The Burrow

Looking for a new author? Wondering who to read (yes, who , not what ) as you wander through the library stacks, the books lined up, maddeningly, alphabetically by author, whith nary a star nor a sticker to indicate that this one!!  will light your fire. Big Cuter and I had that conversation a few weeks ago.  I was between books, between authors .  There was nothing that enticed me, nothing on hold at my local branch, nothing waiting for me in a queue on my downloadable book app on the iPad.  Neither the While You Are Waiting For (insert best seller here) suggestions provided on the library's web site nor the Good Reads For You This Week  ideas were thrilling me. "I know that feeling, Mom," my boy said, and I knew it was true.  This is the kid who spent every Saturday with me, out of the house at 11 am, and, after complimenting me for having secured the best parking spot in front of Barnes and Noble (this was before G'ma's parking karma was transfe...

She rode her brand new bike to the park, and then to the park again. Her hair was soaking wet under her brand new helmet, the one that looks like Skye, from Paw Patrol.   "I was so sweaty."  Those words have never been said more sweetly. It took me back to the first time I ran 5 miles.  Along the lakefront, Chicago shining in the sun, one foot in front of the other, I ran north from Lincoln Park.  Orb Kcorb, Jumble Expert and, at the time, our very best friend in the whole wide world, paced me.  For his long legs, my jogging stride wasn't much more than a loping long walk, but he was determined to see that I finished all five miles with a smile on my face. And there it was.  That smile, that sense of accomplishment, that I can't believe I actually did that look was permanently plastered on my face.  I had to share.  I called my mother, crowing. There was a pause.  A long pause.  And then this, one of the All Time G'ma...

TBG wondered aloud this afternoon.  That's not unusual; we talk to ourselves and hope the other is listening.   We assume we've said something out loud that has never left our heads. The scary piece is when he answers my unspoken thought.  Cue the theme from Jaws ; it's scary like that. But today, watching a spaghetti western, he wondered, to no one in particular, the following: Why is it that big open spaces are paired with men of few words? Nick and Nora Charles's banter would be awkwardly out of place in Monument Valley, wouldn't it?  In the city, there's a lot of stuff everywhere, stuff that is imported and created and purchased and stored, stuff that assaults your ears and your nose, that crowds your physical space to the point that, perhaps, you have to use your words to carve out a niche. There is no niche carving in the scenery of the great oaters.  Any dent in the terrain would be just that - a dent.  Unnoticeable and unnoticed, insig...

Did I mention that this is my favorite time of the year?   :You are looking at pieces of dinner, lunch, snack, and breakfast, courtesy of Whole Foods. I could have waited and gone to the Farmers Market this afternoon, but the store is air conditioned and on my way home.. The heirloom tomatoes were half price, because I'm an Amazon Prime Member. Jeff Bezos is now officially in every part of my life. I added Penzey's Sunny Paris Seasoning  to the lettuce and carrots and scallions I found in the fridge, and chopped away at the goodies I brought home.  The yellow yam (the lime is pointing to it) was sweet and nutty and wonderful just baked in the oven.   Those who know me may take a moment and marvel at the fact that I am creating edible foodstuffs. Wonders will never cease. And yes, I did mention that this is my favorite time of the year.

FlapJilly told her mommy that Being A Big Sister Is Hard. It was late. Very late for an almost-4-year-old to be awake. Mommy and Giblet were cozy in the comfy chair.  The Big Sister was in the doorway. It was a whisper, not a shout.  It was a statement of fact, not a complaint.  Because she has The Best Mommy On The Planet, her statement was met with acceptance and love.  Yes, it's hard right now, and you are doing Such A Good Job.  It is different and challenging and Mommy understands.  Yes, it will get better.  Yes, now he's not much more than a blob of protoplasm we cart from one place to another, but soon we'll get to enjoy more than the fact that he opened his eyes and looked at you.  Soon he'll play with you All The Time.  Won't that be FUN!?!?! And, YES, you can get up in the chair and snuggle, getting all the hugs and kisses in the land. And so, she did.

I spent the afternoon with a new friend, a journalist Professor-with-a-capital P, who is on sabbatical.  She's closing in on the specifics of her project, and talking to me about Getting Shot and Life Afterwards would, she assured me, help. She also offered to pay for lunch.  I can be bought. This kind of request hasn't come in a long time, and I am happy to say that it didn't have the same impact as it has in the past.  I kept waiting to get upset.  I wondered when my dreams would change.  Maybe it will happen tonight, but I'm not holding my breath.  I seem to have moved to a new stage;  I can talk about it without reliving it before and after.  The during part is still a work in progress. I was early.  She was there when I arrived.  I ordered a power meal, a thin tostada topped with avocado humus and kale and cabbages and pickled veggies and some kind of siracha that I'm still tasting (not in a bad way) hours later. Well fortif...

Big Cuter regaled us with a not as salacious as it begins  story last night. Respect, rewards, recognition of the other - their conversation was wide ranging and satisfying, though, perhaps, not what either of them anticipated as they ventured out into the night to meet, for the last time, before she returned to her home in Britain. Laughing with our son, enjoying his ability to share with his parents, admiring his honesty, I was surprised by TBG's coda to our conversation. "Well, good for you.  Anytime we can reassure our UK friends that not all Americans are assholes, we should jump on the opportunity." Modern Day Diplomacy, brought to you by OKCupid.  My son, The Ambassador.

Little Cuter wondered about the times I've been happy.  A birthday party in a white dress with red trim over a big poufy crinoline, a dress that twirled around and around and around comes to mind. The birth of my children doesn't compare to watching FlapJilly feed lettuce to the giraffes, giggling her face off, but they all made me happy.  Partying on the school steps after receiving our Masters Degrees, feeling the floors and the walls of our Big House in Marin (it's not as weird as it sounds... they were awesome!), walking alone on a hot August afternoon, with no place to go and no time to return,  watching my garden grow..... happy, happy and happy. But the most consistent, repeatable, truest answer to her question is Right Now.  Why?  Because this happens in the stores and the Farmers Markets and I get to bring it home with me.  For a month or two, there will be snacks I lust for, snacks I drool over, snacks I can't wait to eat.  They are tas...

Look to the future, but remember the past. Your horizons are endless, if only you allow yourself to dream.  Those dreams rest upon the people and places who came before you.  You are one in a long line of strong and powerful women and men.  They crossed oceans to find a better life, fleeing famine and religious intolerance, looking for opportunities, embracing the new and challenging the old.  You carry many strands - German and Polish and Jewish and Catholic, short and tall, athletic and intellectual, teachers and pastors, Iowans and New Yorkers - and some piece of each of them resides within your soul.  Honor what came before and use it to inform your choices as you move forward. The world is your oyster.  Treat it with care. We have only one planet, and you are its steward.  Practice kindness and respect differences, for we are all on this tiny orb, circling the sun, together.  Consider the least among us, and use your privilege, your gifts...

Are you old enough to remember the Back To School Issue of Seventeen magazine?  I read Seventeen  every month but I never subscribed.  Why?  Because it showed up in Murray's Store days before it arrived in my mailbox.  I had to have it right away. It was thick, filled with advertisements for shoes and blouses and dresses, chock-a-block crammed into colorful pages in which I could get lost for hours.   What would people be wearing when school began?  What colors would I see?  Which three outfits - for I was only allowed three new outfits in the Fall, three in the Spring - would I select?  I'm getting lots of magazines these days, since Fabletics gives me a subscription for every outfit I purchase.  I chose Smithsonian  for myself, and Sports Illustrated and Time for myself and Amphi Middle School, but Shape  and Seventeen  and Family Circle  are just for the teens and tweens.  I never open them.  I ...

He does have a name.  It's just not one she's choosing to use. She's a very messy sleeper.  I know this because we slept in Gramma's bed while the rest of the family was in the hospital getting over giving birth.  I put a body pillow between us on the second night, for protection.  No matter how cute they are, feet do not belong on Gramma's face.  Especially when they land there with authority  Especially when Gramma's dead asleep. No, it was not Morning Time!!  at 2am, but those were the sweetest words ever when the sun woke us up a few hours later.  First yoga - "Of course I know it!  You have to start with Downward Dog!  - then the Breakfast of Champions - brownie and ice cream. Why?  Because why not? We skipped pre-school and went to the zoo.  We stayed up late.  Lunch was frozen yogurt (which she knows as ice cream), with gummy worms and gummy bears and raspberry truffles because the youngest among us has qu...

I walked past the video monitor last night, and FlapJilly was no where in sight.  It was an hour or so after her parents had kissed her goodnight. I said nothing to the grownups and began to walk upstairs to her bedroom. I never got there. On the landing lay my granddaughter. Flat on her belly, bent elbows and upturned palms cradling her head, she was engrossed in the biggest,fattest, heaviest book she owns.  Surrounding her were the teeniest books she owns, square cardboard with a finger puppet poking its face up from the cover, just like the one she chose at Barnes and Opal for her soon-to-arrive baby brother. The contrast made my heart soar. I snuggled up against her, not saying a word. I was a child again, sent upstairs before I was ready to sleep, covertly turning to the foot of my bed with a collection of illustrated Washington Irving, reading in the dim light from the hall.  The picture of the Headless Horseman is as vivid today as it was in reality five or...

Does this happen to you? I was in the shower (still no baby!) this morning,  and my brain had a thought. I repeated it out loud. Why? It’s like there are two parts of me, the internal and the external, and they both wanted to be sure I knew what I thought. Actually, there are three parts - I forgot the one who laughed at the other two. Why wasn’t it enough to have the thought in the first place?  What piece of my brain needed to push it out through my mouth?  It was already there (though I’ve forgotten what it was by now).  Why did I have to repeat it? Not that it really matters.  There’s no extra charge for thinking and saying the same thing to myself.  But I wonder if I’m the only one who has this happen.  I’m not making a conscious decision to do this.  It just happens. Does it happen to you?

The Purim Carnival at the synagogue was a big deal.  A very big deal. The moms had a rummage sale covering half the room, clothes neatly folded, arranged by gender and size and season.  There was something wonderful about all those garments just lying there on the tables, waiting to be fondled and held up to see if they fit and then taken to the grandma beneath the cashier’s sign. I don’t remember buying anything.  I do remember looking. On the other side of the room were the games.  Ring Toss and Magnet Fishing and homemade tests of prowess lined the walls.  The middle was filled with costumed kids.  The costumes were the most fun.  Esther and Haman and Mordecai had cloned themselves a hundred times over.  Small bearded boys and medium bearded boys and larger bearded boys peered out through tiny holes in oversized plastic masks.  Girls in makeup laden masks paraded with stately grace; Esther was a queen, after all. No one came as Vas...

I’m here for the duration.  As Little Cuter points out, she is not in charge of when the baby arrives.  He’s on his own schedule, shifting down and rising up, stretching and hiccuping as he grows and grows and grows.  I’m a houseguest until he’s no longer occupying her middle.  It could be a while. My girl looks beautiful, although she’s uncomfortable.  Finding a position that doesn’t impinge on her breathing or sitting is a challenge, but she scoots around on the couch with a smile on her face.  This is a much anticipated,  much loved,  much wanted child..... we just wish he’d hurry up and join the party. In the meantime, I’m grocery shopping and vacuuming and prepping dinner.  I’m collecting FlapJilly from preschool every afternoon and then collecting her Mommy from work.  It’s slow during the summer at the University which employs her, but her colleagues are making sure that everything she can possibly be asked is put before her b...

There were so many adventures this weekend. Taking a nearly 4 year old to the park is much more fun than taking a toddler. She climbs and hangs and gets up and down without any help at all, thank you very much.  She understands how to properly propel her swing, going faster then slower, then "just the same as you, Gramma." We catered s the wind blew our hair, as the sun got in our eyes then went away.  We talked about friends and pre-school and Grandpa. They were real conversations, another difference that made me smile. There was beauty shop and Barnes and Opal. The polish might have been a little smeary.... okay, maybe a lot smeary... but none got on the table. We were quite glamorous in the book store, collecting some Fancy Nancy's and Disney's Tangled before she played on the plastic frogs and domes in the mall. There was no time for conversation on the car; she was too busy reading. But the big adventure was tie dying. Pregnant mommi...

I lived here for nearly 20 years.  I quickly learned my way around, because Chicago makes it easy.  It’s a grid, moving out evenly from State and Madison, block by block, the numbers going up by one hundred at each intersection. Even I,  directionally challenged, never got lost. Today,  Not Kathy picked me up at Midway Airport.  None of the roads were familiar, though they should have been.  The surface street leading to the highway has a Starbucks now, where before it was lined with abandoned storefronts.  There are overpasses and underpasses where there were vacant lots.  There’s a Jane Byrne interchange, funneling vehicles to the right and then up and down on their way to connecting interstates.  All of this new. They rerouted Lake Shore Drive years ago, creating grass and more lanes and a fence where the secret parking lot for the Field Museum used to be.  The Cuters and I were very good at racing across The Drive on our way to...

Maga and Papa can't be there, so I'm on my way.  The baby is coming sometime this month, and while I won't be in the room to catch him, I'll be close enough to greet him on his first day in the world. I'm not sure there's a great place to be in America in July.  The middle of the country is colored red on the weather maps.  Tucson's monsoon hasn't made much of an impact.  Much of Puerto Rico is still without power and Flint's water is still undrinkable.  Big Cuter says San Francisco is gloomy and grey.  And Mr. Trump is President of us all. Most everyone is on vacation, or planning a vacation, or just back from a vacation.  Facebook is full of Hawaii pictures and New York City pictures and Florida pictures.. and not all of them of a girl treed by an alligator. Friends are at Stonehenge and Disney and marrying in Colorado.  I'll be spending the next few weeks in northern Indiana, wearing my Nevertheless, She Persisted  tank top in that b...

Reprinted from the archives. Relevant every single day. Today's the day the Second Continental Congress officially adopted the Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson and tweaked for two days by delegates from the thirteen united States of America. It was signed by most of the States on August 2, after the rough draft had been written cleanly on parchment.  I love the fact that we celebrate an act of government, rather than a piece of paper. I love contemplating the bravery of those treasonous men... for treason it surely was... and the ideas behind the words they were endorsing. So, take a moment and read the letter to the world, sent by the colonists in 1776. And if you are spending time with relatives-of-a-differing-political-persuasion, and the overhead fireworks aren't sparkly enough.  try the  italicized  paragraphs below as a conversation starter.   You can thank me later. ***** The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen uni...

Grandma and Grandpa lived in Arverne when I met them. They moved to The Butchers' CoOp, the Pink Buildings, in Far Rockaway when Arverne became too dangerous for elderly white Jews. No matter, they were always near the beach.  Bubbe and Zaydeh lived on East 93rd Street in Brooklyn; Bedford Stuyvesant is about as far from the beach as you can get. They too stayed put until the neighborhood became dangerous. They moved to senior citizens housing, living a few floors below Zaydeh's brother, Uncle Sol. In Brooklyn we could play stoop ball or handball in the alley. We could ride the horse drawn pirate ship that swung you nearly upside down when it jingle-jangled down the street, pulled by two old equines. We could walk to the deli or to John's Bargain Store or to the bakery, where Charlotte Russes were always in the window. In Arverne, there was a long driveway without walls, the smell of the sea in the air, and two card sharps just waiting to take my money....

Life in the desert isn't easy for seedlings.  The sun is unrelenting.  The rain is sporadic and uneven, drowning you one day and starving you for months afterwards.  The ground is hard packed and dense; roots have a tough time finding their way through the spaces.  There aren't a lot of nutrients in what passes for soil here; to me, it always looks like dirt. If the drip system is humming along smoothly, the plants I planted and irrigated do just fine.  If the drip system acts up, strange things begin to happen.  Established plants become leggy.  Blooms are stunted.  Leaves become smaller and more fragile.  Everything looks droopy. I asked Scarlett's Irrigation Guru for an estimate on upgrading my system; $3500 is more than I'm interested in spending right now.  So I've been fine tuning it myself, considering which tubes need larger emitters, which can be capped off, which need to be extended further out as the plant's canopy gets wi...