Window shopping

It was dark and that made it infinitely more frightening. The taxi driver dropped us off at the end of street so narrow that the small car could not go any further and pointed forward with a wave of his slim brown hand into ever more narrow and less well lit alleyways. The stores were open, crowded places honeycombed into every crack and crevice, jammed so full of merchandise that removing one thing might bring the whole city down like a delicately balanced grocery store display. Lights were on. People walked. But there seemed more men than woman and more shadows than lights.

The dark changes everything. It might have been a friendly scene in the sweaty daylight. It might have been enchanting.

We wandered forward, our white faces and heavy packs marking us "other" if not "targets." There wasn't any turning back. It was one of those precipice points of travel. If we found the little hostel tucked back here in the ancient, labyrinth streets of Marrakesh, this was a grand adventure. If we had to spend the night on the stifling street in the questionable dark, it was a dangerous disaster.

We found it. A tiny, arabesque arched door tucked into a niche gray with grime led to a tiled white entry hall too narrow to turn around in. We bumped each other aside with our bulky packs and laughed, glad to be inside. A winding tile stairway spiraled up, up, four floors with our packs brushing the walls on each side and the sweat running down our soaking backs beneath the heavy load. And then through another arch and we were on the roof. A cool breeze kissed us on the cheek. Lights and arches and minarets spread out in every direction, a fantastical rooftop city. A fountain sang softly. Moroccan tile paved the roof with blue and red detail.

Our room was to the left, behind a painted wooden door with an old fashion skeleton key. Four bunks, but we had it to ourselves tonight. Other young travelers lounged on embroidered cushions in the common space, smoking or drinking, writing in journals.

We ventured down and out again into the now friendly winding alleyway. No longer alien, but home base, our street, the key tight in my sister's palm. We found a tiny convenience store. One row of shelves stocked with batteries and toiletries rose to the ceiling above the proprietor's head and a cooler full of coke sat at his feet. Cold cokes in hand, we retreated to the rooftop oasis to sip and laugh and congratulate ourselves on braving the travel gauntlet to this tiled gem tucked high above the market alleys of Marrakesh.

The next day, we window shopped, gaping for hours at stunning Moroccan tile and textiles, spices, gold and silver work. It was a bustling shopping district, not at all intimidating when the bright, unrelenting sun banished the sinister dark.

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Yesterday, thanks to a fabulously dear friend, Matt and I had an entire day to ourselves to shop for our addition. We looked at tile and flooring options and fixtures, but in my secret, fabulous sunny day to ourselves heart, I was window shopping. I wanted to find the perfect antique leaded window to set as an architectural detail in an interior wall between the shower and our new master bath.

The whole day, wandering through a few antique and "upcycled" furniture shops, flipping idly through tile sample boards, sipping a glass of wine in the intimate garden of a local restaurant that is only open for these brief three months of summer a year, reminded me of days past. When we parked in front of Brown's Building supply, I saw row after row of outdoor bays stacked with windows pulled from demolished 1920s houses. Patience, I thought, it's here. It could be here. There were lots of leaded glass windows. They were broken or bent or too large or too small. Except for this one, covered in cobwebs and poorly painted white many years ago. Matt had to balance six or seven huge windows upright in the bay so that I could slide it out and fall in love.

For no reason at all, or maybe for many reasons, tile and sunshine and free time, I've been thinking of Marrakesh ever since we wrapped our treasure in a blanket and loaded it in the car. There is nothing like finding the perfect gem, hidden out of sight under the grime.

Speaking of gems, have you discovered pinterest.com? It's sort of a social media sharing site except that you're sharing digital inspiration boards. I'm just getting started, but I am head over heels in love. This is my master bath board. My home page with all of my boards is here. But I'm new at it and my boards are sparse; go and get lost in other people's inspiration.

Sip locusts

You know how your mom told you that you'd understand some day and you thought, no, no I won't because you're mean and I'm not going to be mean, so there? Because you were twelve and kind of horrid?

Well, when I was little, long, long ago in a kingdom far, far away ... . No. Seriously. When I was a kid, my mom drank a diet soda almost every day and the musical pop of that can opening and that sweet, forbidden liquid fizzing into a glass of ice was like a homing call for my sisters and I. We'd crawl out of the woodwork and beg and whine and plead.

A siiiiiiiiippppppp? Just one siiiip? Pleeeaaaaasseeee? Moooooo-oooooom? Just one?

And she was all, no. Like it was nothing. Just no. Go away, even.

I thought my mom was mean. I still remember feeling, deep in my soul, how mean and selfish she was. She had that whole beautiful glass of fizzy pop all to herself - and not even just one - oooohhhh no, she could go and get another one out of the fridge any time she wanted - and she wouldn't give us a teensy, weency, tiny, little sip.

Mean.

Mom. Here you go. You waited almost forty years, but here it is. Sit down. I was wrong and I now understand. I'm so sorry I judged you.

I like icy cold ice water. I like it crystal clear with an unsullied straw. My favorite is from Starbucks because it's triple distilled and as clear as clear can be. But I swear on all that is holy and pure, the minute that green-aproned barista hands me the glass of icy cold goodness, it starts.

I dirsty.

No, I'm thirsty.

Momma, I'm thirsty.  No, me.  

I sip. I sip! I SIP!!

They're like locusts. Viscous, water-hungry locusts who are incapable of taking a sip from a straw without back-blowing gag-inducing crumbs of everything they've eaten for the last three hours into it. Why is there always spittle that hangs between their nasty little lips and the straw? Why can't they just drink with a constant upward pull, why must they snort shit back down?

Why can't they drink from their own damn water bottles that I packed carefully so that I could keep my water separate and pure and unclouded by demonic backwash?

Why, mom? Why? Is my own glass of water too much to ask? The floaties. They ruin it. I'm so sorry for every drink I sullied.

And they're sneaky. I looked away for like a second and one of them has darted in for the sip like a buzzard. You see Nate. I see a harbinger of clear water doom.

Oh, I know. Cute baby saying "cheeeeessse." Look closely. I'll make it very large for you. Uh huh. Snot. Also, granola bar, on his left cheek. BOTH OF WHICH ARE NOW IN MY WATER.

Ew. Dammit.

Restraint

Hampton Noodle has a whiffle ball addiction.  It's all well and good and I certainly don't mind keeping him in whiffle balls, but unfortunately, Nate and Quinn are also partial to the damn things.  I have probably purchased three hundred whiffle balls in the last year.  Hampton can crunch them in one exhuberant crunch, which never fails to cause ceaseless wailing from the toddler set unless I can produce an uncrunched whiffle ball, pronto.

I'm very strict with the children about taking balls from the dog and vice versa. Nate is well aware that if he gets his hands on the ball first, the power lies in his corner. Hampton can track a whiffle ball for hours. He's a passionate whiffle ball hunter.

The hunter stalks its prey. (The ball is under Nate's hand.)

 "What this? You want this?"  Nate feels powerful, but our fearless dane has more patience and a longer attention span than a two-year-old. Oh, I will get that, small one of the no touchy-touchy, and when I do I will CRUNCH it and MUNCH it.

You are kidding me right?  I know you're watching me, yelly woman with treats, but technically he put it down. I didn't take it from him. Crunching it would be fully within the rules at this point. I call foul. I want a line judge.

It's not even looking now. The small screechy one that can not be knocked over is finished with it. It is playing with a PENGUIN.

I'm whiffle crunching with my eyes.

For all my bitching, he's a very, very good eighteen month old puppy.  (Yes, I let him have the ball.)

 (We found the dog park. Great suggestion. He loves it and so do the kids. It's usually deserted too, which is a bonus.)

(He still sucks ass on any kind of leash, although he's an angel and stays right with me if he's loose. We tried the head lead thing. He is, um, very good at walking, well hopping, on his hind legs while wildly tearing at the evil contraption on his head. We'll keep working on it.)

 ********

Soon they are going to start asking me about tile and color and shower design. Scary and exciting. Scariting. I managed to move the children temporarily into the nursery-that-is-not-going-to-be-a-nursery-any-more and to take down all the gorgeous artwork that made the Snow White room special to me. All, that is, except for the photo border. I will do it, but there will be crying, both over the fifty adorable photos of them in their baby glory and because you have no idea how hard it was to get the damn thing up there!@!

Matt thinks it looks like a scary face. I think it didn't look like a scary face until Matt said that and now I will be afraid of our house growing teeth and eating me, Amityville Horror style, at night.  As if I were not already scared of the dark.

Together you and I

Stop! everything! Vague, annoying angst forgotten.  Attempt at beautiful imagery and examination of self bumped down.

My children and the children of my closest friends in this crazy motherhood ride are in Dolly Parton's new music video.  Dolly Parton!  For a total of .00001 seconds at about 2:42 so do not blink, I kid you not.

Tags: Together You and I, Dolly Parton, Dolly Parton Videos

The glory belongs to Amy. The story, because I know you are all on pins and needles, is that she adores Dolly. Their relationship has reached a very personal basis, though I'm not sure Dolly knows it yet, and when Dolly called for home video of people holding hands to be considered for inclusion in her new music video, Amy leaped to action.  The rest of us, Elise, Kristina, Meggan and I, (A lovely circle of women and support and friendship that I consider the biggest treasure of my childbearing and young children raising years, excepting, of course, my actual children. Sometimes, actually, it's a tie.) rolled our eyes and griped.  Get them all together? All thirteen of them? Naps! Schedules! Chaos!

But Amy nagged and moaned and bitched, ah, I mean persisted, and so we gathered in the boulevard one cranky afternoon and yelled at them until they stood in a marginal line for five seconds and I actually captured it with my mediocre filming skills. (Oh yes, that's my videography in a Dolly Parton video thank you very much.)

This is the original clusterfuck of a video. I can't imagine why Dolly didn't keep my piercing, bossy voice in her lovely video.

That night, I went, a trifle grumbly-like, to follow the instructions and upload the video and found that we had missed the submission deadline by twenty-four hours.  I also found that we were supposed to be in front of an historic monument, but directions not being my strong point and Amy's deep happiness on the line, I fudged the boundaries of "historic" Manito Park a bit and hit submit.

I about died yesterday when I heard Amy screaming from ten blocks away that our kids were in a Dolly "fuck.ing" Parton video.  I tried to maintain my facade of measured indifference, but it is so freaking cool! OMFG!  I called my mom.  She hasn't called me back.  MOM.  So I'm telling you.

I hope you have friends like these women.  I hope my children have friends like them over the course of their lives.  I laugh louder and love harder and enjoy my kids more and live my life better for having them at my side.  There's always a net to fall into and a hand to hold and a smile to share. Disappointments sting less and successes taste sweeter.  Humor shared is funnier and life is a blast. It's so much fun.

In the immortal words of Dolly:  They stop the rain and make the sun shine.

Scenes

It's a beautiful afternoon. Our six week reprieve between the capricious winds of June and the large metal key in the bolt sound of the heat thudding on in late August. Door locked. Sentence begun. Summer over.

The kind of afternoon I'll cry for the loss of someday, fingering old pictures with my spider-veined hands and wondering where it all went and why it was in such a hurry.  Why I was in such hurry?

Quinn bends upside down, hanging backwards from a bike rack. He is kitsch-cool in his shades and overalls and Spiderman flip flops.  He has something to him, at three years old, god help us. An innate likability and poise. An understanding of his space in the world and how his ripples affect others.  It could go either way with him, there is deep goodness and cruelty.

Saige swings across the purple monkey bars still in her soccer camp shorts and yellow t-shirt. She makes it back and forth three times before she looses her grip and lands steady on bent knees.  She has practiced for a year to reach level 'astonishing' in monkey bar proficiency. That is Saige. She either wants it so badly it drives us all insane or she can't be bothered. Please let her want school. It could be a nightmare if she wanted it to be. Can you major in monkey bars?

Silly mother worries, I scold myself. She will want something, eventually. School isn't everything.

Garrett twirls in the sparkling droplets of the splash pad fountain. He is the exact opposite of Quinn's studied awareness. He spins free and fast, unconscious of his existence in relation to others. He is uninhibited and outgoing, but in that loose, overeager way that can bring rejection's hammer crashing down hard.  My heart constricts for him, watching at a distance. He'll be hurt and it will be the thing to love most about him.  Quinn will stand behind his wall and watch others scrape their skin trying to scale it.

A biplane purrs overhead, drifting, almost stationary, and Nate signs at me "airplane! airplane!"  His designer-bedroom-blue eyes thrill. The sticky juice of the apple he eats whole drips off of his chin and stains the front of his shirt. He even likes the cores. I have to fish the seeds and stem from behind his puppy-sharp teeth. I sit beside him in the lotus position on our perfect patchwork towel, marketed for summer in some ridiculous seasonal catalog. 

If you watched from the hill on the other side of the baseball field, you might think how relaxed and serene I look. My red highlights rich in the sunlight. My eyes on the pines on the ridge behind you. You never know what you're really watching, do you? You might be surprised.

It's a lie.  I'm terrified. My stomach flips and the back of my tongue goes dry in surges.  I sip a tall recycled Starbucks cup of ice water at my side to force moisture down my cottony throat.  There's nothing for it but to live my summer, ride the waves of adrenaline and drink my water and my children down in big, thirsty gulps.

I'm scared whether the answer is yes or no.  Some day soon, I'll tell you the question.

For now, you tell me, since I need distraction, are you always as you seem?

Gifts

I've never had a two-year-old without a newborn.

It weighed on my heart, yesterday, celebrating Nate's birthday. My thoughts refused to wrap around it. I pulled the precious overalls that Garrett wore to his second birthday party from the drawer and thought, oh no, Nate's too small. They were too small for him.  I rocked him with his bottle before his nap and remembered how I unceremoniously yanked all bottles and most rocking from Garrett and Saige and then Quinn months before this.

I'm done, I justified in my head. The new baby is coming and these simple tasks can't take this long.

It was fine. They are happy, loving children who exhibit few emotional scars from their mother's speedy refocus on a new baby, unless you count endless whining and a Scooby Doo obsession as emotional scars, which if you do, I can't help you. I am wearied by talk of how to set schedules for not-so-small babies.  Wearied.  That is not to judge, I understand the angst and fear. But I can't get there from here. Children are not so fragile in my mind that I will sacrifice my afternoons to their crying or my mornings to their whims or my dinner hour to their pain-in-the-ass finickiness.

He cried for fifteen minutes and it broke my heart.  Really? Because I usually think, good. Get yourself nice and tired, sweet thing, and then take a really good nap.

I am a good, good mother, but after the first four months of life, it is hard to break my heart.  Crying doesn't even come close.

Yet, hypocrite that I am, my new two-year-old is still The Baby and he gets a bottle before he sleeps and sometimes even rocked and cuddles.  Why not? There is no newborn screaming in a bouncy seat to drive me forward.  Nate has had a zero entry into toddlerhood. That is the gift of his place in this family, I suppose.

My other children, no less babies at the time, had an experience closer to being pushed off of a diving board without a life jacket. Maybe it is my own guilt that leaves me impatient with waffling and tip toeing.

Maybe it is. Each family works in its own way, I firmly believe that. One mother's agonizing over crying and sleep has its pros and its cons just as my "put on your big kid diapers and get over it" attitude has its pros and its cons.  Happy children are the product of so many different styles.

There are consequences to The Baby status as well. We sat down after dinner, our faces sticky and our stomachs stretched with cake (A Costco sheet cake. With copy errors. In my continuing quest to make every one who visits here feel like an excellent parent.) to open Nate's two presents.  One from each grandma.  Matt and I planned to take him out for the evening by himself - a family tradition on each child's birthday - and our budget, which is ample but rigidly observed, did not have room for both presents and an outing.

His gifts were few, but the chaos was as large as ever. The bigger kids had to be beaten back from the paper with warnings and then threats and then sharp, tired words. Nate couldn't get a turn with his new bike and he gave up and went back to his favorite toy - an electric guitar beloved for its ability to drive me stark raving mad in 2.5 seconds or less.

It worked.

I snapped under the pressure of the fighting and the mess and the frosting-slick hands on my couch and my rug and the constant recorded strains of "Love Shack."  We put Saige, Garrett and Quinn to bed with more barked commands then cuddles and kisses.

********

Half an hour later, wandering through the park that winds on either side of the river flowing through downtown, I found my center and my remorse.  Many, many times a day, I am overwhelmed by the joy of our large family, but at least once a day, I am overwhelmed. Grenade like questions and requests and demands launched at my head with unnecessary repetition and volume bombard me until I crawl into my bunker and wait for the barrage to pass or worse take the offensive and charge, machine gun mouth crackling.

Nate held our hands and begged between us.  "A-GAIN."

One. Two. Three. Whhhheeeeeee.

"A-GAIN!"

We swung him over and over, across the bridges, bright with blooming flower baskets, past the ducks quacking for fried treats and around the antique carousel.  Children swarmed its gilded tigers and giraffes and ostriches like ants at a picnic. Nate buried his head in Matt's shoulder.  "No! No hoss. Whhheeeeee?"

One. Two. Three. Whhhheeeee.

A simple gift. Of time and unlimited swings. We don't play this game often as a family. The demands for turns grind us down. The inevitable screaming child on the ground dampens the most enthusiastic laughter.  The rules that must be set in advance exhaust us. One time. For each of you. If you cry, you will miss your turn.

One. Two. Three. Whhheeeee.

We walked into a restaurant just after eight thirty. Unheard of, but he was full of chatter and light still, waving to each table as we wove to our seats. We ordered him a lemonade and talked while he sat in Matt's lap and colored between sips, fixing his beautiful gray-blue eyes on mine.

"Dirsty.  I dirsty, momma."

Oh, the life we would lead if we had chosen this. Long dinners. Unlimited swings. Uncounted gifts.

He vibrated with exhausted excitement, pattering up our walk with his bow-legged baby run. The gorgeous evening light hung by a thread in the maples. Nate tried to tell me something all the way home. He started in the car and he said it still, climbing our front steps. His stub fingers wrapped in a tight grip around the railing. I repeated him with different inflections, puzzling his desire in my head.

"IFIE-SAY! IFIE-GARE! IFIESAY. IFIEGARE. MOMMA!!  IFIESAY! IFIEGARE!"

Nate's eyebrows drew together in irritation when I missed his meaning.  Elise distracted him for a moment as she left, but then he was off again on his baby quest and he climbed half way up the stairs before I got it.

"I find Saige. I find Gare. I find Saige. I find Gare."

They all slept, sprawled and sweaty, and Nate was loud, but content to peer into each baby face in turn. "Nigh, Kin. Nigh, Say. Nigh, Gare." Before I settled him into his crib beside them.

I whispered it after him. "Night, Nay. Night, Saige. Night Garrett. Night Quinn. Good night, my babies, I love you, I'll see you in the morning."

One, two, three, four, whhhheeeeeee.

Gifts uncounted.



Thank you, Jen. I couldn't find these words and she said "just start writing." The best advice is always simple.

Oh, Idaho

I malign you so.

(Southwest shore of Lake Coeur D'Alene.)

But you are really beautiful, for about four days every summer when you deign to be warm enough for mammals to survive.

And if it's too cold to swim ...

(Trust me on this, it's always too cold to swim. Nate fell in head first and I had to fish him out; I couldn't feel my legs.)

(Nate mentally projecting: WTfreezingF was that? My head. Went under the ice water! Did you take off your shoes before you ran in? You did, didn't you? (I didn't, they were already off. I swear.))

...there are always s'mores by the fire.

Lest you think we live this fabulously all the time, no, no. No. We live this fabulously when Elise's parents come to visit and rent a gorgeous house on the lake for a week and we crash their party for a day. (THANK YOU!)

In general, we live with a lot less stunning blue water and soldiering pines and a lot more whining and dog vomit.

And construction.

Last week.

This week. Progressing nicely, right? Soon I begin to bombard you with color and decorating questions because I'm clueless and, somehow, Million Dollar Design on Bravo is only adding to my difficulties.  Why is that? Could it be because they buy chairs that would consume my entire budget? Bravo? Not helpful.