bad pirate
February 25, 2007 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
we’ve been busy, busy doing the necessary, too busy for words or fun of any kind.
today it rains. the leaves of the yard sit in wilted piles in the mud. the chair on the deck has a puddle of its own that jude jokes about. “you should sit in that chair, mom,” he laughs. i like it that he makes jokes and i tell him to go sit in it himself. the dog is sad in his kennel because he’s too wet to come into the rest of the house and it’s too wet outside for him to frisk in the yard.
we spend this week waiting for buying power to return to us. last sunday while we were in church someone bashed in the passenger side window of the car and stole wallets and the ipod. thankfully it’s not too hard to cancel cards and wait for new ones to come to us, so the thieves only ran off with $30 cash and filled up their tank with gas using one of our cards. we’re sad about the ipod, the radio is just not the same.
we get a ride from a pair of police officers who were at church. ernie stays behind to file the report. henry is impressed by the man’s gun, his lack-luster badge, the blueness of his car that is not even a police car. we talk about thieves and that it’s sad that they don’t know Jesus. we try to not utter mean words and questions like, “what a loser, jerk, punk,” and “why us?” in one breath we hope for “the book” to be thrown at him, in the next we pray for mercy on his soul.
the glass is fixed on the car after two days of driving under blankets, the chill of wind on the backs of our necks. we find ourselves astonished by the kindness of people we know and people we hardly know. we are sad that we’re so astonished. we are glad we don’t carry much cash around with us. we are hopeful that he’ll be caught pawning the ipod, whose serial number we do have. we are thankful that the cameras weren’t in the car, instruments, computer. we are glad that he didn’t know the worth of trombone mouthpieces or kindermusik materials. at night, when we are carrying sleeping children in from the car we are sick in the stomach at the thought of someone stealing these children of ours. it’s easy to take something that doesn’t belong to you.
the rest of the week was better. all colds and flu bugs have passed leaving us with happy children and a list of places to go. at long last we met my niece, vienna josephine, who was born two weeks ago but we were too covered in germs to go and visit. she’s tiny and girly and has a closet full of pink. she has more clothes than i have, i think, most likely because i don’t puke on myself at intervals during the day. her brothers seem huge and old and talkative. my own children are clearly no longer babies after holding something so light and sweet smelling in my hands.
shake out more and more silver changes
February 15, 2007 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
today we wandered through home depot in search of paint chips (”to eat?” worries jude) and a rake for leaves and another for rocks. the yard truly is an ugly yard. i think it’s hard to buy a house in november and then live with the uglies of winter before any real work can be done to bring life and flower and tidiness about. the walks to the car around puddles and mud, the stumble over kicked up gravel where grass should be while drowsily taking the dog for a quick lap in the dark, the uneven places around the clothesline, the buried bits of metal, a bolt, something from a bike, something with glass broken in the center, all of it mocking at us from under the trees. it’s overwhelming but we rake at it anyway. henry uses his rake and then a bucket and then a dump truck to add to the pile of leaves and the pile of rocks. jude beats the piles with a stick. i smile at green that appears in clump and spear beneath the leaves that fell as we unpacked the truck and boxes and had no thought for the yard.
i remember phyllis and her rake and am glad that now i have a rake like she does, one that pulls every leaf from the stones and is wide enough to pull a good pile with one blistered sweep of my hands and arms. the rake that we had before was metal and cheap and stupid. every thirty seconds i had to lift the thing up and empty the prongs of the leaves that should have been piled in the pile. there were more trees there, bigger leaves, and the city came by and sucked the leaves into a truck on an assigned afternoon.
yesterday i followed a silver truck across town. the bed of the truck was full of daffodils. the driver was old and his face smiled even though he wasn’t smiling. the daffodils nodded in the sun over bumps and around corners. a truck full of daffodils for a valentine somewhere, i thought. daffodils with the bulbs down in dirt and ready for a place in the earth. i thought about buying a rake then and wished for my own field of daffodils trumpeting at the great morning.
no one is sick today, or yesterday. ernie worked late so there were two valentine dinners and perfect chocolate brownies. henry learned to clip hearts from a fold of paper and jude plastered the hearts with stickers that said “bee mine” and “love bug.” ernie came home in the dark bringing red gerber daisies.
like a prizefighter
February 12, 2007 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
we’re sick. the terrible surprise of our children screaming for us in the night because they’ve thrown up and don’t know what to do making us sorrowful. henry is ever like ernie, careful and sure to not get the mess anywhere other than where it has to be. jude, not so. we laugh at the table as jude is like me, always spilling something on his shirt, and henry is like ernie, wearing white and keeping it that way while eating something saucy. henry seems to be over this sickness (we’re never sick, either, really we’re not) as his energetic flutter through the house bears witness. jude and i stare at him from the bed until we feel seasick from the commotion, motion, and look away. ernie alone can still eat without feeling sad that he did so. the dog is mournful as we only take notice of him as necessary. we take baths and put on clean pajamas. ernie surprises us with “something orange to drink” at jude’s request. the tv is on too much and i feel badly about that. we miss kindermusik today and jude does not notice.
i’m sad that these boys are scared when they’re sick, that they don’t understand why i won’t let them gulp water all through the night. i remember that i would wake my mother up, even as a teenager, so that she would come to the bathroom and “hold my hair” for me so that i could throw up with someone nearby. later, i sat in my room all day with a giant bowl on one side of me in the bed and a pile of books on the other. my brother threw up in his nightstand drawer in the middle of the night and my dad had to clean up a mess of puked on baseball cards and other messy piles of clutter. i was insulted when he flipped on the overhead light in my room to spread newspaper on my floor: “i’m not SICK!” i insisted as he flicked off the light and went back to bed. i think of this as i rub circles over and back again on jude’s back, as i wash horrible towels, as i hope for a better day tomorrow.
the sun shines and it does not snow again. i remember being promised cold for this week. there are crocuses already in the ugliness of the place we plan our garden. they’re yellow and don’t seem to belong in the sleeping jaundiced grass. henry picks something rosy from the bushes and takes it apart to see the inside. he finds another and gives it to me “for a valentine.” we go inside and stare at the wall, the tv, the floor because we really should have been resting.
i’m shine, i’m freshly minted
February 6, 2007 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
it seems colder in the house than out of it. the boys are buried beneath blankets, the pairs of their feet each touching the others as they dream different dreams in the same bed. our down comforter is being dry-cleaned for reasons with which i won’t horrify anyone tonight. a wrinkly woman in a valentine sweatshirt adorned with bears and hearts and the creepiness of lace slapped the random thirty-seven dollar cleaning price tag on my forehead. what more can i say than, “silence,” and then “ooooookey, dokey?” the bears on her pill-y sweatshirt (i hate the word “sweatshirt”) appreciated those words. jude, amazed that his hand cannot retrieve a giant gumball from the machine by sticking his fingers and hand up into the doorway, doesn’t notice the sweatshirt. henry doesn’t notice, either, too curious about the horrible dry-cleaning odor in the building.
we drive away and i mutter something about it being “idiotic.” jude chastises me for using the word “idiot” and i actually idiotically argue that i did not say “idiot,” but, the very different word, “idiotic.” both children are distracted by the convenience of gummy worms and the use of “unkind words” is forgotten.
today we kept house and tonight it feels nice to drink tea with the necessary sauciness of a saucer in a bed with white blankets. this afternoon the boys ate popcorn in front of the tv because the vacuum was sitting fat and full in the corner, ready to groan for the work to come. henry worked hard all day because of the thirty-seven dollar price that comes when little boys don’t put the freaking cat down so that it can go and pee in the proper place after a long night of snoring/purring. he didn’t complain, either, even though thirty-seven dollars doesn’t mean anything to him. i don’t want to be obnoxious about it, but i do try to tell him all that we could buy with thirty-seven dollars. there just really isn’t much, is there?
i think in pink and white and maybe brown polka-dottage and the construction of a mysterious chocolate dessert and something new to cook for my valentines. i also think about having two celebrations of love, one with all of us, a great circle of love with many sizes of fingers and hands that will involve spills and the necessary wallow of mess under jude’s chair, that will be made of a laugh and of food that does not have anything mushroom-suspicious disguised as friendly; and a second celebration, one where we will pay for someone else to cook the food and play with the children, probably ending in quiet and the buying of books.
the cat purrs in my lap. the house is quiet. somewhere i hear ernie making music, the long strands of his thoughts connected to stars and something cumulous. the tea kettle gives a rumble and gets to work. i consider the whereabouts of slippers, the birth of my brother’s daughter, and whether or not it will rain tomorrow.
i’m shine, i’m freshly minted
February 6, 2007 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
it seems colder in the house than out of it. the boys are buried beneath blankets, the pairs of their feet each touching the others as they dream different dreams in the same bed. our down comforter is being dry-cleaned for reasons with which i won’t horrify anyone tonight. a wrinkly woman in a valentine sweatshirt adorned with bears and hearts and the creepiness of lace slapped the random thirty-seven dollar cleaning price tag on my forehead. what more can i say than, “silence,” and then “ooooookey, dokey?” the bears on her pill-y sweatshirt (i hate the word “sweatshirt”) appreciated those words. jude, amazed that his hand cannot retrieve a giant gumball from the machine by sticking his fingers and hand up into the doorway, doesn’t notice the sweatshirt. henry doesn’t notice, either, too curious about the horrible dry-cleaning odor in the building.
we drive away and i mutter something about it being “idiotic.” jude chastises me for using the word “idiot” and i actually idiotically argue that i did not say “idiot,” but, the very different word, “idiotic.” both children are distracted by the convenience of gummy worms and the use of “unkind words” is forgotten.
today we kept house and tonight it feels nice to drink tea with the necessary sauciness of a saucer in a bed with white blankets. this afternoon the boys ate popcorn in front of the tv because the vacuum was sitting fat and full in the corner, ready to groan for the work to come. henry worked hard all day because of the thirty-seven dollar price that comes when little boys don’t put the freaking cat down so that it can go and pee in the proper place after a long night of snoring/purring. he didn’t complain, either, even though thirty-seven dollars doesn’t mean anything to him. i don’t want to be obnoxious about it, but i do try to tell him all that we could buy with thirty-seven dollars. there just really isn’t much, is there?
i think in pink and white and maybe brown polka-dottage and the construction of a mysterious chocolate dessert and something new to cook for my valentines. i also think about having two celebrations of love, one with all of us, a great circle of love with many sizes of fingers and hands that will involve spills and the necessary wallow of mess under jude’s chair, that will be made of a laugh and of food that does not have anything mushroom-suspicious disguised as friendly; and a second celebration, one where we will pay for someone else to cook the food and play with the children, probably ending in quiet and the buying of books.
the cat purrs in my lap. the house is quiet. somewhere i hear ernie making music, the long strands of his thoughts connected to stars and something cumulous. the tea kettle gives a rumble and gets to work. i consider the whereabouts of slippers, the birth of my brother’s daughter, and whether or not it will rain tomorrow.
a star in one eye
February 4, 2007 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
i’m having a hard time writing, thinking of words. it would be easier if i could say, “this morning i woke up and took the dog for a walk during which we saw a dirty pomeranian and several plastic topiary porch decorations,” or, “when we got to the car we realized that we had a flat tire and the grown-ups were more than slightly annoyed.”
if i were to outline my day with bullets pointing at what i ate for breakfast, the color of my socks, the monotonous strategies plotted to keep the mess at bay, perhaps there would be more to read and then, more of this week, this year would be recorded for posterity and the like. i think of sentences that bury their roots into my allotment of sand that i’ve sometimes robotically taken from one pile and piled into another, days stretching and zipping by without too much worry at all. i want to scroll and click my way through this book that this thing is becoming (annoying archival side-barrage testifying) and find something other than forgettable mornings and a list of hot caffeinated beverages drunk drunken in a day.
and so, it would seem, because i think that there should be more, the less that there will be. “last night i wondered what it is exactly that i really like to do,” i can write. and “this morning i was very crabby,” and, last of all, with no glitter or pluck, “if i don’t do something besides what must be done and what is expected to be done, i will not know what to do next and will do nothing, again.”
my grandmother keeps a journal in which she writes, “i bought pizza again,” and “this morning i ate cereal and drank coffee for breakfast.” an ongoing menu she keeps. she writes in large loops, and when you read it you feel detached. if ever i scrawl out in long and old-fashioned script the goings on of the day, i would hope that my grandchildren could read it and find more than “i tire of oatmeal.” but can i capture and pin down and tie to the trees in a line in the yard the bubble and pop and crash of boys that already talk of being adults, that ask me not to sing anymore, that use words like “rickety” and “just a sec,” that whisper politely that something on the plate looks to be extremely terrible? can i crush into fine blue powder and spoon into the plastic of a pill the smell of jude’s forehead when coming in for secrets and love? is there a way to keep from becoming an old woman who looks nothing like she did in picture and tale? my words aren’t strong enough, and because i am weak i will pocket the thought and all that will follow are sentences and maybe a wink, both using words like, “nice,” and “sleep,” and “not today.”
tonight i will bark with the great overdog that romps through the dark.
slush day
February 2, 2007 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
