Fyjording

Late this afternoon, With-a-Why showed me his newest game, something he calls fyjording. To play, you find a stretch of woods partially flooded, carry a long stick, and wear the dry sneakers that you have to wear to school because they are the only pair of shoes you own. The trick is to pole vault yourself over the puddles, balancing on clumps of moss or old logs, trying to keep your sneakers dry as you cross water that stretches for hundreds of feet in each direction.

With-a-Why warned me that the sensible boots I wear in the woods would be no good for the game, and he was right. Boots sink into the mud and get stuck, and sometimes fall off just as you are leaping across a ditch of muddy water. And it's more dramatic to plunge into a foot of water wearing your only dry sneakers. I gave up after a while and just walked through the water, while With-a-Why kept doggedly on, even though his sneakers were soaked. By the time we had reached higher ground, it was getting dark and we were both splattered with mud.

With-a-Why loves science fiction, and the woods this afternoon looked like something out of a science fiction novel. Tangled vines hung from the bare branches of trees, and the puddles were filled with subtle colours – some dark and edged with purple, some filled with green algae, some muddy brown. With most foliage still waiting to burst forth, the forest floor is brown with dead leaves, and the mossy logs from fallen trees look like creatures slithering past.

Talkin' Sunshine Blues

As I walked through my woods this morning, I could see the results of the heavy, wet snow we had just a few weeks ago. In the grove of scotch pines, tops of trees snapped off, some of them crashing to the ground while others dangle precariously high above my head, the branches and broken trunks silhouetted against sky. I wore my tall rubber boots as I splashed through muddy puddles filled with dead leaves and broken branches.

I could see spring creeping through the woods. Little green leaves are unfolding on honeysuckle branches and wild raspberry, sedges are growing up from the mud, and the leaves of mayflowers are opening in patches. The nice thing about the lack of thick foliage in early spring is that I can see where I am going in the woods. It was a good day to walk my boundaries: I could spot old fence posts, bits of barbed wire embedded in tree trunks, surveyor's ribbons, and an iron pipe that is usually hidden beneath vegetation.

The warm air and sunshine made it impossible to spend any time indoors. Who can grade papers when the world is filled with new mud? When I returned from my morning walk, I tackled the dead plants in my gardens, pulling up dead stalks and piling them into the compost pile. Then my husband joined me for an afternoon walk at Pretty Colour Lakes, where the water was shining green blue. At the far end of the lake, we saw a man with white hair fishing by himself; he turned out to be Outdoor Girl's father, a man I've known since second grade. We stopped and chatted, of course, catching up on family news, and then he returned to his peaceful casting.

Late in the afternoon, I joined Shaggy Hair Boy and With-a-Why for a walk in our own woods. Well, not so much a walk as a running and leaping over mud puddles. They were happy to discover all the newly fallen trees, which shifted the positions of many of the thick wild grape vines. Shaggy Hair was determined to find a vine that would support his weight so he could dramatically swing over some of the big puddles, screaming as he did so. With-a-Why followed his lead, of course, and soon they were both soaked in muddy water. Their sneakers squished noisily as we followed a trail back to the house, a sound I have always associated with spring.

Nya weñha Skä•noñh

That's what the sign said as we walked through the doors. Welcome.

The warm air smelled of frying meat and bread. Big tables held pottery, woven baskets, handmade jewelry, moccasins and colorful blankets, artwork of all types. Music came from one end of the big room — four men with guitars, a drummer, and an older man who was amazing on the harmonica. Near the band, several little kids were dancing, moving hips and arms with abandon. On the other end of the room, people gathered to eat corn soup, tacos, and fry bread.

We wandered through the tables, examining the jewelry, smelling the baskets and leather goods and lavender soap, and stopping to buy some hot soup. Then when we'd had our fill of the music and crafts, we drove to the school that the kids in the nation attend. I wanted to show Blonde Niece the nature trail behind the school.

We followed the boardwalk that wound through the trees and the puddles, taking us to a muddy stream that flowed by peacefully. We were the only ones on the boardwalk on this overcast spring day. A faint mist of green covered the honeysuckle bushes, leaves just coming out, and the skunk cabbages pushed through the mud and water with bright green leaves. The first green of the season. We walked the paths, chatting quietly and looking at trees that hung over our heads, welcoming spring on this overcast day.

One more week!

This week, as I was putting With-a-Why to bed, I looked around at my daughter's bedroom. It's a tiny corner room with space for a single bed pushed against the wall, a trunk under the window, and a bookshelf tucked against the closet; it's a pretty room, with one wall painted pink and translucent white curtains on the windows. While Beautiful Smart Wonderful Daughter has been living in City Where Lager is Drunk in Pints, With-a-Why has been sleeping her room – partly because he goes to bed earlier than the older boys and partly because he misses her. His stuffed animals are piled on her bed, and his special blanket and pillow. His books and comic books are scattered on the floor and piled in stacks on the trunk next to her bed, and the windowsill is filled with random items that belong to him.

"We need to clean this room before your sister comes home," I warned With-a-Why. He looked up at me from under his long black eyelashes, shrugged, and went back to the sketch he was doing. He's the baby of the family, and the amount of cleaning he does would barely keep the health department away.

I did not let his response deter me. Yesterday, I announced to the whole household, which includes various extra kids, that we were going to clean the entire house this week in honor of my daughter's return. A thorough cleaning. Closets and everything. The gang of teenage boys looked at me with a decided lack of enthusiasm and went on playing cards. Shaggy Hair boy muttered something about how he'd be willing to clean if he could skip school on Friday.

Neighbor Woman, who had stopped by to pick up Older Neighbor Boy and Philosophical Boy, listened to my pronouncement and laughed.

"But if the whole house is clean, it won't feel like home to her."

She's got a point there.

Nitrogen derivatives and index cards

Because Boy in Black had an organic chemistry test this afternoon, he came home last night after his drum lesson, stayed overnight, and skipped his morning class. This morning, he and I both worked in the quiet living room. He claimed the couch – by sleeping there. And I got the comfy chair next to the fireplace.

It's inspiring to work in the presence of someone as intense and focused as Boy in Black. Watching him prepare for an organic chemistry test is a bit like watching an athlete about to run an Olympic trial. It's the third test he's had this semester so by now I knew what to expect.

He wakes up at about 10 am, grabs a cup of cocoa, and then pulls out his laptop and his chemistry notebook. For an hour or two, he concentrates intensely, covering both sides of a sheet of paper with notes and formulas written in tiny handwriting. By the time he's done, the paper is so filled with symbols and words that looking at it makes me dizzy.

When he is ready for a break, he'll sit at the drums for half an hour, pounding out some kind of rhythm. Or he'll sit on the floor with his electric guitar, practicing songs. He might sit down at the piano and play song after song, or sometimes the same song over and over again. Or he'll pick up his acoustic guitar, put on the harmonica necklace, and stroll about the house doing his best Bob Dylan impression. Even when he's playing music, he is so focused that he notices nothing around him.

After half an hour of music, he returns to the sheet of paper that is filled on both sides, every inch of it. He begins pacing with the sheet, memorizing everything on it. "I know all the concepts," he explains to me, "But before a test, I have to memorize the details."

We both interrupt our work to get food every once in a while, and that's when we might exchange a few words.

"Hey, you aren't wearing black today," I said this morning. He shrugged. "This is my Bob Dylan shirt. Besides ... I need to do some laundry."

"Have you actually done any laundry at school?"

"No. But I know where the laundry room is."

He's been bringing his laundry home all year, and my husband has been doing it for him. Yes, he's a spoiled brat.

"I haven't seen you bring home any sheets or pillowcases, " I said, "Have you changed them? Ever?"

"Sure. You bought me two sets, remember? I changed them at Christmas."

"What did you do with the dirty sheets?"

"They're in my room somewhere. I'm good until May."

During an earlier break, I showed him the project I am working on. I've got hundreds of pieces of creative non-fiction, and I am trying to put them all together into a book. So what I've done is write an index card for each piece of writing, and now I am organizing the hundreds of index cards into a structure that makes sense to me. Once I have the index cards in order, I'll be able to work on the manuscript one chapter at a time. I've already agreed to present one chapter of the manuscript at a conference in June, so I am hurrying to get the cards in order so that I can start writing as soon as the semester ends.

I thought Boy in Black would be impressed with how organized I was, but he gave the careful stacks of index cards an incredulous look.

"You mean all this writing is already on the computer, and now you are making index cards for each piece?"

"Uh, yeah."

"So like ... this is what people did before computers were invented?"

He grinned. Then he returned to his pacing, his eyes focused on the sheet of chemistry. I returned to the index cards, feeling somewhat like a medieval scribe.

Pile of roses

I love the way trees in a city will flower, pinks and whites against harsh grey buildings, or the way flowers in a country garden will crowd colour up against a rock wall, or the way a whole meadow will bloom with daisies and vetch and pasture roses. I grow flowers in my gardens, and I gather wildflowers sometimes to put in vases.

But on a dark rainy day like today, when it's still too cold for flowers to bloom, I love the flowers that appear on my doorstop in a long white box.

I untie the ribbon carefully, and lift the cardboard lid, releasing the scent of damp petals. The roses, half-opened, are lined up neatly and carefully inside the box, bundled with baby breath, perhaps, or some ferns. The twelve stems reach all the way to the end of the box, wearing the green plastic holders filled with water. My kids used to fight over these little holders when I would take them off: if you put them over your fingers, you can look like some kind of evil villain with green claws.

I know that some people prefer elaborate flower arrangements or a variety of flowers arranged carefully in a vase. But what seems most beautiful to me is simply a pile of roses, spilling from the box, rose after rose, long stems dangling. I lift them from the box and carry them in my arms, petals brushing against my skin, before finally reaching atop my cupboards for a vase.

April storm

We gathered in an alcove filled with books, rows and rows of pastel-coloured library books with plastic covers and little numbered stickers. Along the top of the wooden shelves, paintings from local artists glowed. Through the high windows above the bookshelves, I could see storm clouds gathering in the evening sky.

When I arrived, a woman was setting up a table with trays of cookies, juice, and coffee. The audience sat on wooden chairs, many of them chatting with each other, many holding poems that they would read during the open microphone part of the evening. Evening Poet and I compared the poems we'd brought, and we decided that I would read first.

I'd been on the edge of a migraine all day, feel tired and sort of nauseous, probably due to the low pressure system moving through the area. Usually a thunderstorm is the only thing that can bring relief from that kind of pressure. But getting hugs from local poets and chatting with friends made me feel a little better. And always, I get a little adrenaline when I read. The first couple of poems I read were funny and political: the audience laughed appreciatively in all the right places. I love when that happens.

I'd decided to go with seasonal poems – first reading environmental poems for Earth Day, political poems and nature poems. Then I chose lyric poems from other Aprils over my lifetime. I read a poem about the move we made away from our old neighborhood seven years ago, then a poem with springtime imagery, and then a poem about my sister-in-law, who died this week five years ago. I read a poem that I wrote two years ago about pine straw, and a poem about the April of my junior year in college, a poem that describes the way we would get ready for a party on a spring evening. I read my way through April memories, stacked up on top of each other, with the bulky years between them dissolved into nothing. I ended with poems about massage, meditation, and healing.

When Evening Poet stood up to take her turn, I looked up at the windows to see that the cloudy sky had gotten darker. I could feel the pressure inside my head began to lift. By the time Evening Poet read her last poem, it was raining outside, a hard pounding rain. We ate cookies and drank coffee and listened to the rain thudding against the windows before everyone returned to their seats for the open mike. During the open mike part of an evening, we heard just a poem or two from each person. It's like opening a sampler box of chocolate and getting to taste each one.

By the time the evening ended, thunder was snapping against the roof of the building. As we stared out of the glass doors in the front of the building, lightning would flash open the whole scene, showing rain pelting into long puddles on the sidewalk and tree branches thrashing the night air. For the first time in days, my headache was gone as I stepped out into the storm and ran to my car.

Picnic weather

When my mother saw the weather forecast for last weekend, she sent an email to family members: "Is anyone interested in a picnic?"

On Sunday, the temperatures went into the seventies. We met at Pretty Colour Lakes, bringing sandwiches and fruit, wearing shorts and t-shirts. The sun felt hot as it shone down through the leafless branches, and soon we were drawn away from the picnic tables and to the lake. We weren't the only family who had the idea for a Sunday picnic – the usually quiet park was filled with children playing in the wet sand, teenagers wading in the water, adults relaxing in the sun.

As we walked the path around the lake, a trail shaded by cedar trees and smelling of mulch, we passed a teenager fishing, some kids skipping stones, a couple walking their dog, and a group of friends sunbathing on the bank. Even though signs at the park strictly forbid swimming or even wading, the water was too tempting to resist. I could hear joyful splashes as dogs and people leaped into the cold lake.

It was hard to retreat from the carefree summer atmosphere of the park and return home to the usual Sunday night chores. I emptied the ice chest we had brought and left it in the kitchen, knowing we'd be using it again soon. My husband and Shaggy Hair went out to take out the garbage and came back in the house looking puzzled.

"We found the garbage cans in the ditch, still filled with garbage," my husband said. He seemed surprised by this turn of events, as if he had not been driving past those same garbage cans every time he backed out of the driveway all week long.

"Yeah, the snowplow knocked them in last week, and they were buried for a few days."

"Was that snowstorm only a week ago?"

"Yeah."

The breeze came in through the open door. My bare arms and legs had tanned already, and Shaggy Hair's face was pink with sunburn. The snowshovels propped up against the doorway seemed entirely superfluous.



With-a-Why, Shaggy Hair Boy, and Blonde Niece.

Retraction

When I said in my last post that no one in my house wears fruit in their hair, I spoke too soon. Boy in Black and With-a-Why, it is true, prefer to tie their long hair back with bandanas. But Shaggy Hair Boy, who has the longest, curliest, most glorious hair in the family, sometimes requires a bunch of bananas to hold it back.

From across the ocean

Yesterday morning, I typed a blog post that describing my frisbee-playing son "tying a banana around his long hair." Within an hour of writing that line, I got a teasing comment from a blogger who lives in European Country Where People Speak English: "Having just spent a happy hour chatting madly on messenger, fingers flying too fast to worry about typos, I was delighted to see that Boy in Black ties a banana around his head! Would love to see that." She followed up with a smile face.

I laughed aloud when I read the comment. How funny that I can be writing on my laptop in my own living room on a lazy Sunday morning, make a typo, and have a friend on the other side of the ocean point it out to me almost immediately. I corrected the typo, of course, lest my readers think my household is even crazier than it is. For the record, we do not wear fruit in our hair.

The next time I sat down at my computer, an email chimed in from my daughter, who must have been reading my blog in her flat in the European City With Red Double-Decker Buses.


Yo, jo(e)

This is why you need me home to edit your blog. A banana, c'mon now.

Love,
Daughter