Real entries later (tonight or tomorrow depending on how bedtime goes). But a couple of responses to recent comments:
The word verification is because, yes, spammers have found my blog. I think it starts to happen when an entry gets more than 5 comments. But this should cut some of it out at least.
And ok, Sophia is doing just fine. It's hard to know--the girls on the block are very bright and also a bit older--one is going into first grade, for instance. And I don't have much else to compare to, and don't tell me that you don't compare your kids to other people or to standards because I don't believe it. And I do worry, probably needlessly, but I do, about the lead exposure early on with Sophia. So I tend to have a hair-trigger about the daydreaming and the motivation. But then again, today we had a dance class with Lindi down at Grace United Church of Christ and it was FABULOUS. Lindi was great and Sophia was really focused. One of those "yeah, duh, she WANTS to dance, of course she's paying attention" moments.
So enough about Sophia for now. Another great short-lesson/short-task day for me and for her and I'm tired from biking and need to get girls to bed!
Thursday, June 29, 2006
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
And Tomorrow, We Begin Again
I had a successful Benedictine day today. It’s 10:30 in the evening now and I have done everything I set out to do this morning and have a little time left over to write this. Those short lessons and breaking up the day really make a difference for me. I am not a lengthy meditation kind of gal. I don’t want to induce ADD in my children (thank you preschool teacher for making me nervous about that), but at the same time, I don’t want days to loom in front of them, drudgery without end.
I’ve been having Sophia draw a picture, using at least 5 colors, and then write a sentence with inventive spelling every day. There’s been a great deal of scaffold building in regards to the sentence writing. I’m trying to help her hear the sounds in the word, stretching the sounds out for her. I am not sure how much phonemic awareness she has, which may be tied to SLU’s original diagnosis of auditory processing problems. But I’m also not making a big deal about it. Like when pregnant moms come to me and say, “I’ve had breast surgery/no breast changes/my doctor told me I’m too small/big/deformed in some way to breastfeed” I don’t tell them, WOW, that’s not going to work!! I tell them something along the lines of all they can do is try and they may be pleasantly surprised at the outcome. I’m not focusing on the back-of-my-mind thought of “what is she isn’t a good reader?” and instead working on building a scaffolding on which she can really climb and find her way. Thank you SLU education department (that would be my degree, not the speech and language clinic, although they deserve other big thanks as well). [For a snoozy but comprehensive article on Vygotsky's theory of education, especially "scaffold building," click here]
And it’s working pretty well. The first sentence was “ET ES A VALE” (It is a valley) back at the beginning of June, when we switched gears from the curriculum to the summertime. Just the fact that valley is a vocabulary word is something. Yesterday’s sentence was “ThE PLAYGRAND HAS SWINGS”, which is self explanatory, and today’s is “ThIS IS LITL HAS EIN THE BIG WEZ” (This is Little House in the Big Woods). She is getting more comfortable with branching out and guessing (hence, “WEZ” for woods) instead of having me stretch each and every word out. Plus, today Paige was at the door waiting to play. That helps a lot.
She also doesn’t turn 5 until next month. We’re not stressing out, and we’re not doing things to the point of tears. It’s summer and all is well. She swam today, made editorial comments as I pulled down the trumpet vine off our fence, watched “Alice in Wonderland”, went to Hartford Coffee, and spent time with friends. We’re almost done with Little House on the Prairie, and tomorrow she starts a homeschool dance group. All is really well in the Sophia department.
And then there’s Maeve. Dirty, grungy, gutsy, no remorse Maeve. She is finally asleep (10:00, insane for her). Clean for the moment. She is saying things like “No mama sit” and “wawa me” (water for me). She already has twice the spoken vocabulary Sophia had at this age (reference, above, the SLU speech stuff).
So anyway, I biked to Schnucks for the few items I needed from there, and came home about 7:05 this evening. Went straight to the backyard, lay in the hammock, and watched the house finches find the feeders restocked. I read from my new favorite field guide, The Illustrated Book of Trees, by William Carey Grimm. Then I went to the shortest parish council meeting ever. I love our new pastor. I think he’s going to be really good, refreshing and solid, for St. Pius. Mike and I watched "Mad Hot Ballroom" after Sophia went to bed (and then took a break for Insane Maeve’s bedtime). I’m heading down there in a moment to see if he wants to continue or save for tomorrow night.
And tomorrow, we begin again.
I’ve been having Sophia draw a picture, using at least 5 colors, and then write a sentence with inventive spelling every day. There’s been a great deal of scaffold building in regards to the sentence writing. I’m trying to help her hear the sounds in the word, stretching the sounds out for her. I am not sure how much phonemic awareness she has, which may be tied to SLU’s original diagnosis of auditory processing problems. But I’m also not making a big deal about it. Like when pregnant moms come to me and say, “I’ve had breast surgery/no breast changes/my doctor told me I’m too small/big/deformed in some way to breastfeed” I don’t tell them, WOW, that’s not going to work!! I tell them something along the lines of all they can do is try and they may be pleasantly surprised at the outcome. I’m not focusing on the back-of-my-mind thought of “what is she isn’t a good reader?” and instead working on building a scaffolding on which she can really climb and find her way. Thank you SLU education department (that would be my degree, not the speech and language clinic, although they deserve other big thanks as well). [For a snoozy but comprehensive article on Vygotsky's theory of education, especially "scaffold building," click here]
And it’s working pretty well. The first sentence was “ET ES A VALE” (It is a valley) back at the beginning of June, when we switched gears from the curriculum to the summertime. Just the fact that valley is a vocabulary word is something. Yesterday’s sentence was “ThE PLAYGRAND HAS SWINGS”, which is self explanatory, and today’s is “ThIS IS LITL HAS EIN THE BIG WEZ” (This is Little House in the Big Woods). She is getting more comfortable with branching out and guessing (hence, “WEZ” for woods) instead of having me stretch each and every word out. Plus, today Paige was at the door waiting to play. That helps a lot.
She also doesn’t turn 5 until next month. We’re not stressing out, and we’re not doing things to the point of tears. It’s summer and all is well. She swam today, made editorial comments as I pulled down the trumpet vine off our fence, watched “Alice in Wonderland”, went to Hartford Coffee, and spent time with friends. We’re almost done with Little House on the Prairie, and tomorrow she starts a homeschool dance group. All is really well in the Sophia department.
And then there’s Maeve. Dirty, grungy, gutsy, no remorse Maeve. She is finally asleep (10:00, insane for her). Clean for the moment. She is saying things like “No mama sit” and “wawa me” (water for me). She already has twice the spoken vocabulary Sophia had at this age (reference, above, the SLU speech stuff).
So anyway, I biked to Schnucks for the few items I needed from there, and came home about 7:05 this evening. Went straight to the backyard, lay in the hammock, and watched the house finches find the feeders restocked. I read from my new favorite field guide, The Illustrated Book of Trees, by William Carey Grimm. Then I went to the shortest parish council meeting ever. I love our new pastor. I think he’s going to be really good, refreshing and solid, for St. Pius. Mike and I watched "Mad Hot Ballroom" after Sophia went to bed (and then took a break for Insane Maeve’s bedtime). I’m heading down there in a moment to see if he wants to continue or save for tomorrow night.
And tomorrow, we begin again.
Monday, June 26, 2006
The Ole Comfort Level Ain’t What She Used to Be
Just a short note before bedtime. I went to do the recycling this evening. We used to have curbside pickup, but we had to pay for it, and they didn’t take paperboard, which was too frustrating for me to pay for when there’s loads of the recycle containers around the city, including a block away behind the firehouse. So I gathered up my blue box filled with “commingled containers” and went on over to the firehouse.
When I got there, in the alley in front of the dumpsters was a homeless, or semi-homeless, man with a shopping cart and a cooler strapped to the top. Huge black bags filled with presumably aluminum cans were on each side of the cart. If you’ve lived anywhere near a city or have seen Time Magazine or a news report in the last 20 years, you know what this looks like. But no guy with the cart. I approach. There’s noise, and I realize that he’s in the dumpster, which is almost empty, and tossing aluminum cans on the alley.
I put my few newspapers in the paper bin and set down my blue box heavily. He looks up and says, “Oh, you got some cans?” I tell him I have a couple, and he jumps out of the dumpster. “I’ll help you do it,” he offers. We sort together, even though everything in my container goes into that dumpster. He pulls out the 3 cream soda cans left over from our Memorial Day trip, and the rest goes into the bin..
“Hey, my name’s Larry,” he says. “I’m sure you’ve seen me around.” He has only one front tooth
“Yeah, I’ve seen you around.” I have.
He jumps back into the bin. I take my blue box and head home, thinking how things have changed. How a homeless guy pushing a shopping cart is no longer a threat. I mean, he could have been dangerous, he could have pulled a knife on me or something, demanded money or worse. I mean, anyone could. But the fire station was right there, the lights were on inside, I know how to run. And maybe I don’t need to be afraid all the time.
“Yeah, you’ve seen me around.” he repeats, throwing cans out into the alley.
When I got there, in the alley in front of the dumpsters was a homeless, or semi-homeless, man with a shopping cart and a cooler strapped to the top. Huge black bags filled with presumably aluminum cans were on each side of the cart. If you’ve lived anywhere near a city or have seen Time Magazine or a news report in the last 20 years, you know what this looks like. But no guy with the cart. I approach. There’s noise, and I realize that he’s in the dumpster, which is almost empty, and tossing aluminum cans on the alley.
I put my few newspapers in the paper bin and set down my blue box heavily. He looks up and says, “Oh, you got some cans?” I tell him I have a couple, and he jumps out of the dumpster. “I’ll help you do it,” he offers. We sort together, even though everything in my container goes into that dumpster. He pulls out the 3 cream soda cans left over from our Memorial Day trip, and the rest goes into the bin..
“Hey, my name’s Larry,” he says. “I’m sure you’ve seen me around.” He has only one front tooth
“Yeah, I’ve seen you around.” I have.
He jumps back into the bin. I take my blue box and head home, thinking how things have changed. How a homeless guy pushing a shopping cart is no longer a threat. I mean, he could have been dangerous, he could have pulled a knife on me or something, demanded money or worse. I mean, anyone could. But the fire station was right there, the lights were on inside, I know how to run. And maybe I don’t need to be afraid all the time.
“Yeah, you’ve seen me around.” he repeats, throwing cans out into the alley.
Wrong Way Fable
I live on a one-way street. It’s only one-way for my block. Halliday Avenue, named for, I believe I read somewhere, an Ellen Halliday who was a landowner in the area back when they were picking street names. Our street had originally been Pocahontas or Powhatan or another Indian name, to match Shenandoah and Winnebago and all those other streets in south St. Louis. But now we’re Halliday. The street is only 5 blocks long, or maybe four—it depends on how far east it goes past Compton. The first 4 (or 3) blocks heading west from its headwaters are two-way streets. Then at Arkansas, the street becomes west-bound, emptying out onto Grand, where you can now only go northbound when leaving Halliday.
My neighbors and I are stoop people—we don’t hang out together predominantly in living rooms, garages, or backyards. Most of the time, if our kids are playing, we are on the stoops, the little sets of 3 to 5 steps between the yard level and the sidewalk level. I think this all started with the drug dealer surveillance back in 2004-2005, although it would also coincide with our kids being old enough to actually play without fear of them running out into the street. This stoop mentality is good from a neighborhood watch perspective, and it’s nice because at a glance, you can see who’s out and who might want to play.
So we watch a lot of stuff. We get to know contractors, like Anthony, get nosy about architects and wayward uncles who show up at odd hours, and notice the comings and goings of neighbors. We also watch a lot of cars head down our street going the wrong way.
There are signs at the foot of the street, big DO NOT ENTER and ONE WAY signs. I’m not sure what makes Halliday so attractive to drivers on Grand. Why not Pestalozzi one block south? Or wait and turn on Magnolia? It seems, too, that the wrong-way drivers are more clueless now than ever before. They don’t seem to notice all the parked cars that are facing them. All those headlight eyes and smiling grills staring at them breaking the law. Often, they don’t even look our way when we gesticulate wildly towards them, hands waving in the air, everyone yelling. It’s as if their cars are glass-bottomed boats and we’re just weird fish. We’re not something to interact with. Just to go past.
The worst part of the wrong way drivers is that the next intersection, Halliday & Arkansas, has only one stop sign, and that’s on Halliday, heading west. There isn’t a north or south-bound stop sign on Arkansas at all. We like it that way—it’s sort of a mental barrier against turning west onto our street. Hey, I don’t have to slow down her, the only block in 16 square miles without a stop sign! No way am I turning! I’ll turn later, when I have to stop. So we don’t get a lot of west-bound traffic (anymore—the drugs used to bring the taxis and the prostitutes, west-bound, but no longer). But the wrong way east-bound traffic gets to the top of Halliday at Arkansas and says those same things to themselves—hey, no stop sign! And proceeds to run through the intersection, risking the legal Arkansas drivers’ lives. Our last crash was this spring. And then today’s close call.
When I leave my house, west-bound, I get to Grand and, of course, since I have no choice, turn north. I then either go west on Magnolia down the park to “all stops west” or I turn east on Magnolia and loop around to Arsenal to head where I need to go. Today it was east on Magnolia, then wrap around onto Arkansas. Heading down to the parish rectory for a little board meeting that I don’t understand very well but keep attending. As I start to pick up speed on Arkansas, about to head past Halliday, here comes a light blue mini-van heading the wrong way on my street.
Kind of a dumb looking white guy in his early forties. Nobody else in the van. He sees me as I see him, and I start my wild gesticulating about wrong way (I need to learn that in sign language). Then in the split second it takes me to realize the whole no-stop-sign-he’s-going-to-hit-me situation, I stop motioning to him and slam on those brakes. I stop about a half a car’s length from his van. He looks at me like I’m the crazy one (which is probably true—but he’s the stupid one) and then continues on east-bound on Halliday. I go to my meeting.
The moral isn’t wry or ironic. It’s this: DON’T GO DOWN MY STREET THE WRONG WAY! I HATE THAT!
My neighbors and I are stoop people—we don’t hang out together predominantly in living rooms, garages, or backyards. Most of the time, if our kids are playing, we are on the stoops, the little sets of 3 to 5 steps between the yard level and the sidewalk level. I think this all started with the drug dealer surveillance back in 2004-2005, although it would also coincide with our kids being old enough to actually play without fear of them running out into the street. This stoop mentality is good from a neighborhood watch perspective, and it’s nice because at a glance, you can see who’s out and who might want to play.
So we watch a lot of stuff. We get to know contractors, like Anthony, get nosy about architects and wayward uncles who show up at odd hours, and notice the comings and goings of neighbors. We also watch a lot of cars head down our street going the wrong way.
There are signs at the foot of the street, big DO NOT ENTER and ONE WAY signs. I’m not sure what makes Halliday so attractive to drivers on Grand. Why not Pestalozzi one block south? Or wait and turn on Magnolia? It seems, too, that the wrong-way drivers are more clueless now than ever before. They don’t seem to notice all the parked cars that are facing them. All those headlight eyes and smiling grills staring at them breaking the law. Often, they don’t even look our way when we gesticulate wildly towards them, hands waving in the air, everyone yelling. It’s as if their cars are glass-bottomed boats and we’re just weird fish. We’re not something to interact with. Just to go past.
The worst part of the wrong way drivers is that the next intersection, Halliday & Arkansas, has only one stop sign, and that’s on Halliday, heading west. There isn’t a north or south-bound stop sign on Arkansas at all. We like it that way—it’s sort of a mental barrier against turning west onto our street. Hey, I don’t have to slow down her, the only block in 16 square miles without a stop sign! No way am I turning! I’ll turn later, when I have to stop. So we don’t get a lot of west-bound traffic (anymore—the drugs used to bring the taxis and the prostitutes, west-bound, but no longer). But the wrong way east-bound traffic gets to the top of Halliday at Arkansas and says those same things to themselves—hey, no stop sign! And proceeds to run through the intersection, risking the legal Arkansas drivers’ lives. Our last crash was this spring. And then today’s close call.
When I leave my house, west-bound, I get to Grand and, of course, since I have no choice, turn north. I then either go west on Magnolia down the park to “all stops west” or I turn east on Magnolia and loop around to Arsenal to head where I need to go. Today it was east on Magnolia, then wrap around onto Arkansas. Heading down to the parish rectory for a little board meeting that I don’t understand very well but keep attending. As I start to pick up speed on Arkansas, about to head past Halliday, here comes a light blue mini-van heading the wrong way on my street.
Kind of a dumb looking white guy in his early forties. Nobody else in the van. He sees me as I see him, and I start my wild gesticulating about wrong way (I need to learn that in sign language). Then in the split second it takes me to realize the whole no-stop-sign-he’s-going-to-hit-me situation, I stop motioning to him and slam on those brakes. I stop about a half a car’s length from his van. He looks at me like I’m the crazy one (which is probably true—but he’s the stupid one) and then continues on east-bound on Halliday. I go to my meeting.
The moral isn’t wry or ironic. It’s this: DON’T GO DOWN MY STREET THE WRONG WAY! I HATE THAT!
Sunday, June 25, 2006
Beavers!
Beavers Love Wood. Just so you know. Taken at a pit stop on the way to the Iron Furnace, in the Shawnee National Forest. We don't know him--he was helping Alex with the water for the dogs and the ice cream. I think he was described as the son of the owner of the little store where we stopped. Mary was mostly jealous that he worked at a job where he could wear a shirt like that. "I'd be sent home."
Shawnee Day Trip
Mike, the girls, Brian, Alex, her dogs, Mary, Heidi, and I took off Saturday morning for Shawnee National Forest, down in southern Illinois. Our focused destination was Garden of the Gods, no relation to the Colorado version. It's a set of sandstone cliffs that are not really sandstone--they have a coating of rust that holds them in place from when this area was covered by water. They are at the same time terrifying and wonderful. 
Sophia really got into it after a few minutes of timid self-doubt. She climbed and jumped and made my heart leap into my throat more than once. Maeve chilled in the backpack.
And in the course of the day, I found 3 more oaks for my oak book. Chinkapin, scarlet, and what I believe may be post.
After the Garden, we headed south along gravel roads to the freakish out of place Iron Furnace. It's the remnants of an Irish village that centered around the production of pig iron. Now it's just the furnace, which the forest service rebuilt in the 60s. Gigantic.
We tooled around looking for something else, wound up down at Cave in Rock on the Ohio River. There was FRESH grafitti, complements of the Mayberry Family, dated earlier that afternoon. In spraypaint. I mean, they set out to vandalize. And not just "Kelly loves Jim," which you could blame on those crazy teenagers--this was the Mayberry FAMILY. Like, Mom, Dad, kids. Great example setting. Under the cliffs there by the river were cliff swallows, which knocks off another bird on the ole life list.
We crossed the Ohio on a ferry that runs from Elizabethtown Illinois to...nowhere, Kentucky...and then looped back around to the Old Shawneetown Bridge and headed home. Olga's was going to be closed before we got there (where Mary wished to go for her belated birthday), so we stopped in Mt. Vernon for a late (and fattening) dinner. I am sluggish today. Mike, the girls, and I are headed out for a bike ride for the evening, in fact, to help work off that dinner.
We saw some of Mike's favorite places. I think Sophia liked them. Perfect weather and low crowds--not the typical trip to Shawnee for us. So it was a hit.
Sophia really got into it after a few minutes of timid self-doubt. She climbed and jumped and made my heart leap into my throat more than once. Maeve chilled in the backpack.
And in the course of the day, I found 3 more oaks for my oak book. Chinkapin, scarlet, and what I believe may be post.
After the Garden, we headed south along gravel roads to the freakish out of place Iron Furnace. It's the remnants of an Irish village that centered around the production of pig iron. Now it's just the furnace, which the forest service rebuilt in the 60s. Gigantic.We tooled around looking for something else, wound up down at Cave in Rock on the Ohio River. There was FRESH grafitti, complements of the Mayberry Family, dated earlier that afternoon. In spraypaint. I mean, they set out to vandalize. And not just "Kelly loves Jim," which you could blame on those crazy teenagers--this was the Mayberry FAMILY. Like, Mom, Dad, kids. Great example setting. Under the cliffs there by the river were cliff swallows, which knocks off another bird on the ole life list.
We crossed the Ohio on a ferry that runs from Elizabethtown Illinois to...nowhere, Kentucky...and then looped back around to the Old Shawneetown Bridge and headed home. Olga's was going to be closed before we got there (where Mary wished to go for her belated birthday), so we stopped in Mt. Vernon for a late (and fattening) dinner. I am sluggish today. Mike, the girls, and I are headed out for a bike ride for the evening, in fact, to help work off that dinner.
We saw some of Mike's favorite places. I think Sophia liked them. Perfect weather and low crowds--not the typical trip to Shawnee for us. So it was a hit.
Friday, June 23, 2006
Bingo!
I have this friend in Chicago (actually, I think I have two, a whopping two friends in Chicago, but this is about the other one) named Alyssa. She actually used to be my roommate back when this house was a total pit. Her room didn't have electricity, for instance, and we ran an extension cord into the hallway so she could have an alarm clock and a lamp. The gigantic front window leaked cold air into the room, and instead of what we would do now:
a) fix it
b) replace it
c) put up indoor storm windows made of plexiglass and magnets,
we chose
d)hang up a flannel blanket and duct tape it at the edges.
Sadness. I'm not sure if we owned a vacuum back then, either. Can't recall. It was really quite pathetic here. We had a long set of growing pains going from dorm living, where all this is essentially acceptable, to home ownership, where none of it is. Pictures from back then make our living room look like Greek ruins--old frescos, crumbling facades, broken things. Sometimes it's good to look back, though, and realize what a Virginia Slims Ad we live in: we've come a long way, Baby.
Anyway, she lives in Chicago and works for a medical publishing company. She has coworkers. Like most every single workplace imaginable, it is dysfunctional on many levels. They have taken to playing Meeting Bingo, where a card of predetermined actions and phrases are written, and you X them off as they occur, trying to get 5 in a row or a 6 pack or 4 corners or what have you. Oh, Gen-xers, aren't we cynical and cool.
So one of her coworkers has started a blog called Situational Bingo. These aren't all about work--my favorite is probably the Trader Joe's Edition. I want to do this, but I really need to cut down my computer time and do a little living at some point. But "Camping Edition" and "Cleaning Sophia's Room Edition" and "Home for the Holidays Special Edition" really should happen. Bingo.
a) fix it
b) replace it
c) put up indoor storm windows made of plexiglass and magnets,
we chose
d)hang up a flannel blanket and duct tape it at the edges.
Sadness. I'm not sure if we owned a vacuum back then, either. Can't recall. It was really quite pathetic here. We had a long set of growing pains going from dorm living, where all this is essentially acceptable, to home ownership, where none of it is. Pictures from back then make our living room look like Greek ruins--old frescos, crumbling facades, broken things. Sometimes it's good to look back, though, and realize what a Virginia Slims Ad we live in: we've come a long way, Baby.
Anyway, she lives in Chicago and works for a medical publishing company. She has coworkers. Like most every single workplace imaginable, it is dysfunctional on many levels. They have taken to playing Meeting Bingo, where a card of predetermined actions and phrases are written, and you X them off as they occur, trying to get 5 in a row or a 6 pack or 4 corners or what have you. Oh, Gen-xers, aren't we cynical and cool.
So one of her coworkers has started a blog called Situational Bingo. These aren't all about work--my favorite is probably the Trader Joe's Edition. I want to do this, but I really need to cut down my computer time and do a little living at some point. But "Camping Edition" and "Cleaning Sophia's Room Edition" and "Home for the Holidays Special Edition" really should happen. Bingo.
Thursday, June 22, 2006
Dead Bug in Wonderland
Bask! Said the mother
We bask! said the three
So they all basked together ‘neath the magnolia tree
Spent some time this afternoon working on that new sock, lying in the hammock, watching girls swim. Oh, this could be my summer.
We also made it over to the Art Museum for about an hour and a half today. There’s a new exhibit called Remote Viewing, which is a modern art exhibit, free, subtitled “Invented Worlds in Recent Painting and Drawing.” It’s a nice bit of modern art that bewildered Sophia at first and later had her making up stories about what was going on in the paintings. The artist who focused on helicopters and giant squid and octopi was especially interesting. Octopi? Is that overusing the Latin? Don’t know.
But it mostly made me miss the Wonderland exhibit from 6 years ago. Janet Cardiff’s walk through the nearby grounds, done with headphones and little photographs you viewed at different times, was one of those mind-expanding moments for me that happens when I learn something really new or figure out how to do something. An a-ha moment. For those of you who didn’t happen to take that walk, you wore headphones and walked through the grounds behind the Art Museum while she talked to you. There were other ambient sounds as well, and mostly it was recorded on that same walk, so your footsteps started matching hers, the leaves crunched, the cars went by—eerie how things matched. And then didn’t match, like the carnival music when you’re deep in the little woods. I wish they’d bring that back, if only on a limited basis.
[This link is to another one of her limited-time-only walks, through Central Park]
Then we came home, Maeve slept on the couch, and Sophia and Paige swam in the pool. Here’s a bit of the conversation:
Do you want to see my new tricks?
Sure.
This one is called jumping under the water.
[splashes]
This one is called dead bug.
Dead bug?
Like the yoga pose. It’s dead bug. But in the water. With an innertube. See? A dead bug.
Umm.
We bask! said the three
So they all basked together ‘neath the magnolia tree
Spent some time this afternoon working on that new sock, lying in the hammock, watching girls swim. Oh, this could be my summer.
We also made it over to the Art Museum for about an hour and a half today. There’s a new exhibit called Remote Viewing, which is a modern art exhibit, free, subtitled “Invented Worlds in Recent Painting and Drawing.” It’s a nice bit of modern art that bewildered Sophia at first and later had her making up stories about what was going on in the paintings. The artist who focused on helicopters and giant squid and octopi was especially interesting. Octopi? Is that overusing the Latin? Don’t know.
But it mostly made me miss the Wonderland exhibit from 6 years ago. Janet Cardiff’s walk through the nearby grounds, done with headphones and little photographs you viewed at different times, was one of those mind-expanding moments for me that happens when I learn something really new or figure out how to do something. An a-ha moment. For those of you who didn’t happen to take that walk, you wore headphones and walked through the grounds behind the Art Museum while she talked to you. There were other ambient sounds as well, and mostly it was recorded on that same walk, so your footsteps started matching hers, the leaves crunched, the cars went by—eerie how things matched. And then didn’t match, like the carnival music when you’re deep in the little woods. I wish they’d bring that back, if only on a limited basis.
[This link is to another one of her limited-time-only walks, through Central Park]
Then we came home, Maeve slept on the couch, and Sophia and Paige swam in the pool. Here’s a bit of the conversation:
Do you want to see my new tricks?
Sure.
This one is called jumping under the water.
[splashes]
This one is called dead bug.
Dead bug?
Like the yoga pose. It’s dead bug. But in the water. With an innertube. See? A dead bug.
Umm.
Continued Obsession
Summer must be starting to get to me. I'm going to go head down to Soulard Market to the "Fruit Guy" Mary was so nice to introduce me to, and buy some peaches and plums. And whatever else he recommends. Turning. Off. The. Movie.
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
FYI The Kid in the Pool
The kid is fine. She was showing me how she could put her face underwater and float. She is our neighbor. She is not drowning. When I looked at the photo the second time, I could see why that might look a tad...wrong...but she's fine. Wasn't even struggling or freaking out.
First Day of Summer
Sophia with the kiddos out in the sprinkler and later in the pool.
It's definitely summer now. I don't know whether to laugh or cry. I'm looking forward to tomatoes and hammock basking and various weekend trips. But I just am not heat tolerant. I'm like a hosta that's been planted on the southwest corner of the house. Fry and wilt. That's me.
PS to Ann--I've started a sock! For me! Same pattern as Sophia's, but big foot sized (not Big Foot, but close).
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
Twenty Things I’ve Learned from My Neighbor Totoro
1. Kids really need a place to call their own, to play in, work out fantasies, and feel safe.
2. Kids are best kept safe from the harsher realities of life, but lying to them is a no-go.
3. Parents know their children best, but it helps to have a wider circle of helpers to make the days run smoothly.
4. Dads are not second-class parents.
5. Kids will go to their parents for answers to their questions if they know they will be answered.
6. If cats live long enough, they turn into busses and run around the forest with mice as taillights.
7. Believing in something is easy if you are supported in that belief.
8. It is harder to believe as you get older. Wanting to believe is sometimes enough for a start.
9. The real dangers in life are not bogeymen and large disasters. They are disease, loneliness, and helplessness.
10. Extended families are important. If you don’t have one, adopt into one.
11. A home full of cheerful people is easier to keep clean. 12.In times of crisis, children will find support wherever they can: in their families, their communities, in pretend play, or places you might not want them to.
13. If a family is strong, once a crisis has passed, things can return to normal.
14. If you hang your clothes to dry on giant poles supported on wood frames, they don’t get clothespin marks on them.
15. Taking your shoes off when you enter a home is smart and sanitary.
16. On the flip side, having an environment that is too sanitary (plastic) squelches creativity.
17. Shrines and altars in uncommon spaces make the world a more careful, holy place.
18. Keeping everyday routine as normal as possible in time of crisis is an imperative with small children.
19. Sometime between 5 and 10, children begin to outgrow their need for fairy tale fantasy
20. Communities come together in times of crisis; we need more communities in the world.
My Neighbor Totoro, Directed by Hayao Miyazaki
2. Kids are best kept safe from the harsher realities of life, but lying to them is a no-go.
3. Parents know their children best, but it helps to have a wider circle of helpers to make the days run smoothly.
4. Dads are not second-class parents.
5. Kids will go to their parents for answers to their questions if they know they will be answered.
6. If cats live long enough, they turn into busses and run around the forest with mice as taillights.
7. Believing in something is easy if you are supported in that belief.
8. It is harder to believe as you get older. Wanting to believe is sometimes enough for a start.
9. The real dangers in life are not bogeymen and large disasters. They are disease, loneliness, and helplessness.
10. Extended families are important. If you don’t have one, adopt into one.
11. A home full of cheerful people is easier to keep clean. 12.In times of crisis, children will find support wherever they can: in their families, their communities, in pretend play, or places you might not want them to.
13. If a family is strong, once a crisis has passed, things can return to normal.
14. If you hang your clothes to dry on giant poles supported on wood frames, they don’t get clothespin marks on them.
15. Taking your shoes off when you enter a home is smart and sanitary.
16. On the flip side, having an environment that is too sanitary (plastic) squelches creativity.
17. Shrines and altars in uncommon spaces make the world a more careful, holy place.
18. Keeping everyday routine as normal as possible in time of crisis is an imperative with small children.
19. Sometime between 5 and 10, children begin to outgrow their need for fairy tale fantasy
20. Communities come together in times of crisis; we need more communities in the world.
My Neighbor Totoro, Directed by Hayao Miyazaki
Joining the 21st Century
I broke down. My resistance has lasted for so long. It stopped making sense, though, and became just this little piece of luddism that didn’t mesh with the rest of my life. I mean, I’m married to a geek, I have geek tendencies, we have more computers than we have adults in our house. I was enamored with Mike’s blackberry when he had one for that free trial through work; I use Mike’s cell phone when he’s worried I’ll get myself into something sticky. So when his 2 year contract was up, we went to the little Verizon store on Kingshighway. Bought Mike a gigantic over-the-top PDA phone with web access and mind-control properties. We got me the freebie basic phone that gets thrown in when you sink that kind of change into a device the size of a pop tart.
Mmm. Pop tart.
Of course, when I took a walk the second day I owned it, I left it in my purse at home. And that’s when Mike was calling about the mechanic. I’m not going to be reliable. It is there for my convenience only: “Mike, I’m at Target—what brand of razor blades did you need?” But I did take it with me when I dropped off the van at said mechanic and then biked home.
Going to the Verizon store, let me just say, was worse than when we bought our last car. Or when we signed the papers that said we owed a sackful of money to the bank for the privelege of living in our house. We were second in line when we arrived. We waited for about 10 minutes—but when we got back to the car, we’d been in that place for 90 minutes. The non-nonsense saleswoman in the closely fitted shirt that zipped up the front (why do people where these?) was supposed to be the resident expert on the piece of technology Mike was interested in, but even she had to call tech support. Twice. I would have walked away if I’d been in there by myself. Thank goodness grocery shopping and the library aren’t this hard, or else we’d starve without anything to read. Why can’t they streamline this process? I have a stack of pamphlets now, sitting on the shelf next to me, written in Esparanto, but promise to teach me how to set up my voicemail and enter speed dial numbers (the only two things I want on the phone, which also takes pictures and mows the lawn. And this was the freebie phone).
I am trying not to be afraid. Perhaps instead, I will celebrate joining the modern world. Maybe a hand-knit impractical cozy for the phone to keep safe and warm inside my big scratchy purse full of kid detritus.
Mmm. Pop tart.
Of course, when I took a walk the second day I owned it, I left it in my purse at home. And that’s when Mike was calling about the mechanic. I’m not going to be reliable. It is there for my convenience only: “Mike, I’m at Target—what brand of razor blades did you need?” But I did take it with me when I dropped off the van at said mechanic and then biked home.
Going to the Verizon store, let me just say, was worse than when we bought our last car. Or when we signed the papers that said we owed a sackful of money to the bank for the privelege of living in our house. We were second in line when we arrived. We waited for about 10 minutes—but when we got back to the car, we’d been in that place for 90 minutes. The non-nonsense saleswoman in the closely fitted shirt that zipped up the front (why do people where these?) was supposed to be the resident expert on the piece of technology Mike was interested in, but even she had to call tech support. Twice. I would have walked away if I’d been in there by myself. Thank goodness grocery shopping and the library aren’t this hard, or else we’d starve without anything to read. Why can’t they streamline this process? I have a stack of pamphlets now, sitting on the shelf next to me, written in Esparanto, but promise to teach me how to set up my voicemail and enter speed dial numbers (the only two things I want on the phone, which also takes pictures and mows the lawn. And this was the freebie phone).
I am trying not to be afraid. Perhaps instead, I will celebrate joining the modern world. Maybe a hand-knit impractical cozy for the phone to keep safe and warm inside my big scratchy purse full of kid detritus.
Monday, June 19, 2006
Bridgett's 32 x 365
So I've got myself another little blog. Stress on the "little". It's a x365 blog. I make a list of 365 people I know (or in my case, used to know as well as know--I tend to move and shed people sometimes). Then I'm going to write 32 words about each person, one per day, for a year. 32 because that's how old I'll be in October this year.
No particular order. But I did start with Mike. Feel free to check and see. Perhaps you will be there sometime. ;^)
Bridgett's 32 x 365
No particular order. But I did start with Mike. Feel free to check and see. Perhaps you will be there sometime. ;^)
Bridgett's 32 x 365
Sunday, June 18, 2006
Childhood "Life List"
We came home from camping on Saturday afternoon instead of Sunday afternoon. We had a really good time until it started storming around 1:30 on Saturday—and the little weather radio I have (hand crank!) was not sounding too promising for the rest of the evening. The decision was made to call the game—mostly Mike and Eric (whose daughter Gabby, Sophia’s friend, threw up on his clothes on Friday night, so I think he wasn’t looking forward to a repeat performance, especially during a thunderstorm).
We came home en masse, cleaned up our stuff and houses, and then went over to Mary & Brent’s to have the communal barbecue we would have done that evening out at the campsite. So nice to live in a neighborhood. Meaning, with neighbors. Nice people who are enough like us that we are becoming friends. Mike right now is out at Riley’s with the three other dads who survived the camping.
I was pretty nervous down by the river. Meramec is well-known for undertow. It was hard to walk across the 3-foot deep sections of the river, and I am a strong gal, an excellent swimmer, and I know about undertow from barrier islands down in Texas. It swept Sophia off her feet. Clear as a bell, but swift and scary. All the young kids wore life jackets, though, and so the biggest concern in our minds was making sure we had an adult “catching” at the end of the sandbar. Essentially, keeping the floating children from floating away. But that was what we did all Saturday morning and right up till lunchtime—sat on a (gravel) sand bar, floated in the river, watched kids build (gravel) sand castles and collect shells.
There’s a picture of me, taken in 1979, sitting in a red white and blue kids’ lawnchair, squatted over in my budweiser fishing hat, playing in the gravel with a stick. That weekend, we slept on the camping mattresses in the red panel van and hung out on the water with my aunt and uncle. There are parts of my childhood, like a “life list” for birders, that I want to make sure repeat for my kids. Others aren’t important, and a few, like moving every 2 years, I’m interested in avoiding. But playing on a sandbar by a Missouri River while the adults drink beer and talk is on that list. Interestingly, considering how different Mike’s childhood was from mine, this is probably on both our childhood “life lists”. Except, of course, for the beer.
My friend Beth once said that you live life twice—the first time in black and white, and once you have kids, in color. This weekend—that one morning—added a bit of color to that memory for me. I don’t recall most of the weekend the first time around—the latrine looms large, the little shells, the hat, the battery powered lamp—but now I know how it smelled, what the air felt like, what temperature the river was, what birds sang in the morning.
And, as a tangent, I was able to check another bird off my birding life list. Red-headed woodpecker. Very nice.
We came home en masse, cleaned up our stuff and houses, and then went over to Mary & Brent’s to have the communal barbecue we would have done that evening out at the campsite. So nice to live in a neighborhood. Meaning, with neighbors. Nice people who are enough like us that we are becoming friends. Mike right now is out at Riley’s with the three other dads who survived the camping.
I was pretty nervous down by the river. Meramec is well-known for undertow. It was hard to walk across the 3-foot deep sections of the river, and I am a strong gal, an excellent swimmer, and I know about undertow from barrier islands down in Texas. It swept Sophia off her feet. Clear as a bell, but swift and scary. All the young kids wore life jackets, though, and so the biggest concern in our minds was making sure we had an adult “catching” at the end of the sandbar. Essentially, keeping the floating children from floating away. But that was what we did all Saturday morning and right up till lunchtime—sat on a (gravel) sand bar, floated in the river, watched kids build (gravel) sand castles and collect shells.
There’s a picture of me, taken in 1979, sitting in a red white and blue kids’ lawnchair, squatted over in my budweiser fishing hat, playing in the gravel with a stick. That weekend, we slept on the camping mattresses in the red panel van and hung out on the water with my aunt and uncle. There are parts of my childhood, like a “life list” for birders, that I want to make sure repeat for my kids. Others aren’t important, and a few, like moving every 2 years, I’m interested in avoiding. But playing on a sandbar by a Missouri River while the adults drink beer and talk is on that list. Interestingly, considering how different Mike’s childhood was from mine, this is probably on both our childhood “life lists”. Except, of course, for the beer.
My friend Beth once said that you live life twice—the first time in black and white, and once you have kids, in color. This weekend—that one morning—added a bit of color to that memory for me. I don’t recall most of the weekend the first time around—the latrine looms large, the little shells, the hat, the battery powered lamp—but now I know how it smelled, what the air felt like, what temperature the river was, what birds sang in the morning.
And, as a tangent, I was able to check another bird off my birding life list. Red-headed woodpecker. Very nice.
Friday, June 16, 2006
What’s This Mulch Doing on my Neck?
Ok. I went back to Laumeier today to drop off Sophia, and there were a couple of normal people there.
Let me back up. Monday, Sophia started Art Camp at Laumeier Sculpture Park. One of St. Louis’ awesome freebies—it’s a county park with museum-worthy sculpture all over it. Well thought out and wonderful to visit. For all you non-St. Louisans, it’s about 15 miles away or perhaps a little more. I should have probably looked closer to home for summer camps, but this brochure caught my eye. It looked like some real art was going to be getting done. I’m 3 credits shy of my art teaching certificate, so I’m a fan of real art, not just cut and paste glorified crafts. For instance, Sophia does wet-paper watercolor with her kindergarten curriculum. Not “cut out the pumpkin on the black line and color it orange with your crayola marker. Is it a happy pumpkin?”
And it is real art—they’re doing ceramics and a natural materials wallhanging and leaf prints. That is not disappointing.
What bothered me Monday was that I forgot about that little rule I spend most of my life obeying: don’t go west of Hampton. Yeah, I venture to Trader Joe’s on occasion, and obviously when I leave town to go to Columbia or something I head west of Hampton, but for the most part, I stick to that. I go north and south and east, but I tend to stay away from the west side of St. Louis. Most of this has to do with my own comfort level, probably along the same lines as why my great-grandfather grew up in Apple Creek Township, Missouri, speaking only German until he was 16. You stick with what you know and what you like.
We pull up at Laumeier, and park my 6 year old minivan in a lot coated in high-end SUVs. I’m not a car person in general (duh, I drive a minivan), but this I noticed. I put Maeve in the sling, and trot Sophia up the hill. I was not setting out to make some sort of crunchy granola statement when I did this—it was a hill. I wasn’t going to push a stroller up a grassy hill. I like my stroller. Anyway, I’ve got Maeve in a sling and Sophia dressed to make a mess (old t-shirt and shorts, her last-summer sandals). We trot up the hill and stand in line to check in, make sure paperwork is complete, etc.
In front of me are the following three groups:
A) Skinny mom with Josephine and Skyler. Skinny mom has a big rock on her ring finger and cute little slides on her feet. Her hair is casually pulled back and of course looks like it was professionally casually pulled back just this morning. The shirt is a camisole with beaded straps. She is perfectly tan, as are her children. Her paperwork is just fine and Skyler and Josephine are embraced and sent over to their tables with their backpacks. She then waits for Mom B.
B) Obviously Swedish And Proud Of It Mom with Maggie. Maggie, with pink backpack that reads “Maggie”, trots over to the tables to be with Josephine, and O.S.A.P.O.I.M. of course knows the young man checking us in. Her mom and his mom kind of thing. How is Catherine doing these days? Oh, you know, she’s at the University of Chicago, hasn’t picked a major yet. Great, tell your mom I said hi. Osapoim has on a sleeveless sundress. It is friggin 8:45 in the morning on a Monday in summer, and you can’t tell me she was heading somewhere important. Of course, things may be more important for Osapoim than for me. Osapoim and Skinny Mom leave together talking about where they should go for coffee.
C) Ambiguously Ethnic But Exotic And Striking Mom with Nina. AEBEAS wants to stress that Nina has a peanut allergy and begins to describe in detail what this means. Nina has brought her own snack and is not to share any food with anyone. Everything is tainted. AEBEAS has long dark hair, but not too long, and olive complexion skin, but not too dark, and a pretty, perhaps Indian in style, blouse, but not too Indian. The young man checking us in reassures AEBEAS that all will be well, they are used to anaphylactic shock (no, he doesn’t say that—but his reassurances make it seem like they have a defib machine and an ambulance standing by). Nina shyly goes over to her table with her backpack. Nina is wearing a dress that, if it were Sophia’s, would only be worn to church. On days with no donuts afterwards.
D) That would be Sophia and me. Dressed in yesterday’s capris, but a fresh t-shirt, that doesn’t even have any writing on the front, in my clunky birkenstocks and almost-shaved legs, I walk up and tell the young man who we are, and he flips to the wrong Sophia. 2001, 8th most popular name. Grin and bear it. I spell Wissinger for him and he says, “umm, you didn’t fill out a medical form?” Yes, I did, I tell him, and I remember because I had to do backbends over the phone table to get my doctor’s business card that dropped behind it when I was copying the phone number down. He flips through, and lo, there it is. “Oh, glad you protested!” he tells me. He tells me that Sophia can put her bag over on the bench and join the first table (with Nina).
Sophia hasn’t brought a bag. There was nothing listed in any paperwork about bringing a bag. I escort Sophia over to the table and read the note the young man gave me—the front is a list of all the teachers and how many degrees they hold, which is interesting. The back is the note with the “oh yeah, bring a bag with the following items…” Ok, why am I the only mom who didn’t read minds?
In the car are my canvas grocery bags, and I tell Sophia I left her bag in the car. Trot down the hill. Fill an old Zoo bag with a sippy cup of Maeve’s (stand-in for the required water bottle) and the hat Sophia got at the last Vacation Bible School she attended instead of the required sunscreen. Back up the hill, kiss her goodbye, and then go feed Maeve cream cheese at Bread Company wondering about what everyone must have thought about me.
I know. I come off as deeply prejudiced against a certain social class. And I think I probably am. I got the carpool list for this camp. I’m the only mom coming out from the city. There are 25 kids in that pavilion and Sophia’s the only one not from Kirkwood, Webster, Des Peres, and “all stops west.” Nobody is even from Maplewood. Or Affton. So I came in with that little chip on the shoulder. City mom. Doesn’t care about her kids enough to bring a sports bottle and a pink backpack for them. Or, the ultimate faux pas, didn’t even think to bring sunscreen. They’re in a PAVILION the whole time, but you know, can’t let those little ones soak up any vitamin D.
My friend Peggy, upon hearing this story, said, “Oh, they were all looking at you thinking, ‘those city people, when will they ever learn to stay where they belong?” She was joking, and of course, none of those moms even noted my existence. Which is probably what bothers me. I mean, I know skinny people and exotic-looking people and Swedish people, and I don’t resent them. I don’t even want anything those people have—long commutes, big gas guzzling cars, keeping up with various Joneses, etc. Every so often, though, my little differences seem to shine like beacons. It didn’t bother me. Till Sophia was old enough to notice. I don’t want to be that mom.
But I think we’re probably all that mom. So I’m going to brush this chip off my shoulder. And tomorrow, Sophia will be there in her cute little bathing suit, with sunscreen (she will be in the sun this time, also wet), with a towel…that has her name embroidered on it. And afterwards, I’ll go get my own damned coffee with my mom and chat.
Let me back up. Monday, Sophia started Art Camp at Laumeier Sculpture Park. One of St. Louis’ awesome freebies—it’s a county park with museum-worthy sculpture all over it. Well thought out and wonderful to visit. For all you non-St. Louisans, it’s about 15 miles away or perhaps a little more. I should have probably looked closer to home for summer camps, but this brochure caught my eye. It looked like some real art was going to be getting done. I’m 3 credits shy of my art teaching certificate, so I’m a fan of real art, not just cut and paste glorified crafts. For instance, Sophia does wet-paper watercolor with her kindergarten curriculum. Not “cut out the pumpkin on the black line and color it orange with your crayola marker. Is it a happy pumpkin?”
And it is real art—they’re doing ceramics and a natural materials wallhanging and leaf prints. That is not disappointing.
What bothered me Monday was that I forgot about that little rule I spend most of my life obeying: don’t go west of Hampton. Yeah, I venture to Trader Joe’s on occasion, and obviously when I leave town to go to Columbia or something I head west of Hampton, but for the most part, I stick to that. I go north and south and east, but I tend to stay away from the west side of St. Louis. Most of this has to do with my own comfort level, probably along the same lines as why my great-grandfather grew up in Apple Creek Township, Missouri, speaking only German until he was 16. You stick with what you know and what you like.
We pull up at Laumeier, and park my 6 year old minivan in a lot coated in high-end SUVs. I’m not a car person in general (duh, I drive a minivan), but this I noticed. I put Maeve in the sling, and trot Sophia up the hill. I was not setting out to make some sort of crunchy granola statement when I did this—it was a hill. I wasn’t going to push a stroller up a grassy hill. I like my stroller. Anyway, I’ve got Maeve in a sling and Sophia dressed to make a mess (old t-shirt and shorts, her last-summer sandals). We trot up the hill and stand in line to check in, make sure paperwork is complete, etc.
In front of me are the following three groups:
A) Skinny mom with Josephine and Skyler. Skinny mom has a big rock on her ring finger and cute little slides on her feet. Her hair is casually pulled back and of course looks like it was professionally casually pulled back just this morning. The shirt is a camisole with beaded straps. She is perfectly tan, as are her children. Her paperwork is just fine and Skyler and Josephine are embraced and sent over to their tables with their backpacks. She then waits for Mom B.
B) Obviously Swedish And Proud Of It Mom with Maggie. Maggie, with pink backpack that reads “Maggie”, trots over to the tables to be with Josephine, and O.S.A.P.O.I.M. of course knows the young man checking us in. Her mom and his mom kind of thing. How is Catherine doing these days? Oh, you know, she’s at the University of Chicago, hasn’t picked a major yet. Great, tell your mom I said hi. Osapoim has on a sleeveless sundress. It is friggin 8:45 in the morning on a Monday in summer, and you can’t tell me she was heading somewhere important. Of course, things may be more important for Osapoim than for me. Osapoim and Skinny Mom leave together talking about where they should go for coffee.
C) Ambiguously Ethnic But Exotic And Striking Mom with Nina. AEBEAS wants to stress that Nina has a peanut allergy and begins to describe in detail what this means. Nina has brought her own snack and is not to share any food with anyone. Everything is tainted. AEBEAS has long dark hair, but not too long, and olive complexion skin, but not too dark, and a pretty, perhaps Indian in style, blouse, but not too Indian. The young man checking us in reassures AEBEAS that all will be well, they are used to anaphylactic shock (no, he doesn’t say that—but his reassurances make it seem like they have a defib machine and an ambulance standing by). Nina shyly goes over to her table with her backpack. Nina is wearing a dress that, if it were Sophia’s, would only be worn to church. On days with no donuts afterwards.
D) That would be Sophia and me. Dressed in yesterday’s capris, but a fresh t-shirt, that doesn’t even have any writing on the front, in my clunky birkenstocks and almost-shaved legs, I walk up and tell the young man who we are, and he flips to the wrong Sophia. 2001, 8th most popular name. Grin and bear it. I spell Wissinger for him and he says, “umm, you didn’t fill out a medical form?” Yes, I did, I tell him, and I remember because I had to do backbends over the phone table to get my doctor’s business card that dropped behind it when I was copying the phone number down. He flips through, and lo, there it is. “Oh, glad you protested!” he tells me. He tells me that Sophia can put her bag over on the bench and join the first table (with Nina).
Sophia hasn’t brought a bag. There was nothing listed in any paperwork about bringing a bag. I escort Sophia over to the table and read the note the young man gave me—the front is a list of all the teachers and how many degrees they hold, which is interesting. The back is the note with the “oh yeah, bring a bag with the following items…” Ok, why am I the only mom who didn’t read minds?
In the car are my canvas grocery bags, and I tell Sophia I left her bag in the car. Trot down the hill. Fill an old Zoo bag with a sippy cup of Maeve’s (stand-in for the required water bottle) and the hat Sophia got at the last Vacation Bible School she attended instead of the required sunscreen. Back up the hill, kiss her goodbye, and then go feed Maeve cream cheese at Bread Company wondering about what everyone must have thought about me.
I know. I come off as deeply prejudiced against a certain social class. And I think I probably am. I got the carpool list for this camp. I’m the only mom coming out from the city. There are 25 kids in that pavilion and Sophia’s the only one not from Kirkwood, Webster, Des Peres, and “all stops west.” Nobody is even from Maplewood. Or Affton. So I came in with that little chip on the shoulder. City mom. Doesn’t care about her kids enough to bring a sports bottle and a pink backpack for them. Or, the ultimate faux pas, didn’t even think to bring sunscreen. They’re in a PAVILION the whole time, but you know, can’t let those little ones soak up any vitamin D.
My friend Peggy, upon hearing this story, said, “Oh, they were all looking at you thinking, ‘those city people, when will they ever learn to stay where they belong?” She was joking, and of course, none of those moms even noted my existence. Which is probably what bothers me. I mean, I know skinny people and exotic-looking people and Swedish people, and I don’t resent them. I don’t even want anything those people have—long commutes, big gas guzzling cars, keeping up with various Joneses, etc. Every so often, though, my little differences seem to shine like beacons. It didn’t bother me. Till Sophia was old enough to notice. I don’t want to be that mom.
But I think we’re probably all that mom. So I’m going to brush this chip off my shoulder. And tomorrow, Sophia will be there in her cute little bathing suit, with sunscreen (she will be in the sun this time, also wet), with a towel…that has her name embroidered on it. And afterwards, I’ll go get my own damned coffee with my mom and chat.
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
Basking in the City Living for a Moment
Ok, we are relatively croup free.
[We are lucky. Every other family with kids on my block has at least one with asthma bad enough to have a rescue inhaler, and many have nebulizers. I don’t know why we were spared that thus far, but we have been lucky. Could have to do with the cleanliness theory of allergies: the cleaner your house is, the more likely your kids will develop allergies. It is a theory, but my house certainly isn't going to raise anyone in a sterile environment. Or perhaps it’s just luck, which is just as likely.]
But since we skipped Laumeier Art Camp today, I didn’t use the van at all. My goal is at least one day a week, not to drive my car (van). I usually don’t go very far, but I’m trying to pare it down further and use the bike more—for instance, this evening I biked to the Kingshighway Branch Library, which is only 3 miles round trip. Really no reason to drive if it’s as nice as it is outside. Of course, tomorrow it will be 90 degrees: will I be biking to Soulard Market? Probably not. Perhaps if I wouldn’t have to pull the trailer and the extra 100 pounds that entails (trailer, Sophia, Maeve, produce). That hill from McGurks back up to McKinley Middle School is daunting. But it's awesome that I'm within biking distance from two farmers markets during the summer (Tower Grove ends in October). Each year that I live in the city, I find new perks like this.
On the way home from the library, I ran into Anne and a couple of other neighbors and we chatted about Vern's buildings on the corner. We are all so frustrated with Vern and our alderman. Of course, I know few St. Louisans who aren't frustrated with their aldermen.
One last note: I made a cabbage-beet-dill-sunflower seed slaw with a sweet dressing this evening for tomorrow night’s dinner. I want to eat it now. I really like my CSA. It’s making me learn things and eat really good food. God Bless Tower Grove Farmers Market. You should go. I’ll try to review it or something next week—I’m camping this weekend, so that’ll be more snakes in the boat talk.
I would talk about Laumeier insecurities but I’m going to wait till the end of the week. Sometimes my insecurities are actually chips on the ole shoulder disguised as such.
[We are lucky. Every other family with kids on my block has at least one with asthma bad enough to have a rescue inhaler, and many have nebulizers. I don’t know why we were spared that thus far, but we have been lucky. Could have to do with the cleanliness theory of allergies: the cleaner your house is, the more likely your kids will develop allergies. It is a theory, but my house certainly isn't going to raise anyone in a sterile environment. Or perhaps it’s just luck, which is just as likely.]
But since we skipped Laumeier Art Camp today, I didn’t use the van at all. My goal is at least one day a week, not to drive my car (van). I usually don’t go very far, but I’m trying to pare it down further and use the bike more—for instance, this evening I biked to the Kingshighway Branch Library, which is only 3 miles round trip. Really no reason to drive if it’s as nice as it is outside. Of course, tomorrow it will be 90 degrees: will I be biking to Soulard Market? Probably not. Perhaps if I wouldn’t have to pull the trailer and the extra 100 pounds that entails (trailer, Sophia, Maeve, produce). That hill from McGurks back up to McKinley Middle School is daunting. But it's awesome that I'm within biking distance from two farmers markets during the summer (Tower Grove ends in October). Each year that I live in the city, I find new perks like this.
On the way home from the library, I ran into Anne and a couple of other neighbors and we chatted about Vern's buildings on the corner. We are all so frustrated with Vern and our alderman. Of course, I know few St. Louisans who aren't frustrated with their aldermen.
One last note: I made a cabbage-beet-dill-sunflower seed slaw with a sweet dressing this evening for tomorrow night’s dinner. I want to eat it now. I really like my CSA. It’s making me learn things and eat really good food. God Bless Tower Grove Farmers Market. You should go. I’ll try to review it or something next week—I’m camping this weekend, so that’ll be more snakes in the boat talk.
I would talk about Laumeier insecurities but I’m going to wait till the end of the week. Sometimes my insecurities are actually chips on the ole shoulder disguised as such.
Bark Bark Bark
Last night, 3:20 a.m., I wake up to barking and wheezing at the foot of my bed. Sophia’s voice is almost gone, and she cries, “My throat hurts, can I sleep with you?” Maeve of course wakes up at the same time and I deal with her while Mike gets Sophia some Tylenol and takes a look at her throat. No white patches, but while I’m lying there with Maeve, I can hear the croup. It’s up high, not chesty or wheezy, really—more like a whistle going in and a bark coming out. She is FREAKING OUT.
She and Mike come back into the bedroom and she gets in bed next to me. Keep in mind that Maeve sleeps in a crib right next to our bed, connected to our bed with a sheet that covers both parts. This would be due to the fact that when my babies are young, I am the laziest person alive and like to nurse lying down. Maeve probably could go ahead to her own room at this point, but until the attic is done, it’s a big ole Chinese Tile Puzzle at our house. This is where her bed fits and therefore this is where it is going to stay for a while. But there’s a crib on one side, three-sided, such that she sleeps most often right next to me, and our bed is full-sized. So it’s pretty crowded when you add Sophia to the mix.
But since I didn’t really sleep anyway, it doesn’t matter—I snoozed a bit, waking to every sound. She stopped the whistling and barking and almost immediately fell asleep. Slept until I woke her up at 8:30 to take a look-see at the status. She claims her throat feels fine. Her voice is really bad, and there has been a single cough in a half hour…but no wheezing or whistling. I called the doctor and the nurse said we probably could wait and see at this point. But I know croup falls under Sundowner Syndrome, which my father defines as “getting worse as the sun goes down.” He worked in ER departments when I was growing up, as a nurse, and between dinnertime and bedtime was always this influx of people who felt fine all day…but then got worse at night. So I don’t want to do that, but at the same time, gah. I don’t know. Croup scares me.
I rmeember being 11 or 12 and my father carrying my sister Bevin (4 at the time, maybe 3) out to the car in the middle of the night with croup. And this was the man who never gave us bandaids, who medicated us with surplus samples from the hospital, and never, ever freaked out. Except that night, and then, several years later, when my sister Colleen was bit on the mouth by a freaked-out cocker spaniel, and the last time I know of, when I had a compromised airway with strep throat (he flew up from Texas for that one). So I know croup is scary and I need to be careful.
So we’re taking it easy. Maeve is asleep on the couch downstairs, and Sophia is resting in the glider. I guess it’ll be another day, yet another day, of My Neighbor Totoro.
She and Mike come back into the bedroom and she gets in bed next to me. Keep in mind that Maeve sleeps in a crib right next to our bed, connected to our bed with a sheet that covers both parts. This would be due to the fact that when my babies are young, I am the laziest person alive and like to nurse lying down. Maeve probably could go ahead to her own room at this point, but until the attic is done, it’s a big ole Chinese Tile Puzzle at our house. This is where her bed fits and therefore this is where it is going to stay for a while. But there’s a crib on one side, three-sided, such that she sleeps most often right next to me, and our bed is full-sized. So it’s pretty crowded when you add Sophia to the mix.
But since I didn’t really sleep anyway, it doesn’t matter—I snoozed a bit, waking to every sound. She stopped the whistling and barking and almost immediately fell asleep. Slept until I woke her up at 8:30 to take a look-see at the status. She claims her throat feels fine. Her voice is really bad, and there has been a single cough in a half hour…but no wheezing or whistling. I called the doctor and the nurse said we probably could wait and see at this point. But I know croup falls under Sundowner Syndrome, which my father defines as “getting worse as the sun goes down.” He worked in ER departments when I was growing up, as a nurse, and between dinnertime and bedtime was always this influx of people who felt fine all day…but then got worse at night. So I don’t want to do that, but at the same time, gah. I don’t know. Croup scares me.
I rmeember being 11 or 12 and my father carrying my sister Bevin (4 at the time, maybe 3) out to the car in the middle of the night with croup. And this was the man who never gave us bandaids, who medicated us with surplus samples from the hospital, and never, ever freaked out. Except that night, and then, several years later, when my sister Colleen was bit on the mouth by a freaked-out cocker spaniel, and the last time I know of, when I had a compromised airway with strep throat (he flew up from Texas for that one). So I know croup is scary and I need to be careful.
So we’re taking it easy. Maeve is asleep on the couch downstairs, and Sophia is resting in the glider. I guess it’ll be another day, yet another day, of My Neighbor Totoro.
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
For Ann, with Love and Flair
Ok Ann, here it is. My stove. My stove is from the 60s, it is a Frigidaire Flair. It has a double oven above and a pull-out cooktop at counter level. It originally sat atop cabinets at my aunt Gracemarie's house (ahem, see "Paul and my Aunt"). She remodeled her kitchen, but loved this stove, for good reason. So she bequeathed it to me. It sat in my parents' basement for a couple of years, because we had a stove, after all. But then ours broke. We remodeled the kitchen somewhat ("remodel" is a loose term--we got rid of an island and the broken stove) and added this gem. It is the best stove I've ever used--the burners heat up quickly, the oven runs a tad hot but cooks everything evenly. I can even bake in it, and I'm a terrible baker. Besides the pull-out (and therefore push-in and hide) stovetop, my favorite part has to be the word "Flair" written in pretty feminine script on the front of the large oven. Oh. And the groovy mod designs on the glass doors, overlapping circles in white. Ann found a link to a support site, in fact, which actually helped me! We had trouble with the front "heat minder" burner, and now I know why! Just wonderful. So Ann, here is the stove. And my first blog entry with a photo. Movin on up.
Nine Stories, Eight Guests
Sunday night was my little book club, which Ann was nice enough to invite me to back in Fall ’04. A couple of chicas from church, a bunch from the neighborhood, and I think the rest used to be from the neighborhood. Not sure how all of them are connected. My connection is definitely through Julie and Ann. There are 12 of us, and so theoretically, we would read 12 books in a year, but it works out to more like 12 books in 15 months. This past “year” had the theme (loosely obeyed) of Books We Should Have Read in School. We read To Kill A Mockingbird, for instance, a Henry James novel no one got through, My Name is Asher Lev, and Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. So I chose Nine Stories by JD Salinger. Not the typical Salinger book (that one I have never read), but still somewhat part of the “canon” that many of us probably ran across in high school or college. I was tempted to choose Floatplane Notebooks by Clyde Edgerton; that will probably be my next choice. I read that in high school, but it didn’t fit as precisely as Salinger would. Not that everyone followed this theme—this past year we also read Freakanomics and The Time Traveler’s Wife.
Italics!
Note: a couple of spoilers to follow, for those who might read the stories and not want that
So we talked about these stories, most of which have depressingly shocking endings. A few of the women quit after the second story; Seymour’s last sentence suicide in “Perfect Day for Bananafish” and the horrible, depressing lives of the woman in “Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut” were just too much. Which is true. But stopping there means you don’t read other really good stories. I have to admit that they’re not all my absolute favorite pieces of literature, but two are worth mentioning.
My daughter Sophia’s middle name is Esme, who is the title character in one of the stories (For Esme, with Love and Squalor). When one of the ladies asked me why I’d picked it, I went back through the story and read aloud her dialogue. Oh man has my daughter become Esme. Can’t wait to see her when she’s 13. This story is set in England during The War, and the narrator is an American who is stationed at the secret spy school on the hill. Bored and lonely, he goes out one afternoon to the town and watches a children’s choir practice. Totally mesmerized by one of the young singers, he finds himself uplifted. Goes to have tea in a local tearoom, and as he is eating his toast, in walks the singer, her governess, and her little brother. Esme greets him and has this delightfully poised conversation with him. At the end, she wishes he would write her a story, one with lots of squalor, for she is “terribly interested in squalor.” Then the story shifts to later in the war, where the narrator is a shell-shocked young man. His companions are oafish young brutes and he is a sensitive, broken person. He may never be fully well again (there is debate in literary circles whether this narrator is Seymour, who kills himself in the first story, or Seymour’s brother Buddy, who is the narrator in Salinger’s other Glass Family stories). Her receives in the mail a letter from Esme, who hopes he makes it through the war with all his faculties intact—and gives him her father’s watch, which in transit has broken its crystal. The narrator wonders, but does not check, to see if it still works.
The other one that really hit me, for different reasons than Esme, is “Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes” which was actually a source of debate Sunday night. The story revolves around a conversation between an older lawyer and a younger one, over the phone. The young lawyer, Arthur, has called Lee because he is troubled that his (Arthur’s) wife hasn’t come home from the party they all attended earlier in the evening. Arthur has amazing disdain for his wife, her intelligence, her morals, but at the same time is anxious that she isn’t there. The whole time they’re talking, we are treated to the scenes on Lee’s end of the phone, where a young woman is waiting for him to get off the phone, lighting his cigarette, occupying herself in various ways. You just know this is Arthur’s wife. Lee convinces Arthur that his wife probably wound up out late with friends, they couldn’t get a cab, it was a big jolly ordeal, and they’ll be storming in at any moment. Arthur gets off the phone, and your suspicions are confirmed—she feels just awful, Lee handled it perfectly, what a dog she is, etc. A few minutes later, Arthur calls back to tell Lee it was just like he said—the wife came in with friends, they went out for a drink, big ordeal, I think we need to get out of the city, move to the suburbs, start a new life; thanks for all your help, Lee, see you in the morning.
So half the room on Sunday night were convinced that the chick wasn’t Arthur’s wife, that she really had come home, while a couple of us thought that the whole point of the story was that Arthur was lying, that Lee really was with Arthur’s wife the whole time, that this was the big zinger to the entire thing. I am in the second camp—the story makes little sense without that being true.
Salinger, we decided, is kind of like mint-condition green shag carpeting. Totally an artifact from another era, but as artifacts go, in pretty good shape. I don’t know if I’d call him “classic” but I don’t think he’s just “dated” either. I wonder, if he’d continued to write, if his ear would have aged with the times—if people would have stopped interrupting each other and saying Chrissakes in his dialogue, if more “you knows” and “like” would have started to appear. Of course, we will never know.
Italics!
Note: a couple of spoilers to follow, for those who might read the stories and not want that
So we talked about these stories, most of which have depressingly shocking endings. A few of the women quit after the second story; Seymour’s last sentence suicide in “Perfect Day for Bananafish” and the horrible, depressing lives of the woman in “Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut” were just too much. Which is true. But stopping there means you don’t read other really good stories. I have to admit that they’re not all my absolute favorite pieces of literature, but two are worth mentioning.
My daughter Sophia’s middle name is Esme, who is the title character in one of the stories (For Esme, with Love and Squalor). When one of the ladies asked me why I’d picked it, I went back through the story and read aloud her dialogue. Oh man has my daughter become Esme. Can’t wait to see her when she’s 13. This story is set in England during The War, and the narrator is an American who is stationed at the secret spy school on the hill. Bored and lonely, he goes out one afternoon to the town and watches a children’s choir practice. Totally mesmerized by one of the young singers, he finds himself uplifted. Goes to have tea in a local tearoom, and as he is eating his toast, in walks the singer, her governess, and her little brother. Esme greets him and has this delightfully poised conversation with him. At the end, she wishes he would write her a story, one with lots of squalor, for she is “terribly interested in squalor.” Then the story shifts to later in the war, where the narrator is a shell-shocked young man. His companions are oafish young brutes and he is a sensitive, broken person. He may never be fully well again (there is debate in literary circles whether this narrator is Seymour, who kills himself in the first story, or Seymour’s brother Buddy, who is the narrator in Salinger’s other Glass Family stories). Her receives in the mail a letter from Esme, who hopes he makes it through the war with all his faculties intact—and gives him her father’s watch, which in transit has broken its crystal. The narrator wonders, but does not check, to see if it still works.
The other one that really hit me, for different reasons than Esme, is “Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes” which was actually a source of debate Sunday night. The story revolves around a conversation between an older lawyer and a younger one, over the phone. The young lawyer, Arthur, has called Lee because he is troubled that his (Arthur’s) wife hasn’t come home from the party they all attended earlier in the evening. Arthur has amazing disdain for his wife, her intelligence, her morals, but at the same time is anxious that she isn’t there. The whole time they’re talking, we are treated to the scenes on Lee’s end of the phone, where a young woman is waiting for him to get off the phone, lighting his cigarette, occupying herself in various ways. You just know this is Arthur’s wife. Lee convinces Arthur that his wife probably wound up out late with friends, they couldn’t get a cab, it was a big jolly ordeal, and they’ll be storming in at any moment. Arthur gets off the phone, and your suspicions are confirmed—she feels just awful, Lee handled it perfectly, what a dog she is, etc. A few minutes later, Arthur calls back to tell Lee it was just like he said—the wife came in with friends, they went out for a drink, big ordeal, I think we need to get out of the city, move to the suburbs, start a new life; thanks for all your help, Lee, see you in the morning.
So half the room on Sunday night were convinced that the chick wasn’t Arthur’s wife, that she really had come home, while a couple of us thought that the whole point of the story was that Arthur was lying, that Lee really was with Arthur’s wife the whole time, that this was the big zinger to the entire thing. I am in the second camp—the story makes little sense without that being true.
Salinger, we decided, is kind of like mint-condition green shag carpeting. Totally an artifact from another era, but as artifacts go, in pretty good shape. I don’t know if I’d call him “classic” but I don’t think he’s just “dated” either. I wonder, if he’d continued to write, if his ear would have aged with the times—if people would have stopped interrupting each other and saying Chrissakes in his dialogue, if more “you knows” and “like” would have started to appear. Of course, we will never know.
Monday, June 12, 2006
The Story of Paul and my Aunt
I’m going to do this one first because it happened first chronologically, both this weekend and originally, back in1982. I will not do it the justice it deserves; Paul is my neighbor across the street who works at AB and knows how to entertain a crowd with a story. But I will try to portray him accurately. And it is probably only amusing to those of you who actually know my aunt. But for those who don’t, it is at least another example of how very very small St. Louis is.
Background from Saturday night:
Setting: Mary & Brent’s kitchen, for dessert at the progressive dinner. Approximately 12 or 13 people of the 16 total attendees were in the kitchen; there may have been more around the corner listening. I was kind of wedged between the table and the fridge, standing next to Paul.
Prelude: small conversation groups with chatting. Paul mentions that he went to gradeschool at St. Clement of Rome, in Des Peres. My aunt Gracemarie lives right near there and her kids went to that school. I guessed in my head that Paul and my cousin Michael were probably about the same age—even if they weren’t in the same class, certainly he knew the Miller family, right? So I ask, “Were you in class with Michael Miller?”
Paul’s response: Was I in class with Mike Miller? Was I in class with Mike Miller? Let me tell you about—yeah—I was in class with him. How do you know him?
Bridgett: He’s my cousin. Or, rather, our mothers are first cousins. But Gracemarie—his mom—we’re pretty close.
Paul: Well, let me tell you about Gracemarie. I mean, I was a bad kid. One of those thug kids, always getting into trouble. I’d been in a lot of trouble. It was 1982, and any of you who were around St. Louis in 1982—
At this point, the whole kitchen starts to focus on Paul.
Paul: Well, you know that snowstorm that hit and dumped a couple of feet of snow on us. We were out of school for like a week. And the first day back, the parking lot was clear but there were mounds of snow like twice as high as me. Just huge piles. And I was in 7th grade and our plan was to eat lunch as fast as possible and spend the rest of the time on the playground. So we ate in like 3 minutes and had the next 27 minutes to ourselves. So I was out there with a friend of mine and we were tossing this kid into a snowbank—
Bridgett: Mike Miller?
Paul: Naw, not Mike, he was all right. We didn’t spend a lot of time with him, you know, Dungeons and Dragons kind of guy, kind of a dork, but he was ok. I wasn’t going to toss him in a snowbank.
At this point, Paul’s wife Kristen has recognized with horror that her husband is telling this story. Her hands are cupped over her face like she’s just seen a car wreck and she is inching towards the butler’s pantry.
Paul: So it was like a 4th grader or something. So anyway, Mike Miller’s mom—and she always looked like this crazy gypsy, had her hair up in a bun with a little lace thing over it—
Bridgett: Yeah. She did that for a long time. She’s not a gypsy. She’s Mexican.
Paul: That’s great, this gypsy bun lady comes over to me and grabs me by the arm long enough to let the 4th grader get away, you know, that’s fair, and my buddy who was doing this with me is of course nowhere to be found, and Bun Lady tells me that I’m going to stay with her the rest of recess. Now, of course I’m not going to stay with her the rest of recess. And I tell her that. But this bun lady doesn’t let me go.
Kristen: Paul, this is Bridgett’s Aunt! You can’t call her the bun lady!
Paul: Fine. So she says yes you are and I say no I’m not and she’s holding onto my arm and not letting go and it’s crazy and I wrestle away from her, and while doing so, pop her in the jaw with the back of my hand. I mean, she was the one holding on so damned tight. So suddenly it’s like I’ve assaulted her, and we’re off to the principal’s office. I get suspended because Bun Lady tells the principal that I hit her. I didn’t HIT her, I just was trying to get away. So then the principal calls my mother, who is having a St. Jo luncheon at the house, and she refuses to go get me. She tells him that she pays his salary and he can keep me the rest of the day. Eventually she gives in and picks me up.
Mary: Did you get in trouble?
Paul: Nah I—
Kristen: You got to go home and eat chicken salad and pineapple rings with the luncheon ladies! I’ve heard this story. I just didn’t know that the woman you hit was Bridgett’s aunt. Oh my God.
Paul: Yeah, and then trying to get into high school, they kept looking at my ‘Permanent Record’ and saying things like well, then there was the time you hit Mrs. Miller, and I’m like I DIDN’T HIT MRS. MILLER!
Bridgett: Hey, Paul, it’s ok. I can totally see how she would piss off the average 7th grade boy.
Paul: Oh yeah. Hey, though, if you see Michael sometime soon, you know, tell him I said hi.
Bridgett: And the next time I have Gracemarie over for lunch, I’ll be sure to bring her over.
Kristen: [mortified moaning from the next room].
Background from Saturday night:
Setting: Mary & Brent’s kitchen, for dessert at the progressive dinner. Approximately 12 or 13 people of the 16 total attendees were in the kitchen; there may have been more around the corner listening. I was kind of wedged between the table and the fridge, standing next to Paul.
Prelude: small conversation groups with chatting. Paul mentions that he went to gradeschool at St. Clement of Rome, in Des Peres. My aunt Gracemarie lives right near there and her kids went to that school. I guessed in my head that Paul and my cousin Michael were probably about the same age—even if they weren’t in the same class, certainly he knew the Miller family, right? So I ask, “Were you in class with Michael Miller?”
Paul’s response: Was I in class with Mike Miller? Was I in class with Mike Miller? Let me tell you about—yeah—I was in class with him. How do you know him?
Bridgett: He’s my cousin. Or, rather, our mothers are first cousins. But Gracemarie—his mom—we’re pretty close.
Paul: Well, let me tell you about Gracemarie. I mean, I was a bad kid. One of those thug kids, always getting into trouble. I’d been in a lot of trouble. It was 1982, and any of you who were around St. Louis in 1982—
At this point, the whole kitchen starts to focus on Paul.
Paul: Well, you know that snowstorm that hit and dumped a couple of feet of snow on us. We were out of school for like a week. And the first day back, the parking lot was clear but there were mounds of snow like twice as high as me. Just huge piles. And I was in 7th grade and our plan was to eat lunch as fast as possible and spend the rest of the time on the playground. So we ate in like 3 minutes and had the next 27 minutes to ourselves. So I was out there with a friend of mine and we were tossing this kid into a snowbank—
Bridgett: Mike Miller?
Paul: Naw, not Mike, he was all right. We didn’t spend a lot of time with him, you know, Dungeons and Dragons kind of guy, kind of a dork, but he was ok. I wasn’t going to toss him in a snowbank.
At this point, Paul’s wife Kristen has recognized with horror that her husband is telling this story. Her hands are cupped over her face like she’s just seen a car wreck and she is inching towards the butler’s pantry.
Paul: So it was like a 4th grader or something. So anyway, Mike Miller’s mom—and she always looked like this crazy gypsy, had her hair up in a bun with a little lace thing over it—
Bridgett: Yeah. She did that for a long time. She’s not a gypsy. She’s Mexican.
Paul: That’s great, this gypsy bun lady comes over to me and grabs me by the arm long enough to let the 4th grader get away, you know, that’s fair, and my buddy who was doing this with me is of course nowhere to be found, and Bun Lady tells me that I’m going to stay with her the rest of recess. Now, of course I’m not going to stay with her the rest of recess. And I tell her that. But this bun lady doesn’t let me go.
Kristen: Paul, this is Bridgett’s Aunt! You can’t call her the bun lady!
Paul: Fine. So she says yes you are and I say no I’m not and she’s holding onto my arm and not letting go and it’s crazy and I wrestle away from her, and while doing so, pop her in the jaw with the back of my hand. I mean, she was the one holding on so damned tight. So suddenly it’s like I’ve assaulted her, and we’re off to the principal’s office. I get suspended because Bun Lady tells the principal that I hit her. I didn’t HIT her, I just was trying to get away. So then the principal calls my mother, who is having a St. Jo luncheon at the house, and she refuses to go get me. She tells him that she pays his salary and he can keep me the rest of the day. Eventually she gives in and picks me up.
Mary: Did you get in trouble?
Paul: Nah I—
Kristen: You got to go home and eat chicken salad and pineapple rings with the luncheon ladies! I’ve heard this story. I just didn’t know that the woman you hit was Bridgett’s aunt. Oh my God.
Paul: Yeah, and then trying to get into high school, they kept looking at my ‘Permanent Record’ and saying things like well, then there was the time you hit Mrs. Miller, and I’m like I DIDN’T HIT MRS. MILLER!
Bridgett: Hey, Paul, it’s ok. I can totally see how she would piss off the average 7th grade boy.
Paul: Oh yeah. Hey, though, if you see Michael sometime soon, you know, tell him I said hi.
Bridgett: And the next time I have Gracemarie over for lunch, I’ll be sure to bring her over.
Kristen: [mortified moaning from the next room].
Mike is the Reason Anything Went Well This Weekend
Yeah. Great weekend. I guess that’s what I get for patting myself on the back for living in the moment and having it all “handled.”
The thing is, moments of this weekend were really great. Our block had our first progressive dinner, which was like three parties in one night: a beer and appetizer evening at Kristen’s, a dinner party at Jerry and Steve’s, and a block party in a kitchen at Mary’s. And it was an early night—the babysitters were gone by 10:15. I didn’t get drunk, I didn’t gorge on good food, and I wasn’t mean or too terribly overbearing.
And trust me, the rest of Saturday really could have led to drunk, fat, mean Bridgett. I won’t cloud your day with too many details, just the highlights: the AC went out, the bad cat went back to his bad ways, and a raincloud of a bad mood settled over me before either of those. Oh, and Sophia was found out for drawing on the furniture. Fun. With the AC out, all the neighbors’ kids were at our house with the babysitters for the progressive. They just sort of wilted on the furniture. After Sam spilt finger paint on the rug. At least I hadn’t gone with my impulse Friday night and shampooed that rug…
Sunday brought more great news: the AC was going to cost us an astonishing amount of money, for one thing, and, umm, ok, I guess that was it. Oh—and Hickory, the “good” cat, broke my favorite vase. At least I saved the flowers.
But Sunday night was Book Club at my house! Woo hoo! It went really well and it was all due to Mike keeping the girls upstairs and making bread and helping me get over myself. I’ll write more about book club and some of the stuff from our book this past month. I just wanted to send the little shout out to Mike that, yes, I am a schmuck under pressure and you were right every time and I’m sorry.
Coming soon:
*Notes from the Book Club
*The Story of Paul and my Aunt
*Feeling Uneasy at Laumeier Park. Maybe. Or perhaps I’ll get over myself.
The thing is, moments of this weekend were really great. Our block had our first progressive dinner, which was like three parties in one night: a beer and appetizer evening at Kristen’s, a dinner party at Jerry and Steve’s, and a block party in a kitchen at Mary’s. And it was an early night—the babysitters were gone by 10:15. I didn’t get drunk, I didn’t gorge on good food, and I wasn’t mean or too terribly overbearing.
And trust me, the rest of Saturday really could have led to drunk, fat, mean Bridgett. I won’t cloud your day with too many details, just the highlights: the AC went out, the bad cat went back to his bad ways, and a raincloud of a bad mood settled over me before either of those. Oh, and Sophia was found out for drawing on the furniture. Fun. With the AC out, all the neighbors’ kids were at our house with the babysitters for the progressive. They just sort of wilted on the furniture. After Sam spilt finger paint on the rug. At least I hadn’t gone with my impulse Friday night and shampooed that rug…
Sunday brought more great news: the AC was going to cost us an astonishing amount of money, for one thing, and, umm, ok, I guess that was it. Oh—and Hickory, the “good” cat, broke my favorite vase. At least I saved the flowers.
But Sunday night was Book Club at my house! Woo hoo! It went really well and it was all due to Mike keeping the girls upstairs and making bread and helping me get over myself. I’ll write more about book club and some of the stuff from our book this past month. I just wanted to send the little shout out to Mike that, yes, I am a schmuck under pressure and you were right every time and I’m sorry.
Coming soon:
*Notes from the Book Club
*The Story of Paul and my Aunt
*Feeling Uneasy at Laumeier Park. Maybe. Or perhaps I’ll get over myself.
Friday, June 09, 2006
Following the Rule
Recently, I have picked up a couple of books about the Rule of St. Benedict, which is the handbook of guidelines and ideals that Benedict of Nursia, back in the 5th century, wrote as a guide for his monasteries. It was kind of on a whim—at the last minute last Christmas I wanted to include some sort of spiritual guidance for Sophia, Mike, and myself, in our stockings from Santa. Mike got the Rule of Benedict for Beginners, Sophia got (my neighbors are still laughing) The Church Year for Children, and I gave myself Praying with St. Hildegard, since I’d just been on retreat with Cathy Vetter that October and she had relied heavily on Hildegard material. I will post on Hildegard another time—she is an amazing woman—but for now I want to just say a few words about the Rule.
I haven’t read it yet—just commentaries for lay people at this point. But I have a tiny bit of background with Benedictines: my first real spiritual formation occurred in Columbia, Missouri, under the tutelage of Br. Stephen Chappell, O.S.B. [Note: he later left the monastery and is now a published author living in New Mexico; I wish I hadn’t lost touch with him]. There was a small monastery there on the church grounds and a few of the brothers taught at the school. What a fabulous introduction to the Bible that was. Later on, I learned more from LaSallettes and Carmelites (well, Carmelite tradition) and of course Jesuits. And there are lots of theological philosophies in the Catholic Church besides these—Franciscan comes to mind as a big player in many people’s religious training. I like Francis’ thoughts about the world of nature, and the Jesuits, wow, practical geniuses across the board. But Benedictines seem to have senses of humor, steady grounded faith, and a regularity to their lives that I crave.
So I’ve been reading. Benedict suggests splitting the day up into several chunks, with separate times for prayer, work, recreation, sleep, reflection, and meals. Nothing you do is more important than anything else, and everything should be approached with similar cheerfulness and reverence. Chopping up greens for a salad, saying the rosary, moving the sprinkler in the garden, watching your kids swim, doing needlepoint—all are worthy of concentrated effort and time, none should overpower the others, and you should relax. Treat all guests as if they were the Lord, but do not waver too much from your routine just because guests are present. Don’t let the day get away from you, or the dishes or the laundry or the reading aloud to your daughter, or the weeding the garden or the errands.
My sister Colleen summed it up this way: Live your life to the fullest and don’t do things half-assed. I think Benedict would probably agree. [Note: only click on Colleen's link if you are willing to be offended...I mean, some of you won't be, but some of you might].
So I have made a concerted effort this week to live somewhat Benedictine. Oh—another thing—don’t retreat from the world in order to live this way. Be in the world and a part of it, but keep to your routine and your tasks at hand. We have awakened earlier than usual, eaten meals together at almost set times, Sophia has successfully detoxed from preschool and is actually getting some learning done. The yard is in fabulous shape, Sophia has had friends over, I’ve tutored for 5 hours total. The only day that went awry was yesterday:
Wake up. Remember the meeting I forgot I had. Get girls dressed in a panic, out the door, down to St. Anthony’s. Stay too long at the meeting because the parish bookkeeper offered to watch the girls and I just wanted to savor the quiet adult conversation for a few more moments. Go to Soulard Market. Buy fruit. Go home, walk to Bread Company which was the bribe for the girls to be good at the meeting. Walk home, friends are outside, I crave more adult time, talk too long sitting on Kristen’s front stoop. Get inside, realize it’s already 2:30. Try to get Maeve to nap. Rachel comes over to be tutored. It takes an hour and a half and is frustrating because I tried to rush. Forget that dinner was going to take 30 minutes of prep and 45 minutes of cooking. Not enough time before Sophia has to go to VBS at Mary & Brent’s church. Find out there’s a program at 7:30 that we should attend. Didn’t read the flyer. Drop off Sophia, run to Webster with Mike and Maeve to eat (fabulous, tasty, awesome, but fattening and large) calzone and salad. Back to the church to watch the powerpoint slide show and kid singing. Ice cream afterwards. Realize on the way home I forgot that Sophia had a swim lesson and didn’t call the instructor to cancel. Home again, Sophia to bed, Maeve to bed, too exhausted to get anything else done.
Compare that to today. Wake up at 8:30. Serve the girls breakfast. Check email. Homeschool. Put the sprinkler out. Weed a little bit. Turn a movie on for Maeve and do more homeschool. Make some coffee. Invite Paige over to swim. Pit all the sour cherries Kerri gave me while they swim. Serve the girls lunch. Homeschool. Check email quickly, reply to Cathy’s comment. Answer a LLL phone call. Put Maeve down for a nap. Help Sophia practice riding her bike. Call my mother-in-law. Plan out the summer calendar. Clean up the dining room. Get dinner prepared and in the fridge for easy cooking when Mike is on the way home. Send Sophia over to the neighbors. Write this while Maeve plays in her room.
Of course, the day isn’t over. Things could still go wrong. But something about rushing and frantic and lingering really made yesterday harder.
Charlotte Mason writes about homeschooling in short lessons—no more than 20 minutes or so for young ones. Sophia learns more this way, doesn’t have that feeling of doom at the dining room table while we drill forever. It is cheerful and positive. Everything in its place and in its time. Keep to the schedule and all will be well. It’s no quick fix, no easy road to enlightenment, but Charlotte and Benedict may just keep my summer from falling to pieces. And keep me from, in August, turning around and saying, “where the heck did the summer go?” because, like Colleen said, I was doing things half-assed.
Days are all the same length. But how is it that they really aren’t?
I haven’t read it yet—just commentaries for lay people at this point. But I have a tiny bit of background with Benedictines: my first real spiritual formation occurred in Columbia, Missouri, under the tutelage of Br. Stephen Chappell, O.S.B. [Note: he later left the monastery and is now a published author living in New Mexico; I wish I hadn’t lost touch with him]. There was a small monastery there on the church grounds and a few of the brothers taught at the school. What a fabulous introduction to the Bible that was. Later on, I learned more from LaSallettes and Carmelites (well, Carmelite tradition) and of course Jesuits. And there are lots of theological philosophies in the Catholic Church besides these—Franciscan comes to mind as a big player in many people’s religious training. I like Francis’ thoughts about the world of nature, and the Jesuits, wow, practical geniuses across the board. But Benedictines seem to have senses of humor, steady grounded faith, and a regularity to their lives that I crave.
So I’ve been reading. Benedict suggests splitting the day up into several chunks, with separate times for prayer, work, recreation, sleep, reflection, and meals. Nothing you do is more important than anything else, and everything should be approached with similar cheerfulness and reverence. Chopping up greens for a salad, saying the rosary, moving the sprinkler in the garden, watching your kids swim, doing needlepoint—all are worthy of concentrated effort and time, none should overpower the others, and you should relax. Treat all guests as if they were the Lord, but do not waver too much from your routine just because guests are present. Don’t let the day get away from you, or the dishes or the laundry or the reading aloud to your daughter, or the weeding the garden or the errands.
My sister Colleen summed it up this way: Live your life to the fullest and don’t do things half-assed. I think Benedict would probably agree. [Note: only click on Colleen's link if you are willing to be offended...I mean, some of you won't be, but some of you might].
So I have made a concerted effort this week to live somewhat Benedictine. Oh—another thing—don’t retreat from the world in order to live this way. Be in the world and a part of it, but keep to your routine and your tasks at hand. We have awakened earlier than usual, eaten meals together at almost set times, Sophia has successfully detoxed from preschool and is actually getting some learning done. The yard is in fabulous shape, Sophia has had friends over, I’ve tutored for 5 hours total. The only day that went awry was yesterday:
Wake up. Remember the meeting I forgot I had. Get girls dressed in a panic, out the door, down to St. Anthony’s. Stay too long at the meeting because the parish bookkeeper offered to watch the girls and I just wanted to savor the quiet adult conversation for a few more moments. Go to Soulard Market. Buy fruit. Go home, walk to Bread Company which was the bribe for the girls to be good at the meeting. Walk home, friends are outside, I crave more adult time, talk too long sitting on Kristen’s front stoop. Get inside, realize it’s already 2:30. Try to get Maeve to nap. Rachel comes over to be tutored. It takes an hour and a half and is frustrating because I tried to rush. Forget that dinner was going to take 30 minutes of prep and 45 minutes of cooking. Not enough time before Sophia has to go to VBS at Mary & Brent’s church. Find out there’s a program at 7:30 that we should attend. Didn’t read the flyer. Drop off Sophia, run to Webster with Mike and Maeve to eat (fabulous, tasty, awesome, but fattening and large) calzone and salad. Back to the church to watch the powerpoint slide show and kid singing. Ice cream afterwards. Realize on the way home I forgot that Sophia had a swim lesson and didn’t call the instructor to cancel. Home again, Sophia to bed, Maeve to bed, too exhausted to get anything else done.
Compare that to today. Wake up at 8:30. Serve the girls breakfast. Check email. Homeschool. Put the sprinkler out. Weed a little bit. Turn a movie on for Maeve and do more homeschool. Make some coffee. Invite Paige over to swim. Pit all the sour cherries Kerri gave me while they swim. Serve the girls lunch. Homeschool. Check email quickly, reply to Cathy’s comment. Answer a LLL phone call. Put Maeve down for a nap. Help Sophia practice riding her bike. Call my mother-in-law. Plan out the summer calendar. Clean up the dining room. Get dinner prepared and in the fridge for easy cooking when Mike is on the way home. Send Sophia over to the neighbors. Write this while Maeve plays in her room.
Of course, the day isn’t over. Things could still go wrong. But something about rushing and frantic and lingering really made yesterday harder.
Charlotte Mason writes about homeschooling in short lessons—no more than 20 minutes or so for young ones. Sophia learns more this way, doesn’t have that feeling of doom at the dining room table while we drill forever. It is cheerful and positive. Everything in its place and in its time. Keep to the schedule and all will be well. It’s no quick fix, no easy road to enlightenment, but Charlotte and Benedict may just keep my summer from falling to pieces. And keep me from, in August, turning around and saying, “where the heck did the summer go?” because, like Colleen said, I was doing things half-assed.
Days are all the same length. But how is it that they really aren’t?
Thursday, June 08, 2006
You Can't Always Get What You Want
(It’s about the song).
This morning I got into the van to go to a youth meeting—actually, a meeting about youth—down at St. Anthony of Padua. We’re in discussion as a parish about whether to do more things as an east-of-Grand bloc of parishes. Specifically about youth and young adult issues. It’s odd. The same people were at this meeting as were at the one I attended in May, but back then, they were curious, interested, optimistic—and this time, they were big ole naysayers. Who knows. Maybe it will work out. Or maybe this will show me what we don’t exactly want to do and then learn how to approach YPIUS, which is the youth group at my parish.
But before the meeting, in the car, I turned off the Smithsonian Folkways for Children CD (or whatever it was called). I had heard enough of Woody Guthrie feeling proud of himself about being so authentic and Pete Seeger saying “cock-a-doodle-do”, which he does in at least two songs. One is appropriate: I had a rooster/the rooster pleased me/I fed my rooster neath the greenberry tree/the little rooster went cock-a-doodle-do-dee-doodle-dee-doodle-dee-doodle-dee-do. But the other one is essentially gratuitous roosters: All around the kitchen, cock-a-doodle-doodle-do! Repeat 97 times. Loosely integrate a hokey-pokey style dance. Enough!
So off went the cock-a-doodle music and on went one of our oldies stations, which is where I am in life right now. I am too old for edgy rock music, too white for any station billing itself as “Smooth Jazz” or “Hip Hop”, too young for “Adult Contemporary”, and too ADD right this minute to listen to NPR, which is the usual car selection. But sometimes I can agree enough with the non-Clear Channel oldies station (technically, 70s and 80s, not 50s and 60s) that I listen. The Rolling Stones song, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” came on and I blared it, kids in the car staring at me like I’d lost my mind. And they’re 4 ½ and almost 2.
It brought me back to 1999 or so. I can’t remember the exact year. It was before my parents moved here (pre-2000) but after we moved to Halliday (post-1998) so I would guess I’m right. My cousin Adrienne got pregnant accidentally, I suppose she was about 20, unmarried, still living at home. The father wasn’t anybody’s favorite anything. My brother later referred to him as Jabba The Hut, and for Ian to say that, you must understand that this guy was both gigantic and slovenly. And probably liked chaining up skinny young things in bikinis and speaking in pidgin English: me Jabba no barter.
Instead of what might have been a wise decision and breaking off the relationship and keeping the baby a secret, she decides to get married to him. Now, Catholics who know they are pregnant are not supposed to get married during the pregnancy—a priest is happy to marry them (at least he should be) after the baby is born and there’s been time for reflection, but you don’t take marriage lightly (which is also why our divorce laws are so irritatingly complex and tend to be unfair in their application—but I tend to agree with the pregnancy rule). So my aunt found a UCC minister who was willing to come to their home and marry these two in the living room. My aunt has a big rambling house in north county, there was plenty of room for all of us and for him and his fat mother and sister. And his first child. By another woman. That he had custody of, essentially, I suppose, because his mother was permanent childcare? Don’t know. I only knew him for that one day—they were divorced within a year, after she’d had the baby (Amethyst Dawn), had a stroke, and was left pretty much completely debilitated for some time. And lost custody of Amethyst to that gross, gross man, as well as forced to pay child support when she couldn’t even stay awake for longer than 3 hours at a time. It quickly became a dire situation, very sad, like something out of a Dorothy Allison novel. I’ve never met Amethyst; I have no idea even how Adrienne is—she doesn’t come to my parents’ Christmas party, even when her mom and dad come, and her smart funny sister Amanda and her smart funny brother Adam come over.
At the wedding, because I was young, relatively, and because I had no children of my own yet, I could not bridge the gap emotionally between myself (smart, funny, married homeowner with a job that I was) and the real adults in the room, my aunt, my grandmother, a few of my uncles. They all knew how grim this was. This was not a couple who would have settled down and had a couple more kids and lived in suburbia and laughed later on, in their 40s, when they told friends how stupid they were not to know how to use a condom way back when. This was not my brother, who got a girl pregnant and didn’t marry her right away, for all the Catholic reasons, frankly—and then stayed by Ashley and married her when Kennedy was 2. These were not people who could take the long view. There was rumor that there was a considerable amount of drugs going into both parties’ systems, the specific rumor was the hoosier crack: crystal meth. At the wedding, all I could think of was, wow, am I glad I did things in the right order. Not, wow, they don’t even know there is an order. They don’t know what tomorrow is.
The house was big, but the rooms were chopped up, such that the wedding happened in the front room, the immediate family in attendance, and most of the concerned guests in the hall and the dining room. Since I didn’t have any money on this horse, I was in the kitchen. I could hear the ceremony, but didn’t see it. My grandmother, who by rights probably should have been in the living room, stood behind me with her hand on my shoulder, crying. Mike stood next to me, probably wondering what the hell I’d dragged him to this time and when could we go get a soda and high tail it back to south city. And my uncle Patrick stood on my left.
Patrick has been around a couple of blocks. He was in the Navy, on the Kitty Hawk, and then later in the Marines, smart as a whip like most of my father’s siblings, has a degree from Purdue in mathematics, for instance. Nowadays he’s married to his high school sweetheart and is a vice-principal at a north county high school. But before this, he married a topless dancer, who later died, and Brooke, down in Houston, who later died. He has his fair share of tattoos from the Phillipines, and once he called my grandmother from the Navy and said, “I’m not going anywhere.” Just that. Two days later we invaded Grenada—but he was safe in San Diego. He’s my godfather and he’s ok. Can’t say that about all my uncles, but Pat came out smelling like a rose. So he’s standing to my left, and the UCC minister is talking extemporaneously, pretending what she’s doing is both holy and welcome. She starts the marriage ceremony, and Patrick, just loud enough for me, possibly my uncle Glennon standing on the other side, to hear, starts whistling that song:
You can’t always get what you want
You can’t always get what you want
You can’t always get what you want
But if you try sometimes, you might find
You get what you need
This morning I got into the van to go to a youth meeting—actually, a meeting about youth—down at St. Anthony of Padua. We’re in discussion as a parish about whether to do more things as an east-of-Grand bloc of parishes. Specifically about youth and young adult issues. It’s odd. The same people were at this meeting as were at the one I attended in May, but back then, they were curious, interested, optimistic—and this time, they were big ole naysayers. Who knows. Maybe it will work out. Or maybe this will show me what we don’t exactly want to do and then learn how to approach YPIUS, which is the youth group at my parish.
But before the meeting, in the car, I turned off the Smithsonian Folkways for Children CD (or whatever it was called). I had heard enough of Woody Guthrie feeling proud of himself about being so authentic and Pete Seeger saying “cock-a-doodle-do”, which he does in at least two songs. One is appropriate: I had a rooster/the rooster pleased me/I fed my rooster neath the greenberry tree/the little rooster went cock-a-doodle-do-dee-doodle-dee-doodle-dee-doodle-dee-do. But the other one is essentially gratuitous roosters: All around the kitchen, cock-a-doodle-doodle-do! Repeat 97 times. Loosely integrate a hokey-pokey style dance. Enough!
So off went the cock-a-doodle music and on went one of our oldies stations, which is where I am in life right now. I am too old for edgy rock music, too white for any station billing itself as “Smooth Jazz” or “Hip Hop”, too young for “Adult Contemporary”, and too ADD right this minute to listen to NPR, which is the usual car selection. But sometimes I can agree enough with the non-Clear Channel oldies station (technically, 70s and 80s, not 50s and 60s) that I listen. The Rolling Stones song, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” came on and I blared it, kids in the car staring at me like I’d lost my mind. And they’re 4 ½ and almost 2.
It brought me back to 1999 or so. I can’t remember the exact year. It was before my parents moved here (pre-2000) but after we moved to Halliday (post-1998) so I would guess I’m right. My cousin Adrienne got pregnant accidentally, I suppose she was about 20, unmarried, still living at home. The father wasn’t anybody’s favorite anything. My brother later referred to him as Jabba The Hut, and for Ian to say that, you must understand that this guy was both gigantic and slovenly. And probably liked chaining up skinny young things in bikinis and speaking in pidgin English: me Jabba no barter.
Instead of what might have been a wise decision and breaking off the relationship and keeping the baby a secret, she decides to get married to him. Now, Catholics who know they are pregnant are not supposed to get married during the pregnancy—a priest is happy to marry them (at least he should be) after the baby is born and there’s been time for reflection, but you don’t take marriage lightly (which is also why our divorce laws are so irritatingly complex and tend to be unfair in their application—but I tend to agree with the pregnancy rule). So my aunt found a UCC minister who was willing to come to their home and marry these two in the living room. My aunt has a big rambling house in north county, there was plenty of room for all of us and for him and his fat mother and sister. And his first child. By another woman. That he had custody of, essentially, I suppose, because his mother was permanent childcare? Don’t know. I only knew him for that one day—they were divorced within a year, after she’d had the baby (Amethyst Dawn), had a stroke, and was left pretty much completely debilitated for some time. And lost custody of Amethyst to that gross, gross man, as well as forced to pay child support when she couldn’t even stay awake for longer than 3 hours at a time. It quickly became a dire situation, very sad, like something out of a Dorothy Allison novel. I’ve never met Amethyst; I have no idea even how Adrienne is—she doesn’t come to my parents’ Christmas party, even when her mom and dad come, and her smart funny sister Amanda and her smart funny brother Adam come over.
At the wedding, because I was young, relatively, and because I had no children of my own yet, I could not bridge the gap emotionally between myself (smart, funny, married homeowner with a job that I was) and the real adults in the room, my aunt, my grandmother, a few of my uncles. They all knew how grim this was. This was not a couple who would have settled down and had a couple more kids and lived in suburbia and laughed later on, in their 40s, when they told friends how stupid they were not to know how to use a condom way back when. This was not my brother, who got a girl pregnant and didn’t marry her right away, for all the Catholic reasons, frankly—and then stayed by Ashley and married her when Kennedy was 2. These were not people who could take the long view. There was rumor that there was a considerable amount of drugs going into both parties’ systems, the specific rumor was the hoosier crack: crystal meth. At the wedding, all I could think of was, wow, am I glad I did things in the right order. Not, wow, they don’t even know there is an order. They don’t know what tomorrow is.
The house was big, but the rooms were chopped up, such that the wedding happened in the front room, the immediate family in attendance, and most of the concerned guests in the hall and the dining room. Since I didn’t have any money on this horse, I was in the kitchen. I could hear the ceremony, but didn’t see it. My grandmother, who by rights probably should have been in the living room, stood behind me with her hand on my shoulder, crying. Mike stood next to me, probably wondering what the hell I’d dragged him to this time and when could we go get a soda and high tail it back to south city. And my uncle Patrick stood on my left.
Patrick has been around a couple of blocks. He was in the Navy, on the Kitty Hawk, and then later in the Marines, smart as a whip like most of my father’s siblings, has a degree from Purdue in mathematics, for instance. Nowadays he’s married to his high school sweetheart and is a vice-principal at a north county high school. But before this, he married a topless dancer, who later died, and Brooke, down in Houston, who later died. He has his fair share of tattoos from the Phillipines, and once he called my grandmother from the Navy and said, “I’m not going anywhere.” Just that. Two days later we invaded Grenada—but he was safe in San Diego. He’s my godfather and he’s ok. Can’t say that about all my uncles, but Pat came out smelling like a rose. So he’s standing to my left, and the UCC minister is talking extemporaneously, pretending what she’s doing is both holy and welcome. She starts the marriage ceremony, and Patrick, just loud enough for me, possibly my uncle Glennon standing on the other side, to hear, starts whistling that song:
You can’t always get what you want
You can’t always get what you want
You can’t always get what you want
But if you try sometimes, you might find
You get what you need
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
Nipples!
I got back last night from the Missouri La Leche League Conference. I took Maeve, which as you know was a gutsy thing to try, but it actually worked out pretty well. I guess I got to practice my gentle discipline. I stayed with Rachel, who is also Sophia’s godmother, and half the time as well with her husband Marvin (that would be Sophia’s godfather) and their son Sam, who has a gorgeous mix of their genetics. I love them all; we have often used Rachel and Marvin as a sort of barometer or field guide, or something like that, a sort of “what would Rachel and Marvin do?” when it comes to some moral decisions we make, especially when it comes to consumerism.
The weekend, besides staying up too late with Rachel on Friday night talking about everything, was spent in little conference sessions, learning about all sorts of breastfeeding minutiae. For instance, my first session with Dee Kassing (of the Kassing Bottle Feeding Method—how to feed a breastfed baby a bottle so to preserve breastfeeding as much as possible) was a slide show, essentially, of every complicated intricate problem mom or baby could have that would make breastfeeding difficult. Not only things like cleft palate, engorgement, or scar tissue, but things I have never seen, like extra nipples in odd places on the breast, extra breast tissue that isn’t connected to the duct system, and therefore swells without being able to exit the body, all kinds of short frenula (frenula? Is that an overuse of the Latin plural? Should it be frenulums? Hmm…), channel palate, folded nipples—just amazing things. It was good to see them on a slide show so that if I ever do see them in person, I won’t have the urge to freak out. I remember the first time I worked with a mom who had a baby with cleft palate, and it was really alarming to me. I guess I didn’t comprehend all that would be involved.
Then on Sunday I helped present a session for leader applicants about listening skills and effective communication, especially handling telephone help sessions. That was probably the best part of the weekend, save the time I spent with Rachel and my sisters (they live in Columbia; we hung out a little bit on Saturday). It’s so nice to see the new leader applicants and how, well, how much like me they are. Just normal people who breastfeed.
[Editorial comment that may get me in trouble but I’m going to say it anyway. Some of the older leaders, ones around my mom’s age or a bit older, of course with some notable exceptions, are just not very nice. They are phenomenal when it comes to having a vast array of knowledge and experience with moms, but they are people who would make me cry if I were a new mom with a breastfeeding problem. I am so lucky that the first leader I talked with was Cathy—only a few years older than me, super friendly, non-judgmental. Perhaps this comes from being in the extreme minority when they were nursing their babies back in the sixties and seventies. Or perhaps the nicer leaders from that generation have already retired. Ah well. I probably should be quiet now.]
Overall, it was a great time. Maeve wasn’t so bad, amazingly enough, although her sleep patterns fell all out of whack. I envy people whose babies go to bed before 9 pm. That said, I did get to stay up late on Saturday night and chat with other leaders from around the state about HIV and breastfeeding. I hesitated in joining in, though. I’m just not as well-versed as some of them are. And, believe it or not, I can be kind of shy when it comes to things like that. But here’s an interesting organization regarding the topic, if you are interested.
And now I’m back in the real world, where people send their kids to school and use strollers and shave their legs. Readjusting…
The weekend, besides staying up too late with Rachel on Friday night talking about everything, was spent in little conference sessions, learning about all sorts of breastfeeding minutiae. For instance, my first session with Dee Kassing (of the Kassing Bottle Feeding Method—how to feed a breastfed baby a bottle so to preserve breastfeeding as much as possible) was a slide show, essentially, of every complicated intricate problem mom or baby could have that would make breastfeeding difficult. Not only things like cleft palate, engorgement, or scar tissue, but things I have never seen, like extra nipples in odd places on the breast, extra breast tissue that isn’t connected to the duct system, and therefore swells without being able to exit the body, all kinds of short frenula (frenula? Is that an overuse of the Latin plural? Should it be frenulums? Hmm…), channel palate, folded nipples—just amazing things. It was good to see them on a slide show so that if I ever do see them in person, I won’t have the urge to freak out. I remember the first time I worked with a mom who had a baby with cleft palate, and it was really alarming to me. I guess I didn’t comprehend all that would be involved.
Then on Sunday I helped present a session for leader applicants about listening skills and effective communication, especially handling telephone help sessions. That was probably the best part of the weekend, save the time I spent with Rachel and my sisters (they live in Columbia; we hung out a little bit on Saturday). It’s so nice to see the new leader applicants and how, well, how much like me they are. Just normal people who breastfeed.
[Editorial comment that may get me in trouble but I’m going to say it anyway. Some of the older leaders, ones around my mom’s age or a bit older, of course with some notable exceptions, are just not very nice. They are phenomenal when it comes to having a vast array of knowledge and experience with moms, but they are people who would make me cry if I were a new mom with a breastfeeding problem. I am so lucky that the first leader I talked with was Cathy—only a few years older than me, super friendly, non-judgmental. Perhaps this comes from being in the extreme minority when they were nursing their babies back in the sixties and seventies. Or perhaps the nicer leaders from that generation have already retired. Ah well. I probably should be quiet now.]
Overall, it was a great time. Maeve wasn’t so bad, amazingly enough, although her sleep patterns fell all out of whack. I envy people whose babies go to bed before 9 pm. That said, I did get to stay up late on Saturday night and chat with other leaders from around the state about HIV and breastfeeding. I hesitated in joining in, though. I’m just not as well-versed as some of them are. And, believe it or not, I can be kind of shy when it comes to things like that. But here’s an interesting organization regarding the topic, if you are interested.
And now I’m back in the real world, where people send their kids to school and use strollers and shave their legs. Readjusting…
Friday, June 02, 2006
Strange Anniversary Approaching
It’s odd. I realized this weekend that a year had come and gone and I hadn’t really thought much about the Steven Rios trial since I attended back last May. It certainly was all-consuming when I was living it. And now a year has swept by. Bevin told me this weekend that Rios’ first appeal was denied, and that she heard from someone in the know that if a first appeal is denied, it’s not a good sign for the convicted. She also said he was moved to Minnesota, probably for his own protection.
The circumstances, of course, are thrilling. Midwestern up-and-coming cop, who falls in the biggest way possible: killing his young homosexual lover to keep him quiet by slitting his throat, leaving his DNA all over the place and then having his wife lie for him. How’s that for a summation. He winds up in the Fulton prison where he had once worked. No wonder they moved him.
There were so many amazing moments at that trial: Dr. Rao’s medical testimony, Morley Swingle’s fantastic prosecution, Detective John Short, Rios’ own testimony, which shocked me by his voice mannerisms. Close my eyes and I’m sitting at a coffee house with a slightly affected gay friend. It was hard to reconcile that picture with the facts as I knew them.
I googled Jesse and Rios this evening. There’s some woman writing a true crime novel about it. Bet that’ll be just great. Having watched Bevin and her friends walk through this, having walked beside them for just that brief moment, I can’t imagine this woman understanding, really knowing, what it was all about. How it changed all of them, forever. Yeah, she interviewed Jesse’s hysterical mother and Rios after the conviction, but—I don’t know what I’m trying to say. It feels like my sister’s story, like Ellen’s story, like all those girls who lived on Wilson—not like true crime. Not like pulp. This was their life, for over a year—for all time. They will never be the same.
Sitting in that trial, though, that whole week last May, sometimes I could separate myself from the gripping reality those girls were living in. Sometimes, it was the most fascinating thing I’d ever witnessed. Sometimes, it was a story too bizarre, too, well, too Truman Capote, to be for real.
Every day, I’d come home to Bevin’s house, where the feeling of dread and death hung heavy, really, and tell them what I’d seen. I kept notes. I still have them. After they each testified, or were released from the obligation, they’d join me in the pews just feet from Rios, from his father, from his wife. Oh the courage of those people—my sisters, their friends, Jesse’s other partners who essentially came out to the whole world on the stand, Rios’ family, who, truth be told, essentially were victims of another kind—they were all so brave. How much that man took away from all of them will probably never be tallied.
Bevin’s notes from the last day of the trial end with Swingle’s summation, the end of which reads, “This is a chain. Don’t be a weak link as the jury in the chain. The DNA shows beyond a reasonable doubt.” And then Bevin writes “APPLAUSE (not really)”. They were all so wrapped up in Swingle’s ability to convict Rios. And he was mightily skilled at his job. Just stunning. Ellen called him her courtroom boyfriend. After the jury went out, we ate pizza and chatted with him. He regaled us with stories of dumb criminals.
The night passed, and then the lawyers were called back in. It had been 5 or 6 hours of waiting. They filed in, we all stood. Bevin whispered almost inaudibly something to the effect of this being torturous. It was. Nobody breathed in that room. It was standing room only—all the cops, the reporters, the friends, everyone we’d come to recognize on sight. I remember hearing, on the left hand side, just outside the door, a heavy clunk of chain, and realized shackles had been removed from Rios’ hands and ankles. It was a sound that stays with you. He came in, and the jury simply announced that they were tired and were going to bed. What was taking so long? We talked with Det. Short. He guessed they were deciding between premeditated and 2nd degree. That was fair, we decided. There was, in my mind, if I removed myself from the situation, room for discussion on that point. That one alone, of course.
I left. I mean Columbia—I left and went home to St. Louis. I was done. The next morning, Bevin called—she’d made it to the courthouse and ran up those steps and popped into the back of the room just as the verdict was read. Like something out of a movie. Just in the nick of time. First degree murder and armed criminal action, which I think is simply there as icing on the cake. Don’t know.
This July will mark a year since his sentencing—life without parole. And 3 days from now—June 5th—will be the 2nd anniversary of Jesse’s murder. He was found lying on his back, in a pair of shorts, no shoes, a four inch gash across his throat that cut through to his spine.
Here’s a link to the Court TV article about the trial, which also has a photo gallery. For those of you with too much time on your hands.
Ah well. I should go to bed. Tomorrow I head BACK to Columbia, yet again, but this time for the annual La Leche League Conference. I’m helping present one of the sessions. I think it will go well, if Maeve cooperates.
The circumstances, of course, are thrilling. Midwestern up-and-coming cop, who falls in the biggest way possible: killing his young homosexual lover to keep him quiet by slitting his throat, leaving his DNA all over the place and then having his wife lie for him. How’s that for a summation. He winds up in the Fulton prison where he had once worked. No wonder they moved him.
There were so many amazing moments at that trial: Dr. Rao’s medical testimony, Morley Swingle’s fantastic prosecution, Detective John Short, Rios’ own testimony, which shocked me by his voice mannerisms. Close my eyes and I’m sitting at a coffee house with a slightly affected gay friend. It was hard to reconcile that picture with the facts as I knew them.
I googled Jesse and Rios this evening. There’s some woman writing a true crime novel about it. Bet that’ll be just great. Having watched Bevin and her friends walk through this, having walked beside them for just that brief moment, I can’t imagine this woman understanding, really knowing, what it was all about. How it changed all of them, forever. Yeah, she interviewed Jesse’s hysterical mother and Rios after the conviction, but—I don’t know what I’m trying to say. It feels like my sister’s story, like Ellen’s story, like all those girls who lived on Wilson—not like true crime. Not like pulp. This was their life, for over a year—for all time. They will never be the same.
Sitting in that trial, though, that whole week last May, sometimes I could separate myself from the gripping reality those girls were living in. Sometimes, it was the most fascinating thing I’d ever witnessed. Sometimes, it was a story too bizarre, too, well, too Truman Capote, to be for real.
Every day, I’d come home to Bevin’s house, where the feeling of dread and death hung heavy, really, and tell them what I’d seen. I kept notes. I still have them. After they each testified, or were released from the obligation, they’d join me in the pews just feet from Rios, from his father, from his wife. Oh the courage of those people—my sisters, their friends, Jesse’s other partners who essentially came out to the whole world on the stand, Rios’ family, who, truth be told, essentially were victims of another kind—they were all so brave. How much that man took away from all of them will probably never be tallied.
Bevin’s notes from the last day of the trial end with Swingle’s summation, the end of which reads, “This is a chain. Don’t be a weak link as the jury in the chain. The DNA shows beyond a reasonable doubt.” And then Bevin writes “APPLAUSE (not really)”. They were all so wrapped up in Swingle’s ability to convict Rios. And he was mightily skilled at his job. Just stunning. Ellen called him her courtroom boyfriend. After the jury went out, we ate pizza and chatted with him. He regaled us with stories of dumb criminals.
The night passed, and then the lawyers were called back in. It had been 5 or 6 hours of waiting. They filed in, we all stood. Bevin whispered almost inaudibly something to the effect of this being torturous. It was. Nobody breathed in that room. It was standing room only—all the cops, the reporters, the friends, everyone we’d come to recognize on sight. I remember hearing, on the left hand side, just outside the door, a heavy clunk of chain, and realized shackles had been removed from Rios’ hands and ankles. It was a sound that stays with you. He came in, and the jury simply announced that they were tired and were going to bed. What was taking so long? We talked with Det. Short. He guessed they were deciding between premeditated and 2nd degree. That was fair, we decided. There was, in my mind, if I removed myself from the situation, room for discussion on that point. That one alone, of course.
I left. I mean Columbia—I left and went home to St. Louis. I was done. The next morning, Bevin called—she’d made it to the courthouse and ran up those steps and popped into the back of the room just as the verdict was read. Like something out of a movie. Just in the nick of time. First degree murder and armed criminal action, which I think is simply there as icing on the cake. Don’t know.
This July will mark a year since his sentencing—life without parole. And 3 days from now—June 5th—will be the 2nd anniversary of Jesse’s murder. He was found lying on his back, in a pair of shorts, no shoes, a four inch gash across his throat that cut through to his spine.
Here’s a link to the Court TV article about the trial, which also has a photo gallery. For those of you with too much time on your hands.
Ah well. I should go to bed. Tomorrow I head BACK to Columbia, yet again, but this time for the annual La Leche League Conference. I’m helping present one of the sessions. I think it will go well, if Maeve cooperates.
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