Race is a Construct

I'm heard that before. I have theorized about it. I've read it. I know it. But still, people look different and some look similar, so race is a convenient identifier. I often use it as a proxy for class and culture, which in my little world in Boston is sometimes accurate and sometimes isn't.

Sumner has fresh innocent eyes. Last year, he asked us who was white and who was black. We asked him what he thought. He told us that he and I were white. One kid in his class was black. Everyone else he knows was "in between". Ramona, Phil, grandparents, friends, teachers, and so on were all "in between", even though I would identify many of these people as white or black or Indian or Japanese or Latino or something else. He saw “in between” people.

The other day he said, "Mom, I think I may be the only white kid in my class."

"Really, why do you say that?"

"Well, I'm not sure about some people. Like Veronica, I just can't tell with her. And Sally. Mom, I just can't tell." (Veronica is bi-racial and Sally is white. Their names have been changed.)

I didn't respond to this. "How do you know you're white?"

"I know that," He said as if I had asked him the most obvious thing, like how he knew he was a boy. He continued, "People have said so."

People have said so, so he's starting to "get it". He is constructing knowledge about who is who and who he is and he is using his world as a mirror to figure it out. Race is one of his identifiers for himself, but not others. Yet. Race is a construct.

First it seemed to be just ordinary bickering...

Ramona was supposed to be brushing her teeth and Sumner was in the bathtub. Phil and I were sitting at the kitchen table talking. We could tell that they were arguing, but it was benign. We like for them to work these things out.

All of a sudden we hear Ramona's voice rising to a fever pitch. "It is NOT! Don't say that! DON"T CALL IT THAT!"

There was some murmuring from Sumner.

Now all-out, unintelligible shrieking from Ramona. I am a screamer and I could hear myself in her. Phil pushed out his chair and slowly moved to investigate. In less than a minute he had mediated the whole thing and returned to the kitchen.

"Do you know what they were fighting about? Sumner was calling the soap dish a poop boat. Ramona didn't like that."

A poop boat. It puts some of my screaming in perspective.

Fashionista

Ramona just told me, "Change your pants."

Granted, I am wearing post-Sumner-partum pants. I am packing. I am working in the basement today right after I drop her off at school.

"Why?" I asked.

"You look blurry. You look crumpily. You need to iron these pants. And...you look like a boy. I don't like those pants."

But I do and I am going to wear them.

ma

Making Plans for the Future

No one will ever be able to accuse Ramona of not setting goals for herself. She like to plan ahead.

The other day she asked if, when she grows up and moves out of the house, I would let her take her Corner Co-op CD with her.

This morning she asked me if I slept in the nude when I was a little girl. She told me she was wondering because she is trying to figure out if when she is grown up she will sleep in the nude except, of course, for when she has guests for sleepovers.

Haven't packed a thing

Supposed to be boxing things. All I can do is hang out with friends and chill. I am drinking lots of tea and processing everything that has happened to me for the last four, seven, ten years. It's been a good week. I am going to start packing tomorrow.

Job

I have a job. I will be teaching sixth grade Language Arts for half of the day and spending the other half of the day working with parents or teachers...to be determined later, as the school leadership team for next year forms.

Bald...

has never meant a thing to me. My dad is really, really bald. His head is shiny. Since I've known him he's been bald and it never really bothered me. Or him.

Philip, in case you haven't noticed, is bald too. When I met him, at age 19, he had a (just barely) receding hairline. It was a little tough to start losing your hair when you are still a teenager. I think marriage and two kids sped up the process. For a while he tried to slow down the process with some products, but I always thought that was silly. To me, he looks the same with or without hair.

The two main adult men in my life have been my experience with hair loss. I never really understood why people, men mainly, get so hyped up about going bald.

Until it started happening to me. I have this fabulous white streak right at the front of my part. Over the last month I have noticed that this spot is thinning. You can kind of see my scalp there. And I am not happy about it. I am downright troubled by it. I don't want to lose my hair! I think I have to stop wearing a ponytail--it probably puts undo stress on the hair. I wonder if it is too late for Ladies' Rogaine.

Sumner is growing his hair out. He's seven. He better hold onto these precious years of a full head of great hair. For those in our family, these days are numbered.

Jane Goodall

Our family was having an ordinary breakfast. Ramona had her cereal with milk (on the side) and was talking in bright chirps. Sumner was sitting sideways in his chair gorging on his one big meal of the day. Phil was methodically eating his routine breakfast fruit and I was slowly sipping my tea and reading the paper while NPR droned in the background. I vaguely heard one of those NPR-not-an-advertisement-but-really-is-an-advertisement advertisements. It announced that Jane Goodall was going to be at the Franklin Park Zoo to talk about her experiences in Africa living with the gorillas. It registered, but I didn't really note it on a conscious level.

Phil, who usually cannot do two things at once, like eat a piece of fruit and listen to the radio, looked up and said, "Isn't she getting tired of talking about that?" I had to cackle at that. When does one get tired of telling her stories? I don't think I ever will. Perhaps you tire when people tire of listening to you.

Ramona on the Easter Bunny

Sumner is a believer. He is all set to prove to all of his doubting friends that Santa is the real deal.

Ramona is suspicious by nature. She is trusts her brother about Santa, but she's not so sure about the Easter bunny. Before Easter she spent a lot of time trying to figure out if the Easter bunny is a boy or a girl. She then announced that it is neither or both. She also concluded that it walks on its hind legs and doesn't stay on all four like other rabbits.

Then Easter came. She loved the egg hunt. She ate some candy for breakfast. We went to church. She tried Peeps for the first time. She played with some spring stickers and she was happy with her Easter basket pull. Then Easter went.

About three days later she tells me, "Mom, I know the Easter bunny is pretend. It is you or daddy or Santa who hides the eggs."

Then a few days later she tells Phil, "Dad, that Easter bunny is just a paper bunny sitting on Santa's porch. I just know that the Easter bunny is not real. I can't wait until I am grown up and I have my own kids so that I can know for sure if the Easter bunny is real."

Condiments

When I returned from New Orleans, Phil informed me that there was work to be done. "We have to eat down the pantry. There are a lot of condiments that we need to get through." So now we are designing meals around a long-forgotten can of coconut milk and remembering to use that tiny jar of honey mustard on our sandwiches. I'm down with that, but Philip can get a little crazy about these things.

So the next day, it is about 4:30 or 5:00 PM and Phil is just warming up to the idea of making some dinner for us. I am hungry. I want a little schnicky snack. I open the cupboard. No chips. No pretzels. No crackers. The fridge: No carrots. No grapes. On my way to the food safe in the pantry I shout, "Hey, sweetie, I thought you went grocery shopping. What do we have to snack on?" He retorts, "Why don't you get into the freezer? We really need to eat that down."

The freezer? For snacks? Now give me a break. Maybe some frozen blueberries could be a good snack (which we were out of), but other than that I am not eating some sage lentils the we froze 8 months ago or chipping off a little bit of frozen mango brick that I bought at a Latino market the three days after we moved into this house.

Come on.

Then, I few days later, I start bugging him again about the lack of snacks. He looks at me and says, "How about a pepperocini? You know, a salad pepper." I know what a pepperocini is. And I like them. But I am NOT going to get into them when I have a hankering for the munchies.

Our house is very, very, very fine house

So I did find and we bought a house. It is the second time Philip and I have bought a house that he has never laid eyes on. (At least this time I did manage to take a few pictures of the interior for him.)

We are going to live on a street called Nelson. It is a little more Leave-It-To-Beaver than we had hoped for, but the house is fabulous. We won't even need to paint the walls. The dining room set (yes, we have a dining room) comes with the house. I have much of our furniture already arranged in my mind's eye in the house. There are even two full baths and three ("Yes, three," the listing agent told me) half baths. It is going to be a nice place to live.

I am reading one of the Mitford sisters' books, In Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford. The Mitfords are these kind of famous English sisters who lived and wrote novels in the 30s and 40s. Their books are about upper-crusty types and they are just fun and silly. One thing that stands out to me right now in this novel is how Nancy Mitford goes on about all of the houses that people live in. There are the grand country houses of the landed gentry that all stand out in some cute way, her little house in Oxford, the country houses of the new rich, the houses in London that always seem to being rented for a season here or there. It is a lot of fun to hear these descriptions and imagine how my new house and its inhabitants would be described by a Mitford.

I think the high ceilings and airy rooms would be noted by the Mitford sisters. I think they'd like the warm, casual hospitality we exude from our home. I encourage guests to help themselves and we always have good shnicky-snacks on hand. It will be a drop-in-when-you-can type of place.

But what would the Mitford sisters say about the FEMA trailers on the block? And what about the boarded up businesses blocks away? What would they make of all of the people back in their homes going on with the work of living and having a family and doing what you got to do? It just wouldn't be in a Mitford novel.

Complex Things

I was growing weary. My family left New Orleans on our scheduled departure date and I stayed on to turn our house-search into a house-find.

It was down to two houses, both about the same price. One, House #1, was one block from the school we imagine Sumner might attend and it had some deferred maintenance. The layout would have been nice for entertaining and there was even an extra room for guests.

The other, House #2, was in an “iffy” area (as we euphemistically say), but it was “one year young” (as the real estate listing said). It was a gorgeous house with a huge backyard and off-street parking and there was even an extra room for guests.

I decided to go to the “transitional” (as we also say) neighborhood and check out House #2’s hood. I parked my car across from the one story brick apartment building right next to House #2. I stood in front of the house and surveyed the block. I walked towards the river and saw a white guy in a suit standing next to a minivan. White-guy-in-a-suit-next-to-a-minivan usually means that there are going to be some white kids nearby that ride in that minivan. I approached him only to see that where car seats should be there were lots of blue prints strewn about. I introduced myself and asked him how he liked the neighborhood. He told me his first name and pointed at all of the houses on his block and told me who lived in them and who had kids. He volunteered that he does not have a problem with crime. In fact, he often forgets to lock his car. The only downside of living there is that the apartments “get loud” on Friday and Saturday nights and the famous po-boy shop on the corner attracts a lot of people and makes parking hard sometimes. He also intimated that there was a developer who was going to buy the apartments and a few other houses on the block and redo them. I knew that this meant that more white people like me would be moving in and that this would be a “good” investment. He seemed to be a good guy and I would have off-street, gated parking at House #2 and I don’t mind a little music so I was thinking: this is all good. Lots of good. I walked on.

On the other side of House #2 (from the apartments) was a nicely maintained orange house. The gate to the back yard was open and I peeked in when I heard voices. Three African-American men were working with an electric saw. One of the men was older than the other two—the young ones were in their 50s or 60s. I introduced myself and the oldest of the three, who owned the house, introduced them to me. They were all Mr. Somebody and all very warm. I told them that I was from Boston and thinking about buying the house next door. They told me what I great neighborhood it was and to bring them some lobster when I came back down. I walked on.

I moved away from the block the house was on and weaved through the neighborhood. I met another retired African-American woman who was out painting her railing and fence black. She was Miss Someone and very friendly.

I kept walking. I was thinking—this is it. One of the reasons I want to live in New Orleans is because I want to live in an integrated neighborhood. After the storm there have been a lot of questions about who will live in the city and where they will live. The city is whiter than before Katrina. This integration is important to both Phil and I. Sometimes I think we are unsure why we want this. When it comes down to it I think we both have come across people in our lives who grew up in integrated neighborhoods or went to integrated schools and these people have made an impression on us. They seem to have a great sense of connection to humanity in general and they also seem to navigate relationships with all sorts of people with great ease. Of course we know lots of people who have these qualities and didn’t have experiences with integration, but it seems to be a little rarer to come by—so we think.

So I walked and thought about living in the nicest house, which is gated with an electric gate, in this neighborhood. I thought about the fact that there didn’t seem to be a lot of young white families in this neighborhood. I felt the heaviness of making a decision to live somewhere and not live somewhere else. I turned a corner and smiled at several more potential neighbors sitting on their porches.

Then this guy called to me from across the street. He was African-American and introduced himself by his first name. His eyes were bloodshot. He seemed to be waiting, loitering. I didn’t get the feeling that he lived in the house he was hanging out in front of, but I thought he knew the people that lived there. I crossed halfway across the street and talked to him. I don’t remember how we started talking, but as often happens with me, he seemed to tell me a lot. I told him I was thinking of moving in to the neighborhood and that got him going.

He had lived in this neighborhood since he was a little boy. He wanted to make sure I knew that it was dry during the flood. Then he started to tell me about where he was during the storm and flood. I didn’t catch it all and I was getting uncomfortable. I couldn’t really ask him a bunch of clarifying questions. He told me that he was at home on this block during Katrina. I guess after the storm, he headed to the Convention Center to get food and water. When things got crazy there, although he didn’t know how to swim, he walked through the flooded areas back to a Walmart near here (this Walmart was the scene of massive looting or commandeering of supplies—however you see it). He them muttered something about finally getting back home and getting his guns ready because no one could make him leave his home. I thought: guns, mmmm. Maybe I should get going.

By now a shaggy looking, rail-thin guy pulled up on his bike and lurked in front of this house. He was in worse shape than the guy I was listening to and my new friend introduced me to him. I was curious to check out what exactly was going on, yet I was thinking about my safety. Just then the front door opened. A much healthier looking guy, big, tall, strong, and wearing a Saints hat, came out with a worn briefcase. He was tucking a small key on a chain into his shirt. The biker cruised away. My new friend introduced me again to this guy.

I thought: alright, he’s the “iffy” part of the neighborhood. I’m meeting the drug dealer in the hood. For sure there are drug dealers in every neighborhood, but this one didn’t look anything like me and I was on foot. I need to go without offending anyone.

The big guy came off his porch. He deduced that I was looking at the “new house” around the corner. I was pretty evasive about the whole thing and walked on. Now I was really puzzling. Could we live here near those guys? As a result of their circumstances and choices they seemed to be living a pretty rough life. How would that match up with my family and our hopes and dreams? I felt more heaviness. I spotted an African-American grandmother and a toddler on a porch. We waved at one another with big smiles.

Just then my friend and the big guy rolled by me in a beat-up car. They were in no hurry. I thought I better get in a hurry. I said hello to them loudly so that they would know I saw them. They didn’t acknowledge me. I picked up the pace.

I looped around back to the street where my potential house was. Parked right in front of my house was the big guy’s car and he and my friend were leaning against it surveying House #2. My hair stood on end; I heard the three guys from the orange house still in their backyard. I was going to be okay, but I was spooked.

The big guy started to talk to me. I wanted to break into a sprint and I wanted to hear what he was going to say. He asked what they were asking for the house. I tried to avoid the question. He pointed to a green house half a block away and told me that he knew the guy who owned it and two other houses in the block. A developer had offered the owner of those three houses half a million for all three. That was not much more than they were asking for House #2. The big guy told me that he told the owner of the houses that he could get more.

Just then I relaxed. I remembered a conversation I had heard on the radio just a few days before. It was between a couple of DJs, a caller, and a psychic and they all sounded like African-Americans. The caller was asking the psychic to interpret her dream. The tone of the show was very silly. The caller had a dream where she and her husband were camping in a forest with two white couples. One of the white couples seemed to be the kind of people who would let something bad happen to you and do nothing. The other white couple seemed like the kind of people who would kill you. A DJ teased her, saying that she was racially profiling in her dreams. The psychic said that some big change was coming in her life and she was scared. The caller said that white people were moving into her neighborhood and it scared her. The DJs teased her about her neighborhood going to hell when the white people moved in. I laughed while I was listening and so did the caller, but she was also genuinely scared.

Genuinely scared. The big guy, a probable drug dealer, and my friend, his lackey, were really freaked out at the idea of people like me—white people—were moving into their neighborhood. What kind of neighbor would I be? What would happen to their neighbors if me and my children took over?

I said good-bye. I got in my car and drove away. Buying a house is a hard thing. Rebuilding a city is complex thing.

Hard Things

I've been in a bubble this last week and a half. I haven't been thinking about the loss from Katrina or the progress since Katrina or the overwhelming task we have ahead of ourself of putting this city back together. I've been thinking about me. Would this kitchen be nice for my family? Can I see my children at this school? If I had that job, when would I get to be with my kids? How far a commute from this neighborhood to the hospitals?

Last weekend I did go hear a blues show. The songs were soaked in Katrina. I teared and then went on with setting up my life.

Then, today as I was driving by yet another pile of garbage I saw something that cut to my heart. It was a kid's play kitchen. It wasn't just any play kitchen, it was the exact same one that takes up one wall of Sumner and Ramona's bedroom. It was our kitchen. It hit me then. Some Ramona is without her kitchen. Where is she living? What is she playing with now? Will her new kitchen survive the next hurricane season?

There are little people living through this thing too.

New Things

I've started dialing only seven numbers when I go to make a phone call. Last week, when we got to New Orleans, as part of our property search, we were writing down a lot of realtors' phone numbers. Phil and his dad and his mom would read me just seven numbers for each phone number to jot down. I was perplexed each time and thought: no area codes! How cute! How provincial! How country! Of course New Orleans is a huge city, but you only need dial seven numbers to make a call.

Today I picked up my mobile phone to make a call. My phone has a Boston number with a Boston area code. Three times today I tried to call New Orleans numbers without putting in the 504 area code.

I also said y’all today. I think it is rolling off my tongue rather smoothly.

Normal Things

In a post-Katrina world there are some normal things to ask people: How'd you make out? Did your house get water? Where'd you go [when the city was unlivable]? Where are you living now?

It is normal to see lots and lots of construction rubble on the side of the street. It is normal to see block upon block of empty houses. It is normal to bump into someone who is living in another city and is visiting, but plans to return as soon as they can. It is normal for the schools I am interviewing at not to know where their school will be, who their students will be, and if their teachers will be able to stay in New Orleans beyond this school year. Hundreds of businesses are closed for good. There is no more recycling. There are a lot fewer Popeyes. Many of the stop lights are still out and have been replaced with four way stops. There are people living in flooded homes--rebuilding, moving on. This city is going to be okay.

Praise the Lord! Thank You Jesus!

We got an offer on our house. We accepted. We were dancing and smiling and feeling good. In private.

When we told the kids, Sumner was a little unsure. He looked at me with a long face and big eyes. I was trying to act cool when I told him. I hugged him. He saw I was excited despite the fact that I was trying to contain myself and he got a little happy for us.

Later, at bedtime, I asked the kids what they were thankful for. Ramona began listing people she knew. This included our immediate family and several of her friends and their moms. She made a point of telling me that she was NOT thankful for the dads (except for hers). Her monologue went on and on. Sumner finally asked her, "Please be quiet, so I can think." With some coaxing from me she was able to be silent for about 10 seconds. He then said, "I am thankful that we sold our house because I am glad that I know when we are going to move. I like to know the date that our house will be sold."

He's a literal little man. He wears two watches: one because it has a second hand and one because it has an alarm that sounds at 8 AM. While he is sad our house sold, the date we close is somehow comforting.

Faith or fear?

We're in New Orleans. I've been on four interviews and have another today. We've found the neighborhoods of our dreams, but not the house of our dreams. We found a house that's great--for a grandma--and we may make it work. We visited Sumner's (hopefully) future school and we've had boiled crawfish and a soft shell crab po-boy. We're packing it in.

Despite the fact that we are moving to a hurricane ravaged city, I am doing just fine. Mainly I am excited for life down here. The pace is not hurried or harried (while the people are somewhat harried right now, it doesn't force them to move too fast and rush). There are neighborhoods that are friendly and stores and resturants are right smack dap in the middle of residential blocks. We love it. The people are so friendly (I repeat myself). We've been trolling the neighborhoods trying to find houses for sale. One woman we met, who does not have a vested interest in real estate, told us she's give us tips if she hears of anyone selling before the house hits the market. Another two people who happen to be hanging out on the street referred us to homes of people who might be selling. So New Orleans will be a great home.

But we don't have a home and I don't have a job and the kids school is still up in the air.

I have moments when I am really scared.

I told Rick, my father-in-law, that I was right between fear and faith. He said, "Isn't that where we all live?" So true, so true.

Oh, the shame of it!

It is simply shameful how long it has been since I have written in my blog. I was always worried that "living neat" (my last entry on March 14) would cramp my style a bit and it has/is.

Apparently my cousin Amy, a blog reader, and my mom were visiting this weekend in Iowa and griping about how many days it has been since my last blog. They want to know the colors of my everyday...and I want to paint them. That was a wake up call. Back to the old keyboard.

I have a lot of topics, scribbled onto receipts and inside my datebook and even on my hand, but I just haven't had the energy to write. So, I peck away and finally flesh out these topics--things that happened or occurred since March 14, my last entry. I am going to try to fill in the blank two weeks.

Why fly when you can walk?

I have seen it happen so many times before to Phil. I anticipate. To the max. I imagine and imagine and worry a bit and picture what life will be like during and after a big change. It hits Phil when it happens. Ramona has asked a lot of questions over the last months. She doesn't just want to know if her bunk bed will be in New Orleans, she wants to know how it will fit out of the house and make its way down here.

The other day we went to the magnet school we hope that Sumner "gets into". It met all of Phil and my's expectations and then some. We thought he was impressed, if overwhelmed a bit.

That night, as Sumner was falling asleep, he had a lot of tears. "Mom, you ruined my day. You made me turn off the TV in the morning. And you wouldn't let me play on the computer later and how will the kids at that new school know me?" It went something like that. Many more tears and questions followed. For instance: How will I know the rules of that school? Why are we moving?

We talked to him for a long time. We told him that we made this decision because we felt that it would be best for our family in the long run. We also acknowledged that it will be really hard and really sad. We told him he'd make friends and we'd help with that. They'd make the rules clear to him. We sang, "Make New Friends and Keep the Old". We even told him that we could fly back to Boston and visit all of our friends when we wanted.

He told us just what he thought about these things:

Moving is not what is best for him. And why fly [to visit your friends] when you can walk?

Living Neat

This was actually part of our dinner conversation tonight:

Me (Recounting my daily events.): After breakfast, Ramona helped me tidy up the house. She learned how to make a bed and then...

Sumner (Annoyed and bubbling over with jealousy, near tears.): How come I don't know how to make a bed? I want to know how to make a bed!

I thought that not knowing how to make a bed equals liberation. For Sumner it was exclusion.

For all of my parents' over-neat and generally pathological and overbearing housekeeping habits, bed making was not one of the things they harped on. I do know how to make a bed very skillfully and I can remember standing on the opposite side of many beds from my mom while she instructed me about how to get it right, yet these memories are warm ones. I liked making beds and I didn't HAVE to do it if I didn't want to.

Apparently my grandmother Rhoda made my dad make his bed everyday and so the day he left home he stopped making his bed.

I think generally my mom only makes my parents' bed for show. When guests come over, she fluffs everything up (just so) and tucks hospital corners (just so) before piling a tower of pillows on her bed (just so). But most days my mom just doesn't see the point. She's really into airing things out--not one corner or cranny of her house is stuffy. So most days she throws the comforter back and airs the bed out to keep it fresh.

Getting our house ready to "show" in the hopes of finding a buyer has been a grueling process, and living in a neat (nearly sterile) house is just not me. I like clean. I really like organization. I don’t like blank, boring neatness. Yesterday when I was making the beds I realized that before we were in the business of "showing" our house it never, ever crossed my mind that I might want to make our bed or our children's beds as part of my morning routine. That made me chuckle. I also realized that the only time we do make the beds is when we change the sheets or when VIP guests are coming by or when Phil is preparing to make the beds neat and safe for the kids and him to wrestle.

I like made beds, but I really just don't see the point.

We May

It is becoming an increasing possibility that we may move in May. That’s in like 60 days. That’s pretty sad.

I know that I should be worrying about selling my house, buying another, finding a job, finding schools for the kids, hiring a moving company, planning flights and drives and graduation, and setting up shop in a new city that was ravaged by a hurricane seven months ago. Thankfully I’m not worried today.

My secret is thankfulness. I heard this sermon last week that emphasized being thankful for what we have and where we are today. For about two weeks before I heard that sermon I had been fretting. A pathetic worry-wart. Panicking pathetically everyday. Then I started to count my blessings. It seems so simple and it is working.

I am sad and I get choked up a few more times a day then usual, but I know that I have been blessed by our four years here and there’s so much more for us in the next several years in New Orleans.

As I often say, “Praise God and thank you Jesus.”

Ramona on Moving

Our friend Julie: Ramona, are you excited to move to New Orleans?

Ramona: Yes.

Julie: What are you excited about?

Ramona: To learn French.

Julie: Really? Why do you want to learn French?

Ramona: Because it is fancy.

Later, she and I were watching TV show in which a little girl's friend was moving to Hong Kong.

Ramona: Kate is going to be so sad when I move. She is going to be so sad that God is taking me away from her.

Baby Slinger

This morning Phil delivered Ramona to our bed at about six. She was having a little asthma and I gave her a breathing treatment and waited to see if she was well enough to go to school. We lay there halfway between sleeping and waking, as I counted her breaths per minute and the seconds between coughs. Sumner bounded in about 45 minutes later, wanting to wrestle and cuddle in a rather active manner. We wanted to lay stillish. I asked him to stop, be quieter, relax, cuddle gently, but he wanted to tickle my armpits and dive under the covers. I got rather snappy with him.

Finally, we all got up and went about getting ready for school. I began making my cup of tea and oatmeal. Although Sumner ate an apple and yogurt at 5:20 and then more yogurt at 6:30, he was suddenly ravenous. Yet he needed to get his socks on, take his medicine, brush his teeth, and bundle up for school. He whined and stomped and didn’t cooperate. I think it was more about the snappy mother than an empty belly. I handed him a re-warmed leftover pancake as he walked out the door with Phil.

Then Ramona was hungry. Although my tea was getting cold, I cut up some fruit for her and scooped up some yogurt. Finally I sat down to eat my cold oatmeal and lukewarm tea and scan the paper.

And then the talking began. Oh, Ramona has a lot to say in the morning. Champion Chatterbox is the nickname she inherited from me. My mom says I used to chatter in the morning. There was lots of "Did you know that my teacher is actually a mommy?" and "When we move to New Orleans I am going to wear bows in my hair." I had to ask her to "just be quiet for a few minutes.” Again, I was rather snappy. For God's sake, I hadn't even been able to finish my tea.

Phil came back from dropping Sumner at the bus stop and immediately noticed how snappish I was. I tried to conceal it, but it seeped through. I was wishing that caretaking/parenting/ family/ relationships could be simpler. My house is organized now, so why can't the family fall in line? We have schedules, routines, rules, and expectations, so why can't I get a hot cup of tea?

While Phil was easing me out of snappy with some gentle teasing and the tea began to do its de-grouching work, Ramona wondered into her bedroom. She was talking, a lot. A few minutes later, as I was kissing Phil good-bye, I peaked in at her through the crack between her open door and the door jam. Here was a future-woman-mom (who may also be a teacher) who had it figured out. She had fashioned out of pop beads a baby holster and placed two babies on one side and one on the other. This allowed her the freedom to talk to them while she brushed her hair and sorted through her barrettes. I am sure she could also drink a cup of hot tea and make her family operate on remote control.

That's what I need: a baby holster. But I don't have babies any more, they're kids. So I guess I'd settle for a couple of horse poles that I could crosstie them to when I need some peace and quiet. Or a mute button. A mute button could be a good thing.

For Sale

We're really doing it. The house is on the market. Yikes. Our house reduced to catalogish shots:

Willie and Monie

I was playing a little slow Willie Nelson for Sumner last night.

"I don't like this song, Mom," Sumner flatly told me.

"This guy is friends with Johnny Cash. You'll like him," I tried to convince, certain that I could get him on my side. I moved on to the next slow song.

"Nope, I don't like this one." I skipped to the next one, another slow song, "Mom, I just don't like his voice. It is like sorrow."

I quickly found Whiskey River. Sumner just smiled and started dancing.

________________________________________

Monie, Ramona, Smooshy Small pants--that's Ramona. Today she moved to New Orleans. She got five other children at her school to move all of the toys from the toy kitchen, costumes from their wall, dolls from their bin, and hundreds of toys from block room to one small area for her move. Everything was in bins and boxes stacked on top of everything. She was getting it organized for a move. First she was going to Iowa and California for a visit and then New Orleans.

When I arrived the teacher told me, "Sumner and Ramona are going to be fine [with the move]. You and Phil are the ones who are going to have a hard time."

How right she is. Moving is so fun and so sad.

Goof Off

Today I got a panicked call from Phil, "Where is the Goof Off? I can't find it." He was agitated.

"I dunno, I think we used it all. I haven't seen it.” Tired of his home improvement impatience, which has been frequent this week, I retorted, “What do you need it for anyway?"

"You don't want to know."

Apparently, about 10 minutes before this phone call, Phil stepped out to take some garbage to the curb. During the few moments that Phil was out, Sumner found two glue traps for our furry neighbors. They looked so gooey and shiny; he put his hand in one. It wasn't easy to get his hand out, but he managed to free it. This lead him to decide to step into not one, but two mouse traps--just to see what it felt like. Then Sumner realized that his hand was quite sticky and it wouldn't wipe off, so he started to skate on the mouse traps on the kitchen floor towards the bathroom to wash his hands. Skating was fun. At that moment, Phil opened the front door.

"You've got to be kidding me Sumner," Phil said.

A bath and a food rub with some sort of citrus adhesive removal and Sumner smelled like oranges and was very clean.

Number of mice trapped this year: zero. Number of seven year olds: one.

A Ray of Light

Today was just a bad day.

Transition sucks. There are too many things to do. Normal life has been moving at a comfortable pace and I don't like having to speed up. I haven't been my best self over the last few days. I have to host a birthday party this weekend, host a workshop at Sumner's school, parent help at the Coop tomorrow, feed my family, respond to emails, sleep, eat, and do every home improvement project that I wished I had done over the last four years in five days. I have become surly, mean, bossy. Phil hasn't been a gentleman all the time either. Sumner's waking up before five o'clock. Today we had some annoying interactions with people we have to deal with here and Boston. Will the condo sell? Will I find a job a like that pays me well enough (whatever that means)? Will I get to be with my children enough with the job I find? I can't remember the last shower I had. Needless to say, by the time the kids were in bed, I was pooped. Phil and I both were low.

Then I got a call. From Marshall, Phil's high school buddy, who lives in New Orleans. He is in Boston for the night. Forty minutes later Phil was making Marshall a French Dip sandwich and a salad and he was telling us tales from his Fat Tuesday, which was just yesterday, in New Orleans. Early morning costume assembly, the inside scoop on property and neighborhoods, retelling old stories, talking about the realities of rebuilding. Ahhh, it was good. We had to stop and sit and talk and listen. Forget the boxes. They'll be done. Don't sweat the spackle--there's tomorrow. And the birthday party--it'll be a smash hit. No worries. It's all good.

So I sit and blog. A pleasure that I have been neglecting. It's all good.

All Business

My friends are in mourning and I am packing boxes. I am all business. Practical. Always in motion. Always thinking of the next thing that I need to check off the list.

My Boston friends are freaking out. They are getting used to the fact that we are leaving. I looking into the future.

Why is this mismatch happening?

I go to the five stages of grief:

• Denial (this isn't happening to me!)
  
• Anger (why is this happening to me?)
  
• Bargaining (I promise I'll be a better person if...)
  
• Depression (I don't care anymore)
  
• Acceptance (I'm ready for whatever comes)

What do they say? You move through the stages of grief in no particular order and you can return to or dwell in any of them for any amount of time. I'm in acceptance today...when will I get depressed again. No time to think about that...I have things to do.

The Dehumanizing Factor

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 5 AM. I didn't know where they were and it was too damn early to get up and look for them. Couldn't he just play with legos and enjoy the quiet?

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.

Keep? Throw out? Give away?

What do you do with two thermoses from lunchboxes long forgotten? A thrift store shirt that never fit quite right? A junky party favor from a party that happened just three weeks ago? 100 pens and pencils and crayons and markers and colored pencils that Phil and I and our children could never use in the next 50 years if we wrote ever second of everyday? (But they work and no one wants them and it's wasteful to throw them away...)

Alex tells me that I am a good person and that I reuse and recycle and so it is okay to throw out pencils without erasers and pens without tops and any I don't like. "Send them to Africa," she suggests. How do you get pencils to Africa? Don't they need erasers there too?

When I googled "donate pencils Africa", I found Teach Africa. They want pencils. New ones.

So I threw away lots of pencils and topless pens and party favors.

Alex also told me to throw away almost all of my children's artwork unless it is brillant or a milestone. "It's all about process," she says.

It hit me that decluttering is all about process: the process of retracing your history, appreciating your journey, embracing your present, and planning for the future.

Wrapping up the pictures of Phil and I at 22--the pictures that sit unnoticed on our dresser for years. These are the the pictures that we each had of one another when we lived 5,000 miles apart.

And the artwork...it tells volumes about who we are and what we've learned. Take for instance the lanterns I packed today from three different JP Lantern parades that we attended.

What I keep even tells me something of my future. I am keep some clothing that has been on layaway, hoping, expecting believing that I can wear it. As I fold it up, I am imagining how cool it will look in New Orleans.

So, decluttering is important. It is a time to reflect and evaluate.

That word is...

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.

Potty Humor

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.

Drum roll, please

We’ve dug. Deep. Deep into our desires for our life. Deep into our hopes for our future. And deep into our pockets to fund two graduate degrees. And now it is time to write the next chapter. Or blog.

The news: We’ve decided to rank New Orleans as our top pick for Phil’s residency program. We will know if we have “matched” there on Friday, March 16. Our chances are pretty good.

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 Boston,...” and “Can’t wait to see you at Jazzfest 2007!” None of these sentences, which I deleted as quickly as I jabbed them into my keyboard, really do our decision justice.

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 New Orleans because we feel drawn/pulled/called there. We want to be locals among locals. We want to pitch in. We want to learn something from the pace of New Orleans and the resolve of those we have been able to make it back to rebuild. We want to live by family.

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 New Orleans, she told me to “pack away”.

I want to go and I want to stay.

Poetry

Sumner wrote these last year for his kindergarten classmates. He dictated them to us and we transcribed them. Each one was individualized for a member of his class.

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.

Draw a picture, or paint a picture.
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....

The Jury

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.

When he says these things I get quite passionate about talking him down, showing him how to be reasonable, and generally convincing him that I am the levelheaded one and all things that I think and say are sensible. Sometimes I have to shout to prove how rational my thinking is. It’s like the bumper sticker I saw the other day, “Don’t believe everything you think.” No matter how much foot stomping or clear speaking I do, I never get very far.

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 New York. And, as you might expect if you are driving into Brooklyn at 5:30 on a Friday and you have two tired kids in the way-back and your husband is trying to navigate from the middle seat, Phil started doing insane things. At least that’s how I saw it. And conveniently sitting shotgun was our friend, Alex. By the time we reached our destination I was boiling mad. And it was Phil’s fault. He was tense. He back-seat driving. He was being unfair. And worst of all...he wouldn’t admit it.

As we unpacked the car, we had words. Alex stood there with a pillow under each arm and took it all in. Actually, she quietly took the children upstairs while we worked it out. Within 10 minutes it was all resolved. He said he was sorry that the things he was saying were coming across tense, but he didn’t feel tense. I accepted that I was maybe a little tense and took a little responsibility too. We kissed and he went off to meet some friends on the Upper West Side.

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.

Making Sense

Our kids are trying to make sense of the world and we’re trying to make sense of them.

____________________________________________

Sumner: Mom, if I wanted to and I was empty and you gave me permission, I could eat a quarter of a pie. I could put it all in my mouth at one time.

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.

____________________________________________

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.

____________________________________________

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.

____________________________________________

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.

Naked Precision

Imagine Sumner standing in our good friend Suzi’s Brooklyn apartment. He’s in her sunny kitchen wearing only his boxers. He slips his hands and arms inside the boxers. He hands emerge under the boxers on his thighs. He claps them together in front of him (arms still inside the boxers). Then he claps them together behind him (arms still inside the boxers). Pretty soon he’s grooving: clap in front, clap behind, clap in front, clap behind. Ramona squeals with glee. All of the adults try to act appropriate, but we are all smiling behind our coffee cups. “How do you like my naked precision?” he asks. We love it.

Uncle John’s Words of Wisdom

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.”

He was calling to thank me for my Christmas card. Not a big fan of answering machines and leaving messages, he’d been trying to reach me for weeks, but never left a message. He told my mom, “She’s got some sort of African drums on her machine. It scared me half to death the first time I heard it. Nearly fell out of my seat.” That’s John. He speaks mainly in incomplete sentences, but you know exactly where he’s coming from.

Well, he finally left a message and I called him back. He said a lot of sensible things in the half hour I talked with him.

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.

My Mom’s Imagination: Where Molehills Become Mountains and Mouse Droppings Become Large Rodent Turds

My mom was a trooper about the mice...kind of. She didn’t refuse to stay here and for the first few days she was willing to help out in the kitchen (where mice have been sited). By the end of her trip she wouldn’t stand by the oven (under which four mice traps lay) and she was very jumpy. She said she was on “turd patrol”, hoping to find evidence of our small housemates. She never saw a mouse, but her imagination got the best of her.

A baseline of fear really started with stomping. Whenever Mom walked from our bedroom through the kitchen to the rest of the house, she’d do a little clog dance. Stomp-stomp-(pause)-stomp-stomp. She recommended that we get flood lights for the kitchen and leave them on all the time to fool our nocturnal friends.

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.

“My back is tight. My eyes are blurry. My knees, my knees! I wasn’t going to shower tomorrow, but now I’ve had day’s worth of sweat in one half a second. If I die in the morning, you’ll know why. I’m weak, weak, weak, and more weak.”

The bed shook with laughter as I tried to get down her most colorful musings.

This morning I read this blog to her and she said, “My thighs start feeling some numbness when you read that. I am so scared. Sumner also told me that the mice were scared of me. I thought: impossible! They would be a whole bunch of psychotic rodents trembling in the floor if that was true.”

Oh, my. I love hyperbole. And my mom.

It's Tough Being So Famous

Here's me in the paper. Click here to see the online version.

Alive and Well

Some of my faithful readers have been expressing concern...why aren't I writing? Well, Phil was gone three weeks in a row and then we spent last weekend in NYC. Somewhere in there my mom came and we had Cha for a night and we threw a birthday bash for Ramona and 40 of her closest friends. I have had MANY blogable experiences and lots of notes. Between now and the next couple days there should be a handful of new postings.

Keep checking.

Weirder than Weird

Phil and I would like to do radical things--whatever that means. But try as we may, the truth is we're pretty square. Two kids, a doctor and a teacher, we sit down for a family dinner most nights, and dark chocolate chips are one of our greatest pleasures.

This morning Phil said to me, "Is it beyond weird to wear khakis in winter?"

"No," I assured him.

Watch out world. What radical move will we try next?

You do that?

My mom is flying right now. She's on her way to Boston and we can't wait to see her. Philip is out of town for a couple of days and I've busied myself with trying to make our house pleasant for her stay. Many times when she's come to visit me over the years, she's helped me "get organized". I want to be organized when she gets here so that we can enjoy each other in other non-organizing ways.

Mom and I are also planning on sleeping together in the same bed.

She's worried I'll "scream and kick". True, I talk in my sleep quite a lot and often I say very unfriendly things. Most nights I growl at Phil. Then there’s the time my freshman year of college when Ha let her alarm go off for 20 minutes and then snoozed it for another hour...I told her, "Ha, I'm going to get an ax and chop that alarm and if it doesn't stop I'm going to chop on you a little." Then there’s the summer I was living with a bunch of Christians and doing service work and didn't get my daily swearing quota. Apparently, in my sleep I mainly just said, "Shit, fuck, damn," all the time and horrified my roommates. Or the time I was watching "West Side Story" with some friends and fell asleep, only to rise up suddenly chanting, "I'm okay, I'm okay, I'm okay" at a rapid pace. One of Phil's earliest memories of me was when he went into my room to drop off a book he'd borrowed and I started speaking in tongues to him, “Yakalakwakeebbiejeebieweeeewooo.” He was sure that I was imbalanced somehow. So, it is true that I talk (or scream as that case may be) in my sleep. But kick? I stopped doing that at about age 12.

She's also worried that she'll snore. In the next sentence she'll deny that she snores, but if you've slept anywhere within a five block radius of where Mom's sleeping, you'll know the truth.

I’m not worried about it. I think I’ll sleep just fine with Mom.

This morning Phil says, "So, where is your mom going to sleep?"

"With me. In our bed."

"You do that?" he questioned. I do that? As if it is a practice that I engage in regularly.

Sheepishly I said, "Not regularly, but I'm willing to give it a go."

"Wow," he said, "I haven't slept in the same bed with my mom or dad since I was like 12."

So now I am left wondering...do we do that? Can we do that?

The thing is I still haven't caught a mouse, so we kind of have to sleep in the same bed. For safety.

Corralling Your Mama

I'm sitting at the computer, checking my email and getting ready for my day. I know it doesn't look like that to Ramona, but I am. She's in her room saying, "Mom, am I going to miss Corner Coop?"

"No, it's not even open yet," I say.

"Mom, you better put your clothes on and get ready," she counters.

"Okay," I try to put her off.

"We're going to be late," she nags.

She's dressed, she'd eaten, and she's brushing her teeth. I've gotta catch up.

Then she double-checks, "Is the Corner Coop even open yet?" (Not for 40 more minutes)

I've gotta get ready.

Super-who?

I borrowed this from Ha's blog and I had a lot of fun doing it. Take the test and post your results in comments. Here's my result:

You are Wonder Woman

Wonder Woman 100% Spider-Man 85% Superman 85% Green Lantern 80% Iron Man 80% Hulk 80% The Flash 80% Supergirl 65% Robin 50% Catwoman 40% Batman 20%	You are a beautiful princess with great strength of character.
Click here to take the "Which Superhero are you?" quiz...

The next stage

I didn't sleep great last night, until about 6:00 AM. Usually if I haven't had some good sleep by this time, I'm done for. After 6:00 AM, sleep is a lost cause because Sumner's already up and although he is really quiet my mommy-dar is aware he's no longer asleep and the quality of my sleep changes. (What will I do when he lives half-way around the world from me and is awake when I am supposed to be sleeping?) If Sumner reading in the living room doesn't rouse me, Ramona does. Over the last few months, she's started climbing into bed between 5 and 6 and falling back asleep wrapped around me. When she first climbs in, I am too disorientated to say or do anything to stop her and within a minute she's sound asleep. I keep sleeping, but again, it’s the quality of the sleep that counts. I am annoyed that I let her fall asleep in my bed and I feel trapped. My sleep is tense and troubled.

This morning a small miracle happened. Ramona and Sumner woke up at the same time and it was early...about 5:45 AM. Ramona did not rush into our room to cuddle with me. Sumner read to her for about a half and hour. Then he ushered her into the kitchen, made her breakfast, and moved her chair right next to his so that they could continue reading while eating. Finally he moved them into the living room and turned on the TV (a skill Ramona does not possess) and they watched it for a half an hour. And now for the real shocker: they shut off the TV and played together for another 20 minutes or so. I heard them wake up at 6:00 and on some level I was aware of the rooms they were in, but I slept peacefully. I wasn't worried a battle would break out. I wasn't fretting that they needed to be fed. I wasn’t anticipating my sleep being disturbed. I slept until 8:00. It really was a miracle.

This signified to me the beginning of a new stage of parenting. This stage includes sleeping in. It includes my kids learning to serve themselves and clean up after themselves. It includes my kids entertaining each other and themselves.

A sidebar: It also includes the word piss. The four-year-old Sumner still wore diapers, but he didn't know about other names for pee. I had to get up when he got up when he was four, but he also didn't shout "pissin'" it in the middle of a walk in the Arboretum, which he did last week. This was embarrassing, yet then was a part of me that wanted to smirk.

Sumner proved that he is getting older and wiser tonight. It was near bedtime. I was tired. I had a short fuse. Ramona flung something away from her where she was sitting and under my foot. I tripped and shouted, "RAMONA!!!!" Then I took a breath and said, "I am sorry, but you can't just throw stuff about like that."

Sumner was supposed to be taking his dirty clothes to the hamper. He paused and said, "Can I just explain to Ramona that you're not that mad? Ramona, Mom's not that mad. It's just bedtime and she's grouchy," he said while rubbing her back. Could this be the brother that murmurs about wanting to “break her to bits”? Did he really just hand out how-to-manage-you-mother advice?

Hello, glimmer of maturity. For years my mom has been saying that I am more mature than her. Is that what the next stage is all about? Will they both gang up on us and revolt? I better brace myself.

Boy Humor

Philip and Sumner were talking about "The Making of Star Wars Part One" the other day. Sumner wanted to watch it right away. Phil couldn't accomodate for some reason (like it was time to go to school or it was bedtime).

Sumner: Dad, I want to watch the "Making of Number One".

Philip: Well, you can't watch that, but if you follow me in the bathroom right now I can show you the making of number two.

Sumner: But Dad we don't have a T.V. in the bathroom and there's no "Making of Number Two".

Philip: The making if number two? Get it? Heh, heh.

Sumner: Heh, heh.

Philip: Heh, heh.

Sumner: Heh, heh.

My Mom Used To Say

This ought to be the real name of my blog.

I write about my mom mainly because she doesn't have any quams about me putting her story (as I see it) out there on the internet for you to read. I also write about her because she made a profound impact on my thinking and my living and I think the gospel according to Annabelle may be something others can benefit from.

So I now wonder...what will my children say about me on their blogs? Philip and I were discussing residency options, talking about the possiblity of living in the Northeast for three more years, when he said, "That's just not in the script of my life." He has an idea of where his story is going and he never thought it'd be here.

I see what he means, but I don't think about it in terms of a script. I think of it in terms of Sumner and Ramona's freshman dorm conversations.

Where will they be from? What will people think of them based on that fact? When Phil and I said we were at Columbia, saying you are from Louisiana or Oregon made us different. Not only was Phil wearing white jeans and I had on Berks with wool socks and a jingling anklet in a sea of students in J. Crew and basic black, we also really loved where we were from and identified with out battleground states. When people ask us where we're from we still say Louisiana and Oregon, even though we haven’t lived either of these places for a long time.

What will our kids say about us as they step out of their own for the first time? That's a real question. My mom's my good friend. My mom's a kook. My mom's an accomplished career woman. She sleeps in the nude and exposed all of our secrets on her blog, but she never made us make our beds.

The other day my friend, who reads this blog, told me that she doesn't order Scholastic books from school fundraisers for her daughter, because they can just get them from the library. I guess she's been pretty firm on this. As she was explaining this to her daughter, she thought: this is something Emily's mom would have done and Emily would remember it for the rest of her life.

My mom let me order Scholastic books, but I get what she means. 1. She knows my mom just from reading the blog. 2. How are the little things impacting out children?

What lessons that we taught them will they remember? What things are we repeating too much? What are we not saying enough?

I know that I say "because we're a family..." alot. Because we're a family...we compromise, help each other, pick up, be nice, and sometimes just shut up. I know I say, "I am so tired of no one helping me around her." I also know that I make clear my dislike of Toys R Us and Cartoon Network quite clearly. What about church? Will they hate church because I make them go or will they get something out of it? And their teeth? Will they brush everyday? Floss too? I just don't know.

I want to watch my words, but things just bubble over.

What is the script I have written for my kids? Where will they be from? What have they taken? Where will they take it?

Mousey Mousey

I hesitate to make this public because my mom just decided to come and visit in a couple of weeks and she will probably cancel her trip when she hears of this.

We have a mouse.

Of course we don't have a mouse, we probably have a family of mice, but it is comforting to imagine just one little Stuart Little inhabiting a cozy (did you hear that Mom, cozy, they're cozy!) little mouse hole somewhere. But I'd be naive to think that and you'd be deranged to believe it. The problem is that now that I have admitted to a mouse in my house, my mom has multiplied this number in her imagination to 100 and she's not even read to the end of the blog.

Mice are common in Jamaica Plain. They come in when it gets cold. Each year they appear and then I go on the offensive, their droppings disappear, and I am satisfied that they are gone and we move on. I have plugged holes with steel wool, I have stuffed poison into all sorts of nooks and crannies, and I have used the dreaded glue traps to catch a few furry fellows.

Our food is secure. The mice over the last three winters have not been as bold as the first winter. In the winter of 1999-2000, the mice chewed into chip bags and oatmeal cylinders and pretty much seized our pantry. We fought back. Now all of our carb reserves (matzo, cereals, pasta, rice, etc.) are in the food safe, a huge plastic container with a metal latch. No one's getting in there.

The thing is I hate mice as much if not more than my mother. In the winter each time something blows against the window, the VCR clicks, or a piece of paper uncrinkles my heart skips a beat. I clap my hands three times before I walk into the kitchen and rush through it anytime past 9:30PM (which is the well-known hour when mice begin to dash about).

Since I graduated from high school and left home, all but two of the seven places I have lived have had a mouse problem. In three of those places I never saw evidence of mice in my room or apartment, but they were there in the walls, in other people's places. I should be used to this.

Phil takes it all in stride. He thinks I am overreacting. He claims that these pests just don't bother him. I'm not kidding. For a long time I thought that he just didn't believe me that we had a mouse family living with us, but just last week he admitted to seeing one. Big-deal-so-what is his attitude. I think he'd probably like to set up a little water dish and food bowl for them under the stove and give them names. The more hyped up I get, the cooler he becomes.

So I've already put some poison out this winter, but tonight I am getting more aggressive. I have set out four glue traps. Last year we learned a new glue trap trick. The common practice is to put glue traps under things and behind things. Not in our house. A friend advised us to put them wherever we've seen them, right out in the open. I just did that.

Now I am waiting and blogging and I am scared, really scared that I actually might catch one.

Play by Play

I usually don’t give play by play blogs, but it feel somehow right tonight.

I finished my final final paper on Friday. I am done with my master’s work. It was a big accomplishment. Not because the paper was really good or the last one, but because of the process through which I went to write it. For one, I submitted it at like 2:15, hours before I had to turn it in. That’s a personal record. There were no late late nights or early early mornings involved in writing my paper. When I finished I didn’t have to panic because I had to regroup for a whole week to get the rest of my life back in order. And best of all, this paper pulled a whole bunch of parts of my life together. The paper’s about my work at Sumner’s school. I pulled references I had used in almost every big paper I’ve written to use in the paper and they dovetailed together nicely. What a learned each semester built on the semester before it. My writing has A LONG way to go, I realize that, but I am developing a way of going about doing it. I am looking forward to being totally in charge of my own learning.

I also had a gloriously slow weekend. Phil was gone and that was a bummer, but the kids and I had a lovely time—only a couple meltdowns. We went swimming on Friday afternoon and then out to eat to a place I wanted to go. We shared some edamane, Sumner ate pork dumplings and rice, Ramona had chicken on a couple of sticks and rice, and I had sashimi. We got the table by the fish tank and we played “Guess What?” while we ate. I only had to ask Sumner twice to sit up and Ramona to turn down the volume of her voice about half a dozen times. Sumner asked to try the sashimi and I gave him a bit of raw tuna. He loved it.

I said, “Yeah, it tastes great. It’s just that it feels a little different.”

He did a typical Sumner-ponder and came back with, “Yeah, it does feel a little like a slug,” and asked for another taste.

They also ate their whole meal with chopsticks. We don’t eat out very often and usually it’s for pizza or brunch or pizza or pizza. Yet when I offered a fork they refused and actually somehow figured out how to use the chopsticks.

I put them to bed and watched “Annie Hall” for the first time ever. I brewed and enjoyed a perfect cup of tea and ate some chocolate.

Then I watched some bad TV and went to bed.

The weekend has followed a similarly slow pattern and I like it. I’m off for a bath with Joan Didion and then some more TV. Life’s not really going to slow. I can just be more in charge of my own time for a few months. That means more blogs...

Last night I ran into a friend who I hadn't seen in a month. She asked if I wanted her to come over a blow chunks all over my house. A blog reader, she knew Sumner had the stomach flu and that Ramona fears I'll talk too much to Sumner and that I over-analyze my Christmas getting and that I think of sewer rats everyday. What more is there to say? Oh, lots, I never run out of things to talk about...but it is weird to be in one way communication with someone. It's not like Ha and Cha. They blog and I blog so I get the gist of their life and visa versa. Or like Alex, a committed blog reader. Since she's Ramona's teacher I see her several times a week so I don't feel so naked in front of her when she reads my blog...I can undress her daily.

So today I got one of the best emails I have ever received from a very, very dear old friend. She wrote that she reads my blog, which I didn't know, and she wrote...

I wanted to tell you that just now i felt this bump on
my neck and of course i thought I would pick at it and
guess what? It is that never-ending pore that you
used to squeeze the dickens out of! I pulled my hand
away and had this huge amount of digusto my finger!
Its still there and rip roaring!

I thought you would enjoy that update. Take care

And I do love that update. So raw. It's only fair.