The Not-Ever-Still Life

Exxon waltz

noreply@blogger.com (Robin noteverstill) — Fri, 25 May 2012 23:16:00 +0000

The other night E and I had a mama-daughter date night, to parallel her sister's, at her school's year-end arts showcase. It was on the upper school campus, a place both she and I had only seen from the side of the road. We wandered the halls, saw her friends, listened to a capella in the auditorium and clapped for ballet in the cafeteria and practiced weaving in the gymnasium. We left filled with the joy that comes of realizing we've joined such a wonderful community, and of basking in her social successes, and in the beauty of 13 grades of art expression in a thrumming, humming space.

We left as the sun set and as her sister and brother were surely getting ready to sleep at home with their daddy. We left full and happy and tired and floaty - you know that feeling? - the one that was so much more than just that night, the one where this is the end of the year and we triumphed. She did and we did and we spent the night in a throng of kids she giggles with, 6th graders who stop to hug her and the art teacher who high-fived her and the parents of her friends who look out for her as one of her own, who have become my friends, who went through the initiation that is kindergarten along with us.

Her teacher hugged me and told me how smart she is and told me again. I love a school where her teacher hugs me, where nurturing the child encompasses nurturing the family and we all are loved.

Part of me tonight looks at the three-day weekend ahead and thinks "how did we get here already, to Memorial Day weekend and the last two weeks of school?" and part of me retorts defiantly because this was no race, no time-lapse, no blink of an eye and they've grown, first graders almost, leaner and smarter and worldly in a way they never could have been last August. We earned every minute of this year, each hurtle and accomplishment, the first mean girl and the first book read alone, the kicking and screaming beginning and the squeal-screams into the outstretched embrace of a coterie of 6-year-olds finish. It's the end of the year and we got here, and I will not gloss over that but marvel at its miracle and its ordinariness and its sunrise-sunset swiftly flew those days.

So we left and couldn't come straight home because the car, worked to its bones as it is each week with the responsibility of freighting my most precious cargo, had been singing its empty siren song all day. Just she and I, so rarely alone, she asked if she could pump the gas.

It is good to remember that all that seems mundane wasn't always.

And never mind the demure prairie skirt, because that girl, my almost-first-grader, she's stuffed with joy when she isn't waterlogged with anxiety. And she succeeded in getting the gas flowing and then she held out her hand.

The loudspeakers above played some big-band music that seemed out of place next to the acne-masked teenage attendant and the pupuseria food truck parked in the corner of the lot and the view of the sunset atop the roof of the orange home-improvement store across the six-lane street. This bothered my girl not one bit. Let's dance, she said, and dip me!

And so we danced in the median between the pumps, in the white light of the awning and the buzz-sound of the mosquito zapper and the cough of traffic headed home on the end of a day's rush hour.

To the high-hat and the saxaphone this girl who couldn't let her smile show at the beginning of the year whipped out an air guitar and crescendoed to an impressive conclusion.

It was a good reminder- the arts showcase, the last week of May-

-happiness does come.

And when it does (when someone asks you to dance)-

-you say yes to happiness (and waltz at the gas station).

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At the end

noreply@blogger.com (Robin noteverstill) — Wed, 23 May 2012 03:18:00 +0000

The kindergarten end-of-year assembly was on Monday.

I never told you just how bad the beginning was, how she screamed every morning, how a teacher had to pry her forcibly from my car in the carpool line, how she clutched her car seat straps, then the frame of the door, then empty air crying my name, Mama, Mama, no! How I cried every morning, just after she was dragged in to the building away from me, how I wanted to believe she could thrive and how I feared I was wrong, how I feared I was forcing her into a system for which she wasn't ready, how not all kids are round pegs and what if I was doing her the worst disservice possible for the convenience of a conventional life.

I never wanted to quit my job and homeschool her, but there were mornings when I thought: one more week, one more day. And then I'm going to have to ditch my whole life because she needs me more than I need my life-as-I-know-it.

I was this.close to that panic attack, to that cliff jump, to doing that which might have felt safer for her but wouldn't have bolstered her with the confidence I needed to summon on her behalf. It was scary, and I really didn't know, I didn't know.

Until the day she only fake-cried, like she felt she had to keep up appearances for me, and the day she forgot to fake-cry, and the day when she actually got out of the car unassisted, and that day, oh that day, the one where she was too busy chatting with her new friends to turn back and wave goodbye to me.

That was a good day.

This girl: she will never, I think, entirely shed her anxieties. She will always have to manage her trepidations. But she'll never have another beginning-of-kindergarten, either. "She should be on stage," another mom told me after Monday's assembly. Because this girl knew every word and every hand gesture and every dance move. She smiled as they performed and winked at me as she said her lines and giggled. "Your daughter," her teacher said to me afterwards, "she gets it. She listened and she gets it. I told them they can have fun up there as long as they still sing loudly. And did you watch her? She had fun and she sang loudly!"

E tells me she doesn't remember when she didn't love kindergarten. I wonder, though, if she's really blocked it out? or if she loves it so much that she doesn't want to acknowledge the change of opinion. That's the best flavor of humble pie, isn't it?

We're celebrating the end of kindergarten. It's a milestone I panicked we'd never reach. She is beloved and adjusted and has learned so much. And she's so, so happy.

She'll always have her struggles. We all have our struggles, don't we? But she triumphed, this girl, this year. It's a thing to celebrate. She's such a great kid.

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Number two

noreply@blogger.com (Robin noteverstill) — Thu, 17 May 2012 03:58:00 +0000

I had a date tonight.

The first girl is a mirror of my own heart and so I understand her feelings by the slightest shift of her expression. The second girl, though, is like a foreign language. I don't always understand what I'm reading, no matter how hard I study.

She is more self-sufficient emotionally (like her father), but also more easily wounded. When she is upset she has to let it out by noise, lowing, keening, it looks like drama but it's release, pain eased by decibel, hard on her mama's nerves but effective because when it's gone, it's really gone. She's more comedic, not at all shy, fierce, defiant, determined, uncautious, impetuous. She is so smart, stunningly beautiful, and sometimes utterly incomprehensible to me in her reactions to everyday events.

The uncautious and the loud and the impetuous: those are the reasons, I can pinpoint them exactly, why for a long time I preferred not to be in charge of her in public. I like her, you know? And it did my heart no good the way she'd manage always to bolt into a street or climb something impossibly unsturdy or find a discarded condom to play with (but it's MY balloon! I found it!) and I'd have to unilaterally insist that she couldn't keep her balloon or play in the sparkly broken glass or leap off a newspaper dispenser and yes, she did have to hold my hand the whole time and her disappointment and frustration would climax in the noise. And to be candid, I'm accustomed to becoming public spectacle at the antics of my three but there is nothing in the world like the worldless moaning at sonic-boom-volume that comes out of L's throat when she's unhappy. You can hear it right over all the outdoor noises of downtown bustle. And so she and I have a long history of house-bound activities.

But she asked, and so I said, "let's go," and I left work early and snuck past her brother's classroom to pick her up alone and we had a little adventure. We drove downtown, which was not DC-downtown but Silver-Spring-downtown, but was exciting enough. We parked in a public garage and walked the wibble-wobble blocks and she was all I had to watch, and so I could let her be a little free.

She touched the edge of every cafe table we passed. Ethiopian, Indian, Greek, Chinese, another Ethiopian. Populated or empty. Ding! she chimed at each one. She made old men laugh. She swooned with praise over the pink and purple wigs in the window of the wig shop. She hugged the shiny statue of Buddha in the doorway of a nail salon, proclaiming him the prettiest golden teddy bear in the whole wide world.

And when we arrived at our destination, her whole body exploded in happiness, fracturing bystanders with the vehemence of her joy. The restaurant is a converted fire station, decorated with everything a little firefighter loves and with a real fire truck outside. Thank you for bringing me here! she shouted about a hundred times at inappropriate volumes but with unabashed sincerity. The food was nothing special but without exaggeration, I don't know the last time I saw her so unwaveringly happy.

After dinner, we played in the splash fountain. He siblings both approach the fountain hesitantly and in their company, she always has, too. Tonight she ran right to the biggest stream and took a geyser up her nose and sat down laughing. We had got a cup of ice cream and I'd spoon her bites between water runs and she played until her lips were as blue from cold as her tongue was from the dessert. She was drenched and shivering and couldn't stop giggling and I stripped her right there down to her also-soaked rainbow unders. I took off my cardigan and wrapped it around her and she composed a flappy penguin dance right there on the plaza, too-long sleeves flying and her feet wibble-wobbling. And I carried her wet and dripping to the car like she wasn't my four-and-almost-a-half-year old but my baby, which she will always be even if we never learn to speak the same language, and I brought her home.

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I owe you memes. I said I'd write you memes and they're in draft and I don't know why they're so hard for me to publish but they just make me feel shy. They're coming, really (I think).
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When you're a blogger

noreply@blogger.com (Robin noteverstill) — Fri, 11 May 2012 15:20:00 +0000

Today we're departing from our usual hijinks so I can tell you about a few fun things I've done lately as a direct result of blogging:

Noodles & Co.

So you know that Noodles is a favorite destination of the kids, and particularly of E's. I've written about it here enough times (this is either embarrassing or amazing; I can't decide which and I think the answer is 'both') that I was invited to have a private meal with the company's executive chef and to ask her anything I wanted when she was in DC last month. Meet Chef Tessa Stamper:

and Bangkok Curry:

Tessa sat with me (and her PR manager) for an hour as I tasted anything I wanted on the menu and asked questions about anything and everything. Here are a few nuggets from our conversation:

if your pesto sauce tastes too thin, your meal was cooked too long. The pesto separates if it's not tended carefully, but the Noodles policy is to remake any food that doesn't satisfy you, no questions asked.
the rice krispie snacks are made fresh daily and what's in them is a secret she wouldn't reveal.
the company tries to source local produce for as much of the growing season as is possible, and buys organic if the quality is as good as conventional.
the rice noodles are made by hand in Thailand and are unbroken when fashioned, from the tradition that long noodles represent long life and breaking them is bad luck. When they arrive to the restaurant, they are prepared in the same manner, without breaking them. In this way, Thai traditional noodle-making methods transmit good luck to you.
although asparagus season is almost upon us, the seasonal asparagus dishes of the past few years are not returning for 2012.
there are no current plans to add Noodles in upstate New York, where all the kids' grandparents live.

Weird blogger experience details: although I never knew her name before this meeting, Tessa is an important figure in our family life. We appreciate Noodles for the opportunity to feed our kids in a setting that prepares fresh food, serves organic milk, and incorporates vegetables everywhere. I recognize that it's still not exactly health food but it's not junk, either, you know? Meeting Tessa felt like meeting a celebrity, in a way. I was not expected to write about the meeting and I was not paid for the meeting but I had a one-on-one conversation with the executive corporate chef where I was free to ask anything I wanted. I also ate anything I wanted, and left with a handful of coupons for free Noodles bowls. Those have already been redeemed.

The Puppet Co.

photo credit: Christopher Piper

The Puppet Co. at Glen Echo invited use to their production of Pinocchio, which is still running. My girls loved this show, and the best fun happened after it ended when the show's director brought us backstage and we got to meet the puppets and the puppeteers. It is a tragedy to me that I only had my phone to serve as camera with me.

Most of the puppets for this show are from 1974. "They're old -- they're older than many of the parents in our audience," the director laughed. L asked me: are you that old?

"No, honey," I answered. "1974 is from before me." Oh, good, she said. Because that's reaalllly old. "Well, that is when Daddy was born." Oh, she said. So Daddy's very old. I'm glad I know that now.

Fun fact: The Puppet Co.'s is the second largest collection of puppets in the United States, after a company in Atlanta. They have hundreds of puppets that are stored archivally in two separate locations to ensure preservation of the collection.
The puppeteers roll around on low-wheeled stools behind the stage. It reminded me of scooters in gym class in elementary school. (Kadimah friends: remember Mr. P's yellow scoooters??) At the beginning of rehearsals for each new exhibit, the puppeteers have trouble walking up and down stairs after exhausting some narrow interior butt muscles from silently wheeling huge puppets over their heads for hours at a time.
And backstage, puppeteers can be just as bawdy as any other actors. God bless my oblivious daughters. (G and his daddy stayed home and napped during this adventure.)
And if my kids were bigger, they'd be all over this puppet-making workshop that's coming up for 10-12 year olds.

Weird blogger experience details: we were given free tickets to the puppet show, and invited backstage for a private tour. The girls hugged puppets and manipulated puppets and had many, many questions about Pinocchio's nose growth, which the puppeteers gracefully answered in detail.

Amazing Art Studio

Oh, you guys. I've had a weakness for glass forever. Pre-blogging (so you might not know it happened), the lovely husband gave me a glass-blowing class in Baltimore for my first Mother's Day. It was amazing. At the Amazing Art Studio, I got to try glass fusing for the first time, which was way easier and produced results just as beautiful. The evening was put together by Amanda from Tots2Tweens and about a dozen of us sat together chatting and crafting. It was like a book club with safety goggles. So fun.

Breaking glass into precise little shapes is not only not difficult, it makes you feel badass. You should try it.
The Studio is adults-only on Thursday nights and they keep wine glasses in the cabinet because you can BYO and they help you keep it classy.
They also do birthday parties, but they don't break out the wine glasses for those.
You assemble your glass piece, which is like collaging with glass. They fire it in the kiln and you return later to pick up your creation, which is food- and dishwasher-safe.
They also offer ceramics, but why would you do that when you can play with glass?

I made this:

and I love it. Who wants to go back with me?

Weird blogger experience details: we were treated to cupcakes and other light refreshments, and didn't pay for the glass pieces we made. It was basically a blog-sponsored ladies' night out.

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I was at a dinner Wednesday night with several women who blog professionally. I doubt that will ever be me; while I don't mind making money from blogging it's not my primary focus nor something I pursue beyond the opportunities that fall into my lap. I have friends who have free computers and free cameras and free trips across the country and the world because of their blogs, and my little memoir blog (which I love dearly and am not denigrating here) will not likely generate those opportunities.

But- even the humble storytellers among us get to do some really fun things because of blogging, and I wanted to tell you a little bit about what that's like. This is still a very young medium and if you've ever been curious about the advantages of blogging instead of journaling, these little opportunities are one good example. Truly, though, I still think the supportive community you grow around yourself as you write out loud is the best reason to blog. And that means all of you.

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Sugar cereal and other adventures

noreply@blogger.com (Robin noteverstill) — Fri, 11 May 2012 03:35:00 +0000

image via Jeni Rodger

Not too long ago I received some unsolicited material in the mail. It happens every so often that I'll be sent something with the hope that I'll write about it here on my blog, and since you never read those posts, you know that I don't make a habit of writing them. That package was a few boxes of cereal that were boxed in promotional packaging related to a new movie. There are so many reasons why those boxes weren't going to appear here, including that I think of myself primarily as a narrative blogger and that I don't think we should encourage our already-overly consumerist society to buy cereal just to save the cardboard box. Oh, and the cereal has no redeeming nutritional value. It's sugary, artificially colored, exactly what we never buy for our house...and delicious, of course. It's the cereal of my childhood.

I stuck it in the basement, not being able to waste food by throwing it out and not interested in posting about it, and forgot about it.

The main cereal consumed in our house is oatmeal, and not even the quick cooking kind. The kind where I mix honey and cinnamon and milk and real butter and fresh berries into dry grains, the kind made of real ingredients. When we buy dry cereal we pretty much stick to Cheerios and Chex, sometimes that box of cornflakes with the dried strawberries in it.

On the lovely husband's most recent business trip, at the end of a long day when no children would agreeably go to sleep and I still had to empty lunchboxes and pack new lunches and find clothes and any number of uninspiring and further draining chores, I realized I was starving and nothing would get better if I didn't at least give myself a few moments to eat. And like a hallelujah chorus of angels singing, I suddenly remembered the sweet indulgent cereal sitting in the basement.

Oh, I know how wrong it was. Refined sugar. Refined sugar at 10pm. Colors not found in nature. Have I mentioned the delicious? I ate it for dinner four nights in a row.

On the last night I didn't get the cereal box put away in the cabinet because one of the babes woke up screaming from a nightmare and the only solution was to snuggle my little one to sleep in my own bed. In the morning we awoke to the return of the lovely husband, who'd gotten home around 3am, and to the tantalizingly bright cereal box still out on the kitchen table. What's that? both girls asked with great curiousity. The lovely husband shot me a bemused look and quickly answered, "oh, it's a mommy cereal. Kids don't like it." And because I eat all kinds of things that they won't, like salmon and asparagus and coffee, they just accepted that. Because grown-ups eat all kinds of weird, gross things. You know that, right?

After his return yesterday morning I wasn't home last night and L had more questions about the cereal. It was so interesting to her, a new food she'd never seen, and so brightly colored. She never expressed an interest in trying it, because mommy foods are yucky, obviously, but she needed to engage with it. The lovely husband and she came up with a plan that she'd pour me a bowl of it in the morning for me to eat. And she told me so at 1am when she woke up, wandered in our room, and asked if it was wake-up time yet; should we go downstairs for my cereal?

When real morning came and not the 1am insomniac's version, she and I walked downstairs and she lovingly poured me the most sugar-dust covered meal she's ever seen, and lovingly stood by my side as I ate it, tenderly suggesting that I try the blue piece in the next spoonful, then the purple. Happy Mother's Day, she crooned. I love you so that's why I made you breakfast. And I had the very strange experience of accepting her love by eating a meal that would be, in her mind, the best thing she'd ever tasted, by not offering her any at all. That's my own love, keeping her from an unhealthy fondness for sugar cereals. Sometimes I think motherhood is best understood in its most bizarre moments.

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Although I don't usually write about them at all, the fact is that because of blogging, sometimes some really fun opportunities come my way. More fun than sugar cereal. So tomorrow I'm going to pull back the blogging curtain a little and tell you about a few fun things I've done lately. I came here first to write but this space has brought me moments I'd never have without this medium. And on Monday I have two memes to address, even though I don't often do those, either. Meme Monday - everything's better with alliteration, right?
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Legacies

noreply@blogger.com (Robin noteverstill) — Tue, 08 May 2012 02:59:00 +0000

More or less 108 years ago in an area we'd recognize today as eastern Poland my great-great-grandmother Hinde bought a pair of silver candlesticks to give to her son's betrothed as a wedding gift. Today they're on my dining room table in Maryland and I'm writing about them on the internet.

I'm Jewish because my mother is Jewish because her mother was Jewish because her mother was Jewish and she got a pair of candlesticks for a wedding gift so that she could usher in the Jewish Sabbath every Friday night in one of the most important rituals in a Jewish woman's life. It's amazing to me what survives and what is lost.

Paul Ferney, oil on linen, 2010. I had him paint my candlesticks in the second round of The Commission Project.

I don't have any inheritance and as far as I know, I never will. We don't have precious jewels or polished antiques. We don't have that kind of family legacy. But improbably, I have a pair of candlesticks that fled Europe, crossed an ocean, were used as a weapon of self-defense during that crossing and still bear the dent and bend to prove it, came to the US and were used consistently, more or less, every week to light the Sabbath candles.

They are wax-covered and crooked and barely in need of re-silvering. Their value now isn't monetary, it's in their story of survival and enduring use and family legacy.

Judaism probably changed more in these more-or-less 108 years than in the thousands of years that came beforehand, and sometimes I can't reconcile the acts of ritual that live in my genes with modern science and opportunity. I don't light candles in those candlesticks every week, but I do light them frequently because in a life that's mostly spent forward-facing I find a great comfort in the tether of an enduring past.

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This post is inspired by I AM FORBIDDEN by Anouk Markovits. Though not sisters by blood but through their Hasidic faith, Mila and Atara views the rules and structure of their culture differently. Mila seeks comfort in the Torah while Atara searches for answers in secular literature she is forbidden to read. Ultimately each must make an irrevocable decision that will change their lives forever. Join From Left to Write on May 8 as we discuss I AM FORBIDDEN. As a member, I received a copy of this book.

Also, as possibly the "Jewishest" of the group, after some trepidation I agreed to write the book club's introductory post for this book, which I've never done before. You can find that post here.

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I'm writing to you from the wrong side of 1am, self-righteously, about my standards

noreply@blogger.com (Robin noteverstill) — Sun, 06 May 2012 06:01:00 +0000

The cheesecake is in the oven.

Is this what you do at 1am? The cheesecake is in the oven tonight so I can make the caramel topping tonight, which needs to settle for 24 hours in the fridge before being poured over the cheesecake, which also receives the caramel better if it's been chilled overnight. It's for Monday morning, also known as the first day of Teacher Appreciation Week.

The lovely husband's schedule is always supposed to be in my calendar, too, so when I looked at the notation for his California trip overlaying the pop-up for Teacher Appreciation Week, I knew my only chance was to volunteer for the first day's slot and utilize the weekend to my benefit. Hence the cheesecake.

I was emailing with the mom coordinating all the Appreciation and I threw in a "how are you doing?" line because she's the kind of woman I suspect I'd really like if I knew better but I have only had the opportunity to know casually. Her son is in G's class at daycare and her daughter is in the toddler class and she wrote something about not feeling like such a fabulous mama; life with a toddler and a 2 is hard! and how do I do it with THREE? (her caps, not mine). My oh-so-helpful answer was, pshaw, woman, stop volunteering for massive coordination projects like this. Save that for the mamas of singletons.

(Just kidding. Sorta.)

The thing, of course, is that I have mad appreciation for the teachers. I do try to show it. I'm thinking about this at 11:15 (pm) as I left-turn right-turn my way through the grocery store gathering cheesecake ingredients. I'm thinking that maybe I could just buy a cheesecake? I never do that, but this is absurd, isn't it? But I remember my last act of appreciation, just last week, when the preschool had some international food fest. We were all supposed to send in foods that reflect our heritage, and I made my challah. "Homemade challah?" two teachers asked with perked-up interest, and I may have said something like, "of course! I don't really believe in store-bought baked goods." And I don't, really, but it's easier to have standards by daylight.

So I can't bring a store-bought cheesecake, of course, and I knew that all along, because a) mine tastes better and b) I have a reputation to uphold and c) cheesecake is easy, really, and I should stop whining. It's easier than challah, even, and like challah it's a food that a lot of people think is complicated, so you get double points: for having attempted at all the thing that looks complicated as well as for its flavor.

And those are all the things I remind myself as I get in line to pay for everything. I have a lot of groceries for this time of night, because of the lovely husband and his California trip (who just, amusingly, just discovered that I called him a yellow-tailed secessionist traitor and blurted out, "what happened to 'lovely?' I have a reputation to uphold!") and really if I have any standards at all, it's that I'm not going to the grocery store when I'm alone with three kids. So I have $100 in produce (which they will eat entirely before his return Wednesday morning) and there is one cash register open only, which is a darn shame for the restless crowd behind me with two or three things only in their hands.

The thing is, though, I don't care. Because it's not my fault that Maryland has ridiculous liquor laws and it's almost midnight and we're in the suburbs and this is the only place to buy beer or wine right now. Because everyone behind me is about twenty-one-and-a-half years old and they can come babysit my bottomless produce eaters, once they're sober. And if they'd just planned ahead, they could have bought their beer in the regular liquor store with the regular hours, and not had to stand behind the mama who needed grapes in two colors and apples in two colors and pears in two colors and also avocados, but only in one color because G likes the black ones but not the green ones, and don't you even think about serving them up to him, what were you thinking, he has standards, too, you know. Children these days, honestly.

That was about the beer buyers, of course.

Discovered tonight in my grocery store: what the hell is this? Be it known that if I have any standards at all, they include using full-fat dairy in baking. Always.

The other thing is that I never intended to be at the grocery store this late. But we had this crazy busy day, fun, but packed, and all day long we did the big things we'd planned but never got to the million little things, like how E started asking for popcorn just after breakfast and it wasn't feasible and it wasn't possible and then we weren't home, and all of a sudden she's asking for popcorn and I realize it's almost 9pm and I think they never had dinner, but she can't have popcorn now because I'm combing knots out of bath-wet hair and whatever they eat, it'll be in my bed because we're on the verge of bedtime and I don't want to sleep in popcorn crumbs. But I think: problem solved! Because we're going to another birthday party tomorrow and it's at a movie theater and there will be popcorn! So I can say no yet again without a shred of remorse.

Remind me I still have to wrap that birthday present.

I stepped on this guy tonight. I swear I've never seen him before, and now here he is, part of our family. I can't decide if his expression reads: 'get me out of here' or 'I surrender' but either way, bud, I'm alone with three kids. I don't have time for your problems.

So this is how tomorrow will go: we'll wake up and find clothes and get to this birthday party in a movie, where I can only hope that G falls asleep on my shoulder and we can call that his nap, because by all rights he should be home and sleeping horizontally but I have a husband (lovely, of course, but I'm wondering if 'secessionist' applies again) who has business in California and so tomorrow, where one kid goes, so do they all go. But before we leave, I will feed them all a wholesome breakfast, which had better rely on some of those strawberries and raspberries I bought, because I kept those kids from their beer for you, so eat up, even though I know you think popcorn is a reasonable first meal. Don't you know I have standards?

And that way, when they eat movie popcorn, we can call that their lunch.
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My personal hellmo

noreply@blogger.com (Robin noteverstill) — Fri, 04 May 2012 03:43:00 +0000

Mister man G has developed a wee obsession with my iPad, and specifically the Kideos app** from which he mainlines his crack, also known as Elmo videos.

(**If you have kids, go download Kideos right now. It's a YouTube portal in which all the available YouTube videos are pre-screened for child-level appropriateness. Because after one delicate afternoon spent explaining what Dora's doing sticking that Map up her friend Boots's tushie, you never allow your kids direct access to YouTube again.)

Whenever G sees the iPad he begins expressing his love and his need. Hi HiPad! That's what he calls it: the HiPad. Mommy HiPad. Mommy HiPad Elmo. Mommy HiPad Elmo Ding! (Ding = sing.) Ding Elmo Mommy HiPad! Mommy HiPad ding now Elmo? Ding now? Ding, HiPad! And this his hands get all grabby and he gets jumpy excited and I just hope you weren't planning to use that HiPad for yourself.

The Kideos library offers probably 20 viable Elmo videos, but G has become particularly obsessed with this one Adam Sandler video. I will give you that it's funny, but Adam Sandler freaks me out. And I don't know why he doesn't freak the kids out because in this video he's at his Adam Sandleriest. He does that creepy grovelly scary guy voice thing, and I don't know why, but Elmo is completely unphased. He says, "okay, Adam Sandler, do your thing," so I guess the lesson here is we should take our emotional cues from Elmo, because he's good at reading people? Isn't this the same puppet who spent the '90s pimping his body out for tickles from thousands of strangers?

Watch this, please:

Adam Sandler thanks you for reading my blog; he'd like to wish you wellmo.

I've heard this song so many times in the past few weeks that it's become the running theme song playing continually in the back of my brain. Adam Sandler Grovel Voice sings in my head all day. It's the unlikeliest of earworms. If I can't get rid of it I'm spending the weekend building myself a padded cellmo.
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And the bad dreams that you dare to dream really do come true

noreply@blogger.com (Robin noteverstill) — Wed, 02 May 2012 03:54:00 +0000

Just after Holocaust Remembrance Day last week I had a tense dream that I was hiding from someone. I had to slip through a disguised patch in the drywall, through the frames the hold up the wall, and behind some pipes that went through the floor to the hot-water heater below anytime I wanted to leave our home. It was urgent that I went undetected, and then I had to drive somewhere, and not be noticed there, and get back safely, and not be noticed returning, and get inside safely, and behind the pipes and through the wall and in the disguised drywall patch. I don't know who we were hiding from or why, only that I needed to come back with something to ensure our continued safety. And for some other reason related to the danger we were in, I had to go alone, and say goodbye to my lovely husband at the pipes, and hold my breath and hope I'd make it back.

I don't know if talking about the Holocaust was what prompted the dream, or some general anxiety, or something else. It might not have been a Holocaust dream. But I almost never have bad dreams, and this was terrible, and left me unsettled all the next day.

They're just dreams. They aren't real.

We've been talking about the Holocaust a little because now that E is in kindergarten, and at a Jewish school, she's learning a little about it for the first time. But she didn't seem unsettled, only I did. Why am I having the bad dreams? She and I actually talked about it the next morning. They're just dreams, we agreed. They aren't real.

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The next night E woke up screaming. It wasn't her usual wordless cry. Instead, very clearly: help! Help! She couldn't explain, just that she felt she was being pulled somewhere. I couldn't get her calm. Finally I brought her back to our room and she fell asleep in my arms.

The next morning I got out of the shower to find the lovely husband calming a still-jittery girl. "Do you want to talk about it?" I asked. She said she had a bad dream about her new earrings. A bad guy pulled them out of her head. "Sweetie," I said, as I went to soothe her.

The lovely husband leaned over me as I bent over her. "The dream was real," he whispered. "Look at her left ear. The earring is gone." Then he squeezed my arm and left the room.

Yellow-tailed secessionist traitor. The girl was going to freak and he left the room.

We found her earring snagged on the weave of her blanket. We sterilized it and hoped hopedhoped that it would go back in, that her new piercing wouldn't have closed in the hours she slept unknowingly without it.

I poked it partway through. She was shaky and hated the sensation. I couldn't get the stud through her ear. I decided to try the other direction, hoping to open the back of the hole.

I poked the earring through backward, slowly, slowly, slowly. And it went through!

And then I couldn't get it out and her earring was backward and she was crying and we were all going to be late and I was still in a towel, arranged awkwardly so she could lean against me and I had no idea how we were going to make this okay.

And you know that feeling, the one where you split down the middle and your body displays a completely different set of emotions from what you feel inside? We were well into my own panic attack, inside, but I kept saying calmly, "it's okay, let's try again, hold still, sweetie."

We got it, eventually. And I've changed the blanket on her bed. And everything is okay. But sometimes that feeling just lingers, and it's been hard to shake. And it wasn't about something as small as an earring or about as big as the Holocaust, but about the in-between, about how precious my life, and how little control I have over anything, and how to stay calm in the powerlessness.

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The persistence of memory

noreply@blogger.com (Robin noteverstill) — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 03:52:00 +0000

My second daughter derives half her name from my grandmother, whom she never met. So an image of her namesake captures her imagination. Sometimes she'll ask for stories.

Too many red lights today, she asked for a story. She was eating a banana in the backseat, sweetly unpeeling an inch, offering a bite to her brother, enjoying a bite herself, and unpeeling the next inch. I watched her through the rear-view mirror and began the banana story.

My grandmother for whom she is half-named was born in Poland and came to this country at the age of 12. The school system in Chicago stuck her in kindergarten with kids half her age; that was their plan for teaching her English. On one of her first days the school lunch included a banana, which was a food item my grandmother had never seen. She didn't know banana protocol and bit it directly. It was disgusting, of course, and the kids half her age laughed at her. My grandmother learned fluent English but never did eat bananas.

But, Mama, L says, if I was there I wouldn't laugh at her. I would show her to peel it, like you showed me one time. She and her brother share their treat until it's gone and traffic dissipates. I'm rewarded with their conversation and room to accelerate and the offering of an empty yellow peel.

My grandmother was more than an immigrant, more than stubborn, more than banana-hater. And L is more than the reduction of these moments from my fingertips to your screen. But I marvel, always, at the hypnotizing power of a story.

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At the bottom of the bowl

noreply@blogger.com (Robin noteverstill) — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 03:37:00 +0000

For as long as she's eaten solid foods, E's favorite meal in the world has been the pesto cavatappi from Noodles & Co.

She will eat that whole bowl of pasta, but she never eats the mushrooms or tomatoes. Those are mine. I love them so much, warm produce just touched with pesto, the blessing of sharing a meal with my girl, savory and sweet.

It's a tender little ritual, that the mushrooms and tomatoes were fished out for me, that she dove for the long strings of parmesan. She'd nip cheese off the top of the bowl as I'd divide my bits from her bowl and stir the pasta into the sauce. We'd work wordlessly, two forks, and then she'd eat her meal, and having enjoyed my pesto-flecked appetizer, I'd enjoy mine.

I noticed today on our regular Mama-kindergartner post-yoga noodle date that it's been a while since I was asked to de-mushroom. She's so grown now, so confident and competent. She still won't eat the mushrooms, but she no longer wants my assistance, no longer disdains at a face-off with a tomato skin. She works methodically, eating her pasta straight down to the bottom of the bowl, working around those bites she doesn't like as trivial obstacles not to be impediments to her gustatory satisfaction.

I don't get any mushrooms until the end of our meal, now, where they sit languid and cool. They've lost their magic as they lost their urgency.

I think it's time to say farewell to my mushroom ties to her meal. She doesn't know we can order her bowl without the mushrooms and tomatoes but she no longer needs my help preparing her food to eat, so let's say goodbye to my favorite hindrance.

This whole fostering independence bit brings unexpected losses but I love her quiet confidence. Six is magically big, and even when our forks aren't clinking in her bowl it's such a pleasure to sit across from her and behold her childhood unfurling.
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All credit goes to the underpants

noreply@blogger.com (Robin noteverstill) — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 03:59:00 +0000

Remember the color calendar, where I accidentally agreed to dress by my six-year-old's schedule? What happened is this: I struggled with yellow day because it's not my color, you know? And E informed me that undergarments count so I bought myself a cute pair of underpants when I was at Target because A) five dollars and B) gray with neon yellow hearts and neon yellow lace! Adorable and now I can meet the requirements of yellow day. So G decided that he'd finally start with the vocabulary explosion we've been waiting for, and has begun yelling UNDERPANTS ME!!! and grabbing any pair of unders he could locate and pulling them on his person. And when I found my yellow neon hearts around his neck like a necklace, it became urgent to buy the boy his own underpants.

That's all preamble, but it was urgent because yellow day was coming up and I was going to have to wrestle my son for my unders and something's not right about that, although I appreciate his flair for accessorizing. So while we were up in New York last week and near the great outlet mall near my parents' house, I declared to my family, "I'm going to run to the mall to buy G some underpants."

I never go shopping with my kids. Because, obviously. And I mean never. Everything we own in life is procured via the internet or can be purchased on my lunch hour or after they're asleep. But we were on vacation and Mister Underpants Me himself needed a nap, which really means he needed his Sisters, The Distractions, to disappear, and suddenly it was all: family trip to the mall!

Hold me.

But then this thing happened: in one of the clothing stores, E saw the accessories wall. She discovered Cute Earrings. She ran to me with fistsful: I'm ready to get my ears pierced right now!

This is also preamble: I first offered to get her ears pierced in November, after her ear surgery. She'd been asking to get her ears pierced for years, and I suggested after surgery (when we mistakenly thought the ear saga was done) that we mark the occasion by celebrating her ears and fulfilling her long-held wish.

But at the chance to fulfill her dream, her courage failed. Maybe when I'm six I'll be ready, she suggested. I told her from that point forth, it was a standing offer and she could tell me when she was ready. Six passed: maybe after kindergarten.

And then, because her brother makes jewelry from my underpants, she discovered cute earrings and decided she was ready.

I will remember this day forever, the one where I took my sweet girl to the hands of strangers who donned medical gloves and wiped her skin with antiseptic and performed a thousand tiny injustices that would in other circumstances set her screaming and kicking, the one where she set her jaw and held my gaze and didn't even whimper.

There will be times when I remind her what she can accomplish with determination, and there will be moments when I remind her that everyone has different struggles and things that come easily to others might be challenging to her and there's nothing wrong with that.

But tonight, I just told her a million gazbillion times how proud I felt today.

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The ears are the handlebars to the soul

noreply@blogger.com (Robin noteverstill) — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 03:56:00 +0000

We’ve talked before, I know, how G’s favorite things to love on aren’t blankies or beloved stuffed animals They’re ears, mine and the lovely husband’s. When he’s tired and asks to be picked up, he doesn’t nestle in to my collar bone. He grabs my ear.

The thing is, he doesn’t just hold it. Whatever bucolic “it’s weird, but sweet” Rockwellian image you’re conjuring up, you need to begin again. He’s very kinetic with it. He fidgets with it. His self-soothing includes little repetitive motions. On my ear.

Remember Taggies? Those little blankets and toys designed with all the tags sticking out of them for kids to rub? My girls never took to them but we had a few, and oh, how I tried to convince G that they were better than ears. No, they’re not, he retorted sternly with his eyes (as only four-month-olds can).

Nobody wants a cold tag, woman.

He is gentle in his movements, though they’re full-range-of-motion ones. He’ll bend the cartilage at the top of my ear baaack and fooorth, baaack and forth. Like bending a credit card in half one way, then the other. Until it breaks. I wonder if my ears will fold over when I’m old, years of deep, slow cartilage damage. It doesn’t hurt. But calling it pleasant would be misleading. Maybe I should be applying collagen creams to my ear backs?

Sometimes he plugs the ear itself. He’ll stick his finger, usually an index but depending on his angle, sometimes a pinkie, right into my ear. That’s when he needs the most reassurance, I think. Like: I created a suction in your ear with my finger. That’s how connected we are. You and me, baby. You and me. Personal space is just a construct, right?

He just really loves ears. They comfort him. Every time I wonder if it's crossing the line past amusing quirk into full-on strange I'm reminded of the words of my dear friend, who shared with me her memory that the best thing ever was when her big brother let her hold his ear. Touch is love, right?

Last night he had a bad dream and I climbed into bed with him. Eyes closed, he reached out and found my nose, feeling to the side for an ear. Then came his other hand, finding my nose and then my other ear. Like Helen Keller feeling along her teacher's face, he traces one feature into the next. He pulled gently, as he always does in bed, until my face was an inch from his. His eyes never opened. His cries sputtered and ceased, his breathing slowed, and he found his way back to restful sleep, both my ears cradled in his warm little fists.

I kept my own eyes open to watch him by night light, his eyelids fluttering, his lips slowly parting, his breath milky sweet and his hair coppery sweat and his nose just out of kissing reach. He held me to him until his sleep grew so thick that his hands fell open and I thought, don't question the shape of the gift. He pulls me to him in need, and here I am.

From the perspective of my mama-heart, I am just feeling so tenderly toward him (and toward the girls) after a weekend and a school night answering questions about when daddies die. And from the perspective of my nerve endings, I want to reassure you that I always, always remove my earrings before snuggling with my sweet boy.

image via sara.lauderdale

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Too close

noreply@blogger.com (Robin noteverstill) — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 03:48:00 +0000

Last night E woke from a terrible dream. She was clammy and whimpering and crawled into my arms. "Just let me hold you," I whispered. "You're safe. The dream will fade. Go back to sleep." I stroked her hair. I spooned her snug against me.

After five or ten minutes she sat up in the dark. It didn't go away. Can I tell you about it? Tears fell down her face as fast as words fell out, and she blurted out a vivid tale that left her alone and permanently apart from us. She knew she'd never see us again and in her sleep she shook with fear until she woke herself with her trembling. Only with an eternity of darkness shushing and promises of her safety and my proximity did she finally fall back to sleep. It took her an hour this morning to awaken past her tremulous memories of the dream, and she stayed extra close by my side.

This evening we got an email message that the father of one of her classmates died yesterday. We don't know any details, only that the little girl's birthday party, which was scheduled for tomorrow morning, is cancelled. I keep thinking about that little girl, her father gone forever and the idea of birthdays probably forever ruined.

And I keep thinking about my girl, to whom I have to tell this story tomorrow, and to whom I spent a midnight hour promising I'd never disappear.

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Down

noreply@blogger.com (Robin noteverstill) — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000

We were married in Niagara Falls,and not because we're overly romantic and not because we're tourist travelers and not because of whatever you're remembering on that trip your family took when you were six or nine or twelve.

It's where I grew up, four blocks from the river and the border with Canada. Two-ish miles from the Falls themselves. They're majestic, of course, those Falls, but when I think of the river I grew up on, my river, I don't think of the precipice of water. I think always of the lower river, the northbound body after the falls fall and before those millions of drops become part of Lake Ontario.

Over gazbillions of years the river fell over the falls and carved a deep gorge. You think of Niagara Falls for its showpiece but I think of it for its hidden escape. Ever since I was old enough to leave my parents' house without supervision, I've walked those four blocks, jumped a small wall, crossed a scenic highway, jumped a small fence and entered the state park that exists at the top of the gorge. And then I've climbed down.

I don't mind that tourists don't know about the miles of beautiful hiking trails that lie on both sides (New York and Ontario) of the gorge. It's always been my oasis, and though I haven't lived in Niagara Falls in many years I always hope when I'm back that I'll have a few hours for a walk.

At the beginning of this week we were visiting my parents and while little G (and his daddy) napped I decided it was time to introduce the girls to my gorge. A little has changed now. There's no longer any need to jump that first wall because a fence has been removed and replaced with a purposeful opening. The scenic highway has been reduced in lanes and part of it is now walking trail, making the crossing even less daring. And the trails are still not all marked. I guess we still don't want the tourists to have all the fun.

(These photos are straight out of the camera. The water is so highly oxygenated after its big fall that the lower river is always this amazing color.)

There are trails that are packed dirt and there are trails that are steps carved into the stone and there are trails that lead straight down, steel cables we rappelled long ago that might not any longer exist and possibly should have never been grasped by our hands.

I used to climb down with friends several times a week and sometimes I'd go alone with a snack and a novel and this week, I introduced one of my very favorite places to my girls, and it was wonderful.

We didn't climb all the way down to the very bottom. The wind was picking up and the girls were exhibiting uneven levels of enthusiasm and more importantly, we hadn't brought a snack.

According to my phone, we climbed about 750 feet down. And then we climbed back up. And most importantly, they're clamoring to go again.

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I was inspired to have a (small-scale) hiking adventure with my girls after reading my latest book club book. Trish Herr's then-five-year-old daughter Alex wanted to hike all 48 of New Hampshire's 4,000+ foot mountains. Would you let your five-year-old do the same? Join From Left to Write on April 12 as we discuss Up: A Mother and Daughter’s Peakbagging Adventure. As a member of From Left to Write, I received a copy of the book. All opinions are my own.

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The nursing home and the butterfly garden

noreply@blogger.com (Robin noteverstill) — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 03:55:00 +0000

We're on spring break this week and our regular life is a little out of order. Today we went to visit the lovely husband's grandmother in her Senior Life Facility. That's what it's called, of course, and if it conjures up an active lifestyle with golf and charades and drinks on the patio, I'm sure that's what the marketers want. But his grandmother, the kids' Gigi, she's in her 90s. Nobody in her building plays golf anymore.

I will tell you that never will be you be aware just how dewy your girls' complexions, just how unctuous your son's cheeks, until you watch a hundred leathered, worn, slumped and drooling, pale, bespectacled, askew, rheumy eyes turn toward you as if on one ball bearing. You parade your youth, your vibrance, your functioning legs and cheerful gait and your children, your children. You parade their unscarred, unscabbed, unmaimed or withered or shriveled boisterous laughter and mid-hallway spontaneous rings-around-the-rosy, their oblivious, arrogant, carefree-in-the-best-way vivaciousness, their on-ramp starting gate slots to the bell curve of life.

You don't usually think about the bell curve of life. You don't usually carry a chubby-cheeked boy so rosy that his cells regenerate right before your eyes across a line of wheelchair-bound onlookers, sitting in the hall because they were positioned so, because they have no choice in the matter, some of them, no control of their limbs or their voices to sputter any complaints, no where else to be, nothing else to occupy them because they're waiting for their off-ramp parking spots from the bell curve you usually don't consider.

The Facility is new and modern and brightly-lit and well-apportioned and probably about the best a person could ask for, and still it's depressing and rank with urine and antiseptic and Gigi's body, slowly betraying her, has left her mind fully intact to catalog the treasons. We only stayed for about fifteen minutes. She was tired and our flauntingly lively kids were losing their ability to behave demurely. I can't stop thinking about the place, though, and what's worse, not knowing you're dying or knowing fully and slowly watching it.

Earlier we had gone to a butterfly garden, one of those enclosed, tropical spaces where the creatures fly thickly and land right on you.

Butterflies taste first with their feet, we learned, and I like that notion, that one's whole body engages with the physical pleasure of nourishment.

Whenever I see butterflies or bees or hummingbirds do their thing, I think of the line from Thoreau (in the voice of Neil from Dead Poets Society, of course):

I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately.

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.

Tonight I kept recalling the next line, as well.

To put to rout all that was not life;

and not, when I had come to die, discover that I had not lived.

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That elusive peace, and a moment of it

noreply@blogger.com (Robin noteverstill) — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 17:35:00 +0000

Somehow, by the grace of excitement and spring-break-induced departure from routines, all three kids slept through the night. At around sun-is-actually-up o'clock, little man G crawled up into our bed. Minutes later, E climbed in, too. And they played together, as the lovely husband and I cradled them in leg parentheses, waking slowly to happy sounds at our sides.

They were doing this sweet little thing, the kind of moment not even worth noticing which is exactly why it's worth noticing. They were kissing each other's palms. Kiss? E asked, and held out her hand. G kissed her on her memory line, scooping her hand into his, and squeezing it onto his puckered face so no love would be lost. And I'll kiss you! she offered in reciprocation, and he opened his hands obligingly. Is there anything sweeter than a little boy who learned to make a kissy sound?

And now kiss Mama! E instructed, and the best part about when G initiates a kiss is he double cheeks. Right-mwah! Left-mwah! He's so sophisticated and European, that one. A kiss on both cheeks delivered from my boy, and then I was awake.

There was soft sunlight dappling the air, and the realization that for the first time in perhaps weeks, I'd gotten enough sleep, and the further realization that with spring break, I had no particular obligations today. It was a more restful moment than one I can remember. It's such a go-go-go life, isn't it? this business of raising littles and working and feeding and laundering and still finding time to be ourselves, whatever each of our 'being' things are. We're celebrating Passover tonight and all weekend, and you're likely celebrating, too, or Easter, or maybe just the beautiful weather, and I hope you find peace and rest and happiness in your weekend, and some quiet moments in the sunshine.

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Conversations

noreply@blogger.com (Robin noteverstill) — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 03:43:00 +0000

We ran into the preschool room this morning. L showed me a picture she had drawn on Friday and left in her cubby. I counted four human-ish figures and asked who they were. Usually she draws five characters and calls it a family portrait. She’s creative, that one, and often assigns meanings on the spot as if they’d been there all along. I watched her brain spin. Oh! I drew it for G! It’s Elmo, see? Because he loves Elmo. She pointed to the red one. See, G? Elmo! I drew it for you!

He clutched the paper with great fervor. Elmowoll! he cried out, which is how he calls Elmo now, not by his name but by his famous sketch, “Elmo’s World.” A teacher knelt down between my excited little recipient and my proud little artist. “Who else did you draw here, L?”

Spinspinspin. That’s Cookie Monster! Because he’s blue! And that’s Big Bird. This scribble is his beak and that scrabble is his tail.

“Who’s the green one?”

I don’t know! she smirked with an upraised shoulder and a sideways smile, belying her supposed plan.

“Could it be Oscar the Grouch?” the teacher asked.

Yeah! It’s Oksar! she said in that funny way she has of transposing a few consonants here and there. They’re almost gone, the transpositions, untangled have they off the skein of her tongue.

G turned around. Hi, Meiwee! He speaks so much more than he did even a month ago. But just moments ago at the fridge as we unpacked his food I congratulated my mama-self on understand almost everything he says, even as I realize that most people probably still wouldn’t, here he is saying something clearly to someone, and I can’t identify the words.

Ms. Williams had just entered the room, and she understood him perfectly. “Hi, G!” she returned in greeting. “What do you have in your hand!”

Elmowoll! L dat Elmowoll me too! G says “me too” now for anything first-person. “L dat” indicated his sister as the artist. I knew Ms. Williams mostly understood. But not having been privy to the early translation, there was no way for her to look at the red, green, yellow and blue scribbles and positively identify Elmo. So we interpreted for her.

Last night E and I read a pivotal chapter in her book, set just after World War I. The protagonist, named Ella, made the weighty decision to pursue her dreams of singing on stage after being picked up by a casting director. Her boyfriend didn’t hesitate to express his disappointment that she wouldn’t agree to marry him and keep house while he attended college. This baffled my E. So we talked about when women didn’t have equal balance of power in relationships or in ambition. She couldn’t understand. I’ve done something right, I thought to myself. She didn’t understand the idea of keeping house and protested by pointing out that her daddy does most of the dishes. We’ve done something right, I affirmed. “You have a great daddy,” I said, “and also remember that this book took place a long, long time ago.”

She laughed and thought about the Ella in her book. I’m going to sing on stage when I grow up, she said.

This is my girl who couldn’t look strangers in the eye at the beginning of the school year; who found her own seat next to two kids she didn’t know at a birthday party last weekend; who accepted an invitation to sit on a new person’s lap yesterday; who dreams now of fame instead of shrinking from attention. We’re used to G’s voice and L’s pictures and E’s downcast eyes but they are not the same things we think of them as day after day after day. Time marches forward.

This photograph has nothing to do with anything, except that it exactly portrays our life. Last week our whole family went to kindergarten to watch E's class performance, and in front of seventeen pairs of parents, at least five sets of grandparents, two teachers and a whole line of five- and six-year-olds mid-recitation, L decided to try balancing a cup on her face, which made G squeal loudly. Of course we were sitting in the very, very front row.
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Mutterances

noreply@blogger.com (Robin noteverstill) — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 03:50:00 +0000

image via safoocat

It’s yellow day today, and there’s this: on the surface road portion of our morning commute we drive under a blinking yellow traffic light. Blink. Blink. Blink. Our path is on the main thoroughfare and the light reminds us of the side road, a tiny little slip of a thing hidden by old trees that leads back to some beautiful wide-lawned homes. Maybe once a month or so we’ll approach as some reticent car from that side street needs to join our noisy southbound throng. Blinkblinkblinkblink. And so we get a faster yellow before the light blooms red.

But before that road rises up to meet us, we take a six-minute jaunt across the new highway. To access it I wait in a left-hand turn lane with a blinking red arrow. (Saturday was red day.) Blink. Blink. Blink. It blinks and then it’s done. Solid red, and no turn, and no warning. We’ve watched a car in front of us run the red light without noticing, so busy was he concentrating on studying a break in the oncoming traffic pattern, and I’ve had it change from blinking to unblinking as I was mid-turn.

It’s a little unnerving. To use G’s current parlance, why no blinkblinkblink? Where blinkblink go?

Today as we waited and I measured traffic and wondered when the unblink would present itself, an ancient man on a bicycle made his way slowly up the slight incline of the sidewalk. His path would eventually take him into and through the crosswalk at the beginning of my on-ramp. In a distant field of my brain, barely visible in through the pale-bright early morning sunlight and evaporating fog, a voice in a megaphone called to me, “good for him, plodding tenaciously uphill of his own locomotion.” From a nearer valley just out of sight came the quip, “no nursing home for that dude!” And the forefront voice, the one that lives in that frustratingly unseeable spot right between my eyes, it threw up its hands in exasperation. “Great. Now I have to worry about a break in traffic, the light turning red unnoticed, and not killing the inchworm bicyclist.”

What can I tell you? The third-eye voice isn’t always PC. It’s also never quiet. It balances the kind voice and the always-joking voice, though. Put them together and my viewpoints are usually pretty comprehensive.

Do you ever catch a person with a certain expression and ask all friendly-curious, “whatcha thinking?”

If I ask you what you’re thinking and all you give me in response is “nothing,” my third-eye voice calls you a liar. I mean maybe, I suppose, there are people out there who are sometimes thinking nothing, but I can’t envision that because my brain is never quiet. Their brains certainly can’t be as interesting as mine. You could poke mine for hours; I’d surely entertain you with it.

My point is (you may be wondering): this week marks the fourth anniversary of this blog. It’s a medium I took to naturally because of all that incessant thinking; it translates easily to rapid typing.

Thank you for four years of reading the transcripts of my layered internal monologues. This is so much better than walking around muttering to myself.

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Green day

noreply@blogger.com (Robin noteverstill) — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 03:58:00 +0000

Today was green day. That's a thing that happened recently; every day has a color. There's a schedule. E made it, of course. One day she just said, tomorrow is purple day! and because it seemed important to her and also amusing to us, which is the very best kind of convergence, we agreed and everyone wore purple.

Oh, yeah. Did you think this was all abstract? This is about what you wear. Please have pangs along with E for her brother's regrettable lack of sartorial options on pink day.

That's what happened. Purple day was purple day and we all obliged, and then we woke up the next morning to learn that it was red day. I might not have been so gung-ho a second time but E announced the day's assignment to me just after I had gotten out of the shower, and lo and behold, I had put on some red unders. Good, Mama! she said with much praise and appreciation. While I had been in the shower she had coordinated her siblings' outfits, all in red, of course, and L was really excited. She looked like a cherry-pop hobo, with her red gauzy blouse and her thick red tights and her fleecy red skirt, a clash of seasons and textures but uniformly tomato in hue. And G had red socks, even. The thing is, the younger two usually fuss so much about getting dressed and E had managed everything so smoothly. Red day it was.

I installed a green zipper today on green day. Isn't it pretty?

We've been getting dressed in color order for about a week and a half. Tomorrow, if you'd like to play along, is yellow day. I am not blonde but if you are, E tells me that yellow hair counts.

In which I hold office hours

noreply@blogger.com (Robin noteverstill) — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 03:33:00 +0000

image via WildLifePrints

The kids know that we both work in offices and they think of offices as wonderlands, magical places filled with candy and entertainment. So meetings, it stands to reason, are filled with unicorn kisses and extra chocolate. Grownups' lives are so cool, man.

I've taken to applying that magic at home. When one of the kids is having a hard day or I can see that there's a problem that needs a little encouragement to spill forth, I ask if anyone would like to take a meeting. And then I always ask: "my office or yours?"

Her office is her bed. My office is mine. (Mr. G has never yet needed to take a meeting. I'm sure the day will come, though.)

The agenda is generally child-directed. The important part is that we've removed ourselves from the bustle of our family to a quiet space with a closed door. The space becomes a sanctuary, made holy by the special just-us time and confessions or day's hurts that release themselves from the sore spots troubling my sweet girl. We talk in bed, sometimes she in my arms or sometimes us nose-to-nose, and every meeting concludes with a forehead kiss and a cuddle. That is the procedure.

And so I said tonight, "all better?" And she nodded at me, yes. I uttered the words that bring our meetings to a close: "let me give you a kiss, and we can snuggle for a minute, okay?" And she said, no, that's not how the meetings end anymore.

"They don't, my love?"

No, new plan, Mama. A kiss and a snuggle and a jump on the bed!

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My not-ever-still life

noreply@blogger.com (Robin noteverstill) — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 03:52:00 +0000

I've told you this preamble at least a few times, now. I'm obsessed with learning to sew. Last night I found out that I'd finally made it off the waitlist for the sewing class I've wanted to take at a nearby fabric shop. So this morning I walked into class with my fabric scissors and a seam ripper. This evening I walked out with this:

I made that, and I was so pleased with myself. I came home and showed off my new tote bag to my appropriately-admiring family and realized how exhausted I was from hours of concentrating. What a great feeling, though, to have learned a new skill today. I can't really think of any other experience where I learned a whole new skill after a few hours' time. Maybe the best comparison is after reading the state laws about driving as part of driver's ed, and then finally spending that first afternoon driving.

Having reached the conclusion of baby-having, it's been a revelation to discover I'm allowed small moments for action or thought again. The act of everyday parenting isn't any longer an act of adrenaline now that we're past the point where constant attention to a gaggle of tiny people is required. G is old enough to play independently, E is tall enough to reach the books he wants, and L is daydreamer enough to entertain herself indefinitely. It's a sweet spot, I think, before we hit the angst and drama of tweendom or independence of being out with friends but without adults not too far hence.

When I named this blog, E had just turned two and tiny L had just been born. I was thinking of the whirlygig whirling dervish cyclone effect of it all, that there was always a baby to nurse or a diaper to change or two diapers to change and a milk to pour, or a diaper to change and a spill to clean and a hungry child screaming and a misplaced critical item and a mess just stepped in. It was dizzying for a girl like me who prefers to live in her head than in the real world. It was demanding and loud and disorienting. Nothing stopped moving. Nothing stood still.

And then, of course, we had another one.

Lately, though, after our equilibrium got worse and then got better, I've been rethinking the blog title as a reference point. As the littles get bigger they will continue spinning, undoubtedly, but on ambling trajectories that ultimately take them away from us and into independent lives of their own. And then, what of this blog, and arguably more importantly, what of me? And I've been thinking of the phrase in reference to me not as Mama, but me-as-me. I don't want to be a still life, waiting for fruit to rot on the vine, reminding myself and you of inevitable death. This is my not-ever-still life, filled with new challenges and adventures and maybe I'll be able to control the pace of all the spinning one day instead of letting it control me, but undoubtedly there should always be forward motion.

And so this is my new thing in my ever-changing life: I'm throwing myself into the new hobby of sewing.

After the kids were finally asleep the anxiety of the day caught up to me. What if I couldn't sew without the instructor's assistance? I'll be back next Sunday for the second half of the course, and knowing I'd have a chance soon to ask questions buoyed me. Last week I had bought the most perfect pair of pants (gray linen with a yoga waistband!) but like most pants, they were many inches too long on me. I got the courage to machine sew a new hem.

Guess what? I hemmed those pants. I wound a bobbin and threaded the machine and figured out what to do and I hemmed two lovely straight lines. And to think: there were all those years of hemming my pants by walking on the bottom until the extra fabric ripped off. There's actually a tidier way.

***

PS- the fabric shop shares a building with a Gold's Gym. Watching the crowds who move through the plaza I realized that they could be broken down into two equal groups, and any new person who got out of a car immediately fit in one group or the other. The inhabitants were equal parts grandma calico and pit-stained Under Armour. It was the strangest crowd I've ever observed.

PPS- I sewed the prettiest straight lines on my pant hems that you can possibly imagine. And then I tried on my pants and I think they're a quarter inch too short. So now I can sew, but I still can't measure. I'll be wearing them all summer, anyway, and if you see me in them you should tell me they look great.

PPPS- you might hear a lot about sewing in this next block of time. Because you can't stagnate or grow complacent when surrounded by sharp pins and needles. And this is my life, certainly not still.

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Tiny blossoms

noreply@blogger.com (Robin noteverstill) — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 03:41:00 +0000

When the lovely husband and I were first married, we bought a townhouse with a big back deck and a tiny patch of dirt. It was about two feet deep, just begging to be filled with something vibrant, a pretty picture frame for the deck where we'd grill our dinners and look at the stars. I ordered beautiful peony bushes online, so excited to think of those exuberant blossoms, haughty in their fullness, nature's pompoms hanging themselves like garlands on the boundary of our property.

So the thing about mail-order plants is that they don't come looking like their pretty pictures. Instead of full bushes I got six root stubs, rhizomes. I didn't even know which end went up. I planted them the best I could. They never grew.

I was faking it when I promised the girls a flower garden. We had a bunch of overgrown vines to rip out, leaving us with a westward-facing garden bed on the side of the garage. "We'll cover it in flowers," I promised, "and it will be gorgeous. We'll do it together." It was an easy promise to make, but I had no idea how I'd fulfill it.

And that's the thing about parenting: I don't have any idea what I'm doing. I'm no gardener and I'm no behavioral expert and this whole life here, the whole thing, it's fake-it-til-you-make-it. But the girls wanted beautiful flowers. We'll figure it out together, I thought.

When a friend offered excess flower bulbs across Facebook last summer, it was beshert, I decided. We'd plant that garden. One way or another...

We supplemented our narcissus bulbs with the purpliest selection our local home improvement store had to offer, and on a mild November day we dug and poked, dug and poked. It began to rain lightly as we finished and the girls took that as a good sign. All winter they asked when the flowers would arrive. "I don't know," I said a hundred times, wondering if they'd bloom at all. What if they were all upside-down? Or sideways? Or dug up and eaten by squirrels?

Ah, but faith always yields rewards:

Look at our tiny flowers, and the two big ones, too. I am so grateful for spring.
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In the air

noreply@blogger.com (Robin noteverstill) — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 03:59:00 +0000

Today was the first hot day. You know this day, where ever you are and whenever you might experience it: yours may have been a month ago, or you may still have snow on your front steps, but today was our first hot day. I wore a short-sleeved linen peasant blouse and the sun warmed my pale arms, limbs that hadn’t seen sun in months.

I drove by college kids in tank tops and breezy skirts, so quick to shed their winter skins, so adaptable. It always takes me a while to feel comfortable, like after a hibernation of winter’s modesty I’m revealing too much of myself. I don’t know if that’s real or metaphor.

The flowering short trees are turning pale pink and deep magenta and papery white with blossoms but the mighty trees, the pergola above, are still bare. They’ll fill out soon, verdant with leaves that right now are just tree-thoughts forming.

Everything changes after the first hot day, doesn’t it?

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Now we are six

noreply@blogger.com (Robin noteverstill) — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 01:43:00 +0000

You and your Sixness, girl, they coalesce in a thought-pebble I turn over and over all day. I wear it smooth with the tendrils of my musings, turning it over and over, finding here a new streak of something shiny, there a soft spot I hope won’t one day crack. I expect I’ll burnish it golden like the nose-nubbins of public art sculptures or mermaids on fountains, woodland creatures cast in metal for children to climb in parks, bodies green or brown but somewhere on each, a touching spot, bright gold with the love and curiosity of a million tiny fingers. I expect I’ll wear away the patina and buff up a shiny radiant patch with my understanding-your-Sixness of it all…just about the time you turn Seven. This is how it goes.

When you were a little thing and I tried to envision your future bigness I never saw this far, not into the land of On-My-Own, this kindergarten business that takes you hours of the day away from us into a building you inhabit as yours but not ours, a society where we’re only fringe members, spectators peering over the fence and leads to greater pastures, first grade and middle school and summers away, will you attend those summer camps, my love? and college, months or years or forever in buildings not ours where fences grow taller and bear fewer peep-holes. I couldn’t draw the walls of this life when it was still future-dream, and now I know that’s because you hold the pencils; we’ve graduated from an eight-color crayon box with pigments hewn squat for chubby fists, and this is for my own protection as much as your burgeoning identity. I’ve known women fall apart when their babies leave for college, not knowing themselves without their littles-grown-large, and the small fences now I lose you across are practices for my heart. These are the minerals to mine from Sixness.

You are not small, anymore, my love. Your clothes come from the “Big Girl” side of the store. Your cheeks have grown narrow, your eyes have developed an amusing tendency to roll, and your language is peppered with accurately-used slang. You toss your hair in frustration and complete sudoku puzzles for sport.

So it’s established by now, here at the juncture of Six and Everything That Happens Next: you are Big. You act Big and look Big and speak Big-going-on-Bigger. And one of my roles, I guess, as the crossing guard at this walkway is to be agreeable about all this Bigness. I have to affirm your perpetual enlarging and say “yes, go, climb to the next spot even further yet away from me and I won’t be sad about it, so don’t you either and don’t look back” even if those words are lies in my throat as I utter them. I would never trap you in this age, but successfully feigning complete confidence for the next one is the pebble I haven’t figured out how to grasp yet. And all this time I thought I had to do that for you, and in this year I learned that acting so for you is only half of the objective. The other half is acting so for you which is so you will go forth and I may see that you have gone forth well and all of this, it’s a circle feeding faith for me.

And that’s why pebbles are built of curves, so you can trace with your thought tendrils again and again and again.

Yet.

That word, ‘yet.’ Comedies and tragedies and galaxies-distant stars still forming live on the precipice of ‘yet.’ Whole lives, yours included. And yet: for all your bigness and more growing--

last night you and your sister and brother had reason to be in costume. You were a ballerina, elegant and demure, pastel and a little transparent at the edges, and it wasn’t just the tulle. For an instant (just an instant) I saw a glimpse of pebbles past: your head down filled out your cheeks and your bare arms show the last softness of baby fat and the way you stood, skirt swept out, jutting your feet into what you imagine a ballet pose to be, that last soft spot of belly came forward. A favorite writer calls them frog bellies, those small kid bellies that pop forth until Bigness carries them away and only evocative tulle can conjure them back.

This wasn’t the real you, this Small girl, just costuming and a trick of the light, maybe, a pebble long skipped and sunk across the pool of our shared narrative, but for a moment there you were, the You of You Past. Inside my innermost heart of hearts I took a deep breath for the pain-joy ecstasy of seeing her again.

And then she was gone.

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I'm linking this up as a Bigger Picture Moment.
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