The Last Few Days

I have passed a few really lovely days.



On Saturday, Arabis and I went to Children's Fairyland with my friend Lisa and her son, Blue. Arabis and Blue have known each other for over two years and it is adorable to watch the two of them together. He is enamored of her and she being the strong-willed creature she is, gladly tugged him along after her. If anyone is interested, the full set of photos is here. For contrast, check out Blue and Arabis on their first trip to Fairyland together, almost two years earlier.

On Sunday, Mojo and I went to Forbidden Island to hear Meshugga Beach Party, a mock-Hassidic surf band while my mother agreed to spend the afternoon and evening with Arabis. Mojo and I got three and a half hours of alone time together, something we haven't had for far too long. After two sips of my first fruity rum drink my head began to spin and I remembered that the last meal I'd had was breakfast, having forgotten to eat lunch. Oops. We ordered food, had drinks and I got delightfully tipsy. We flirted and joked and managed to not talk about either kid for almost an hour and a half.

After Meshugga had packed up this woman came up to Mojo and I and handed me a flier for her book, Cool Jew: The Ultimate Guide for Every Member of the Tribe. We started talking and after a while she said, "You are Jewish, aren't you?"

I laughed, "No. I'm Armenian, but I get that all the time."

"Wow. I totally thought you were a member of the Tribe. That's okay. Do you still want the flier?"

I told her I did and would pass it on to a friend in Brooklyn.

Meanwhile, Arabis was at home with Grandma having a tea party. As Mojo and I were walking out the door I realized I had forgotten my phone and ran back in to get it. Arabis was sitting very primly at her little table while grandma sat on the sofa at the other side. She was holding out a demitasse cup and saucer to my mother and saying very properly in a mock British accent, "Would you like a cup of tea?" I melted just a little bit.

Yesterday was relatively mellow at home, culminated by two hours in the community garden. Some other tenants were there as well, and as the sun set my neighbor Brad blew bubbles for Arabis which she danced in and then gleefully popped. The two of them were laughing hysterically and I found myself sitting back in the twilight, watching and smiling and daring to think that life was actually pretty good.

I took a few 30 second videos but unfortunately cannot download them since Arabis spilled yogurt on the USB connector cable for my camera and it is dead. If anyone has a spare Sony VMC-MD1 Multi-Use Terminal Cable for Cyber-Shot cameras, I'd be eternally in your debt! I'll have to wait until the first of the month to order a new one.

Today, we got up early and made pancakes, Arabis helping me in the kitchen. I had her stir the batter and she started singing the Mexican Chocolate Song at the same time, while shaking her little hips back and forth:

"Bate, bate, chocolate
Tu nariz de cacahuate
Uno, dos, tres, CHO!
Uno, dos, tres, CO!
Uno, dos, tres, LA!
Uno, dos, tres, TE!
Chocolate, chocolate!
Bate, bate, chocolate!
Bate, bate, bate, bate,
Bate, bate, CHOCOLATE!"

I had to call her padrino (godfather), Tio Riqui, and held the phone near her so he could hear her singing in Spanish. Hopefully she's going to have a good grasp of both Spanish and Armenian as well as English.

I think today we may head up to Lake Anza and go swimming. She has been asking for it since we woke up and I'm feeling pretty good right now.

Oh, before I forget, I had the oddest dream this morning. What I remember of it is this:

Robin and I are going to Cat and Peter's house for some unknown reason and we are standing at the front door ringing the bell. Only it is not their house, but a house across the street with the last two numbers reversed (this actually happened. To my mortification, I transposed the numbers of their address one night and spent 20 minutes outside the wrong house waiting for them. In my exhaustion and distraction, I was convinced that they had given me the wrong address and admonished Peter for it. But it was my fault all along). So Robin and I are standing on the porch of this yellow house, ringing and ringing the bell and finally the door answers and there they are, still in their pajamas. Cat is wearing a loose fitting, light-colored, pajama top and bottom set with white bunny slippers and Peter is clad in a pink bunny suit with attached feet that zips up the front (like the sort kids wear, only much bigger). Robin and I ask why they aren't ready and they tell us that daylight savings time has ended and it is an hour earlier than we think it is. Embarassed we apologize and offer to go have coffee on Castro Street while they get dressed. Peter is laughing at us and then I woke up.

Very strange place to live, my brain. Hope you all have a magical day. We're going swimming!

"This Is Now"

Tonight I finished reading "Little House in the Big Woods" to Arabis as she fell asleep. When I was a child, Laura Ingalls Wilder's tales of her girlhood were favorite books. So much so that my mother still laughs at the memory of me being offended when the televised series came out. Oh, I watched every episode and afterward would indignantly rip them to shreds, to my mother's glee (keep in mind that the series premiered just a month prior to my ninth birthday. I was {and still am} very protective of my literary loves).

My friends and I used to play a game based on the little house books which we called "Pioneers." We would take our little red wagons and stand an empty cardboard box in the back. Then we would put our dolls, our mess kits, apples, bread, cheese, a washboard, anything we had that was "old-timey" and go out into the fields to play (this was when we lived in Marin, before it was the overgrown yuppie-ville it is today).

My childhood friend Jenny's dad (who is an artist) made her a covered wagon frame that slid onto the rails of her Radio Flyer. We marched in the Fourth of July parade with it one year, all dressed up in our costumes. I'll have to post some photos (now that we finally got the scanner hooked up).

I haven't read these books since I was young, but found a complete series in a used bookstore about a year ago and promptly snatched them up. In reading to Arabis, I take myself back in time and so many things become clear to me.

My father always said that he was born a hundred years too late. I think that trait was passed on to me. I learned to spin and dye when I was nine years old from a woman named Ida Grae (who wrote the definitive book on natural dying, "Nature's Colors"). I used to do my homework on my old-fashioned desk by the light of a New England oil lamp. The first major purchase I ever made with my own money came at age 14 when I bought my Ashford spinning wheel (which I still have - along with the original receipt!). I collected the Foxfire books and learned crafts from my father (carving, shooting) when we were together. I devoured history, my own and anything else I could get my hands on. I sat at the feet of my great-grandparents and aunts and uncles, listening raptly while they told of their lives in the old country and here. Tales of what was. Of how things were.

Arabis had fallen asleep a few pages from the end, but I continued reading aloud:

"What are the days of auld lang syne, Pa?"

"They are the days of a long time ago, Laura," Pa said. "Go to sleep, now."

But Laura lay awake a little while, listening to Pa's fiddle softly playing and to the lonely sound of the wind in the Big Woods. She looked at Pa sitting on the bench by the hearth, the fire-light gleaming on his brown hair and beard and glistening on the honey-brown fiddle. She looked at Ma, gently rocking and knitting.

She thought to herself, "This is now."

She was glad that the cozy house, and Pa and Ma and the firelight and the music, were now. They could not be forgotten, she thought, because now is now. It can never be a long time ago.

That final passage just struck me hard. It was so poignant and real to me, living in the moment, in the now, with my daughter's head cradled in my arm and her breathe moist on my skin. One of those beautiful, transcendent moments that I wanted to cherish forever.