Where the sidewalk ends

Summer of the hammock

When I came home from my west coast trip this June, the first thing I noticed was the hammock in our living room.

It would be hard NOT to notice the hammock. One end touched the drum set on the west wall, and the other end reached over the couch on the east wall. The sides of the hammock brushed so close to the piano that I couldn’t walk through the room.

The kids thought that having a hammock jammed right in the middle of the living room was a fine arrangement. Always, one or two or even three of them would be lounging on the hammock, balanced precariously beneath the orange tree. I’d come home in the afternoon and find Quick or Skater Boy just chilling in the hammock. Every morning, I’d find Shaggy Hair Boy or Boy in Black asleep in the hammock. When I’d talk about moving the hammock outside where it belonged, the kids acted like I was proposing something ridiculous.

“What? The hammock adds MORE seating space to the living room.”
“It was just wasted space anyhow. No one uses the space in the middle of a room.”
"Move it outside? No one wants to sit outside when everyone's in here."
“It’s raining. It’ll get wet.”

One day, I got fed up with how messy the living room was, and I moved the hammock outside. It was With-a-Why’s summer chore to clean the living room, and I figured that he could vacuum more thoroughly without that awkward contraption in the middle of the room. Besides, I told myself, a hammock really does belong outside.

Late that night, Quick began cleaning the living room – and rearranging the furniture to make room for the hammock. I couldn’t stop him; Quick is such a nice guy that is impossible to say no to him. Besides, it’s my policy never to stop a teenager who is cleaning my house. He was even vacuuming the hard-to-reach places that With-a-Why routinely ignored.

Sometime after midnight, the kids carried the hammock back in.

They explained to me the next morning that my logic was faulty. The reason the living room was such a mess had nothing to do with the hammock, and everything to do with With-a-Why being the baby of the family. Sadly, this was probably true.

The kids figured out that they could keep the hammock in the living room by doing a bunch of cleaning to appease me whenever I started getting frustrated with the lack of space. So the hammock stayed in the house for the month of July. I didn’t move it out again until August when it was time to start looking ahead to fall.

This week my household is dispersing, with three of my kids and most of my extra kids heading off to college and grad school. Even as I write this, Blonde Niece is on her way to City Famous for Baked Beans and Tea Parties. I’ll miss always having a gang of young people in my house – some lounging on the hammock, a bunch crowded onto the couch, some throwing discs across the room, some playing poker at the table, some at the stove making strange, huge pancakes. I’m going to miss the chatter, the jokes, and the energy. I might even miss the hammock.



That's Shaggy Hair Boy in the top photo, and Boy in Black in the bottom one.

Up a creek

My mother and I both like to paddle up the creek that winds its way through the cattails. My mother is a great person to canoe with: she never complains when I get distracted by the view and forget to steer, she is willing to go off and investigate whatever odd things we come across, and she’s very patient when I stop paddling altogether to take my camera out of the dry bag. Unlike the rest of my family, she doesn’t say things like, “Don’t you already have a photo of a water lily?”

We took the left fork of the creek because we wanted to see where the beavers had built their lodge for the winter. Sure enough, as we came around a curve, we saw the big pile of mud and sticks, a thick home where the beavers could raise their young. As we paddled up to the lodge, my mother said, “Hey, look! A snake.”

If snakes symbolize change, seeing this creature was entirely appropriate. My life will be changing dramatically this week as my three oldest kids, plus about a dozen extras, go off to college and grad school, leaving me home with just my husband and With-a-Why.

The water snake lay stretched across the top of the beaver lodge, sunning herself in this dry, sheltered spot. Lumps in her thick body indicated she’d just eaten. I stood up in the canoe to take a photo, and when I touched a stick on the lodge, just to keep my balance, the vibration got her attention. She raised her head and her tongue flicked the warm breeze.



That’s my mother in the top photo.

Water lily in August

Into the river

During the last week or so, temperatures have gone up into the 90s, and my house has resembled a tropical rainforest. Except without the canopy of wonderful plants and colorful singing birds and cool green light. One small fan, which we move from room to room, is completely inadequate during an August heat wave.

My daughter’s last day of work for the summer was Thursday. So early Friday morning, she and I tossed our bathing suits and toothbrushes into the car and drove up to camp for a couple of days. My parents were already there, enjoying the shade of the oak trees and the breeze that comes off the river.

The hot August days that can be so miserable at home take the icy chill off the river water. Sailor Boy, who is stationed with the Coast Guard up on the river, joined us for a swim. At our favorite island, we jumped into the deep water, swimming out to rocks where we could sun ourselves and climbing up onto my father’s boat, which was anchored nearby.



The two figures on the island are my parents. That’s my daughter on my father’s sailboat and Sailor Boy swimming alongside it.

On that note

We’ve been to his piano recitals, where he plays classical musical in a way that’s moving -- and flawless. We’ve seen a DVD of him performing as the timpanist for an orchestra that included the best young musicians in the northeast. We watched him in the high school variety show, where he appeared on stage again and again, acting in comedy skits, doing a drum solo, and playing a stirring rendition of Clare de Lune on the piano. He’s an incredible athlete who makes dramatic throws and catches on the Ultimate Frisbee field. He’s smart: the salutatorian of our local high school. He’s good at pretty much everything.

But at the candle ceremony we held in our living room last night, the same words came up again and again: “he’s the nicest person I’ve ever met.”

It's not that the group of kids and extras who gathered for the ceremony are an overly sentimental group. In fact, the young men seem to take pleasure in insulting each other. Even gathered in a circle or the ceremony, balanced on the arms of chairs or kitchen chairs dragged over into the living area, with flames flickering from beeswax candles, they spent about half their time joking and tossing sarcastic comments across the dim-lit room.

But even a group of young men who exchange insults the way monkeys pick bugs out of each others’ scalps could say only complimentary words about Quick.

What’s especially notable about Quick is that he’s world’s nicest guy, but he’s not a pushover. He’ll always stick up for what he thinks is right. It’s a rare combination: that laidback, super-nice personality paired with real strength of character. None of us worry that he’s going to succumb to peer pressure in college: he won’t.

The candle ceremony was a send-off: Quick leaves tomorrow for college in Camera City. It’s going to be strange to have him living somewhere else. I’m used to just walking into the living room and seeing him sitting at the drums or playing a board game with With-a-Why or doing homework with Shaggy Hair Boy or throwing a disc back and forth with Boy in Black. He's part of the family, a kid who will help clean or cook, or who will sit down to play the piano whenever we need music. We’re going to miss him.

Moving day

On Saturday, we drove to Bison City, 150 miles away, to bring my daughter’s stuff to the apartment where she’ll be living for the next year while she’s in grad school. She’s still here until next Thursday, but we decided it was a good time to transport her bed and her desk, as well as her clothes and books. She’s very organized and she’d spent a couple of nights packing up everything she needed.

“Mom, what can I take from the kitchen?”
“Anything we have two of.”
“What about this?”
“Okay, anything we have one of.”

Last year, she’d given the box of kitchen stuff she’d used her senior year in college to Boy in Black and First Extra for their campus apartment. She rummaged through it, consulting Boy in Black.

“Can I take this?”
“Take whatever you want.”
“Well, I don’t want you to have to buy anything.”
“We won’t. That would be too much work. Whatever you take, we won’t bother to replace. No colander? We won’t make noodles this year.”

Her stuff fit nicely in the back of my husband’s van, but then her three brothers decided that they were going to come too. And then somehow, Skater Boy and Sailor Boy ended up joining us as well. So in two vehicles, the eight of us took a 300-mile roundtrip to check out her new apartment.

There wasn’t much to see. The living room was empty: just a carpet and beige walls. The kitchen held a refrigerator and stove. Her roommate’s bedroom held a bed, a desk, and not much else. We moved my daughter’s stuff into the other bedroom in about five minutes. Her belongings didn’t take up much space.

“Want some lawn chairs for the living room?” I offered. I had two bright red folding chairs in the back of the car, and I figured they might add some colour.

“No, I think it looks fine like this.”

There’s an amusement park with waterslides near Bison City, so after we’d inspected her apartment, we drove to the park. Unfortunately, it was the first hot Saturday we’d had all summer, and everyone in the region seemed to have the same idea. The lines for the water slides were ridiculously long. My group didn’t seem to mind – they just joked around and talked while they were in line – but I felt bad for the families with little kids.

While we were sitting in the shade, debating which part of the park to check out next, Sailor Boy said, “There’s a lot of negative energy here. Some of these families are just going at each other.”

He was right. Despite all the colorful images and plastic smiling faces that stared out from the concessions, the general mood at the park was hostile. I could hear parents yelling at their kids, couples snarling at each other, adults fighting over how much money to spend. The hot sun, the pavement, and the crowds were making everyone miserable. I’d forgotten how much I hate amusement parks.

Even though the waterslides themselves were fun, it was a relief to leave the park and retreat with my family to an air-conditioned restaurant where we were waited on by a smiley young woman who kept flirting with Boy in Black. We talked and joked about the day, and drank pitchers of water and lemonade with our pizza before getting back into our vehicles for the long ride home.

Just outside

The little neighbor kids, Ponytail and Biker Boy, have spent many mornings this summer playing on my front step. I leave bins of toys on the porch for them, and we’ve got a big lawn that is mostly shaded. We’re on a quiet, deadend street so my front yard is a safe place.

Some days, they’re good about playing quietly while I’m working in my home office, just a few feet away. When I want to take a break, I come out and sit with them for a while. We talk and eat snacks -- or put the garden hose in the tree so that they can run in the spray. Sometimes Shaggy Hair Boy will play with them or take them on walks. He’s good with kids.

Four of us in the household work at home sometimes, and that’s hard for these little kids to understand. Boy in Black’s summer job has been doing research; that is, he’s getting paid to sit on the couch in our living room writing computer programs and running simulations on his laptop. One of my daughter’s jobs has been freelancing for a magazine: editing articles on her computer. I’ve been writing, of course, and putting together syllabi. My husband checks the stock market on his computer and answers emails when he’s working at home.

The kids don’t get how doing stuff on a computer can be “work” or why we might need the household to be quiet during the day. They’re needy kids, with a difficult home life, and sometimes they drive the household crazy, always banging on the door to ask for another drink or snack or “Can’t I play the drums now?” Teaching them boundaries has been difficult work. One day when I left early to go run some errands and forgot to lock the front door, Boy in Black was awakened by the two kids jumping up and down on top of him.

Little Biker Boy is a child with a whole lot of anger inside him. At eight, he’s already got a host of childhood demons to deal with – and not the resources to do so. I’ve explained to him many times that the “no hitting” rule at my house works in his favor – since he is considerably smaller than the gang of young men who live with me. But it’s taken him a long time to curb his tendency to react violently when he doesn’t get his way.

But he can be sweet and charming, too. He’ll bring in the trashcans after the garbage truck comes through, and he’ll be so proud of himself for doing us a favor. “Look! I brought your trashcans up the driveway!” Some days, I ask him to wash my car with the hose – just to keep him and his sister busy and cool – and he’ll brag for the rest of the day about how clean the car looks.

On a ridiculously hot day this week, I came outside with juice so that we could have a snack in the shade of the river birches. I was wearing an old shirt that was covered with stains, and shorts leftover from the 70s. I’d yanked my sweaty hair up off my neck with an old scrunchie – not a flattering look -- and because my contact lenses had been bothering me, I was wearing a pair of glasses that my daughter has called ridiculous.

Little Biker Boy gave me the kind of sweet look only an eight-year-old boy can give. “Jo(e),” he said with complete sincerity, “you look beautiful today!”

On second thought

I have never tasted peach pie.

Artist Friend was horrified when I told him that. And his brother even volunteered to make me a peach pie if I’m ever in Motor City. When I go visit my friend PoetryeWoman, who happens to live in Motor City, I fully intend to show up at the house of Artist Friend’s brother and demand a pie. The fact that I’ve only met Motor City Brother once will not stop me. If his pie crust is anything like his brother’s, well, then it will be worth violating any kind of etiquette about how well you need to know someone before you show up on their doorstep demanding pie.

The only pie I ever make is apple pie. Since I live near apple orchards of all kinds, it makes sense on cool autumn days to make apple pie. And I like apple pie because it’s not as mushy or sickly sweet as most other fruit pies. Especially if you use tart, just-picked apples.

This week, though, I passed baskets of ripe peaches at a fruit stand and actually got as far as thinking about making a peach pie, on the slim chance that Artist Friend is right about how great it tastes. I’ve been on kind of a cooking spree ever since seeing the movie Julie and Julia so the timing seemed right. But then I remembered how damned hot my house has been this week: well over 90 degrees for several days in a row, with the kind of humidity that makes it feel like I’m moving underwater. And the thought of turning on the oven changed my mind.

We can just eat the peaches one at a time, plain. A ripened peach is a fine treat on a hot day. The pie will have to wait until the next time Artist Friend visits.

To the waterfall

Going away for a family vacation in August has gotten impossible now that our older kids have jobs and other commitments. We’ve had to content ourselves with short weekend trips. Luckily, we live in a beautiful part of the country.

Last weekend, we drove to a place famous for gorges and waterfalls. We had only 48 hours, but we tried to find something that could please each person in the family. For Shaggy Hair Boy, who loves good bread, we ate at a local bakery and bought him a loaf of bread to snack on. (That probably seems like a pretty token effort, but hey, we had six people to please.) With-a-Why wanted a hotel with vending machines, cable television and a pool. My husband wanted to go hiking. I wanted a waterfall. My daughter bought jewelry at the farmers’ market. Boy in Black always says his favorite part of a family vacation is just chilling in the back of the car, listening to music as we drive along.

The Gorgeous City farmers’ market was a disappointment. The location was wonderful, an airy wooden structure on the waterfront, but many of the stalls seem to sell expensive items marketed for tourists. We had to look hard to find farmers selling local produce. The most exciting moment was when a woman walked through with a dog who started growling at people. A kid screamed. The crowd parted. A man who had been happily eating some kind of savory meat sandwich leaped to his feet and backed up against a stall of jewelry, necklaces swaying and mirrors tilting as he knocked against the table. “He’s really very gentle,” the woman kept saying, pulling at the dog’s leash ineffectually. Yes, that’s what dog owners always say as their dogs bite savagely into strangers.

The weather was cool and sunny, which was perfect for a nice hike on a trail outside of town. We walked through a gorge, following a wide, flat streambed of limestone surrounded by shale cliffs that rose nearly 400 feet on one side. Boy in Black and Shaggy Hair Boy ran back and forth across the streambed, throwing a frisbee. We walked lazily, stopping to explore and take pictures. Shaggy Hair Boy had old sneakers on so he didn’t hesitate to walk right into the stream. The rest of us picked our way carefully across rocks in the stream, and mostly ended up getting our sneakers wet anyhow. At the end of the gorge, we stopped at a 215-foot waterfall, which we had mostly to ourselves. Then we walked back, following With-a-Why who was chanting, "Hotel! Let's go to the hotel!"

I really should change Boy in Black's pseudonym to "Boy in Pink Bandana." That's him in both photos, and the boy with the curly ponytail is Shaggy Hair Boy, of course.