Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
The good:
Betsy-Tacy has been reissued in a spiffy new edition. Nice big trim size, appealing to young readers. The beloved Lois Lenski art inside. Quite a beautiful painting on the cover—you may recognize it from the previous edition, which featured the same art peeking through a cutout on the front cover. And a nice bonus: in back is a big chunk of interesting biographical material about Maud Hart Lovelace. My young B-T fans (and their mother) were delighted.
The bad:
This doesn’t necessarily mean the entire series is being reissued. As you may recall from posts last year, many people have lamented the gradual going-out-of-print of this series, which is one of the best children’s serieseses of all time (she says authoritatively). If you’re a fan, now’s the time to show you want books like this in print…I for one will be stockpiling enough copies for my brood.
(P.S. Pardon the lack of wrapped text around the picture above. WordPress is being persnickety with me. Can’t remember the HTML do wrap it manually. Tried float=”left”. Didn’t work, obviously. Too lazy to google it. Too lazy even to capitalize google. Almost too lazy to close my parenthesis here, but…will…muster…the…strength.)
The radiator tragedy and, six months later, Jane’s arrival, put the brakes on my houseplant mania somewhat, but there was still a good bit of greenery filling up the sills and corners of our new, slightly bigger apartment down the block. We even made a field trip to Logee’s Greenhouse, that wonder-of-the-world Becky and I have been discussing in the comments. I remember Scott patiently entertaining a toddling Jane while I explored the rooms and rooms of beauties—though I think I only bought three little bitty cuttings. Oh, brave restraint.
Well, of course you know what happened next, and it’s no surprise that most of my plants perished from neglect the following year. Jane and I lived in the hospital almost nonstop for nine months, and Scott was dashing home from work only long enough to bring in the mail and pick up the car so he could drive out to spend the evenings with us. But in the early months of 1998, with high-dose chemo behind us and Jane’s curls beginning to sprout once more, we had a little renaissance of greenery in the apartment. Jane’s immune system was still almost non-existent and her platelets dangerously low. The playground was forbidden to us, and contact with other toddlers strongly discouraged. For a little while I fretted about my three-year-old living in isolation, even if it was only temporary, in a city apartment with no balcony, no backyard. Then it struck me that if I could not get her outside, I’d have to bring the outside in.
The front room of our apartment had windows on three sides, a small but lovely space with lots of light. I used our small tax refund to transform it to a mini-conservatory/playroom. Low white shelves (the cheap kind from Costco) under all the windows, for toys and puzzles and books. A blue plastic Fisher Price table with two little green chairs, a present from Jane’s aunt and uncle. (This table is still with us: currently residing in our backyard.) In every window, a hanging basket of flowers. Good old gesneriads, blossoming liberally in a warm, dry place. Plants atop every set of shelves: all the flowering varieties I could coax into bloom. It really was a small wonderland. We spent most of our day there, the two of us, or sprawled on the sofa in the next room, reading. Scott would come home to a flat stack of picture books literally as high as the seat of the couch.
We got a hydroponic growing kit and tried our hand at herbs and vegetables. Mostly we raised whiteflies. No matter; I wasn’t cooking much, anyway.
I really loved that little garden. By the time Rose was born the following summer, Jane’s counts were back to reasonable levels and we began, at last, to see our old playmates again. But our sunroom, as we called it, remained a favorite place to play. That was the only part of the apartment I missed when we finally moved to a bigger place with a (gasp) yard in the fall of 1999. We brought all the houseplants with us, of course, but I’ve never been quite the fanatic—nor green thumb—that I was in the apartment years. The garden mania moved outside, of course. Our next move, to Virginia in January of ’02, was the first and only house we’ve owned, i.e. the only place I could really put things in the ground. Here in San Diego, we’ve done most of our outdoor planting in pots.
But there are a few varieties of indoor plants I’ve kept up with, sort of. I mean, we’ve always had, in every house, the standard tropical non-flowering greenery. Ficus (the little one I bought was getting quite big when I said goodbye to it in Virginia); always a prayer plant or rabbit tracks named Thor, long story; Chinese umbrella plant, pothos, ivy, jade tree, peace lily. Homey and forgiving sorts, the lot of them.
But my favorites, the things I don’t like ever to do without, are African violets and scented geraniums. My parents gave me a set of violets for my birthday last year, because I think I enthused about them here on the blog and they are incredibly sweet that way. (Wicked daughter pauses as thoughts of other things she might enthuse about flash through her mind. Ignore me, indugent parents.) I use my mom’s trick of keeping African violets in nearly continuous bloom by breaking Jobe’s Flowering Houseplant Fertilizer Spikes in half and burying a half in each pot. Works with geraniums too, but I only do that for the Martha Washington kind with the big showy blossoms, not the scented varieties where the flowers are rather nondescript and what you really want are the leaves.
So I grow African violets for the color and scented geraniums for the smell. But only a few of each, because somewhere around baby number three I lost my fastidiousness about tending to plants. Now everything green that survives in this house must be able to thrive upon benign neglect. Which is why only one of my birthday violets is in bloom right now. Where’d I put those fertilizer spikes again?
Subtitled: Ah, Aeschynanthus Lobbianus, How I Loved You
Things have changed on my windowsill since I wrote yesterday’s post. I couldn’t find the red plastic cup the other nasturtiums had looked so pretty in, so I filled the cream cow with water and put the new nasturtiums there. They look so cheerful. And an idea struck me and I transplanted the little bulbous cactus into the empty blue-and-white watering-can-shaped miniature flowerpot (it once held a mini African violet). That was probably not the brightest idea, since the flowerpot is a little small for the cactus. But it looks cute.
And then I took a cutting from a geranium in my backyard and started that rooting in a little glass vase, so that’s in the window now too.
Years ago, I used to be a houseplant fanatic. It started in graduate school. I brought a few plants to North Carolina with me, cuttings rooted by my dear auntie in Northern Virginia, whom I visited every couple of weekends during college (undergrad). My mother (this aunt was her older sister) has an amazingly green thumb, and there are gorgeous plants all over the house back home in Colorado. Aunt Genia had the same talent, and her apartment was crammed full of greenery. She couldn’t conceive of sending me off to grad school without a few neatly potted houseplants of my own.
I didn’t know their names, then, beyond the cutesy nicknames I gave them. (Look, Anne of Green Gables did it—surely you remember Bonny the Geranium?—so it was good enough for me.) But a thing about me is that I always, eventually, need to know the names of things. And, if possible, the stories behind the names.
So I scoured the local used book store and found this book, which I have probably read three hundred times over the years, if you add up all the times I’ve pored over a certain page or section. Crockett’s Indoor Garden, and I don’t know that it’s any better than other houseplant books out there, or information now available for free all over the internet, but it was exactly the book I wanted at the time. Of course it awoke a hunger to raise more varieties, grow flowering plants, seek out rare species, learn more about everything, everything, everything.
Moderation is not my strong point.
Budget constraints (read: grad-school poverty) provided their own moderating influence, however. I begged cuttings when I could, bought a few very small, very cheap plants from a corner store, and mostly just read. I learned a lot. I grew African violets from leaf cuttings rooted in sand. I transplanted a four-dollar ficus frequently so that it grew bigger and bigger, almost magically fast. I repotted a hapless gesneriad a dozen times because my cat would keep knocking it over, no matter where I moved it. She was not a very bright cat, but so determined.
The thing about plants is that they grow and multiply, so that even with a tight budget you can fill up a small apartment quite rapidly. At the end of two years I must have had two dozen little plants, and a few big ones. I have an old notebook somewhere with all of them listed by name. After graduation I gave a bunch away (along with my dear kitty, who would not have looked happily upon the new life awaiting me in New York City—gave her to my friend Kelly Link, the now esteemed science fiction writer, if you’re interested) and carted many more up to Queens, where I struggled to find room for them in my tiny apartment.
And then, oh dear, came Weird Things You Can Grow. I was an editorial assistant at Random House Children’s Books, and one of the books my boss was editing was this book. Its target audience was ten-year-olds, but I ate it right up. I wanted to grow every one of those weird things. The way I got to know my way around New York was by trekking uptown and downtown to obscure nurseries and flower shops, on quests for papyrus and string-of-beads and passionflower. I found them, too, a good many of them, and nurtured them on the broad windowsill of my hallway cubicle, an inglorious workspace rendered glorious by the view of the East River, with Queens and Brooklyn sprawling on the other side.
Not every acquisition was a success. Scott gave me a bonsai for my 23rd birthday, and I am sorry to say I failed the bonny wee thing, and it became a dry stick sometime during the first year of our marriage.
What I was best at was gesneriads. You probably know some varieties of this family: lipstick plant and goldfish plant are two common varieties in the indoor section of nurseries. African violets, of course. Cape primrose. Flame violet. Gloxinia. I went mad for them all. Even joined a Gesneriad society in Manhattan. At the monthly meetings I was the only member under 35, and one of perhaps three members under 60.
I joined a couple of houseplant round robins, too, a charming means of correspondence which I suspect has completely died out in the internet age. You added your name to a smallish list of addresses, and people would write long letters about their gesneriads, and send the packet on to the next person on the list, and when it came to you, you eagerly caught up on all the news—Millie’s episcia finally bloomed! what joy!—and shared the latest on your collection. I will now confess for the record that I was just as slow in keeping up my end of that correspondence as I am now at email, and after about three rounds of holding up the queue with my delay, I meekly resigned from the group. I do not think they missed me.
By then I had fifty or sixty plants. In a three-room apartment: I know, it was ridiculous. Scott and I got married, and he moved in, and I wonder now how he put up with it? Card tables in front of every window (we only had three), Aeschynanthus grabbing at his hair every time he walked past the dresser? People don’t know about Scott that he is a little bit of a saint, when it comes to exhibiting tolerance for his wife’s enthusiasms.
And then: tragedy struck. Six months after our marriage, we went away to spend Thanksgiving with his parents. While we were gone, a cold wave hit New York. Our landlady quite naturally cranked up the radiator heat. The radiators were by the windows, directly under the plant tables. My plants—they roasted. Baked. Were smited by the dry and the hot and the vicious desert conditions. Not all of them succumbed; sturdy old devil’s ivy (pothos) scoffed at danger and thrived on oven life. But the gesneriads, oh dear. They were crackly and grey when we returned home. It was a dreadful sight. I had carefully set them up with wicking and capillary mats so they would stay watered in my absence, but those tender measures had been insufficient to save them.
Thus ended my tenure as an amateur gesneriad specialist. The loss would have been much harder to bear had I not, by then, already become captivated by a new enthusiasm, a new subject on which to read obsessively and constantly.
Jane was on the way.
I did not mean for this post to get so out of hand. It has grown like a variegated philodendron under compact florescent lighting. There is more to the story, if it is a story, but my battery is almost dead and I have small Enthusiasms to tuck in bed.
My father saw my anniversary post and set immediately to work scanning my wedding photos! Isn’t he a peach?
Here’s one:
Somebody seriously needed to talk to me about those bangs. But isn’t my dress gorgeous? It was my mother-in-law’s. She wore it in 1960, Scott’s sister wore it in 1986 (in that very same church!), and they were so kind and offered it to me in 1994. I loved it. But I loved that boy even more.
I wrote this last night but conked out before sending it. I had half thought to go through old emails and photos to see if I could fill in some of the fuzzy spaces, but here it is the day after Mother’s Day and I’m approaching conk city again. Busy busy days around here. I’ll just post this as is, rather than let it languish with the other (eep) 185 posts WordPress tells me I have sitting in drafts.
Mother’s Day 1995: May 14th. Our first wedding anniversary. Our first baby was due on May 24th. I had quit my job as an assistant editor at HarperCollins Children’s books at the end of April and was plugging away at a freelance project I wanted to finish before the baby came. I was sure the baby was going to come early, sure of it. She was instead a full two weeks late, born June 7th. But on May 14th, my first Mother’s Day, the end of my first year as Scott’s wife, I was thinking today could be the day. I was ready. Where the Wild Things Are prints ornamented the walls of the baby’s room; soft teal and purple bedding was ready in the crib. That would be the crib in which that baby never wound up sleeping—she was in bed with us almost from the first, and the crib was where we stored the clean laundry. When she was three months old, I read The Continuum Concept, and that was the end of cribs for us forever.
Mother’s Day 1996: May 12th. Jane was 11 months old, and she was our everything. Had we converted her bedroom into an office by that point? I was writing the Carmen Sandiego books during her naps, and I remember that I had a deadline that week. Scott and our good friend Keri (the world traveler I’ve written about) took the baby for a long walk so I could crank away at the manuscript. It was a strange way to spend Mother’s Day, I recall. But I finished the book, and then I think we celebrated with Thai food. Either that or the best pizza in the world, from Gino’s down the street.
Mother’s Day 1997: May 11th. Celebrated in the hospital, and I think my best present was getting to go to the Ronald McDonald House for a shower. Jane was about six weeks into chemo by then, having been diagnosed with leukemia on March 22nd. She was past the brutal four-week induction phase and just getting going on the six-month (in theory; it lasted nine) middle phase of treatment, which involved lengthy hospital stays. All the nurses wished me a Happy Mother’s Day. Jane made a picture in the playroom with noodles and glue.
Mother’s Day 1998: May 10th. Jane was about to turn three, and I was expecting Rose in August. We didn’t know whether she’d be a Rose or a little Pete, but Jane insisted she was having a sister. That May things were just beginning to get good again after a long hard slog through hospital months. The early spring had been awful: a bad drug reaction left Jane weak, lethargic, battling the worst nausea of her time in chemo. For a time she had stopped eating, talking, walking. Those were the darkest days when it seemed like our sunny little girl might really slip away from us. But I’d figured out—and on Mother’s Day, I’ll not shirk from taking the credit for this, since I had to fight hard to convince the doctors I was right—that her rapid decline coincided with the switch from one antibiotic to another. The G/I docs thought that was nonsense; they thought her refusal to eat was behavorial, an acting-out of her resentment of her unborn sibling. I knew that was nonsense. Just about the only thing that brought the old spark into Jane’s eye was the mention of the baby in mommy’s tummy. She would kiss my belly and talk about her “sister.” G/I wanted to put in a feeding tube, but I insisted that we try going off the antibiotic first. Three days later, the child was eating and chattering and literally twirling on my bed. Hurrah for maternal instinct!
Mother’s Day 1999: May 9th. Rose would have been about nine months, and Jane was almost four? We were back in the world by then, making frequent trips out to Alice’s house on Long Island, bursting at the seams in our little Queens apartment. And joy of joys, Scott was home full time. He had quit his job as a comic-book editor the day Rose was born, wanting to write freelance and spend as much time as possible with his little girls. I would have been finishing up the second Martha book that spring, I think. I know I’d finished the first Charlotte book the November before. Oh! I remember—that was the spring HarperCollins sent me to Boston for a big hoopla Little House event along with the illustrators of my two series, and Laura’s biographer, William Anderson, and Roger MacBride’s daughter, Abby. There were lots of booksignings and interviews. I don’t remember exactly when it was. But I’m thinking that Mother’s Day that year was dominated by all that fuss.
Mother’s Day 2000: May 14th. It had come around to our wedding anniversary again, our sixth. We had left Queens the previous October, trading our two-bedroom apartment for a three-bedroom apartment on Long Island with a basement and a backyard. And our first washer and dryer, oh the bliss! Jane was about to turn five; Rose was not yet two. I ought to be able to remember this day better. I’m sure there was breakfast in bed (bagels most likely), and Mass at the little white church down the hill, Our Lady of Fatima. A family drive? A trip to the beach at Sands Point? I don’t remember. Chocolate, without doubt. Pizza, probably. That’s how we roll.
Mother’s Day 2001: May 13th. The day before our 7th anniversary. Beanie was 3 1/2 months old. Three little girls. I remember that spring very clearly: that was the year we were on a Beatrix Potter/Secret Garden kick, and we followed the dearest of rabbit trails. One of our funniest and most treasured family stories comes from that time.
Mother’s Day 2002: May 12th. And now we’re no longer in New York. We had moved to Virginia on New Year’s Day that year, into our very first house. Jane was seven, and I remember that Mother’s Day: it was the day after her First Communion. Scott’s parents were visiting, and I made a pork roast for dinner. Our azaleas were in magnificent bloom, and the perennial border I’d planted in April was beginning to look lively. Columbines, pink sea thrift, a few tulips, anemones, a froth of silver-green where the yarrow would be, and all sorts of baby plants not yet come into their own. I’d had to wrestle out enormous clumps of weeds, bush-sized weeds, in order to plant that bed. We had a pair of bluebirds nesting under our deck. Beanie’s curls were beginning to assert themselves.
Mother’s Day 2003: May 11th. Let me think. Jane was almost 8, Rose was going on 5, Beanie had turned 2 in January. Wonderboy was born in December of that year so I must have been pregnant by Mother’s Day, but I don’t remember whether I was sick yet.
Mother’s Day 2004: May 9th. This one should be easy. Wonderboy was exactly 5 months old. He’d had surgery at 3 months, and in mid-April he was evaluated by Early Intervention and determined to qualify for services. He couldn’t lift up his head when lying on his stomach. He would already have started physical therapy by May 9th. We didn’t know yet that he was hard of hearing. Hmm, so I can remember the time frame but not the day. How quickly it all begins to blur!
Mother’s Day 2005: May 8th, and suddenly strolling memory lane becomes so easy: there is a blog. There’s no entry between May 4th (when I wrote about my personal salad bar) and May 17th, which is an entry called “Hands in the Air,” about the roller-coaster ride we’d been on during the past two weeks. Funny, though, the misadventures described in that post seem quite benign compared to the usual run of things around here. I can’t remember Mother’s day at all, but I bet I got beautiful cards from three little girls that year.
Mother’s Day 2006: May 14th, our 12th wedding anniversary. Oh my gosh, I’m in shock. I went to the archives to see what was happening that day and there was baby Rilla. We’re that far along already? Really? Yes, this was just two years ago. Rilla was exactly one month old. I was about to start blogging at Lilting House. The next month, Scott would be offered a job in San Diego, and accept, but we had no notion of that then. I wrote this post. He still gives excellent footrubs.
Mother’s Day 2007: May 13th. One year ago, more or less. I was about to write this. Scott gave me a lime tree, which is now producing excellent, um, lemons. Scott and the girls made me monkey bread and served them on paper plates decorated with love notes. So sweet. I think we went for a drive that day, but I don’t seem to have pictures of it.
And here we are in 2008. Blink. It was such a great day. Mellow, but we did a lot. Around the house, I mean. Getting little house jobs done was part of my present. And there were donuts for breakfast, and Wonderboy made it all the way through Mass without needing to be taken out, and roses, gorgeous roses, and in the afternoon everyone piled in the minivan for a Target run—the nursery, I mean. The parking lot was a nightmare and Scott let me just run in and grab what I wanted (some bedding-out flowers) while he circled instead of parking. Worked out perfectly. Rose helped me plant the flowers (mainly she kept Rilla from unplanting them while I dug the next hole) and after a while all the kids were playing dodge ball with Scott while I puttered around the yard, admiring my new posies. But I think my favorite moment of the day was peeking through the bedroom door in the afternoon and seeing Scott and Rilla curled up together. She’d been down for a long nap, and he went in to wake her up, and got lured to the snuggle. So sweet. Later, we watched Office reruns on TV and he laughed because I smile so big when Jim and Pam are together. I’m a sap. I like romance. I am fond of love.
(I have taken a long time finishing this post because it’s the last one, and I haven’t wanted to let Barcelona go. Hard to believe we’ve been home for two weeks now. )
Sunday afternoon. I had lingered long at lunch after Mr. Giraud (aka Moebius) left, chatting with the artists and convention staffers who were winding down their busy weekend full of signings, sketch sessions, and dinners. I had planned on spending my last afternoon in Barcelona visiting a monastery I’d heard about, a longish subway ride away, but I found myself instead drawn into pleasant conversation with a British ceramics artist named Alison, who had accompanied her good friend Melinda Gebbie to the convention. Melinda is a highly respected comic book artist and the wife of comics legend Alan Moore, whose Watchmen was the first graphic novel I ever read.
(In college, when Scott and I first began dating, I learned quickly that comics and music were his two great passions. I’d never read comics except for the occasional Archie, and I asked Scott what I should start with. He hesitated not an eyeblink: Alan Moore. Everything Alan Moore ever wrote. Accordingly, I read my way through Alan’s body of work: from Watchmen to Miracleman, V for Vendetta, his entire Swamp Thing run, and more. I remember how shocked I was to realize comic books could be brilliantly written—could be literature.)
It was lovely to have a chance for quiet conversation with Alison after having bumped elbows with her at dinner tables all week. It was nearly 5pm when Melinda came to remind her of an engagement they had. I knew Scott would have gone straight from his artist luncheon to his final portfolio-review shift at the con, so I was on my own for another couple of hours. I decided to take one last walk up Montjuic, to say goodbye to that view I’d come to love so deeply.
It was a warm and golden evening, and I am kicking myself for not bringing my camera that night. Dumb, dumb, dumb. I walked to the Magic Fountain and up one of the many flights of stairs, and then, on a whim, I turned off to the right, following signs for the Spanish Village I’d heard about—a living history museum, I gathered. It was a longish walk around the curve of the mountain, along a busy road. When I got to the mountain, I saw the tops of stone buildings above a tall wrought-iron fence, but I decided not to pay the hefty admission to go inside. Instead I backtracked a bit and struck off on a path through some woods up the slope of Montjuic. The Palau Nacional was not far off on my left, and the roofs of the Village rose to my right. And then suddenly, around a little bend, there was a high fence with wooden pickets set just far enough apart that I could peek through. Inside was something magical.
It was a sculpture garden, with a bronze bull that took my breath away. Dancers made of coiled and folded metal rods. And oh! Two people sleeping on the ground, their heads on rough packs, their clothes ragged at the edges, their faces tired and troubled even in sleep. At first glance they were real people. Then I saw that they were sculptures, refugees in bronze. Incredible detail work. Heartbreaking expressions on the faces.
I think I’m glad I saw them like that, unexpectedly, through the slats of a fence. I stood there a long time, peering through, holding my breath.
The woods were suddenly alive with chickadees, busy and talkative as they finished their day’s work. I tore myself away from the sleepers and continued up the hill. My dirt path ended at another busy road, this one leading to a back parking lot for the Palau Nacional. I headed in that direction and kept on going, circling the back side of that splendid building, strolling past the Olympic Stadium, discovering to my great delight a set of gardens on the far side of the Palau.
The gardens were empty but for me and the birds. Light woods turned to hedges and paths, plane trees in rows, half a dozen small fountains, each one different. It struck me that though it was April and warm, there were no flowers. Indeed, I’d seen very few flowers during the whole trip, no plantings of pansies or early spring bulbs like you see in all public spaces on the East Coast of the U.S. There was one golden-flowering shrub, and an occasional small tree with pinky-purple blossoms the color of redbuds back in Virginia, but no other blossoms at all. Most of the trees had young, translucent leaves. Perhaps I missed the main bloom season: but if that were so, I’d expect to have seen crocuses or tulips or daffodils or primroses or something in the understory.
The garden did have rows of big terracotta urns on its steps and avenues (this was a garden with many architectural elements: columned walkways, terraces, stone steps), each pot filled with the same kind of geranium. Eventually it occurred to me that as flowers go, these geraniums were not spectacular: straggly white blossoms on leggy stalks. And as soon as I noticed that, I remembered that such unimpressive blooms are typical of many varieties of scented geraniums. I rubbed a leaf and ohhhh. Chocolate mint. I used to grow scented geraniums in little blue-and-white pots all over my house, so that every time I walked through a room I could break off a leaf and smell a pretty smell. Now I moved slowly through this garden, brushing leaves, inhaling deeply, breathing in beauty, which is what the whole week in Barcelona was like.
Though I loitered long, I came at last to another road: the end of the garden, the end of new things. I was back at the Palau, on the terrace from which Scott and I had first gazed at the spires of Sagrada Familia. I leaned out over the railing and said a silent goodbye to the church, its companion cranes, the rust-red, butter yellow, and white rooftops of the city all around. Back down the steps past the fountain for the last time. Down the avenue to the Placa Espanya. The big clock on our hotel told me it was an hour past Scott’s quitting time at the con. He’d be wondering where I was.
I stopped by the piano bar first, windblown and no doubt red-nosed, for the evening had grown chilly as I walked. Scott was just coming out, his backpack slung over his shoulder: he was looking for me. Someone ordered me a Bailey’s Irish Cream (I never had a signature drink before!) and I never did make it up to our room to brush my hair. The piano bar spilled into dinner, which spilled back over to the bar. Several of the artists—Jock and Tony and Tim—were busy sketching as we talked, granting requests for convention staffers and a charity auction. There is nothing like watching a picture take shape on a blank page before your eyes, seemingly as effortlessly as ink seeping into a paper towel. These guys amaze me. Andy Diggle and I, the only just-writers of the bunch (as opposed to writers and artists, or writers and editors), marveled at this casual display of ability we do not possess and deeply covet. Novels, schmovels. I want to draw.
I had another chance to talk with Alison; I told her about the woods, the sculpture garden, the other garden. We talked about that John Stilgoe book I’ve written so much about here, and I mentioned the “every face I look at seems beautiful” quote from the Betty Edwards drawing book—because it had struck me several times during my walks in Barcelona that every place I looked at was beautiful as well. And sometimes I would be struck with a pang of regret that I had such a short time there, and then I would remember that I was going home to San Diego—beloved not just because my children are here, but beautiful in its own right, an idyllic kind of city. And then I would think of our bonny glen in Virginia at the feet of the Blue Ridge: no place on earth more lovely. Or the boats on the water of Port Washington, New York, where we lived for a time. Or the homey red-brick duplexes of Astoria, Queens, with the lovingly tended fig trees and decadently abundant rosebushes in the table-sized yards. Or the golden aspen leaves in the suburban front yards of my hometown, Aurora, Colorado, with those incredible white-capped mountains rising majestically (there is no better word) in the west. Every place I look at seems beautiful. Is beautiful.
Alison told me she thought I’d like the work of a photographer named Andy Goldsworthy. I’m going to look for his books.
The last dinner was a special event, sort of, with all the convention guests present. Andy, Jock, Scott, and I lingered longest in the piano bar and wound up seated at the far, far, far end of the table, up against a wall. As in, Jock was literally facing the wall. He’s such an amiable guy he hardly seemed to mind. That was the night my duck was served almost completely raw, which serves me right for asking for well done. There was some speechifying at the other end of the table, and many toasts, and all of us were reluctant to say goodnight. And so many of us didn’t. We stayed in the hotel lobby until 5 a.m., talking, laughing too loudly, mostly at Tony Harris, who is a riot. Finally the security guard kicked us out, and we scattered to our rooms. Most of us were leaving the next morning. Tony and his wife and friend were to be on our flight to Atlanta; Jock and Andy planned to leave for the airport at about the same time, so we did not say goodbye. We’d meet in the lobby at 10:30 and share a cab: that was the plan.
Upstairs, I packed like mad for fear of going to sleep and never waking up until the plane was about to take off. Got all ready to go, while Scott snoozed. Only 7 a.m. by now, sleep sounding very enticing, what to do? Ran down to the lobby for one last email home. Ordered breakfast. Gave in at last and dozed a little. Travel jitters woke me around ten. We freshened up and headed downstairs, suitcases in tow.
Andy was there, but it turned out Jock’s flight was a little later; he’d be taking a later cab. We felt bad that we’d be leaving without saying goodbye, but he was probably asleep: better not wake him. Scott and Andy checked out, and we lugged our luggage (oh! I just got that for the first time! how funny!) to the curb to look for a cab.
A cry from above caught our attention: someone was calling our names! “Scott! Lissa!”
We looked up, and there in a fourth-floor window was Jock, leaning out, window wide open as only Old World hotel windows will do, waving in a grand and cinematic gesture that gave us both goose bumps. “I wondered if I’d find you,” he called, “and there you were!”
It was the perfect farewell to Barcelona, a perfectly glorious gesture capturing all the magic and lightheartedness we’d felt all week. Our goodbyes soared up on the wind, like birds winging their way toward the spires of Sagrada Familia.
Michele Quigley has some big news:
A while ago I started a craft, sewing and knitting board as an offshoot of my On Pins and Needles blog. It’s been quiet lately and a few friends (and my husband) have nudged me to expand it into a larger, more diverse forum.
Family-Centered Living went live this afternoon. Membership is growing fast and discussion is flowing already. Won’t you join us?
This morning Beanie came bouncing into my room and informed me that she had just won a game she was playing with Rose. The agreed-upon-beforehand prize? “A cuddle with you, Mommy, uninterrupted by the other player.”
Rose elaborated: “We wanted to think of a prize that everyone would like.” (This moment, the moment of announcing the contest results, was not the prize moment. Beanie seems to be planning to redeem her winnings later this weekend.)
The conversation about patience, peace, and parenting continues to unfold in the comments of Monday’s post. I haven’t had a chance to chime in yet today because of Good Friday, but I hope to catch up tomorrow. I so appreciate the thoughtful responses you are contributing. I had no idea this post would strike such a chord. Thanks for sharing your struggles and your insights. I think a lot of busy mothers and fathers get into authoritarian habits without examining where they’ve come from or whether they are really good for the kids. (This page has some great advice about how to change those habits, especially Pam Sarooshian’s post near the bottom.) It’s good that we’re thinking about this, talking about it, being frank.
My web host informed me there’s going to be a server change this weekend, so it’s possible (but not definite) that things will be out of whack here for the next few days. It’s a busy family weekend for many of us anyway. But rest assured that I’ll be continuing to ponder the questions and thoughts you’ve posted, and I’ll be back in the regular groove on Monday. Unless I’m busy being Beanie’s prize.
