In memory of my grandfather

Charlie Griffith
June 9, 1924 - August 31, 2008

Shifting the Sun

When your father dies, say the Irish,
you lose your umbrella against bad weather.
May his sun be your light, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the Welsh,
you sink a foot deeper into the earth.
May you inherit his light, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the Canadians,
you run out of excuses.
May you inherit his sun, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the French,
you become your own father.
May you stand up in his light, say the Armenians.

When you father dies, say the Indians,
he comes back as the thunder.
May you inherit his light, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the Russians,
he takes your childhood with him.
May you inherit his light, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the English,
you join his club you vowed you wouldn't.
May you inherit his sun, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the Armenians,
your sun shifts forever.
And you walk in his light.

~ Diana Der-Hovanessian ~

My girl, she loves her some nekkid time

Tonight Suzannah and I were getting ready for the bath, and she bolted down the hallway, giggling her head off, naked as the day she was born. She raced to the kitchen, where Matt was cleaning up dinner. He had Bob Dylan playing on the stereo, so she scooted on into the family room and proceeded to dance and dance and dance. My girl loves to dance and she loves to be buck nekkid, so we just let her rock out with her nudie self for awhile. Sometimes even toddlers need a little stress relief. I'm thinking she probably needed a break from all the work she's been doing on her book: 1001 Ways To Avoid Bedtime.

Matt may or may not have had the camera handy. We'll get our sweet revenge for sleep deprivation later, I'm sure.

The story of a house and its new little chef

When we bought our little 1960's ranch-style house a mere two months after we were married, it had recently been remodeled by the owner. Everything was crispy-new and smelled of fresh paint. It was a smart move on the owner's part, because it was like a blank canvas; I could immediately envision the place as ours.

Of course, it was awfully white. White walls, white baseboards, white door frames. I knew I'd want to paint eventually, although the thought intimidated me a bit as I'd never painted a room in my life. I helped my dad paint the trim on the outside of our house once, and once he made me stain a fence (do you see how I suffered?), but he claims that more paint made it on to my legs than the house. See, though, that's not a big deal when you're painting outside. So paint might get accidentally flung on the grass, or -- on one's little brother or something. Big deal. And okay, painting is pretty much the easiest home improvement ever and a monkey can do it, I KNOW, but it's an entirely different story when we're talking new carpet and wood floors and a completely neurotic, obsessive-compulsive neat freak.

Still, I finally worked up the courage to choose two colors for the living room. The only thing I had left to do was convince my husband that Memorial weekend would be a great time to paint. (I think I may have called it bonding.)

"But isn't the living room already painted?" he asked hopefully.

"It's all white," I explained, as though that should have been sufficient. When it failed to produce the desired response, I continued, "It's like living in a tooth."

Finally he agreed, and we painted the living room, and I loved it, and he loved it, and I wondered aloud eighty-five times how I could have lived in that house with that white living room for a whole entire year. ("It wasn't that bad," Matt said.)

[Edited to add: Matt just asked, "Did I really say that? That it's already painted?" And I said yes, baby, you really did. But then I felt compelled to point out that it doesn't even matter anymore, because according to my STORY, you did. He shrugged and said, "Well, I guess you're the doing the blogging, huh?"]

Gradually, we added colors to different rooms -- sage green in our bedroom, "sandstone cove" in the kitchen and family room (which is very light but still makes our base boards and door frames stand out nicely), and, when I was quite pregnant, a light, buttery yellow in what would become Suzannah's room. Our study is still white, mostly because neither one of us is particularly excited to move the desks and computers and bookshelves, and the guest room hasn't been touched, either. That's probably going to be my next project (and I'm thinking a light, dusty blue).

I was thinking about this today -- about the evolution of houses into homes. Paint is really only one part of that. I was just watching my daughter play this afternoon, and it occurred to me that our family room really has become her play room, and I love that. When we moved into this house, the family room contained one of the faded green love seats from the farm, our exercise bike, Matt's CD shelves, and the little 13-inch television I got for Christmas in college. Our "entertainment center" was really this wooden cart I bought at Office Max or Target. As a sophomore in college, it held the tower and printer to my computer next to my desk in my dorm, and when Carmen and I moved into our little college apartment, we kept the microwave on top of it. Our living room furniture consisted of the other faded green love seat and another old recliner from the farm. Suzannah's room had a futon and a closet full of camping gear.

Over the past few years, we've slowly replaced the old furniture with pieces we bought together: a couch and recliner for the living room, a new love seat for the family room. We bought a bigger TV and a modest but "real" entertainment center and moved the little 13-inch television and cart into the guest room. We gave away the futon and bought a crib and dresser. We bought shelves for the camping equipment and turned our storage room into a baby's room.

Now, our living room contains not only our comfortable "grown up" furniture and bookshelves but baskets of children's books and a tent. The family room holds a toy chest, a toy piano, a dollhouse, and Suzannah's brand-new wood kitchen. It's where Matt and I sprawl, legs tangled together, to watch movies after Suzannah goes to bed. It's where I nap with the pug in the afternoons, where I used to spend hours nursing my firstborn. It's where Suzannah watches Sesame Street and dances to Bruce Springsteen and The Ramones. It really is a family room, in every sense of the word. I love the way this house has told our stories. I don't know how long we'll be here; it's certainly not a huge house, and maybe I can't really see raising teenagers here, but it's exactly perfect for us right now. (Besides, when it seems like we have too much stuff for the space we have, my natural inclination is to want to clear out some of the stuff -- not move it into a bigger space where we'll accumulate more stuff.) I love the way it reflects the changes and growth in our family and becomes more and more ours.

So these things were on my mind as I was watching my daughter play this afternoon. Our latest addition to the family room is a beautiful wood play kitchen. It's something I wanted to give her for her second birthday, and I'd begun to check them out in a couple of toy stores in Seattle. Then, Matt's dad asked if we'd maybe like it if he built her one. And I'm all, are you kidding? That would be amazing.

So they brought it with them to Montana and we managed to fit it into the back of our CR-V, and now it has earned a spot in our family room, between our hutch and Suzannah's toy chest. It's completely beautiful. I knew it would be, but it surpassed every expectation I had. I mean, it embodies the term "labor of love." And Suzannah loves it a lot. Yesterday was fairly low-key in that we didn't go anywhere, we just hung around the house trying to readjust to being here, and Suzannah spent a lot of time cooking for Mama. Her grandparents also gave her a nice little assortment of pots and pans and utensils, so she made several batches of "soup." She strolled around the family room, wandering in and out of the study, merrily banging a spoon around inside one of the pans.

"What are you making this time?" I asked her.

She marched up to me, thrust the spoon at my mouth. "Try," she commanded.

So I did, and then she stuck the spoon in her own mouth. "Mmm, nummy!" she said.

"Yummy soup," I agreed.

"No." She shook her head. "Roni." She leaned forward for emphasis. "Roni." Her mother is slow to catch on, I guess, because I thought we were still on soup, but clearly this was a batch of macaroni and cheese, whoops, yep, I can definitely tell now.

"Macaroni," I said. "Nummy."

"Roni," she said again, smiling. And then she demanded that I take another bite.

The world is old enough to break my heart

We're home from our end-of-summer vacation in Montana. I'm experiencing a bit of the post-vacation blues, but I thought trying to capture a little of it might make me feel better, although the evening is shaping up to be a pretty cozy one: We're unpacked, the car is cleaned out (that feels good), and the kitchen is filling with the aroma of pad thai and Matt's special green beans with peanut butter and shallots and garlic and whatever other magic ingredients he tosses in the pan.

First of all, I should add a disclaimer: I love living in Washington, a lot. I've never regretted moving here, and I know I would miss it deeply if I ever left. But my heart is home in Montana in a way it never will be anywhere else; that is just a simple fact. Most of the time, I am at peace with having roots there and living somewhere else, because I love a lot of landscapes, and I have roots there, too. But for the past several days I've been all over, I've been through the mountains of southwest Montana, I've seen the sun set over the Bridgers, I've driven through the prairies and in and out of mountain ranges between Bozeman and Havre, I've traveled long stretches of highway and met only deer on the road, I've driven on winding gravel roads, and I've breathed the sweetest air that exists in this world. I love every inch of that state, and every time I leave, even though I've been leaving for over a decade now, it aches.

And now that I'm faced with this text box, trying to figure out how to capture an entire trip in one entry, I realize that's a task more daunting than I have the energy for tonight when all I really want to do is curl up with hot buttered popcorn and whatever Netflix sent us. So I'll give you the highlights, instead.

Bozeman: Lots of good coffee, a date with Matt while my parents graciously watched Suzannah (we feasted on filet mignon and lamb chops at the Montana Rib and Chop House in Livingston before watching a hilarious performance of The Foreigner at the Firehouse 5 Playhouse), hiking to Grotto Falls with my parents and Suzannah (2.5 miles with a feisty two-year-old who wants to DO IT HERSELF, thank you very much, is a challenge), meeting Joannah's new baby, hiking on Kirk Hill with Matt, buying books at Vargo's, and eating Dad's grilled salmon and Mom's huckleberry pie. We missed our traditional meal at MacKenzie River Pizza, but the rest of the visit made up for that.

Great Falls and Havre: Meeting my oldest friend Julia's baby girl, driving around Great Falls in the twilight and revisiting my old haunts, driving the deeply familiar roads to the hi-line, praising GOD that our daughter SLEPT in our hotel room at The Great Northern (the last time we shared a hotel room, the child was awake until three in the morning when her father strapped her in the carseat and took to the freeway, and we have been afraid of a night like that for seven months), taking pictures of our tiny tot snuggled in the middle of our king-sized bed (she wouldn't sleep there, though, much to my dismay -- it's been so long since she slept snuggled against me), stopping to visit my grandparents in Gildford and eating KFC with them, driving to the farm just to see it, and taking to the road once again...

(In case you couldn't tell, I actually really love the driving. I took the wheel between Havre and East Glacier, because Highway 2 is my heart's territory. The highway dips and stretches to the mountains in the distance as we drive through Shelby, Cut Bank, Browning. Houses near the road are often shabby, and clothes flap from lines in the breezy heat. I lose track of what year it is, what age I am, what car I'm even driving. It's a little like the way I felt in Great Falls, driving around my old neighborhood; I saw the ghosts of my other selves, really almost literally saw them. I could say, that brick house, right there? I remember it, I remember riding my bike here, and I remember climbing in that tree and running past this house because we were always so scared of the old man who lived there, and there is that same dent in the screen door all these years later, do you see it? And I know that no one else can get inside my memories, but I swear, it's as though I've taken a tour of my whole life and it's not in my head at all -- it's right there, playing in front of my eyes on this street corner, in that park.)

Glacier National Park/Whitefish: We met Matt's parents and grandpa and David and Tia (the newly engaged couple!) there. They rented a beautiful house near Whitefish, where we spent our evenings cooking cozy dinners and reading and playing outside and relaxing. We spent time in the park each day, and I just have to tell you, it is still true: Glacier is my favorite place on this earth, especially Apgar Village. (Talk about suspension of time. There are pictures of me on this beach at Lake McDonald for every year of my life through high school. Almost nothing has changed, save for the location of all the stuffed bears at The Cedar Tree. The hanging signs outside Eddie's still advertise broasted chicken and trout dinners. They serve the same hot chocolate in those old brown diner mugs I love so much, even though their menu has been updated to include trendy things like veggie wraps on spinach tortillas. Everything smells the same.) We drove to Many Glacier, over Logan Pass and the beautiful Going-To-The-Sun road. Matt's parents spent an afternoon with Suzannah so we could hike to Avalanche Lake; it's special to us, because it's one of the things we did the summer we began dating. We ate a picnic lunch on the shore of Lake McDonald and were surprised by sudden clouds and fat spatters of rain. The sky darkened, the waves frothed. The street through Apgar Village steamed and shone, and as I walked back to the car I thought, this is a moment of unutterable perfection and I am living in it.

"I PLAN ON WRITING AN EPIC POEM ABOUT THIS GORGEOUS PIE..." (Gordon Cole, Twin Peaks)

This day was all kinds of fantastic: a picnic at Remlinger Farms, a pilgrimage to North Bend (well, a pre-pilgrimage), and an evening in West Seattle. Very Saturday and Very Summer. We were due; for the past several weeks, Matt has been hard at work on various house and yard projects, so we've mostly stuck close to home. Today, though, we eyed the invitation to Matt's company picnic and thought, you know, this looks fun, and we don't have much summer left. So we loaded up the car and headed out of town.

The drive to Remlinger Farms is really lovely. I love heading out on Highway 18, into the mountains and away from the city. In the fall, the colors are spectacular. Today, the mountains were deep green under a sky heavy with storm clouds. The sun broke through often enough that I figured we'd be fine for the picnic, and I was right: the first fat drop of water landed on my arm as we were heading back to the car afterwards. We drove towards Seattle in a downpour, and when we stepped out of the car in West Seattle the air was sharp and clean in a way it hasn't been for weeks. We even heard a little thunder in West Seattle while we were browsing through one of our favorite little toy stores, and I erupted with an embarrassing amount of enthusiasm.

"It never does that here!" I cried.

"You must be from the Midwest or something," the saleslady said.

But the rain spared the picnic, so we spent a few pleasant hours eating hamburgers and potato salad and corn on the cob and partaking of things like the climbing wall (Matt), the henna tattoos (me), and the big inflatable bouncy house thingie (Suzannah). Let me talk about the bouncy house thingie for a moment. You all know what I'm talking about, right? Those big inflatable things that kids can go inside and basically just . . . go crazy jumping around and throwing themselves off the walls? When we arrived, I gave it hardly more than a passing glance because it was full of a bunch of Big Boys. Big as in, like, fourth grade. Big as in, there is no way I'm going to let my two-year-old baby girl in there with a bunch of crazy ten-year-olds who are playing a game of Who Can Stay Conscious The Longest After Head-to-Head Collisions. We moved on.

But after we'd eaten and checked everything out, I noticed that the Bouncy House Thingie was more or less unoccupied. There was one girl there -- she was maybe nine -- whose eyes lit up as we approached.

"Does she want to go in?" she asked. "I'll go in with her!"

Truthfully, I wasn't sure Suzannah would go in. She's kind of a cautious child sometimes; she takes her sweet time approaching something new. But when she finally goes for it, let me tell you, she GOES FOR IT. This proved to be the case with the bouncy house. She sat just inside the opening, tentatively. She watched the nine-year-old bounce gently nearby, encouraging her. She giggled a bit and bounced around on her knees. Finally, she stood up, and suddenly she was shouting, "Jump! Jump! JUMP!" She was just beaming. And then she went from jumping to running. Around and around and around. And then she went to tumbling. And then running some more. And then tumbling again. A few other kids -- a young boy and a girl just a tad older than Suzannah -- joined her. They were all very good about not clobbering my child with their happily flailing limbs, and Suzannah would probably still be in there now if I hadn't grabbed her ankle as she bounced by the entrance. Even that made her shriek with delight. The entire trip was worth it just for the Bouncy House Thingie.

Oh, and the pre-pilgrimage.

I've become addicted to Twin Peaks, that bizarre show that aired in 1990 when I was probably too young to fully appreciate it (or, you know, be allowed to watch it). It was filmed around here, and the Twin Peaks Diner is actually Twede's Diner in North Bend. If you've seen the show, you'll understand why I wanted to see this diner. Actually, what I really need want to do is order a piece of cherry pie and a cup of black coffee ("a deep black cup of joe"), but since we were full of picnic food and were planning to eat dinner at the Elliott Bay Brewery, I settled for merely staring at it in blissed-out wonder. (Actually, my husband will tell you that when we found the diner I spent a full five minutes convulsing with glee. And it's true.)

West Seattle was all about the ahi tacos at the Elliott Bay Brewery and hot cocoa at Coffee to a Tea afterwards. The evening ended rather abruptly when our over-tired little lady got upset and crawled under the dollhouse (it was up on a little coffee table) in the kids' corner and cried bitterly into her hands. She cheered up once we got her into the bath at home, which only goes to show that when kids get a little squinky, you should always put them in water. It works every time.

And now I'll leave you with a few glorious tidbits from one of the most brilliant shows to air on television.

Pete Martell: Mr. Cooper, how do you take it?
Dale Cooper: Black as midnight on a moonless night.
Pete Martell: Pretty black.

"This must be where pies go when they die." --Special Agent Dale Cooper

"Harry, I'm gonna let you in on a little secret. Every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don't plan it, don't wait for it, just… let it happen."
--Special Agent Dale Cooper

Show me a day when the world wasn't new...

Suzannah attends her daycare for a few hours a week during the summers; this is mostly to ensure a smooth transition when I go back to teaching in the fall. It also gives me a few hours to do things that are easier sans toddler and gives her the opportunity to spend time with her buddies. Yesterday, I tagged along on a daycare outing to Northwest Trek, which is basically a wildlife park where you can see all kinds of animals up close in a natural habitat. We had a completely fabulous time; we saw moose and wolves and Bighorn sheep and bison and mountain goats and elk and caribou and LIONS AND TIGERS AND BEARS, OH MY! Suzannah really digs the animals these days, and was very excited to name each one as she saw it, although she was equally excited to announce each tree she saw, as well. And even though that meant pointing to about five hundred trees, all of which looked more or less the same, her enthusiasm for discovery just bubbles over.

Also wonderful for me is watching the ways in which Suzannah just thrives in the company of other kids. She's grown up with this little group, and she loves them all (you know, most of the time). It was fun for me to actually watch her play with them all day; I love the way she interacts with them so easily and happily, running around like crazy and laughing. She has a "big sister" of sorts, an older sister of one of the boys; she's in about the fourth grade, I guess, and Suzannah just adores her. She came along yesterday, and when Suzannah started to grow restless on the hour-long tram ride, Maddie just scooped her right up and said, "Hey, Suzannah, look at this!" The change of scenery -- and arms, perhaps -- settled her right down, and she was happy to hang out with her friend. Suzannah also holds her own quite well with the toddler boys, much to her daddy's chagrin. One of them is always trying to hold her hand, which she tolerates, and one of them is just a big old rotten wrecking ball of noise and Suzannah will probably end up marrying him one day, mostly because her father already heartily disapproves of this kid and any attention he might bestow on his little girl. (There's a backstory here involving the little hellion pushing Suzannah down, like, a year ago. Ever since then, Matt's lips visibly curl whenever this kid's name is mentioned. I love that protective side already!) And then there's this wild little kid, I mean he's just always spazzing out all over the place, who ran up to Suzannah with a spray bottle and squirted her right in the face (we brought tons of them along because it was hot yesterday, and very muggy. It proved to be an excellent idea). I suspect Matt might have just picked this kid up by the scruff of the neck and tossed him to the wolves right then and there, but instead of getting upset, Suzannah shrieked with delight and shouted, "AGAIN!" Basically, she handles the rough-and-tumbleness like a champ; it's when someone takes something away from her that she's likely to turn on the angry waterworks.

Anyway, we had a wonderful day. I never pass up an opportunity to go on a field trip with my daughter, even during the school year. Last fall, I played hooky from a day of staff development to go to the pumpkin patch at Remlinger Farms, which was considerably more difficult than yesterday's outing in that I toted Suzannah around in a sling all day long and nearly had a panic attack when we were separated from the group in the middle of the corn maze, which has resulted in my NEVER WANTING TO DO A CORN MAZE EVER AGAIN, I mean I am seriously traumatized by the memory, thank you very much, but that's another entry. Yesterday was a breeze; Suzannah even consented to riding in her stroller on the trails. Normally, she is much too independent for that, but miracles happen.

Matt and I take Suzannah everywhere we go, and for the most part, she fits so easily into our lives (as long as we come prepared with snacks and things to do, of course, and this is not to suggest she's never been a total stinker when we're trying to finish our food at a restaurant), but I think it's so important to take her places where it's really all about her experience, where she doesn't have to integrate herself into an adult's world. In some ways, sure, having a child ages you -- you cross into a different world, where you are the same age as every other parent no matter what year you were born -- but in many other ways, children keep you young. The whole world is new again. No matter how many trees or bears or raccoons I've seen in my life, when my daughter's eyes are wide and shining at the miraculous world, mine are, too.