On Turning 90…

Happy Birthday to R.’s mom, my mother-in-law, who turns 90 today. (This photo was taken on the occasion of her high-school graduation, in 1934 or 1935.)

She was born on a working farm in Minnesota…her parents were Norwegian immigrants and staunch Lutherans…she is possessed of more curiousity about just about everything than most people…she is a voracious reader and a very good listener…she was a school teacher and music teacher and didn’t get married until she was 36, and then she married a man who was (only) 25!!…she’s been married to him for 53 years.

She loves modern design, she collects glass, she went to Morocco for the first time last year, she firmly believes in Michelin tires and will pay you to switch your four wheels over, and she affixes post-it notes to the backs of EVERYTHING (think: artworks, books, cards, bulletins and programs, etc.) in order to tell the object’s “backstory” to whomever inherits the item.

I have absolutely no idea what it feels like to enter one’s nineties, but I’d certainly like to do it the way that she does it. Happy Birthday to this most remarkable woman!

Try this…it’s fun….

although I was bemused to note that I am BOTH an “Escape Artist” AND a “Home Soul.” Or maybe that makes total sense.

Thanks to Mamacita for this Friday diversion….

*Yes, I am still filling the blog up with various kinds of fluff until the day The Bee is safely buzzing around my office with me, and I can return to offering biting satire, witty commentary, or whatever the hell it is I meant to do here more usually…ahem.

Gearheads…is what we are.

Babies take some gear. It’s nearly mind-boggling to me how much STUFF there is associated with people who are so little and dependent. But there is, and that’s what we’ve been doing, rather furiously in fact, for the last week or so: getting the last of the gear together in anticipation of bringing the kiddo home…sometime this spring?

When I first met R., I realized pretty quickly that he took an interest in certain activities just for the excuse to buy the cool gear…telemark skiing, for example, and rock climbing. The gear is so specialized that it’s impossible to adapt gear from other activities to these…rock climbing shoes are rock climbing shoes. No substitutions. No using your tennies. No using that rope you keep stashed in the car trunk for tying your Christmas tree onto the roof every year. Ah, no.

Babies are similar. There is no use, apparently, in using your purse as a diaper bag. You can’t stick baby on top of a stack of telephone books on one of your regular chairs and call it ‘high.’ Ah, no.

So, we have been busy spending money on specialized gear. To whit:

We don’t have a nursery yet. The contractor dude who was hired to build us one out of our master bedroom space (putting up walls and windows and doors to divide the space into three rooms) got behind in his jobs, so we are still waiting. Hence, we now have a crib in our bedroom and a changing table in our living room:

I always thought that dirty diapers went well with stacked rock walls, no? In lieu of a nursery, our breakfast nook has been converted into a playroom for The Bee:

Note the mushy padded floors. More gear. When I was little, we had shag carpeting to cushion our falls.

Perhaps the worst offense in the gear department, however, has been the boondoggle that R. has managed to pull in the past week in our TV room. We have a bowling-alley TV room (long and skinny), and R. has always hated the little couch that I found for it…it’s vintage and undersized, which was perfect for the size of the room, but it did have rather thin cushions…

He worked on me about that couch for the better part of a year. I liked the couch. I liked the vintage rattan stuff it was made out of; I liked the graphic ulpholstery fabric that reminded me of writing; I liked that it was small and ‘fit’ the space. He hated it. Watching American Idol became a battle of wills. He finally broke me when he hooked into the idea of a new, larger, cushy couch as necessary kid gear.

To whit:

Um, yeah. I’m officially a gearhead.

Protected: Well Met.

More Honey for The Bee…

The post office surprise box continues to offer up lovelies for The Bee…this becoming-parents thing has all these hidden perks!

Yesterday, we had two lovely surprises…a ROOSTER T-Shirt for The Bee who was born in 2005, the year of the strutting bird, from the wonderful woman over at The Slow Boat to China. She has a terrific new business of embroidering shirts and bags and whimsical stuff…go check it out:

Doesn’t she have great business sense to know what people will like? And she knows how to make it pretty when it arrives, too:

Our other surprise was from the way-cool chiquita over at The Moon Is Always Female. She’s done gone underground now but sure has a way of knowing the sort of things I like:

WAY COOL little red Chinese lanterns to hang above a future daughter’s dancing head–and PJs!!!! I spent about 20 minutes last week at the T@rget, looking for jammies to buy for the trip to China and couldn’t find anything without that orange clownfish on them, so these are just perfect and perfect timing!

Thank you to all my incredibly generous blogging peeps, once again!

A River Runs Through This Sunday…

So, yesterday, I had what is affectionately known as MVFIRL…Meeting Virtual Friends In Real Life. OmegaMom and OmegaGranny and OmegaDad and OmegaDotter and SBird and R. and the dogs headed down about 2,500 feet to a river that always runs through the lower desert.

It was low. It was algaefied. It had interesting channels where deeper water decided to detour around the sand banks, frog eggs, guppies, Vermillion Flycatchers, a Black Phoebe, and a Chimney Swift. It was perfect for wading.

It was perfect for sharing your beachcombing finds with a very single-minded Jack Russell Terrier for whom the poet Marvell’s term “vegetable love” has certain dear associations:

Fiona-the-JRT may very well like to have a little girl around, if the little girl is curious about all manner of weeds, hair-like aquagrowth, sticks, or bottom-sand as the OmegaDotter is. I give all the credit for instilling this curiousity into said little girl to OmegaMom (and OmegaDad, of course), who is clearly raising a fearless, engaged, and thoughtful daughter. It was a pleasure to trudge through the water with her, to pat the walls of the sandcastle, to find the baby fish, to hold the yellow toadflax flowers for her.

And when we arrived back to the ranch after enjoying our 80-degree river weather, we realized that the most elusive season of the year had arrived…my test for Spring every year is whether the fruit trees have bloomed.

Yesterday, the peaches and the plums bloomed. It’s Sprung!

P.S. There are additional pics of the day at the other two bloggers’ homesites….

Quick Update…

So, we got our LOA!!!! This is the Letter of Acceptance that the CCAA just started to impose upon SN aparents the first of this year…it was issued on the 2nd, arrived to our agency on the 6th, and arrived to us yesterday on the 8th. Signed it and overnighted it back to the agency the same hour, and so it went back to China today…

the TA should be about two weeks away…which means we should travel at the end of March. Fingers crossed. If the TA takes longer than that, I told my agency that we WOULD be traveling during the tradeshow in April if it came to that. Parents do travel then, it’s just more expensive and a bit of a hassle for the agencies to make arrangements.

Tough toadstools. I’m not waiting another month. We received the LOA six months to the day that we first put our daughter “on hold.” I’m now ready to trade that photograph in for real fingers to squeeze, real cheeks to kiss, real eyes to get lost in. I’m even hip to change some real diapers. Really.

Oh, and tomorrow? March 10th. Otherwise known as Mario Day. This is my made-up day. When I was in grade school, we had to date our notebook pages, and I used the abbreviation for this month: MAR 10. I decided it looked like “MARIO” and made up a holiday. So, just run with it.

Of Petals and Parkinson’s…

I had a request recently in the comments section, asking whether I would post some of my poetry. I haven’t done that before for a variety of reasons, not least of which is I’m a pretty shy person, and poetry is by its nature, full of exposure. Of course, so is a blog, despite all the selectivity you can impose on it. So, here goes…

First, a bit of explanation because this poem is not easily accessible…

Seasons are a funny thing here at the ranch. It always rains during August (what is euphemistically called The Monsoon) and usually during the winter, in December and January. It almost always snows, at least once like this:

Although not this year. We had one dusting, no real snow at all. Two winters ago, it was so wet that it caused torrential floods and scoured out our canyon. Our swimming hole is usually about 18 feet deep and looks like this:

After the rains of December-January 2005, so much sand and silt was moved through the canyon and deposited on the bottom of the swimming hole, you could walk across it only up to your ankles. It suddenly looked like this–you can compare the rocks in the two photos to see that it’s the same place:

That same winter and early spring of 2005, we had a fantastic wildflower season. I didn’t even realize how good at the time, but I’m thankful I ran around–nearly every day–taking photographs of anything that bloomed, as it probably won’t be that good for another 50 years. So, I assume I saw flowers that only bloom once every few decades. (This year, there are NO wildflowers–not a one.) That year, I researched them obsessively, trying to memorize their shapes and colors and names. It was like learning a new language:

Wooly Paintbrush

Maiden Blue-Eyed Mary

Bluestem Pricklepoppy

Blue Dicks

Desert Mariposa

Common Bedstraw

Miniature Woolstar

Miner’s Lettuce

Blue Toadflax

Bastard Toadflax

Horehound (which was used in making candy, to thicken it)

Barestem Larkspur

I could go on and on–there are more than eighty distinct wildflowers that I documented growing on the ranch that year. Interestingly enough, they grow at certain spots and not others, apparently according to altitude and shade factors, and also they bloom at different times, so there is a sort of staggered season, starting in late January and disappearing completely (except for the various kinds of penstemon, the poppies, and the nightshade) by the end of May when the heat really ratchets up.

The other part of this poem is the part about my father, who came to visit us at the ranch in Christmas of 2004, just before the incredible wildflower season began. We didn’t know it at the time he was visiting, but he has Parkinson’s Disease. His mobility was in decline when he was here, but we weren’t yet sure why. He was diagnosed a couple of months later, and he has an atypical sort of Parkinson’s, in which he doesn’t “shake” but rather has limited control over his legs and has fairly significant loss of cognitive function. It’s somewhat like Alzheimer’s, actually, although he still knows who everyone is. He just can’t remember what he just said to you.

I wanted to show my parents some of the trails at the ranch, and so we drove them to the top of the hill and gave my father hiking poles (like ski poles, without spikes) so he could have some leverage. But it was very hard going for him. The trails are quite clear by hiking standards, but it’s not like walking on a smooth surface, and it was too much for him. Of course, he wanted to please me, so he didn’t complain and kept on going, even when I think he was pretty nervous. I probably insisted on him seeing more than he was really able to because I didn’t want to believe at the time that he was in such decline.

And, so, the poem was really born out of the attempt to merge these two things: the decline and loss of a parent with the fullness and rejuvenation of this incredible springtime we had that year. It’s trying to come to terms with the paradox that seemed to point to–that my father could no longer walk over the very ground that was about to be full of blooming life in a few weeks time–and also his need to please me even in the face of my inability to accept what was happening to him.

The poem was published in the fall of that year, but I’ve never shown it to my father. My mother has read it. By the way, please feel free to comment or ask questions about the poem if you want to…poets like feedback when they put their stuff out there….

Later, larkspur

i.

In the sweet midwinter of these slopes,
when seeds still clasp blue buds like lockets,
my father leans on ski poles without skiis
or snow underfoot. His legs resemble
numchucks unlaced, two stout scraps of wood,
their threat dispersed. Stabbing the earth,
he pulls first one leg, then the other, in line
with some interior fold, the body’s diameter,
a paper doll’s measure of even distance
from point to point. Gone is his best guess
of who he was, top to bottom. Later,
larkspur, nettle, paintbrush, wool stars
will poke the warming air. Fleabane bloom
like mops. Each day will coax a new color
from the empty earthwells he drags over now.
Whatever fear he sees in stone and runnel
surrenders to a lie: the lie he traffics in
to please his daughter, the lie of him I harbor,
a girl storing flowers in the pleats of her dress.
When she runs to his outstretched arms,
he gathers her up like stems.

ii.

In a good year of flowers, history stubbles
the sides of rock: miner’s lettuce, bedstraw, soapberry
packs the native poultice, the hands of pioneers,

who come from Wheeling and Omaha
to stuff their mattresses with weeds. Settlers name
the wild plants for what they do, like engineers

name gears or witches, brews. Like all words,
the names ferment: traveler’s joy, candlewick,
wait-a-minute bush. We lose their sense. What’s left

ripples across the stream of reason. Washed by time,
my father travels the route I ask, gamely
picking his way toward where wildflowers will be.

Prophecy divides him out of the world, like conceived
cells. Even in a good year, horehound no longer comes
to candy, nor flax to cloth.

Props to a Grrrlfriend…

Embarrassment of riches. That’s what I’ve got lately with all the lucious gifts The Bee keeps receiving. Yesterday a box arrived from back east, from the lovely Jessi over at Elsie Elsewhere.

Do y’all remember that post about when she crackled that dresser last summer for Elsie’s nursery? It turns out she’s a crackle diva!! Look at this amazing thing that she made with her own two very own hands:

It’s a wondrous BOX for The Bee to keep all of her treasures in! I love boxes. I hope my daughter enjoys all sorts of stuff one might keep in a special box…rocks and feathers and pictures and stickers and pinecones and the little shells that fall out of bird nests. I did. It’s the perfect gift for a collector-girl. For a little girl who likes to look.

Then, when I opened it up, I found this:

A BEE shirt! Can’t wait to explain this nickname to Miss Bee one day. Oh, did you say your eye caught on something else? Something on the inside top there?

Yep, it’s the bird and the bee. The Singing Bird’s old logo (which I fiercely miss, by the way) and a logo for The Bee.

Also with the box came a great book and a perfect card:

Thank you, Jessi, more than you know. It’s becoming harder and harder to express how talented and how thoughtful I think the people of this community are since you all keep being so talented and thoughtful!

And, Jessi, I really hope our Summer 2005 daughters get to meet SOON.