Ford is practicing basic board maneuvers. He circumnavigates the driveway in rough squares of measured effort, propelling himself faster each time. His legs are slightly bent and his form conveys assurance and ease, but his arms carry some tension. They coil upwards toward lifted shoulders, bearing fear’s weight in two invisible buckets. All the while, joy and satisfaction beams through his proud, young face.

Chas soars above the ground, speeding faster than the sound of his rolling bearnings. He clicks over twigs in the driveway, sometimes rolling over the board as it stops dead beneath him. He laughs, I laugh. His palms are black from asphalt soot and his nubby toes are fearlessly worn smooth and black, too. I can hear him acting out an action scene, his voice trails behind him as he flies across the blacktop, exaggerated cries of help and pleas for mercy, ending with a thud as he slams into the woodpile, throwing himself in a heap onto the ground. He lies spread-eagle beside his skateboard, looking up into the walnut boughs above him, swaying in the hot afternoon breeze.

After a three minute meditation, watching the leaves flutter and sway, he mounts his hovercraft and soars back across the driveway, his own little cosmos

to flail himself into the jasmine, in another utterly romantic gesture of bravado. His heart just couldn’t beat any louder.

Ford and I laugh again. We follow no particular path, only minding not to run in to each other. Sometimes we glide just so close, knock knuckles, smile again. There is no two o’clock school traffic on our street to mark our passage through the afternoon. Chas is in his own world but he sometimes shows us where he’s been. Sometimes he shows us where he’s going. And then, like us, you can catch him just gelling with the afternoon. At that moment you know he’s off any agenda and he’s just somewhere in the middle of a summer afternoon in the driveway.

It rained last night, throughout the night and into the morning, until the sun poked through the snivelling stratus and proclaimed that it was no longer a time of grieving. So the rain packed up and moved eastward, I’m told. And in its wake, the starlings came back out of hiding among the ivy boughs, and the quail promenaded atop the dewy lawn, properly.

For the past three weeks we have had occasional rains, and each time the pitter pattering begins above our heads on this old roof, we tell ourselves, “This is the last rain of the season.” That was the last rain of the season.

Speaking of proper, this is a blog where I am obliged to to log a chronicle of events, and I missed the holy weekend of Easter. I’ve been called on this, so let me indulge you people on what you missed, heretofore two weeks.

Alis threw Seth an Easter rager. Thirty-odd toddlers turned every stone and log looking for eggs and chocolate on the Whitman commons that straddle Skyline ridge. She spent the week beforehand sewing fleece easter bunnies and dying eggs in pots of boiled beets and onionskins and cabbageleaves. On other nights, she wrapped heirloom seeds in tulle and tied them to colorful tongue depressors, and when she was busy wrapping little pots of violas and wheatgrass with tissue paper and hand-painted yarn, she enlisted friends to string wooden beaded bracelets into the wee hours or, as in my case, stand in her kitchen, slackjawed and dumbfounded, to gawk at all the hard work she really put into this fete while she dyed yet more gorgeous eggs.

Which is all to say that my boys cared neither here nor there about any of this, on that particular day, the day of the hunt, as they poked and prodded through the Lamb’s Ears and Lilies until they found all forms of chocolate, but that we girls, and by that I mean me( because I was trying not to notice my younger competition) secretly dashed through the garden like a pixie, collecting shiny glass beads and seed packets, purple-and-orange violas and wheatgrass pots, slipping them inconspicuously into Chas’ easter basket while he gorged on his gold, his precious chocolate. Occasionally I’d urge him to pick up a seed packet that I’d found, and he’d probe the entire area first for chocolate, certain that I had scouted for nothing other, and finally reach for the only thing hidden in the foliage, which was indeed the seed packet and which he indeed picked up. For me!

And so, with seeds to plant, I’m faced by the bare patches of three quarterempty flowerbeds, spared just for such purpose, and the blank face of a front and back yard, freshly plowed by a thirty year-old and rusting tractor with a likewise rusted and ringing plow, just days ago before the rain fell. I see mounds upon which to plant two to three ppumpkins seeds apiece. Give or take a melon.

I have tenacious, hard callouses on my hands from three weekends ago, when we spent the rest of Easter weekend in Pebble Beach, playing drunk barefoot tennis doubles into the black of night. I’m not sure how I didn’t bleed through my feet by bedfall, on those heavy, luxurious sheets; on the contrary, my feet tingled as if they’d been freshly shorn of three old inches of thick hide. Perhaps they were?. Indeed, the rest of me felt that idyllic; it’s fun having rich friends with third homes nestled in the surreal beauty of California’s monterrey bay peninsula. We drove home along the coastal highway bisecting the prim acres of golfing lawn and the rugged, emerald blue jumble of ocean and guano-stained rock and the white froth of my amazement. Acres upon acres of blooming artichoke and fruiting strawberries, laborers scattered along the endless rows that stretched inland, hunched over the produce like props. Surreal produce signs with enormous specimens that seemed to shine from the light of the sun itself, which glared down sternly upon us as we shook off the two day hangover that only an irresponsible weekend in someone else’s mansion in someone else’s neighborhood could bring.

With little difference to the stiff neck I felt yesterday morning, I drove the kids down to the beach. All the elation that nearly winded me on the drive down to Half Moon Bay fizzled once I started lifting Chas out of deep tide pools and stretching to capture fossils embedded in the rocks. I remember the swirling panorama of beached seals and hungry surf, thinking, This is a very bad place to be with a stiff neck and two exploring preschoolers.

So I let both of the kids clamber their way back to the beach on their own (Chas is getting surprisingly nimble) and then rested in the tent while they bouldered and threw rocks at the incoming tide. This overexposed shot is taken from my little infirmary. I like the way it captures the heat, unforgiving light and pain (although I might be the only one to look at this picture and feel it). It also has a nice retro tint. What’s your impression? I’m obliged to use these flickr tools for SPC’s current challenge but I’m not sure I’d use these tools in my own. It lacks authenticity. Not sure I like that, although it has a home somewhere.

My advice to anyone waking up in the morning with a stiff neck is to traction yourself to a board for the rest of the day and hook yourself up to an IV and catheter. Don’t drive a long, winding road to the beach, set up a tent, wrangle children across the rocks at low tide and then press reverse. That was a recipe for disaster. Damon says it wouldn’t matter; that the muscle would spaz no matter what.
I wonder if he’s right.

If you want to learn more about online photoediting tools , check out a gallery exhibiting some at SPC.

Despite my occasional irritations with way the boys continue to remain so close by my side, there are upsides to their lingering dependence on me. I can still redirect muddles between them by simply leaving the room, a perfect curveball. This morning, I quelled an escalating feud between them in the living room, one I was almost ready to fuel with my own frustration, by halting mid-step, turning round and retreating to the mudroom, where I silently baffled them as I put on my socks and boots and headed out into the yard. They watched me from the stoop as I opened the shed door, near the garage, and began excavating hoes, cultivators and shovels from an ethereal matrix of dusty cobwebs, spreading them like battle artillery, single-file, to rest along a low-lying branch. And within minutes, both were eagerly digging into the understory of a giant oak tree in the front yard, heaving shovelsful of composted peat into random piles around me.

Chas soon began to look for earthworms. Crouching over the dugout, in the space I’d carved beneath the tree, he picked fat glossy creepers between his fingers and carried them around the yard, through the house for a little while, taking them on a helpless tour of distraction before returning to my side. As if he’d forgotten it was still in his hand, Chas would ask to take another bath (perhaps his third?), doe-eyed and head tilted, and I’d look down at his hand to find another gleaming, limp, pinched annelid. “I wanna put him in the bathtub,” he’d say, quite matter-of-factly. And I’d have to disagree, smiling apologetically, as I turned the compost in the drizzling rain.

It took me a half hour to post my last entry because Ford was singing really loud downstairs in the garage with Damon and I kept turning an ear down the hallway and laughing. I wish I were this uninhibited:

If It’s Nothing

On Saturday morning, we rediscovered our old college schedule of getting up early and hauling ass to class, except this time we went to Elgin for a Sausage Run. I loved the morning drive, creeping out of night across the hills, still blanketed in fog. It’s so breathtaking, this yawn of daybreak. I usually sleep through it, as do my children; we are a family that wakes up twenty minutes before school starts, and somehow this works for us. But to see what I’ve been missing makes me want to curb my nocturnal habits. Passing by our neighbors along the road, little glowing windows inside each shadowed house reminds me of forgotten habits: frosty morning jogs along Balckburn avenue in Providence, cats on the prowl in driveways that I pass, concert flyers waving on telephone poles, and showering before breakfast; the opposite sequence to my current routine, a thousand miles south.

Ford, quietly pouting in the center of the universe, was disappointed that the race didn’t include him. So we pulled back, letting him sprint every now and then through the old town streets and across train tracks. I even gave him my number, and trailed behind him through the finish line. I want to be the family that runs together. It’s a lifelong sport. And my hip was killing me so this made good pretense. He ate it up.

A proper fun run, this race divvied up a kegger at the finish line along with steaming pork sausage (note: the best in Texas) and while I dislike eating pork, I couldn’t resist pints of beer and hot sausage to follow the trail of woodsmoke that carried me from start to finish along the uninspired smalltown route. Even better: a bounce house for the squirts to decompress while we shotgunned refreshments.

Ford is really, really into circuit boards. Sadly, I’m not. But his father steps up to the plate in my stead. When I walked outside before dinner, he and the boys were elbow-deep in chalk dust, reviewing their designs. So pervasive is the circuitboard concept in his everyday speech that I’m unsure where to begin elaborating on this current fascination. (oh, I just did a funny, did you get that? Because I just did) And, seeing as I’ve already had a day chock-full of the stuff, I must admit that I really don’t want to discuss it any further. Maybe another day. Or maybe I can transcribe something from the engineering mini, himself?…

At any rate, I thought the grandparents would really love to see some of Ford’s creations and I wanted to mention that I, for my part, am thrilled that he’s finally beginning to enjoy drawing and sketching more than he used to. This is so important to me, that he always feels comfortable letting go with paint or pen, whatever medium. You see, for a long time he seemed to have little interest in this kind of activity, preferring to flip through books or pretend he was blowing things up. I tried never to push it, while always having accessible materials. Somwtimes I’d try getting him to work through a freeform “assignment” but it still didn’t break any barriers (of course, knowing me, you’ll understand that I’m certain it only made them!) I think that his seeing me spend more time at the desk doing my own work (which has been more frequent lately, as well) may have something to do with his increased comfort in expressing himself on paper.
Whatever. This just made me smile.

As it turns out, Ford hates school. He dreads it like a fat set of immunizations, asking every night whether the next day is a school day, telling me that he’s already feeling sick; he asks me every morning if it’s a school day, and tells me that he’s not going to school; he runs away from the classroom on some mornings, bolting back towards the car. This is a lot to pay, on top of tuition, for the three hours each morning that he is in “school.” In his defense, Ford says he’s “bored,” and that he doesn’t like the teacher, and the schoolroom “sucks,” along with the toys.nThey, apparently, “really suck.” Straight from the horse’s mouth, four going on fourteen.

And I just don’t know what to do about it. I thought this would do him a world of good. After all, I loved my Montessori years: feeding the animals, teaching myself to ride a bike, learning about different countries and fiedltripping to cotton gins and post offices. In fact, the only school years I like to reflect on are those freeform, user-paced, friendly three foot-high days. Really, my heart is in unschooling him and raising him on experience and one-on-one “lessons.” But we aren’t able to freewheel it around the globe for years at a time, immersing ourselves in the daily rhythms of various cultures, learning to make our rope hammocks in Bali, build fishing boats in New Zealand and forge our own stainless steel toenail trimmers in Germany. Who has that kind of independent wealth? If you’re in this group, don’t bother raising your hand because it’s already pressing my angry buttons.

I also don’t know whether Ford is telling me the whole truth. When I ask him,
“Ford, what did you guys do in circle time, you know, right after I dropped you off?”
“We didn’t do anything. We just sat there and stared at the walls.” Is his immediate and nonchalant reply. And when I asked him about the red bump on his noggin, he told me he got hit with a rock, “and no teacher noticed. Nobody cared.” Yeah. And when I asked him whom he sat with at lunch, on the second day of school, he replied: “Nobody. I didn’t sit next to anybody. Nobody cared about me.” Uh, huh. He follows with this raised eyebrow, sideways-glance. It looks like this: C’mon, Mom. Buy it! I’m so convincing! And you’re soooooo gullible!
For the record, I sat in today and watched the little rugrat in circle time. Lo! He did sit and stare at the wall. Complete disinterest! And I’m beginning to see why. He’s the eldest in his class, eccentrically focused on resistors, capacitors, stratacone volcanoes and molecules. He could care less about “learning to roll a rug” (which, according to Ford, he has practiced in circle time three days in the past week) and “how to walk in a line” (today’s lesson—something I thought he’d learn if he ever entered public school).

So, I’m in a conundrum about what to do with him. I’m a neurotic, borderline schizophrenic parent who plays devils advocate with herself and her decisions. I can’t decide what’s best for Ford. I think I’m deciding for my own reasons, at this time, since those few morning hours are well-spent laughing uninterrupted with Chas, helping him learn to pour rice down a funnel and into empty cups, feeding the chickens, reading books and brushing little teeth. I like this time alone with him. But the situation is not ideal for all of us, and I’m left feeling guilty at the end of the day that I just can’t figure out what’s best for my child. After all, isn’t this really my job? I can’t seem to get the hang of parenthood; it constantly throws me curveballs.

I wonder, staring across the house while I do dishes: how do some parents exhibit such
conviction in their decisions? What makes me so neurotic? Is it all a matter of self-esteem, for my part, or is it just pigheaded perfectionism? With the huge parent market out there, it seems that keywords such as “THOSE CRITICAL FIRST YEARS” and “HOW TO BUILD YOUR BABY’S BRAIN” and “DON’T YOU WANT WHAT’S BEST FOR YOUR BABY?” have anchored in my brain, flailing wildly around the canyons of doubt, to echo, “DON’T FUCK THEM UP! IT’S ALL UP TO YOU! DON’T FUCK THEM UP!” Even though my teeny rational brain, tucked away in my frontal lobe somewhere in a fold, is meanwhile repeating the mantra in a soft whisper, “It’s not up to you, how the kids turn out. I mean, it’s your job to give them security and love, but they will evolve for themselves out of experience—it’s not what you hand them, it’s how they process what they’ve got to work with.” Or something like that. It’s hard to tell, because I can’t really hear it under all that screaming.

So…I guess the pivotal part of my job becomes clearer amid the conflict: staying sane.

Ford recognized our car as it idled in the parking lot. He raced towards me, half-smiling with uncertainty– was I was in the car? or not? But when I arose from the car, his expression relaxed into a joyful open smile, his stride lengthened, and this all released with a spring the bundled cords of my anxiety. He was happy!!! He rmet me at the fence, and I hugged him, holding him snug even in the hundred-degree heat. Behind him: two tentative little girls. One came forward and tapped my arm, with eyes on Ford, and asked me if it were okay for her to kiss him before he left school. I didn’t give Ford a chance to answer for himself; I was too amused with the cuteness. Another girl stood patiently in line behind her for a kiss, I think. But Ford squirmed out of all this loveliness and bolted towards the gate.

Getting in to the car, he told me this was “the best school ever” and asked to return tomorrow. And then began to eat the peanut butter and jelly sandwich he’d forgotten to eat when he was at lunch.
…and there’s a whole hour of writing I’d love to indulge myself in, to sort of respond to all of this on my own time. But I’m about to pass out. How did I ever find the time to write, months ago? Where is my time going? There’s a black hole in my schedule…