fun in threes, sometimes fours
the girl
I spent the morning with six lovely ladies and a camper with a Jacuzzi, flat screen television, double hammock, and loads of other extras.
It was a morning of pretend: “Tata, pretend she…” “Tata, let’s pretend they…” “Oh, Tata, you need to pretend the dog…”
The days of pretend, when the simple imperative “Pretend” was enough to make it reality.
When we still had complete control over something.
And we could easily get a closet full of whatever it is that thrills us.
"I promised her!" K mouths to me as L thumps up the stairs to brush her teeth, disheartened by my casual dismissal of her idea to go down to the blooming azalea and pick some flowers to take to school. "You can just get some from our neighbors' azalea in their front yard," I said just moments earlier. They're out of town, but I knew they wouldn't mind: they're like long-lost family to the Girl.
"I'm not tromping down through the cold, wet leaves and grass to pick blooms for her when she can walk fifty feet..."
A few minutes later, I'm pulling small clumps of blooms from the bush, excited about the foggy early morning that promises a sunny mid-morning.
An hour later, the prophecy is fulfilled.
Our two hostas (Fortunei Albopicta) winter under decaying leaves and an ever-dwindling smattering of decorative rocks. After the new leaves of most all trees have fully unfurled and the crape myrtles have begun budding, the hostas finally begin to emerge from winter dormancy.
It’s almost magical to watch such perennials resurrect themselves every spring. Little buds emerge from even the dampest, thickest blanket of last autumn’s leaves — the strength to push stones and leaves away is a testament to life’s tendency to conquer death.
Then again, maybe it just likes to hide.
After all, who doesn’t like hiding?
The first day of spring break 2012 proper, and it starts like any spring day should: sun, warmth, clear light. Freshly emerged leaves offset the patch of Azalea blue (or is that purple? I've never checked, i.e., asked K) in the back corner. It would be great to be out in the warmth, to do some work on our small raised-bed garden, to work up the first sweat of the year. The grass needs mowing; autumn's leaves need raking; the raspberries need netting shortly -- yet none of these are options.
With a major paper due in a week, I'm sequestered, reading through articles, planning an attack, drowning in coffee and tea.
I spend the day filling a folder with articles from JSTOR, Gale, and seemingly countless other online resources that make it possible to research most anything from home. Then I write, write, write.
"In calling these stories 'parabolic,' we encounter an critical etymological parallel with geometry."
Did I really just write that?
Still, I take my own advice, the mantra to my students that I seem to chant daily: "It's a first draft. Don't worry about making everything perfect -- or even close to it -- in a first draft."
Evening approaches and with it, new tasks. I help the Girl get ready for bed; I trim tenderloin and prepare the brine for smoking later this week. K reads the Girl stories and prepares a salad for tomorrow's lunch. Having to go to work tomorrow, she trundles off to bed; I sit down once more at the computer.
Others I'm sure are enjoying a first evening at the beach or the sounds of crickets at a mountain retreat. Me, I'm just ready to turn out the lights and head to bed.
It’s a bold idea that only a winter-hardened Polish woman could come up with. It’s more Eastern Europe that a consonant cluster. We need only imagine the ground, frozen solid for months, is covered with snow as a scarfed babcia digs about in the cellar for something to use in soup. She happens upon a store of cucumbers preserved in brine — pickles to us, but since everything in the East is pickled, it makes little sense to single one veggie out for distinction like that.
Whatever the series of fortunate events, Polish pickle soup is a reality, and now that we know the Girl likes pickles — “I eat them at school with my lunch!” she smiles — we have a new soup in our regular line-up.
A recipe for those interested is here, though I don’t vouch for it. It’s not what K uses — she freestyles!
Summer always had a dream-like feel to it when I was a young kid. Even though it seemed never to arrive, it had an aura of endlessness once it finally did. Two and a half months seem a lot longer when you’re five.
And waiting for summer vacation when the weather is already warm and everything around you is beginning to scream, “It’s summer!” (even though it’s technically spring) makes for itchy feet.
So we decided to get a jump on summer today, though, with some tag in the front yard. We ran around the yard, fell on each other, and rolled around in the grass, winded and sure that the moment would last for ever.
At least I was sure. The Girl, not so much. She was up again, ready to go.
“Come on, Tata! I’m it!”
When everything, positively everything is blooming,
or about to bloom,
when spring is leafing out everywhere,
there’s only one thing to do: get out and enjoy it.
Saturday has a morning ritual that never changes. It begins with some Skyping to Babcia and Dziadek in Poland. The Girl carries on two-thirds in English, a bit in Polish, and the rest in squeals and laughs. Ballet follows, with me heading to a nearby McDonald's for a coffee and some paper grading. Returning home, it's time for polski cwiczenia, Polish practice. Saturday after Saturday it's the same, in ordinary time, Advent, Lent, or Easter.
A five-foot visitor in our backyard, though, is hardly an every-Saturday occurrence. If it were, I think we might be seeing less of Nana (and, by proxy, Papa).
A black rat snake Pantherophis obsoletus, this fellow came slithering along our side yard, and I noticed him just as he was winding his way among the Leyland cypresses that shield our deck from neighboring yards.
K was simultaneously fascinated and repulsed, wondering aloud whether I should kill it.
"Of course not!" I declared. "This guy eats rats, mice, chipmunks, squirrels, and a host of other things I'd gladly do without." But as a compromise, I took a pitchfork and scooted him down to the edge of our property where he promptly wound his way into an extremely large azalea, curling around the branches until it was four or so feet in the air.
Returning to the upper part of our yard, I discovered some moss that appears to have sprouts. First a snake, then odd moss -- who knew what else might come our way.
Yes, a very tenuous Lenten connection. Still, one can't say I didn't try.