the dream life

Bon voyage and little mugs

Last night, my brother and sister-in-law and nieces threw a bon voyage party for my mom, who is on her way to England (the homeland of her soul.) Ava presented my mom with a really cool sign  

and we all sat around and ate delicious pie and drank coffee.

Tracy and I received our coffee (yes, we just sat around in a giant soft chair while Ava and Chloe brought us things) in the most fabulous mugs. The mugs were a gift from Chloe's sister-in-law, and I just fell in love with their charms.

 

After doing some quick research, I believe them to be the children's mugs from Bybee Pottery.

I would imagine there are few people who grew up in the exact region where I grew up who don't own at least one piece of Bybee.

We went there on school trips and Sunday drives. It's just one of those Kentucky places that you honor. 

I'm not spending much money these days, but I feel I must acquire a set of these mugs, not only for those small coffee moments, but also for when the girls come over for dinner or snacks.

Strange start

When my grandmother was younger she had night terrors. In fact, when she was a girl, she experienced shared dreams with her siblings. They would wake up screaming, all pointing at the same corner of the bedroom, convinced they saw the same thing lurking there. She was also a sleepwalker for many years -- she would go through her house winding the clocks, would even go down into the basement sometimes to check the furnace.

I've never been a sleepwalker and I've never had night terrors.

This morning, I told Tracy and Woody to have a good day, gathered my things, and headed out for work, deep in thought. What I didn't know was that my mom had decided to ride to work with me. She was, in fact, waiting on the porch. When I opened the front door, there she stood looking at me. It should have been a nice surprise but what greeted my mother instead of my smiling face was the sight of me completely falling a part. When I saw her there I was completely terrified. A sound came out of me -- not a scream exactly -- but the guttural sound of primal fear. Even though part of my brain could see that my mom was standing on my porch, the other part of my brain was simply freaking out. I felt for a moment like a couldn't stop making this sound, that I couldn't climb out of this moment of terror. Even after I composed myself, I was shaky and tearful for a few minutes.

I kept trying to explain to my mom, to Tracy, to anyone who would listen, what had happened. It wasn't that I was startled. It was that I couldn't get what my eyes were seeing and what my head was thinking to sync up. A similar thing had happened to me once when I was a teenager. I passed out and when I came back into consciousness, I was deeply frightened in the same way. I made that same sound and experienced that same sensation of being between things, confused on a very basic level.

This afternoon, my mom realized that the sound I made this morning was the same one she used to hear her mother make when she would have the night terrors. She called my grandmother and told her what had happened. "Oh," my grandmother said, "I know exactly what that is."

It turns out that my grandmother didn't just experience this when she was asleep, it happened to her during her waking hours, too. "It's a horrible feeling," she said. "You can't process what you're seeing."

That was it exactly. That's what I'd been trying to explain. I couldn't process what I was seeing and I understood that I couldn't process it, and that understanding, was frightening and bizarre. 

Knowing that this was something my grandmother had many times experienced made me feel a lot better. I'd felt very exposed by it, foolish, and guilty for surely making my mom feel bad. Knowing that my grandmother understood what had happened because it had happened to her, helped me immediately release all of those feelings.

It was just a strange start to the morning.

I find things

In my cleaning and organizing today I opened up a box in my office (which is now called the writing room) and discovered a small black Bible with a falling off cover. Stuck inside were several tiny photographs.  

I didn't recognize these people nor did they bear any family resemblance to me that I could tell. They looked tough. The men especially, but the woman also looked like she'd seen some things.

I had no memory of where this Bible came from, how long I'd had it or why these portraits were stuck inside. What, I wondered, was it doing in the box my dad gave me that's designed to look like books, but isn't really books. A secret box. He gave it to me to stash money in, but I found no money today. Just these people, these men in their hats.

Then, I opened up the front page and found an inscription. The Bible was a gift to my grandfather from his aunt and uncle. In his hand, on the first page, is written the first three words of a verse in the book of Joshua. I looked up the verse and read it, as if I'd found a clue or a code to unpuzzle. It felt almost like my grandfather speaking to me. These words, poetic, were once important to him. I don't know why, but it doesn't really matter. It is enough to see this private physical mark that he made, this reminder that he pencilled. 

I think it's possible that the man at the top in a hat and no tie is my grandfather as a very young man, because the woman does look quite like his sister, but I'll have to check with my grandmother to be sure. I have only seen photos of him as a young boy and as a married man, never in his young adulthood. Never that brief time in his life when all things were possible, when he had a reputation for driving fast, when he met my grandmother and they fell in love.

I have other things of his - his baby clothes, a small pocket knife, childhood books, a ring that belonged to his mother. I believe these things are charged with his energy. I believe that when I touch them or look at them a connection is made, a door is opened between this world and the next and the illusion of time dissolves. 

I know that he is here.

Father's Day

Tracy loves cinnamon and cinnamon rolls and that sort of thing, so when I saw these sticky buns on the Food Network last week, I thought that Woody would probably really like to make them for Father's Day. I decided to lend a paw since Woody doesn't do a lot of baking. Instead of the two types of flour, I used whole wheat, but that didn't hurt a thing.

Meanwhile, my mom had suggested I make a fruit pie for our Father's Day dinner and I decided on blackberry (mostly because you don't have to peel blackberries, but also because they are good.) When I went to the store, however, I spied rhubarb. I hadn't seen rhubarb for so long and instantly I was transported to my grandparent's farm house kitchen table and the rhubarb pies my grandmother made every Sunday. I didn't want to abandon the blackberries, so I ended up making two pies. This one and this one. The rhubarb pies of my childhood did not include strawberries, but strawberries were showing up in every recipe I ran across, so I decided to include them.

It turns out that two pies were not too many. The littlest of us cried, "Pie! Pie!" several times after dinner, which we ate on my parents' back porch. Afterwards, my dad and Ava played a game of chess. Her dad has been teaching her how to play and she's very serious about it.

Although it's customary to give fathers the gifts on Father's Day, as we were leaving my father gifted us with a chair. It's not just any chair. It is a family story. It is a chair that my dad made when he was in college. The assignment was to design a chair, make a small model, then make the chair by hand.

Wherever my paternal grandparents have lived -- house, trailer, apartment -- the chair has been in their home. Recently, my grandmother moved from her apartment to a nursing home and she couldn't keep the chair so she sent it home with my dad who put it out in his office, where he didn't really have room for it. Tracy and I love the chair, so he gave it to us.

The cushions have been reupholstered several times already, so we plan on covering them with snazzy new fabric. I'm thinking leopard print but Tracy is not so much thinking that.

The interesting thing about the chair is how well it fits with the rest of our furniture. It's interesting because no one else in our family shares our particular taste. It's as if my dad made the chair just for us, only years before we were born.

Zoo trip

This morning I received a surprise invitation to go with Chloe and the girls to the zoo. I was honored to accept the invitation, of course, going on adventures with the girls being one of my favorite things.

It is true that I have conflicted feelings about zoos. I don't like the premise that we somehow have dominion over animals, that's it's somehow okay to take them from their natural habitats, put them in cages, then gawk and stare and point at them. (I tried to ask them telepathically if it was all right to photograph them.) The deep sadness in the eyes of the primates is difficult to bear. Even though I'm glad that the animals in the zoos won't be hunted or poached, will receive medical care, and ample food, I think their hearts must long to be in the wild. 

And yet, when zoos are done right, they are almost like churches to me. To be able to look at a tiger or a lion, I consider a great gift.

I do think it's a good thing for people to have exposure to live animals that they may never have opportunity to see were it not for zoos. I hope that this exposure leads to compassion and understanding. And despite my zoo feelings, the Louisville Zoo is a very nice one. The people are mostly kept at a distance and the animals have space and privacy. The landscaping is beautiful. There are trains and there is a carousel. 

We saw beautiful, majestic animals today. We communed with elephants  

and maned wolves and giraffes

   

and Ava's favorite animals -- flamingos.  

We also got to pet goats and I don't know if I've ever mentioned this before but I just love goats. If we ever live on a farm, I definitely want some goats. The goats we sat with today were serene and sweet.

We had a good, good day, the four of us. I'm so grateful to be given opportunities like these -- to be able to experience life with my nieces and go on adventures together. Today, as always, I was struck by what a great mother my sister in law is -- how she is always so fair and even-tempered and kind, how she is always flexible with her eyes cast both at the big picture and the small details.  I was also struck today by how much the girls love and admire one another, how Ava takes care of Emme and includes her in her fun. I'm lucky, lucky just to know them, let alone be related to them.

Ten year toast

Last night my family attended Ava's dance recital. It was her second year as a dancer and while the scene on stage may have seemed chaotic to the untrained eye, it was clear to those of us who watched last year's performance that much progress had been made.

I couldn't be prouder of Ava if she were my own child. (Not just at dance recitals, but all the time.) Watching her tap and sway I felt a sweeping love for her that almost lifted me off of my seat. Tracy asked Ava if she's nervous when she dances. She said only for a little bit, when the lights are off and she's walking on to the dark stage.

Afterwards, seated in Graeters (which was strangely packed for a Thursday night), two hours past Emme's bedtime, with our cones and cups, Ava's hair in a bun, someone pointed out that ten years prior we were enjoying a rehearsal dinner in my parents' backyard.

"Our desserts," Chloe told Ava, "were shaped like swans."

I watched Ava's eyes as she thought about this, a time before she was born.

Like the girls, Tracy hadn't yet made is way into our family. Close friends were in attendance, though, and the yard was aglow with tiny lights and well wishes. My brother and I tease my mom that her backyard parties (which are rare, but elegant) remind us of the Great Gatsby. That night was Gatsbyish. My mother and I had planned for weeks to float flower-shaped candles in the pool. With the guests set to arrive, we got our candles out, anticipating the romance of light flickering on water. My dad suggested we float the candles in aluminum pie pans but we soundly rejected that suggestion, calling it tacky. Aluminum was not a part of our vision. We lit the candles and set them afloat. It was only a few minutes later that someone suggested the pool might be on fire. Drawn by the filter, the candles had congregated at the sides of the pool and caught the liner ablaze. Quickly, my dad was on hand with a stack of aluminum pie pans.

Chad's best man gave a moving toast. We all laughed, a lot. Rehearsal dinners are such a good part of a wedding. Everyone is relaxed, but the air is charged with the energy of anticipation.

 

The next day I cried, a lot. I wasn't sad, but I was moved by the gravity of the moment.  

I was grateful (as I am now) that Chad and Chloe had found one another. 

After the reception, as we rained rose petals on the bride and groom, they ran toward their car, toward a future they could not see. They ran, trusting, into love.

 

Tonight I raise an invisible toast to my brother and sister-in-law in celebration of the tenth anniversary of their wedding.

After brunch

Windy, rainy Sunday afternoon, Hippies on tv, Woody and I are cuddled up on the couch. The house is clean and we're not worried about doing anything. He had to go out at 2:30 this morning and I never did get back to sleep all the way, so we're tired and happy to be sitting still (or, in his case, stretched out sleeping.)
Yesterday was my grandmother's birthday, so my family had a dinner last night.

Today, Tracy and I made a Mother's Day brunch for my mom and sister in law and family. We had donut holes and pimento cheese biscuits and fruit and hash brown casserole. They rolled in from the church they all attend, where a downed tree had knocked out their power and blocked their usual route home, and we ate food and drank coffees and teas and listened to music.

My original idea for this afternoon involved planting, but the weather has brought me the gift of rest and in a couple of hours, brunch leftovers will provide dinner.
Here's to mothers of all kinds, shapes and sizes -- the ones with children and the ones without. I hope your afternoons are just as pleasurable.

Gettin' back to where I once belonged

Since the first time I met Tracy's friend Jeff, I've wanted to go hear his band (I feel compelled to mention that as much as I deeply, deeply love the John Hughes contributions to film, when I watch Sixteen Candles as an adult, I am stunned by the character of Long Duk Dong, which has to be one of the most offensive presentations of Asian stereotype ever. This is just an aside, and I'm certainly not blaming the band for that...so, anyway.) I've wanted to hear them for a long time. First of all, I just really like Jeff a lot and second of all, they are an 80's cover band. They are, in fact, Lexington's premiere 80's band.
They play frequently at an Irish bar that's near our house and I routinely check their website to see when they're playing and I suggest that we go, but then we do whatever else we have to do and by the time 9 p.m. rolls around, we are either too exhausted or already wearing pajamas or actually in bed. Tracy doesn't drink at all and I drink alcohol about three times a year, so we just don't find ourselves in bars very often (even though I like bars for the darkness, the neon signs, the appetizers and the people watching.)
But last night, we went on a date.
Chad and Chloe graciously offered to take us out to thank us for a recent babysitting gig and even though we feel no thanks are necessary for that, and even though we really wanted to pay our own way, we were thrilled to go out as adults and have a time together. We knew we would go to Nagasaki. (Yes, I know that fish are not vegetables. The fact that I have allowed a little bit of fish back into my diet is the subject of another post) then we would do something fun like Karaoke or bowling or some such thing. So, of course, I checked the Long Duk Dong schedule, and they were playing.
Last night we headed out to Nagasaki and had a great meal.

(Although, I didn't pay attention to what I was doing and ordered up a bunch of expensive rolls. Sorry, Chad and Chloe), then, we actually did a little grocery shopping. I'm not lying. We needed some essentials so we stopped by Fresh Market and got them. Then, we went to O'Neill's. The timing was actually perfect. We got there just before the band was set to go on. The place was pretty well packed, but we found a table. The bartender immediately brought us a sample shot of Ale8 and Knobb Creek slushie. Since, like Tracy, my brother doesn't drink, and my sister in law doesn't do bourbon, I was the only taker. I didn't even drink all of it (and it was a shot), but that wasn't because it didn't taste delicious. This is all just to say that we aren't your typical partiers.
But, we sure did have fun.

The show began with 80's videos - some that I'd forgotten about but love like the Eurythmics Here Comes the Rain Again-and that immediately lulled me into an 80's reverie that made me feel really weird in a really good way. Then the band came on with a light show and they were so good. The thing that makes them so good is that they are a great band. They aren't getting by on a gimmick. They are seriously good musicians and can genuinely deliver the songs they play and the songs they play are - you know - the songs that people of a certain age remember in a certain way.
As Chloe put it, "I feel like I'm in my bathroom, there's a few inches of snow on the ground, and I'm hot rolling my bangs."
Exactly.
The crowd was a mix of people who were in their twenties during the 80's, people who were in their teens during the 80's, and people who were little bitty babies during the 80's, and we all grooved on the 80's vibe, remembering our memories and singing along. As I watched the dancing that was going on next to the stage, I saw for the first time in a long time, dancing that I know how to do. You know, high school dance dancing. I can't express how happy that made me. It was good, good stuff.
We left by 11 so that Chad and Chloe could relieve their sitter, so Tracy and I were actually home and in bed at a reasonable hour.
Next time, I'm going early, and getting a table up front.

We don't get it

Warning: This post is going to make me sound cranky and out of touch. Maybe I can offset that a bit by telling you that I don’t like censorship. If you ask me, TV after 8 p.m. is fair game. If I’m downloading a song and there’s a clean and explicit version, I download the explicit version just on principle.
Personally, I’m hyper sensitive to violence and anguish so I don’t watch tv shows or movies that are excessively violent or pessimistic, that include scenes of torture or rape, or anything where something bad is going to happen to a child or an animal, but I feel it’s my responsibility as a viewer to turn off the things I don’t want to see. I don’t think it’s anyone else’s responsibility to make television, or the movie screen, a happy place for me.
I think movie ratings can be a huge detriment to film makers and I’d like to see a move toward a less restrictive more informative system. I can pretty much tell from previews and marketing whether or not a movie has too much of what I don’t want to be exposed to and I sort of resent the idea that some governing body somewhere is deciding what’s appropriate for a 13 year old and what isn’t. If I had children, for instance, I’d be way more concerned about their exposure to the many varieties of cloaked and overt sexism and racism that run rampant through the media than I would be nudity or language.
So now that you know where I stand on things, here comes the cranky part.
My eldest niece, who is four, is familiar with the book Horton Hears a Who! and likes it. My grandmother, who discovered Dr. Seuss through the nieces, is familiar with the book and loves it. A couple of weekends ago, we decided a family outing to the movie theater to see the Horton movie would be big fun. Ava was excited to go with us and we were excited to take her and we had the nicest time in the car just chatting and being together and basking in the sweet wonderfulness that is “four.” Four is a beautiful age, and Ava is a fantastic one. Her wisdom and compassion never fail to astonish me. She’s always ready with a compliment. (If you’ve never sat down next to your four year old niece and had her say, “Wow, you smell nice,” then you really haven’t lived.)
So, we planned our food purchases (popcorn, Twizzlers, gummi bears) and bought our tickets. Ava asked if she could sit in my lap, and I gladly obliged. The previews had already started by the time we sat down and the first one was for the new Pixar movie. It included one rather major gun blast and a lot of what I think of as generalized fear. I felt uncomfortable knowing that Ava was seeing it because I didn’t want her to feel uncomfortable, the way it was making me feel uncomfortable. The next was for Speed Racer. It was loud and sort of aggressive and there was some sexual innuendo, but nothing too offensive. The next one was for an animated movie, Kung Fu Panda. The entire trailer involved kicking and punching, and not just in a martial arts context, but worse than that, the characters were really awful to each other. They were just mean and the jokes all seemed to be centered around the main character getting hurt. The next preview, for Ice Age 3, was more of the same and ended with a frightening, roaring dinosaur.
Finally, the movie started and I was relieved that the previews were over. I know the story of Horton, but I also know the tone of Seuss. Surely, I thought, the movie would be appropriate for a four year old.
But I was soon disappointed.
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer Carina Chocano said it very well:

...it tries too hard to act cool around the other animated movies, which, for some reason, still swear by the sardonic, pop culture-laden, celebrity-voiced, sitcom-cadenced corporate-speak that keeps trying to pass as humor. When in this mode, "Horton Hears a Who!" compulsively undermines its own message of dedication, respect and perseverance. "An elephant's faithful one-hundred percent," Horton says at one point. Then he lowers his eyelids wearily, puts on a funny voice and drawls, "That's my co-o-de. My mot-to. . . . " So much for sincerity.

There were moments of Horton that were funny and moments that were magical-looking, but overall the tone was harsh and sort of mean. I would have noticed it, but perhaps not cared as much if Ava had not been sitting on my lap, but since she was, each pointed jab, each slap of pain, each episode of nasty name calling stuck my straight in the heart.

When the black-bottomed eagle Vlad entered the picture, it was all too much for Ava. Too dark. Too angry. She suggested that we leave, so we did.
That input, seeing all of that content that's marketing for children, made me think.
The trailers we saw, you could certainly argue, are meant for older children, but Horton Hears a Who!, it seems to me, ought to be just right for a four year old. Maybe Ava and I are in a minority. In fact, I suspect that we are, but we don't think it’s funny to be cruel. We don't think it’s funny when sympathetic characters are mocked and harmed. We don't think that extreme peril is the only story there is, or that characters need to be either immensely “good” or immensely “bad.”
In the car, Ava said, “Maybe when I’m more growed up, I can see movies like that.”
It was exquisitely heartbreaking. I hope not, I thought. I hope you always have the sensibility that you have now. I hope your heart is always just as out of step with that sort of thing as it is in this moment.
“I’m as growed up as you can get,” my grandmother said, “and I didn’t like it either.” Then, she added, “You should always say what you think, Ava. You don’t have to like something just because other people like it.”
And that, really, is the truth about our day. It was a good outing even though we didn’t like the movie. We enjoyed being together and we went to Krispy Kreme and watched donuts being made

and ate donuts and everything was fine. So maybe you could say that Horton Hears a Who! just wasn’t the movie for us, but the experience made me think.
I've never been one to blame "the media" for things, but I had to wonder as I watched the animals in Kung Fu Panda casually punching one another in the stomach, tossing out phrases like, "you suck," how much all this mildly violent, sarcastic storytelling is sinking into young minds and bodies and relationships, informing those playground moments that seemingly come out of nowhere. Maybe we are, in subtle and not so subtle ways, guiding our children down a path of big-man-on-top, winner-takes-all, nastiness in the name of entertainment and that makes me sad.
Ava and I are waiting for a Charlie and Lola movie.

A weekend with the force

It's been a strange sort of weekend around here - one where things happen and time passes but it seems like there's no time, or that everything is happening quickly.
On Saturday, I did my first Reiki healing session for another person and I was honored that the other person was my own beloved. It was a pleasant, relaxing experience for both of us and I'm looking forward to continuing a practice of healing with him. (Maybe you can convince him to guest blog and tell you about it.) Other than that, it seems the whole day was consumed with cake baking and birthday partying. That can't be true, but if I did something else, I can't remember what it was.
Tracy and I spent this morning with the girls, then we came home and dealt with flood-damaged belongings for a couple of hours. This involved sorting through wet, ruined, mildewed things, piling them into garbage bags and carrying the bags up the rickety basement steps (I didn't do that part). When we'd had enough of that, Tracy helped me do my taxes (I only had a couple of small breakdowns), I completed some other required tasks, and here we are. Day over.
Of course all there is to it is never really all there is to it.
This weekend has also been punctuated by the original Star Wars trilogy - A New Hope on Friday night, The Empire Strikes Back last night, Return of the Jedi tonight. (My method of watching Star Wars is to ask Tracy a lot of questions - "Who is the Emperor? That face that sometimes talks to Darth Vader?", "Why does Darth Vader wear the mask?", "How did Luke and Leia get separated in the first place?", "Did that look like Fraggle Rock to you?", "Were the Star Wars movies based on books or are the books based on the movies?", "How much of the Star Wars movies do you think George Lucas had in his head before he made the first one?", "Do all Jedis disappear like that when they die, or just masters?","Did that green woman get eaten?", "What did Yoda just say?" That sort of thing.)
Even though I don't particularly like movies about wars and space and all that good vs. evil jazz, I've found that I like watching these because they're tied to my childhood in a particular way and I like revisiting that territory, especially with Tracy (perhaps exclusively with Tracy) and that realization leads me to the other thing about this weekend.
Because he knows I'm working on my big genealogy project (I want to know everything about everyone I'm related to in all directions of time), my dad let me borrow his mother's family bible for a few days so that can scan things and copy lists of names and dates. My grandmother has kept the family record in this bible - births, deaths, marriages. It's filled with newspaper clippings, photographs, florist's cards - history.

It's an incredible thing to turn the pages and know there's so much information there and mostly information that I can't see, but can only feel. I'm grateful to have a few days with it and honor my connection to the flow of time.