This is Mother's Day

Yes indeed, tiny love, this is Moth Ers Day.  Thank you for this card, and for the 10-bead necklace of little plastic hearts.  With your eyes an inch away from mine, your single-breath decree: mama, you can wear this all day it's for you and it's made of hearts because I love you.  

Dress-wearing, garden-digging, baseball-watching, breakfasting like royalty.
This is Mother's Day.  And I miss my mother who is far away and enjoys all of these things.
Distance is so hard, they say, and it always is true.

With Oregon and half of California in between us, I sent my mom a book with a published poem, my own little version of a 10-bead necklace-- Because she is marvelous, and I am still wide-eyed and wishing I could do more.  I was remembering today how she taught me all of my times-tables in third grade.  She let me jump on the bed while reciting my seven and eights, which are tricky.

Mom, you taught me what motherhood is all about.
It is hard, and fun too.  A bit like learning your eights while jumping on the bed.
I love you, and I love my girl who ended the day by making me a red and green Christmas Zoo out of legos (because, as she poignantly put, Christmas is a really fun and special treat to have on Mother's Day).  
This is Mother's Day, and this is Motherhood.  What a kick!  She's such a little friend.

Oyster uncertainty friends.

Baseball friends.

Dress friends. 

****

Thank you, Mom, for finding in your 

wallet every year a spot for my school 

photo.  Even in 8th grade, when my face 

was mostly dental work, you found a space.  

What a gift of confidence this gave me, just 

knowing in my goofy grin you took a little 

pride.  

And even now, in my adulthood, as I 

wait in grocery lines, it makes me smile to 

remember hidden deep within your wallet, 

you have aligned my face with opera stars 

on ticket stubs, your favorite cookie fortune, 

and that one-hundred-dollar bill 

you found in 1984.  

Speaking the Language

When my kid is sick I find myself doing all these things my own mother used to do.  I set her up in this little picture of what I hope will help-- there's a small bowl of apple slices, a glass of water, a stuffed toy to hug, a kitchen pot just in case the breakfast toast comes up.  She sleeps in socks, under a pile of pillows and blankets, with the mid-day light of Thursday filling up the room.

Sometimes I feel so completely inadequate as a mom.  Maybe we all do.
When I was trying to learn Italian I remember someone telling me that you couldn't do it by translating in your head everything into English.  You had to just start thinking in Italian.
So uccello isn't bird.  Uccello is just uccello.  
I think about that a lot.
Motherhood is its own foreign language, but maybe it's something like Latin-- and some days I can't quite crack the code or get into the flow of it because it only really exists in poetry.  So I'm making up all these things to fill in the gaps as I go along, and just trying to think poetically instead of logically.

So I'll hold your foot while you rest, and know that somehow it helps.  Later, we'll do puzzles to help reduce your fever.

Violet's Map

I was listening to this interview with Simon Garfield on NPR a few months ago, and haven't been able to get it out of my head.  It was all about maps-- the making of them, how they are varied and flawed, and how historically they are these beautiful pieces of art.

But what really stuck with me was the author's point about how different one's experience is with a map than with a GPS.  

A simple point, but the author talks about how we lose the romance of maps when we turn on the GPS; we lose site of this whole unfolded huge beautiful large world that is out there-- valleys and rivers and mountains-- when we turn on the GPS we see only ourselves; a flashing dot that moves from A to B without a a larger vision of the surrounding world.  As the author says, "you get the feeling, actually, 'It's all about me'... It's a terribly egocentric way of looking at the world".  

Anyway, maps.  

I think this interview has been on my mind partially because Violet is totally and completely into maps. She is always handing us imaginary maps when we drive places these days, and whenever we go to the zoo we spend a good chunk of our time there just staring at the zoo map board.  When we get home, she unfolds her paper map and gets out some little people to trot along the yellow trail line, and shows how they can go from the goats to the bears and see the penguins and snakes along the way (but if they want to see the giraffes and elephants, they'll have to go a different way). 

I don't really know how she got into maps.  Maybe it started with India a few years ago, when we got her a playground ball that looked like a globe, and showed her Seattle and then India.  Then we started talking about other places, like Berkeley and Chico, and then Wisconsin and Whidbey Island.  

Well, long story short, Violet made her own map at preschool yesterday.  I think it's somewhere in between the romantic idea of a traditional all-encompasing map, and an egocentric (haha) GPS.  But, well, such is the mind of a 4 year old.  

Children's Concert at the Seattle Center

This afternoon we got dressed up in our fanciest of fancies and made our way to the Seattle Center for the annual Children's Concert.  We've never been, but now that Violet is 4 we're starting to do all this real person stuff with her like go to little shows and have extensive conversations about how peanut butter is made.

Anyway.

The Children's Concert was awesome.  It is put on mainly by the Seattle Men's Chorus and Seattle Women's Chorus, but also features acts from kids theatre groups.

The whole thing began with the men's chorus standing on bleacher steps singing Abba songs.  SO fun! A live orchestra, and so many fun interactive songs for the kids.  I was completely impressed.


Also, a storytelling of And Tango Makes Three.  Have you heard of this book?  Apparently it's controversial, and even banned in some places, because it tells the true story of two male penguins in a zoo who pair off together and sit on an egg and raise a baby chick with each other.
Can I just mention again how happy I am to be living in a city that would host a free concert for children that focuses on love no matter what the flavor?
Love is love is love, (at least in this family) and what a beautiful way to celebrate it today.  I am so excited that we get to raise our child here.  She will grow up in a community that is open and supportive and filled with so much love.

Also, I know I keep saying it, but I can't believe how suddenly grownup my kid is.  She wore this beautiful dress that she got for her birthday, and sat just like any other person in the big velvet theatre seat. She clapped and was attentive and laughed at all the jokes.
Also, she got to see a disco ball for the first time ever (yes, it blew her mind).  

Thank you, Seattle.  What a great public event.  Can't wait to do it again next year!

 PS-- We walked a mile in the monsoon to save $13 on parking, so we decided we all deserved a quick sushi snack after the show :) 

Chowder's Garden

Last October we lost our wonderful siamese cat, Chowder, after only having him for a year.
It was so rainy and dark.  Everything was stones and gravel and frozen dirt; and we had to burry him late at night, in the wet cold beginning of winter.
It was horribly sad.  Really unthinkably sad.
We still miss him; his eyes were the color of peacock plumes running toward me in the morning begging for breakfast.

In the week after he died, I found this paper sack of tulip and hyacinth bulbs that my mom had given me, shoved in the closet behind the summer sand toys.
Still trying to figure out how to deal with all the sadness of losing Chowder, Violet and I decided to plant a little garden for him.
So we went outside and sat in the dirt planting bulbs for an hour.
And it helped, just a little.

Well, it's spring now, and Chowder's garden has come into bloom!
It was hard to think, on that horrible stone cold October night that it ever could have happened.
You think life is gone, permanently, and then in the rosiest shade of rose, up it comes, and stands proud on the straightest green legs you've ever seen.
Your tulips, Chowder-- They look like flamingo eggs waving in the wind outside our window.  
We wave back.
They've made us happy.

Easter Birthday

When we brought Violet home from the hospital after she was born, I was terrified to take her outside.  I couldn't believe that she had made it safely into this world, and that we somehow had survived the first car ride home;  She was so tiny and I had no idea what to do with her, so I decided that the most sensible thing to do was to lock every door, swaddle her in a blanket, and just sit on my inflatable donut cushion for the rest of our lives together.  

Well, after two days of that, Tyler and I, coaxed by our parents, decided to take her for one very short walk around the block.  

We were petrified.  

I remember looking down at her-- this itty bitty little squish faced person rumbling along the sidewalk in an oversized stroller-- and I thought this is it.  She is not going to survive this.  There is no way.  Also, why is our block so big?   

But, somehow, I also remember looking up at the sky for the first time in probably a week, and it was blue as all get out, and the cherry trees which had been sticks when we left for the hospital were now in full blushing bloom.  Like the world was celebrating the arrival of my baby girl.  

  

It was spring, and it was gentle.  Thank goodness she wasn't born in winter.  I really don't think I could have handled snow.  

WELL, what I am trying to lead up to is that I always enjoy Violet's birthday partially because it usually falls in the middle of the rushing welcome into spring.  

And this year, as luck would have it, her birthday was the day before Easter.  Really, what could be more fun?  

And, as an extra bonus, it was a gorgeous weekend, probably the warmest we've had in months.  

So, without hesitation, we moved her entire party (all of my uncles, aunts, cousins, etc), outside onto our driveway/lawn strip.  

And with Violet's flashy new turquoise bike perched against the house, I couldn't help but think how far we've come from that first terrifying walk with her.  

Photos!  

Violet's new big-kid bike; I might have to be terrified again.

Easter-birthday decorations are so fun, easy, and sweet.  Just bring in the bunnies, eggs, and flowers!

A few of the honorable guests!

We went to Kwanjai Thai for dinner; V's favorite restaurant.

The new marble game is fun for all!

Violet's new Hourglass shoes.

Now we match!

Four tomorrow

Four is so big.  Really, so much bigger than three.  And what's so crazy is that it seems like it was not yesterday, but maybe just last Tuesday that we were flying home from India and she was turning two.

Four climbs trees.  Four is sassy with these twirked and questioning expressions.  

Four is wanting to help with every single thing.  Making pancakes, digging flower holes, feeding the animals.  

----

I remember so well when you couldn't hold your head up; when you couldn't chew a bean.  

And now you are asking for more chutney at the dinner table, and we're giving you a bike to learn to ride.  

You are so independent with strong opinions about coats and teeth brushing, and you drive me crazy when you holler about the bath-- both getting in and getting out, giant protests.  

But mostly you are my snow day, and I love you more than I ever thought I could love anything.  

Sleep well, Violet.  Tomorrow you are four, and four is so big.