…it’s just that there’s all this WEATHER, fall slamming down on top of summer like a set change, the backdrop with its cold nights and hurricane-force winds thudding down on the seasonal stage — BAM! — to obscure summer with its clear blue skies and heat-thirst and exposed skin. BAM! Fall! We’re done, and stop snivelling in the corner over there about how you want if not just simply MORE summer then at least a GRADUAL shift from one season to the next. Buck up, Buttercup. AUTUMN! IS! HERE!

It’s jarring, like the alarm that woke me this morning, the alarm we will now set regularly, for the first time in six years. We just haven’t had to set alarms — notwithstanding the fact that my commute is a hallway or that our schedules are flexible, we’ve always have children to wake us well before seven, and if they didn’t we took it as a welcome surprise. But this year, with the start of first grade and twice weekly preschool and children who, miraculously, can be relied to sleep at least occasionally through the night and past sunrise, the alarm feels necessary. I’m grateful for it, if grateful is the right word. More specifically I am grateful for the perceived order it confers over the household, over enough time to shower and dress and eat and put together lunches and backpacks and get children to two different locations every single day. I have been fighting, in fact, for the alarm for a while now, fighting against Rachel’s laissez-faire attitude about getting up any earlier than we possibly have to. But last night, the night before the first day of first grade, when I suggested setting the alarm for 7:30, she actually countered with 7:00.

“Really?” I asked.

“Really,” she said.

“Every day?” I asked.

“Every day,” she said.

“Pinky swear?” I asked.

“Pinky swear,” she said, and we shook on it. And then I turned to face her and said very slowly and very carefully, “Okay, because I want you to know that I am fully and completely committed to setting the alarm and two weeks from now you can’t conveniently forget that we had this conversation and decide that you don’t want to set it. Because this is very important to me. I need you to understand that.” And she patted my head.

To be perfectly honest, the alarm didn’t actually wake me — my own internal, autumnal clock did just that. With some help from Isaac, who insisted, circa 6:30 or so, that Rachel go cuddle with him. I lay awake, in the dark, eyes closed, until the news came on and I learned that Australia does indeed have a Labour government and that a 90-year-old man was found alive in the bush in northern Manitoba and I thought how odd it will be to be somewhat informed about world events from here on in. And then we awoke and there was indeed enough time to shower and eat and dress and take two children to two different places. Just barely enough time.

And of course it had to rain, pouring down in grey sheets over me and Rowan as we picked through the puddles and made our way to the gymnasium for the handoff. He’s been fairly low-key about starting school this year, alternating between nonchalance and calm proclamations that he’s simply not intending to go, the way he might decline an invitation to a birthday party. But he hopped gamely out of the car and held my hand as we walked through the doors and through the hallways to the gym. “Oh look,” I kept saying, “here’s Jacob’s dad, and there’s Julie, and Erin and—”

“Mom,” he kept saying, “stop telling me every time you SEE someone.”

And then we were in the gym, and he was in line, and his teacher shook my hand and I caught glimpses of some of the other kids in his class and some of their parents and Rowan kept hitching his backpack up over his shoulders and looking very small and grown-up all at the same time and I caught a glimpse of one of his classmate’s mothers who looked like she was about to cry and you know, a therapist once told me that my tendency to cry so easily — my hyperemotionality — is a sign of a body in crisis, under stress, and to that I simply say, Pah! I am a Goldberg. We cry. Have you met my father? A cryer. Me? Cryer. My five-year-old son, who today started first grade? Two nights ago, after watching an airplane move its way through the sky, I sang to him the first few verses of “Leaving on a Jet Plane,” and he asked me, holding the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, to please stop singing, because it was just a little too sad.

Rowan did not cry. And, to my credit, I held it together until I exited the gym and another mother asked me how I was and I gulped. And then another mother came by and took one look at my face and hugged me. And then another. And then we all made our way, slowly, via the first-grade lockers, outside, where we stood making small talk, until I shuffled home, tears mingling with raindrops on my cheeks.

PS: One year ago today

PPS: Two years ago today

But I’d call these good, solid, say, Mazdas. Or maybe Subarus. The Subarus of painted radiators, that’s what we have here — in Chelsea Gray and Kendall Charcoal, no less. A thousand bucks my ass.

Now excuse me while I go vomit up the rest of my brain cells. Spray paint? Fumes. Also, my right index finger hurts from holding down the nozzle. Stop laughing.

And when I say “we’re doing some painting,” what I mean is that “we have hired somebody who actually knows how to paint” to take our main floor from its original “peanut butter and jam” palette — well intentioned, but ultimately not sustainable — to a much more refined mix of grey and cream.

Going ...

Going ...

Gone.

This is a big step for me, but, really, it’s about time. Those of you who are regular readers of this blog are likely well aware of my prowess as a painter of walls. For those of you who have yet to be initiated, a recap:

The person we hired to correct these errors also happens, conveniently, to be our next-door neighbour, Holly. From September to April, she’s a mild-mannered, mature university student, but in the summer she returns to her roots as a painter for a select few clients. Last week, we were lucky to make the cut, I had the pleasure of watching somebody who’s really good at something do that thing. I love watching capable people do capable things, capably. It’s just so soothing.

“I could watch you paint edges all day,” I sighed to Holly as she outlined — without tape! — the edge of a grey wall, nary a spot of colour marring the cream ceiling. And then I worried that maybe she thought I was creepy, and I tiptoed back to my office to do my job. Because I do my job well and I’m learning to let other people — like, say, painters, or roofers — do theirs.

It was also great to have Holly around because it meant that we could compare notes about kids. She’s the mother of a sweet 14-year-old boy, and Rachel and I like to look to her as a bellwether of things ahead, while she likes to reminisce about life with little ones. Initially, she was hesitant to take the job because she wanted to spend the last couple of weeks before school started again with her son — but then she realized that she would be able to get plenty of painting done in the mornings before he woke up at noon or so. “He’s going to have to get up for school at 6:30 in the morning,” she kept fretting. “I don’t know how he’s going to do it.” “He’ll do it,” I said. “It’ll be just fine.” But in my mind I knew that when my own teenage sons sleep until noon I will fret about it all the same.

Holly, alas, cannot paint our radiators for us, and so that job falls to me — the other option being to pay $1,000 to have an auto-body shop sandblast and paint them. “Really?” I asked the lady at the auto-body shop on the phone. “A thousand dollars?”

“Yes, dear,” she said. “It doesn’t matter whether it’s a radiator or a Lamborghini — it’s still a paint job.”

Truthfully, I’m kind of excited to paint the radiators, mostly because it means that I get to use a power washer, which just seems like the most satisfying tool one could wield. My other astonishingly capable neighbour (we’re surrounded), Greg, of my self-styled vast tool lending library and infinite patience, has set me up with his washer, and now I am going to go blast several decades worth of dust from the cast-iron beasts before going at them with some spray paint. I doubt they’ll look like Lamborghinis when I’m done with them, but I hope that they’ll be presentable. Wish me luck.

And, oh my God, it was everything everyone had said it would be, and more. From the opening slanting words of the back story through to the Jawas and the lightsaber (grateful thanks, Rob, for alerting me to the correct spelling of this seminal term) battle between Darth Vader and Obi-Wan Kenobi, I sat, entranced, glued to the screen. As my synapses adjusted and my entire psyche realigned to make room for this new sacred text, I thought I might explode from happiness and wonder. Truly, I felt part of the Force.

Okay, so, not so much.

It was fine. It was fun. It was somewhat gratifying to finally sit down and watch the whole thing from start to finish and make sense of the finer points of the plot (aided by the closed captioning — my solution to the mumbling actors — and Rowan, who said helpful things throughout, like, “And now Obi-Wan Kenobi is going to die” — oh, sorry, spoiler alert). That Luke is pretty cute, in a mullety sort of way.

I’m wondering if I would’ve felt more uplifted had the DVD player not decided to stop playing during the final few minutes of the film, as Luke is stripping off his mask and trusting his instincts and the Force in order to make the precise hit he needs to destroy the Death Star. I’m guessing nothing too important happened right then, though, so I’m probably okay.

But all this talk about Star Wars and such has got me wondering just what I was doing in 1978 rather than twisting my hair into Princess Leia buns. What movie was I obsessing about? This one:

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to my sacred text of 1978: the Walt Disney production of Child of Glass. Wherein 13-year-old Alexander Armsworth and his family move to a spooky old grand antebellum Southern mansion and he and his nerdy friend Blossom encounter the ghost of the beautiful little girl Inez Dumaine (jealous much, Blossom?), who initially appears to him as a throbbing blue light (not unlike a lightsaber, I suppose, but not really). Inez, who has been murdered by her riverboat pirate uncle, cannot rest in peace until Alexander and Blossom solve the riddle of her death and find and reunite her with the “child of glass.” Being a ghost and therefore somewhat cryptic, Inez gives Alexander only the following poetic clue to help him out:

Sleeping lies the murdered lass

Vainly cries the child of glass

When the two shall be as one

The Spirit’s journey will be done.

Oh my God people this movie freaked me out. FREAKED ME OUT. Every Sunday evening, my cousins Michael and Nancy (Nancy, who taught me how to knit and to crochet, and who worked at the Children’s Bookstore in Toronto and brought us wonderful books, and whose weekly visits are the reason I am so devoted to our weekly brunches with Rowan and Isaac’s godmothers, Judy and Jill) came over for deli and we all watched the Disney Sunday Movie together. Because rituals are good. I remember watching Child of Glass with them, remember how utterly entranced I was by Inez, and how terrified. The best part is when Inez comes alive — every ghost, apparently, has a once-in-a-deathtime chance to turn human again — in order to dance with Alexander during the cotillion his parents throw at the Southern mansion. The scariest is when she changes into a menacing spirit in order to scare off the drunken handyman who tries to murder Alexander by setting the Armsworth barn on fire. Because I was seven years old, much of the plot sailed right over my head, but I remember deciding that the only way that I would get through the rest of my life was to cultivate an imaginary friendship with the ghost of Inez Dumaine, to get her on my side so that she would protect me as opposed to, say, stalking me in her scary spirit form and tormenting me for the rest of my days. I imagined myself as a ghost and how and when I might choose to come back as human: with whom would I dance? For years, I used to lie awake at night, just knowing that the ghost of Inez was floating through my house and coming to rest under my bed. We would chat, and I would quell my nerves by telling myself that I was friends with this ghost, that she had my back. It almost worked.

Several years ago, I spent a small fortune on eBay to acquire a VHS copy of Child of Glass, and I watched the whole thing, shaking. Sure, the plot was hokey as the special effects, the dialogue was stilted and the characters two-dimensional (in addition to the drunken handyman, there is Blossom’s grandmother, the “mystical old hag” — according to the copy on the video case — who gazes into her crystal ball and tells Alexander “Strange forces are at work here… Listen to the call of the spirits… they’ll come to you soon”), but watching that movie was like watching a home video of long-lost relatives I’d met once and loved and wondered about and never seen again. Watching it was like coming home.

So, people, I get why those of you who are obsessed with Star Wars are obsessed with it. I can’t argue that my late-70s flick of choice is better or worse. Just mine.

What was yours?

You know what I have a problem with? Cool people who insist that they are — or that they once were — nerds. Because, you know? Even though it’s cool to call yourself a nerd these days, nerds, by definition, aren’t actually cool. And the people who willingly admit to being nerds actually wouldn’t admit it if they really were nerds, because then, well … there is a difference. If you are actually a nerd, you don’t tend to want to announce it publicly. You tend to quietly go about your nerdy little life, playing along like you’re mostly cool and hoping people won’t notice that you really like trilobites or enjoy reading the Chicago Manual of Style.

All of which is by explaining why, until now, I have not mentioned on this website that I have never seen Star Wars.

Because, I’m sorry, but every North American child of my generation has seen Star Wars. And The Empire Strikes Back. And that other one, the return of the whatevers. And then those other three with that guy Jar-Jar and the princess played by that badass Natalie Portman.

Except me. And it’s not like I was locked inside an iron lung or something between 1979 and 1984 or so. I chose not to see them. Because they did not interest me. I vividly remember my brother and my two male cousins running hyperactively through a movie theatre parking lot as though their lives depended on seeing that movie and thinking, “Why would I bother to see that movie? I don’t care about stars and wars and spaceships.” Because I didn’t. Which put me, apparently, into a tiny minority of my friends, into a class of true nerddom. At the time, I thought it was a gender thing: it was a boy movie and I was decidedly not a boy. Except that all the girls I know saw the movie too, and loved it.

I probably still wouldn’t care, except for the fact that now Rowan, and by extension, Isaac, all of a sudden care. Passionately. Rob, who is a walking Star Wars codex (and not, however, despite his protestations otherwise, a nerd) put it on for them one day, and now, it’s all about the light sabres. Rowan skulks into rooms, wielding the sabre he has managed to procure, breathing heavily. “Hi, Darth,” I say, and he points that thing at me and says, “Guards,” or “Mom! I’m not Darth Vader, I’m Luke!” And I say, “Oh, sorry. Luke.” A few nights ago, he wrapped a towel around his shoulders and said, “I look a bit like Darth Vader in this, don’t I?” This morning, I walked in on him and Isaac on the sun porch, Rowan with the sabre, Isaac making do with a broom. “Come with me to the dark side, and together we will rule the planet,” Rowan was saying. To which Isaac replied, “Okay.”

At the risk of making a massive understatement, there’s obviously something compelling about these movies, something that captivates children and grown-ups alike, over the span of generations. Rachel, getting all lit-critty on me, calls them “sacred texts.” She may be right.

So what is so strange about me that I don’t get them? Over the years, I’ve caught glimpses of each movie, and they don’t draw me in. Other people see magic, and I see rinky-dink special effects and jerky monsters and slightly forced dialogue. The actors mumble and I can’t follow the plot. So I don’t.

On the other hand, it’s not like I’ve ever given the George Lucas oeuvre an enthusiastic chance.

Until now, that is.

People, I’m going to watch Star Wars. With my sons. I am going to watch the first three movies in their entirety, although I make no promises, yet, about the prequels. I’m going to try to watch them through the eyes of my children, to set aside my own biases (and, Rob, sarcastic comments), and see if it’s possible, at this late stage, for a lifelong holdout to convert to the church of Jedi. I’ll keep you posted on this experiment.

May the force be with— oh, fuck off.

In the middle, you will observe a tent with three smiling stick figures inside: the two little ones are Rowan and Isaac, and the bigger one, natch, is Rachel. Off to the right, in his own little tent, is Rob-the-donor. If you look closely, you can just make out what he’s thinking:

At the top is the requisite kindergarten-grade sun. To the right is Lake Superior, clear and warm, shallow for miles in under the August sky.

But, you’re thinking to yourself, someone is missing. Susan, where are you?

Guess.

Maybe you have been eaten by a bear? Perhaps you are visiting the Portapotty? Trying to patch the slow leak in the air mattress?

No, no, and no.

Oh.

Maybe, then, you are soaking commando in a hot tub underneath the stars before taking yourself off for ice cream and to see a late showing of The Kids Are All Right — which did, after all, come to Thunder Bay! Later, maybe you slept in, and then woke up to do yoga before settling in for a morning of quietly reading the manuscript of your novel-in-progress. After which, maybe you went for a long walk, picked some raspberries, returned home to finish your readthrough, and then went out for a long-overdue dinner with a friend. Maybe you ate slow-cooked ribs and gumbo and jambalaya. Maybe you read your girl friend’s copy of the third Stieg Larsson novel in bed and then slept, uninterrupted by partiers in the next campground over or a shrieking baby in the next tent or your own three-year-old son, who never quite settled and hopped from Thermarest to Thermarest every two hours through the night. Maybe you woke up to do more yoga and plot out the events of your novel on a spreadsheet before making gazpacho and pasta with tomatoes, cucumbers, chard, and parsley from your very own garden, ready for your sunsoaked family when they returned after their 48 hours away from you. Maybe you all watched The Empire Strikes Back together when they got home.

Bingo.

Maybe you missed them.

Maybe.

I guess I should write a post about how this image captures perfectly what it’s like to live with children. Something about how they get the soft white inside, while I’m stuck with the crusts.

But the thing is, I like the crust. It’s the best part.

On a good day, everything works out just fine, really.

Unconditional love and always having someone to talk to notwithstanding, there is no baby lust here to speak of. As in, we’ve pretty much told the donor to go get a vasectomy. (The donor, by the way, is here! Now! For the better part of a month! Last night he went grocery shopping while I lay around reading the first in the Stieg Larsson series — yes, it’s come to that — and then watched the slightly disappointing season opener to Mad Men. And, as I write this, he is helping us fill in an unexpected gap in child care by taking Isaac this morning, for a fun-filled three hours that I suspect will mostly involve throwing things down the laundry chute. Two parents good: three parents better. But, alas, the same does not hold for children, at least in this household. Two is great — can’t quite get it up for three.)

For some reason though, people of late have been bringing it up, that long-ago resolved question of the third. “Are you planning to have any more?” other women (always women) keep asking. “We are planning to have no more children,” I keep answering. And then they usually sigh and say, “Us, too.”

I keep coming up with new reasons why we don’t want another baby. “If we have another baby,” I will say to Rachel, “it will be a third set of grimy, scratchy little fingers on the CDs and DVDs.” “If we had another baby, we’d have to get a minivan.” “If we had another baby, it would wake us up all night long and I would get depressed and anxious and unhinged and think only about sleep, and then where would we be?” Where would we be, indeed. Somewhere less fun that this place, I tell ya.

And then Rachel said, “If we had another baby, then we would make Isaac into a middle child.” And we both stopped and scratched our heads and said, “Oh, yeah.”

It’s not that either of us has anything against middle children, but simply that Isaac is, still, the baby. And, inasmuch as we don’t feel the need to have any more babies, we’re not quite ready to turn our latest and last baby into something else. Just yet. Or, ever.

But then, a couple of weeks ago, Isaac pulled the household copy of I’m a Big Brother! off the bookshelf — the one we got for Rowan when Isaac was born, the one where we scratched out with a Sharpie all instances of the phrase “Mommy and Daddy” and replaced them with “Mommies” — and asked me to read it to him.

“See?” I chirped at him as we turned the final page. “Babies are fun to play with!”

“I want a baby,” he said. He jabbed at the baby in the book: “A baby like that.”

(So, why do or don’t you want a baby? From the inane to the profound.)

Intrigued? Read on: “While appliances aren’t usually associated with fun and creativity,” Jane wrote, “we decided to push the envelope and see what crazy concoctions we could cook up with our own household appliances.” The online retailer of appliance parts, says Jane, has managed to do just that with its Dishwasher Lasagna Video.

“That’s right!” says Jane. “We actually cooked lasagna in the dishwasher (and ate it too!). Yes, we’re probably a little crazy and no, there isn’t anything wrong with the oven. We wanted to do it just to see if we could. … Next up… salad spinning in the washing machine?”

Those crazy kids. I admire them, being all crazy with their onlinedly retailed appliance parts. I mean, you can’t have fun at work, after all, then why bother? I hope you enjoyed that, readers of Mama Non Grata. Now go associate your appliances with fun and creativity! Your life will be better. I swear it.

Oh, wait: that would be “smitten.”

Especially because he left me the cryptic and Rachel the Sudoku. That he filled with the squares in with random letters is beside the point, really; it’s more the spot-on posture he’s adopted, as though he’s watched other people do crosswords his entire life. Just like that. I would have posted pictures of him playing Scrabble — grown-up Scrabble, mind you, not the kids’ version — with his grandmother last week, adding up the scores with his orange, foot-shaped calculator, but the camera ran out of batteries. It’s a whole new generation of word nerds here at Casa Non Grata, pottering around with our cups of cocoa and our dictionaries. He asks things like, “What are all the words in the world and who made them?” and “Why does the C come before the K and which one do you hear when you say ‘back’? And who decided that?”

Yes, who? Who decided that? Because there’s a five-year-old around here who would like a word with you.