The Burrow

Today, as I'm writing this, I'm remembering sitting around the pool at a lovely little motel just a mile or so from my parents' home with TBG and Daddooooo and Nannie and Grandpaw.  Daddooooo looked at the leaves on the trees.... looked at them turning over, showing their undersides.... looked at them predicting the rain that would fall all night lonog.... looking and not saying anything. He didn't want to spoil my wedding day before the weather did. Of course, my sister and my mother woke me at 6am to inform me that it had been raining, that it was raining, that it looked like it would never stop raining, and what was I going to do?   Go back to sleep  came to mind.  The drama was more important than the facts.  What could I do? TBG called at 7, wondering if I were still going to show up, even in the rain.  My oft repeated plan was to elope if the heavens opened, but that seemed like more trouble than it was worth, especially that early in the m...

If you are still freezing, caught in the grip of a polar vortex, I apologize for this post. We, the gardeners of Tucson, are in lust, thanks to the luscious, warm sunshine. With temperatures in the 70's and 80's, it's hard to stay inside. Unfortunately, the garden store's offerings reflect the calendar more than my desire. They had petunias and calibrocha and violas and gazania, but they'd been there all winter, too. I bought some, because I needed something to plant with my new bag of soil , but I left the nursery resigned to the fact that I would have to repot and deadhead and prune rather than plant anything new and exciting. Kneeling on my Happy-Birthday-Mommy-present from many years ago, I swiveled around, in search of a trowel.  The first one (bottom right) had too large a scoop; the second one had a string through the handle.....  and that was the end of gardening for a long while. I sat in the potting shed and looked around.  My parent...

Once again, I forgot whether his birthday was the 12th or the 14th of October.  Used to be that I could remember because it was NOT Columbus Day.  Now that Columbus Day is on a Monday instead of a specific October date, that becomes more confusing.  And, every time I wondered about it, I was struck by the fact that I ought to be calling it Indigenous Peoples' Day. Life is so confusing these days. Once I determined that today is the day, I began to spend time with my dad.  True, he's been dead since the Saturday before Thanksgiving, and that Saturday occurred twelve years ago, but he was a big presence in life and, it seems, that continues in the after life, too. He was watching me schlep pots from the front to the side of the columns in the backyard.  It was a mindless, heavy, sweaty chore, a chore he'd have delighted in doing for me.  It didn't matter to him that I spent hours in the gym every day; when this kind of thing needed doing, he was the go-...

I love my son. Among his many talents is an aptitude for heavy lifting. When his father and I were young and spry we set a good example for him.  One of his favorite stories is emptying his Junior year apartment at Georgetown, me in gym shorts and a tank top and sneakers, carrying two boxes precariously balanced in my arms as I maneuvered down the steps past another mother, this one dressed in silk and pearls, delicately holding a dry cleaning bag, containing one dress, as she wondered where the rest of her family was hiding. As age and infirmities and bullets have intervened, we've come to rely on Big Cuter's presence for heavy arranging.  This afternoon, in between bouts of Guillotine , he was on the ladder in the garage, bringing down boxes labeled Psych Books and Cornell Papers and Law School Stuff .  I can promise you that none of the treasures contained within that cardboard has been seen in this century.... or the latter half of the previous century, i...

I sent her furniture for the baby's room as her birthday gift. I think I forgot to get TBG to sign the card I remembered to mail. This morning, her email to me wondered what it meant that she kept forgetting that her birthday was approaching.   Is it weird?   Yes, sweetie, it's very weird.  It's not unusual, but it's weird. She's getting to the point where the individual years blur together. I remember it well.  She went to a 1980's theme party; I was bemused. I missed the 1980's; being pregnant and parenting little ones was as far as I could see. My musical tastes ran to Raffi and lullabies, my reading material centered on Margaret Wise Brown, and forget about fashion or lifestyle trends. Were I to be invited to that theme party, I'd have worn sweatpants. My birthdays came and went and I was happy to buy my own strawberry shortcake and take a long bubble bath and be done with it all.  I had decade-celebratory parties for TBG, but I wasn't ...

It was too cold to do much besides go from one warm space to another, so the kids and I went pre-shopping for the baby while TBG snuggled with Thomas-the-Wonder-Dog on Cozy Rosie, in front of the game.  What game?  Who knows.  He was happy and so were we.  We started at the No Returns All Sales Final Open the Package and BE SURE IT'S RIGHT outlet for Land of Nod, and moved on to Buy Buy Baby, which turns out to be Bed Bath and Beyond for kids. There were some pretty cool ideas and some fairly awful ones. As you can tell from Little Cuter's grimace, we agreed that this would put you off Thanksgiving forever.   Someone in marketing had serious attitude issues, as evidenced by   and this  Demand all you want, kiddo. Cry to your heart's content. As I told your mother, long long ago, I'm not the one embarrassed by your antics; I'm not the one wailing at the top of my lungs.   Someone with an ironic sense o...

They aren't teaching it anymore. I find that fact to be extremely upsetting. And no, I don't think I'm over-reacting. I am merely reporting another tear in the fabric of the cosmos, an earthquake in the course of civilization.   How will my grandchildren sign their job applications, their loan documents, their love letters?  Will we revert back to the X?   Printing does not lend itself to flourishes, although Daddooooo did manage to embellish his otherwise illegible scrawl with the most beautiful g 's imaginable.  They looked just like the ones this keyboard is sending to you.   Those gardening tools I mentioned yesterday are still talking to me, it seems. My paternal unit is as upset as I am. Some grown ups do not use cursive. G'ma was one of them.  Her printing was small and even and precise, just as one would expect of a woman trained as a kindergarten teacher.  Almost til the end of her life, that handwriting was a constant.  When...

In one of his former lives, I am certain that my father had gills.  The water was never too cold, the air never too chilly, the surf never too high to keep him out of the water. He'd shallow dive off the poolside, avoiding diving boards because the impact jarred his ear canals.  He'd point his fingers and his toes and create a straight arrow with his body and whoooosh across the bottom of the pool.  He was as likely to come up underneath me as he was to arrive beside me.  Swimming with him was always an adventure. He'd burst from below, shaking his head and exhaling.  If there was water in his mouth, those around him were sprayed.  He thought it was funny; I did, too, until I turned 8.  Still, he was having such a good time, it felt churlish to berate him; I hid my shame by pretending that I didn't know him.  Once I became a parent, though, I could hardly wait for him to arise and spray my children.  They found him delightful and I, safel...