Tag Archives: family

Weekend Snapshots 30

Friday

I think it’s important to always look professional for work…

You never know who might drop in…

My 13-year-old had some friends over for a Halloween party later that evening…

Saturday

On Saturday morning my husband was acting really fishy. My daughter came down the stairs in her pjs and plopped herself next to me.

“Dad sent me down to keep you company.”

“Why?” I asked her with narrowed eyes, “Does he not want me to come upstairs?”

She grinned and shrugged her shoulders. Very suspicious.

He came down himself and started putting away the laundry that I had just folded and placed on the back of the couch.

Now I knew something was up. It takes at least a full day of nagging to get my family to take their laundry and put it away.

Next he started to take away the empty laundry basket.

“Hey! I need that!”

“I was going to put it away for you…”

<What?!>

“But I need it for the next load of laundry that’s in the dryer now.”

“OK,” he said reluctantly and put the laundry basket back down on the floor.

Fishy. Very fishy.

And then the doorbell rang.

And then these lovely friends came in bearing flowers, gifts, and scrumptious foods and drink:

Love these ladies!

It was a surprise housewarming brunch! My husband had managed to keep the secret for weeks, even when I announced that I’d be taking the kids to Arlington this weekend.

“You can’t leave that weekend!” he had blurted in a panic. “I have to check the calendar…I think I have something going on.”

I remember feeling a little miffed at the time. “You don’t have to come,” I said. “The kids are out of school on Monday and Tuesday and I’m taking those days off work. We have trick-or-treating on Saturday, and then we’ll leave Sunday morning.”

As soon as he heard that I was leaving after Saturday, he dropped it. Poor, poor, long-suffering man.

How awesome is that? If I had known about the housewarming, I’d have spent hours, maybe even days cleaning and stressing out. Fortunately, I had done some tidying up after the boys’ party the night before.

Later that day, we went back to our old neighborhood with our last trick-or-treater. For the second year in a row she dressed up with a friend. They were Calvin and Hobbes…

Sunday

We drove up to Arlington on Sunday morning.

The kids had fun checking out the new foot massager my sister got for my parents:

My sister (Sissy to me, Auntie Sissy to my kids) had come up with a surprise for the kids. As we rounded them up to take them to the undisclosed location, they kept venturing guesses as to where we were heading.

“Oh, I know where we’re going,” the fifteen year old said. “You’re taking us to a mountaintop to sacrifice us, right?”

“WHO SPILLED THE BEANS?!” I asked.

Well, since the surprise was ruined, we took them to a trampoline park instead. While they waited for their time slot, they practiced their driving skills.

This boy…

is about to get his learner’s permit. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Actually, he was a genius driver compared to these two:

But that’s not saying much.

Trying to get over their disappointment at not being sacrificed on a mountaintop.

 

 

Shout-Outs

As I was driving my daughter to school this morning, she was explaining to me the tradition of “Shout-Outs” instituted at the school a few years ago. My children have all gone to the same sweet elementary school in the rural outskirts of Charlottesville. With a student body of fewer than 250, the school is able to make community building a regular part of the curriculum, and they take this mission seriously. One Friday a month, a school-wide morning meeting is held during which students and faculty gather together in the gym to do a special greeting and a team-building activity. The fifth graders read out some announcements, and then the assembly concludes with “shout-outs,” which is when a few teachers take over the microphone to call out compliments that they’ve prepared in advance for a select group of kids.

“So give me an example of a shout-out,” I asked my daughter.

“Well, it’s usually something like, ‘Thank you for being kind,’ or ‘Thank you for helping the teacher.’ But, every single person is supposed to get at least one shout-out every year. One year, there was this kid, who I guess wasn’t, well…(there was a pause as she searched for a way to phrase it nicely)…the greatest and his shout-out was, ‘Thank you for putting the caps back on the pens!’ And another time it was, ‘Thank you for remembering to cover your mouth when you sneezed.'”

I started cackling like a demented witch.

“How about, ‘Thank you for remembering to wipe after you went to the bathroom?,'” I asked. “Or…’Thank you for not murdering a single person all last week?!'”

I began chortling and heaving in paroxyms of unseemly mirth. Tears began streaming from my eyes.

My daughter, who goes to a kind, nurturing school where they have a  shout-out for every single kid, even the ones who aren’t the greatest, solicitously asked me, “Mommy, are you ok?”

I was, but my behavior clearly revealed the fact that I went to a school that hadn’t capitalized on the civilizing influence of shout-outs.

I failed preschool three times.

Lately my thoughts have been with Claire, my daughter’s first preschool teacher and our dear neighbor, before she and her husband moved to California. We were so sad to hear that her husband passed away a couple weeks ago. We have been exchanging messages and reminiscing ever since.

Claire was a golden, luminous presence in our lives. A few mornings a week we would walk down to the cul de sac and up a steep hill to her “Little Sisters Preschool.” The four little girls who made up the neighborhood school were all little sisters and the youngest children in their families.

You had to cross a pretty little creek and a mossy lawn to get to the front door of Claire’s enchanted house. On one side of the house was a pond that her husband had lovingly dug by hand. It was full of lilies and goldfish and croaking frogs. On the other side were beautiful gardens. Fairy houses and other treasures were hidden along winding paths through tall trees.

The girls wandered the woods looking for fairies, they learned to sing songs of thanksgiving for the food they ate, and most importantly – they were loved.

Until then preschool had been highly problematic for us. “I guess we’re not good preschool parents,” I would say with a shrug to explain why we had switched schools so many times.

Towards the end of our oldest child’s first year of preschool, he began desperately crying the minute we pulled into the parking lot. It was a struggle to get him out of the car and into the school. Eventually, we discovered to our horror that his teacher had been harsh and unkind to him. We pulled him out immediately.

The next year we tried a co-op that had a reputation for cultivating a warm and nurturing environment. Because it was a co-op, all the parents helped out in the classroom a couple times a month. At the end of those two days every month, I would crawl home at noon with my head throbbing and collapse in a senseless heap. I still have PTSD from my multiple tours of duty at the woodworking station where two and three year olds would brandish real saws and joyfully pound nails into blocks of wood for hours on end.

On the days I didn’t co-op, I would dread the moment when I picked up my son and would be told in a gentle voice that “N had chosen not to make a paper-bag vest today.” The first time this happened, I said lightly, “Oh, that’s ok!” I quickly realized that this was the incorrect response when his teacher replied, “We think it’s important for him to participate in all of the activities.”

I may have failed out of two preschools, but at least I knew when to take my cue to leave. We enrolled my second son in a traditional drop-off preschool. It was a stressful time in our lives. Our daughter had just been born and was in and out of the hospital for months. After her first surgery in New York, my husband left us at the hospital to drive through the night with our young sons back to Virginia because he had to teach a class early the next morning. Running late for the class, he parked in an unauthorized spot to drop our son off at preschool. As he stepped out of the car, a policeman asked him to move his car and was unsympathetic to his plea to allow him to park for the two minutes it would take to bring our son into the building. My husband chose not to repark the car and told the officer to give him a ticket if he must. I was mortified to read the next preschool newsletter in which certain unnamed parents were firmly reminded to set a good example for young children by not arguing with policemen in their presence.

My husband was not the only one to be disgraced. I lived in fear of “getting the finger” from my son’s preschool teacher when I came to pick him up. As soon as she caught sight of me, she would beckon me over to her with the curve of a bony, exigent forefinger.

“Your son was very disappointed that he didn’t have three things that began with a ‘c’ for show and tell today.”

Oh, Lord! There were letters of the day, numbers of the day, and colors of the day! It was a daily nightmare! I would set a terrible example for my young charges as I frantically ransacked drawers, cursing the fact that we had no yellow clothes for “yellow day,”or six things that began with an “f,” or was it five things for “e” day?!

We had to fail out of three preschools before Claire and The Little Sisters Preschool came into our lives. I have always loved the Christian concept of Grace – the idea that you are granted love and mercy, not because of what you do, or who you are, but even despite your failures and shortcomings. Having Claire and Lionel in our lives was that kind of blessing. How lucky my daughter was to have that time with her…to build houses for fairies, to read The Story of Little Babaji, to picnic at Beaver Creek,…to be loved. Thank you, Claire. I think of you and Lionel with such love, admiration, and gratitude. We miss you both so much.

The gift

I began this latest move like every other one I’ve ever made – that is, with the very best of intentions. Inspired by the snippets I’d read of Marie Kondo’s book The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up, I zealously tackled the unfathomably large quantities of stuff I’ve acquired over the years. I returned things to their rightful owners. I found new homes for towering mountains of clothing, toys, and books. I filled dumpsters with load after load of trash. I carefully sorted and packed things away in boxes, neatly labelled with their contents. In the end, of course, as always happens despite my good intentions, I ran out of boxes and time and desperately began dumping drawers into plastic garbage bags and clearing surfaces by indiscriminately sweeping everything into buckets, shopping bags, laundry baskets, and garbage cans. Even after officially moving, we had to make a few trips back to the house to pick up things we had left behind in the rush. I am sadly resigned to the fact that it will probably take the next ten years to sort through all of those hastily filled buckets, bags, baskets, and cans…

Last week I went back to our old house, which is still on the market. There was one last thing I needed to get and it had been preying on my mind. Seventeen years ago, my mother-in-law came from England to visit us in our first house in Charlottesville. With the brio that only elderly women possess, she brought me plants from her own garden that she had dug up that morning and wrapped in tissue right before heading to the airport. They traveled in her purse across the Atlantic. She presented them to me with a flourish upon her arrival.

The primulas she brought me had been planted in the beautiful garden of my husband’s first home in Scotland.

From our visit in the summer of 2013

When they moved to Manchester, they brought some to transplant to their garden there.

Garden in Altrincham

I planted my mother-in-law’s gift in the very first garden of our very first house.

When we moved to our next house, I divided it and brought it to our garden there.

There were many plants that I loved and nurtured for ten years in that garden…

but there was only one plant that I absolutely had to bring to our new house:

Once I’d dug up the primula, I decided to do a quick check of the kitchen drawer where we had stored batteries. I couldn’t remember packing them, and we desperately needed some at the new house. I opened the drawer, and there they were. A nagging thought occurred to me and I opened the drawer just below that one. There I discovered another gift from my mother-in-law – the family heirloom silver. Heavy silver forks engraved with the initials of my husband’s godmother, bone-handled knives, ladles with royal crests…

“Oops!” I thought to myself sheepishly as I pulled them all out of the drawer. I’m glad to have these, of course…but the real treasure is still my primula.

Birthday

For my birthday this year I got a new old house, a miserable cold from my daughter, and an extra year of life! My iPhone wished me a happy birthday and informed me that I just turned the age I thought and said I was all last year. Hooray for declining faculties working in your favor for a change!

I dragged myself home from work today and wasn’t sure I was feeling up to going out, but I’m glad we did! We went to Lampo Neapolitan Pizzeria for dinner, where the only sure way to get a seat is to show up at 5 pm. We may have disgraced ourselves just a tiny little bit by inhaling shocking quantities of the thin crust wood-fired pizzas…

Margherita D.O.C.
Funghi Pizza – Love the awesome pizza shears!

We had to try the desserts too, of course:

Budino – a magical concoction made of chocolate pudding with hazelnut brittle and olive oil.
Zeppole

We ended the evening back at home where I got to take some birthday pics with these kids, the very best, most priceless gifts I ever got:

 

Now and Then…

The last time we moved was a decade ago. Our daughter was born shortly after we moved, so we combined our new address announcement with our new baby announcement:

Oh, those sweet smiles on those darling little faces!

And now here we are, ten years later:

These bonus outtakes made me laugh out loud, very possibly because I am just a little bit evil. I believe I captured the precise moment when the kids no longer had to “pretend to be annoyed!”

 

Picnic at Ash Lawn-Highland

It was a gorgeous day for the annual Mary Ellen Brown Family Picnic. Mary Ellen Brown was a conversation group leader at the Lorna Sundberg International Center at the University of Virginia. The family sponsors the picnic for international students, scholars, and their families to honor her memory. This year for the first time, it was held at Ash Lawn-Highland, home of President James Monroe.

Our House

When I was a little girl we took a long car ride from our house in Pennsylvania to Georgia, where my dad’s friend had a farm. Visiting that farm was like entering a foreign land populated by mythical beasts I had only ever read about in books. There were horses that stood impossibly tall and imposing. There were dozens and dozens of pigs that squealed and ran in a comical panic whenever we approached their pen. Indoors, I found a giant, fluffy orange cat lounging on a bed.

The only animals I had ever known to that point were dogs; the cat was as exotic to me as the horses and pigs. I knelt down and stared straight into his green eyes. I began to stroke him from his head to the tip of his tail. With our eyes locked, I felt that we were communing with each other on a spiritual level. I could tell he was appreciating my ministrations, because he was slowly wagging his tail, just like our dogs would do when showered with such loving attention. Suddenly, the cat leapt onto my face and raked downward with his claws.

Tears mingled with the blood trickling down my face as I ran to find my mother. In a very Korean way, she urgently whispered to me to stop crying and to say nothing of my encounter with the cat. Our hosts would be embarrassed by what their pet had done, she explained, and it would be rude to upset them. She dried my eyes and washed away the blood, but there was nothing she could do to hide the long red tracks made by the cat’s claws.

Instead of expressing the slightest regret or embarrassment, when our hostess noticed my face she cackled with mirth and drawled, “I see you met Tiger.”

I’ve been wary of cats ever since, though what this episode really should have taught me is to be wary of people – a far scarier species.

This is all to say that I never considered that I would ever share space with a cat.

This is Scooter. He’s a feral cat that the family who sold us our house had been taking care of when they lived here. Before they moved out of the state a couple years ago, they trapped and relocated Scooter to their friend’s farm many miles away. The cleaning lady, who was keeping up the house while it was on the market, noticed the cat hanging out on the back porch and alerted Scooter’s former owners that he had somehow managed to make the long pilgrimage back home.

For the week we’ve been in our new house, Scooter has been sitting on the back deck or in the back yard. Whenever our eyes meet through the glass doors, he yowls at me with a grumpy, pissed off expression on his scrawny little face.

“Don’t feed him, or he’ll never leave,” advised my friends.

“Promise me you won’t feed that cat!” commanded my mother, aka She Who Must Be Obeyed, over the phone.

“We should call the SPCA to trap him and take him to the shelter,” suggested my son.

We’ve been negotiating all sorts of things via our realtors:  the replacement of pipes, the cutting of keys, electrical repairs…A couple days ago I got another message relayed to us by the sellers’ realtor. The former owners were begging us to keep Scooter as a barn cat.

Here’s the thing…My husband and I reported to each other that we both felt our mood lift the moment we first pulled into the driveway of what is now our new house. It’s an old yellow farmhouse originally built in 1920 to serve as the rectory for the Reverend Howell C. Lewis and his wife Bessie, who served the Presbyterian church just around the corner. There’s an ineffable sense of serenity here. To us, it felt like home. Scooter thought so too. He knew and loved the place long before I ever did.

I just bought my very first bag of cat food. I’m sure it won’t be my last. Scooter and I both chose to make this house our home, and I guess that means we’ve chosen each other. But Scooter is such an undignified name for a cat who suffered and wandered in the wilderness to find his way back to his own hallowed grounds, don’t you think? Meet Parson Scooter, resident cat.

Labor Daze

We’re still in the throes of moving. Every day we shuttle back and forth between the two houses, our cars groaning under the weight of Stuff. So. much. stuff.

We took a short break yesterday to join some friends for a picnic dinner at IX Art Park.

We’re trying to “Dream BIG,” but to be honest, it’s not happening. Mostly, we’re just gathering up gazillions of minuscule Lego pieces, cramming piles of paper to be sorted at some future date into boxes, rounding up miscellaneous cords, puzzle pieces, etc., all while trying (and failing) to keep our house looking “showable.”

I commissioned my son to draw two cartoons to illustrate what it’s been like these past few days…

I explained to him that by the end of each day I feel like an angry giant is trying to crack my head open as if it were a recalcitrant walnut…

I think he pretty much captured it!

The professionals are taking over soon. The piano will be moved tomorrow, and on Wednesday and Thursday the rest of the furniture and heavy things we haven’t ferried to the new house ourselves will be moved.

We’re getting there!