Jam on Bread

…my new MacBook came in the mail today

I’ve been away the last 2 1/2 days (yes, by myself!!) at the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature conference in Lansing. Here’s what I had to tell my mom in an email tonight (I think most of it will make general sense without extra explanation).

Arrived home later than I’d expected–around 5:15. Just couldn’t keep myself from stopping at an Indian grocery Jenn told me about last night, at garage sales in Lansing, and at the old neighborhood. Our neighbor Terry’s son Pat was sitting on their front porch with his niece Mya who was just a baby when we left and is now 2, so I stopped and talked with the kids (hardly kids anymore) and Terry. Our old house looks GREAT–the woman who bought it has really kept it up nicely and added to the landscaping. She took out the red fence, added nice white plastic railing on the front porch, and has added to the landscaping. Nice to visit the old neighborhood but kind of sad to see Lansing too. The old GM plant on MLK is gone leaving a big gaping hole and empty lot when you go over the bridge. Lansing paper headline for the day was about the school system laying off 120 teachers; Terry said Lansing schools are last in the nation (if I recall correctly) in SAT and No Child Left Behind scores. Sad. Lots of gas stations out of business and some abandoned storefronts.

But the conference was great! My story went over really well and I enjoyed the other presentations I went to, all of which had really good discussion about topics like what it means to be a midwestern writer, how place is represented, and the construction of identity in relation to place.. Plus I caught up with a number of old friends–Alice (who has the art studio), Melissa (about to move to Belguim whenever her visa goes through), Jenn (a friend of ours from MSU) and Bill, Jane (of course), Amy (who’s now teachingn Iowa) and Bob, and even acquaintances like Diane at Volunteers of America workers at Woody’s and Altu’s who remembered me from when we used to eat at the restaurants. I introduced my students to Ethiopian and Japanese food, took them shopping at Oriental Market where I stocked up on rice, curry, lentils, cracked wheat, and other staples of ethnic cooking, took them to St. Vincent DePaul’s and Alice’s Reach Art Center, had coffee at Bibbgy’s, and just generally drove around the city. I can’t remember the last time I felt so constantly elated and social, babbling even with conference strangers I didn’t know

So I guess you could say I had a good time. And it was just good to be back in that environment, both the conference and the city, though I felt at moments like I’d just walked back into a former life.

Belle Gunness. Feels like I’ve known her my entire life, and I suppose that’s just about true since I was in 4th grade when I first heard the full story of how she killed so many people, mostly lonely Norwegian men, but also a couple husbands and a handful of foster children. And it seems fitting that Bruce Johnson, the 4th grade teacher who shared the tale with my class, should be the chairman of the 100th anniversary events, that he should be the one placing a wreath on Andrew Helgelien’s grave in the AP story.

And 100 years later, I still don’t believe she died in that fire, but we’re still waiting for DNA evidence to know for certain.

Dad: Yeah, and one day he’ll want a car. That’s when things will really get expensive.
Mom: Will you want a car one day, Elliot?
Elliot: Yeah.
Mom: What kind of car will you want?
Elliot: A red car.
Mom: A red car.
Elliot: No. Not a red car. A pink car! I want a pink car!

Dropping his pants wherever he happens to be and peeing. First in front of the house (he really wanted to pee into the garden hose, but I kept that from happening), later at the busy playground in front of the slide. Totally unselfconscious and, in fact, rather proud.

In other news, Elliot had a field trip to Domino’s pizza today where he made his own pizza (without cheese, he told me). Later they all went to his favorite pet store in town. Wore him out this evening by having him outside in the yard and later at a playground with his friend Gabriel.

Lucy continues to do new things. She waves now and her vocabulary consists of Mama, Dada, Kitty, Hi, and Duck. She’s almost ready to walk on her own. Almost… And she’s working on teeth 7 & 8 simultaneously.

This has been one of those days it’s hard to find the words for, a day when the word joy has been redefined as a series of small happenings, and while I know I won’t even come close to doing the day justice, I’m going to try, if only to preserve a small portion of it in memory.

To begin, spring is here. The grass is greening, birds are returning, and crocuses are popping out of the ground in yellow, purple, and white clusters. It’s just beautiful. Following Sunday school and church (Elliot’s papers to pick up were labeled “Sally” as that was apparently who he was pretending to be, even sewing his arm back on when it “fell off” as in Nightmare Before Christmas), we all worked outside and in the garage for an hour and a half until it was time for…

Elliot’s first play!! I’ve been so looking forward to taking Elliot to a play, and today was the matinee performance of Little Shop of Horrors at the college. Since he first saw the (dinky, run-down, un-renovated) theater in the building where Todd teaches, Elliot has been enthralled, and after nearly two years, he finally got to see a production. Today, instead of running up and down the aisle and dancing on stage himself, Elliot got to sit in a seat and watch, to see for himself what a play was like. Getting ready to go, Elliot insisted I wear the loudest (some would say ugliest) skirt I own, an item I picked up at a thrift store years ago for its 70s qualities (white background with fluorescent green/pink/blue psychadelic flowers). I already was wearing the skirt I had worn to church when Elliot brought this relic up to me and said, “You need to wear this, Mama. This is your Little Shop of Horrors dress.” And while I tried to get out of wearing it by pointing out a stain and the wrinkles and promising to put it on as soon as we returned so that I could wear it in the privacy of our own home, Elliot was insistent. With a sudden giddiness I hadn’t expected, I slipped the skirt on and thought, “What the hell–they can’t refuse Todd tenure because I wear a hideous skirt,” and since the green matched the shirt I had on, it was confirmed that I should wear the thing.

In all honesty, I didn’t expect we would stay for the whole production. I’d told Todd we’d undoubtedly be back within an hour and a half, but Elliot wanted to stay for the whole thing, and he did very well. Once in a while he’d ask, “Has it started yet?” and “Can we go home now?” and (post intermission snack buying) “Are these my M&Ms? Is this one a football?” (they were the oval/almond ones), but on the whole he just watched, sometimes sitting on my lap, sometimes standing, sometimes slouching on his own chair and smiling up at the blonde college woman next to him. I wasn’t sure how much he’d “get” in terms of the man-eating plant, but during intermission I asked him what the plant ate, Elliot said, “meat.” I did not press him further. When the dentist was getting sadistic with a patient, I stood Elliot up and tried walking him out the back until that part was over (he already hates dentists), but Elliot said, “But we’ll miss the rest of the movie,” and refused to walk out so we stayed. Afterwards we walked onto the stage and he looked around, though he did keep his distance from Audrey Two even though other kids were climbing inside for pictures. I’m still waiting for him to regurgitate “Tough shit Sherlock” at some inopportune moment, but otherwise I think the play did more good for him than harm.

Tonight as Elliot played in the tub while I tried getting Lucy to sleep in the bedroom, I listened to strains of “Suddenly Seymour” punctuated with the hiss of the shaving cream can which Elliot had procured for himself. When I finally made it into the bathroom (with a wide-awake Lucy), Elliot had covered himself–face included–with shaving cream and was having the time of his young life.

And the crowning moment of the day? As Todd was reading to Elliot in bed, Lucy was standing alongside the bed, holding onto the frame…and she let go, pivoted to face me, and lurched forward into my arms–her first time ever.

Today Elliot had his potty party, complete with the “potty train” that has been our motivational tool for the past year or so. While we are not so naive as to believe that Elliot will never have another “accident,” he has been so very good with pottying on his own this past week that we decided it was time for the party, in part so that Grandma C. could be a part of it. So we went out to eat at a Mexican restaurant, came home for carrot bread with frosting (which Elliot didn’t eat, though he did “blow out the sprinkles”–couldn’t find any candles), and put together Elliot’s GeoTrax train with remote control which was brand new at a thrift store except for, well, the remote. Still, $5 was a good deal even if Elliot has to make the train move all by himself.

Needless to say, this event is a big deal in all our lives, and I’m just so very proud of Elliot.

$2/bag sale

For $4, I bought:

*more than a dozen t-shirts (for the next couple years), pair of shorts, and cool cargo pants for Elliot
*2 Old Navy t-shirts for Todd
*2 great pairs of jeans for me that both fit perfectly (I’ve trimmed down to an unspeakably small–for me–size 14) and have lots of wear left

Steph, I wish you could have been there…

And indeed Elliot got it right

Today was sunny and the yellow crocuses began to pop through and open. It was “pretty flowers day”.

In addition, it was just a pretty good day generally. My parents, sister, and her 2 kids visited (I was to have visited them with the kids, but Elliot’s been sick), and though they didn’t arrive until 6 this evening, we had a very nice time. I continue to think (and grow more convince with each meeting) that Daniel has unrecognized issues of his own that may at some point need dealt with, but he’s a sweet child if a bit too focused and organized for my personal tastes.

A good visit, though, and I go to bed happy, even at this late hour. Hoping tomorrow is another pretty flowers day like today was.

Aargh! Just when I’m getting over my stomach sickness, Elliot comes down with another runny nose “turn out all the lights they’re hurting my eyes” cold. This has just been the month from hell.