We had a lot of fun this morning with that Elvis wig. While The Boy and The Baby have had their outfits for weeks, it was only a few days ago that they were allowed to try the various bits and pieces on, to see if anything needed to be taken in, let out or repaired. And just that one time.

This morning, The Father grabbed the Elvis wig, pulled it on and Girl snapped a photo. No, we won’t be showing that here, even though it is a great photo. The Father being a tycoon of industry and all of that, dontcha know. But The Girl used a funny angle ( read : lazy, elbows on the kitchen table to snap a subject who is 6 foot 4) and The Father looks just like an Elvis impersonator out of a Stephen King nightmare.

Once decked out, The Boy and The Baby whirled about in their outfits, very excited, very pleased. I took a photo of The Boy, it is on my computer, a prisoner of Zenda.

I don’t know what happened between this morning and a few hours later, when I went to pick up The Baby and bring her home. I bumped into a crumpled The Boy, a listless The Boy, a The Boy who was in some place that parents dread. I didn’t ask him anything, he had hours to go before he came home, and so I just chatted with him. This and that, chew the fat.

Once I left him at the school playground, all that I wanted was for him to be home again, away from that place he was caught in. I told The Father about what I had encountered and he said, well, when you have kids, you want to protect them from everything, but at a certain point, you just can’t anymore. Later, he said that it hurt him as well. And still later, he commented upon a society which demands that one hides one’s heart, one’s feelings. A society that demands that one builds defenses all about oneself.

I myself stared out of the car window, trying to think of the perfect phrase for how I felt at that moment. I found the phrase, but it seems to make no sense, although it is indeed the phrase of my choice : I felt as though my heart was being sliced away by paper cuts.

Later in the evening, I did finally ask The Boy how his day was, and he said fine, nice. I asked him why he seemed so sad at lunch and he simply said that he was thinking.

Couldn’t remember about what, though.

Elvis glasses : check
Elvis wig : check
White Elvis Jumpsuit : check

Princess doo- dads : check

Noisy things for the
parade of noise : check

We seem to be armed and ready, attributes set out for tomorrow morning, let the holiday* begin….

* bits in English : here

At dinner, The Girl passes on a prime bit of gossip and a dilemma that I suppose I am going to have to solve. But not right now, not this very minute. As she was telling me about her day, I realized that things were going really, really well for her at the manege, and deep in my heart I have always believed that being a Horsey Girl is totally incompatible with becoming a Hell’s Angel Babe.

As well as caring for Bennie, she was also asked by two other people to help them with their horses : this means that she has three horses that she can ride and take lessons on, whenever she wants. I was surprised that she now helps with Appie, for the Head Horsey Girl always helped with Appie. It leads me to believe that the powers that be at the manege think well of The Girl. Of course, I could say, sure, she is free labor, but that is not how the horsey world turns when one is 12. When one is 12, one usually has to pay someone for the honor of helping out with their horse.

Why, well done, The Girl. She even gets along with the owner of the manege these days and the various teachers there. She seems to have found a pleasant niche of her own and I find myself both happy for her and, well, proud of her. The Girl is thought of as being a steady , reliable and competent person to help out with horses.

Back to the dilemma. Advice would be welcome. It seems that one of my sister- in- laws is about to be banned from the manege. She and The Father’s brother are those kind of people that are.always.late. The Girl’s cousin is always.late for his horse riding lesson and as they rush in, The Girl’s Aunt tells her, basically, to drop whatever she is doing and saddle that pony up for The Girl’s cousin. And then The Girl’s Aunt starts a row with one or another of the powers that be at the manege.

If you know even the wee bit that I do about the horsey world, saddling up and taking care of your pony are considered to be very important elements of your horsey education. And I know The Girl well enough to know that while she probably sent evil wishes in her Aunt’s direction, nasty looks under lowered lashes, she would not be overtly rude when she says that she is busy and cannot help at the moment ( I have banged it into her head over and over to never, ever be rude to her Aunt).

But it is obvious that The Girl dislikes this intrusion into her special world of her own. At this point, I’m sortof agreeing with her, she is not obligated to drop what she is doing to help saddle up his pony ( they have been late every week for the last two years), but I do insist that she keep a civil tongue in her head.

Yup, seems I’m leaning towards telling a 12 year old she doesn’t have to obey an elder, that she is allowed to have… free will.

Doesn’t this sound like something that is going to come back to me and knock me on my ass, wanting her to have a ( polite) disregard for authority figures ?

Before The Father left for a two day trip to France this morning ( no, wait : technically speaking, he was here this morning and technically speaking he will be here tomorrow evening, and so- technically speaking- he will have been here both days, not gone at all…) he drove to the office and picked up Richard and brought him here.

But that isn’t how one spells Richard, for Richard is polish, so I think that there is a z in there somewhere, perhaps even a y and- who knows- even the strong possibility that there are no vowels at all in his name. I can say these sorts of things, for my Mother’s polish last name was so complicated that someone flung their hat up into the air at some point in time and said, eh, your name is Rogers from now on.

We have been doing business with Richard since we lived in the apartment, so at least since 1988. Some church group that our neighbors knew were trying to help the poor little Polish people and so we met up with Richard, and his textile company, back in the days when there was a wall and border crossings and stamps stamped onto one’s passport.

Why, his daughter ( plus a friend) even spent a summer here once, in Casa Kitchen, about 10 years ago. Now I am going to say another politically incorrect thing : his daughter was / is a bulimic, I had a two year old and a new born,and I spent my days refilling our larder when she was here, how that child ate . She gave new meaning to the worn out cliche eating us out of house and home.

She works at Disney World in Florida now. Not that that means anything one way or another.

But that is all long ago and far away. So, this morning, Richard , The Father and I are sitting around the table in the kitchen. Richard speaks very good Polish , very good Russian and very poor German. Hey, very poor German is just the sort of German that I can follow. The Father speaks German perfectly, but stoops down to our level. It is rather fun. Especially when The Father turns to me and starts talking to me in his simplified version of German, and after a few words his eyes are telling me, why am I speaking German to you, of all people ? And then he wonders for a moment what to do- continue, or change channels…

Suppose three languages at one kitchen table, early in the morning, is a bit much.

But it is all arranged. As well as manufacturing clothing, Richard also has a construction company. He made the double glazed windows on the back of the house, as well as various hard stone bits and pieces that we needed. So while the children and I loaf about in Alabama, breeze down to Destin, a crew of painters shall move into the third floor. Two bedrooms, their own bath, a sitting area, they will paint our house inside and out.

Old friends…

I suppose that Karen was one of the first people that I met on line ( and still know) and I am following her pregnancy with many trips down memory lane.

I really, really try to keep my mouth shut at her place, because, well, I know that I am jaded. Experience wore down those bright, excited edges, blurred the memory of stepping into unknown waters.

When The Girl slid into this world, everything a newborn could possibly desire ( according to the books) was within her reach. She had a little bath in her bedroom, a handmade baby quilt on her bed. The Father picked the wallpaper for her room, I painted the beams on her ceiling bright yellow. How easy it is to forget how new and exciting that all was.

I have the material for The Baby’s baby quilt here in my little room of my own, various shades of purple. She will get it. Some day. And she will love it, as The Girl and The Boy ( he received his when he was about 4) do. Now.

There was no room for The Baby to slide into, she slept with me, she slept with The Girl, she slept with The Boy until all of the building permits came through and the long haul began.

The Baby now has a lovely, spacious room, complete with a beamed ceiling and an antique iron bed. But she hates sleeping alone and so does The Girl. Long ago we gave up trying to force them to sleep alone.

Afraid of washing a tiny, slippery baby on my own, The Father always bathed the children when they were infants. The baby bath in The Girl’s room gathered dust, once we discovered that popping the baby in the bath with The Father gave all so much pleasure and quality time together. I have many memories of The Father and babies in the bath together, The Father singing My Bonnie Lies Over The Ocean to a tiny clone of himself.

I never even contemplated breast feeding or cloth diapers, poor The Baby slept in an open suitcase on the floor when we took her to Italy at 5 months old. I never wanted natural childbirth, although I had to go that way twice and wept bitter, bitter tears when it looked like The Baby would be natural as well.

I am jaded and so try to keep my mouth shut, not say that babies are really tough little buggers, tiresome little buggers, and that you never experience any love like that you feel when you see your baby for the first time.

Then they become teenagers.

But under all of the rubbish, that pure and fine filament of love always remains, connecting you back to the baby long gone.

The Girl just called me, totally upset. She says that her teacher is lying about
her again and she can prove it. To tell the truth, after that whole blow- up
about how The Girl was supposed to have threatened the very same girl that she
shopped with two days later, I find that her teacher is losing credibility in
my eyes.

Mummy Dearest

Only King Arthur knows for sure.

Send good thoughts to Joy.

She has one stinker of a weekend ahead of her.

Lately, I have found myself asking this question quite often. I am beginning to find my answers interesting.

For example, I put quite a bit of cash on the table in order to get that photo of Virginia Carbis.

On the other hand, while I want a used microfilm reader, I don’t think that I would spend more than 40 euro for one. I’m thinking that maybe The Father’s business buddy in Poland could find me a good used one. Cheap.

And now I want some decent American flour, the kind that I can use with one of my mother’s recipes and it actually turns out like what she placed before me, long ago and far away. I want to bake cookies that are not flat as communion wafers, bagels that weigh less than 4 pounds each, banana bread which doesn’t have that grainy, corn-bready oma cake texture.

Yup, once again I am standing on a high precipice, overlooking a landscape filled with dreams ,and being whispered into my ear is How much would you pay….?

This week became immensely easier to handle when The Babys forehead returned to normal temps last night and she went off to school this morning, leaving only The Boy – an oddly pale The Boy, with patches of flush upon his face and looking suddenly very thin- at home.

At dinner, The Boy commented upon how many things I do during the day, when I am not bogged down with my job as head referee. He had a day behind the scenes, seeing the laundry being washed and folded, the beds made up, shopping done, meals prepared, copies of a movie made for Opa , me ironing up a mess of pieced work and on and on.

We watched the skating together, very exciting.

It was nice, though, to have someone comment upon the things that I do, not that I feel unappreciated. More, I feel guilty when I indulge in my hobbies and distractions, instead of , oh, say, scrubbing the kitchen floor or mucking out the shed.

His few words, said at the dinner table, almost encourage me to buy a second hand microfilm scanner. They only run about 20 euro ( they are coming out of old East Germany) and Kentucky does sell copies of microfilm.

My family must love me very much indeed, for even my father, last night on the phone, encouraged me to continue to look for Robert.

And the perfect ending to a peaceful day after a a harried week, we spotted the first flower in our yard.

We all went out and admired the tiny white bloom, our promise of summer.