jeans

Oh, my beautiful girls.
Oy.
This week, I bought Sadie a pair of new jeans.
I rarely buy new clothes for the girls. My 13-year-old sister (who never spills anything on anything) passes all of her clothes down to Sadie (who spills everything on everything), and then Rosie gets the dregs. Rosie is okay with it, as long as she has socks she likes. I buy her new socks.
My sister is narrow and willow-y like her father, and so as time goes by, I filter out the jeans and send them to goodwill for children of that tall and willow-y body type. And so, last week, when Sadie pointed out another pair of stretchy cotton pants that were all of the sudden 4 inches too short, I agreed to go in search of some new pants.

I picked up the girls at school and we headed to the outlets. Small planned city with manicured bushes. Really big strollers. Christmas music piping over the sidewalks. Cinnabon.

We were cheery. And with one girl's hand in each of my own, we crossed the street to start our adventure at the Gap. The girls laughed at the early Christmas music, and I thought to myself, this will be easy. In and out. Comfortable and inexpensive pants in hand.

Store 1: Into the dressing room with a pile of every fit and several sizes. And also lots and lots of these things called jeggings. Jean leggings. Jeggings. Rosie explained it to me. And then, one at a time, Sadie tries on each pair. She falls over trying to get the things off. She pulls them up. She struggles with the buttons. She runs around the dressing room and does the mandatory "squat in your jeans" test.

She shakes her head and hands them all back to me, one at a time.
"Mom," she says. "I can't do the skinny jeans. I don't get them, and I can't get them on."
It's either skinny or slim fit. And neither fits. I size up, and then they're huge. She starts to look discouraged.

Jeans are hard! I say. Maybe you're just not a Gap jeans kind of girl. Most people have to try on a million pairs before dining the right one.

Store 2: Again with the skinny jeans! Only these have silly zippers on them, too. They're out of almost every size, and so we try on more jeggings. Sadie shakes her head again. The staples-on paper label on the back pops off, and she bursts into hysterics.
"My butt is too big for these pants! I popped the label off!" Rosie falls on the static-y carpeted floor laughing. Coldplay is playing Christmas music in the dressing room.

Store 3: There are lots of styles and sizes and I am hopeful. There is, however, no dressing room. I ask the woman at the counter where we can try things on, and she says, "try on? why?" We try to go into the back store room, but there are a bunch of guys in baggy pants in there. I grab the nearest skirt, a tulle tutu, and hand it to Sadie. She puts on the tutu, takes off her pants, tries on the jeans. Rosie is again on the floor laughing. Sadie shakes her head. 

Store 4: It is dark, and we are hungry. Sadie is asking why there is Christmas music, and why all the jeans are skinny. I am telling her that some people don't even like wearing jeans at all! That we will find the right ones some day. That all these stores are lame and we don't want their jeans anyway.

I don't want her to hate shopping. I don't want her to hate jeans shopping, or swimsuit shopping, or situations when she has to be under bad lighting in front of a full-length mirror. I just need a pair of decent pants for my beautiful beautiful girl.

In the darkness, the inside of the another store calls to us. "GIRLS DENIM!" I repeat the words, and pull the girls into the store. There is a wall of jeans.  None of them are skinny. They are "bootcut" and "straight" and there are jeans in every size. My arms are filled with little jeans, and we head to the large and empty dressing room.

The first pair fits. Perfectly. She slips on her sneakers and runs the full parameter of the store.
"These are my jeans."

I exhale.

cinnamon buns, part 1

Sadie and Willow were born 12 hours apart.

 

We met Willow's parents in birth class, when both girls were in the belly, so the girls extend the length of their lives by 3 months, and they say, "we have known each other for that long."

They have celebrated almost every birthday together.  Sadie and Willow have joint birthday parties where they fight over the guest lists, or they plan grand voyages, and then they settle for a day in New York.  This year, the request was dinner out together with the 2 families, then a sleepover, and then Sadie asked for cinnamon buns instead of a cake.

A simple request, really.

Oh, Mommy, won't you make cinnamon buns?

I was a little off this weekend.  Blurry in the eyes, short on patience, and I kept telling myself to get it together.  I perused the cookbooks and softened the butter.  I had to work on Sadie's birthday, so it was essential that the recipe benefit from sitting in the fridge all night before I could bake it in the morning before work.  But my unmerited crankiness and impatience got in the way.  And my unmerited crankiness and impatience made me even crankier and more impatient with myself.  And that's how I found myself in the kitchen far too late on Saturday night, squinting at a recipe and cursing at my yeast (always always a bad idea! living thing!) while Joey tried to stay awake in front of an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in order to keep me company. 

This, in truth, is my least favorite kind of cooking. The kind where I think I should be one way, but I can't quite be my best self. The kind when I am trying to make something fabulous for my kids, but I have gotten in my own way.  The kind where I realize that the recipe actually calls for 12 more hours of rise time (no!!!!! how could I have missed that!)  than I have allowed for. And new-agey as it might be, you know and I know that bread above all other things takes in the emotions of the person creating it.  It just does.  And no matter what I did, I couldn't change my attitude.

It was strikingly similar to the same day 8 years earlier.  

I'd like to think that I do what I need to with grace and patience and calm, but really, that is more of an ideal that I strive for.  And as I sat 8 years ago, so so pregnant, I was convinced that I would never give birth, that my body wouldn't behave--in short, I was overcome with crankiness and impatience.  I had been in and out of labor for weeks, and it seemed to me that my life would just continue like that forever.  But more than all that, I was annoyed with myself for being so cranky and impatient--I felt like I should be able to calmly embrace the reality--that I would have a baby soon, that my body would come through, and that I should enjoy these last days before my life changed forever.  But I couldn't. I was trying to be a patient earth goddess, but in truth,  I was pissed and ready for birth. 

You know how the story ends.  The baby came, I became a mother, and life changed forever.  But this weekend as I tried to change my attitude, I couldn't help but see the continuity of it all.  I was mad that I hadn't asked for the day off from work, that I had botched the cinnamon buns, and that I was just feeling so off.  But the world worked it's ways around me, and it took care of Sadie.  Willow kept her laughing for nearly 24 hours, Rosie showered her with gifts and privileges, and Joey kept the day running smoothly.  Sadie's auntie (fairy godmother) Eilen came up from Boston and took the girls out for a whirlwind pizza and toy store day.  Joey came in to see me at work, and I sat with him for a few minutes, and I realized that 8 years ago that very moment, I had finally called him at work to tell him that my water had broken and it was really going to happen this time.  We were quiet, and we just sat there at the table for a minute.  And by the time I got home and started rubbing herbs on the chickens for Sadie's roast chicken birthday dinner, my mood had shifted.  Sadie came home and showed me all her birthday bootie, talking a mile a minute about every single thing in the day. We sat around the dinner table and we were exactly the group of people who were in the room when she was born--me, Joey, my mother, stepfather, Maia, and Eilen (and Rosie of course!) And when we finally tucked Sadie in, right at the moment that she was born 8 years ago, the calm that I had been waiting for all weekend really came to me.  Because again, again I realized (why does it always take so long!) that I do what I can, but the world takes care of these girls, and the girls take care of themselves!  Sadie is strong, and smart, and so capable.  And she has such a support system of people who love her--they carried her through the day.  Eesh, mothering.  I am just not everything, and once we get them into the world, the world will take over. Thank whoever is looking out for that.  I don't know that it takes a village.  I think it takes a universe.

And the cinnamon buns?  Well, I don't know what took over, but they were fabulous.  I botched the recipe so many times throughout, I have no idea how I made them. I'm going to go through and see if I can reconstruct what I did, so that will be part 2.

Happy birthday to my sweet girl. And thank you to the world that holds her. 

roasted baby vegetables

Well, I'm sorry to say... Sadie's been a bit at it again. In the mix with all of her wonderful Sadie things, there are constant demands, and there is foot stomping, and there are more demands. I just don't know how to help that girl out these days.
Last night, after being whisked away from a coming tantrum by a few aunties (thank you Molly, thank you Lissa!) to see some free modern dance in the woods, she returned, and without so much pausing to say hello, it all began again. You see, during her absence, we ran Rosie down to the ice cream shop, just honestly for a mellow treat for Rosie sans the demanding one, and Rosie just couldn't keep in the information. So, then it was hysterics on the lack of ice cream followed by an angry critique of what was for dinner.
What is this! stomp stomp frown frown.
Roasted baby vegetables, from the garden!
"Mom. That is mean and unnatural. These vegetables should be growing until their big. You are hurting mother nature with this dinner."
You see what I'm up against here?

If you find just the right farmer at the farmers market, you might walk away with a little basket of baby vegetables. Maybe little beets, or miniature carrots, or tiny cippolini onions. But honestly, this is reason number 456 to grown these things in your very own yard. Because the truth is, Sadie is right. Like other things that are tastier when they are young (oh, Sadie at 3!), baby vegetables should keep growing so that you can harvest them correctly and have lots of food and preserve them for the winter and all that. But tiny? They are worth the guilt of ending their short lives. I could (and I have been known to) empty my garden before anything is grown--I am that susceptible to the siren call of the baby onion.
And if I were really on top of it, I would have thinned everything beautifully, and I would have writing about baby vegetables earlier in the summer, when you're supposed to have them, and when thinning benefits those that stay to mature to adulthood.
But my garden is a wreck (I plead abdominal surgery), and when finally my friend Molly whisked me out to the garden yesterday before whisking Sadie away a bit later, I finally faced the jungle of thistle and grass and radicchio that I have going out there. And because of the sheer quantity of weeds (more work today!), every time I yanked an offending plant, there was often a perfect little baby veg hanging on to those weedy roots for dear life.
Hurray! Dinner! Although not, as you would imagine, for the big girl, who abstained for humanitarian reasons. And not for the little either, as she was filled with ice cream. And I call myself a mother. Ah well. More work to do. What would I do with my time if I wasn't so so imperfect?

Roasted Baby Vegetables

Combine any number of baby carrots, onions, beets, new potatoes, and peeled garlic cloves. Anything that is bigger than quite little should be cut down to match the size of the smaller vegetables. Toss with a glug of olive oil and sprinkle with salt. Spread on a baking sheet and roast at 425 degrees for 20-25 minutes, or until especially the beets and potatoes are tender.

sadie in the play

Last night, Sadie was Miranda in The Tempest. There were five Mirandas, all equally Miranda-like and filled with wonder.

Sadie's got a thing for Shakespeare, and since she was little she has loved to hold my Riverside Shakespeare in her lap. This was the first play that she has gotten to do, really truly, in front of an audience.

She knew her lines weeks ago. She's chanted them around the living room so many times that Rosie knows them too. The night before last, she just couldn't fall asleep. She wasn't nervous--she just couldn't wait.

I was Miranda too, once. It was just a few years before Sadie came to be. Over the last weeks, Sadie has been drilling me on the similarities. What was your costume like? (blue and silky and Indonesian) Did you have to kiss Ferdinand? (Yes, and it didn't go so well) Do you remember this line? (Only because you've been repeating it all day)

Honestly, I have loved this connection over the play. That Riverside Shakespeare is one of the most important books in my life, and I am happy to share it with her. It is so heavy, after all.

Last night, I had a selectboard meeting. It was important, and worthwhile, and we were dealing with issues that will make a difference. I had to be there.

Standing in the back of the classroom while the kids gestured and spoke out and swayed in imaginary storms, I watched the clock. I knew that I would miss the end of the play, but I was hopeful that I would get to see Sadie in her big scene. In the end, I ran out of the school five minutes before her scene, trying not to cry as I hopped into the car, and I sped to my meeting.

I missed her first school play. After staying home with her for years and being there for everything, I missed her 8 lines as Miranda.

I left my camera with Joey and I made him swear to photograph every moment. When I got home, I looked at these pictures, and I heard the lines in my head, and I gave Sadie a really big squeeze. She asked if I had seen any of her scene, and I was honest with her. A flash passed through her face, and I pulled her onto my lap and asked her to tell me about every moment. She was okay. She had had just the night she was dreaming of.

I feel ridiculous thinking about Sadie in therapy in 20 years, but I have to admit that I think of it. "My mom missed my first school play!" she'll say, and the therapist will shake her head in disbelief. "She was always so busy- there was the town, and her writing, and her cooking. She was always shooing me out of the kitchen! No wonder I hate to cook."

The side of myself that creates these conversations is not my best. With my rational side, the one that thinks anxiety and guilt is a waste of time and energy, I know that she will be okay. I know that she is her own little self, and that I do my best to keep her safe, feed her well, and give her a lap to sit on. I know that I am not so powerful that one missed play will make a future wreck of her. After all, there are so many people who love her, and I am just one among them. Last night, Rosie was sitting in the front row, mouthing her lines and cheering her on. Joey was in the back, beaming and photographing every moment. Grandma was there, and Auntie Maia. And there were all of her friends, onstage and off, calming each other's stage fright and high-fiving after each scene. A lot of people were loving her through those eight lines.

But next time, nothing can keep me away.