bucket list

Chris and I have been struggling lately with Bela. In general, she's a fairly agreeable girl, but she has her likes and dislikes all neatly organized in a mental list that she keeps at the ready. Mention something to her - running an errand to the post office, for example - and you can see her little eyes running down her bucket list. She gets to the bottom and the whole "post office" thing was not  to be found on her "likes" list... she balks.

She stomps her feet when I have to stop on the way home and buy cat food, put gas in the car, drop off the recycling. She rolls her eyes when I need to get groceries, drop off the library books, get the oil changed. She flat out refuses to join me (obviously) when I need to make a 5 minute trip to pick up our vegetables at the farm delivery site.

What does she like to do?
1) Swim at Pulaski Pool.
2) Listen to Audiobooks or play with IPhones
3) Go to Chris' studio (No one will admit it, but I think there is a stash of chocolate, toys, and cartoons there).
4) Color or paint.
5) Bake and/or eat cookies, or cakes, or pies, or anything sweet.

Mae, on the other hand, pretty much just likes to do what I'm doing. I find this very refreshing. Go to Whole foods to buy arborio rice? Oh yes PLEASE. Accompany me to the hospital for yet another round of pre-natal blood tests? Only if she can watch the blood coming out of my arm and down the tube. Stand by my side and hand me supplies while I scrub the bathroom? As long as I promise to be there the whole time.

Today, Bela woke up and declared she did NOT want to go to summer camp (a first) because they were to take a trip to the beach and it was thundering and lightning. I invited her to accompany me on my plans for the day: spend 4 hours driving in the car to spend 1 hour at our CSA farm picking beans in a muddy field. After a quick check, she reported this was not on her list. Mae was already dressed and ready to go.

Now, Mae loves to spend time with me but this doesn't mean that it's always a breeze. I had an appointment in the city I had to get back to which severely limited our time in the field. After a 2+ hour drive through morning rush hour traffic in the rain, we were in Caledonia, IL. We were surrounded by fresh thyme and sage, bronze fennel, green and wax beans, and a field of flowers to cut. But we spent the first 20 minutes on a cross-farm trip to the really cool two-story compost toilets they have there. Patience and time were running short.

Two-story compost toilet.

Goat detour

We returned to the field. Mae picked 4 beans and ate 3, and I frantically grabbed at green and wax alike. That's when I caught her in that stance, the one where her whole body freezes but her eyes roam wildly. I knew she needed to make another trip to the potty. I looked at the field, I looked at my watch, and I told her she had to wait.

Wanting to be agreeable, she nodded. I sent her down the row to check out the sunflowers. I asked her to mentally record all the colors of the flowers to report back to me. I did everything I could to keep this bathroom trip at bay while I scrambled like a madwoman in my muck boots.

"Just 5 more minutes, honey. Just this many more."

I held up my hands but the girl was clearly at her breaking point. I did what any other mother would do: I dug out an extra plastic bag, I directed her to a private spot just out of the field, I spread the bag out on the wet grass and told her to poop on it.

This time she didn't agree so quickly. She fretted about clean-up. She fretted about privacy. She really wanted to see that cool toilet again and throw wood shavings on her poop.

I forced her into a squat, she deposited her enormous turd into the plastic of the old Target bag, and I snapped a large leaf from a bush bean plant. For clean up.

We raced through the field, cutting flowers, snipping herbs, and collecting our bags of beans on our way to the car. I loaded our fragrant acquisitions into the back: 1 very heavy bag of green beans, 1 almost empty bag of wax beans, two bunches of aromatic thyme and sage, a 5 gallon bucket filled with cosmos, sunflowers, calendula, and delphinium; and one plastic bag containing a gigantic turd.

I'm going to let you guess which one smelled the strongest on the 2 hour journey back to the city.

Mae snatches some Cosmos

Home Alone

New nightgowns. Back to sewing. 

I know I haven't been here much lately; I'm just starting to crawl out of the shell I like to call the 'thomas street heat bubble'. Little by little, day by day, life is being restored to these here parts.

Things have been cooking in the kitchen again after a month-long hiatus. The sewing machine has been running and I've picked up knitting needles on five separate occasions in the last 7 days. yes. I think we're back.

But I don't want to share what we've been cooking up around here lately. Not yet. I want to record for posterity (and hopefully not for judicial sentencing) a momentous occasion in the lives of my young girls. I left them home alone today.

Before you get all worked up, let me tell you that they were alone in the house for approximately 10 minutes, which is nothing compared to the 1 1/2 hour long naps I take while they listen to audio books. Or the 45 minutes at a time I lock myself in my bedroom to hide from them. And I ventured only 0.9 miles away from our front door.

You see, every other Wednesday I have to pick up my box of vegetables from our CSA. The girls were not willing to come along for this 5-10 minute laboriously boring task, so I opted - as I often do when they put up a fight - to leave them alone. Until today, they have always rejected the idea as atrocious. Today, they decided it sounded pretty o.k.

I walked out the front door feeling strangely liberated, and I set the trip odometer to 0. Exactly 3.5 minutes later I arrived at the Wicker Park mansion to pick up my cucumbers, my kohlrabi, my sweet corn, and my salad greens. The only drama of the whole episode happened in my car, when I gazed down to the fuel indicator and realized my gas light had been on for an inappropriate length of time, an inappropriate number of miles (my husband's eyes are rolling out of his head right now.)

Despite my fear of running of out gas on the 1 mile journey from my home and having to walk back in the heat, in the rain, pregnant, and with too many pounds of roughage under my arms, I arrived safely home to realize that they hadn't realized I had even left.

Mae looked at me, puzzled: "When are you going to go?"

This Moment

Squeezing this one in. Just got home and wanted to share one of my favorite moments from the week. Have a great weekend!

Rock Star

As much as I hate to admit it, a certain percentage of the things I do and tell my kids are done and told with a sense of how "cool" it will seem to them. Can you blame me? We all want our kids to think we're cool, even though they'll spend most of their lives firmly convinced of the opposite. As hard as I try, though, I totally lose out to their Dad, who will in their eyes - make no mistake - be viewed for far longer as far cooler than me.

Now I don't know any cool, hip rock stars, but when I was a young graduate student, I had the opportunity to spend 6 weeks at the Linguistic Society of America's summer institute. I met amazing people, drank decent wine, and took classes with the rock stars of the linguistic world. I found myself seated in front of men and women whose names I had memorized from the thousands of pages of articles I read during my years of study. They waxed poetic about semantics, they shared their latest discoveries in psycho-linguistics, some flirted shamelessly with young female graduate students....

We were their groupies. If it weren't so nerdy it would have been awesome, but I fear that these aren't the kind of rock stars that are going to earn me any points with my kids in the future, unless they end up studying the finer intricacies of Chomskian grammar.

Chris, on the other hand, has a much - MUCH - cooler job than I. The rock stars that he meets are the ones with actual instruments. Although he spends 80% of his time photographing billionaire economists and notable professors and visual artists, sometimes he gets to hang out with the likes of Billy Corgan, Big Head Todd, Mavis Staples, and Jeff Tweedy, among others.

As you may (or may not) know, Wilco releases a new album in September, and when there is newness on the horizon, people take a lot of pictures. Chris was recently asked to photograph Jeff again - twice, on the same day, for two different jobs. The first shoot was standard studio stuff, but for the second, he convinced Tweedy and his family to join him on a chartered salmon fishing boat out on Lake Michigan. I know, right? Who knew there were salmon in Lake Michigan?

Anyway, the girls might not know it, but Tuesday when we drive to central Illinois to celebrate (by means of a potluck bbq) the birthday of one of Chris' younger brothers, he will be winning future coolness points with them. Our share of the potluck? We like to call it 'Wilco Salmon." Thanks Jeff. It's certainly yummy.

This Moment

A moment from our week, no words necessary. Thank goodness it's Friday, eh?

Sexy

At dinner the other night, between bites and gulps (or since this is a Bela story, it was probably during bites and gulps) Bela looked Chris straight in the eye and asked:

"Do you sexy Mom?"

He looked to me for help. I explained:
Earlier in the day one of our little friends reported to me -

"Mae Mae thinks I'm sexy."

I choked. "That's ridiculous. Mae Mae doesn't know what sexy means."

"Yes she does. I told her."

I winced. "Impossible. You girls do not know what 'sexy' means."

There followed a flurry of whispers from the back seat, but for the most part, they dropped it. So it didn't surprise me to hear Bela bring up the topic over dinner.

We tried to tell her: "Sexy isn't a verb." (Blank stare.) "Sexy isn't something you do." (Moderate amount of interest. ) "A person can be sexy, but they don't do sexy." (Admittedly arguable.)

She wanted more. We went for synonyms. "When you think a person is sexy, you think they're attractive, cute, pretty, handsome. They make you feel silly, embarrassed, speechless. You like them. You want to be close to them, get to know them, be their friend. Or more."  


I started to feel like I was floundering. I envisioned Bela as sexy, Bela thinking other people were sexy, Bela starring in a hit HBO show about sexy vampires having sex and doing sexy things. (Man, I do love that show.) I wasn't ready for this conversation.

I added: "Sexy is for grownups. Little kids are NOT sexy. Little kids should not worry about BEING sexy." 


I didn't know why I felt so horrified. I didn't  know why I felt so appalled, so fearful. But I realize... I'm not afraid that exposure to grown-up stuff will make Bela grown up, overnight.  I don't want to lock her up in a tower until she's 16. I think it's completely normal for little kids to try on adult "stuff".

I just want my girl to be 6 for as long as she can. Why, oh why does it seem like the whole world is trying to make my little baby grow up so fast? I prayed the conversation would end, but then...

"Dad, do you think Mom is sexy?"  (applying it appropriately adjectivally). 


I held my breath. I glanced across the table. I blushed. Bela saw it.

"Yep."

Right answer. 

This (late) Moment

A moment from our week. Have a great one!

July 4, cont.

So what DID we do to entertain ourselves for four days in two towns that did virtually nothing to celebrate this iconic summer holiday? Plenty.

• We baked a peach pie.
• Bela learned how to ride a two-wheel bicycle.
• We caught fireflies.
• We lit sparklers and smoke bombs. Lots of smoke bombs. 
• Bela and Mae made friends with every single child under 12 years of age within a three block radius of my Grandma's house.
• Chris and I climbed the 'jumbo'. 
• Chris went on many bike rides.
• I tried to run.
• We made sun prints.
• We played hopscotch.
• Bela hula-hooped her heart out.
• We visited the sweet shop.
• We went to the park.
• We visited the cemetery. Many cemeteries. 
• The girls pulled the old red wagon around town.
• We drove to Henry, Illinois to watch the fireworks.*
• We went to Bloomington and ate Avanti's sandwiches.
• We visited Brian's tree at Lake Bloomington.
• We ate peppermint ice cream at Capponi's Italian Restaurant.

We did ok. 

Sweet Shop - choices

Bela loved her coke. Mae thought it was 'disgusting'.

Just shy of 4 months. 

*Henry, Illinois is located on the shores of the Illinois River. To enter the town from Toluca, our home base during our trip, you cross the river via a pretty bridge - East to West. The night of the fireworks, Henry was in full throes of their week-long summer carnival/fourth of July celebration. The fireworks were set off from the East side of the river, and the town gathered on the West shore to watch. We could see the early sky-high explosions over the cornfields as we approached the town. As we neared the bridge, the explosions got louder and louder, until we suddenly found ourselves right next to the men in blaze orange, holding little lights and smoldering punks. Our new little car filled with the sulfurous smell of lingering firework smoke. We practically drove through the show, emerging from the smoke cloud on the other side of the bridge, where we quickly took our lawn chairs and joined the crowd watching the short but sweet display, from the safety of the far side of the river. 

July 4

Thirty years ago, the only place you needed to be on the fourth of July was Wenona, IL. Had you asked any of the other children in my extended family what Independence Day was all about and where to go to celebrate, we would have all looked you straight in the eye and told you that the only place that mattered on that day was the itty bitty town in Central Illinois where our grandparents lived. As for what it was all about? Well, firemen, leprechauns, candy, crafts, and sparklers, of course.

Back in the day, this town of 1,000 held a spectacular weekend-long celebration of the fourth. The city park - a mere block from Grandma and Grandpa's front door - was the hub of all the activity. They had baseball games in the diamond, a 5k run, a craft sale in the park, and at dusk in the pavilion they would screen for our viewing pleasure Darby O'Gill and the Little People...

... in which a wiry old man named Darby O'Gill searches for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, only to come up against Brian, King of the leprechauns. I'm not sure if Sean Connery considers this one of his best flicks, but man did I love it. I still do. There are scenes where death comes riding in from the sky in a carriage pulled by horses, and thirty years later I can still recall it with ease and clarity. What this all had to do with celebrating our country's Freedom is ir-re-le-vant. It was completely awesome.

Watching this movie was second to one on my top ten list of things to do in Wenona over the Fourth.

What was #1? When the local firemen would descend upon Pine Street and set up shop right in front of Harry and Helen Ellis' house. I don't know what this game was called, but they would compete against the firemen from neighboring towns-fire hoses at the ready-by spraying a small bucket on a cable, horizontally suspended approximately 30-40 feet above the street. The team to get the bucket across the opposing team's home-line won. It was the most extravagant waste of water I ever witnessed, and I loved it.

My cousin, my brothers, and me - watching the firemen do their thing

In an attempt to recreate my own past and thrust it on my children (as I do with every other holiday of the year) Chris and I took the girls to visit Wenona. We were staying with my Grandma Bastion just a few miles away in the equally awesome town of Toluca (where, it must be noted, nothing apparent was done to celebrate this beloved holiday. We drove 25 minutes away to the little town of Henry, on the Illinois river, to watch 20 minutes of fireworks. But that's another story).

We visited Pomeranke's Sweet Shop (which changed hands in the early years of the new century and has now become "Kim's Sweet Shop") where we enjoyed vanilla cokes with marshmallow cream topping. We also took the girls to the city park, and while they swung and spun on playground equipment that predates ME, I walked through the old red pavilion where my first crush blossomed (Sean Connery) and where the fourth of July became forever and inexplicably intertwined with little green men who speak with Irish accents. 

The Pavilion

Gone are the days of the Wenona fourth of July celebrations. Gone are the craft fairs where I bought clothes for my cabbage patch dolls. Gone are Darby and Death and the Leprechauns. There weren't even any people walking around town that day that we visited, a fourth of July thirty years distant from the ones that so marked my childhood. But we had a nice time. And in the moments I wasn't choking on the nostalgia, I appreciated the profound connection to my past that I witnessed as my children went round and round on the merry-go-round I used to push my little brother on.