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Where to start? We’re back from almost two weeks of vacation in New England. We were all looking forward to the trip, though I was admittedly a bit apprehensive about how the ladies would do with all the traveling and new people. Turns out I had nothing to worry about. Not one thing. They rolled through every stop, they reveled in their new friends, they loved the weather, the city, the country, the beach. It was grand. GRAND I tell you. And it was the ultimate motivation for getting aboard the boat. We miss our dear city of Boston. We cannot wait to get our hands dirty building in Maine. We have an application and contacts for getting our mooring in the Benjamin River, minutes from our soon-to-be-homestead. And best of all, we saw friends old and new who we look forward to getting back to. I said to John more than once, “I don’t want this to be my vacation, I want this to be my life.”
Gushing aside, we started in Boston and were blown away with the changes downtown. When we left four years ago, they were just starting to lay the Greenway over the now-submerged highway. It’s done and traffic patterns are so much more manageable. The North End is connected to the rest of the historic district. People were sunbathing on grass on top of I-93. Brilliant. We stayed in the Charlestown Navy Yard, a location I’d recommend to anyone, but especially to anyone with kids. There are restaurants and playgrounds steps away. We took the MBTA ferry (that John used to operate) to and from the waterfront. Once you’re parked in the cheap garage, there’s basically no reason to drive.
Our first day was our chance to play tourist and do the things we wouldn’t have done prior to kids. We started with Sophie’s first taxi ride, followed by her first T experience. We walked through Boston Common to the Public Garden, the nation’s first botanical garden. Sophie LOVES flowers. She was in heaven. The real ducks in the pond proved less inspiring than the bronze statues (”Statuas” as Sophie says) commemorating Robert McCloskey’s story, Make Way for Ducklings. Rosy fell madly in love with “Jack” and we had to pry her away so that other people could visit the mallards.
We hit up a playground, got a Finagle a Bagel (oh my) and walked to the waterfront. We were just crossing Northern Avenue to the wharf where John used to work when we looked to the left and spied a beautiful carousel on the new Greenway. Sophie had been asking for weeks to go on “a carousel with beautiful horses.” It was like this one fell out of the sky just for her. She was the only kid on it. Perfection.
We ferried home and rested, took a long walk through the Navy Yard, played in a playground for hours, and finished the day with our dear friend, Bobby, at our favorite pizzeria in the world. Santarpio’s is officially still the best pizza we’ve ever eaten. It was great to be home. It truly felt like home to us.
more tomorrow . . . .
Posted 11 months, 2 weeks ago. 3 comments
I’m cooked.
My folks have been here keeping the ladies busy while John and I work on the boat. Climbing in and out of a crowded hatch a dozen times a day is an act my body is having a hard time remembering. Crazy to think that soon I’ll be guiding two little bodies down into the boat, a dozen times a day.
But the work is so satisfying. It reminds John and I of a time when it was just the two of us. In the midst of the dust and drilling, the heat and the grime, it feels good to be together. It feels especially good to be finishing this little house for our little family. It is now and forever ours; our ticket to the world.
Meanwhile Rosy’s contracted some mysterious stomach ailment and poops all the time but hardly ever pees. Talk about tugging at the angst of a non-vaxing, swine-terrified mama. She’ll be fine, but she’s not sleeping when I’m sleeping (she’s fine until I get to bed, and then all hell breaks loose), so it’s been a rough three or four nights. As my mother would say, with kids, “there’s always something.”
We leave for our first real family vacation in two short days. Lazy, chilly mornings in Maine await us. I have to remember to print the inumberable confirmations and directions, to pack the appropriate reading material and DVDs and sweaters (!!). It will be thrilling to be back in New England.
And just think. We’ll be coming back to a home almost ready for a trip back home.
It’s been a busy few days. We got word on Wednesday that some old friends from Germany were in town. Like, two miles away! We invited them to stop by yesterday and we ended up plugging their RV in to an electrical outlet and parking them in the driveway overnight. It was so much fun. John met Tom Herbst and his wife, Chris, over ten years ago when our friend Franjo was working on Thompson Island, in Boston. They were traveling with their then-tiny kids, Sarah and Benedikt, and tell a great story about kayaking through the Harbor to find parking for their enormous RV. John was the ferry captain on their trip to the island.
This time the parking was easier. Sarah is 17 and Bene is 15, and their youngest, Hannah, is 8. We caught up with them four years ago in Germany. They were even lovelier than I remember- funny, smart, kind friends whom we look forward to seeing again soon. Sophie was wrapped up in the arms of the big kids, and loved every minute of it. We always laugh that Tom takes great pride in the fact that his house in Germany, “is older than your country!!” True. But I think he appreciate the fact that our house has a waterfront view.
I just finished reading this piece by Tabitha Tucker, a friend of a blog-friend, about her full-time parenting being a radical, political act. And it is. That’s the part that keeps me interested. Just like choosing the bike makes a statement, choosing to be home is a choice that we didn’t happen upon. We actively decided to have a parent at home with our ladies. Some days it’s mind-numbing, some days it’s wicked hard, but every day it’s a conscious decision we make to slow down our lives and the lives of our children.
Tabitha’s essay points out all of her small radical acts. “Radical” laundry on her clothesline, gardening, preserving food, cooking, walking, mending clothing. Rosy has a radical bum, I have radical boobs. Sophie is about to embark on a radical homeschool journey. We started our radical journey when we moved onto our boat. Fewer possessions, a smaller footprint, freedom to relocate. We have tried to keep ourselves as “small” as possible while living ashore- biking, breastfeeding, cloth diapering, eating fresh and local as often as we can, all of it is part of the picture. We are itching to pare down again and as soon as the boat is liveable, will be back in our tiny abode.
But what makes me laugh about the larger “Slow” movement- and it has become one, a movement to slow down, buy less, eat better, and stick it to corporate banality; what I love about it is that it draws upon the skills my grandmother and great-grandmother held dear. They were considered imprisoned by their laundry, their cooking, and their child-rearing. That is exactly the stuff we’re taking back. We want to simplify but we also want to work harder. I don’t buy jam anymore. I make it. Rather than buy paper towels, I use rags and take the time to hang them to dry. I want my kids to get the chicken pox, and I’m happy to spend the time to take care of them while they’re sick. John and I design our little homestead in Maine on a daily basis, with its chickens and maybe a goat, a big garden, and a root cellar.
It’s conversations like these that make me want to do a bit of time-traveling. Would my great-grandmother have a good laugh? Would she say, “Be careful what you wish for.” Or would she trade her relatively “hard” life for this one filled with BPA-lined cans and smog and the fear of global warming (and it is something I truly fear).
What I wish she would say, and something I’ll say when I’m the great-grandmother, is what Tabitha ends her piece with, “I’m not sure, but I do know that if I don’t do it, if I don’t seek to be the change I wish to see in the world, there is no hope.”
It is what gets me through the day. Being the change. Being the mom. It keeps me challenged and make me feel a little bit better about all of it.
This past weekend we visited my grandparent’s house in Columbus, Georgia, probably for the last time as a family. My grandparents had the house built in 1987 on Lake Oliver, which sits on the Georgia/Alabama border. We used to sit on the deck in rocking chairs in the evening and look at the sun set over Alabama. My grandmother once caught a huge catfish in that lake, and I have a vague recollection of taking a ride on a “pah-tee” boat (aka a pontoon boat) down some of its creeks.
All weekend I kept waiting for my grandfather to saunter into the kitchen and assume his rightful place at the head of the table, where he could look down onto the lake. Instead, Sophie sat there and made deviled eggs with my cousin, Annie.
We swam in the pool, ran on the lawn, drank from the veritable “Macallan Room” (my Grandfather’s bar). We ate dinner around their table and barely had enough room, as the family continues to expand with sons-in-laws and grandbabies. I slept on my grandmother’s side of their bed, which seemed to have shrunk since I was a little girl. My sister said that she was surprised that it felt so normal to be there, without them. It truly did. Not stuffy, not empty, but full of twenty-two years (not to mention a lifetime) of memories. What will feel strange is when we don’t have the house by the lake. When the desk and the tables and the chests of drawers are sent their separate ways, tucked into corners of our own spaces. As long as the house is intact, we can still wait for the them to emerge from their dressing rooms. We can picture them behind the bar, at the stove, on the porch waving goodbye. Asking their images to leave with us will be an altogether different matter.
Apparently, John and Sophie had a chat last night about our family’s nicknames.
The usual suspects were present:
JoePopaRoPop (my dad)
GoonieaRoonie (my mom)
SophieaDophie (soph)
then it gets interesting
Daddy Salami (John)
Mommy Cheese (Salami goes with cheese?- me, clearly)
and
Rosy Juicebox
Rosy has a problem with juiceboxes. We never buy them, being hippie freaks about making trash, but did get some for Rosy’s first birthday party. She fell madly in love. If she finds an empty straw wrapper she comes marching over waving her hands and yelling, seeking her crack.
That’s Rosy Juicebox for you.
Posted 1 year, 1 month ago. 1 comment
