My kid picked up Miss Cloud this afternoon, only to have her twist around in his arms, unmistakably asking that I be the one to hold her. “Does she think you’re her mother?” he asked me. I told him I didn’t know, but that she did seem to think I represented safety.
“That’s because you’re the mom-magnet” quoth he in response. “If anything thinks it needs a mom, it comes and finds you.”
I can’t argue with that.
Next Saturday a few of us are hosting a bridal shower for a very close friend. The event and 90% of the guests (including the bride) are in Indianapolis, so I took charge of the baking. That can easily be done at a distance, and even more importantly, it’s what I’m really, really good at. So, having finally managed to clear sufficient space in the freezer, I got started on the preparations yesterday.
I’ve made brownies. That sounds very simple, and it is, except that I made mini-cupcake-sized individual bites out of them. I’ve made a batch of flourless peanut butter cookies. (At least one of the guests is gluten-intolerant.) I went and acquired the necessary ingredients for the rest of the baking – a lemon yeast bread that is amazing with cream cheese and toffee bars with almond meal instead of flour as the binder in the crust, and the best extra-dark chocolate I could find for the top. That will leave me only the cake to make, and I still haven’t decided what it should be. I can make either my grandmother’s Sunshine Cake (a citrus sponge cake) or a chocolate angel food cake.
Hmm. Decisions, decisions. I have to make this one by Thursday.
I’ve replaced my cell phone with the next generation of the one I had. I debated it, but in the end decided to get the one with the features I wanted that actually best fit my hand. I looked at a slide model, but the woman helping me told me those were quite fragile, which will not do at all. I looked at some PDA/phones as well, but really, what’s the point? I can use the one I got for reminders and the few text messages I send, and my schedule is no longer so full that I need an electronic brain. Were I still in full-time practice, it would be another matter, but I’m not. Likewise if my son were involved in numerous after-school activities that required I keep track of them, but he’s not either. Those things for which I have to be on schedule happen daily, and so are easy to keep track of.
The replacement process took about four times longer than I thought it would, but I did not grudge the time. What took so long was the staff’s efforts to get my phone list copied to the new phone. It took them 4 or 5 tries. I lost count, but I’m very grateful that they didn’t give up. So I haven’t lost my list of contacts. Now if I can just get my photos to transfer to my computer when the phone’s keyboard doesn’t work, I’ll be able even happier.
Those whom I call, on a regular or even an irregular basis, do not expect to hear from me over the next several days. My cell phone, the one with everyone’s phone number in it, died abruptly. The keyboard simply stopped responding between one call and another, over a space of at most five minutes.
I may well be e-mailing to ask for phone numbers again as well. It depends on what else the phone collapse took with it.
To say this has been a frustrating day would be a huge understatement.
My husband and I have a routine we use when one of us is having a bad time of it, and worried about how the other will react. “I listened to the rabbi very carefully” the one responding will say “and I didn’t hear anything about ‘except when she’s in a rotten mood’ or ‘except when he’s impatient’”, or whatever the issue might be.
We stood there listening to that rabbi twenty years ago today, and we still haven’t thought of any exceptions. We’ve been through things I’ve seen break many couples up – medical crises, professional crises, career changes, financial crises, infertility and adoption, a child who turned out to have a disability, a year of living mostly apart…the list goes on, and through it all we took care of each other instead of fighting with each other.
I remember being single, but it’s a distant thing, almost like a tale heard rather than lived, certainly a thing my imagination can no longer encompass except in the most abstract way. Shortly before our wedding, someone asked me if I was sure we would be able to handle stressful events. I responded that we’d already been through the bar exam, two job hunts, living four hours apart, a boss from hell, setting up a legal practice and several moves, and that if we could survive all of that we would survive anything else the fates chose to throw at us. It appears that assessment was accurate. We have managed not only to survive, but to thrive; to remain married not out of inertia, but because we genuinely want to and work at it.
It’s been twenty years. Had I my life to do over, I would do it again in a heartbeat. But we don’t have to – we got it right the first time.
Last summer and fall, we had to be careful lest little Miss Cloud slip outside on voyages of exploration any time a door opened.She managed it a few times, to be outwitted by age and treachery and returned to the house each time. She tried twice in the course of the winter, each time getting something she hadn’t bargained for. The first time she gleefully launched herself past my ankles and over the steps as my son was going to get on the bus, only to land shoulder-deep in the first serious snow of the winter. She froze motionless for an instant, then before I could decide whether to endure a moment of snow in slippers, got herself back inside in what I can only describe as an act of levitation. After that she looked carefully, and if the ground was white she did not venture forth.
Her second winter attempt was, if anything, a ruder shock than the first had been. It looked like it should be safe. Trouble was, it had thawed and the ground was completely saturated, so that the front yard was in essence a shallow lake concealed by grass. And once again, in a bid to escape faster than human intervention could prevent, she scooted around my ankles and leaped past the steps….to splash down belly deep in very cold, very wet water. I didn’t see her move that time either; one instant she was frozen in shock, and the next she was in mid-air, facing back the way she’d come and diving back into the house without bothering with the steps. There are two of them, and I swear she did not set paw on them going in either direction. Since then she has gone to the door and sniffed, but has not tried to pass the threshold.
On the other hand, she is our one-cat welcoming committee, greeting any human that comes to the door with trills and mews of urgent conversation. So today when someone came, I thought I would introduce her. I picked her up in my arms and carried her out, standing just outside that door.
She was Not Happy. She started wriggling as soon as I started to walk out the door. When it became apparent that what she was trying to do was attain the ultimate safe haven of my shoulders, I let her. She wrapped herself around my neck and trembled as the visitor gave her a hand to sniff and a little bit of petting, and when I opened the door and crouched down, dove back inside with as much alacrity as she had ever shown in her escape attempts. Outside is obviously treacherous and far too big for her liking now; somewhere in that walnut sized brain, she’s decided that feline nirvana consists in being an inside kitty. I don’t know if we’ll get renewed attempts at exploration when the weather gets warm, but for now, she is answering the Call of the Tame.
I’m finally beginning to feel like I might possibly have some of my usual energy. It took me most of last week to make my son a pirate shirt. That’s a project so simple I don’t have or need a pattern, one that generally takes half a day to complete if I make mistakes or the sewing machine goofs me up. I made only one such error, and the new machine made the whole thing easier than I had ever known it could be, and it still took me a week. Then yesterday I finally got started on the other half of his Purim costume, a brocade cape-tabard, finished it in about 2 hours, and made a double batch of hamentaschen for today’s Hebrew School Purim carnival. I thought they came out a bit salty (that’s what I get for following the recipe as written, I guess), but judging by the rate at which they vanished, other people thought well of them.
Our son has gotten the idea (with cause) that any time he wants or needs a costume, Mom will go up to the attic and cause one to materialize. This time he wanted to go as King Ahasuerus, which had me thinking “Ok…oriental prince. Flashy. Ostentatiously rich. Elaborate fabric.” followed by “where did I put the brocade?” I found it and pulled out a length of metallic gold paisley for the outermost layer of costume. So there he was – green pants, white puff-sleeved shirt, and golden cape-tabard. One of the local teens saw it today, and commented “Wow. Lord of the Rings meets Three Musketeers. Only you, Alisa.” I just grinned. For myself I just grabbed the nearest SCA/ Ren-Faire dress in my closet. I was quite surprised to get both as much comment as my son, and a suggestion that I sell similar dresses at the Temple craft fair in May. It’s a good idea, but I think I’d better plan to do it next year. I have enough going on presently that the prospect of making enough of those outfits in a range of sizes in a bit over a month is very daunting indeed. It’s also quite a compliment.
But the best praise of all came from my son. He tried on his costume in all its glory and gaudiness for the first time yesterday, looked at it in the mirror, and came back to hug me and announce “Mom, you ROCK!”
Every spring, without fail, I resolve to avoid my annual spring respiratory infection. And every spring, as reliable as the return of the red-winged blackbirds, my best efforts avail me nothing at all. This spring is no exception.
I haven’t talked about much of anything because I’ve not had anything to talk about. I can state conclusively, after extensive empirical testing and close examination, that there are no cracks on the inside of my eyelids. In other words, I’ve spent more of the past week or so asleep than awake. That does aid recovery (“rest and fluids”, quoth the doctor) but isn’t even remotely newsworthy. I did note with some amusement that the cats seemed to be taking it in turns to keep me from getting up. They took their naps, not only with me, but in many cases on me, draping themselves across my legs. I wouldn’t think a human turned on her side would provide a particularly stable sleeping surface, but evidently my girls find it quite satisfactory. The first few days I was sick, they even double-teamed me, lying down one on each side of me, leaning up against my legs, so that between two of them they had the blankets pinned down across me. Then if I tried to get up they would open their eyes about half way – not move anything else, just the eyes, and maybe the very tip of a tail – and look at me as if to say “excuse me, I was napping here. Please refrain from disturbing my imperial repose.” And if I was a Good Human and settled back down, they’d purr me back to sleep.
But I’m awake at last, and have at least some portion of my voice back. I still can’t trill back to the girls; the pitch of it is too high. That’s ok; I’m audible again, if a bit deep, so I’ll settle. I can not only frame an intention, say to cut out a pirate shirt for my son’s Purim costume, but actually execute it. I don’t think I’m quite up to taking advantage of this warm weather by going for a walk, but perhaps by this weekend, I will be. And I can keep my mental focus long enough to figure out what needs to be done next. It’s a start.
This morning getting boys off to school was an exercise in complete chaos. My temper was commensurately short, a condition not helped by the fact that I am still sick and don’t have much of a voice. So when I heard….”Mrs. D., do you have a key for the attic room?” come floating down the stairs, things were already a bit tense around here. No, I said, I did not. (I don’t; I don’t need one. A flathead screwdriver works perfectly.) “The door locked itself” came floating down. Now, it can’t do that and so R. was informed. He had to hold the door knob in one hand and turn the latch with the other. I called all three boys down and gave them a clear demonstration of the Wrath of Mother. I was locked out of my sewing room, one of the cats probably locked into it (she hides from rampages behind my storage tubs), and one of J’s shoes possibly in there as well, and I was Not Happy.
It must have been an impressive lecture, though I can’t tell you what I said. Next thing I knew, strange sounds emanated down from the attic. My husband called up to ask what R. was doing, to be told “I’ve almost got the door broken!” My helper. He had made it impossible for me to get into my sewing room, and he was going to fix that. If there wasn’t an intact door I wouldn’t be locked out anymore, right? We got the well-intentioned child downstairs post-haste, used the correct code-phrase and told him to “let the adults deal with it”, and got him safely onto the school bus. I went up and unlocked the door, released the cat and determined that the shoe wasn’t there. (It was later found in J’s desk. I didn’t ask.) Then I went back to sleep, pondering the stunning directness and clarity of ten-year-old boy logic.
I suppose demolition can be a form of repair…..
For those who wonder (hi, Mom!) I still don’t have my voice. I have been to the doctor and gotten appropriate pharmaceuticals, so this should be better in another few days. Modern medicine is a wonderful thing.