Shhhh.

We’ve been using the library this summer. It’s a tiny gesture on my part to help out with the budget.

I like using the library– I like the wealth of out-of-print books and fun finds… but it’s frustrating to read something really, really good and then have to return it. I want it on my shelf so I can wander across it at 3 a.m. on a night with  insomnia… or grab it to take to the Lake for a reread.

And I get depressed thinking about all the crappy books that the library is housing mixed in with the ones I love.

Jack likes going to the library, too– but for an entirely different reason. He likes the children’s room and the “Green Eggs and Ham” computer game… And the stacks of puzzles and games. He’s worse than I am about returning books– today we brought back three and came home with two of them and one new one, “I want to keep these longer,” he pleaded.

This summer I’ve been reading goofy books from the section on writers who write about themselves. William C. Anderson and Ludwig Bemelmans. Today I picked up a weird assortment including a books about a nun, an undertaker, an Alaskan army wife, and an old “Anne” book (L. M. Montgomery) because my own copy is AWOL.

The guy in front of me checked out three books about serial killers and murders. I’ll stick with my bagful.

Insomnia

Can’t sleep tonight.

I’ve done all the stuff to welcome sleep– drank some milk, took a bath, read some, facebooked some… but it’s no use. I’m wide awake.

So here are some random thoughts:

1. Read any good books lately? I just finished Geraldine Brooks’ People of the Book. It’s good. Not as good as her Year of Wonders but good. I wonder why her stuff isn’t optioned for movies.

2. I’m down to my last box of Mallomars. And I’m getting nervous about it. My Mother-in-Law gave me two cases of them for Christmas. There’s nothing like a good Mallomar and orange juice.  A little chocolate, a little marshmallow, a little juice– ah, bliss. My bliss, unfortunately is about to run out.  Stupid midwest.

3. I’m wanderlusty lately. I want to pack us all up and go someplace for a few days or weeks. Live out of a well-packed suitcase and eat new things, see new places, return home sated.

4. On Sunday night, also unable to sleep (stupid time change?) I found Mark & Olly on television. Two british men who go off on tangent adventures because they can. The series has them living with an Amazon tribe in some far part of Peru. I watched two and a half episodes that night– this is how I fell into the trap of loving Deadliest Catch, too– but it’s interesting TV.

5. Jack’s vocabulary has exploded again. This time it’s all the funny little in-between words… adjectives and adverbs and the ilk. He used the word “also” today. It broke me up. He’s delighted in our recognition of his new words. And he’s a great mimic. He’ll try out phrases he hears from us or his movies. This week we’ve watched A Charlie Brown Christmas a few times so there is a lot of Linus, Charlie, and Snoopy coming out.

6. I can’t beat Robby in Scrabble. Or Lexulous rather. We play it on Facebook. It’s disconcerting to lose to him when it is a matter of words and not numbers… but he’s a much better strategist than I am. My problem is I get so delighted in discovering a word I forget to pay attention to what might be more advantageous. Sometimes the two letter words get more points than the 7 letter words. It’s frustrating, too, because Lexulous circumvents the rules of Scrabble. I grew up on the rules of Scrabble– my grandmother was unyielding when it came to those rules. And there was no use of the Official Scrabble Dictionary unless there was a challenge thrown– you had to rely on the words you knew and could defend– not thumbing through the dictionary to find a word that incorporated the tiles in front of you. You can cheat quite a bit in Lexulous against those rules– it takes a lot of the fun out of it.
And it makes me a crabby opponent. The other day Robby started a new game (which irritated me– the loser gets to do that, not the reigning champ) and played a word that I didn’t know.
“Oooh! A new word! What’s it mean?” asked me earnestly.
“I don’t know,” came my husband’s hesitant reply.
“Yeah, then we’re done with this game then, aren’t we?”

7. To do: Learn the Kitchener Stitch so I can finish up two pairs of socks. Sew Jack’s teddy a little cape so that he can be “Super Georgia.” Drag Robby to IKEA to look at ideas for the kitchen and dining room (we’ll pay the Swedes in lingonberries). Paint a family tree on the upstairs hallway wall for Jack. Clean the basement. Get Robby to do his Charo impression again.

8. I need to come up with a fun treat for Friday at Jack’s preschool. I like bringing in the treat. It’s fun to try to find something that all 20 kids will eat.

Okay.  This hasn’t helped. I’m still not sleepy.

And now I want a Mallomar.

The Miracles of Ed and Adrian

Jack is still not “completely trained” which is a nice Mommy Euphenism… what I mean to type is that Jack is “still soiling himself.” (Were I the Daddy, and not the Mommy, I’d type Jack is still “crapping his pants.”)

We haven’t pushed it (no pun intended). Our theory is that, in his own time, he’d decide that the little Mickey Mouse undies would be far more appealing than Size 4 Huggies. (Particularly because I made a solemn vow when Jack was tiny that I wouldn’t ever buy the Size 5 Huggies. They seemed akin to adult size diapers and it creeped me out… Consequently, the little man has been somewhat squeezed into his Size 4s each night.) Of all the battles we’ve endured and have in front of us– this one, this basic function of polite society, seemed the least worth fighting.

Everyone’s weighed in. Some of our friends and family are horrified that he’s yet “untrained.” We see it in their eyes even as we shrug it off. “He’s not going to college in a diaper. Eventually he’ll decide he’s ready,” became our mantra in these scenerios. (We used to say “kindergarten” but somewhere we gave ourselves a wider berth.)

And we’ve had plenty of useless advice:
“Give him m&ms!” (He won’t eat chocolate.)
“Take away a toy” (He shrugs and says goodbye to it and finds something else to do.)
“Don’t change his pants.” (He walked around one afternoon with an increasingly bloated Huggies until his little legs chaffed. And never complained.)
“Make him sit on the potty.” (This was our favorite. He sat there one day for nearly the whole day. Completely happy. Watched a movie on the portable DVD player, flipped through his train catalogs, ate lunch, and sang every song he knew… )

Jack is unbribable. As exasperating as that can be sometimes (bribable kids are easier. Think about it.) we can’t help but think that might hold him in good stead down the road. He’s not going to cave easily to pressure– whether it’s our’s or the idiot buddy that says, “Hey! let’s go joy riding in that car over there!”

And then came Adrian and Ed.

Adrian arrived first– he’s the newborn son of our best pals. Suddenly Jack was no longer the baby in our midst but a “great, big boy!” in light of tiny, mewing Adrian. Jack was somewhat disappointed that this long awaited little friend was somewhat incapacitated– Adrian’s not able to run and play and eat pizza like Jack can… but there was a glint in Jack’s eye of the realization of his own cababilities.

So, in the blink of an eye, Jack was casually mentioning to us, “I have to go to the bathroom” and then going off to urinate, flush, and wipe his hands. 

Robby and I held our breath.

Ed came along this week. Inadvertently. Jack and I were home one afternoon this week and both of us were a little cross. I’d just changed his pants again. After he’d promised, “I’ll tell you when I have to go potty, Mommy. I promise.” I went back to reading a book and Jack went back to playing with his toys. We have steam radiators in the house and they tend to pop and hiss and clink. Jack can go weeks without noticing the sounds then have a day where he needs to be reassured that “it’s just the furnace, sweetie. It’s okay.” But this day I was distracted. I was in the middle of reading The Reader by Bernard Schlink and so when Jack paused in his play to ask, “Mommy! What’s that?! Mommy!” I didn’t look up from my book and said, “That’s the monster that bites small boys in the popo when they poopoo in their pants.” (Yes, I know, Tolstoy only wishes he’d written that sentence.)
Jack: “What? A monster? It’s not the furnace?”
Worst Mommy Ever: “His name is Ed.”

Jack’s little face went white and his lip started to tremble. I closed my book. He burst into tears, “I don’t want Ed to bite my popo Mommy!” I started to laugh. Because, really, Ed is quite possibly the poorest name for a monster… and it was all rather ridiculous. “Jack– it’s okay. I was kidding. There’s no Ed. There’s no monster. Mommy was being silly. It’s just the furnace baby.”

But he didn’t believe me.

So now, suddenly, we have a kid that runs to the bathroom when he needs to poo. That Ed is pretty effective.

Yesterday I had to go to a funeral so Jack was going over to play at the grandparents. “Let’s go potty before we go, okay?”
Clever Jack: “I’ll go potty at Grandlady’s house”
Clever-er Mommy: “Ed knows where they live.”
Jack ran. RAN. to the bathroom where he promptly shat. Three times in the space of a half hour.

I’m torn. I should put a stop to this. Somehow prove that there is no Ed.

Ed is growing. At our pals’ last night Ed took on a shape and size. Apparently Ed has been spotted before– and the glimpses show that his head is all teeth. No lips. So he drools and makes a horrid sucking sound when he uses a straw. Robby and Chris exchanged Ed stories while Jack played nearby and I shushed them, guilty that I’d started it all.

Yet, really, teeth and all, Ed isn’t so bad. I’m not sure which I feel worse about– giving a name to Jack’s worst fears or taking this long to give a name to Jack’s worst fears…

Because, and still holding our breaths, we may be on our way to those Mickey Mouse undies yet.

Columbus didn’t actually discover anything that wasn’t already there

When Jack discovered his hands– that they were attached to him and he could make them move at will– was one of those Big Moments. Sure, it was wrapped in the ridiculously cute packaging of his mouth in a little “O!” shape while his eyes lit up with the wonder of these strange things at the end of his arms. We were charmed at his utter delight. We were crew members on an Apollo mission. New frontiers and all that.

I’ve been feeling that way myself a little lately.

My high school reunion a few weeks back was pleasant enough– there were some old pals that made it worth the $45 dollar bad appetizers. The real payoff of the night was when a couple of those old pals encouraged me to get on Facebook. (Encouraged is nicer than saying that they openly mocked my admission that “I used to have a MySpace page…” “Uh, Terri– it’s not 2005 anymore. Catch up with the rest of us.”)

Later that week I signed myself up. And now I’m in contact with a handful of people that I grew up with and then lost track of. Which is where I’m feeling a little akin to that moment when Jack was so startled by his own hands…

I’m still me. My trappings are different– I’m somewhat of a grown up with a mortgage and a job. I have Robby and the JackRabbit and the little black dog and the demanding Dorothy (for a goldfish she’s got a lot of attitude)– but underneath the new layers is still me.

I find that somewhat astonishing.

Take my pal David. I haven’t seen him for years and years– twenty probably– but in the last few weeks, plucked out of cyberspace– there he is. Still recognizably the boy I knew. He commented on the Koala entry– about his experience with the Ian McEwan’s book Atonement. And I gasped out loud because I’d felt the same way about it. The last third of that book is a bullet train. No way was I jumping off until I’d got to the end… And when I finished I sat somewhat stunned. Dazed a little at how dizzying the effect of a really good story is. I’ve told at least a dozen people they should read Atonement and there is crickets. Yet it came as no surprise that David would have loved it, too– despite the fact that I haven’t a clue as to what he’s read in the last two decades.

My pal Dehan and I like some of the same music. We did twenty years ago, too. My pal Gail and I used to write letters to each other. I have a suitcase stuffed with them. We’ve fallen out of that habit somewhere since Jack’s arrival… yet she can send me a text message with less than 10 words that has almost the same effect that one of her neatly lettered envelopes in my mailbox.

It’s jumbled– I can’t really explain it other than to say if nothing else I’ve had the good fortune to know some very good people. People that I still recognize and still recognize me. Our cores are still the same. Jack’s hands were there all along. He just had to figure out that. The only difference is about 38 years.

Shhhhh. She’s sleeping.

This weekend we went up to the Lake to see the in-laws. The cottage is an enchanted place– there, somehow, there is time to read and knit and sleep. Little elves make meals and do the laundry. Okay. Maybe it’s my mother-in-law that does those things.

But the end result is that I spent a large chunk of Saturday in bed. Sleeping. Reading (James Hilton’s Goodbye, Mr. Chips if you are interested). Sleeping some more. Fired up the laptop (Robby’s– mine is still driverless. What IS a driver?) and did some work. Four Hello! magazines (I like to pretend I’m in Britain when I read them.)

Robby and Jack played in the Lake. Friends came for a whitefish and sweet corn dinner. The sun took it’s sweet time slipping down past the other side of the Lake.

And did I mention that today, on my father-in-law’s satellite television there was an all day Beverly Hills 90210 marathon???

Home is Where the Sand is Brought

I’m back from the Woods. It was a good escape from the reality of losing my hard drive. At camp there is only the reality of, well, camp. And that’s a good thing. Cooking, for example, even the abbreviated camp food version, is a process that requires you to slow down. Showering is a 75 yard walk through the woods to the bathhouse. Fires need to be built. Tents swept out.

All those little tasks add up to fill your camp day. It pushes out all the thoughts of files that have to be recreated, rebuilt, remembered. The photos that don’t exist anymore. The banked episodes of “Deadliest Catch” that I didn’t get to watch.

And then there are all the camp activities that we look forward to– the campfires and singing and comraderie. The hike to the beach. The hobo pies and s’mores. Those things that work their way into the cracks of the walls you build the rest of the year.

While we were at camp our phones had spotty coverage– we’d get text messages hours past when they were sent. Most of the time the little bar was through the little phone icon meaning we had no service at all. When my nieces left in the middle of the week we abandoned our phones entirely. It was nice.

I read a couple of books– my Friend Wallis’ Dad’s book, Deep River was the first on the list. Family seemed simpler when I was younger. The older I get the more I realize how very complicated families are. And how schewed our individual ideas of “normal” are because of our families. Wally is a true patriarch in all the best senses. He, the Christian pilgrim, is relatively uncomplicated. Yet only a generation separates him from the chaos and destruction of an alcholic grandfather. The book I read is an account of his father’s early life and conversion and subsequent ministry. Wally’s born in the last third of the book and it was startling to remember that these weren’t just characters in a story but flesh and blood people that I’ve met and loved. Weird.

A Year Without Made in China was my beach reading. It’s one family’s attempt to give up anything made in China– to extend their consumerism to other countries and other economies. Wal-Mart gets a lot of the brunt of the experiement– but really, my beloved Target isn’t any better. The fact that it is almost impossible to buy shoes manufactured this side of the Great Wall is scary. What kind of world will Jack grow old in? Will there be any industry left in the good old US of A at all?

It was good to read. Even better to have an excuse for not bringing along my laptop and work. Good to shake sand out of my shoes at night. Good to shiver in the 45 degree mornings waiting for the tea kettle to hiss. Good to see my little son take such joy in the singing.

And good to be with the church family for a week. They’re good people. Reality snuck it’s way in to the camp. One of the families at camp– a big, rollicking clan with three generations that are nearly impossible to sort out– had a hole in it. the oldest generation, the mother and father, weren’t at camp as one of the middle generation had just had a baby that wasn’t doing too well. On Tuesday we got the news that the little babe had passed away. His aunts and uncles and cousins stayed at camp and shared their grief and resilience, too. It tempered the rest of the week in that the petty annoyances disappated in the face of their loss. My lost laptop was suddenly less of a tragedy. The headcolds that Jacky and I were hosting were only a nusiance.

A lot of our friends don’t really get why we go to camp with our church. Or why we go to church for that matter. Maybe this year I can learn to articulate why it is worth the sand in the dryer vent and all the bother of organizing equipment and supplies and cooking under a tree.

Did I mention the s’mores?

In praise of Annie Dillard

In college my favorite professor (though at the time he wasn’t my favorite– time and a modicum of wisdom has done that) introduced me to the American author, Annie Dillard. Her prose and her poetry are carefully worded– spare even– but still evoke a rich opulence of layered meanings and descriptions.

Her details are exquisite. I love details. I like the nuances of individuality that would be lost if the sentences contained just noun and verb. It’s the adjective and the adverbs that are important. Yet, having alluded to the idea that her sentences are loaded with descriptive words– well, they aren’t. They are neat and tidy. It’s like a spare room at a dear friend’s house– fresh linens on a simple bed and a place to put your things without all the to do of the master suite and it’s comforts.

Back in college we dove into Holy the Firm, Teaching the Stone to Talk, and Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. An American Childhood came later. This weekend I finished her novel The Maytrees. The cadence of it, like her other books, was measured out so that I had to slow my brain to wrap around her set out words. My breath and pulse, I think, went stiller, quieter, too. It’s a good story about marriage and love.

I like that the author blurb about her uses the word “recluse” — it would be disconcerting to find out that she’s a member of Stephen King’s band or some late night poker gamer with some hack like Nicholas Sparks or Danielle Steele.

I’d rather think she’s standing near some place where the water runs across multi-colored pebbles. Cold, clear water that isn’t polluted. Maybe– on the hottest days of summer– late July, perhaps, she dips her toes into that cold, cold water while words gather about her head like swarms of tiny gnats.

I’m glad the copy of The Maytrees I’ve just read is paperback. It means that maybe, soon, some new thing will emerge on the shelves at Borders. Meanwhile, I’ll dig it out one of the old friends and read it again.