when we pretend that we're dead

Two years ago, we were staying in a rambling house in Northeastern Vermont with two other families who are dear to us, gathered together for a week to celebrate the marriage of Edith and Zac. At the time, we were in between two houses, two lives.

All our belongings were in storage for the time that would elapse between closing on our old house in Lancaster and moving into a new rental in Annapolis. In the midst of those homeless days, we packed all we could into our new Prius (we had recently said goodbye to our old car, in addition to everything else). Frances had just turned three, Gabriel was three months old, Mike and I were overwhelmed, and the four of us drove twelve hours to Vermont, where we experienced a series of days that felt something like being lifted out of regular life and placed gently on a cloud (as one of our housemates later described it).

But of course we didn't forget that we were smack dab in the middle of a massive transition. One morning in the cloud house, I heard Frances stirring. She was in a room adjacent to ours, and I quietly climbed into her twin bed and snuggled up next to her. She looked at me for some time. Then she looked at the ceiling, a ponderous expression on her little face. Suddenly she looked back at me with great intensity and pointedly asked,
Did your Papa die? 
Yes.
Silence surrounded us. Then I told her that I missed him very much.
I do too, she said. And I knew she was telling me the truth.

That conversation ushered in a time of serious morbidity and existential inquiry. What was being alive; why did people and animals die; where did they go? Who were the relatives in her family that I knew who were dead now? Were they very very old when they died? This lasted almost a year. We wondered if it had to do with the loss of her old home and community. Was her grief being expressed somehow as three-year-old style mourning for everyone and everything that had ever lived and died in the world?

Those days are a far cry from the conversation in the backseat yesterday afternoon as I drove us home from a playdate on the Eastern Shore. As we mounted the majestic Bay Bridge, I heard Frances insisting to Gabriel: you're dead! you're dead! you have to die now! die die! And he responded with a series of refusals, increasing his volume with each repetition of I NOT DIE NOW! I NOT DEAD!!! He knows. He's approaching the age Frances was when death became a real force in her life. He's fascinated by dead bugs, dead plants, all kinds of dead stuff. And he knows he absolutely does not want to be dead, even for pretend.

Nowadays playing dead has a certain romance and mystique for Frances. She learned from her princess-loving classmates last year. They would enact their own elaborate fairty tales that featured the dramatic and satisfying death of a princess. Sometimes she came back to life, sometimes not. The game was even called "Dead Princesses." (An aside: all those old Disney princess movies should be called Dead Princesses! Sleeping Beauty and Snow White get their prince, but only by dying first.)

So after a morning of 'acting' Snow White (charming Mackenzie explained the story to Frances, who happily donned a massive curly black wig and played the wicked queen), Frances was eager to rope Gabriel in to some more dead princess play. The boy will go to all kinds of pretend places with his sister (among them: fairy woods, their wedding, a little nest where they are baby squirrels or owls, a tent, an apartment where they are Charlie and Elizabetha*...) but the afterlife? That's a no.

So death has returned as a topic of intense fascination for Frances, but now her imagination and intellect provide a protective distance from the potential emotional whammy. This morning on the way to her swimming lesson, she noticed the signage at the World War I memorial at the Naval Academy Bridge, prompting endless questions about war. Do only the bad guys die? Who can be in the army? Why do they go to the army if they might die? Why do you have a memorial if the person is already dead and can't see it? We talked and talked, and the entire time Gabriel was uncharacteristically silent. I could see him growing serious and uncomfortable. His thoughts are not sophisticated enough to protect him. He simply feels the subject matter, which is not easy.

And this morning, the girl who never forgets a birthday asked me if today was my papa's birthday. Yes, it is. And how old would he be if he were alive? Fifty-nine.

That was the end of her questions. She hit a wall. Fifty-nine is too young to be dead. Some time ago, anticipating today, Frances requested that we go out for ice cream with Grandma and Rachel and anyone else in our family we can find every year on Grandpa's birthday. This is a tradition I can get behind. So even though we can't be with Grandma or Rachel today, after Gabriel wakes up from his nap, we're going out in search of ice cream.


*Meagan: So are Charlie and Elizabetha friends? Brother and sister?
*Frances: In the early ones when we're young, like in our twenties, we're boyfriend and girlfriend but then when we stay friends for a really long time we decide we want to get married.
*Meagan: So are you married when you play now?
*Frances: Yes. Right now Charlie is 31 and Elizabetha is 39.

eternal flame

Not too long ago, apropos of nothing, Frances said to me:

Mama, why were there a hundred million songs on the radio when you and Papa were teenagers? And why did you like them all and how do you know every single word to all of them?

Ah. Well. Maybe if you had been twelve in 1989 you'd understand.

Can you detect the adolescent exasperation brewing? She's already begun to feel burdened by "our" music, the music that we have more or less successfully - up until now - embraced as our family's music. She realizes she wasn't on the scene when I first latched onto this or that song, which must be a little weird and annoying. The truth is we've adjusted our listening habits since becoming parents, eschewing music that explicitly celebrated less-than-wholesome living (goodbye to so much rock and hip hop) and enthusiastically welcoming people like Dan Zanes and Elizabeth Mitchell into our living room. When Jonathan Richman broke up with the original Modern Lovers, he said didn't want to make music anymore that would hurt a little baby's ears. As new parents we endorsed that position. No music that would hurt a little baby allowed! 

Happily, lots of pop music is made out of soap bubbles and doesn't hurt a bit. (Plus at home you can always turn down the volume.) And I guess we like it too much to give it up. Some of you may remember how we encouraged precocious baby Frances, who could identify Johnny Cash, the Kinks, the White Stripes, and others just a few chords into a song. We brought out lots of sixties pop and Pete Seeger and Leadbelly and anything that struck us as quality family listening material. As a toddler, Frances could listen to Pete Seeger sing "I've Been Working on the Railroad" for hours. I started to feel like a crazy person after about four listens.

Now both kids have strong opinions about music. They are often admirably cooperative when I interrupt them mid-sentence in the car to announce that a REALLY good song is on the radio. I turn up the volume and do all kinds of soon-to-be-embarrassing mom dances in the driver's seat. I feel myself reaching back through time, connecting to generations of mothers who have done some version of this to their children. I especially feel like I'm channeling my mother (who I can vividly imagine singing Motown in our minivan) when I drive our new/old 1995 Toyota Camry station wagon. Sometimes I put on - get ready - a cassette and rock out to some college-era mix dug from a pile of tapes I found in a shoebox at my mom's house during our last visit.

But really, what is it about the music of our youth? How does it imprint so indelibly on our brains? Some combination of receptivity and passion, I suppose. Why didn't I spend middle school committing Latin or long Shakespearean passages to memory? Instead of belting out every single word of the Bangles' "Eternal Flame" to Frances and Gabriel, I'd be lulling them to sleep with sonnets and psalms. Did any of you read The Chosen, or other Chaim Potok books? I could have been one of those scrawny Orthodox boys hunched over the Torah, memorizing it forwards and backwards. Instead, I memorized the Smells Like Teen Spirit album and far too many Cure songs to keep straight.

The thing is, it's not just nostalgia. I love to hear an old Pixies song on the radio, sure, but I also love new pop music these days. A good song really does pop; it sparkles, shines, and adds a burst of happy energy to my day. Dishwashing, bath-giving, dinner-making...these little moments are transformed by a good song.

The sad fact that we have to do most of our traveling by car here in Annapolis is ameliorated considerably by WRNR, a local station that plays lots of good, new independent music. I was never energetic or committed enough to read reviews and track down new music (yes, you can file me under 'I listen to my boyfriend's rock music and claim it as my own') but now that I can just turn on the radio, I love it. I try to get my kids on board, with mixed results. Vampire Weekend is a go. Bon Iver proved to be excellent toddler sleeping music. Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes meets with ambivalence in the backseat...but I attribute this to how loud I sing along to their single Home (versus the band's actual merits). The more enthusiasm and mom dancing I indulge in, the more I risk losing potential sing-along partners.

I quit piano lessons when I was eleven. I know absolutely nothing about music theory and history. Regardless of my ignorance, some of my happiest memories involve music, especially shared music. Singing campsongs with abandon, singing at church next to my mother and sister, guitars and shakers at various picnics and gatherings, singing at the top of my lungs with friends in a car, all the windows down. Emily Rogers commented on this blog months ago that Pete Seeger said if everyone in the world could participate in regular singalongs, there'd be no war. I'm not entirely sure, but I get what he means.

And better than all those peaceful hootenannies and living room concerts? Singing with my children! Waking up to Gabriel's clear high voice singing "Freight Train," even at 5 am, makes me smile. When we sing grace as a family, when we sing Hi Ho The Rattlin' Bog, when all four of us start into Yellow Submarine, inspired by a t-shirt of Gabriel's...my heart literally starts flapping its little wings, trying to fly out of my chest and into the sky.

dinner in july

All those jungly tomato plants in the garden are earning their keep. Seriously.

So is the basil. The potatoes and zucchini are doing their best. Thank you, garden. Thank you bugs and deer and bunnies for feasting elsewhere, at least for today.

And thank you Whole Foods for those one pound plastic boxes of salad greens from California. And herbed tofu and olives and organic avocados from Mexico.

And thank you also to the creative and zany person who discovered beets make chocolate cake extra delicious. I made this recipe during Gabriel's nap, while Frances assembled multi-colored pop bead jewelry for our family. I know the words "beet tea loaf" all in a row are not exactly evocative of dessert, or of anything appetizing for that matter. But trust me, it's great, and a beautiful color too.

I used whole wheat pastry flour and one generous cup of pureed beets (she calls for 1.5 cups loosely packed grated beets). These beets were originally picked by a certain hot and grumbly child at Larriland Farms on the Fourth of July, an event that happened to fall within the two weeks or so that I was cooking out of Jessica Seinfeld's sneaky mom cookbook. So when I brought home many pounds of beets without any particular plan for them, I dutifully followed her lead, roasting and pureeing and freezing them in half cup portions, waiting to be silently slipped into something sweet and pink. Or in this case, reddish-brown.  

I wish I could have popped a bite of this cake into Frances' mouth while she stood in that beet field, sweaty and indignant. Reluctant farmhands, your reward shall come, and in ways you never could have expected.

the open house

Here are Tessa and Frances, feeling joyful and not a little unhinged, en route to The Open House.

The Open House is a house that is for sale midway down my mother's block in Lancaster. It has a seemingly permanent sign out front that reads "OPEN HOUSE Sunday 2 - 4 pm." No one lives there now. It is a big beautiful house that features many dead cicadas littered around the front steps for bagging up and inspecting with one's friends. The Open House also boasts a dusty porch swing - situated low enough to be accessed by those with very short legs - the lone item on an otherwise eerily empty front porch. I once watched Gabriel tentatively climb the steps by himself and walk to the swing. He looked so nervous as he swung a little leg up, I wondered which child had double dog dared him to do it.

At a certain point I chaperoned a motley gang of six children (aged almost-two to almost-six) who moved with a great sense of purpose and surprising speed between The Open House and my mother's front porch, collecting bugs and bits of mulch and who knows what else. After that day, whenever I'd begin to suggest a new activity or announce the morning's plans, Frances would quickly jump in and derail it all with: you mean The Open House? I'll get Tessa and Annika!! Let's go!!

They LOVED going to The Open House. At least one parent would watch them running down the street and back so it wasn't completely unsupervised...but still. What a thrill, what freedom! It was like their own hideout, fort, bug-collecting site, and house all rolled into one. No one ever went into the house (except those adults who may have peeked in during the actual Open House, at which point we were back on the road to Annapolis). But something about it belonged to the children, just them, and even though there were a few moments when things threatened to get out of hand, I loved it.

I loved the dirtiness, the wildness, the kid-driven play, the sweaty walks, the too-late bedtimes and too-much ice cream that characterized our week in Lancaster. It was a break from the rules; a time to throw open the windows and doors and let some air in. An open house, indeed!

Here are a few scenes from our open week, hanging out in the neighborhood.

Henry suggested everyone cover their eyes for this shot. I think it works.

Gabriel insisted on perfecting his headstand on the hard cement.

 Boys and their...balloons.

The view from my mom's porch Saturday morning around 9 am.

The view in my mother's next-door neighbors' backyard Saturday afternoon.

Little Annika, running back home from The Open House, with Gabriel close behind.

Happy Gabriel, oblivious to the fact that baby Beatrice is about to swipe his peanut butter and jelly.

On the last day of camp, kids were invited to dress up however they wanted. Frances proudly conceived and assembled this "pirate princess" get up.

A quiet moment in my mother's beautiful living room. (Despite the demands of directing an outdoor Shakespearean comedy, my mother found the time and inspiration to create this adorable butterfly dress during our visit).

 

Happy Tessa.

Creative and big-hearted Leslie (Titania) babysat Gabriel while I worked in the mornings and built the HMS Lala with him on their first day together. Besides a lot of fun, it provided a holding pen for stray toys and curious children during our visit.

Gabriel was gaga for our friend Aidan, at least in part because he generously welcomed this less-than-harmonious duet on one of the first evenings in Lancaster.

Here is darling Agatha in the kiddie pool at Buchanan Park. When we arrived, a beautiful boy with long black hair ran up to me and announced: We live in your old house!! He was right. He does live in our old house.

He told me they still find magnet letters under the refrigerator.

...Are those yours?? Did you play with them?

Yes, we used to.

Frances, on her first sleepover:

We talked and talked in Henry's room after bedtime. And Henry kept turning on the light and getting out toys. And we would play with them, and then turn out the light, and then he would turn on the light AGAIN!

And at Henry's house at the sleepover we were fighting again about how old we were, because he is 58 months and I'm 61 months old. But the truth is that Henry is a little bit taller, and I'm a little bit older.

We played with legos and cars.

Henry's clock turns green when it's 6 in the morning, and we looked, and it said 5:01. And we couldn't believe it was almost morning!

You know Mama, we talked all night long. We actually did.

(For more on this momentous event - from the parent perspective - see Amelia's blog.)

report from the village

Here I am, winding down Day Four of our week in Lancaster, sitting in my mother's blessedly clean and peaceful home, watching the light fade in the garden through the big bay window. The children are sleeping in a questionable arrangement upstairs, both of them crammed into the corner of the room where later tonight I will try to squeeze through the door in order to avoid the squeak and crawl into bed as silent as a mouse. Or as silent as a mama who really needs some sleep.

When we were first driving into town, I realized that my family moved to Lancaster almost exactly twenty years ago. We moved into the big white house on President Avenue on my thirteenth birthday. And over the years, I have come to understand something with utter clarity: longevity has benefits! My family had lived in three other cities before we landed here; when people ask me where I'm from, I hesitate. But now - twenty years! We are rooted, it seems.

And what a fertile spot to send down roots. We are having a beautiful visit (despite the face that we are missing Mike sorely, who had to return to Annapolis to teach yesterday). In the mornings Frances is going to a summer camp at a local Montessori school, carpooling with her friends Henry and Tessa. The theme is drama and she is pretty much in heaven. Gabriel is hanging out with a babysitter who is playing Titania in my mother's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream and whom Mike and I first saw on the stage many years ago as an extraordinary, hilarious twelve year old chicken. While the kids are occupied, I have been either working at the charming neighborhood coffee shop or pursuing interviews with immigrant mothers for an independent project I am just beginning work on.

And what happens in the afternoons and evenings? A swim in the new kiddie pool at the park down the street. Porch swinging, sidewalk chalking, video-watching on Grandma's fabulous TV, neighbor chatting, endless playing with toys procured at a phenomenal garage sale on Saturday morning. Walking in the rain in a borrowed stroller, dining with friends, running into a lovely young man who has grown taller and more adult since the days when we were his youth group leaders. Today I went for a jog in the beastly humidity and ran past our old family haircut stop, so stuck my sweaty red face in the door and scheduled two kid cuts and a bang trim for me Thursday afternoon, which will turn into a wild lollipop-laden playdate because the salon owner's daughter Lulu will come join in the fun.

This place is a village, and my children absolutely blossom in it. It's sweet to realize that most of the village vibe we're enjoying is the fruit of our time living here as adults, back when Frances was our precocious only and Gabriel was a twinkle in our eyes. But all the connections seem to entwine in this small town - my family, the UU church, my old job, our dear F&M friends, our Episcopal church, our neighbors - and the roots support unexpected and brilliant blooms.

Gabriel is darting around and offering bits of information to anyone who will listen - a butterfly who can flit around and easily keep up with his sister. He was a shy baby and a sometimes taciturn younger toddler around new people. Now all the world gets to enjoy his language, his dancing, and his wacky sense of humor. He basked in the attentions of a sweet twelve year boy at dinner last night, building towers with him, begging to ride his skateboard, and accompanying him with a few joyful and erratic high notes during Fur Elise on the piano. And he ran like the wind down the big hill at the park, following Frances and Henry, without giving my whereabouts a second thought. This was beautiful for me to watch!

Even more interesting: he is self-weaning this week. I figured doing the whole child-led weaning thing would mean I was going to be nursing the kid to sleep until kindergarten. But the day before we came to Lancaster, he started carrying around his very soft stuffed alligator and insisting on sleeping with him. And the first day here, with his new transitional object under his arm at bedtime, he told me to "just put [him] in the crib." No song, no nurse. He has only asked to nurse once since then. We were only nursing at naptime and bedtime previously, but he has up until now been very attached to that routine. I cannot help but think the independence and openness I am witnessing are related to his readiness to give up nursing.  

Frances is also growing in indepenence, developing a new sense of herself as a kid among kids. Last night, as we walked up to our friends' house for dinner, she gazed at some older neighbor kids playing in the yard with stars sparkling in her eyes. Gracious Amanda saw and suggested nine year old Izzy take Frances with her and her friends to walk their pal Max home. Frances eagerly raced over and grabbed Izzy's hand, and I couldn't stop smiling as I watched her talking nonstop and heading down the street in the evening rain with those big-hearted big kids.

Frances loves Tessa next door, and the two of them amused themselves this morning while waiting for their ride to camp by walking hand in hand up and down my mom's street, immersed in some fleeting imaginary world known only to them. And Frances counted the seconds til it was time to go to Henry's house this evening for her First Big Kid Sleepover Ever. I bathed the kids, put them in pajamas, and wheeled them down to Mary Street, where we discovered the sleepover had to be postponed. That was a major disappointment, but it certainly wasn't the first time I'd carried a sobbing Frances down Henry's front steps (in fact our first visit to their house ended that way - it is always sad to go). Happily, it is a well-known fact that a little ice cream before bed at Grandma's house cures most every ill.

In short, they seem confident and happy, and they are heading off without me. This visit marks a time of standing back and watching, something that is impossible to do when the children are clinging to my legs. I have experienced moments of growth and separation as bittersweet in the past, but this feels decidedly good. I'm grateful that we have this special place, a home away from home, where they can go a little farther and run a little faster, safely surrounded by people who know and love us - people we know and love.

a conversation fom yesterday, during which I nearly cried

Frances, picking up my book from a nearby table: Mama, how did you get Sense and Sensibility, and when did you get it?

M: I got it at the library, just before I left for my trip.

F: But why did you get it?

M: Because I was a little scared and nervous, and I love that book, and I thought it would make me feel better to read it sometimes while I was away.

(A strange silence descends. Gabriel looks up, startled, from the heretofore extremely absorbing play dough snakes he had been rolling out.)

F: You were scared? Scared??

M: A little.

F: But why were you scared?

M: Because I'd never been away from you guys for so long. And I'd never done anything like what I was going to do before. I was nervous, I guess.

(More quiet. Gabriel is staring at me intently, with that extremely-wide-open windows to the soul look that both my children seem to come by naturally).

G: You were scared when you went away.

M: Yes.

G: I was scared when you went away too, Mama.

a few of our favorite things

Now it's July. How did it happen? The heart of summer, the month of my birth. This is the time of stone fruits, chlorinated hair, sweaty children, and other less eternal yet equally delightful things around our house. Read on for some of our new favorites...

Above and below you see (post-croup) Gabriel enduring Frances' soccer camp last week. She loved it! What joy to see my little girl jump right in, running around the chaotic kid mass with gusto.

She didn't seem to notice that she was pretty tiny compared to the rest of the kids, and surprised me with her dribbling skills and ability to run hard without tiring. She also didn't mind a bit when we arrived on the last day of camp to discover she had somehow misheard "crazy hair day" as "freaky friday." And while the other kids had mohawks and triple ponytails, she was wearing plaid pants, a gold skirt, a tie dye shirt overlaid with my old Girl Scouts vest, and her froggie "eyes" from Halloween. But she wasn't fazed a bit. I was relieved, and very proud of her irrepresible Frances-ness. It was a high point in a week of some tough, whiny behavior. And the soccer energy level has persisted; yesterday morning she came running with me (in a pajama shirt, underwear and crocs) and jogged happily on hilly terrain for well over a mile.

.

What else? We downloaded the Elizabeth Mitchell & Lisa Loeb album "Catch the Moon" that came out a few years ago. Predictably, we love it. It's more classic, quiet children's music; I think it would make an excellent new baby gift. It seems like the breathy indie girl singers from the 90s have found their true calling and we can't get enough of it.

Mike subscribed to National Geographic magazine and all four of us love it. Have we read a single word? Besides photo captions, no. But the pictures are awesome.

Clafouti! We made a patriotic clafouti with red sour cherries (that we'd picked that morning) and blueberries and a dusting of white powdered sugar for a Fourth of July party last night. It is so easy and so delicious. Here is the recipe I use. (I think I took this from my mom's old copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking):

Put
1 1/4 cup milk
1/3 cup sugar
3 eggs
1 tbsp vanilla
1/8 tsp salt
2/3 cup flour (though I used nearly 1 cup since my fruit was so juicy)
in a blender, in the order listed, then whir it all around on high speed for about a minute.
Pour 1/4 inch of the batter in a buttered pyrex pie plate and set over moderate heat until a film sets (about 2 -3 minutes). Remove from heat and spread 3 cups of cherries (or blueberries, or whatever you'd like to use) over top. Sprinkle another 1/3 cup sugar over the berries, then pour the rest of the batter on top. Bake for about an hour in a 350 degree oven, until a knife comes out clean. Yum!

Newest crafting inspiration? Crafting Fun: 101 Things to Make and Do with Kids. I finally put it on hold at the library after seeing it mentioned on various blogs. It is great! I might have to buy a copy. Activities are organized by season, and Summer features things like catching fireflies in a jar, making newspaper hats, and pressing wildflowers. Things you did a long time ago, and would like to do again.

And how can I forget to mention humble agave nectar? It dissolves easily into cold tea and coffee. The bottom of the glass is just as sweet at the first sips. I've been making pots of iced tea brewed with black tea and long sprigs of mint and drinking way too much of it. That, and the addition of a floppy white sunhat to my summer wardrobe, makes me wonder if I'm going native after all, despite my insistence on alienation from nearly all things Annapolitan. 

Frances has been sleeping in a play tent ever since she received it as a birthday gift on June 19th. She loves it. When asked if she will ever return to her bed, she simply replies: I can't answer that question. She began the practice surrounded by all her other birthday gifts. It was a tight fit.