Later, by the Ringed-Round Hill

Just last night my husband rolled his eyes at Glee, and its pretentious mourning of Whitney Houston, and I scolded him, and told him remember when Steve Irwin died? Because he knows good and well that we sat up late and cried together, watching the Crocodile Hunter's funeral. At which point Noah's adam's apple grew very jumpy, and he cleared his throat and said he didn't want to talk about it anymore, but that Steve Irwin was such a wonderful person.

So full of life.

Just last night, and then this morning I find myself crying over coffee grounds, heart sick and sad to hear that the world has lost Maurice Sendak. Through my own tears I am baffled by this, our human proclivity to mourn the deaths of people we have never met. Then I think that the human soul is like God. I believe that the Divine presence is an actual thing in our world, very real, and that because it is real, any person can feel it and know it, no matter where they are born, or what religion they are raised in.

The power of art is similar to this; invisible maybe, but real. Through a person's art we have known a bit of their soul. Because I didn't know Sendak personally I may not know which part, exactly, of his soul that I have known, but I have known it all the same. It haven't known the personality, but I have felt the touch of another soul through that soul's art, a touch just as real as coffee grounds and orange peels and Tuesday mornings and the Divine. When we mourn artists we never knew, Heath Ledger or Georgia O'Keeffe or Whitney Houston or Maurice Sendak, we mourn the part of them that reached out bright speaking through their art and named us, and knew us, and left us changed. Our spirit knows this, and so it mourns. This is why we have to keep making art, all of us, whatever our form. Because this is how we connect, this is how we know each other, when the exquisite, orgasmic friction of soul on soul is too much. Art becomes the medium that makes connection so intense it is painful, possible.

Possible for us to look into each other's eyes, and not die or turn to salt or stone.

My dad used to read it to me, Outside Over There, Ida with her wonder horn and her serious mistake, her frenzied jig that made sailors wild beneath the ocean moon. And I read it to my girls, that and Wild Things and Bumbleardy and We Are All in the Dumps With Jack and Guy. All his work so deeply rooted in the subconscious, so powerful for it. I've been told before, but I remember now, that we must write to our favorite artists and tell them what their work means to us before it is too late. We can't assume they know.

So, then, here are the lines, the ending, which always makes me cry:

I'll be home one day, and my brave, bright little Ida must watch the baby and her mama, for her papa, who loves her always.


Which is just what Ida did.

Snow, Secrets

Last night we put two sick kids to bed early and watched Moneyball. We'd watched Drive the night before, and I'd spent the evening walking around the house listening to the song on my ipod and had even played it in the car en route to the library, driving purposefully but with my face all emotionless and blank. I like to pretend I'm in the movies whenever I'm alone. I've never been caught.

It's important you know we'd watched Drive because it's possible what happened next can be solely chalked up to SRGD (Sudden Ryan Gosling Deprivation). My husband was trying to enjoy the movie and I start tossing out comments like "Could we take baseball any more seriously?" and, "Could this movie be any more like The Social Network?" with a vaguely Chandler Bingish inflection. I don't know why I decided to become the movie's heckler, it was after all an innocent little movie, sweet and well-intentioned. I swear I didn't know until the credits rolled that Aaron Sorkin had written this, too. Like I said, it wasn't Drive, there was no Ryan Gosling or sweet-ass synthesizer music, or hot pink fonts. Billy Beane seemed determined to be unhappy and the scene--MILD SPOILER HERE--where the clouds roll in during the game and you-know-what happened really bothered me. It made me itchy. I get that we are trying to be romantic about baseball here, but come on. I just don't have it in me. You can't play "Kittens are being forced to fight each other to the death" music during baseball. Hath Jimmy Duggan taught us nothing? Also I was annoyed that I was born in 1981, I'm 30-years-old, and the vast majority of movies are still made about men. Yes, I know we had The Help and Bridesmaids this year, but Kristen Wiig and Skeeter Phelan can't single-handedly save Hollywood and can someone call Steven Spielberg and check if he's even aware that women exist? The last time I saw a female in a movie of his, Drew Barrymore was in pigtails and screaming.

We turned off Moneyball and I listened to the song again to comfort myself. Mr.V went to bed and I made a cup of tea and settled down with a Jacqueline Carey novel. It was close to ten and the house was dark. The snow had started outside. Mr. V had baked bread and I had a thick, warm slab of it drenched with butter and honey. It was a real cozy moment, where your bones just say "ah". From down the hall, I heard a small coo. I set down my tea. In her bed, Indy was crying.

Baby, I whispered. What's wrong?

She had an earache. Medicine and warm washcloths were given. Look, I said, pointing to her window. It's snowing. We snuggled up tight together. How sweet a mother I will be right now, I thought. We will just cuddle here until she is back to sleep. Indy sat up. "I'm just going to go lie down on the couch and watch Rugrats," she said. "Because I feel like I want to."

It was ten o'clock and she'd in bed for three hours. I am powerless to Indy. I settled her on the couch and turned Rugrats down low. Outside the window behind her the snow was thick like marshmallow cream. I felt my flirting illness settling deeper into my bones. Baby, I said. I'm going to go to sleep now.

Ok, she said. I'm just going to watch this for a few more minutes and go back to bed.

Yeah right, I thought, kissing her forehead and padding down the hall. In the morning I knew I'd find her there, the tv still on, my Indy dreaming away under quilts on my sofa. But I was wrong. A short while later a noise opened my eyes, and there she was in her room. My door faces hers directly, her nightlight was on, and I watched my Indy in her private world, in her owl pajamas, five-years-old and so good natured, whenever I tell her I forgot to put dessert in her lunch or the birthday party is canceled, she shrugs and smiles and says "Oh, that's ok!" I watched her climb up on her bed, on the flannel sheets, and pause to rest her elbows on the sill and peer out the window. She muttered something, soft as snow, some private world or language I could see only the fringes of, the essence like Avalon, shimmering in the mist. She blew on the glass and squeaked her finger through the fog.

Memorize this moment, my spirit said to me. So very seldom am I present enough to memorize. Brief flashes, laughter on a beach, my daughters in the spring, pink cherry blossoms falling in the breeze, landing in their hair, and they are holding hands. But now I have it, this memory, forever. Indy, five-years-old, pausing at her window to think thoughts I will never imagine, to spin dreams to be forgotten, to tread in worlds that I will never see.

What Ayla Doesn't Know

Indy looked in the mirror and said, "Mom, I'm getting lots of freckles on my nose because I eat so much toilet paper every day."

. . . So, that was news.


Ayla got really mad at me and ranted off a string of things I won't repeat but it did include screaming, "You have so much junk in your trunk!"

I would like to point out that Ayla doesn't know the expression is a euphemism for fat.

(Isn't it? I don't actually know.)

She wrote in chalk on the sidewalk that she was sorry. "I love you mom will you forgiv me?" she scrawled, and left an empty line.

I wrote "for a ticket to Paris, yes".



Then Ayla did this and I was sure: I've got the best kids ever.



She spelled 'love' correctly, but I am having width issues here and they are proving insurmountable.

Just like Ayla.


I am Vesuvius and I'm going to go hide the toilet paper.

Sunny With A Chance Of Wonder

We're driving home from school and three minutes into the ride Ayla discovers that the 3D glasses that came with her book order book about sharks do not actually work.

"They don't work!" she said. "This book is stupid!"

The response I've always given before, to comments like these, is something along the lines of, "I'm sorry you're frustrated. I bet it's a really good book though!"

Ayla and I have this type of exchange all the time. Ayla gripes a lot. That's just Ayla. And usually, our conversations go more or less like this:

Ayla: "I have a problem!"

Me: "I am sorry that you have perceived something as a problem. Now I am going to distract you with talk about something else."

Ayla: "But mom! Problem. No likey."

Me:"Something else somethign else something else sunshine birds."

Ayla:"MOM. BIG PROBLEM! PROBLEM PROBLEM PROBLEM."

Me: "I am sorry you have perhaps incorrectly perceived this situation to be a problem when it actually is not a problem because of everything like such as. "

Ayla: "YOU ARE THE WORST MOTHER EVER."

Me: "DEAR GOD MAKE ME A BIRD SO I CAN FLY FAR, FAR FAR AWAY FROM HERE!"

Ayla: "WHY CAN'T YOU JUST ACKNOWLEDGE THAT I HAVE A PROBLEM!"

Me: "Don't worry. About a thing. Every little thing's. Gonna be all wine wine wine wine wine wine wine sleep wine."

I don't know if I'm making it clear, but that cycle wasn't really working for us.

So today Ayla said, "This book is stupid!"

"Yeah," I said. "Really stupid!"

Did you catch that? It went like this:

Ayla: "Mom, I have a problem!"

Me: "Yeah you do!"

There was silence as we both feel the beauty, the surrender, of this moment. It feels so good to Ayla to have her feelings validated, and not redirected. It feels so good to me just to admit it, to not fight her natural inclination toward dark clouds and stormy skies, to just go along with it.

"It's the stupidest stupid thing ever!"

"It's dumb!" I said. "It's stupid and dumb!"

Silence again as Ayla, now moved on from the glory of validation and back into her usual ornery, searches for a rejoinder.

"I'm not going to bring it to show and tell," she says emphatically.

Please note nobody is screaming or crying or begging the pagan gods to make it rain Malbec.

"You shouldn't bring it! It's a stupid book."

"Well I AM going to bring it." (Look, old habits die hard.) "But I'm not going to talk about the glasses."

"I don't blame you. I don't blame you one bit."

And then--Ayla cries out in delight. "Woah! Mom look at those clouds!"

They were really amazing clouds.

"It looks like a bunch of dead guys watching us!" Ayla says.

"Ayla, are you Hopi now?" I said.

"It looks like a hibernating bear!"said Indy.

"It looks like peacock feathers!" said Ayla.


The windows were down and the sky around us was about all we could see. And then Ayla says, more quietly now, It looks like god.

And Indy says, It looks like a boy and girl god.

The wind is in our hair and the sun is still strong.

Sometimes everything goes wrong. You gasp for air, you're exhausted like you've been swimming through muck, unable to pull your head above the surface. You fight. You fall.

And sometimes, you just let each other be. The updrift catches you and you surrender. You drive along through a gold and green afternoon, sharing the wonder of the clouds.

I am Vesuvius and I'm making this up as I go along.

In Which I Develop Inexplicable Anger Toward A Dead American Icon

"Roses are red, violets are orange," said Indy. "That can't be true."

That's how I feel, Indy. None of this can be true.

I haven't managed to wake up on time once since the time change.

I hate this time change so hard. This time change is worse than the whole "Kara Thrace is really an angel" thing. That's how hard I hate it. I don't care what Benjamin Franklin said. I don't like his willfully oblivious, optimistic chirpings and I don't like his time change. Why are we all still doing what Benjamin told us to? He got our hundred dollar bills, isn't that enough? He even has a rap song about him. Now we have to let him in to our sleep schedules? Into our bedrooms? Isn't this one step away from Benjamin Franklin telling us how to have sex? Did Benjamin Franklin ever have sex? Listen, I wouldn't take his advice on 'bedroom stuff', and I don't like taking it on my beta rhythms either.

I used to wake up two hours before the Bird was due at school and now I wake up one. And can I just say that getting up at 5:30 am and going to work was a lot easier than getting up at 6:15 and getting the Bird ready for school? This is the Faustian I have made. In exchange for being a Kept Woman, one who works at coffee shops, confounding and annoying baristas all over Longmont, and not for pay, I am in charge of off to school duties. At Operation: Bookstore, you know what I did? I got up. Saw to my own needs which are infinitesimal in comparison to the needs of a 6 and 4-year-old. I drank my coffee while reading my blogs. Then I drove to work where I generally drank a lot more coffee, bought with my sweet discount thank you, listened to my ipod, and played with books by myself for three hours. Sort the books, alphabetize the books, put back the books. When that was done I would chat with my co-workers about Buffy and Mad Men and hate on Twilight. It was a sweet job. Why did I leave this job????

I miss you, Ira Glass. And I'm sorry.

Now I get up and immediately the goblins are haunting. They have needs they can't see to. They need juice, they need milk, but their cups are dirty, they can't find their cups. They need cereal, or bread toasted and buttered and jellied, they need lunches made. They need to fight over the tv, the remote, the blanket, the pillows, the names of the characters, the name of the show, who is Angelica and who is Sarah, what is the nature of the soul, can humankind ever really do 'good'? They need to cry over having their hair brushed, fuss over the toothpaste. They don't want to get dressed, getting dressed is for suckers, why can't we wear our underwear and cowgirl boots to school?

Did I mention that during all this I am trying to conceal my true nature as a Daywalker? I am sloughing off my identity as Mistress of the Night, and it's not easy nor pretty. I'm in a between state, my shape not fully shifted, and my 'Medusa is hungry for the life blood of children' voice is a lot more likely to slip out.

Listen, I just looked it up and you know what I read? Benjamin Franklin didn't "invent" daylight savings. Apparently, out of typical early American petty jealousy of the French, he satirically suggested waking Parisians up with cannons an hour earlier to conserve Parisian candle wax.

Seriously, what a cad.

What an enormous douche. Can't Benjamin Franklin keep his nose in his own candle wax? What's it to him, what the Parisians do with their candles? As long as they keep making chocolat escargot, they can do whatever the hell they want. Have you ever tasted the Parisian version of hot chocolate? I believe in God only because I have. These people know their shit. Benjamin Franklin was like the eariliest Felicity. Always sticking his nose in other people's business. Always making bad decisions with the hair. I don't care if he said something cute once about beer. He probably said it right before he turned around and told everyone else that they should really cut back on their consumption, they were getting a little fat.

Have you looked in the mirror, Benjamin?

I am Vesuvius and I satirically suggest that Benjamin Franklin can suck it.

I am Vesuvius and chocolat escargot is not chocolate snails. It is this:



I am Vesuvius and chocolat chaud is not something you give as a joke at a bachelorette party. It is this:

Prophetess

Yesterday:

"Knock knock," said Ayla.

"Who's there?" said I.

"Interrupting diarrhea!"

Well that's just good comedy, I thought to myself. The best part was her delivery--clearly that was the punchline. Because if you were, say, shopping for Shake Weights and found yourself suddenly interrupted by diarrhea, would you take the time to say "interrupting diarrhea who?"

Me neither.


Today:

It had been a long day. I had walked into Michael's thinking it would be 'easy' and, I don't know, 'cute', to pick up supplies and have the girls make their own Valentine's. I have never been so wrong in my life. We took one step into the store that will eternally smell of fake flowers and wicker and I immediately started crying. Indy was all like "What's wrong?" and "don't cry, mommy", and I told her to stop being such a little brown-noser and give mommy a minute to recover from massive stamp and sticker over-stimulation. Panting, in a cold sweat, I called my sister. In reassuring tones she navigated me through the meelee like this was wartime Saigon and she was on her third tour. She knew the natives, she spoke the language. "Card stock and construction paper are basically the same things," she said, calmly enough to almost make me believe everything was going to be all right, despite all evidence to the contrary. "But it all has flowers on it," I sobbed. "And storks, and soccer balls. Oh god I am too young to die!"

"You are not in enemy territory," she said firmly. "That is just the scrapbooking section."

Well. You coulda fooled me.

After that I dragged my weary soldier to Target because apparently Michael's is too upscale for people like me who don't wish to make our own stickers out of German glitter glue and the blood of the Viet Cong. She is four, and she was tired, so naturally she went for the only option available to her: stamping her foot, screaming, and making the bloody purple monsters dance to their eerie funeral dirge five thousand times. Oh baby you . . . got what I neeeeeeed. I think she must have picked up something about torture methods during our time in the war zone.

We made it out of Target with, I swear to god, two cans of chopped clams, one box of stamps without an ink pad, two cute bags with owls on them that I have little to no use for, and absolutely none of the things for which we had come. We called it a wash. Went to get Ayla.

Went to King Soopers.

Almost made it alive through the store at rush hour. Got to the check out. Kindly gentlemen ringing up my goods. Me, magnanimously distributing quarters and pennies to my own little waifs to entertain them during the wait.

"Mom," Ayla whines. "I have to go potty."

"You're gonna have to wait just a minute. We're almost done."

"Mom," she starts to cry. "I have to go POTTY."

And then she grabs her bottom.

"We're going to have an accident!!" Poor, poor me screams to the kindly checker. I grab my daughter and friends, I ran like a bat out of hell--honestly, Louis Zamperini had nothing on me--my daughter in my arms, a mad dash for the bathroom on the opposite end of the store. "Will you watch my daughter!" I cry over my shoulder to the checker, pointing to my little cowgirl Indy--wearing her pink cowgirl boots, grinning like an idiot, obliviously enjoying her penny pony ride like no one has ever enjoyed that ride before. My wallet hit the floor, coins flew, people stared. I'm pretty sure at one point an old woman pushing a baby carriage pulled out of my way in the slickest nick of time. I elbowed and leapt and beat people back the way my teenage self once did trying to get front row seating at an O-Town concert. If you were there, I truly do apologize for those things that I shouted. Please interpret them in the kindest possible way.

The women's room is closed.

"Hello!" I yell, and dash into the men's.

Empty. Good things do happen.

Ayla is flustered. Teary. Probably a little embarrassed and a lot terrified. I situate her so she can see to her business. She's drawing in quick little breaths, chewing her bottom lip. I take a deep breath. She looks like she might cry.

"Ayla?" I say softly.

"Yeah?" her little voice wobbly.


". . . Knock knock."

Apologissima

Yesterday I was at the library with my boring American children. We were sitting there reading boring books about white people eating boring turkeys when these adorable little bambinis from Italy came running in, crying out "Mama, Papi, canna we playa con la computadora?" in pleasantly accented voices.

I was going to ask one of their parents if I could trade them their moppet for one of my kids who say unmusical things like "computER", and, "I love you mom, you're so pretty" instead of 'mami'. But some hawk-eyed librarian was watching me and I think she was on to my grift.

Anyway, my point is, if I had one of those superior Mediterranean children I could record one of them saying it to you like this:

"Mis computadora esta no vive! Esta muerta! Por favora mama belissima, cana I cleana upa my budoira now? And then make-ah you some superiora pastisseries?"

That's right. Italian PLUS French. Suckers.

Waiting for a new ac adapter to arrive. Did you know they're 11 bucks on amazon and 60 at Walmart? Who knew?

See you Tuesday.

I am Vesuvius and I should have married that guy named Paolo. He waited on me once in a restaurant, but I tell you, he gave me the eyes.

I am Vesuvius and I made up that stuff about Paolo.

Also I Enjoy The Kit-Kats

Vesuvius is looking forward to Sunday night, about 10 pm, when I can pry the goblin's Halloween buckets from their exhausted sticky clutches and steal all the Twix. And the Snickers.

And the Milky Ways.

We will be going to the Dia De Los Muertos festivities at the Longmont Museum and Cultural center. Then my children's training up as pagans will finally be complete.

(Indy: Mom, god wears make up and makes me feel cozy. Mom: No honey, that's your Aunt Sophie)

Indy also thinks God needs to get some more Halloween decorations.

(Please resist your temptation to comment on how the leaves are God's decorations and all that jazz. We are not writing for the Christian Jack Handy here.)

Lastly, today I got to blog for MOPS International. I remember my mom taking me to MOPS meetings. Those were the ones where they fed us those cheap fake Oreos and grape kool-aid. Or maybe the ones in that smoky restaurant with the basement, where our parents gave us money for Pac-Man and then we could never find them again for three hours.

Wait, what?

Check it out here.

Have a Happy Halloween and remember: If your kid doesn't like Crunch bars or Junior Mints, I do.



I am Vesuvius and my favorite Halloween candy is wine.

Spiritual Journeys Undertaken In Red Carts

We just returned from Mom Mecca (otherwise known as Target), where the goblins humiliated me so badly I almost cried.

They can be so naughty and I needed to shop for sunglasses and I couldn't--because of the screaming and the kicking and the stroller tipping over backwards. And everyone else staring. Sorry. I realize that my children are the first children to ever have a tantrum in a grocery store. I know it's truly an original sight, and terribly fascinating. But maybe for the sake of the poor mother you could just. . . avert your eyes? Just for a minute? And not stare at the breaking down mother the way you stare at a car accident? Because you and my girls are embarrassing me more than I was embarrassed during my Most Embarrassing Moment--the one that occurred in college speech class and involved a naive parochial-school raised me and a sex toy. (No I am not at all joking about that). (No, I will not tell you the rest of that story. Still embarrassed.)

I walked home glaring into the sun. And onto the heads of my misbegotten offspring.

I have been looking into books involving spirituality and motherhood, but they all read to me something like this:

Are you the perfect mother? No? What is wrong with you? Try to be the perfect mother. Feeling better yet?


I wondered aimlessly through Barnes and Noble on Saturday, feeling unmoored and empty and then I found this book by Sue Monk Kidd. So I ordered me an iced mocha and sat down and read the book and after an hour I felt like a brand new person.

Seriously. I felt like sunshine. I felt so good that when I went to meet back up with Mr.V I knew he was absolutely going to see my inner radiance beaming like El Dorado and fall to his knees praising my beauty and asking me to bestow my newly gained wisdom upon him.

And when he saw me coming he said "Hey. What do you want for dinner?" Which you may not know is IN FACT man's way of saying "Oh ye embodiment of every goddess of wisdom, oh ye who art beauty incarnate, allow me to worship at the altar of you and bring you offerings of goodly iced mochas and the richest red wine, which still is not richer than thou wisdom and beauty ."

It's true.

Now if only SMK (as I like to call her) would write a book on finding some zen when your children go all zany in public areas and not reaching down into the depths of your humiliated soul and finding your inner devil mommy that screams things like "STOP WHINING OR I AM SELLING YOU TO THE GYPSIES!" or "STOP THAT KICKING OR I SWEAR TO GOD I SHALL UNHINGE MY JAWS AND SWALLOW YOU WHOLE".

Did you get that, Sue? Could you manage?


Stop by tomorrow. (You, that is. Not Sue.) I would like to tell you about something I once wanted, and did not get, and have since become very grateful that I didn't get what I thought I wanted..

And no, it's not about wanting this.