the painted ponies go up and down

A carousel is a beautiful thing.

One afternoon last week, both my children had runny noses. They were tired and grumpy. I came out of my bathroom and found them jumping on the bed in a maniacal way that suggested someone was going to go flying off onto the floor, and soon. There was no doubt in my mind that tears were imminent. So I somehow talked them down and started rubbing backs. Before long I was kneeling in between them on the big bed, each hand methodically rubbing a narrow little back.

They were both lying on their bellies, utterly silent. Is this what hypnotizing animals is like? After a minute or so Gabriel inclined his head towards me and asked for a song. As my hands were making little circles on their backs, I sang them the chorus of 'Circle Game' by Joni Mitchell.

The stillness in the room was utterly crystalline when I finished singing. Their little bodies were motionless, relaxed. Bewitched. Until Gabriel spoke into the sheet: AGAIN. Again, Mama.

So I sang it again. I only know the chorus; it's a short number. I sang it about 15 times in a row, and I would have sung it 15 more times to prolong the scene. But of course the little hypnotized chickens could not be held under my magic spell for that long.

Ever since then, Gabriel will occasionally ask me for a 'tassage' or just a little 'sage' when he's feeling sleepy. Frances does too. And they both want to hear the circle song, lots.

So I took extra special pleasure in our carousel ride at the Please Touch Museum in Philadelphia with Poppy, Ann Marie and little Amelia yesterday morning. A carousel is delicious. You are in pursuit of the pony in front of you, and someone else is on your tail, but you live in perpetual chase. There are the simple delights of anticipation, motion. You are almost - but never quite - arriving. With each complete circle, there is a smiling grandfather to wave at (not to mention everyone else's smiling grandparents and uncles and mothers along the circuit, too, if you are in the waving mood). And of course the whole thing takes place on the back of a stunning, shiny horse, her mane endlessly billowing.

Here is Frances, contemplating the circular nature of time and looking very much like her aunt Rachel.

sick and tired of being good

Yesterday I wanted a TV. And all sorts of processed food that comes in brightly colored boxes covered in characters that we will meet on the TV, conveniently packaged in individual portions that I could throw over my shoulder towards the children while driving whenever they started whining. Oh! And a little TV screen in the car too, while we're at it. And matching new clothes for them, and professional haircuts, and gymnastics class.

What else? Lots of beer. Take out. New running shoes, and fancy gym clothes that wick. A strange woman who sneaks into my house once a week and cleans it from top to bottom. A second car, a beach house, Botox!

Annapolitans are living the dream all around me. What's with the rags instead of paper towels that always need laundering? The clothesline, the Goodwill, the flax meal. This is America, people! Why am I working so darn hard to avoid strolling down easy street?

The truth is we don't have the money to promenade the particular street I describe above anyway, even if we weren't so persistently drawn to Authentic and Wholesome Living. Yes, I was feeling grouchy and poor. In the morning we went out to breakfast at a charming spot, thanks to my thoughtful big-hearted mother who sent us a check for $25 for Valentine's Day, with a note saying that it should be enough for the family to go out to breakfast with.

Instead of reflecting on our good fortune - having this caring mother who looks out for us and helps us to have special outings like this one - I suddenly realized: we NEVER go out. We never go out because there is no money to go out with. It's like when I pick a fight with Mike as soon as we have a happy evening together after a period of stress. Now I can relax enough to tell you how I've really been feeling! Or getting depressed during a precious rare visit with Ann Marie because I so rarely visit with Ann Marie. And now that we're here together, and the waitress is lovely and the syrup is sweet, I think I will begin to grumble because we don't get to do this everyday. Nice, Meagan.

Usually I am rather content and happy with our domestic rhythms that include a lot of cooking. But yesterday morning, as I watched Gabriel spellbound before the little TV on the wall of the diner broadcasting sports highlights ("He has a BASKETBALL, Mama!!") and Frances inhaling her pancakes slathered in butter and soaked through with syrup, I thought: this is what people do. They go out to breakfast. They watch sports on TV. It's easy. It's fun!! What are we missing out on?

I don't really want botox or a screen in my car. Don't worry. Most of the time I feel grateful for the relative simplicity with which we live - the time and inclination to watch bread rise, punch it down, watch it rise again, punch it down again. To sit in the kitchen and eat it hot - slathered with butter - with my kids. It's a combination of things that led me to dream of Nick Jr. and Go Gurt yesterday. Two months in a row of very tight finances, less time than we are used to having together due to my new job, poor sleep ... suddenly all the usual mole-hill sized stresses of everyday life became mountains.

(An aside: it would be so hard to be poor. I think of my old clients at the clinic, trying to balance so much on so little, often in a language that wasn't English. A piece of my heart flies to them. I want to ask certain women - mothers I admired in particular - how do you do it? The miracle mystery that is resilience...)

Last night the mood shifted for me. I made the children dinner inspired by a recipe I found in my weekly email from The Splendid Table. I told Frances it was a special secret roll-up and refused to tell her what was inside her tortilla (avocado, mashed chick peas, and cucumber-yogurt sauce). She loved it! So did Gabriel! Now, would tater tots and chicken nuggets have given me the same glow of maternal satisfaction?

Well, maybe. Who knows. But it helped me shake off the grass-is-greener blues and enjoy lots of stories together after dinner. And realize that I needed to go to sleep at 8:45. And wake up a heck of a lot happier this morning.


p.s. Speaking of the power of a healthy happy meal to lift my spirits - I saw this recipe yesterday and had visions of more such meals in our future. Sprinkled over popcorn? Yes!

p.p.s. Who wants to come over for tater tots and beer later tonight?

thinking of my dad

Yesterday afternoon I was working on a short piece for the Listening Hearts newsletter. I sat staring at the computer screen, rethinking what exactly I wanted to say, feeling a bit stuck. I thoughtlessly packaged my third piece of stale chewing gum in its wrapper and popped a fourth fresh one in my mouth. I was struck by a strange feeling. Not quite deja vu exactly - something else, something familiar.

Then I had a vision, a scene from 1992 or 1993. Through the glass doors leading into his sunny study, I see my dad hunched over his computer screen, chewing away as he writes his sermon. Thursdays were sermon-writing days, and as he wrote my ex-smoker ex-drinker of a dad would go through 6 bottles of Perrier, or 3 packs of gum (murder on the jaws, as I am discovering) or a bag of apples slathered in peanut butter. His study was a hodge podge of books and papers and kid art all over the walls. There was a lumpy corduroy couch in the middle of the room to provide a cozy spot for mulling things over. Or napping. And it was the perfect quiet spot for a bookish teenager to stretch out with a novel, listening to the gum snap behind her head.

I looked down and half-expected to be wearing the enormous old gray cardigan my mother made for him many, many years ago, the one that became his housecoat.

But that is impossible, because he was buried in it fourteen years ago. The anniversary of his death is this Monday. Every year I feel its approach as the seasons shift. The snow melts, crocuses poke through, and his presence in my heart and mind grows stronger. Often, I dream about him. Every year I feel it a little differently, but inevitably I am compelled to go back to those last days my mother, father, sister and I had together in 1996. I have told and retold myself the story of his death so many times it has made a little rut all its own in my mind. (I learned this week that in the church calendar, saints' days are always commemorated on the day of their death, rather than birth. This resonates for me, very much.)

This year, this new writing work has brought me into some continuity with him, a lost thread pulled out of my back pocket and gripped now in my palm. My adult self, the one he only lived long enough to catch a tiny twinkling of, is trying on some of his old habits. I didn't even realize it, until I sat there with my open pack of gum in front of the computer, staring at the wall of kid art Mike has assembled in his hodge podge of a papa study downstairs.

I wrote a little while ago about my children imitating me, and wondering about what habits of mine will stick and become a part of them. Every night as I put Frances to bed I look at the bulletin board of special people she has on her wall, and since writing that post I noticed that my mother and I have our heads angled in just the same way, with just the same little smile on our faces, in our respective photographs. Her picture was taken at Frances's second birthday party and mine is from the day Gabriel was born. I have my arms around my two babies. Is there such a thing as peaceful ecstasy? That is what I was feeling, next to Mike on the hospital bed. Maybe - in a less intense way - that was what my mom was feeling too on that sunny June afternoon nearly three years ago in our Lancaster backyard.

It is mysterious and beautiful, isn't it? Maybe I will get to know my dad better, doing some of the things he used to do. That would be an unexpected gift. It's funny, I experienced this in my last job too. As a social worker in Lancaster, I ended up meeting and working with so many people who knew and loved my dad. I didn't anticipate that happening either, feeling closer to him through my work. But I did. And now, in a different way, I do again.

Am I following him around?

If I am, that's okay with me. Here is a consoling thought: my kids might know him more intuitively through me and my work. Maybe one day I will catch Frances tilting her head and smiling in just the same way my mother and I apparently do. Maybe years from now I will walk into Gabriel's room and he will be eating compulsively, writing a term paper. Hopefully I won't give him a hard time about eating the entire bag of pretzels. Hopefully I'll feel grateful for the glimmer of my dad that lives in us.

kindred spirits, and the spirit that moves us

The expression 'friend of my heart' entered into the conversation this weekend. Our dear old Philadelphia pals Ann Marie and Rick and their daughter Amelia came to visit us, and Ann Marie and I used it as short hand to refer to those very special friends, the ones who seem harder and harder to come by as we get older, the ones who get it.

We all watched the cold rain steadily falling and talked a lot and the children did great. Here they are contemplating hopscotch on the wet sidewalk, and on a short walk, during a lull in the rain.


Last night after dinner and many, many chocolate chip cookies I found myself feeling a sense of gloomy disappointment in myself as we talked about parenting. When close friends enter into my new world, especially friends who pre-date children, I find myself looking around with fresh eyes. And for whatever reason (could be as simple as waking up at 4:30 with Gabriel - yes, despite daylight savings - or being cooped up for too many rainy days) I found myself suffering some narcissistic worrying about my failures as a parent: being weak-spined, permissive, inconsistent, and lately too captive to my own irrational irritable responses to Frances.

Anyway, this is all very boring, and I had to apologize to Ann Marie for the funk that continued to grip me, albeit lightly, into today. I think it had to do with being together - being with a friend of my heart - and thus feeling able to let some of that sadness surface. It's that satisfying deep exhale, being reunited with a close friend, letting niceties go and not having to be anyone other than oneself.

It's just a bummer that the rain clouds infiltrated my mood during a precious short visit, despite the presence of a very bright, shining little person named Amelia Jane in our house. We said goodbye this afternoon, and then I looked into what promised to be a long afternoon lacking in inspiration with my equally underslept kids. We descended into the playroom. I grimaced and brought a magazine, hoping for the trucks and toy kitchen to exert some magical pull on them.

Soon we were reading about Fancy Nancy's stay in a motel room featuring some 'spa treatment' with her doll and all the little bottles of shampoo and shower gel. Hmm. From somewhere in the far far reaches of my heart, a blessed little twinkle flashed. Frances, should we have a spa today?

Yes.

We had a spa bath at 4 pm. I put drops of lavender oil in their bathwater and told them it would be a very, very relaxing bath. Both kids love the bath so it was no problem convincing them to hop in despite the unusual hour. Since it was a pretend spa, no one complained when I scrubbed their hair or even more remarkably, rinsed their hair - it's part of your spa treatment! I filed my nails - what we do here in our spa - while the children turned into happy shivering prunes. Finally it was time to get out, and I led them into Frances's bedroom, where I had spread out every random bottle of cream and half-used lip balm and baby product sample I could find under the bathroom sink.

More spa! The kids let me slather them in cream and sprinkle them with dusting powder. Gabriel told us he was painting his nails and refused to put on clothes.



They both smelled delicious. I felt rejuvenated myself, and ever so grateful.

How does it happen? Call it grace, inspiration, kismet - those little moments when the sun suddenly bursts through (metaphorically - it's still raining out there) and we feel connected to one another, released from interior dreck and able to give freely again.

I scorched the black beans on the stove while we had our spa. But what a teensy price to pay!

Here is wishing all of you, friends of my heart, some unexpected sunshine this week.

greetings from the other side of working motherhood

I've been a working mother for a whole week. So far, so good...but I've really missed connecting with all of you here.

I am confident there is room for blogging in my new life, but I might not be as chatty for the next few weeks, as I work out the new balance. So for you few loyal readers who have stuck around despite that long silent stretch - thank you, thank you. I'm still here, just stretched a little thinner.

The babysitter is a student at St. John's and has already become a special person for the kids. Thank goodness, because Frances is having a harder time than I expected, and having a new friend in Kelsey certainly eases her disappointment about my having to go work again. Gabriel the puppy (or cow, or loader, or Big Bad Bunny, depending on the moment) is having an easier transition than I anticipated. He greets me with a big grin when I come home and likes to play a little game called "I came back!" involving running into the other room, then returning to me and happily explaining that he came back! Followed by a hug. Repeat. However he needs to work it all out is fine by me, and this is a rather pleasant way to do it.

So, not too painful, right? But just this morning, Frances and I were listening to a song on the latest Music Together album on the way to the doctor's. It's a cheerful tune, and the lyrics go something like:

who says she's gonna come back, your mommy does that's who.
whoever takes care of you comes back, because they do love you!

You get the idea. A little girl has a solo about how sometimes you feel lonely, or sad, or mad, when you have to say goodbye. But then your mommy and daddy come back! I was fighting back tears for the entirety of this jaunty little number. Frances was silent in the back seat as we drove through dreary gray streets, on the way to get an impetigo diagnosis.

So maybe I'm struggling a bit too. I've been irritable with the children, who after a period of perfect health have this past week developed - between the two of them - a nasty skinned nose, two runny noses, impetigo, a minor skin problem, the usual sleep(less) issues, and a new flare up of sibling rivalry. The usual stuff, really, but it just seems harder to me this particular week.

Oh, and the job? I love it. I just love it.

One last thing to report is how lucky we are to be making this transition during Mike's spring break. And how lucky we were to have a few days of warm sunshine, to get the much expanded new vegetable garden started. Here are some images from the most exciting day, featuring shiny red machinery:

Thankfully there were tools enough to go around. Gabriel now calls any small machine - most recently our Kitchen Aid mixer - a TILLER!!




Don't worry. It's off, I promise.

hide and go ...hide

Thank you readers, all of you, for the positive feedback, ideas, and encouragement you've been sending lately. The transition is still under way - job has not yet begun, nor has the sitter been hired - but it does feel as if things are falling into place.

In their own ways, my kids each are picking up on the changes that are about to happen. Suddenly our solid gold sleeper Frances is waking up once or twice a night and coming to our room with all sorts of fears; Gabriel, who once liked to play in the child care area of the rec center where I exercise, suddenly starts sobbing when he realizes we are separated. Both of them follow me around and cling to my legs with a new, ferocious tenacity.

Okay. So. I am trying very hard to be empathetic and understanding with all this. Within seconds of leaving a room, I hear the thud-thud of Gabriel running and his dear little voice calling: Where Mama GO?? Frances is convinced aliens have come to take me away and starts yelling for me if I'm not where she expects me to be. She reads me the riot act - in her most impressive adolescent-in-training style - for going anywhere without her. Can you blame me for relishing our game of hide and seek today?

By relishing, I mean taking a serious wild and wicked pleasure in the whole thing. I confess, I had a nasty case of schadenfreude. In my defense, the children loved it and this was the fifth or sixth time we've played in the past week, at their request. Frances counts while peeking a bit, I run off and crawl under a bed or hop behind a shower curtain, and laugh like a mad woman while the two of them run all over the house screaming for me. Honestly, I only let it go for a minute or two! If you could have been hiding under the kitchen table with me, watching the two of them calling, laughing with increasing notes of panic in their voices, bumping into each other and running back and forth like frenzied little barnyard chickens in the hallway...keep in mind I am in plain view and am laughing out loud, uncontrollably. Those two were so wrapped up in the sheer panic of seeking and not finding that it took me calling out to them and crawling out from under the table to end that scene. Oh, but for a moment, it was so excellent. Mama really did disappear!!

Part of the fun is watching them play this together. And of course, looking for Frances with Gabriel as my little sidekick is hysterical. Everyone screams with delight and fear and I don't even mind. When Frances hides, she ends up jumping from her hiding spots with a big semi-disturbed grin on her face within seconds, unable to bear the suspense. When Gabriel found me hiding in their little fort (sheet over two chairs) he did the usual scream of discovery, then suddenly got serious and looked hard at me. I love you Mama, said the boy, and hugged me for a long minute.

I think I probably turned back into my usual mama self - the one who doesn't get children too worked up before bedtime, and doesn't take pleasure in the sounds of growing panic - after this still moment in our game. But for awhile there, it was outrageously fun. Watching their little feet run right past me from under the bed in the guest room, I laughed so hard I almost peed.

Maybe this sort of thing is fueling Frances's nighttime fears. But hopefully, in a strange way, this kind of wild play is serving the same cathartic release function for all three of us. I go away, we all freak out a little, but then I come back! And we get to scream and hug and run around the house!

As we gear up for life to change, it stays the same. In a good way. Here are some images from the past week or so. I'll start with the snowy ones, and take you to our glorious sunny warm afternoon yesterday.

Snow painting, idea courtesy of Milena, using food coloring and squirt bottles. It was a lovely thing to do after the snow had become icy and dirty and the novelty of it all was wearing off.

Frances designs a 'magazine for grown ups' about things grown ups are interested in; it is called The Worker.

A page from The Worker reads: day is quiet and fair.


In these pages, Frances cut out want ads from a magazine. Top reads 'spring will come and winter will end,' and the bottom page (featuring a want ad for a vegetable farmer, Mike's fantasy) reads 'the years will be happy.'

Gabriel develops a goggle obsession, in addition to his sunhat fetish.

He also has a newfound love for 'sewing.'

Our afternoon tea parties always feature place settings.

And finally, sunshine! Icy bits make excellent pretend ice cream, and the rivers of melting snow proved irresistible. Next time we'll wear boots.