to help us grab on to a little more summer with our grubby little hands. Check it out at Simple Good and Tasty. It’s a yummy one and best of all, my editor didn’t nix the part about the wet t-shirt contest! Score!
Look what happens when you actually let your minivan sit idle in the driveway for an afternoon. All of a sudden, Supergirl has time to invite Big E, her best buddy, over to play. After some deep popsicle conversation on the swing set they set off for an adventure down at the creek with Saint James. They come back soaking wet. I suppress the urge to warn them about giardia. They leave again, brown shoulder butting brown shoulder as they scamper down the hill. After a spell Devil Baby and I decide to join them. I sit on a park bench. A park bench! When is the last time I sat, just sat, on a park bench? Saint James comes out of the water and folds his cool wet body into the side of mine. I watch Supergirl and Big E slither down a big rock into the water, floating on their backs as the current carries them gently downstream. I watch mallards swim by, giving them suspicious looks and wide berth. I watch Devil Baby rip leaves into teeny tiny chlorophyl confetti and throw them into the water, fingers spread wide in a celebratory flourish. I watch Big E give Supergirl a boost into a tree that is entirely too tall for them to climb and then her reach down to hoist him up – like traveling acrobats – gypsies – feral children. All of this because I stayed put. For one afternoon.
One of my all time favorite things about this city is the May Day parade and festival at Powderhorn park. Even though the weather is usually cold, gusty, rainy and generally nasty, Minneapolitans give the final word to the date on the calendar and turn out in droves to frolic on the newly greened hills of the park. The Heart of the Beast puppet theater shows up with their giant freaky puppets and all the fringey, unwashed, dreadlocked, young, old, and in-betweens don their most sparkly, tattered, peculiar get-ups and come out to mill around, eat fair food, and watch the epic Tree of Life Ceremony from a riotous patchwork of quilts thrown up on the hills. It’s like a big roving carnival, with jugglers, stilt walkers, plumed ladies, fire breathers and musicians. As drumbeats, clapping and yelling grow in intensity, the Sun Flotilla gets paddled across the pond until it reaches the shore to wake the Tree of Life. It’s awesome. It’s colorful, pagean, freaky, and optimistic. It’s an excuse to collect in one spot with people from all walks of life. It’s a celebration. It’s a collective sigh of relief. It’s SPRING!
On Sunday afternoon I heard Devil Baby shrieking, and I mean shrieking: “I found some boobs! I found some boobs!” Surely, I wasn’t hearing her correctly. I ran outside and sure enough, she had found some boobs.
To say that my relationship with dandelions is fraught would be an understatement. On a glorious spring day in the early seventies I was assiduously collecting them and using them for tickets to go down the slide when all of the sudden I was scooped up by a wild-eyed teacher, who rushed me inside and called my parents. My eyes were swollen to slits and I was taken to the hospital and given a gigantic shot in the ass. I slept for seemingly ever – kinda like Snow White – and woke up with a tacit understanding that there were things in the world that could make me itch. As I grew, my list of itchy things grew: pollen, grasses, molds, dogs, cats, weeds, dust mites, etcetera. I pretty much stayed clear of dandelions for the rest of my childhood, ubiquitous as they were on every school playground.
Fast forward to early 2000. I’m a young mom, with a house on a creek and a whole hell of a lot of dandelions. In my youth, I spent the summers pretty much bathing in the chemical mist of the white Chem Lawn truck. Usually, my mother would shoo us inside, but I can remember plenty of times the guy would spray under us as my friend and I perched a top the swingset and watched, breathing in that stinging sweetish chemical smell. Doctor Dash and I couldn’t, in good conscience, spray our lawn, even though the Chem Lawn truck had changed the letters to spell Tru Green - not with a crawling baby, not with a creek down the hill. So we began to pluck them, one by one and with numerous fancy implements. On by one. By one. And here it is, nine years later. And I’m still plucking. It’s what I do when I’m outside. Nothing is more satisfying than digging in with the weeding fork and pulling out a big nasty root, all wrinkly and hairy – squeeeeee they scream. But it’s downright Sisyphean, this trying to keep the dandelions at bay the old fashion way. Every time I turn around, there’s an army of bright little heads, sprung out of nowhere, mocking me in the grass. The theory, as I understand it, is that if you keep plucking, each year you get less and less dandelions. Well, I’ve been plucking for nine years and . . .
Good God.
So imagine my delight when I saw this op ed piece in the NY Times. The author basically challenges the notion that green golf course lawns are more beautiful, hence more desirable than weedy, natural ones. Dandelions, after all, look just like flowers. Isn’t the difference between a weed and a flower in the eye of the beholder? I’d say so given my annual bickering with Dash over what he’s allowed to bushwhack in the yard. What I see as healthy ground cover, he sees as invasive and aggressive weedage. He wants space between the “legitimate” plants. I tend to be more inclusive in my definition of who gets to stay in the yard. But I digress. The author writes: “. . . my eco-friendly ethos dovetails suspiciously with my laziness.” I love that. It is so my m.o.
Now if I could just convince everyone else, I’d be in business.
Some people walk around in rose tinted glasses. It’s enviable, really. I certainly do not and in some ways, this blog and the writing I do here is an attempt to stop, take notice, and really look. Really see. Pry my grimy tenacious thoughts off of myself and point them out at the beautiful world. Try on some rose tinted shades for a change. It’s so easy to forget. To ignore. To take for granted. But bulbs, man. Bulbs are magic. They lurk underground – frozen dead brown ugly nothings. Until out of nowhere, they split and soar, and out of earth that looks truly forsaken, they send riotous leggy beauties, just because and all for free. What a sight for sore eyes. What a gift. Pure joy. Here’s a promise to myself. I’m writing it here, so I don’t forget – so you hold me to it: I will plant more more more bulbs of joy this fall.
Oh, and uh, Circus Lady? That app? It rocks.
I seem to have tuckered myself out with my spring cleaning shenanigans. There’s an enviable pile of stuff on our front lawn for the ARC truck to take away, and yet the mess inside the house doesn’t seem in the least bit concerned. The micro-chaos, the day-to-day stuff, keeps on churning no matter what I swipe from under my kids’ noses to give away. The syrupy plates in the sink, the sweatshirts on the floor, the sidewalk chalk in the grass, the shower of tiny black pellets that spring out of St. James’ cleats and socks every time he has soccer practice, the mail, the pages and pages of drawings, scribbles, draft rap songs, and old homework that sprout like mushrooms wherever I look.
Our simple days in Tulum seem like a whole other life: one room, two beds and a cot, two suit cases, 2 stuffed animals per kid. Simple.
We had travelled to Mexico seeking warmth and sun as well as the chance to dip our toes in a different culture. We got those things in spades, but we also got a big dose of really pure family time. Simple. We stayed at Suenos, a lovely 12-room eco hotel that I can only describe as Swiss Family Robinson meets Frieda Kahlo. There were no paths between the thatch roof buildings – only soft, velvety sand, palm trees, bamboo groves and artfully placed hammocks and grinning skulls. I feel like I’ve been searching for a place like this my whole life. Everything, from the sturdy wooden beds, to the Mexican painted toilets and sinks, to the colorful woven bedspreads, to the multi-colored blown glass lamps in the gardens, seems to be handcrafted out of beautiful organic materials.
Our room was small, so small that Doctor Dash and I had doubts about surviving the week at first, but in a lesson about how much we don’t need (tons of space, giant piles of towels, a closet full of clothes, a pantry stocked with snacks, computers, toys, TVs) it turned out to be perfect. Our room was comfortable and chic and aside from nights, there were only a handful of times we were all in it together, lolling and chatting on the beds, taking a break from the sun and wind. Truly lovely.
Our pared down surroundings and the absence of TV allowed us to simply BE. Like everyone, we’re always busy running from one thing to the next. Even when we’re home, there’s noise – TV, music, youTube, neighbor kids. It was good to detox
from all of that stuff and just be. Be together. Dash remarked that it felt like camping since we were up with the sun in the mornings and falling into bed exhausted at night. A couple nights the kids went crab hunting on the beach with flashlights and we marveled at the star studded sky in the absence of urban light. Our stay felt low tech, low impact, low light (all solar energy), although we were hardly roughing it. It was abundant and indulgent in the things that mattered: warm ocean, big surf, soft sand, hot sun, gorgeous views, idle playtime and killer food.
And ay chihuaha cosita sabrosa we feasted like kings. Breakfast at Suenos was strong coffee, copious fruit platters, granola, yogurt and pastries in the gorgeous open air two-story palapa with a view of the sea. For lunch we’d either crawl back up there or stroll down the beach to one of the other open-air, shoes-optional, restaurants that dot the beach. The only time we put on sandals and flip-flops was when we got in the car to go to town or on a day trip. We ate tacos and tostadas and quesadillas with fresh fish, shrimp, beef and cheese. We never asked them to hold the pico de gallo, beans or guacamole, and the kids ate way out of their comfort zone – with gusto. Blame it on the big waves, the sea air, or, more likely, the lack of constant snacks, but they were hungry when mealtimes came and willing to eat green and red things they would never have eaten at home. At night we’d venture into town to walk around the crowded colorful streets and found three outstanding Italian restaurants, any one of which I would love to have here in Minneapolis. Again, meat sauce, tomato sauce, the kids gobbled it up. Could it be that butter noodles are a thing of the past for us? I can only hope.
One of my favorite moments was coming up from the beach and finding my kids standing with a man weilding a machete. They were each clutching a coconut, waiting their turns and watching with wide eyes while Jorge hacked open coconuts for them to drink. They had scoured the beach for coconuts with their pals from San Fransisco and found a way to convey what they were after to the friendly owners.
As one day slid onto the next, our kids managed to do everything and nothing at the same time. They befriended the motley crew of Mexican dogs that guarded the place. They made a fort in the bamboo and buried each other in the sand. They snorkled, climbed Mayan ruins and tracked spider monkeys through the jungle in a nature preserve. They crashed their little bodies into the surf for hours at a time. Once a day, Saint James would get creamed by an especially harsh wave and emerge from the water sputtering and muttering that he’d had enough, only to be drawn back in within the hour. He stalked lizards and iquanas and played soccer on the beach, finding his legs in the slow slippery sand. Supergirl explored every nook and cranny of the property, collected coconuts and drew faces on them. Devil Baby remembered that she knows how to swim and ruled the pool. And Dash and I? We did everything and nothing too. But mostly nothing – if by nothing you mean watching and smiling and trying, trying so hard to remember every sound, every color, every moment of Tulum.
Only a fool, or a three year old, would believe that spring is around the corner. Yes, the snow may be melting, slowly exposing street grime that can be carbon tested back to November. Yes, we can see patches of sodden grass and all manner of balls and toys that have been buried for months. But it’s only March 9, which means that we, my Minnesota friends, are far from finished. But if you’re like me, you are finished. You’re ding-a-ling-a-DONE. I’ve exhausted all my love for stews, reading, and cozy fires. I want crocuses, sunshine and pollen. STAT. Christmas, Valentines Day, Tiny Dancing and the Olympics are gone, leaving nothing to look forward to. The worst is over, yes. But as far as I’m concerned, the hard part starts now. The thaw in Minnesota is a long, drawn out, dramatic affair – it is Mother Nature being the biggest, most flamboyant tease she knows how to be. One step forward. Two steps back. Lubricated by a whole hell of a lot of mud. My kids have forsaken their winter coats for weeks now and I can hardly blame them. I feel the same way about my matronly puffer. But dare I wash them and put them away? Only if I want to bring about a giant blizzard followed by a freezing clipper. Sigh. At least our thick winter blood is coming in handy. Dash and I spent most of Sunday sitting on our stoop, reading the paper, watching the kids play, tilting our faces to the watery sun. My kids alternated between snow boots, rain boots and bare feet all day long. Some people might think we’re crazy. But we know we’re not crazy. We’re just desperate.
I am absolutely besotted with this concept. Coined by French philosopher, Gaston Bachelard, it loosely translates to pathways of desire. It’s the worn paths of hard packed dirt that naturally occur when people repeatedly find the most compelling (or shortest) way to get from point A to point B.
Do you remember? Do you remember all the paths of desire on your old schoolyard? The well loved artery from the merry-go-round, where you’d spin and spin until you felt sick, to the small clearing at the edge of the woods where you could lie in the leaves and squint through your lashes at sky and an impossible tangle of black branches? It’s the path a child is likely to take, or a dog.
Sometimes, the shortest, most logical route is stamped in concrete and we know nothing of a path of desire. And sometimes, the concrete does not suffice and our feet are impelled to cut through, veer off, bisect swaths of land, following an intangible rationale not accessible to city planners and engineers. It’s just so romantic. It’s the intersection of geometry and emotion – like frown lines, laugh lines.
Right now, with the snow covering all the sidewalks and paths, there are chemins du désir everywhere. Down by the creek in front of our house, the snow is padded down in patterns that don’t match up to the cement walks I know to be underneath. Come spring, we well-behaved Minnesotans will take to the pavement and forget all about the blanket of snow that innocently gave us the freedom to follow our heart’s desire.
For a poetic exploration of les chemins du désir in the beleaguered city of Detroit, check out this post over at Sweet Juniper.
I did it again. I frickin’ frackin’ did it again. I wedged my minivan in a mesa of snow right in my Goddamn driveway. Does this sound vaguely familiar? Hmmm? That would be because I have done this before. TWICE. You might have read about it here. But this time, I am really truly disgusted with myself. This time, I am really truly having serious doubts about my intelligence level. Serious, serious, doubts.
We’ve gotten a bit of snow over the last few days. Nothing crazy. Yesterday the plows went through, leaving a pile of snow about two feet wide and one foot high across the driveway. As I approached, I somehow forgot that my minivan is basically the basset hound of cars, and when it snows it’s like a basset hound on roller skates. It’s amazing how many thoughts can flash through one’s mind in the split second it takes to make a really bad decision. So many thoughts, so little help: I never got stuck in the driveway last winter, surely I won’t get stuck now. Actually, better not try this, I might get stuck. But the snow is super powdery. I’ll bust right through like a car commercial. Or maybe I should park in the street. I might get stuck. But what a pain to carry the groceries an extra thirty feet. I’m going for it.
YEEEEEE!!!!! HAAAAAAAA!!!!!!
. . .
FUUUUUUUUCK MEEEEEEEE!!!!
What made me think I could Dukes of Hazzard it across that snow, I have no idea. But I gunned it. All the better to lodge my van in real good. Like Boss Hogg’s fat knuckles stuck in an olive jar. And so there I was. Stuck. Again. I took Devil Baby inside, set her up with some cartoons and came back out cursing a blue streak with a hockey stick in one hand and a shovel in the other. I peered under the car and it was as I suspected. I had no choice but to loosen and push away the snow trapping my chassis. And there’s that word again. Chassis. I haven’t even thought of the word since the last time my chassis was impaled on an iceberg in front of Blooma Yoga. Incidentally, a hockey stick is the tool of choice for this particular type of excavation. A shovel is useless for getting under the car. Being an experienced chassis dislodger, I pulled out a floor mat so my knees wouldn’t freeze, but I eventually ended up completely prostrate, digging on my stomach, and finally my back. I dug for a good hour, making my way around the car, shedding layers and huffing and puffing as I went. My arms felt like feeble noodles and I was sweating buckets when I collapsed onto my back for a moment’s rest, squinting through my sunglasses at the clear blue sky. It was warm and quiet – I could almost make myself believe I was lying on a beach in Florida, except that, in actuality, I was lying in the street in the sludge next to my minivan in Minnesota. Fuuuuuuck, I wailed, cursing myself for the thousandth time. Fuuuuuuuuck! I heard a polite throat clearing and a little Are you stuck? I leapt up to see an older couple standing on the sidewalk with their dog. I dusted the snow off my shoulders, put on my best neighborly smile and assured them that I would be ok. What the hell were they going to do, anyway? At that moment Big Red (she is not big, but her son calls her Big Red, so who am I to pass up such a great nickname?) ran out of her house. She made the Popeye arms at me and insisted on giving me a push, so I relented and got in the van, careful to put it in reverse. And wouldn’t you know it, Big Red and the old man got me out. Goddamn if they didn’t get me out.
For now, anyway. We’re in a bone deep freeze here in Minnesota, and have been for over a week now. It’s the kind of cold that seriously roughs you up when you dare step outside. It smacks your cheeks, takes a punch at your chest, and then frisks your entire body with icy fingers – a cheeky bully trying to find a way in, past the layers of goose down, fleece and wool. The only good thing I can say about this kind of sustained cold is that when it finally breaks, ten degrees, twenty degrees suddenly feels like open coat weather. As the days grow longer by barely perceptible increments, scarves will hang loosely around impervious necks, gloves will be stuffed into coat pockets, and jackets will litter the edges of outdoor ice rinks as we go about our business in the kind of weather that would keep most reasonable people inside clutching mugs of tea. We may cringe and scurry now, but our blood thickens, our flesh adjusts, we set our jaws until we’re able to take a swipe back at old man winter – beating the dirty bastard at his own game with the fire in our bellies. We are warriors and we know our time is nigh. Bam. Pow. Thwack. Aaarghhh.
Of course the SIX gallons of WHOLE milk that I bought by accident (don’t ask) should help matters. Have you had whole milk on your cereal lately? It’s freakin’ delicioso. Bring on the winter blubber. KAPOW!
And Happy Birthday to my dad, Lelo, who today is 65 and fabulous! How many guys do you know who can do this – at any age?
is a walk around the lake. I was fed up. Bored. Antsy. Annoyed with myself for all of the above. So I took a walk. And on my walk I saw clouds the color of bruises and sherbet. I saw the sun set and the moon rise, innocent and optimistic, nearly full and dangling from fishing line. I saw an island of seagulls perched in the middle of the lake like origami flicking to life. I saw a girl pull out her ponytail holder and her beautiful hair tumble out in wave of auburn. I saw the city shimmering silver, a magical two-dimensional movie set. I saw a giant bald eagle in the same spot we saw him yesterday, perched on a lamppost, King of the Lake. He craned his neck to watch me beneath him. He looked massive against a darkening sky and I whispered, Hail King.
Is it me or does the dark just seem darker this year? Every night, it takes me by surprise, like a hooded figure, suddenly appearing from behind a shadowy corner. It is sudden and it is unequivocal. Ink deep and solid to the touch, night means business. It comes upon us like a blind fold. Like a cast iron skillet to the head. Where is the soft retreat, the fade out, the gloaming? Where are the moments when everything shimmers, suspended between tangible and intangible, between being here and being gone? Where is the glow that melts over the hills and the rocks, allowing you to believe, for a second, that there is warmth and potential for motion in those seemingly immutable forms. It could be me. Or it could be the dark. But it just seems darker.
I have half an hour and a hot cup of Yogi Detox tea at my wrist. It’s snowing outside and last time I checked it was OCTOBER. As I made my kid-drop-off-supermarket rounds this morning I came to the realization that Mother Nature is one peevish mama.
Perhaps it a tad self-aggrandizing to think that I might have anything to do with the state of affairs outside our windows, but I write one little post last week about not being ready for winter and the next day – BAM – snow! Mother Nature’s all Hey yo, you stupid little bitch, I like how you thought it was safe to sign up for playground duty on October 12. I know you and your crisp fall day bullshit. Take that. Booof! Smell me now, fools! Kind of an I’ll give you something to cry about move, which, honestly, can only be described as deeply, deeply peevish. I know peevish and I can tell you, my friends, she’s gone super freak deep peeve.
Last year I wrote this about winter and it was a full month later. Admittedly, it was kind of an odd post with whispers of peyote usage – not sure what was going on with me and my fingers that day; you are free to draw whatever conclusions you will. My conclusion, retrospectively, is that winter sort of yawned into us last year. There was something inevitable and drawn out about its settling over our piece of the earth. Right? Lethargy? Bitterness? Resignation? Did you get that from the gray opera gloves? Hmm. Not sure I did either. But this year feels completely different. Mama Nature is feeling spry and peevish. Puckish and and meddlesome. She’s on a bit of a power trip, I think, but it comes from a good place – she’s feeling like a saucy little trickster, hence the white stuff. And when she’s feeling like that, what other choice do we have but to rub our hands together, bust out a little hip hop move and say, OK, baby, I’ll play.
Mama Nature, I’m IN, girl.
Time for playground duty. Now where the fuck are my boots?
I feel like I’ve been sucker punched by Mother Nature. When fall hits us in Minnesota, it hits us hard. One minute it’s boiling out and I’m marveling at how much my kids stink when they come home from school – sweaty and sticky, the smell of playground, jostling, new friends, and a wee bit of stress clinging to their warm heads. Without the benefit of the pool to wash them off and with the shame of a teacher to smell them, I force them to bathe every night. Sorry, you stink I answer flatly to the groans and eye rolling. They do. Stink.
But seemingly overnight the weather turns, and this week in particular, with the cold driving rain, our noses are rubbed in the mess of Autumn. Get ye inside, Mother Nature seems to hiss as the rain drops pelt my kitchen windows, And like it.
But I don’t like it. I’m feeling bereft. Unmoored. Discombobulated. I haven’t made peace with the darkness, for one thing. As the daylight retreats earlier and earlier every night, I cower in my kitchen. The drives and drop-offs, the errands, the stuff of life that now need to happen after dark take on a heaviness, a sense of sacrifice. The hour belies the black curtains outside my windows which make me want nothing more than to curl up under a blanket. I glance at the clock, time for bed on the tip of my tongue and wilt: What? It’s only 7:20?
And soon the cold will come to stay and every move out the back door will require armor, literally and figuratively. Winter is a battle. You suit up and you suit up your underlings with layers of protection against the cruel air. You hunch your shoulders, put your head down, squint, grimace, let out a war cry and run into the danger. Every time. Every time you open the door. It’s exhausting.
And then when you come back in, it’s a whole other kind of carnage: Boots, mittens, hats and coats left for dead all over the mud room floor – a winter massacre in the mud and melting snow. Once I found a pair of snowpants standing straight up, they were so caked in mud. Did I mention we have white tile floors in the mud room? I cannot even begin to understand what kind of a person would install something so monstrously and offensively impractical. Idiots.
Believe it or not, I actually like many things about winter in Minnesota. As someone who has a near Pavlovian reaction to the sun that makes me race outside and stay there for as long as possible, it’s nice to take a break, to have an excuse to hole up, to feel no guilt for the hours spent indoors. I like fires. I like cooking hot things in big pots. I like living in a city where people refuse to surrender and find joy in every season. I like tiny dancing. Wait, I LOVE tiny dancing. I like scarves. I like tea. I like books. I like boots.
I like winter. In its own time. I’m feeling rushed. Pushed. Bullied. I’m not ready to let go of the ease and the sun, the warmth and the long lazy days, the relative lack of responsibilities and places to be. But what I want doesn’t matter. I need to make peace with the paradox of a busier calendar when we’re supposed to be hibernating, of having to move quicker when I want to slow down.
What I want doesn’t matter. I know what I need to do. I need to get some thick winter blood and some balls. Maybe a cute pair of boots. Winter’s coming. And I best be ready.
