Little Miss Homemaker

Last night Kate had a few minutes after her bath before she had to go to bed. Where most children might fill the time, say, assembling a puzzle or drawing a picture, Kate brought a paper and pencil over to Mark and asked him to help her write her shopping list.

Here’s what she needs:

• Carrots
• Beans
• Rice
• Noodles
• Chicken
• Dora cup
• Princess cup
• Baby stroller
• Video
• Computer
• New shoes
• Pet duck
• Baby carrier

Damn if she’s not comprehensive.

Which, honestly, is starting to make me look bad.

Last week we went for a what-the-hell-should-we-have-for-dinner late afternoon foraging walk. I tossed on flip flops, grabbed my sunglasses, wallet, and keys, stuck Paigey in the carrier, and was ready to roll. But, of course, nothing’s that easy. It takes far longer for Kate to ready her troops for a simple stroll through the ‘hood.

She had to change her baby’s diaper, strap and restrap him into his stroller, then collect and/or pack a few of the myriad purses, backpacks, paper and tote bags that she regularly rotates most of the loose smaller contents of our house through on a daily basis.

Kate’s bag-lady-like lifestyle is a bit quirky, sure, but generally doesn’t bother me unless I realize I can’t find something like my contact lens case. It means that it’s likely buried away deep in one of Kate’s overstuffed sacks, underneath a yellow rubber LIVESTRONG bracelet, a wooden toy orange juice container, a Diesel Bookstore bookmark, a hopefully-clean handkerchief of Mark’s, a reminder card from the dentist, a calico doll quilt, one or other of the small weird Beatrix Potter books, a baby shoe, two fake hundred dollar bills folded over and over and over into tiny squares, and a pair of Paige’s blue cotton tights.

Sometimes I need to ferret through three or four such bags until I make contact with my lost item. And although it feels good to find whatever’d gone missing, the whole experiene leaves me vaguely unsettled, like a mother cleaning up a long-neglected teen’s room—fearful of what I might see along the way.

I wish that game show Let’s Make a Deal was still on, where audience members could come down to play if they had things on them like a golf tee or a Dixie cup that the host would call out for. Katie would rock that show hard.

So aaaanyway, we were heading out on a walk. And as Paige and I waited by the open door, me tapping my foot My Three Sons-opening-credits-style, Kate—who insisted I called her Another Mama, not Kate—was  bustling about the house collecting her crazy lady crap, and hanging her overstuffed bags off the pink handles of her doll stroller.

Once we finally blessedly set off, we rounded a corner and Paige started squinting and squirming, getting a direct blast of sun in her eyes.

Kate: “Other Mama? Does Paigey need a sun hat?”

Me: “Yeah. Why… Do you have one?”

Kate: “Yes!”

And so we stopped in the middle of the sidewalk so she could untether a small calico purse, reach down to the bottom past a square of yellow fleece fabric and God knows what else, and extract Paige’s floppy pink and orange sun hat.

Perfect.

I’m not sure whether I should feel threatened by Kate often being more on top of this mother thing than I am, or just run with it and reap its benefits.

Someday maybe I’ll have wipes handy when her baby has one of its seemingly incessant “big stinky poops.” Then we can even the score.

Johnny Can’t Read Music

The girls and I got to spend an afternoon with my sister Judy and her adoptive Indian parents this week. And by the end of our visit I was convinced that everyone who doesn’t already have a set of these—Indian parents, that is—should get one. Judy’s no fool.

We ate an incredibly delicious home-made Indian lunch, and, not unlike our Italian kinfolk, the more we ate had a direct correlation to how delighted our hosts were. There was a lot of fretting over and playing with the children, and we capped off the afternoon with a cup of chai tea that was so warm and mellow and sweet it nearly caused me to curl up in Amma’s lap like a drunk cat sleeping in the sun. Finally we took a tour of the fabulous Eichler house’s equally fabulous yard, snapped a few photos of everyone with the girls on their laps, and called it a day.

What I was taken by in meeting these lovely folks was their warmth and welcome, and seeing how much a daughter my sister had become to them. But later on the phone, Judy also told me about Appa’s impressive background in academia, and Amma’s—and her parents’—staggering brilliance as musicians. Something for which her family is renowned in India.

Presenting, of course, the perfect opportunity for me to remark to my sister with my highest quality sarcasm, “Oh I get it! That’s why you two are so tight! It’s the whole music thing.”

One of my family’s favorite pastimes, aside from rhythmic throat clearing, unsnarling our hair in the morning, and doing laundry, is making fun of our profound musical ineptitude. No doubt I’ve mentioned that somewhere in this here blog before.

If we are not in fact all tone deaf, we’ve spent the better part of our lives believing ourselves to be. Oddly, from as far back as I can remember, my father has boasted about this as if he’s reporting my oldest sister was elected to the Senate. At any rate, it seems to have become a self-fulfilling familial prophesy.

Which, as you might imagine, has impacted our singing. And our staggering un-Von Trapp-ness can’t help but make me think of a meeting the four of us had with a priest the day after our mother died. We were planning the funeral program. And the priest, Father McSweeney (God bless him), a delightful world class Irish nut job, was enthusiastically, gleefully, talking us through some options of song choices.

He was waddling about the room at a frenetic pace, flipping through song books and clucking in his thick brogue, “Oooh, that’s a good one! A good one, indeed!” Despite our heavy sadness—or maybe because of it—he was determined (I resisted the urge to say “hell-bent”) to whip us into a little sing-along. So he suggested some old standard hymn that was beaten into our childhood brains and started in, beckoning to us vigorously with his arms to join in. We got through just a few verses before our collectively cracking voices had us cracking up laughing, and had old McSweeney bellowing cheerfully ceilingward, “He loves us all, no matter! He loves all our different sounds of praise.”

I guess it’s the closest you can get to having a priest tell you your singing sucks.

In my father’s stint years ago as president of his local Rotary Club, he was required at the start of each meeting to lead the group in singing “On the Road to Mandalay,” a tradition I find both charming and absurd. Anyway, Dad’s voice is so bad—and actually quite booming—that he decided quite early on that he’d lip sync the words for the sake of the group. Something that must’ve been obvious, but that no one called him on. (One of the rare times I can imagine my father determining that not talking was the best course of action. Yes, I’m my father’s daughter.)

In terms of actual instrumental training, as kids my sisters had a limited stint of uninspired piano-lesson taking. But by the time I arrived ten years later, my parents couldn’t summon the energy for me to go through those likely fruitless motions.

I’ve joked to Mark that my instrumental prowess is limited to playing the three-note “Hot Cross Buns” on the recorder. But truth be told, I’ve forgotten how to play even that.

It’s all my very long way of saying that I know I don’t get the music thing. And frankly, along with the other socially-alienating fact that I’ve never seen Star Wars, I’m pretty comfortable with it.

But then a couple weeks ago I bought a toy for the girls when I was at Target. The sad fact is, I rarely seem to think to but them toys. So I was pleased to have remembered that I have kids and kids like to play. And in that happy frame of mind I removed a little red plastic xylophone—you know the typical kiddie style-one with the different colored keys—from the box. It’s got the drumstick thingy attached to it by a string, I guess so you don’t lose it, or so your kid doesn’t swallow it and disembowel themselves from the inside.

And as I’m admiring this new plaything, which was certain to bring them hours of creative fun, this white paper fell out of the box.

I was dismayed. Yet a second look at the packaging confirmed that the toy is for children ages 18 months and up.

Now, is it just me, or am I not correct in assuming that in a little more than three months time, it’s unlikely that Paige will be able to utilize this music sheet? I mean, aside from the fact that she’s got the Bad Music Bruno Gene Mutation (albeit tempered by Mark’s musical skillz). Still!

Now, I’m no expert, but I couldn’t help but wonder if some kinda color-coded sheet music, or even one that identifies the letter notes that’re printed on the keys, might be more, uh, user-friendly?

Who knows. Maybe I’m totally wrong here, and come this summer, I’ll be walking past Paige’s room and will hear her pounding out a mean “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” on the xylophone. I’ll peer in to see her crouched down to follow along on the paper, perhaps tapping her foot to keep time.

I can only hope for as much.

Songs of Torture

My sophomore year of college I lived in a dorm near the DKE fraternity. And although much of what took place in their hazing process was, intentionally and gratefully, not common knowledge around campus, there was one component that year that the whole school was, uh, privy to.

Which was that they blasted the same bloody song OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN throughout the famously haunted (but that’s beside the point) Old Kenyon building where they lived, and blaring out onto the quad. To really fuck with the pledges, and anyone else who wasn’t hearing impaired in Knox County, sometimes they’d stop the song for a small stretch. Just long enough to get you really fired up that–sweet relief!–they were moving away from that particular form of aural abuse, and leading some goats into the building or something.

But then, they’d ruthelssly turn it back on. Whaling it extra special loud. And the entire campus would collectively seize up. Scraping at the sides of our faces wondering derangedly if they would ever show mercy on us, and hoping at the very least that whatever intangible social stature those pledges would gain as a result of it all, that it was really fucking worth it.

For years after when I’d hear the song I think I still twitched and gnawed on my lips a bit. I feared I might never shake the trauma.

But here I am, just weeks away from my can-ya-believe twentieth college reunion, and I’m thrilled to report that, as you might have noticed due to its omission–at this point I can’t even remember what that damn song even was.

Which thus far is the best mental yardstick to indicate just how freakin’ long it’s been since my college prime. Well, that or that the experimental mind-erasing procedure I had performed in Boston in ’97 really did the trick.

Heh.

At any rate, in his years as a Sports Illustrated reporter, Mark got to cover the ’96 Olympics in Atlanta. (And if you’d like a few commemorative duffel bags, t-shirts, or even a 100% rayon necktie from that event, I can happily hook you up.) Anyway, the bombing that year made the already overworked and sleep-deprived journalists there exponentially more overworked and sleep-deprived.

But outside the hotel where most of them were staying–where they’d retreat for the measly hours of sleep they’d get to have a night–there was a street vendor selling sodas, sounvenirs, and the retarded Izzy the mascot crap. The dude worked nearly round the clock and blasted that hateful hot hit which you’ve probably blacked out of your brain by now, “The Macarena.” He played it in an evil, heartless, endless loop.

And really just one hearing of that song when I’m not even mad for sleep makes me want to take a chop stick to my eardrums.

In the past couple weeks I’ve had occasion to think of these episodes. Unfortunately. All because of one greeting card. One of those open-it-and-it-plays-a-song cards, sent to Kate for Easter from her grandparents. (I won’t tell you from whose side of the family.)

Okay, OKAY! So it was from MY side of the family.

This card plays a very tinny version of a song whose nonsensical verses are, “Yummy yummy yummy, I’ve got love in my tummy, and I feel like I’m loving you.” Verses that at times seem sexually perverse to me, and at other times just an odd choice for how vaguely associated with Easter—candy eatin’, I guess—they are. I’ve had plenty of opportunities to ponder this.

Anyway, don’t get me wrong. This card is adored and beloved by Kate. It was incredibly sweet and thoughtful to have sent it to her. Every time she opens and closes and reopens that card—while eating breakfast, peeing, riding her bike, or leering up close to Paigey’s face—every single time, morning, noon, or night, it’s as though the fact that music emanates from it is a freshly exciting revelation. Something she isn’t certain will necessarily happen if she opens it again. So she needs to check.

That gal’s tenacious.

And even though I’ve had on the order of seven breakdowns where I’ve pleaded with her to take mercy on us and it’s only 6:47AM and Daddy is still trying to sleep and don’t you think that’s a little close to Paige’s face and maybe if we just sit down and eat a big pile of candy for a while that would be a fun way to take a little break from the card hmmm? Even with all that, when I cleaned up all our Easter crap a couple days ago, throwing away the already broken or rotten stuff and shoving the rest of it ceremoniously in a garbage bag for basement storage, I still left that card out for her.

Why? Because in a weirdly genuine I’m-happy-that-she’s-happy-even-if-it-makes-me-unhappy maternal way, I feel like with some intermittent intervention I can stick it out until she eventually hopefully tires of the damn card. Or, if there’s a God, it breaks.

Not that I’m setting my sights on it or anything, but if she ever wants to, that girl could DOMINATE a sorority some day.

I Could Have Told Him So

Fearful as I am to do so, I have a confession to make.

For some time now—several months, really—despite the fact that I’m a mother of a one- and three-year-old, I’ve been getting blissful, uninterupted nights of sleep. Just like normal people without kids get.

I mean, with the exception of a trip to Lake Tahoe a couple months ago, which had us all bunking in one room and therefore victims of Kate’s nocturnal verbal outbreaks (and door-banging trips to the potty), my blissful nighttime slumber could be in some kind of Serta Sleeper TV ad. Okay, so my hair gets a lot nappier from sleep than those mattress models’ apparently do, but STILL. What I’m sayin’ is we put those kids of ours to sleep in the evening, and God bless ‘em, we don’t hear from them again ’til morning.

So Saturday we visited our friends Kristen and Suneel and their delicious 5-month-old Jackson. (Total future husband material for Paige.) At one point Kristen turned her tired eyes to us, and looking almost uncertain whether she should even venture to do so, asked how sleep was for us at this point.

Now, I’ve passed through the portal into parenthood, and as part of that process I’ve been fully indoctrinated in Belief in the Mighty Power of Jinx. Particularly when it comes to discussions of successful sleep patterns. Aside from it being socially malodorous to brag about one’s child’s good sleep–especially to other potentially sleep-deranged parents whom you’d like to retain as friends–it also inevitably brings into play the potential for the good sleep spate to, well, shit the proverbial bed. For karma to spit in your eye and say, “Ten hours of straight newborn sleep, you say? Well here’s a night you won’t soon forget.” [Roll track of demonic laughter.]

This is all to say, as much as I wanted nothing more than to allay this new-Mama friend’s anxieties about how many years of crappy sleep she was staring down the barrel of, I was also—selfishly, I admit—fearful to even answer her question.

Blessedly, that night, despite having uttered aloud that our sleep was actually quite good these days, thank you, our familial sleep groove went unaffected.

But then, Mark had to duel with fate. And out of the blue in the kitchen last night, he mentions all casual and stuff, how we never even had to sleep train Paigey Wiggle in order to arrive at her current state of excellent sleep-through-the-nightery.

You think you know someone. But what ON EARTH would compel him to utter such a thing aloud?

Yeah, yeah, it’s painfully—exhaustingly, ahem—clear where this is headed. Which is to say that Paige decided to enter an unprecedented middle of the night cry-a-thon last night. In her 15 months of life the girl has not bawled as much as she did last night. There was cacaphonous wailing, and possibly even rending of garments, though it’s hard to tell with those feety pajamas. The girl had me out of bed three seperate times, alternately shoving my breast and/or a dropperful of Tylenol into her mouth to quell her insistent wake-the-whole-house-up-when-it-was-really-otherwise-quite-cozy-in-bed fury.

Finally I just decided to hold and rock her for roughly EVER until I was certain she was in a deep deep sleep and any small lurches of my body didn’t make her fear I was going to set her back into her crib and re-ignite the earsplitting wail. As sleepy as I was, it was pretty damn cute that a few times as she was about to doze off she’d wake herself up to reach her arm out to make sure I was still there.

Still, my sleeping uninterrupted would have been cuter.

The whole incident made me want to get in the car and drive like a crazy lady the hour-plus trip back to Woodside to pound on Kristen and Suneel’s door at 3:30AM—when, God knows, they may well have been awake with their baby anyway–to tell them how horribly terribly sorry I was to have forgotten the most important piece of parenting information I could ever hope to impart to dear friends such as them. Whenever it is that wee Jackson does start sleeping like a champ, for the love of God, DO NOT UTTER A WORD ABOUT IT BETWEEN YOURSELVES OR TO OTHERS.

Of Yoga, Yurts, and Republicans that Get You Thinking

Mark and his friend Christian often do this thing when they’re relaying events in the recent past. They continue rambling on about what happened beyond the point of, well, interest, until they finally wrap up by saying, “And now we’re back to the present.”

I’m not really sure what the genesis of this is—some decaying collegiate joke, no doubt—but like many things between those two I just nod and smile. I mean, aside from these little in-joke foibles, there’s little I can complain about with my husband’s husband. (This being a JOKE, Dad, since Mark and Christian are known to carry on like an old married couple.)

As for my present world, the book I’ve been obsessively reading whenever I have 30-plus seconds to myself (which averages to a 3-minute reading window) is Curtis Sittenfeld’s excellent American Wife. Of all random things, it’s the quasi-fictionalized account of Laura Bush’s childhood, running up through her utterly unanticipated stint as our very own First Lady. And believe it or not, she’s quite a sympathetic character. There’s friendship, tragic death, literary references, and even sex scenes! All in all, it’s good reading.

It’s the second selection for my new book club—a group I’m thrilled to report that with my girls at the ages they are now, I can solidly make the time commitment to be part of.

I’m not aware that I read book club books terribly differently knowing I’ll be talking about them later. But I guess there is a small part of me that underscores in my mind whatever weensy insights I’ve managed to muster along the page-turning way. And the one thing that I can’t help but come back to with American Wife, is this concept of how utterly surprising it was for Laura—or rather, Alice, the character who’s based on Laura B.—to one day call the White House home. At age 9, or 20, or even 41, she’d have never believed it to be her fate. (And really, married to HIM as she was, you can’t deny it’d come off as a fairly big shocker.)

On Friday I found myself at the dazzling nature-groovy gorgeous Green Gulch Farm Zen Center in Muir Beach. In a small yurt. In a downward dog. Or alternatively, chanting, “Ommmmmm.”

It having been a day-long yoga retreat which my friend and neighbor, Jennifer, told me about, and for which Mark graciously jumped through a fair amount of childcare hoopery in order to allow me to attend.

And despite the yogic practice of attempting to clear the mind, live in the present, and focus on one’s breathing, ommmming, or corpse-posing, I did find my mind wandering at times, thinking once during the morning session that this was a setting that not too far back I’d have never imagined myself in. Back when, at age 11 in Rhode Island, I was most concerned with how many layers I could don to perfect my turbo preppiness (a base of two turtlenecks of complimentary pastel hues being my secret weapon of success). Or at my Midwestern college at age 18, when acquiring a hand delivered invitation to a Deke party seemed to have equaled attainment of nirvana.

Even in my mid-twenties when I’d migrated to San Francisco like a big girl, my hummingbird-paced temperament was still so much the essential core of my me-ness. The thought of sitting in a room (nevermind a yurt) of strangers, eyes closed and in a cross-legged position for even three minutes would seem like some form of brutal custom-made Kristen torture.

Sure, my “and now we’re back to the present” moment is hardly on par with holding court in the White House or anything. It’s just that on Friday, as I reveled in hearing birds singing outside and strove to attain a perfect chest-opening Side Angle Pose—and wondered intermittently how Kate and Paige were faring without me all day—I also couldn’t help but think that my being in that setting seemed very, well I’m hesitant to even say it, but so very California. You know, for me to be chanting, and singing in Sanskrit, and partnering with unknown kindly long-haired men to enact prone spine-lengthening poses.

Really. Who’d a thought?

And my chaser thought that I really shouldn’t have had since by that point I definitely should’ve gotten back to focusing on the silent intention I’d set for myself that day or at least my Ojai breathing, was how very grateful I was to have somehow found my way there.

And so, as I gently pushed my chest upward into Cobra while drawing the tops of my legs down flat into the earth, I decided that years from now, when I find myself skulking around the White House kitchen for midnight snacks like it’s no big thing, I’ll have to make certain one of my agenda items is to clear out a section of, say, the Situation Room, and build a yoga studio there.

Or maybe I can just set up a little yurt in the rose garden.

Let’s Make a Deal

Like a United flight, we encountered delays this morning.

But ours weren’t due to weather in Chicago or some vaguely-described-so-as-to-not-make-you-worry mechanical issue. Ours were from what’s become a regular waking nightmare here at Casa McClusky–getting Kate dressed.

And so in an effort to expedite the process, and to reduce the number of tears shed by either her or me, I offered the girl a deal. If she put on a fresh pair of panties, she could watch Blues Clues.

It was by no means my finest hour as a mother. But it did result in me getting my desired outcome. A victory for me and the proverbial doctors-who-may-see-them everywhere.

But now as I crawl into bed, I’m fearful of the precedence that I might have set. And hopeful that the new day doesn’t deliver Kate, taunting me with a clean pair of Elmo undies dangling from one finger and muttering in some raspy tough-guy voice, “No Blues Clues, no panties, Lady.”

The View from Here

It’s Monday morning. And Paige is napping. And it’s warm and sunny and my laptop and I are curled up together on the front porch and the neighbor’s dog is barking and a steady stream of nannies are pushing stroller-loads of kids to the nearby park. And I’m looking at the flowering plants I bought recently–they’re hanging somewhat limply–and I wonder if amidst the myriad other things he did, Mark ever managed to water them this weekend.

Because, for three days and two nights–or really, three days and three nights of parenting when you consider the kids were asleep when I got home yesterday–I was on a blissful Moms Gone Wild weekend, with my fabulous far away friend, Julie.

This all-by-myself like a big girl extravaganza was my delightful Christmas gift from Mark, who as it turns out does have some appreciation for how hard my job can be, and the fact that despite not having a 401K, salary, or discernible career path, the position also lacks sick leave and vacation days. So, God bless him, I was given this sorely needed and greatly appreciated junket.

Now, some people might wonder if it’s kinda weird to suddenly find oneself kid-free with all the nose and ass-wipin’ I’m used to doing all day. You know, taking a look back at the empty carseats and having that unsettling feeling that you’ve forgotten something. But really, I supported a lifestyle of kidlessness for some 37 years. And I’ve found that not being responsible for anyone else is like riding a bike. Neglect it for a while, but when you do hop back on it’s like your legs just know how to pump those pedals.

And since the mere act of aloneness is part of the thrill of it all, I didn’t have to wait until I was perched on a bar stool in Breckenridge for my weekend hijinx to begin. The fun kicked in Friday afternoon, the moment I pulled away from the curb and turned the kiddie CD off and LIVE 105 on.

I mean, other mothers understand this. Out at breakfast that very morning, the Mama Posse was angling to get a little contact high off of my upcoming weekend.

“Okay, tell me everything you are doing,” Mary commanded. “Every plan you have. I need to hear it all laid out.”

And Megan: “You are going to be on the airplane with no children! You can nap! Read a magazine! I’d be happy with just the airplane ride alone.”

I hated to gloat, really, but all those things were true. All the other people on the long-term parkng shuttle were biding their time until they arrived at their terminals. In my new fancy-free untethered Mama mode I was in a mental limbo contest on a beach in Jamaica. That was the shuttle bus ride of a lifetime. (The driver, who didn’t even help with my bags, still may be wondering why he got such a handsome tip.)

The thing is, aside from all the foolish thrills of doing things like peeing without children yapping at my heels, the weekend was also filled with many legitimately fun and beautiful and delicious activities–things even a normal person would find particularly noteworthy and engaging.

We ate a dazzling meal in Boulder on Friday night, giving me one evening to admire our SF-transplant friends’ hip hip hip new house (no Haight Ashbury Victorian that), hang with the husband-folk, then cup the chins of their darling children before Julie also ripped off her mother uniform, smashed it down deep in a garbage can, and we hopped into the car to four-wheel footloose to Breckenridge.

It snowed! We got 90-minute hot stone massages! We sat at the canonical ain’t-this-livin’ Mexican restaurant drinking the requisite margaritas and taking silly pictures of ourselves. I bought a pair of barely-can-breathe skintight jeans that have those super faded creases at the crotch and buttons on the back pockets because sometimes it’s fun to dress like a 14-year-old when you’re 41 just because other women at the store tell you how hot you look and you believe them, damn it. We got mochas at the World’s Quaintest Starbucks, housed in a little yellow cabin with dark green shutters and a wee front porch. So cute you could pinch its cheeks. We bought matching black hipster hats that managed to fit our small small heads. And after drinking more than two but less than five margaritas, we went to a bar that had pool tables, and even though it should have happened, when we walked in no one handed us arm bands that said ‘chaperone’ to wear. All those kids were actin’ like it was okay that WE COULD HAVE BEEN THEIR MOTHERS, and were just letting us sit there nicely with them having exactly what we didn’t need (more alcohol) but wasn’t the point of the whole weekend about us getting ourselves some of what we didn’t really need anyway?  (Case in point, the aforementioned jeans.)

Oh there were other things we did. Like slept until 10AM, thankyouverymuch. But really, I don’t need to continue to rattle on about how I read the entire way on the flight back. Because, even though I’m back from Breckenridge and my hangover is almost nearly altogether behind me, my Moms Gone Wild weekend is still lingering. I’m still feeling it out here on the front porch where in a few minutes Paigey will likely wake up and we’ll figure out what groceries it is we might need, and whether we should walk or drive to get Kate from school, and if there’s maybe time to pick up some Easter Bunny supplies along the way.

I’m back in saddle. I’ve got this routine nailed. There’s not much new in these parts since I left, but the familiar views I’m so used to seeing from here have taken on a fresh new sheen.

Thank you, Mark. This was the best Christmas ever.

Don’t Cry for Me Chopping Onions

My Aunt Mary, who was my neighbor growing up in Rhode Island–and who my sisters and I call “aunt” even though she ain’t blood kin–is one of those dazzling people who children instantly adore.

At an amazingly spry 90 years old, she remembers every word to seemingly every children’s song, including the little hand gestures. Kate was still an infant when she met her for the first time, and even then she was enraptured. Today, the love is more about the home-baked cakes Kate’s come to know Aunt Mary always has on hand.  She serves up big slices with glasses of milk, and Kate sits blissfully on the same wooden stool at the same yellow linoleum counter where my sisters and I used to preside.

Aunt Mary is nothing short of a legend. I’m so happy my kids have gotten to know her. I just wish her wonderful kitchen wasn’t now so many miles away.

So, back when I was the one begging baked goods, Aunt Mary used to tell us there was a little girl, clearly some sort of ghost-girl (though she never quite spelled that out) who lived in her attic. She said her name was Isabelle Onnabike—which just a few years ago I realized was a pun for ‘Is a bell on a bike?’ I think she must have found that funny, but maybe didn’t realize we weren’t in on the joke. Or perhaps she knew we didn’t get it and that was what delighted her.

Another thing I remember her often saying, or rather singing, was, “I’m a lonely little petunia in an onion patch, and all I do is cry all day!”

I’m sure there are other verses to this odd song, but as I said, she’s the one who remembers the words to these things, not me.

Anyway, I thought of that ditty the other day since I seem to somehow be channeling Heloise and her tactics for avoiding the onion-cutting weepies.

Kate’s old nanny came over one day last week to provide childcare and psychological relief for me while Mark was out of town. I also managed to convince her to whip up a batch of her chicken and sweet potato curry for us. So I got a couple dinners out of the deal too.

When she arrived she enlisted Kate’s eager help with the cooking. Her first instructional comment being, “So first we need to put the onions in the refrigerator so they’ll get cold and we won’t cry when we cut them.”

Huh. Who knew?

Then on Saturday, when Randy came over to do some front porch sitting, we were drinking iced tea—as one does on a front porch (unless it’s an hour when one should be drinking alcohol, which, sadly, it wasn’t quite yet). There were quotes or fun facts or something written in our bottle caps, and I actually decided to read mine. It said that if you chew gum while you’re cutting onions, you won’t cry.

Randy thought it was bullshit.

As for me, I don’t have the energy—or enough interest, frankly—to test either tip.

I’m just curious why the universe is sending me so many pointers on this issue. Perhaps it’s time for me to rejoin the workforce? And I’m going to be pulling long shifts of KP duty, peeling potatoes and chopping onions?

Or maybe I’ll be reincarnated, some hopefully far-off day, as a lonely little petunia in an onion patch?

Hard to say how my immersion in onions will manifest itself, but it seems prudent for me to keep these tactics—and my old ski goggles—handy, just in case.

Songs about Stars

A few hours ago Mark staggered through the door, finally home from his European business trip.

It was uncanny how Paige decided to start barfing just hours after his departure Tuesday morning, and maintained a steady stream of miserable maladies straight through to today, when I had to arrange a weekend doctor appointment for her inconsolable (and uncharacteristic) bawling.

Oddly, the doctor couldn’t find a thing wrong with her, which I could tell was bugging him. Diagnostic performance anxiety, I guess. I should have just told him she was trying to maintain a high level of drama and neediness up until her father got home.

When she wakes up tomorrow I’ll bet the college savings she’ll be pink-cheeked, perky, and all smiles. Daddy’s little girl.

The temptation to swan dive into self-pity when I was mopping up vomit while Mark dined in a room hung with Picassos and Chagalls was great at times. I won’t lie. But I know Paige didn’t set out to make my solo parenting stint extra challenging. (That’ll come when she’s a teenager, right?)

And through it all I did manage to find the silver lining to a week’s worth of Just Us Girls. The one thing I learned about myself is that it’s my instinct to move a puking child. Why do I do that? While holding a baby who is spewing forth, whatever reason would I have to want to walk her through other rooms of the house? Oh wait, honey, you didn’t get any on the hall carpet, let me quickly usher you through there!

On two occasions, instead of limiting the, well, splash zone, I took long circuitous pathways through the house to eventually get to a toilet. By which point Paige was essentially dabbing at the corners of her mouth with a napkin and giving me a well-I-feel-MUCH-better-now-that-that’s-over look.

Fool me twice! And as I was on my hands and knees maniacally Formula 409ing every visible surface, I started chanting an internal don’t-move-the-puker don’t-move-the-puker mantra. But it was like when someone always makes the same kind of nasty or hurtful or weird comment to you, and even though they’re a repeat offender you still find yourself so stunned you never manage to bust out a zingy retort. And then in the shower some morning you decide you’re not going to take it any more, damn it, and you craft a brilliant scathing response. But then you lie in wait to defend yourself and they never come back at you. Aaaargh!

Which is all to say that once I had my stay-rooted easy clean-up baby barf approach all mapped out, she moved onto other gastric issues and didn’t upchuck again. Figures.

And despite the weird role reversal of Paige workin’ some illness drama and getting all the attention, it was Miss Kate–the one who’s usually with top hat and cane doing jazz hands up in yer face–who stole the show this week in the sweetest quietest way.

I almost never put Katie to sleep any more. With Paigey still doing the pre-sleep boob thing, it makes Mark and my division of bedtime labor an obvious one. But on my own I put Paige down first, then Kate and I run through her bedtime routine.

Aside from the realization that, despite her overflowing bookshelf, she often wants the same books I read her during the day read again at night, I noticed for the first time the glow-in-the-dark stars Mark painstakingly mapped out on her ceiling. If you set aside your jaded they’re just those glowy star stickers mindset, and lie down on the bed, take maybe the first relaxing breath you’ve had all day and gaze up at them, they really are quite beautiful.

Our post-reading, pre-nighty-night moments only lasted a few minutes. But that first evening, marveling at the beauty of the stars and giving Kate a fresh interest in them, I realized she has yet to go camping and to experience the wonder of sleeping outdoors. (Something I regretfully never did myself until my twenties.) And so, whispering–as I was directed to so as not to wake her babies–I explained what sleeping in a tent that’s open to the sky is like, and promised her that we’d do that together soon, while assuring her that, no, there aren’t any tigers that come to eat you when you go camping, and leaving out the part about how maybe bears will.

The next night, Kate capitalized on her ceiling stars, an asset she knew at that point impressed me. The moment the light was out she pulled me down on the bed imploring, “Look at the stars, Mama. Look at them!” I had to remind her to keep her voice down for the barracks full of sleeping dolls lined up under small blankets all along her floor.

On Night #3 the stars were still cool and all, but what really moved me was having my little bundle of three-year-old energy in a rare sleepy snuggy mode. The girl who, understanding full well the power she wields over her adoring mother, rations hugs and kisses like bottles of bourbon during Prohibition. The same gal who recently made the weird world-weary “I have no love left to give” remark—odd and adult-like enough to make me wonder if she’s been Tivoing As the World Turns behind our backs.

Anyway, somewhere in the course of the week she determined that once the lights went out, after a brief period of admiring the constellations, she’d roll over, back herself up to get really close to me, and request I sing her a couple ditties. Namely, “Silent Night” and “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” (Note the theme she’s going with?)

Of course, I needed to whisper-sing, since God knows her babies are extremely sound-sensitive sleepers, despite what I’ve told her about having it be preferable to get them used to sleeping without having to tiptoe around them. But does she ever listen to her old-fashioned mother? Noooooooo.

Anyway, let’s just say that there are notes towards the end of “Silent Night” that I struggle with. And whisper-singing only seems to exacerbate my cracking voice. But Kate just burrows into my side quiet and listening. She doesn’t seem to mind my singing voice. And for the sweet few minutes of snuggles it affords me, I don’t either.

Kate and I are wired the same way. Whatever it is we’re doing we’re always busy busy busy. We’ve got things to do, places to go. But this week reminded me that I need to carve out more time for the two of us to stop and do some star-gazing together.

And while I’m at it, I should come up with a few more songs about stars to add to my repertoire.

Yo, William Safire

Magazine obsessives that we are, even Paigey subscribes to something. And the mags, like all of Paige’s possessions, Kate immediately requisitions for her own amusement, until she eventually loses interest. Then the moment Paige so much as glances in the direction of whichever discarded item, Kate reclaims it, dragging it back to her bedroom lair, where Paige will be lucky to ever lay eyes on the thing again.

Some day we’re hoping that Paige will have her own toy.

So last night I was putting Kate to sleep and reading her Paige’s newly-arrived magazine, a publication that’s geared towards giblets far younger that Little Miss Precocious. Despite that, as Paige’s property it was being processed by Kate, and was still being held for inspection and assessment.

The last page had a picture of a gorilla on it.

“G is for…” I said, leaving her to fill in the blank. Lately, she’s been super curious about letters and words and such.

Looking up out of the corner of her eyes she said slowly, “Geeeee is foooooor… Gelephant!”

Well, yes Kate. Oddly enough, I guess that’s true.