Could it be any gloomier outside?
Eeyore should come ambling up the walk any minute now.
Sigh.
On a happier note, Jack and I broke out the LeapFrog Learning Table today. It’s a regular cornucopia of musical fun. We’ve played the heck out of it this afternoon. Look for our upcoming performance at the Blind Pig soon. We’ve got quite the little blues number down.
The other day I was up in the attic trying to rearrange boxes and clear out some clutter. I didn’t have a huge window to do this– Robby had baby Jack under wing but I had an ear cocked for any unhappy noises. Anyhoo. One box held my old denim jacket. It’s tiny. Size 3. (Robby thinks he’s being funny and says that I must have worn it to junior high… and is only slightly appalled when I tell him I think I was still wearing it in kindergarten) It’s black and has little patches all over it. My favorite is from the 1974 Mt. Baldy HillClimb competition. Mt. Baldy is the big sand dune at Silver Lake that faces the parking lot. When I was a kid we went to Silver Lake every summer. My parents and their friends and all the assorted children rode various means of sand transportation– motorbikes, dune buggies, Four Wheel Drive Trucks (which were still something in those days not driven by the ordinary wife and mother)… No other sand is like that at Silver Lake. It wasn’t dirty sand. It didn’t leave you dusted and dry. Mt. Baldy was a huge beast of a hill that, because of it’s location, could only be traversed by foot. There was nothing like running down Mt. Baldy. Sliding actually, it was too steep to allow for running when you were small. Even the grown ups would end up tumbling down the side of it when they tried to take it at a run… gravity and the incline and the deep sand all conspired against you.
We’ll take Jack there some day. Bounce him over the dunes in the jeep and swim in the warm water of Silver Lake or wade in the cold waters of Lake Michigan. Picnic in the blowing sand so that the Pringles are extra crunchy. Let him tumble down Mt. Baldy.
He’ll wear the little jacket, too… it’s not girly. It’s tough. Though he won’t wear it with the Go Go boots and mini I used to wear it with (as a preschooler I was quite the little Tina Sinatra)…
Anyhoo. The Mt. Baldy patch must have still been roaming around in my brain last night– a few days after my archelogical dig in the attic– because I dreamed about sand dunes. And a stupid girl I know that may or may not have been a witch in my dream and a friend that I haven’t seen in nearly a year and the ugly stone pendants I saw yesterday at the mall. What a weird dream it all was. And completely implausible– (though the girl might be a witch. At best she’s an idiot) except for the part about running down Mt. Baldy. You can only do that with very short legs.
No more salt and vinegar chips before I go to bed.
Lassie spent too much time rescuing people or looking down wells. Maybe Timmy shouldn’t have had a dog. Maybe they should have bought Timmy a nice police inspector.
Our puppy has finally, after half a year, come around to realize that the baby might be a good addition to the family after all. Maybe it’s because the sleep deprivation stage is long past… or because I am careful to protect Philbin’s beloved toys from the clutches of the drooling and curious Jack… or maybe it’s because Jack occasionally has sweet potatoes or bananas under his chin or between his fingers that the pup can get to before I can.
Regardless, it’s a welcome evening pasttime now to watch them play together. Jack on his Dad’s lap (or, as he was the other night, laying tummy down on his Dad’s legs which were propped up on the ottoman giving Jack a bird’s eye view of the living room. A short bird that is.) and the pup on the floor running back and forth to retrieve and shake his toys. Nothing comes close to amusing Jack more.
Or us.
I’m a fickle Christian. I can’t quite say that there aren’t any coincidences or karma… yet when it comes to anything important (ie; anything that involves me me me) I strongly believe that it’s a God-incidence.
Take this week. And really, for the most part you can take this week. I hate the endish of March. My Dad died in it 9 years ago this week… a fact that still has me stymied. Losing my Dad tops the list of Terrible Things. He and I were close. We had a good thing going. His absence is a big, unfillable hole that, on some days in particular, is a nonending kick in the stomach. He wasn’t a saint. He could be a real jerk when he was impatient. I know. I’ve inherited his impatience in a big way. But he was one of the very best men I will ever know. So there a few days out there that I’d rather like to avoid if I could. This week is one of them.
And then… cue the organ and Charleton Heston…. that’s where God waves hello. Because, as conincidence or Godincidence would have it this week marks my Jack’s Half Birthday. And unlike the wacky scheduling of Easter and Palm Sunday my Jack will always have a half birthday during this otherwise dreadful week. And while it isn’t always doom and gloom after the ides of March pass because there is, after all, crocuses and chocolate Easter bunnies and Girl Scout Cookies… well, I’m not so dumb as to not recognize a good thing when I get it. This annual diversion is a good thing.
So, JackRabbit, if you’re reading this some far off day, you’ll understand why you’ve scored two birthday celebrations when most kids just get one. Thank your lucky stars. Be grateful for good Karma. Ask for a Bompa Story. And, before you lay you down to sleep, you might remember to thank God, too.
The spring biannual conference that I attend was this week in Ohio so off I went to it with the JackRabbit and husband in tow. Or, as he was known this week, the DaddyNanny. Conferences are always good for something– for reenergizing or reinvigorating or reinventing a wheel. This conference has, however, as a chief draw, a gang of pals too far flung to ever take for granted. We appreciate the few days a year that we are all together and store up every silly line and moment to recall when we are not.
Friend (and Auntie) Ericka was there. She and I used to live just an hour apart. For a while I saw her at least once a week. Her couch (and later a whole room) were set aside for me and my visits… we had a perfected (yet completely unrehearsed) routine of slowly rising in the morning and easing into the day with the help of television (we were especially partial to ER reruns), few spoken words, and (this was key) bottled coke. Ericka’s now a four hour drive into the heart of Indiana’s backyard basketball shrines… techinically, my once Canadian, now American, Friend is a Hoosier. (But oh, dear stars! don’t tell her that. She refuses to even see the Gene Hackman modern classic despite the fact that it’s one of my favorite movies…) I miss the proximity we used to have. We had a good thing going. We might spend an entire evening sewing. Or it might be in tooling around in a car talking. Certainly there was usually food involved. And laughing. We were very hard on certain VCR tapes (this was before either of us splurged and bought DVD players)… Collin Firth, Daniel Day-Lewis, and yes, sigh, Kevin Costner (it was Bull Durham. Leave us alone. Every woman loves him in that.) accompanied us into the wee smas of the night while we solved the problems of our world and hemmed and felled and seam ripped (well. I seam ripped. Ericka doesn’t often make mistakes.)
It’s always a little scary when friends move around. We’re all old enough now to know that some things fade and slip away and end up filed under certain life periods. When Ericka moved off into the unknown world of Quakers and that “Lord I can’t go back to Indiana” song… I mourned the loss of our routine dreadfully.
If you asked me what I learned this week at the conference I wouldn’t hesitate to answer that I learned a lot about hybrid corn… and the strength of my Ericka bond. And not just because she is the first girl (other than his mother) that my small son has waltzed with… or because she and I still broke each other up in the middle of a horrifying conference session that was full of inaccurate information (after several little comments were scribbled back and forth I got her with, “Am I pithing you off?”)… or even because we can still finish each other’s sentences… though all that is important….
Ericka came armed with a package this weekend that has me still choked up. She’d taken all of the first year of this blog, printed them off (assigning each one an appropriate font and paper choice) with the (pithy) comments made by those that comment pithily… and bound them in a leather album for my Jack so he’d know his mother and her way of thinking even before he became the center of it.
Alone with Jack I forget sometimes who I was before. That’s mostly a good thing– but also a little dangerous. This week–with those pals– I remember a little. And I am assured, with the thick album for Jack and the long memory of his Auntie Ericka (and his mother’s Friend) that even years from now, when he is older and his idea of who is mother is begins and ends on a September day that his Auntie Ericka will spin him stories that begin, “Once was a girl named Terri… ” I’m counting on it.
And, Boy, are there some good stories….
So far, for those of you keeping track, rice cereal, squash, peas, and now, today, sweet potatoes are a hit with the little Man. After a steady diet of milk 6-8 times a day I think he rather welcomes the change. His little mouth pops open like a little bird with the occasional “mmmm!” coming from him. Such a palate.
It’s a little daunting to be holding all this power. For the most part, because of proximity, I get to introduce most everything to him. Spiderman pops into my head once in a while with his earnest little voice-over, “With great power comes great responsibility…” Yeah. But so do the rewards. It’s a nice prize to see his little grin light up his face when he’s pleased with some new food or experience.
And I’d be remiss not to point out that what he’s eating is that much more fun because it’s all packaged so wee and small. Like airplane food. And, if you’ve read for awhile, you know how I do love airplane food for all it’s wee smallness.
Open up.
I miss reading.
It’s hard to now with Jack. I read to him all the time. And I like it– we plow through his little board books and the others on his shelf that are simple and keep his attention. The other night we read all the wintery and evening poems from Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verse. Jack slipped off to his own Land of Nod towards the end in a very sweet way. We’ve memorized most of the Sandra Boynton books (she’s a genius) and we’ve giggled with P.D. Eastman and Dr. Suess… Patted the Bunny. Said Goodnight to the Moon. Ran away with the Bunny…
Still. I miss submerging myself in a good story. I still read– magazines and newspapers mostly. I just haven’t gotten lost in a story for quite a while. The last one was probably The Good Earth shortly after Jack was born and long before he was eager to play during the day. I read, painstakingly slowly, Bruce Fieler’s Learning to Bow this winter. It was a really interesting nonfiction piece about Japanese culture and the educational system there. But nothing that swept me off to another place or time.
I realized how much I missed it all last night. Robby, Jack, and I went over to Ann Arbor to eat at one of our favorite Japanese restaurants. Afterwards Robby treated me to a trip to Borders. I found, in less than 30 seconds, a book for Jack and was a little dumbfounded when Robby told me to get a book for myself, too. I didn’t know where to begin to search. I ended up with a cautious choice… another Bruce Fieler nonfiction book– this time on Oxford and Cambridge. Hopefully I’ll read it all before too many months pass. Maybe it will quell my ache to be in the UK again.
I’m a little surprised (and grateful) that I don’t necessarily resent not being able to read. I just miss it that’s all.
My pal Speedy and I share many things. But I think one of the top five reasons he and I are Kindred Spirits is because we both hate Sundays. Sundays represent the end of the week for us. And usually, the end of time together with pals and a looming Monday that brings the inevitable return to work and ceasing of play.
Sundays are always an end of things. Usually good things. Camp. Weekends. Film shoots. Adventures. Vacations.
This weekend was a really nice one with Jack. We didn’t do anything particularly special– but the four of us (me, Robby, Jacky, and the Little Black Dog) had a lot of time to spend together playing and reading books and practicing all our new tricks (like sitting up with a little help and reaching for toys while on our belly). Today we went to church, tried peas, and had pizza with Robby’s parents. Robby’s mother has spent most of the week in the attic cleaning out clutter. Including a box of old letters and papers. A big chunk of Robby’s history overlaps mine because we’ve been friends for well over half our lives now. Most of the letters and postcards and notes were from me. Strange to revisit things you thought you’d never ever forget and yet– reading them– you realize you have. Or nearly almost.
I wouldn’t want to be a teenager again. High school was fun– it really was. I had a great group of friends and adventures. But, reading over old letters and scribbles makes me glad not to be 16 or 17 or 18 again. I don’t think I could ever be that raw again. Not now. It’s okay to be when you are on the cusp of things. But, Tommy Wolfe was right. You can’t go home again.
Though I wouldn’t mind a quick trip back to the little house I grew up in when my sister lived down the hall and my Dad was still here on earth and my Mom still making sure we were fed and clothed and laundered and well kept. It’d be nice to pat my little dogs Ali and Fergie on their heads and to walk the few blocks to Melle’s house where we might call up Lizzie and Gidge for a sleepover. Or hit the movies with Robby and Mark and maybe the old pizza place at the Mall that closed way too soon (good, cheap thin pizza has not been had in this town since).
There’s a lot of things that would be fun to revisit. A lot of people to see again.
And then there’s Jack. Which makes all of this less Sunday feeling. Because I wouldn’t want to trade a second of Jack. It’d just be nice, is all, if I could overlap things enough to have my son and my Dad could play on the floor on a Sunday afternoon.
Jack’s good for me. It was my little monkey that taught me that Mondays are good, too. Mondays are the beginning of things. Wonderful things that you can’t even imagine because they haven’t happened yet. Things that make even Sundays a little less lonesome.
Drive thrus have taken on a whole new meaning. Or rather, I’ve taken on a whole new appreciation for them. Jack’s a heavy little bundle when he’s tucked into his infant seat. The seat itself is heavy. Coupled with Jack’s weight (nearly 15 pounds now…) and the awkwardness of carrying it without whacking my knee or sliding on the ice… well, it’s a handful to get him in and out when running errands.
And apparently it’s frowned upon to leave him home alone or in the car. Sheesh. (Just kidding. Tell Protective Child Services it was a joke and put the phone down.)
It’s made me rethink how I do things when I’m out and about. First off there’s the whole issue of driving with the Jack Rabbit in the back seat. It’s one thing to cruise about town with just me in the car. It’s entirely another thing to have my little son strapped in behind me. And then there’s the timing issue of trying to get from Point A (our house) to Points B through P before returning to Point A before Jack is either hungry, wet, tired of being in the car, or in a coma-nap that threatens to wreak havoc on his sleeping through that particular night. (THIS is how algebra problems should have been worded in school. All that crap about trains traveling at different speeds and apples and oranges has NEVER come up in any of the adult lives I’ve led…)
So I plot out my errands as though I’m on some highly detailed recon mission. (Which, actually, I am. I’m not all that far from having a large pull down wall chart of the town with grids and those little push pin flags that they use in the movies. Okay. World War Two movies. Modern military movies use those Tom Cruise orchestra maestro conductor wireless thingies… But I digress…) Usually the errand day is padded with about four to six places we can’t possibly ever get to but are there to make me work a little harder at the first five places we can make. Today, for example, I needed to mail a package (Happy belated Birthday Auntie Ericka!) and drop off some letters, grab lunch, hit the grocery store, drop off some dry cleaning, have a picture blown up, etc. etc. etc. I got the package mailed because, thank the sweet good Lord, there is a mailport plus with a drive thru window. It’s a tiny, tiny window. Like the side window in a RV bedroom. (About six of you know what I mean.) My package to mail was about, in circumference, one-eighth inch smaller on each side then the window. The lady looked skeptical. I had a kid in the back seat on the verge of an afternoon nap, an icy parking lot, and a heavy box. It was going to fit. (It did.) On to lunch– thank you Burger King. I stopped in to drive thru and pick up my order (whopper junior, NO onions, NO pickles, extra ketchup, extra mayo, and keep your yucky shouldn’t-be-on-a-whopper-junior cheese and a Dr. Pepper) and wait seemingly until my son was ready for kindergarten for the car in front of me with three young black gentlemen who, kind of them, seemed to have ordered for their entire sophomore class at the high school. (It’s a very big school. I went there. I know.) The driver, by the way, was nearly in the back seat of the car. I cannot figure out still how he was managing to drive with the seat nearly all the way laid down. He must have INCREDIBLE ab muscles. Maybe he does Daisy Fuentes Pilates? Anyhoo. Lunch was only half ordered. I had to exit the drive-thru, go out on the main street, and then turn immediately again to go through the McDonald’s drive-thru to get french fries because, simply, they are superior. (If you can’t understand that– I can’t possibly explain it to you.) I ate in the parking lot. Wolfed it, actually. I’m sure the patrons on the window side of Burger King think I’m binge eating. With my multiple fast food bags. I’m sure, if it would have amused them, I might have been able to dig up an old Taco Bell bag from under the back seat to add to their theory? And then off to the grocery store. And then a detour to pick up good, fresh Culligan bottled water. (Hey Culligan Brother in Law!) By this time the little Lamprey was beginning to wonder if he was going to be out of his carseat before nightfall so the rest of the errands were abandoned and we headed back to Point A Sweet Point A.
Drive-thrus are my friends. There are, however, places that are still in need of a window to my world. A few ideas for the entrepeneurs out there… Drive thru bookstore/magazines/newsstands… Drive thru DVD rentals. Drive thru chocolate covered marshmallow stores… Drive thru Chinese.
Just pull up to the second window….
Life as we knew it as changed again. The Jack Rabbit has learned to roll his way across the floor. Like a little tumbleweed among the table legs and chairs and puppy toys. He doesn’t seem (yet) to have a particular destination in mind– he’s not going after a toy or the pup necessarily. He just likes to travel. (He gets that from his Mommy. I do, too.)
My day is broken up now with the resituating of the rolypoly boy back on to this or that quilt. (I have them laid out overlapping each other and he rolls from one to the other– across the russets and browns of Auntie Ericka’s to the dazzling brightness of MomMom B’s to the stars of Mrs. K’s.)
Which reminds me…better get this kid a passport soon.
