Early Summer Grounding
It’s that raw time of year; the days are long and warm (last week hitting 90 most days without flinching), the teachers are putting on videos and handing out snacks instead of assignments, and we are all spent after nine months of worrying about grades and GPAs and making sure the alarm goes off at 6 a.m.
Rosie and Kaelen have been doing a daily countdown to the last day, varying total days between now and the 15th, to just school days, to whole class days only (not half days). Which sounds better? Which will make these last few hours go by most quickly?
Rosie cut all of her hair off and dyed it blue as part of her new and improved Ferndale High School version of herself. Her wardrobe is also suddenly very black and full of jagged edges. Eddie asked out a new girl last week and we have seen almost none of him. He will be a senior next year and is talking about SAT scores and an apartment and his hourly wages at Kroger and collwge applications. We are taking his final driving test next weekend and then he will finally have his license.
Kaelen blossomed as a reader this year and hunts down and devours every YA paperbook he finds around the house. He will be a third grader next year. Ari did so much better in preschool than I could have imagined. I am forever thankful for his teachers this year. He will be disappointed when he understands that school is over for the year. He has learned colors and numbers and how to quietly listen in a group and the shape of his name. He knows ‘A’ and ‘X’.
And June, baby June. She is already strong and silly and curious beyond her 20 months. We all dote on her and enjoy her little own language and affections. She finally says water instead of calling it ‘ice’, but she still calls outside ‘cold’ most of the time. You can watch her brain work to formulate language enough to communicate her desires through the windows of those wide, wanting eyes. I think she is very smart. Today she asked for a popsicle and pizza, unprovoked. So despite the questionable diet, her brain seems to be rapidly developing. Life isn’t all organic avacados and wheatgrass juice, kid. I’m glad you can thrive in a weedy patch. I promise to throw you some berries and filtered water along with the nachos.
Beyond the kids, what is life right now? Slow things, tedious things. Keeping up with the never-ending streams of dishes and laundry and driving while also watching closely how the vibrant, juicy green grape vine grows over the window above the sink… Smashing ants when they march across the dining room, looking for bits of toast and egg I missed at breakfast clean-up, sorting clothes into piles grown out of or not yet grown into. Sitting in the yard with Melissa in cheap platic lawn chairs, listening to the secret made up world of the kids playing with the hose, threatening them not to tattle.
I am working, but only a little bit. My world feels slow and stunted. Was it always this way? Am I failing?
Nick and I talk but mostly argue. I want to not be around him most days because the arguments disable me further. He doesn’t seem to allow for pleasant, meditative observation. He paces, shouts, picks. Even the slightest prying or rushing is, I think, exaggerated for me right now.
I want more than five hours of sleep a night… I want to listen to the wind move through the pregnant trees in the dark, I want to feel feeezing groundwater from the hose run over my toes until they are numb. I want to center myself. My greatest delight right now is watching the cottonwood seeds fill up the golden hued sky. I love it every year. When they are thick as snow, I first remember Bernie and his disdain for their habit of clogging up the pool filter (Goddamn Cottonwood!!), and then I remember the dream of the boy under the tree in the field, his conversation, his brief kiss on the lips. And both things make me happy.
