la femme follette

belle epoque

Since our return from Maine, I have been wandering around in complete control of my faculties.  Thinking about it right now, it may be the assertion of my competent self from the first leg of the drive there.  Previously, I suspected it was the sketchy connection to Our Digital Age while away, the breaking of the pavlovian response to the chirp/whirr/whistle of electronica, but whichever -- since we have returned, I am awash in calm productivity and a lot of easygoing agreement with the children.  When they are not irritating the shit out of me, anyhow.

I have avoided nearly every external contact with the world, blaming reëntry, but it is not at all true.  I am just avoidant and even more selective than usual.  I was worried, a couple of days ago, that maybe I was depressed -- this withdrawal seems depressive -- while I was talking to Kowalski.  All I do is clean the basement and not return any of the Playground Mom's calls and catch up on a very large stack of soft-news sections and organize my BlackBerry's functions and play Uno!  What is wrong with me?  Kowalksi reminded me of a time several weeks ago where I reported that I had gone to the steam room in the gym and "wiped myself out," falling asleep for 90 minutes in the lounge chair by the whirlpool and vowing to never steam myself again for it was too harsh, clearly, for my delicate constitution.

Had it occurred to you, he wanted to know, that you just might be relaxed?  I refused his insight -- No, never, of course not, ridiculous, I must be teetering on the edge of some precipice -- but I was sheepish when I said those things and had to admit he might be right.  Not that I would know what relaxation looks like, really, but maybe I can see it now.  Because everything that I want to do, that is necessary, even icky things I do not like to do -- for example: finding then returning 32 errant library books and paying the fine that costs as much as something exciting -- when it comes up on the list, I just take care of it.  And it does not ruin the rest of my life with retrospective anxiety, which is extra atypical for me.

Since we have been back, I have not really been back to the gym on my usual schedule, which is ironic because most of the vacation involved climbing mountains, so it is not as if I went soft on the trip.  Not corporeally, anyhow.  I went the first week we were back and breezed right through the Sadist's class, wincing only while isolating the small muscles of my upper arm.  I just ... there is something dreary about returning to the gym after exercising in Acadia National Park, which I knew to expect, for this happened to me once long ago after a vacation in Shenandoah National Park.  I just cannot bring myself to run and run or climb and climb or bike and bike to, uh, stay in the same place.

I was hoping that maybe when the weather changed -- "changed" -- I would get homesick, knowing that temperatures are in the teens back home and the resistance of that nostalgia would send me back into the punishment of the gym.  I find it is so disruptive to be all feelingy, so whatever it takes to push it back and manage it -- alcohol, endorphins, oxytocin, oxycontin -- whatever.  Bring it. 

But, an unexpected thing happened:  Maine was somehow an inoculation against the homesickness that overtakes me every year at this time.  Down East Maine was cold and wintry-sporty and bleak and blue and gorgeous.  Portland?  So sweet and impossible, like a pirate hewed it from the rock as a wedding present for his fairy bride -- boutique shopping and fishermen -- so much like my hometown on a great lake with its juxtapositions of Gothic and Deco skyscrapers in profusion, all of it built of cowshit and blood and rivers of steel. 

The children did not complain about the weather, for which Mari and I were endlessly grateful and it eroded some of that resentment that we have toward them for being of where we have raised them.  Fillette learned eagerly about the default baselayer.  Jen's same-age pair of children are our children's newest and sweetest friends, according to Garçon a lot like us, but allergy-free.  We four all came home so suffused with this ... contentment and I dare not exhale, let alone answer the phone for some neighborhood loudmouth.

It is not all some perfect idyll.  Mari has misunderstood clear input of mine too many times in a row  for it to be accidental, there are shark teeth, Garçon is still 8 (which is a horrible age, horrible!!), and I am still going to have to figure out some normal, non-compulsive way to motivate myself into the gym.  But, for now I am free from this terrible wistfulness for everything -- a kind of longing to know now what I will miss most later -- that I harbor so often.  It gets dark at 5, and I do not even care.  My oldest child has expressed a desire to relocate to Maine (it's so pretty there, Mom), but I just like knowing that it is there.  Maine:  just like you thought it would look; nice to know it's there.  I am so getting a job in tourism!  Wait, no, I hate working.  Hahaha, I am not that relaxed.               

baby sharkmouth

Fillette is dreadfully sad, for armed with a panoramic x-ray, the orthodontist reported that the right central incisor will erupt in just the same fashion.  Additionally, the upper central incisors (aka "two front teeth") will erupt in the same shark-toothsome manner, but on the front, instead of against her tongue.

Oh, she cried when I explained this to her tonight while I washed her hair --  Well, but it was ok to have one shark tooth, but not a whole mouthful!  I just want a loose tooth like everyone else!!  I feel sad for her, but not that sad.  I was sympathetic, held her a little, but told her that it was just the way it was.  We talked about how bodies do not always do what we want.

This led to talk of ballet and a tale of Madame Anna's Ballet Smackdown on a girl who was sticking out her butt while doing demi-pliés, during which talk Fillette illustrated something ballerinariffic and so pointed her toes.  I was shocked, for the child can practically fold her foot in half.  I mean, like something from The Good Earth.  This helped me do great work in the area of the dangers we court and the opportunities we refuse when talking about ideas such as "normal," "regular," and the pernicious "everybody else."  I think I did ok.  I did have to drive around late in a foggy night, alone, listening to Tom Waits, but I think it was preventative.  We should all hold for a while.     

megalodon

I guess dentition disappointment can take it out of a girl.  No afebrile child of mine has slept past 7:30 a.m. since infancy, yet here is Fillette at the late, late hour of NINE in the morning, snuggled in the big bed with our bossy, abandonment-issues cat.

Garçon was great last night.  The whole time Fillette was wailing and weeping and being consoled and carried around, he said nothing and just maintained a mild-mannered, sympathetic openness while being very careful to be very interested in his book.  After she calmed down and I was putting them to bed, he asked me why she was crying.  I asked her if she wanted to show him.  She opened her mouth and let him peer in.  With an excellent reverence, he said, "Wow, Fillette.  You have extra teeth!  That's really great!!"

While Fillette was sleeping -- and I was enjoying the sound of one hand clapping, which sounds an awful lot like one child eating breakfast -- I called down into the top-shelf medical facility across the river -- the one where we took Garçon last month.  I spoke with the peds dental administrator who referred us with great confidence to the orthodontic specialist in their ken.  Because of some scheduling miracle, the orthodontist has an opening early next week.  So, we will hear about our options then.  The gal in the dentist's office was explaning to me that pre-adolescent orthodontia is considered a "second-stage" treatment?  That now orthodontists are working on refining first-stage treatments for crowded little primary-teeth mouths?  I do not know.  I guess we will learn.  In the meantime, Fillette has a new excellent nickname and some really cool extra teeth. 

said is said

Fillette has been wrought over not losing any teeth, even though she is nearly seven years old.  Garçon lost his first tooth when he was 5, so young he was utterly confused by the whole process of losing a tooth.  Who knew teeth were for losing? 

She courts me every day on the matter -- when will I have a loose tooth??  All of her best pals have lost three or four teeth, every new gummy grin she gets at the playground, from peers, from playmates much younger, it slays her.  I remain upbeat but noncommital.  I tell her every time that her distant pal, the Israeli's son, didn't lose his teeth until after he was 7.  She wrings her hands and sighs when I tell her this. 

Mari and I had been whispering to each other, because while we were away, he reported that she was complaining of sensitivity along the second or third tooth from the center.  We knew it might be referred pain from an erupting tooth.  Then tonight, she was standing on the toilet lid with her mouth at eye-level while I was brushing (in their extra-lit bathroom) and I saw this.

Shit.  And of course the tooth before it is not loose.  I told her that the other tooth might come out on its own yet, or she might have to have it pulled.  Also, I am kicking myself a little, for I hate their dentist and have been loath to switch.  This is either the perfect time or the worst time, I cannot decide.

She was shocked, then saddened, by this enduring betrayal from her own dentition.  She cried and I held her and then she called Mari and tearfully confessed her nervousness at extraction and her great disappointment.  ("I just wanted to be ... regular!" she told me, through great gulping tears.) 

I felt so sad for her, but what can I do?  Also, really, in the back of my mind, even though I was compassionate and back-rubby and a good listener, I am a little swimmy in the realization of how fucked-up her grill is going to be & how much orthodontia is this that we are looking at?  Jinkies!

parachute silk

I spent some time on the phone this afternoon working an excellent post-party wrap-up with my lovely friend Jen, who in so many ways was the woman responsible for our excellent Maine trip. One of the things we got to do in the great state of Maine -- besides being treated to a very precious sliver of time with her and her sweet, sweet, sweet children & her foxy vacuum-wielding husband -- was see a lot of art. Some of it was hers hanging in a hometown handmade gallery space; while I was there, I could not help photographing my favorites.  Some of them are so wee and they are all so suffused with her.  Everything Mari and I admired was sold (we were so drawn to the one called overgrowth), so, next time I will have to get there sooner! Never try to out-shop me!

Mari, the children, and I also spent some time at the Maine College of Art's ICA, mostly because our ICA here costs money and whatever, but except for a Yoshitomo Nara show in 2004 we have not been, because my son does not appreciate looking at art but my daughter does, and who needs the conflict, I do not. But the point is that we stumbled into their annual Art Auction, which is their major fundraiser, and we were stupefied with delight. Everything was so risky and delicious.

My favorite was a mixed-media piece by Danielle Weeks called in mountain folds, your beauty.  It was a frame & mat crammed with fiber -- cashmere, silk, alpaca, and a few others all wedged in there -- and it makes a pretty design. ( make this clicky.) I was walking around the gallery with Fillette by the hand and all I could think when I saw it was ... something in there is alive.  Oh, fun. I was explaining to Fillette all day about how with modern art (with which she is not extra-familiar) people will say, "I could make that," and the only answer is of course, "But, you did not, no, you, shhh."

Still in a kernel in the back of my mind is that Jen has a really gorgeous home with her v recognizable aesthetic, which is decorated in a fashion directly opposing my own home, which is to say that it does not resemble an insane asylum, which mine does, in my very sterile & ascetic design. Our houses are similar in structure, and I am considering doing something wild. Maybe I will paint a wall a color besides white or commit to surface decorations of some kind. Well, I will see how that grows. I have some free time and am primed for it by vacation.

Our vacations this year have followed the routine of Complete Big Project, Get the Hell out of Town, Leave it All Behind. It works, I guess, but it makes the concurrence of Big Project Engagement and Preparation to Leave a little harried. Hallowe'en was so high-pressure in its preparation, what with the strap-on fart machine and the goth haircoloring that didn't take. I have a rule that only one child can have a high-maintenance costume, can need a pre-party makeup job besides the costuming. I have never had to tell them that I have this rule, it has just fallen out this way, luckily. The rest of Hallowe'en is pretty low-key: I always buy their costumes, or the portions thereof, and I never really get too prop-master. Anyhow, there was a lot of pressure on this year's event, for some reason. I think it was because this was the first year that they had a lot to say about the event. I do not know.

But, it was so enervating for whatever reason, this year's Hallowe'en process (because it was mid-week?), that Mari and I decided that instead of leaving on Saturday all together, I should drive up to Boston with the children Friday and he should take the train and meet us. This would work because we would have a 3-hour advance start on him and he would be able to work while on the train and so could leave in plenty of time.

This was a great idea! We would wake up on Saturday morning already on vacation! (In a hurricane, but later.) But for me, it was a little intense. I had to: pack all four of us; clean the house to something like a close-her-down standard; place timers; hold mail, newspapers, etc; get our son's haircut, for the love of god; hook-up with our cat-sitting neighbor, plus all the rest, all by myself. Then I had to pack the car in a clandestine fashion, not forget anything, and be off. All by myself.

This all went better than I expected. I did notice that the whole effort lacked my usual attention to infinitesimal detail, which to me was very interesting. So, for example, Mari had clothes to wear, and they were all weather-appropriate, but I did not pack his flannel-lined khakis. We had plenty of food to eat in the vacation cottage, but I forgot my stick blender. Things like that. I realized about  myself that I get to tend to these details because I have the luxury of a lot of time and a lot of pitch-in assistance from Mari. He would have been packing the car & taking over some of the to-do list while I dithered around and left him a post-it that said "Don't forget to pack yr flannel-lined khakis" and one to myself that said "Def stick blender!"

What is interesting to me is that given all the time in the world, the flannel-lined-khaki-packing delegation post-it would have taken on a monumental significance -- a make-or-break vacation joy perfectionist's standard, naturally -- however, the fact is that no one froze or starved to death or even really missed the extra details, and that includes me. So, why do I spend all this time on massaging the tiny details & pressing my attention into so much service? I do not even know. So, that. Also that I did take care of everything without standing around wasting a bunch of time thinking about it and bouncing ideas off of my spouse.

We got out of the house more or less at the time I planned, less the time I spent looking for my cell phone with the unfortunately on-its-last-bar battery and the anxiety of thinking I might never find it ever, plus also the time Garçon had to spend looking for his shoe. I try to be understanding when the children lose pairs of shoes, but how a child loses ONE SHOE is beyond me. Once everyone was strapped in, I spent an enjoyable hour or so on the New Jersey Turnpike talking to Algren, who had me twisted around his finger with the history of the supermarket tomato.

The run up to NYC is pretty standard travel for us, so I was not feeling too road-trippy until after I hung up, when I got on the Cross-Bronx Expressway and realized that I was spending all the rest of the day's light hours driving across 3 states, to none of which I had ever been, to get into a city to which I had also never been, to meet my husband at a train station the location of which only made sense on paper, in a town where all anyone talks about is a. the bad driving and b. the sadistic layout of the roads. All of this, plus I was a woman who knows nothing about how to change a tire traveling alone with 2 children. Hm.

Then, right about the time this was starting to weigh on me, I learned from the newsradio there had that morning been a big! huge! traffic accident in Eastern Connecticut that would close down I-95 for a few miles in each direction. Oh, no. I dithered a little and wrung my hands, and then because Mari was not there to a. weigh in or even b. take over, I took care of it. Which I am sure does not seem like a big deal to anyone who has a large family or sometimes leaves the house or maybe works for ooky people, but I really have a routine from which I don't much deviate. I am a woman who will not change light bulbs because my husband stands six-foot-three & so why should I? I am pathologically delicate, plus schema-driven -- I do not want to worry my pretty little head about that, I say -- and miraculously, most everyone goes along with the idea and suits up for the protection & defense & big rescue. I guess I am just lucky. 

The point is, I drove into Westport, Conn. at the junction of I-95 and Route 1 while starting to feel a lot anxious and a little scared for the success of this trip.  It was going to be dark before I ever got out of Connecticut. I had to either find a new route right away or risk being stuck in an interminable & arbitrary detour somewhere along the way in a place where I knew nothing about the roads.  Mari was waiting for me in a town he knew nothing about, except that the train went there.  All of our worldly possessions were in the car and I was not just the only driver, but had two passengers who are, frankly, exhausting. 

I hustled the rowdy children into a diner on old Post Rd for dinner. While there, totally bamboozled & letting them order everything off the menu at once, I opened up my big, giant road atlas, right in view of any old roadside predator/strangler/rapist and flipped it around between Massachussets and Connecticut, decided that I-95 from NYC to Boston was a sucker's game anyhow. Clearly the only way is to take 91 to 84 to the Mass Turnpike and any other choice is just falling for marketing.

Then, I had a bracing cup of tea and we left the diner. I had behind me already the small & fortifying victory of having been clear & articulate with strangers in a strange place, plus I managed to get myself oriented and re-routed in a smart & efficient (also, due to road closure, necessary) fashion and did not even attract the attention of any kidnapping serial killer rapists! No! (Westport, Conn is the location of old Martha's Turkey Hill mansion, so as if, anyhow) In the end, despite the harrowing, dark, trucky, and high-speed drive along 91, 84, and 90, I made it!  I can do it! I did it!

The trip was full of I can do it. I get so busy with the children and our routine and I keep my head down and feel so kept by my husband that I sometimes forget I used to be capable. I used to do things. I used to be mentally sharp & agile and ready for things to happen. I balanced my own checkbook and found my own apartments and went on job interviews and was known to bar brawl in the defense of my own honor.  Me, yes, me!

When we were finally reunited with Mari -- who had chosen to take a cab to the hotel because of our delays -- I kept bouncing around the hotel corridors, so excited & regaling him with tales of my improvisational competence.  He told me some sober paraphrasing from the denouement of Wizard of Oz about having had it in me all along.  Well, that is just how I feel! Like I could do it all along! Amazing and useful and interesting! About new stuff, not just the same old stuff! It was great!

The next day (in the hurricane), I was happy to let him drive the six hours to finish off Mass and continue up the coast in the constant rain & wind.  Three of those hours were in the pitch-black backroads' darkness, while I sat quietly murmuring encouragements from the passenger seat, as if I  have been trained in docility & defenselessness all along. I do not know what the hell is wrong with me sometimes. Do I just have too much time on my hands? I am like a caricature of a housewife. I could use this energy on wild & risk-taking home decorating. In fact, the problem is surely a lack of home decorating.  Nothing at all to do with poetry.  Nope!  Egads.

the way life should be

Maine:  it amazingly looks just as I expected, but how could I believe any place imagined as such would be real?   

The Maine Turnpike has a sign along its shoulder that says, "Watch for moose in the roadway."  Sometimes a simple midwestern girl is not entirely ready.  Moose?

We spent a lot of time hiking and seeing and doing and it was triple-plus relaxing and fun, plus wonderfully cold and clean.  Reëntry is now.  It is good to be home, even if the house is not quite as clean as I thought I left it and the cat will not stop following me around, scolding me for the abandonment.

costume balls

Mari and the children got it together somehow yesterday and got the jack-o-lanterns carved.  No lives or digits were lost & no feelings were hurt.

If I had been a girl and someone told me that when I grew up & got married & had babies, Hallowe'en would be the busiest holiday of the year, the go-go-go-iest, I would not have believed.  I may have scoffed.  Yet, it is true, and for everyone I know with kids, Hallowe'en is the hand-wringiest, as-many-grownups-on-deckiest, barn-raisiest holiday of all.  Maybe because it is the least-supported mainstream, gentile-calendar holiday?  Because it is not really a family holiday and so it bands playmates with neighbors with stay-at-home moms who can do the school pick-up ahead of time?   Fillette's friend Ella's mom was telling me that she was looking at her week, scheduling meetings, the whole while in her head thinking -- OK, Wednesday is not good, I have to leave the office by two.  Halloween!  Crazy stuff.

But, for example, we have a Hallowe'en procession that not only closes off five streets in the neighborhood, but jams up traffic for an hour while we all cross the street into the start of the route.  It is kind of an excessive embarrassment.  Somewhere in the line of cars backed up going east and west for a mile is a young woman who has no idea that someday Hallowe'en will be the busiest day of the year.  But she will learn.

There is always something trafficky and redirectional happening around here, because of the university, so I never feel too bad about it.  But I do wonder what happens when one is a student,  no idea that Hallowe'en is the most important day of the year, minding their business in a nice rental house and then finds out that their house is on the route.  They are always really into it.  Mostly because I think that the student body does realize that they spent a fair amount of time taking of more than their fair share of resources, so now it is someone else's turn. 

I know that when I was at that age & stage, I would have been into it.  Unless I were trapped underneath something.  But, all the neighbors give out candy, and decorate, and carve excellent pumpkins.   

One of the reasons that we live here instead of a thousand other neighborhoods and a million isolated suburbs is because besides this parent-initiated road closing and traffic-cop appointing, at the end, we have snacks.  An honest-to-god refreshment table.  Because 10 pounds of fun-sized candy bars are not  enough.  This is where the people-watching is and all of we playground parents are all around, chattering, some people we never really get to talk to until Hallowe'en, unless it is at a birthday party.  Children are always sedated in the early phases of high sugar dosing, so there was nice catching up accomplished. 

Fillette got a lot of attention in her costume, I think because it was so evocative of a time known in some measure by all the parents who were out last night.  Garçon got a lot of attention in his, too.  Some because, well, he was dressed as a whoopie cushion.  But also, he had a remote-control, battery-operated, fart noisemaker strapped to his back.  Mari held the remote and every time it sounded, Garçon giggled.  Oh, but after the fart machine is put away and the fishnet tights have the knees torn out, there is only time to sell the candy to the dentist and move on to the next project.  Which is not, thank god, Thanksgiving, but something far more enjoyable.