kiwords

Smackdown with small voices

I was on my way somewhere, boys in the back seats of the van, muttering under my breath at the car next to me when Raphael said,

"Mom? Why is it when you're driving, the other drivers are 'jerks', but when Dad's driving, they're all 'pal' or 'buddy'?"

Ahem. Because your dad is a more highly evolved person. Get used to it.

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Max came trotting inside, his face lit up with the excitement of the afternoon. They were flushing the water in the hydrants in the neighborhood, and the poor city workers were being dogged by a gaggle of thrilled children. Great gushing streams of water! Now THAT is entertainment.

"So one of the men had a cigarette in his mouth?" Max waved his hands to show the scene. "And when he opened the hydrant, a stream of water SPLASHED him in the face and it put his cigarette out and he said a bad word."

"That's too bad. He shouldn't be talking like that with all those kids around him."

"Oh, that's ok," he was already on his way out the door and called back over his shoulder, "we already learned it from you."

Kira's Wild Kingdom

Today Tre and Max had a couple of friends come over to play. Nate and Gabe are my favorites of their friends - such an amiable pair that Raphael, even being the YOUNGEST and having no friend over today, wasn't all that left out. The five of them rampaged around the house. It's the only day of the week when I sort of wish we lived in a sprawling farmhouse on a 15 acre lot. Dude. That's a lot of boys.

Whenever the kids have friends over I like to drop back, sort of melt into the background. I make cookies, I tidy, I flip through the newspaper. I become semi-invisible, which provides me with an excellent opportunity to observe. It's like having my own show on the Discovery Channel. I even narrate in my head, sotto-voiced. Now the older boys have decided to spy on the younger pair. They have enlisted the help of the youngest, in an effort to stave off an inevitable tattling. What the older boys don't know is that the younger pair has been spying on them for at least twenty minutes. The younger pair is likewise unaware of the older's pair's plans. It would seem that neither set of boys is particularly adept at spying.

I have such a rich inner life, don't I? Aren't you envious of the late night ramblings that my husband gets to listen to as he tries to go to sleep?

Nonetheless, despite my keen powers of observation, there are always unanswered questions.

How did the window well cover collapse, despite deeply sincere assertions that no one touched it - or so much as thought destructive thoughts at it?

Why is Max talking like his uvula has been superglued to his tongue? Why is this so amusing?

Why is Raphael wandering through the house, with a walky-talky pressed to his lips, mournfully informing someone, "the ancient peep is dead"?

Clay arrived home, bearing pizza, and the entire herd thundered in, ate an astonishing amount of pizza (followed by cookies), and thundered back outside. They would have stayed out there for the rest of the evening, but I made them come in when the rainstorm rolled in, with lightening, thankyouverymuch. They all yearned to be out there, in the cold, feeling the rain and hail and wind, and they stood in the garage, inching their toes out into the wet. I sat down with my laptop and watched out of the corner of my eye.

Such a wild world it is.

Happy Mother's Day, Mom.

Last night I baked an angel food cake. My dad and Clay had planned a fete for Mom and me, but it was, after all, my mom's Mother's Day too, so I made the cake. It never ceases to amaze me, how mundane ingredients come together to become something as ethereal as angel food cake. As I separated the eggs, I dropped the yolks in a glass bowl. They formed bright pattens, like the rapidly dividing cells of new life, and I was mesmerized. I worked slowly, deliberately, and noticed the slip of the egg whites on my fingers, the grains of sugar beneath my wrist on the counter. The oven ticked quietly as it preheated.

Mom and I spent much of my childhood locked in combat. I believe the issue could be summed up thus: She was not me, and I was not going to be her. It seemed to take us some time to come to terms with those facts, and the negotiating process could be harsh at times. I, in particular, could be a real little...pain in the neck. Once, when I was about 13, I remember telling her emphatically that if she and Dad divorced, I was going to live with him. Not that they were threatening divorce, you understand. It was just a sort of pre-emptive rejection. Er...sorry, Mom.

I whipped the egg whites, watching them bloom from a slippery bubbly puddle, to loose foam, then up and up and up into stiff, glossy peaks. As the mixer whined, I held a bowl of sugar over the whites and tipped it, letting it spill in a wisp of a trail. Then I poured in a tiny bowlful of vanilla, lemon juice, and almond extract, and watched it melt into the bright white cloud.

After all the angst of my teen years, an amazing thing happened. I left home, and an uneasy cease fire was called. And then one day I found myself married and pregnant and terrified, and the person I needed to talk to more than anyone in the world was my mom. Just like that, everything that once stood between us melted away and she-who-didn't-understand became she-who-knows. By the time Tre was two, Mom and Dad moved to Denver, and I was thrilled. Mom had become my best friend.

I took a mixture of cake flour and sugar and sifted it over the whites, quarter cup by quarter cup. After each addition I folded it in with a spatula. Careful, quick movements, and with each turn I heard the batter sigh, the sound of air escaping. It's a balancing act between mixing it thoroughly and keeping billions of tiny bubbles intact.

Don't think I don't know how lucky I am. I look at friends whose moms are gone, friends whose moms are endless sources of pain and frustration. Friends whose moms are both. I know I am the recipient of a huge and undeserved blessing. I know.

What I hadn't thought about until last night, as I stood there with sticky foam drying on the side of my hand, turning the spatula in the sighing batter, was that I could have lost all of this, just this year.

Mom and Dad joined the Catholic church a year ago. This makes them not only Catholic, but Catholic converts. Oy. I, on the other hand, am not Catholic - and married to a former Catholic. If there is an anti-covert, it is the former Catholic.

It's not that I have anything against the Catholic church - not at all. If anything, before their conversion, I was more skippy with the Pope than Mom and Dad were. If a protestant can, indeed, claim to be skippy with the Pope. But it's awkward, the changing of beliefs. When someone who has always stood next to you takes a huge stride away, it's hard not to look at the ground under your feet and feel judged.

I've had friends convert to other churches and had the friendships not survive. I used to have a gang of moms that I hung with. Moms know how important this is. But then all of them converted to the Orthodox church. Some I still see. One is still very much in my life (thank God, I say with complete sincerity). But when the language of someone's life changes like that, it makes conversation difficult. And so much that was once a part of my life is now just gone. I miss it.

Would you believe that at one time my parents, all the women in my mom's gang, and I went to the same church?  Some Sundays I stand in church and I close my eyes and I can imagine them all standing around me. Some hymns we sing sound hollow, because in my head I can hear my mom's silvery strong soprano, arching above the rest of us, giving the melody structure and grace with her descant. Sometimes I try to sing her part, because I can hear it so clearly, but my voice is thin and breathy and was not designed to soar like that. It cracks, and I find myself with tears in my eyes. Again.

As my parents made their way into this new faith, Mom and I talked. As with everything, we discussed it up one side and down the other - cautious at times, laughing at times. There were moments of tension - anger even, but for the most part we just talked it through.

And now here we are. Now this is just how it is. This is our church, that is their church. We'll worship together again someday in heaven. It's ok.

I still have my mom. It's better than ok.

I scooped the batter into the cake pan, and smoothed the top. I could tell by the height of it, by the glossy surface, that it was going to bake up perfectly - airy and sweet and velvety.

Angel food cake is ethereal. All it takes is a careful hand and a miracle or two.

I think he's vying for the title of "most stereotypical boy." I NEED to find that old copy of Free To Be You and Me and girl him up a bit.

Raphael, he's a tough little man. He crashes his bike and leaps up to do it all over again. Today he was playing baseball (OF COURSE) at the park with his dad and a passel o' kids, and he took a ball to the upper lip. That left him with the most stunning blood blister inside his lip, which he loves to pull back and show me so I can lean against the wall and frantically wish away the tingly-weak feeling in my knees. Splinters in his hands? He'll gnaw them out with his own germy teeth, left to his own devices. He is rough and tough and not a little bit gross.

So why is it, exactly, that drying him off after a bath with a fluffy, clean towel and applying lotion is an exquisitely painful experience, earning me the title of MEAN MOM?

Good idea/Bad idea: summer edition

Bad idea: We signed Max and Raphael up for baseball.

Good idea: Tre (my favorite) has decided to sit this season out, opting instead to participate in a 25 mile bike ride in June.

Bad idea: That bike ride will require training.

Good idea: Which he will do with his dad.

Bad idea: Raphael has moved up out of the relative safety of T-ball, into the dangerous waters of "coach-pitch." He and Clay both think this is a fine idea, and are unmoved by my arguments of "But he's my BAY-BEEE!" and "But he could get HURT!" and "But someone will be throwing things at my BAY-BEE!"

Good idea: Raphael is completely enthralled with his cup, and wore it most of the day on Saturday. It protected his young squishy boyness during a particularly brutal game of Wii baseball, and also kept him safe during multiple thunks with his own delighted knuckles.

Bad idea: Max is moving out of the relative safety of "coach pitch" into the brutal waters of "player pitch." This is an archaic form of torture wherein youngsters learn how to pitch by spending interminable hours flinging wild balls in the general direction of home plate whilst their adoring parents watch and quietly die a thousand deaths. Games last one million years or until everyone is dead, whichever comes last.

Good idea: Max has GLASSES and can SEE and might...um...be able to pitch?

Bad idea: First practice isn't for two weeks, and I'm so emotionally scarred from last year that I'm already hoping for rain.

Good idea: Max and Raphael are alight with baseball joy. Max keeps plotting pitching strategies. Raphi totes his glove everywhere, and is never more than two feet away from a ball. Tre is likewise obsessed with his bike. They are all so engaged and delighted that I find I can't quite begrudge the fact that my life is over for the time being.

Let the games begin.