said.

“Elizabeth Earth!” Noah cried.

I wondered how close she was now.

Later that afternoon, Noah, June and I were nestled in a little cave someone had dug in the sand near the high water mark. Every now and then a wave washed gently over our legs. I was a little nervous that big wave might swirl in and knock June off her bottom, but Noah insisted that this was our superhero hideout and June was delighted with the little enclosure so we stayed put and I kept my eye on the ocean. After we’d been there awhile and only the occasional tail end of a wave reached us, I relaxed. That’s when the cave filled with frothing water up to my chest. June was completely submerged. I couldn’t see her. Instinctively, my hands shot out to the spot where she’d been and I pulled her up out of the water. Her wet hair was filled with sand. Her blue eyes were wide and shocked. She didn’t cry at first. Nor did she cough or sputter. I think she must have managed to keep her mouth shut under the water. “I float in the water,” she said solemnly and then she started to cry.

She didn’t cry long and I held her until she stopped. Then I took her up to Mom. June stuck close by her, playing with her sand toys and cuddling on Mom’s lap for a long time.

I was swimming when I saw Noah waving excitedly from the shore. I got out of the water. “Is Beth here?” I asked eagerly.

“No,” he said. “Well…it looks like you’re finished swimming.”

“No, I wasn’t,” I said, starting to wade back in. He looked disappointed. “I’ll come out soon,” I promised. I didn’t want, too, though. The sky was a robin’s egg blue, streaked with cirrus clouds. The waves were big and gentle and so clear I could see tiny fish swimming in their crests. As I drifted northward, I admired a series of elaborate sand castles on the shore, including the Great Wall of China with “Beijing 2008” and the Olympic rings etched onto it. It was the one that looked like a dragon, though, that made me get out of the water for a closer look. It’s the Summer of the Dragon for us. Noah and I are reading three separate books series about dragons. It wasn’t actually a dragon, but just a half-eroded castle with a line of turrets suggestive of a dragon’s back scales. Still, I thought Noah might like to see it, and the Great Wall of China (which he’s long wanted to visit) as well. So I set off in search of him.

As we were visiting the castles, and Noah was jumping into a big hole someone had dug, I saw Beth walking down the beach toward us. I gave her a big hug and got her front all wet. Noah hugged her, too, and soon Mom was walking and June was running toward us. Beth swung June up into her arms. After five days and four nights, Elizabeth Earth had returned to the House of Crazy.

All For The Love Of You

A Chronicle of Suburban Lesbian Family Life

Category Archives: Extended Family

Pink is the New Black

Look at the Sunflower

When We Were Down Beside the Sea

The First Week in August: A Week in Pictures

The First Day in August

A Series of Fortunate Events

When She Got Three

Let Freedom Ring

Out of the Haunted House

The House of Crazy