Make Do

We do not live near any ocean - not the Pacific, not the Atlantic, and really not the Indian. We are land locked in North America.

I was nine years old the first time I saw an ocean . . . and a beach - oh the waves, and the rocks, and the shells, and the sand of it all. Sand under my naked toes, sand wet and sand dry, sand castles (or lumps), sand holes that fill with water from below, and sand in all the crevices beneath by bathing suit when we got back to the motel.

Our trip to the ocean was really a trip to Disneyland. The beach was an afterthought to Mickey, but it may have been the more formative experience for me.

Our family was without great means when I was a child. I didn't notice much, but I'm guessing if I were to see the household income verses expenses from that period of my life it might all work out to a bottom line of "approximately destitute." Like, meat was the venison my Dad brought home from a hunt, and spending cash for my sister and I were the few dollars we brought home from peddling home made cookies through the streets in our rusted wagon.

I loved my childhood. I never felt poor. Not even when Grah and I combed through the rubbish bin looking for interesting things to play with - empty bottles of any sort, that was our real bounty - we had an apothecary of plastic shampoo bottles that kept us entertained for . . .well, our childhood.

So my Mom coming up with the money to get our family of five to Disneyland was no ordinary feat. I'm guessing she didn't do anything illegal to get the cash - she's just not like that.

I'm guessing she sacrificed a few of her own necessities - she's just like that.

When the money was ready she loaded us all in the Dreaded Dormammu - our red and silver Volkswagen Bus - and we left Cedar City for the very foreign experience of California. We got as far as a few miles past Mesquite before the Dreaded Dormammu made some dreaded sounds and puttered to a stop on the side of the desert highway.

My Dad declared the trip a resounding failure and we would have to make our way home some how.

My Mom used words she doesn't normally use and declared the trip in full swing and it was up to him to find a solution.

She won.

The story is; Dad starts walking back to Mesquite, nice couple in a Mercedes stop to pick up the Damsel in distress along with her three children. Nice couple turns around to fetch Dad. Uncle in Mesquite takes care of the Dreaded Dormammu. Nice couple picks up their second Mercedes in Glendale that they let my Dad drive. We caravan to Vegas where my grandparents lend us their car and we drive to Anaheim the next day.

Thank you nice couple with two Mercedes who let strangers drive your cars.

My nine year old heart might have broken into sad little pieces had we not made it to California. It was my life's adventure at that age.

I ached to see Disneyland.

I ached to see Los Angeles.

I ached to see the beach.

So now, when Jonah tells me he "really, really, really" wants to see the ocean, I know how he feels. He is seven. Time is ticking away for our inland selves, and he grows impatient. Mountains and canyons are nothing to scoff at. We have some of the most stunning the world has to offer, but the unknown is hopelessly beguiling.

We have tried to plan California, but babies, graduate school, and money seem bent on keeping those 682 miles as distant as say, the Arctic.

On a whim, Matt decided to offer the children the nearest beach available to us on Monday.

It is a beach not without some faults, namely that it is the shore of the Great Salt Lake - which is not as much great as it is foul smelling. But there is water and there is sand, and if you live landlocked it is actually more fun than I imagined it would be.

So until I do as my mother did when I was nine, and figure out what I can give up for long enough to pay for the trip to California, we can make do with the remains of what Jonah calls "the Ancient Lake Bonneville."

Keeping Up With the Artists

We have two paint shirts, cut from the many white shirts that go "the way of all the earth" after Matt has worn them once or twice a week for two years. These shirts are marked with a history of little people's efforts at creating - it is the art of childhood smeared all up and down the front, or in some cases painted directly on to the shirt as the paper eventually becomes a bit boring. We need a new canvas, they decide, discovering fabric works nicely.

We have two paint shirts but three painters now. The littlest painter came to the table a few days ago after Jonah and Caroline abandoned their post. This abandonment is so strictly against the painting rules I can hardly contain my (anger - which I'm working on) response. They left all their wares and tools scattered across the marginally protected tabletop - far too inviting a scene for a momentarily unsupervised two-year-old.

I found her thus:

Paints are a heady temptation. I experience this temptation regularly, accompanied by the gloomy realization that I have no skills once the paints have been squeezed seductively from the tube. A brush in my hand has such a tentative meeting with canvas - beyond "hello" it really has no conversation. I like to watch my kids paint because their brush and canvas converse fluently.

Cecily is obviously no exception.

And she has christened her own paint shirt.

When Matt's currently white shirts are discarded to make way for a new batch of new white, I will snag two more for the little painters.

Perhaps I should keep one for myself and call it my painting smock. Perhaps it will sufficiently clothe my artistic apprehension such that I can smear paint on paper without fear.

Be warned - a little paint tray, left unattended, sporting an array of colors such as this might tempt your little ones, or even yourself beyond forbearance.

Two suggestions:

1. If you buy paints you must emotionally disconnect yourself from your children's clothes.

2. Buy a piece of duck cloth or canvas that can be easily unrolled to cover the table generously - it alleviates anxiety.

Forefathers and My Father

I know that everyone knows this part by now - the part where I can do almost nothing but sit on my bed. This pregnant body betrays me . . . or is true to me. I can't tell which one. I read recently a woman who at some point in her seventh pregnancy came to this realization; I can grow this baby as long as I don't do anything else. That's how I feel - capable of this thing my body does by itself with no conscious effort from me, but nothing else.

So, to get three kids in the car and go to the Utah Museum of Natural History is, well, a bit ludicrous. But I have a Community Exploration card good through the end of August that grants us free entrance into the Natural History Museum, Discovery Gateway, Red Butte Garden, and the Fine Arts Museum. Never mind that my belly is contracting, my feet swollen, my back tight and aching - we will eek out these free experiences before the baby comes, and before my kids go crazy in the doldrums of summer.

Side note - Discovery Gateway has been permanently removed from my list of worthwhile things to do with the children. Unless the establishment would like to grant us a family night all our own.

Insanity. Times ten. With pigtails and petulance.

"Other people's kids."

That's what Matt always says. As if ours were . . . well they aren't. But we like them best.

On this trip - to the museum, where there are things of actual interest, we listen to music. Jonah and Caroline demand songs from the MP3 as soon as we get in the car.

"Play such and such."

"No, play this one first."

"No, I don't want that one."

"You always pick first."

"I never get a turn."

Until we end up with some Miley Cyrus (I'm embarrassed that this is on the MP3, but there is a reason outside my own music taste, and now that I have an Apple computer, I can't remove it) song, that makes me cringe. Where did they gain such an interest in Top 40, pop, teeny bopper music?

But not always. Sometimes it is Fleet Foxes, Mykonos. Or Sufjan Stevens, Decatur. The Eagles, Waiting in the Weeds. Or Feist, Joni Mitchell, Ingrid Michaelson, Jennifer Warnes, Kings of Convenience, Loreena McKennit, Landon Pigg, Hungry Cloud - music being passed to them intentionally.

Today it is Dan Fogelberg - Forefathers. This is Caroline's choice, taken from the playlist I made in December for my Dad, when I thought he might die, when he wouldn't wake up, when his heart quit working.

A massive heart attack took him from upright to open heart surgery, to unconscious for five days. My Mom and I took turns sitting by his side nearly every hour of each of those days, but he was not be woken peacefully. Like a bear he was, like a lion in a cage, thrashing his big body about such that there was no choice but to keep the sedatives dripping into his blood and his captive consciousness. We felt very tearfully helpless.

Aubrey felt the most helpless being three thousand miles away. In her geographic impotence she offered a suggestion that I think made all the difference. "Take him some music. Just play his favorites for him, soft things that will help subdue his subconscious while they try to wake him up."

I did. Within a few hours I had collected the music that lives in my Dad's soul, the music he would set on the turntable under the alchemy of a needle that would give us song and just a bit of crackle at midnight when we should all have been asleep, but were instead being infused with the stuff that brought musical magic into our home. I put it all on my MP3 player in a playlist titled For Dad.

We played it over and over until Aubrey's prescription lulled him into a kind of dreamy awakening. So many tears for the familiarity of songs that have marked the moments of living for him. Which he seemed then determined to do - live.

Forefathers is the first song on that list. I cannot summarize the poignancy of this song that harbors the foibles of synthesized bagpipes and other sundry sounds of the 80's, but still makes me cry every time I listen to it. The words are a means of bringing me into the center of my familial tapestry. Within it I am placed soundly and happily in all the roles that are the mortar of my identity.

And Caroline says "Mom, this makes me think about Las Vegas."

"How come," I ask.

"Because it sounds like Tickle Grandpa."

"Yes, it does. I have always liked Dan Fogelberg, because I've always thought he sounds like Tickle Grandpa."

And I can see Tickle Grandpa, my Dad, lying in a hospital bed, with a tube down his throat, a machine heaving his mighty chest up - then down - then up, eyelids fluttering from the movement beneath.

I see him sitting up in the same bed, awake, raspy voiced, professing CHANGE on every front. "A mission" he says, "God" and "gospel" woven through all the days that will follow. Professing mistakes and a hushed decree that he will learn to dance - for my Mom - he will learn to dance.

Yes, it sounds like Tickle Grandpa, who is an active forefather, granted time to become so much more to the generations he has borne thus far.

Good choice Caroline.

The Dickens' Debate

Her 5th birthday started with all of us laying in my bed.

This is how pretty much every day starts at the moment.

After many years of grappling with A Tale of Two Cities, I was determined to finish the last thirty pages before I committed my mind and body to any of the heavy duties of the day - like feeding everyone breakfast.

Jonah asked me to read aloud. His request came in the most critical, emotional, purposeful pages of the book. I read with tears barely held at bay. I gave voice to Sydney Carton as the unlikely Christ figure. We rode with the tumbrils through Paris to meet Madame La Guillotine. We followed the clicking, knitting Defarge en route to an unexpected encounter with Miss Pross. We were jostled in the heart thumping carriage of the little party desperate to abandon la vie francaise. Jonah held on to every word - enraptured. Caroline said, "When can I open my presents?"

What!?

Presents?

Oh yeah. . . it's her birthday.

"Caroline," Jonah retorted with frustration, "we have to find out what happens."

"But I want to open my presents from Granny."

"Ugh," he replies, "if only you understood the glory of books."

"I know the glory of books," Caroline demands.

"No, I mean like, figuring out something new, and . . . the magical way the author tells the story."

"Well, I just want to open my presents."

And it is her birthday, so Dickens will have to wait another ten minutes to render the conclusion of his tale that has taken me nearly fifteen years to read.

We open presents.

We play.

We finally come to that famous sentence:

"It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known."

How did he do it - Dickens that is - The first and last sentence of this book are arguably the most famous in English literature - except for maybe a few of Shakespeare's.

We eat pancakes per birthday request.

The culmination of our birthday celebration came in the evening when I used Caroline's new curling iron to put curls in her hair, dress in her fanciest dress, take a picture in the front garden, and dine at the Olive Garden - a very rare outing for our family.

Books are good. A Tale of Two Cities might be one of the best. But someday Jonah will also know the glory of children - his own - a little girl turning five. Even Dickens would have yielded to that glory.

"Retire to thy bed early..." - but probably not all day.

Twelve hours in my bed did a good deal towards reducing the permanent, pregnant swelling in my feet.

Last night I laid down at 8pm with the thought that I needed just a few moments to gather my strength before getting three children into their own beds. Sometime in the dark of night, I awoke with my husband asleep beside me and all three of those children in their beds, asleep, without my having contributed to the effort in any way.

While I showered this morning Matt asked what my plans were for the day. "To lay in bed as long as I can" I answered (in slight jest). I really liked the idea that if I stayed in bed the next two days I might be able to wear shoes to church on Sunday. But that wasn't really my plan. My plan is almost always to clean the house. My plan is waylaid nearly every day. Plus taking a shower these days requires nearly an hour of recumbent recovery, so I did, in fact, end up on the bed for some time afterward.

Caroline poured cereal and milk for herself in the dining room, but came to me so she could pray before eating. She was ok to eat by herself, but not pray by herself. She prays consistently for me that I will not have "a heartburn", like she prays for Tickle Grandpa not to have "a heart attack." I wonder how the two are related in her mind and figure I had better help her understand that there is actually no correlation at all nor is there any danger of imminent death for me.

She asked in her blessing on the cereal growing soft and unpalatable in the other room, that "the Bishop will get lots of tithing so he can buy lots of Books of Mormon and so he can give money to people who need it." I amen this prayer earnestly. There are so many things the Bishop does that I am both grateful for, and grateful I do not have to do. Not that I would mind giving people money, but exercising the wisdom and confidently gaining inspiration as to who should receive the money and how much holds no allure for me.

While I sat in bed - still recovering from the shower - Jonah and Caroline decided to pretend they were attending to me in a kind of salon for pregnant, suffering women. They each took a foot to treat with pumice stone and lotion, then rubbed my legs with a dazzlingly satisfying cream called "Lucky Legs" that Chani bought for me at Pea in a Pod, said to relieve the discomfort of swollen legs. It is minty and cool and an hour later my legs still feel better.

Finally, approaching noon, the kids ask if they can wake Cecily up so they can play restaurant with the play-kitchen in her room. I figure noon is a decent hour at which to waken the child that seems to be able and willing to sleep any length of time if left to herself.

We are all up now - no one left wasting away the day in bed. We'll see how close we come to a clean house today, the possibility of making something for dinner, keeping the kids busy, moving the sprinkler as Matt has asked.

Clean house...

Swollen feet...

It's a good life whatever the close of this day brings.

Your Mark Is Permanent

There are signs of my mother everywhere.

The last load of laundry that she put through my washer and dryer, still waiting to be folded.

The last two pieces of cheesecake and raspberry sauce in my refrigerator that she made for me on my birthday.

The scraps of towel she tore apart and used to clean my hardwood floor - that had not been truly cleaned in the six years we have lived in this house.

The towel she brought me to replace the one she tore up which happened to be a bit raggedy but still one of my favorites. The one she brought is my new favorite.

The new pillows she bought for me that support my aching, pregnant body each night and carry me through to a new morning - one day closer to the end of pregnant.

The towels put away in my cabinet that are folded differently than I fold them, but would not be folded at all had she not done it.

The lack of grass choking out my daisies.

The morning glories thriving in the pots on my front porch - growing from seeds she harvested off the dried up vines from last year and planted with the kids.

All the clean clothes left in my children's drawers.

And the empty space she left on the couch . . .in my kitchen. . .my laundry room. . .my garden. . .my inner sense of well being.

Luckily she leaves other signs - the kind that won't fade.

Like homemade macaroni and cheese with red sauce served at our table regularly.

Magenta bottles of pomegranate magic. . .or jelly, whichever you prefer.

Thursday taco night.

Little Cecily saying "Nana, Nana, where Nana, Mama?"

Instilling the confidence in me to keep trying to be a mother.

Organizing my medicine drawer.

Airborne when we feel the slightest itch in the throat.

Stevia for morning oats.

The nightgown she gave me out of her own suitcase after Caroline was born that I wear all the time while I am pregnant and nursing.

Her genes made manifest in my mirrors and my daughters.

#7 on my cell phone speed dial.

My Mom is in New York.

My Mom moved to New York.

She is in my sister's home now.

I know what kinds of things they do together - work - and some play - and make sure to take a nap every day.

Goodbye Mom.

It's alright. The next best thing to doing my laundry is doing Aubrey's. The Hannigs are lucky to have you, even if you don't do any laundry at all. And Heaven knows they've waited long enough to have Nana on that side of the country.

Until September 14th.

"Mom Sorry"

I yelled at Caroline the other day - Caroline and Jonah. The kind of yell that is borne of my own exhaustion and unrelated frustrations, but comes out as though they have betrayed the very heart of me by . . . playing in the dirt.

The wrong dirt, at the wrong time. I usually don't mind my kids jumping into outside dirty. I had better let them do something, since everything with an electric cord, or batteries makes me get all impatient and irritated. But this was right by the newly planted tomatoes, and fit snugly in the twenty minutes after bath and before bed. So I am the backyard banshee, demanding obedience and some kind of retribution from a four and seven year old. I corral muddy little bodies into the house, pushing them with undo force.

Our back door opens into the house at the top of the stairs to the basement. We have trained ourselves to open gently and slow should there ever be a child at the top of those stairs. A child at the top of those stairs would be bumped right down to the bottom by a door flung open in anger. So when I flung open the door in anger it caught the moment that the baby was making her way through that little square of floor from stairs to kitchen. It also caught the side of her head. I waited for a split second envisioning her tiny body tumbling down too many stairs to the floor that had at least been recently carpeted, instead of the welcome block of hard tile that used to catch my kids when they fell down the stairs.

Instead she screamed and clung to the wall. Anger rushed out of me, replaced by a flood of shame. I left the muddy children, scooped up the crying baby, and locked myself in my bedroom to hide from my own parenting. Cecily and I cried together. Her head was fine. She wiped my tears saying "Mama crying?" Matt eventually came in to sit quietly with me, never chastising me for my ill behavior. Natural consequences worked well enough in this case.

After enough time had passed to make me feel almost ready to go apologize to the rest of my family there was a timid knock on my bedroom door. Caroline came in - no signs of mud and clad in pajamas - to offer her own silent apology.

She explained that she is the little girl in the picture and "The tears are me crying because I made a wrong choice."

I told her I made a wrong choice too, and I'm old, and it still made me cry.