Tree Girl

After long hiatus, here we are in a December that sometimes wants a t-shirt and sometimes wants wool, with a girl who's four and a Christmas tree that takes up half the apartment. Life's been busy, but always sweet. Learning some new fiddle tunes, trying some new recipes, working in some new traditions, watching our girl grow tall and then taller. More soon soon soon.

Tucked behind the Buddha's Ear...

Apples. Childhood.

Just a train ride away, apples turned into the taste of fall. And we ate the season's last, sweetest ears of corn. And the hawk hung overhead so close you could see its feet tucked up under the feathers. And we all watched the kids: childhood in action.

In which...

...we are all really, really happy to be exactly where we are.

In which...

...girl digs for Monhegan clams whilst within giant heart.

In which...

...Anna and I are loved up by a draft horse named Scarleg who thinks he's a cat, at the Windsor County Fair in Maine. His owner says that the horse lays right down to take a nap, and he curls up along side him and naps too. More to come...

One last hello before unplugging for a week!

 

 

 

Girl at low tide

Girl at high tide: "Where's the rocks?!"

house sitting

The rain came and went and the cicadas were so loud it felt like they might actually be inside our heads. We ate sun-hot cherry tomatoes by the mouthful, standing at the vine. When I was a kid I used to study and study the seed catalogues and choose as much by name as anything. Blood Gulch, Valhalla, Summer Cider, Fireworks, Eva's Purple Ball, Radiator Charlie's Mortgage Lifter....

A house where the outside is a part of the inside is a good kind of house to be in.

Some people came to visit. We made a lot of kale slaw. We shucked a lot of corn. We ate and ate and ate.

And mostly, we were here.

August begins...

Little girl, big wind.

Climber, with three-legged dog.

Prairie.

36-hour-playdate

 Kindred spirits, circa 1982.

30 years later: kin of kindred spirits, kindred spirits too.

It was beyond lovely to have Libby and Anya here for a 36-hour-straight-playdate. Here's some of what happened: hotel-bed jumping, clothes-swapping, watercolor-face-painting, sculpture-scaling, building-climbing, bike rack-hurdling, plates of pasta bigger than our heads, late-night milkshakes from a building no wider than my wingspan, mandolin-music-dancing, sprinkler-jumping, and dinosaur bones. Anya gave Anna the socks right off her feet. Such a gift to get be mamas together for a day and a half, after all these years, to watch our girls and laugh our heads off and talk and talk and talk, just exactly like we did way back when.

of bike lights and bow arms

Anna doesn’t run away anymore when I practice. Sometimes she even dances a little before saying, “Put that fiddle down and look at me.” A step in the right direction.

On Tuesdays P. comes home early and I sling the fiddle case on my back, ride my bike along the park to Crown Heights. I always see someone else with music on their back now too. Last week a man with waist-length dreads rode the opposite direction with a guitar. Hey, violin! he shouted. Hey, guitar. It's a fiddle! I shouted back. I could hear his loud laugh, heading south. Once I saw a woman with an upright bass in a wheelbarrow.

I ride past the greened bronze at the top of the arch at Grand Army Plaza, the curved face of the central library, up St Mark’s to Washington where all of a sudden the sidewalks are full of people calling to each other from across the street, dollar stores, Monica’s Hair Fusion, Checks Cashed Anytime!!! At the no-parking sign in front, lock the bike. Hot. Back has a fiddle-shaped sweat. Up the swaying elevator where everyone’s always so nice and says I know where you’re going, 6P, you’re going to 6P ain’t you?

And the fiddle teacher’s apartment is a million degrees and smells like curry. We stand in front of an old wire fan and drink water out of jam jars and he tries to teach me how to bow like a fly fisherman. Straps a bike light on his bow hand like a ring and we stand in the dark hall watching the light make little w’s, little loose loops back and forth across the wall as he plays. Looks like fireflies. Makes you want to dance. When I try, it looks like headlights backing up and driving forward, backing up and driving forward. He says it’s a long learning curve.

Back home I tell P. about the bow arm in minute detail and he listens and smiles and smiles and listens. Later the next day I strap a bike light on my bow hand and Anna stands on the couch and jumps for the flash on the wall. Every so, every so often, a little lilt comes in, the light draws a tiny little curve…

July!

July, July, July. Paul and I were standing where she was heading though it wasn't us she was running to it was the water which first striped her and then soaked her. 4:00 in Brooklyn and the air is thick with a billion park barbecues and so hot those bluestones steamed when we finally turned the sprinkler off. Watching her run made me remember for just a second what it felt like to be a kid. I mean, I remember, but it's a rare thing to remember: MN summer and grass ticking with crickets, the first shock of cold as you dive in. And how you never know what time it is, and the days last forever until they're over.  Willis was over for dinner and we were thinking of all those times in winter when you get nostalgic for days like this, even the heat, even wearing barely anything, and sweaty water glasses, and hearing yells and laughing from all different directions from all the block's backyards. And we were thinking how it's happening right now, right now, right now.

On Friday...

 we stepped out,

and made our way here: Teardrop Park near the tip of Manhattan. So hot it was hard to take a deep breath.  It's been almost a year since we were last here. We stood in little icy pools of pumped-in reservoir water. If you squint, you can't see the skyscrapers. Or don't squint, and imagine they're all gathered around gossiping, watching the kids dunking each other and getting breaded with sand.

ohio in june

Town square-Neil Diamond cover band-multigenerational dance party

We document ourselves as Great Grandma looks on, bemused.

One-girl-band. Pine cone xylophone hootenanny.

As long as K's is still serving up deep-fried cheeseburgers, all's right with the world.

Washing Dishes, Girl Holds Forth

The girl's new favorite phrase: "In the grand scheme of things..." She has no idea, of course, what it means. She was so busy playing with suds and talking to herself as we washed dishes the other day she forgot I was there. I eavesdropped shamelessly. Here's how it all breaks down, according to Anna.
 

“In the grand scheme of things it’s not you or us, it’s milk and water and a pan, and the grand scheme of things will come and we’ll think about everything.

In the grand scheme of things it’s water who fills up and drinks.

The grand scheme of things is hot and not cold.

The grand scheme of things is all the brushers and the bowls. The sponges are not beware-ing of water.

The grand scheme of things are bowls of water that we fill up with guitars."

impromptu 3 1/2 birthday half-cake party with willis and gracie

in and out of the weeping beech (with bulldozer and siren soundtrack)

Peak Lilac Season at the BBG

I'm such a sucker for lilacs. I mean, really, today, it was enough to make my head explode. We had a sniff buffet and got lilac drunk and had to lay down.

And then there's this vale of bluebells. They look much lovelier than this picture. It kind of hurts to look at them, all gathered around the dark tree trunks.

But mostly we were here, in one of the only Brooklyn patches of long grass a city kid can roll in. And make deer nests.

And stalk things.

And run and run.

a good day...

has bikes...

and pies...

and water...

girl kicks butt of virus

two weeks later, Anna's back to her wily ways. here she is last week preparing for a (much despised) nebulizer treatment - good tunes and deep breathing make many impossible things seem possible. so glad to have the rascal back in action!

Practicing

P and I were saying tonight how there are fewer and fewer remnants of the baby in our great big girl these days. She pretends to be twelve million different people and animals and creatures a day. She sings to herself. She gets into the guitar case and wants us to say, "Oh, look, a new guitar!" And then "Oh wow, this guitar is really heavy. Hmm, how do I play this thing? Where are the strings?" And then, "Oh, it's wiggling, wait a minute, what is this? It's a person! In fact, it's a ballerina in a black tutu! Oh my, what a surprise." Again, and again, and again. Her favorite moments are the part when you haul her up out of the guitar case and the part when you realize (for the twelve millionth time) that she's alive. So much practicing going on. At the park this afternoon, first hopscotch game. She was very serious. Again, and again, and again. Each time a little bit steadier on her feet.