This book is hugely popular with little boys, but insufferably long and detailed, so that Penelope and I get SO tired of reading it. Having company means that Hank gets his favorite story, and we get a night off!
Hank and his Great Gramps, August 2011. They’re a couple of handsome fellas, no?
My grandfather is turning 90 tomorrow. (Truth to tell, it might even be today: I’m not good with dates.) And as it is our practice to spend a few moments every night counting our blessings, this post is dedicated to Gramps.
I am grateful for the childhood summers I got to spend in Yosemite National Park, where Gramps served for 30+ years as the Park’s dentist. Vermont is already a pretty great and gorgeous place to grow up, and on top of that, I got to spend at least two weeks per year in one of the most spectacular wilderness areas on the planet.
I am grateful for the time Gramps spent with me during those summer visits, the walks and hikes and bike rides we shared, the raft rides down the Merced River, the sailing outings at Tenaya Lake, and the quieter at-home afternoons we’d spend in companionable silence on the patio, reading our separate books.
I am (selfishly) grateful that I am the oldest grandchild, and I had so many years of these special visits, when Gram and Gramps were still young and spry and active, and I didn’t have to compete for attention with siblings and cousins.
I am grateful that in all those years of riding around with Gramps on the Park’s narrow, twisty roads with only a guardrail wire or perhaps some scrubby pines separating our car from a precipitous drop to a near-certain death, I never got carsick.
I am also grateful that it took me until I reached my 30s to realize that Gramps’ devil-may-care approach to motoring, especially on those Sierra highways, is absolutely terrifying. I’m grateful we’re alive.
I am grateful that my grandparents, though they live on the other side of the country, made a point to never miss a single major milestone in my life: they attended all of my graduations from high school to law school, and they flew east with all my aunts and uncles for the wedding when I married Penelope, even though it was less than a month after September 11, 2001, and everyone was afraid to fly.
I understand that it has become too much for them to travel so far, these days, and from now on I must bring my milestones to them. I am grateful for the opportunity to introduce Hank to his Great Gramps (and Great Gram), and hope very much that my children-yet-to-be-born get the same chance.
Happiest of birthdays, dear, dear Gramps. You are so very loved.
-C.
Hank and I drove home tonight in a deluge, wipers slapping at their highest speed, rain pounding on the roof and windows, puddles sloshing against the wheel wells. I opted for the back roads rather than the highway so I could take my time, and I’d long since turned off NPR so I could concentrate on getting us safely home.
Hank started talking in the backseat, but against the roaring storm and the road noise, I couldn’t hear him. -And suddenly I caught myself with my thumb on the Volume + button on my steering wheel, trying to turn him up. I was actually trying to turn up the volume on my toddler.
Yes, it could have been worse. I might have been trying to turn him down, or trying to turn up the radio to drown him out. I suppose I can take some comfort in the fact that I was trying to listen to him even in the midst of my white-knuckled driving distraction. But it got me thinking: I now turn to gadgetry to solve every day issues in a way that is so automatic, so reflexive, that I don’t even think about it… and maybe that’s not such a good thing.
“Phone” was one of Hank’s very first words, and he knew how to flip through photos on my iPhone before he knew how to walk. I’m not proud of that. We derive a certain amount of smug satisfaction from living in a TV-free home, but the lack of a TV doesn’t stop us from logging too much screen time. This very instant, I’m blogging at the dinner table while I supervise Hank’s meal. (Penelope’s out at our home inspection tonight: more on that another time.) Penelope is addicted to the New York Times Crossword app on her iPad. I check Facebook on my phone the very instant I wake up, most mornings.
I definitely notice that with all the time I spend plugged in to my various gadgets and digital distractions, the less activity there seems to be going on in my mind, even when I unplug the external noise… and that can’t be a good thing, no ‘maybe’ about it. So while I’m not ready to cut my digital umbilical cord and swear off the internets entirely, I am going to try to seek a better balance. I can’t turn up the volume on my toddler, but maybe if I unplug the noise, I can turn up the volume on my own thoughts.
Wish me luck.
-C.
We had a lovely walk this morning at Springweather. Most of the wildflowers were gone by, but Hank picked this buttercup.
Every spring in Vermont, locals take to the woods to gather the sweet, curled new fronds of fiddlehead ferns. (Or, if they happen to be busy, working parents like me, they buy them at the co-op.) Then they wash them, boil them, and serve up the delicious greens. Penelope and I like ours served with horseradish sauce. Hank prefers his plain, but he loves them.
“Big!” (Everything is big.) “Green!” (He’s learning his colors.) “Heads!” he shrieks happily, as he eats.
Earlier this week when we met with our realtor to make an offer on a new house, he asked us to sign a disclosure form about the customer vs. client and realtor-to-client agency agreement. “Didn’t we sign this already?” we asked, confused.
He grew unaccountably flustered. “Well, you signed it,” he told my wife, and then turned to me, “but you didn’t. I didn’t think it mattered, because I assumed you were sisters.”
We get this all the time, and we are not alone. It happened twice in one recent day to my college roommate and her partner, who are expecting twins this summer. The author of this article on same-sex parenting says this mistake happens so often, she has developed an acronym to describe her response: EOTS — Explaining of the Situation.
Somehow, I thought our Situation would become more obvious to outsiders once we had a baby, but clearly that is not the case. It’s not as if Penelope and I look all that much alike. She’s skinny, I’m… not; she’s got straight light-brown hair, I’ve got thick, wavy dark hair; our facial features are different, our bone structure is different, our mannerisms are different. If there is a resemblance (apart from the fact that we’re both white girls), we don’t see it. Yet the question persists, whenever we meet new people, and even the presence of an adorable toddler who calls us “Ma” and “Mumma” hasn’t helped to correct the misconception.
Generally when we correct people, they react pretty well. New England is, after all, the birth place of civil unions and a stronghold of marriage equality. Gay families have been in the news here for so long that we’ve lost our novelty. Ten years ago when the civil union legislation first passed in Vermont, the rednecks festooned the Green Mountains with “Take Back Vermont” signs (something which amused and infuriated Penelope, whose family first arrived here in the 1700s, well before Vermont was even a state), but that kind of open homophobia is rarely encountered now. I’m sure most of the people who owned those signs haven’t changed their tune, but they’ve been shamed into silence. I know we’re a lot better off than lesbian couples all over the country, for whom the safest answer to the question, “Are you sisters?” is probably, often, “Yes.”
Yet just because we don’t have to brace ourselves for a possible confrontation every time we answer the question doesn’t mean we don’t resent having to answer it, and I’ll tell you why. I bet 99% of the people who ask it don’t think we’re sisters at all. They know exactly what we are, but they’re embarrassed to ask outright, and they think asking if we’re sisters is somehow more polite.
Think about it. You see two women out together, perhaps sharing a meal or a drink, or walking down the street, or sitting next to each other at the airport. If they’re not touching, you probably don’t make any assumptions at all. Maybe they’re friends or coworkers, maybe it’s girls night out, maybe they’re strangers who happen to be walking in the same direction or waiting for the same flight. You don’t know, and you don’t need to know.
Now, what if you see two women together, and something about them tips you off to the fact that they are more to each other? Maybe they stand a little too close, or finish each others’ sentences. Maybe it’s something about the way they look at each other, or the way they refer to themselves as “we,” or the fact that the kid with them calls them both “Mom.” Suddenly, you’re dying to know exactly what their relationship is! You think you know, but geez, you’ve never met real live lesbians before! You don’t want to offend them by saying the wrong thing (what if they’re dangerous?!), but you just have to know. So you ask, “Are you sisters?,” because that’s a safe question, right?
One of these days, I’m going to design a t-shirt for the dyke set to wear when we leave the house together that says, “Trust Your Instincts: We’re Not Sisters.” It will spare us all so many awkward conversations.
-C.
I love Rhubarb. I love rhubarb pie, rhubarb crisp, rhubarb sauce served over ice cream or waffles, rhubarb tarts, rhubarb jam…. If it has rhubarb, I love it. Unless, and this is a big caveat, unless it has been corrupted by strawberries.
I don’t know why people decided that rhubarb goes with strawberries. I’ve heard people say they use it to counteract the tartness of rhubarb, but honestly, people! That’s why God gave us sugar. Strawberries are a perfectly lovely berry, but (and this is important): they should never be cooked. Cooked strawberries are mushy and revolting and, frankly, a crime against nature. Therefore, strawberries should never be added to rhubarb, which must be cooked in order to be edible.
This Strawberry-Free Rhubarb Crisp is one of the easiest recipes I know, particularly since this time of year, the main ingredient is available for harvest twelve feet from my front door.
1. Preheat oven to 375*F.
2. Wash and cut approximately 10-12 stalks of rhubarb (enough to fill a 9×13″ glass ungreased baking pan). (Eat only the stalk, not the leaves or roots, which are toxic.)
3. In a mixing bowl, combine 1 cup flour (we use Bob’s Red Mill GF All Purpose Baking Flour, since Penelope is allergic to wheat), 1 to 1 1/4 cups sugar, 1/4 tsp nutmeg, 1/4 tsp cinnamon, and a pinch of salt (optional). If you like a crunchier crisp, you can also add sliced almonds to the topping.
4. Cut 8 tbsp (1 stick) unsalted butter into pea-sized pieces, and combine with the dry mix. (No need to get the lumps out: the butter will melt.) Then pour over the rhubarb. Gently tap the pan against the counter a few times to help the topping settle.
5. Cook in lower 1/3 of oven for 50-55 minutes. Serve with ice cream or whipped cream. (You can put uncooked strawberry slices on the side, if you like.)
Enjoy!
-C
Spot the Toddler!
You can’t do much outdoor gardening before late May, when you live in Vermont. The temperatures are still too extreme. While it isn’t unheard of to have daytime high temperatures in the high 70s and even 80s this time of year, the nights still have some bite. We had a frost warning this past Friday.
The other factor complicating our gardening ambitions this year is the fact that in two short months, we may very well not live here. We have a home under contract in the next town north, and while we haven’t yet done the home inspection (scheduled for Tuesday after next) or all of the mortgage hurdles, there is a very good chance we won’t be here to see the seeds we plant now grow to harvest.
To solve both of these issues, we’re opting to do most of our gardening in containers this summer. We can move containers inside or onto the sheltered porch if cold threatens, and we can put them in the back of the moving van (in theory) if the home-buying adventure goes well. (I say “in theory” because Penelope is a lot more optimistic about being able to move containers full of eight-foot-tall Kentucky Wonder pole beans than I am.)
Anyway, each spring for those few weeks when the poppies and rhododendron burst into bloom, our front yard suddenly looks almost charmingly wild and whimsical (rather than merely unkempt, which it generally is). This might just be my favorite time of the year.
-C.
My MINI Cooper is still under warranty, and today was its annual service visit at MINI of Bedford. I brought Hank with me and a diaper bag full of snacks and toys to help entertain him during the wait. It turned out that I needn’t have bothered. It turns out that toddlers don’t get bored, or at least ours doesn’t. It also turns out that a MINI dealership is a surprisingly fun place for a toddler to hang out for a few hours.
They have a display case of Mini Rubber Duckies, in memory of New England MINI enthusiast Ed Smith, who would give them to other MINI drivers he met in his travels. The folks at the dealership let Hank pick one of his own, and with no prompting from me, he chose one that has a sheriff’s badge and cowboy hat.
Only a toddler would try to play Hide and Seek behind a three-inch wide post.
There are big blocks to climb on…
… and bead “necklaces” to dance with (with supervision, of course),
… and lots of windows to look out.
I kept apologizing to employees about all of the toddler-prints and smears that he left on the glass, but they kindly said I shouldn’t worry about it.
Hank liked climbing all over the brightly colored furniture in the waiting area,
… and finding Hank-sized places to sit. (Plus, there were free snacks! Note the peanut butter cracker, which he found much more palatable than the cheese and raisins that I’d brought from home.)
There was a couch to climb on when we needed a rest, and “mazagines” to read. (I had no idea he knew that word, but he does.)
They totally ought to slap a uniform on this kid and put him to work. You’d buy a car from this guy, wouldn’t you?
-C
