After picking up the family tent stakes at the end of June and moving from one city to another not very far away, I left all the corrugated cardboard behind for a lengthy road trip to Ohio, America’s Heartland, with my children and mother to visit her parents.

Four generations of the family managed successfully to spend a relatively happy week together doing both touristy things as well as boring things, spending time running around and time just hanging out on the 100-year-old swing set. (We’re not totally sure on the age but it did belong to my 86-year-old grandfather as a child and is quite sturdy.)

Having a little time just to hang out was really great, since it afforded my kids a chance to socialize with their great-grandparents in ways that sometimes surprised me, like when Council showed Grandy how her Tamagotchi works. And he really wanted to know, since all things gadget-related seem to interest him. He and my mother share a GPS obsession.

On one day, after going early to the farmers’ market, otherwise known as the Local Social Scene, there was a funeral to attend; later that afternoon my cousin and aunt attended a rollicking wedding shower.

Below my family talks with the famous Chef William at the farmers’ market after my kids had already each purchased a one-dollar treat. My grandmother loves his recipes and concocted a few of them for us at home during our stay.

Just prior to both events was a small folk concert in the park offered by a man traveling the country to talk about peace, and we were all encouraged to show up because it had been arranged by my grandparents’ church. We were given pins and peace rings and plastic bird warblers and small bubble-blowing containers.

Many people at the event happened to be dressed in black, because the funeral was for a well-loved church congregant, and they were all doing the same thing we were: supporting the concert, then heading to the funeral. Even the bubble-man folk singer acknowledged the unfortunate timing of the concert up against the funeral. When everyone left, however, I took my kids to the public pool instead, where we proceeded to lose a Tamagotchi (later found, although having been reset and thus “killed”), and where I sunburnt the backs of my legs really badly, but we did have an awesome time, and anything not-funeral was good with us.

We spent the evening visiting an open house at a local studio and shop for an artisan and bookbinder with an old-fashioned letterpress. The artisan does everything in an arts and crafts style in the manner of a few generations of men before him of the same name. I walked away with several lovely tiles they sell in their shop from a different artist in Canada. It was mesmerizing to watch the letterpress in action as letterhead was generated before our eyes. There was also jewelry for sale. My son Paolo asked how much the brooches cost. When he was told $95 he muttered, “I guess I’ll have to start saving up for that…”

That night everyone was a little emotionally drained, so naturally we all went to church the next morning, and my daughter and I had power struggles about whether she would put on the dress she brought for the occasion, and then about whether she would actually enter the church building itself. As it worked out, my aunt saved the day, and was able to persuade Council to come in for a little while to see how it was. The peace folk singer attended the church service as well, so we heard a few of the same songs as well as a few others, and there was more bubble-blowing. Council, grumpy as ever, sat far away from me, but had cheered up by the time we had to leave. Her method of rebelling before we left was to take a little walk to a stand of pine trees outside the church doors and put a bunch of the nature in her hair, and then wander around pretending to be some kind of fairy, which she knew I would find terribly annoying, and she was right.

Following this we went on one of my favorite excursions of the whole trip, a visit to the grounds of a former governor’s mansion, within walking distance of my grandparents’ house.

We visited the interesting museum on the grounds and then walked over to the large, gorgeous home for an hour-long tour, offered by a woman dressed up in period costume. She asked us not to take flash photography or touch anything. Naturally, upon hearing this, my youngest child reached out to run his hands along the baseboard, wondering if it was “real wood.”

The building was heavily air-conditioned, but otherwise I truly felt I had been transported back 200 years as we wandered through it and heard about candles made of animal fat, servants who never washed and therefore were encouraged to stay out of occupied rooms (especially when entertaining guests), a dark doorknobless closet known as “the crying room,” and various methods for staying warm or cool in the different seasons of the year.

My children peppered our tour guide with a lot of engaging questions—so many that we may have reached a point where she was eager to have us finish our tour. They remarked on everything about the house and mused on any topic, no matter how picayune, related to what it must have been like to live in the house in the early 1800s.

As the tour went on, their questions and comments became increasingly more conversational and embarrassing for their mother. Indeed, immediately upon entering the home, Paolo proclaimed loudly that the foyer smelled like a basement. It only got worse/better from there, depending on your point of view and sense of humor.

While we visited the formal dining room, we heard about how Governor Worthington had entertained the renowned Shawnee chief Tecumseh in about 1803, who stayed at the mansion for a week with his companions, and who had presented the governor with a ceremonial peace pipe in the shape of a tomahawk.

The tour guide pointed out the very cup Tecumseh had drunk from, and said that during his stay at the mansion, he and his companions opted to sleep outside under the beautiful trees. “Well, that’s good,” Paolo burst out, “because they probably didn’t smell very good anyway!”

I was so astounded by this comment and doubly embarrassed by how it probably sounded or was received by the others on the tour that I could only look at him and wonder at what he may have been thinking. The comment also seemed to leave our tour guide at an actual loss for words, seeing as how up until that point she had been trying to respond to the children’s comments and questions.

It is perfectly possible that no one in 1803 smelled very good, but that’s somehow not quite the point in the story about Tecumseh. I leave it to Paolo to think laterally and always take us by surprise.

Later that night we all went to a Chillicothe Paints minor league ball game, where dinner was ballpark fare and the pace was slow and relaxed. My children, all a bit tired perhaps, started acting up toward the uneventful end of the game, when I thought I might have to leave early with them, but they perked up when they were invited to run the bases with any other interested kids. Not wearing the proper footgear made for an amusing run for each of them.

When we went to a Red Sox game at Fenway Park last week—a huge, much-anticipated event for our family—my kids wondered aloud whether they would be invited to run the bases after the game. Sadly, I had to tell them it was probably not going to happen. In some ways the minor league ball games are more enjoyable for that kind of reason.

There was also much sewing with greatgrandma and lots of playing with old toys we’re accustomed to busting out when there are children in the house. My grandparents are great hosts and provide ceaseless stimulation with seemingly zero effort.

Thus it was that on the last night of our stay, while perusing some of the photographs from the peace folk singer over the weekend on his web site, my grandfather played the YouTube video produced from the visit (still images accompanied by John Lennon’s “Imagine”). My mother, cousin, aunt and son all showed up in the still images from that brief visit at the park. We finished watching that and my grandmother asked why the video was so stuttery. I explained that if you just let the video load a bit more before playing it, the whole thing will play more smoothly since it won’t be trying to load while you watch and sometimes surpass the loading.

My grandfather asked how you tell it to wait. By way of example I clicked on another video, this one demonstrating a recent hovercraft race on the Scioto River in Chillicothe. My grandmother had previously been telling us about how amazing these hovercraft are since they go on land and sea. I showed how, since the video begins to play automatically when you load the page, you can just click “pause” and give it a moment to load maybe one-third or halfway before playing, and how the red bar shows you how much has been loaded.

They totally followed all of this and remarked on how slow the video was loading. Their DSL connection is not the fastest but they do have a very secure wireless setup, as I discovered upon hitting not just a password protected router but also the most powerful, all-knowing firewall I think I’ll ever encounter in my life. At any rate we allowed the video to load a bit and then we listened to lively rock music and watched hovercraft racing on the Scioto together. And I thought to myself, how many people can say they’ve watched YouTube with their kids’ great-grandparents?

One of the best parts of the visit, though, was breaking in my new iPhone. I found the most frequent use for it was de-spamming my other blog as we trundled along from one place to another. Not exactly glamorous, but definitely practical.

Deep thoughts, Wish fulfillment | 2 Comments »

I have much news to report, but the most current is that I have been beset with a number of poisonous skin rashes of the variety that are exacerbated by the recent heat and humidity. Concurrent with the recent move from one city to another, I’ve also managed to catch back-to-back viruses, like a mild flu, that have allowed me to function at a basic level but no more. Last week was definitely a low point, but at least the move is over, and the cardboard boxes are not multiplying anymore like they were for a while. I still can’t find a few key belongings, mostly related to my tech gadgets, but for now that’s no big problem.

Settling in, I was thinking it would be a really great stress reliever to go out on the nice backyard deck we have at the new place, inhale the fresh breezes of our small urban but very green yard, and just relax. I also enjoy digging my hands in the dirt and just cleaning things up as a way to let go of the cares of the day.

After a few tries at this, however, I’ve discovered just how much poison oak and poison ivy there is on our relatively small lot. This is perhaps one of the big downfalls of moving into a place that has been somewhat neglected for the last decade, but also happens to be located in a very enthusiastically fertile spot. The weeds going crazy are one thing… but this degree of poison-whatever is just ridiculous.

Last week, I figured I had learned my lesson about the poison oak all over the back and would just focus on the few small beds in the front, where nice day lilies have finally bloomed but where lots of weeds have also grown very tall and needed to be shown who’s boss. I was expecting a visitor the following day and wanted the yard not to look quite so slummy. So I spent less than an hour or so clipping away at some items and yanking up the biggest offenders—not that much stuff, but I ended up with three armloads of material to haul to my growing pile of organic refuse semi-hiding under an evergreen tree with low-hanging boughs I recently pruned a bit so I can see under it.

As I worked, I noticed what looked like poison ivy in the actual flower bed in the front yard. How did this happen, I wondered? Did someone actually plant poison ivy here?

I regarded the front of the house again with skepticism. Has it been hexed, I thought? Are all future gardeners forever cursed on this property? I stupidly handled all these plants and brought them in bare armfuls to a pile. I tried carefully to avoid what I imagined could be poison ivy but inevitably got some of it on me.

I happen to be highly allergic to such poisonous plants. It could be worse, I suppose, and for just about anyone with this allergy, it’s unpleasant and lasts for days. I have an overly amplified sense of just how allergic I am.

It started some years ago, when my family and I were living with my in-laws in a small, ad-hoc space they gave us in their fairly large home. We were sharing one bedroom for the five of us, which had room for two queen-size beds crammed together as well as all our clothing. This is where I was crashed out for a few days in a row after I unknowingly used some tainted “outdoor facilities” at a local playground where we lived at the time. I remember it was early spring, and apparently too early for the port-a-potty there to be open: it was padlocked, and I really had to go, and I found a little hillside out of view of the playground where there was just some low ground cover. A friend I was with never mentioned to me (until later) that she already knew the low hillside was covered with poison ivy—she was more familiar with that playground than I was.

A day or so later, I noticed a rash that resembled the shape a toilet seat might make; I wondered if I had some sort of staph infection from a dirty toilet seat. In my confusion over what I could have, I looked up a natural remedy for treating such an infection; it included making a hot compress of garlic and cayenne powder.

As the rash grew angrier and angrier, and I grew less and less mobile, I had my husband brew up such a compress, and I laid there in bed with the compresses on me, replacing them when they cooled off, unable to get up or even roll over onto my back without a great deal of pain. My rear end swelled like a red balloon around the area of my tailbone, and I had to walk bent over and slowly on those rare occasions when I did actually get out of bed. Placing the hot compress on the rash felt good in a painful sort of way, like when you scratch a mosquito bite compulsively until it bleeds. I figured the way it stung was somehow part of the recuperative healing process, and besides, it could not be much worse than the itchy, painful rash untreated.

During this time, I was also nursing my younger son. My husband would bring him to me in bed and I laid there feeling more depleted than ever. I probably got mastitis again around this time, as I did so frequently during those days of so little personal space and such high demands on my time and energy. Compounding the problem: stupidity in self-diagnosis.

Finally my health situation had worsened to the point where my mother-in-law assertively arranged an appointment for me, at her expense, with a very good osteopath she recommended nearby. I went to see him under great physical duress. I laid down on his exam table and he took one look at my bottom. “This doesn’t look like a bacterial infection to me,” he pronounced. “This looks like an allergic reaction. Are you sure you haven’t changed detergents or something recently? Used the outdoors as a bathroom somewhere?”

I laid there on my belly and gave this a moment’s thought. “Yeah,” I said, “I tried to use a port-a-potty last week, but it was locked, so I…”

Hmm.

“I did pee in some ground cover. It could have been poison ivy.”
Hmm. I suddenly felt very, very dumb. When I told the doctor what I had been using to treat the rash, he could only offer his deepest sympathies for the pain it must have been causing me to place boiling hot cayenne and garlic on a poison ivy rash. We discussed how these types of rashes can worsen over one’s lifetime. If I had any kind of oversensitivity to poison ivy before, it was cemented into my DNA now. Indeed, I don’t know that I could have done more to help introduce my body to the toxins in the poison ivy’s oil, and in effect, tell it, “You will overreact to this now and for all time.”

The doctor told me I had options: he could prescribe steroids, for example, but I’d have to stop nursing. That was an option for me to avoid, I said. Alternatively, I could take the homeopathic remedy Apis, which is used to treat bee stings among other things, and apply the zinc oxide diaper rash ointment Desitin to the rash, which rapidly renews skin cells. I chose the latter route, relieved at last to know what was ailing me, and to have some remedy that might help it get better rather than continually worsen it and add to my immobility. I started to feel better right away, although as the doctor warned, the rash got worse first.

He said it would appear all over my body. I would see it surface in constellation-like patterns, everywhere, basically in accordance with the lymphatic system, which is all over the place but has nodes and concentrations in various spots. And that was the case. My entire body itched; red dots appeared everywhere and were made worse by heat and sweat. But I kept up my treatment, which took longer than it would have taken if I had gone the route of steroids, and eventually it all went away.

Now, of course, when I see poison ivy around, I do my best to steer clear of it, but I’m such an enthusiastic gardener that I do have the tendency to ignore what could be problematic—especially when it’s so unexpected as to be in a small garden bed in one’s front yard.

I steered clear of the poison oak in the back because we had spotted it early on. Doing some light weeding work, I did everything I could not to touch it; as it worked out, I got one single dot of a blister on one arm, near the wrist. My older son was much less cautious and has now gotten two bouts of the rash on him, but he doesn’t react as badly as I do, and it’s under control and fading (and hopefully he’s learned his lesson, too). In reaction to my single dot, however, a two-inch radius of rash broke out on that wrist, and then I had a sympathetic lymphatic reaction across my arms, legs and belly—not a direct contact with the poisonous oils, but a lymphatic memory, an expression of some kind. I dealt with it as well as I could.

Then came the weeding and the additional contact. Through all of it, these viruses and an extended road trip during which my health worsened for a spell and I came down with laryngitis. I’m ready to get better now, but in the meantime, I’m covered with Desitin again, which happens to smell like cod liver oil. Today, after putting it all over my neck and jaw, my children stared at me, and one said, “You look scary.”

I hope the house and I can reconcile sometime soon, and that it will allow me to garden in its yard. This will not be a happy long-term relationship if that aspect doesn’t work out.

Deep thoughts, What now? | No Comments »

It’s spring, which means that my formerly-stray calico cat is out in force in the yard, hunting down and bringing to near-death multitudes of young squirrels and fledgling starlings—unpleasant-sounding birds that are abundant in my city neighborhood. I have a deep respect for nature and a desire to protect all living things, so watching my cat hunt and kill, or rather, nearly-kill, is something like torture for me.

I remember at the age of 5 or 6 watching while a man got pinned under a city bus in downtown Pittsburgh, standing on the sidewalk holding my mother’s hand as we prepared to cross the street to go to one of those downtown department stores that don’t really exist anymore. The man had been trying to get on the bus, but had missed it, and so ran alongside it banging on the bus’s side and yelling. Then he slipped on the curb and went under the rear tires as they drove away. When the driver realized what had happened, he stopped the bus, but the man lay there in the street not moving.

Watching what my cat does to birds and squirrels is much more difficult for me than watching what happened to that man, and it’s not because I lack compassion for other human beings, it’s that I possess über-compassion for creatures of the natural world. My thinking is that they can’t really tell us what they would prefer to see happen, so for instance if we’re handling them in a way they don’t like, it’s rather a challenge for them to let us know in any layers of complexity. If I could, I would take all animals under my wing and nurture and shelter them and cause all peace and happiness to reign in the land.

Except for my stray cat, who is a killer. She is also kind of cute, but she’s still a killer, and she’s merciless and precise, and doesn’t quite finish the job as quickly as I’d like.

Last spring, when this phenomenon came upon us, I tried to help every little fledgling being we discovered in the grass, finding a way to protect it and maybe nurture it back to health, which more often than not is something of a failure. This year, I have relented to the cat and I simply try to put her inside more often. My children have found countless dead critters in the back yard in just the last few weeks. The body count averages two per day. Our yard is small. I would think the birds and squirrels would take a hint, but there seem to be a lot of them. I try to remind my children of this fact—the plenitude—when they bemoan the latest kill. But it is small comfort.

Similarly, my children—my own little fledglings—demonstrated new levels of capacity just recently. I had to attend an evening meeting for work, but lacked child care. River was going to be in New York City for the evening and late into the night for his own work meeting (well, a celebratory dinner with travel by limousine, if that can be said to be actual work). My mother, who has blessedly been available for babysitting from time to time, was likewise not available that night. I had to face either not attending a community meeting I found quite vital to attend and cover, staying home and sulking about how my children are a burden and trap me and prevent me from being able to accomplish anything in the world, or I could do the obvious and take them with me.

I hemmed and hawed about this decision for several days, and on an hourly basis changed my mind about what the right approach would be. Perhaps I was a bad mother for wanting to take them with me. Perhaps I was a bad mother for wanting to stay home. Perhaps I was a poor excuse for a reporter, since after all I don’t get paid for my reporting. Perhaps I was a poor excuse for any kind of professional, since I don’t have child care arranged. I lingered in these depressing thoughts for a while. Then I talked about it with a couple of people. Each encouraged me to take my children with me, and said a few things—just a few small words is all—about how such a thing could be done, and how it wasn’t really any big deal after all. Gradually, I warmed to the idea and realized that I don’t have to draw such strict lines in my life between yes and no, black and white, on and off, mother and not-mother.

So I prepared the children the night before. I took a deep breath and said, “I’m taking you with me to work tomorrow night.” Just one of them rolled her eyes, and the others just looked at me blankly. I explained the purpose of the community meeting. I told them that we would bring supplies for them (books, quiet materials), and that I would reward them afterward.

We have a special bag we’ve been preparing for the move. In it there are a variety of toys and games that River had collected both from a dumpster-dive at LEGO a few years ago, where he used to freelance (lots of wet cardboard boxes in perfectly good shape otherwise; they’d been left out in the rain), as well as from some work he had done designing a few toys and games for Hasbro, based near here. We put all these things into a bag the size of something Santa Claus might carry on his sleigh, or maybe just a little bit smaller, and then stuffed it into a closet for a couple of months. My thinking with the bag was to pull it out when things feel a bit dire, when we need a reward for some tremendous accomplishment, or maybe a nice chunk of happy distraction. Who could guess what would arise?

As it happened, on the same day of River’s New York trip, and my important meeting, we were also waiting to hear word about the house we’re trying to buy in Hartford. We were just two days away from our eagerly-anticipated closing date the previous week when the seller learned that she would have to pay a large pre-payment penalty to the bank for her mortgage. She didn’t have the money available to cover this. We learned about it and held our breath. On the day of the closing, we learned that she wanted to borrow money from us. We declined, after considering it. Then the day passed and no closing took place. The holiday weekend arrived and we felt disappointed and stressed out. Another day passed and there was no progress, until finally this day arrived of no child care and River gone and so on. At any moment we could hear good news or we could hear bad news.

So it was definitely time for the prize bag, which I have to say did motivate my children significantly. We pulled everything out of the bag and they looked at all of it. I told them, “If you do a great job tomorrow helping me at my meeting, you can pick one of these.” Their eyes sparkled and they examined everything closely, marveling at the colorful boxes and interesting, unusual toys. (For example, one box River designed is for Lazer Bounce.) They each selected one item and we set it aside for the next day.

The day came and the morning passed. A while later, I learned good news about the house. We have a new closing date in early June and the seller miraculously came up with the necessary funds, or otherwise worked it out with her bank. Some time after that, my children came home from school, I fed them an early dinner, we went to the meeting with everyone well-prepared for 2.5 hours of sitting quietly without disturbing Mama, and all went as smoothly as if I had scripted it myself. I was amazed.

When we were leaving the meeting (pictured above—no kids visible; they disappeared into the pews), one of the young men present who works for the city said to my children, “You guys were so good—you think your mom will take you out for ice cream now? You can thank me later.” I did take them out for ice cream, too, even though it meant a disagreeable sugar high that would later make it very difficult to get them to bed. But it was all very much worth it.

Wish fulfillment | No Comments »

Relieving some of the stress referenced here in recent months, things are falling into place that will enable my family and me to relocate from one city to another just 30 minutes south: Hartford, Connecticut. For a while, the uncertainty about the move was driving me to a certain level of personal chaos, because my blogging work, for one thing, is firmly place-based. Or so I have told myself.

It looks for now as though I will extend my place-based-ness to include the new city as well, and we’ll see how well I can continue to examine the old homefront. The sense of responsibility for the current city I’m leaving, which approaches a maternal feeling in sometimes ridiculous fashion, is weighing rather heavily on my shoulders, and I believe explains much of the stress I am in the business of trying to shed. I keep telling myself, “It will all work out alright.”

We close on the new house tomorrow, hopefully averting a temporary financial crisis on the part of the seller, and things are underway for the house we’re vacating. After weeks of rather grueling house-showings, during which I had to accomplish miraculous, last-minute house-cleanings from time to time while keeping children calm and well-behaved in order to avoid anything backfiring before we left the house spotless, I can now breathe easy for a bit. An offer came in that we like, and the potential buyer seems very promising indeed. I am so happy not to be selling to a crack dealer, and all signs are good.

Friends stopped by today and even commented that my street is looking not so scary these days. Houses appear to be getting fixed up. I beamed with pride like a mother of a baby taking his first steps. I really need to get over myself with this neighborhood thing. I keep reminding my ego that it’s okay to let go, and there are plenty of other people who can come in and do good by the city.

In similar news, our family visited the neighborhood school in Hartford we’ve been hoping to get into. It’s a public school, K through 8, with a decent reputation according to the one person’s opinion I was able to get. (Another person told me flat out, “You should homeschool. Hartford schools are not a good option.”) We enjoyed our visit and were pleased to learn that we’re in, after being told by a central office that our chances might be slim. Not only that—my kids adored the school. They weren’t even fazed by the dress code, which up until now had been a significant obstacle.

Now to get through the closing without any big problems, and we can dig in to refinishing floors and repainting some walls at the new place. When we stopped by this week, I was dismayed to find that there are a lot of weeds I wanted to pull, and I had to stop myself from doing it. But I checked myself, too: when I want to pull weeds, it means I’m in.

What now?, Wish fulfillment | 3 Comments »

Cuz he’s funny, he’s a Bahá’í, his son’s name is Walter, his wife is Holiday, and he appears to manage to balance his fame with moderation, grace, humility and, of course, humor. What’s not to like?

In a recent interview originally for US Bahá’í News, reprinted with permission from Bahá’í World News Service, Wilson said, “I like being a Baha’i who has an out-there sense of humor. God gives us talents and faculties, and making people laugh is one of mine. I don’t have to be digging latrines in Honduras to serve humanity.”

“When you grow up with a spiritual foundation that asks you to be conscious of the fact that all races are created equal,” Wilson said in the interview, “that men and women are equal and that all religions worship the same (God), it helps you see the world as one family and not get lost in the traps of political, social, and economic belief systems that can lead you astray. I always think of myself as a world citizen. It’s a powerful thing.”

Deep thoughts, Wish fulfillment | 2 Comments »

I’ve been under a bit of stress lately, and have been acting strangely as a result. Things culminated yesterday and today. While preparing last night’s dinner, I put some olive oil in a large pot to warm up, so I could sauté some onions. I think I must have put the heat on fairly high on our gas burner, and then I left the room. My mind was elsewhere. Somewhere speaking in zeros and ones.

A few moments later, a room away, I smelled something burning slightly, so I raced back to the kitchen to find the pot filled with smoke. Duh, I said to myself, thinking about how I’d need to start over with a fresh bit of oil. I picked up the pot and quickly placed it in the sink, which already had a couple of things in it, but I didn’t remember what they were and figured it was just too bad. (As it turned out later, one was a plastic container, which melted completely into the pot’s bottom.)

No sooner had I put down the pot than the oil caught fire. It was in slow motion: fwoomp. The whole pot was ablaze. I stood there and stared at it, and hours passed.

Then, stupidly, I put the faucet on, and blasted it into the pot.

If any part of my brain was functioning up until this time, by now it was seriously impaired, because any dork in the kitchen knows that you don’t put out an oil fire with water. The fire answered back, yesss. It blazed full up to the cabinets, which are kind of high up there. (Just ask my mother, who has been known to remark more than once, “This is a kitchen made for giants.”)

Another hour went by while I watched the fire and wondered how long it would take before the cabinets melted. I blasted more hot water. The fire relented, and went out. I guess it had really only been a second, or even less, when it flared. My heart was in my throat, and my kids were in the next room. I thought about all the things we could lose if the house went up in flames. How some people weren’t wearing shoes. I didn’t know where all the pets were. It was cold, and raining, outside.

As it happened, there were only a few sooty traces on the cabinets above the sink. I was able to use a back-up pot after talking myself down for a while to try to come back to cooking, and I didn’t try to multi-task with anything else unnecessarily.

Today, though, this kind of thing happened all over again.

I was trying to get some work done in a rush, in the time I had available between taking my children to school—which was insane today because of some road construction right in front of the neighborhood fire station, so the walk was a din of beeping, growling, grumbling, smoking, and revving large machines—and going to do an interview near City Hall.

As it happened, though, I was distracted by ten thousand things while doing email and reading the morning news feeds, and ended up hurriedly leaving the house, remembering enough to grab my iPod for recording the interview as well as my wallet in a purse, a notepad and pen, and oh yeah, a jacket. As soon as I stepped out the back door, which locks without a key, I realized I had left my keys in their usual spot inside, maybe because I grabbed a jacket I don’t ordinarily wear, and so I wasn’t checking for the weight of the keys in the pocket. I also didn’t put the jacket on, another safeguard for remembering my keys.

I stood there for a moment feeling really dumb. Then I figured I was going to need to cancel my interview, since I was already running late, and now I was never going to make it. I left a voicemail and then called River at work. He was in a meeting but was going to drop everything to bring me his key. He works an hour’s drive from home. I felt like a dork supreme. I began rummaging everywhere in the backyard, wondering if the key fairies had somehow decided to help us out overnight. No dice.

River said he’d call me back when he was on his way. Twenty minutes passed. It was cold outside, and the air was raw. It wasn’t raining, but the air was preparing for it, and worse, the temperature was just above freezing. I was underprepared, with no gloves or hat, and not the warmest jacket. The garage was the only place with any protection from a nasty wind that was blowing from the north side of the house, cutting across the back porch, making that an unpleasant stoop. Every time I went back there to sit, I ended up shaking uncontrollably. Back to the garage. For a while, I put on canvas work gloves and half-heartedly did some yard raking to try to warm up a little. I was so depressed from locking myself out and being an all-around loony tune, though, that I just couldn’t get into it, and I kept obsessing about how all the stray cats in the neighborhood seem to use our yard as their litter box. I kept wondering, what am I doing trying to clean up this mess of a yard?

When I did finally speak with River, he told me that his office intern, Tim, would be driving up with a key. That was a relief. River could stay and take care of his huge pile of work. He had already planned to stay late at work that night. I didn’t want him to have to drive so much during a productive work day.

To pass the time, I played a game on my cell phone for a while, but this was during one of those uncontrollable shakes phases of my wait. Back to the garage again, to stand around, and wonder what else to do. Finally it was close enough to time for Tim to show up that I went to the front of the house and waited on a chair on the porch. Our porch is very close to the street, so when you sit there, you end up basically greeting everyone who walks by. Not many people were walking by. It was grey, depressingly grey, and quiet, except for the rumbling and grumbling and beeping of construction vehicles a few blocks away. Eventually the mail carrier came along. She chided me for sitting outside. I shivered at her. I explained my predicament, and she told me about her preemie. Without being locked out, I wouldn’t have known the details about her new baby.

I talked to my mother on my cell phone for a while as well. It was good to have someone to more or less moan and groan to although I tried to keep that to a minimum. Then, while we spoke, Tim showed up. He was very business-like. He got out of the car, handed over the key, politely said, “You’re welcome,” to my thanks, and drove away. I gleefully went inside and pledged to take some time to tend to myself, to reduce this baffling, apparent stress problem. I made a warm lunch and took a hot bath. I got under the covers and had hot chocolate. The shivers abated, and I began to feel better.

A few hours later, I needed to stop by the neighborhood post office to pick up the Bahá’í Assembly’s mail. I believed that some important annual election documents might be waiting there for pickup, so I grabbed the PO box keys and thought I had enough time before school let out to do the errand. When I got to the post office a few minutes later, it occurred to me that I didn’t remember what the PO box number was. I called River (again) to see if he had that information in any emails. No luck. I asked at the counter, but couldn’t decide what name the box would be listed under. The first two attempts yielded no listing. I was now late getting my kids at school. The postal worker brushed me off, saying, no, wait just a minute, I’ll find it for you, and then he disappeared for what seemed like five more minutes in the depths of the post office. I had to take off.

Getting the kids was a procedure of going inside to locate them at the office, where they are brought when parents don’t pick them up outside. If parents don’t show up for a little while, the children are brought to a central city school where care is provided. I don’t know what happens to them after that, if parents don’t show up. I have never had to retrieve them like that, and I don’t want to get into the habit. I raced from the post office to the school (a few short blocks over rough, under-construction terrain). I am fortunate not to have gotten into an accident, because my head was still somewhere else. When I managed to get the kids, and return to the post office, the worker there had discovered the PO box number, gave me a brief quiz, and I was able to retrieve the mail.

When I returned home a bit later, now through relentless pouring rain, while fielding innumerable questions and comments from my children, I looked through the mail to discover that the envelope I had anticipated was not there.

I went to look through a separate pile of Assembly mail I had set aside from my last PO box pickup. Sure enough, in that batch, was a large, unopened envelope with the documents I sought. It had been sitting at my desk all along. I don’t know how so much time passed, and why I didn’t get around to opening some envelopes in the pile. Then again, I’ve been paying bills late all winter. I’m not on top of any of this.

At dinner that night, which I prepared successfully with nary an oil fire or a locked-out-of-doors, and served in a timely fashion to my children without any other adults around to assist (very challenging for me lately), I opened up about my problems.

“I’m feeling really stressed out,” I told my kids. “My stress level is up to here.” I held my hand, flat out, at the top of my forehead. I recounted for them the things I had done lately that prove my absent-minded condition.

Paolo then exclaimed, “I know what you need, Mama!” He stood up from his dinner (this often occurs at our table when people want to make a point or need to run a few laps, and it drives us nutty), and he came over to me. “What you need,” he continued, “is a visit to the spa!”

The boy was so right on, I just couldn’t get over it. “You’re absolutely right, Paolo,” I agreed emphatically. “I totally do need that. I need to relax.” I am not a spa-going person. I rarely even treat myself to decent chocolate, let alone a massage or something as indulgent as an appointment would require.

Vigil looked at me sideways from his seat at the dinner table. “You do need to relax,” he echoed.

Then they started whispering amongst themselves. Paolo came over to me again and started rubbing my shoulders in earnest. “Just giving you a little preview,” he said. From then on the children behaved like angels. Paolo recited his haiku from school, which was lovely. Vigil ran around in circles after eating only a little, and Council ran to hush him on my behalf; I could hear her saying, “Mama’s got a headache!” (which wasn’t true, but that was fine). They cleaned up after dinner (mostly), and ushered me upstairs to wait while they prepared an upstairs room for… the spa.

The kids set up our small TV room by opening up the sofabed and spreading some blankets down, arranging pillows just so, and placing a side table next to it with a few news magazines neatly spread out, with a fresh glass of water. A jar of lotion sat on the bed. Sticking out from a tall shelf was Paolo’s green, plastic light saber, which had a purple sign taped to the extended saber. The sign hung at about my chin and read, in cursive, “The Delicate Spa.”

The spa itself was a true delight in pampering. They lotioned and rubbed my feet and hands, and took turns massaging my shoulders, back and head. Their collective attention to this waned quickly, but I soaked up every second of it. I told them that it was the very idea of it that made me feel so much better, and anything else they did on top of that was extra delight.

“Is your stress down now?” they asked.

Later, when Council and Paolo were in bed reading, Vigil gave me a “therapist” session, which he felt was an important part of the spa and stress-relieving experience. I had told him earlier, at dinner, that therapists mostly listen, they may make gentle suggestions, and they ask questions. This was in response to his question, “What’s the name for that kind of person you can talk to when you have problems?”

He tried to follow suit while he listened to me, but started off right away wanting to tell me how to solve my stress problems. I asked him to wait a minute and listen to me explain, but he kept talking and gesticulating enthusiastically about his fixes. This went on for a few minutes, until as I reflected, I uncovered something slightly new about my erratic behavior.

I said, “There’s something else about what’s been going on.” Vigil looked at me expectantly, listening. It helped him listen if I gave my idea a headline, a short proclamation. “I just realized that I haven’t even been aware of my stress when I do things that are dangerous or without thinking clearly. I try to act as though nothing is bothering me.” Vigil waited, with a goofy, wide grin on his face. “So my problem is that I’m not even paying attention to what I’m doing or how I am feeling.”

Vigil’s eyes lit up. “That’s it! That’s it!” He started jumping up and down in place so he became a blur. “I know what you need to do! You need to pay attention!” He then delivered a long soliloquy, while jumping, about what paying attention would solve. More therapy sessions should be like this.

“But how do I pay attention?” I asked.

“When you’re doing something, especially something that might be dangerous—” and here he reminded me of some of the dangerous things I had done lately, “—make sure that you’re paying attention first!”

Later, while I tucked him in, Vigil bragged to Paolo that he had solved my problems with just one piece of advice.

Wish fulfillment | 5 Comments »

My family spent our new year’s day—March 21, also known as Naw Ruz—at the home of some friends in the city who use a wood stove for heating and cooking throughout the colder months. The house was a little chilly, as the family was down to using just kindling during (what we hope will be) the last big storm of the season. A big-burst fire was built up primarily for cooking purposes.

The dad of the house, D., set up a child-tortilla-making station in the living room while the kids made a snowman in the large, frozen garden out back. Everyone came in with wet socks, kindly temporarily replaced with some handmade woollen ones, and folks got to work balling up dough and rolling it out with miniature-sized rolling pins.

Then the tortillas were placed on pans atop the wood stove for a few minutes, flipped over to cook on the other side, and then they were stacked inside a tea towel to keep warm until we were all ready to eat.

The table was set right up next to the wood stove with four places for the grown-ups and a mini-seat for the little babe, N., who recently turned one.

The coffee table, where the tortilla station had been set up, was transformed into a deluxe dining experience for the four children, who gobbled up their burritos faster than the adults could possibly serve them, and then all proceeded simultaneously to try to play the piano, with a great amount of arguing and fussing over how this could be done (it couldn’t). When I got up to suggest a one-person-at-a-time scenario, the children scattered and found something else peaceful to do for a while, and we parents sat around eating and trying to figure out how to solve some of the world’s problems.

Deep thoughts, Wish fulfillment | No Comments »

Lately in the line of my work, which I am not sure I can technically call work, I have been going into vacant buildings and taking pictures. This series, which I’m still preparing to publish on my city blog, shows the interior of a grand old mansion on a prominent city street. In the 19th century at some point, a former city mayor made this place his home. The latest residents were evicted when a bank foreclosed on the property, if I understood the details correctly.

Walking the rooms told a bizarre story of what went on in the house. Numerous color photographs were strewn about, on the marble mantelpieces, for instance, showing raucous parties, strange Halloween costumes, and especially women posing. People struggling to take care of their homes, failing to respect the spaces around them, demonstrate how they feel about themselves.

What now? | 6 Comments »

While I spent much of February pretty much stuck in bed, I can say that it is not a bad lifestyle, at least as long as it does not go on too long. Being the person that I am, I did not lie there inordinately; I would just grab as many successive hours as I could to be as prone as possible.

Fortunately, senior cat Luigi (12) was always there to see to my needs. And to poke holes in the comforter with his ridiculously sharp claws on his disproportionately large paws.

Redeeming quality of illness number one: a loving cat who unconditionally loves me. Or at least behaves as though he does. I can’t say whether it’s really “love.” He’s furry and warm and that’s enough when one is lying there with a fever.

First there was the cold virus that swept through the house. I could deal with that. I got out of the house and functioned just fine. No big deal; I just had to explain to people who asked about my terribly congested-sounding voice that I had a little virus. It was really the first of the season for me but I figured I was getting off easy, considering it was early February and we hadn’t been hit with anything nasty.

We all got over the cold, and then along came an unfortunate mild fever and sore throat. First one kid, then another, then me. I let this go for a couple of days, worsening all the while, and really, really stuck in bed, unable to eat much of anything. My throat became so swollen and painful that breathing and sleeping became difficult. At 3:45 am on a weekend night, unable to rest, I caved and tried to reach a doctor on call. No return call came, so an hour later my husband tried on my behalf. Again, nothing for an hour. I called again—in a state of delirium, having slept for five-minute stretches sitting up in order to breathe, unable to swallow, yadda yadda. I explained my situation again, and this time gave an alternate cell phone number. At 7:00 am or so I was finally able to speak to the doctor, who apparently couldn’t reach our internet phone number.

The doctor patiently explained to me every other ailment under the sun I might have, including mono. I patiently explained that I needed the damn antibiotics, now. Ordinarily I do not much want to deal with doctors or antibiotics. But when I’m sick and have something or other that I think needs such treatment, I’m usually right. I’ve had strep before, and this was strep. I had pushed myself too far (see previous post), and my immune system went on vacation to Aruba without me. The doctor relented, and called in a prescription for me, which my husband immediately went to fetch. Thank God for 24-hour Walgreens drive-through pharmacies.

Redeeming quality number two: taking advantage of 24-hour pharmacies, which otherwise can make a person go, “What’s the big emergency at 3:00 am?” Well, when you’ve been there, you know.

Redeeming quality number three: a husband who will help out with a call to the doctor at 4:30 am, and then go pick up the medicine at 7:30, and still take care of the kids throughout, including bringing meals (or what I would eat of them) to me in bed.

After I started on my medicine, my husband made an appointment to take the kids to their doctor, who happily has weekend morning hours for cases like this. They all got throat cultures and were diagnosed with strep.

Redeeming quality number four: being right about my sickness, even when the doc on the line was dubious. And not only that: mine had advanced to scarlet fever, with all-over mild body rash that focused on my face. Mmmm. (Side note to this redeeming quality: I have become a veritable encyclopedia of knowledge about bacteria and viruses. This is not something I ever aspired to; it just comes with the territory of parenthood.)

The kids started their meds the same day, and we were one happy family of canceling all social engagements, watching TV together, sleeping at strange times of day, having little appetite, and generally feeling incapacitated.

Except for me, as long as I had my computer on my lap in bed.

Redeeming quality number five: being able to blog throughout my sickness, primarily out of boredom. And with the cat by my side, this was made rather pleasant indeed.

Postscript: the strep returned this week, and the youngest kid is back on antibiotics. I am now engaged in trying to figure out how to fend it off this time. Husband appears immune, so I am employing deflector shields. The pediatrician recommended new toothbrushes for everyone, and each person gets his or her own toothpaste as well. No more shared cup at the bathroom sink, either (duh: how many household illnesses might I have prevented earlier by eliminating this dreaded, germy practice?). So far, so good, and I’m healthy enough for the time being to continue fasting, more or less, but I have put myself on notice.

Deep thoughts, Wish fulfillment | No Comments »

I have spent the past week doing my own private equivalent of a marathon, insisting that I work as hard as possible in spite of being sick, while carrying with me a knot of tension on my back and shoulders about as thick and cumbersome as a mature oak tree. When this happens, sometimes I try to make myself believe that no harm will be done, but the truth is I think that I pace myself just so, in order that I tend to forget what happens next after an all-work-no-sleep-while-sick binge: I crash.

And crashing really takes with it the whole family.

This is also how one might identify manic-depressives. Crazy highs, deep lows. That’s not really me: I don’t have the highs. Instead I just feel like I’m trying to make it through some long underwater tunnel, and I figure if I go faster, I’ll get out sooner. Nope.

So what is the answer to this? Am I supposed to be breathing water? If I just relax and settle in, is this home now? Maybe so. Maybe I’ve adapted.

This week one of my children stayed home a total of three days from school. On two other days, he managed to make it, but he looked horrible. Today, he was home again along with his sick sister. I’m sick, too. We needed a caretaker, so my husband stayed home and even managed to do the slightest bit of paid work, while juggling all of us and our various whiny little needs. And so did I manage to do a slight bit of paid work, although I practically had to slap my hands to prevent attempting more.

I really like the work I do. I just wish I got paid for all the hours I put in, and the many more I could (or might, out of insanity) but don’t, because of guilt for already working too much. These days, “equitable pay” for a writer is sort of a curious joke anyway. And as I have been reminded by some in the field, as a blogger, it’s even more curious. Then again, there was some guy in California getting paid something in the neighborhood of $72,000 a year to blog. I like to write that off as “just those crazy Californians at it again.”

Here in the northeast, we like our bloggers poor and underfed, because it makes them wilder and less predictable. Pay them too well, and gosh, they might get complacent. In my case, the pay keeps me just on this side of the line, but always wondering if this makes any sense to keep doing. I try too hard, I tell myself. Then it’s, I’m not trying hard enough. Push, push! Write more and it will feel better. But then it doesn’t, because there is always so much more writing to do.

Oughtn’t a writer burrow into pillows and muse, and emerge to write about it later, spending weeks ruminating and creating, and then being paid millions for the brilliance of it all? Perhaps—I wouldn’t know—I’m in a different league, that of the addict-writer. The blogging life has a way of feeling a little like crack hits rather than a series of moody pamperings (although moody I am, and apparently, today, pampered)… each post is so live, so in-hand, so temporally electric, that I just can’t wait to post again, until I’m exhausted. And there are moments when I wonder why I do this when it can be so draining, and so little certainty about whether it means anything, or is headed anywhere good.

Being sick puts me in a funny frame of mind. And it’s February. One wants to think spring, but for some reason it’s as though winter has finally arrived here. So the sunlight has that essence of spring in it, that persistent shine and glow and increasing strength that can actually be a bit of an annoying glare (especially when one has not had much sleep, or can’t breathe from congestion). Yet the air is frigid and the wind brutal. Is that just another curious joke? I seem to be surrounded by them.

Anyway crashing is reminding me again to pace myself, go slow, maybe hold back some of my energy a little and keep it in reserve for… some other important thing I could be doing, like… parenting, or cooking, or arranging photo albums. Wait, I never arranged photo albums much. It’s the cooking part I used to do. Parenting, there’s no choice. Except today, of course. Today, I crash. Maybe I savor this, too.

Deep thoughts, What now? | No Comments »