Denomination of Daughters

{on a bench outside Jefferson's Monticello}

Susie is my Mother-in Law.  She calls me "Be-fessica,"  or "The Incomparable Jessica."

I can't think what I might have done, or been, or said to earn the latter.

The former came by way of birthing one Jonah, who for lack of a 'j' sound early in life called me Be-fessica, and himself Fwonah.

Susie says I am a daughter to her as much as any of the five she bore herself.  What can I do with this?  What do I say between the space of good fortune and friendship that is mine and hers.  I love her.

I love you.

Susie thanks my Mother for Susie's ability to love me as she does.  This is why - my Mother loved my Dad's mother as only a Ruth loves a Naomi.  All my years of growing up I saw my Mom wash dishes in my Grandma's kitchen.  I watched her laugh with my grandparent's, and talk, and seek advice, and accept help when help was all that would keep our family from glimpsing the edge.

To love the mother of the man you marry is a good plan.   And Susie is right, it was seeing my Mom's love - determined and constant, reaching out beyond herself which planted in me the expectation that when I walked into the Rasmussen home for the first time, I was coming to join, not to divide.

Matt told me early on that his Mother's only advice to him about who to marry was to make sure he chose an orphan.  I am hardly an orphan.  Oh grief, I am a Leavitt - a passel of kin, a parcel of generations that claim me up tight.  And despite that moment of hesitation at the Social Security Office just weeks after we married, I was able to slide out of the name that had cradled me for 23 of my own years and who knows how may hundreds of the years that came before me.  I tried on Rasmussen, filling out the paper and passing it over to the woman at the desk who seemed desensitized to the transformation taking place in front of her.

I am a woman.  I am a Jessica.  She is a Susie.  We both tucked away the name we brought to courtship and wed ourselves to a husband and a name.  Father - Son - Grandson.  Someday Jonah will  offer the same name to another woman, who, like us,  a daughter in her own clan, will find that there is room and to spare under the shelter of this name.

Funny how we women go about trading a name for a name, an identity for an identity.  One might be tempted to think that the moving about and the scramble of families and generations and alphabetical segregation would leave us feeling isolated.  But I don't.  I feel like the jumble of appellations untangles into one metronymic name that lets us be sisters, that lets us love.

Extra . . . Something

At the beginning of the school year I had intended Cecily to go to a local preschool.  After looking at the options and visiting a school, I decided on St. John's Methodist preschool which is just a few blocks away in Buena Vista.  

Both Jonah and Caroline attended the West High preschool near Rose Park.  This was a good thing for both of them for different reasons.   And knowing that I would shortly be adding Cecily to the daily mix of lessons at home I felt she needed the opportunity to learn how to do something on her own with other people.  

As school approached the apprehension among the children grew.  They all knew Cecily was destined for the newest, most foreign experience yet in our Virginia life.  They all anticipated Cecily's first day of school with varying degrees of excitement and anxiety.  

Huddled together just days before school began, Jonah whispered to Caroline "Cecily is going to preschool in a church."

"Oh Cecily," Caroline exhorted, "you have to be extra good."

"And extra normal," added Jonah.

"And extra Mormon," Carlo concluded.

As it happens, she ended up joining a preschool co-op of all LDS kids and Moms, so she didn't need to worry about being extra Mormon or extra normal.

Becoming a "Townie" in Buena Vista - The Library

We lie in my big king-sized bed this Wednesday morning and breathe a bit as a family after the running of too many days on end and the puking in between the running.  We should be able to ignore the calendar when we are sick, but somehow we don't.

Cecily brought the virus home having picked it up on the dangerous streets of downtown Buena Vista . . . or possibly from some sneezing child at preschool - one can never be sure where they unknowingly consent to host a virus.  Cecily shared it with Ewan.  This is no surprise as Ewan is forever seeking hugs and kisses we are bound to share a bit of whatever it is that lurks on us.  Ewan shared it with Jonah.  This is no surprise as Jonah cared for Ewan so tenderly at 11pm when he was throwing up in his bed the night before.  Jonah shared it with Matt, but Matt has not puked since 1991 so his will has become stronger than any virus that has made the attempt on him in the last twenty-one years.

So far Caroline and I remain undisturbed, but for the puke on my shirt and neck, sheets, towels, floors, rugs, beds, and toilets.  It's just not my puke.  While Jonah slept in my bed yesterday Caroline and I did two math lessons.  Jonah woke up periodically and read enough to finish The Two Towers and then gently beg me the rest of the day to pick up The Return of The King for him which was on hold at our local library.

Finally, around 3:00 pm the girls and I walked into the library where Tori, the twenty-something librarian was waiting at the counter.  Before we could even say "hello" she had fetched our book for us, laid it on the counter and asked with incredulity "He's finished The Two Towers already?"

"Yep, he's been sick today, laying in bed either reading or sleeping and then begging me 'Mom, please go get my book for me' ".

"I love this kid," Tori exclaims.

I love this town, I think.  Much as I miss, pine for, yearn for, try not to think too much about the Salt Lake City Library, no one ever knew my name at that library.  We had to have been some of their most frequent patrons, but no one ever saw us come through the door and had our books picked up and checked out for us without us so much as having to produce a library card or even give our names.

Susie is the sweet forty-something librarian who is a "townie" through and through.  Which is to say she is pure Virginian, mumbles softly in southern drawl such that one westerner must lean in closely and listen hard to translate the loosely shared English.  She wears cable knit sweaters with flowers or seasonal decor such as reindeer or elves on them.  Tori calls her 'The Goddess of the Library' because she knows all the answers - even if you have to listen hard to discern them.

Several weeks ago I had all four kids at this very small library in the middle of the day.  As I was checking our books out Susie leaned in close and whispered "Your kids behave real good."
"Thank you," I replied as we watched a band of children who did not belong to me stomp through loudly, throwing fits and pulling books off the shelf.  They are not bad kids, just unsupervised kids who spend the limbo hour between school and Mom-getting-off-work at the library because they have nowhere else to go.

Recently Jonah returned a movie (The Secret of Roan Inish which you should watch if you have not).  He jumped out of the van and ran in to deposit the movie which we are not allowed to put in the book-drop.  He came back saying "Man, Tori was in there.  I wanted to stay and talk.  For several days after I kept checking our account to see when they would apply the four dollar fine I knew we owed on the movie.  When it never appeared I knew Tori must have had a hand in it.

A few months before that Susie took pity on me when I was trying to pay my library fines which, at twelve dollars, were alarmingly high to her.  Again she leaned in close to me and said very softly "Don't tell nobody, but I'm gonna take half that off for ya."
"Ok, I won't tell nobody," I whispered.  "Thank you."

So consider yourself not told, because I don't want to betray The Goddess of the Library's trust.  Bad things might happen, and we can't live without the library.

Virginia's Fruit

Virginia has brought us a good many things, and fruit is one of the most heavenly.  I'm sure there were more opportunities for picking in Utah than I took advantage of, but here it seems the thing to do.

When the seasons of berries, and peaches, and apples roll through, the neighbors start heading out "over the mountain" into Amherst county to get a bushel of whatever is hanging ripe from the limb or vine, or bush.  They stop at my front door and ask "shall I bring some back for you?"  Or they offer their juicers and canners with a clear expectation that this has been on my calendar all winter.

So I have started to put it on my calendar.  And we have started to make the trip over the mountain ourselves.  And we have begun to put strawberry jam in the freezer and homemade applesauce in jars on the shelf.  We are preserving, eating, delighting in what the earth gives us.

This year I didn't take from the earth all that it would have happily given me.  I spent all of the months of May through mid October abstaining from fruit and my weak will could not have borne the hardship of letting the juicy stuff go from my hands to bottles bypassing my mouth entirely.  But I am happily eating fruit again with a new and appreciative tongue.  This comes at apple season which means we are up to our ears in apples.

April gave us strawberries.  October gives us apples.  The months in between would have offered raspberries, blackberries, grapes, pears, and peaches.  Since we have none of these to keep us happy through the long winter we are marking the months of 2013 according to what fruit will fill our kitchen, stain our hands, and grace our pantry.

Finding the Stage

{They are walking along the side of Lee Chapel where Robert E. Lee is buried at W&L}

These two went to school yesterday . . . kind of.  We have a woman here in this small town who has transformed a few things. Her name is Susan Hogan. She owns an art studio and offers art lessons.  She owns a small cafe called the Blue Dog Art Cafe where she displays local art.  She runs a theatre program in the elementary and middle schools.  And she runs a very affordable three week summer camp called Kids University.

The kids put on a play and they do all kinds of art projects.  Yesterday Jonah and Caroline shuffled in to the auditorium a bit apprehensive about this new school-esque experience.  But in the 60 second process of checking in they saw half a dozen kids they recognized from church and one of them motioned for Jonah and Caroline to come sit by him.  Off they went.   Off I went.

Weird.

By the end of the day when I picked them up in the POURING rain they were giddy.  "We're doing a play, Mom.  It's Winnie the Pooh.  I'm making a collage.  We get to design flower beds at Penny Park.  I think I might try out.  I want to be a Bumble Bee.  I made a new friend."

Today when I picked them up Jonah announced that he has been cast as Christopher Robin.  And Caroline will be a Bumble Bee.  We have already been to two of the plays that Ms. Hogan has produced.  The kids have loved them, but shied terribly at the thought of being on stage.  It is their turn now.  As a homeschooling mother I am thrilled for them to have this experience independent of me.

Independent.

It's like rubies.  Precious.

HEART AND SOUL

Dear Mr. Nelson,

All my mothers are white - the Anglo-Saxon Eve of European emigration crossing the Atlantic for as many reasons as there were crossings.  I have borne white children, but I have borne them American, and therein lies a kaleidoscopic identity louder than white.  

I am a harassed, homeschooling mother in a small library in Lexington, Virginia, carrying a baby, watching a toddler, trusting two older children to keep themselves alive among the shelves.  There is a book on display - Heart and Soul - with a woman on the cover so dark, so fierce, so determined I cannot pass her up.  I slip her and her little black baby into my bag not knowing what she will pull from us, what she will give to us over the next month.

We have read so many books.  We have learned so many important things from so many authors, but you are the first to whom we all knew we must write and say "thank you."

I grew up in the Southwest and Mountain west United States.  The history of African Americans has always felt like a story removed from me - separated by a continent, an ocean, another continent.  Having recently moved to Virginia we are feeling the tide of African American history come in around us.  Here we are immersed in the ongoing story.  Here we become part of the narrative, and you are among our first guides.

While the geographical parallels of our new home and the tortured slaves in your book settled upon my son, he cried and pleaded with me to go home, back to Utah, away from a place where these things could happen.  I can tell him there are nearly two hundred years between us and this story.  I can tell him the pages that follow offer some resolution.  But I cannot tell him that some divine panacea distilled upon the American heart making true brothers of us all.  Every heart is converted and committed to a prismatic humanity in their own single moment.  

This child, my child, this nine-year-old, white Jonah is in the midst of that moment.  He can now shed some of his own skin and try on something more human, more universal, because you taught him a little about how to respect a human being, be they any color at all.  You taught my six-year-old Caroline that no soul should be standing under the whipping tree.  And honey, you taught me that I can be brave.

Thank you for this story.  Thank you for the paintings you gave us to go with your words.  Thank you for all the things we will now see, the places we will go, the things we will read and learn because we first read Heart and Soul.

          

Your Sister,

Jessica

A Rose By Any Other Name

We have a lot of nicknames in our house.  Matt christens us all, routinely, with something new to answer to.

A few examples:

Jessica, Jae, JaeReg, Reg, Reggie, Jethro, Jethrodesia

Caroline, Carlo, Carlotta, Carlotta Kumquata, Kumquat

Jonah, Yonut, Fro-nut, Yonus Fro, Donkey Nut, Donut, Bon-oh-me-oh, Bon-oh-mc-me-oh

Cecily . . . she says hers is Cecil

Ewan, Bald-e-wan,  Brick Density

Obviously the nick names are not necessarily an effort to shorten a name, or even associated with the given name in any way.  Matthew's mind works in mysterious ways.

Another obvious is that Cecily is strangely lacking any nicknames.  None have ever stuck to her.  Which is odd considering that 'Bon-oh-me-oh' sounds just like 'Jonah' to my ears.  Where is the connection?  Nowhere.  It is Matt's gift of persistence that stitches a name to a person.  But like Peter Pan's elusive shadow, no nicknames have settled on Cecily long enough to start sewing.

Jonah and Caroline are, evidently, adopting their Dad's practice.  Yesterday Caroline declared "Jonah, I'm going to call you Phoebe."  To which Jonah responded, "I'm going to call you Carton-of-Jurassic-Buttermilk."

We'll see if those stick.

That would be Phoebe on the left, JaeReg in the middle, and Carton-of-Jurassic-Buttermilk on the right.

What I Wrote Before I Knew

I have things to say about my Dad.

First - I miss him.

Sometimes at night, I cry into a pillow on the couch while everyone else is asleep. I do this because the kind of crying I give myself to, the crying that comes with saying "My father is dead", is not the kind of crying that is easy to do in front of other people. There is an abandon to it that makes other people so unsure of what to do. And the truth is they don't need to do anything. Except Matt, who needs to hold me occasionally while I cry the cry that would be humiliating if it weren't making the tears that fall to my Father's grave.

My journal keeps my memories for me. Once I write down the goings-on in my head, I can let go of them mentally. Thus, it is always a bit of a surprise to go back and read. The details of my life live in the pages far more than they live in my head.

There are a series of entries I will share. They are the spiritual prescience of saying goodbye, while goodbye was still still beyond the horizon.

Here is the first - written just as Jonah was getting over a severe facial tic that seemed devastating at the time:

02 Sep 2009 Wed

I have periodically wondered at the goodness of our life, and how I will react when something threatens that. I fear now that I am fragile, in a way I was not familiar with. This has been only a brush with trial - not actually trial itself - and I have nearly fallen apart. What I know is that I was recovering emotional strength before Jonah was recovering physically. I DO have something in me that can move past fear and carry on with life. I must foster that ability in preparation for whatever hits next.

03 Sep 2009 Thurs

Television is bad.

05 Sep 2009 Sat

Two hours on the strip in Las Vegas reminds me why we make so much effort, work so hard to remove ourselves from the world. Hedonistic indulgence offers me nothing - it cannot persuade me. I am a daughter of God. I am a woman of virtue pursuing something very different.

06 Sep 2009 Sun

Matthew -- tomorrow I regain thy presence. Always a sweet reunion.

Homeschooling Requires Jelly Beans

WHY ? why? Why?

Why do we homeschool?

This is the question a psychologist asked me two years ago with great incredulity when I went to her for help during my dark days of postpartum depression. It's a fair question, especially for someone feeling overspent, overworked, underslept, and overangry.

The answer to this question eluded me then as it does now. I have read books about why other people choose to homeschool and I relate with some of their reasons. I get catalogs from the great amorphous right-wing, conservative Christian homeschooler guild that is sure I am homeschooling so that the infidels in the schools won't whisper the name of "Darwin" to my little darlings, lest they be convinced there is no God.

I don't order from those catalogs .

And Darwin is not why we homeschool. Unless that is to say there would not be opportunity in public school to answer or explore all the questions my children have about who he was and what he did . We do have opportunity to indulge curiosity in a way that cannot be done by a teacher in a classroom. I have a finite number of curious minds to indulge. The logistical impossibilities are stacked high against teachers from the outset. I can't blame them for the parameters that restrict their abilities.

I am Christian and I admit this does play a part in my WHY. We don't watch television in our house. It is bad for us. This is a personal choice that has made us a happier family. We do not have any video/computer games in our home. Again, this has helped us turn to other forms of entertainment and engagement - namely each other. These choices stem from our Christianity, our own interpretation of how we, as a family, can prepare to know Christ. I do think that the influence of media and gaming found swirling around in the brew of popular culture in the public school is at odds with our choices as parents.

This, of course, may be considered being overprotective.

tomato - tomahto

I think I mostly find my Why in being privy to my children's moments of discovery. If I sent them elsewhere for their education I would not see the first stitches of recognition as they sew a new concept to their own young collection of ideas.

I am rewarded constantly by the time I give to my children in the name of education.

Jonah does a timed math sheet every day - one minute to complete 25 addition facts. The point is not necessarily finish all 25, but to continue to improve and get as many right as possible, an effort at proficiency. Jonah only sees the 25 that need to be completed and we have gone through many days of tears for the blank addition facts glaring at him at the end of one very short minute.

The crying.

Ughh, the crying.

One day I said to him, "Jonah, you don't need to be so devastated if you don't finish every addition fact."

Without hesitation he responded "Just give me some jelly beans if I feel devastated."

Caroline and I did a reading lesson yesterday; number 64 of 100 - the 100 that are in the lesson book. There will be a thousand more lessons over the next few years as we read together regularly. She has a story to read each day and they are getting longer. Yesterday's story was a full page and at the outset she slumps her body into the refusal posture that tells me we will be at it for a long time and each word will require frustrating coercion on my part. The battle ensued. But it was a funny story, as most of them are, about a boy who tries to send his mother a card but a cop gets it instead, and it inspired her to make two beautiful cards for me that said "Mom" with hearts and flowers.

Jonah and I read Shakespeare. Not the intense, full language Shakespeare that will come several years from now. And not the Henry V Shakespeare that is best left until one has developed a true appreciation for the slightly more approachable plays. We have read children's versions of the plays that make us laugh.

It did not occur to me the other day as we read Romeo and Juliet that the end of this story was very different from As You Like It or A Midsummer Night's Dream.

While Romeo was kissing the lifeless lips that would soon warm giving Juliet her turn to find the death of love lying poisoned beside her, Jonah was already crying. When Juliet turned the dagger on herself Jonah's crying became full sobs that wracked his little body. I couldn't finish. He had his head in his hands, full of tears, while he asked over and over "Why would he write this, why would he write this?"

When Jonah calmed enough to talk I finished the last few paragraphs where the Montagues and Capulets vow to resolve their differences for the sake of the lost youths.

I told Jonah, "It's not a true story."

"I know," he said, "it's just so sad."

"Why do you think Shakespeare wrote a story like that?" I asked him.

"To torture someone."

"Do you learn anything from it?"

"It teaches you one thing," Jonah acquiesced, "never quarrel, because bad things might happen and it all turns out horrible in the end."

Had I any jelly beans that day, I would have offered them as balm to his devastation.

Strangely, my biggest regret with this experience was that Jonah will never discover Romeo and Juliet for the first time again. The tragedy is known to him no matter how many times he reads it or sees it on stage. But at the same time I am so glad that I was with him to talk through his visceral response to a very unhappy ending. That is the gift of homeschooling.

A week may turn out very different form my vision on Sunday night of our next round of lessons. This week there has been letter writing to Norway, philosophical discussion about the nature of curfews imposed by Henry Plantagenet in England, uncovering Herculaneum (the lesser known city destroyed by Vesuvius in 79 A.D.), a trip to Temple Square to participate in another homeschooler's geography project, watching the leaves sprout on our sweet potato immersed in water, and the creation of two very impressive versions of pages from The Book of Kells.

It's a good week.

What We Do Before the Cock Crows

Aside from his first months of life when Jonah seemed sustained not by mother's milk, but crying beyond the realms of colic, he has been a good and peaceful sleeper. At least until 6am, when his inner clock gives him a good 'thwack' from the inside, jolting him out of sleepy reverie and physically out of bed. He gets this jolt based entirely on the time and not the number of hours he has slept. Put him to bed at 7:30 with a story and a hug and he is up at six. Put him to bed at 10:30 with a "get your hiney into bed or I'll get it there for you," and he is up at six.

This schedule works for all of us because Matt gets up early and the two of them commune in the wee hours while we of the fairer sex rest on, attending to our beauty. Father and son might commune like this: Matt gets into the shower while Jonah lays on the hard tile of the bathroom floor soaking up the heat from the vent. Father and son might instead commune like this: Matt pours a bowl of cereal for each of them and they sit at the table together considering the confections they will eat when Dad finishes his 'book' and we have a mighty junk-food-party. And yet another means of communion might play out as such: Matt goes back and forth from bathroom to closet dressing and grooming, gelling hair, brushing teeth, and tying shoes while Jonah follows almost a full step behind chattering ceaselessly about Willie Scott, Short Round and Indiana Jones, making Matt wish we had 5000 more square feet in our home so as to avoid tripping over his son every time he turns around.

I give this quality time to my boys each morning as a gift of the truest motherly love. I stay in my warm bed and let them enjoy the half-light without my influence so that Jonah will have these memories with his Dad forever. It is a gift I am possibly a little too happy to give. So, on mornings when Matt is not around to absorb the impact of Jonah's wakefulness I tend to struggle just a little bit. Mother and son might commune like this: Jonah comes to the side of my bed where I am effectively 'dead to the world.' "Mom," he says with a voice that has the raspiness of a shameful effort at whispering and the volume of a freight train. "Can I have some cereal?" Why would he ask this of me? Do we not grant him the right of eating cereal every day of his life? "Yes, you can get your own cereal. And then go read a book and let me sleep, Jo."

Our communion comes in other ways, at more decent hours throughout the day. My best self emerges with the sun.

While in Las Vegas for two weeks I began to tire of Jonah's sweet company in the dark of early morning. I went to bed too late and I wanted him to go away and let my body eek its selfish sleep in a heavily curtained room. One night (late, I'm sure) as my Mom and I sat at the table talking about going to bed, she mentioned how it might be nice if Jonah would get up in the morning and start his lessons on his own. This was a stroke of maternal genius that I had not gleaned from my own paltry experience as a mothering neophyte.

"That's it! I'll make a treasure hunt for him to follow in the morning when he gets up." This I did with all of the gusto that a person has left at 1:00 in the morning after a day of keeping three children alive and one adult sane. I used 3x5 cards strategically placed throughout the house to get the most mileage out of the activity. It started with a large sign on my bedroom door that said "DO NOT ENTER" and then some clue that led him far away from my bedside, out of ear shot. I gave Jonah several activities with which to amuse himself including his writing/copywork, and reading three or four chapters of his Magic Tree House book. At the end of all this I had Charlotte's Web queued up in the DVD player so he could push 'power' and 'play', giving me an extra two hours of sleep, giving him a more present and capable mother.

Jonah bought this whole thing like it was a trip to Legoland. He woke up, he came to my room with his freight-train-whisper on the tip of his tongue and found the clue on my door. He followed each direction, reading and writing on his own without any one there to nag him like his teacher might have considered absolutely necessary before then. He moved on to the getting-his -own-breakfast part, and finally to watching Charlotte's Web before he decided he had to wake someone up.

Jonah knocked on my bedroom door with no thought to waking the baby that slept in the room with me. I jumped out of bed lamenting the unsuccessful attempt at the morning treasure hunt. It felt far too early for him to have taken the bait. He stood before me in tears.

"What's wrong?" I asked. "Did you do the treasure hunt?"

"Yes," he sniffled. "I did all of it. But I'm too lonely. No one is waking up."

I pushed the button on the clock to illuminate the hour.

5:00 AM!

Jonah had eaten, copied a full page of writing , read four chapters , and watched an entire movie, and it was 5:00 in the morning. Maybe he and Matt have been communing earlier than I thought.

A bit of "Not-Lonely" Please

We are a migratory clan, 400 long miles from the man who is "Dad" in our tribe.

It is bedtime - a torturous routine involving three children that always, every night, despite any efforts on anyone's part, end up asleep. I can't get them there fast enough. They would prop their eyelids open with toothpicks and ask for seventy-two "goodnight drinks" to avoid the inevitable slumber.

Jonah is letting slip a few I-miss-Dad tears as we go through our third round of hugs in the dark room. He decides a prayer will help. "Please bless Dad that he won't be lonely," Jo implores on Matthew's behalf.

One "amen" later Caroline refutes the prayer.

"Dad doesn't be lonely, Jonah. He be's with the Holy Ghost."

(The apostrophe in "be's" is poetic license based on my assumption that Caroline has created a contraction out of "be is". Thus - he be's...)

Well, I for one am feeling better about the state of my husband's potential loneliness. Lest I fear that a man alone at home misses his family, I need only remind myself that "he be's with the Holy Ghost."

And Jonah's tears are gone, so apparently the Holy Ghost be's with us too.

"Holy Crud ----- The Toothless Man"

I AM THE TOOTH FAIRY

Don't let this confuse you. I know. You are also the tooth fairy.
It's one of those universal titles. Like when you are walking around in the grocery store and there are little people everywhere saying "Mom", and they are not your children, and it grows ever more confusing that you are just one of many millions of women with the same name. So it is with "tooth fairy". Except in this scenario you are just one of many millions of women (or men) who are complicit in the harmless charade that there is that one, solitary fairy, flitting about from bed to bed collecting little dead bits of our children's bodies that fall out of their heads.

Jonah is "at that age". The age when little dead bits of his body fall out of his head. He's lost four now, and I'm growing less mournful at the loss of his "milk teeth." His mouth is moving and spreading in the strangest of ways, giving me no choice but to hope for a better world. A better world being one wherein Jonah's mouth does not resemble that of a 50 year old English, drunkard. At present he is leaning in that direction.

Two days this week have ended in a stealthy transaction in Jonah's room. I slip four quarters into his tooth-pillow while removing the small mark of his childhood. I'll not admit to him, of course, that they could very well be the same four quarters he got last time he transacted with the tooth fairy. I dip shamefully into his "Disneyland" jar to reconcile these debts to tradition. My integrity would have me withdraw real money from my real bank account and deposit it with clinking finality into the jar Jonah so naively leaves on my dresser. This would do much to ameliorate my guilt whenever he declares his intent to save these new quarters in his "Disneyland" jar. Thus far those "new" quarters have all been "old" quarters already living in that jar, because I have NO quarters of my own. I have plastic that will, most assuredly, not be traded for a tooth.

I will count the remaining milk teeth and repair to the bank this week for a sufficient supply of dollar coins, and if we're going to concede interest, I might as well slip a twenty in the jar while I'm at it.

Behold the evolution of a six-year old mouth in just five days time.















"Snaggle Tooth"




"The Toothless Man"

Curiosity With a Voice

Caroline comes to the garden with me, a great festering mess of rotten tomatoes hanging from rotten vines that need throwing out before snow renders them immovable until spring. We work at unwinding the gratuitous lengths of wire I laced around my six-foot tomato cages and the rebar stake meant to anchor each cage to the center of the earth. She is surprisingly adept at this, her little fingers making quick work of the tangle that my bumbling, gloved fingers struggle with. Behind me she hums and talks aimlessly to herself until she realizes she's pretty good at what Mom is having a hard time with.

"Mom, did you ever know that you would have a four-year-old who is not so big, who is a helper and works hard like me?"

"No, I didn't know I would have a four-year-old like that."

She returns to her quiet work for a moment, then declares "I'm a Jesus girl."

__

We are in the van driving to meet Granny and Auntie Maren at the park for a fall picnic. Jonah and Caroline are in the back seat coexisting, for this brief moment, in peace. Caroline threatens the peace with an innocent question.
"Jonah, I think we're near the park. Do you want to take your jacket off before we get there?"
"Why?" he asks.
"So the people at the park won't see what you look like," she says with an implied 'of course'.
She asks this as if he wasn't wearing an ultra cool, height-of-kid-couture, GAP hoodie with an outline of Mt. Everest embroidered on the back. And he is wearing that hoodie!
"Like what?!" he demands to know.
"Well, your jacket has that funny thing on the hood that sticks out."
Silence.
He's mulling it over. Weighing the consequences of a six-year-old fashion faux pas at the park.
"No," he replies, completely unoffended. "I'll keep it on."
And we carry on, pax romana intact.

__

Caroline stands on the fourth stair. I don't know if this is fourth from the top or from the bottom, but I do know that the fourth stair is, for Jonah and Caroline, the pinnacle of stair-jumping bravado. It is Greg Louganis on the high dive, only we hope Caroline's jump has a more auspicious outcome than Greg's famous "whack."
Matt is Caroline's only audience. She readies herself while he watches intently, poised with saving arms should the fourth stair prove beyond her means. Caroline closes her eyes, puts a steady hand to her heart and pleads "Jesus, help my heart."
This must be the dramatic indicator that she is about to leap.
But no!
She has a thought, a question for which she requires an answer before her feet leave the fourth stair. Caroline opens her eyes and asks, "Dad, would it be bad to say 'Jesus, bless my little broken body'?"
I'm guessing Jesus has been asked to bless significantly less holy things than Caroline's little broken body.
But wait!
Such a question is more than alarming to the father waiting for the jump.
He might think to stop her at this point, the vision of her question being too much for his natural propensity to caution.
But Caroline is ready, her curiosity satiated, mind turned back to the inhuman feat ahead of her.
Before Matt can voice concern...
she bends her knees just a bit...
and flies...

His Imaginary,Telepathic, Pen-Pal

I miss Gavin-Height

He wasn't here for long and I would like to have known him better.

As a kid I had lots of friends; neighborhood friends, school friends, church friends...sibling friends -whose particular brand of friendship sometimes hovered dangerously close to fatal- but I do not remember ever having an imaginary friend.

When Jonah introduced us to Gavin-Height it was not the "Here is my new friend standing-beside-me-can't-you-see-him-Mom" variety of introduction. I really don't remember a specific declaration or "Nice to meet you" experience. Gavin-Height came slowly into existence. Like Pinocchio, he bandied about with a pseudo identity until one day - poof - he was a real boy, and we happily accepted him as such.

We never talked to Gavin-Height, only about him.
I never observed even Jonah talking to him.

How Jonah got his information I don't know. Jonah was four when this started. He would have understood validating the source of his knowledge about Gavin-Height with a claim such as "G-H sent me a letter, a postcard, an email, he called me, I saw him on the street..." But Jonah never revealed how he knew what he knew.

And this is what he knew:
Gavin-Height and Jonah were cousins
They were the same age
Gavin-Height had blue hair
Gavin-Height lived with his grandma
The grandma was not Jonah's grandma
Gavin-Height and his grandma traveled

Jonah and I went through a phase of reading about different countries. We built a repertoire of impressive facts we could cite about far off places that really existed. Someone might say "Wow, Jonah is so smart. I couldn't even tell you where Pakistan was on a map, much less what they like to eat."
But it's not about smart, is it? Jonah is curious. Jonah is willing to accept whatever attention his mother offers and if that comes in the form of reading a book about children in Sri Lanka he doesn't turn me away. Kids are pretty universally curious. Nothing is old hat. The world is new with every new mind that enters it. The complexities and beauties of life will settle upon them like raw wool with which their minds will spin radiant threads of knowledge. They will happily spill out all the silky ribbons of information flitting about in their heads to any willing audience. We adults might have turned off 'curious' or abandoned 'learn new things for the sake of it' in lieu of making dinner and earning a living. We forget that it is not "smart" to know that Pakistan is sandwiched between India and Afghanistan, it is "smart" to want to know.

I'm not sure that Gavin-Height was so much an imaginery friend as he was a kind of imaginary, telepathic pen-pal. He didn't eat dinner with us, he kept us abreast of his travels with grandma.

Jonah: "Mom, Gavin-Height is in China today."
Mom: "What's he doing there?"
Jonah: "He's going to school with Xui Li (pronounced shoe-lee)"
Mom: "What's his grandma doing while he's at school?"
Jonah: "She's fishing."

We met Xui Li and her parents in a book about life in China. In the book we went to school with her and saw pictures of many little Chinese children that all look very similar to our western eyes. Identical school uniforms did nothing to diminish the differentiation troubles we Occidentals have. We met Xui Li again through Gavin-Height and his wandering grandmother.

Over several months Gavin-Height carried us away to Israel, Paris, California, Iran, Maryland, Italy, and Idaho. His expeditions were both reactionary and innovative - his trail sometimes winding its way through books we had already traveled and sometimes breaking new ground requiring that we read to catch up with him.

One evening Jonah sat at the dining table coloring as I made a cake. I greased the two round cake pans then put flour in to coat the surface. Tapping it this way and that to ensure no spot was left uncovered. Jonah watched intently. I turned the pan over the sink and slapped the bottom a few times to get rid of the excess flour which came away in a white cloud sailing down to the drain.
"Do you know what that's called, Mom?"
"No, what?" I asked, not entirely sure what he was referring to.
"It's a 'Huff'.
"What is a 'huff' ? I wanted to make sure I understood.
"When the flower falls down like rain."
"Where did you learn that?"
"From Gavin-Height........he learned it from his grandma."

I think that was one of the last things we heard from Gavin-Height. Maybe he settled on a country he just couldn't bear to leave. Maybe he turned five and had to go to school. Maybe grandma ran out of money with which to bank roll the globe-trekking. Maybe Jonah didn't need him anymore. I think maybe I needed him to stay a while longer - I knewJonah just a bit more through him.

I like that he had blue hair. I wonder what they thought of that in Israel.