Cape Cod

I admit that before I went to Cape Cod, I had no geographical clue.

My knowledge extended only to the fact that I would be north of New York and south of Maine. I thought it was just “a” place, like somehow that little curly cue sticking out off the upper right side of our country was “Cape Cod” - the one place. As many of you more versed in New England and common knowledge than I am I'm sure know, it is in fact hundreds of miles – a whole peninsula leading up to the curly cue with lots of places along the way.

The names of these spots are what I would like to talk about first. You'd think since I was born on Long Island that boasts some killer indigenous names like Massapequa and Ronkonkama, I'd be over the funky indigenous sounds, but I never get tired of these: Sippewisset? Sandwich is always good for a chuckle, and there is East Chop and West Chop, as if the place has side burns. Mashpee, Mass. - Do they make baby food? Then try out a few like – out loud remember and with your creative caps on – Falmouth and Hyannis.

My far-and-away favorite Massachusetts town name, however, is no where near Cape Cod but too good to pass up: Athol (long o). I just bounce around the house saying it over and over again – Athol, Athol. It makes me so perversely happy. The only thing I find funnier than pondering why on earth a town would retain the name Athol, is thinking about what exactly the people from that town call themselves...

Maybe it's because I was raised on a crowded, touristy peninsula, home to the newly wed and nearly dead that touted “dockside dining” (read: seagull poop on your table) where the streets - depending on the tides - had a way of smelling like various shell fish and other stinky catch. Or, maybe it's because I am currently living on a crowded, touristy peninsula that touts similar residents and dining options and indeed reeks like yesterday's clams when the wind is right. While I felt quite at home in Cape Yawn, I'm not rushing back. I must say also that people were friendly – to the point where as I walked along the bike path talking to Mike on the cell phone they continued to greet me. My side of the conversation: “Hi. ... No, not you. What? Hi. ... No, not you. What?”

Just before heading out to CC, I was going on and on to Mike about how I just didn't know if I could ever live away from the ocean as we walked around groovy Northampton, Mass. with its rainbow flags outside the churches and its Poetry Center at Smith College which this past spring apparently hosted Tony Hoagland, Sharon Olds and Mark Doty – a trifecta of holy cow in poetry (“All events free and open to the public”). Flash ahead to Camp Dockside Dining (I hate seafood, have always, and now am a committed vegetarian) with its accompanying aromas and its sleepy pace and I started to wonder about myself. Luckily, we can sniff out the rebels pretty much anywhere and so stumbled onto the proverbial café/bakery with its menu in big chalky orange letters, its fair trade coffee and its bulletin board advertising yoga classes and Westfalias for sale.

Just to put a face on my passive hostility to the homey little Cape, I left without purchasing a teeshirt, not even one with a black dog on it. I'm reasonably sure I could have been held at security in Logan Airport for such an offense had they cared to investigate (though when you come right down to it, Logan needs no extra reasons for delay...).

What I did do is something I like to try to do in places I visit whenever possible. I seek out craftspeople, the tradesmen, the artists, the workshops. In Santa Fe, it was the indigenous people shaping storyteller bowls out of clay. In Otavalo, Ecuador it was everything from reed boxes to felt hats. In Cape Cod, it means potters.

In the days before Isaac, I was free to creep up to someone's home where there was sewing happening in the back room, a wheel spinning yarn in some tiny shed in the yard and tap lightly, hesitantly before being let in to view their wares and watch their process. These days I get to pick one potter that I can check out briefly while Mike and Isaac are around the corner at the beach.

I didn't get to meet the artist herself, unfortunately, but I did get to spend time with her lovely mother who said the most irresistible things, the first memorable one being: “Go look over there, dear. There's a beautiful piece you can't have.”

I spent a good while poking around the laundry room/studio before emerging back up the stairs next to the pantry with three ceramic cups that fit wonderfully in my hands. Mom was on the phone drumming up volunteers for something or other. I stepped gingerly over the extended hose to her oxygen tank and watched the turtles splashing wildly in an aquarium nearby.

“Hello, Steve and Alice.” She was talking to an answering machine. “I'm calling because I know you'll want to take the Wednesday spot again from 12 to 2 for July. That's the one we need filled. I know you have so much fun doing it and I so appreciate it. Maybe you'll call me back soon and confirm that you're going to do it. You know...” (I was beginning to wonder what kind of time allowance Steve and Alice's voicemail carried.) “... you can bring lunch and just sit and enjoy th view. We really need the help, and I thank you; I thank you. They say you should only do it if you really love doing it, but of course I know you really love doing it...” (apparently, a hefty time allowance. I looked around at the art on the natural wood walls, more artists in the family judging by the signatures. I felt the grip of my new cups painted in ocean blues and greens.) “...So, Alice, I meant to thank you for the flowers you brought me...”

The message continued for what seemed like another three or four minutes, after which I wanted to put down my cups and take Mom home instead. “Okay, then, bye-bye now.” Click.

“Ooooooo!” she hummed, turning her attention immediately back to me. “You've made some good choices. I have to get down there and get one of these for myself,” she mused, turning my favorite in her hands. I started a bit imagining her headed down the steep, narrow staircase with her tank, but had no trouble believing she could find a way to do it.

“I think this one's $18,” she told me, estimating up $2 from the smaller cup, the only one with a price tag. “If it's not,” she continued, eyeing and immediately disregarding my California address in the guest book, “you'll be back again and we'll give you $2.” The turtles tumbled off their rock, mouths agape, jaws working under water. I was glad to have had this moment in the inner sanctum of a real life in a foreign/too familiar place, but the turtles and I both knew it'd be a while before I'd pass this way again.

HFCS/DVD Nation, what we're feeding our kids

(I'm starting to feel like a really preachy prude, but here is something else that was in the chute. You can give at least part credit to Barbara Kingsolver whose book I'm reading and which I will post in "What We're Reading" shortly.)

There are no two ways around it. This trip was the most sugar-laden episode of Isaac's 3 years and almost 4 months here on earth.

Who knows what he was lapping up in utero with my chocolate pudding pie cravings (you-know-you're-pregnant-when...you keep an ample supply of graham cracker crusts in your house at all times.), but since emerging into this little red state – blue state game we call life in the U.S. he has been spared much of mine and my husband's addiction to the sweet stuff.

I was somewhat prepared to throw my hands up for this special adventure and return to eating beets, broccoli and peas from our garden again once we got back home. As we settled in to our flight three hours behind schedule, I was also relieved that the video monitors were limited to the area high above us in the center aisle so that I wouldn't spend the “in flight entertainment” portion of our journey keeping Isaac from watching incredibly violent movies. Even “Alvin and the Chipmunks” - a video version of which hung directly in front of our seats on the last air travel sojourn, involved scenes of stress and violence that put Isaac on the verge of tears - “Me no like dit mobie!” For the moment, all was well. Then we arrived, and we were back on track for the original issue.

We won't even count his grandmother's Rice Crispie treats and frog eye salad (some sort of jello, marshmallow concoction if you must know). Or her proclaimed “healthy” supply of snacks for our plane ride back including chocolate fudge granola bars. Just joshing – of course we'll count those! “You don't want him to have it, do you?” my mother-in-law would chuckle while offering the cookie jar. I'm so glad flaunting our lifestyle choices for our son amuses you.

Then there is the little moments of earned yum or of stress that sent Mike after bread pudding covered in whipped cream at one dinner, and my cave to chocolate chip cookies another day. The convenience store shopping turned up yogurt (high fructose corn syrup) and wheat crackers (high fructose corn syrup). The choices at our breakfast bar were so scant I agreed to a fruit bar – always bad news (high fructose corn syrup).

But the crowning moment of sugar rushes was when we were finally escaping for home. After driving in circles at 4:30 am trying to follow our hotel's directions to the airport, we arrived at our rental car return. The only person there at that hour was the same man who'd been whipping cars around the lot when we got the thing. He was about the size of the SUV he was standing next to and he addressed my son:

“You're not awake yet, huh?”

Isaac blinks.

“Want some candy?”

I checked – no trench coat. No van parked outside the school playground....What the hell kind of line was that??

“Nooooo!” Isaac squeals with a giggle twisting into me. He too believed it must be a joke.

“Oh, c'mon,” he continues, “I'll share my Mike n Ikes with you.”

“No, thank you,” I tell him this time, still convinced he must be kidding.

“Cookie?” he persists, ignoring me and speaking again directly to Isaac.

“We're not doing candy for breakfast and we're not doing cookies for breakfast,” I say more firmly.

“Aw, why not? He's gonna have Duncan Donuts in the airport anyway. What's the difference?”

This is Duncan Donuts country. The prevalence of Duncan Donuts stores here is second only to discussion of the Celtics and Red Sox as a cultural marker, (and of men like the one I saw in a “YANKEES SUCK” teeshirt, the letters a foot high on his chest - miraculously I managed to hold my tongue; he was with his elderly parents and I thought it best not to cause a scene). We know people who wanted to name their son Duncan but were discouraged by family members who feared that his recess buddies might nickname him Donut, or worse. I think to be incorporated as a town here you must provide habitat for no less than 3 Duncan Donut establishments.

While I was not about to accept Mike n Ikes (even if they do carry the names of my boyZ) from the 5-foot, 300-pound model of healthy choices, to some extent, he did have a point. Under the lean tutelage of his father, Isaac picked out a giant corn muffin at the airport. My bite tasted mostly like cake.

I have a dentist appointment for my dear one in about 3 weeks to fill a small hole in the far back upper right side of his mouth. Our pediatric dentist is very nice and while Isaac does not relish going, I'm hoping for the best. The office does have an unfortunate habit, however, of turning on the enormous video screen in front of the chair to “entertain” the kids while they are worked on. When we were there for our cleaning, just as Isaac sat down it was the part in “Ratatouille” when someone is shooting a gun at the rat – ah, how soothing.

Wish me luck.

may Bob the Builder rot in hell

I may be joining him, but let’s talk about little-mister-fix-it first.

My son likes trucks. A lot. Blame it on Salvador – our garbage man from when Isaac was approximately 11 months old until he turned 2 – who would faithfully wave with umph and spirit as Isaac gawked in admiration from the window. Blame it on the Y chromosome. Blame it on the fact that I live in an area that refuses to accept the housing crash or the scarcity of available land or of open space as a natural and needed resource and so is constantly under construction. Blame it on Bob the freaking Builder and the fact that in a weak, unguarded moment, his father and I actually willing rented Isaac a video entitled “Bob the Builder Meets the Real World” which, besides “visits” to real work sites, featured squirrels and bunnies and other forest creatures excitedly begging Bob to tell them more about how to build roads. Cut me a flipping break already.

Let me tell you, this “phase” of Isaac’s has lasted WAY TOO LONG.

And let me tell you something else: I HATE TRUCKS. The trucks and construction vehicles I hate include, but are not limited to: garbage trucks, front loaders, fork lifts, excavators, mini excavators, back hoes, cranes, graders, rollers, pavers, dump trucks, giant dump trucks (yes, this is a category of truck), tractors, scrapers, street sweepers, cement mixers, skid steers, bulldozers, utility vehicles, snow plows, and logging trucks.

One more thing – the only thing I hate more than trucks is PLAYING trucks. One of the nicest things about being away this past week was getting us out of our routine and doing some different things – a swim in the hotel pool, a ride on the bike path, a visit to a new library, the beach. Isaac couldn’t drag me out to the driveway and begin “You’re gonna me dit truck, ‘n’ me gonna be dit truck.”

Today, while we are still all feeling the jet lag, I brought my obviously tired boy home after preschool, betting on an early nap. Before we were out of the car Isaac told me, “me weawy busy with some work trucks ober hewe, so I haffa go do dat.” And off he went to pick up where he left off this morning, and the day before, and the week before that. It’d be just fine, except that after about 3 minutes the inevitable happens…

“Mama, dit a weawy bid job. So I need you to help me.”

I told him I’d come out and sit with him and check out what he was doing while I read a little. (He wasn’t the only obviously tired one.) That lasted not so long before the whining started up. “Me need SOMEBODY pway wid me.” Boing!!

Did you hear that sound? It was my heart strings singing out their best twang. Now, don’t get me wrong, we do LOTS of discussion about the adventures and advantages of playing by oneself. “Isaac imagination time” is implemented more and more often around these parts. But truth be told, I hadn’t played with him in a while and was hoping between a (fingers crossed) extended nap and the arrival of his dad not to have to sit in gravel pushing a plastic four wheeler at all on this particular day in history.

Here’s the equation: Jet lag/exhaustion + bad back + old game + new magazine in the mail + bad mommy attitude = no wanna play.

But that little whine plugs right in to something else – the idea that Isaac is an only child. That I am making that conscious decision for him. That he, like I did, spends the vast majority of his time with adults, without other children around, and often with just me, while he clearly, like I do, absorbs his energy by being part of a group. Under the circumstances, I feel like I should be a better play-with-me mama. But I can’t stand it. I admit it. Sorry. I don’t have the lose-myself-like-a-kid-in-play-gene. Perhaps I never did. I really go crazy. I do it – I lie on the floor and pick up his building blocks with the truck of the week, but I am always looking for an out. There are a few things I’m good at doing – puzzles I’m okay with, drawing I’m down with, but trucks – I’d really rather slam some remote part of my body in the garage door.

The pouting escalated to stone throwing and stomping on mama’s camping chair. Sometimes I wonder Isaac’s under-motives with his behavior, but it didn’t take an early childhood education major to figure this one out. Here I was, planted with a magazine. Here he was asking me to play. Maybe another day I would have caved. I often do. But shit. What’s the recipe when I just don’t want to? I just don’t. It’s mama mental health day. I told him (reluctantly) that if he let mama read for a little while then I’d play trucks with him. Not good enough. With tantrum at full capacity, I got to pull out the old “you must not want mama to play with you at all then” and we both came in the house.

After a few “I want DADDYs!!!” and much snot on his newly washed jean jacket, we figured out that a snack might help along with a visual depiction of the rest of our day, into which I (reluctantly) built Mama and Isaac play time.

I don’t know how to resolve this long term. I don’t really enjoy my days at home and that sucks, it’s tiring in and of itself. I can’t always blow him off to play alone. And then there are the trucks themselves and what they represent.

Bob, may you and Scoop and Rollie and whoever else those ridiculous characters are, pave yourselves a road straight to hell.

Stay tuned late this week as I explore more on the Y chromosome and the lives of bugs in the balance.

Eco-mama – Oxymoron?

(apologies for the soap box rant, lots in the chute and hopefully I'll have time to write it all down but gotta get some things out of the way to clear the path)

In a personal essay I read recently, the author was discussing how environmental parenting often feels to her like a contradiction in terms. I don't actually remember her examples, but I have plenty of my own so that the idea stuck with me:
- We're tired, so we order take out. The giant maw of Styrofoam shells mock me, the numbers on the bottom bordered by a swirl of arrows a joke since no program or municipality I know recycles them.
- Isaac is almost asleep, so I drive just a bit longer. The thought of not reading that blasted construction truck book again AND risking no nap at all in the end when he tells me “My body weawy wants to wate up” outweighing the waste of our nation's favorite limited resource.

On vacation, as we just were (Well, as vacation-y as we get anymore. Consider a visit to the in-laws and a work conference for Mike.) things can get even dicier. At first, I felt good doing my part to save the Great Hospitality Waste since Isaac was always napping – or his mother was trying for one anyway – during the times housekeeping normally wants to pull their trolley up to your room and give you a new everything. The Do Not Disturb sign, as it turns out is nature's strongest advocate.

There are those perfunctory attempts at ecological awareness now in most hotels – that card you leave or don't on your bed depending on whether you want them to wash your sheets every freaking day or just when you check out. Still. These nods to water conservation don't go nearly far enough.

They sneaked in once, those housekeepers, while Isaac and I were returning our rented bike and trailer – and what the hell?? Where is my soap? They took away the perfectly good soap I'd unwrapped less than 24 hours before and replaced it with another, wrapped soap. I understand that they are supposed to supply you with a new little wrapped soap, update your tiny shampoo and whatever else they are mandated to waste, but where the hell did the other soap go? Are we that seduced by “luxury” that we want to open a new fucking bar of soap every day we're on vacation? War time rationers we are not.

There was a restaurant near where we stayed called the Landfall Restaurant. We didn't go for perhaps obvious reasons. WAY too close to Landfill for me. There's one they didn't research all that well. Just say it out loud, people. It's a crucial stage in my creative process and one, I think, everyone should employ. (Have you ever heard that NPR show called “Open Source” - Not. Good.) Despite the fact that we avoided the Landfall, the breakfast buffet at our hotel proved nearly as harrowing an environmental catastrophe. Plastic utensils. Styrofoam cups next to the water pitcher (Yeah, those mugs full of water would be a bitch to wash!) etc. etc.

But my ultimate plea is this: please, don't kill the environment in the name of my child. Honest, he can drink from a real, live, breakable cup – even (gasp!) without a straw. As much as we appreciate the acknowledgment of the possibility little people may enter through your doors, I'm begging you not to do it through purchasing mass quantities of plastic panda cups with sippy lids or disposable tumblers covered in cheery jungle scenes, the likes of which may be long gone by the time they finish manufacturing the bloody receptacles.

A new one this time was the addition of Pooh characters smiling out at us though they suffered the ends of plastic forks, knives, and spoons jammed up their yellow, orange and pink rears. They are just cute enough and strong enough to save and we decided to salvage another ecological travesty and take them home. When we realize Pooh has just been swept away with Isaac's mostly uneaten lunch (honey yogurt and apple granola were unbelievably not on the menu), we ask the server if she can retrieve it for us. “I can get you a new set,” she offers. “No, no, really, it's fine,” we protest. So off she heads to the kitchen, returning in seconds with a new set. “Just brought a clean one,” she explains, “We have SO many.” Then by all means...

hair

(Mom, this is for you.)

“Your daughter...”
“Son.”
“...Uh, your son has such beautiful hair.”

Top ten pieces of evidence on how groovy men with long hair are/why I shouldn't cut my son's hair.

10. Long hair plays a part in animals' natural selection since it is associated with health.
9. Zeus, Achilles and Poseidon are all depicted with long hair.
8. Many Native Americans prized long hair in men.
7. Chinese men wore the culturally identifiable long braid down their backs (called a “queue”) beginning in the 17th century.
6. Samson.
5. Orlando Bloom, Owen Wilson, and Johnny Depp (Okay, two out of three isn't bad.)
4. Counterculture movements such as the Rastafarians and the Hippies used long hair to separate themselves from the establishment.
3. Sikh men refuse to cut their hair as one of the most important parts of their religious practice. Their hair – “kesh” - is allowed to grow naturally out of respect for what god created.
2. The hair salons all give out candy.

And although I, frankly, could go on and on, the number one reason, I shouldn't cut my son's hair...
1. He doesn't want to cut it.

menu of a 3-year-old

We all hear about kids who are picky eaters. Like, they eat raisins. Exclusively. Only with a fork. The one with the blue handle. Or, they won't touch vegetables, even the ones their mothers shape into intricate facial expressions, the green beans giving the brows that oh-so-surprised look.

So here's my little one's alimentary hang ups.

-Every day for the last two weeks at least two meals of the day have consisted of honey yogurt and apple granola.

-He does not like grilled cheese, or any kind of hot, melted cheese-like dish. When I wasn't downing Minute Rice and TV dinners as a kid, I lived on “fake pizzas” - i.e. toast with a spoonful of spaghetti sauce and a piece of cheese stuck in the broiler or toaster oven for a minute. I can barely comprehend that my child does not fancy these delicacies. Recently when serving him a modified version of same, along with carrots and cucumbers, the boy cleaned his plate of vegetables, leaving his cheesy goo untouched.

-Isaac hates muffin tops. I'm not even joking. He will only eat the bottoms of muffins and begs me to let him eat the paper too.

-I know things are getting weird now, so let me bring you back to something you can hold on to. My kid's not a total odd ball – he loves ice cream. Today, he talked me into making some via a single serving recipe from one of his National Geographic magazines. Marching around the kitchen grinning with his bowl of frozen half and half, he could hardly contain his joy, and, just to take his place in the classic scene of child with food – boy with ice cream, he promptly dropped it upside down on the floor and burst into tears.

"Sometimes a pizza is a pizza. But sometimes, a pizza is more than just a pizza."

Whenever I get down about the fact that the major part of my written opus seen by a public audience consists of articles written on bird cage liner about things like airshows or festivals honoring produce or the same freaking tired musical with references to gossip columnists from the 30s playing at no less than three different local theaters over a single season, I read the grocery store flyer and feel better.

There is a chain of grocery stores, the local version of which I frequent, that offers certain alternatives to most chain grocery stores and that publishes a monthly flyer with descriptions that rival the L.L. Bean catalogue. (I'm going on memory and reputation when I say that of course, since I haven't read an L.L. Bean catalogue, I'm happy to report, in a very long time.) It's like the edible L.L. Bean. If you could eat your polo shirt, this would be the place it was written about.

There is someone whose job it is to write three substantial paragraphs about Pecan Sticky Buns and BBQ Blue Cheese Chicken Wings. There is someone who has chosen a career in which the birthing of phrases like “Something frozen this way comes...” earns them high fives at the water cooler and commendations in the board room. There are people, people like you and me, with families and hobbies, who welcomed a new day, fought the commuter traffic, grabbed a hot mug of joe and sat down to compose “One of our favorite condiments at the moment is our Wasabi Mayonaise. We carried this product for a number of years before discontinuing it to make room for newer items. Wow, was that a mistake!”

I believe the phrase I'm looking for is “But for the grace of god...”

$4.13/gallon

There used to be a game show on in the 80s or 90s maybe, was it on MTV? I dunno. I blank out when it comes to horrible specimens of pop culture around my coming of age. On the show, friends or couples or someone had to answer questions with what they guessed their partner (who was backstage in a sound proof booth – it goes without saying) would say before the partner would bounce onto the stage for a stressful timed replay of the true answers.

The answers were one of two possibilities: Cool or not cool. Generally, contestants would yell out these phrases while the studio audience cheered or groaned. It went something like this: “Skipping underwear with a white sundress.” “Coooool!!!” “Telling your buddy that you saw his girl cheating on him.” ”NOT Cool!”

So I'm sitting in the courtyard with the other parents waiting for my kiddo to come out of preschool. One of the moms turns to tell me, “You know the kids know our cars? They know who rides in each car.”

Her massive grey elephant of a Suburban is parked just on the other side of the gate.

“Yes, I realize that,” I say.

“That's really cool! Isn't that cool?”

nurturing a nurturing nature

Isaac's closest buddy has a new little sister. Born the day before Isaac's birthday.

A month or so ago her mama brought her into Isaac's preschool class so that everyone could meet her and so his buddy could continue to process this huge new change in his world in another realm of his little life. His mama told me laughing afterwards that the girls all swamped her and the baby, while the boys, including her own and Isaac hung back and looked wholly uninterested. But I knew my guy better than that. I guessed it was more of his impressive ability at observation than his disinterest that kept him at bay that day. I'd have a chance to try out my theory.

Not long after, baby, mama, and friend were visiting us at our place. When the little one would squawk, Isaac would pause in racing from one end of the house to the other with his bud to look at us with an expression similar to what my Zappy cat would give us when Isaac cried as a newborn. It said: “The baby is in distress. What are you people going to DO about it?”

Later, pulling himself away from a game of something called – as close as I could tell – Pour Every Toy in Isaac's Room onto the Floor and then Smash the Closest Car into the Closest Animal while Wearing a Fire Hat and Screaming, Isaac appeared in the living room again where baby was mewing and mamas were chatting. He had with him an old pacifier that was still kicking around his room, despite the fact that he hasn't used one since before he turned one. He offered it up to baby's mama.

“Oh! Thank you, Isaac!” she exclaimed. “For the baby? How sweet!”

She didn't notice that when he retreated that he was still lurking just around the corner within earshot.

“But I don't think I'm going to put it in her mouth,” she finished.

“Why?!” Iz whined, reappearing, his little broken heart on his sleeve.

“Oh, uh, um...”

I stepped in. “Iz, some babies don't use pacifiers when they are so little. Maybe she can use it when she's a little older. And maybe we can make sure it's really clean so it won't have any germs to make her sick.”

Later that night, Mike, Iz and I were in Iz's room and found ourselves absently twiddling with the same pacifier while talking about the day. I informed his dad how kind Isaac had been earlier, trying to offer it to the baby. Dad cooed over the gesture. I hadn't mentioned that the baby didn't use it or what Isaac had overheard, trying just to reinforce the praise for the intention. Isaac, staring intently down at the dark blue nipple said only, “I'm going to get this thing clean. Somehow, I'm going to get it really clean.”

he has his limits

Take One:

Isaac has been creating metaphors left and right as per his poetic usual.
(his bitten toast) "Mama! It's a boat!"
(the stamen of a calla lily flower) "It has a carrot inside!"
(the water filter faucet) "Look, Mama! A letter J!"
(cheerios stuck together in stepped pattern) "It's like stairs!"

Finally, it is almost 6 o'clock and we are both waiting impatiently for Daddy to get home. I lie back on the grass in the front yard.
"Isaac, what do the clouds look like today?"
"White."

Take Two:

After a full day of cars talking to each other ("I'm a forklift. I pick up big, heavy things. Watch! Wanna come to my house?") and the wee men Isaac begs me to make with my fingers reading imaginary books to each other and watching rubber whales splash into the ocean (living room rug), and cooking strawberry shortcake soup (granola in a sauce pan on the coffee table), it's bath time.

We go looking for the pieces of Isaac's camping set to join him for bath play. It includes a little plastic man, plastic boy, tent, fire, cot, and dog. Can't find the boy. Mama grows tired of looking and eyes the clock.

"Maybe when you get in your bath, Iz, the man and the dog can talk about where the boy is. Maybe that can be part of their conversation."

My son looks at me, head lowered, eyebrows lifted. "Dogs say like 'woof-woof,' like that, Mama. Dogs can't talk."

"Right, Iz. I forgot. Sorry."

more garden

I'm struggling with photo location on upload here, but anyway. you'll notice they are all closeups. sometimes I don't want to see the dump trucks and the baseballs and the plastic shovels. and sometimes I feel guilty for planting as a renter. my poor plants. uprooted again and again or left behind. what kind of mother am I?

Earth Day in my garden

heard it from a friend who...

There are certain trademarked music classes for children out there – if you are a parent of a young child you likely know what I'm talking about. They are the ones where parents participate and a REALLY HAPPY teacher sings and doo-doots continually, sometimes a capella, sometimes along with recorded music. And children get a chance to “explore” instruments for about 30 seconds before we say “bye-bye, instruments” and practice putting them away again and begin to sing some infernal ditty, each transition - to a standing dance, to a lap clap play, to whatever else, come up so quickly and suddenly it feels like channel surfing between “Soul Train” and some kind of Walt Disney marathon.

People swear by these classes; there is talk about brain development and music's pivotal role; there is a lot of smiling.

Yesterday, there was a free trial class of one of these puppies. I heard it from a friend who had been going and liked it alot. Isaac and I had nothing better to do in the afternoon and I hadn't been to something like this since he was an infant and surely they were different for this age and sure, I'll come.

We got there more than fashionably late. The remaining 20 minutes of the class were the longest 20 freaking minutes I can recall in this lifetime. If I ever, EVER, mention the IDEA of POSSIBLY attending one of these flipping things again EVER, and if you care about me or my child at all, you will rush to where I live and tie me to a towering redwood with steel cable.

Can I just mention that if I get the bug up my butt to flap around the room clucking like a chicken, I'm perfectly content to do so in the privacy of my own living room without the leadership of a paid professional? Can I also mention that as we entered the room where synapses were audibly snapping into place for the adults marching high-kneed in a circle exuding disingenuous joy while several children made a play fort under a folding table, that my son gripped my arm with something like the fright one might feel when chased by demons made terrible in our dreams?

I know it's just the craziest thing, but whenever possible, I take my son to music ... in the real world. We are exploring things with Isaac. He hates theaters – the dark, the crowd, so we find outdoor venues or other places we can come and go from. So far, he enjoys harmonies, people singing live in front of him without too much loud music accompanying. At one recent festival, he sat all the way through a gospel session.

I have to say, as unhappy and unidentified with the Christian tradition as I am, I adore gospel. I'm a sucker for a great voice and damn if people singing gospel don't feel the passion in what they are sharing. Afterwards, one of the singers asked Isaac if next time he'd come up and sing with them on stage. My son, who speaks to no one he doesn't know for less than a day, who has yet to answer the favorite stranger question “What's your name?” straightened up, smiled at her and said, “When I get bigger!”

I'd like to think that teaching my child what authentic interaction looks like trumps letting him play with disinfected cymbals for half a minute once a week.

Maybe I just have a wee problem with people telling me what to do and how to feel about it, and with selling the like to my son. Maybe the idea is to move and do what you feel when and if you feel it – to find music you emotionally connect with – to, dare I say it again, find the company of others you emotionally connect with.

The other day, I was working in a café where they were blasting the most ridiculous line up of horrible 80s music – REO Speedwagon, Journey, Billy Idol, some Fleetwood Mac thrown in. God, I loved it. I felt like I was flying sitting there in front of my laptop. My head started bobbing involuntarily. I could barely keep from singing. I glanced over at the business woman in the celery-colored camisole and black eye-liner at the table next to me, who was flipping through important looking folders while the men with her in their onyx-shiny shoes spoke seriously clunking their heavy watches down as they gestured. And I noticed, is she? yes, I think so! She was mouthing the words. Home is where you find it.

...they say you got a boy-friend
and you're out late every week-end...

earth day soap box

Earth day is approaching. Here's an NPR report from today. Number one reason I am a vegetarian.

restlessness

And the little bears growl to each other, “He's mine,
As soon as he's silly and steps on a line.”
And some of the bigger bears try to pretend
That they came round the corner to look for a friend;
And they try to pretend that nobody cares
Whether you walk on the lines or squares.
But only the sillies believe their talk;
It's ever so portant how you walk.
-- from “Lines and Squares,” When We Were Very Young, A. A. Milne

How do you know when it's time to make a change? Do you make changes or wait for them? If I want to leave behind the psycho Western frenzied tradition of do do do more more more, do I solve that by hurrying up and doing something? I can only change myself but I seem to be in a marriage with someone else. Must he be informed of the change? Agree with it? Embrace it too?

How do I write about a restlessness I can't really define? How do I explain the feeling that has followed me for several years now that something big has to shift in my life for me to feel like I'm living it? How do I find my peaceful, slower pace in a home surrounded by natural beauty without becoming even more isolated from the friends I already have to turn myself inside out to manage to see at all?

I started my job two years ago. So much has changed for me in those two years and my heart isn't in the writing the way it once was. It takes away from my time to do poetry and essay writing and submitting and revising and and and. There is no dedicated time for any of these. How can that be? In 38 years I haven't figured it out? Why don't I just quit my job and write? (I can answer that in 3000 words or less, but is it a valid answer? I may be forced to address this in another entry.) But this newspaper writing job, it's crept in to lend me a type of identity again. It feeds me free tickets to other people's evenings of creative expression and I want that to continue. Is that good enough? Is it good enough a reason to not do my own writing?

How do you know when it's time to make a change? I've actually caught myself on more than one occasion while looking at the pile of dollar store writing pads I use to scribble interview notes from my discussions with would-be stars and unquoteable executive directors thinking that maybe I'll only keep doing this job for as long as the paper lasts (double-sided of course, we love our trees). Once that runs out – that's it! I'm not buying any new ones. Like my vegan friend who, after his inspired conversion, continued to wear his leather shoes until they wore out, then – no more. His philosophy makes a hell of a lot more sense than mine. The infantile notion at work in my brain here, makes me think I am some bizarre form of human or at a stage of arrested development I could only dream of before or maybe just totally screwed up. I imagine watching the paper dwindle, judging the right time to give notice by the thickness of the pad on my desk. But how do you know? What do you do? What do you not do? Will life spin me around when it's time, like whipping me through a revolving door, on the other side, a new universe for me, my path through the singing daisies clearly marked? Doubtful. This isn't really about whether or not I'll write next year's Beer Festival article. How do you know? Active? Passive? Contemplative? Meditative? Gradual? Sudden?

jury duty

“I have to find something to really make me look like an engineer,” Mike said this morning while looking through his closet, “so they don’t pick me.”

He grinned widely and pulled out an olive green short –sleeved button down shirt and UPS-brown pants. (I didn’t even want to go near him.)

Then, he was off to jury duty.

This has been a dilemma for me ever since three and a half years ago when I got that letter in the mail and showed up at the courthouse only to be told to go home before 9 a.m. I was barely pregnant and afraid I might throw up on someone official that could take it the wrong way. It was still a dilemma for me when, just earlier this year, I wrote an eloquently dramatic letter stating the reasons it was impossible for me to serve on a jury, like how I needed to care for my son, who was not yet three at the time. All the reasons I stated were quite true and veiled me with a kind of melancholy about the job I do, alone, as mom every day.

But the root of the dilemma is that I believe mothers of young children have to be excused from jury duty whenever necessary, and yet, that means that a significant portion of the population, a portion of which I am a member and about which I feel strongly when it comes to needing more voice and less isolation in our society, ends up excluded from the public end of the justice system.

Has anyone researched this? Likely, but I don’t have time to look for it. It’s an NPR story waiting to happen.

I’m not saying I’d be thrilled to serve on a jury. (Though think of the writing it could produce!) But I do know that something our penal system could benefit from is the warmth and wisdom of a mom.

National Poetry Month

We're almost two weeks into National Poetry Month. Have you hugged a poet today?

NYC is even sponsoring a Poem in Your Pocket Day, April 17. Makes a person want to get up and move across the country.

But as it is, I just updated my "What We're Reading" sidebar, which is really all I could manage and while I should have chosen a poetry book for Isaac's too, I'm inconsistent and my rug is unvaccumed and I'm lucky if I remember to eat, though judging by the way my jeans are fitting, you'd think I don't have any problem, and I have to go pick up my son, and I looked on line for this Sharon Olds poem I really like but I can't find it and it's called "The Sound"and then I considered her poem "The Pope's Penis" but I don't have time to answer hate mail and there's this line, this LINE in the Sound poem that goes "We improvise on the edge of milk and sleep" and well, shit, I don't even know what it means, but I wish I wrote it.

May your day be wild with poetry.

grandmom

Alright, I'm starting to feel guilty.

My mom keeps blogging away about our visit there last week and I'm talking about gophers and urine-soaked carpet.

She kept asking me if we should “get together” on what we were going to blog about regarding our experiences. Ain't she cute? Thinking our ideas might overlap.

My mom writes about days and lives and lifetimes. I write about moments. It's the same thing, really. And not.

I can't believe she didn't post this picture of laughing Isaac from the trip; it's my favorite.

We see our families so rarely it's difficult. It's difficult not to have them. It's difficult figuring out how to see them. It's difficult to leave. I've written about past encounters with grandmothers and the like when Isaac was an infant. The real reward of this trip was that Iz is finally at the age when he can start remembering all these far away people who love him.

We have our photos running as a screen saver on our computer. All I have to say about the matter is, if it's been once it's been a thousand times this week that Isaac has called to me frantically “Mama, come! Come, Mama!” Thinking the cat must be on fire, I race into the living room where my son is leading over the arm of the couch grinning like he's waiting for the parade to pass by. He points to the computer screen where inevitably some picture ancient or recent of my mom is fading onto or off of the screen. “Look, Mama!” he squeals, “It's Grandmom!”

my kid the drunk

Isaac seems to be suffering from blackouts. He wakes from naps with his bed soaking wet and claims not to know how it happened. “Me not sure how my pants get wet! Hmm. Dat kinda funny, huh, Mama?”

Hilarious.

Yesterday, Mike went in to find him on the floor of his room, his pants around his ankles, asleep in a puddle. In that magical space between the dream and waking worlds, the pile of pajamas next to his dresser looks so much like a toilet. You can understand.

Other times, it's even wackier.

“Isaac, how exactly is it that your underwear is perfectly dry and your pants are sopping wet?”

“Me donno.”

“And why does monkey smell like pee?”

“Ew, montey 'mell wike pee-pee!”

Truly, I can often not begin to piece together the series of events that lead to these kinds of findings. Bed wet, kid dry. Kid wet, rug soaked, underwear no where to be found. Underwear dry, pants wet, bed dry, kid peeing in toilet. The distinct smell of urine, no physical evidence. Etc.

In the past, I have posted entries about coming upon what feels like a crime scene, me the detective, and about something I referred to at the time as “QP.” Lately, I'm starting to think my kid is just a drunk.

Why can't the child employ these mysterious methods of relieving himself in the middle of the night? Once in a damn while, at around 3 am, I could use him to just take a whiz in his closet and fall peacefully back to sleep in whatever state of undress and poor hygiene he'd like. But noooooo.

(2:41 am)

“Mama! MAMA!”

“Wha?”

(the bathroom door – directly opposite my bedroom - swings open slamming BAAM into the wall)

“MAMA! Me haffa go pee pee!”

“Wha? ... Oh, uh-huh. ... Who? ... Okay, I'm awake now.”

“Me not need help.”

“Great, Isaac. Thanks for letting me know.”

Encounter

(This entry needs pictures, perhaps they will come next.)

There were new holes in the garden. A lot of them. Some of my most gorgeous poppies, complementing the blue daisy bush thing, (whatever that is) were weeping and languid.

That little bastard. He's lucky he's so cute.

Of course, I am speaking about my gopher.

I'd gone to the Mexican grocery store, bought the biggest bag of the hottest peppers they had – chile de arbol. “Estos son los mas picantes, verdad?” I ask the clerk stocking produce. (“These are the hottest ones, right?”) He looks at me, first with confusion, then with what appears to be sympathy. “Si,” he says, slowing returning to his gigantic pile of papaya. But you know he's thinking. Ay, gringita, dju can' hannle dee hottest pep-pears.

Look, I'm trying to be humane and eco-friendly here. Plus, let's be honest, Mike once stomped his foot to frighten away a gopher and Isaac, witnessing this horror, cried for an hour. And I read it somewhere. Hot peppers in the gopher holes. I was okay with it. Isaac was okay with it. Mike laughed at me, but come on, it could've worked.

Unfortunately, I think I only succeeded in educating the palate of my little garden guest.

Mike suggested sticking the hose down the holes and turning on the water full blast so as to try collapsing the tunnels and spur a move out. The last time I'd tried this technique, the hose disappeared – no lie – eight and a half feet underground.

I needed a miracle, but instead I went out this morning, tossed my once-beautiful poppies in the compost and shoved the hose down the biggest hole. When lo and behold, out scrambles little mister small, grey and very wet. He ran through the back garden and I followed him with the hose, not having a clue what to do.

I decided I'd try to trap him under a pot and then...I dunno. I couldn't take my eye off him. I needed help. I yelled in the door for Mike then quickly returned to the chase. He'd disappeared, but a spray of the hose over the suspected area produced a little running rodent again. He jumped into the open square of a cinderblock. I ran to the door to scream for Mike again, but no one heard me. I returned just in time to see the bugger dig his way under the deck.

And as I slunk back inside, who was sitting at the door begging to go out – Emily cat. Damn. Why didn't I think of that sooner?

To My Esteemed Professional Contacts

freedom
free enterprise
free-fall
free-floating
free-for-all
free-form
free-hand
freehold
freelance – a) a knight or roaming soldier available for hire by a state or commander b) one who acts independently without regard to party lines or deference to authority c) one who pursues a profession without long-term commitments to any one employer
free-living
freeload
free love
free lunch

Esteemed Colleagues and Contacts (e.g. the woman at the box office of the theater that regularly pisses me off anyway and the city official in charge of the 3,184th annual street fair of blahdeeblah, you know who you are):

I did mention, didn’t I, that it was my HOME number I gave you, right? And that might suggest that perhaps I work AT HOME, right? And if you know anything about the state of affairs of our print media, you might suspect that that also suggested I am a freelancer, right? Which could mean – I’m just hypothesizing here – that I have a life outside of my job and could even, though I know it’s a bit hard to swallow, keep irregular hours…right?

So why when you get the answering machine with the three-year-old roaring like a dinosaur would you assume you have the wrong number? And honestly, don’t you find it a bit silly that just a wee little roar could send you scrambling in every direction to find my “real” number – frantic emails to my editor, repeated hang-ups on my machine, pleas for the number to the cell phone I never get to in time and that I consistently forget to charge?

How little it takes to rattle you. How narrow your imagination, that you can’t envision your local arts writer also mother to a prehistoric beast such as this.

In case you are ever interested, in case you might want to ask me a question or two, my larger reality can be reached at 555-ROAR.

pining

I do the best I can for the boy.

But ask me to pull from my days beauty? From the trip to the doctor's office, where a babe asleep over his mother's shoulder goes into the room next door, is awoken by cold instruments, screams and screams, the walls so white as to blind? From the rooster my neighbor keeps, raking the grass, crowing day and night, the poor bird pining for a barn, a field of dirt marked with grain? I cannot make beauty nor sense of this.

There is nothing to speak of here, just a mid-afternoon nap if I'm lucky, just a moment to pour the tea. His blonde curls undo me, his questioning why. I am only his mother and tomorrow is like today and I don't know, I don't know.

Pavlov's bitch: An ode to sea salt and vinegar Kettle Chips

I hated the giant seminar class in college.

All the talk about behavioral psychology coming towards our slumped figures wedged into auditorium seats – mice made to do this; people made to do that. No, I'd think, you're leaving something out. This isn't the whole story.

And of course it wasn't. I didn't have to know what the “else” was to know it most certainly was. It would happen over and over again in my life, people presenting “the” way while I shuffled to the left trying to see what else was hidden behind their backs.

“People work in offices 9-5.” Freelancing from your living room? “Educational research requires statistically significant results and empirical evidence.” What's an ethnographic case study?

Lies of omission.

But still, here I am, PMS Diva. Just the thought of turning down the chip aisle sends my saliva glands going. Then, when I see the bag, I am all animal and remembered patterns.

It's science like they kind they sell in undergrad seminars, food like the kind they sell at the 7-11 down the block from your dorm at 2 a.m. while you're studying for your midterm on Skinner.

And I'm okay with that. It means at least something I learned stuck.

wanna-be writer approaches the literary journals on a recent bookstore browse

Even before I get close enough to touch them, I sense their disapproval, covers closing tighter around their pages.

I'm at the door of the clubhouse trying to read the list of rules hung on the branch outside.

Their back covers read like inside jokes I don't get. Their tables of contents dare me with a smirk. The fresh, new poetry dances this way and that on the pages, never stopping too long in any one column, on any one thought. But more, the bright white leaves are heavy with prose, glossy with art, the verse ducks and weaves as I flip through, so as not to be fully discovered.

The only reason they are letting me sit at their lunch table is so they can make fun of me later. And I tap the books once, twice, on the heel of my palm, thinking, miserable, awkward, before replacing them in their slots – all the prom queen's court lined up on the float – and walk away. It is my only chance at salvation.

everything he needs to know...

Check off another lesson learned.

Mike was cleaning out the garage yesterday when Isaac grabbed an empty plastic container and while simultaneously demonstrating announced to no one in particular, "You take junk, and you put it in there, and you close it up!"

books

So it needs work aesthetically, but what I want to say is there. To the left. My newest bit on my sidebar. "What We're Reading."

the elephant cake

Today is Isaac's third birthday. Happy birthday to my not-so-baby. And happy birth day to me.

This day marks an enormity of change I am still coming to terms with, and still, I look outside and the world moves along in its routines as if nothing special occurred at all. I admit to feeling a bit disconcerted.

If I were a normal person, an eloquent blogger, or a mother in line with the social mores of other mothers, this is where you would find a long entry filled with irresistible pictures that began “Dear Isaac” and waxed on and on about all the ways my son has brought joy into my life over the last three years. I am none of those things listed above, however.

What I am on this day is overly emotional, sick with a head cold, and pissed as hell at my husband, again.

In three years, I am no closer to knowing how to deal with tiffs or blow ups or any other form of argument. In trying not to traumatize my son, I attempt not to fight in front of him which usually means I hold things in and then, we... what? discuss it rationally in all that free leisure time we enjoy by ourselves? Yeah, right! I add it to the last three things that I wanted to choke him for and it all bottles up until I'm ready to chew through steel. And it's not as if there are not fewer arguments after you have a child, there are more, MANY, MANY MORE. Should I name some topics? No, I won't bother, the list is long and tedious, let's just suffice to say we fight about how to fight too.

What makes me maddest of all is that if I want to resolve anything, I will have to be the one big enough to bring things up again because darling dear is fond of the method by which you just wait quietly until such a time as things die down on their own, when your sweet wife lets things go and begins to look at you without glaring and speak to you without gritting her teeth. Men are chicken shit.

Besides the little party we gave Isaac on Monday at home, they celebrated on his real day today at preschool with his friends there. Mike and I were invited to attend the ceremonies, for which we provided a cake - Isaac's second homemade cake in three days, baked and decorated, of course, by his father. Anyone who knows three-year-olds can tell you if ask them a question about what they want , you will get myriad answers over time. Isaac wanted strawberry, apple, chocolate cakes in shapes ranging from rectangle to jungle animal.

His newest request as of bedtime last night was a chocolate elephant. “Okay,” Mike pronounces nonplussed.

A few minutes later he shows me the plans he's drawn up on paper. In a carefully measured engineering feat, my dear husband has designed an elephant out of a single round cake pan. The real thing came out well, like every other bloody thing Mike does.

So at preschool today, after we watched some games and took some pictures, the kids all sat at their places for cake. Isaac's teacher passed me the knife to start divvying it up. And as I looked down, there is was again, staring right at me, the elephant in the room.

snow

“We have to be on our best behavior,” Mike said solemnly. “Isaac might remember this forever.”

We were on our way toward the southern entrance to Yosemite. We had voluntarily left our sunny, 60+ degree weather of California's central coast to drive three hours to snow. Is there no end to parental sacrifice?

“What are you talking about?” I asked my husband for the hundred-millionth time over the last three years.

“Well, I remember when I was three and my parents took me to play in the snow.”
I just nodded. I didn't bother reminding him he also has memories from when he was still in a crib because he is an UNNATURAL FREAK.

On the phone, the hotel had told us there is a snow park between them and Yosemite. Armed with two different friends' recent stories of visiting such places, we had visions of gliding along on rented snow shoes while pulling Isaac on a sled and watching kids of various ages toss snow balls between ice forts and try their hand at snow boarding. Awesome. We were set.

We drive through the town of Los Banos - past Olinda's Restaurant, Johnnie's Cleaners and Rooney's Liquors, and toward the town of Oakhurst and Danny's Pizza. (I don't know if any baby name books take this into consideration. If you want to help shape your offspring's commercial destiny, think about what name you pick. “Olinda's Pizza” just doesn't sound appetizing somehow, and “Johnnie's Restaurant” makes my arteries clog just musing on it. And, well, I don't think Quinton will be going into business at all, or if he does, he'll hide behind names like “Second Street Grill” or “West End Jewelers.” But, as usual, I digress.)

After sleeping for the first hour and a half of our journey Isaac woke up in order to spend the following hour and a half craning his neck and whining desperately “Me can't see the snow!”
After a wrong turn that cost us about 40 minutes more of this charming predicament, we landed at our Comfort Inn where the woman at the desk has no knowledge whatsoever about the snow park except that it did in fact exist.

It's late so we save the park for tomorrow. For tonight, we head up the hill just far enough until suddenly and miraculous snow begins to appear at which point we pull over and venture into it. At first Isaac is enthralled. Then, he becomes fearful, afraid he will sink too far into the snow and refuses to walk any further without being carried. I am slightly deflated by his reaction, but also accustomed to his odd anxieties and short-sighted sense of adventure.

The next morning everyone at the hotel's continental breakfast crowds the waffle makers in their goofy pants that come up too high and swish-swish as they walk. They have important places to go. These are snow people.

We ask the new clerk behind the desk about the snow park which, by all accounts is a mere 20 minutes away. She also claims to know nothing. By now, Oakhurst hospitality has us in the palm of its hand. We blush with the warmth of it and head out.

The conditions are perfect: the sun is shining, the roads are completely clear, there is only snow where there is supposed to be snow – glistening among the trees, on the rooftops. We pass an inn with a large sign outside it that says “Vegetarian Menu.” Our lunch, post snow, is in the bag.

Then comes the sign that reads “Snow Play Area 2 miles.” In only a few moments I expect to see a Disney Land of snow appear on my right. Kiosks of fried food and piles of those saucer sleds, each in a rainbow of colors. And finally, there it is – except it's another sign, “Snow Play Area 1 mile,” with an arrow that points off the road and up the hill. “CHAINS REQUIRED” another sign reads. Well, obviously they mean when (as my son would say) “'now coming down from da sky.” We start up.

About three-fourths of the way we encounter some ice on the road, but it's no big deal. And then, ah, at last, our resort paradise...A meadow. Goat Meadow, to be exact. Goat Meadow Snow Play Area. Which is, a meadow. Nothing more. Nothing less. A couple SUVs were unloading sleds and kids and boots. There was no piped music, no fried food. There were a few snowmen leftovers and trees. And there was snow.

“Okay! Let's go!” I chime, not letting on to Isaac that I was completely counting on a lodge with a fire, or at least an ice rink and some cocoa.

This snow is packed down at least and Isaac loses his fear of sinking in. He requests to build a snowman with his dad while I pull the old, flattened carseat box out of the trunk to attempt a sled. After a while some people take pity on us and lend us their real sled. Isaac goes down a little hill with me once and pronounces himself all done. He returns to his snowman. I take the damn sled and do a few runs myself. We putter about, take another family's picture and then decide it's lunchtime.

I'm feeling proud of us and how we made the best of things, how we got our boy to the snow he's talked about for months, how no one yelled at anyone else, how I'm completely comfortable with this being Isaac's forever memory, as we start our 1-mile descent to the highway.

Not far into it we have to stop. There's a truck in the way. Mike gets out to see what the issue is. -- A backup has formed coming up the hill because the big-ass four wheel drives can't fit by each other without sliding. The ice I thought would be gone in the noon sun is still there and it's causing problems for the burly men with Harley tees and chains on their tires, and, by extension, us. They are trying to convince the people on their way up the hill to back up again to no avail.

Half an hour goes by. Men get in and out of their trucks. No one moves. I mention to one of the men sliding by that I saw the sheriff's pick up parked at the top. Okay, he says, he's off to go get him. Next thing you know, the sheriff's truck appears in our rearview mirror. Saved? ... It loses traction and slams into the Honda behind us, almost causing a domino effect. Another half hour goes by.

We could stay here for days if we needed to. Our car is chock-full of food. Not to mention clothes – piles of it, clean and dry, none of it worn. I packed for a different family, a different child – one that would roll in the snow and giggle when he sank up to his thighs, who would beg to take one more sled ride before we left. But this is Isaac, the kid who, at the first strike of the Taiko drum screamed and climbed his father in terror, then had to be carried out of the theatre to watch the first half of the show on a TV monitor in the lobby before going home to bed. Even when he counts something a good experience, there's the sense that enough is enough. He returned from swimming with his dad not long ago with the excited announcement, “Mama! Me go down the slide!” followed quickly by “Me never doing that again!”

The men, who are once again, convened outside on the ice, my husband included, (Oh, how they must love their job of being men. Doing men things. Talking men talk. Folding and unfolding their manly arms.) suddenly break apart and head to their separate vehicles. “What? What is it?” I ask, peering out of the homestead and straightening my bonnet. “We think we heard an engine start.” Mike stations himself behind the wheel. When suddenly, the smallest Who down in Whoville started to sing:

“Me haffa go poopy, Daddy.”

“Can you hold it for a little while?”

“Michael.”

“Well this is the kind of thing that makes things go. When things start moving, they start moving, if you know what I mean.”

“Michael, take the child in the woods.”

Reluctantly, he does. So at least Isaac's memory of the snow will not be pooping in his pants.
By the time they get back, we are moving as promised.

At the bottom, trucks are parked everywhere. Why isn't anyone leaving? Another ranger is there and he approaches the car. “I need your license and registration.”

“Excuse me?”

“You're the ones who caused all this!”

“What???”

“No chains.”

Strangely, like most of us when we are falsely accused, my husband has trouble sticking to the charge at hand, but instead, as if defending his supposed guilt blurts, “The sheriff didn't have chains either!”

“Four-wheel drive.”

I wonder if this man always talks like this, in short, accusatory phrases, this sheriff of Mariposa, this sheriff of Butterfly.

He continues to make his rounds, notifying others of their crimes, and when he returns to collect the license and registration, he seems cheery, empathic, even. Perhaps he is heartened by the thought of his badge number on all those citations. “Current insurance?...Okay! No problem! I'll be right back.”

No problem! I'll be right back with your fine!

I say this out loud of course and the other sheriff, the one with no chains and four-wheel drive who slid into the Honda smirks at me.

“Why we stopping?” Isaac wants to know.

“We're going soon, honey. First we have to wait for the nice officer to give us a ticket.”
At last we are free of it all and headed below 6,000 feet. We are still buoyant about the vegetarian lunch place, but as we approach the turn, a woman waves us down. “He's stuck. He's sliding.” She points to a giant four-wheel drive about 100 yards ahead.

“Thanks! Don't say another word.”

But the Who had this to say: “Me want to go back hoooome.”

holding out hope

It's hard to live in this world.

At times, it is hard to accept that this is the only world I have to hand to my child. Yet, the world holds out hope, though in the oddest of ways.

It is not the same way we hold out hope. Not like crossing its fingers and praying - “maybe this time...” It's more like hope is a carrot the world tied to a stick. It leads us around as we bump into furniture, conflicting philosophies, paradoxes beyond our comprehension. We follow the carrot of hope because what else can we do? There is no other path but to starve.

The world holds out hope in the form of soft, rolling green hills, the kind people compare to women's bodies, and the way the horses standing on those gorgeous hills look so terribly, terribly sad.

Its hope looks like walking past the day laborers in front of the 7-11 still waiting at noon on a Friday, men with dark hair under ballcaps, cowboy hats, hoods, half of whom are sitting on the curb scratching lottery tickets. The oddest of ways.

The little yellow plane glides magnificently, tilting on its dragonfly wings, then zips over the highway and back toward the fields. It is magic in the sunlight. And it is only then that I see the trail of white begin, as it rains poison onto young leaves, and the world holds out hope in the oddest of ways.

There is Isaac, peppering his Valentines with stickers of black cats and pumpkins. There are no rules, no borders. His freedom rushes at me like a gust of wind that steals your breath and I have no conscious memory of ever feeling that free, but I must have. I must have. So I long for it, reach back blindly, groping, hope to bump into it in the dark of the day.

a funny thing happened on my way to CA

The other day I was talking on the phone to a friend. A friend from California. We started laughing, cracking up about some dumb thing. It was a joke that pretty much made fun of both of us, grabbed up each of our idiosyncrasies and ran for the goal posts. I noticed the moment (because I notice everything; I’m a writer and) because it was unusual, this moment.

And that’s when it hit me. I don’t laugh here.

When I complain about how I miss my friends or how besides the fact that I love where I live, for being somewhere nine and a half years, we still have hardly any close friends, no one that shares our daily muck, what I’m talking about to a large extent is this absence of inside jokes, HUMOR.

Here’s my disclaimer about how I think California rules and I am the first to ponder groovy inner paths, visit retreats featuring meditation halls and yoga classes, and use the word Zen as a verb. But, people, circling toward nirvana is sometimes just not funny. Look, I’ve got west coast in me - my guests threw granola at my wedding, for goodness sake! Okay, so maybe it was a little tongue in cheek (although my father-in-law who has no excuse because he’s from Massachusetts thought the honey-coated seeds in a little satin bag placed in his hand were a snack, but that’s another story all together). Actually, now that I think about it, I think the granola could have been the last really funny thing we did since moving here.

A couple years ago in a writing group I was in we were critiquing a poem I’d brought about my pregnancy which included the line “the child inside me…” One woman’s helpful comment was that the line was ambiguous because people might think I was really talking about my “inner child.” My response? ONLY HERE, FREAK. ONLY IN THIS SPACE. (AND WHEN I SAY SPACE, I WANT YOU TO FLUTTER YOUR HANDS ABOUT YOUR HEAD TO INDICATE YOUR AURA, THE OTHER AURAS INTERACTING WITH YOUR AURA AND THE COSMIC ESSENTIAL BEINGS OF ALL CREATURES, WHATEVER PLANE THEY MAY BE ON BECAUSE WE WISH THEM ALL THE BEST ON THEIR PATH.)

And believe me, I do wish you all the best on your journey, but if you are going to wear THAT HAT for the trip, I am GOING to make fun of you along the way. It’s just that, for now, I seem to have forgotten how.

I wrote a blog about my bi-coastal ambivalence before – here it is. I’m not trying to say that the east coast is funnier than the west coast…exactly…but let’s just review the data. What if “Seinfeld” were set in California? Would it have been as funny? We’ll start north and move down my state –

Seinfeld in Sacramento? (I can’t think of a more humorless place.)
in San Francisco? (“not that there’s anything wrong with that”)
in Santa Cruz? (I don’t see George with a belly button piercing, but it might be funny if you were smoking that weed you got growing in your back yard.)
in L.A.? (The liposuction episode was cut early on.)
in San Diego? (Perpetually beautiful weather and a strong military presence. Not. Funny.)

A mom walks into a bar. Aw crap, no.

A mom walks into her therapist’s office. Definitely not funny.

A mom walks into her therapist’s office drunk. Ah. Now that has potential.

My current job of mom has things in my funny world all screwed up. While the stuff that comes out of a three-year-old’s mouth is some of the funniest material you will ever hear, you spend your day trying NOT to laugh so you don’t scar the kid into thinking you’ll mock his every thought.

Then there’s the other stuff they say – the stuff you want to sell them into hard labor for.

AND the OTHER, OTHER stuff, the stuff of the world that breaks your heart or pisses you off royally because you are a mom and you need to protect this child and the deeply magical qualities he is made of and you are appalled that others would do things to compromise his present state of wonder or his future, whatever that holds, and so you walk around with the figurative keys in one hand ready to gouge the eyes of anyone challenging you while the other hand is lotion-soft and there to cover the eyes of your baby in order to block out unwanted stimuli. As you can see, there isn’t a lot of time left in the day to be funny.

We passed Measure R (just one more endearing thing about my adoptive state, any election is fair game to get the general public to vote on every freakin’ thing someone ever called out in a town meeting). I hope the cops are happy. It means money for them. And although I would have preferred to have lit dollar bills on fire and shoved them up the asses of my local police force, I voted in favor of this measure. I can forgive the satellite station no one ever goes in or out of that’s surrounded by gang graffiti, oh sure. And the fact that there are never any fewer than three cops parked at the local coffee joint doesn’t bother me a bit, I just jimmy around the billy-clubs to get to the stirrers. No problem, boys, really, you make me feel all warm inside knowing you’re close. But then I got the mail one day…

There was a half-sheet color glossy plea for making our town better that featured a photo of one of the parks with glass in the fallen seed pods and paint jobs from the 1960s and another – my fave – of police in flak jackets aiming large automatic weapons into a house. Right away, I grew sympathetic to their cause and, obviously, I left it out on the coffee table so my two-year-old could pick it up and know who the good guys were. I wish the word MORONS had more syllables, so when I yelled it at the top of my lungs I could kind of yodel for extra effect.

I had a good mind to get my mama bear on, march into the station, and drag them around by the ears, maybe even scold them for not washing their hands and eating their veggies.

The truth is though that goofy things happen all day and while a day that regularly includes wiping poop off a small human’s butt has the potential to be simply hilarious, those friends are missing, the ones who get it, who aren’t consumed in wiping poop off other small humans’ butts, or who are and can crack a joke as the small human runs off still poopy and sits on the new couch. All in all, the key seems to be to have someone to share the joke with.

almost three

Okay, there have been better shots of the hair, but despite the fact that someone riding by us on the bike path yesterday called my son "princess," I'm not in favor of cutting his hair and either is he. I like it long. And it'll get longer, much to his father's dismay.

Thank you, Robin, for this picture.

blog roll

Okay, send them my way. The blogs. Recommend me a blog or two, not more than two for now, please. My mother has scolded me for having no blog roll. (Okay, I admit, I had to ask her what a blog roll was.) Send me your favorites and I'll check em out. I'd like more cross action on this durn thing. If anyone is out there...?
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In other news, it's election day here in CA. But then, as we all know, CA doesn't have a corner on that market today. I tell you, I was bursting with pride when I arrived at the church across the street - my voting hub - and found that American flag duct taped to the bricks outside. We went back to paper ballots apparently. I can't keep up.

In California, if you don't belong to a party like moi, you are allowed to vote in the Democratic primary but not the Republican primary. Not that I'm out there begging to pick a Republican, but the law could have interesting implications.

The Republican race feels like choosing a teeshirt color. (This is CLEARLY HYPOTHETICAL, BECAUSE WE WON'T ULTIMATELY CHOOSE ONE IN THE REAL ELECTION THIS TIME, RIGHT? RIGHT????) At first, it's harmless. There they all are, an amusing rainbow. As a pack the bold or weird or ugly balance each other. Some are eliminated off the bat -- army green or some pukey lemon green color that looks horrible on you (Giuliani...), but then you realize that one will have to stand without the rest, one will have to be everything you need. And while you thought the teal blue shade was mildly interesting in its own right (Romney), now you feel panicky, like that can't be the one and maybe you should pick a standard staple color like white (McCain), even though you have a closet full of those at home already. It's all so confusing and you liked it better when you felt like you owned them all, standing there in the store staring at the display, before you'd have to think about it for real, out on the streets of life.

what? are ya made of sugar?

Okay, look. I really can't take this any more.

I mean the way my brain is slowly but surely melting away to nothing. Ever since the dawn of parenthood my identity has been irrevocably shifted to - I still don't know what, my sensitivities have been heightened to unmanageable levels (Just saw Persepolis. It's amazing and torturously heartbreaking), and I can't spell for shit. Door nob? Door NOB? What-the hell-ever.

I'm dissolving.

It's been raining here for weeks. Truly, I can't quite believe there is that much rain to rain. Not that I'm complaining. We need it and it's good to write to and sleep to and it goes well with the hibernation of winter/introspective time of the year. I'm just worried that with everything else I have going against a semblance of self, the rain might be the final straw and I'll just melt away completely. The onlee traise of me lefft will be my jurnal floting in a puddel.

witness

Often, what I want more than anything in my day is a witness.

Someone around who understands the juggling act if not first-hand, then from just off to the side, who stands apart from the think-on-your-feet decisions and sees. Someone who can answer my husband with something less than murder in their eyes when he asks, "Why are you so tired?"

Someone to witness the clever ways I talk my child into brushing his teeth while getting myself dressed and writing a check for the rent. Doing a phone interview standing at the washing machine in the garage while Isaac naps. (Our house is so small and he is such a light sleeper, I'd wake him up anywhere else.) The lessons in everything from social protocol to neuroscience that spring from our book reading, water playing, phone ringing, daddy waiting, internet searching, cat vomiting, insane making days.

Luckily for you, you aren't that witness, and nor can I report my day minute by minute. But here is a moment in time, or, a mountain of moments all come together. I call it, My Coffee Table, An Inventory.

-- one hair tie
-- two newspapers
-- the alumni newsletter from my grad school
-- box of tissues
-- fliers for our neighborhood association
-- a door nob
-- Buddha by Karen Armstrong
-- The Sunny Side: Short Stories and Poems for Proper Grown-Ups by A. A. Milne
-- three stuffed dogs
-- a matchbox car
--Found Magazine
-- a Christmas card from Mike's college friend with a picture of him, his wife, and his FIVE daughters
-- a pressure gauge
-- a suction cup
-- a can of pink Playdoh
-- Offbeat Overnights: A Guide to the Most Unusual Places to Stay in California
-- How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry by Edward Hirsch
-- brochure for toddler gymnastics
--"Important Voter Information" for the California Primary Election
-- Day Hikes around Big Sur by Robert Stone
-- an inflatable fire truck
-- a purple seahorse magnifying glass
-- a paper hat
-- a paper cutter
-- a paper clip in the shape of a cat

Come by anytime. We'll have a cup of tea and I'll tell you about my day.

D and D

There are some men in this world for whom the question "Did you play Dungeons and Dragons as a kid?" is unnecessary. The answer is obvious. Recently, I was attempting to joke about one of these men with my husband, who is also one of these men.

Over the last three years, I've gotten lulled away from the "a boy?!?!" feeling I had when I was pregnant. And then, something like this occurs.

Mike: I can't wait to play D and D with Isaac!

Me: Oh, god. You have a nickname for it. You really want to drag my baby into that world?

Mike: It's that or memorize baseball stats - blehck!

Me: Those are the choices for you as males?

Mike: Well, we don't know any Nascar people.

Me: You guys are pathetic, simply pathetic.

fact

I can just look at my little boy and know unequivocally that he does not belong to me.

Sometimes I wish with great ferocity that he did, and other times I'm so relieved he doesn't I can barely keep from weeping. But either way, the fact remains.

I knew it early on, maybe even from the moment they placed his slick, pink body on mine, that although he is my son, he is a soul apart from me with his own gifts and purpose.

I am writing this down now in case there is a time I forget it, when I try to steer him toward something that is my challenge and not his, for when I am hunched over from trying to carry his pain. Even when I want it to be different, maintaining this clarity is helpful, dare I say, calming.

NPR blows it

Exactly one year from today, I will be having a "Mess With Texas" party, celebrating whoever and whatever is elected instead of the Neanderthal that's dragged his knuckles around Pennsylvania Avenue for WAY too long.

I needed to come out of blog hibernation on this auspicious date to register just how tired I am of the media's snide attitude toward Dennis Kucinich. I'm not naïve enough to think he'll win any elections in 2008, but he's the bomb and thank god he's out there and maybe someday he'll be president and why does everyone feel like it's okay to treat him like a child?

Here's the latest evidence – an interview on National Public Radio's “On the Media” in which Brooke Gladstone could hardly contain her contempt. Just listen to her questions and her tone. MSNBC broke their contract with Kucinich, barring him from a recent Democratic debate in Nevada. Period. Contract broken. Nevada Supreme Court ruled in favor of MSNBC. Kucinich claims MSNBC – owned by GE – might not want him up there talking about a nuclear free future, a stop to war. Could he have a point? Uh, YEAH. DUH.

When I looked up the link to the interview for this entry, I was at least heartened to see that the people who left comments on it seemed to agree with me that the questioning was offensive.

Look, NPR, we're all human, but don't blow it on me now. Are we ready for an African-American president? Are we ready for a woman president? Blah, blah, blah. Who the hell cares. The real questions are: Are we ready to treat each other with Dignity and Respect? Are we ready for Peace?

shadow life

It was a Saturday morning. The boys were at the dump, of course, and I was enjoying a leisurely shower without anyone barging in announcing on my behalf “All done! All done, Mama!”

Exiting the bathroom, I was jarred by a pounding on the door. Emily Cat and I both jumped and ran for the bedroom to wait it out. I figured it was just the usual – someone selling tamales or strawberries or Jesus. But the pounding came again. I peeked out to see a uniformed officer in the window.

Mr. Police Man is looking for someone who used to live at this address. He flashes me a wanted poster. Do I know him? Is he family?

This is not the first time I've fielded questions about people I've never met, but into whose shadow we have stepped. Back four addresses and three years ago, the place we lived was staked out while the cops determined whether we were telling the truth as to our lack of connection with the former tenant. (And that was the town where the cops are really bored – a source of panic in certain situations. Check out this flashback entry.)

Then there are the phone calls which have superseded our physical address. We've had our current number for two years now, but the creditors for the unfortunates who had it before us still call. Their tone is skeptical, as in, “You mean to tell me this is not the right number?” Dude, back off.

We are living just a step behind these lives that did not bask in a glowing spot light, but dashed off into the bushes to avoid a search light. They're just silly coincidences, I'm sure. And yet, I can't help but dwell (stick with what you do best). Is my family's association with criminality cool or creepy? (Lines are open; vote now!)

Isaac is very much in the stage where “pee-mans” are there to help people. He's not so up on the bad guy idea. He associates police with ambulances and fire engines which arrive to emergencies like when someone “goes boom down,” as well as their other official duties of delivering people to the “ha-iple” when they “no feel weal dood” and putting out “wires.” Isaac also often confuses police cars with taxi cabs. This worries me slightly, and so I feel like a police car camped in front of our house again could be a good thing – really seal the deal on the difference.

I'm not sure he'll get the chance to focus on cop vs cab, though. I think our link may be weakening. In this latest encounter, while standing in my doorway in a bathrobe before I even started shaking my head at the grainy black and white of a stocky bald man, the officer seemed to give up. He dropped the hand holding the paper as if it were weighted with cement. “Sorry to bother you,” he mumbled, and turned on his shiny black heels.