The chicks are hardy in the heat. This has been the hottest week this summer and they’ve spent the whole time outdoors in their new tractor. I’ll return home at noon from the gym, walk barefoot to the edge of the deck, and peek down on them. Looking back at me are three chicks that are always an ounce heavier, more feathered and panting with open mouths. Every few hours I give them cooler, fresher water. I love the way they peep quietly as I move about, rinsing and rearranging.

We’ve been terrestrial lately, despite the heat outside, tending droopy plants, cultivating the soil, digging. We have a few good books to inspire more curiosity and garden-play: Diary of a Worm, by Doreen Cronin, and Thumbelina, by Hans Christian Anderson. Ford digs Thumbelina. Yak yak. We haven’t yet made it to Microcosmos yet. Then, of course, we have all the nonfiction we could need at home. The huge sci/nature nonfiction library in our bedroom: that would be my fault.

This afternoon, Ford and Chas helped me pin together a 3x4ish compost bin out of some remaining galvanized builder’s cloth. Once we’d finished, they helped me rake leaves and pile them into the compost bin. Somtimes they’d run through the piles and the lawn would look no different than it had before I’d organized the chaos, and a fuse would blow in my brain, but I’ve been more mindful of my wiring today. I’ll have to write more about that later, about what it’s like lately, ramming horns all day with the four year-old rebel. But right now I’m slipping like mercury through planks of burnout. And I’m falling asleep. But god, he has his Hallmark moments, too:

On the drive home, as the kids fought over who would hold the chicken box on his lap, I began to doubt the success of the kids with the chicks. I figured it was a good idea I’d arbitrarily chose three versus two chicks: one would certainly meet its fate under one of the boys, and being left with two chicks is far better than being left with one.

But I may be wrong. In fact, the prognosis is GOOD. I watched them with a smile all day long, as they gently trod around the garden, the chicks weaving in and out of their footpath. They encouraged us outdoors the entire day, and I found time to rearrange the rosemary and trim the papyrus, harvest parsley bolts and this and that. Ford mentioned “I never knew there were SO MANY BUGS in our yard!” because the chicks: they never stopped harvesting them, too.

Ford is, to my surprise, the new mother hen. And he’s a natural. To watch him cradle the chicks, or sprawl across the grass while the chicks scramble over him, for hours at a time, and compare this sight to the same child in a playdate full of little boys: one would never suspect the two images belonged to the one Ford. But it’s true. He’s come into his new role with all the fever of a new mother. Periodically, I’d have to come outside and feed him a yogurt or a half-sandwich because he was so preoccupied with shepherding the chicks.

But, as it turns out, they follow Ford everywhere; there’s no need to chase them down. They believe that Ford is the mama hen and will run up to his feet, peep imploringly with pinched eyes, and all he has to do is pick them up before they drop their heads on a thumb and fall asleep. Ford looked up at me after his pullet, Abby, fell asleep this way. He had reddish purple circles under his eyes, his face flush with afternoon sweat, dry grass dangling from his knees. “Don’t you just love the baby chicks? I’m not going to let anything happen to them.”

He is drinking water from a glass right now, pausing after each sip to raise his chin to the ceiling and gulp it down, just as he’s seen the chicks do when they drink from their shiny metal tray. He licks his lips and smiles, and I wink back. As I read him a new book at bedtime, he reaches over and pecks at my arm with his fingers. He’s just so impressed with his new brood. For fun, I paint little glittery dots on his finger- and toenails, and we’ll wait to see how the chicks respond tomorrow. But the young Mama Hen needs to go to sleep. And so do I. Tomorrow we build the coop!

There’s a Storm Trooper maintaining his aquatic fleet.
Waiting for Chas to finish napping so we can go out to play. These short, quiet little projects are sweet fillers in a day jammed with chaos, amped-up play and an onslaught of noise.

On bikes, we sailed past the footed caravan of quilts and igloos into Zilker park, where the symphony began playing William Tell overture. Chas clapped, mimicking the shiny brass cymbals on stage before him. When it began to rain, a crowd of families followed us under the Riverside bridge, and as we waited for the lighting to pass, floodlights illuminated wet spiderwebs along the handrails and the smoke from the cannon drifted through drizzle. A religious fanatic brayed like a jackass through a megaphone, but we escaped that, too, once the thunder abated: across the meadow we found the perfect place for firework-watching, and I stood grinning and wet in the rain as I watched Ford and Chas gape at the spectacular display. And when it was over, Ford was left completely devastated, sunken and slouching in disbelief. How could it ever end?! How dare they?! HIs reaction was so cute I could hardly stand it.

Ford doesn’t share my love of painting, but he is creative in other ways. Here is an arrangement he called me to see, the creation of which he narrated for five minutes to an imaginary audience. When he was finished, he held it in place and sat back, stratching his arm, so that he could get a different perspective on the piece. I told him that it was important to take a picture of it, so that he could look back and appreciate it after he did the inevitable: take a sip, then throw it across the room, pretending that it was a spaceship with attached spacecpod sailing through space.

I made this aluminum starfish at RISD when we were told to design a toy. I’d just returned from a weekend at Narragannsett, where I’d found a scattering of beached brown sea stars. Inspired by the way they clung to my hands (I’d never before felt one) and their bumpy texture, I immediatedly brainstormed a way to recreate one (or a scattering of them). And because I couldn’t get enough of the oily sharp smell of metalshop in winter, I HAD to make one out of aluminum. My favorite memories from school there are from this project.

And what a pang I felt when I looked up this morning to find Ford playing with it! He was whirring and buzzing it all over the house, pretending it was an omidriod robot, for HOURS. It was so rad. I almost cried.

Our seventh morning in the hot natatorium. I sat in a white plastic chair above Ford, my sundress sticking to my legs while beads of sweat trickling down my cheeks. Meanwhile, naked with resurfaced anxiety, Ford threw pleas of desperation at me through chattering teeth and purple lips. And I could immediately identify with this feeling of his. I disappeared into my mind, where an abysmally blue open ocean dropped beneath me. I remembered looking down beyond my suspended feet at a shipwreck, one hundred feet below. I remember the way panic feels in a racing heart, chattering teeth, trembling body , and a wild shallow breath that I couldn’t uncoil.

I coached him at breakfast, an hour before class. He bent my positive vibes backwards and refused to go. Today I decided not to talk so much, but to firmly remind him of the challenges and the fact that he was, indeed, going to face them. Still, there he was in the water, panicking.

One boy floated on his back, waiting for his turn to swim in the deep water. He spat a stream of water towards the ceiling. The girl beside him made ape calls to an elderly man running in the next lane. The third girl silently stared at Ford. And Ford, for his part, was negotiating as best he could in a frenzied squeal: “Coach Heather? Coach Heather? I’m scared! I want to go to the little-deep side! Please can we go to the little-deep side?”

I wanted to have magic hands to rest on his shoulder and ease his fright. Instead, the best I could do was clench my fists and shove out my thumbs, pinning my grin from one ear to the next, shouting “That was even better than the last time! Way to go!” It was agonizing for me to watch him worry, though I knew his pain, in the face of all my applaud. As if I owned part of the problem. Did I do something wrong? When, of course, the very real fear is his own acquisition, because he is his own person and he is four. I can’t blame myself for everything, as hard as I try and as egocentric as I probably am.

But he did it. He jumped into the pool today, smack onto the pool noodle and splashing the teacher’s wide smile. I was suddenly able to breathe, and the world started turning again. I wrapped him with praise in a warm white towel and for the rest of the day he greeted everyone, everywhere, by inquiring,
“DO YOU KNOW WHAT? I HAD MY SWIM LESSON THIS MORNING AND I JUMPED INTO THE DEEP END!”

Summer is saturated with mass-production. The sun destroys anything left outside. So after lingering twilight, chasing fireflies and each other around the flowerbeds, toys stay outside night and day. Our home has stretched out onto the lawn. Plastic toys will only last a few months in this climate.

This is an inflatable swimming pool that I bought last summer. I also bagged sand toys, beach balls and a Slip and Slide, but these have all been shuffled into the other toys, buried in sand and punctured by piercing UVrays. This pool has lasted longer than I imagined, knowing when I bought it that it would destruct by Fall, like summer plastic tends to do.

It’s beginning to get a fair amount of use, now that we’re baking our way towards the double digits. And every day we drain it, like I’m doing (with Ford) in the photo above. I don’t have time for stylized puns on Pop art. Take this as a nod to mass production. We like it. Well, maybe not, but it’s convenient and cheap and beautiful when you’re short on cash. And who isn’t, when you majored in Industrial Design in school?

And you can see more Pop art self portraits here.

Speaking of mass-produced: balloons. They are in high demand at our home. Chas loves them. We can drive by Blockbuster (our fallback now that all of our Netflix movies have gone awol) and Chas will scream for boobahs. BOOBAH!!?!? BOOBAH?! BOOBAHH?! like some heroin addict. JUST! ONE! FIX!!!
We brought home two of the Blockbuster balloons with us on Friday, and Ford picked one up to practice the properties of static electricity.

So he rubbbbbbed the balloon on his nappy hair a minute and then I watched him hold the balloon over a small mount of sugar. The sugar flitted excitedly on the table. “A sugarstorm, mom!” He passed the balloon over a pile of punched paper holes: “Dancing dots, mom!” and then he passed the balloon over an ant trail in the kitchen: “Mom! Check it OUT!” And, sure enough, the ants were flicking up onto the balloon. Can you see them? They’re tiny pharoah ants (otherwise known as ‘Piss Ants’ by my father in-law, the entomologist). Science is so funny.

I sat on a little wooden bench this morning, Chas on my lap, beside the swim class. I decided that Ford needed a nudge. He wouldn’t get away with negotiating or opting out of the coach’s instructions. It took preparation, but I was ready for the work.

So we took a jog this morning, both kids in the twinner, and I coached him on the challenges he’d have to face. I told him it would be difficult, but that he would do it anyway. After all, that’s the definition of a challenge. We talked about all the things he could do once he was able to swim: we could kayak on Town Lake, ride in Papi’s pirough in the bay.

Lo! Did it help. Spastically joyful after each effort, Ford squirmed all over the pool steps and shouted silliness. He made me so proud, I think I wore a smile for hours afterwards.