Pickup game

The email from my youngest daughter's soccer coach said practice this week would start a bit earlier and "go until dark." I wasn't sure how dark dark should be, but when I arrived, I had to look hard at the girls running up and down the field to find mine. Formal practice had ended, so the girls had divided themselves into teams and switched out a regular ball for one that glowed in the dark. Their ponytails were snarly and their cheeks pink from the cold, but no one wanted to stop. To them, it didn't matter that there was dinner waiting or homework to be finished. They just wanted to play. And so it goes.

It's these informal pickup games that my youngest loves best. At recess, after school, after practice, and between "real" games. All they need is a goal, a ball, and a few children. Age, gender, ability - none of that matters. They're happy when a parent or teacher joins in. Shoes (and shirts for the boys) are optional. I'm in love with this age, with these pickup games, with their snarly ponytails. I know that too soon the fields will freeze, the snow will fall, and these 8-year-olds will be 11- and 14- and 16-year-olds. I'd like to think they might still play this way, that it won't end.

In Brazil, home to next year's World Cup, it never ends. In an article from last Sunday's New York Times: "In Brazil, the ball is always moving. It moves on grass and on sand, on concrete and on cobblestones. Sometimes, during the rainy season, it even moves on water." There's the dream of fame and fortune, of course. According to the article, Brazil is annually among the nations exporting the most players to foreign professional leagues. But mostly, pickup soccer in Brazil is about escape, and about joy. It doesn't matter if the game is played on a strip of grass between highways, on a beach, in a cage, or in a parking garage. "This game ... this is where you go to be yourself," one boy said. True in Brazil, and true on a field behind an elementary school just down the street.

Lalo de Almeida for The New York Times

White church, orange leaves

"I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers." ~ Anne of Green Gables

Have a wonderful (long!) weekend.

(Photo: bluepueblo.tumblr.com)

Smoke from the chimney

This is how, if you asked, I would describe our across-the-street neighbor: such a good guy.

He lives in a traditional Colonial house in a most traditional suburban neighborhood. He's my age but is single with no children. In the warmer months, he skateboards to work, and when the waves are good, he straps his surfboard to the roof of his car and goes. He typically dresses in board shorts, even when there's snow on the ground. His shoes of choice are flip-flops and sneakers, and each morning he runs for miles. When he comes back, he crosses the street to pat Clementine the dog, lying in the driveway. He buys boxes of cookies from the neighborhood Girl Scouts and many more tickets than one person needs to the annual pancake festival at the middle school. When he was frustrated by too many cars speeding through the neighborhood, he worked to get a new stop sign installed on the corner.

In the summer, he tends to his vegetable garden, and in the winter, he builds fires in his fireplace, and those fires are the whole point of this post. (It took me a very long time to get there, didn't it?). It's cool, sometimes even cold, now at night when we get home, and thanks to our across-the-street neighbor, that cold air more often than not is filled with the smell of smoke from his chimney. Most nights, in my house, we're too busy to make a fire, even in the dead of winter, and that's a shame. I love everything about fires, including the smell and the sound. I love the orderliness of stacked wood and the containers people use to hold it. And so a goal for the winter: to take the time to make more fires. And in the meantime, feeling grateful for our surfing, skateboarding, gardening, cookie-buying, all-around good-guy neighbor, who already does.

(Photos from top to bottom: Sanctuary; The Ranch at Live Oak in Malibu from Remodelista; convoy.tumblr.com; thegiftsoflife.tumblr.com; Catherine Kwong Design)

Friday thoughts

The details of the story I'm about to tell you elude me, such as the store I was in or what I was looking for, but about a year ago I was in a store looking for something, and the woman (very young) who was helping me suggested I look online. I must have stared at her blankly for just a second, because she said, "That means the In-ter-net," as if I were 110 years old.

I remembered this last night when I was thinking about the Internet and how I'm still sometimes amazed at being able to look up anything I can possibly think of at the exact moment I think of it. (Coming across something I'd never think of in a million years or know anything about also is good.)

Last night I was thinking about Mary Oliver and began to read through some of her poems. I have several favorites, and there they all were, just by typing her name. Here's one I particularly love because of the last line. Amazing thing, that In-ter-net. I hope you have a happy (almost summer) weekend.

The Summer Day, Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean -
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down -
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

(Photograph: Baby grasshopper by Jack Hochfield. National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest 2012)

Peony

Part 1

Six years ago, when we bought our house and did a renovation, there was very little left at the end for landscaping. We had budgeted for some "hardscaping" - a stone wall along the driveway, a smallish bluestone patio in the back, and a very small bluestone landing by the side door. Plantings were minimal, mostly because of cost, but also because I wasn't sure what I wanted.

I knew what I didn't want, though, and that was color. I consistently tore pictures from magazines (this was pre-Pinterest) of all-white and green gardens, and I thought they were beautiful. I'm not a big color person to begin with, so this was easy.

Part 2

Very slowly, over time, I began to add to the garden. They key to Part 2 was my good friend and neighbor who also is a professional gardener. We'd wander through nurseries and sometimes bring home a hosta, a boxwood, or some Solomon's Seal. She'd often stop by with a shovel and a bucketful of something she'd divided from her own garden or a client's, always white. "These will sulk for a while," she'd say, "but just wait."

Part 3

My mother's house was about to go on the market. I thought about how my children always asked if they could pick a Lamb's Ear from her front bed, I think mostly because they liked the name. I thought of her rose bush by the front door. I thought of her garden out back that had become overgrown but once had thrived, and which my mother had loved.

So we put on our boots and went back to see what was there. And what was there were peonies. Peonies that were not in bloom. I tried hard to remember what color they were but couldn't. I also couldn't leave them behind. So we dug them up and brought them home.

Part 4

For a while after the peonies were planted, nothing happened. Nothing happened for long enough that I began to think they hadn't survived the trip from one garden to the other. But then, this spring, buds began to appear on one of the plants, and one day those buds exploded into bloom.

A few days earlier, I had been talking to my 11-year-old about a big decision he had to make. I had asked him to try to explain to me what he was feeling, and he said, "I don't have the words."

That's how I felt when the peonies opened. They made me both happy and sad, but mostly happy. I took a picture with my phone and emailed it to my sister. She made me promise that if we ever move, we'll take the peonies with us, again.

One last thing: My all-white garden now is splashed with a deep, hot pink. That was the color I couldn't remember. Of course.

The peonies cut from my garden.

Time flies

I'm having a time-is-flying-by moment. These spring weekends (and weeks) are so full, there's hardly time to think. It reminds me of having babies, when well-meaning people said, "Enjoy this time; it goes by so fast," and I thought, "I'm really trying, but mostly I'm feeling overwhelmed." We'll race to the end of spring, measured by the last day of school (the end of June in our case), and then it will all come to a halt, at least for a while. Yesterday, I went with one of my daughters on a field trip to the ocean, where we spent the day searching for crabs, shrimp, and starfish. We climbed over rocks, waded in icy-cold water, and ate picnic lunches on beach towels. I tried not to give in to the feeling that my field-trip days are numbered. As parents of 8-year-olds, we can still elicit screams of excitement from the school bus when it pulls into the parking lot and the children spot us waiting by our cars. That won't last, I know, but an 11-year-old and a 13-year-old remind me that what comes after also is good, just different.

I hope you have a very happy - and relaxing - weekend.

Landscape into art

I sometimes play a game with myself when I'm scrolling through Pinterest. I look only at the images - not where they came from or who posted them - and wait for something to jump out at me. I try not to "repin" or even "like" anything unless it almost startles me - its beauty, its familiarity, something. So much of what's pinned starts to look the same, and I love the feeling of seeing something different that moves me.

I felt that way when I came across a series of paintings (not on Pinterest!) by Katherine Downey Miller, an artist who grew up in the town next to mine and still lives and works nearby. Our local magazine profiled Miller and talked about her connection to nature and the land.

Her paintings are so beautiful and remind me why I live here, despite another snowstorm yesterday and gray and white everywhere. Miller turns this landscape into art, into something to celebrate. And I couldn't resist adding the painting at the bottom, which for me makes a different kind of connection.

All images by Katherine Downey Miller

Oh, snow

It's snowing again, so much so that the kids have a snow day and may be going to school in July. Clementine the dog has remembered that she loves snow with all her heart. The adults around her don't love it quite so fervently. Still, there are signs of spring. On Sunday, we'll lose an hour but gain an hour of light. And I'm not sure what these yellow blossoms poking through are, but they're a hopeful sight among all that white. Have a wonderful weekend, whatever your weather.

Pink hydrangea

My plan was to run quickly in and out of Whole Foods late yesterday afternoon. I was getting some chicken for dinner, but it took me almost 15 minutes to get through the flower section at the front of the store. There, just past the roses and tulips, were dozens of beautiful hot-pink hydrangeas. It almost startled me to see them there. They seemed so out of place and of a different time (summer). I started chatting with a woman standing next to me, who already had put one of the hydrangeas in her cart. She told me she would try to keep it alive through winter and replant it once the ground thaws. She reminded me that the soil determines its color, so it might not end up being the same fabulous pink. No matter. I was just happy to be talking about it. I put one in my cart, too, and followed my new gardener friend into the store.

Spring

The temperature rose to 15 degrees today, an improvement over the rest of the week, but so, so far from Spring.

I decided to pretend, though, in West Elm. With the wood-handled garden scoops, paper flowers, and even bags to carry it all in, it wasn't hard. There was that moment of remembering that it gets better.

I hope you have a wonderful weekend. Stay warm.