We made it ten years with our boy!  To celebrate such a momentous March 7th, Huck awoke at 4:30 this morning when he “inadvertently thought we would all wake up and open presents.” Thankfully, some part of his brain decided this was a mistake and the rest of us were able to sleep in until 6:30 when the gift opening extravaganza began.  Roller blades from Aunt Jeni, who arrived yesterday for her annual birthday visit, were instantly put to good use thanks to a warm, sunny day and an afternoon rollerskating party with favorite friends.

The night before while reminiscing and catching up, back when Huck was still a mere single digit nine year old, I somehow told him two terrible secrets about life: the gas chambers of the Holocaust and menstruation, definitely scarring him for life.  I guess somewhere inside my motherly soul I felt it was time for him to really grow up.  My apologies, dear sweet boy.  And may the horrified look on your face (and my husband’s and sister’s) someday leave my memory.  Perhaps to make up for this awful parenting (or to make it even worse), we ended this day with the three of us giving Huck a 15 minute massage on our massage table followed by a totally unhealthy meal of nachos.  We decided that Huck’s upcoming 11th year, which begins at exactly 9:27 PM New York Time, was bound to be an adventure.  A new house, middle school, parents with new jobs.  And so many books to read and puzzles to solve and equations to learn.  What a life!

Happy 10th birthday to our favorite boy!  Here’s to many, many more tens.

O, what a difference a year can make. This time last year these snow days made me crazy, partly because there were so many of them, and partly because I was beginning a silly chapter of resisting the present moment, especially if it was one I didn’t want or expect.  It’s very tiring to spend months and months feeling outrage, or at least deep frustration, every time a disappointment comes along.  To quote my beloved Anne Lamott, “Exhaustion is usually the beginning of wisdom and change.”  So nowadays I take the snow and ice for what they are, noticing they seem to be pretty temporary, and allow myself some extra healing naps while our car sits in the garage.  This has been the most anticlimactic return-to-work-after-surgery ever.  But that’s okay, because the older I get, the more I appreciate the anti-climatic.  And the naps. Especially the anti-climatic naps.

(Charming Photograph by The Fayetteville Flyer)

And o, what a difference a decade can make.  Ten years ago right now I had a pretty gigantic belly region and was about to face The Unknown.  Flash forward to yesterday when that little Unknown and I bundled up and went into the back yard to trudge around the icy snow together. I got in trouble a few times by my winter dictator who didn’t like that I cleaned the snow pile off our patio table or that I filled a bucket of water for him without cleaning it out first. His final straw was when I attempted and failed to pull his snow pants over his snow boots so that he could go down the slide without getting his leg skin wet.  As we argued back and forth about the inappropriateness of an almost ten year old bossing his little mom around, this same mom who was trying to enjoy some physical activity in honor of making it to the three week post-surgery mark, I watched his cold face get more and more red and his eyes fill with tears.  It was the classic fight between wanting to stay a baby and wanting to be independent, and it was all the more awful with the big birthday three days away.  As he angrily tossed his snow gloves across the yard, I thought of the many years when he couldn’t function without my help, wondering if he treats Troy the same way when they’re hanging out.  I left his gloves on the ground and his body on the slide and went into the house without him.

Within an hour things were back on track thanks to forgiveness and short term memory loss, and we were up in his warm, colorful loft bedroom with me drawing letters on his back for him to guess.  Later that evening, Troy and I watched some home movies starring a very cute one year old while Huck played nearby and ignored the nostalgic comments and sighs from his sentimental parents. Somewhere in the middle of all that I received the text message announcing today’s snow day and I smiled.

Two things I love to do that I can’t do for a little while longer: laugh really hard and cry over a good book. Sometimes, especially this time of year, I miss blowing my runny nose and sneezing now and again.  I do not miss carrying groceries or vacuuming, and I could definitely get used to watching Huck do the laundry.  Unrelated to my ear, I also miss sunshine, temps in the 70s, hammock naps, eating outside and scheduled events not being canceled, like Troy’s second and final performance of “Red” and Huck’s second and final archery tournament. To quote my friend’s t-shirt: “Dear Winter, Can You Not?  Sincerely, Everyone.”

In non-winter news, Troy and I are both starting full-time jobs at The New School in a few weeks!  Along with assistant theatre director, I will also be the Director of Auxiliary Programs, overseeing the after-school and summer program while Troy will join the preschool faculty, eventually incorporating his guitar playing and storytelling.  Troy has endured my braggy monologues about the amazing food at The New School for the past six months, and now he gets to see what the fuss is about.  They may have to increase their breakfast and lunch budget starting on March 9th.  It took us a year, eight months and several mistakes along the way, but we are finally ready to begin our Fayetteville careers.  Join us as we collectively breathe a sigh of happy relief.

Huck, in the meantime, is entering his final week in the single digits.  We have high hopes that with his birthday will come not only Aunt Jeni, but also the beginnings of spring.   Until then our town shall turn whiter and whiter as we huddle together in warm blankets watching our new favorite Netflix show “Brain Games,” wondering when we will next get to leave the house and how much shorter summer will become.

This just in: RED has been rescheduled for May 29th.  What?  That’s right.  May 29th.

On Saturday Huck checked out a 300 plus page book at the library and spent the afternoon reading all of it. Since February is Book Hogs Month and we have to record all the minutes spent reading, I happen to know he read for five hours and 15 minutes on February 21st, a fact that made him giggle himself to sleep.  This was a break from his normal self-imposed rigid book-reading routine.  He usually starts each day at 6AM, reaching over and taking the bottom book from a pile of six on his desk. That becomes the book he reads for the day, even if yesterday’s book ended on a cliffhanger.  He reads in bed for a full hour, and then comes downstairs for breakfast where he continues reading. Sometimes he’ll stop to describe in detail something that just happened in his book, always something about mythology and wizards and prophesies and punishments. I nod and say affirmative things.  When we leave for our five minute drive to school, he reads in the back seat, and he continues that little reading session at the end of the school day. And when he climbs into bed for the night, he reads for one last half hour and then puts that book on the top of the pile, not to be read again for six more days.  As if that’s not enough discipline for an almost 10 year old, Troy and Huck are keeping track of their daily pushups, which means there’s lots of competitive talk regarding how many pushups they’ve done, at any moment one or both of them may drop to the ground and begin grunting without warning, and there’s some kind of Excel spreadsheet that Huck likes to check occasionally.

But father and son do have their differences.  While Huck has been letting his hair grow like crazy, Troy went and shaved his off on Saturday for the two-man play “Red,” which opens at Crystal Bridges Art Museum tomorrow, coinciding with a new Rothko exhibit as well as the 45th anniversary of his suicide to the day.  Along with changing his appearance, over the past few months he has read (or at least looked at) nearly every single oversized book ever written about Mark Rothko, filling our living room floor and dining room table, making Huck’s pile seem like nothing.  To prepare to play the 55 year old artist, he’s also let his extremely grey beard, my arch nemesis, grow out.  I am now the proud wife of a 60 year old looking man, who the other day was stopped by a 70 year old man worried Troy would slip on the ice and break his hip.  I think he has succeeded in making the world forget he’s in his mid-40s.  All this for two performances.  That’s m’hubby.

I hope you all see what I have to deal with around here: two sweet little goobers committed to their hair and their books and their art and their exercise and their lady, constantly interrupting their important work to help me with the dullest of tasks in order not to put too much strain on my healing ear, which is doing just fine, thank you, and we’ll know whether or not the surgery worked and whether or not my hearing has improved right around April 11th when all of the protective packing has dissolved somewhere in my head that the two of them lovingly pet and care for everyday.

I guess I’ll keep them.

Click here to get your tickets for “Red” on Wednesday, Feb. 25 and Friday, Feb. 27:

live-arts-red-theater-performance

More on the Rothko exhibit:

van-gogh-rothko

Today is our first snow day in Fayetteville, which means Huck can now look forward to spring like the rest of us.  The lack of snow was holding him back, especially after last winter’s world record breaking 59 snow days.  Or 12.  I’m hazy on the details.  This is what I do know:  I’m on Day 6 of surgery recovery and it’s nice to have some lazy company in my midst.

Recovery has been easier than I expected, as it turns out several things I’d read about this surgery online were from five or more years ago.  So many improvements have been made since then, making me suddenly thankful I waited as long as I did.  I stopped taking the narcotic painkillers on Day 3, which helped my brain focus and my action-movie dreams subside, and now I rely on ibuprofen and many naps to get me through the day.  It’s poor Troy who’s working the hardest around here.  I am under strict orders not to sneeze or do any physical activity, so along with his regular work and rehearsal schedule, he’s also doing every household chore imaginable.  (I showed him how to work our washing machine.)  My only complaint about his work ethic is that when he cleans my top secret stitches hidden behind my ear that now sticks out a bit, his mouth begins making all kinds of percussion and woodwind instrument sounds as if he’s his own easy listening radio station.  I call this Mouth Band, and it’s a testimony to how well my formally called “bad ear,” currently filled with protective packing, can still hear.

Once our town decides it’s safe to drive on the roads, I will slowly return to work this week.  I got a taste of what it’s like to be a normal person on our beautiful spring-like Valentine’s Day when I actually took a shower and put on clothes for a few hours.  What fun all you normal people have!  By 7:00 that evening, though, I crashed hard and sadly climbed back into my sick bed to hibernate for a couple more days.  And if this means Mom isn’t up and about to locate the real sled, thank goodness for dogfood bags.

In the weeks leading up to my much anticipated tympanoplasty surgery to repair the hole in my eardrum, I found myself unable to commit to anything post-February 11th since I had no idea how long the recovery would officially be.  I kept catching myself saying to people, “I may or may not be there.  I’m going to have to play it by ear.”  Never did I intend that pun, but it always made me smile.  I feel like I’ve been playing my life by ear for about 16 years now.

Once the big day finally arrived, I knew I was going to be okay when I saw Troy wearing the same shirt I requested he wear back on March 7th, 2005.  It’s such a comforting, soft blue shirt that has now gotten me through two major medical procedures: childbirth and ear repair!  Oh, may we never need it again.

And I did get through this surgery thanks to a million prayers, wonderful advice, encouraging emails, texts and phone calls, a personalized recorded loving kindness meditation, friends who made us dinner and stayed overnight to be on Huck and Sunny duty, my very own nurse friend who has already made two house calls, the best husband, and my favorite surgeon Dr. Ward Gardner (who also happens to be Huck’s dear friend Lydia’s dad’s childhood best friend). Facial paralysis is one of the risks of this surgery, though apparently very rare and not permanent but still on my list of top things to be terrified about, and so upon “waking up” Troy asked me to give him a smile.  I think he, too, may have felt some relief when I did.  Of course I have no memory of any of this.  Once I finally did start making memories, we slowly oh so slowly got me dressed, adjusted my new ear contraption, and headed westward to Fayetteville. Waiting for us at home were love notes and ear puns and a fridge and freezer full of wonderful food from local friends, along with the realization that I did it! This thing that I’ve put off for so many years was over!  No matter what kind of recovery I face (pain, discomfort, bleeding, hearing weirdness, no lifting, no strenuous activity, no blowing of the nose or sneezing for two months at which point we will know whether or not it worked), the actual surgery was done and I could still move my face!  I slept very well last night, though I did wake Troy up at 3AM to visit a little bit.

Many friends texted us throughout the day for updates, and one of them accidentally included my old New York number. This has happened many times over the last year, and the young woman who inherited my former digits has been a very good sport about it.  She often chimes in, sometimes in an ornery way, but always good-naturedly.  Last night she texted, “Wrong number, but hope all is well for Jonny’s surgery.”

It’s this kind of loving kindness that gets me every time.

The other night I asked Huck to say a prayer for me and my upcoming ear surgery, as the date is quickly approaching and with it a bit of trepidation.  Huck doesn’t pray out loud much, but when he does he’s extremely formal, referring to me as his mother, as if God doesn’t know me very well.  So he asked God to help his mother not be too scared or nervous and to know that it would definitely … or most likely … turn out okay.  Afterwards he said to me, “If you weren’t nervous for your surgery, I’d be worried.”

Last night  I came home from opening and closing night of the preschoolers’ spectacular Circus Play, and as I came up over a hill near our house, the incredibly beautiful, gigantic moon took me by surprise.  I came inside and shouted for everyone to bundle up and follow me.  Huck was in PJ shorts and a t-shirt with a pink towel turban on his head, straight out of the shower.  He excitedly put on snow pants and his winter coat and summer Crocs onto his bare feet as Troy leashed up the dog.  We four excitedly ran outside and around the corner near the spot where the moon had appeared for me moments before and oooed and awed together.  Troy and Huck began searching for the Big Dipper and I said, “Too bad I left my phone inside,” because it contains a night sky app that takes the guess work out of star gazing. Huck said in his best Shirley Temple voice, “Who cares?  We will remember this moment forever.”

Sometimes there’s nothing like nine year old wisdom.

My third ear surgery in nearly 16 years is next Wednesday the 11th at 7:30am.  Prayers, well wishes and howling at the moon appreciated.

Picture Stolen From Facebook

We have a joke with some of our very closest friends from New York to Austin to right here in Fayetteville.  We say that something is a “once in a lifetime opportunity” when we know that most likely it will happen again or has happened before. But what we mean is that it feels like a once in a lifetime kind of thing, and we try to cherish it as such.  We got to have one of those once in a lifetimes last weekend when we drove all the way to Colorado Springs to see our Texas friends Shannon and Greg acting their hearts out in the wonderful play DETROIT directed by our Brooklyn friend Shana. All together there were eight of us for the special occasion, with a bonus of seeing our dear NYC friend Abbie (and Huck’s first love) and meeting her son!  On the way to Colorado we made a pit stop at my childhood home in Kansas and left Huck with his grandma and grandpa for nearly 72 hours of the kind of fun we all remember as kids. Sunny stayed home and had back yard play dates with our friend Stephanie and her dogs. Knowing those two were so well taken care of, Troy and I were able to enjoy Garden of the Gods and Manitou Springs and dinners out and beautiful mountains and coffee conversations and fireside chats with some of our very favorite people without interruption.  I was filled with childhood memories of Colorado Springs vacations, almost feeling funny to be there without my parents and sisters. We told stories of past gatherings such as this one, whether in the Poconos Mountains, our Fayetteville home, a Texas lake house or a New York apartment.  Shannon, Troy and I reminisced about a road trip the two of them and young Max took back in 1996 from Austin to Wyoming to see me in a play, also stopping halfway at my parents’ house.  You see how these once in a lifetime opportunities keep repeating themselves?

When at last we arrived back in the middle of Kansas to retrieve Huck, he and my parents were filled with stories of their time together which included a visit to Huck’s college fund broker, an art piece made of plaster and found objects, and a cut-throat Canasta game.  It also included a dirty old Band-Aid on one of Huck’s fingers from a little cut back at home. Instead of replacing the Band-Aid he just put tape and rubber bands around it, much to Grandpa’s dismay.  ”I wanted something to remember you by,” Huck whispered to me.  Grandpa’s eyes softened and he said, “Oh, that’s what that was about.  Okay.”

Once in a lifetime!

Goodbye, you three!

And hello, Faves!

Abbie and Spencer!

The Amazing Playwright, Director and Cast of “Detroit”

Here we all are!  This picture was taken moments before the world’s longest and saddest goodbye.

So fitting to have Huck and my parents as book ends to all these pictures!

We’re all three in school a lot these days, and between that and our extracurriculars we don’t see each other during the week like we used to. Troy’s busy at the University nursery school, Huck’s finishing up fourth grade, and for the past two weeks I’ve been substitute teaching at The New School. Mostly I’ve been the art teacher, but I’ve also made cameo appearances in both Spanish and P.E., which may be stretching the limits of my abilities.  I can barely remember how to say “hello” in Español and I certainly shouldn’t have shouted, “HOLD YOUR BALLS!” in an attempt to quiet down the dribbling third graders.  But because of my usual role as play director, I’ve worked with almost all of these children over the past year.  And while no one would call substitute teaching “easy” or even “fun,” it has been surprisingly both getting to know these three to 13 year olds outside of the pressure (and occasional absurdity) of rehearsals.

The other day I set up a grocery store station for the preschoolers, something that would have been my dream come true back in 1975.  Suddenly there was a strange commotion and I realized that all the little boys were robbing the grocery store, stuffing cash registers and fake food into their shirts and pants while little girls screeched, “They’re robbing us! They’re robbing us!”  Since I have some experience with drunk midgets, I had a good talk with the out-of-breath robbers and convinced them to cool the heck down.  The next day I made another childhood dream come true and set up an office station.  I spent the morning on a gigantic old fashioned cell phone enlisting four year olds to join me at our 1:00 meeting, missing a certain four year old who would have loved this game back in 2009.  Amongst the three year olds is a little girl named Stella and a boy who does a wonderful Stanley Kowalski impression.

With the fourth graders I brought in some of Huck’s origami instruction pages, and before I knew it six or seven children were hovering over me hoping I would teach them how to make complicated lilies and stars that were way beyond my paper crane abilities.  I promised them I would have a one-on-one session with Huck at home and learn all the proper folds. Due to a rather crazy schedule that included the start of Prison Stories, archery lessons and Troy’s rehearsals, this session did not happen until 6:30 the next morning. That’s the worst time for me to learn anything.  Later that day I attempted the lily only to repeatedly fail right around step four out of seventeen.  The sweet girl I was trying to help shouted, “GET ON THE PHONE AND CALL YOUR SON RIGHT NOW!  I DON’T CARE IF HE’S IN SCHOOL!”  Thankfully, she accepted Huck’s perfect lily example as a consolation.

Last Friday night Troy and I were tired from a long work week when Huck began entertaining us with old songs from his jazz choir days.  Wearing his red and black flannel pajamas, he began wistfully dancing around the living room singing to us with intense eye contact, practically daring us to laugh at his commitment.  Troy was in and out of consciousness during Huck’s routine, as is his Friday night tradition, but I couldn’t take my tired eyes away.  Possibly due to being sleepy, the sight and sound of his performance took on a dreamy quality for me and I had a feeling this would be something I would remember.  I imagined I had time traveled, as if I had been given this gift in the future to magically appear on a January evening in 2015 when Huck was but a nine year old.  We’re reading Rebecca Stead’s wonderful book together called “When You Reach Me,” and in it a character believes we wear an invisible veil over our faces to protect ourselves from all the beauty and sadness of the real world.  Sometimes the wind will blow our veil up a bit and we get a quick glimpse at what’s really around us, but most of the time the world is a little blurry and we like it that way.  That’s what it felt like while Huck sang his outrageously dramatic rendition of “Summertime,” especially in contrast to my days spent with kids I haven’t known forever.  I had time traveled and the veil was off for a few seconds and there was my origami teacher aggressively singing his guts out while my funny husband and lazy dog snored together next to me.

And for the next 48 hours we had each other all to ourselves.

Right around this time eight years ago, I stopped breastfeeding almost two-year-old Huck.  I knew this motherhood milestone held the potential for heartbreak, but I was so organized about it that the whole event was pretty anticlimactic. (At least for me.  It’s possible Huck felt differently.)  The following January we kicked our almost three-year-old out of our king-sized bed and ended the family nest that I at first resisted and at last embraced.  Again, months of planning made this change seamless for the three of us really.  (It’s possible Huck would disagree.)  Some years passed and it became 2015.  Apparently we are serious about new year’s resolutions, because this January finds almost ten-year-old Huck (and his middle aged mom) facing a new change.  As I begin working more hours at The New School (today I was the art teacher), Huck is beginning an everyday after-school program for the first time.  When I mentioned this plan last month, he enthusiastically told me he’s always wanted to join his friends at after-school, making me question my determination to be available starting at 3:00 most every afternoon.  And again I find myself expecting emotional devastation but instead shrugging my shoulders in a “that was easy” kind of way.

Now then.  It wasn’t necessarily easy when I kissed Huck goodbye around 7:40 this morning knowing I wouldn’t see him again for nearly ten hours.  I realize this makes the three of us late bloomers in the garden of real life, but that’s pretty much been our way.  It’s probably why on most days Troy and I think we’re in our mid-twenties.  Look at us still trying to figure out what we want to be when we grow up!  Isn’t it nice of Huck to grow up so we can?