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We laughed about this yesterday…

Yesterday when I was waiting with my son for his ride to DC, we reminisced about this incident from last year. I originally posted this on April 9, 2014…

The cherry blossoms hadn’t quite popped yet, but the Cherry Blossom Festival was in full swing this weekend.

After lunch, we decided to go paddle-boating in the Tidal Basin.

Two people had to peddle in our four person boat. My three kids argued over who would get to peddle as if they were vying for seats on the U.S. Olympic rowing team. The man who was helping us into the boat solved the problem by suggesting that we return to the dock halfway through to switch positions.

“Remember! You’re not allowed to switch positions in the middle of the water,” he warned, “When you’re ready to switch, you have to come back here and we’ll help you do it.”

The boys took the first shift while my daughter and I relaxed:

Halfway through the hour, we returned to the dock so that my daughter could have a turn. My oldest son graciously gave up his coveted spot to switch positions with her…

Moments before all hell broke loose.

…and immediately transformed into a crazed martinet. “FASTER! Peddle faster, you maggots!” he shouted gleefully.

His siblings bore his strident orders with good humor at first, but the relentless nature of his hectoring soon began to pall. Undeterred by my dirty looks and increasingly forceful requests that he put a sock in it, he kept goading his younger siblings. We were like the characters in Sartre’s Huis Clos, who eventually come to realize that they are in hell, and that their punishment is being trapped for eternity with each other.

To distract the kids, I suggested that we go investigate some white rocks I could see in the distance. I didn’t recognize them and wanted to get a closer look.

The two kids got the boat fairly close to the rocks, but not close enough for me to make out what they were.

“I still can’t see what they are. Can you get a little closer?” I asked.

My conscientious eleven year old, our family’s own Jiminy Cricket, advised me against this unwise course of action. “It will take us too long to get back to the dock if we get any closer to the rock.”

“But I really want to see what they are. How about you get us just a little closer?”

Meanwhile, my eldest took this as a signal to renew his taunts.

“CLOSER! Get CLOSER! Peddle harder, you maggots! I want to see bubbles in our wake!!!”

Against his own better judgment, Jiminy Cricket steered us close enough to the rocks so that I could see at last that it was the new(ish) Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial:

“OK, let’s head back now!” I said, sneaking a peek at the time.

“How much time do we have left to get back to the dock? NO! Don’t tell me, it will just stress me out. OK, go ahead and tell me.”

“Ummm, well, we have about ten minutes.”

Now Jiminy Cricket was pissed. He started scolding both of us.

“You HAD to see the rock! And NOW we’re going to be late getting back to the dock. Don’t blame me if they make us pay more for the boat! I TOLD you it would take too long, but NO, you HAD to get closer.”

“Don’t stress out about it! If we have to pay extra, we’ll just pay extra. It’s not a big deal,” I tried to reassure him.

All the while, his brother provided a steady dose of maddening counterpoint: “Is that the best you can do? We’re not even moving! Come ON! Peddle for all your worth, Maggots!”

Jiminy Cricket lost it: “YOU peddle then. I’m not going to peddle anymore!”

“I’d be glad to peddle, but we’re not allowed to switch.” (For some reason, now my eldest son switched to a velvety, smarmy English accent dripping with evil).

For dramatic effect my second son stopped peddling, even though I know it was killing him not to be making any progress back toward the dock.

“Well somebody has to peddle…,” I ventured, as the boat came to a standstill.

At that point we realized the youngest was not feeling well.

“I think I might throw up,” she moaned.

“Just stop peddling. STOP PEDDLING! Take your feet OFF the pedals. I can manage myself!” shrieked my poor little Jiminy Cricket as he resumed peddling as fast as he could, “UGH! My back is KILLING me! My legs are killing me!”

“QUIT your whining, you maggot and peddle!” (I whacked the boy to shut him up – to no avail). “Don’t tell me that’s the best you can do. Peddle harder!!!”

The ridiculousness of it got to me and I started shaking with silent laughter.

“You think this is FUNNY?!” asked Jiminy Cricket, apoplectic with rage.

“NO! I’m sorry! It’s not funny at ALL!” I said trying to get a hold of myself, “I’m sorry, I wish I could help you peddle, but….”

Finally, we made it back to the dock, about fifteen minutes past the time we were due. Fortunately, they took pity on us, and let us stagger off into the sunset without any additional payment.

As we walked on, my sweet Jiminy Cricket said, “Thanks so much for taking us on the awesome boat ride, Mommy.” I looked at him suspiciously to see if he was mocking me, but he continued with earnest sincerity, “It was so much fun!” (That one’s a keeper, I’m telling you)!

The three siblings reconciled…

and we headed back to meet up with my sister for our ride back to Arlington.

 

Sorcery

I’ve been working on my wheat belly since the day I started on solids. My mother’s culinary witchcraft has led to a lifetime of chronic overeating. I simply couldn’t stop eating her magical food. No one was immune. My friends would literally beg to be invited over for dinner. After each meal, when we finally let the spoons drop from our limp fingers, we would clutch our distended bellies and whimper with pleasure and pain.

I remember one day I found my mother standing over her bubbling cauldron stirring something that looked delicious. The tantalizing aroma made my knees go weak and my mouth water.

“Can I try a little?” I pleaded.

“NO!” she replied indignantly, “It’s for the dog!”

When she wasn’t transforming random scraps into three star Michelin guide-worthy dog food, she was conjuring up wondrous meals for us. Each bite would make you want to weep with joy and fall on your knees and beg for mercy because surely you must be committing a mortal sin by eating something so impossibly, wickedly delicious.

One day there was a piece of rubber hose lying around on the kitchen counter. My husband wandered into the kitchen just as my mother was throwing it away.

“I’m so disappointed,” he said as he watched her put it into the trash can, “I thought you were going to whip up a delicious casserole with that.”

It had been a long time since we’d been to Arlington, and this weekend my mom pulled out all the stops for us.

On Sunday morning the smell of bacon, pancakes, and eggs lured the kids out of bed.

“I wish breakfast could be like this every day,” my son said dreamily as he tucked into the feast set before him.

“Dream on, kid,” I said as I crammed mouthfuls of magic into my mouth.

All day long, my mother would disappear into the kitchen at intervals and come out bearing some new triumph. The kids ate as if in an ecstatic trance…

One time she emerged from the kitchen with a crumpled paper bag that looked vaguely familiar.

“Look what I have!” she said, “It’s a Royal Cookie!”

“MOM?! Is that the cookie I bought at the rest area on our way home from Christmas in New Jersey?!”

It was. She divided it up and we ate every last crumb. And yes: somehow even that three month old cookie stored in nothing but a paper bag tucked away in my mother’s cupboard was magically delicious.

It’s called sorcery.

She Said…

Here are just a few of the things I’ve heard from Miss Sassy Pants in the past 24 hours:

I got my children all excited by attempting to replicate my mother’s legendary mackerel for the first time. She always cooks this for my children and it has magical, highly-addictive properties…kind of like crack cocaine.

My daughter took a bite and said, “Don’t take this the wrong way…I’m not saying it’s bad…it’s just not the same as Grandma’s.”

This morning when she came downstairs in a pair of shorts and a t-shirt I told her, “It’s not going be that warm today.”

She replied, “Mom. I was sweating so much yesterday, I practically drowned.”

As I was driving her to school this morning she said out of the blue, “You should enjoy being taller than me. While it lasts.”

Crocus

Crocus pas de deux

Today the sun shone for the first time in days. Most of the snow has now melted and my beloved crocuses are pirouetting all over my yard. Oh joy! Thanks to Daylight Savings, there was just enough light when I got home from work today to take some photos.

Corps de crocus

The first thing I planted in the yard of our very first house was a variety of purple crocuses. For seven springs I loved watching them come up through the grass. I think I’m so fond of them, because of the way they intrepidly shoot up right through the snow to announce that spring is just around the corner. When we moved to our current house, I couldn’t bear to have a spring without them and so I planted them by the handful again, all over our new front yard. I know I’ll do the same when we move to our next house.

It takes a certain amount of faith to shove crocus corms into the earth in the autumn. There’s something quite miraculous about the fact that within these hard, brown kernels are hiding gorgeous silky flowers that bide their time all winter long, just waiting for spring to come sashaying up out of the mud.

In her poem The Crocus (1858), Harriet Beecher Stowe compares the miracle of the crocus with the miracle of the Resurrection:

Beneath the sunny autumn sky,
With gold leaves dropping 
We sought, my little friend and I,
The consecrated ground,

Where, calm beneath the holy cross,
O’ershadowed by sweet skies,
Sleeps tranquilly that youthful form,
Those blue unclouded eyes.

Around the soft, green swelling mound
We scooped the earth away,
And buried deep the crocus-bulbs
Against a coming day.
“These roots are dry, and brown, and sere;
Why plant them here?” he said,
“To leave them, all the winter long,
So desolate and dead.”

“Dear child, within each sere dead form
There sleeps a living flower,
And angel-like it shall arise
In spring’s returning hour.”
Ah, deeper down cold, dark, and chill
We buried our heart’s flower,
But angel-like shall he arise
In spring’s immortal hour.

In blue and yellow from its grave
Springs up the crocus fair,
And God shall raise those bright blue eyes,
Those sunny waves of hair.
Not for a fading summer’s morn,
Not for a fleeting hour,
But for an endless age of bliss,
Shall rise our heart’s dear flower.

In The Year’s Awakening Thomas Hardy ponders the mystery of nature’s unerring ability to detect the shifting of seasons. The “vespering” bird and the crocus are the canny heralds of spring:

How do you know that the pilgrim track
Along the belting zodiac
Swept by the sun in his seeming rounds
Is traced by now to the Fishes’ bounds
And into the Ram, when weeks of cloud
Have wrapt the sky in a clammy shroud,
And never as yet a tinct of spring
Has shown in the Earth’s appareling;
O vespering bird, how do you know, 
How do you know?

How do you know, deep underground,
Hid in your bed from sight and sound,
Without a turn in temperature,
With weather life can scarce endure,
That light has won a fraction’s strength,
And day put on some moment’s length,
Whereof in merest rote will come,
Weeks hence, mild airs that do not numb;
O crocus root, how do you know,
How do you know?

1910

Alfred Kreymborg describes the wonder of the changing of the seasons when “the first small crocus” banishes winter to the grave:

Crocus 

When trees have lost remembrance of the leaves
that spring bequeaths to summer, autumn weaves
and loosens mournfully – this dirge, to whom
does it belong – who treads the hidden loom?

When peaks are overwhelmed with snow and ice,
and clouds with crepe bedeck and shroud the skies – 
nor any sun or moon or star, it seems,
can wedge a path of light through such black dreams – 

All motion cold, and dead all traces thereof:
What sudden shock below, or spark above,
starts torrents raging down till rivers surge – 
that aid the first small crocus to emerge?

The earth will turn and spin and fairly soar,
that couldn’t move a tortoise-foot before – 
and planets permeate the atmosphere
till misery depart and mystery clear! –

And yet, so insignificant a hearse? –
who gave it the endurance so to brave
such elements – shove winter down a grave? –
and then lead on again the universe?

1933

 Happy Weekend!

Birthday Blessings from Auntie Harpy

Today is the first birthday of my niece – the youngest member of my gigantic family…

My little niece gave us a preview of her 1st birthday hanbok at Christmas.

May she always be surrounded by people who adore her:

May she always have girlfriends who would do anything for her:

May she recognize true love when it looks her in the eye:

May she always be curious about the world:

May the world let her remain as gentle as a lamb…

and as fearless as a lion:

May she never lose the twinkle in her eye:

And may all her days be filled with love and laughter:

Related posts:

First Birthdays

How my brother foretold his future when he was 1 year old

Hangin’ with the Harpies in Minneapolis

Signs of Spring

Friday morning the sun was shining and the snow was melting fast…We went from this:

Japanese maple on Friday morning

To this, in just a couple of days:

Sunday afternoon

On Sunday I spent a pleasant afternoon with the sun on my back as I strolled around the yard on my very first hunt for spring for the very first time this year…

It’s become a daily ritual that I look forward to around this time of the year…

…when the monochrome landscape suddenly transforms into a technicolor scene of riotous shape and gaudy color with new surprises springing up from the muddy earth every single day.

Every year it seems to me that I am witnessing an impossible miracle.

I was most excited about spotting this little friend, the greatest miracle of all:

I always consider the first sighting of the fish in our backyard pond as the true harbinger of spring. It always fills me with an unreasonable amount of joy!

The Snow Queen and Other Snow Day Tales

With a son in high school and another in middle school, we’ve been flirting with the idea of letting all three kids stay at home alone without adult supervision. I know it might strike some as ridiculous that this would even be an issue at this point. As an eleven year old still in elementary school, I was babysitting infants. As a “safety patrol” armed with nothing but a frayed vinyl orange belt and a cheap badge slung over my scrawny little shoulder, I was in charge of a whole bus stop full of kids far from the watchful eyes of any of our parents. But that was a very different era. These days in our peaceful little neighborhood nestled in the bucolic countryside, I sometimes see parents waiting at the bus stop with their high school-age kids.

"The Voyage of Life: Youth," Thomas Cole, 1840.

“The Voyage of Life: Youth,” Thomas Cole, 1840.

The last time we asked the boys if they would feel comfortable staying home alone and in charge of their little sister, they looked at us wide-eyed with fear and vigorously shook their heads. Could it have been the fact that we began the discussion with exhortations to hide if they heard anyone at the door, to NOT answer the phone unless they recognized our number, and to call 911 IMMEDIATELY if their sister so much as coughed a little? Could it have been the scenarios we role-played in which evil sickos disguised as sweet old grannies would plead with them to open the door, because their car had broken down and they were hurt and needed to come in to use our phone and by the way they had a cute little puppy and sacks full of candy too? Possibly.

"The Voyage of Life: Manhood," Thomas Cole, 1840.

“The Voyage of Life: Manhood,” Thomas Cole, 1840.

We were very close to finally taking the plunge last week when the fairly modest snow we got here in Charlottesville shut down the school system for an entire week. Every day last week I would get a text from the county announcing that school would be closed for another day. Like clockwork, the next text I would receive shortly thereafter would be a one word expletive in response from my husband, who would be losing yet another day of work to stay home with the kids. Towards the end of the week, his one word text bombs would literally make me LOL.

We just couldn’t quite bring ourselves to leave our nine year old daughter home alone last week, even in the care of her older brothers, and despite the fact that my son has openly acknowledged her superior level of maturity. And so my husband and I traded our daughter back and forth throughout the entire week, while we fulfilled our various work obligations. This kind of shuffling has been going on for years. Once when my husband didn’t get back home in time to take over parenting duties, I was forced to bring my infant to a class I was teaching. I’ll never forget having to change my son’s diaper in the middle of my lecture on Russian literature. I’m sure the students will never forget it either. More recently, the kids have had to spend many a snow day or sick day sitting in on their dad’s political theory lectures. I’ll be so bitterly disappointed if after all this, they don’t have enough credits to earn their B.A.s by the time they get their high school diplomas.

It snowed again late last night and early this morning. School was cancelled for all three kids, but alas NOT for the parents. This morning we debated back and forth about how to handle this latest development. Finally, we decided that it was at last time to cross the Rubicon. We would leave all three kids at home.

A little while after getting to my office, I called home to check up on them.

“Mommy?” my daughter asked as she picked up the phone.

“Yes, it’s me!” I answered, “Oh YAY! You haven’t burned down the house yet!”

“MOMMY!” she replied. Did you know it’s possible to actually hear the sound of rolling eyeballs?

“Have you gotten any homework done?”

“Yep! I’ve done some math and I’m going to do some word study.”

“And what are you guys going to have for lunch?”

“Actually, we’re in the middle of lunch right now,” she replied.

“Really? Already? It’s only 11:20…”

“Yeah!” my daughter replied, “We’re having a big fat cooking showdown.”

My heart sank.

“Big fat cooking showdown sounds really scary to me. Are you guys making a big fat mess?”

“No. So, N and T both made me dishes and I’m deciding which one tastes the best.”

“What are the dishes?”

“T made me macaroni & cheese and N made me some delicious noodles.”

I guess I know who won the showdown. I have to laugh as I imagine the boys microwaving the  ready-made macaroni & cheese and pouring boiling water over the instant noodles and then presenting their “dishes” to their sister with a flourish. I should probably start planning my outfit for the James Beard Award Ceremony.

I also have to laugh as I envision my daughter dispensing judgement upon her loyal subjects. It reminded me of the time a few years ago when I took the kids swimming. Eventually, I noticed that the boys were not frolicking and splashing about as one might expect two carefree kids on vacation to be doing. Instead, they were assiduously taking turns giving their little sister rides on their backs and then anxiously asking her to rate their performance. It turned out that my daughter had ruthlessly pitted her brothers against each other in a  “Best Brother Contest.”

“Well…I’d say you’ve got a 7.5 so far. N gave me a smoother ride, so he gets an 8.2, but maybe you could improve your score by giving me a longer ride.”

On her way to total world domination.
Keep up the good work.
Not bad, not bad.
Subjugation with a smile.

More bitter disappointment is coming my way if that girl doesn’t become Ruler of the Universe in my lifetime…

Until then? I’m pretty sure they’re all going to be just fine.

Valentine’s Day

It was not the Valentine’s Day of my dreams…

In the afternoon I attended the memorial service for a man with whom my husband and I used to sing. He was a retired minister with a warm smile, a twinkle in his eye, and a deep love and steadfast devotion for his wife. His son described the love his father had for his mother as a “perfect shelter.” One of his closest friends spoke movingly of the time he spent with him on the many hikes they would take together in the Shenandoah Mountains. He was one of those rare people in this world who simply radiate goodness and light.

I went alone to the service, and my husband stayed home with the kids. As I was leaving the house, I asked my family to think of something fun that we could all do together when I got back. I knew it would be a wrenching occasion, and I wanted to have something to look forward to when I came home.

When I returned, my husband suggested that we go for a hike.

?!

?!?!

Did he not remember that I had asked him to think of something fun to do?

Did he not remember that in all of the almost twenty years that he’s known her, his wife has always, most definitely been an indoorsy kind of person?

Did he not remember that we had just gone on a hike the weekend before, thereby 100%, maybe even 175% fulfilling the annual hike quota for 2015?

Did he not care that it was about 20 degrees outside?

No. The answer is no, he did not.

And so we went.

We went to the Ragged Mountain Natural Area, which at this time of the year looks like this:

I ask you: Is this view worth hypothermia?

As we walked along I kept hearing alarming creaking noises and thought it was only a matter of time before I got beamed on the head with a falling tree.

My fourteen year old had decided not to wear his winter coat, and in keeping with my resolution to let him make his own crazy-ass wardrobe decisions, I kept my mouth shut. He did not look very happy:

My daughter still has two legs. I have no idea where she hid the other one in this photo.

As we hiked, I was quickly outpaced and fell behind. Everyone disappeared from view, and I trudged along by myself, thinking sad thoughts and apprehensively eyeing the groaning tree trunks. Suddenly, I saw this brave little plant right in the middle of the path. It seemed to be miraculously growing out of rocks…

I thought it might be a sign.

When I reached the summit, I found this:

Note that my daughter lost her coat, but found her other leg and also a big, cheesy grin.

It was a beautiful view worth hiking for, and it made me smile for the first time that day.

My Valentine for whom I hiked. Outdoors. In 20 degree weather.

And then, to round off Valentine’s Day, we went to Lowe’s to pick up a part to fix a light fixture that had blown out…

And that’s how we restored a little light and love to Valentine’s Day.

In memory of John, who really did love hiking, and who brought so much light and love to the world.