Dirt and Sunshine

more national poetry month

Egg
C.G. Hanzlicek

I’m scrambling an egg for my daughter.
“Why are you always whistling?” she asks.
“Because I’m happy.”
And it’s true,
Though it stuns me to say it aloud;
There was a time when I wouldn’t
Have seen it as my future.
It’s partly a matter
Of who is there to eat the egg:
The self fallen out of love with itself
Through the tedium of familiarity,
Or this little self,
So curious, so hungry,
Who emerged from the woman I love,
A woman who loves me in a way
I’ve come to think I deserve,
Now that it arrives from outside me.
Everything changes, we’re told,
And now the changes are everywhere:
The house with its morning light
That fills me like a revelation,
The yard with its trees
That cast a bit more shade each summer,
The love of a woman
That both is and isn’t confounding,
And the love
Of this clamor of questions at my waist.
Clamor of questions,
You clamor of answers,
Here’s your egg.

Just look at that sweet face

celebrate National Poetry Month

I learned in Real Simple Magazine that April is National Poetry Month. I've decided to participate in the celebration of words. I'll post poetry as it comes to me:

You Begin
by Margaret Atwood

You begin this way:
this is your hand,
this is your eye,
this is a fish, blue and flat
on the paper, almost
the shape of an eye
This is your mouth, this is an O
or a moon, whichever
you like. This is yellow.

Outside the window
is the rain, green
because it is summer, and beyond that
the trees and then the world,
which is round and has only
the colors of these nine crayons.

This is the world, which is fuller
and more difficult to learn than I have said.
You are right to smudge it that way
with the red and then
the orange: the world burns.

Once you have learned these words
you will learn that there are more
words than you can ever learn.
The word hand floats above your hand
like a small cloud over a lake.
The word hand anchors
your hand to this table
your hand is a warm stone
I hold between two words.

This is your hand, these are my hands, this is the world,
which is round but not flat and has more colors
than we can see.
It begins, it has an end,
this is what you will
come back to, this is your hand.

I have a splitting headache, so I can't really sit and write an analysis of this poem, but I'll tell you quickly what I like. I like the idea of the hand - how amazing it is when an infant discovers she has her own vehicle for discovery - and then how gradually, a child's perspective broadens, deepens. I also like the progression of the colors, from a basic primary color, to more colors than we can see.

May our palettes always be growing, may new shades and hues continue to color my world.

Mothering 101: Follow Your Nose

One day, I seemed to be on top of things. (ha!) The house was semi-clean, Emmy was playing quietly in her room, and I was peacefully feeding Sophie. I even had cookies baking in the oven. As I was enjoying the moment, I started to notice the smell of laundry detergent in the air. "Hmm. . . I thought, someone must be doing their laundry" (we live right next to the laundry room). I continued rocking with Sophie, when I realized that Emmy had been playing quietly for a long time . . . things were eerily quiet.

As I walked into her bedroom, her whole body jerked--she knew she was caught. She was sitting amidst clouds of laundry detergent, "cleaning" it with a square of toilet paper. It was quite a mess and cleaning it was made more arduous by Emmy's noble attempts to help out. When we were finally finished, I noticed another smell: the cookies! I rushed to take them out of the oven, but I was too late. They were burnt to a crisp.

What an afternoon. I sat down to take a breather, when I was confronted by yet another smell: sweet little Sophie needed a major diaper change. Yuck. Two kids in diapers makes the chore of diaper changing pretty routine, but still, not pleasant.

Too much laundry soap, burnt chocolate chip cookies, and poopy diapers made up the greater part of my afternoon, but you know, I'll take 'em - because everything is made worth it when I get to breathe in the soft, clean scent of Emmy's shiny hair, and inhale Sophie's sweet, milky breath.

The Saga of the Matching Dresses

The moment I found out I was having another girl, I immediately began dreaming about two little girls in matching dresses. So when my mom sent Sophie an adorable dress for Christmas this year, I immediately ran to the store to buy Emmy a matching one.

Of course, my next step was to try to capture their cuteness on camera, which proved to be a much more difficult task than I originally thought. The first Sunday they wore their dresses proved to be impossible. This was one of Sophie's first outings to church and we had to cancel the photo shoot so that we could get there reasonably late. After church was a disaster, with Emmy throwing her scheduled 4:00 pm tantrum.

I decided that Sunday wasn't going to be a good day for picture-taking, so I called up the local Picture People and set up an appointment for professionals to take over. Picture day arrived and I packed up the car with dresses, accessories, bribes, and the two girls. My friend, Heather, and her perfect child, Abby, came with us for moral support. We explained the whole process to Emmy, assuring her that once the pictures were taken, she would get a sucker and a ride on the horsie. All seemed to be fine. The girls were darling, Sophie smiling, and Emmy with her strawberry-blonde locks neatly curled under. (I'd even gotten her to let me curl her hair!) Emmy seemed to be in good spirits as she asked me when the "man" would come to take her picture. Suddenly, though, the "man" did come, and right when he set up the black backdrop, Emmy let out a bloodcurdling scream of terror. She could not be calmed and she clung to me as if her life depended on it. I gave up. Heather escorted Emmy from the room and we took pictures of Sophie sans sister. Heather summed up the experience pretty well when she said, "That was hard."

So today I decided to try again. I knew I would probably fail, but I had to give it one more shot. Before church, Sophie fell asleep and we had to bring her in her pjs. So we decided to try for after church, in hopes that Emmy would postpone or give up altogether on her 4:00 tantrum. The stars aligned, just barely. Here are my two little girls in their matching dresses:

Emmy is very happy to have her picture taken

Sophie is thrilled as well

Awww

Don't be deceived by these smiling faces . . .

Rain, Rain, Don't Go Away

At least for today.



After many days of me pleading with Emmy not to stomp in the puddles so as not to get wet and ruin her outfit, I finally made good on my promise and took her out for some stomping and sloshing through the rain. She couldn't have been happier to pull out her own embroidered-with-her-name, ruffly, pink umbrella, and her cherry rainboots. She could have ran around jumping in puddles all day, but we finally had to go in after my feet resembled the color of her umbrella and I began to lose feeling. (I wore flip-flops since I don't own rainboots and didn't want to ruin any of my shoes). We both had a lot of fun, and she especially enjoyed her warm bath afterwards.