My sisters have been sending out emails chronicling their respective world trips. Laura is jetting around Italy right now, looking at the Old Masters, eating fabulous food, and drinking lots of chianti. Jenn just got back from Vietnam, where she toured war sites (horrifying) and ancient temples, and did not eat balut*. Feeling a bit left out but not to be out-done, I've decided to make my siblings envious by bragging about our family's glamorous and sophisticated trip to... Caswell Memorial State Park. In the middle of the Central Valley. In the middle of July. I did not die of heat stroke, but it was close.
D's been working like crazy since he started his new job, so I thought it was only fair that I take over packing duties. Five hours later (not kidding), I was cursing myself. I know D would have taken an hour, tops, and he would not have forgotten either the lantern or his sleeping bag (oops). Then again, D and I have very different food philosophies when it comes to camping (or life) (let's be honest). He's an oatmeal-every-morning, pbj-every-lunch, pasta-every-night man. I, on the other hand, prepared an awesome camping menu, complete with roasted vegetable packets, two different cooked breakfasts, black forest ham and homegrown tomatoes for sandwiches (I despise pbj), and homemade chocolate-chip peanut butter rice krispies treats (which I left in the freezer, naturally).
D got home from work, looked at the weather report for Ripon, and made the mild suggestion that we might want to find somewhere else to camp that didn't feature a 95° forecast. I started flipping out. He reminded me that I don't do well in the heat (I believe the words "you get sick, unreasonable, and out of control" were used). I reminded him of the hours -- hours!! -- I had spent on reserveamerica.com trying to find available campsites. We loaded the kids in the car, headed out, and hit Bay Area Friday afternoon rush hour.
Four hours and several detours later -- detours including but not limited to our spectacularly unsuccessful attempt to get to the park 'the back way'; this attempt featured a bucolic dairy farm and a disgruntled dairy farmer who told us that "google is bad" -- we pulled into our campsite. I have to say, I'm a fan of Caswell Memorial State Park; the Stanislaus River runs through the middle, there's a little river beach, and people float down on inner tubes. The boys were in heaven. Especially since I bought them fishing poles.
Micah practicing his mad casting skills. For the record, he does not get these from me.
But D, as usual, was right: it was HOT. HOTHOTHOT. We spent Saturday morning on the river, and then I spent Saturday afternoon moaning in the tent waiting for my head to explode. D made the executive decision to take the family to Target both for the AC (we are such hardy campers), and to replace the grill grate which I skillfully managed to melt that morning (I should not be allowed near any propane-powered equipment in the future). I bought a vitamin water and some popcorn, and the boys and I dug in. I'm sure we looked like we were homeless, wearing our ratty camp clothes and sitting on the crib display pedestal shoveling food into our mouths like ravenous wolves, but I'm used to it.
Target was great -- it's amazing how losing 30 degrees can do wonders for your outlook on life -- but unfortunately, I succumbed to peer pressure and went back to the river in the afternoon. Plus side: we unexpectedly ran into some Friends With Kids, making Micah and Shiloh very happy. Minus side: I got heatstroke for the second time that day, and spent the rest of the evening moaning in the tent, imagining what Dirk would do when he found his wife dead on the air mattress and had to raise our children without their mother. Then I started wondering if he'd re-marry. Then I started wondering WHO he'd re-marry. Then I deliberately lost consciousness for the rest of the night.
I need to not complain so much. The boys had a great time whacking at vines and 'fishing' and making stick rafts and generally getting filthy.
It flooooaaaats...
I'm pretending I didn't hear Scott tell me that he saw cows peeing in the river. Just keep your mouths closed, boys! It's NATURE! We don't drink nature!
And apart from my two near-death experiences, I also had a great time -- especially early Sunday morning when Dirk and I got to drink our coffee and read our books while the kids snored away in the tent. I must say, Ye Old Camping Experience improves exponentially when you bring a coffee press. Next time, we'll bring an RV. With AC.
See??? We love camping!! We're an outdoorsy camping family!!!! Yay!! I wear skirts to go camping!!
* PS I just read the wikipedia entry for balut. I don't recommend it.
A few weeks ago, I helped my friend W teach Sunday school to the kindergarten class. (By "helped," I mean "sat on a chair." I don't know what he would have done without me.) Being an engineer, W had done a lot of advance planning; he even brought in props to illustrate the story. (In case you didn't know, Hello Kitty was a passenger on Noah's ark.) W was prepared for anything -- except the morbid minds of the kindergarten set.
Everything was going great. The kids managed to get through the 'guess which animals were on the ark' game without too much fighting over who got what plastic animal, the girls sat quietly and raised their hands, the boys squirmed and writhed on the floor and shouted out answers, and W and I thought we were golden. Teaching Sunday School is a piece of cake for those of us with Advanced Degrees, extensive experience in Giving Presentations for Large Groups, and years of Theological Study (aka all those sermons we've sat through since childhood). But then it was time for the actual reading of the Bible story, and these children, most of whom are being raised in the California school system and are thus expected to ask questions and think critically, started coming up with some doozies.
Micah wanted to know if Noah split up all the animals on the ark, so they wouldn't eat each other. Then he wanted to know why the animals didn't eat Noah.
Hailey wanted to know what happened to all the people who didn't get on the ark. Then she wanted to know if Noah saw lots of skulls floating around while he was cruising through the waters.
Aidan was mightily offended by the animal sacrifice Noah made after the waters receded. He said that wasn't fair, the animals didn't do anything, and it was NOT NICE of God.
These kids are great, by the way. A few weeks before we tackled Noah, I was helping my friend L teach (again, by sitting on a chair; I went to school up to 23rd grade to learn how to do this, so you can be sure I did a great job). This time, the story was about Jesus dying for our sins. L asked the children if they ever did anything they were sorry for. A sea of blank faces stared back at her, heads shaking slowly and deliberately. Nope, never do anything like that. Can't relate.
L decided maybe they needed a little prompting, so she said, "You know, I do things that I'm sorry about all the time. For example, sometimes I yell at my kids, and I know that's wrong." The light collectively turned on in all their little minds, and suddenly, hands were popping up all over the room. "MY mom does that, too!" "Yeah, so does mine!!" "My mom yells ALL THE TIME!!" (thanks for your input, Micah...) It was awesome.
In any case, I've heard all these Bible stories since I was a baby. They're so familiar that I pass over the weirdness without catching it (and let's be honest -- the Bible is full of weirdness). It's fascinating to watch people encountering these stories without years and years of acculturation in the 'secret language' of the church -- they pick up the obvious questions that we've buried deep in our psyches.
And then there's the fascination of watching your tantrumming five-year-old spew out all the torturous and self-serving logic that you yourself hold in secret.
It was Sunday night, after a long day of unpacking the Noah story's dirty little secrets, swimming at the local pool (how appropriate, apres Noah), and watching videos. The video-as-babysitter strategy is always risky for D and me. On the one hand, the boys will sit like statues, unblinkingly staring at the computer, and (key) not bugging their parents. On the other hand, Micah, especially, can't handle the stimulation, and regularly stages class-A meltdowns an hour or two after getting his Peep fix. So D had a little pre-video bargaining session with Micah, wherein Micah promised, PROMISED that if he could watch the DVD, he would not pitch a fit at our community group potluck.
I don't know why D and I always fall for this. I guess we fail the delayed gratification test.
In any case, we made it to our friends' house and had a nice dinner; Micah and Shiloh scarfed a miniscule portion of their food and then ran around playing in the playhouse and swinging on (and falling off) the swing. I was happily holding one of my friend's baby and feeling nostalgic about those sweet early months, when Micah came barreling in the door and started harassing me for dessert.
I told him he had to finish his dinner first. He took umbrage; the eyes narrowed, the chin thrust out, and the whining commenced. I rolled my eyes, because I'm that kind of a mom, and repeated myself. He flung himself on the floor and tried to simultaneously pull my leg off, karate chop my arm, and kick me in the hip (he's been very inspired by Kung Fu Panda). I handed sweet, smiley baby N off to his mom, and carried my screaming FIVE YEAR OLD off to another part of the house so we could "have a conversation."
Micah howled "I want PIE!! Daddy said I could have PIE!!!"
I said, "You can't have any dessert. Daddy told you that you couldn't have dessert if you screamed and kicked." (In retrospect, I got this wrong, since Daddy actually said Micah could watch a video if he didn't scream and kick -- but hey, general principle, right??)
Micah opened his mouth and a torrent of words poured out. "It was YOUR fault!! You made me MAD! You MADE me scream and cry!! It was YOU!!! YOU did it." And you could almost see his mind working frantically, the story unscrolling just one step ahead of the words. "Your fault, Mommy!! YOU did it!! It was.. it was.. it was really YOU who was screaming, NOT ME!! I was just making the noise."
And at that point, I started laughing hysterically. I mean, it was actually kind of impressive how he managed to turn his tantrum into me screaming. Then I told him that no matter what he said to other people, he should never lie to himself (along with a whole host of other brilliant statements about screwing up and forgiveness, which I'm sure made a deep and lasting impact on Micah).
But it struck me that Micah had just verbalized the entire process of guilt-transfer and scapegoating and blaming others and refusing responsibility -- the process that I, as a more evolved adult, can do instantaneously and unconciously. Crazy. And more than a little enlightening and convicting.
I've started teaching again this term, which means I've started branching out from my signature sweat-pants and baggy-jeans look. I think this may be confusing the children -- not that they like the sweat pants, since there's a chance that my wearing them may mean we are taking a trip to the despised gym and its even-more-despised daycare. (Funnily enough, although the car ride to 101 Fitness is replete with whining and complaining and dramatic hand gestures and dire threats about how divine retribution shall fall upon mothers who force their innocent offspring into the hellhole of the Gym Nursery ["jwim," as Shiloh says; he also is loud in his recriminations, because he wants to be Micah when he grows up] -- FUNNILY ENOUGH, extricating them from said nursery after my workout is almost impossible, engrossed as they are in the mountains of toys they've been happily playing with for the previous hour. Ha ha. Joke's on you, Mommy. We're not leaving. We still hate the jwim, by the way.)
I seem to have lost my narrative. Oh yes, clothes. Today, I was scarfing my lunch so I could run to the computer and print out my lecture, and then run back to the kitchen and prepare my packed dinner (which I then forgot to bring with me to Santa Cruz, naturally), and then run back to the office and collect all my class materials, and then run to the garage and grab the laundry out of the dryer -- all this to be completed before my kids finished eating their mockeeroni* -- and I realized that I should maybe think about what I was going to wear to class. Then I remembered that I was actually wearing my non-baggy jeans and my non-hole-y-purchased-ten-years-ago-in-Sweden sweater, because I had gone out in public that morning. Sweet!! No need to change!! That's an extra five minutes to make some coffee so I won't fall asleep driving back from Santa Cruz this evening (which, as an aside, is why I'm writing this entry at 12.57AM, but we won't talk about that!!)!!!
Micah and I had just had a discussion about my upcoming lecture, in which he correctly -- and unprompted by myself -- identified elements in the models of extravagance and necessity that explain why people from Asia have immigrated to the United States (thank you, Ron Takaki). He'd even come up with "power" -- as in, the US might have more power than other nations, so people in those nations might need to move to the US; and while I realize that 90% of that answer was parroting propagandish, er, informative lectures that I'd inflicted on him in the past, I was still pretty impressed. (As a point of contrast, none of my students came up with "power" when I asked them the same question this evening.) (Clearly, they have not gone on enough extended car rides with me.)
In any case, given Micah's academic insightfulness, I figured I'd solicit his clothing advice as well. I showed off my nice new dark jeans and my nice new brown sweater, and asked him, "Hey, bud, do you like this outfit?" He looked at me carefully, and said, "Yeah!!" He paused for a second, and then added brightly, "It looks like poop!!"
This statement was met with enthusiastic agreement from the other half of the fashion review board. Shiloh thought it was the absolute funniest thing he'd ever heard in his entire life, and accordingly, the rest of the meal was peppered with various permutations of "Mommy's sweater looks like poo," including, but not limited to, "Micah looks like poo," "Shiloh looks like poo," and "This table looks like poo." Finally, Shiloh had to take it to the next level. "Mommy!!" [hysterical giggling] "You look like a PEN!!!"
Well. He sure told me.
*My new goal is to include as much Shilish in these posts as possible.
D and I went to Japan last October -- a wonderful trip filled with awesome food (including ramen , which I happily eat, and not including sushi, which I do not), old friends and their new children , beautiful scenery , fabulous hotels (thank you, great deals on last-minute reservations), and the pleasure of hanging out for a week with my favorite travel companion.
One of the things that struck me was how intertwined the sacred and the profane are in Japan. Ancient temples are sandwiched in between car repair shops and apartment buildings . Shrines are perched on hillsides next to highways. The streets leading up to temples are lined with shops selling kitschy souvenirs, good-luck charms, chopsticks (Merry Christmas, Lexie), plastic Buddhas and bobbing-head cats, mochi and fish balls, leather purses, Asian-motif ties (Merry Christmas, Dad) and cheap sheepskin boots. You must buy tickets to enter many of the temple grounds, and inside there are more shops, staffed with monks selling incense sticks and paper prayers and wooden charms . It costs ¥200 to bang an enormous gong outside one temple, and the laity happily queue up for the privilege. Everywhere, throngs of people mill around, dropping coins in the water dippers and incense burners, washing their hands and fanning the smoke before turning around to snap the obligatory photo. EVERYWHERE we went, there were people snapping the obligatory photo . If there is anyone in Japan who doesn't tote a camera at all times, I didn't see him.
I would have thought that thirty-plus years of hearing the story of Jesus clearing the temple and overturning the moneylenders' tables would have caused me to feel at least a little pang at seeing the commerce in the courtyards. But I loved it. The unabashed mixing of the sacred and the profane, the blessings duly recorded on film , the hordes of local townspeople dancing in the streets carrying their shrine (and stopping to mug for the camera, of course) , the vermillion-clad nun kneeling at what I can only surmise was Heian Jingu's official vending machine... So vibrant and lively and unapologetic and brazen. I thought it was fantastic!
And lucky for me, that sacred-secular mixing continues in my own home!!
Last night, Micah started asking questions about genealogy, questions that soon morphed into theological musings.
Micah: "Daddy? Who is the oldest person in our family?" D: "Well, Mommy is --" M: "No, I mean who's older than her in our family? Who's her mommy?" D: "Grammy is." M: "And who is older than Grammy?"
Floundering in these dark depths of his wife's history, D had to call in the resident expert, moi. me: "Gramma Yama is Grammy's mom. And before her, Obachan." M: "Who's older than Obachan?"
Aaaand, this is where my expertise peters out.
me: "Ummmm, I'm not sure. But there's always someone older." M: "But who is the oldest person in the world?" D, impressed: "Hey Micah, you've figured out the problem. If everyone has a mom, and their mom has a mom, and their mom has a mom, then who was the first person? How were they born? You're learning about logic!" me, leading the witness: "Do you mean Adam, buddy?" M: "Yeah, Adam. Did he have a mom?" me: "Well, not really..." M: "Then God must have made him, since he didn't have a mom."
Oh, the brilliance, the incisive mind, the sensitive spiritual seeker...
Just a little proud of myself for producing this child, I lay down next to Micah (yes, three years after moving out of his crib, he still sleeps on the floor) and let the conversation continue for a few more minutes. Finally, Mr. Philosopher looked at me earnestly, gave me a loving hug, and said, "Mommy??" "What is it, bud?" "You know what?" "What?" "I just laid a BIG STINKY FART!!"
And there you have it. The sacred and the profane, intertwined in one chatty five-year-old. He must be part Japanese.
My cousin-in-law-in-law is in labor right now, so in honor of birth days, here's to Micah's 5-and-3-days commemoration. We've been a little late around here...
Introducing Big Red! Doesn't he look peaceful... (aka the world's most misleading picture)
First birthday and a homemade pumpkin cake (this is before I turned into slacker mom)
I know I get Bad Mommy points for including these pictures, but given today's 20 minute tantrum on the potty, I thought it appropriate to take a moment to remember a few epic Micah meltdowns...
Getting ready to be a big brother!
Micah and Doosey -- one of my all-time favorite shots
Third birthday
Fourth birthday
November 14, 2009!
This time I bought the pumpkin cake...
Celebrating with a severely jet-lagged Daddy
I can't believe how much he's grown up. Happy belated birthday, bubs!
love, yo mama
(I love you with all my heart, tantrums and all, because really, we are two peas in a pod...)
