Belongings

Belonging, noun:
1. possession, personal effect
2. close or intimate relationship

It was a Saturday morning and I was poking through one of three huge boxes of purses lining the edge of a yard cluttered with a life's accumulation of belongings. The girl having the yard sale was still in her twenties, too young to have amassed such a collection. I struck up a conversation about all those purses; the objects I find most interesting are the ones with a story. So she gave me the story: My mother died.

Instantly, I was transformed from shopper to vulture, picking around the corpse for a juicy morsel. When my grandmother died, my mother refused to sell any of her belongings. She couldn't bring herself to let strangers judge and haggle over her mother's memories. I thought she was foolish, giving everything away when it could be sold for good money. Now, I understood.

I bought a purse, but I couldn't get past its story. Every time I went to use it, I felt the weight of regret at making that poor girl put words to her sadness. Months went by before I finally decided to carry the purse to a going away party for a friend. As I rummaged for a lipstick in the dark hallway outside the ladies room, I looked up to find the girl from the yard sale standing beside me, eyes fixed on her mother's purse. A bemused smile broke through the sadness on her face: Today is the two year anniversary of my mother's death.

Belongings can have stories, and maybe some can even have ghosts, who slip out of the shadows to appear at just the right moment.

Practice What You Preach

Starbucks is big on Community Service. They say so right on their website:

We believe in being good neighbors.

Every Starbucks is a part of a community, and we’re committed to helping neighborhoods thrive wherever we do business. It’s a commitment rooted deep in our heritage and the belief that we can use our scale to be a catalyst for positive change.

Now, more than ever, communities are relying on the private sector to share resources and help drive meaningful change. At Starbucks, we’ve always valued community service, and our partners have been fostering this “culture of good” since we opened our first store in 1971.

But when I walked in today and asked them to donate 20 little paper cup sleeves so my kids could make these cute ships, they said something else.





They said no.

I wonder if they've read their website?

Putting My Big Girl Panties On

My bedroom has a built-in state-of-the-art security system. If anyone heavier than Stuart Little tries to enter the room, the floor CREEEAKS so loudly that it not only wakes us, it wakes everyone within a three house radius.

And that is why I went commando today.

It was 6:30 this morning when I was tippy toeing around in the dark, trying to piece together a decent outfit to go garage saling in. My only real criteria was that everything be close enough to reach in three creaks or less, and clean enough that it passed the sniff test. In only two creaks, I managed to dig a skirt and bra out of the dumping ground I have created on the top of my husband's dresser. Three creaks later, I scrounged a shirt off the floor of my son's closet. One more creak, and I was slipping on a pair of shoes waiting by the door.

I was fine with the fact that my naughty bits would be getting a breath of fresh air. Anything that helps keep me cool on an Arkansas summer day has to be a good idea, right? Well, you'd think so. Except for one critical garage sale design flaw. When they run out of tables, they just stack stuff on the ground. And unless you're Sharon Stone, do you really want to be caught in that position?

Luckily, there is a law of garage saling that is as steadfast as gravity: If you need it, it will be there. And today, I needed undies.



Yes, they do go up to my armpits and make me feel about as sexy as Andy Rooney, but they're new and they fit and they were only a buck. I would have preferred something a little less Victorian and a little more Victoria's Secret, but you can't always get what you want. You get what you need.

Don't Try This At Home

Remember that old ad campaign, Take the Nestea® Plunge?





The premise is that if you're lucky enough to have a cold, quenching glass of Nestea Iced Tea in your hand, even the harshest environment magically transforms into cool, refreshing water.

My husband decided to try the plunge in our pool a couple of days ago.



Our pool, a couple of days ago


Unfortunately, he wasn't lucky enough to have the tea. In which case, even the harshest environment just stays harsh, and instead of getting refreshed, you get a broken shoulder.

Oh sure, you can all lavish sympathy all over him—poooooor baby—but I'm the one you should be feeling sorry for. All he has to worry about is a lousy six to eight week recovery period, constant pain, almost complete loss of the use of his dominant hand, and an awkward, hot, uncomfortable sling for two months.

Whatever. The garbage isn't going to take itself out for two months.

Man. This really sucks for me.

A Fourth of July Miracle

I'm not exactly what you would call an especially rational person. I'm more of what you might call a recreational worrier. When things go wrong, only the worst possible ending seems plausible. I find a wet spot on the floor, and I'm SURE the roof not only has a leak and needs to be replaced immediately, but probably is in fact dripping some highly toxic poison into our home which will kill us all by dinner. It could happen. My seven-year-old gets a strange bump on his genitals, I'm convinced it's fatal scrotum cancer. Even after my husband shows me the tick writhing in the tweezers. Ticks can cause fatal scrotum cancer, you know.

I have a word for this kind of thinking. That word is "pragmatic."

My husband has a different word.

So this morning, when we woke to a hot house, dread began swirling in the pit of my stomach. We'd need a new unit for sure, maybe two. Certainly all new duct work. Probably months of expensive labor. We'd have to find somewhere to stay. It was going to be a nightmare. There'd probably be locusts!

But then, something crazy happened. Not two hours after we noticed the house was hot, it was cool again. My responsible husband called our reliable AC guy and he fixed it. Just like that. All it was was this little old part.





A part which cost $41.00.





Then he stayed and tuned our son's guitar.

I'm sure we'll have a disaster for me to worry about soon enough. But it looks like today's not the day.

. . . and justice for all.

Even though my HUGE teacher paychecks just keep rolling in all summer long, I still like to supplement with a little extra income when I can. Summer nanny gigs are the perfect solution, mainly because I'm way too lazy to get a real job, but also because it keeps my only child out of my ass for a few hours a day. (I mean that in the nicest way possible.) For me, it's a part-time job; for him, it's a part-time brother.

Because I'm such a quick study, it's only taken me two weeks to get to the heart of the strange dynamic between my child and my charge. They aren't so much acting like friends; they're acting, well, like brothers. After two solid weeks of bickering and pissing contests, I've got them figured out. They don't give a hot damn about happiness or fun. They are completely unimpressed by even the most ambitious attempts at entertainment. The ONLY thing they are interested in, in fact, are obsessed with, is justice. I could lock them in a room full of snakes and rotting meat and all they'd care about is that they each got equally poisonous snakes and exactly the same portion of rotting meat.

"His meat is stinkier than mine!" I can hear them complain.

"He got more maggots than me! No fair!"

But now, I've got their number. I know where it's at. Screw fun, they just want fair. So today, we baked cookies. And not just any cookies—peanut butter cookies. We made chocolate chips last week, and it didn't go well. The randomness of the chips led to anarchy and near mutiny. But with peanut butter, I had some control. I explained to the boys that each and every one of these cookies belonged to both of them. They were going to work together, side by side, equally. They took equal turns with the beater, and got equal licking rights.


Notice my son, reaching for the other child's beater. Punk.


Next, I rolled the balls and handed them to the boys, one at a time, to roll in sugar. Even Steven. I had one boy press in all the vertical fork prints and the other, the horizontal. What could be more fair? There was only a brief uprising when vertical boy yelled, "Hey, he's smashing MY cookies!" Old habits die hard.





They'll probably continue to fight like brothers for the rest of the day, but who cares. I intend to eat the entire batch of cookies and be drunk by supper.

Special Effects

This never happens.

I'm one of those lame joke tellers who has to pause twelve times to mentally run through the punchline. My ghost stories aren't a lot better. Five-year-olds have been known to sigh impatiently and walk away to check the score on the game.

But this time was different. This time I had a secret weapon. This time, I had special effects.

We were exploring a wooded creek, my son and I and two of his friends. One of the boys discovered some debris on the bank and got to wondering where it came from.





I decided to fill him in. I started weaving this spooky story about a strange old man who had been in a horrible accident, the result of a group of seven-year-old boys—boys just like you—ding dong ditching him. It ended badly for the old man, and he vowed to get revenge on any seven-year-old boys who ever had the bad luck to wander too close to his home—this creek.

A dog barked.

"He trained his dog to bark," I told them, "Whenever seven-year-old boys came around. That's his signal. He's probably getting ready even now."

Their eyes grew wide.

I continued with my tale, adding details as the scenery dictated.

Then one of the boys said, "What's that smell?"

"Yeah, what smells so bad?"

The smell was unmistakable—death. Right on cue.

First we spotted the maggots.

Then we saw the fur.

Some bones.

A spine.

A tail.

A head.

And the creepiest part of all — a butterfly, floating in stage left. A little too Silence of the Lambs for my liking.





The two friends, sensible little boys, were properly disgusted and eager to get far away from the source of the stench. It was my child who wanted to investigate further. My child, who is still afraid to go to the bathroom at night in his own home, was suddenly fearless. He would have carried the skull home in his back pocket if I'd let him.

In fact, I think I'll let my husband do the next couple loads of laundry. Just in case.

The Blindside

It happens every year.

Just like the last shopping day before Christmas, or the psycho killer showing up the second the hot girl takes off her shirt, it always catches me by surprise. I know damn well it's coming, but then, every time, it blindsides me.

The last days of school.

You're right if you think the teacher is counting the minutes until that last kid is ushered away, heading off for a summer with mom or dad or the nanny. A summer with anyone but me. I am counting the minutes, and each one is a little harder than the last. Each one pushes me just a little closer to the brink.

I never know what exactly will be the tipping point, what will throw open the valve and unleash the tears I've been pushing back for days. Yesterday it was my little Latina child. She was working on her Pre-K Memory Book, documenting for posterity all the things she liked best about school. When we got to the teacher page, I prompted her to come up with an adjective to describe me. But she didn't quite understand the concept.

So I said, "What do you like about me?"

She looked me in the eye and said, "You heart. I love you heart." And then, a split second before I curled up and died, she added, "And you hair."



This is one of the other children I have to say goodbye to. Look at that face, and tell me how.



Tomorrow is the last day.

Send me luck. Or vodka.

Superdan

There were two things worthy of celebration at our house today—

1. I am now one semester closer to finishing grad school.
2. It's almost summer in Arkansas and we needed jackets.

I'm seriously not sure which is bigger news in my book, but they both make me very, very happy.

We decided a celebration was in order, and as luck would have it, there was a festival in town—the Jewish Food Festival. After soaking in the music, culture, and delicious aromas, we made our lunch selections and found a seat by the river, enjoying our meals as we watched the children burn off their blintzes in a bouncy house.

Like this one—




Apparently a little distracted by his latkes, some clumsy reveler tripped over the cord, taking a bit of the bounce out of the house.

Like this one—



Well, my falafel was really good. So good, that I just sat there, chewing and gawking, as the house collapsed upon itself, trapping all the helpless children inside.

Thank baby Jesus my husband uses his head for something other than food intake, because he didn't even swallow before bolting into rescue mode. He dropped his plate and ran to the house, propping up the flaccid door as children wriggled out around his feet.

It was like he didn't even care that his kabob cost eight tickets.

The Eye of the Beholder

Due to an unfortunate playpen accident when I was an infant, I have the ugliest baby toe in America.

No, I'm serious.

It's repulsive.

Really.

You do not want to see this.



Okay, if you just have to.





You were warned.

So today, I'm having a picnic with the four-year-olds I teach. In the chaos of the moment, I forgot about my hideous appendage and kicked off my shoes in the grass. And that's when something truly amazing happened.

I felt someone caressing The Toe.

I looked down and saw that the hand touching my repugnant growth was one that belonged to my little Hispanic student. We'll call her Maria. Although Maria started the year speaking exclusively Spanish, her English is now nearly perfect.

And it was in that perfect English that she said words I never dreamed I'd hear, "You toe ees so preetty."

She was stroking my freshly painted toenail, a shiny sliver of salmon glistening atop my meaty, red pork chop. But she didn't see what I see. All she saw was the shimmering preety pink.

Why can't we all be four?

200 mgs Perspective: repeat as needed

Cindy Crawford has her mole. Angelina Jolie has her lips. Me? My trademark is phlegm. What can I say? All the good ones were taken.

For as long as I can remember, I've had a disgusting, rattly, wet cough and perpetual runny nose. I'm Hansel, but instead of crumbs, I leave a trail of dirty Kleenex. My husband is one lucky son of a bitch.

Well I finally got sick of being sick and went to the doctor. After putting it off several decades, you really wouldn't think I had any right to get impatient, but after about an hour in the waiting room, I did. After about an hour and a half in the waiting room, I started looking for the hidden camera. This is a big practice, with eight doctors and a legion of nurses, all holed up behind locked glass doors. I could see into the their mysterious land, but for some reason, they weren't letting me in. Over and over again, smiling nurses would come to the portal and call a name. But never my name, just the names of the other patients, the lucky patients. This happened no less than forty times. Without a shred of exaggeration, thirty patients who came in after me were taken back, treated, and released. While I waited. I am not making this up. I tried my best to keep my sense of humor, asking the receptionists if I'd done something to piss them off, or if I'd score some free drugs for my trouble. But all they could do was apologize and scratch their heads. An hour and forty-five minutes into my wait, I finally had the good sense to get up and walk out. I was only going to my car to see if my book was there, but they didn't know that, so it had a nice dramatic effect. So much so, in fact, that a receptionist chased me out and told me it was finally my turn. If only I'd gone for the book sooner.




Once inside, I was escorted to another room to continue waiting. And waiting. And waiting. Just as my blood pressure was topping out, I began to hear sounds penetrating the wall between me and the adjacent exam room. In the span of fifteen minutes, some poor invisible soul vomited more than I have in my entire lifetime. Loud, violent, horrific, gut-wrenching, intestine-ripping vomiting. I tried to figure out which one of those earlier "lucky" patients it might be. But I couldn't imagine who. Nobody out there even looked sick to me; they all just looked chosen, better off than me.

And right about then, sitting quietly in a chair for two hours didn't seem so terrible after all.

Keeping His Head

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My seven-year-old has a mind of his own. Even when he doesn't have a head.




He never wants to be whatever the popular costume is. Never a transformer or a superhero. Never anything Disney. And I guess it shouldn't come as a surprise. When your kid was watching Batman cartoons, ours was memorizing Michael Jackson's zombie moves in Thriller.

Last year he was a mummy. This year, The Headless Horseman.





He loved it, for about 12 minutes.

Then the shoulders started slipping.





And the layers got too hot.





So he ended up trick or treating in black jeans and his mom's white button down shirt. When people asked what he was, he called himself a cowboy.

But I think he's an angel.





Or a Muslim woman going to disco.
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Too Good To Be True

Because I like living indoors and eating at regular intervals, I avoid blogging about any school related topics that could be construed as negative or critical. If you don't believe me, just see if you can find a single word in my archives about my previous aide.

Moving on.

But then, I moved to my new school. And there was Sarah. The words "new and improved" don't begin to cover it. Sarah, in a word, is perfect. She has an innate understanding of how a classroom, my classroom, should be run. I think it; she does it. Truth be told, she's smarter than I am and much more organized. I should be her aide. Sarah is in grad school and next year she'll be a full-fledged teacher herself. For a brief sliver of time, the kids in our room have had the rare privilege of two equally qualified teachers. However, through a fluke of bureaucracy, Sarah is not qualified to be a Pre-K aide.

Yeah. Moving on.

So tomorrow, she's leaving me. When something seems too good to be true and all that. I'm sure her replacement will be just fine; everything at this new school seems conspicuously better.

I just hope I don't hate her for not being Sarah.





Thank you, Sarah, for the best 16 days of my teaching career. I miss you already.
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Happily Ever After

It was last spring when my principal broke the news. Due to the shifting student population, my school would be losing one of our three Pre-K classes. Due to lousy decision making skills resulting in a complete inability to pick a career until my thirties, I had least seniority. I was being transferred, like it or not. As an elderly person, I did not embrace this sudden and involuntary change. Given the choice, I would have stayed put, surrounded by the comforting known.

Sometimes, it's a really good thing I don't always get what I want.

I've been at the new school seven days now, and even with my trusty Merriam-Webster Online just a click away, I couldn't possibly find the words to say how happy I am. Over the moon happy. Clicking my heels happy. It's 2:35 already? happy.

Strange things happen at this new school that I hope I never get used to. Things like the principal going out of her way to make sure I have what I need to be happy, even on a Saturday. And a teacher wishing me a "winning" year, and handing me a lottery ticket. Or an aide showing up out of the blue, wondering if I needed anything done. Then there's the (handsome!) counselor stopping by just to read to the kids.

The Lunch Lady isn't even mean.

Weird, right?

And then there's Sarah, my aide, who is sweet and smart and hard-working and reliable and agreeable and cooperative and very possibly perfect. If I had to, I would pay her myself just to have her with me every day.

But I haven't even told you the best part yet. Every once in a while, just for a second, I see him.





And, well, I just don't have the words.
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Look Moms, No Hands!

When a Pre-K teacher meets her new parents at the beginning of a school year, there are certain questions she can expect: What time should I pick him up at the end of the day? Can she have a teddy bear for nap time? That sort of thing.

But this year I got a question I wasn't expecting: Can you touch the children?

The first person to come up with a sadder or more disturbing question than that wins the deed to my house! Hell, I'll even toss in the dog, because I know nobody's coming up with anything to top that.

Can you touch the children. In Pre-K.

sigh . . . .

Unfortunately, she didn't just pull the question out of thin air. She asked because her sister's kids go to a popular new school in our area that has a strict no-touching policy. Because I'm sure if some creepy pedophile does happen to get a job there, he wouldn't think of breaking policy. Well, I was going to defile that kid over there, but damn the luck! There's a policy!

There are bad people in the world, it's true. And there's nothing that should be more jealously guarded than our children's safety. But denying a child a comforting hug, a deserved pat on the back, or a reassuring hand to hold, in my opinion, has the potential to cause more harm than it prevents.

As for my Pre-K kids, I started the year by giving them each a beautiful little welcome gift ~





Bubbles



Sidewalk Chalk



Rainbow Marshmallow Twist



And a big hug.
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Hot Dog!

No matter how sweltering the weather, it rarely bothers me as much as it does most people. My husband will be sopping wet with sweat while I'm tucking an afghan around my knees. Somehow, my body just seems to stay cooler than normal humans. I may well be slowly dying from poor circulation. But I'm okay with that, because even in Arkansas, there's rarely a day hot enough for me to resort to air conditioning in my car.

Today was one of those days. August is not pussyfooting around, y'all.

When I ran out to do a few errands today, the temperature was every bit of 100° with a heat index of 368°. By the time I walked from the house to the car, I looked like a Salvador Dali painting. There was no way in hell I was sitting in that car without cranking the AC as high as it would go. And why not? No one in their right mind would be caught dead in an un-air conditioned car on a day like today.

At least no one who could help it.





When I opened my car door at the Office Depot, the first thing I noticed was the oppressive slap of hot air across my face. The next thing I noticed was the barking. It was coming from a sleek, sexy silver sports car. Or more specifically, from the frantic bite-sized Yorkie trapped inside it.

Sadly, I am not making this up.

Despite the rotisserie-like temperature, goose bumps immediately crowded my flesh. I began muttering cuss words under my breath, more or less. I don't think I could have been more livid if it had been a child. And I'm not even an animal person. God help the poor son of a bitch who does this in my sister's neck of the woods.

I huffed to the front door and waited a long minute or two, deciding what to do. Minding my own business was the first option ruled out. Soon enough, a beautiful young couple strode out of the store, hipsters with too much disposable income and not enough sense. I glared at them as they sauntered toward the car, debating whether I should deliver a searing lecture or stay more true to character and just talk smack about them behind their backs for the next few weeks. It was the woman who made her way to the driver's door. "Awww . . . look at this poor doggie," she sighed. And they went to their real car and drove away.

Once inside the store, I all but accosted the first uniform-clad body I saw. In the most controlled voice I could dredge up, I spat, "Somebody has their fucking dog locked in a car out there. Will you please make an announcement and tell them that I'm waiting five more minutes and CALLING THE POLICE!" I'm nothing if not classy.

I heard a small voice say, "It's my dog." I turned to see an attractive blonde woman at the check out. She was wearing strappy high heel sandals and a slinky white dress that gave her a Greek goddess quality. I wondered if I could kill her with an EXPO marker.

Although I hardly even yell at my own husband, I definitely heard myself say, "SISTER!? DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW HOT IT IS OUT THERE?!"

"I only had to run in for a minute," Venus explained.

"REALLY?! WOULD YOU SIT OUT THERE IN THAT CAR WITH THE WINDOWS ROLLED UP FOR EVEN A MINUTE? WOULD YOU? WOULD YOU!!!?"

Surprisingly, she didn't answer. But I'm sure I'll see her again. She's probably my new principal.
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It's Not What You Say, It's How You Say It

Another year as summertime nanny to a couple of sweet little boys has come to a close. Because I'm not grown up enough to wait for praise and affirmation to come naturally, sometimes I might give a little gentle nudge, just to assure my fix. So I came right out and asked each of the boys if they'd miss me. (I know, pitiful. Shut up.)

The older boy said what I wanted to hear, but not exactly in the way I wanted to hear it. He said, "Yeah," but his tone was exactly what one might expect if I had asked him if he'd like to tag along on a trip to the fabric store.

The younger boy, though?

"I'm really gonna miss you," I prompted. "You think you might miss me, too?" His little forehead contorted slightly, his big brown eyes brimming with confusion.

"Well yeah," he said. But if you heard his tone, you might think I had just asked if he'd be disappointed if Santa skipped his house this year. While I usually cringe at the duh inflection, this time it was music.

I've always loved those boys equally. It's not right to have favorites. But if you asked me right now if one of them took up just a little more space in my heart, I'd probably answer, "Well yeah."


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Catch .22

When you do 90% of your shopping at garage sales, it tends to make you a bit naïve about the real world of consumerism. I'm sure I'd be the worst failure ever in the history of The Price Is Right, what with my impossibly sheltered exposure to reality. A brand new Cadillac Escalade, Bob? I'll say $10,000!

Well turns out it's not just my idea of what things cost that's warped. Last night we went to Academy Sports to pick up a few necessities for our upcoming vacation: water shoes, sunglasses, swimsuits, that sort of thing. I strolled down the beach accessory aisle, contemplating the potential of SpongeBob boogie boards and Jumbo Castle Molding sets. At the end of the aisle, I took a right, and found myself suddenly in front of a display of items not on my list.



Other than that living-under-a-rock thing, I have no excuse for how shocked I was. I'm fully aware that the Second Amendment is alive and well in America, I just didn't realize it was subletting space next to the yoga mats and soccer balls at my local sporting goods store. I get it that hunting is a sport. I can even buy in to the idea that it's necessary and noble, although my husband will never see me naked again if he ever pulls into our driveway with a bloody deer splayed across his Subaru.

But handguns? PINK fucking handguns?! Really? REALLY?

Not one for playing it cool when completely over-reacting is an option, I grabbed my six-year-old by the arm and yanked him out of the aisle like it was on fire. They may as well have been selling freshly severed human heads. But then I couldn't help but wander back, over and over, while my husband kept my son a safe distance from the clearly hazardous unloaded weapons. Eventually I struck up a conversation with the man behind the counter, Max, who is probably writing about me in his blog right now, too. I needed to know why the pink. Why the intentional effort to make lethal weapons look cute. He told me what any normal woman would have instinctively known, "Women like to accessorize." Then he laughed and added, "And when the manly men come in and make fun of them, I just tell 'em, 'Well wouldn't you feel foolish if you had to tell somebody you got shot with a pink pistol?' "

Oh Max, I think feeling foolish would be low on his list of pressing concerns.

So then I asked about the ridiculously adorable Deringers on display. These fun-sized versions of the weapon that John Wilkes Booth carried into Ford's Theatre to do his part for the Confederacy are now, apparently, all the rage with ladies who lunch. According to Max, the infinitely concealable Deringer is the way to go, especially in the summertime, if you don't want your piece messing up your silhouette. Linen can be so unforgiving.

I had to ask Max, how many ordinary citizens are there walking around Arkansas with these things lurking amid their Kroger cards and Altoids? At first he said thousands, then shook his head and corrected himself, "No, tens of thousands." At which point another employee walked over and really blew my mind, "No, it's more like 300,000."

I'm not going to rage against the Second Amendment. I understand that people have the right to bear arms, and to protect their families. But I don't think our founding fathers could have envisioned The Real Housewives of Little Rock accessorizing their ensembles with pearlescent pink .22s. Just as toy guns should not be made to look real, real guns should not be made to look like toys.




The Children's Defense Fund offers this chilling statistic: In one year, more children and teens died from gunfire than from cancer, pneumonia, influenza, asthma, and HIV/AIDS combined. If you must own a gun, at least have the sense to pick one that looks scary as hell. Then lock it in a box painted with zombies and tarantulas and bury the box in a pit full of pythons.

And don't invite my kid over.
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Olly Olly Oxen Free

Days like this don't come around every day in Arkansas. Well they do, but not until October. In July, the combination of cool temperatures, low humidity and intermittent breeze falls somewhere between a gift and a miracle. Which is why I did what I can only assume all good mothers did today: I locked my child out.

Literally.

At first, it was a bit like a prison break in reverse, him and his pals searching for breaches in the security and sneaking back inside. At one particularly low point, I even caught them crawling through the doggie door. But I was undeterred. I ignored their protests, shooed them back out and wedged heavy furniture in front of all points of entry. I won't kid you, there were a few moments when I was in serious jeopardy of mutiny. But they're really too short to do much damage, so I persevered.

A little later, a neighbor girl noticed the signs of life on the lawn and came out to investigate. Her nanny conscientiously came over too, to see if maybe we were evacuating because of a fire or carbon monoxide leak. When the little girl decided to join the boys in the yard, I felt a tiny surge of success. Right up until I overheard her say, "My nanny said however long I stay outside, that's how long I get to play Wii when I go in." Of course she did.

I'm coming to the unnerving conclusion that children are losing their ability to play. It makes me wonder: Has Kick the Can kicked the bucket? Has Donkey Kong killed Pin the Tail on the Donkey? Has Hide and Seek gone into hiding? Or is it our children who are in hiding? When our kids are holed up on the couch, playing video games or watching TV, there is comfort in knowing that they're safe. Our neurotic fears of kidnappers and child molesters and 16-year-old drivers texting behind the wheel get to take a breather. But I don't believe kids are really any more at risk out in the world today than we were as kids. Since 1993, crime rates have actually been steadily tumbling. It's just that we've developed an insatiable hunger for coverage of the crimes that do occur. How can we help but imagine every horrific way our child could be harmed when television pumps an endless stream of images into our brains. And we refuse to look away.

There are dangers out in the world to be sure, but to my mind, the greater danger is in not sending them out. We may be protecting their bodies, but we're killing their souls. What seeds can a child plant in the fallow land of his living room? It is only beyond those four buffering walls where discoveries are made, where unique thoughts are cultivated and sown. Toy manufactures know this, and take names like Discovery Toys and Creative Playthings. But what discovery can be made when another human being has already done all the creating? Children need to explore the world with their own eyes, not experience it through a facsimile of someone else's perception. They need to feel the cold lake on their toes to know boundless possibility. They must hold the wriggling frog in their own hand to know the pulsing energy of life.








Rachel Carson never had children, but she understood nature well enough to know, "A child's world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful, is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood." Parents stand with their hand powerfully poised before the dimmer switch. We can choose a low setting, or we can throw open the back door and send our children intrepidly into the big, bright, limitless world.

If we don't, who will design the video games for their children?
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A Three Hour Tour

My new best friends forever, Sherry and Dallas, just bought a boat. And she's gorgeous. I felt just the slightest pang of envy when the first pictures appeared on Facebook — the beautiful vessel, the happy new owners, the promise of endless summer fun. Then yesterday, they posted pictures that told a different story. Their most recent trip to the lake was a disaster — engine malfunction, stranded for hours in the searing sun, then lost in the pouring rain. Everything that could have gone wrong did. It looked horrific.

When our mutual friend, Susan, called me early this morning, the first words out of my mouth were, "Wow, weren't you glad you didn't get invited on that trip?"

"Funny you should say that, because we're invited today!"

I was out of the shower and in the car so fast it didn't even register that they were calling for the same weather today. And why would it? It looked so pretty.







At first.







And then, well, who could have predicted this? I mean besides everyone with a TV, newspaper, radio, or computer.







It didn't just rain. Have you ever been in one of those showers where the water spigots come at you from all directions? It was that, but with a broken water heater.







We all huddled low, trying to shield ourselves from the freezing torrent. Which seemed like a good idea, until the floor got so saturated that icy streams began to flow around us. In case that wasn't quite cold enough, the sky opened up and began pelting us with ice cubes. I am not making this up.

Just then, a menacing swarm of birds appeared out of nowhere.







Okay, I am making that up.







The truth is, the weather couldn't have been worse if it tried. But the company couldn't have been better. And if they ask me to go again next weekend, rain or shine, I'm there.
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