Insomnia

Another great poem by B. Collins.  Appropriate following a night filled with a two-and-a-half hour 3AM.


Insomnia


Even though the house is deeply silent

and the room, with no moon,
is perfectly dark,
even though the body is a sack of exhaustion
inert on the bed,

someone inside me will not
get off his tricycle,
will not stop tracing the same tight circle
on the same green threadbare carpet.

It makes no difference whether I lie
staring at the ceiling
or pace the living-room floor,
he keeps on making his furious rounds,
little pedaler in his frenzy,
my own worst enemy, my oldest friend.

What is there to do but close my eyes
and watch him circling the night,
schoolboy in an ill-fitting jacket,
leaning forward, his cap on backwards,
wringing the handlebars,
maintaining a certain speed?

Does anything exist at this hour
in this nest of dark rooms
but the spectacle of him
and the hope that before dawn
I can lift out some curious detail
that will carry me off to sleep—
the watch that encircles his pale wrist,
the expandable band,
the tiny hands that keep pointing this way and that.

picking a tree

There is something very adult about buying a Christmas tree for your family. -- deciding how much you are willing to pay; having to tell the man at the lot that yes, the noble firs are indeed lovely, but we just can't spend $50 on a tree, and could we please see the one advertised for $14....  

So, you'd like the Charlie Brown Christmas tree?  the guy says, a bit disappointed in us, and points over to a small pallet of about 4 humble trees.  

Absolutely we do!  

My Christmas childhood memories are pretty potent, and I honestly don't remember our trees being anything less than perfect, although looking back now, I would bet everything I own that my lovely wonderful [frugal] father and mother also refused to shell out a small fortune for our tree each year.  Often times my family was super clever, and bought a live tree in a pot, and we just used that for a few years, hauling it in from the yard, until it finally got too big to haul.   

But it was always perfect, even if not perfectly Christmas tree shaped.  

I do remember my dad lopping off one or two extra zealous branches that had grown from the year before, and those, I think, my mom usually ended up using as decoration on the mantle around the Swedish horses and Christmas goats.  

So, we got the $14 tree this year, and guess what.....  it's lovely!  Violet thinks it's the most amazing thing she has ever seen; and really it is perfect, and has been so much fun.  It is a Douglas Fir, which apparently is the poor man's Christmas tree and a lesser form of foliage than the noble grand blue whatevers that will run you a pretty penny.  Christmas snobbery is not a welcome guest at our table.

Tree topper, chosen by Violet O. 

  

Haircut

Before the haircut.... 

I think I forgot to write about the haircut.
Well, a couple of weeks ago I decided that it was high time Violet had a real haircut.  I've been trimming her hair up until this point, and it's been ok.  But her hair has started to confuse me a bit.  I'm not sure how to explain it---  it's as if all the hair on her head grows from one dot way on the back of her crown, and it all grows forward.  In other words, the girl has no natural part.
So I took her to this place just for kids, "Li'l Klippers"--   the name makes me gag a bit, but really they were very good.  Violet got to sit in this chair shaped like a speed boat, and rummage through a bin of random disney toys the whole time.  In our typical way, both she and I were very serious and nervous throughout the whole experience, but afterwards we couldn't stop talking about it, and we were very proud of ourselves for having gone through with it.  And neither one of us cried, which is always a good thing!
Here are some photos, and post-haircut interview.

Ta-Da! 

Pleased as pie, after the haircut!