(While crowded around the computer, watching Facebook videos.)
Me: What do I smell
Me: Is that–poop? I look around. Marlee’s on the couch. It’s not a dirty diaper. I sniff Meena’s hair, then Oliver. Then: Oliver’s hand.
Me: Oliver, why does your hand smell like poop?
Ollie: (shrugs) Because I’ve been sticking it in my butt-crack.
Took the chickens to the Victoria Albert Museum during half-term. I want you people to understand how cultured I am, but I confess it wasn’t intentional. We were trying to see the dinosaur skeletons at the Natural History museum across the street, but the line zig-zagged out from the door and went winding round the block and so we fled across the street to the less popular “V&A”.
Ollie was well impressed by the naked statues–he wondered if a guy battling a snake on a square platform was supposed to be in the shower–and as we passed out of the room headed for the children’s activity space we passed a bust of Albert Einstein. We stopped and looked at it. “You know who that is?” I asked him.
“No.”
“That’s Albert Einstein,” I said, carrying on down the stairs. “He’s generally thought to be one of the smartest–if not THE smartest–guy who ever lived.”
Fast forward: we go to the activity room, build a box, draw some pictures, wander around a bit more. On the way out we pass by Professor Einstein again. Fancying myself rather a good mother for it, I take the opportunity to reinforce the lesson. “Ollie, you remember who that is?”
He glances over. Shrugs. “Uhhhhh–Elvis Presley?”
June 2008
On the swing today, in Baxter’s Field: [audio http://texasgurl1.fileave.com/giggle.mp3]
July 2007
While I was uploading that audio file, which I titled “giggle”, I ran across another one, recorded in June last year, titled “marlee-laughs”. This one has bonus material: me alternating between ordering Boyish to perform like a trained monkey for her (”Roll around on the floor again.”), and talking like a baby myself. Warning: baby giggles are contagious.
[audio http://texasgurl1.fileave.com/marlee-laughs.mp3]
They sure grow up fast, don’t they?
What 5 Looks Like, originally uploaded by texasgurl.
Happy Birthday, Big Boyish. It’s been a good day.
Boyish is having some issues. Identity issues. In the car a couple weeks ago his sister was talking about Ishara, a girl in her class, and Boyish piped up from the backseat: “Mommy, is she white?”
“Who? Ishara? I don’t think so.”
“She’s not,” Girlish said.
“Is she black then?”
“Yeah, Ishara’s black,” Girlish said.
“Am I black?”
I glanced at Goodlooking, who was grinning. “Sort of,” I said.
“Am I white?”
“Well, you’re white like Mommy and black like Daddy,” I said. “You’re lucky, because you’re both.”
And we left it, for the moment.
Goodlooking and I have talked about this, and our general approach has been not to discuss race with the children. We don’t have deep discussions about skin color, or multiracial identity, or blackness, or whiteness, because it’s something that doesn’t matter to us, as a family. He’s my man, and they’re our kids. They look a little like me, and a little like him—just like most everybody who has a biological family.
It comes in, though, occasionally, and when it does we do talk about it, minimizing its importance as best we can. Girlish thinks of herself as black, I think. She identifies strongly with her paternal grandmother, and with Goodlooking’s family in general. Boyish has informed us, however, that he doesn’t want to be black—or rather—that he’s not black, as if he has some control over it. Last night he had a friend over for dinner, and Boyish sat next to me at the table insisting that he was white, like me, and Girlish was black, like Daddy.
I held my arm next to his. “You’re darker than me,” I said, “maybe you’re honey? Maybe you’re light brown?”
He shook his head. No. Then later, when I wasn’t around, but within earshot of his Daddy, he asked his English buddy, “Elias, are you white?”
After a bit of confused silence, Elias answered that he was.
“I’m white, too,” Boyish said, “but I’m dark white.”
The other night at dinner, Girlish told a story about a boy in her class who got his feelings hurt.
“Poor Sam,” I said.
Boyish chimed in: Mommy?
Yes, Boy?
Did Sam die?
No, Honey. He just got his feelings hurt at school.
Oh.
Girlish: Mommy, tell Daddy the story about Kandy.
Boyish: Did Kandy die?
Me: No, Goofball, what are you talking about?
Girlish: Yeah, I think Auntie Sara would’ve called us.
Boyish: I just like stories where somebody dies.
Boyish joined me in the stall of a public restroom recently. He likes to sit on the toilet, no matter what sort of business he’s doing (no amount of negotiating has worked to persuade him that at least in the public restroom, he might consider standing, as is his natural-given right as someone who possesses that most useful bit of anatomy: a penis). Dutifully, I lay the paper liner on the seat and set him up.
I stood there, back to the door, my knees to his. He asked me, “Mommy, how strong is poop?”
“What do you mean?” I said.
“I mean, how strong is poop?”
Ah, well, that cleared it up. Was he talking about the smell? Was he thinking it might do something more spectacular than plop into the bowl of water?
“I’m sorry, Honey,” I said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
He spoke a bit louder. “I said, I want to know how strong is poop!”
Having an a mother as obtuse as I am can be pretty annoying, I know. “Um . . . not very strong?” I ventured. “It dissolves in water, right? You flush it away. I guess in terms of strength I’d have to say it’s ‘not very strong‘.” I looked at him hopefully.
“Well,” he said, resting his elbow on his knee and propping his chin in his hand. “It’s strong enough to break through paper.”
Did I mention the kids are jetlagged?
They are jetlagged, and so they come into my bed the last two nights, between 2 and 3 in the morning, for romping and conversation. Boyish watches the window, waiting for daylight.
“Mommy,” he asks, “have you ever been in the moonlight?”
“Yes, Baby,” I say sleepily, still entertaining the fantasy that I might drift off again.
“Has Daddy?”
“Um-hm.”
“Did the moonlight get on you?”
I open my eyes. He is up on his elbow, looking into my face, his little eyebrows drawn close together. “I have been outside,” I say, “while the moon was shining.”
“What happened?” He plucks the fabric of my sleeve, as if the answer doesn’t matter much.
“Nothing happened. Maybe I looked pretty. Maybe I looked pretty, and somebody wanted to kiss me. That might’ve happened.”
“Did you change?”
“Did I change in the moonlight? No. I’m always kind of pretty.“
“What about Daddy?”
“Did I ever kiss Daddy in the moonlight? I’m sure I have.”
“No, Mommy, did Daddy change, when the moonlight got on him?”
(Me, finally getting it) “No, Baby. People don’t change under the moon. That’s just an imaginary story.”
“What’s ‘initch-gem-marry’ mean?”
“It means it’s not real. Doesn’t happen except in stories.”
“Oh.”
“And Boyish? No more Thriller video for you.”
I don’t love L.A. I can admit that what you’ve heard about the weather is true: it’s almost always warm and sunny there. But most beautiful days are spent under pale skies, the horizon obscured by a haze so omnipresent you must love weather more than you love sky not to be bothered by it. On a few clear days in January and February, when you can see the ocean or the skyline in the distance, Los Angeles opens up and feels (almost) like a place I would like to live. Most other days, though, I find it crowded, polluted, and poxed by powerlines and a stripmall aesthetic.
Los Angeles has one singular redeeming quality for me, though, and it’s not the sunshine. It’s family. Goodlooking’s entire family lives there. His mother and her two siblings, their children, and his three sisters. For five years just after Girlish was born, we lived there, too, and in my life, there have been few things as sweet as watching my children grow in the bosom of a group of people who love them almost as much as I do.
I have been so happy on our London adventure. Seeing and doing new things, taking photographs, volunteering, traveling to Germany, Spain and France over the last six months. But yesterday morning, after a lovely wedding for Rod’s cousin at the beautiful Mission Inn in Riverside, we left L.A., dragging my thousand-pound heart behind me.
This visit, Baybish discovered her Grandaddy. She toddled up to him in his favorite kitchen chair where he sits, reading the paper much of the day. She handed him shoes and other interesting objects, or threw toys at his head when he didn’t notice her quickly enough. When she got his attention (which was always) she rewarded him by batting her eyelashes and babbling conversationally. And although I was ready to come back to London yesterday, it broke my heart to take her so far away from him so soon.
Then, around three a.m. this morning, a jetlagged Boyish crawled into my bed, wide awake and begging to get up and watch Scooby Doo. I kept him close, stroking his back in hopes of soothing him back to sleep. He tossed and turned, pressed his damp cheek against mine, and I asked him, “Are you sweating, Bear, or crying?”
He rolled over into my chest and sobbed, “I want to see my Grandma!”
“You’ll see her soon,” I whispered. “She’s coming to visit you soon.”
“Is she on a plane right now?” he asked.
It’s hard, see? I’m caught between giving my children the comfort of close family, close by, and the adventure of learning that the world is small and that the place they have in it is—complex. So here I am, pushing 40 with three small children, and still not knowing where I belong. I love the idea of settling down, raising my family in one place, but honestly, I don’t know where that place is, or when we might get there. In the meantime, I can only keep trying to make the most of where I find myself. For all of us.
It’s Christmas Pageant time here, and Holiday Pageant time in America, which means there’s a great deal of rehearsing go on around my house.
Welcome to my musical world, y’all. Come in if you dare.
Boyish sings about sheep:
[audio http://texasgurl.fileave.com/shepbutts-bizzy.mp3]
Girlish sings about puppies:
[audio http://texasgurl.fileave.com/puppies4xmas.mp3]
