water like a stone
November 28, 2007 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
the house is a mess from one end to the other. i normally have a hard time coping with enormous messes that cover the floor, messes that crunch and splatter, wads of paper in forgotten places, half-dressed kids sitting under couch cushions while eating crumbly bread with peanut butter (that i did not administer) on it, legos here, there, everywhere, laundry, clean, waiting for a free minute of peace to be folded, microscopic pieces from manipulative games removed from the cabinet, mixed together and discarded, dishes, tracked-in dirt, wet towels, smeared toothpaste, hardened play-doh, normally these things really stress me out. i’m not talking about dust, misplaced books, creative mess contained in one location. no, this kind of thing, fingerprints in places like the bedroom mirror (the handprints that are only seen from the bed when the lights are off in the bedroom but on in the kitchen), the baseboards in the kitchen, the disorder in the pantry, these things don’t bother me too much. it’s the day to day disasters that i can’t leave alone. maybe that’s good, maybe not.
today we ignored the mess (which wasn’t really here yesterday, it just accumulates faster than expected), baked more bread (whole wheat challah from the laurel’s kitchen bread book: so good, and so much of it! i didn’t know i was making two loaves until i was in the braiding stage), pulled out (first up the basement stairs, through a few rooms with mess scattered on the floors, then out, about) christmas decorations and went with it. there was lots of noise, too, music, and the squalling rest, as there has been in these days of cold and wet, days without park climbing and racing over rocks.
maybe christmas comes in winter to distract kids from the need to be running amok under tree and sky, help them forget with cookie baking, glitter spilling, package taping, garland stapling, light blinking, nativity telling, reindeer dash-awaying, music jingling, mistletoe kissing, winter crafting, and all other manner of reasonable mess making.
saved all my ribbons
November 26, 2007 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
the day wasted itself raining. early, in a crabby huff (waking up to a three year old loudly wallowing in a pile of corn flakes on the floor, that kind of huff), i sent the boys into the yard to play. it was wet, cold, but they twisted scarves around their necks and explored putting gloves on their hands, which they enjoyed because it had been a long time since the last time they had tried to stick three fingers into the pinky place. they didn’t last long out there, the coffee barely thinking about brewing before they tramped into the laundry room and made wet piles of clothes, gloves, scarves in the corner.
the rain started to fall in that way that makes you think it’s not really raining, the kind of rain that you don’t really even feel too much because you’re wet just being outside at all, the only proof of it being in the sound it’s making in the leaves, on the side of the house, the hood of the car.
i’m cold tonight, stealing ernie’s socks from his drawer (why are his socks so much better than mine?), kissing lola’s cold nose with my own. the call of the bed and its blankets just tossed into fluff hard to resist. a long day behind us, tomorrow promises no mistakes, at least to start, as they say. henry is coughing at the other end of the house and i wonder how long it will be before one, the other, the both of these stir-crazy, rained-out , driving-me-a-bit-insane-with-the-need-to-move boys will be running into my bed on their own cold tip-toes, crawling under, ernie and i unaware of it until we roll over on top of them in the night. not long at all.
how now
November 24, 2007 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
fall came late this year, so even though it was Thanksgiving, the farm wasn’t gray and wet and cold. the need for jackets was possible, occasional, afternoon sun coming in waves. jude fished, thankful minnows were squeezed gently and dropped to swim opalescent, disappearing. henry followed the older boys around, into the woods and back again. the pig was roasted and picked-at in the garage. a sorry deer was shot by a cousin and skinned by other cousins and we didn’t watch (much) of that. we drove (ernie drove, we clung to him for dear life) four wheelers through the woods, leaves in great magnitude were raked by children who fought over who got to work.
we stayed one night, two days. in retrospect, i wish i had eaten more of those pecan bars. ernie didn’t eat even one. there was no pumpkin pie so we’re making one tomorrow, even though the boys will only eat the cool whip on top. i always feel more domestic when i come back from the farm. tonight i’m baking bread (which i realized today i never do because it’s so hard to open the bucket of grain to grind the flour: am i really this lazy?), squash are waiting and hopeful on the counter, the twitch of the cat’s tail is something to watch and appreciate.
we stayed in scotty’s room (just don’t call him scotty) which was cat-fur free and quiet. i started over knitting that bib for lola, who will most likely be eating avocados she’s mashed herself by the time i finish the thing. we like to be at the farm, to feel the quiet in the trees, the lowing of the cows by night, the fuji apples always appearing cold, best, life without the purring traffic, the lights flashing against the glass, shadows that travel on the wall with each car coming by.
they shine for you
November 20, 2007 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
pursue
the opening of blinds on sunny mornings
holding hands with henry
lola’s head, her ears, her hair, the scent of them all
acorns with distinction
food that has been cooked by me in my house every day
those elusive hugs from jude
the burn of energy and pleasant ways to entice boys to do it
christmas list making
avoid
people with coughs
dead batteries on cameras, phones
talking to intimidating people
feeling crabby about mess
any possible encounter with pork rinds
running out of clean cloth diapers
having to vacuum the living room rug due to the inhalation power of the new machine that sucks the rug off of the floor in the process
the question “is she a good baby?”
snug in your waterbed
November 19, 2007 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
the senile dishwasher churns and belches tonight, reminding me that those dishes on the top rack are mostly likely going to be full of crumbs and sludgy water again. something is amiss about the dishwasher these days. my hands feel dry just thinking about her quitting on me. come on, you can do it, surely you have a few hundred more loads you can muster.
jude wore his first tie, the tie with the spouting whales that henry wore. henry has graduated to a tie with skulls on it, possibly inappropriate for church, but where else will he wear a tie? jude pretended to be annoyed with the tie but was secretly pleased. he wore it while eating a long lollipop, lick by lick. belts are only used in this house to hold weapons close at hand, so the shirts went untucked. i like them better that way, finding myself always untucking the accidental and intentional tucking that goes on here. it just seems so wrong, so uncomfortable, so not what wearing clothes should feel like for a long time, if ever.
ernie is out buying orange hats so that no one is mistaken for a deer when we go to visit grandpa’s farm for turkey and pig and that mysterious million dollar pie that always seems to be available when we’re there. i’m looking forward to grinding large amounts of coffee beans this week. for some reason, coffee in the drip coffee machine is really good at grandpa’s farm.
like a kite tied to a stick
November 16, 2007 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
i woke up this morning to the bells on the back door jingling enough to remind me of their purpose, whispering boys turning the knob to go out in the yard, the sun and glow of morning in front of them, the bag of marshmallows behind.
they’re excited for the bonfire of next week (”it’s a holiday, you know,” henry announces) at the farm, the one that follows a rowdy and terrifying use of shrieking, streaking firepoppers. henry remembers marshmallows and sparks and the sharpening of sticks, jude does not. today they were leaving the house to find sticks “for stabbing marshmallows.” there was no mention of fire.
i left lola and all the boys of the house for two hours today to party with someone else’s five year old. it has been decided that it is too early for such things, especially when the tire on the car decides to flatten during much traffic and cold winds. all was well enough at home, although lola would have given me a resentful look, to be sure, had she known how to make one.
i was nervous all day about leaving lola, leaving ernie with late afternoon needy boys and a potentially upset newborn, about the composition of minutes and actions taken that would make everyone succeed. a man in a car next to me was nervous for me, waving and pointing and enunciating at my tire until i opened the window and thanked him. the car sits in a slump in the drive, knowing that, today in particular, we don’t like her very much at all.
gusteau’s
November 15, 2007 | Filed Under ordinary | 2 Comments
tonight he comes to the table and, upon looking at the spinach linguine (yum!) on his plate, asks, in all seriousness and, with a reasonable amount of intrigue, “what? do we have to eat rubber bands?”
i’ve never fed him rubber bands or anything that people shouldn’t eat (well, this could be debated by the crunchier among us, tsk, tsk . . .) and i’m now wondering how bad things must have gotten when i was full of lola and could not do more than throw bland crackers (think: those horrible looking packages they sell to you for two dollars at the zoo to feed to designated animals) in the direction of their hungry faces.
gusteau’s
November 15, 2007 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
tonight he comes to the table and, upon looking at the spinach linguine (yum!) on his plate, asks, in all seriousness and, with a reasonable amount of intrigue, “what? do we have to eat rubber bands?”
i’ve never fed him rubber bands or anything that people shouldn’t eat (well, this could be debated by the crunchier among us, tsk, tsk . . .) and i’m now wondering how bad things must have gotten when i was full of lola and could not do more than throw bland crackers (think: those horrible looking packages they sell to you for two dollars at the zoo to feed to designated animals) in the direction of their hungry faces.
monica could not reach the moon
November 14, 2007 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
“today is clayton’s birthday,” i tell henry this morning as i check off the things he’s done for school, before sending him off to do his own thing, to play in a world that does not involve reading words and parts of words that use the short e. “did he invite me?” he asks, not understanding the miles between us, an ocean in earth and tree between. clayton is thirty today, one of all of the brothers younger than i, only i am not thirty yet, it seems. somehow thirty is older when someone else turns so. happy birthday, clayton. please invite henry next time.
the sun burns today but is met by the wind who has decided to fight back today, carrying the beam and twinkle upward and through each leaf of the neighboring maple, oak, the yet-to-really-yellow pecans. the glitter in the pavement of the street twinkles and flashes with the glass on the passing cars. i squint. lola burrows her face into the warm and shadowed.
jude is blue much of the day lately and has started waking at night and yelling for reasons unknown. his misery is hard to manage, annoying, laughable at times. it makes me wonder how God can stand all of our whining and moaning all of the time, thousands (not just one, two, three) of his children screaming, muttering their unintelligable requests, demands, accusations, offering a begrudging thanks because they feel like they have to, taking mercy and grace for granted day in and day out. it also makes me glad that God parents me better than i parent these kids in this house. thank you, God, for seeing only Jesus when you look at me, at jude, at us.
and i know you’re on the inside looking out
November 12, 2007 | Filed Under ordinary | 2 Comments
want
coca cola with cherry grenadine. it’s been too long, friend.
a decent fabric store in greenville
to cook things like this (so out of character for me!) often, and well
a very clean bathroom with very little effort
transformation of all of those national geographics into something more useful, lovely
a swing that hangs high from the tree and swings wide in the yard
more kids web pages to be like this
do not want
to smell gasoline for a long time
to continue to forget that those striped socks have an annoying hole in the toe
that stray cat to look at me the way she does
a kitten trophy rug, or anything taxidermically displayed
to wake up before seven tomorrow morning