Wild Animals

This morning I sat down at my computer to this headline: "Giant Creatures Attack Villagers."

I had two reactions. The first was, I have got to switch home pages. My husband has the New York Times as his home page. And in general the headlines, while not cheerful, are fairly reasonable. My homepage is AOL, which features things like, "Enormous snakes threaten Texas Town," or "Silent Killers: How Many are Lurking in Your House?"* So my husband sits down and reads all the bad news in the world without being in a heightened state of anxiety, while I sit down and say, "Oh my GOD! Tommy! Did you read this? Some woman ate her children in Brazil!!"
(Which reminds me of women I grew up with who had scanners and and could open a conversation with, "Brian McPherson** got his balls cut off by his lawn mower over at his house yesterday and those guys at the fire station were over there for three hours.")

This particular article was a sad one about Komodo dragons, who are starting to attack the villagers who have been living peacefully next to them for years, and how people are scared and no one is sure what to do about it. One of the reasons given for the attack was that the dragons are running out of food. I think it's also because human activity is starting to drive animals mad.
I just been talking about this this weekend with my friend Suzanne. We at a party and someone brought their dog, and Suzanne said she had grown up with dogs and always liked dogs, but she'd recently been peed on and bitten by two separate dogs on two different occasions.
"Animals are going crazy," I said. "Humans keep messing with the the order of things and they're just getting sick of it."
I started going through my list of back up for this-the giant sting ray in Florida (or maybe it was Louisianna, I can't remember) that leapt out of the water onto a boat and stung a man to death, the otherwise gentle panda who bit a tourist, and the rise in violent behavior in elephants. (A phenomenon I found especially sad and alarming.)
And then I read a story about pharmaceuticals turning up in drinking water and doing things like feminizing male fish. So to me it isn't a stretch to imagine those chemicals might start to affect a small animal's brain chemistry more quickly than they would a human. I mean really, how would you like to be a dog, going along fine, and then suddenly you're getting viagra, antidepressants, estrogen, and medication for someone else's angina in your water dish? I'd start peeing on people, too. In fact, when I read about all this, I felt like biting someone.

Suzanne was unconvinced, and so was my husband, who may have said I was starting to sound like that character in James Thurber's essays who thinks that electricity leaks from the ceiling. I don't think either of them have read about the elephants.

*not actual headlines, but you get the idea.
**A name I made up, and does not refer to any Brian McPhersons you might know.

The trouble with being happy.

Tonight at dinner my brother in law Dave said, "You can update your blog any day now."
"I know," I said. It's been about a week since I posted anything. This is partly because I've been working almost nonstop on the novel and at the end of the day I feel so wrung out from writing that I can't bring myself to write anything else. But also I feel like I haven't had that much material. It's the trouble with being happy. No one is fighting (first rule of writing--conflict drives a story.) Dawson has made a complete recovery of the chicken pox. Summer has begun and for the last few days it's been so beautiful out it's almost blinding. The trees are bright green with their new leaves and everything is flowering--trillium, lilacs, tulips. Last weekend Liam and Dawson spent the night at my parents house and when I went to pick them up Liam had seen six snakes in the creek that runs by my parents' house. He had caught three and two of them were in a container with airholes in the living room.
"I want to take them to our house," he said.
"I think they want to be here with their families," I said.
"It's a little known fact that reptiles have strong family ties," said Tommy.
Liam took that pretty well, and we let them out by the hydrangea bushes.
My father said that he'd never seen as many snakes in the creek as he had this year, and I said that one of my neighbors, an anthropologist, told me that snakes were a sign of a healthy creek.
"Well," said my mother. "We are surrounded by organic farmers now."
"Unlike when we were kids," I said, "when we played in a creek full of agricultural run-off, ate unwashed pesticide filled strawberries by the fistful, and happily burned our own trash."
"And you turned out fine," she said.
"Jury's still out," I said.

Then Tommy took the children to Ohio so I could work on the novel and now here I am, lonely for them, like a mother snake whose babies got put into a container with airholes and rushed off someplace else.

I am getting to watch a lot of TV though. And work on the book, of course. I just sent the first three sections of it to my first reader today.
And maybe something interesting will happen tomorrow.

Too much fun

It was such a beautiful spring weekend that were outside all day every day and then I went to a wedding on Saturday and drank a little too much champagne and now I am too exhausted to write anything. So I'm reposting something I like from last year.

"Last Saturday. Domenica and Justin came over with their kids and I made a big pot of vegetable biryani that tasted awful when we first tried it, so we all had some bourbon to give it time to absorb more flavor, which put us in excellent moods.
It was a breathtakingly gorgeous afternoon, everything bright green and in bloom. Tommy and Justin played badmitton, and Domenica and I shared gossip until Liam started riding a turtle on wheels down the hill in our backyard. Our backyard is one long slope that ends in a pit that used to be the foundation of a barn. It is not a good yard to ride anything on, and I telling Liam all week that if he didn’t listen when I asked him not to ride down the hill I would take something away, I took the turtle away.
This started world war three. Liam cried and screamed and told me he hated me.
“You sound very angry,” I said, using a technique Domenica had read in a parenting book. (Step one: validate the child's feelings.")
“I am!” Liam said.
“Why didn’t you listen to Mommy?” (Step two: find out what the child was thinking.)
“That turtle doesn’t go very fast!” he said. “And I know how to stop! And you weren’t supposed to take that away from me!”
“It sounds like you didn’t feel like I listened to you,” I said. (Not sure what step that was.)
“That's because you didn't!!!” he said.
So I said something about how no one likes to be ignored, and I don’t like it any more than he does, and then I asked him if he was ready to say he was sorry and he said no but he threw his arms around my neck and clung to me, so I decided that was apology enough for the time being.

We all went on to have a nice dinner (the biryani turned out fine) and the children played well without spraying each other with Windex or pouring any foodstuffs on the couch like they did the week before.
Later, after everyone had left and things settled down, a rainstorm came. I was in the kitchen washing the dishes, feeling happy and full of everything—life, good company, good food, when I looked out on the back porch and saw Liam sitting quietly out there in a chair eating blueberries from a cup, watching the rain fall.
Liam is almost always in motion, and seeing him sit pensively and still, absorbed by the sound of the rain was such an unusual sight I practically held my breath--the way you do when you see a rare bird or wild animal that doesn’t know it’s being observed.
He stayed out there until I finished the dishes and then I went out and sat down next to him. It was so beautiful out on our rickety porch. The sky was that deep evening blue it turns just before it becomes night, and the trees were in black relief against it. Across the creek I could see the lights from someone else’s window and the rain poured and poured down. Is it because we’re mostly made of water that it is so soothing to listen to rain fall? It’s as if my body responds to it gratefully, like thank you, thank you, thank you.

I buried my nose in Liam’s gritty, little boy hair which badly needs a shampoo and said, “I’m sorry you felt like I didn’t listen to you today. And I’m sorry I yelled.”
Liam just nodded.
“Let’s stop not listening to each other, all right?” I said. “Then we won’t have to be sad.”
Liam shook his head. “No,” he said quietly. “We’ll always be sad.” He said it as if this was a bit of heavy knowledge he’s had for a long time.
“Why do you say that?” I said.
“Because people will always be taking things away from other people.”
We were quiet.
“Well,” I finally said. “The good news is that people will always be giving things to other people, too.”
Liam didn’t say anything.
“I’m pretty happy now, though,” I said. “Are you?”
“Yes,” he said. “It’s because we aren’t bumblebees. They just hate the rain.”

More Fairies

Last night I told my children that if they didn't stop getting out of their beds the bedtime fairy was going to come over and take away their bikes.
"Who is the bedtime fairy?" Liam asked, stricken.
"She's the fairy who likes to make sure that all little boys go to bed on time."
"What does she look like?" said Liam.
"I've never seen her," I said. "I've only talked to her on the phone."
"I DON'T WANT THE BEDTIME FAIRY TO COME," said Dawson, who looks like some fairy cursed the hell out of him with all the pox on his skin.
"No Mommy, no," said Liam. "Don't call the bedtime fairy!"

"Of course I have been telling them I'd take away their bikes if they didn't go to bed all week," I said today to my friend Cara. "But the bedtime fairy scared the living daylights out of them."
"That's because it's the PARANORMAL," said Cara. "It's the unseen forces coming in and taking your bikes."
I hadn't thought of it that way.
"Have you heard of Death?" Cara went on. "That could be a fairy. We don't know."
"Then of course they wanted to know what the bedtime fairy looks like," I said.
"You should say about 5 feet 5 inches tall, with shoulder length hair..." Cara said, describing me.
"And very sharp red teeth," I said.

I was joking, but then I remembered that when I was little I had this fear that my whole family turned into monsters when I wasn't looking. I knew it was a fantasy--sort of, but there was always a part of me that wondered, what if? And every so often I'd try to catch them at it. Years later when I told my mother this she said, "Ah. Well, in a way you were right. You were becoming aware of the dark sides all of us have that we don't like to show anyone."
And I wondered if Cara was right, that this is why fairies are so effective with children. They represent the unseen forces--anxiety, rage, depression, fear--that children sense in adults but don't always see because we try to hide them. (Some of us better than others. I don't think a fairy would throw bikes off the porch. But then again, she might turn a boy into a gnat.)

In any case, they're very persuasive. And not as hard to get on the phone as you might think.

Happy Mother's Day

Mother’s Day began at 1:00 this morning with poor little Dawson who was covered in chicken pox, waking up in tears.
“Oh Dawsie,” I said. “What hurts?”
“Everyfing!” he said miserably.
It was as if his chicken pox were breeding and multiplying by the second. When he went to bed his back was half covered. When he woke up they had doubled, and now he looks like something out of the book of Job. I spent the night spraying him down every two hours with an oatmeal colloidal solution that he didn't like but did seem to help with the itching. His fussing, however, woke up Liam who wanted to help and then wanted breakfast (at 2:00 am) and didn't go back to sleep until I don't even know when.

So we were all pretty tired this morning, which was blustery, chilly, and bright. I can never get over how beautiful it is here in May. The redbuds are out, the apple and cherry trees are flowering. It happens overnight, as if things can't wait to be alive.

Anyway, we spent most of the day indoors due to Dawson's pox, and by 4:00 we were all getting a little antsy.

I feel like I am a capable enough mother 1) if I am getting enough sleep and 2) until about 3:30 in the afternoon, at which point my ability to just be with my children, to understand them, or to be able to go watch them ride bikes or engage in activities like painting blocks of wood goes out the window.
At four-thirty my mother called. Liam was climbing on my back and Dawson was chasing the cats.
"Hi Mom," I said. "My children are driving me C-A-R-Z-Y.”
My mother burst out laughing. “You realize you just spelled Carzy."
"Did I?" I said. "Liam and Dawson, don't throw that ball in the house!"
"Sowwy," said one of them.
"I don't know what happens," I went on. "We start out fine and then by four o'clock I just don't want to to paint blocks or do another beadwork. It's BORING.”
"Playing with children is boring,” said my mother. “That’s the housewife’s lament. Before Betty Freidan came along we were supposed to just sit around and love being with our children but it's not always enough.”
Then she said that today in Quaker Meeting she kept thinking about Thursday night, when we went to her house for dinner and Dawson crawled under the table and started kissing her feet.
"It was just so sweet," my mother said. "No one has kissed my feet since I was a baby. It was the best Mother's Day present anyone could have given me."

I remembered when Dawson did that. My mother had made a birthday dinner for my sister's husband--carrot ginger soup and lasagna and a huge salad, and we were all talking about how good the meal was. Dawson, who had barely touched his food, wiggled down from his chair, crawled under the table and began kissing my mother's toes. "Oh!" my mother said. "What is that?"
"I KISSING YOU!" Dawson said happily.

When I'm home alone I often think of things my parents have done--the gentle, firm love my mother gives my children, the hours my father has spent with Liam in the creek, and I think, what will I do when they're gone? I'll miss them so much. And then I see them, and we're all having dinner and doing things like dressing the salad or talking about so and so's job and the kids are running around, and I never quite find a moment to say, "Thank you," or "I love you so much," And there was Dawson, effortlessly honoring the oldest woman in the room. It was very sweet. And in a way what I never find the time or right moment to do.

After we finished dinner that night, Liam and Dawson wanted to do a moondance (which means running around in circles in the yard yelling "Moondance! Moondance!") The moonlit sky was cloudy and dramatic and the flowering apple trees swayed in the wind. Tommy herded Dawson into the car and I went down to the front lawn to find Liam. As my eyes adjusted to the dark I could see both my father and my son silhouetted against the sky—my son up in the top of an black-limbed tree hooting up at the moon like an owl, my father quietly standing by on the ground, making sure Liam didn't fall.

So today I was thinking about how lucky I am, and how lucky my children are, that I'm not the only one raising these boys. (Especially since my batteries seem to die out at around 3:30.)
So for Mother’s Day, I just want to say thank you to the mothers of my children: my husband, my father, my mother, my sisters and their husbands. And also to the aunties Domenica and Justin.
Thank you! I love you so much!
I love you like carzy.

I finally found the perfect black jacket.

It was in a little store on Seventh Street in Manhattan called D/L Cerney (13 E. Seventh St. between 2nd and 3rd, right next to McSorley's 212.673.7033.) The store was located two doors down from the building where I first lived when I moved to New York in my twenties, so of course I had to go in. (The beautiful dress with an elegant floral pattern in the window helped persuade me.) It is a little narrow room lined with dresses, skirts, jackets and tops that look like modernized designs from the forties and fifties. Everything is stylish and elegant and the dresses are so beautiful. Some of the fabric is vintage--my jacket was made from a bolt of cashmere from the forties, that the man at the counter told me he loved so much it took him years to cut it--all of it is gorgeous.

Anyway, I've been wearing my new jacket everywhere. (I'm wearing it in the One Story post.) If I could, I would wear it to bed. And apparently it likes margaritas as much as I do.
So if you're in New York, go visit this lovely little boutique.

Meanwhile, Dawson has the chicken pox. Which is what happens when you don't vaccinate your kids.

Yesterday we stopped by Hazlenut to make a reservation for dinner, and Christina (who owns the place with her husband Jonah) came out from the kitchen to talk to us. Dawson looked at her with her apron on and said, "HEY YOU! GET BACK IN THE KITCHEN!"
"All he has to do is add, 'WOMAN', to that sentence and we'd have a baby Jerry Fallwell on our hands," I said.
"Do you want me to take my shoes off, too?" Christina said good-naturedly.
"I want to go ride my bike," Dawson said.