Homecoming week in review

Heading Home!

If you had asked me a week ago if six months was a long time, I would have affirmed yes, emphatically. But after just a few days of celebrating Dad’s return, six months seems like a blink. Life has resumed a sense of normalcy. There doesn’t seem to be much housework because two people are around to do it. We haven’t been in a rush to get places because there are two people to get the kids ready and drive. We have eaten well, because there are two people to fix dinner, clean up, and make sure all the homework is done before dinner starts.  And all the kids have been on their best behavior.

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In the decompression lectures in Kuwait, my husband was told he had changed and to expect changes at home. He seems pretty much the same to me – more relaxed than I expected and several pounds skinnier. I feel less talkative and more distracted than I would like to be. But being on vacation all week has also made me feel like a nicer person, although I catch myself in selfish indulgences like reading the paper during breakfast, and wanting to get on the computer after the kids are in bed. And since those same kids have been being so good, their dad hasn't had to see me turn into the screaming meanie I was for a good part of the last six months. They were reminiscing about the Bill Cosby Chocolate Cake skit the other morning because Dad let them have carrot cake for breakfast (even more nutritious!).  I can really identify with that image of the mother with her head splitting open (although honestly I'm glad they ate carrot cake for breakfast or I would've eaten it myself.)

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Since this is a vacation of sorts, we have done some fun things this week: On the first night Dad was home, we had cake and champagne. The next day we slept in and swam and shopped all the bazaar items Dad brought home. That night we took all the kids out to eat at Olive Garden. My husband wanted comfort food. The kids were well behaved and excited to order from a menu. However, I hope they don’t get the impression that Olive Garden is fine dining.

Some of the souvenir trinkets for kids and family, and me:

And my new Afghan rug:

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The next day we did more reunion activities: went fishing, took a walk, looked at photos. That evening, we had a fancier date: first to a live production of the Thacker Mountain radio show, and then to dinner. Thacker Mountain is Mississippi Public Broadcasting’s version of Lake Woebegon Days, and it’s usually recorded in Oxford, MS, literary hotbed of the south. But on Saturday they did a special recording at the little theater here on the coast. We were treated to the house band The Yalobushwhackers, a blues gospel singer, the folksy singersongwriter Caroline Herring who crooned about little boys growing up and Walter Anderson, a reading from New Orleans author Tom Piazza’s new book about Katrina, and the blues group Homemade Jamz Blues Band, which is made up of three siblings, ages 12, 16, and 18 on homemade instruments plus their dad on harmonica. They were phenomenal. We finally had a taste of southern culture in its most distinctive form.

Then we had a taste of local cuisine at a nearby restaurant. Fearing not for contamination by oil, we savored the crab cake appetizer. For an entree, I had shrimp and grits, but the taste was obscured by the heavy cream sauce and the well-made martini that preceded it.

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Sunday’s Mass was marked by the best behavior all year by the kids as Dad resumed his role as spiritual head of the family. They were rewarded with a boat ride on the rental pontoon from MWR. They didn’t catch enough fish in the bay to provide more than a couple bites, so we had to make do with steak and potatoes for dinner, a man’s meal. 

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Eating wasn't all we did this past week.  I won't tell all the highlights, but one other memorable afternoon was spent visiting the Walter Anderson museum and the Shearwater Pottery gallery begun by his brother Peter Anderson. Always love strolling through an art museum, even a tiny one. I’d never heard of Walter Anderson before moving here, but his artwork is striking and appealing. Part of the appeal may be his life story and his family’s place in the community. He was apparently rather eccentric and singularly single-minded, evidenced by the way he left his family for weeks to live in rough shelters on the barrier islands where he drew and painted. He created an amazing painting on the walls of his room, showing the stages of a day as well as of creation.
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This is beginning to sound like an ad for coming to see the Gulf Coast.  I'm trying to entice our family members down for a visit.  Swamp boat tours are in our future as we host a goodsized passel of relations next week.

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Photo of a welcoming sign on the base that my first grader painted. A perfect representation of how we feel.

Homecoming

The 5:32

She said, If tomorrow my world were torn in two,
Blacked out, dissolved, I think I would remember
(As if transfixed in unsurrendering amber)
The hour best of all the hours I knew:
When cars came backing into the shabby station,
Children scufffing the seats, and the women driving
With ribbons around their hair, and the trains arriving,
And the men getting off with tired but practiced motion.

Yes, I would remember my life like this, she said:
Autumn, the platform red with Virginia creeper,
And a man coming toward me, smiling, the evening paper
Under his arm, and his hat pushed back on his head;
And wood smoke lying like haze on the quiet town,
And dinner waiting, and the sun not yet gone down.


- Phylis McGinley

trains or planes...!!!

Weekend watching: The very very good and the very very bad

Watched Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi Saturday night with the kids – a remedy to letting them watch Labyrinth the previous night. Felt like I had to repair their brains so that such bad acting and such scary dancing as that of David Bowie’s in Labyrinth wouldn’t be imbedded in their imaginations. (Too late!) What were Jim Henson and George Lucas thinking? Other than the Magic Dance/Baby with the Voodoo song, we couldn’t make out any of the lyrics – was it a bad recording or just plain bad? But of course, the kids LOVED the Bog of Eternal Stench. And just to say something charitable, some of the Muppets were memorable. I thought I remembered liking this movie when I saw it when it came out in 1986. Why didn’t someone nix the David Bowie cameo and use a Muppet for the Goblin King? Then it would have been a forgettable Muppet movie; instead, it’s an odd, scary film that I couldn’t believe we wasted almost two hours watching.



You can’t even compare the three hour Gandhi with Labyrinth, except that we watched them on consecutive nights. Well made, fabulously acted, it only lacked a good stereo recorded sound. Or perhaps it was hard to hear because the kids kept asking me what was going on, which I didn’t always know. It was an excellent lesson in history and principles, patience and dedication, and the blindness of the masses to the potential for peace through self-control. Not that we all have the will of Gandhi to deny ourselves of consolations and comforts, but if only we could stifle our desires for revenge, for power, for following the mob.

The movie follows Gandhi through his first attempts at civil disobedience in South Africa, to his gradual awakening to the possibilities of nonviolent resistence and the even more gradual loosening of the British grip on India. The resolution of his nonviolent revolutions took years. It is a miracle that the people continued to follow him.

Sadly, the victory for nonviolence was short-lived, once the civil war between Pakistan and India began. How Gandhi felt about the warring between Pakistan and India after he had worked so hard for home rule is incomprehensible. What would he think about the situation there now?

The temptation is to think that “those people” have a violent religion or will never be free from tribal disagreements. But there are plenty of small wars going on in our communities and households that are certainly not undertaken in a spirit of peaceful resistance. And perhaps on a smaller scale, but still destructive, are those wars in our hearts that prevent us from following our convictions and our beliefs. Perhaps I was so affected by this film because I feel that I have drifted so far from the ideals of my young adulthood, and Gandhi’s growth in conviction and practice is both an inspiration and a condemnation.


I’m not sure how much this movie affected the kids, but they begged to finish watching it after the intermission, even though they complained when I put the movie in. (Why don’t you ever get any good movies, Mom? my 12 yr old wanted to know. I’ll take that as a compliment.) They were impressed that the movie was made in 1982, as it feels so contemporary (especially compared to Labyrinth, whose 80’s provenance is obvious). Ben Kingsley looks just like Gandhi, and is completely convincing. You couldn’t tell if the newsreel clips were real or made for the movie. There were scenes of distressing violence, perhaps most especially the massacre at Amritsar, but they weren’t gratuitous - their tragic nature was clear.


My own encounter with Gandhi took place when I was about the age of my olders, shortly after the time the movie came out, when I was in 6th grade. I can’t remember if I chose or was assigned to present a research project for Social Studies on him, but it was one of the first times I remember getting drawn completely into research, enjoying the discovery, the process of becoming familiar with a person from history, looking for resources in the open library at our middle school.

Come to think of it, that social studies class had several big projects: learning hieroglyphics, a mock trial of historical characters, making a film strip. Out of my few memories of middle school, a large amount come from that class, which was taught by a heavyset woman with brilliant red hair. She was large enough that no one knew she was pregnant until we found out the next fall that she had a baby in the summer. Perhaps pregnancy explains why she sat in state in the front of the class, rarely left her stool behind the podium, and spoke with sardonic humor about history and current events. I don’t remember her lecturing much, but she was very good at coming up with projects. And now all these years later, I realize in retrospect what a good teacher she was. Never a favorite, but able to encourage critical thinking from pre-pubescent middle schoolers.


(Unlike the math teacher, a tall thin, beak nosed woman, who told me not to ask questions when I asked why were using letters in math. I was prejudiced against math until 12th grade, when another memorable teacher revealed the beauty of the unit circle. But that’s another topic.)

Artifacts and fossils

Yesterday on a bike/jog around the neighborhood bordering the bay with my younger kids, we stopped again at the vacant lot to pick a few lonely scuppernongs clinging to the vines. I told the kids to hunt for a more while I ran to the dead end and back for exercise.


As I jogged back, I saw the kids all sitting on the crumbling curb. They were waiting to present me with a treasure: a brown glazed pottery urn found buried near the fence line under the vines. The six year old saw it first: he thought it was the turtle we had released several weeks ago, only now it had flowering vines carved on the back. Then he realized it was a vase, so he and his brother dug it out to give to me.


Although caked with mud, it looked fairly pretty, having a crackled glaze, embossed peacocklike birds, and an uncommon shape. The only flaw was a broken handle, which snapped when they tried to pull it out of the ground because a root had grown through it. My admiration was genuine, as opposed to some times when I have to feign joy over a piece of broken Corelle, or chipped brick. Failing to find any “made in China” stamped on the bottom, I indulged an “Antiques Roadshow” fantasy: “Yes, my children found this urn in a vacant lot. It was probably washed away from some household during Katrina. . . . You mean it’s Shearwater pottery worth thousands?! . . . Oh, I’m going to hold onto it since it was a gift from my children, but it’s nice to know I could fund their college with it if I wanted to.” It was enough to make me want to find that piece of handle.

They showed me the spot where they had found it, and where we also saw three blue-tailed skink skittering under the detritus of rotted leaves and scuppernongs. Apparently their nest had been disturbed. I disturbed it further by sifting through the dirt by the fence. I found one piece of the broken handle, but another tiny brown fragment still lies buried for the next generation of archaeologists. I had to give up the search to go pick up another child. All day I plotted how I might jump on the bike to ride back over, but a free half hour never surfaced. Maybe tomorrow.

This adventure in archaeology serendipitously occurred shortly after reading Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier. I picked it up because it went from the “New Books” shelf at the library to the “Recommended Reading” shelf, and because I had read a picture book, Stone Girl Bone Girl by Laurence Anholt, which I found more remarkable than the novel. The picture book’s simple illustrations reminded me a little of Barbara Cooney’s, and the author told the story in a way that made you interested in the fossils that Mary Anning and Elizabeth Philpot found, but the focus was on Mary as a little girl.

Chevalier’s story focused more on the unique friendship of Philpot and Anning, and on their identity as women in a men’s field rather than on the fossils themselves. Other than mentioning how the fossils contributed to theories of extinction and the resulting pressure on religious beliefs, Chevalier doesn’t delve far into the geological questions of the day, nor does she really frame the religious questions with clarity. Bill Bryson’s book A Short History of the World opened my eyes to those wonders in a more thorough way.

What becomes tiresome about Chevalier’s book was overemphasis on the barriers these women faced: that the women were unconventional in their pursuit of fossils and in their friendship is interesting, but reading repeated comments about these constraints is not. I get tired of being told how oppressed women of previous centuries were because they had to have chaperones and mind their manners. Whenever I read historical fiction I wonder about this emphasis on the unfair trials women of yore had to endure: did they really resent the restrictions as much as their modern sisters imagine? Take Jane Austen, who gets a mention in Remarkable Creatures, for example: some of her characters chafe against their societal roles, but more often what they struggle with are the constrictions of class, not gender. We judge the oppression of their cultural regime by our standards.

Maybe I expected too much from a novel that has been on the library’s special features shelf. This book ties into the resurgence of interest in Charles Darwin, which has resulted in renewed interest in natural history, or maybe vice versa. It’s a fascinating period of history, which makes reading Chevalier’s story entertaining. But of most value is its proposition that the story of the past is written in the rocks beneath our feet, and that if we keep our eyes open we can find extraordinary treasures in ordinary places, that time is more spacious and full of possibility than we can imagine, that our relationship with God can expand to include these possibilities. And maybe by articulating these thoughts I’ll hold onto that glimpse of wonder every time I look at our potential treasure of a lost artifact, a record of perseverance in the face of a storm’s destruction.

Fossilized coral petoskey stone, Lake Michigan

Car Ordeals

One more week until the glorious homecoming! Plans are underway for Dates with Dad. The list of good places to eat and fun places to play and discover has grown. Also planned, of course, is lots of quality time at home, including multiple evenings on the lanai with summer beverages.

Unfortunately, in the midst of our pre-homecoming preparations, we had not one but two car malfunctions last week. This should not be surprising given the age and mileage (17 years and over 300,000 miles combined) of these vehicles.  With only one driver in the house, getting the cars fixed required a bit of forethought and finagling. To be honest, only one of them has been fixed so far. Figuring out what to do with the GMC – the entire molding is falling off the passenger door –  has been postponed by liberal use of Gorilla tape until I can get it to the body shop, or let Dad take a look at it during one of his days of liberty.


The problem with the Volvo was a little stickier. The window wouldn’t roll up. With rain in the forecast, I couldn’t ignore it any longer, so I took the car over to the import place in the next town and made arrangements for a friend to pick me up. The station manager quickly diagnosed the problem and replaced the switch for a relatively inexpensive price before my friend arrived. A relief.

The deal was sweetened even more because in the waiting room magazine rack, not only did I find back issues of The Oxford American, but also a photocopied essay about Julian of Norwich. The best car repair shop reading I have ever come across.

Baby Face

Sometimes I feel like I’m on the Chutes and Ladders board, climbing across a week at a time in one turn. School started today for my seventh and eighth graders – and it was with standard motherly mixed emotions that I watched them walk with apparent confidence into school.  They are big kids (I had to run to the uniform store the day before school started to get the oldest another pair of longer pants, which above size 32 only come unhemmed, so I spent last night hemming, ripping stitches, rehemming, repeating), and they are good kids; I don't worry as much about them as I do my younger ones who have had a different toddlerhood.  But I want to push them back down a chute or two to slow this whole game down.

On our desktop we have the photo slideshow widget on the Google sidebar. It is a constant distraction, even to the kids, who stop to watch a few slides every time they walk by. Nearly ten years worth of photos stored on the desktop flash by to remind us of wonderful times that we have had, and that now are lost except to memory.

And my memory works poorly.  Maybe if I could remember all the details with perfect recall, I wouldn't feel quite so nostalgic.

I miss those small children I used to know.

A few old favorites:

Day is Done

At 4:59 yesterday afternoon, I was outside hanging up the beach towels over lawn chairs to dry out. The 4 yr old followed me out to make sure I wasn’t doing something fun without her. At 5, Taps began to play. We live close enough to a military base to hear it broadcast over the loud speaker system (called affectionately “Big Mouth”). The 4 yr old put her hand over her heart and called me to attention.

I really didn’t want to stop what I was doing. I wanted to go back inside and make something fast for dinner before I had to take the older boys to sweat off some pounds at football practice. But I paused. And then sang along with the National Anthem when it began right after Taps. Had to set a good example.

If you are on base when Taps begins to play, you are supposed to cease what you are doing. Sometimes in my car the noise is so loud I can’t hear the loud speaker, so I have to rely on visual cues – stopped traffic, pedestrians standing at attention, gate guards pausing in their ID checks. If I happen to be running on base, I sometimes resent the 3 minute break – I only have so many minutes to jam exercise into my day. But the song is to memorialize those who have no minutes left, for whom time has stopped forever. To stand at attention, to stop rushing, to remember respectfully the service members who have sacrificed everything and the country they defended is a small enough ritual to offer up for their souls.

Original Lyrics: 

 Fading light dims the sight
And a star gems the sky, gleaming bright
From afar drawing nigh,
Falls the night

Day is done, gone the sun
From the lakes, from the hills, from the skies
All is well, safely rest;
God is nigh.

Then goodnight, peaceful night;
Till the light of the dawn shineth bright.
God is near, do not fear,
Friend, goodnight.

John Wayne Lyrics:
      Fading light
      Falling night
     Trumpet call, as the sun, sinks in fright
      Sleep in peace, comrades dear,
      God is near. 

At one point in time, church bells rang out a similar call to pause. If we lived close enough to a church maybe we would remember to pray the Angelus more faithfully. When we were homeschooling, we said the Angelus at lunchtime. The boys said it as fast as humanly possible, but at least we stopped what we were doing, ever so briefly, and offered that prayer together before digging into lunch.

Of course, once they started school, we aren’t together at lunchtime to pray. We could say the Angelus at dinner or in the morning or in the car, but I simply haven’t made the commitment to do it. Apathy? Acedia? The same thing with morning prayer. When school is in session I get up early enough to read Magnificat by myself before the rush begins, but during the summer I’m embarrassed to admit that I take a vacation from some of these rituals, to my soul’s detriment, I’m sure, and also to my peace of mind. An early morning usually heralds the start of a good day.

I actually started this post a few days ago and didn’t know where I was going with it, but since my sister tagged me with the devotions meme, providentially, I’m provided with a way to close.

So my favorite devotions are:

1. Bedtime rosary with the kids. They like it as a means of deferring their bedtime.

2. Morning Magnificat readings

3. The Angelus

4. First Friday (I think Mass is supposed to be a given, but the First Friday devotion is a little different. Of course, I have to admit with chagrin that this is another practice from which I’ve taken a summer holiday.)

5. Taps/Star Spangled banner (can that count as prayers for souls?)

Other prayers I actually say sometimes:

• Prayer to St. Anthony. Most recently he came through with a lost hermit crab, but my favorite is when he rolled a missing Lego into the room.

• Guardian Angel Prayer – a favorite to deter nightmares.

• We add in a little prayer for the dead after grace before dinner and a prayer for my friend with cancer through the intercession of John Paul II. 

• We also say a short prayer to the Holy Spirit after the rosary for the graces to love others:

Holy Spirit, enlighten my heart that I may see all there is of God.
Holy Spirit, enlighten my mind that I may know all there is of God.
Holy Spirit, enlighten my soul that I may belong only to God.
Sanctify all I think, say or do that all may be for the glory of God. Amen

So now I’m supposed to tag someone to blog about their favorite prayers. Actually, after a little research, I realize it is supposed to be tag 5 people about their 3 favorite prayers.  But I’m not sure this blog has five readers. So if you happen to see this and if you haven’t already, please write about your favorite prayers. I’ll come and read about them.

Summer in the South

There is a heaviness here from heat, humidity, ill humors.  Instead of complaining about the heat, I could complain about my 6 year old biting and spitting on me while I was trying to hold him in time out after he bit and spit on his brothers and strangled his sisters. Or I might moan about my 12 year old threatening to run away or my 8 year old whining for playdates.  The 4 year old steals gum from my purse and leaves it, with all the flavor chewed out, in inconspicuous spots to be sat or trod upon. Then my 13 year old, the arbiter of justice, is angry because I don’t follow through on meting out fitting punishments for these evils deeds. Meanwhile, the 10 year old asks hourly to play Wii or computer games or to get another new pet until my ears begin to feel stuffy.

In a couple of weeks, they all go to school, and I will feel guilty about dropping their discipline problems into the laps of other more capable professionals. Despite their quarrelsomeness, I really, really feel sorry that I am not keeping them home to sit around and read The Incredible Book Eating Boy one more time with the youngers or to talk with the two olders more about To Kill a Mockingbird, which they just read and I just reread for the first time in at least 20+ years. (Why did I wait so long? I thought it was a courtroom drama. I didn’t love it the first time around so many years ago, wondered why all the fuss. But this time I had a pang in my heart and folded over every other page corner to go back to. Is it that I’ve become more sentimental in my middle age? That I’m in the south and suddenly the setting is more familiar? That I understand the difficulties of the relationships better because they remain difficult 50 years later?
The boys actually didn’t say much to me about the book, but neither did they complain when I came home from the library with the black and white movie. Instead they wanted to watch it w/o the youngers, and they wanted me to make the 10 year old wait to watch it until he had read the book. But I let him watch it, and I let the youngers watch until the courtroom drama began and then I packed them off protesting to bed.)

But it is still summer. I was happy to hear one kid complain about being bored yesterday. Finally, we are not busy. Like Jem and Dill and Scout, the kids have tired of some of their games. So we are fighting. Because when you go outside you start to sweat and the ants bite you between your toes and you don’t stop itching even when you rub the spot so hard that dirty skin starts to peel off.

But when you go outside sometimes you find a box turtle in the yard and you have to take it around the block to the vacant lot next to a creek and there you find scuppernong grapes that you teach your kids to suck on until the sweetness fades. And you notice the tiny pink portalucas that bloom in the sidewalk cracks and catch a glimpse of what you are sure is an escaped yellow parakeet flying after a mourning dove and wonder if you can call it to you and keep it as a pet. Maybe the kids spend a few moments climbing up the low branches of a twisted live oak and running through the neighbor’s sprinklers. They eat the last of the neighbor’s blueberries that are sour now and then flop in the grass and complain about the heat and beg to go swimming or to eat another popsicle. So for an hour you sit at the side of the neighbors' pool while they are at work (with permission) and pretend to read but really watch the kids compete in big splash contests and races and playing at sharks and minnows. You note with bittersweet pride and cautious approbation that the baby holds her breath under water and spins and then swims from one end of the steps to the other. She doesn’t need you to hold her in the water any more. You can sit and read your book or watch them swim away. Or dive in and race them to the other side.