Out of the Haunted House

Posted on November 5, 2008 by Steph

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.

Name that ’Toon: Postscript

Posted on July 16, 2008 by Steph

We went to the beach this weekend and June got her first taste of Funland on Saturday afternoon. I was pretty sure she was ready for the tamer rides—the boats that sedately circle a mermaid, the fire engines that go a bit faster and maybe a few others. Well, she rode the boats, the fire engines, the airplanes, the cars, the merry-go-round, everything Noah rode at her age and she even wanted to go up in the kiddie Ferris wheel. I was uncertain—it goes about twenty feet into the air. But Beth said she thought she’d be all right if we sent Noah up in it with her and sure enough, she was. She looked very serious on each ride and when they were finished she always knew exactly what she wanted to do next, down to the color of the vehicle she wanted to ride. As we watched her glide through the air, just above our heads in the airplanes, I said to Beth, “She’s thinking, ‘I am just like Maisy.’”

For those of you who don’t know Maisy, she’s a very adventurous white mouse and the protagonist of such titles as Maisy Drives the Bus, Maisy’s Fire Engine and Vroom Vroom, Maisy (http://www.maisyfunclub.com/bookshelf_home.asp). My point is she gets around, and June, who is also a girl on the go, adores Maisy. Almost as soon as I’d said it I realized I done it myself, compared her to a cartoon character. (We mostly know Maisy from books, but she has television show, too.) To make matters worse, I had compared her to mouse, not even a human girl.

As we prepared to leave the beach Sunday afternoon, June and I stood outside the motel’s outdoor shower waiting for Beth to emerge. June was freshly showered and her hair hung in damp ringlets. A maid pushed her cleaning cart out of a first floor room and came over to say hi to June. She told me she looked “just like Shirley Temple.”

I guess that had to happen sooner or later. I think I heard that at least once a week until I was fourteen or so. I hated it. What self-respecting tomboy would want to look like this (http://www.breakingthetape.com/keeping-pace/Shirley%20Temple.bmp)? On the other hand, Shirley Temple was a real girl and she did grow up to be an ambassador so maybe we are making progress here.

Meanwhile, my good friend Joyce raised an interesting question in the comments of the original poll. Who does Noah remind me of? Well, the reason I wrote about this in the first place was that no-one has ever told me Noah reminds him or her of a cartoon character (human or mouse) or a famous child-actor from the 1930s or any fictional character at all so this accumulation of associations attached to June struck me as funny. But since Joyce asked, I tried to think of something… and I came up blank. I asked Beth and her answer was good enough so that I felt I didn’t need to come up my own answer. I will just elaborate on hers. We choose Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes (http://vaishno.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/calvinhug.jpg) because of his imagination and his penchant for making up over-complicated games. (Does anyone remember Calvinball? The rules change constantly, at the players’ whim. Noah would love it.) I would add that Noah has had an imaginary mouse friend since he was three and that Calvin’s hair, while not exactly curly, has the unruly charm of Noah’s hair. Finally, we’ll throw in a dash of Linus from Peanuts, (http://content2.myyearbook.com/zenhex/images/quiz27/131696/131696_res3_linus.gif) for his thumb-sucking and his intellectualism combined with some rather fanciful beliefs. (Think the Great Pumpkin.)

Of course, they are real kids and I have to agree with the woman on the bus today who told me I have “beautiful children,” regardless of what cartoon characters they may evoke. But if you have any more ideas, feel free to post them. It’s summer and a little frivolity never hurt anyone.

Name that ’Toon: A Reader Poll

Posted on June 22, 2008 by Steph

While we were at Beth’s parents’ house, her father commented that June reminded him of Maggie from The Simpsons. When I laughed he hurried to explain himself. It was because of the way she’s always darting around and “because she’s so smart.” He didn’t say anything about Maggie’s and June’s ever-present pacifiers, but that had to be part of it. The reason I was laughing, however, was that I had just been telling Johnny how my sister Sara recently said June reminds of her Cindy Lou Who from How the Grinch Stole Christmas and how Andrea often says June reminds her of Pebbles from The Flintstones. I’m not sure what it is about June that calls cartoon characters so readily to mind: Is it her petite size? Her classic little blonde girl looks? But there you have it. I’m suppressing my immediate instinct to protest—But she’s a real girl!—and instead I’m embracing this facet of my daughter’s public persona by presenting you with the following poll:

Which animated girl-child does June most remind you of?

Please vote if you’re reading this. It’s been ages since anyone has commented on this blog. You can rely on pictures and text from blog entries or from personal experience if you’ve had to pleasure of meeting June.

The contestants:

A) Cindy Lou Who
(http://jpbutler.com/images/cindy-lou-who.jpg)

Pros: Blonde hair, big blue eyes, close to June’s age. (She’s “no more than two.”) Pretty articulate for her age. Speaks to the Grinch in complete sentences.

Cons: The antennae.

B) Pebbles Flintstone
(http://pattisoriginals.files.wordpress.com/2007/09/pebbles.gif)

Pros: June used to be a redhead, especially from nine to eleven months. Check out the first photo in the blog archive for a look. Andrea says their voices are similar. It’s been so long since I’ve watched The Flintstones I will have to take her word for it.

Cons: June has never worn her hair in a ponytail on top of her head with a bone stuck through it.

C) Maggie Simpson
(http://www.simpsoncrazy.com/gallery/images/MaggieSimpson3.gif)

Pros: Highly mobile, intelligent, pacifier-loving youngest child.

Cons: An infant. Spiky crown-like hair.

Bonus Contestant:

D) Sally Brown
(http://www.snoopy.com/comics/peanuts/meet_the_gang/images/meet_sally_big.gif)

Johnny threw this one into the pot the day after his dad made the comment about Maggie Simpson, as a joke. “You know who June reminds me of? Sally from Peanuts.” It was just a throwaway line, but the more I thought about it the more merit I decided it had. Do you remember the scene in A Charlie Brown Christmas when Charlie Brown is disgusted with Sally for requesting “tens and twenties” from Santa? She responds, “All I want is what I have coming to me. All I want is my fair share.”

This morning Beth and I tried to ignore both children pulling on Noah’s sultan puppet and screaming “It’s my puppet!” as we ate our eggs and read the Sunday paper. The day ended with June sliding into Noah’s bed, pulling the covers up to her chin and shouting “It’s my bed!” when he tried to get in. In between, I watched her drag Noah’s hopping ball all over the lawn while asserting it was “June’s ball” even though she is too tiny to scale it, let alone bounce on it.

All I’m saying is that I can see her uttering Sally’s line one day.

Pros: Blonde, little sister, assertive and acquisitive.

Cons: Older than June, wears those weird puffy dresses all the girls in Peanuts do. All together too gushy over Linus.

E) Other. (Nominate your own character and explain.)

That’s it, folks. Please leave your votes in the comments section. An anxious family awaits your verdict.

Wild, Wonderful West Virginia

Posted on June 20, 2008 by Steph

I kissed Beth when I saw the “Wild and Wonderful West Virginia” billboard early Monday afternoon. I don’t remember how it got started but we have a tradition of kissing when we cross state lines. We’ve been doing it since college.

Fifteen minutes later we’d arrived at Beth’s parents’ house. Sometime during Noah and Andrea’s joyous and noisy reunion, she declared herself his “wild, wonderful YaYa.” (Both kids call her YaYa because when Noah was a toddler she sent us a picture of herself in a talking picture frame singing “I love you, yeah, yeah.” She’s been YaYa ever since. We found out later that YaYa is Greek for Grandma, which made it seem even more appropriate, even though none of us is Greek.)

When I referred to our visit as a “four-day” one later that evening, both Noah and Andrea howled in protest. They thought we were staying a week! I backpedaled as best I could. It was three full days and two half-days (Monday afternoon to Friday afternoon). That could be four or five days depending on how you count them. But Beth said a week! Apparently she meant a work week. No matter how you count the days, here are some of the highlights of our abbreviated week in the Mountain State:

Top Ten Wild and Wonderful Moments:
(In chronological order. I tried, but I couldn’t rank them.)

10 Sail Naked
Shortly after we arrived, Andrea presented both kids with gifts from her recent trip to Italy. They both got colored pencils in cups with little Pinocchio figures perched on them. June called them “Pokios” and claimed ownership of both. June got two sundresses—a flowered one from Italy and a pink, green and white striped one Andrea sewed for her. Noah got a shirt from Sorrento with the alphabet in nautical flags and a secret message spelled in flags underneath. Andrea had not thought to decode it before she bought it but Beth was curious and did so at once. It said “Sail Naked” in English.

9 Invasion of the Fire Aunts
Beth’s aunts Carole and Jenny came over to visit later Monday afternoon. “It’s the aunts!” Beth said when she say them coming in.

“It’s the red aunts,” Noah joked because Jenny was wearing a red tank top.

“The fire aunts!” Jenny joked back. For the rest of their visit, all through the games of Scrabble Jr. and Mancala she played with Noah, Jenny referred to herself frequently as a fire aunt.

8 Salamanders, and Frogs and Birds! Oh my!
Tuesday morning we visited the Nature Center at Oglebay Park (http://www.oglebay-resort.com/activities.htm). Noah painted a ceramic salamander in shades of blue, green and pink and we left it to be fired in the kiln. June enjoyed scattering nature-themed books, puzzle pieces and stuffed animals all around the room. Noah noticed a small stage and he and Beth put on an impromptu play. It was a little thin on plot: I remember one of the characters was a frog, but not much else. The sound effects, however, were first-rate. There were buttons on the other side of the room you could push to hear different kinds of birdsong and Noah kept working birds into the story so he could go push the buttons.

7 Over the Rainbow
Among the treasures in the kids’ gift bags were two packages of 3D sidewalk chalk. When you put on the enclosed glasses, the different colors appear to hover at varying heights above the sidewalk. Each piece of chalk had a high-flying color on one end and a low-lying one on the other.

On Tuesday afternoon, we tried them out. Noah drew geometric shapes. June scribbled. I wrote the letters of the kids’ names in alternating high and low colors. I noticed the pink in Noah’s name seemed to float higher than the yellow in June’s. Noah got an idea and decided to draw a rainbow so we could see exactly where each color lay. He drew the top arc pink since it seemed to be the highest color, then he filled the rest in—orange, yellow, green, blue and purple. Sure enough, each arc was a step below the one before. It was a wild effect.

6 Uncle Johnny Goes to Outer Space
Johnny came down from Columbus later Tuesday afternoon. He and Noah were immediately immersed in games of Club Penguin, Mancala and Mad Libs, which they played in English and Spanish. Noah commented approvingly on Johnny’s Spanish. When Andrea, Beth, June and I went to an outdoor concert in the park that evening, Noah elected to stay home with Johnny. When we came home, we found them in the sky chairs on the porch, pretending to be on an outer space adventure. Noah was impatient with our suggestions that it was time to get ready for bed because he was in outer space and how could he get ready for bed in outer space?

5 Baby, You Can Drive My Car
Wednesday was a fairly lazy, low-key day. For June the wildest part was probably our trip to the supermarket to buy ingredients for the homemade strawberry frozen yogurt we were going to make that night. (We have a new ice cream maker and brought it with us.) The reason for her enthusiasm was the shopping carts they have at Kroger’s. They come with toddler-sized cars attached to the front. June was in heaven, except whenever we stopped to pick out an item and the car stopped moving. “The wagon stopped!” she’d cry.

4 A Hot Date
Beth and I had a date on Thursday. We left the house at 8:45. (8:45 a.m. What were you thinking, that we’d have a date at night like regular people? No, this former night owl now goes to bed at 9:30 so evening dates are a thing of the past.) We got in the car and listened to music of our own choosing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mermaid_Avenue) and drove to a Fiestaware outlet (http://www.hlchina.com/). We bought four small bowls, a mug and two ramekins. “I just like to say the word ramekin,” Beth confessed. I tell you, we really know how to party hearty. On the way home we listened to more music of our own choosing (http://www.cduniverse.com/search/xx/music/pid/1389010/a/Greatest+Hits.htm) and stopped for crepes. We started with vegetable crepes and split a nutella and cherry dessert crepe. Oh, the sheer hedonism.

3 The Dragon’s Breath
During June’s nap on Thursday, Andrea, Beth and Noah went shopping for fabric for the pajamas Andrea was going to make for Noah. He wanted “something royal” and was hoping for a pattern with crowns on it. We warned him this might be hard to find and indeed, there was no crown fabric to be had at the store. However, there was one with dragons and flames that captivated Noah. For reasons known only to himself, he decided it would be better for a pillowcase than pajamas. When they got back and he showed me the fabric he pretended to be a fierce dragon blowing fire at me. Feeling his teeth graze my hand, I said, “Don’t bite me!”

He pulled back but commented, “A real dragon would have bitten.” Good thing he’s not a real dragon.

2 West Virginia Catechism
On Thursday evening we had Chinese takeout for dinner out on the patio, before Beth gave her dad his late Father’s Day and early birthday presents. As we ate, Andrea asked Noah what he would say if someone asked him about West Virginia. He wasn’t sure so she gave him three choices: A) It’s a beautiful state; B) It’s Wild and Wonderful; C) It’s Almost Heaven.

1 Happy Birthday, West Virginia!
“Well, that was too short,” Beth said as we pulled out of her parents’ driveway on Friday afternoon. We were driving home on the first official day of summer and on West Virginia Day, the 145th anniversary of West Virginia’s secession from Virginia during the Civil war (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Virginia_Day). It’s a big deal; if you know where to go there are a lot of places you can get free birthday cake. Last year we were driving in West Virginia on West Virginia Day and we got some at rest stop. However, when we stopped at one this year, they were just giving away pretzels and off-brand chocolate sandwich cookies. It was a bit disappointing, the sort of fare you’d expect when you give blood. Despite the lack of cake, I’d like to wish West Virginia a very happy birthday.

In his West Virginia Day speech, U.S. Senator Jay Rockefeller said:

“When people think of West Virginia, their thoughts turn to our mountains, our rolling green hills and rivers. It’s a place of immense natural beauty and scenic wonders. Still others may think of our most abundant natural resource, coal, or even our steel. And, every fall, many college sports fans turn their thoughts to our incredible football teams…
West Virginia, without question, is all of these things. But what truly sets us apart from other places is our people. West Virginians are the hardest working, nicest people you’ll ever have the chance to meet. They’re the reason that so many people choose to come back again and again to our state. They’re real people who possess an abundant spirit of hope, optimism and authenticity. More than anything else, they are the heart and soul of our great state.”
(http://theintelligencer.net/page/content.detail/id/510860.html)

I can’t speak for all the people of the state, but I would like to thank YaYa, Grandpa, the Fire Aunts, and Uncle Johnny. They baked for us (oatmeal-chocolate chip cookies, brownies and baked macaroni and cheese!) played endless games with Noah, read piles of books to both kids, took the kids on outings and stayed with them while we went out. Any trip with small kids is wild, but Beth’s family made this one truly wonderful.

Head for the Hills

Posted on June 16, 2008 by Steph

School ended with a half-day on Thursday and Noah and Sasha ushered in their summer vacation with a five and a half hour playdate. It was a double-header, starting at our house immediately after school and moving in the late afternoon to Sasha’s where they swam in his family’s pool.

I was dubious about such a long playdate because Noah and Sasha’s friendship is an intense one. They have a lot in common; they have a lot of fun; they have a lot of arguments. But much to my surprise, they were extremely well behaved. I asked them to play outside during June’s nap so they pretended to be detectives solving a mystery in the yard, then they played snap circuits on the porch. Finally they moved inside and played Build-a-lot (http://www.arcadetown.com/buildalot/game.asp) on the computer. I didn’t hear a single argument. Noah confided to me later that they did argue, “but we did it quietly,” which was fine with me. An argument I don’t hear is one I don’t feel tempted to referee and one that might even help Noah learn to solve his own conflicts.

Friday we spent most of the morning running errands. Because of this, it was three in the afternoon before Noah used up all his television and computer time. Otherwise it surely would have been earlier. It was the first full day of summer vacation and he hasn’t learned to pace himself yet. “Is every day of summer going to be like this?” he whined.

“Like what?” I asked.

“No more tv. No more computer. Nothing to do.”

It was a good question. There will only be five weeks this summer when Noah’s not in day camp and we will be on vacation for two of them. Still, it could be a long three weeks if I don’t get more creative with activities for him and if he doesn’t get more independent about entertaining himself when I’m occupied with June or housework or the several hours of work a week I do for Sara. Still, nothing seems as charged as it did last year when we felt so bad about the rough spring he had that we were anxious for his summer to be perfect. He’s had a good year academically and a decent one socially. A few boring weeks at home won’t be the end of the world. A little boredom could even be a good thing if it spurs him to get out a rut and find new ways to have fun.

We spent all day Saturday and yesterday morning running errands, housecleaning and packing for our trip to Beth’s parents’ house. Beth’s folks haven’t seen the kids since Thanksgiving so a trip to Wheeling was our first priority once school was out. We drove half the distance Sunday afternoon, and then we stopped to camp at Rocky Gap State Park (http://www.dnr.state.md.us/publiclands/western/rockygap.html). After we settled into our cabin we headed down to Lake Habeeb for a swim. Noah practiced his swimming with Beth while June and I went back and forth between the water and the lakeside playground. June scrambled up a rope ladder until she was higher than my head and I had to hold my arms up to spot her. She swung in a new (to her) kind of bucket swing, the kind that’s open in the front, with a belt to secure her. “It’s broken,” she said at first, then grinned when she realized she would be only semi-enclosed. As she swung, she watched a boy climb up the outside of a tunnel slide with rapt attention; she was no doubt making plans for the future.

Back in the lake, she kept trying to wade too deep into the water until Beth and I settled down sitting in the water a few feet apart with water up to our chests and she amused herself walking back and forth between us.

A girl of eight or nine crawled over to us with just her head out of the water. June stared. The girl asked how old she was and said she was pretty. An older girl and a younger boy trailed her and joined us. The boy, who was about Noah’s age, demanded to know why June was so small if she was two. She didn’t look any bigger than his one-year-old brother. The girls tried to hush him with little success. I said she was small for her age.

After chatting for a while one of the girls asked Beth if she was Noah and June’s aunt. No, their mom, Beth replied. Who was I? Also their mom. The boy was shocked and skeptical. How could we be both be their mothers? Who would we marry? Each other. We’d had a wedding and now we had two kids. But why? Because we love each other. The boy said emphatically that women should not get married. We might kiss! Yuck! The girls starting telling him to be quiet, a bit more vigorously than before and then they started to splash him when he didn’t listen. He ignored them and went on in the same vein. Beth was magnificent, remaining calm and matter of fact throughout, eventually ceasing to offer explanations and just repeating, “Well, that’s your opinion.” I was silent.

Noah, who as far as I knew was listening to his first anti-gay tirade, was quiet for a long time. When the boy said it was impossible for two women to be a couple, he finally piped up, “But me and my sister Juney have two moms,” as if that settled everything. He didn’t sound upset, just a little baffled at the whole exchange. “It’s not the usual thing,” he added as a concession.

As we drove back to the camping cabin, Beth said, “Well, we gave that family something to talk about tonight.” I was struck by the irony that this conversation had occurred on Father’s Day and on the day of the gay pride festival in D.C., and on the eve of the first legal gay weddings in California (http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/state&id=6184802).

Beth and I spent the evening on separate but occasionally intersecting tracks. Beth was trying to coax a fire out the green firewood we’d bought at the camp office. I chased June through the woods, down into the ravine, along the camp road, into neighboring campsites. She was curious and excited and tireless and fast. Really, really fast. I was glad for the chance to catch my breath when she paused at the picnic table to eat. Beth had managed to warm baked bean and veggie hot dogs over the balky fire, but the noodles were a gummy mess because the water never boiled. June ate heartily—two hot dogs and a big pile of beans. Noah, who doesn’t care for hot dogs or beans, and for whom the noodles were intended, ate nothing. The camp store was closed, we’d lost the emergency food I carry in the diaper bag and there was nowhere nearby we could drive to get him a snack. It was late, too, 8:45 by the time we got the kids to bed.

Beth and I sat on top of the picnic table in the gathering dark. “We are never leaving Takoma Park,” she pronounced. Living there, where no one has ever told Noah he can’t have two moms, has helped create his nonchalant attitude toward his unconventional family, though his self-confident temperament no doubt helps, too. And it’s not only homosexuality Noah sees as normal. Several of his friends (Jill, Sadie, Maxine and Ruby to name a few) are mixed-race and he knows Latino kids with white parents and even two white boys with a white mom and a black mom. His idea of family is not restricted to heterosexual couples with kids all biologically related and of the same race. In fact, when I was pregnant with June, he asked me what race I thought she might be. I don’t think he was wondering if the donor was of a different race than me. I think he imagined race was randomly generated. He can be naïve about the world (he is remarkably innocent of sexism) but it’s a healthy naiveté, one that I hope will give him an expansive sense of possibility about his own life when he’s older.

Still, we decided we’d better talk to him about what the boy at the lake said, just in case he had any questions. This morning in the car as we drove to breakfast, I asked if the conversation had bothered him. “Why should it?” he asked. “It was just his opinion, not fact.” I probed a bit more, asking if anyone had said things like that to him before. “Never,” he answered. “No one ever said women shouldn’t marry, but sometimes they ask why I have two moms.”

“What do you say?” Beth asked.

“I say because my two moms married.”

“Well, I guess that’s the answer,” Beth said.

After breakfast, we drove the rest of the way to Beth’s folks’ house. It’s a haven, smaller than Takoma Park, but nurturing and full of love. I can’t and shouldn’t try to protect Noah from everything—from arguments with a good friend, from boredom, from the occasional glimpse of homophobia. In small doses, these are learning experiences he needs. But I was still glad, gladder than usual, to see him bolt out of the car, run to Andrea and John’s front door, and straight into Andrea’s arms, secure in the adoration of the grandmother who couldn’t love him more if he were a blood relative.

The Very Merry Month of May

Posted on May 11, 2008 by Steph

[Show as slideshow]

Turning forty-one is anticlimactic. There’s no getting around it. This year it was especially so since we celebrated my birthday (along with Noah’s and my sister’s boyfriend’s and Mother’s Day) the day before my birthday at my mother and stepfather’s house in Pennsylvania. My sister and her beau Dune are visiting from Oregon and due to the convergence of early to mid-May birthdays and Mother’s Day, we decided to have one big celebration. Saturday ended up being more convenient than Sunday since we were planning to drive back home early Sunday afternoon so Noah could attend a birthday party.

The weekend was too short. Everyone knew it would be ahead of time, but we didn’t want to pull Noah out of school and he didn’t want to miss Elias’s party (they’ve been friends since nursery school) so we had a pretty short window of opportunity to see Sara and Dune. This was complicated by the fact that we go to bed and get up really early and they don’t, plus they were on West Coast time and June naps in the middle of the day so there were remarkably few hours when everyone was awake at the same time.

We arrived on Friday evening close to eight and headed straight for the kitchen to admire the beautiful and nearly finished renovation Jim has been working on for over a year. Then we let the kids stay up an hour past their bedtime to socialize a bit with Grandmom, Pop, Auntie Sara and Dune. Noah went to sleep pretty easily but June was so wound up it was another hour before she got to sleep. Then she was up three times during the night and Noah woke up for the day at 5:35, so none of us was what you’d call well rested for the big day. We would pay for this later.

In the morning, Mom and Noah played the Ungame (http://www.boardgames.com/ungame.html), a therapy tool she uses with her clients. It’s a board game in which you discuss different feelings depending on where you land. Noah loves this game. He plays it with her almost every time we visit. During the course of their game I learned that the Penguin Secret Agency dissolved this week, as the members quit one by one. It seems Noah had a very specific vision about how it was to operate and wouldn’t compromise with his fellow agents. He said he didn’t understand why people didn’t want to do what the club was for in the first place. In any case, the last member quit on Friday. Noah seemed not only disappointed about this but also a little mad. He even said Sasha wasn’t his best friend any more.

Sara and Dune got up around eleven. We hung out for a while until it was time for June to have lunch and take her nap. I elected to sleep with her since she was sleeping in a bed that was pretty high off the ground and I was exhausted. Sara wanted to take Noah to an arcade to play Dance Dance Revolution (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dance_Dance_Revolution). I thought it was going to be just the two of them, but she talked Mom and Beth into going along. Dune was taking his own nap and Jim was working outside so when June woke up she and I were on our own for a couple hours. When Dune woke up we talked politics for a while and June ran around the house insisting she was “the biggest most famous.” She must have been repeating something she heard somewhere but I can’t think what. When Dune asked, “Are you the biggest most famous?” she said, “Yes,” in a matter-of-fact tone.

When everyone returned I learned the plan had changed to miniature golf while they were out and that Noah had a huge meltdown at the seventeenth hole because he noticed the other course had a water hazard and he wished they were playing that one instead. Beth had to pick him to get him off the course and she says he was completely out of control. We can only guess it was frustration about the dissolution of his club coupled with a poor night’s sleep. He’s also got a mouthful of loose teeth, which feel funny and make it hard for him to eat sometimes. After a long talk with Beth and me, he agreed to apologize to Mom and Sara, though he could only bring himself to do it after piling sofa cushions around himself and delivering the words of the apology in scrambled order. (Mom had told him when it’s hard to say something you can start in the beginning, the middle or the end, whatever is easiest.)

Mom and I went out for coffee before coming home and starting dinner, an enchilada casserole that turned out quite well. It took longer than expected to assemble, however, so we decided to open presents while it baked instead of waiting until afterward. Mom, Beth and I had Mother’s Day presents and cards to open. Dune, Noah and I had birthday presents. Even Sara, whose birthday was in March, had a late present from Mom (a set of glasses), which Mom had held onto because they were too fragile to ship. Sara squealed when she saw her glassware—it was just like glasses she’d admired in Italy. Dune laughed with surprise when he opened the spirulina bars we bought him. “I love these! Sara must have told you.” Noah was very excited about his Snap Circuits Jr. kit (http://www.fatbraintoys.com/toy_companies/elenco_electronics_inc/snap_circuits_jr.cfm). I read the long and mushy message in the Mother’s Day card Noah picked out for me aloud. He’d signed it twice, so I’d know it was really from him. (And not from some imposter son? Kids can be mysterious.) Beth and I also had homemade Mother’s Day cards from school. He’d drawn our names in jellyfish tentacles just like the ones he had Beth draw on the goody bags for his party. Meanwhile, June busied herself with the paper and ribbons and didn’t seem to notice that nothing was for her.

Even with the schedule change, by the time we’d eaten dinner and cake and ice cream and gotten the kids ready for bed, it was nine o’clock again. This time, though, both kids dropped off right away and Beth and I got to sleep a little earlier as well. June slept through the night for the first time in a few weeks and Noah woke briefly at 5:40, only to go back to sleep and sleep in until 7:05.

We had a Mother’s Day brunch around ten, without Sara and Dune, who’d been out visiting friends until two in the morning and were still asleep. Noah had no trouble chewing the French toast and ate four slices. Mom finally roused Sara and Dune around eleven thirty, as we were packing to leave. Sara was sad about missing brunch and wished we’d woken her earlier. She sat on our bed, watching us get ready and said she finally realized who June reminded her of—Cindy Lou Who from The Grinch (http://jpbutler.com/images/cindy-lou-who.jpg). She’s the tiny little girl with blonde hair and big blue eyes. Beth said there’s no way the Grinch could have put one over on June like he did with Cindy Lou.

Driving home, we remembered we’d left a couple of June’s sippies in Mom and Jim’s fridge and that we’d also forgotten to take some of the cake with us. I was a little disappointed to think there would be no cake on my real birthday, but we stopped at Starbucks and I put a sizeable dent in the gift card Noah got me for my birthday, buying coffee and juice and pastries for everyone.

We got home in time for Noah to make Elias a birthday card on the computer and for me to plan some dinners for the next week and put ingredients on the shopping list. Beth took June shopping while Noah was at the party and I was left alone. This is my regular time to do housework, but I decided to read a book Beth got me for my birthday (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20th_Century_Ghosts) instead. It felt rather decadent. I’d also told Beth to buy some Brie while she was out shopping. I’ve been trying to cut back on fat a little so this was a luxury, too. It started to rain pretty hard soon after Beth, Noah and June left. I curled up in bed with my book and read a story. When I finished it I felt too tired to keep reading so I decided to rest my eyes a bit and listen to the pelting rain. I woke up forty-five minutes later. I resolved to be a little bit useful and I unpacked everyone’s clothes, unloaded the dishwasher and watered the plants.

I opened my gift from Andrea when everyone came home and we had lentil soup, Brie and apricot jam on flatbread for dinner, followed by cupcakes Beth picked up at the grocery store. She asked me whether I wanted one with blue, pink or orange frosting. Remembering how my sister and I always fought over the pink cupcake whenever Mom bought the Sara Lee variety pack, I chose the pink one. Later that night my sister called to wish me a happy birthday, since she’d forgotten to earlier in the day.

It was a low-key birthday, a bit overshadowed by other celebrations but that’s because we have so much to celebrate in this merry, merry month: having and being a mother, having a wonderful partner to share my mothering, the birth of my eldest child and the man who makes my sister laugh like none of her other boyfriends ever did and Noah’s oldest friend. Plus I had over two hours to myself with minimal responsibilities and I got the pink cupcake. That sure doesn’t happen every day.

Someplace Glamorous

Posted on February 19, 2008 by Steph

Beth’s phone was beeping so she checked it. The message made her laugh. “It was your mom,” she said. “Just a ‘haven’t talked to you in a while’ call, but she said we were probably ‘someplace glamorous like Rehoboth.’”

I took the phone so I could return the call. “Mom, we are someplace glamorous,” I told her. “We’re at Taco Bell. We’re at the Taco Bell near the Chesapeake Bay Bridge.”

“So, you are going to Rehoboth,” she said. She didn’t remember the exact date of our trip, but she’d known Beth and Noah had gotten me a weekend trip to Rehoboth for Christmas. (Noah was the idea man. Beth was the financier.)

“A weekend at the beach in February!” my stepfather had exclaimed incredulously on Christmas morning when I opened the card that informed me about the trip. I suspected then that he was not really serious about retiring to the beach, although he sometimes talks about it. You don’t move to the beach if you don’t want to be there in February, do you?

The trip was to be somewhat more glamorous than usual. We were staying at the Boardwalk Plaza Hotel (http://www.boardwalkplaza.com/concierge.htm), a pink and white wedding cake of a hotel on the boardwalk, probably the toniest hotel in Rehoboth. I’ve always wanted to stay there. We’ve eaten in the restaurant once or twice and most memorably, I once clambered over several-feet high snowdrifts on the boardwalk to fetch a take-out meal to bring back to Beth and Noah, who were holed up in our room in another hotel. That was Presidents’ Day weekend 2003. Noah was twenty-one months old and we’d been snowed in a couple days. I’d offered to go out and find something to eat besides grilled cheese, which we’d been eating all weekend, and I returned with a fabulous meal. I only remember the first course, a salad with dried cranberries and a sharp cheese (feta maybe?), but I recall digging into our first good meal in days with gusto and I remember the hotel staff’s hospitality. They readily agreed to box up a take-out meal even though they normally only prepare food for the dining room and room service and they invited me to warm up in the steamy spa room.

The inside of the hotel is faux Victorian and festive. They leave the Christmas decorations up all winter. Normally, I do not approve of this decorating choice, but somehow here it works. There’s a Christmas tree still up and lights and garlands of evergreens (fake but a good likeness) hung with angels are strung in the lobby. There are two parrots, one of which is often out of its cage, and men in suspenders and tails are always opening doors for you and offering to help with your luggage.

We had a lovely time. We ordered elaborate desserts from room service. Beth had a massage. Noah spent a lot of time in the pool, demonstrating his new swimming prowess. June loved dashing back and forth between the birdcages exclaiming “A bird! Another bird! Orange bird! Bird drinking water!” You could see the ocean from our room. I spent a lot of time reciting books to June without actually looking at the pages and staring at the ocean instead.

And of course, Noah rode his new scooter on the boardwalk and we played on the beach. June delighted in using a little shovel to fill a pail with sand and then she topped it off with pebbles. I pocketed a pretty mottled one as a memento. Noah and I made castles and villages and laid siege to them. I took a walk by myself, wading in the water in my rubber boots and wishing I’d brought warmer socks.

On Monday morning we went to the realty to pick a house to rent for a week in August.  When we gave the realtor our requirements and price range three houses came up on her computer. One was quite a long hike to the beach and at the upper end of our price range (it was a pretty big house). Another the realtor said was “not very well kept up” by the owners. And then there was the house where we stayed the summer of 2003, the year Noah was two. We’d gotten snowed in that February weekend five years ago because we’d come to town to look at houses. The realty closed due to the weather and we never got the chance to look at any houses that weekend. We had to come back in the spring. The property is a cozy little house with wood paneling in the living room and a big dormer bedroom on the second floor. Not fancy, but homey and only two blocks from the beach. We decided to take it again without touring it to save ourselves the hassle of going through the house with the kids.

Before we left Rehoboth, we got smoothies at the same café where we broke the news about Santa Clause to Noah two months ago and we had a picnic lunch of all our weekend leftovers. As we munched on cold quesadillas, pineapple pizza, tempura, vegetarian sushi and edamame, the kids chased each other around the boardwalk like maniacs, Noah laughing uproariously and June clutching a pizza crust and chanting, “I run so fast!”

When he came home from school today, Noah showed me the instructions for his latest long-term project. (He has done research projects this year on rocks, Germany and horses.) He has to make a model of a building. The first step was to fill out a survey about three kinds of buildings he would be interested in building. His first choice was a hotel because “me gusta hoteles” (“I like hotels.”) I like them, too and I am grateful to be able to afford the occasional luxury of staying at a swank one. But I am even more grateful for the memory of my kids running and laughing on the boardwalk; for the white, gray and brown spotted pebble now on my chest of drawers; and for the chance to return to the little house a short, toddler-friendly walk from the beach. That, more than fancy desserts and doormen in tails, is real glamour for me.

The Planet New York

Posted on December 27, 2007 by Steph

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The alarm on Beth’s iPhone went off at 6:30 on the day after Christmas, or as Noah kept reminding us, “the first day of Kwanzaa and the second day of Christmas.” I’d just finished nursing June and she and I were just drifting back to sleep. Beth and Noah were asleep in the dark of an overcast late December dawn. Moments later, we were all stirring, getting ready for a quick trip to New York. We’d spent Christmas at my mother and stepfather’s house outside Philadelphia and we’d decided to make the short hop up to New York to see my father and take in twenty-eight and a half hours’ worth of kid-friendly sights.

Two hours later we left my mother’s house on foot, toting only what Beth, Noah and I could carry in our backpacks. We walked to the Lansdowne SEPTA station (http://www.prrths.com/Phila_Lansdowne_Station.htm). Noah, used to buying Metro cards from machines, wanted to know why we were going inside the station. Beth explained we needed to buy tickets from an agent, “like in Frosty.” (We’d just watched Frosty the Snowman a few days earlier.) Noah was eager to watch the transaction and went up to the window with Beth while I sat on the bench and June climbed up and down a short flight of stairs, announcing “I climb stairs,” in case anyone in the station had failed to notice. We told Noah that Pop, who now works full-time renovating his and my mom’s house, had renovated the station twelve years ago.

At 30th Street Station, Noah was not terribly impressed by the giant Christmas tree or the famous statue of the angel with the fallen soldier (http://www.explorepahistory.com/displayimage.php?imgId=1495), but he was entranced by the spinning rows of text on the Amtrak arrivals and departures board.

The train was crowded and we had to split up so I could find a forward-facing seat. (Riding backwards makes me violently ill.) Beth and Noah sat together and I took June further up the car. Once we were seated, June was simultaneously lulled by the movement of the train and excited by the novelty of the situation. She would lean against me and start to nod off, then stand up and look out the window. I pointed out the boathouses on the Schuylkill River (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boathouse_Row) and other notable sights. “I on train,” she commented repeatedly. About twenty-five minutes into the journey, she collapsed in my lap and slept the rest of the way to New York.

Reunited with Beth and Noah at Penn Station, I inquired about his train ride. He said they had done some Mad Libs and pretended the train was a space ship traveling to “the Planet New York.” On the subway trip to our hotel, Noah noted which parts of the galaxy we were visiting as the stations flashed by on the lighted route map.

Walking into the lobby with its Christmas tree, poinsettias and bowls of ornaments and gold-painted pine cones reminded me that in similarly decorated hotels in Chicago, approximately nine thousand academics would soon be descending on the Modern Language Association annual convention (http://www.mla.org). I’ve spent the days right after Christmas interviewing for jobs or moping because I wasn’t interviewing for jobs at this convention more years than I’d like to say. I pushed the thought aside. June’s enthusiastic bouncing on the hotel bed, her mad dashing around the room, her laughing and squealing “I too fast!” cheered me right up. I called my father and made plans to meet for dinner, and before Noah had a chance to whine “Why do I always have to sleep on the pull-out couch” more than a dozen or so times, we were off to grab lunch at a burrito place and go see the Statue of Liberty.

My father warned us this trip would take a long time and he wasn’t kidding. We took two subways down to the Statue. As we switched trains, we just missed hearing a violinist and a guitarist who were packing up to move to another car. We arrived at the Battery (http://www.thebattery.org/) around two p.m.. There we admired a poster advertising plans for an aquatic carousel, skirted a rally, and got in a very long line that wound around Castle Clinton (http://www.thebattery.org/castle/) to wait for our tickets. About fifteen minutes into our wait, Noah decided to make a game out of it by having everyone guess how long it would be until we made it to the ticket counter. Noah, ever the optimist, guessed seven minutes. I guessed a half hour and Beth guessed forty-five minutes. Beth set the timer on her iPhone and Noah decided whoever made the closest guess could have the head of his chocolate reindeer. I pointed out that since it was already his, there was no provision for a prize for him if he won. He said he didn’t mind. I like things to be fair, but since I thought there was very little chance he’d need a prize, I let it go. While we waited in line, June napped in the stroller and we watched the entrepreneurs who had painted their skin green and donned robes to pose for pictures with tourists. Beth won the bet. It took forty minutes and twenty seconds from the time we set the timer to get to the ticket counter and complete our transaction. Once there, we learned you need special tickets to enter the statue so we’d only be able to ride the ferry to the island and see the statue close up. Noah was a little disappointed, but still excited to go. He’s been studying symbols of our country at school, which was the reason for the excursion.

It was a cold, damp day and we were chilled from standing in line, so it was actually a relief to go through security in the heated tent by the water. We caught the last ferry of the day, the 3:40, and sat on the top level, for the view and so I wouldn’t get seasick. After a scenic (and very windy) ride we arrived at the statue. She’s impressively large in person and really quite beautiful. We admired her and walked around the island. We paid a quarter for Noah to look through the telescope at the harbor, and then we got back in line for the 4:45 ferry. On the way back we opted for the heated lower level. We shared a warm soft pretzel, and Noah got a pair of Statue of Liberty sunglasses, much coveted by a little boy sitting near us.

Two subway rides later (trains #6 and 7 of the day), we met my father and stepmother Ann for dinner. Ann admired Noah’s new glasses and Dad asked me questions about Sensory Processing Disorder (http://www.sensory-processing-disorder.com/) and how Noah was doing. (The answer is just fine now that he has more compatible teachers.) Service was a bit slow, which was fine, since we were exhausted from running around. It was nice to relax, eat our pizza and pasta, and chat. Once we’d finished our meal, though, we needed to hurry back to our hotel and get our worn out kids to bed.

The next morning we met Dad for breakfast at Alice’s Teacup (http://www.alicesteacup.com/). I highly recommend this teahouse to anyone who, like Noah, adores Alice in Wonderland. Quotes from the book and photographs of people dressed as characters from the book adorn the walls. The bathroom walls are painted with scenes from the book. There’s also a library of kids’ books, so Noah spent much of the meal with his nose in a book about magical creatures. Every now and then he would regale us with facts about them. The Naga (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N%C4%81ga),
for instance, is half-human, half-snake and causes floods when angered. “I think I worked for him once,” Dad commented. We feasted on crepes, waffles, scones, tea and coffee. Once everyone was sated, Dad took us to a toy store and let the kids pick out their Christmas presents. Noah got a pirate castle and June got some small stuffed animals (a bear in a chef’s apron and a snowman) and a bead maze. Dad, who’s an editor who comes in and out of retirement, had an appointment to discuss a job at an investigative journalism web site soon after, so we parted company.

Our next stop was Central Park. Both kids had been cooped up in trains or the stroller or standing in line and they needed to move. We entered the park at Strawberry Fields (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strawberry_Fields_memorial), and looked at the Imagine Memorial, which was covered in evergreen boughs and roses arranged in a peace sign. Shortly after entering the park, we noticed June had lost her little chef bear. (We looked for it on the way back, but we never did find it.) We walked along the paths and clambered on the big rocks. “I climb dis!” I climb rock! I climbing!” June announced as Beth and I scrambled to make sure neither child fell off the wet boulders. We made it to the Bethesda Fountain (http://www.centralpark.com/pages/attractions/bethesda-terrace/bethesda-fountain.html), which was turned off and Noah and June played inside its basin. We went under the arches of the terrace and admired the mosaics on the walls and ceilings. It was beautiful and smelled of urine.

It was time to head back to the hotel and check out. It had been misting all morning and on the way back it started to rain in earnest. Both kids are generally sturdy about being out in the cold and wet but June had soaked her feet in a puddle in the park and her face was getting wet and after a while she started to whimper. Then her whimpering turned to crying and as we wheeled her into the hotel lobby she was screaming. We had just enough time to change her diaper and her socks before grabbing our things and leaving the room. A desk clerk had called to inquire politely, “When will you be leaving?” so we needed to hustle. June had stopped crying, but we decided to warm up a bit in the lobby before going back into the rain. After we’d exhausted the kid-entertaining possibilities there, we shouldered our packs and left. Ducking into a near-by Starbucks, I noticed June had conked out during the short stroller ride there, so we decided to stay inside where it was warm and let her sleep a bit while we drank coffee and raspberry soymilk, did Mad Libs and watched New York walk by.

When the rain let up, we walked thirty-three blocks down Broadway to Times Square. At home in Washington, we can recognize the tourists because they block the walking side of Metro escalators. I think New Yorkers must recognize their tourists because we’re the ones blocking sidewalk traffic gawking up at the tall buildings. “Those are sky-scrapers!” Noah said in wonder. We stopped to read the news on the CNN building banner (all about Benazir Bhutto’s assassination), watched the ads on giant video screens and checked out the various theater marquees. Without having read any reviews, I was most intrigued by Mary Poppins and knowing how long some shows stay on Broadway, I made a mental note to keep it in mind if it’s still there when both kids are old enough to take in a show. I learned that there’s a whole store dedicated to M&Ms and M&M-themed products and a Hershey’s store across the street. I didn’t see it, but based on the number of eight to ten-year-old girls clutching dolls I think we must have been near the American Girl store. We frequently got separated in the crush of the crowd and June and I would have to wait for Noah and Beth to catch up. Beth reports that during one of their absences, Noah fell flat on his back on the sidewalk. This is not an unusual occurrence for him and he was apparently having a tactile under-sensitive day because he jumped back up without comment, spurring a teenage boy nearby to say, “Tough kid!” with some admiration. Near the end of our walk, I bought some warm nuts in a paper bag to much on while we soaked up the last few sights of our trip.

We got on the subway at 42nd Street, only eight blocks from Penn Station, but we were too tired to walk any further. In the café car of the Amtrak train, we did Mad Libs, snacked on leftover pizza and potato chips and took turns trying on Noah’s Statue of Liberty glasses as we sped away from the Planet New York.

Where Santa is Real

Posted on December 10, 2007 by Steph

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We told Noah the truth about Santa Claus yesterday. You may wonder why we did this a mere sixteen days before Christmas. We didn’t want to, but he’d been struggling with his belief for weeks, turning it over and over again in his mind, and the longer it went on the less it felt like we were pretending and the more it felt like we were lying to him.

When Noah was a baby we weren’t even sure if we’d do Santa for this very reason. We wanted to be as honest with him as possible, but in the end tradition won out. Noah has always loved stories and pretending and magic, so it felt perfectly natural when we first starting talking about Santa the year he was two and a half. Earlier this year he asked why we celebrate Christmas if we are not Christians. It was a logical enough question. We told him it was because our families were Christian and the traditions were still special to us. He accepted that, but wondered why Santa visited us and not some other families who don’t believe “Jesus was a god.”

On Thursday night, Noah and I were snuggling in his bed and talking about our upcoming weekend trip to Rehoboth. We were going in order to Christmas shop away from the chores and distractions of a weekend at home and for me to get an off-season ocean fix, but for Noah there was one main attraction. He reported that some of the kids in his class thought it was strange we were going to the beach in December.

“What did you say?” I asked.

“I said Santa will be there,” he answered simply.

Santa has a little house on the boardwalk where he visits with kids every weekend from Thanksgiving until Christmas. It’s scenic, the lines are short and you can take your own pictures for free. It beats the mall hands down.

“Last year I told him I wanted a microscope and he gave me a case that had not just a microscope but a magnifying glass and knives, too. Cool, huh?” (The scalpels are for dissecting specimens to put under the microscope. He’s not allowed to use them yet.) In his excitement, he seemed to have completely forgotten that he’d declared, “I think Santa is a fake” in the car on the way home from Thanksgiving weekend. Of course, that declaration was followed by a long soliloquy about how no scientists have ever found Santa or flying reindeer at the North Pole, but how not finding them doesn’t necessarily prove Santa’s not real, and how he did get the microscope he asked for, etc, etc. And it went on this way, on and off, for the next two weeks.

Every now and then during one of these monologues he’d ask, “What do you think?” in a casual, conversational way, as if he was consulting an equal for an opinion, not seeking a definitive answer from an authority. When I asked him where he thought the presents came from, if not from Santa, he ignored the question. I was testing him, seeing how close to the truth he’d already come. We decided he wasn’t quite ready, so we waffled and stalled, hoping we could make it until Christmas. We’d tell him then, Beth and I agreed. Meanwhile, Noah was making plans to stay up all night and watch for him at my mom’s fireplace on Christmas Eve.

We arrived at Rehoboth a little after seven on Friday evening. June had slept in the car and wasn’t sleepy at bedtime so after Noah was asleep I left Beth and June in the hotel room and went for a walk on the boardwalk. I walked down to Santa’s house, admiring the lights on the boardwalk, and stepping carefully through the slush on the wet boards. I checked the sign for his hours. Santa would be there starting at three on Saturday afternoon.

The next morning, Beth teased Noah, asking if he wanted to see Santa that afternoon or wait until Sunday. He was incredulous. “Today, of course!” he said. But then he told us he was going to whisper what he wanted into Santa’s ear, “so you can’t hear.” Bad sign, I thought. Now he’s testing Santa.

We spent the morning playing on the beach, hanging out in the hotel lounge and watching the fire while Noah worked on the rough draft of his oral report on Germany, and doing some shopping. Then we went to lunch and returned to the hotel for June’s nap. We were at Santa’s house almost at three on the dot. Santa was outside, posing for pictures. When he went inside, Noah was the first child to enter. Santa asked him his name, commented that he’d always like the name Noah, and asked how old he was. Then it was time to get down to business. “What do you want for Christmas?” he asked. Noah leaned in and whispered. Then Santa diplomatically promised to bring him something he’d like and gave him a necklace with a flashing red Christmas ornament dangling from it.

Noah seemed happy and satisfied with his visit to Santa. But as soon as we left the little house, he asked if it was possible that the person he’d seen was just someone in costume pretending to be Santa. We allowed that this might be the case. Beth pointed out that Santa couldn’t be everywhere at once so maybe he needed some helpers to visit with children and find out what they wanted. Probably, they would send an email to Santa with the requests. “But he just asked my name. Why didn’t he ask my address?” Noah was suddenly alarmed at the possibility that his information would be incompletely conveyed to Santa.

I took the kids to the beach while Beth did some more shopping. Noah got too close to the waves while I was watching June and his boots filled with icy seawater. I found him sitting on the sand pouring it out. I winced a little to see him running around with only a pair of drenched cotton socks on his feet, but he didn’t seem to mind and we’d promised to meet Beth on the beach so I was afraid if we went back to the hotel room she wouldn’t know where we’d gone. It was actually his hands that got unbearably cold from piling wet sand into piles to make castles. They started to smart and he cried until I warmed them between mine. We put his boots back on and walked down the boardwalk hand in hand, looking at the lights. I held both of Noah’s hands in one of mine and one of June’s in the other. “Mommy, you have five hands!” Noah exclaimed with delight. When Beth came back, I suggested we take him back to the motel and get him into a warm bath instead of going straight to dinner as planned. Once he was warm and dry, Noah was disinclined to leave the hotel room, so we ordered pizza to the room and watched The Polar Express on television. Despite the film’s strangely menacing atmosphere (a complete contrast with the book), I still got a little choked up at the end when the skeptical little boy protagonist explains he is now an old man, but the magic sleigh bell still rings for him as it does “for all who truly believe.”

The next day as we lunched on sandwiches, fruit salad, smoothies and tea at a cozy little bistro, Noah launched into another Santa discussion. “Maybe you bought the presents,” he said. Beth glanced at me questioningly. I nodded.

“You’re right, Noah,” she said, placing her hand over his.

“What?” he seemed distracted, as if he wasn’t sure what she was talking about.

“You’re right. We did buy the presents. Santa is just a story we tell, for fun.”

I reiterated what she’d just said, since he still seemed not to have heard. Then he said, “Oh,” in an understated way and changed the subject.

On the drive home we stopped at gas station. As June and I waited outside the restroom door, a man approached. “Are you ready for ho ho ho?” he asked her. As usual when she’s addressed by a stranger, she looked slightly alarmed and started to back away. Not reading her body language, he came closer. “Is Santa going to come visit you?” he asked.

“She’s shy around strangers,” I said, holding out a hand for her to take. I was annoyed with him for getting in June’s space and for making assumptions about what holidays we celebrate, but still, part of me was comforted by the thought of having a few more years of ho ho ho. We are sentimental and inconsistent atheists, clinging to the traditions of our youth, not able to let go of the symbols, even after we let go of the substance behind them.

At home last night, as we lay in bed, talking about the weekend, Noah said, “I wonder if I’ll get what I asked for.”

“Because we didn’t hear it?” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. “Because Beth says Santa’s not real.” He said this as if Beth might not the final authority on the question and as if I had not spoken at all.

When he got off the bus this afternoon, Noah asked me, “Do you think Santa has glasses?” I was taken aback and didn’t answer at once. Did he still believe or not? “I’m just asking your opinion, Mommy,” he said impatiently. “Because Santa’s not real.”

“Do you mean how do I imagine him?”

“Yeah.”

“I guess I don’t usually think of him with glasses.”

“The one I saw had glasses,” he commented.

Then he asked me if we could play a game that takes place on another planet “where Santa is real.” The game involved riding on Santa’s magic flying surfboard back and forth between the planet and its six moons. Noah and I stood on his sled in the damp grass of our backyard, knees bent, arms outstretched, flying back to where Santa is real.

All For The Love Of You

A Chronicle of Suburban Lesbian Family Life

Category Archives: Travel

Out of the Haunted House

The House of Crazy

Name that ’Toon: Postscript

Name that ’Toon: A Reader Poll

Wild, Wonderful West Virginia

Head for the Hills

The Very Merry Month of May

Someplace Glamorous

The Planet New York

Where Santa is Real