peevish mama

And I’m tickled pink about it. Actually, he doesn’t call her a nemesis. His term is rival. A piano rival to be specific. I only just got wind of this rival a couple days ago, but he talks about her with the blasé resignation of a life long fact. As in, oh ya, my piano rival, yawn. Who knew you could even have a piano rival? I mean, piano is not typically a competitive undertaking; it just doesn’t seem to have the requisite head-to-headness for rivalry. Plus the students only see each other twice a year at recitals. But what do I know? From what I have been able glean, her name is Sasha, she is his age, she goes to another school and they have been plonking through the piano books neck-in-neck. I think his teacher has been stoking the rivalry and it’s a genius manoever because he’s been practicing a ton lately without reminders. The other day I took a seat to listen for a little while and he muttered Amy says I’m ahead of my rival as he tried to sight read a Christmas tune. Well done, Teach! Well done!

And you know what’s even better than bestowing him with his very own rival? His teacher has them playing a duet in the upcoming recital! Hoooweee, are sparks gonna fly at that nursing home! Watch out, old folks, the rivals are laying down their weapons and coming together for the love of music for one night only! Don’t miss this spectacular, unforgettable showdown. It’s a performance of a lifetime! Talk about drama. I am all a’dither.

I can just picture how it’s gonna go down and I can’t wait. The air is thick with tension. A florescent light flickers casting a sickly glow over the large hall where the residents of the nursing home have been brought for a holiday concert. Two skinny nine year olds glare at each other from across the room. At a nod from their teacher they begin to approach the piano, their eyes narrowed and their piano books tucked in the crook of their arms, matching each other step for step like two gunslingers. Agitated whispers ripple through the room like an electrical current. An old woman gasps in the corner. When they reach the piano they pause, breaking their focus to look over the crowd. A roomful of elderly people stare back at them, mouths agape. The rivals look at each other again and then turn to take in the tiny expanse of the bench. Each sighs a small unperceptible sigh before sliding in and sitting shoulder to shoulder. Their blond heads bob in unison as they silently count together one and two and . . . 

Last year, Thanksgiving brought us Tom the Nut Pecker. It also brought us Tartare, Meester Panqueques and Lil’ Salami from Seattle. By contrast, this Thanksgiving was shaping up to be uneventful, mellow even. In the wake of the South American feast (which was lovely and super fun and, I think, had the intended effect of leaving our guests with full bellies, happy taste buds and dizzy heads), Mama was feeling tired. And maybe it was my general fatigue combined with my general inability to say no to Saint James that landed me smack in the middle of Petco on Tuesday evening, trying not to touch anything and gagging a little at the smell. What can I say? All he has to do is play the tremulously hopeful card and I’m butter. $47.96 later we were fully equipped for the arrival of . . . drumroll please . . . a crayfish. I can just see Dolly and Soul Daddy’s eyebrows shooting up into their hairlines because down in St. Louis, they eat these suckers by the thousands every spring at their big crayfish bonanza and the only money they would consider throwing after a crayfish would be for some cold beers to chase them down with. But here in the upper midwest, we are asses who think glorified shrimps can be pets.

So on Wednesday afternoon, I sat in my minivan, watching the drizzle hit my windshield, waiting for Saint James to emerge from school with the creature, thinking I can’t fucking believe we are going down this road again. Our family’s success rate with classroom animal cast-offs is dismal, and the brooding sky and my uneasy gut portended more of the same. The look on Saint James’ face, however, was enough to chase away my misgivings. Excited and proud, he carried the thing like a new born baby, were said baby floating in a plastic tub, looking like a nasty tiny lobster. And so, in a deja-vu like trance, I drove home, careful not to slosh the newest addition to the familia, letting myself get caught up, just a little, in the joy of naming him. By the time we pulled into our driveway, Bubbles had been christened and I watched in wonder as Supergirl acted super helpful and carried Saint James’ backpack for him so he could deliver Bubbles to his tricked out new pad, complete with realistic pebble bottom, faux seaweed and Tiki guy. 

Folks, I think you know how this is going to end. At around ten o’clock on Thanksgiving morning, I was up to my elbows in turkey giving him the butter massage  of his life when I heard a heart broken wail from the basement. Saint James ran up the stairs, fear and sadness stamped on his flushed and puffy face and cried that Bubbles was dying. What? What? Already? How do you know? I sputtered, my arms held aloft like a scrubbed-in surgeon. He’s on his baaaaaack, screamed Saint James, and his claw fell ooooooffffffff. And that is when my heart broke into little pieces. I didn’t even get to feed hiiiiiimmmmm. And then the little pieces of my heart broke into even littler pieces, which I had no hope of collecting, so slick were my hands with turkey guts and butter.

The rest of the day went by in a fugue of fretting about the turkey and fretting about my son. Up and down the basement stairs he went, over and over, to check on freakin’ Bubbles, at first emerging wracked by a fresh batch of sobs and finally too weary to cry, passing through the kitchen in silence. Doctor Dash whispered that maybe he had too much water in his aquarium, so we went down to check, not that we would know too much water if we saw it. Saint James had moved Bubbles to a smaller bowl where he had put him on top of a piece of cat kibble (incidentally, I’m really glad I paid $16 for a bag of cat food, of which exactly one niblet was used). Bubbles appeared to be clinging to the nugget for dear life and all those little pieces of my heart on the kitchen floor jumped up and broke into even tinier pieces, approximately the size of Nerds. Oh man, that’s so sad, said Doctor Dash, it’s like putting a steak over the face of a dead man. And it was. It was exactly like putting a steak over the face of a dead man.

And it was St. James’ desperate act of tenderness that made me vow NO MORE PETS. Never, ever, ever. Not ever again. Ever. Never.

That is, until Bubbles really died.

And with my boy limp and weeping, his sobs resonating through my chest like thunder, the words tumbled out before I could catch them. We’ll get a fish, sweetie, hush now, we’ll get a fish.

One morning you notice your kids hug you goodbye as soon as they spot the bus, before it gets too close. And then when they get on the bus, you see one hop into the first seat, the other move to the very back, as far apart as two siblings can possibly get. You watch and wait, a twitch in your wrist where a wave waits to flutter free. You see both kids on their knees in sweet profile, their noses, shoulders and words pointed excitedly at someone in the seat behind them. They don’t look back at you. The bus door closes with a sigh. And all is right in their world.

Supergirl: This is Jesus on the cross. When he was a little kid.

Theologically speaking, I don’t even know what to make of this. Laundrylogically speaking, I can see that Jesus had the same annoying habit of wearing two different socks that my kids have. You would be wrong to assume that Mary is a slovenly keeper of house. You would be wrong to assume that she just throws Jesus’ socks into his drawer in a jumble, that she doesn’t spend most of her free time on the hunt for rogue socks, trying in vain to reunite them with their mates. Maybe if Jesus had been a little more sensitive to how hard his mother works he wouldn’t have gotten himself into such a . . . ok. I’ll stop there.

The other day, Saint James and Supergirl shared a hearty chuckle at my expense, for the first, but undoubtedly not the last, time. It started with a little laminated map of the world that’s been floating around the house for eons. Every time I clean up, it gets propped on a windowsill in the kitchen, shuffled into my planner or a stack of place mats, or stuffed into the cupboard where we keep the playdough and paints. It hangs around the kitchen mostly, but I have found it fraternizing with the dust bunnies under Saint James’ bed and once it was in my tub, a world patiently waiting to float away.

I’m convinced someone is paying my kids to quietly and deliberately carry things around the house because this is what they do with a thoroughness and alacrity that can only come from mucho cashola. I picture their employer as a shadowy figure sitting with his back to them, a halo of cigar smoke around his bald head muttering in a ripped paper voice: You just move things, right? Ya take your toys, don’t even play with them, you just move ‘em. Up the stairs, down the stairs, just put ‘em in a different spot. The floor’s good. Always good. And if it’s not a toy, even better. More money for moving household items. Kitchen stuff. Always good. The whisks, the oven mitts, the tape. Always good. Always good. Take ‘em to another room. Better yet, take ‘em to your mother’s car. Drop ‘em. Always remember, a ladle in the minivan is a beautiful thing. Same goes for a box of bandaids in the freezer. Stuffed unicorn under the sink. Always good. Always good. Don’t over think. Just keep moving. You pick it up, carry it, drop it. Simple. Capish? My children nod solemnly, their eyes as big as saucers.

This all by way of saying, the mapa mundi has got some legs. So the other day I decided to put an end to its shifty and peripatetic ways and tape it to a wall. Specifically, the wall next to the toilet in the kids’ bathroom. Supergirl, who never misses a thing, came sliding out of the bathroom with an exaggerated, Disney tween show intoned Can someone please explain, like, WHY there’s a map, like, in the bathroom? To which I responded, simply: So you can learn about the world while you poo. And that’s when it happened. She and Saint James chuckled, and then they LOOKED AT EACH OTHER and laughed some more. And then they repeated what I said, and laughed even more! They were sharing a laugh. At me. At something I said. I walked away with a secret grin, letting them revel in a rare moment of solidarity and mirth.

With that little exchange, I realized that their sense of humor is evolving, ever so subtly. They are precariously perched in that spot where I can make them laugh because I’m so smart and funny and that spot where they can laugh at me because they’re so smart and funny. I can tickle them and still make them laugh. I can make a cross-eyed bucktooth face and still make them laugh. But not for long. Someday, that behavior will elicit nothing but groans and eye rolling and the only giggles I’ll get will come from general battiness, slips of the tongue and tumbles of words. Lucky, for all of us, I’ve got those in spades.

We’re reading I Married a Communist by Philip Roth for book club this month, and while I shouldn’t be surprised that I had one of those reading moments when you stop, exhale, raise your eyebrows, go back and read the passage again, I was sort of surprised that it happened on the first page.

We read American Pastoral last year and it was a giant octopus of a book. Sometimes it thrashed in countless directions, in anger and fear. Sometimes it swam along as graceful and smooth as can be. And it went deep. (Hmm, this metaphor has legs! Ho!) It was gorgeous and challenging and we wrestled with it – on our own, reading it – at book club, dissecting it and putting it back together, or trying to anyway. That book club meeting was about a week after my knee surgery. I was on crutches, my injuries still felt fresh, personal. My mom was in town to help out, so I brought her with me so she could have a glass of wine, meet my book club ladies, and understand why it is such a source of joy in my life. I read American Pastoral under duress. I was frantically preparing to be on crutches for six weeks, gingerly probing worse case scenarios like a tongue returning to a sore tooth. Desperate to lose myself, it was rich and thick, the perfect book to take up the whole of my mind. I was a ball of angst, agitation and worry and American Pastoral is nothing if not a monument to angst, agitation and worry. Maybe that’s why it resonated so much with me.

Or maybe, it was just that good.

We’ve been back to school for a couple of weeks. Saint James seems muted about it. I’m not sure what to make of it. I’m not sure what he needs. What exactly does he expect to be doing with his time right now? He can’t very well hunt for creatures in the bushes and play soccer all day long. Maybe it’s too much to expect him to be excited about school – being a fourth grader is essentially his job. How many people do we know who are excited by their jobs? And yet, I wish he was. I wish he was fired up, tingling, hungry. 

So the passage that stopped me cold? It’s Roth simply introducing a character – that of Murray Ringold, a teacher. And in his muscular prose, Roth brings him to life and makes me want him for my son. To light that fire.

“His passion was to explain, to clarify, to make us understand, with the result that every last subject we talked about he broke down into its principal elements no less meticulously than he diagrammed sentences on the blackboard. His special talent was for dramatizing inquiry, for casting a strong narrative spell even when he was being strictly analytic and scrutinizing aloud, in his clear cut way, what we read and wrote.

Along with the brawn and the conspicuous braininess, Mr. Ringold brought with him into the classroom a charge of visceral spontaneity that was a revelation to tamed, respectablized kids who were yet to comprehend that obeying a teacher’s rules of decorum had nothing to do with mental development. There was more importance than perhaps even he imagined in his winning predilection for heaving a blackboard eraser in your direction when the answer you gave didn’t hit the mark. Or maybe there wasn’t. Maybe Mr. Ringold knew very well that what boys like me needed to learn was not only how to express themselves with precision and acquire a more discerning response to words, but how to be rambunctious without being stupid, how not to be too well concealed or too well behaved, how to begin to release the masculine intensities from the institutional rectitude that intimidated bright kids the most.”

Holy smokes, Philip Roth. Is it mere coincidence that twice now, your words feed me precisely what I’m craving?

Or are you just that good?

We went up north for Labor Day weekend. Hastily assembled, last minute planning yielded three days, more relaxing and action packed than I would have thought possible. Sometimes, last minute is the best way. We pulled the kids out of school on Friday and set off due north with a minivan chocked to the gills with food, fishing poles, water colors, and anything else I could think of to keep our short attention spans from unravelling into pervasive, crotchety boredom.

I needn’t have worried.

The lake. It was beautiful. Deep. Almost primordial. Its dark, velvety waters were cold enough to make swimming something for which you had to summon up courage. It was cold enough to feel curative. And it was vast, with undulating shorelines, eddies and bays, silent islands, promontories and fingers of land, beckoning or accusatory, depending on how you looked at them. There seemed to be a secret code of earth and water we had to approach with caution and respect. Dash and I had to navigate, eyes skimming the horizon and darting back to the map, to reconcile the two dimensional with the three, to keep our bearings, to find our way home. It was challenging, but it got easier. We learned something new. We grinned madly, feeling slightly less the rubes on a pontoon. We squinted into the sun, proud, almost seaworthy. 

Fish. There are fish in Lake Vermillion. All hungry for worms and willing to be caught by Saint James and Supergirl (Dash too, but with less success – I think the jerky line of a child-held rod must make those worms dance extra seductively). They fished off the docks, they fished off the boat. It was the go-to activity for three whole days. It was what filled up the hours in the sun. And Devil Baby watched and cheered, played with the worms, touched the slippery bodies of the fish, and essentially hung around doing nothing in a way I’ve never seen her do before. It was gratifying to watch them do something contemplative, something that requires patience, quiet, sustained attention with eyes trained on the water.

Kitchen. More time and less stuff, I found myself enjoying the simpler, pared down ritual of preparing meals. I found it meditative: the opening and shutting of drawers, looking for a potato peeler, a whisk, a bottle opener; stopping to take a sip of wine and gaze out the enormous kitchen windows at the lake; washing dishes by hand, keeping my workspace neat. Without the rush, meal preparation is a completely different animal and in the silence of the cabin, broken only by the occasional triumphant whoop from the nearby dock, I remembered everything I love about cooking.

Reading. I was forced to unplug. No wireless, no phone. No twitter, no blog. Just my books. I have been feeling scattered lately. Unmoored. I have been finding it hard to focus, to lose myself in a book. Perhaps it’s because there has been so much end of the summer action to attend to. Perhaps, I too am losing the power of sustained attention, giving way to the rat-like compulsion to check my email, tweet and surf every few minutes. In the quiet of the north woods, I became that mother – the reading mother. On the chaise, with her nose in a book, occasionally peering over the pages with narrowed eyes and an amused smile, luxuriating in the act of reading deeply while her family plays almost, almost, out of earshot. They fished, I read. My heart slowed down. Everyone was engaged, so I could disengage and dive into my books: Snow by Orhan Pamuk, challenging reading, testing my patience, but a book whose layers slowly unfold drawing you further and deeper. It’ll be worth it, I think. Time will tell. And Dangerous Laughter by Steven Millhauser, a tightly wrought collection of short stories, the few I have read so far are intriguing, smart, mildly menacing – he is a beautiful writer.

Fish. Each catch was followed by a few seconds of tense hook extraction. Saint James and Supergirl would bow their heads in concentration, working against the ticking seconds and the struggling fish to get the hook out as gently and quickly as possible. They’d toss it back in the water, peer into the depths and inevitably yell “Yep, he made it!” with joy and relief. For them a fair fishing bargain involves no more than a few seconds of discomfort on the part of the fish. They are tender and respectful toward nature. I am not sure whether this is something you can teach, or whether this is something that just naturally occurs in a child.  

Kitchen. I brought everything, even my sharp knife and cilantro. But even when you bring everything, there are things you wish you had brought. As I made salads and salsas, mixing and matching my ingredients like edible Garanimals, I thought of Jumpa Lahiri’s piece in the NY Times earlier this summer. I thought of all the things I would remember next time (honey, white pepper, soy sauce, hot sauce, gin, the pickled eggplant I just made) and all the things I was so glad to have brought (my knife, sea salt, avocado, cilantro, olives, strawberries, fancy cheeses, sauvignon blanc, baby spinach, garlic, tomatoes, baguettes, Hope Creamery butter, two kinds of vinegar and olive oil).

Fire. Doctor Dash made two fires a night. One with charcoal for grilling steaks and salmon. One with wood for roasting s’mores. The fire drew the children out of the brush, away from the beach. Like young natives, they watched the flames, flicking and dancing against the darkening sky. Or maybe they were just hungry.

Fish. One morning I glanced up from my book and saw a stout fireplug of a man talking to Doctor Dash on the dock where he and the kids were fishing. Our cabin neighbor had ostensibly come out to introduce himself to Dash, but in fact needed to flip Dash’s rod right side up before showing him a picture of the 53 inch Muskie he had caught the day before. We chuckled about this the rest of the day, picturing the poor guy grimacing over his coffee mug as he looked out the window watching Dash cast with an upside down rod. He probably muttered through his pain and agitation for a good fifteen minutes before getting so exasperated he burst through his back door to save Dash from himself. Hilarious.  

Watercolors. I’m so glad I brought them. Devil Baby painted and painted. Busy, quiet, happy. Just how I like her.

Feathers. The bald eagles. They were incredible. We had no idea they all hung out in the north woods. We saw more eagles than seagulls, yet they never lost the power to startle us, to elicit a gasp, a pause in the action to watch their muscular flight, their graceful hunting, their branch shaking landing in the tops of trees. There was an island where a bunch of them seemed to perch and to hover right below them in a quiet kayak was pure magic. And then there were the loons. My kids said the cries of the loons reminded them of our neighbor, Evan’s, cry. Somewhere between a giggle and a sob, suspended between joy and loss, the loons stopped us in our tracks over and over again.

Haunting and beautiful. Just like that lake.

Grades first and fourth. The faces say it all.

Yesterday was my birthday. And it was lovely. I’m not one to make a big hooha out of my own birthday. But I must admit, it’s kind of nice when others make a hooha for me. 

There were flowers on the kitchen counter, which had to have been purchased sometime between ten at night on Saturday and seven in the morning on Sunday because Dash has been on call. A+ for effort, my love. Beautiful swollen peach roses and sunflowers. Sunflowers are so straightforward and happy – they’re my favorite.

There was a precious half hour alone with coffee and the New York Times.

There were sleepy birthday hugs. They woke up remembering.

There was a trip to the Kingfield Farmers Market and my window sill is bejeweled in tomatoes, glowing orbs of yellow, red, orange.

There was a  yoga class, which always does me a world of good.

There was a fortuitous bump into Salt and Pepper Polymath at the supermarket. He wished me happy birthday. I’m not sure how he knew.

There was a late afternoon trip to Bush Lake where some of my book club ladies awaited with their hubbies, resplendent in sun hats and laughter, vodka tonics and cheese. They sang to me and I felt as if I would burst from happiness before melting into the sand from embarrassment. Dash and I lingered in the warmth of the waning sun, long after they had all left, our toes in the sand, our kids feeding the remnants of sand speckled cheese to the seagulls.

There were phone calls and messages throughout the day from all the people I love.

There were grilled rib eyes, tomatoes sliced and drizzled, a little salad of farmers market radishes and carrot, thinly sliced, in a chive mustard vinaigrette. My perfect meal.

There was angel food cake with whipped cream and berries, rowdy singing and plenty of help blowing out the candles.

There was a dance party which ended in a crash. The portable disco ball is kaput, which is just as well because ever since we moved into this house I have been politely requesting a disco ball. A real disco ball. Doctor Dash thought he could mollify me with the disco boobs* he got me for Christmas, and it worked for a while, but I’m afraid that’s all she wrote on that one. 

There were tears and words of truth in the bathroom before bed. Supergirl was crying over the disco boobs, Devil Baby kept repeating that it scared her when they crashed and I hushed and shushed, promising another disco ball, a better disco ball, a real disco ball. Saint James took his toothbrush out of his mouth, looked me straight in the eye in the mirror and scolded: well this isn’t going to help us save up money for Costa Rica.

Touché, St. James, touché. But it IS my birthday.

*Coined by Supergirl.

I stare at a blank screen. And then I let some days pass by, hoping for inspiration. Because what is there to say? You are nine. You are beautiful. You are boy. You are easy to me. And maybe that’s hard to write about. You are my perfect companion: smart, affable, introspective, handsome, funny, sweet, perceptive, passionate. You still snuggle. You still fold your long bony limbs up to climb into my lap – I put my arms around you and squeeze, like a giant gathering sticks into a bundle. You love your friends. You think nothing of holding hands, of throwing your arm around a buddy’s shoulder as you walk off in rapt conversation. You watch the satellite radio like a hawk, yelling change it, don’t change it from the back of the minivan. Music matters to you. A lot. You read like wind, plowing through books like you’re famished. Sometimes you are moody, sullen, secretive. Already? You still love stuffed animals, but you are over Pokemon cards. You still want to be a naturalist when you grow up. You are a handsome devil, but you have no clue. Your room is a mess. You spread everything out on the floor. Your voice is soft and your words are few, so when you talk, I want to listen. Your stories are silly and merry and sometimes I find myself just watching your face, letting that boy voice wash over me.

Your uncles think you’re a mama’s boy. And you are. In the best way. You love your mama. Sometimes you smother my arm in a million kisses when I’m walking by. You cling to me like a baby chimp. But I notice our paths gently diverging as of late. More and more, you are forming a boy-alliance with your dad. You talk about sports, about FIFA, about Barcelona and Messi. You miss him when he’s working late. You ask about him. You try to wait up for him. You kick a soccer ball in the yard with him and I wonder, watching through the kitchen window, look how happy they are, what are they talking about? Boy stuff, I suppose. Guy stuff. And my heart feels squishy because I can see your trajectory: it is clear and it is good, but it leads away from me. You are a smaller, looser, clumsier, version of your dad – a puppet, a Pinocchio – and you watch and mimic, absorb mannerisms and gestures without even knowing it. Your future is written on your shoulders and in the cool blue of your eyes. 

You are nine, Saint James. You are still a little boy, still a mama’s boy. But not for long, sweetness, not for long.

Happy Birthday. I love you.

Supergirl has taken to calling me Bubble Butt. These days she can often be found hovering around my derrière, karate chopping or poking or jiggling said (allegedly) bulbous protrusions. I’m not sure what the appeal is, aside from the fact that my butt is most definitely more prominently on display these summer months, what with bathing suits and all. And we do shake our booties in our house. In fact, I often shout it out as an explicit instruction: shake those booties, shake ‘em, shake ‘em, uh huh, that’s right! My kids are half French Canadian, after all, and I need to cultivate the Latin in them as far as dancing goes, so we don’t end up with a family who thinks a big grin and a slow jog is an adequate substitute. It comes from the hips, child, but since you don’t have hips, well, shake the next best thing, that’s right. Shake it! Shake it, baby! Moreover, Supergirl’s face is pretty much at ass level, so it’s simply the first thing she sees if I happen to be around. I suppose it makes some sense – she sees asses, like we see faces. Maybe two year olds are fascinated by knees, only lack the words to say so. And we know twelve year olds are fascinated by breasts, only they know better than to say so.

To tell you the truth, it took me a while to even register the recent scuttlebutt. I am by and large impervious to being ogled, prodded and otherwise fondled by my offspring. Privacy and personal space are more than abstraction, they are downright fiction. One becomes accustomed to all manner of  sticky bodies scaling one’s limbs, digging their fingers in one’s ears, probing one’s clavicles and such. Moreover, after a hard yoga class, I can think of worse things than a bit of a glute massage while I’m doing the dishes.

The truth is, far from being offended or annoyed, I am heartened by Supergirl’s silly fascination because although she doesn’t necessarily mean it as a compliment, I am choosing to take it as one. Johnnny Depp captured my imagination when he used the term “high water booty” to describe his then girlfriend Kate Moss in an article I read over a decade ago. My buns may not go so far as to hike up their skirts to avoid the rising waters of the bayou, but say what you will about six year olds, they know their shapes. If Supergirl thinks there is anything “bubblish” about my buttocks then I must have, as of yet, escaped the dreaded “triangular factor” coined by my father and unwittingly illustrated by countless bathing-suited older women walking by us on the beach over the years; women whose slightly atrophied glutes had come to resemble a heart, a triangle, an upside down party hat, an icecream cone, an inverted volcano, a tornado, etcetera. So bubble butt? Ya, I’ll take it. And I’ll take another one of those mini massages too.

Doctor Dash can be a very wise man. There have been times in our marriage when he noticed things about the kids or put things into words in a way that made me stop, blink, and sheepishly acknowledge the lightbulb suddenly swinging above my head. I am drowning in the kids. I can’t see the forest for the trees, but he, with his hours away, sometimes brings a new perspective that is, frankly, right on.

Example: when Supergirl was about a year and a half old, she was a total wild child. She was a climber and a runner and her mission in life seemed to be to find the highest and most precarious perch from which to exhibit herself to the world. She always had a naughty smile on her face as she watched me staggering around below, trying to talk her down, ready to catch her if she ever slipped (she never did). She was (and is) a coordinated and strong little monkey with no fear of heights or speed. She was (and is) a girl in constant motion. We found ourselves gasping and clutching our chests, shaking our heads in exasperation, telling everyone who would listen what a “handful” she was. Until Dash wisely noted that if she was a boy, we would think nothing of her level of activity and risk taking, and that maybe we just needed to stop talking about it. Simply put, just because she’s a girl, doesn’t mean she doesn’t have the right to careen through life at top speeds. Of course. Of COURSE! We didn’t want to change her, wouldn’t be able to even if we tried, so what was the point of belaboring the point? No point. Right. So we stopped making such a big deal about her hair raising antics, learned to trust her as much as she trusted herself, and have come to quite enjoy having that kind of kid in our brood.

As I’ve mentioned before, we have been trying to give Saint James and Supergirl some freedom to roam our neighborhood. We want them off the couch and into the brush. We hope that by giving them a little space, they’ll gain a sense of confidence in themselves, a healthy sense of safety in their surroundings, and maybe some smarts along the way. Earlier this summer, we let them walk two blocks to Sweet Jessamine and Ivory Tickler’s house to turn on their sprinklers while they were on vacation: a chore adventure hybrid – genius. Doctor Dash made the observation that the two of them seem to get along the best when they get to go out alone on their little excursions. Normally, Saint James and Supergirl are notorious, insufferable bickerers, making the Costanzas look like swooning love birds. They have turned quarreling into an art form, refusing to agree on anything, dividing the universe of ideas in half and planting themselves firmly on either side of the line. They argue, they parse, they quote and misquote, they poke holes in reasoning, they unveil inconsistencies, they split hairs, they tit for tat, they begrudge, they demean, they scoff, they tease, they bully, they quibble, they scrap, they wrangle, they aha, they I told you so. In short, they fight. Constantly. Except, it seems, when they go off on an adventure. Yes indeed Doctor Dash, I do believe you are right! What an interesting bi-product of our little freedom experiment!

They don’t exactly walk off hand in hand, but they do go side by side and it’s as if the expanse of the world unfolding in front of their feet makes them feel less chafed by each other. Simply turning the focus away from the other to a point over the hill or down the creek allows them to coexist in peace, at least for a short time. Or maybe, when they are walking alone, they feel a bit of us against the world. They always come back happy, having seen one dead animal or another, having caught some insect or another, or, most recently, having had a relaxing little visit with neighbors. Yesterday Supergirl asked if she could walk to Red Vogue’s and Salt and Pepper Polymath’s house with Saint James, under the pretense of showing them the tie dye shirts they had made at camp. They came back about an hour later, their smiles ringed with the telltale mark of blue Gatorade. I find it amusing that they walked over to our dear neighbors’ house, accepted a little refreshment, chatted them up, (hopefully) didn’t fight with each other, (hopefully) said thank you and good bye. How civilized of them. And all NOT under my watch. It’s actually a small miracle. And another interesting bi-product of our freedom experiment.

Thank you Red Vogue and SPP, for being part of a little world that allows them to feel big. And thank you Dash for discovering one small way to curb the bickering. Their mucky water shoes are parked at the front door and if you see them touching dead things in the creek, just know that . . . I’m kind of, totally OK with that . . . as long as they’re not fighting.

As I fold laundry in my sunroom, I watch a boy carve slow figure eights into the hot street with his bike. He is alone and sweaty. He is bored. His tires make the sound of rubber on cement, a crunchy hiss. He cuts his eights tighter. He tries to pop a wheelie. Where are his thoughts as his body moves through the thick monotony and humidity? Maybe far away, somewhere cold and dangerous, somewhere with polar bears and infinite blue crevaces. Or maybe his mind is close, motionless, baking under his black bike helmet, lulled by the sound of his tires and the physics of his turns. Either way these stolen moments of quiet are good for the boy. He wouldn’t believe me if I told him. So I won’t.

I think I had to get that big lump out of my throat so I could come back around and approach this last week from an angle a titch less mushy. We packed a lot into the seven days before Doctor Dash had to go back to Minneapolis and our basic modus operandi was: whatever it is, call us. We’re in. And it turns out, with out the constraints of things like, oh, work and babysitters, you can cook up a whole hell of a lot of fun. 

On our drive to Michigan we stopped in downtown Chicago for a night and got to hang out with one of my favorite people in the world, my brutha from anotha mutha, my college partner-in-crime: The Fox, his hilarious wife, Sweet Cheeks, and their three adorable kids. We thoroughly fondled the shiny bean in Millenium Park, walked around the city for a while, and had a delicious, albeit chaotic, meal of Spanish tapas at Emilio’s. Our collective six children were rambunctious and lively, but essentially as well behaved as could be expected. I have seen better behaved children, but they’re usually sitting in the shadow of excruciatingly boring looking parents. The first thing Devil Baby and their youngest did when we sat down, was to scurry under the table. We tried half heartedly to get them to come out, but abandoned the notion in favor of a couple pitchers of sangria and some good catch-up chatter. My favorite moment came later in the dinner, when the kids had started to fan out and scuttle around the restaurant: The Fox gingerly lifted the corner of the table cloth and tried to shoo the little ones back under the table. That’s exactly the kind of off-the-cuff, lesser of two evils, short cut, bandaid, whatever works in this moment parenting that we embrace, and precisely what I would expect from my friend who procrastinated his Heart of Darkness paper for so long that he actually entered the heart of darkness, turning the whole thing into a long, drawn out, tortuous extravaganza that still ended in a painful all-nighter. It brought me endless pleasure to watch him wrangle the two year old boy who was determined to give his mother a heart attack by pitching along the sidewalks of Chicago as fast as his short little legs would carry him. It was only a few chaotic, funny hours, but thoroughly soul satisfying. Everything that was quirky and funny about The Fox and Sweet Cheeks before they had kids, inflects their parenting and their family in all the lovely ways you’d hope. And now, we will make a plan to see each other again somewhere with long table cloths and no murderous taxis.

On the morning of the rehearsal dinner, a big shipment of roses arrived at the house, followed by the clicking heels and jingling bracelets of my mother’s best betties who came from Buenos Aires, Laguna Beach, D.C. and right down the road to help her make the flower arrangements. I  jumped right in, happy to indulge in that loose, winding, gossipy chatter that magically flows from women in a circle, doing something busy with their hands. It’s not something I get to do often, ever really, but boy there is something about it that feels really restorative, really right. Women making tortillas, pounding cassavas, weaving baskets, painting porcelain, quilting, knitting. It’s a tradition to be reckoned with for good reason, and in short order, we had busted out a bunch of beautiful centerpieces. Then we piled into a couple cars and sped off for a quick, relaxing lunch at the club. What a girlie, indulgent, and downright delightful way to spend a morning. I miss hanging out with all these old girls.

Equally as delightful, but hitting other notes altogether, was throwing down with my brothers and their friends. El Maestro de Bife is six years younger than me and Golden is twelve years younger. I’ve met most of their buddies throughout the years, but they were just the little boys slumping guiltily out of our house in backwards baseball caps, the ones who nearly melted of embarrassment at the sight of my pregnant belly in Florida. They were cute, but they were sort of irrelevant. When I was partying, my brothers were kids. When my brothers were partying, I was, um, procreating. In an unfortunate hiccup of chronological irony, I had missed a whole chunk of their life revelry and I hadn’t even realized it. I needed to make up for lost time. In different permutations and combinations of my siblings and their fine feathered friends, we had feasts at my parents house, met them out for drinks, hung out on the boat, drank white wine on the sly at a dad band concert in the park, and reveled at a rowdy house party chez Peppermint Love, all before the actual wedding festivities had even begun.

It turns out everyone has grown up into some serious hotness. They’ve all graduated from college, some grad school, some have girlfriends, some have wives, all appear to have jobs, and moreover, they’ve all grown into their skin. Without exception, they are fun, funny, easy and most importantly, ridiculously good dancers. Here’s a little talked about fact: it does an old lady good to dance with a bevy of young bucks. This is no secret to the dirty old man population, but ladies, I’m here to tell you, it works the other way too. I’m not sure what peculiar confluence of forces turned out such fine dancing lads, but I have yet to meet anyone my age who can throw down like these boys. This is not a criticism. It is a challenge. Prove me wrong friends. (Although I do have to give Doctor Dash props for having made the choice, early on in our relationship, to go from being a non-dancer to a bonafide dancin’ fool for my sake. He’s always game and I love him for that.) 

Moreover, Saint James didn’t leave the dance floor all night long – he was all eyes and ears and smooth little boy moves. He went so far beyond cute little kid dancing at a wedding, showed such promise, such young Jedi powers of concentration that one by one my brothers and their friends shimmied on over, showed him some moves and sent him on his way. It was tutelage at its best, a one-night apprenticeship in the fine art of cutting a rug, and now, so many days later, Saint James is still referring to the wedding as the dance party. Looooove that.

[Note: I would like nothing better than to insert a picture from the dancing portion of the evening, but it turns out that as soon as Larry Lee and his smokin' hot band started playing, I completely lost my wits, abandoning my camera in favor of the dance floor fray. I am hoping someone captured the magic and will share their pictures with me, and if they do, I will share them with you.]