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Little Voices

Little Voices

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It’s summer time and into the click-click of computer keyboards and the businesslike tones of those  in Important Meetings comes another sound, a welcome sound — the high-pitched ping of little voices.

A couple days ago a colleague brought her baby to the office and I could hear the babbling and squawking from many doors down the hall. And both Wednesday and Thursday I ran into daycare kids on campus — yelling, laughing, taunting and teasing.

It brought me back to the days of the little voices in my own life, how I treasured them even then, knowing how precious they were, how fleeting. Now they’ve matured into the voices of adult women, not even a “like, you know” left from the teenage years. They are still precious to me, but they are different.

When I was knee-deep in child rearing I used to wonder why older folks would smile as I extricated  one of my noisy children from underneath a clothes rack or a church pew. Now I understand. They liked the sound of little voices too. Like me, they listened and remembered.

Late Arrival

Late Arrival

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First there is the wakening, slightly panicky, the feeling that something is not right. Next, a peek at the clock. After 2 a.m. Surely she should be home by now.

Should I get up and look out the window? If the car is there I’ll rest easy; if it’s not, I’ll be awake till she gets home.

Last night it was the latter. A late arrival, but not much later than my wakening. I fall back to sleep, happy and grateful.

The morning after the late arrival is another story: Bleary and disbelieving. How can it already be day?

Two Years and Counting

Two Years and Counting

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Claire and I escorted Suzanne to the train station when she left for the Peace Corps two years ago. It was Sunday, and not much traffic. Inside the train station, another story. The ancient rituals of leave-taking. Ours loomed large. As well it should. I haven’t laid eyes on my oldest daughter for two years to the day. When I tell people how long it’s been, they will often ask, “Skype?” “Once,” I tell them. Only once. It’s a lack of electricity compounded by a lack of bandwidth compounded by, well, Africa, I guess.

But I have seen Suzanne through the eyes of her father, sister and friend, all of whom have visited.  And I hear her every week or two on the phone.  And between these first-hand accounts and my mother’s ear listening for tone, inflection and the spaces between the words — I know what I need to know. She is, for the moment (God willing, “Inshallah,” as she has taken to saying), happy and healthy (minus — or plus! — an intestinal parasite or two).

Last year when I write “One Year and Counting” I thought Suzanne would be home by now. But she will stay another year in Benin, take on another Peace Corps job, another challenge. Still, my count-down to seeing her is only months, since she’ll be back this fall on home leave.

One observation I’ll repeat from last year’s post, because it only deepens with time: Suzanne is the happiest person I know.

(Photo: Katie Esselburn)

Summer Reading (in Tandem)

Summer Reading (in Tandem)

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Yesterday on the way home from work, I picked up a quart of local strawberries, a loaf of French bread and two books. I like thinking of books that way, as staple and delight.

When at the library I saw the poster for the summer reading program, which starts today. “Paws to Read” is the logo.

It all rushed back to me then. The lists of titles each of my girls would keep — each in her own distinctive scrawl. Our trips to the library on sultry afternoons, laden with bags of picture books and chapter books. Searching the shelves for old favorites — and discovering new ones in the process. The coupons the girls received upon completion. Redeeming them for a cookie at the bakery or an eraser at the office supply store.

I live in a different universe now, but the girls and I still trade titles and lists and favorites. We may not read together anymore, but we do read in tandem.

(Illustration: Courtesy Fairfax County Public Library)

Gratitude

Gratitude

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Parents need children, I once wrote, because they help them remember what it was like to be coming alive to the world. As a parent to young adults, I will amend that slightly. Parents need children because they remind them what it was like to be … a young adult. And no matter how wondrous and exciting that can be, it makes me appreciate every creak in my middle-aged body.

What prompts this revelation? Having one daughter return from a four-day music festival, for one thing. Apparently it was difficult to sleep more than a few hours at a time there because the music blared all night. No shade, no quiet, no privacy. No thanks!

And then, from another daughter, a description of her Monday. A double shift at the restaurant: working lunch followed by a two-hour break when she ran and worked out at the gym followed by working dinner. Waitresses are on their feet constantly. I remember because I once was one.

So I head into Tuesday glad that I’m not 19 or 22 anymore. Takes some of the sting out of the day, doesn’t it?

(Photo: Claire Capehart)

The Child in Spring

The Child in Spring

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“We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it.”      —  George Eliot

I often think of these words, especially this time of year. In mid-May, childhood runs rampant. Kids frolic at the bus stop, forgo homework to dash outside the minute they get home from school. After dinner they ride bikes and scooters around the cul-de-sac. The end of the school year dangles tantalizingly in the future. It won’t be long now.

I caught this excitement the other day on a walk through the neighborhood. I inhaled it in the aroma of cut grass, felt it in the sun on my face. So many memories as I amble. Not even memories, but deeper than that. Sensory impressions. A whiff of juniper. The musty odor of a storm drain.

We forget how close to the ground we were in those days, how the earth rose up to meet us then with all its sounds and scents. But because it did, I can stroll through the world now with my middle-aged self — and the whole world comes alive again.

Landscape of Childhood

Landscape of Childhood

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In My Life in Middlemarch, Rebecca Mead writes:

“[George] Eliot found regenerative inspiration in the remembrance of the landscape of her childhood. Her love for the deep green England of Warwickshire was the foundation of her belief that the love we have for the landscape in which we have grown up has a quality that can never be matched by our admiration of any environment discovered later, no matter how beautiful.”

Mead quotes Eliot from The Mill on the Floss:

“These familiar flowers, these well-remembered bird notes, this sky with its fitful brightness, these furrowed and grassy fields, each with a sort of personality given to it by the capricious hedgerows — such things as these are the mother tongue of our imagination …”

And later, this line, which I quote in my own book: “We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it.” 

I read these passages on a bumpy flight to my hometown, sick at heart, sick in stomach, but imagining the balm that awaited me — my own “furrowed and grassy fields.” And knowing there would be some comfort there. And as always, there has been.

The Coverup

The Coverup

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Few activities in life bring as much simple pleasure as covering up the ones we love.

Swaddling a newborn.

Finding the beloved blankie for a toddler in footie pajamas.

Tucking in a child after the fifteenth reading (that night!) of Goodnight Moon.

Pulling a jacket over the sleepy, sullen high-schooler you’re driving to school after she missed the bus.

Covering the teenager who came home late from the party and crashed on the couch.

And, when there is no one else around, tucking in this character.
 

Running with Children

Running with Children

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The flakes started flying before the race started. That would be the 5K Run with Santa — the first race I’ve run in, well, let’s just say it’s been a few years!

A little over three miles — doable, even for a walker in the suburbs. But my already conservative pace was slowed even further by the slick spots on the road. Luckily, my running buddy was Claire, whose last race was the Marine Corps Marathon but who matched her cadence to her timid mama’s.

Timid was putting it mildly. I worried the whole time about wiping out, ending the race on crutches or worse. One middle-aged woman went down within the first few minutes. “Don’t worry, Mom,” Claire said. “She just ran into a cone.”

The last few tenths of a mile, though, the pavement was wet, not snowy, and Claire and I kicked it in and dashed (sort of) to the finish line.

Children do many things for their parents (as parents do for their children). They care for us, make us laugh and introduce us to the future. Yesterday I was thinking how they make us face our fears. We will do things for them we don’t do for anyone else. And in that sense, they keep us young — they keep us, quite literally, in the running. 

Getting the Tree

Getting the Tree

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We’re several weeks ahead of schedule, but the girls were here and the weather was fair, so yesterday we drove  to Snicker’s Gap to cut our Christmas tree. After Leesburg, foothills appear on the horizon and the road curves up to meet them. Soon after that, I spot the familiar hillside, parceled in fir and pine.

I breathed in the evergreen scent, took in the scene, livelier than usual this busy weekend. As with any annual tradition, I was measuring, calculating, thinking about where we are now compared with this time last year. A better place, I decide, shoulders relaxing as we trudge up the hill.

The trees are healthy and plentiful, and there is variety in each plot. Old trees and young trees, tall and short — giant blue spruce and scraggly pine seedlings — all share the same southern slope. As I watch the girls stride ahead I realize they aren’t the only ones who’ve grown up. The trees being cut today were babies when we first came here.

We have lived through an entire Christmas tree life-cycle: 10 years of rain and sun and wind and snow. Ten years of growing pains, of hour-long car trips here, some coerced, some not.

And still we return to saw the trunk and topple the tree; to drag it, lash it and bring it home. We drive west to seek the southern slope. We mark the years as best we can.