http://www.washhumane.org/HelpTrooper.asp

Some days feel like a lifetime, in a good way.

Today.

Up just past dawn with girls, cookies and lemonade made, signs painted and written, money box found, flowers readied, supplies loaded--stand a rousing success. Almost $87 earned for Trooper, the dog who is the subject of my heading. Listening to Lily explain to customers why she was raising money for Trooper some of the best moments of my life. Keeping Annika from inserting entire arm in lemonade pitcher or poking holes in cookies good reality check.

Library party for summer reading program. Girls dancing, singing, laughing--Annika in Lily's arms for half of performance. Lily and I exchanging proud and surprised looks when Annika followed dance instructions as well as the nine-year-olds who made up the bulk of the group. Ice cream sundaes.

Good phone call; book sold. Hard, joyful, life-affirming work to be done. Another one: Lily winner of mystery library prize, to be picked up tomorrow.

More lemonade/cookie stand action while Annika napping. Meet family up the street with two older girls who invite us over in the morning to meet their animals, including miniature ponies the father promises to "saddle up." Lily looks like it's Christmas times her birthday times another ice cream sundae.

Quesadillas and leftover lemonade for dinner: Lily's choice. An hour in the playroom at twilight. Lily says: "You worked really hard to make this for us, Mama. I am proud of you." I look up at the clean white ceiling imagining the birds and the butterflies. It looks just like I wanted it to, even without them.

Alone. The air is cool. Lie on the porch with an arm on each dog watching fireflies. Sadie gets up and brings me a pinecone.

Inside. More lemonade and The Wire.

Today.

http://www.sandyewilensky.com/

Should I acknowledge yesterday's skip? No, I think not.

As you may know, I spend a bit of time worrying about how much I am continuing to grow as I age, and I am eternally admiring of those people in my life who remain open to growth and change in spite of all old dog/new trick cliches and stereotypes. Which is why I can't stop thinking about how it felt to see my mother behind the table of her professional tent at last weekend's enormous art show in Mystic Seaport, in which she was selected to participate out of a competitive pool.

When I think of all the times my mother was asked to watch us participate in some kind of artistic or athletic performance, from our Nutcracker stints, to piano and cello and clarinet recitals, to library craft contests, and so much more, not to mention the endless performances we put on at home--I feel as though she should be given back ten years of her life, to sit in a hammock and read, or watch mindless television, or even just sit, peacefully, in a quiet, darkened room. Sometimes I think that, "Hey! Watch this!" could be the mantra of my childhood. But although I have, over the course of my life, seen my mother in her professional comfort zone command many classrooms, and even several times--awe-inspiringly--a school community of six hundred people or so, I have never seen her in quite this position before: vulnerably, by definition, exposing what she herself has created.

Her work, which focuses on her beloved oceans and beaches and seaside vistas, is beautiful: restful, soothing, occasionally moodily complicated, deceptively simple sometimes, and pure. To see it en masse, an oeuvre, if you will, was impressive, indicative of the amount of work and time and care she has invested in this new endeavor. But I was even more struck by my mother herself, answering questions about a painting with a customer, arranging the paintings to reflect her vision, making arrangements with a decorator who was shopping for a client, sitting, alone, behind the table at the back of the tent, watching the thousands of people walk by surrounded by what she had made.

In some ways my mother remains an enigma to me. Like her father, and her brother, too, she keeps her cards close to her vest; it is often hard to know just what she is thinking. But always, in so many ways, she knocks me to my knees. There is no complacency, no slow slide into acceptance, still, when I am least expecting it, a surprise. And this: this inspires me. To create, to be unafraid, to slow down when I need to, to push myself when I need to, and no matter what, to keep my eyes on the horizon, taking in both the long, smooth stretches of cool sand and the tumult of the waves at the line of the shore.

A Bientot

Just finished daunting work project; conciliatory post tomorrow.

To See

Spent the weekend with my parents and the girls in Mystic Seaport, where my mother was participating in an enormous art show--to be the subject of another entry. What I want to write about tonight is the La Quinta chain hotel we stayed in, and Lily.

I had taken on the task of finding us all a place to stay, and I began with the inns and bed-and-breakfasts. Booked, booked, booked. I moved on to the nicer chain hotels, also booked. A woman at a Marriott informed me, when I wondered aloud why it was so impossible to find a place to stay in Mystic, that because of the art festival and a large number of local weddings, I was going to keep hitting dead ends with my calls. She suggested I try a La Quinta, a chain I didn't know, one town over, as it had only been open for a few weeks and was therefore apt to be under the radar. She was right.

My parents arrived the night before we did, and en route I called my dad to ask how the place was. Like me, my father enjoys a nice hotel, and I knew from his curt, "You know. It's fine," that La Quinta was substantially sub par. It turned out to be very generic, on a highway near nothing save a Dunkin' Donuts, overpriced for what it was and in serious lack of managerial talent. The cleaning staff was erratic, the so-called heated pool was icy, and the complimentary breakfast--save for yogurt, dry cereal and coffee--inedible.

But from the moment we pulled into the parking lot, Lily was in heaven. "It's just so beautiful, Mama," she breathed as she climbed down from her car seat. And then. The room (with slick, polyester bedspreads and ochre curtains) was so "spacious and glamorous." The bathroom (chain motel standard, missing shampoo and soap) was "gigantic." The aforementioned pool, which I forced myself into out of profound love for my firstborn, Arctic to me and my mother, who somehow escaped going in, "the funnest fun I've had in 22 years." Even the breakfast--with its bevy of (unappetizing) choices--"delicious."

I found myself enchanted by Lily's perspective, not in a way that made me (or my father) ever want to set foot in a La Quinta again, but in a way that made me realize how new and full of possibility the world is to a five-year-old, even one who's stayed at a four star hotel before but not one that she remembers or that gave away tiny boxes of cereal to anyone who wanted one, just because that's what they do. It is a real part of my job, I decided, to help her stay this way--not as a five-year-old, of course, but as a child, an adolescent, and an adult who continues to know that, in the words of Henry David Thoreau, "It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see."

And finally, on our drive back Sunday evening, we stopped in at IKEA on the highway to pick up a few things. As we pulled into the lot, Lily practically jumped out of her car seat. "Look! Look what's right next door to IKEA!" I looked. Although I've been to this IKEA a dozen times, I'd never noticed the La Quinta beside it right there on 95. "We've got to tell Sands and Grandpa Joel," she added.

"That we saw it?" I asked, confused.

"No," she said. "That we saw it, and that it wasn't nearly as beautiful as ours."

Creation

You know how sometimes you get so immersed in something that you have no perspective on it whatsoever and even when someone else comments on what you are doing you can't really understand what they are talking about?

Wow, that makes no sense. What I am getting at is that today, this evening, I had a sort of a revelation--a flash of insight into my own behavior. I have been spending hours and hours of hard manual labor and challenging problem-solving and actual lifting of heavy objects--which for me is a rare occurrence--on this ridiculous project I took on of turning an unfinished attic wreck of a "room" into a viable play space for the girls.

It didn't occur to me to ask myself why. They play outside much of the time when we're here, and there was enough room for their toys downstairs and in their bedrooms, and although I am a big believer of not having all the adult space in a house taken over by children's stuff, that wasn't enough of a reason. Not to take on a project so out of my comfort zone, so physically taxing, so detail-oriented, and so dependent on an aesthetic vision for success.

I'm not quite finished yet, but today, I hauled up some heavy shelves for books and toys, some chairs, and the wooden dollhouse my mother gave Lily for Christmas. I started the most artistic part of the project, some lettering on the stairs that is hard to explain, and I brought up dozens of piles of books and puzzles, which the girls helped me begin organizing.

At one point, they were downstairs, and I surveyed the now all white space, a blank canvas just waiting for the bird and butterfly mobiles Lily and I are going to make, the artwork both Lily and Annika will make for the walls. It looks beautiful, I thought to myself, and that's when I realized it.

Sometimes, when you are preoccupied with knotty challenges, you just need to make--not buy but make, with the full involved labor of your own two hands--something pretty. Something that looks just the way you imagined it would.

Car Interior Dialogue, Take 326

Lily has always been one of those kids whose age you forget sometimes. She prides herself on competency, sometimes to a fault. Then, there are times when it is blessedly clear she is five. A dialogue:

Scene: car interior

Lily, from backseat: Mama? Have you ever built a grassman?

Me, driving and trying desperately to listen to John Hughes story on NPR: What? What did you say?

Lily: Mama! I said, have you ever built a grassman?

Me, giving up on Brat Pack analysis: No, I don't think so. What's a grassman?

Lily: You know. Like a snowman but made out of grass. You know, lots and lots of grass. Like from a big field.

Me, pausing to absorb strangeness: Hmmm. That seems like it would be hard to make. Have you ever made one?

Lily: Not exactly. I mean, I tried. It didn't get very big.

Me, choosing words carefully: I feel like it would be really hard to get the pieces of grass to stick together. Snow sticks to itself when it's wet so it's easy to make the snowballs. But grass--I can't really imagine it.

Lily, excited: Exactly! That's just what the problem is. You understand exactly. Maybe someday, we'll figure it out. Make a real grassman.

Me: speechless.

Fade out...

Distracted

Got into a painting groove and am about to fall over. Back tomorrow...just the trim left!

Apple Doesn't Fall Far From the Tree, etc., etc.

Two nights ago, as I lay on the couch downstairs reading at 12:30 at night, I started when I suddenly saw Lily standing at the foot of the couch, Mr. Popper's Penguins in one hand, her new Itty Bitty Booklight--a colossal mistake, as you will see--in the other.

"What in the world are you doing awake?" I asked her, jumping up to take her straight back to bed. "What woke you up?"

"I haven't been to sleep yet," she said, on the verge of tears. "I'm so tired, but Mama, I just love reading so much. I just can't stop."

Last night 10, tonight 9:30 or so after the light was confiscated, to the sound of wailing protest: I know it's too late, and I want to go to sleep, but you have no idea how good this book is.

I told my mother about the 12:30 night on the phone and heard a sigh. "I can't say I'm very surprised," she said. Ah. Yes.

It's 11:30 now, and I think I will bring my book up to bed. But only for a half an hour. Famous last words.

Would-Be Baby Book Entry

Last night after dinner I told Lily that it was later than I had thought, and that we would soon need to organize ourselves for bed. I started putting some of the dishes in the dishwasher, not noticing that Annika had headed upstairs. A few minutes later, she appeared beside me, proudly bearing a short stack of clothing she had found in her bedroom. "I got my 'jamas for you, Mama," she said. And she had. The child is still only one.

And then this morning, I was reading to her from a pile of books she had assembled for the purpose. (Like Lily, whose first sentence, uttered incessantly, was, "Mama! Read this book to me," Annika is a voracious and demanding listener. Which is, don't get me wrong, a good thing.) One of the books was a counting board book, with pictures of objects numbering from one to ten. The last page was of a baby's feet, with the toes representing the number ten. The photograph had been taken from above, but I never would have noticed that--had never, in fact, having read the book before--if Annika had not said before I was able to read the line of text, "Uh oh! Poor baby." I looked at her, confused. "No, it's ten toes," I said, starting to count them for her. "No, Mama," she said, more insistently, holding her own feet up in the air like the feet in the picture. I realized the baby had to have been on its back for the picture to look like that. "The baby fell," she said.

And in a final trivial yet delicious detail, this afternoon Lily and I were doing a hard-to-explain craft/organizing project that involved construction paper and magic markers. Annika held a marker out for Lily as I walked into the room to get something. "This one, Lily," she said. "It's purple." Turns out she knows all her colors. Who knew?

Work, Oh, Work--Why Are You Always So Hard?

Oh, such frustration. And it's lingering. Usually my mistakes aren't quite so glaringly concrete.

Over the past few weeks I have spent hours of hard manual labor, alternately complicated and tedious, trying to transform the ramshackle attic room of our house into a special playroom for Lily and Annika. Home improvement projects are way out of my comfort zone; I can hammer nails into a wall, and that's about the extent of my regular experience. And this room was in terrible shape. Somebody had shoddily put up a layer of thick, hideous wallpaper, slapped unmatching, uneven layers of paint on wall, stairs and ceiling, and nailed down patches of a filthy, dead-bug-covered carpeting. It was not a beginner's job, but then again, if I'd known that, I never would have started it. And although I'm not finished yet--and today's debacle set me back some, for sure--I have a feeling I'll be glad that I stuck it out, even considering I am typing with my index fingers only right now, due to the open wound on my thumb. Injured in the line of carpet-removal. As you will see.

So in short, this is what I did today. I had rented a heavy-duty carpet cleaner from the grocery store, hoping I might be able to make the carpet, which although white and patched in places, was a sort of wintery white wool and in theory, not totally impossible, if only I could get the stains out. To my surprise, once I'd figured out how to operate the thing, the carpet cleaning machine worked wonders. When I'd finished about half of the space, I stood back at the top of the stairs to assess: not bad at all. I was excited--it seemed that I might actually be able to finish the carpet and paint the stairs before the girls came home from my parents' house, which would be quite a surprise, more than I'd hoped for. Suddenly, I spotted the spray can of blackboard paint I'd bought. Without stopping to think, I decided to use it to paint the inside of the closet I am planning on turning into a secret little reading/clubhouse nook and just started to spray, standing there. When the can was emptied, I told myself I'd pick up another at the hardware store when I went back out later in the day, but then I looked down.

All around me, for four or five feet beyond the floor of the closet, green spray paint had scattered fine droplets on the white rug, heavy nearest the closet, lighter as you headed away. I confess: I cried. I sat at the top of the stairs, and I cried. So much work--and time and money, too--but mostly work, had gone into my project so far, and now this. I was too mad at myself to walk away. Instead, I gathered turpentine, and nail polish remover, and WD 40--anything I could think of to try to get the green paint out. I put some of it in the carpet cleaning machine (sorry, grocery store rental facility) and tried that. I saw that in my efforts I had spread the paint wider and added a couple of green footprints to the now unsalvagable situation. Although I could get quarter-sized spots out by dumping turpentine on the rug, I was beginning to worry that the room was on the verge of spontaneously combusting, which would have suited the mood I was in at the time. I also felt light-headed from the chemicals I had inhaled, which might have affected my judgment as I made my next move.

In one swift motion, I ripped up a corner of the carpet. When I had done this originally, it had looked to me like there was just unfinished plywood underneath. Now I could see there were painted floorboards. I ripped up the rest of it. The floor was in bad shape but I could patch some of the holes, sand some of the damage. First, of course, I would have to rip up the thin strip of wood that had been nailed all around the edge of the room and pull out the hundreds of staples all over the floor. Then, I would have to take on another painting job out of my comfort zone--paint buying, sanding, priming, painting, fixing.

But this was, although I had not thought so in the heat of the moment, a surmountable problem. I had done something rash and thoughtless, yes. But now I could, would, make it better.

Annika, Love

Apparently this morning, Annika--who is at my parents' house with Lily--came to Lily and told her that she needed to wash her shoes. Lily told her no, that her shoes did not actually need to be washed. Frustrated, Annika went and found my mother. She told her, "My shoes are thirsty." My mother got her some water. Presumably, the shoes "drank."

A reminder, as I seek to find the right words in my own work, that there are so many ways to say just about everything. And a reminder to pay attention, as close as I can. The way these children of mine are growing and learning is astonishing.