We are erasing ourselves, more or less, from our house. We took down all of our pictures and all but one of our bookshelves. One of our bed stands is gone and the one that remains has two books on it. Usually there are about 8 books on each side of our bed and a pile of papers. Our realtor recommended removing all religious or political books because potential buyers will profile us based on our books and if they don't like what they see on the spines of the books...you can forget about making a deal. The kids' toys have been downsized to the current favorites and those have to be out of sight when they are not being used.
This morning Sumner stomped into our room looking for his Harry Potter tapes at about
Ramona wonders where her all the dolls went.
Phil can't find his flashlight because it was in a new box on the exact same shelf we've always kept it.
Even our coats are out of the entryway. We're hanging them on hangers in the kid's closet.
It is dehumanizing.
The worst of it is this mirror. Our wall of family photos has been dismantled. What now hangs there is a mirror fit for a vacation condo. It just cries to be unnoticed.
We are not the type of people who like to go unnoticed. I hope it sells fast.
Yesterday Sumner and I and his friend were hanging out. Sumner was getting into some potty talk and I was tolerating and ignoring it. There were a few poops and a few butts peppering the conversation about holograms and superpowers and at one point he spelled u-n-d-e-r-w-e-a-r for his friend. I tried not to get too worked up about it.
Then, out of no where, he says a nonesense sentence and ends it with the word shit.
I spun around, grabbed his arm, and said, "Sumner, do not say that word."
He looked at me, shocked, and said, "What? Do you even know what that means?"
"Yes," I said with a firm toungue and fierce eyes, "I know what it means and I do not want to hear it or you will lose some priviledges."
"Okay," he agreed, clearly not getting the difference between poop and shit.
Later, away for the ears of his friend, I explained myself. "Shit is a word that people take offense at. It is rude to say it and people get really shocked when someone says it aloud."
Sumner just said, "No, Mom, that word is fuck."
I guess he understands these things.
I was just doing the lunch dishes. Ramona pranced into the kitchen, wandered around, talking to herself, "Oh, I need to go to the bathroom. Pee-pee? Poo-poo? I don't know which one I have to go. I need to go to the bathroom."
She wandered back out of the kitchen towards the bathroom, gripping her crotch.
I heard a tinkle. There was no more running commentary, usually a sign that a deep thought is emerging.
She poked her head back into the kitchen and said, while pulling up her pants, "Did you know that pee-pee in kind of like vanilla and poo-poo is kind of like chocolate?" With that she was off back to her playing.
The news: We’ve decided to rank
I’ve been holding off blogging all together this week because most of my blogable moments have to do with incidents, conversations, tears, and mishaps relating to this transition. I’ve started to write this entry several times. I’ve written sentences like, “While we will be sad to leave
The billing on my blog says that this blog is about a year of digging deep. We have done a lot of that and I have written about of very little of it, because it is a private process and this is, of course, rather public. But at the end of the day, we are going to
And we’re in mourning. We simply are in denial about leaving our friends. Our neighborhood is perfect. We walk. Yesterday we walked to the pool for a swim and then Sumner and Phil walked to the library for Chess Club and Ramona and I walked home for lunch and then over the salon to have my hair done. Phil and Sumner walked to the grocery for a snack, picked up Monie at the salon and walked home. Later our friends, who live down the street, walked over with their kids for dinner. We love JP.
And we’re scared. We’re not scared about the things you’re probably scared of, like levies and hurricanes and rotten moldy buildings and Southern people, but we’re anxious about change on 100 different levels.
But we’re trusting ourselves and I believe that God has some sort of plan in this, so we’re going.
This week I’ve been putting things in boxes in an effort to get ready to put our house on the market. I call it packing. My friend Aaron, who lives behind us, asked me to stop saying that—it makes him too sad. So I started to call it de-cluttering. Later I talked to my friend Amy, who lives in
I want to go and I want to stay.
Every kind of food is so delicious to the cob.
It’s so delicious like the snow.
Winter is so fun.
Spring is so fun.
Every season is fun.
Summer is fun.
Fall is fun.
Plants can be any kind of beautiful color.
But each one is the most beautiful of all.
The valentine color couldn’t be redder.
Valentines, valentines are so red.
They are the best red in the world.
The spider web is shining.
Oh spider web shine every second.
Glow in the night like moon-glowing star.
Off to a spider glow no more.
The sun is yellow.
The moon is gray.
But every day is valentine beautiful.
Bananas are yellow, apples are red, and every fruit is healthy.
A rainbow rocketship is built by the moon and the sun.
Vines are green.
Branches are brown.
Every kind of stick is useful every day.
Eyes can be any color, blue, red, or purple.
Every color of eye is beautiful.
Blue, red and yellow are very primary.
They like to be very beautiful.
Butterflies are beautiful, as the most beautiful things on earth.
Beautiful as wind, song and wings.
Oh beautiful, oh beautiful.
Baby.
Bless God, for spirits bless a shining heart.
Give and shine.
Friendship can never be broken.
By the force that connects it with two people that might even marry.
Inside is love, outside is beauty.
Beauty is married forever.
A shining spider web in the night.
Oh beautiful web, oh beautiful night.
The night never ends.
Oh beautiful birds, you are wonderful.
Be quick or fast, there’s a net in your eyes.
Beauty comes from the inside, not out.
And the heart is more loving with each inside out.
Neither bunny nor dragon, but beautiful guard of inside.
Make a wonder-picture of beauty and all.
Star Wars Episode I: Someone hired two Jedis. Darth Maul is after the two Jedis and queen. But nobody wins. To be continued....
When Phil and I get in an argument, I think he says insane things. Not just things I don’t agree with and not just rude things or heat-of-the-moment things. INSANE things. I don’t want you to think he’s crazy, so I won’t report any examples here.
In the heat of the moment, I fantasize about the Jury. The Jury is a group of about 5-10 of our mutual friends who would essentially side with me if they were listening to our argument. I see them sitting on a bench set up along the side of our bedroom or kitchen or wherever we are. After they take in our perspectives, they would make a ruling. Chris, Ajay, Suzi, and Ha are always on the Jury, because they are our oldest joint friends and know us best. Ajay would be the captain (Sorry, Chris, it’s not an elected position and Ajay is more Swiss than you). Unfortunately, no family members make the cut on the permanent Jury seats; blood is thicker than water and that makes them impartial.
The rest of the jury selection varies depending on the topic under discussion. Parenting? I’d call in the Corner Coop teachers. Speedy decision-making? Ara, my father-in-law (I’ll make a special family exception because he’d vote with me), Molly Wolfe, and Darcy get to share the Jury bench and Chris gets an extra vote. Decorating? Erika, Amy, and our moms (again they get a special exception because they’d vote with me). Fashion issues? Aarti, Erika, Julie, both of our mothers, Laura, and my brother.
Last weekend, we drove to
Here’s were I saw my chance. I had a jury of one, Alex, waiting upstairs to side with me. When I got upstairs I told her and the kids that it was all worked out. Nothing to worry about. Then, as an aside, I asked Alex, “Wasn’t he being so intense in the car? I couldn’t believe it.” Then I waited for her guilty-as-charged verdict.
She smiled and said, “I dunno, Em, you were pretty tense.” Then she paused and saw my gapping mouth and added, “You both kind of were.” She really meant that I was the tense one, but softened the blow with an addendum.
Justice can be bitter.
Our kids are trying to make sense of the world and we’re trying to make sense of them.
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Me: Really. I can put my fist in my mouth.
Sumner: Me too.
Me: What if you were full?
Sumner: I would vomit the pie up.
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Ramona: Mom, was this Barbie alive?
Me: No.
Ramona: Is it dead?
Me: No, it was never alive.
Ramona: Not even it the time of dinosaurs!
Me: No even then.
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Sumner has been making it clear lately that he doesn’t get enough attention. He’s right. Ramona edges him out and demands everyone’s attention. We were talking about this...
Sumner: When it happens I don’t feel smart.
Me: What do you mean?
Sumner: Well, like at school I am always smart. I am really smart.
Me: Huh, and when you don’t get attention you don’t feel smart?
Sumner: Yeah.
Later, Sumner was explaining to Phil why he likes to wear this fleece buttondown shirt to school everyday.
Sumner: You know how I am the smartest kid in that class? Well, I wear this shirt because I am smart and this shirt is like the kind smart people wear, like professors.
Phil: Huh.
Sumner: When I have a bad day at school I don’t remember it the next day.
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What do you say to that? Sumner, there’s lots of kinds of smart. You’re the kind of smart that’s valued in school, but there’s other types too. OR Sumner, you probably shouldn’t go around saying you're the smartest kid in the class. OR Smart people don’t have to wear collared shirts. OR Sumner, eating a lot of pie will make you sick. We don’t say anything.
I spoke with my Uncle John the other day. When you answer a call from him your hello is followed by a scratchy, “Yeahp.” It’s not a yeah and not a yep. It’s yeahp. When we hear this we all know who it is, “Hey, Uncle John.”
On the movies:
“I don’t go to the movies. The last time I went to the movies was in the 70s. It’s completely ridiculous. You jump up. You sit down. People climbing over you and popcorn and soda spilled on you. It’s worse than an airplane. Getting herded around like a bunch of cattle. Nah, I like a more peaceful life.” As he told me this he could hardly hear me because his cable cooking show was on so loud.
On the movies and sin and a few other tangential topics:
My grandparents “became” Christians as young adults and they adhered to a lot of rules and regulations when they had children. They softened as they grew older. My cousin Michelle, John’s stepdaughter, said at my grandmother’s funeral that my mom and her siblings grew up with a lot of rules, but that once the grandkids came along that all we experienced was “grace and mercy”. So true, their faith grew.
Well, anyway, John remembers when all things were sinful. You just couldn’t measure up, “Movies? That was a sin. Movies and ball games. Sunday you didn’t do nothing but go to church and milk the cow.” Presumably Sunday was the day some (sinful) farmers took in a movie and went to ballgames. “The movie theater was a den of iniquity. Getting caught at the movies was almost like a life sentence. You were done for. Alan and I got pissed off and didn’t listen to that bullshit. We’d combine when everyone went to church. Bushel a whole bunch. When they all came home from church he’d [Grandpa Art] wouldn’t say nothing because we made him a lot of money.”
Those inconsistencies on Grandpa’s sin theology still don’t make sense to him.
On Mom:
“She’s either crying or screaming.”
On Dad’s weight loss:
“What’d he go on some crash diet? If you like to be skinny that’s the way to do it. I thought he was ready to collapse. He’s ash gray. Got no color. He had to stand in one place twice before I could see him.”
That’s Uncle John. You should give him a call. You’d learn a lot about the VA hospital (“they take good care of me”) and getting kicked out of Christian schools and how much he loves his grandkids. He’s alright.
But all out paranoia and delusions started one night when we settled into watch a movie. Fifteen minutes into the movie, she yelped and jerked up. When I asked her what happened she told me that she thought a mouse was climbing up her. I burst out laughing, “Mom, they’re scared of us. They are not going to climb up onto you.”
We watched the rest of the movie without incident, but Mom was further on edge. I saw my opportunity. I was brushing my teeth in the bathroom on one side of the kitchen and she was in the bedroom on the other side of the kitchen. I hurried through my hygiene and snuck into the kids’ room and found a small pink ball. Then I hollered, “Mom, are you coming into the bathroom? Should I turn off the light?”
“I’m coming,” she said. Then I heard stomp-stomp-pause-stomp...at that point I quietly rolled the pink ball across the kitchen floor right in front of her. Of course, this movement on the floor out of the corner of her eye appeared to be a mouse and she screamed bloody murder and grabbed her heart before she could get her last stomp in. I was on the floor giggling until it hurt, while she shouted, “Let the old lady die! Call the coroner’s office!” We chuckled together for a couple minutes, really I chuckled and she shouted at me with a smile. Then I retired and she headed for the bathroom.
Apparently, while she was using the toilet, she leaned forward to inspect where the baseboard heater pipes went into the floor, calculating if a mouse could fit through there. At that point she felt something fall onto her back and visions of mice peeping out of the pipe hole morphed into a hallucination. Again, she screamed, but this time it was longer and it was more agitated. From my position reclining in bed I was sure it was all over: rats had infested the bathroom.
I raced to the bathroom to find my mom standing with a hand towel in her hand, “I thought a herd of them had fallen from the sky and landed on my back. I thought they grew wings and were doing a free fall attack.”
She was serious. I started laughing so hard I couldn’t stand. She went on for awhile. I grabbed a notebook and started transcribing nearly every word she said.
The bed shook with laughter as I tried to get down her most colorful musings.
Oh, my. I love hyperbole. And my mom.
