A Beautiful Morning

Yesterday morning when I woke up I found the front door open and my kids’ breakfast missing from the kitchen counter where I’d set it out the night before.  The kids had carried their cereal and sippy cups out to the front step where they were having a picnic breakfast.  I was invited to join them with my fruit and yogurt.  It was lovely to sit there in the cool of the morning, listening to the birds and being quiet with my children.

I was surprised that they had the idea to take their breakfast outside.  I cannot guess what inspired it.  I am pleased, though, that they knew it would be okay.  I never explicitly gave them permission to have a picnic breakfast—why would I have thought of that?—but they reasoned that it did not break any rules, it did not put them in any danger, and it would not have any negative consequences.  That is the kind of decision-making I want to foster in my children. 

 

A blue sky, leaves shimmering in the breeze, children who are learning to think for themselves—it was a beautiful morning.

It's A Boy

My daughter is the type of little girl I was.  She likes babies and dolls and can play with them for hours.  I’ve always felt I have less in common with my son, who is more like his dad.  My son likes puzzles and robots and building with Legos.  This summer, however, I have discovered new affinities with my son—and released the seven-year-old boy inside myself.

I like to climb rocks, to run in the grass, to throw a Frisbee, to shoot hoops.  My son was not much into sports before, but last year’s P.E. class turned him on to basketball and soccer and taught him not to duck when things are flying at his face.  Now he is eager to play games that I enjoy, too.  To my satisfaction, I am just enough faster than him that I can still catch him in tag.  Next summer he’ll get away.

I also enjoy adolescent fantasy adventure novels with dragons and elves and magical quests.  (It’s no wonder I married my geeky comic-book-reading scientist husband.)  My son likes fantasy novels, too.  We read them together.  We’ve read all of Cressida Cowell’s How To Train Your Dragon series, Elmer and the Dragon, Cosmic, about a twelve-year-old boy who travels into space, and Dragon Rider, about a boy who travels with a dragon in search of the Rim of Heaven.  When my son’s a little older I’ll introduce him to The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe and Harry Potter.  I can’t wait.

Of course six and a half years ago I didn’t care if my baby was a boy or girl, as long as it had ten fingers and ten toes.  Now I am glad that I have a son who can be a little boy with me.

Summertime Black-and-Blues

I bear the marks of motherhood—not stretch marks or gray hairs but black-and-blue shins, scratched ankles, and a farmer’s tan.  Motherhood is taking its toll.

New Shoes

This week I bought myself a new pair of sandals.  I’d wanted to replace my old grungy brown sandals since the beginning of the summer, but I never had an hour to myself to run into the shoe store.  I didn’t miraculously get an hour to myself this week, either; I finally just dragged my son along to the shoe store with me.  We had a deal, that after I finished shopping we would go to the play land there at the mall.  Bribery has its limits, of course, and he couldn’t be a patient good boy forever.  I had to work fast.  That diminishes the pleasure of shopping, but at least I got it done—and we had fun at the play land.

The sandals I bought are impractical for a stay-at-home mom.  They are open-toed with crisscrossing straps, which immediately get filled with sand or rocks at the park, and they are leather, not ideal for wading across a creek.  They’re so cute.  So far this week I have managed to devise outings on which I can wear them, such as playing at the playground that has a rubber surface rather than sand or pea gravel and going for a walk to the grocery store for “a few things.” 

 

Today, however, I am wearing my closed-toed, durable-soled, water-proof adventure sandals.  Parenting is a compromise.

Rain, Rain...

Ten minutes ago I was standing in my kitchen packing an elaborate picnic dinner (grilled chicken breast with roasted red pepper, spinach leaves, and goat cheese on toasted Italian bread; broccoli salad; blueberry buckle for dessert) while rain fell outside and thunder rumbled, jeering me.  It’s not unlikely that the storm will pass before dinnertime.  But if this picnic is rained out, it will be the second picnic we’ve eaten at our dining room table this week.  When should I just give up?

Halfway, Part II

On the first Saturday of every month my husband has a “free day.”  In the winter he goes skiing on black diamond slopes, and in the summer he takes sixty-mile bike rides.  These are not activities that the family can do together.  I occupy the kids for the day, and in exchange my husband gives me the evening off.  The family usually goes out to dinner so I don’t have to cook, and my husband puts the kids to bed.

At least that’s the deal.  In truth, however, I often end up putting the kids to bed.  This isn’t because my husband reneges on his offer.  Sometimes I just feel like it’s easier for me to do it.  If we’ve been out to dinner, it’s probably late.  The kids need to get right to bed, and I’m faster at marshaling them through their bedtime jobs.  Even though I’ve been alone with them all day, doing all the work of parenting myself, I can manage another half-hour of child care.  I can do it.

Looking over the remaining weeks of summer vacation, I think, I can do it.  If I am feeling brain dead because I am not working (writing), if I am getting tired of having fun, if I am longing for a few hours to myself, I know that I can bear up and plow through a few more weeks.  I can do it.  I can pack picnics, arrange an outing to the reservoir, ride bikes, and kick the soccer ball until school starts again and my days are mine. 

 

Fortunately, I like being with my son.  He is good company.  He doesn’t drive me crazy or irritate me or bore me.  I’ll try to be good company for him for another month.  I know he’s anxious for school to start, too.

Halfway

We are halfway through summer vacation.  To be precise, thirty days have passed since my son’s last day of school (not including weekends), and there remain twenty-five days to fill until school resumes.  I don’t count the weekends because he wouldn’t go to school on the weekends anyway.

There are two weeks left of the library’s summer reading program.  I don’t know why it doesn’t continue until the start of the school year.  I suppose we can still go the library on Thursday afternoons even after summer reading is over.

My son is registered for one more week of summer camp.  Also, we have plans to spend a long weekend in the mountains on a short family vacation, so there’s that. 

We have not been swimming at the reservoir yet, nor downtown to play in the fountain and eat ice cream from the vendor’s cart.  I’m disappointed in myself for letting so much time pass, and now I’ve lost my enthusiasm.

My son and I haven’t been on a bike ride in a while.  We haven’t kicked the soccer ball around in a while, either.  We haven’t played any of our new games lately.  We’ve finished all the books we got at the school’s end-of-the-year give-away.

We did go on a picnic once.  We went on a nature walk with our wildflower field guide, too—but I only remember one of the flowers we identified.

Despite all my plans, it’s becoming a slog.

It’s time to dig deep.  I’m planning a hike and a picnic supper this weekend (cold fried chicken, potato salad with blue cheese and crumbled bacon, crudités, fresh berry salad, brownies), and I’ve promised to take the children swimming on Monday (weather permitting).  My son wants to go to the farm the weekend after that, and we’ve rented Mary Poppins from the library for a family movie night.  I won’t give up on having fun.

Last night at dinner my son prayed, “Thank you for the good day I had with Mommy.”  So there’s that.

Into the Kitchen

When we are away from home I think I enjoy letting other people cook for me, but as soon as we get home the first thing I do is make a grocery list.  I can’t wait to cook for myself and my family again, to make meals of my choice and to experience the pleasure of chopping vegetables, measuring ingredients, seasoning to taste, and turning out a dish exactly as I imagined it.  This week I’m going to make pasta primavera with julienned carrots, pea pods, and broccoli, garnished with shaved parmesan cheese and cashews; chicken marsala with green beans amandine and hot rolls; and salt-and-pepper shrimp with stir-fried spring vegetables (asparagus, snow peas, and leek) and sticky rice.  It’s great to be home.

A Few of My Favorite Things

Here are some things I like about visiting my parents (besides seeing my parents):

It is very dark at night.  There are no street lights outside our bedroom window; no cars pass.  It is blissful.

There is a two hour time difference between my parents’ time zone and ours at home, and my parents have a satellite dish.  This means that I can stay up “late” without getting too tired and watch The Daily Show and The Colbert Report with my husband.

 I have not gained as much weight since high school as the classmates I bump into.

At breakfast I can watch the horses gambol in the pasture beyond my parents’ back fence.

My pixie haircut seems unconventional and daring.

My kids are so happy to be here.

Thoughts

We are visiting my parents.  In their basement I found a box of old papers I’d written in college and graduate school.  I remembered several of them; I still think those things about those books.  Maybe my thinking has not matured at all, but I believe that they were just good thoughts. 

The distance between those papers and my reading and thinking today seems very short, shorter than my experienced life.  Those papers seem less long ago than marrying my husband, moving west, having my babies.  Each of those life events is fixed in time.  Thinking, on the other hand, is always instantaneous, at this very moment in time.  Although each paper was dated, the ideas are not past.  They are still immediate because they are still in my head.  My thinking about new things incorporates those ideas, too.  Every moment contains every thought I’ve ever had, even ideas I’ve discarded and opinions I’ve changed.  I felt that those old papers are not part of my past, they are part of my present.  It was a relief to feel that I am still a thinking person, even though I am not doing hard core literary analysis anymore.

I threw the papers away.  I’m not interested in rereading them; I’m not going to reuse them.  The only thing that matters about them is that I started thinking once and haven’t stopped.