Yesterday I rolled Arwen's window down so she could say goodbye to a little friend, and her purple balloon got sucked out the window! If you've ever witnessed this, it is a true heartbreak for a child. Their tears are genuine.
Trying to put a good spin on her tragedy I said, "But he's free now! He got his freedom!"
I expected more tears, but she said, "You mean she."
Seth teased me by pretending to eat a big slice of apple, as opposed to the small bite that he knows I prefer. I ignored it.
"Seth, they say that an apple a day keeps the doctor away. What do you think that means?"
My interesting tone took his attention away from The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown, and he said, "Doctors don't like apples?"
She climbed into bed with us this morning, as she does every morning, and we oohed and aahed about her being 4! But she says, "But I'm not big." I know what she means. She's been babied. She is the baby, and she still looks like a baby. Her face is still round; her hands are still dimpled. Arwen is a peanut. All the strangers at Trader Joe's seem surprised when she tells them she's turning 4, not 3.
Highlights: chocolate muffins, a tea party board game and cheeseburgers with her family. The big party with all her little girlfriends is still 10 days away.
….For one thing. I look forward to saying what I’m really thinking. The truly elderly seem to get away with that. But more importantly, I’d like to figure women out. I’d like to know why we size each other up. On a basic level, it’s survival, evaluating the competition for a mate. But I have a mate, we’ve made 3 babies. While I’m a normal person, I don’t think of myself as shallow, I’ll be friends with women who are a size 2 or a 20. Why do I still do it? I should say, that when I do, I try not to be obvious about it. While I’m not proud of it, I know it’s natural, and it probably won’t last forever.
When we were in Mississippi, I went into a TJMax. I found a sweater to buy, and I never find anything in there to buy. So I’m in the checkout, and I can’t wait to get out of there. The Jackson, Mississippi I saw that week had a mean spirit; sorry, y’all. At first, the animosity I felt came from a couple of black women, different situations, and being a fish out of water, I didn’t know what to make of it. Then the white cashier, who can see me from head to toe, turns, and very obviously looks me up and down! Whether she was looking at my clothes or my waistline I don’t know, probably both. I smiled a bit to be disarming, but she didn’t smile back. I know what I saw. (It occurred to me later that it might’ve been sexual, but that was not her vibe.) The meanness I found in the women came from other sources too: partly race, partly class rank, maybe just city living, but in the South that I know, what female peer doesn’t return a disarming smile? And no run-ins with men, just grief from the women.
I went to a women’s retreat with our congregation this month, and I loved bunking with the old girls, they say things they wouldn’t say in mixed company. I loved it. Five minutes after I’m thinking about this on my shin-splinting jog, subtle things happened with some younger women that made me wonder why I like women at all.
My good friend in Connecticut, a grandmother, says sizing women up will fade with age. As we get older, survival instinct relaxes, certainly the drive for baby-making relaxes after menopause. I hope it gets easier being with women.
Seth's big field trip was a bus ride to the museum. An odd choice I think for rowdy 5 year old children, mostly boys. Running my errands, I drove past his class all crowded around the bus stop. I'd assumed they'd rent a yellow bus, and sure enough, when Seth got home, the only thing he had to say about it was his disappointment in not getting to ride a yellow school bus. He'd ridden the public transit bus, The Number 10.
So now we see The Number 10 bus all over town, and Seth yells from the back seat, his little barbaric challenges, like, "I hate you, Number 10!" or "Oh, no! Not again!" or "I'll get you for this Number 10!"
Finding ourselves “down South” again (for my Western friends I don’t mean Anaheim or San Diego :-) We were greeted by the lightening, wind, and rain that I remember in Arkansas and Mississippi. It is night, but not yet cold. The days will be grey.
Got up at 3 a.m. with the kids after my worst night of sleep since college. Though now the sleep is a lot more precious. I was too nervous about sleeping through the alarm and missing our cab. But walking through airports, eating protein, and generally adjusting a downhill attitude does wonders for warding off a headache. Our childen have gotten old enough now that big trips are… dare I say, fun?
Since I bombed on last year’s resolutions, (I had six, maybe seven, and I’m not even sure if I could name them without looking back at my blog.) I only have one for the coming year. I started 3 days ago.
No eating while I’m driving.
This has never been a big problem, but days back, as I was taking a bite of my cream cheese sandwich, I looked over at the driver next to me taking a bite of his fast food breakfast sandwich. Now, I love my cream cheese sandwich, made with the toasted sesame Ezekiel bread. (There is something so nicely subtle about the taste of sesame, dresses up just about everything.) But I wasn’t enjoying it, looking for brake lights and red traffic lights turning green, filtering the children’s complaints from the backseat for the more important complaints, music playing…. It seemed a little sad, people driving and eating at the same time, an obvious symbol of a hectic life.
Resolving to take time for each meal actually embodies other changes that need to be made. Publilius Syrus said one of many witty and painfully obvious truths, “To do two things at once is to do neither.” And according to a recent article in The Week, multitasking is getting us no where. This is disappointing to me. In the same way, I was disappointed to learn that people who are comfortable in their clutter are often more productive than us tidy folk. (I don’t like clutter, and I’m often not productive.) But I think I can make a greater effort to enjoy and focus on one thing at a time, then I can being productive in a trashed house. I don’t know. I know I don’t like looking down to see that my sandwich has disappeared and I’m wondering where it went.
I Savannah declare:
- Stay up later
- Have a raise in my allowence
- Have the computer in my room
- More sleepovers and playdates
- Science stuff
- Science posters
Sighnd,
Savannah (in very curly cursive)
Brad just asked for the third time if I’d used the Movable Type feature of blogging from my iPhone. No, I haven’t, I say. Being a captive audience and no excuse but a Rachel Ray magazine……
We are going down to investigate what this Mystery Spot is all about. All the minivans in Pleasanton seem to be sporting the Mystery Spot bumper stickers, and I’ve been curious for three years what this means :-)
So, when will I be able to cross post to VOX from my fancy phone?
;-)
Seth likes puzzles and digging in the dirt and making noise. He is not as crafty as his sisters, unless you show him how the craft will make a noise.
He is in love with me and sometimes wants to marry me, although he usually says he'll marry his little sister. Savannah would tell him he might go to jail for that though.
I shudder to think how crazy and rough he'd be if Savannah and Arwen were boys. They keep him grounded, but he's due for a play date with his buddy Jack down the street. Jack is also the little brother of an 8 year old girl, so they hit it off well, jumping up and down and laughing at nothing obvious.
Anymore, he takes a lot of delight in doing the opposite of what I say, and he does this with a smile, but his elder sister did the same at this age. In fact, she's 8 and just did this, running into the bathroom when she knows I want 2 minutes of privacy please! So the orneriness is not gender specific. But when I tell the children to slow down with supper, enjoy your food, I say, the girls "get me." Seth stuffs his cheeks full of green grapes, (it only takes 3) grunting, pointing at his mouth, and, I'm pretty sure, smiling.
He is closer to Daddy than he used to be, as usually happens and should happen... bike rides and video games and a whole lot more rough housing than Mama can tolerate. Daddy is in Japan right now. Yesterday when I closed the garage door after the garage had cooled off. Seth jumped up and ran to the door saying, "Daddy's home!" No, not yet, in a few days :)