The Cricket on the Hearth

I got over it...

2011-04-19T17:11:00.000-04:00

I am always leery about guns. I just can't get over the reality that the only purpose for them is to kill or maim mercilessly. I know, I know, but still--that's how I feel.

But today my daughter pulled a package out of the dollar bin at Target and asked me what it was. It happened to be squirt guns. Really cool looking, tiny squirt guns. And she wanted them.

It is in these moments that there is a tiny battle waged within a mother's soul--distract, deflect, preach, or don't make a mountain out of a molehill and relent. I choose the latter.

And so today after we all got home from the bus stop--sweaty and tired in 95-degree heat--we filled a basin with water and went in the backyard to shoot each other with water. And it was delicious fun.

My son and I played with each other, darting behind patio walls and trees to sneak attack each other. My daughter frolicked in the grass in her soaked dress watering plants in between pot shots. It was refreshing and silly to run around shrieking and squirting water at one another.

I do feel a tiny bit like I let one of my hard and fast moral rules slide. It's a little tick of worry and shame that can't seem to compete with Really Good Clean Fun.

You won't see me at a shooting range, but I guess some squirt guns can be used for fun in my backyard. I'll save my molehill into a mountain issues for another day...

A Poem a Day

2011-04-18T17:11:00.000-04:00

I love poetry. Really love it. I can't imagine life without it and try to share it with those I love. I'd share the love with strangers, but I think that might land me in the same category as the street preachers. It's much safer (and saner) to share it here.

Dream On
by James Tate

Some people go their whole lives
without ever writing a single poem.
Extraordinary people who don't hesitate
to cut somebody's heart or skull open.
They go to baseball games with the greatest of ease
and play a few rounds of golf as if it were nothing.
These same people stroll into a church
as if that were a natural part of life.
Investing money is second nature to them.
They contribute to political campaigns
that have absolutely no poetry in them
and promise none for the future.
They sit around the dinner table at night
and pretend as though nothing is missing.
Their children get caught shoplifting at the mall
and no one admits that it is poetry they are missing.
The family dog howls all night,
lonely and starving for more poetry in his life.
Why is it so difficult for them to see
that, without poetry, their lives are effluvial.
Sure, they have their banquets, their celebrations,
croquet, fox hunts, their seashores and sunsets,
their cocktails on the balcony, dog races,
and all that kissing and hugging, and don't
forget the good deeds, the charity work,
nursing the baby squirrels all through the night,
filling the birdfeeder all winter,
helping a stranger change her tire.
Still, there's that disagreeable exhalation
from decaying matter, subtle but ever present.
They walk around erect like champions.
They are smooth-spoken, urbane and witty.
When alone, rare occasion, they stare
into the mirror for hours, bewildered.
There was something they meant to say, but didn't.
"And if we put the statue of the rhinoceros
next to the tweezers,and walk around the room three times,
learn to yodel, shave our heads, call our ancestors back from the dead--"
poetrywise it's still a bust, bankrupt.
You haven't scribbled a syllable of it.
You're a nowhere man misfiring
the very essence of your life, flustering
nothing from nothing and back again.
The hereafter may not last all that long.
Radiant childhood sweetheart,
secret code of everlasting joy and sorrow,
fanciful pen strokes beneath the eyelids:
all day, all night meditation, knot of hope,
kernel of desire, pure ordinariness of life,
seeking, through poetry, a benediction
or a bed to lie down on, to connect, reveal,
explore, to imbue meaning on the day's extravagant labor.
And yet it's cruel to expect too much.
It's a rare species of bird
that refuses to be categorized.
Its song is barely audible.
It's like a dragonfly in a dream--
here, then there, then here again,
low-flying amber-wing darting upward
and then out of sight.
And the dream has a pain in its heart
the wonders of which are manifold,
or so the story is told.

Like a Good Neighbor...

2011-04-12T19:47:00.000-04:00

A neighbor stopped by with her daughters this afternoon with freshly baked cupcakes. Our children played together for about a half hour while we both enjoyed the small moment of adult company.

She was apologetic about the haphazard frosting and sprinkles on the cupcakes her children made. I asserted that I'd never met a cupcake I didn't like, and neither had my children.

I was embarrassed that I had three piles of laundry overflowing off our couch in need of folding. I sheepishly explained that while I loved doing laundry (oh, how I do relish the clean scent and warmth wafting through my home), I hated folding clothes. She told me she felt exactly the same way.

All in all a lovely little visit. Which reminded me of three things: 1) I need to fold the clothes. 2) We really should make cupcakes more often. 3) Neighbors are such unassuming friends...or at least the good ones are.

Quality Time

2011-04-11T20:58:00.000-04:00

Tonight, sitting outside on the porch with my husband, we caught up with our day between sips of red wine. There was the everyday exchange and then he shared the news that his Grandfather was biopsied today for colon cancer. It is speculated that it is Stage 4, and I know what that means now. (I didn't many years ago when I was fresh out of college, self-centered and working hard, so I thought I was a saint for simply taking my own Grandfather to some chemo treatments without a full awareness of what Stage 4 lung cancer meant.)

This news is not welcome, but not so much a surprise. His Grandfather is 92 and has lived a full life. He has been getting weaker, faster. We visited with the kids a couple weeks ago and it was an earnest affair. I watched my husband talk of the Civil War with him and listen quietly when he informed us he had been to church and was ready to die now. It was not easy to leave that afternoon.

Sometimes I think the serenity of a tender sunset with someone you love, sharing something so hard, and smelling sweet jasmine and rocking on porch chairs while sipping red wine is what keeps us sane. It is a blessing to have such luminosity surround us when absorbing such dark news.

We don't say much after that. The bugs are biting now and we will be going inside soon. It is a battle to stop myself when I want to blurt out how sorry I am, want to hug him, want to soothe and sort out and speculate. But I see my husband there in the growing darkness and he is looking at a mockingbird that has landed on the edge of the roof to perform a spectacular aria. I don't dare interrupt.

Because I said so.

2011-04-08T23:18:00.000-04:00

Arguing with your kid is like beating your head against a brick wall, only worse. You love the brick wall and don't want to hurt it.

"I Wanna Be..."

2011-04-07T20:36:00.000-04:00

Late in the afternoon today, when I was faced with two children in the doldrums (a particularly beneficial time I might add for encouraging reading or other creative play by simply allowing my dear ones to "get bored"), my four-year-old daughter marched up to me in full dress-up attire with pretend microphone in hand.

"I'm going to sing for you," she stated boldly. And then promptly looked doubtful and added, "Only if you don't laugh." Oh, my darling, I wanted to say, I would never laugh at you--my sun rises and sets with you. But I wisely just nodded and stated simply, "Of course I won't." And that was that.

All prior singing had been done behind shower curtains, in the bedroom with the door closed or an adjacent room where it was assumed no one could hear. I had always lingered in the bathroom letting the water run a little longer than I should or stood just outside view in a hallway to enjoy her tiny voice belting out songs of her own design. She knows the words to many songs, indeed sings along quietly in the car when she thinks I am too busy watching the road. But it is the songs she makes up on her own and sings so earnestly and tremulously to herself that I treasure.

So, this performance is a first treat and a precious one, and I am acutely aware of how serious I must be and how important it is not to not screw up my role as coveted audience member.

She climbed atop the low all-purpose play table in the middle of the room after checking that her brother was lost in a book secure in his room out of earshot. She stood there, very still for a moment, staring at me. I worry that I am supposed to do something, or say something, but my paralysis is due to the very newness of this moment and my overwhelming sense that I am looking at a wild woodland creature in her natural state and that if I move she will dart away never to be seen again.

She began after sizing me up, and tucked up her dress-up gown in one hand and gripped her microphone in another. Her song is a simple one, but it is loud and poignant to me not for what she sings, but for what she doesn't...

"I wanna BE...." she sang loudly, her voice shaking a little as she experimented with key and pitch. "I wanna BE..." She swished her skirt and twirled. "I wanna BE..." Now she attempted a brief dance routine in what I assume is the interlude before the triumphant climax. "I WANNA BE!!!" And she stopped and looked at me again with wild eyes, a little dazzled by what she has done.

I am also a little breathless and realize it is my cue to clap politely. And so I do. And I resisted the urge to sweep her up and hug her and spin her and cry and perhaps laugh a happy laugh that will undoubtedly be misinterpreted. I settle for applause and a hearty congratulations for a wonderful performance.

"Please sing for me again sometime," I told her as we begin to gather toys and books to set away for the next day. She nodded. It is time to make dinner. She prepares for her shower. I let her stand in the streaming water a little longer than I should and listen to her sing, "I wanna BE..."

And I let myself smile now, my heart near to bursting. Will she remember singing this for me? Will she remember her made-up lyrics? She never completed her thought and so I pondered--be what? But then maybe she did sing exactly what her heart was spilling out into music.

And that is when I think I got it. She wasn't yearning, she was exultant. I removed the idea that she was figuring out what she wants to be, and instead hear that she just wants to be. I want her to remember how vastly different that interpretation is as she moves through her life, and how very sage her lyrics were for a young child and perhaps even for that very fact.

I stirred the boiling macaroni and sang softly to myself, "I wanna be..."

Bedtime (it can always wait)

2011-04-06T20:24:00.000-04:00

     Tonight my seven-year-old son kept hopping out of bed after lights out. First it was the bathroom. Then it was his loose front tooth--Wanna see it wiggle?

     Sitting out on the back porch, after settling him into bed again, I sat with a glass of wine enjoying the fading warmth of the day and the whisper of a cool breeze while listening to the crickets and the mockingbirds unwittingly serenade me. A thoroughly lovely night, but since my husband was away on business, I sat and felt just a little lonely, wishing there were someone with whom to share this moment.

     And then, with a plane landing nearby, low enough to see the cabin lights were on, I heard my son exclaim behind me, obviously trying to sneak out of bed once again. He was so taken with the vision of the low flying plane glinting back the reflection of a setting sun and framed against a brilliantly blue sky, his eyes open wide, his mouth a perfect O of wonder...with his loose snaggle-tooth making for an adorable lisp as he asked all number of questions about planes and destinations and travel plans he'd like to make. Well, how could I be angry that he was finding yet another excuse for delaying bedtime?

     He climbed into the chair next to me and we talked for a bit. I kept glancing his way when he would stare up into the rosy wispy clouds of a perfect Spring sunset, quiet for a small stolen moment, and marvel at how he was changing from baby to boy to man right before my eyes. He wanted to talk about school--a project he was doing tomorrow and the unfairness of not having recess on Thursdays. Talking about such things does not ever happen, ever, when asked on the walk home from the bus stop or at dinnertime how his day was or what was new with school. And so I was keenly aware of this small gift of sharing his world with me. His hair was still wet from his shower and it was curling over the tops of his ears in the new longish way he wants to wear it. I could just sit and stare at him and marvel, really.

     Then he discovered our dog was rolling in something out further in the grass, a dead mole cricket--and it is, for him, as nearly perfect as it is for our dog, or at least a wonderful happenstance. After looking over the dead bug and asking if he could keep it in his room (No.) it was time to go to bed. Again.

     And I know I will always try really hard to hide the fact that I love tucking him in and will do so over and over again gladly with a song in my heart. That would be too dangerous for him to know now. But I want him to know this someday--that tucking him in is a joy that frames every evening of my life with happiness.

Why Blog?

2011-04-05T21:01:00.000-04:00

I've resisted the trend. I've scoffed at it even. But I read others and am usually duly impressed. I'm a little happy to have heard on the news from a trendy young reporter that blogging is now out. In a relieved way, I feel like the time could not be more right now for that very reason. There are reasons to blog. I'm sure I can come up with a few if faced with a need to defend my egotistical foray into the blogosphere. But mostly it is because I go to bed almost every night with thoughts and musings jostling each other for attention. And almost every day I nearly convince myself to start a journal for my children to read, as if it might be where I can tell them the things I am bound to forget with the erosion of time or the loss of expression. I may not register in the world as much, but I am the center of it to my children right now. So here it is. My hour of reckoning. Time to create and embellish or let it suffer a quiet demise with nary a reader. My sole intent is to create a record of my thoughts for my children and my closest of friends who share a love for words and the way they record, and possibly shape, a simple life. Cheers.