painted nails

I painted Nora's nails today. Jonah wanted nails painted too. The color was bright crimson red, seductive really and we all realized that Jonah actually has fantastic girl hands, beautiful, elegant, long.
While his nails were drying I got a phone call from some relatives and gave out the scoop again about my father in law. He is sick in the hospital with newly diagnosed colon cancer. There is possibly more cancer and more cancer and more cancer.
"Jonah, don't touch the table cloth, keep waving your hands........ Yes Aunt Janet, it seems quite serious."
We picked up the house without one smudge for Jonah. Nora peeled most of hers off and mine are a total wreck. Sadie would rather wear a dress than paint her nails (for those that do not know Sadie, she does not wear dresses) so she was paintless and in her basketball uniform most of the day.
We got in the car to go to the library. We were going to meet Gary there. He was out walking, out thinking. His dad is sick and people are still getting up and moving about the world. People are still calling looking for guitar lessons and I still have to feed our children. Everything seems in a state of dream.
Gary said he had a dream last night that he was falling off a cliff.
I didn't dream. I slept like a rock and then woke up and had a full minute
before I remembered. He is sick. He has cancer. He is almost 80 and these may be our last times with him.
At the library there was a party for our favorite children's room librarian, Cathy. She is leaving after 19 years and all of my children's lives. She has been there from Carl books through all the Harry Potters and more. She is leaving and Jonah showed her his nails. She thought they looked beautiful. They really did.
Gary came along after us strutting with a look on his face I don't even really know. He plowed in and proceeded to belt out several different kids songs for Cathy and the kids and pay tribute to her in the only way he knows how. Guitar, song, voice.
Jonah had a peice of cake and when he ate it a little girl next to him admired his fingernails.
We went to the animal store without Gary. We said goodbye to him in the front of the library. Jonah was crying because he didn't want to leave and I was frustrated that Jonah was crying and Nora was excited about her new Narnia CD and Sadie was happy about her new book and Gary looked pale, childlike in the rear view waving at us.
He is going to visit his dad. At the same hospital where his dad first held him, he will go hold his dad.
Jonah and Nora wanted to spend their $10 Valentines money from Grammy and Grampy on two new fish so we picked out a shiny fish bowl and two really beautiful goldfish and talked to the salesguy about the book "A Fish Out of Water" which he had never heard of. We told him to get it and read it and Jonah pointed at his new fish with his shimmering red nails, smiling all the while at "Baby Einstein and Nemo."
On the ride home we talked about life and fish and sickness and I imagined what I would say to them the day that one of their grandfathers dies. One is 80 and one is 55. One is in the hospital gasping for breathe, watching Fox news and talking about the Red Sox. The other is using his oxegon, watching Leave it to Beaver, playing "Gotcha Last" with my children.
Jonah is laying on the floor with his sister Nora watching Harry Potter. He has forgotten about the red nails.
I am swirling through the red nails, the laughing faces and the mudpies. I am praying for more days of childhood before I have to talk to them about goodbye.

MUSIC

Driving in Circles

Today we took Molly to take her learners permit test at the Registry of Motor Vehicles. It was her second time. The first time we brought her a few weeks ago she went in very confident and came out very sad, proceeding to argue with one of the workers there that some button wasn't working or something. That day she learned that some things are not as easy as others. Take her GED, for example. I think she thought that that was going to be easy, studied a little bit for it and then passed it with flying colors. Not all things in life are easy and I think she learned that day that just because a lot of other people tell you that something will be easy, doesn't mean you won't find it hard.
So we drove her down today quizzing her all the way. Sadie and Nora had some good questions such as, "When will you be old enough to drive me places?" and we listened to music. The girls and I went to a diner and got snacks and coffee and waited and then she called, happy and full of energy, she passed and could she please drive the car home.
I told her that she could not drive us home but after we drove Sadie to basketball practice we could drop Nora home with Grammy and go do a little driving. She was excited.
When I got home with Nora I dropped in on my mom and Grampa John and asked John if he would come with me. He said no. I asked him again, I pleaded a little and then my mom chimed in that he had been home all day and it would do him good to get out of the house and he said ok.

I thought, "This is good of us, taking ole Johnny out. Poor guy does not get out enough and we will get him out." John is sick with pulmonary fibrosis, out on disability from work, on partial oxygen and 55 years old. We'll take him out.
So off we went to the school where Molly was waiting for us. I told John to hand over the keys to Molly and he looked at me like I had five heads but rescinded. He said, " I don't think this is a good idea, we should start out slow." And I don't know what I thought or if I really even thought at all. I just figured if we gave her the keys she would know. It's easy, I've been doing it for years. I don't even remember learning.
But two seconds in the parking lot with Molly made it clear to at least John that we would need to stick to the parking lot so we found an empty part of the parking lot and we drove circles around it so she could practice gassing, braking, turning, signaling and getting the feel of it. John got to talking about the West Parish School while coaching Molly, about his days there, about different teachers he had had and about the playground. John had been a child here 45-50 years ago. We listened to him talk about his first grade room and some character from his past digging paths to cut to school. We listened and it occurred to me how important this moment was. It came to me like a wave and I laid back and floated. I heard all the words in his mouth come out and he was sharing them with us and this was Molly's first time driving and we were here and maybe he wouldn't be here in a years time or two years time and we would have this to carry with us. John and the car and the stories of West Gloucester and the steering and the lessons. Things go slow. People learn slow sometimes and other times fast. Molly needed to make circles in the parking lot for an hour before she hit traffic. Sadie needs to take rests in math because she can't absorb everything at once. Nora needs to read the word BAT for a solid year before she registers the connection between BAT and the black flying animal in our back yard in the summer time. I need to run slow before I can run fast and these are the important things, this is important. Be here now.
We let Molly drive through the cemetery next to the school and it was twilight and the trees looked like shadows in the sky. We read all the names as we passed and John told us stories about different families and different histories of his city, Gloucester. We drove by his mother's grave and I asked him if he remembered her funeral and her burial and he told me that he never went. He was twelve years old and he didn't go because his dad didn't let him. He said, "what are you going to do about it now, can't go on crying about it, what's done is done." when I told him I thought that was sad. He told Molly that right next to his mom was his 7 year old nephew lying there in a grave after being killed by a car 29 years ago. Tommy would have been my age and John rarely ever talks about him. One time he told me about the softness of his yellow blond hair when he was going to identify his body with his brother 29 years ago. I told him that I wondered what his mom thought about him as she looked down on him and he laughed and Molly and I both said she would be happy.
We got back to watch the end of Sadie's scrimmage and Molly asked John if he would take her out again and he said of course and then I realized that this is going to be a thing for them like the way that Sadie still loves to tell everyone how Molly taught her to ride a bike. My grampa John taught me how to drive a car, that will be Molly's thing.

I hope he is there to teach Sadie.
And Nora.
And maybe even Jonah.
Tonight we had ice cream for dessert and Jonah liked to talk about it:

camcorders

Sunday morning at 5am I roused Sadie from sound sleep to get ready for her swim meet in Somerville (start time 7am). She was cranky but I remember that she is cranky in the morning no matter what so we didn't talk too much and I helped her get dressed and bundled up for the cold and promised her a nice bagel on the ride in. She was tired.
The scene at the swim meet was like any other that we have been to, parents and children running a muck, purchasing swim gear, pep talking their children to championship status.
And then there was Sadie and I munching on our bagels, hair all everywhere barely out of our pajamas, laughing.
She was a little nervous. She always says her belly hurts before these events. I feel bad for her. I want to tell her that we don't have to do this and that we can leave at any time but I don't because I know that she really wants to do these things and that at the end she is always happy to talk for days about these things. I always hated that about my mother. Whenever any little thing became hard in my life she was always there telling me to quit, why bother? I know Sadie really well and I am glad that I do.
I went up to the bleachers to watch and there they all were. All the swim moms. I had heard about soccer moms and hockey moms but these swim moms are equally crazy. They are frantic and writing down times and statistics.
I had the Boston Globe and proceeded to read it from front to back.
What is wrong with me? Why can't I get in to this mom world? Why am I so wrapped up in my own world to relate to most people?
Anyhow, I waved to Sadie. She was happy to locate me and playing with friends. I admired her in her NSSharks swimsuit and her cap and goggles. I watched in awe at her body manipulate the butterfly and I thanked God for giving me her in all of her youthful glee and eternal hopefulness. When the meet started the camcorders came out and I realized (as I always do in moments like this) that I never carry a camcorder. I pretty much never do. I video the kids in the house and on summer vacation and I take a ton of pictures but I just can't imagine needing video of every freestyle race Sadie swims in during her life.
But then I feel bad and I look empty handed and kind of pathetic.
So I whip out my phone. My new phone has videoing possibilities and although I don't really know how to work it I looked like I did and I was in uniform with all the other moms. We were in videoing stance poised for our child's victory.
In the end Sadie improved on her times (I think) and did really well. She did not win a medal but these were the districts which is the best of the best all over the state. She was most happy about the pool size and that her team came in 3rd out of 18th. She talked about that the whole ride home. In between talking about Harry Potter and the piano.
I did have a video camera at her first meet. Here she is two years ago.

Storms

Today is the day when I woke up to go to the gym like normal at 6 am and got dressed and ready and looked out the window and was trapped again by the formidable foreboding hill and a whole bunch of snow. Today is a day when I can't fit in to anything right and the way that the house looks is large and evasive and endlessly dirty. Today is a day when my children seem to be walking around in a daze bored with the snow day stuff, how many times can one child make cookies and roast marshmallows by the fire?
Luckily Sadie has the piano and Nora has her dolls and Molly has her laptop and well Jonah has a stick. Gary is happy to make 25 rounds of cookies. It is mostly me in the way here today.
Today I had a disagreement with a sort of friend and I can't let it go and I am muddling over what I should of said and what I could still say.
I am sad because my favorite boss is leaving our site and going to pursue other goals, good for him, bad for me.
The snow is inching its way around me, encircling me, drowning me in cold and slippery slopes ahead.
It's only one day out of many days to come. The feeling will change and warmer weather will come. Riding out these feelings is like riding out a storm. I wonder where Nora and Jonah came from with their intermittent explosions and then I remember, they are me. I gave them the blessings of strong love, crazy laughter and mad unpredictable disposition. I gave them the abilities to make someone stand up tall or shrink down to earth with a few sentences uttered from my ever flapping mouth.
As I get older these things get easier. The waves are calming and life is out there more and less in here.
I get to watch them and maybe their storms will be less intense. Maybe not.
Tomorrow I will get up and go to the gym at 6. There is no storm predicted.

The Symphony

Last night Gary and I rode the commuter rail in to Symphony Hall to see the Boston Symphony Orchestra. This is not a regular occasion for Gary and I and it was nice to get away from our normal routine and do something different. We talked a lot about how we would get there because it would mean taking the commuter rail and then a green line T ride. We would have to be in and out of there dependent on someone else's schedule and it would be a long ride. However we chose to go this way and I am glad that we did.
Now that I live up on the hill here in West Gloucester, sometimes I can spend days on end in my own head, which is never a good place to be. Lately with all of the snow I have been stuck up here for long periods of time. Time in which I literally don't see anyone but my own family. Some people might love this experience but I am a person who really needs to be around people. I am not a person that necessarily needs to talk to people all the time or anything like that. I just really like the idea that there are other people around, in this world with me.
On the commuter rail there was a scruffy looking man who got on with back pack on back and two small boys, also sporting back packs. I was dying to know what they were doing there and I loved listening to this man with these boys on the way in. I imagined that they were running away from something or that he was recently divorced and had no car and so he had to shuttle his boys to his ex's house via the commuter rail. I imagined that they were recently homeless and trying to find a place to live. I imagined all sorts of things. It turns out that one of the boys was his son, another was his nephew and he was taking them for a sleepover at the Museum of Science yesterday.
People got on the train with their instruments and I thought about Gary as a younger man traveling around with his guitar on his back and I thought about the time when I left my mothers house at the age of 22 in search of my own situation. It was in a huff and a long time coming and when I left I, too carried a guitar on my back. Somehow it signified something to me at the time. Gary had been teaching me to play and although I never did anything with it music and Gary have followed me around ever since.
I saw people come on alone and people come in groups. I saw black people and white people and Spanish speaking people and people speaking languages I don't know.
When we got in to North Station Gary and I had some time to kill so we ate a sandwich at this little pub and that also was really interesting to me. We talked about what it must be like to work in a place like this where everything is so transient, so changing and ebbing and flowing. There was a man next to me who looked as if he may be a regular but that was more of a sad looking story than anything. The young female bartender was describing a patron to her coworker and she said, "you know him, he is like, well a little older like 30 or 40." and I made fun of Gary for this the rest of the night and he smiled with me a lot.
On the green line we were squished together like sardines but I didn't mind. I loved listening to different conversations. There was a really uptight young man sitting with his girlfriend and I felt so sad for her. I kept wanting to reach over and tell her how many other guys there were out there and that she shouldn't waste her life with such a stuffy guy. And then there was this adorable young couple goofing off together and I held all the hope in the world for their future. There was a group of drunk 20 something girls half dressed and obnoxious and I prayed none of my daughters would act like that one day and there was this little old lady clutching her bag, worried.
I stared at them all and I got to know them.
And then just like that they were gone and we were out on the street walking toward Symphony Hall.
The Symphony was magical and my brain and ears are still swimming.
On the train ride home I slept on Gary's lap and we arrived quicker through my sleep.
When we got off the train there was a guy limping and he asked us for a ride in to Gloucester and I thought, "no you can't give him a ride, he could have a gun or a knife, get in the car." But instead we opened the car and let him in and I learned that sometimes believing in people is enough.

A Piano

I hear a soft symbol of song singing to me.
When you put a key down
you hear a depth of eerie song.
Its song revolves on me.
Its song can make me sing "La La."
When I hear its song so beautiful
it makes me want to sing along.
It makes me quiet when I am loud.
It makes me calm when I sing along.

Sadie Marie Backstrom age 8