Motherhood here and there

For four years, we lived next door to a family from Norway, and they became some of our closest friends. Our children were young, with a 7-year-old, a not-yet-born, and everything in between. The kids raced between houses, had their first sleepovers, and started preschool and elementary school together. We celebrated Norwegian holidays with them, and they went trick-or-treating and to Fourth of July parades with us.

Audrey (the mom) and I spent hours talking on their driveway, and often those conversations were about life in the United States vs. their home in Norway. Audrey is Scottish, married to a Norwegian, and her ability to adjust to other cultures seemed almost effortless. Her insights into life both here and there fascinated me.

Eventually our friends moved back to Norway, and we miss them. I thought of Audrey, her sweet, Americanized kids, and all our conversations on the driveway, when I read the first of a series on one of my favorite blogs, A Cup of Jo. For the series, called Motherhood Around the World, blogger Joanna Goddard interviews American mothers about their impressions of raising children in a foreign country. First up was Norway (coincidentally), and last Monday was Japan. You can find both here.

I've loved reading about the differences these mothers have encountered living overseas. But I've also loved the sameness. For example, Joanna interviewed Yoko Inoue, a photographer who grew up in Japan but lived in the United States for 17 years before moving back with her American husband and son. She talks about children walking to school: "As parents [in Japan] we have to make sure kids always say greetings 'with big voice! Good morning!' No mumbling or looking down. If you don't, it's considered so rude!"

I smiled when I read this. "Remember to look the person in the eye," I'm constantly telling my children. "Use a good, strong voice" (though I'm going to start using the simpler instruction, "With big voice!"). Very Japanese of me, I now know.

This photo is not really related to the post other than reminding me of when she was 7.

Married

Last night a friend asked me how long I had been married, and I couldn't remember. I knew it was either 15 or 16 years, either 1996 or 1997 but not which one. I was fairly certain my husband wouldn't know, either. It wasn't until I sat down later with a calculator that I figured it out. My other option would have been to dig up our wedding invitation.

One of the things I do remember about that time is going to wedding after wedding after wedding. It seemed as though there was one every weekend, usually requiring road trips, hotel rooms, pedicures, new dresses, and reunions with friends. All those weddings took a bit of effort but were so worth it. They were that much fun.

After the wedding stage came the non-wedding stage, where I remain today. The non-wedding stage consists of one wedding every five years or so, if I'm lucky. Definitely not enough. Not enough beautiful brides and beautiful dresses; earnest, clean groomsmen; scene-stealing flower girls; moments that make you cry and many that make you laugh; that feeling of two people starting out on a great adventure.

I got a little bit of a wedding fix last night when I read C Magazine's fall wedding issue. I loved seeing the dresses, the table settings, the flowers, the brides. I was intrigued by an article about Greg Kalamar, an artist from Los Angeles who paints scenes from people's wedding celebrations in the likeness of a Degas or Monet painting. The image below is a painting he did of a reception inside San Francisco's Ferry Building.

Meanwhile, looking forward to my next wedding invitation. I'll try to be patient.

(All images from C California Style Magazine)

Finding the way there

A friend dropped a book off on my doorstep yesterday morning with a note saying how much she liked it. My computer was moving slowly, so as I sat and waited, I read the author's note at the beginning of the book. And there I came across a perfect description of my life, right down to the detail about the author's sister:

"A hopeless navigator, I regularly got lost trying to find birthday parties and doctors' offices, exiting the highway at the wrong place and driving around for ten minutes without recognizing anything. After a while my children would begin shouting from the backseat, 'You're lost, aren't you? You're lost again! Call Aunt Bridget!' My sister, Bridget, would navigate me back to our town after I called her on my cellphone, my heart pounding with the stress of being late, being a wretched driver, risking a citation, being lost."

This is me. I remember driving a carful of girls to a birthday party and becoming utterly lost with no idea where to go next. The GPS was no help because apparently - as I remember - there there two streets with the same name in the same town. I called my sister, trying to sound calm for the listening ears in the backseat, and sure enough, she got us there.

I love the author's description of this state of being - being late, being a wretched driver, being lost. I once told my children I don't panic when I'm lost because I'm so accustomed to it, but that's not true. Being lost in a car is a terrible feeling. The GPS (usually) helps, to be sure. And of course my sister.

The book, by the way, is Paris in Love by Eloisa James. It's about the author's decision to take a sabbatical from her job, sell her house, and move with her family to Paris, where she continues to get lost, but this time on foot and - most important - with much greater pleasure.

'Wet foot, dry foot. Low foot, high foot...' *

I won't tell you too much about my feet, because certainly no one needs to know that. I'll only say they're nothing like my 8-year-old's feet, or even my older children's, though I become less and less familiar with theirs as the years pass. But my 8-year-old still needs me to trim her nails, so I know those feet well. They're soft and smooth and wash off quickly and easily with soap and water, even when she has spent the large part of her day outside barefoot.

Part of the problem with my feet stems from my love of flip-flops. The fact that I wear flip-flops almost all the time in summer, even to walk the dog in the woods, certainly doesn't help. When my feet are grimy after a walk, they don't wash off quickly and easily with soap and water. So I was intrigued when I came across a recipe on Pinterest for a foot scrub and thought I'd try. It's so simple, with just two ingredients: liquid soap and granulated sugar. To make, pour half a cup or so of sugar into a bowl and mix with liquid soap until goopy. Then, using your fingers, rub the mixture all over your feet, concentrating on heels and toes, and rinse.

That's it. And the best part is, it works. It's the sort of DIY scrub my 13-year-old loves. After using it a few times and ending up with fairly clean, softer-than-when-I-started feet (though still not 8-year-old feet), I'm loving it, too.

*Dr. Seuss

Friend

Katie Cole and I were best friends from Kindergarten until the day she moved away in 4th grade. Here is what I remember about her:

1. She wore her blonde hair in two braids every single day.
2. Her mother's name was Priscilla, and she had a little sister named Sarah and a one-eyed Dachshund named Oliver.
3. One day I was sitting next to her on the school bus, and I lied to her about a grade on my report card because I wanted her to think I had done better than I had.
4. Both her parents grew up on farms in Iowa.
5. There was a big bump in the road in front of her house, and I always made sure to ride my bike over it when I went to play.
6. One day on the playground, she said something mean about me to a group of girls, and I went home and cried at the kitchen table with my mother. I forgave her the next day.
7. I sat in the bathroom and cried again the day she came to our house with her parents to tell us they were moving cross-country. Almost immediately after, or so it seemed to me, they were gone.

Two of my children each have a close friend who is moving far away in a month or so. Unlike my experience in the bathroom, both have known about the moves for a little while, and I hope this will make it easier. But they will miss their friends and will remember them when they're grown. I feel sure of that. But which memories will they take with them? I hope to find out when we get there.

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.