Skies

My friend asked me to read the manuscript of her novel. The Oklahoma sky plays a major role in the book, and while it didn't really affect me at first read, the longer the book stews in my head, the more I'm reminded of the power of the sky.

Before you accuse me of having had too much coffee or cough syrup, let me 'splain.

I'm not from "here." I'm from there, where the sky is not an unbroken line of horizon, but a silhouette of mountains and skyscrapers. Where a deep breath fills my mind with memories of cold walks to school across frozen earth. The fight for forward progress recalls steel mills and coal. Where a sniff of summer grass hearkens back to softball games and cool summer rainstorms. Where the sense of home resonates even as it no longer exists for me as "home." There is not the wide open expanse but it does not feel crushed.

Here, in Oklahoma, the sky is a vast extremity, extending from earth to air without interruption. (Of course there are buildings and skyscrapers in Oklahoma. Just go with me, mkay?). Breathing in the Oklahoma air, my memories extend, but not as far back as childhood. This smell of home is of a fresh new marriage, birthing babies and thick summers.

Running last week, I paid particular attention to the grey clouds breaking apart, the sun fighting its way through. I thought of how the hills here would not be classified as such in Pennsylvania. It seems I have one leg firmly planted in the literal here and now of Oklahoma. And one reluctant to leave the past, literal and figurative home, of Pennsylvania.

Do others exist in such a divided mind? Do you live looking forward and backward simultaneously? Can my mind coexist in memories and hopes? Is there another way? Just wondering.

Just Take a Bath

I drove home from soccer practice last night listening to the shrieks and cries and horrid moans of an unhappy little boy. Yes, my sweet precious angel hollered the whole way home (a thankfully short commute) because I decided he would bathe instead of shower.

While not normally cause for such alarm, precious angel was tired. And hungry. And hot. And doggone it that boy wanted a shower. In my best stern mommy voice I also asked him to bring in his shoes from the car. The horror. Waterworks all up in here.

One daughter covered her ears. One daughter made funny faces hoping to cheer him up. Both actions caused equal and utterly opposite reactions in their brother. That's the trouble with physics.

We made it home with him wailing to his heart's content. I stopped trying to reason with him when his words became unintelligible. The line between reason and hysteria had been crossed miles ago. Finally home, the girls scattered, probably thankful they could escape to the relative quiet of their rooms and their homework. He went to his room, covered himself with blankets and continued that post-cry whimpering, short-breathing things kids do when they know they're not going to get their way, not fully committed to trying anymore but still kind of aggravated. In lighter moments, it's kind of funny.

I started a bath, thinking of my mother. I dropped in gobs and gobs of bubble bath, another unusual event at our house. We're usually cycling through too many bodies to luxuriate in bubbles of aromatic ambiance. My mother's prescription for everything when we were growing up was a bath. I'd say, "I have a headache." She'd say, "Take a bath." My sister would be stressed over tests: "Take a bath." Even our brother was advised to take a bath when under duress or illness.

My son had the same reaction we did. Dude was pissed. Our mother's one-stop, cure-all works-every-time solution seemed to mock our displeasure. "Just take a bath," we teased her, had become her code for: "Tell someone who gives a crap." She wasn't really belittling our emotions, reducing our stress to a simple action, confining our unhappiness to the bathroom (Freud would for sure have something to say about that.)

In our angst, we overlooked her genuine care. We wanted her to wallow in our drama. We wanted her to stomp her feet with us. We wanted tears, balled fists, reaction. Anything that indicated she was on our side.

The way she did that, though, was to offer a quiet space where no body could pour salt in our emotional gashes. Where we could be alone to sift out the thoughts, shake loose the dross and soak away the metaphoric and physical dirt. She's a smart one, my mom.

I plopped the sobbing boy in the tub, tears streaking down his dirty soccer field face. I wish I could say instantly his troubles were over. No. It wasn't as fast as that. But, he did sit for a while. Then he began to play with his action heroes. He finally tried the new shampoo I'd bought for him. In the end, he climbed out of the tub quieter, calmer, happier, and ready for bed.

Sometimes, I want to throw the same kind of fit my son did. I want to shout and scream and tell people they're all stupid. Of course, as an adult, that's just not done. However, the prescription remains the same at our house. Just take a bath.

All This Remembering Makes My Teeth Hurt

Dad and my son 6 years ago. The crazy kid on Hilarious Hair Day in Kindergarten. Note the purple hair.

Our son turns 6 years old today. I remember discovering my pregnancy a week after dinner with "the girls" during which I said, "I'm not having any more kids. Why would I? I have two great daughters. We are all set." A week later, I started doing the math, wondering how many times I could have counted the days wrong and blushing that I was describing my decision to have no more children while pregnant.

The idea of a third child took some getting used to. And then of course this sweet and funny little boy entered our lives on November 4, 2003 at 10:10 pm, at home, while his sisters slept upstairs and our two dear friends cooked and cleaned and tended. I would never want it any other way.

Yesterday, to celebrate his birthday, I painted his room in colors he chose himself (limeade and bayou blue, FYI), to surprise him after school with his new cool room. Painting rooms always makes me think of my dad, and birthdays always bring out the nostalgic old lady in me.

I remembered, as I painted, my dad taking me to the hardware store, age 12, when purple was my pride and passion, to choose colors for my own room. I remember Dad explaining about Spackle, and brushes and rollers. I remember his patience and feeling special, grown up, proud.

Once home, I wanted to start slapping paint on the walls right away. Instead he showed me how to fill the holes I made with thumb tacks in my posters. Then sanding it away, wiping down the baseboards, moving the furniture, taping off the ceilings...the prep work seemed unending. Until, finally, we got to start rolling on the glorious color. Dad and I also made a set of deep purple shelves for my walls. He showed me how to cut the lumber, sand the edges, find the studs, the whole bit. My dad wouldn't let me do anything half way.

My childhood was not idyllic. Neither was it horrendous. These memories are like freeze frames in my brain. They flash up, abrupt and earnest, calling to mind the best things about their grandparents I want my kids to know. My sense of gender inequity comes as much from my working mom as from my liberated dad. I cut grass, took out trash, weeded the garden, set the table. I learned how to check and change the oil in my car, change a flat, and to be and do anything I want to be. So did my brother.

That's where memories of my dad and my son's unexpected (but joyful) birth intersect. Painting his room, I remembered all the great things I learned from my dad. And I felt so pleased that my son and my daughters get to know him. I remembered feeling lost and scared when I was first pregnant with my son. I was unsure I would be able to handle three kids.

Painting my room with my dad clearly made an impression on me. He cared about me, he allowed me to choose the colors, as gross as they were, and he showed me the right way to do something. Remembering while I painted was fun, and it reminded me of how I want my kids to remember me. I want my kid to remember he picked the paint and painted on the polka dots. I want him to learn to do it the right way, and I want him to remember the gift of time we had together.

Putting the Sweet in Sugar Lake

The Lake. Sugar Lake. A tiny little patch of happy in Pennsylvania where our family has had a cottage, this cottage, for 109 years. I can still see my bare feet, blackened from the hot tar from the road, running up those stairs, a stinky hot mess of a kid loving her summer.

When I'm there, when I think of it, images float into my mind. This is what I see.

• Playing Trivial Pursuit on the screened porch
• Tin cups in bright colors
• Fighting over who would get the turquoise towel
• Carving our names into mushrooms Grandma found with us.
• Wearing my first bikini
• Swimming in the lake, standing on old inner tubes, playing king
• Eating all my favorite foods, nary a thought to my waist line
  

Makes me smile.

Now I live 1000 miles from this childhood idyll and being there is worth ever hard earned mile. My joy comes from two sources. The first is simple remembrance. Some people who have enjoyed the cottage are no longer living, some I haven't seen in over 20 years. The whole family doesn't always get there every summer but no matter who is there, we still, ALWAYS play Trivial Pursuit. Walking in the slamming back door into the kitchen is entering a family museum. My dad's high school art work, my aunt's books, old fishing rods. Even the curtains, made by hand by my great grandmother, still hang.

I'm awash and downright glowy with nostalgia. I've smeared vaseline on the lens of history and only the beautiful remains. But whatever.

Because the second source of joy in being there is watching my kids. Five of the seven cousins scrambled around the yard all day and well into the night on July 4th. The ambled from one activity to the next; from art on the porch to swinging, races in the yard, smoke bombs, fishing, bug catching. The whole bit. They wake up and play. All. Day. Long. And they go to bed tired.

It may sound like I'm romanticizing a pile of wood and glass and nails. Maybe I have. Nothing wrong with a little childhood idyll.