2 Wheels for 2 Boys

I should add, 2 sets of pedals, because before this weekend, the boys have been riding on two wheels and using their feet to power themselves. They've been riding their "like-a-bikes" for two years and the seat posts are about as high as they can go, plus, Willy St bikes was having its annual sale. We bought two of the last ones in stock in their size. Dietrich picked out a blue and black frame, Elliott chose an olive green and red frame. But their favorite feature is the water bottle holder.

We went to a local playground but the main paved area was being used for a cricket match, so we started off in an ajacent parking lot with a slight incline. While I was still getting Elliott situated on the seat and talking about pedals, I saw Dietrich go foward out of Ryan's reach and make a loop around the lot, a smile stretched across his fearless face. Elliott's turn came today at a different playground (cricket continues all weekend, I guess) when I gently let go of his handle bars as he screamed, then laughed, and surprised himself, "I'm doing it! I'm riding my bike!" He wants somebody, preferably Ryan, to be right next to him, but he is off on two wheels.

It is the time of jarring contrasts. One moment the sun is hot on my back, the next a cold wind sends us back inside. Next week is Holy Week when we observe, even take part in, the death of Jesus and in the next breath we come out of that darkness and celebrate life, resurrection. Today I watched our boys pedal their first bikes on their own; last week we were shocked to hear of a bike accident involving three young women, two of whom we knew.

I've woke up more than once this week thinking about three high school girls in southern Illinois who suffered a tragic accident as they journied a 500 mile loop to celebrate their upcoming graduation. One of them lost her life. The others survived, but suffer injuries, and the loss of their friend. I've woke thinking of their parents and how they live through this. I've woke thinking of the long road of recovery and what is ahead for those who survived. I've woke and prayed for some kind of grace, a grace unknown to me, for the parents who lost their child.

Last summer one of the girls who was injured offered to help me make decorations for our church's summer Bible school. She was on her way out of town, overseas, if I remember right, but took the time to contribute to the kids' week with construction paper depictions of canyons, dessert plants and creatures. I was grateful for the help, and impressed that someone with so much going on, with plenty of reasons to sit this one out, chose to help anyway. When I met the other girl who survived the accident, it was a mid-summer evening, just before she was to leave for summer camp. She was excited to meet our boys, and her parents, one of whom was a colleague of Ryan's, invited us for dinner. She introduced the boys to ping-pong, and took multiple elevator rides with Elliott (which he fondly remembers when making up stories).

Both of them showed me a kindness for others that I did not know at their age, and am still learning. I've also woke to the thought of the reckless ways of my high school days and how relatively free we came through them. These girls were pursuing a dream, together, and found themselves in the midst of a nightmare. As they journey back home, to a home missing a friend and missing the fulfillment of their 500 mile dream, they will be welcomed with the same kindness they have given to so many others.

3 Days Out

I am woefully aware of how hard it is to write something, anything, everyday. I've just missed three days in a row, and tonight spent all my creative energy filling out an application form for Kindergarten. Explain the circumstances of your child's birth. Are you kidding? I paired down considerably, which was a healthy exercise for me. Describe the early days of your child's life. Again, you've got to be kidding. Have you ever been in a house with two newborn babies for 24 hours? Those hours were filled with painfully loud and shrill cries, and then silence that was so quiet, it made me startle. Then a leading question: what do you find unique or unusual about your child? It's my child(ren)! Everything is unique and unusual, can't you just see? One has been interested in mechanical buttons since he was 17 months old. If his age is adjusted, that is like an adult about to retire after having had the same job for her entire life!

As I said, all my creative energy has been spent in writing sincere answers that will wow the admissions staff so that next year the boys can (hopefully) have a nurturing place to play and meet some friends and share a snack and play outside. A place to grow as a child with other children, a kindergarten.

Chase

Four-year-old screams are not cute. Or quiet. Or easy to reverse. We had our share of them today: at a restaurant, at the suggestion of moving away from the CD player, at the delay of a print out of the titles on a new CD for his cousin. But with our emerging spring, I knew the end of the day would lead us outside. No matter if there was screaming before hand, we would get outside, and the edgy feelings of the day would pass. But I had no idea that they would pass into a joyful game of chase. Maybe it has been the snow cover, or the snow-pants cover, but the past few months there has been little chase. Today we couldn't get enough. Elliott ran ahead on the sidewalk. "Chase me, mommy!" Dietrich had his own thing going on with a much-missed stick he discovered in the yard now that the snow has melted, but he joined in eventually. How could he resist? The freedom of running mixed with the certainty of being caught. We chased all the way to the park, where the grass was a bit oozie, but the tire chips around the play equipment dry. And we even left the park without screaming, and chased all the way home, or at least until they found bigger sticks that acted as trains, making stops along the way.

Inbetween Times

The sky is stuck somewhere between a dense fog advisory and a pale showing of the sun that nearly casts shadows in the late afternoon. Sounds of wet come from the tires on the streets, winter boots in puddles, and the drips from the down spouts. The winter's wear is bearing its face. Our fence is crooked and the door won't close. Wrappers and newspapers are glued in cold wet to the muddied grass along our sidewalk. Tiny rocks from our shingles are peppered all over the deck as the snow slowly creeps away from its edge but insists on a small iced pile in the middle. A friend from just a 100 miles south posted that they were going to the park -- in t-shirts. We are still layered, even fleeced, and the parks are a soggy pit of ground up tires (the covering of choice in Madison). Just a few days ago I wrote of the emerging that we are living in, but this week we've taken a different turn to a place that isn't sure what it is, only that it can't stay this way for long. Or at least we have hope that it won't.

Greening of the Advertising

I admit it. I am a Marketplace junkie. Hearing the gong announcing the beginning of the show and Kai Rissdol's voice introducing the first tantalizing story makes my day. Or makes my time with dirty dishes something other than just time with dirty dishes (though seeing them all cleaned up also makes my day). One of the stories on today's program featured a journalist who admits to buying organic apple juice because it tastes good and is probably better for her daughter. She goes on to interview her yoga teacher who says that she is green because it is good for her and her family's health. If it helps the environment, all the better, but it is not her real concern (or motivator to pay more for green products). Not surprisingly, the ad industry has picked up on this and now even 7th Generation, a company whose advertising consisted of its products sitting, often lonely for competition, on the shelves of Whole Paycheck, is launching a TV campaign aimed at showing how mom's can best take care of their family -- by using their chemical-free products. Some environmentalists are disappointed, but the one interviewed for the show said that as long as it was getting people to treat the environment better, so be it.

And for the most part, I agree. If my reasons for being green stem from being a good steward of the environment, what does a little advertising hurt to draw in those who would otherwise be spending their money on chemicals that harm the environment? Of course there is the question of why do we need another ad campaign aimed at moms (hello, Proctor and Gamble during the Olympics?). After all, it is far more likely that moms will start buying products that do no harm to their loved ones than it is we'll see an ad campaign about the relationship between fertilizing lawns and farms and their effervescent neighboring lakes.

Ironically, I trace my green streak back to working on a golf course, one of the more chemically induced play fields of modern time. I had always enjoyed being outside, but when I began working with grass, dirt, tree limbs, leaves, and sticks, day in and day out, at ridiculous hours for a teenager, my relationship with the environment changed. It is true that my western sky watching was largely a search for a half day off of work (we couldn't work in lightening, though a steady rain in any temperature range was fair game). But I learned to appreciate how the clouds shifted as the day wore on. How the clouds of spring and those of fall spoke different languages. Walls of cloud scared me back to the maintenance shop on a slow-moving vehicle where we would wait out a storm, trying to believe there was a blazing sun just minutes ago. Grateful we were at least covered by metal roof and walls. Sticks and low-cutting mowers to not work well together, so every storm required meticulous clean up -- every limb, every stick needed to be cleared from tees and greens before they could be mowed.

And then there was the grass. It just kept growing. Granted, it had some help, but my dad tried to minimize the chemicals he used -- and exposed his two kids to -- on the golf course he managed. One co-worker mowed the longer grass that lined each fairway and curled around the empty spaces between holes. She started on Monday, and by Thursday afternoon, she could have mowed again where she had started. Her routine took countless miles each week on a diesel riding rotary mower with five blades. And each week, it started again. The environment, even this relatively tamed one, was relentless in its pursuit for life.

And somehow that pursuit of life, and working with my dad, and watching how his work was indebted to weather, impressed on me that the environment is something we care for, admire, and even fear. There is no way to advertise that. Any advertising asserts that we are in control. And if there is one thing that working outdoors taught me, it was that we are hardly in control of the sun, the rain, the wind, the all of it.

Food Fight!

I realized how far I've dipped into the feeding philosophy of "as long as they are eating something" tonight when I was thrilled at the prospect of sitting down with two of the three men in our house for dinner without a high pitched scream or stomped feet, or blank stares. Instead, Elliott and Dietrich plopped themselves in their respective spots at the table and even held hands to remember Lent and give thanks to God before we ate. The other side? We were all eating different meals, there was a cereal box between my dish (chicken, rice, and mediocre asparagus) and Elliott's (all the leftover noodles I could find and cheese, mixed together and warmed on the stove) because he can't stand the sight of meat, and Dietrich's "meal" was a cibatta roll with butter and milk. Later Dietrich ate two plates of rice and soy sauce. It was still white, but it was something other than pancakes, bagels, and cibatta rolls! I passed around cut up pieces of asparagus, a vegetable both boys used to chomp down to the woody ends, but there were no takers. We've long decided that bribery for colorful food was not helpful and there weren't any cookies in the house, anyway. But we sat and ate our respective meals, talked, and with the exception of a potty break and a spontaneous need to see something in the living room, stayed seated at the table. Dining delight!

I remember the challenge of the boys' first solid foods. It was just one more thing to do on top of naps, nursing, playing and keeping up with new mobility. I wanted homemade, organic, efficient meals that I could spoon feed to one and then to the other in a game of food-tennis. But at least they would try the crazy things I made. And they liked eating avacado mixed with plain yogurt and oatmeal -- no kidding! I thought food would be smooth sailing. A friend helped me balance offering healthy foods and having fun -- she had presented (and had a picture to prove it) her first daughter with a zuccini muffin and a candle when she turned one. By her second daughter, it was butter cream frosting and chocolate cake. (The zuccini baby just turned 18. The cake? Umpteen layers of ice cream and crushed chocolate candies. Both girls eat mounds of broccoli, salad, and other happy greens). And for the most part, one of the boys eats well-balanced, though pasta-heavy, meals. But I never thought I would be grateful for a non-complaining approach to the table, even if it meant three different meals on the plates. Thankfully, Ryan eats just about everything I make.

When I am tempted to fight about what to eat, I'm reminded of pumpkin pie and chocolate milk. Our favorite place to dine out when I was growing up was Ponderosa. It's a cafeteria-buffet-style family restaurant where we'd pick up our drinks and desserts and pay before we found a table and loaded our plates at the steam tables and salad bar. Except that my meal was complete by the cashier. I ate pumpkin pie and chocolate milk. And I loved it. I loved my parents for letting me eat it. I don't remember going to bed hungry and I grew just fine. Then again, I also liked eating liver and ranch dressing at home, so it wasn't pumpkin pie all the time. And I'm pretty sure I pushed my share of green food items around my plate while everyone else had finished eating. But something about that pumpkin pie and chocolate milk keeps me from pushing foods that are not welcomed, at least not now. Somehow growth happens. Somehow our tastes emerge and change and open to possibility. For now, we'll just keep passing around the asparagus.

Unlimited Horizon

Dietrich finished eating early and went into the other room to make a rocket contraption and sit by the fire. He listened to Elliott and me talking about the atmosphere and going through it to get to space, offering up corrections when needed. Then Elliott came up with this:

"Here's how I go to space. I just go to the end of the lake where the sky goes zup zup (cutting with his hand a right angle) and I put my head like this (tucking his chin as if to crawl in a tunnel) and reach out this high (stretching his arm up) and there! I'm in space."

How many times have I watched the horizon on Lake Michigan -- on a bike, running, driving (carefully), sitting on the beach -- and watched the end of the Earth as Elliott described? As I stared out at its beauty, its seeming infinity, all I could do was allow myself to awe at it. The horizon never looked the same from day to day, even during the steamy summer when a haze loomed over it or when the foggy late winter drizzle denied it was even there. It spoke silently of possibility, but did I really believe it? Elliott noticed it, too, bouncing along in the Burley, playing on the beach, climbing on the rocks at the Point. For me it was a matter of beauty and perspective; for Elliott the horizon as he described tonight was just out of reach but it holds the possibility of another world.

Now that I think of it, the world Elliott imagined may have also been inspired by a clever book called Katie Meets the Impressionists (James Mayhew) where a girl visiting an art museum climbs into the paintings and becomes part of the scene (sometimes finding herself in more than one painter's world). Whatever his muse, the image he gave is powerful. Why not just go to the end of the lake, reach into the horizon, and get where you want to be?

Getting Dressed

This is my daily challenge -- not finding something for me to wear, that is an entirely different story, one that usually comes up on Sunday mornings when my jeans with the hole in the seam and the Eddie Bauer fleece won't quite do. My daily challenge is not losing it with Elliott when it's time to get dressed. Or not helping with the items he can easily do on his own. Or not raising my voice when we are about to miss the bus. Or not holding a grudge about the getting-dressed episode for the rest of the day. Why is it so hard? When he was first learning where to put his body parts into the various holes in the clothing I had a lot more patience. But I've witnessed it! He knows where everything goes and can get all the parts in the right places (give or take a few tags in the front). But there are so many more interesting things to do: cuddling in his comforter and sheets sans ropa; oh, there's a book on the floor, does it have a table of contents? Yes!; And this book over here, where is the date due paper for it?; Oh, there is my brother getting dressed, would he like to wrestle? The distractions go on and on until I either cave in and decided getting to the bus and getting on with our day is worth enabling his behavior or until I hover over him and step by step ask him what is next. And then, being winter, we do it all over again once we're downstairs. Boots, snow pants, but no, honey, it doesn't work in that order, now jacket, where are your mittens and hat? Okay, let's go. We'll zip outside. At least it is warm enough for that. The competition factor works great for Dietrich -- all I have to do is suggest a contest or race and he is off! But Elliott would rather be in the sheets or a book than win anything.

Clothes for Sunday are sitting out tonight. Maybe he will show up for breakfast all dressed! Then again, maybe his lack of focus on getting dressed isn't so different from my own blank stares into the closet. Though no one is watching me, there are plenty of days that it takes me far longer to find something to wear than necessary. Almost everyday I forget socks or decide on different ones and have to dash back up two flights before leaving the house. It is the transition between the comforts of home and facing the world. Maybe that requires a little more snuggling for Elliott, or another look at a book, or one last run around the basement before he can put it all together and see the world today.

Emerging

It is one of those words that is hugely popular, kind of like hugely. There is the emerging church, a Christian movement to rethink common Christian practices, and light lots of candles. The emerging job market, though it is debated if it will ever emerge or if we'll be stuck in an emerging state for a while. There are emerging therapeutics, or at least there should be with all the pharmaceuticals being peddled on TV, in print, on the side of my gmail account.

But nothing says emerging to me more than stepping outside and seeing our neighbors. Even if we've seen them out there from time to time this winter, it was either too dark to play safely or too cold to do anything but dart to the car. But today there were adults, kids, dogs, bikers out on both sides of the street. One girl climbed the heap of snow by her driveway and slid down, no gloves, no snow pants. Another girl along with her brother shoveled crystallized snow back onto the sidewalk while their dad talked with a neighbor whose dog waited patiently for a walk. I talked with the dog's other owner in between her dashes toward the front stoop to pull her one year old away from the screen door.

The boys tolerated our stop but would have rather kept moving toward the bike path for round two of "dog catcher", a chase-and-catch game inspired by The Stray Dog, a book where the dog catcher plays a minor roll, but for better or worse has become the most fun to imitate. They run and catch each other or I catch both of them (but I refuse to be a dog catcher, just a people catcher, is that any better?). Soon we were off, Dietrich with his ice scrapper and Elliott finishing off a box of raisins. But those few minutes of sidewalk exchanges and seeing the faces of our neighbors in late afternoon sunshine assured me that even in these last weeks of winter, we are emerging.

Making Bread

Four loaves of white bread sat on the cutting board in my grandma's kitchen at some point during every one of our summer visits and most of the time during the Christmas visits, too, though sometimes sticky cinnamon buns might replace them. The warm heels were my favorite where the crust curled around the soft white bread inside. I remember a story of my mom and her sisters cutting off both heels -- probably not the best for storage, but how could anyone resist?

After I graduated from college I met another bread-making family in Thailand. They were from the U.S. and lived not far from the house I was watching. Every morning -- every morning -- she had dough rising, and by noon there was fresh bread. She had two sons who devoured most of it before dinner. The bread baking reminded me of my grandma's house half way around the world. Maybe someday I would bake bread.

And we have been baking bread, but not often enough to get it right. Pizza dough I have down, I don't even need to consult the More With Less Cookbook, my favorite kitchen literature. But bread I still struggle with. Yesterday the big meal was going to be vegetable soup and bread (and cheese, we live in Wisconsin). But we were out of yeast and Trader Joe's counts it as one of their "seasonal items". After negotiating another walk to the smaller grocery store that carries yeast year-round, we found our neighbor friend playing sidewalk chalk. The grocery store could wait, chalk after a 4 month hiatus could not. We did pick up the yeast later, but I didn't bother to check the flour supply. Not surprising, we were low. The recipe called for 7-8 cups. Whole wheat we had, but I've worked with it enough times to know that it won't take the place of white -- or it might, but it will be a lot of work.

Dietrich helped work the course flour into the wet ingredients (at least the yeast claimed to work well with whole grains) but eventually returned to his lego moon lander. I moved the big blue ceramic bowl to the table for better leverage. The dough worked me as much as I worked it. At first I was bemoaning to myself how I can forget to get flour when making bread? Why not just have extra around, and yeast, too, for that matter? Why do I seem to have just barely enough of everything? Maybe we should become members of Costco! Thankfully the dough started working better and I could stop questioning my worth and just kneed. I could feel it in my gut, and shoulders, and the heals of my hands. I pushed the coarse dough in on itself, again, again, until it was at least bouncing back slightly. Two hours later, it had nearly doubled. That didn't make rolling it out any easier (it was a recipe for french bread) but it was edible and obviously high fiber. Flour is on the list. Two bags, at least. And yeast. And next time, I'm trying Grandma's recipe.

Sticky

North Carolina in August (and sometimes in June or May, or even April, but just for a day); chubby fingers eating noodles with cheese sprinkled on top; raisins; the flat fruit snacks and even worse, their plastic packaging; the underside of the fork that slipped too far onto a plate of buttermilk pancakes; toothpaste from a brush that was dropped on the floor; balsam needles that keep showing up in the corners, even in March; bagels and cream cheese and honey, but so good it is worth all the stick; juice, any kind, any amount, any time of the day -- no spill is ever unstuck until the hands and knees scrubbing is done; the upper edge of the glue stick that leaps onto hands no matter how far away from it they hold it; feet that have just come out of the pool, even if showered, those little feet stick to their socks; the laundry detergent cup; Trader Joe's stickers which adorn our doorknobs in the basement, and the walls next to the doors (filling in for automatic door-buttons), the bottoms of our slippers, and countless random pieces of paper;

Time's up! Feel free to add some more...

Walk Score

A year ago I was obsessed with a web site called "walk score". We were in the middle of a housing search for a home that above all we wanted to be "walkable". The site allows you to type in any address to rate how easy it is to walk to libraries, grocery stores or convenience stores, restaurants, coffee shops, and parks. I would find a house on a real estate site, type in the address to walk score, and wait while it drew a map surrounding the little red dot, our potential new home. Many times the just-right house was just outside a comfortable walk zone. Car-dependent, it declared. As the ratings went up, the yards shrunk, the garages squeezed onto the lots (or didn't exist at all), and the price shot up, too. But how great would it be to be able to walk to most things?

The walk from our house to New Morning Nursery school is just under a mile with only a mild elevation change (I am still adjusting from Chicago). Today I pushed the empty jogger over to pick the boys up. They bemoaned my new rule that I don't push them uphill. Granted, they were exhausted after swimming this morning and playing this afternoon and the general excitement of the spring-is-coming sun. Once we were on the slow downward slope home, they rode and happily bantered about making hats and reading books about a king in a bathtub who ate his lunch in the tub and a magic hat that made people into animals. I relish this peek into their new world apart from me. When we drive, it is Justin Roberts all three minutes home -- whether the CD is in the player or not. But today, walking, they let me in on the books they read and the hats they made.

When we reached the bike trail, Dietrich hopped out and ran ahead. The runners had shed layers today and smiled at Dietrich clad in the same winter gear he had on in January. He did finally take off his mittens. Bike commuters slowed down to make sure Dietrich stayed on his side of the path as he waved them by. Elliott sleepily wore a cone-shaped magician's hat and rode solo. Just as we crested the exit ramp from the bike path to our block (with heavy whining at the request to walk the hill) we met a neighbor going to join the walkers and bikers and runners and strollers and be-hatted kids on the path.

March

The jar said Smuckers jelly on the lid and it was covered in a frosty haze. Underneath a lively green began to show through as it thawed during the day. March holds the possibility of green, if not the grass at least we have St Patrick's Day when even the beer and the Chicago river turn green. There may be a surprising t-shirt day, but more likely there will be a surprising 8 inches of snow day. But this jar held our first, and maybe only, green of March.

We picked up the batch of basil from a farm in Sun Prairie toward the end of the summer when the ripe tomatoes dripped sweet juice, all over, as I tried to cut them up, cook them, freeze them, somehow save them before they rotted or froze or we tired of their sticky sweet. The tomatoes seemed a nuisance compared to the basil. I froze the tomatoes knowing we would use them often, but I also knew they would lose most of their taste. But the basil was different. It needed just to be chopped and mixed up with other happy ingredients: pine nuts, olive oil, garlic, parmesan cheese, a little salt. A few whirrs of the food processor and wha-la, we have pesto. The harder part was putting it in jars and forgetting about it so that we could surprise us with its warm reminders of summer on some long winter night.

Most of the jars are long gone. I don't think one has never made it this long. Maybe it was our new freezer that is low to the ground so I don't see things in the door (there was also a can of frozen lemonade sitting next to the pesto). Or maybe I had been saving it long enough I actually did forget about it because we bought some from Trader Joe's a few weeks ago. But tonight when Dietrich wanted pesto pizza and Elliott wanted pesto noodles (this is as close to consensus as we ever arrive, save Chipotle), there it was in the door, waiting to be thawed, spread on carbohydrates, and savored.

I've been mourning the end of winter. I know this won't last for long and soon I will be as ready as everyone else to see it go. But the snow has been our playground for the past three months and I'm sorry to see it going. But this taste of summer tonight, on the first day of March, reminded me how sweet the summer is. How good it tastes, how warm the sun feels on my back after a winter of being layered down. How the trees drape over our house, how the lake laps easily on the beach. I am sad to see the winter go, though I doubt it has had its last word. But I'm grateful to be reminded of the life to come by this jar of pesto that has sat quietly in the freezer door these long months.