FREE Sunday tours of Boston's Trinity Church

Bill and I went to Boston last Sunday, hours before snow storm Marcus’ arrival.  I had booked a walking chocolate tour via groupon as an early Valentine’s Day gift for us… and I missed the Saturday evening email to say it had been canceled due to the storm.  I only saw the Saturday night email confirming it was still on. So, if you happened to be watching The Weather Channel Sunday and saw the anchor standing on the snow bank in Copley Square, we were just to his right standing by the John Copley statue for a good 45 minutes, waiting for the tour and waving at him.  Wondering if he drew the long or short straw.

Bike in Boston

Around 12:25, we changed our venue to Trinity Church, which is also on the square.  Trinity is one of those in-your-backyard gems that we had never made the time to visit.  We met parishioners coming out as we were going in.  A very pleasant usher greeted us and pointed us up a side aisle to where the 12:30 p.m. free tour would start shortly.  Every Sunday after service, this tour is free!

With the service ending, we sat in a pew and listened to the recessional organ music.  Together with another couple, our tour started promptly as the last organ note dropped from the air.

Tours are led by volunteers; our guide was a young female architect who was not a parishioner.  I admire people who are fluent in their passion.  Seeing the details of Trinity through her eyes was astounding – from her explanation of the transformation of Back Bay to land and the life notes of the first rector, the architect, and the artist... to the details of stained glass windows and floral designs throughout.   Our guide brought the church to life architecturally within the realm of the Episcopalian Church and this particular congregation in the late 1800's.

We were both awed by the building and the guide – and it was free to boot!

Check out these sites for church details:

Trinity Church -Tour times and contact information

Trinity Church Book Shop - lovely gifts, cards, and books

Trinity Church is one of the 10 Buildings that Changed America, according to PBS

...plus, more details from the walk around Copley Square in Boston’s Back Bay:

Parking at Back Bay Garage

Solas Irish Pub – was OK with us just having coffee and not food!

Chocolate by the bald man… Max Brenner – a small sampling of pecans rolled in hazelnut paste, dipped in chocolate, and sprinkled with real cocoa powder made up for the canceled chocolate tour.

Enjoy!

Life Under a Microscope

Denial. It has its place.  It calms.  It centers.

I finished treatment for breast cancer five years ago.  My follow-up plan is to have alternating MRIs and mammograms every six months.  Two weeks ago after my MRI, I recognized my breast surgeon’s voice on the answering machine.  Call me; it’s just something very small.  An MRI showed a tiny change in a nodule in the other breast.

My doctor sent me for an ultrasound and, if necessary, a biopsy.  The first ultrasound was canceled by the blizzard.  A week later, the ultrasound showed nothing.  Nothing to biopsy by ultrasound.  My doctor strongly encouraged me to have an MRI-guided biopsy.  Or, I could wait six months.  And wonder.  I waited four days for an appointment. Last Friday I had the biopsy.

Over that two-week period, most of me was calm.  Strangely calm.  I’m watched under a microscope.  Unlike most of the female population, there are many, many internal images on film of my breasts.  I had three thoughts:

First, if it is something, this is the first time it has been picked up, so I’m going to assume it’s small.  I’m going to assume at the worst it’s a surgery and maybe radiation.

My second thought was false positive.  I’m alive; I’m aging; I see changes on the outside – and the complex parts are all on the inside!  Surely internal cells and nodules will change as well.

Finally, I thought about the system of observation.  It’s working.  Something changed and now we investigate.

I denied the possibility of an all-out big lump of cancer.  Of statistics guiding my future.  I had passed the five-year mark.  I quietly celebrate at the beginning of every season opener of American Idol.  Every mid-January I’m as delighted with the show’s theme music as I was in 2010 when I had had my last round of chemo.

Denial.

Because my kids aren’t ready to live without me.

Because Bill isn’t ready to parent without me.

Because there are many more words to come out of my fingertips.

And I move to denial via statistics.  Statistically speaking, I have more of a chance dying today by getting hit by a bus while being distracted by the thought of cancer than I do from dying of cancer.  This statistic has been with me since I was diagnosed in 2009.  Today, I’m more likely to get hit by a bus than die of cancer.  I convince myself that there could ever only be one day when those statistics could swing the other way.

Yesterday, snow day Tuesday, I’m full of denial and making lists of ways to better our lives.  And, again I’m soaking in this once in a lifetime Northeastern snow event.

The phone rings and caller ID says it’s my doctor’s office.  I carry the ringing receiver to the toy room doorway and lean heavily against the door frame before pushing “Talk.”  This time, the voice on the other end – to my relief – is not my doctor.  And I know before she says the word.

Benign.

(More life under a microscope... The Eye of the Storm.)

50 Inches of Snow in Pictures

Living just north of Boston, between snow and sickness, we haven’t had one full week of school since before Christmas. Many Northeast families are paddling in the same boat.  I hear and see creativity; I hear and see craziness.

On the second snow-day Tuesday in a row, I escaped to the spare room upstairs, dropped a screen-less window from the top, and took photos of the icicles melting.  Then I took short walks through our winter wonderland; the snowy scenes were stunning. I clicked away day and night...

I had never photographed an icicle drip before snow storm Juno.

Rather than taking photos of this, a concerned homeowner probably would have been knocking these down or calling someone to break them up. Click. What ice dams are made of... drip, freeze, drip, freeze...

Liam's first leap from the top of the bank. He sunk in up to his waist. Then just sat there. Sitting in that deep snow is peaceful, surprisingly warm, absolutely surreal.

My depth perception is whacky. Here's what 55" tall kids look like playing on 60" snow banks.

(...During the Blizzard of 2012, the kids' independence reigned supreme.)

Sweet double drips.

Charmed by these enormous icicles... bigger around than my arm. I thought their power in motion would pull the edge of my shingles off... so I didn't knock them down.

A duet of drops.

Oh, the shimmer!

So sleek and shiny.

Rhododendron droop.

The magnolia's shadow.

Snowbanks galore -- this small one is on my kitchen window.

Why I leave my outdoor lights up beyond Christmas...

How did "meltdown" get such a bad reputation? Here's a triple meltdown!

We built our snowman after the first 7 inches of snow: it was great snow for building! Here he is covered with 40-plus inches of fluffy snow.

Our winter barn.

Since moving to the east coast, sand dunes at the beach have always felt familiar to me. I think this is why: Iowa's open fields and wide ditches drift like this. In the Northeast, we see more sand dunes of this shape than snow drifts.

Snow makes the outdoors glow. This was taken at 9:30 p.m. -- our fence, no flash.

One. Two. Three.

And the waltz continues... one, two, three, one, two, three...

Be prepared.  Last year, a local Boy Scout marked fire hydrants throughout town as his Eagle Scout project.   At the time the tall springy red and white poles seemed a bit extreme!  We've kept our hydrant clear.  With all this snow, firefighters are struggling to access hydrants when fighting house fires in the Boston area.

See the yellow handle?  It's a decorated snow shovel with snowmen painted on the blade.  I anchored it out front thinking I would mark inches on the handle to measure snow this winter...

Here's the same Rho --but a different season...

The very definition of hardy!!

(You may be ready for The Beach Cottage... but it's only February, and 2015 winter snow storm Marcus hasn't even touched us yet!  Getting ready for 12" - 20+" of more snow!)

The Semi-colon Rule (or Really, Virginia?)

Tip-toeing to the living room at 3:55 a.m. with reading materials in-hand: People magazine and Mrs. Dalloway.  Jennifer Lopez and Virginia Woolf.  Fluff & fancy and fluff & fancy.  (Hmm, I practiced Venn diagrams with Liam yesterday.  The vision of JLO’s and Virginia’s circles somehow intersecting?  Wow.) I picked up People first: a cover-to-cover 45-minute read.  Then, I opened Mrs. Dalloway and, on page one, butted heads with the over-use of semi-colons; a different use than I taught in my Developing English classes with incoming college freshmen.

I understand the semi-colon’s use to separate complete thoughts; when you use them to connect related but separate thoughts, they can be quite effective in providing sentence variety.  Or, when there is a complicated list of items and each item is several words long, then they are helpful.

But to plop them in willy-nilly… they accost my grammarian senses at 5:00 a.m.  Wave after wave: reading of a clause or a fragment then bashed into the brick wall of a semi-colon.   I put the book down, and I remember what I told students as they grumbled with all the grammar rules: learn and master the rules before you break them.  I do it.  Love every minute of it.  My stream of conscience writing is in fragments.  Virginia’s is dotted with semi-colons.

I do hope Virginia knew the rules of semi-colon usage; it would make it easier for me to read her if I was absolutely sure she had command of the semi-colon rule and then purposely chose to manipulate it to her own writing style; I would accept that; however, I will need to better prep myself before reading page one again; I must release the ideal that semi-colons separate complete thoughts; rather accept the notion that this literary genius of the 20th century chose them to accentuate her character’s ADD.

My fragments feel right.  They reflect the 21st century’s culture of ADD; however, stream of conscious fragment-writing with the use of semi-colons… I struggle with that.  Really they aren’t that far apart – just a comma extraction and the addition of a capital letter moves the fragments from their run-on appearance to abrupt, jerky thoughts.

Next time I pick up Mrs. Dalloway, I will accept the semi-colons, and I shan't have a candy appetizer of People magazine's simple sentences beforehand.  That will help.  Most definitely.

Top 5 January Conversations

After Liam, my 9-year-old’s productive cough: “Mom, I have mucus on my shirt!” After 10 days of Will coughing, the doctor’s diagnosis: “I really think it’s a virus; give it another 10 days.”

Liam, while digitally measuring his fever under his arm for the fourth consecutive day: “Yup, the numbers are still increasing!”

After Will, my 11-year-old, goes night skiing with his school’s ski club for the first time: “I even went down a slope that wasn't lit!”  Me: “Perhaps the slope was closed?”  Will: “No there were lots of tracks.”   And I couldn't bring myself to say, “From skiers earlier in the day?  As in… the past??  The daylight??”

Me to Bill, in preparation for the Blizzard of 2015: “You might want to pick up fire starters for the fireplace on the way home.”  Bill: “Do we need anything else?”  Me: “Yes, marshmallows and Hershey’s bars.”

For you see, we know that we don’t need to strip bottled water off the grocery store shelves during a blizzard.  All the things I need to know for a blizzard I learned by reading Little House on the Prairie -- and living on the prairie for a good number of years:  Snow is frozen water, folks!  But big-ass Hershey’s bars don’t spring from snow banks.  I sent the right man for the job; I never buy this size Hershey’s for S’mores...

Gotta love that man.

Blockages

Rarely do I have writer’s block. Often I do get in the way of myself and not carve out time to write. That’s not for a lack of words. That’s a different blockage than writer’s block.

Have you heard crickets chirping the last few Hump Days? Ah, yes. Linda Malcolm the writer has been researching. Living. And today, I’ve made the time, and the words are stuck in my fingers like a heavy log jam on a river.

Blockages. They ran rampant in the Malcolm house over the last few weeks. Noses. Sinuses. Chests. Intestines. My head with worry over said noses, sinuses, chests, and intestines. Christmas decorations. Laundry. Sewer lines.

We turned the corner last Thursday with the arrival of loud, heavy equipment necessary to clear a major blockage. Before Christmas the bathtub on the main floor had a bit of funny dirt in it. I wrote it off to someone washing something and not rinsing the tub. Then another day, a different kind of dirt. Thinking someone had ignored the “4 Squares, 4 Squares, Flush” sign,  I gave the toilet a quick plunge. A couple days later, Bill called me while I was out, “The toilet is overflowing!” For no apparent reason.

The town said, not mine! The plumber said, not me! The drain specialist said, for a few hundred dollars I'll shoot a 1-minute video of your sewer line! The drain specialist then said, not mine to fix – I just take the pictures of rocks and roots in the old clay pipes – and recommend that you use 1-ply toilet paper and don’t use your garbage disposal!

Last Thursday, the sewer line specialists pulled in with a back hoe and a jack hammer. Such a welcome sight: a brand new, 4-inch, light cyan green, PVC pipe laying in a 4-foot deep, 42-foot long trench, dug through the year-old grass sod. Honestly, after three weeks of 1-ply – this was indeed a beautiful sight...

If you have a fragile sewer system, you understand: The humidity in an exhale starts the immediate decomposition of 1-ply toilet paper.

With the installation of this new line, all other blockages ceased within three days. Fingers crossed, next week will be a full 5-day school week since before Christmas, with everyone healthy and no holidays, and I will be in this same quiet spot in the library writing a Hump Day Short.

Now, may all the possibilities of a New Year freely flow forward.

The Missing Gift

My time is divided between merry-making, play date booking, and looking for that bag. You know the one… The perfect gift found for a special person. In October. That was three months ago. And eight hiding places ago. The cookies are baked. The tree is up. The Christmas get-togethers are happening. But it’s two days til Christmas. I need to find that bag. It has one of the best gifts in it. It was actually shopped for. Not a rush what-do-you-want-and-I’ll-go-buy-it gift. It is one of those hey-this-is-perfect-for-my-nephew kind of gifts. Wait… how big is the bag? I seem to recall buying more than one thing that day. Or did I? Or… did I decide against that gift at the last minute? Crumbs. Now I’m looking for a bag that I’m not sure even exists.

Heading to the basement, my shoulder swishes against a red bag hanging with the coats. What is that? Oh, glad I found that one! Not the one I’m looking for, but one I will be looking for shortly.

I need to take inventory, pull all those cryptic Christmas lists together, and get some wrapping done to see if I’m missing anything. Holy ka-lu-la! I haven’t gotten Dad’s gift yet! I’m not driving by the Welcome Inn in Elizabeth, Illinois, this year on the way to Iowa, so swinging in and getting four orders of his favorite ribs is out of the question. And, my Amazon prime 2-day shipping is worthless at this point.

Has Dad dropped any hints? “I just want all my kids home for Christmas.” No hint there. “Man, it is cold outside. I got my long-johns on and my john-johns on top of my long-johns on.” I’m not doing long-johns again this Christmas. “Well, these are just fine! There’s nothing wrong with them!!” Dad probably has two pair of bib overalls lying in wait for the old ones to fall to strings. “Where are my half-pants?” There’s no sentimental value in getting him a second pair of Dockers when he rarely needs to wear half-pants.

How can the Christmas tree twinkle so calmly while my mind is whirring? Worrying about that gift. Aha! The cookie table is behind me. “I haven’t had a single cookie this year!” Probably not true, Dad, but thanks for the hint! I’ll start with a cookie tin. Then, if I put my thinking cap on – and mentally don my long johns and bib overalls – I’ll wonder the aisles of Ace Hardware as would a farmer. Slowly looking for that “Well, I’ll be….” kind of gift.

May you find “that” bag and the perfect gift. Soon.

(Did you read about the drone that landed in my hair?  Yes, really.  My writing is based on factual events... really.  Here's Happy Day After Thanksgiving!)

Do you have an elf on your shelf?

Do you have an Elf on the Shelf in your house? In case you haven’t heard of the Elf, he visits from Thanksgiving to Christmas Eve, sits in your house watching and listening during the day, and then flies to the North Pole every night to report back to Santa. Then, he comes back to your house before the kids wake up the next morning, but he lands in a different spot. No one can touch him; he will lose his magic powers if touched by a human. A week ago at Liam’s parent-teacher conference, I learned that our family was the only family in his class of 23 kids who did not have an elf in their house. I was flabbergasted: How could Santa forget our house when the rest of the town is apparently overrun by an elf population?

Lo and behold, this morning we woke up to a letter written in North Pole red ink. The letter was from an elf. He explained that Santa had sent him to England to find Will and Liam over Thanksgiving, but after days of looking, he reported back to Santa that he couldn’t find the Malcolms. Santa explained that we LIVED near Boston and were only visiting England. (Perhaps the fact that our names weren’t on a permanent title or lease in England added to the confusion.)

In the letter, the elf explained that Santa had directed him to stop in Reykjavik on the way to our house. The elf needed to check on some reindeer for Santa. A couple reindeer from the North Pole went to Iceland in November to visit cousins, and two of the cousins wanted to move to the North Pole. Before Santa would allow them to immigrate, he wanted to see if they were naughty or nice, so he had our elf watch them and report back to Santa. Fortunately, the reindeer made the cut, so our elf helped them move to the North Pole -- which is why he was delayed getting to our house.

After reading the letter, Liam soon spotted the elf tucked on a narrow ledge above the stove.

Smiling slyly, Liam told me that very, very, very rarely elves might make a mess. A buddy of his at school woke up one morning to a sugar spill on the counter. “They make messes?!?” I exclaimed, perhaps over-reacting a bit. “Not very often at all, Mom.” In addition to the normal route of picking up boys’ clothes from the bedroom floor and boys’ towels from the bathroom floor and boys’ breakfast dishes from the counter, will I now have elf mess for the next 13 days?

By the way, behind Liam’s little face – which was lit up in awe as he spotted the elf – I saw through the kitchen window moments of big fluffy snowflakes falling out of this rainy Nor'easter sky. I do believe the elf has brought a little magic to our house.

(P.S.  Did you read about the drone that landed in my hair? Yes, really. My writing is based on factual events... really. Here's Happy Day After Thanksgiving!)

Happy Day After Thanksgiving!

We are visiting Bill’s family in England for Thanksgiving -- five short days. There was no turkey dinner or Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. However, the English have chosen to celebrate another more modern American tradition: Black Friday. Yes, we Americans eat the turkey and celebrate the voyage that originated in Plymouth, England; then we wake up Friday morning to mania in the stores and in our email boxes. And English retailers have latched onto this day-after tradition. Bizarre.

Bill’s mum gave us our Christmas present early: evening tickets to a musical, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, in London on Thanksgiving night. Waking up at 11 a.m., we had a bit of a late start and found ourselves at Buckingham Palace to watch the guards march around 4:00; then we strolled around Green Park near the Canada Gate -- a memorial area dedicated to Canadian forces killed in the First and Second World Wars.

From there, Will wanted to check out the famous London toy shop: Hamley's. The five floors of toys was filled with a festive buzz and lots of smiles. Each floor had employees playing with toys, so we could see how much fun they were. It worked. Bill explored with Will, and I went with Liam. In a half hour we met and compared what the boys wanted. Bill and I each had a remote-controlled clone in our hands. They were very cool little gizmos. The man flying it around the shop landed it on his nose; his expertise showed he had been doing this a while. The drones took the air with lights flashing and four little helicopter blades spinning. The flying toy easily fit in the palm of my hand.

For Thanksgiving supper, we had delicious baguette sandwiches from a coffee shop then walked around the corner to the theater. The magic of live theater, while eating a Wonka chocolate bar, kept the smiles and awe on our faces, just as the drones had done.

From the theater, we hopped aboard a double-decker bus. The the best seats were available – upper deck front row! We imagined we were on the Knight Bus from Harry Potter, white-knuckled as the driver wheeled around some of the tight corners.

When we opened the door to the house around midnight, we were all wired. “Can we try the drones?” Sure, but don’t fly them where there are glass ornaments; don’t fly them in the kitchen. No sooner said did Liam’s drone mistakenly take off from the kitchen table and zip straight up to the ceiling and drop straight back down. Into my hair.

I cringe when I see bats flying around. It probably isn’t a logical fear that they would get caught in my hair. It’s never happened to anyone I know. I also know no one who’d had a drone get caught in their hair. We all laughed. Then Bill had the brilliant thought that perhaps Liam should turn the thing off. So the blades would stop spinning. In my hair. And I noticed that when I turned my head, it hurt. Right in the front at the hairline, one blade was wrapped so tightly it was pulling my scalp.

Serious de-tangling ensued with Bill working as gently as he could to get the four blades out of my hair. “Mom, I’m so, so sorry!” Liam kept saying. “Get the scissors!” Bill directed. “No, you can’t do that!” Liam exclaimed. “I won’t cut much out,” Bill assured.

As for me, I was caught between a grimace and a chortle. Will sat stiffly and watched my face, trying to judge how painful it was. After 15 minutes, I was free of the drone. “Mom, I’m so sorry!” said Liam again. No more drones were flown in the house last night.

Today, we took them to a park. Liam’s wasn’t working very well. Up close, I saw the problem. Hair wrapped around the blades. Black hair. Had I been seconds away from my hair catching light? Or, had another mother with black hair been ensnared before me? Had they then returned it to Hamley’s in the original package to be resold to us?

All in all, Thanksgiving in London was a wonderful time with my family… and as exciting as Thanksgiving 2009... when we set the oven on fire.

Hoping you had a wonderful, relatively uneventful Thanksgiving Day!

(Do you remember the other Reel Hairy Tale?)

Untying the Mother-in-law's Tongue

For years I’ve had one of Grandma Mills' plants: the mother-in-law’s tongue. It has never been that healthy or prolific under my care. I couldn’t even get the leaves to stand up straight. I’ve had wooden chopsticks and twine anchoring up the tall spiked leaves.

They are dark green from age. They look fragile. Tired. I moved the plant to the deck for the summer, and I removed the sticks and the twine. The plant was in a corner where there was room for it to splay its leaves a bit.

A few days later, I hovered over it with the watering can. Looking into the middle of the plant, where all those spikes radiated from, I saw a short, light green point.

In all my attempts to help the plant stand up straight, I had been suffocating it: new growth erupts from the middle. The place I had committed to darkness with the leaves pulled together so tight it kept out any sun or air that might have generated a young spike years ago.

With water, it lived. With the untying of the string, it’s thriving. Multiplying.

My mind spins with the symbolism.

(There is another other heirloom plant in my care, Grandma Murphy's Christmas Cactus: How to Get a Christmas Cactus to Bloom.)

The Drill

The Drill. It sums up last week. Will and Liam had dentist appointments. It was a 25-minute drive to the dentist’s office in the dark early evening rain. In the back seat was a re-hashing of every dentist appointment they could remember. Dentists were demons. Once this was agreed upon, Will and Liam went on to reminisce about strep throat tests. The nurses who did those were also evil, but not the doctor – no, she was really nice. (Well-played, Doctor, throw the nurse under the bus.)

“How long will this take?” Will asked. It’s this 11-year-old’s favorite question. He’s squirming in the waiting room. “Do you want me to come in with you?” I offered. “Only if you don’t restrain me,” he replied with annoyed emphasis on “restrain.” Yes, in the past I have put a full body press on Will and watched cavities filled and sealants applied. About six inches away from the action in Will’s mouth. He knows the drill; I pray I’m not called into restraint service today.

As Will settles into the chair, with book in hand, Liam is guided to the room next door to Will. He also carries a book. I anchor myself against the wall in the hall giving me full vision to both of the open rooms, chair backs facing me. Liam wiggles and giggles as the hygienist straps the bib around his neck. Once in place, he reads. When the dentist comes in, he notices the tools on cords. “Are you going to harm me?” Liam pointedly asks the dentist. He sees the drill; and again, I pray I’m not called into restraint service today.

Will’s cleaning is quick. He lurks in the waiting room and at my side still with the question, “How long will this take?” Liam is having sealants put on the back molars. The dentist sweetly says, “If your tongue goes over there again, we’ll have to start all over. Keep that curious tongue away!” Now I'm silently asking, "How long will this take?" I’m offered a seat near Liam. Really, I just want to stay against that wall, thinking how pleasant it would be if there was a hook for my collar, so when I feel weak in the knees I would still look strong standing against that wall, er, hooked onto that wall.

Finally, squiggly Liam is released. Bounding out of the chair, he laughs in the face of evil, “YES, I’M INVINCIBLE!” I’m not. In two hours, I’ve relived their childhood dental drama which has brought on flashbacks of my childhood dental drama. If they only knew what it used to be like. Leaving the building, I feel as heavy as the Nor’easter soaking us.

The van chat on the way home switches to the School Lock-Down drill. Will had his earlier in the week. Liam’s is the following day, and he missed the day of school that they practiced for it. I was obliged to prepare him. “You’ll be practicing what to do in case there is ever a dangerous situation in the school. The most important thing to remember is to listen well and do exactly what your teacher tells you.” Will embellished. “Yeah, someone came over the loud speaker and said, ‘The intruder is on the main stairs.’ And we were nowhere near there, so our class left the building.” Liam picks up on the word intruder. “Was there a real one at your school, Will?”

I grew up with tornado drills: preparing for a freak of nature. I struggle explaining the complexities of a Lock-Down drill. I remind myself that they learn this drill as a protective measure. It should give a bit of comfort, but it's a freak of nature less easy to understand than the tornado.

By the end of the day, we have lived the definitions of drill: as the known routine of how an event was previously carried out, as a tool that makes holes, and as training for a “what-if” scenario.

I’m fatigued by the English language. As in exhausted. Not as in dressed for war.

Happy Hump Day.

How is it that our kids went to bed at 10:30 last night?

One more. One sec. And it’s 10 p.m. Peeling them out of the house in the morning is like pulling four pieces of chewing gum off the bottom of my shoe. Only it’s accompanied by growls.

One shower lasted 15 minutes. “One sec.” “One sec.” “One sec.” Consequently, I put away the cereal, bowl, spoon, and milk. I knew it would be a granola-bar-in-the-car morning. Or no breakfast at all because, after all, how can one eat anything with the taste of toothpaste in one’s mouth? It ruins the taste of all food.

I’m a morning person. My candle burns low after 8 p.m., which is when I begin as the caller of this square dance, calling each move four times – finish your homework, put your homework in your backpack, put the books on the shelf, put your Bakugans away, brush your teeth, floss your teeth, wash your face, go to the bathroom, pick up your clothes, give me the book and the light under the sheets. Then, I just want to lie in peace for an hour. Until 11:00. And that makes me a night person. Unhappy when my alarm goes off at 6:00 a.m. to be a morning person.

When I try my “Good morning, hun, your alarm went off. It’s time to get up,” it falls on ears of children that went to bed at 10:30. The utterance of these words fall harshly on non-morning children. I’m ignored or grunted and growled at. One grunts a pained “mmmmmm.” The other growls a guttural “rrrrrrrrr.”

While I goaded Liam this morning with ten minutes to get to school and a multitude of tasks undone, Liam leisurely explained that “it doesn’t take that long to get to school.” Yes, yes. So true. Wait right here – let me just warm up the Mom-mobile and get my super cape on so that I can fly you there.” Honestly, I want to be late enough one day that we don’t make it on time. I want him to explain to the teacher why we are late. I want him to give MY explanation (15-minute shower) NOT his (Mom). A broken strategy.

Perhaps I need a reward system, for my words fail me. Before I embark on another one of those, I’m going with two-word utterances in the morning. Directives. Unarguable. Because I’m the Mom. “Shower. Now.” “Dress. Now.” “Eat. Now.”

My attempt at pleasantries with supporting reasons “why” are lost.  The words of reason are swallowed on the sound waves like those of Charlie Brown’s teacher, even though there are only two feet between me and those young ears.

My gut says this two-word strategy may work. This morning, I landed at school with the other Mom-mobiles double-parked – their capes flying out their windows. Rather than saying “have a great day,” “we are here,” “put the book down” and other niceties, I used two words briskly spaced. “Get. Out.” Immediate action. “Backpack. Lunch bag.” And out the door he went. Two minutes after the bell had rung, but 30 seconds before the last kid entered the school.

Happy Hump Day.

Pebbles Upon a Stone

I don't run.   I don't jog.  I walk.  And Tuesday,  out of the walking routine, I wandered.  Wearing pants with no pockets, I carried my phone. The wander turned into a 5k meander.  The phone became a camera.

Many years ago Bill and I went with friends to Belize and spent a week on a live-aboard scuba diving boat.  The ocean was our backyard.  The swim deck was always open, and we relied on our dive computers to beep and tell us when it was safe to return to the water.  We had to be on deck for so long to let the nitrogen leave our bodies before safely diving again.  We dove at night as well.  For the first few nights, I followed the group looking for nocturnal lobster.  Bored with that nightly hunt, I turned my attention to the boat's photographer.

Charlie had an impressive camera and barely moved 15 feet along the ocean wall while everyone else chased lobsters.  On about the fourth night dive, I asked if I could tag along with him.  The abundance of nocturnal macro-life on the ocean wall was astounding.  Most memorable was a basket sea star that had unfurled its tendrils to find dinner.  I'm still in awe of the myriad of life in the 3x3-foot sections of wall we covered that night.

My walk today was that kind of journey.  I have been on this particular path many times.  Even though the sky was gray, the fall colors were bright.  The scenic view was beautiful but hard to capture.  Little tidbits sometimes paint the best picture of the whole.

I passed the Jewish cemetery and noticed small stones and pebbles on many of the headstones.  My first thought was that kids had stole into the cemetery and deposited these, but the rocks were orderly and seemed purposely placed.

At the end of my photo journey and back at the house, I looked for an explanation on-line and discovered that it's tradition for Jews to lay stones on the graves of loved ones.  The original rationale for this tradition varies from a grave marker before head stones were used to holding the spirits of loved ones in the grave longer.  Today, placing a stone is a sign of respect and a way to honor the memory of a loved one.

Unlike flowers, stones are timeless, solid, and strong.

50 Miles a Day

50 miles a day.  That’s what the trip meter says in the van.  That’s not equivalent to 50 minutes driving on an open highway in the Midwest.  The conversion of mileage to time is in hours. I believe I once purchased Dragon software, which is voice recognition software – I talk and it types.  Would it work in the van?  Could I write while I drive when those fleeting thoughts pop and I feel a story come on?  Or would it end up in cryptic one-liners?

“Hi Kathy, when I dropped Liam off at your house, I noticed Jennifer was in her formal pinafore for mass.  Could you please tuck in Liam’s shirt before you leave for school?  I think that will do.”  One minute later: “Hi.  It’s me again.  Liam doesn’t have a stuffed animal to be blessed today.  Could he borrow one from Jennifer?”  The teacher sent photos of the class with their favorite stuffed animals.  They were adorable, including Liam in the front row with the borrowed panda.

Last Monday’s early email from Will: “Trumpet!”  The previous Monday’s early email: “Trumpet!”  11-mile return round-trips.

“Mom, we haven’t used our dining room in a long time,” Will’s observation.  Summer eating al fresco has ended.  I’ve invited friends for dinner Sunday evening.  A sure fire way to get the table cleared.  Except, they are old friends… they wouldn’t be overwhelmed by the dining room piles and would be fine eating in the kitchen.  I might need new friends to accomplish the clearing.

“You’ve lost your electronics privilege for Friday!”  I regret it every time those frustrated words fly out of my mouth.  Liam begged for a way to retrieve that privilege.  I gave him an option: Write a letter to Mom.  Think about good things and the Golden Rule.  “You’ve talked about the Golden Rule in school, haven’t you?”  A glum ‘yes’ was the reply.  The assignment specifics: One full type-written page, Arial font – because I love that font, font-size 14, single-spaced.  “I can’t do this!”  But he did, with a little coaching.  It was a lovely letter.  “Now, at the end of the letter write what you learned.”   A one-liner appeared.  “I can’t hate people.  I can hate broccoli.”  Liam saved the file as “mom’s punishment.”  I told him I would have titled it “mom’s learning tool.”

No matter where the errands and drop-offs are or what the conversation is in the van, the road home is the same.  It’s a glorious road, and it’s the one daily constant in the routine of the week’s driving.  I drive it slowly and stop to take pictures.   “The Holly and the Ivy” tune runs through my head with the words “The Turkeys and the Ivy...”

Here's to fall driving.

We Believe

Will’s school issued iPads to all students, so occasionally I get an email from him during the day. Last week… Will: “I forgot my pencil case! The only place I will get in trouble is religion.” Me: “Why religion?” Will: “I need red and black pens.” Me: “Do you have your colored pencils? If so, use a red one and a black one for religion. If not, ask someone if you can borrow pens.” Will: “Thanks!”

This week was more complicated.

The email from Will read, “I forgot we believe for religion.”

Well, we haven’t been going to church for a while. We joined one church when we moved here 10 years ago but have since occasionally been attending another church. Mild panic. Was Will the only kid who couldn’t readily identify his religion?

I sent an email specifying what religion we are and where we have been going to church. To which, there was no reply.

While Skyping Mom that evening, I mentioned to her the dilemma Will had had at school. Will was eavesdropping and immediately corrected me. “Mom, I know our religion! I forgot my book for religion!”

“There was no mention of a book in the email.”

It was a disjointed email because Will had omitted the word “what.” However, I was able to read between the lines: “I forgot what we believe for religion.” Where would book fit in here?

“Look, Mom... I said, ‘I forgot we believe for religion.’” He showed me the book.

We Believe logo"Cap-it-al-i-za-tion, Will! Grammar is EVERYTHING!"

I would like to give the same message to the graphic artists who designed the book cover.

How to Get a Christmas Cactus to Bloom

With nights that dip into the low 40’s, the house plants that have spent the summer on our porch deck are moving inside. I only have a few plants, and I call them heirloom plants: two mother-in-law tongues from Grandma Mills, one climbing vine from Granddad Mill's funeral, one giant Christmas cactus from Grandma Murphy, and one "puppy" Christmas cactus started from that giant. The oldest of these plants is a matriarch. The big Christmas cactus from Grandma Murphy. When she left the farm and moved into an apartment in town, the cactus and the walnut stand where it perches moved to Illinois with me. Its tendrils bloomed beautifully in Grandma’s house. Bunches and bunches of pink flowers.

These are the bits of trivia I gleaned from Grandma: Give it castor oil in October and leave it root-bound. Grandma estimated that it must have been at least 125 years old. It belonged to her mother long before it moved into Grandma’s house. We did that math more than ten years ago.

In my care, I’m happy to say it stayed green and had an occasional bud in Illinois. Then, nothing. Perhaps because I didn’t believe in the castor oil tale. Or perhaps because one year I tried olive oil instead – I thought Grandma said any oil would work.

I drove this cactus and 15 other houseplants 1,600 miles to Massachusetts with Will when he was two, nine years ago. Since then it has sat stubbornly in our bedroom, braced itself through construction dust two years ago, and lived one summer on the porch deck in the shade.

Last spring, I had to do something. It didn’t look healthy. The 135-year-old limbs were wedged into the pot. Had it ever been re-potted?

I bought a pot double the size of what it was in. Then I looked at that new pot for a couple weeks. Dare I do it?  I lifted the terracotta pot out of the basket.

I was inspired.  The terracotta pot was beautiful.  In all the years I had the cactus, I had never seen this pot.  If I lost the cactus as a result of this re-potting, I still had this pot, but unfortunately, none of its history.  Had Grandma ever seen this hand-painted piece of art?

Why is the thought of re-potting more complicated than the actual job? In minutes I had dropped the root-bound old lady...

into fresh dirt and placed her on the table...

...and she still looked miserable.

Then summer happened, and she could not spew shiny new leaves fast enough! Really, really beautiful.

If she was putting all that effort into growing over the summer, I felt obliged to work out what she needed when she came inside.

Some days I don’t know where my time goes, but I know last week I spent a good hour scouring the internet trying to find the secret: “how to get a Christmas cactus to bloom.” The most concise and scientific information was from one horticulturist who gloated that if you know what you are doing, it’s really not that difficult. Light and temperature are key.

Christmas cacti rely on the light of the environment to determine when to bloom. Photoperiodism. To force blooms, and to put photoperiodism into motion, the cactus needs 12 hours of absolute darkness for 6 – 8 weeks before she will bloom. Sources give sound advice: move it into a dark closet or bathroom every night and bring it out every morning. This particular matriarch fills nearly 3 x 3 feet of cubic space. Lugging her around morning and night won’t work.

Christmas cacti rely on cool nights – ideally 50 – 55 degrees – for the same period of time that it is dark. Reading this reminded me how cold Grandma’s extra bedroom used to be. The main fall guest was this cactus.  In our house, between the baseboard heating in one zone of the first floor and the radiant heat in the other zone, temps rarely drop below 70 degrees.

Discussions were held with Bill and the Laundry Maven. Bill nor I were completely convinced we could close off a hallway for eight weeks to give this matriarch a nice dark space. Bill suggested putting her in the laundry room. The Laundry Maven bulked, saying she spends half her life in there… and now to work around this? Impossible!

The Laundry Maven’s open plan laundry room has been reduced to a walk-in & back-out galley-style laundry room. It’s like doing laundry with a happy green English sheep dog gently nudging your back side.

But allowances must be made. For 6 – 8 weeks.

Nightly at 6 p.m., I slide the hallway door to the laundry room shut in order to block the light from HRC (Her Royal Cactus).  (The Laundry Maven needs to remember to get that evening load of wash going before 6 p.m.)  I have cut, flattened, and taped two brown paper bags together trying to create a kind of blanket for her to block light from the other end of the hallway that leads to the kitchen. I need at least two more bags as this blanket only covers the top third of her. Early this morning, I saw the light from our neighbor’s back porch from the laundry room window. Can this sleeping beauty see it? Does it distract her? If only she could say… I could get a pole, lodge it between two shelves, and hang a temporary curtain.

The first night I cranked the small window wide open to give her fresh air. To make the air she breathes below 55 degrees. I closed the baseboard heater in the laundry room. When my alarm went off at 6:00, I hit a thermocline half-way down the stairs. My tired head immediately calculated adjustments to help the Malcolms and HRC acclimate to one another: crank the window shut a bit and turn the heat on in all zones. The second morning, the brisk chill was limited to the laundry room.

Where the Laundry Maven, in bare feet and summer PJ's, starts her day transferring clothes to the dryer.

Where a lovable green sheep dog – and her pup --  greet the in-direct sunlit day.

It’s Week 1, Day 5.

This grand matriarch is high-maintenance.

(Moving from my family's plants to those on the St. Maarten butterfly farm... Still Enough for a Butterfly to Land)

White After Labor Day

Have you noticed how quiet the Laundry Maven has been? She was busy last weekend.  It was the white load washed on Saturday night, to be dried Sunday morning, that made her head spin a bit.

In that load were two favorite pairs of summer trousers: khaki and white.  And as they went into the washer, she wondered if it was time to put the white ones into storage until spring.  Was it okay to wear white after Labor Day?  Sunday morning as she pulled clothes from the washer, the words “winter white” confirmed her decision: white would be perfectly fine to wear to church that morning.

Pulling out the pants, the Laundry Maven noticed a pea-sized black spot on the back of the pants.  Reaching for the stain remover, her mind easily switched to the idea of khakis for church.  It was a sign – no white today.

Mave turned the pants around to check the front and was confronted by multiple huge black blobs.  She instantly knew she had washed an ink pen.  From Will’s uniform shorts.  She hadn’t checked pockets.  And, she hadn’t told Will that she never checks pockets.

Timidly, Mave pulled item after item out of the washer and gave each a quick shake to check for more ink spots.  Nothing.  The two pair of uniform shorts came out.  Nothing.  Perfectly fine.

Bravely those white pants had sacrificed themselves and enveloped completely around that ink pen.  Bless them.  Their summer season ended as the school season began.

Mave felt incredibly lucky but sad.  The pants had only been worn a handful of times.  But the Malcolms are recyclers.  Will and Liam have grand ideas of turning them into puppets.  However, after looking through pictures from an outing to Cape Cod this summer, Mave may hand them off to the gardener in the house come spring.

Mave is checking pockets from now on.

School Lunch with a Crunch

Yesterday on the ride home from a friend’s house, Liam firmly stated that he did not want chocolate and sardines packed in his school lunch.  I agreed to his request. I had no idea what he was talking about.

I have re-vamped lunches this year. Will and Liam like foods that crunch. Their senses are centered and their focus is sharpened by goldfish, carrots, apples, pretzels, and potato chips. Liam washes down the crunch with his chocolate soy milk. Will gulps Gatorade and gets a protein hit from the insulated bag I have waiting for him in the car after school: Cheese slices snuggled up against an ice block.

They love cold, cold cheese, preferably right out of the fridge. They haven’t developed the taste for room temperature cheese. Eating sweaty cheese out of a lunch bag? I might as well be packing chocolate and sardines. Yesterday, I discovered that a slice of bologna sweats in a lunch box just like cheese does. And, sweaty bologna comes home untouched.

To decompress myself from lunch stress, I’ve taken a step back and acknowledged what history has shown. Liam might remember to eat one or two things as he’s chatting with his friends at lunch time. Starving after school, he demands food. I open his lunch box and there is his 3 p.m. lunch. As for Will, he prefers food in smaller doses. Recognizing hunger, he grabs food throughout the day and appreciates that cold snack in the van. Will & Liam eat to live.

Neither boys eat sandwiches. As a kid, I depended on that wonderful bologna sandwich for lunch. On white buttered bread with ketchup. And for pure decadence, if there were plain potato chips in my lunch, I tucked them into the sandwich, on the ketchup side.  I loved that crunch.

Crunch. That reminds me... A friend picked Liam up from school yesterday, and she offered me a kind of homemade toffee that was heavenly. To make it, she covered saltine crackers with butter and sugar and chocolate. The microwaved result was chocolate-covered toffee!

Ahhh... 0therwise known as chocolate and “sardines.”

Crunch box(Do you have suggestions for a crunchy lunch?  Please, please, find this big yellow box on my Facebook page and leave your suggestions in the comments!)

from summer to fall with a pocketful of prayer

From the outside, I may have wavy hair but on the inside, I’m sporting the Rosanne-Roseannadanna look: frizzled bushy hair standing straight out. The back-to-school factory went into full production at 6:00 this morning. Two different breakfasts, three different lunches, two fully-equipped backpacks. One bowl drawer filled only with lids. One snack drawer overflowing to the point of not shutting. Two different school uniforms all tried on -- except for one belt.

One last-minute realization that Liam had never operated a belt before left one worst-case scenario screaming through this one mother's head.

Bill left for school with Will at 7:15. I completed drop-off and flag ceremony at Liam’s school at 8:30.

One 30-minute lull before the library opened meant a cup of coffee and a heated-up omelet. In peace. That wasn’t easy, for there were two of me prattling on this morning: one wondered what I could clean-up in 30 minutes and the other told me to be still for 30 minutes.

My coffee mug has a chip out of the rim, just to the right of where I drink from it. I put up with the chip because I love the mug. Black tree branches radiate from the bottom of the handle. The branches are sparsely populated with bright red maple leaves.

We have been out on the thin end of that branch called summer. It started with a strong surge of freedom and ended with a push to the end of the branch where we splintered precariously. To get the most out of summer. Before it retreated.

With the boys both at new schools, the underlying edge is only somewhat smoothed with the first days of drop-off being behind us. The urge to swoop and rescue them from uncertainty started in my gut, raged through my heart, and stopped short of my tongue. For the last two days, at two different schools, this urge landed mysteriously as a supportive smile on my lips as they walked away. That's how motherhood flows.

As I drink my coffee, I take a walk down that branch of summer back to the stability of thicker branches at the base of the handle. And, I make a tight turn to that solid branch called fall. But my legs are still shaking from summer. Or caffeine.

I think of days when I have been strong, full of courage, and solidly grounded. Five years ago, I was moving through life with a pocketful of prayer. Today, I get that tool, use it, and put it in my pocket. Most of that prayer is still apt today. But I’ve added just a couple bits:

“Every day, may our minds grow and our hearts stay full.

And, please, let the bowl drawer, the lunch bags, and the uniforms be organized, full, and complete.”

I think He understands little things like this.

(This was inspired by Power & Prayer, written during chemo treatment for breast cancer in 2009.)