I try not to use my blog to rant about life’s trivial annoyances. But today I’ll risk sounding like a pouty child. This morning, a series of minor nuisances really ticked me off.
It began around 6:20, when I applied myself, with much concentration, to the vexing mystery of the moment—how to get the little rubber ring to stay put on the lid of my daughter’s new thermos. I persisted, but had no success. The bell of the toaster oven dinged. Because I had devoted too much pointless effort to the thermos, the mini-bagels I had been toasting for D’s breakfast were burned beyond rehabilitation.
It was at this inopportune moment that my husband wandered blithely into the kitchen. He remarked, in all innocence, that he couldn’t understand why D, who is in the process of choosing the classes she will take next year in high school (high school!), needs to continue studying English. She can read. She’s a good writer. What more does she need to know about English?
That comment, following so quickly on the heels of my thermos and bagel difficulties, was the last straw. My poor fragile camel’s back cracked sharply in half. Some say, I responded, through slightly clenched teeth, that there is value in literature. While reading good books is unlikely to lead to a well-paid career . . .no . . . it’s likely to ensure the absence of a well-paid career, it offers some help in coping with life’s disappointments. I stopped there. I did not add this further petulant bitterness: that reading offers the possibility of occasionally eking out some small measure of joy in a world rife with uncooperative thermos rings, annoying toaster ovens and clueless husbands whose idea of enlightening reading is an online windsurfing forum. H wisely kept quiet until he left for work.
And then Kiko and I went out for our walk. Another lovely light snow had fallen. I expected that the walk would lighten my mood. But no. Paved surfaces were far more slippery than I had expected, and Kiko insisted on attempting a break-neck pace, determined to run, if not in the road, then as close to it as possible, where the cars were hurtling by us more aggressively than usual. The salt from the road frequently stung his paws, prompting him to limp flamboyantly, one foot in the air, yet without lessening his speed. I had to repeatedly kneel down to brush the snow from his paw pads. An icy, gusty wind whipped the snow into my eyes, and the blue glare of the sun on the white ground was blinding. My ears were wet and freezing under my scarf, while my hands were too hot in my mittens. I was reminded vividly of why I find skiing so unpleasant. Our morning outing was an ordeal to be suffered through.
On a happier note, it sure is good to be back home. Alone, except for my silent dog, now sleeping peacefully in another room.
H telephoned later, warning me about the icy roads and clearly trying to appease my irrational meanness. I’m feeling better now. As Gilda Radner’s Roseanne Roseannadanna used to say: Never mind.
We woke up this morning, unexpectedly, to snow. It wasn’t a lot of snow, but it was enough to cover the yard and nicely powder the trees and shrubs, to give the world a sort of winter facelift. It’s been ages since we’ve seen snow here in northern Virginia, so it was a welcome sight. Schools were delayed two hours, giving my daughter, a snow fanatic, the chance to enjoy it. The snow piled up prettily on the nandina berries, above.
Today’s snow is pleasant, attractive and manageable. I don’t miss the winters of constant snow, as my daughter does. When she was in preschool and kindergarten, seems like every Friday from December through February brought just enough accumulation to shut down the schools. The prospect of another snow day overjoyed her as much as it exhausted me. I don’t look back fondly on the years of blizzard after blizzard. I hated the many transportation worries. Will the schoolbus make it through? Will the steeply winding road home be passable? Should I cancel that appointment? What havoc will be wreaked by those drivers who have no business venturing out in such weather? Will my husband get stuck behind someone who is unwisely inching up the long hill, again? Will D and I be left to try to shovel the driveway alone, anxiously awaiting roadside updates from H?
The snowy weather ceased, of course, once H bought a snowblower. While he’s been itching to give it a try, I wouldn’t mind if he doesn’t need it again this winter. Or, maybe, to please him and D, he could use it just once. For their sake, I wouldn’t mind one lovely deep snow. While I’m wishing, I’ll wish for the flakes to start falling some Friday night after we’re all safely home.
The yard was covered, just barely, with snow. The trees and bushes were powdered white.
Kiko seemed to have completely forgotten that he had ever experienced snow before. He found it strange but exhilarating.
The first glimpse of the sun in the sky this morning could have been lifted from a Currier and Ives print.
As a toddler, our daughter’s favorite playthings were the various trappings of Christmas. She had little use for actual toys if holiday decorations were at hand. This led to occasional minor heartbreaks when fragile tidbits fell to pieces in her insistent little fingers, but generally she knew how to handle with care.
The first year that I unpacked the gingerbread village in Virginia, D was at my side, bubbling with excitement. She greeted each structure with much admiration, and I was duly flattered. She helped me arrange the buildings, some in the center of the dining room table, others atop the hutch. D could spend hours sitting on the table, setting up various inhabitants among the houses and churches, talking to herself, happily lost in her imagination. The village might host our clothespin nativity figures one day. The felt Christmas mice, or a crowd of Polly Pocket dolls might have the run of the place the next day. The possibilities were nearly endless, just like a child’s busy, growing mind.
D proved to have a knack for creating attractive baked goods. At age three, she was a surprisingly skilled sugar cookie baker. She turned out to be a natural with a pastry bag; her royal icing decorations were top-knotch. Before long, she was asking to help me make a gingerbread house. I realized that she would, indeed, be a capable assistant.
Our first mother-daughter collaboration was a modest cottage. I gave my daughter fairly free reign in terms of decoration, so it was a colorful dream of candy and icing. The next year, we decided to go big. We made an elaborate, turreted gingerbread castle. It was an appropriately exuberant candy palace for a girl who chose to wear a different princess costume every day.
Because I couldn’t face the daunting task of properly sealing, packing and storing the gingerbread village, it became a permanent display in our playroom. Our old house, as I’ve said before, is lacking in closets, and our basement used to flood with every hard rain. The absence of the perfect spot to store the village was a good excuse to simply keep it out all year long. D was glad to have it as a constant companion. Every new holiday brought another chance to redecorate. Our Christmas village had become a town for all seasons.
D, nearly three, arranges the clothespin Mary and baby Jesus on the roof of the thatched cottage.
It’s an easy and logical progression from pumpkin to jack-o’-lantern. Mother/baby Halloween parties across the country are crowded with crawling, crying, babbling, drooling, toddling jack-o’- lanterns. Our first Halloween event was typical.
The three jack-o’-lanterns at our Halloween playgroup party are assembled here for a photo opp. The middle pumpkin took offense, perhaps at the indignity of being sandwiched between two other pumpkins.
She continued to protest, loudly and forcefully. The other two pumpkins seemed mildly interested, at best.
After the party, D relaxed at home by quietly ripping the flaps off a seasonal pop-up book.
We reused D’s jack-o’-lantern costume on her second Halloween. As we had expected, our not-quite-two-year-old voiced no protest at having worn that same old thing last year. On her first Halloween, she was not yet walking, and the costume proved cumbersome for a crawler. Here, at our Gymboree party, she enjoyed being a jaunty pumpkin on the move, walking, running, jumping, and bouncing.
On D’s first Halloween, we went with some of our playgroup friends to an afternoon celebration geared to young children at the local mall. We couldn’t justify trick-or-treating on behalf of a baby in a stroller. But on year 2, we hit our neighborhood. Up to this point, I had limited our daughter’s exposure to candy. She got a few sweet treats, but, as the baby books advised, not many. That Halloween, however, the jig was up. The great wealth of the candy universe opened up to her like a treasure chest unearthed, and she rejoiced. While Kit-Kats were initially her favorite chocolate, she quickly developed an eclectic, enthusiastic palette. Here, she sits in a trance-like state savoring a lollipop, the contents of her trick-or-treat pumpkin spread around her in what was then the bareness of our kitchen.
When my daughter and I were choosing our Halloween pumpkins last week at a pleasant local farm market, we were surrounded by parents photographing their little ones among the seasonal displays. Babies and pumpkins look good together; it’s a natural fit. Both tend to be round, fat, cute and firm. Facebook is understandably full of adorable pumpkin/baby duos this time of year. Our baby is no longer pumpkinesque, which is fortunate, considering she’s nearly fourteen. But I’m prompted to look back on the years when she was, very much so.
On our first trip to the pumpkin patch with our daughter, the chill of the late afternoon took us by surprise. We had dressed D in soft overalls and a Scandinavian-style fleece jacket, the first of a series that my mother would sew for her over the years. But either Mama hadn’t yet made the matching fleece hat, or we didn’t think she’d need it. Her baseball cap clearly didn’t keep her warm, and her lack of mittens didn’t help either. Her little feet must have been freezing, in lightweight cloth tennies. In these photos, it’s painfully evident that the kid, not quite ten months old, was borderline miserable but making the best of a bad situation. She looks as though she’s thinking Where are we? What are these cold round shapes? Why do they make me sit on such scratchy stuff or on a hard, icy seat? I do, however, rather enjoy being pulled around on this thing.
Here, D is wedged in on the Radio Flyer between pumpkins and the bulky camera bag we were never without during those early years. We had bought our first video camera in anticipation of our new baby, and, like so many new parents, we filmed our growing child during unremarkable moments. Look! She’s tilting her head! Look! She’s blinking her eyes! She’s lifting her hand! Amazing!Marvelous! No doubt we have extended live footage that documents her discomfort on this outing even more clearly.
The next year, we made sure to choose a warmer day for pumpkin picking. Here is our girl surrounded by pumpkins on another red wagon. Despite the more comfortable temperature, she still doesn’t appear to be very happy. But I’ve never appreciated a photographer’s insistence on BIG SMILES! I remember this day as being a fun-filled one. I’m hoping our baby, despite her conspicuous lack of a big smile, nevertheless enjoyed herself. I resolve to think she did, because in the years to come she would look forward enthusiastically to pumpkin patch visits.
After our return from the railroad tracks, the predicted rain was not yet falling, so we walked past broad flat fields to the Ford Farm Market, a showcase of pumpkin glory and diversity. On this beautiful old family farm, Tom Swain, a former middle school science teacher, grows a vast variety of pumpkins and gourds. Signs proclaim the availability of pink pumpkins. Indeed, some are peachy-pink. There are pumpkins in nearly every conceivable earthy hue, including white and many shades of yellow, orange and green. There are also multi-colored varieties, some speckled, some striped, some uniquely patterened. The range of sizes is equally wide, from tiny palm-sized pumpkins to enormous giants, and everything in between. In years past, the largest Ford Farm pumpkins have topped 1,000 pounds. Tom’s wife Sharon is a pumpkin carver of great skill and imagination. Each year she creates a series of gigantic, intricately designed masterpieces. The family’s extensive and charming collection of Halloween decorations is displayed in the barn.
We made no pumpkin purchases because we would soon be flying back to Virginia, although D bought an apple for the walk back. A cold rain was falling steadily by then, but our cheery dose of Ford Farm fall spirit sustained us along the way.
In front of the old farmhouse, more pumpkins, including some of the giant ones Sharon Swain typically carves.
A colorful celebration of roadside vines and wildflowers.
When I was young, I spent my summer days
Playing on the track.
The sound of the wheels rollin’ on the steel
Took me out, took me back.
Big train, from Memphis. Big train, from Memphis. Now it’s gone, gone, gone, gone, gone, gone.
–John Fogerty, Big Train from Memphis
For many of those who grew up hearing the whistle and roar of passing trains in the night, the sounds evoke home, family and childhood. My husband and I each became accustomed to the music of the trains, and we miss it here in Virginia. When we return to Rochester or Atlanta to visit his parents or mine, we savor the familiar, comforting sounds of the train.
H and his childhood friends really did spend their summer days playing on the tracks and beneath the adjacent highway overpasses, at least when they were not deep in the neighborhood woods. The tracks are easily accessible from his sister’s house in Rochester. If we have time, we head over to see what’s new and what’s as it always was. It’s a particular joy for H to explore the area again with his daughter by his side. She appreciates his tales of boyhood adventure as well as the desolate beauty of the landscape along the tracks.
D was delighted to find this sturdy rope well-anchored to the underside of the bridge.
The unruly landscape bordering the tracks gets a beauty treatment of fall colors.
A mingling of the seasons: touches of gold and green among the fallen brown leaves.
D negotiates the tangle of weeds as she emerges from down under and years gone by.
This past weekend we went to Rochester to celebrate Grandma’s birthday. In between the frequent meals, the snacks, the cookies and the birthday cake, we managed to squeeze in an afternoon walk in the woods. My husband wanted to show our daughter a spot much loved by him and his boyhood friends. Enjoying a freedom from adult supervision nearly unknown to kids these days, they met there on their bikes after school. Using found lumber and fallen trees, they built hideouts and forts, which they outfitted with discarded furniture. They shot their BB-guns at cans (and occasionally, at each other, but with a strict one-pump rule). They made campfires for roasting hot dogs and for the sheer joy of watching things burn. Responsibilities were divvied up, and H brought the explosives. (It’s no coincidence that he went on to study combustion in grad school). He hadn’t set foot in these woods for decades, and he was worried that they had been developed or modified beyond recognition.
We were relieved that the entrance to the woods, several streets away from H’s childhood home, was just as he remembered. As we walked, it became apparent to him that some paths had been widened, neatened, or rerouted. But thankfully there was no sign of encroaching development, no nascent parking lots, shopping malls or townhouse complexes.
The weather forecast had predicted a full day of rain, but early morning showers had given way to a sunny afternoon. The light on the turning leaves suffused the canopy with a golden glow. The woods took on a magical, enchanted aspect. Our daughter appreciated their appeal as keenly as H had when he was her age.
Rochester’s fall palette was bright and varied. The yellows and oranges of the trees were especially brilliant.
The ground was carpeted with green moss and colorful fallen leaves.
Perfectly formed mushrooms, the small white kind that fairies rest on in childrens’ books, were a frequent sight underfoot among the leaves.
Beech trees, their leaves just beginning to turn yellow.
The kindness of trees: one member of this group of trees, having lost its base, is supported by its neighbors.
Our ultimate destination was the secluded pond where H and his friends had focused many of their boyhood activities. D and I followed H as he wandered, searching uncertainly through the swampy, heavily tangled brush, looking for landmarks to point the way, such as the tree on which they had carved their names. As my feet got soaked, I regretted not stuffing my hiking boots into my suitcase. Repeatedly, the pond wasn’t where H thought it should be. He began to fear we wouldn’t find it. Finally, with the help of the GPS system on his phone, he located it. It looked the same as it had all those years ago, H said, except for the greater accumulation of algae on its surface. A small boat was tied up in the reeds by the shore, suggesting that the pond continues to be the haunt of local explorers.
The walk back to Grandma and Grandpa’s house was a happy one. It was enormously satisfying to see that every once in a while, despite the fleeting pace of time and so-called progress, we can return to a place that still matches up with its treasured memory.
I have the perfect mother-in-law. The only down side to this is that I’m unable to participate in the swapping of mother-in-law horror stories. I’ve heard many such accounts, and other than gasps of incredulity, I have nothing to add. I’ve listened in amazement to tales of the mother-in-law who “helps” with the new baby by bellowing orders, complaints, and increasingly outlandish requests from a command center on the family room sofa. I’ve heard about the M.I.L. who, determined to ensure that her son’s house run on her rules or not at all, regards each visit as an opportunity for a hostile takeover. I’ve listened to anecdotes about the M.I.L. whose sensitive temperament is constantly wounded by imagined slights tossed off by a cruel daughter-in-law. And I’ve heard everything in between.
With my mother in law, there is no drama. She is sweet, good, and uncomplicated. She is kind, thoughtful and intelligent. During visits to our home, she asks how she may help. She is not overbearing. She does not insist, but she never offers out of empty politesse. It has taken me a while, but I’ve learned to accept her assistance. I come from what may be a predominately Southern tradition of automatically refusing the first few offers of guests’ help, thereby forcing them to insist or be considered rude. Now, when Grandma* asks if I need help with dinner, I tend to say Yes, please! She is a calm, easy presence, and it’s a pleasure to share the house, and the chores, with her.
Like everyone in H’s family, his mother welcomed me warmly at our first meeting, now over twenty years ago. She has never implied (as some mothers of sons are known to do), that no living woman could be a worthy companion of the god-like boy-child she birthed. She has a deservedly high opinion of H, and she has always treated me as his equal.
H’s mother is a loving grandmother to our daughter and to her other four grandchildren. Gentle and fun, she laughs easily, and she remembers what it was like to a child. I’ve heard about grandparents who cannot be trusted with their own grandchildren. This was never an issue with either set of my daughter’s grandparents, thankfully. When D was nearly three, my husband and I, along with my parents, took a trip to France, leaving our daughter in the care of Grandma and Grandpa. We missed our baby girl terribly, but we had no worries about her welfare, either emotional or physical, during those ten days. We knew she was in devoted and capable hands.
Grandma’s attitude is generally one of meekness, and some might take her for a pushover. This, however, is not the case. When she feels strongly that righteousness is on her side, she is tough, patient and determined to persevere. One year, when H’s windsurfing board went missing in Cape Cod, she summoned Grandpa to accompany her on a walk. With slow, thorough deliberation, she surveyed the property, until she discovered H’s board leaning up against the wall of another cottage way across the green. Thanks to her gracious yet firm intervention, H’s board was soon being carried back to its rightful place by those who, no doubt, had removed it.
Our daughter with Grandma at Cape Cod. In D’s younger years, she always urged H and me to go out for date night during our vacation, so she could enjoy a full evening of food and fun with Grandma and Grandpa.
Grandma is always ready for a game with a grandhild, whether it’s air hockey, Chinese Checkers, Candyland or Chutes & Ladders.
Grandpa is a lucky man, and he knows it. He has Grandma by his side, no matter what. During their long marriage they’ve had their share of hell and high water, in addition to many joys. They are a formidable team, and together, with their strong faith in God’s love and grace, they know they can weather any storm. Grandma has a gift for finding and sharing that kernel of sweetness within the tough husk of the bad.
Thank you, Grandma, for enriching the lives of all those you touch. Happy Birthday, and many more to follow!
*I address my mother-in-law by her first name, which is an unusual, very pretty name. It suits her. But here, I will refer to her as Grandma. When I wrote about H’s father, her husband, I referred to him as Grandpa (June 2012), so I’ll be consistent.
This year, H’s sister and her husband brought their three-month old baby to Cape Cod. We were not so brave. We waited until our daughter was two and a half. The year before, we had attempted our first family beach trip, to the Outer Banks, just the three of us. While it was a joy to experience the sun and sand from D’s fresh perspective, it was not a vacation. The demands of our beautiful child, limitless as always in those early years, were more difficult to satisfy, being away from home. We were simply caregivers in an alien setting, and there was minimal opportunity for relaxation or enjoyment. When D was awake in the hotel, which was most of the time, H worried she would awaken or annoy our neighbors. On the rare occasions when she finally succumbed to sleep, these same neighbors typically awakened her and annoyed me. There was great collective frustration all around.
That trip made me reassess the Cape Cod complex that H’s family has visited for over thirty years. Some cottages are covered in white clapboard, others in weathered cedar shakes. All are small but charming. They cluster, like the homes of a compact village, around two spacious central greens and a pool. It’s timeless, quintessential Old Cape Cod, exactly the picture conjured by that 1950s Patti Page song of the same name. An immensely wide beach, unusual for Truro, provides a buffer zone from the water. Rather than the pounding surf of the Atlantic, there is the relative tranquility of the bay. It suddenly hit me that this was a decidedly welcoming environment for small children and their parents.
One of the greens, empty in the early morning, but soon to fill with friends.
Before the narrow boardwalk was built, about ten years ago, the trek to the bay was rather daunting.
I realized that at the Cape there would be willing, helping hands, certainly those of Grandma and Grandpa, perhaps those of H’s sister and her husband. I wasn’t hoping to hand my child over completely, only grateful for any assistance that might be offered. I also knew by this time that our daughter tended to behave better when she knew there were other eyes on her besides those of Mama and Daddy.
D, at two and a half, happily at work on her sand-pouring skills.
H’s family’s adopted Cape Cod village opened its arms to welcome our daughter, and for her it was love at first sight. As children sometimes do, she appreciated the simplest things. She found it supremely entertaining to sit outside our cottage, pouring sand into a cup; she didn’t even need a pail or shovel. We would send her over to her grandparents’ cottage for cooking oil or butter, and she relished the responsibility. H would use the walkie-talkie to tell his parents D was on her way, and we’d keep her in our sights during her short journey. (There are no phones in the cottages, and before we were all so fiercely entangled in the web of technology, this meant an actual break from the typical work-a-day world.) Grandpa would signal D’s return, and she would arrive flushed and happy, more mature than when she had left.
D returns triumphantly from an errand.
There is a real sense of community in our vacation village, because families tend to return for the same week every year, and friendships are nourished. Most of the parents who are now H’s and my age grew up vacationing here with their families. Two sweet and thoughtful sisters, four and five years older than D, took her under their wings on our first visit. Through these girls, D became acquainted with kids of all ages. Even now, with one sister in college and the other a senior in high school, they remain close. All the kids look forward to their annual reunion. Friendships pick up seamlessly, as though no time has passed.
D with her best Cape friends. All teenagers now, the girls are still close.
Above, D and her friends float in the calm shallows of the bay, a pastime that never gets old. Sometimes the waves kick up and boogie boards come in handy, but the water is never as rough as the ocean. Having grown up with the Cape’s prodigious seaweed, none of the girls finds it objectionable (as I did, at first). Neither are they squeamish about the amazing variety of life in the water, which includes tiny shrimp, eels, sea worms, insects we refer to as potato bugs, and a vast number of unidentifiable, speedily swimming slimy things. Some years there are hosts of jelly fish, but typically these are the small non-stinging kind, drifting in the water like blobs of translucent white paste. D and her friends have always collected these in buckets, examined them, and returned them to the water. The blue crabs that lurk in the sand are ready to rumble, pincers poised for an unsuspecting, intrusive toe. Occasionally we see multitudes of horseshoe crabs, the dinosaurs of the crustacean world. And there are the furry-looking spider crabs, of which D is inexplicably fond, despite her distaste for true arachnids.
At low tide, the water of the bay empties out nearly completely, so it’s almost possible to walk across to Provincetown. Starfish, sand dollars and scallop shells are revealed among the reeds. It’s time for D and her friends to build expansive sand compounds, which they populate with feisty hermit crabs and slow-moving moon snails. Before long, the tide turns and begins to inch back in. Islands of sand appear and gradually diminish. Soon the bountiful and diverse life of the bay is submerged once again.
A view across the bay at low tide.
D and her friends congregate on the last remaining island as the tide rushes in.
In the warmth of the late afternoon sun, the green beckons to villagers of all ages.
A reed city in the sand, one of D’s ephemeral beach creations.
Our little nephew examines his tummy in the shade of his peapod.
This year, it was a blessing to welcome the new baby on the beach. It was also a blessing, at this stage of my life, to be the baby’s aunt rather than mother. D’s newest cousin looked out on the summer landscape from the shade of his peapod tent. When it appeared that even from that sheltered vantage point, the bright light made him cranky, Grandma and Grandpa went on a mission to Provincetown. They returned with infant sunglasses that strapped around the head with an elastic ribbon. This made their grandson, and all of us, much happier.
I had almost forgotten that magical essence of Baby. What a gift is a baby’s smile! How rewarding it is to share in his squeals of delight! Our darling nephew was just discovering his unique voice, and his vocal experiments were enchanting and enthusiastic. I had nearly forgotten the incomparable warmth and sweetness of a baby in my arms.
D treasured the time she spent with her cousin. For one week a year at least, he was, and will be, a substitute for the brother she never had. And I like to think that next year, when he’s old enough to walk, he will follow in our girl’s sandy footprints. I can see the two of them now, wandering through the sea grass, making their way down to the bay.
Still checking on the tummy, which is looking good.
A blog about motherhood, marriage and life: the joys and frustrations, beauty and absurdity, blessings and pain. It's about looking back, looking ahead, and walking the dog.
