Monthly Archives: September 2013

The Crocodile King Comes to Dinner

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This glorious fall weather means that we’ve been spending every possible minute in the fresh air and sunshine.  Last weekend was all about the swinging bridge.  This weekend we planted flowers.  chima dirt

Took out the last straggling remnants of the marigolds from summer.  Vivi chose flats of pansies in pumpkin orange and a purple so dark it looks black…for Halloween, of course.  I bought blues and yellows, with just a touch of white to make it pop (another one of Big Gay’s lessons).

This whole family loves piddling in the dirt.  Vivi busted up the dirt and mixed in some compost.  Carlos was in charge of generalized cuteness.  My six year old knows how to tear open the plant containers, cup the tender plants by the base, and spread the roots around before planting.  I taught her how to arrange the snapdragons in the back because they grow the tallest, the pansies in the center to fill in and some bright gold Creeping Jenny along the edge of the box so it can trail over the edge.

She’s clever, but she’s also six, so the attention span lasts about fifteen minutes.  After a while she left me to finish up planting the boxes.  She wandered off to play with her newest toy–a LEGO Chima figure that she’s been wanting for two months. chima flowers

It’s Cragger, the crocodile king who has turned bad after his best friend Laval, heir to the Lion Tribe throne…oh, I can’t remember what happened but the crocodile is mean and the lion is good.  Here’s Cragger and Laval.  Laval has attached his Chi sword to Cragger’s tail in a strange Dr. Frankenstein move.  I love that it’s never dawned on her that Chima is a “boy” toy.  It’s in the fierce warrior aisle at Target, not the little mama aisle.  We’ve got stuff from both aisles.

So when your daughter ends up playing with warrior action figures and flowers, this is what you get:  a Crocodile King who is probably a vegetarian so he chooses marigolds and chrysanthemums for dinner.  Doesn’t he look vicious?

chima marigold

Carlos opted for the traditional gender-neutral pastime:  dumping a giant bucket of dirt on his head.

chima bucket

Saturday Snort–Yo Mama Is a Nerd

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oh snap

Yo mama’s so fat that scientists track her position by observing anomalies in Pluto’s orbit.

Yo mama’s so fat that China uses her to block the internet.

Yo mama’s so stupid that her exchange particle is a “moron”.

Yo mama’s so old that she goes on carbon dates.

Yo mama’s such a ho that even the noble gases are attracted to her.

Yo momma so fat, she took geometry in high school just cause she heard there was gonna be some pi.

Yo momma so mean she has no standard deviation.

Good Night Moon

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Goodnight Moon

In the great green room…

Tonight, Carlos chose “Goodnight Moon” for his bedtime book.  We haven’t read it in a few months–I never got the sense he really liked it, but what do I know?  He likes to say “mush” and “bears” and “chairs” and “yight.”  Our copy of this board book was Vivi’s favorite for a while, too, so it is soft around the edges and broke backed.  We find the mouse on every page and we whisper good nights to the kittens, the mittens, the comb, the brush, the old lady whispering hush.  When we got to “good night stars, good night air, goodnight noises everywhere,” I choked up on something that’s been making me sad all week.  

Absence.  Emptiness.  Distance.  The space between the stars.  The empty places in the trees as the leaves begin to fall.  

Goodnight Moon has been around for seventy years.  Phones and clocks don’t look like that any longer.  Who eats mush?  When I was younger, I remember seeing that book and thinking how godawful the colors were.   And the plot!  Bleh.  Now I find such peace in that tidy room.  Margaret Wise Brown takes the fear and loneliness of darkness and going to sleep and turns them into cozy comforts.  That room’s never lonely even when it’s quiet.  

I’ve been lonely this week with G out of town.  I’ve been really proud of myself for taking care of the family single-handedly and hitting all my marks.  But I had a few conversations about grief/loss/change/sorrow this week that got old feelings bubbling up, and once the kids are in bed I have all this time and quiet on my hands.  I walked downstairs the other day to retrieve something for Vivi and passed a picture of Richard’s and my feet propped on a balcony in New Orleans.  I sobbed before I knew what was happening because that big toe doesn’t exist anywhere in the universe any longer.  Our waitress at Steak and Shake wanted to talk about leukemia when she saw Vivi’s tshirt.  I met my fundraising goal in his memory and his mother wrote me to say that it warms her heart when I do that every year.  His classmate sent in a donation.  So did people who never met him and only know him through my stories.  

When I carried Carlos to bed, he held Goodnight Moon in both hands, clutched to his chest.  After I tucked him in under his monkey quilt that my high school friend, Valaria, made for him, he seemed to be drifting off.  I took the book and put it on the table.  In the dark of his great yellow room, he wailed, “MY BOOOOOOOOOOK!”  I brought it back to him and he laid it across his chest.  

As I was washing dishes and crying for people I know who are hurting and for things that have gone away, I remembered a snippet of a song I heard 10 years ago on an Oxford American Magazine Southern Music CD:  “Goodnight moon, goodnight stars, goodnight old broke down cars.  Going away, leaving soon, goodnight darlin’, goodnight moon.”  And lo, through the magic of Google and YouTube, I got to hear the song again tonight while the dishes dripped dry.  

It’s by Will Kimbrough.  Here’s a clip of Will singing it live at the Bluebird in Nashville:

I also liked this version.  It’s tuned higher and the arrangement is spare and elegant.  It’s Jason Vincent doing a cover of Will Kimbrough’s song “Goodnight Moon”:

After listening a few times and a few times more, I felt better.  I remembered that the same moon shines on all of us, wherever we are, whenever we are.  The moon that my grandparents kissed under is the moon that lit our path when Richard and I walked along a beach in Crete.  It’s the moon G sees in Brasil, and Erica in Chile, Rhonda in Canada, Frances in Ecuador, Beth in France, Catie in Bhutan, Marian in the Netherlands, Heather up the street, Jean a mile from her, Rachel down in South Georgia, and Ginger in Ohio.  Goodnight y’all.  Goodnight all.  

Ten True Things

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Here’s a list of truisms that floated through my head this morning between 6:33 a.m. and 8:00 a.m.:  The Dreaded School Run.

  1. “Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.”   (Ben Franklin, who clearly did not have Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert keeping him up until all hours.)
  2. “Never argue with a fool.  Onlookers may not be able to tell the difference.”  (Mark Twain.  This also applies to a grumpy 6 yr old.)
  3. “Charity begins at home.”  (My stepmother, Big Gay.  All the kindness in the world stems from the patience and love we share with each other at home.)
  4. “There’s a reason God gives children to young people.”  (My Grandmama Eunice, who raised several and did a fine job.)
  5. “Always pay attention to your rear view mirror.  What’s happening behind you can be far more dangerous than what’s going on in front.”  (Mom, who clearly drove with a snarl of little children in the back seat.)
  6. “Never buy a house on a yellow line street.”  (Vickie, my first realtor.  Who wants to raise kids in all that traffic?)
  7. “Don’t tailgate someone driving a Dodge.  They’re already mad and they’ve got nothing to lose.”  (Daddy)
  8. “What goes around, comes around.”  (Myself, laughing at the dumbass who PARKED in the drop off lane at school then couldn’t get out.  Hate it fer ya.)
  9. “Mind your pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves.” (Another from Big Gay, and the reason I had a yogurt instead of pulling through a drive through.)
  10. “Friends multiply your joy and divide your sorrow.”  (a coffee mug I saw once)

peanuts-blogging-advice-770x433

A Message From Ben Bernanke

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Thanks to many generous donors, I am VERY close to my goal of raising $5000 in memory of my late husband, Richard.  It’s rainy today, so I’m having trouble doing the math in my head, but my total stands at:

$4,931.11

 

That means I only need to raise….(math function still broken)…..a little bit more!  Here’s Ben Bernanke to demonstrate how much more:

ben b

 

Can you help push the total over the goal?  Every dollar you donate goes to the Leukemia/Lymphoma Society to fund the fight against blood cancers and support patients who are in treatment.  To make a tax-deductible and secure donation, check out my page at http://pages.lightthenight.org/ga/Athens13/ashleygarrett68.

Thanks!

What Is This Word?

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Child with a Dove, Pablo Picasso, 1901

Child with a Dove, Pablo Picasso, 1901

I try to do at least one New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle per week.  After Richard died, his mother left a half-complete collection of NYT puzzles at our house.  I asked her if she wanted me to mail it to her and she said, “No.  I did so many in the hospital these last few months that I don’t think I ever want to do one again.”  So I picked up her book and finished it.  Then I bought another one and another one.  There are 200 in each collection–now that I have kids, one book can last me over three years!  But anywho…one of the clues this week for a three-letter verb reminded me of a sweet story from when Vivi was little and G and I were still in the throes of parenting an infant.

I make fun of G’s Brasilian accent now and again, but the man has an exceptional command of the English language.  Shoot, he even helps me with those crossword puzzles–usually for things like isotopes, names of stars, or atomic numbers.  Still, every so often, he bumps into a word he’s just never needed to know until that moment.

Like the time we took Vivi to the pediatrician when she was about six months old.  Vivi had a lot of ear infections, so we were talking to the doctor about whether they might impair her hearing and speech development.  The doctor said, “Does she make normal baby sounds?  Is she cooing?”  I assured him that she was and the doctor told me it was nothing to worry about.  He told us that we could get Vivi dressed again and left the room.  G put his hand on my arm and leaned in close.  “What is this word ‘coo?'”

It’s a delicate whisper of a word–coo.  Not something he would have run across in a chemistry lab, or a research paper, or a citizenship exam, or a patent application.  Not a word you hear at the grocery store, the gas station, the tax office, the cafeteria, the television.  It’s such a precise word.  You might know it if you have been close to birds or babies, but not otherwise.

I explained, “Oh, you know the sound doves make.  No?  It’s those little happy sounds she makes, like she’s trying to talk to us, like a cat purring.”  He smiled and cupped her tiny head in his calloused hand.  He leaned close to her and said, “Do you coo, gatinho do papai?”  I watched him as he tucked that word into his mind, on the English side, across from “arrulho.”  A sweet word that only came his way because he’s a Daddy.  

Is there a special word you associate with a moment in your life?  What’s a word you remember learning?

The Swinging Bridge

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I saw my baby do something today that threw me right back to a tense conversation I had with Fartbuster a dozen years ago.  Then I saw my other baby do something that catapulted me right back to this life and the joys that I have found.

The kids and I went out in the backyard to play today.  I know, I know, we should do it more often, but there is dog poo and mosquitoes and a river and some nails in that thing that rotted and all.  Carlos is too young for me to cut him loose out there without supervision, so he is still unfamiliar with the massive playscape that we have in the corner of the backyard (courtesy of my brother, Joe, who built it for his children a decade ago then passed it along to us when time rolled on).  Chanting “Climb!” in his chirpy little voice, Carlos scaled the ramp up to the first platform, which Vivi had accessed via the climbing wall.  He looked out over his kingdom with delight.  There were leaves to crunch, a ship’s wheel to spin, sticks for poking stuff–everything a boy could wish for was up there on that platform.  But there was more.

On the other platform, his sister was sliding down a fire pole and slinging pine cones down the yellow slide.  Huh.  The only thing standing between him and the pleasures of the second platform was a swinging bridge.

swinging bridge

Awfully wobbly, it is.

He hooched down as low as he could and stuck one foot out onto the bridge.  I was standing on the ground beside the bridge, cheering him on, reassuring him that it was safe.  But his foot told him otherwise.  He tried a couple of tentative forays, but the bridge kept wiggling.

That’s when I thought of Fartbuster, and a conversation that we had in a marriage counselor’s office during that year when we were trying to put things back together.  Fartbuster said, “I think our problem is that you don’t trust me.”  Well, duh, dipshit.  You had an affair.  You lost your job.  You lied to me over and over and over again.  Some crying woman calls my house at night.  Why should I trust you?  But what I said in that room that day was, “Trust between us is like a bridge.  I want to walk across it, but every time I’ve stepped on it, it’s lurched and swayed and dropped me on my head, so why would I step out on it again?  I think it’s up to you to rebuild the bridge.”

We all know how that one turned out.

Back to today.  I recognized that look on Carlos’ face–that concern that he was placing his faith in something wobbly.  And even though his mother told him it was OK, and his sister had proved that it was sturdy…all he felt was the wobble.   Then this happened:

carlos gets a pep talk

A pep talk

Vivi put down her pirate cutlass and spyglass long enough to give Carlos a pep talk.  That look on his face.  You can’t hear their laughter through these words, but you can probably imagine it if you look at his face.  I told him it was OK, but she took the time to show him.  She used herself to demonstrate that it was perfectly safe to trust the bridge.

So he did this:

Steady as she goes, mate.

Steady as she goes, mate.

Look at the concentration, the daring, on that tiny face.  Trust.  One foot in front of the other.  

I hope all of his bridges lead to greater adventures.  And that even if they sway, they are held up by steel cables his family built, way before he was born.  

Saturday Snort – Art Appreciation

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This is so funny that it makes me want to be a high school teacher.  For about four seconds.

 

420 errday

Shine On, Shine On

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Harvest MoonI woke up this morning to a strange golden light coming in through my window.  Carlos and I stepped out on the deck to see what we could see.  His tiny bare toes tiptoed across the chilly dew-covered boards then stopped.  He looked up in the sky to the harvest moon.  His perfect little mouth curled into a smile then he whispered, “WOW!”

Yes, Baby Carlos Punkin…Wow. 

What a perfect word to start the day…WOW.  Even in his less than three years, he’s already seen the moon a hundred times.  But he reminds me to delight in it, to see it.  Sometimes it is so easy to forget to see the things we look at every day.  

Vivi asks me questions.  She reminds me to wonder and to investigate.  I love living in this age of Google when I can say, “Let’s look it up!”  Here’s what she and I talked about when we talked about the moon.  “Are other people seeing this moon, too?”  We found this really cool image from EarthSky.com:

Day and night sides of Earth at the instant of the September 2013 full moon (2013 September 19 at 11:13 Universal Time). Notice that dawn is coming to the U.S. while night is falling in Asia when the September 2013 moon reaches the crest of its full phase. Image credit: Earth and Moon Viewer

Day and night sides of Earth at the instant of the September 2013 full moon (2013 September 19 at 11:13 Universal Time). Notice that dawn is coming to the U.S. while night is falling in Asia when the September 2013 moon reaches the crest of its full phase. Image credit: Earth and Moon Viewer

I love having all these little minds around; they remind me to look, to ask.  To wonder.