New England Mamas

Up, up and away

Presque Isle. August. 2008.

I've very rarely been to event that was so satisfyingly...happy.

The simplicity of a balloon launch is it's charm. The crowd who come to watch knows how to wait, knows how to be still, knows the pure joy of watching something as simple as flame lift human beings off the ground as gently as a breeze. Add some homemade pie and red hots to the mix and you get an afternoon of pure enjoyment, even if you are still on the ground.

I found myself laughing out loud as these huge balloons finally lifted off the ground. Something in myself rose up and floated away as well. An unrealized anxiety that I wouldn't find anything in my new home that would make me feel ridiculously good, with no reservations.

How often does that happen?

Not often enough. Next time, I'm going up.

Home again.

Here we are.

It seems strange sitting down to write in this dim corner of the front room. There is a fireplace behind me quietly waiting for the truly cold weather and a cord of wood to burn. The Impling prances around in the other front room...what was once a dining room but is now a dining/ library/cello practice room. It is also temporarily holding all the paintings, finished and unfinished, that I have yet to either hang or haul up to my little office/studio with the sloping ceiling and window overlooking an apple tree and the road that leads to a farm where the cat is friendly and the pony and horse peek calmly from their stalls at an absolutely mesmerized Impling, and the dancer/organic farmer who owns it all tends her chickens and fields for the fun of it.

Here in this corner, I think of our favorite room, through the library/dining/music room, through the mud room, through a glass door with its tarnished brassy handle, into the great, bright room. It is a large space, larger than anything I've ever lived in. Coming from a small apartment, this house seemed overwhelming the first few nights. But as the days go by, we expand to fill the space. This is not so much due to us appropriating new stuff, as a more personal expansion, like breathing deeply and exhaling, and expanding with each breath until we fill the bigger spaces around us with our thoughts, and our laughter, our chats and our tears, our music and our puttering sounds.

I feel bigger, somehow, looser, as if part of myself is both inside and outside all at once. The great room is so bright with windows and skylights that it's more or less a room outside. It overlooks the fields and the herb garden where the Impling and I weeded this morning. We donned our hats, and gloves, and after a protective layer of bug spray, we set off to work. We saw earthworms, and beetles and mosquitos and bees, we turned over the earth and tore out weeds and flung them aside, leaving behind the fresh overturned soil and space for our spearmint, sage, marjoram, tarragon (or little dragon, as we now call it), and a host of other herbs I can no longer remember, to grow. While we were working, the previous owners of the house came by and gave us a rather nostalgic tour of both the herb garden and the vegetable garden, naming plants for me and pulling at the gigantic weeds as if they just couldn't help it. I would miss these gardens too, if I moved away after four years of tending them.

They brought us an apple picker, with advice to leave the windfall for the deer. I can't imagine picking apples yet as the veggie garden still looks like the forest primeval. And I have at least four or five more burdock plants to dig up. Burdock man. One tough weed. But I have my shovel, my arms, (stronger now from all the construction of furniture and lifting and carrying of boxes and the Impling), and my innate stubborn nature to help me dig down and down into that clean smelling earth and pry up the great weeds that threaten our dill and tomatoes. It is a good battle. It is a good new world.

Dandelion Break

Brought to you by the new caretaker/owner of a little hill with dandelions and clover (house included). Before we head up to our new adventure in Maine next month, we will be having our much-needed and deserved dandelion break over in the Netherlands for the next two weeks.

Have a wonderful summer all. The next post may well be live from the Shiretown.
Til then,
TTFN
Ta Ta For Now.

The Kingdom of Frogs.

Here I am, writing yet again in a distracted funk, while the Impling pretends to float and fly and kick in the waters of imagination as a floppy purple frog named Alice.

Or, it might just be a real frog. The first frog.

Today, we went to Griggs Park.

And there, in the spring smelling air, surrounded by stray sand from the box, and toddler gymnasiums, the Impling had an experience.

"I want to go to Griggs park and catch my own frogs...with this dish!" she declares now, holding up her black cauldron (initially purchased for use as a Halloween candy repository) but now premoted to "Frog catcher". Appropriate, don't you think?

Yes, we are writing this together.

So there we were, eating, (and not eating) our lunch on a wooden bench beneath the pine cone shedding trees, when a boy approaches.

He is a little older than the Impling, but not by much. He has a broad wonderful grin, a wonderful laugh, and a cookie bin. A Trader Joe's cookie bin. Without the cookies, but with something infinateley better inside.

Two, hoppy, green and brown spotted...

"what were they?" the Impling looks up at me with sparkling eyes:

"FROGS!!!" she cries. Now melancholy is in her face.

"I miss the frogs. I want to see the frogs. Froooggggssss!"

Yes. Two frogs.

"I want to catch one of my own!" says the Impling as she looks over my arms and fingers as they type type type away, and then I get a kiss and a huge grin.

Have I mentioned I LOVE hanging out with my Impling. I can even write with her.

"I can even frog." adds the Impling.

Anyhow. There were frogs. In the cookie bin. And the Impling thought this was the BEST THING EVER.

Time stopped. The Impling and the boy looked at the frogs, watched them climb, and jump and crawl and try to get away. The boy lifted one little frog, gently gently, and placed it into the Impling's open hand.

"How did it feel, Impling?"

"It felt good. Impling hugged the frog!" The Impling blows out her cheeks like little vocal sacs and places her palms over them.

"Frog" she says. "I want to go to Griggs Park and find frogs! FROOOGS!" she declares.

"Let's wrap this up" says the Impling.

I have only one thing to add. Language. Overrated. The little boy and the Impling said not one word to one another. They shared, they watched ,they laughed and played. But even if they had wanted to communicate in something other than the innately wonderful language they already had, it would have been impossible.

Because the boy spoke only Russian.

The Impling, her own version of the English language.

And yet, they are friends.

Smile from the Impling.

"I want. To. Wrap that up."

"I want to hug."

"I want to see the Frogs."

The Bicycle Queen

(with thanks to Cari Best...author of our favorite book of the year)

When the Impling was one year old, we didn't strap her on the back of our bikes. For one, we have no place to store bikes. For another, the idea of peddling around the outskirts of Boston on a bike with a toddler attached filled me with terror. So no bikes.

When the Impling turned two, she was big enough for the tough little trikes we saw tooling around the playground, but truth be told, the Impling was more interested, at that point, in climbing up the ratlines of the play fort, and pretending to be a dread pirate. Also, we still had the stroller hogging up space in our apartment. So the whole trike thing...never happened.

Then, the Impling turned three. We go to the library every Wednesday, and on one of our visits, the Impling picked out what became one of her favorite books ever. Sally Jean, the Bicycle Queen. This was the sign. The Impling was ready.

Do you remember your first bike? Mine was a wonderful royal blue, just my size. We had a huge sloping backyard perfect for coasting. After about an hour of wobbling around with the training wheels, my older brother helped me take them off. Away I went, down the gentle hill, with soft landings when I didn't quite make it. A far cry from my brother's falls on the coral path at my Grandparent's place in the Keys.

But parts of these experiences were lost. When we brought the Impling to International Bike to look around, it all came back. The excitement of the new...the strange; of being astride a beast, of sorts, with it's own ideas of how it would move; of climbing up, and down, poking prodding, touching turning the different parts; of spinning the pedals; of struggling with those pedals, trying to get them up over the top to push them down and forward; of the sudden jerking stops when I pushed backwards and discovered how to brake; of looking down at my feet going in circles, forgetting that I actually had to look where I was going. It was a microcosm of life.

But once you learn, you never forget. It may be years in between rides, but you'll always find your balance again, and go flying off down the road, off to adventure. With a sore backside come morning, but hey, the more you ride, the less it hurts.

Crossposted at Rock the Cradle

Turkey

It is 8:30 AM. I am helping the Impling pull on her underwear. My phone rings.

It is Dr. Science, calling on his way into work.

"Hey! The Turkey is on the corner of Kent and Longwood! It's on the wall of that big house on the corner...you know the one...if you hurry, you might see it!"

"We're on the way."

So off we went, the Impling and I, rushing out the door like storm chasers. Would we make it? Would it still be there?

Why all this drama for a turkey? Anyone who lives in the area knows that Brookline has wild turkeys. This is old news. They have existed quite contentedly, it seems, in the Jamaica River Way park, and the tree park on Kent Street. To all reports, the wild turkey was now...common.

Except, I had still never seen one. And neither had the Impling.

Not for lack of searching. We are regular wanderers in that neck of the woods. It's a nice walk, and you can see the ducks and geese playing in the water. The trees are beautiful. It is fun to run around in, as long as you avoid the expanses of lawn that are the goose turd grounds. But for all our searching, in this past year, we had NEVER seen the turkeys. People would tell us they had seen them all the time, and eventually, I found myself nodding sarcastically and saying:

"Yeah, uh huh, right." And poults are about to fly out my butt. Face it, the only turkeys around here are the ones who don't use turn signals in busy intersections.

So we ran down the street, in search of the elusive turkey. We reached the appointed corner, and searched the grounds of the multi-million house for signs of turkydom. And were disappointed, yet again.

Then we looked across the street. And there, on the sidewalk, was the turkey.

He was taller than the Impling, with his neck stretched out, checking out the commuters with a air of superiority. The Impling was entranced. We watched as the turkey lived out one of the oldest jokes, and crossed the road. Of course, once he got to the other side, it wasn't as green as he had hoped (I think it was a he, I've no bloody idea if it really was). Longwood traffic, at rush hour, came to a standstill as the turkey strutted his fabulous self down the yellow lines. Swish swish, sweetie. Finally, a jogger, a amatuer photographer, and an earnest young man on a bike managed to herd the turkey to the sidewalk again, where he proceeded to strut his stuff down the street and across the bridge, leading a parade of onlookers (including an Impling who was now strutting "just like a turkey") in various states of amusement, annoyance and "oh for chrissakes it's just a fucking turkey get over it already I for one am sick of stepping in turkey shit all over my yard".

We spent about an hour following the turkey until we herded it (the jogger, the photographer and I were the only ones left towards the end...and that says...what about us?) down the path on the other side of the bridge to the river. At least, I think it eventually went to the river. The last we saw, the bird was making a break for it by doubling back through the woods towards the Riverway. That was one turkey with a mission. I hope it found whatever it was it was looking for. We had fun following it for at least a small part of it's journey.

That night I looked for reports of certain medical personal from BIDMC being assaulted by a wild turkey, but no such luck. Nice little fantasy I had going there, for a little while.

Be vewy, vewy quiet...

Is it some sort of Darwinian impulse that keeps me from sharing the details of the house I am trying desperately not to fall in love with? I am a mass of contradiction. I feel like shouting out about it, and at the same time, I harbor a Gollum-like tendency to curl up around the property, shield it from the gaze of the world, stroke it tenderly and hiss:

"My preciousssssss.....my owwwnnnnn."

It's not like there is tons of competition in the town we are moving to. It's not like flocks of people are going to suddenly in the next 2 months (two months!!! AHHHHHHH!) move en masse to Aroostook County, Maine.

So. What the hell is getting my panties in such a bunch?

Maybe some of it is information overload. We saw 12 houses in the space of 9 hours. Houses in town, houses in the country, houses with crystal chandeliers, houses with scary, homicidal dogs, houses with apple trees, houses surrounded with farmland and nary another house in sight. I've learned about dug wells; drilled wells; septic tanks; the best foundation for the area (poured concrete); the pros and cons of metal roofing, and fireplaces; the wonderfulness that is the pellet stove; flood plains; waste disposal; heat zoning; the drawbacks of forced air heating;

Hmm. fast pulse, shortness of breath...panic attack coming on...

It's just a fucking house.

I'm healthy, if neurotic. So is my husband. (Healthy I mean). My daughter is happily tearing apart her room while I type. Our lease here runs out in August. We have to move by the end of July. Breath. Great. I just burned the fuck out of my lip with my green tea which thanks to my blasted travel mug is still scalding hot after ten minutes. Ah pain. The head cleanser.

Things are slowly falling into place. Daily, something is done to get us closer to our goals. We were approved for a mortgage. That's good. Dr. Science is one test and some paperwork away from obtaining his Maine medical license. That is also good. We have our passports all ready for our trip to the Netherlands at the end of June for Great Oma's 90th birthday. We have tickets. This is good.

We have 17 days between the time we return and Dr. Science's first day of work in Maine to move. That's...bad. We haven't made an offer yet. Also bad.

For those of you not in the know, the whole "this is good/bad" thing comes from the years in medical school. Particularly, from working in the ED. Things get down to basics very quickly when you have a short time to get results. So looking over a patient, one says..."he's breathing...that's good. He doesn't have a pulse. That's bad". It reminds you where your priorities should lie.

Right now it is...make the fucking offer already.

And be vewy, vewy quiet...

Cross posted at Rock the Cradle .

Dear RMV,

I want to thank you for one of the more enlightening mornings of my life.

You see, I'd always been under the impression that in the course of studying for a driver's permit, one would want to focus on information pertaining to safe driving.

I can't thank you enough for relieving me of this gross misunderstanding. Why on earth would you be interested in knowing whether a new driver understands things like the three second rule, or when the road is most slippery, or who has the right of way at an intersection without lights? I understand now. These things are just not important.

Of course, it is important to know that when one sees a person with a white cane walking across the street that they are in all likelihood blind. This is a good bit of information to know. I never would have guessed. But I naively thought, going in to take a test for a driver's permit, that I would actually be answering questions on something relevant, such as, oh, I don't know, driving safely.

Instead, it seems it is in the best interest of a new driver to be aware instead of what precisely will happen to you if you do NOT drive safely. This is Massachusetts after all. Punishment and suffering is part of our Puritanical heritage. I'm so glad to see the RMV continuing this legacy in it's education of new drivers. And we can see by just looking at our local drivers how successful an education it is!

I will be sure to remind all my friends who are future drivers to be...in Massachussets...in Boston...do NOT study safe driving. Because when you sit down in front of that computer screen, 19 out of 20 questions will be about law. Specifically, the various and sundry punishments for the under 21 crowd out there. Not pahking the cah.

And I will remember, for that one non-law question you slide in there...that a person carrying a white cane crossing a sidewalk, is, in fact, blind.

Sincerely,
Rocks

I'm sharing this over at Rock the Cradle today as well. Just because I can.

The Education of Little Impling: Chapter 2

To be honest, this is more about my own education, or my recent episode of reality clobbering me upside the head. A while back I began what is ideally to become ongoing coverage of the Impling's education, such as it is. At the moment this is where we are:

The Impling is 3 and a couple months. She is counting, rhyming, memorizing lyrics faster than me (and yes, I am listening to Blue Moo and the soundtrack to Oklahoma 5 to 8 times a day as well), doing giant 100 piece floor pieces with a little help from the Mommy unit, drawing shapes, typing her name, and spouting her phone number to whomever will listen. She loves learning the names of the streets we walk in Brookline. And she LOVES her books. So far, so good.

She is not in preschool. She is, while absolutely fearless in some arenas (see below) also very wary (read terrified) of other children her own age. This tendency, plus our family's lack of money money money, led to the no-brainer conclusion that we would just skip preschool, thank-you-very-much. It turned out to be a very good call. Over the past months, she has in the course of visiting the Science Museum and the Brookline Library story hour become more comfortable with other children. I could see her terror downgrading to fear, then to mild discomfort. Finally, on a day I will never forget, she sat down by the storyteller with a group of about 6 other little girls (who were, truth be told, mostly 4 year olds) and listened raptly to frog stories. This past week, she sat down with a group of 13 little girls and boys, and had a blast. To say I was proud is a vast understatement.

So she is growing up. And here is my little episode of enlightenment:

For the first time, I've sent the Impling off on her "own". One of the classes (actually, the only class) I've enrolled the Impling in ever since she turned 6 months old, is swimming. I loved the water as a child, and I want the Impling to have a chance to learn to love it too. I've blathered on about this before, so I'll skip over my own idyllic learning-to-swim history.

With the Impling, I started off with the swimming lessons at the Brookline High School, then moved over to the BU Recreation Center when BHS closed down for renovations. We only just recently got back to the BHS for their open swim. Anyhow, after years of swimming with my little one, catching her as she launched herself like a rocket off the edge of the pool into the water, chanting "Motor boat, motor boat step on the gas!" and singing "Three little speckled frogs", I signed her up for Two's in Training. Our delay may (*ahem*) have been partially selfish. I love playing in the water with the Impling. I was sad to give it up.

It was, however, the right time. The first class, we were in the water with them as they got used to their two instructors. Last class, the parents stayed at the side of the pool in their bathing suits, and learned to trust the instructors. And who taught us that trust? The one and only Impling, of course.

"Three Little Speckled Frogs" for the uninitiated, is a jumping exercise. The toddlers stand on the edge of the pool, and wait for the magic words "One jumped into the pool" before leaping (or sliding, or vehemently refusing to leap) into the water. This is possibly the Impling's favorite song in class.

But that day, they each had to wait for their turn to jump. You know where this is going. The Impling bopped and sang along with the lyrics, and when the magic words came, launched herself in a beautiful arc into the water. Only, it wasn't her turn. And there was no one on the other end ready to catch her. I lunged forward, but as I called out her name the instructors already had her. She had bobbed up to the surface with a radiant face, and as the instructor brought her back to the edge of the pool, I laughed while my heart was still in my throat and my hair turned white and yelled "THAT WAS AWESOME!"

"Just wait until they're ready for you next time, OK?"

PLEASE.

Next week, we will be in street clothes on the side of the pool. Oh boy.

Crossposted at Rock the Cradle!

bama bama mobama

bama bama mobama

 

banana fana O bama

 

fee fi fo bama

 

OOOOOBAAAAMA.

 

OK, so the Democratic Underground got there before me. But between the inescapable coverage in the Globe of all things Obama (remind me to point out later the almost hysterically obvious visual campaigning for the Big O...all those ridiculously silly shots of Hillary we've seen over the past months were chosen for a reason) and the strains of Sha Na Na's contribution to Blue Moo, (“Banana nana nana nana nana na na na.” very catchy...and no, I'm am NOT making any sort of stupid racial editorial comment*) it was inevitable. I had to write it out to escape it's insidious hold on my brain. Like the home remedy of singing a song that has been going through your head over and over and over to stop it.

 

I voted for Hillary in the primary. I had many reasons. First and foremost is that she is everything Obama is not. She is not glamorous, or sexy (to me, at any rate), she isn't a fabulously talented orator. But damn, is the woman a fighter.

 

At that point, I was leery (and still am, quite frankly) of the groupie mentality I saw in some of Obama's supporters. I know my low tolerance for hard selling, so I kept my exposure to propaganda to a minimum. I had no real bones to pick with either candidate. Either one would be a vast improvement over who is “in charge” now. Through the last months, we've seen the gloves come off, the mud fly, and they both have managed to pick themselves up out of the dirt. Filthy, but standing. I'm glad Hillary went after Obama the way she did. Beyond seeing her at her most unreasonably aggressive self, we were able to at least glean how Obama might deal with the full-fledged Republican attacks which may be in his future. And let's face it, the Republicans want Hillary to go up against McCain. They know they could slaughter her before she even got to the house.

 

Because Hillary made mistakes. She made experience a big part of her platform. Then she proceeded to do what many of us do on our resumes. Embellish the hell out of it. Some might say fabricate the hell out of it. Whatever. It all part of the game. Every damn politician out there is doing it. But if she goes up against McCain, a big part of her campaigning will become useless. And she's got Bill baggage. The one thing she really has, a workable healthcare plan, will not be enough to beat the brutality of the Republican machine once it breaks out it's battering ram. The mud slinging will become shit hurling. I will stop reading the paper.

 

So what, you may be wondering, inspired this 30 something white woman to write about this demonic circus?

 

I watched Obama speak. Specifically, his March 18^th address in Philadelphia. And I saw in his candor about his response to the incendiary words of his “former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright” my own thoughts, my own experiences. It brought back my days of participating in training exercises at Women in Transition that enlightened all of us young counselors as to exactly what privileges are, and how we benefited or suffered from them. I too, have relatives whose racial prejudices make my teeth grind. I have ancestors who hid their racial identities because it was dangerous not to do so. Once upon a time, it was dangerous to be Penobscot. It was dangerous to be Irish. And look where we are now. We have a long way to go, but now I can proudly state my ancestry in a way that was impossible for my great grandparents to do.

 

Obama is a magnificent orator, he has stage presence, gravity, and yes, he looks almost presidential. Almost, because he is missing a key facial expression. I don't believe, (and you can correct me on this, if you please, if I missed it) the mashed lips that seem to be part and parcel of almost every candidate today. The look that says they have lost control, that they are on the defensive, that they are hiding baggage. He didn't have it.

 

So I say almost presidential. He has created an image of himself that is hard to resist. Upright, realistically hopeful, self actualized. When was the last time I listened to someone and thought...here is someone who could be a hero? Or even more...someone to look up to, as well as a good man. A real man. Not an ol' boy, like those that populate the White House. So what if he doesn't pick up his socks? Neither does my husband. So what if he doesn't have experience. Neither did Lincoln, and where would we be without him?

 

I wish Barack well. I hope for him. I want to believe in him. This is beginning to sound like a religious conversion, so I think I'll wrap this up.

 

I'd like to leave you all today with the 3 year old Impling's nature prose, observed and composed during a leisurely stroll through the streets of Brookline, and here by her specific request:

 

“They are Spring bare branches!”

*This would be particularly ridiculous of me since I think I might be on the brink of a big O conversion.