Memories Tuesday

I had a wisdom tooth pulled yesterday, my first. It was burrowing under my back molar and had to go -- the dentist was confident he could pull it in the office, so that I could avoid going to the hospital here in Breda. I've already had two traumatic experiences there, and don't need a third just before I move.

It took about an hour, and he didn't really pull it -- he ground it down and sawed off pieces and had to leave the office twice in frustration, because it just wouldn't come OUT. The last time he came back he dug around for what seemed like forever, and then POP it was done. There was nothing to show, because it was all in little pieces and had mostly been sucked up by that little vacuum thingy the assistant was wielding. I didn't mind, I wouldn't have looked anyway.

I slept poorly and didn't feel so great when I woke up this morning, but went into work anyway -- I'd tweaked the daycare schedule so many times in the last week, I just couldn't bear to call and ask if I could change it again. Work was okay, I got out of my telephone shift (have to do an extra on Friday) because talking, I sounded like I'd been drinking since Sunday -- and after work I went into town to pick up things for Mirthe's birthday. As the afternoon wore on my jaw turned a soft blue and the swelling went down a little. At 3:30 I had a check up at the dentist, to see how it was doing, and everything was okay. I managed to eat some dinner with the girls and put them to bed early, although I think I can still hear them singing once in a while. Since my parents have been here (they're gone for a few days, BTW) we've moved their beds into our bedroom and it's been lovely, just like when they were little babies, those first weeks. When I wake up at night I'm not in a panic, thinking, do I hear one of them? I just look over at them and see them sleeping, listen to them breathing. And then slowly fall back into my own dream.

What did Geert photograph today?

Baby swans. Swanlings? No... (doing a google) Cygnets.

Beautiful, Geert!

http://www.geertfotografeert.nl/index.htm

Mijn ouders zijn heel onverwachts eerder terggekomen uit Spanje, zondagmiddag. Ze zouden eigenlijk vanmiddag komen, maar hadden genoeg van het wandelen. Ik zal waarschijnlijk hier niet zoveel te vinden zijn, dus, de komende twee weken. Ze vertrekken weer op 9 juni maar gaan op 8 juni al naar Schiphol, vroege vertrekkers zijn het.

Het is zo geweldig om mijn ouders met mijn kinderen te zien. Ik heb ze al bijna 2,5 jaar niet gezien, en toen was Anna net geboren en Mirthe net zo oud als Anna nu is. Een heel ander gevoel. Mirthe is helemaal tot leven gekomen, gisteren was ze zo moe na een dagje Pake-en-Beppe (ik moest werken, heb ze thuis gehouden van de creche) dat ze om 17.30 (!!!) al vroeg of ze naar bed mocht. Om tien voor 18.00 lag ze erin en ze werd pas om 07.30 wakker. Dat is voor haar doen een wereldrecord.

Anna was gisteren eigenlijk ziek, dus het was heel fijn dat er iemand aanwezig was die haar echt kon vertroetelen. Ze had sinds vrijdagavond niks gegeten (wel goed gedronken) en vanochtend na een enorme poepluier ging ze gelukkig wat opknappen. Vanavond at ze voor het eerst in dagen.

Ik ga dus NU mijn kinderen naar bed brengen -- vanavond mochten ze wat later opblijven. We hebben deze week en volgende week vakantie, dat komt goed uit met het bezoek van Pake en Beppe. Vrijdag waarschijnlijk richting Friesland.

Tot over een tijdje (of misschien even tussendoor om foto's te plaatsen :-)

Memories Monday

I swam the backstroke on the town swim team for a couple of summers, junior highish, maybe until the summer after my freshman year. I had a dark blue Speedo one-piece, with light blue stripes down the sides. This was the team suit, but I wore it every day I spent at the pool and then right through dinner the nights when we had meets. It's what I wore in the summer, that and a pair of cutoff jeans. I wasn't one for fancy swimsuits. I liked my Speedo. We bought it at the same place we bought our soccer stuff in the fall, I loved the way it smelled in there. New shoes.

I loved being at the pool at night, after the day crowd had gone home. I hated swimming my actual race, but loved the sitting around and watching everyone else -- the sun would go down, the grass would get cooler and the fireflies would come out. We'd lay on a blanket and giggle and wait for our race to be called up. Eat cherry Jello, raw, out of the box wth our fingers. For the "energy."

Not many people swam the backstroke. I swam the 100 and the 200, and it was usually just someone from the opposing swim team and me. As a result I have an impressive collection of second place ribbons.

Tired of me linking yet? I am. But here's another one anyway:

How to bray like a donkey in dozens of languages:

http://www.georgetown.edu/faculty/ballc/animals/animals.html

This is especially useful for those of us raising children in a language other than the one we were raised in. Thanks for the link, Heleen!

It's awful, I know, but I WANT this:

http://www.irobot.com/sp.cfm?pageid=128

It's $400, so I'll never get one, but ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh it's tempting.

It'd be like the Jetsons!

Nu ook in het Nederlands:

http://irobotstore.nl/index.php?main_page=household_robots_robots&dir=home

Two new links, Kiddley and Tussen Gras en Koeien.

While waiting for our own camera to be fixed (and we're not sure yet if we'll fix it or buy a new one, depends on how much fixing it costs) I've borrowed a digital camera from my father-in-law, so there should be new photos sometime this week.

Mirthe's birthday is coming up (June 9) and having learned my lesson at Easter, I'm going to be starting a little earlier with the birthday crafting. I might not be online that much. Depends on how much procrastinating goes on.

After Mirthe's birthday we'll start with packing, I've reserved five weeks for that -- is that reasonable? The last time we moved we owned almost nothing (seriously) and it took about three trips with the Astra stationwagon and we were done.

Also, we'd like to take our apple tree with us -- we're moving around the 15th of July, is that a crazy time to transplant a tree? Does anybody have any advice on how we should do this? I know we could just buy a new one, but the one we have has a lot of sentimental value :-)

Okay, I'm going to kick some kinderbutt back in bed.

Memories Monday

Saratoga Springs, N.Y. Picking wild strawberries in the grassy field at the edge of our church campgrounds, while we waited for my mom to finish doing whatever it was she did at Bible Camp. The strawberries were tiny, no bigger than a child's thumb, and we'd till them carefully into the pink styrofoam egg cartons we had brought along for just that purpose. On the ride home we'd sit as still as possible, in the backseat of our Volkswagen Beetle, the berries cradled in our laps.

Or my mom would send us out to the blueberry bushes at the back of our yard, by the shed/boathouse (it was just a little house where the former owner used to work on his boat, so we called it the boathouse.) With a coffee cup in one hand, or a tupperware bowl wedged against a hip, we'd circle the bushes, slapping away mosquitos, until we had enough and then run on up to the house, yelling,"We're done! We're done!"

Or balancing on the slopes of the enbankment that ran along the railroad tracks, where the huckleberries grew, way at the edge of our property. You had to go through the woods to get there. The huckleberry bushes would scratch your legs, and to keep your balance you had to hang onto a bush, making the actual picking of the berries rather difficult. It took forever to pick a whole cupful, mostly because it was just so tempting to stand there and eat whatever you had picked. That small sweet burst of blue. But huckleberries were the ultimate, the summer treasure. We'd carry our winnings back to the house, where my mom would gently wash them up and let them dry. After dinner we'd eat them with the Jell-o Instant Pudding she'd made (always vanilla) and forget about all the work it was to get them to the table.

From this memory I slide directly into another, and even though I try my best to shut the door and not let it fully out, it keeps coming and coming until I have to think about it. We used to play on the tracks, back there behind our property -- we liked to put pennies on the rails and see if the trains would flatten them (never happened, but we kept trying.) While waiting for the train to come we'd sit on the rails and look for "shiny stones" -- a certain kind of stone with mica in it, or hardened bits of tar that would break open and reveal a smooth glossy blackness. We'd sit there and forget about the train.

Until the day the train whistled, roared in our ears. I looked up and the train was so close, I could see the conductor. He had brown hair and a big 1970's moustache. And a cap, darkish material -- and then I jumped, and John and Jason jumped, and we landed in the rocks alongside the tracks and felt the train rush by.

I know we ran home, I know we told my mother right away, I know we were all crying. I don't remember if we got punished -- we must have, but I've forgotten all that. I let my mind go back to the enbankment, to the huckleberry bushes, to the coffee cup filled with the tiniest of berries -- and I walk back through the woods and leave all that had happened back there by the tracks, behind me.

Oh yes. The design-your-own-fabric-link I picked up at The Glass Doorknob:

http://theglassdoorknob.blogspot.com/


Now laundry.

One more... because I really am a geek, and I'm putting off folding 15 (not kidding) loads of laundry and Procrastination is my real middle name, not Michelle.

http://www.vam.ac.uk/vastatic/microsites/
british_galleries/designa/textile/textile.html

Have fun! I'm going to start the laundry now. Really.

Yay! Old Coat Thursday!

http://kindshipincolorandwool.typepad.com/my_weblog/

I know, I'm a linking geek. But Old Coat Thursday is worth looking past my inability to link in a cool way, like when there's just an underlined word: Brenda.

Onze Nikon is stuk, daarom de laatste tijd zo weinig foto's. (Moet hem toch naar de shop brengen, en laten repareren voordat Mirthe jarig is. Gaat op de TE DOEN lijst.) Vandaag zo'n dag waar ik normaal gesproken HEEL veel foto's zou maken. Prachtig weer, Pippa en Anna aan het spelen in het Huisje, Mirthes eerste sportdag op school, Anna die de waterpokken heeft (voor de derde keer!) en nu helemaal onder de pokken zit, een wandeling naar de eendjes, met z'n vieren 's middags naar de GGD om geprikt te worden (mijn schoonvader heeft open tuberculose en we zijn op bezoek bij hem geweest toen hij besmettelijk was) en 's avonds lekker gebarbecued en buiten gegeten, de meiden swingend in hun HEMA-jurkjes naar Mary Chapin Carpenter, die de hele tuin vult met haar mooie stem.

Als ik dat vast leg in een foto, dan zie ik het niet alleen, maar hoor en ruik en voel ik alles weer. Zo ook met deze foto. Anna die haar benen gebruikt om met haar pop te spelen -- het was de dag van het eerste Buurtfeest en ik draaide toen hetzelfde CD als vanavond. Anna was net wakker en ik was nog even aan het opruimen voordat wij ook naar de speeltuin gingen. Ik keek naar haar, lekker aan het spelen, en was opeens zo dankbaar dat ze niet geopereerd aan haar arm was, dat haar kuiten gespaard waren en nog helemaal gaaf. (Bij een zenuwtransplantatie voor een erbse parese nemen ze zenuwen uit de kuiten en zetten die dan in de arm, zodat de spierfuncties terugkomen. Ze maken een hele kleine snee in de nek/schouder, maar in de kuiten moeten ze meer openmaken en daar houdt het kind zichtbare littekens aan over.)

Dankbaar, en daarna meteen schaamte. Ik voelde me schuldig -- dankbaar dat ze geen littekens had, terwijl andere erbse parese kinderen die wel hebben en vaak nog meer problemen. Ze noemden Anna een wonderherstel, ze deed het zo goed, en ik kon alleen maar aan haar kuiten denken. Ik begon me een partij te huilen -- tranen van geluk en van schaamte. Alles in die tijd was zo dubbel. (Oke, ik was nog niet helemaal ontzwangerd en had nog voldoende hormonen in mijn lijf, maar toch. Ik voelde me toen zo'n draaideur -- nu binnen, nu buiten. Binnen, buiten.)

Vanavond hoorde ik dezelfde muziek en kon alleen maar genieten van mijn kleine meid, die nu stevig op die beentjes staat en haar heupen draait met de liedjes. Haar rechterarm kan ze niet zo hoog heffen als de linkerarm, maar dat maakt haar plezier niet minder. Weer tranen in mijn ogen, maar alleen omdat ze zo mooi is, zoals ze is.

Memories Tuesday

In my last semester of high school, on the days when the school nurse wasn't present, I would go down to the front office after 5th period and say I wasn't "feeling so good" and if I could have the key to the nurse's office so I could lay down for a while. Then I'd grab a book out of my locker and spend the rest of the school day in there reading. The office had an army cot, with a grey, not too scratchy wool blanket and a clean white pillowcased pillow. Above the bed, high up on the wall, was a window that looked out over the soccer field -- I could hear the gym classes coming and going, just not see them. Outside the door the halls would fill up after every period and then after a few minutes fall silent again, and I could continue reading.

I had to be careful not to go too often in one week, or for a long period of time -- it was hard to be careful, because I loved those afternoons, needed them -- book after book, until winter became spring and graduation finally set me free.

"Moed is niet de afwezigheid van angst

maar het besluit dat er iets belangrijker is dan angst."

Ambrose Redmoon (ingestuurd door: Karel Verboon, Nijmegen)

Memories Monday

The (Christian) school system I attended from 4th through 12th grade owned two movies it considered suitable for young Calvinist viewers: The Red Balloon and Paddle to the Sea. Once or twice a year we would have a Special Assembly to watch one of them. As far as I can remember, these assemblies were totally unannounced -- the teacher would just stop the lesson, set down his or her chalk, line us up and march us to the gym. The reel-to-reel projector would be ready and waiting for us, in all its glory -- pearly grey metal skin, spindly legs, a taut air about it, as if it were holding its breath, waiting for the sign to exhale, to begin. Some poor teacher, the designated AV specialist for the day, would start fussing about, adjusting knobs and flipping switches and muttering under their breath. The lights would go out and it would fall reasonably quiet, as we waited for the title to appear. Half the excitement, half the specialness of a Special Assembly, was the anticipation: which would it be? Balloon or canoe?

I preferred The Red Balloon. I liked that there were no words, just music. I liked the faded colors, the almost black-and-whiteness of it all, against the red of the balloon. And it was sad, melancholy. That was right up my alley.

25 years later, I am overwhelmed with what my children have visual access to -- we own dozens of (children's) DVDs, we have three TVs. Two working computers with internet access. Digital photo's, email, weblogs, forums. They hardly see the computer (set up in the attic) and I try my best to limit the TV time, but like almost every mom who wants to cook dinner without feeling like there's a freight train running through the kitchen, I usually cave in to Sesame Street and "Kid's Time" (KRO's Kindertijd) during rush hour. And Mirthe gets her fair share of Pippi and Knofje and Ibbeltje when Anna's napping and I need to finish something (like 26 little felt chicks?) I wonder what they'd think of The Red Balloon, the movie from Mama's childhood. Too short? No bloopers, no videoclips? Boring?

May 4, Remembrance Day, and May 5, Freedom Day, are coming up this week. Every year I watch Schindler's List on one of these days -- they run it on TV but I prefer to watch it on DVD (yes we own that one too.) Something about pushing the PLAY button yourself makes it more definite, your decision to watch. And you watch it through to the end -- no zapping away to another channel, when the movie gets tough.

And when that little girl in the red coat begins to wander the streets of the ghetto -- no words, just music -- it's the same feeling, the same lump in the throat as all those years ago during the Red Balloon -- only a thousand times worse. Now that I have children of my own, that scene is almost unbearable -- I can't watch and yet I have to watch. That little girl in her red coat, bobbing through the streets. I see her and I think about her mother, making that coat, choosing a beautiful red wool, smiling at her daughter and thinking how nice and warm she'll be that winter. Sliding her arms into the sleeves, buttoning her up and sending her out to play in the street, the way children should.