Signs of Spring

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We’re still getting the nightly dusting of snow, but it melts quickly these days.  White predominates in our yard, but the crocuses have begun to emerge from the ground.  And even as the cold is slow to relinquish its hegemony, it can’t prevent the longer days and, the return of the roadside egg stand as our neighbors chickens begin to produce again.

 

Of Plans, Plants, and Cigars

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I have come to believe that in many marriages there is one partner who has their head in the clouds and another who helps keep both people anchored to the ground.  Anyone who knows me knows that my head is not in clouds; it’s often in another dimension.  No one knows this better than the Big Guy, so, last night, when I casually moved the new dark green shrub to the edge of the counter as I unloaded the grocery bags, he raised an eyebrow but didn’t ask what had prompted the purchase.

The plant was just the end of a journey I had started two days ago on the first sunny afternoon since the official start of spring.  For the first time since I’d claimed my Mom-Cave at the back of the house, I minded that my cozy winter cocoon lacks a view of the impending greening of our yard.  Our house is earth-sheltered, and, while all the bedrooms and family areas look towards the forest and fields that border our yard, the bathrooms and the study are tucked into the back part of the house, which is buried under three feet of dirt.

All of this made my first thought – how could I install a window – just a tad irrational.  When I returned this dimension at five A.M. the next morning, I considered other options as I wrote.  Taking over the one unoccupied bedroom/winter laundry room isn’t feasible for the longterm (the boys are getting old enough for their own rooms).  Then I though about moving to our well-lit, but unheated, attic.  My mind churned as I mentally figured out heating and decor for the space.  The Big Guy has plans for most of that space, however, so I nixed the idea.  Then came a stroke though, sadly, not of genius.  It was the stroke I envisioned the Big Guy experiencing when I finished pitching my next plan – remodeling the upstairs and the downstairs with a workshop, study and guest-area down and family bedrooms up.

The Big Guy popped his head in as he was heading out to work, bringing me back to the ground.  I posted my posts, got the kids to school and returned to the Mom-Cave for the next 8 hours of my Work-At-Home-Job.  My 3 minute dance sessions – my latest attempt to get more movement (not exercise, just movement) – reminded me there was another advantage to working in a room without windows.  Maybe I could find a way to make it feel less claustrophobic for the summer.

I googled windowless offices.  Google gave me white offices (straight from the pages of the Neat & Childless Magazine), walls with trompe l’oeil murals, mirrors built into reclaimed windows, and plants.  I remembered the houseplant cemetery we call a forest and took closer look at the mirrors, stumbling on to a gorgeous and, most important, affordable distressed window with a mirror behind it.  I saved the page just as the Big Guy got home with the boys.

“Look at this mirror,” I said, not mentioning my other decorating ideas. “Don’t you think it would brighten up the office?”

“I guess do,” replied my husband with practiced composure. I don’t have hard scientific data on this, but it’s my suspicion that nothing strikes fear into the heart of a married man like the words, “I have an idea”.  To I decided not to reveal my endgame (however much it had shrunk), and the conversation ended.

The next afternoon, I announced I needed to get some groceries after work and headed into town.  The mirror was still in mind, but as I guided my cart through the aisles, I wandered into the nursery area.  The aroma of dozens of Easter lilies and hyacinths assaulted me. I explored, remembering the plant idea and started hunting for something that looked like it would do well in extreme shade.  A few minutes later, I emerged from a corner with a nameless plant whose directions to keep it out of sun and not overwater reassured me it might not join its predecessors in the woods as compost.

When I had the last of the groceries put away, I picked up the plant to take it to its new home in the Mom-Cave.

“What do you think?” I asked. “I just thought the room could use a little green.”  The Big Guy just nodded and got to work on the latest incarnation of his famous pasta sauce.   After +16 years of being the anchor in our marriage, he knows that a cigar may just be a cigar, but a plant is never just a plant.

 

Tis the Season

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We’re well into the first full week of spring and snow still covers our yard.  It’s almost time to plant peas, and my garden is a slushy mess.  The fact that Vermont’s gardening season commenced at least a week or three behind the calendars in every gardening book (even one or two written by Vermonters) once caused me consternation.   By March, I’m ready to get out of the house and start digging.  

A decade of digging later, however, I’ve learned to relax about this thing I absolutely can’t control.  My springtime serenity stems from two sources.  The first comes from observing the long-term effects of that saturating late winter snow pac.  Soggy in spring but still moist enough to prevent the need for watering well into summer, I’ve come to trust that Mother Nature knows what she’s doing.  The other source of my calm comes from discovering a spring signal far more reliable (and delicious) than a date circled on my calendar. 

The sap buckets start appearing in late January.  The large maple syrup operations set long blue tap lines that run from tree to tree and then into huge covered containers, but there are still plenty of do-it-yourselfer’s and small operators who use the old-fashioned taps and buckets that are symbolic of the season.  

We made maple syrup a few years in a row.  Our buckets were recycled milk jugs.  We collected sap for days and made exactly one gallon (you need 32 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup) on our old wood stove.  Our old house was drafty enough that we didn’t mind turning our kitchen into a sauna for a few days, and it was the best maple syrup we ever tasted.  

We buy our syrup now, and, even though it’s available at even the smallest producers through most of the year, picking up a gallon or two at the end of March has become as much a ritual as taking Thing2 to see Santa at the town Christmas party or planting my peas in soggy spring soil.

The steam started pouring from the sugar houses in late winter.  Even now, the nighttime temperatures are still mostly in the freezing range even as the days get warmer, and the sap still flows.  Last weekend, the first weekend in spring, the sugar houses opened their doors to tasters and tours, but it was just a date on the calendar.  For me, it won’t be until the sap slows that spring will really begin.  It’s when the sap buckets along our road come down.

 It doesn’t make the spring season any less welcome, but it does make it a little bittersweet.

 

Where my Heart wants to Go

Listening to the wind of his soul, as Cat Stevens once sang, and letting the music take him where his heart wants to go, it’s Thing2’s time to dance, as it is every night after his homework is done and before dinner is ready.  With the Big Guy’s borrowed iPod and and my old ear buds, he leaps and twirls, shakes, rattles and rolls, his eyes half closed as he translates the music into motion.

An angelic smile lights his face as he looks at the Big Guy for approval.  The Big Guy is bemused.  Thing2 turns to me for non-verbal feedback, but his gaze falls first upon Goliath, still steeped in homework at the round pedestal kitchen table.  Always willing to be a distracted from his studies, Goliath has stopped to watch our private performance.  His face is a study in preteen angst.  A smile lurks, but the fear that this performance might be repeated in public also knits his brow.

Thing2, unsure of Goliath’s evaluation, stops mid pirouette.  He stares at his big brother as another one song ends.  When he finds his tongue, it is not nearly as dextrous as his feet.

“WHAT?!?” he demands.  Goliath shrugs and bows his head over his book again, and the Big Guy and I worry the time to dance has ended.  But the dance continues until the last plate has been set at the dinner table. Thing2’s monosyllabic outburst was not a question after all; it was statement that he will be who he will be as long as the music keeps playing.

Sympathy for the Giant

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The steps creak a little more each day as Thing1 descends from his bastion on the upper bunk.  He’s been taller than his mother for a year now, and, even though he enjoys sizing up the difference every time we pass in the hall, I am getting used to looking up at someone I used to carry around in a Snugli.  It’s strange feeling, and a few weeks ago, I realized that Thing1, evoking a decidedly impish quality, didn’t really suit him anymore.

I’ve been using nicknames for my kids and husband since this blog’s inception.  My six foot six husband is the Big Guy.  My twelve and six-year-old boys are known as Thing1 and Thing2 (or SuperDude if he’s wearing his cape and wig), respectively.

My decision to use nicknames was not so much to safeguard their internet safety – very little is private anymore now  – but more the result of the feeling that, especially with the kids, I had the right to tell our stories but not the right to opt in the use of their real names until they were old enough to make that decision themselves.  The result has been a mostly illustrated blog (the few photos of the kids are usually old enough to prevent easy recognition by anyone but the people who already know them), and I’ve been happy with it.  Now, however, as I’ve been searching for a new, more appropriate nickname for the gentle giant that roams our house, I realize that part of the motivation for the original nickname was my denial that he is growing up.

There is still a bit of the imp in him, but middle school and the discovery that a world lies outside Minister Hill have made him serious.  When the imp is revealed, Thing2 is often the inspiration and the provocation.  Like any good younger brother, Thing2 carries around a bit of loving hero worship for his big brother.  Most afternoons he expresses his love by snuggling up to his older brother, but there are times when love hurts.

Sometimes inspired by boredom, sometimes by that most flattering of desires – to imitate his older brother in every possible way – Thing2 will sidle up to Thing1 at his desk or on the couch.  He’ll work to inhabit the space with his brother.  Then he’ll ask to play whatever Thing1 is playing, listen to whatever song Thing1 has blasting, or watch whatever show Thing1 thought was great last night but couldn’t care less about this afternoon.  He is dogged in his admiration, and, when Thing1, in the time-honored tradition of surly preteens everywhere, ignores the initial overtures, Thing2 finds a plan B.

Snuggling becomes poking.  Then poking becomes climbing, and sometimes the climbing hurts.  Thing2’s faith that Thing1 would never hurt him is stronger David’s in a God that would guide his slingshot was.  For the most part his faith is well-placed. Unlike the ancient Goliath, when our giant needs a lot of needling before he responds in kind.  Sometimes the giant will lose his temper, but he rarely loses his cool.

Lately he’s been taking on more grown-up chores around the house.  He’s attentive and responsive when we need a quick favor.  Naturally, I see him through my maternal bias, but as I watch the imp becoming a man, I’ve decided it’s time for someone to get a new nickname and rehabilitate the name Goliath.

Honor Thy Family, Honor Thyself

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My mother’s parents, in their later years, moved from Hawaii, where they’d spent much of their retirement, to Ohio so that they could be closer to their children and grandchildren.  My grandmother suffered a series of debilitating strokes soon after they moved, and my parents, especially my mother, became instrumental in supporting both my grandparents, emotionally and, often, logistically.  

My mother made sure our family visited them regularly during the week.  She helped my grandfather adjust to his new roles of caretaker, housekeeper and cook – tasks my grandmother had primarily done during the fifty-plus years of their marriage.  When my grandmother passed away, my parents – geographically the closest of his children – continued the Sunday dinners and afternoon visits with my grandfather.  They took him on family vacations, provided (in the case of my father) second medical opinions, and did everything they could to ensure that he was independent but not alone in the last years of his life.

It was labor, but there was more love than obligation in it.  Although I know both my parents felt blessed to have those last years with my mother’s parents, it was not always easy.  Watching both parents rise to the occasion with love and grace, however, was a powerful lesson for me and my sister.  It is one I think about often as my parents have started their retirements.

So when, at the first meeting of the Hubbard Hall Writer’s Workshop, Diane Fiore revealed that she would be writing about her Saturday drives with her late father, I knew her blog would be good before I read a word.  It was.  

For most of the last year on her blog, Merganser’s Crossing, Diane has been telling the story of how what started as a daughter’s duty to help emotionally and logistically support a father suffering from increasingly intense dementia became a path to a close relationship and better understanding of her dad.  It has been humorous and heartbreaking, honest and enlightening.  Illustrated with sketches, photographs, and now, the loveliest watercolors, it is also evolving.

After learning that her mother had recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, Diane decided (with her mother’s support and permission) to chronicle the next phase of her journey on her blog.  Already the story has seen her and her husband move so as to support her mother’s needs better.  As she writes simply but compellingly of her new life, navigating the changes and relationships, the same love and grace I once saw in my parents comes shining through.  

We live in an often harsh world.  Too often culture and media not only reflect that harshness, they amplify it.  It makes stumbling on a story like Diane’s all the more valuable and inspiring.  It’s an oasis of kindness and hope, and it’s worth visiting again and again.

About Family

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My younger son dances.  He sings.  He has a crate full of costumes – including a rainbow wig, several superhero outfits and a tutu – and a puppet theatre complete with curtains sewn by his grandmother.  He loves dressing up and taking on all sorts of personae.  He is the sum of his arts – joy in a skinny six-year-old package.

We make him leave the costumes at home (on school days anyway), but he brings his joy everywhere he goes.  He dances when he walks.  He falls in love with people at the drop of hat and is still at the age where he wants to marry everyone with whom he falls in love.

Most of the time his antics and his expressions of love – for his parents, his brother, the waitresses at Bob’s –  produce smiles from people around us.  It’s hard not to smile at someone who’s compulsively happy.  But every once in a while I’ll catch another adult watching his gaiety, and I can see a question forming behind the gaze.

I know the look and the question.  The look is judgement warring with joy.  The question is the wondering if the gaiety is evidence that our dancing, affectionate child is gay.  I don’t know.  I also don’t care.

I have seen and heard this story since I was in high school.  Several of my closest friends came out to our circle of friends before and after graduation.  Some came to the realization that they were gay very early in life.  Some had supportive parents.  Others lived in the shadow of projection (once with a violent result) because certain mannerisms or affinities were proof to others that they were gay long before they had considered the question themselves.

I would like to say that I was always mature and supportive.  With my male friends I remembered it made no difference.  With my best friend, I am sorry to say, I was less mature, mainly because she was suddenly dating and someone else was monopolizing her time.  At the time I wasn’t adult enough to remember I had done the exact same thing to her a year earlier.  The one thing I do remember, however, is that who my friends dated didn’t change how I saw them because they were still the same loving people who had accepted me for all my flaws as we went through the high school gauntlet together.

Today, as I’m watching the news, waiting to see how the Supreme Court is going to rule on marriage equality in California, I’m thinking about our journeys.  Some of my friends are still single.  Some have had commitment ceremonies – two couples the same year the Big Guy and I were married – and are still happily married themselves.  Our journeys have been different, but the parallels are still there.

We all wanted to fulfill our potentials.  We all wanted to love and be loved.  And we each wanted to be part of a family of our choosing.  It’s the same thing I want for both my kids.  But, most of all, I want them to have the same chance at happiness that I have had – regardless of the person they find to love.  So today, to me, this issue isn’t about politics.  It’s about my family.

 

 

 

 

The Hairy Edge

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Maybe if it hadn’t been a snow day filled with lolling about and lying around, this milestone might have gone unnoticed.  But twelve-year-old Thing1, getting as big as a good-natured Goliath these days, made the mistake of mentioning that he wanted a shower on a slow news day.  The Big Guy and I looked at our son and then back at each other, the same question on our minds.

I think the Big Guy was the first to ask Goliath point blank if there was a girl involved.  Our firstborn immediately rebuffed such a ridiculous suggestion.  His hair was too long, he said.  It was too warm and he needed to cool off.  

I don’t mean to imply that Goliath doesn’t shower regularly.  But anyone who’s raised or raising boys will concur that there comes a phase in their lives when they develop severe soap allergies, as evidenced – at our house – by the sounds of cajoling and pleading (and that’s the parents) that commence many evenings just after supper time.  We have heard every excuse for why Goliath and his six-year-old tormenter, David, should abstain from contact with cleanliness.  They don’t feel dirty.  They’re just going to get dirty again tomorrow.  They’re trying to save water and (going after our off-grid Achille’s heels) electricity.  So when we haven’t had to cajole or plead for not just one night, but three in a row, it’s a major event.

The Big Guy and I didn’t contest any further his earnest contention that a sudden romantic interest was not at the source of this sudden spate of elective hygiene.  Once Goliath cleared his place and retreated to his half-hour shower, however, the Big Guy and I looked at each other, realizing we are getting closer and closer to the scary hairy edge of being parents of a full-fledged teenager.  And as frightening as that thought is, the scarier idea is just how fast it’s all going.

Snow Days

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Christmas comes several time each year at our house.  We call those extra Christmas days snow days.  They’re the only other winter days that see both boys out of bed before dawn as they race to the internet to check school closing, waiting to see if the Snow Fairy has brought them candy or coal.

Thing2 got candy last night.  It was most likely due to a wind-related power outage than the snowfall we got last night that barely qualifies as a dusting by Vermont standards.  Thing1 got a lump of coal.

Normally I require hard core proof of illness for either imp to stay home.  More snow may be on the way, however that could cause an early closure.  Tonight’s homework is also already done. So, instead of giving Thing1 his morning marching orders, I toss his coal into the roaring wood stove and order him to stand down.  

I have the day off, and with both boys home, it’s more than an impromptu weekend.  It really is a holiday.

So Uncool

The best thing about having a preteen is not the sudden displays of independence (or rebellion depending on your take) or the occasional surliness.  It’s the fact that no matter what you do, for the next decade or so, you know you will never be cool.  Now, no one has actually ever accused me of being all that hip – except maybe the Big Guy when I complement him on a burp – but I’ve noticed that the little bit of cool factor I may have enjoyed, has taken a nose dive as Thing1, my first born, approaches the big One-Three.  This might have bothered me once upon a time, but, now, as I’m getting a lot more selective about which dragons I go chasing after, it’s actually quite liberating.

My precipitous loss of coolness (always in danger due to my uncanny knack for mastering fashion trends just as they were ending and love of all things geek) became apparent one morning as we were driving to school.  Thing1 had already begged me to stop dancing in the car, regardless of our surroundings, and, well remembering the gauntlet called middle school, I respected this ‘request’.  My music choices, however, stayed pretty much the same.  I listen to everything, and my playlists vary with my mood.  My tastes can have us listening to Pavarotti one morning, Rolling Stones  another, or an eighties pop list the next.   It was an eighties pop mix that first prompted Thing1, a budding music geek with firm ideas about “what’s good” that can only survive in the hothouse of adolescence, to assume the role of arbiter of musical taste on our morning school runs.

He began switching up the playlists on my iPod, and, for the most part, I acquiesced happily.  That acquiescence made him happy on the drive, but when we arrived at school, he began hitting the pause button before the car stopped.  After a few mornings of this I realized my acceptance of his choices was causing him to question not his taste but his own coolness.

He’s not into girls yet, so fashion – the most visible signal that a kid is trying to display their coolness – hasn’t really become an issue (boys seem to escape a lot of this anyway), but as he stops the music and climbs out of the car, everything in his demeanor says he’s still anxious to be cool.  Most of the kids entering the building seem to have this same anxiety, translated through their tense postures and nervous glances at their friends.

It’s not just maternal bias when I say that, in my eyes, Thing1 has always been cool.  He’s a door-holder.  He can carry on a conversation with grownup. A number of his classmates are like this too.   So, as I watch these pleasant, curious kids scurrying to school, wearing their self-consciousness on their sleeves, my first daily thought is how ironic it is that they should worry that they’re not cool enough.  When the car door shuts and I unpause the music, my second thought is usually how exhausting it once was to worry about it.

I know Thing1 will survive this gauntlet.  The Big Guy and I are fiercely protective of the inner young man full of hopes and dreams and ideas, but we also know navigating between the desire to fit in and his true north (when he discovers it) is part of the test of teenager-dom.  It’s a journey we can’t take for him.

I’ve recently adopted a new exercise regimen of dancing for a 3 minute song in front of my laptop every few hours so that I can fit some movement into my day.  I pretty much look like an idiotic bowl of jello for those 3 minutes, and sometimes I’m glad none of our windows look out on neighbors.  But I would be dancing even if they did.  That carefree dance is the reward at the end of that journey.  I’ve discovered my true norths now, and, while I’ve started another part of the path, I’ll be waiting for Thing1 when he’s found his own groove.