plum syrup is worthy of myth and legend

cloudy and breezy, the grass has turned green and a tree outside the bedroom window has red fingernails blooming a springtime. the trash cans blow across the sidewalk, half a roll one way, another half the other way.

we zoo'd yesterday. after naps and noodles and donning hooded sweatshirts we drove through the gray to see horribly large cockroaches (eating bananas) and bats(napping) and snakes(twisting together).

terribly, it was mating day at the zoo. for the african native creatures, anyhow. enormous porcupines. nonchalant lions. mystifying.





my darling ernie brought a gift to me after work yesterday. he knows what to do. he brought home the wondrously delightful book by moby and kelly tisdale. this vegan trip called "teany book" is full of "stories, food, romance cartoons and of course, tea." the thing is funny, happy and deliciously photographed. i want to eat or drink everything pictured.

here are some excerpts for you to enjoy and obsess over so that the one you love the most can go on out and buy it for you yourself.



about the chamomile and lemongrass hair rinse:
"do you ever take a shower and don't want to wash your hair (because you don't want it to be 'fluffy', so you just rinse it but feel like you should be putting something it it? this is the stuff to put in it."

about the avocado, beet, and mango, salad with blood orange tea vinaigrette (aka the dish of bliss):
"why is this dish the dish of bliss? can you think of a better way to describe a salad that is savory, sweet, crunchy, mushy, fresh, filling and really pretty?"

about the chocolate and green tea pudding:
"like all drug addictions, an addiction to chocolate is something that builds over time, wherein you always need a stronger quality and larger quantity of the drug in order to satisfy your addiction."

on the book itself:
"it's a book about teany. it has tea and food and tea robots and a fake history of teany on the lower east side and lots of strange and interesting stories and anecdotes and cartoons and even some romance."

the kitchen windows are propped open. henry washed spiderman and fingers and bowls in the kitchen sink while i washed the floor as jude followed me around on the floor, pulling himself up to my back, laughing at me.

obsessively i clean the house. when the sunshine comes to visit i want the house to be clean and shiny.

the bevel on the mirror of my dresser makes a rainbow, something to do with the glass of the windows, the mirror, the light. it was late morning and the boys were falling asleep in my bed, quietly, tapping each other, pulling hands and hair, drifting off on silver clouds of sleep while i watched the rainbow flicker in acentric swirling circles.

the angel up on the tombstone

weather-wise we’ve a fitting easter – the day starting out a little sad, a little gray, a stillness. and then the bursting forth of blue and sun, sparking sudden. something joyous.

some keith:

hear the bells ringing
they’re singing that you can be born again
hear the bells ringing
they’re singing Christ is risen from the dead

the angel up on the tombstone
said he has risen, just as he said
quickly now, go tell his disciples
that Jesus Christ is no longer dead

joy to the word, he has risen, hallelujah
he’s risen, hallelujah
he’s risen, hallelujah

hear the bells ringing
they’re singing that you can be healed right now
hear the bells ringing, they’re singing
Christ, he will reveal it now

the angels, they all surround us
and they are ministering Jesus’ power
quickly now, reach out and receive it
for this could be your glorious hour

joy to the world, he has risen, hallelujah
he’s risen, hallelujah
he’s risen, hallelujah, hallelujah

the angel up on the tombstone
said he has risen, just as he said
quickly now, go tell his disciples
that Jesus Christ is no longer dead

joy to the world, he has risen, hallelujah
he’s risen, hallelujah
he’s risen, hallelujah
hallelujah

ours the cross, the grave, the skies

o death, where is thy sting?
o grave, where is thy victory?
the sting of death is sin;
and the strength of sin is the law.
but thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory
through our Lord Jesus Christ. i cor. 15:55-57

happy easter, one and all.







i turn my collar to the cold and damp

soggy and puddled. we search for puddles on the walk home from grandmamas. jude peeks down through his hood as henry whacks the cloudy water with sticks, one in each hand, a steady slapping beat. my pants are spattered and students are coming so i herd them on. it’s cold and i think about black coffee and the swirl of cream in a cloud. the spin and tap of my spoon. the first hot sip.

along the mossy sidewalk the uneven bricks make great gullys of water, small rivers on which we send twigs sailing, miniature oceans splashed with a rogue wave caused by boots and sticks and pieces of brick.

it’s spring, the time for sog puddle walks, for yellow raincoats and green umbrellas.

and we’ll have another walker soon. jude pulls him up at the couch and walks his way back and forth up and down along side of it. he uses one hand to hold himself up at the couch and the other to reach out to grab at things, at henry, at me. he bounces on his soft white feet and laughs. henry laughs. i secretly cry. what will i do with two boys running around as fast as their legs can carry them? the walking is the beginning of the end. running, skipping, dancing. and then what? i saw a fresh baby today and gasped at the recollection of how quickly jude has become a mover, a baby dancer walker.

henry’s hair. it curls in the watery day. he sleeps it into a fuzz. he moves it around with inexperienced fingers. when it is wet it slips down in a long golden strand past his neck, between his shoulder blades. so glorious. call him samson if you must, he’ll not have a haircut for years to come. one can only get away with such craziness of the hair for a very short time. let it be.

something springy:

`This has been a wonderful day!' said he, as the Rat shoved off and took to the sculls again. `Do you know, I`ve never been in a boat before in all my life.'

`What?' cried the Rat, open-mouthed: `Never been in a--you never--well I--what have you been doing, then?'

`Is it so nice as all that?' asked the Mole shyly, though he was quite prepared to believe it as he leant back in his seat and surveyed the cushions, the oars, the rowlocks, and all the fascinating fittings, and felt the boat sway lightly under him.

`Nice? It's the ONLY thing,' said the Water Rat solemnly, as he leant forward for his stroke. `Believe me, my young friend, there is NOTHING--absolute nothing--half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats. Simply messing,' he went on dreamily: `messing--about--in--boats; messing----'

`Look ahead, Rat!' cried the Mole suddenly.

It was too late. The boat struck the bank full tilt. The dreamer, the joyous oarsman, lay on his back at the bottom of the boat, his heels in the air.

`--about in boats--or WITH boats,' the Rat went on composedly, picking himself up with a pleasant laugh. `In or out of 'em, it doesn't matter. Nothing seems really to matter, that's the charm of it. Whether you get away, or whether you don't; whether you arrive at your destination or whether you reach somewhere else, or whether you never get anywhere at all, you're always busy, and you never do anything in particular; and when you've done it there's always something else to do, and you can do it if you like, but you'd much better not. Look here! If you've really nothing else on hand this morning, supposing we drop down the river together, and have a long day of it?'

The Mole waggled his toes from sheer happiness, spread his chest with a sigh of full contentment, and leaned back blissfully into the soft cushions. `WHAT a day I'm having!' he said. `Let us start at once!' – the wind in the willows, k. grahame

's' is for snow-storm

tell me this isn't so, this isn't snow.



it's soaring down, not floating, aggressively beating down everything in sight.

and worse yet, it's sticking.

the woman was herding her small-jacketed husband across the parking lot. she shoved her purse under her arm and waved at him to hurry through the rain that smelled of snow. he pushed the cart, one old hand grasping the handle, the other balancing two shiny-and-new yellow garden hoses which were perched atop four enormous bags of potting soil. he slid down the wet, uneven pavement, pulling up his pants as he followed his spring-stepping woman.

the latest photography of henry greene.










fog's rolling in on the east river bank

i’m ready to run. i want to wake up early (earlier than the larks that sleep warm and golden beside me, anyway) and run circles on the track at the park. to slip down at the first crack of light, listening to my shoes clunk along the pavement, past the baseball diamond, the enormous peeling white tree, that bend in the path where the stench of the rotten creek is strong, the curve beneath new trees that smell like summer camp and fire fly fire, the parking lot, the pavilion, the playground, the bathrooms, the drinking fountain.

it’s definitely time to run again. nothing outrageously unattractive about the state of this body. she merely looks like the melting winter, white, soft in too many places. and she feels slow. slow and sleepy. she doesn’t look forward to the screaming of her lungs and the pinch of her side.

my children cuddle up to me and squeeze the fat of my stomach. they poke their flags of ownership into my navel. they knead the skin as though they’re working for bread, constant, from side to side, squeezing and poking and twiddling.

instead, i want their fingers to mindlessly climb the stairs of my protruding rib cage, their curly heads to rest quietly on the firm mattress of my stomach.

perhaps they love the soft swells of my belly because they first found life inside it, underneath it, a dark red world of water and heartbeats, the muffled rise and fall of my voice, ernie’s voice, music, felicity.

henry pushes out his stomach and says he loves his “big tummy.” he washes it in circles with green soap in the shower.

tonight he greeted my mother with a hug and a “grandmamma, i love you. and i love your big tummy.”

every afternoon we tiptoe across the cold floor of the sun-porch to open the back door, the only screen that stayed on the house through the winter. the chimes that i meant to bring inside still hang outside the door, over the patio, under the tree nearest to the house. we can hear their cheerful greeting while we’re still in the bowels of the house. the sun shines and the room is bright and we squint (and sometimes sneeze) when we come down the dark stairs from the shady kitchen to the sun-filled porch.

henry spilled a new bottle of bubble solution on the tile of the porch and slid around for half an hour with a towel “cleaning it up.”

the cold air of pre-spring, air that smells and looks warmer than it is, deceives me and i prop doors with step stools and windows with cans in an effort to send something fresh swirling through this sleeping house. the house is old and has storm windows that are changed from glass to screen in the green of spring, from screen to glass when the sky stays gray and everything else turns from yellow to red to brown to black. the windows and removable pieces are numbered with corresponding round brass buttons flush with the wood. ingenious and wonderful.

tonight the house is dark and creaking. the kitchen is a pile of dishes and smells of onions and curry. the men of the house snore in their sleep, not turning or tossing. the heat has been turned back to make way for better weather. my feet and nose are cold, yet stubborn. we four will stay warm as we pile up together under quilt and blanket, slipping into socks and sweaters come morning, come coffee and raisins and bread with new peanut butter.

"don't cry about it."

yesterday, st. patrick's day, was ernie's birthday. grandma thought he was lying about his age. the brothers and father and husband ate humongous pieces of carrot cake (ernie's pick, of course) frosted high with shiny cream cheese frosting. henry poked his and asked for an apple. grandma had two mid-sized pieces, which means she ate more than anyone else.

before the cake ernie and i heard the technology savvy yet near tone deaf group, the westwind brass. the people who hosted the concert were celebrating fifty years of local concerts featuring crowd-pleasing classical music and light jazz. toward the end of the music a woman loudly hissed/shouted, "i can't find my house keys!" the woman behind us snorted her cigarette laugh at the tuba player's jokes about multiple divorces. as we went out the door we were given twix bars with "fifty years of community concerts!" stickers taped to them. we were two of the eight or nine people in the building under thirty years of age. i felt bad that when this generation of community concert lovers and goers dies the community concert will die with them. unless we can do something about it.

which raised an interesting question between ernie and me as we booked it through the grass to the car, in the car through the town, to get back to cake and sleeping jude and red faced, pajama-ed busy henry. when you go to classical or jazz concerts in big cities most of the audience are young people, twenties to forties. perhaps there are not as many eighty year old pink haired ladies in big cities. when a music teacher's sphere of influence is limited to a thirty minutes lesson in a week, a listening assignment here and there, recitals, etc., how can this music teacher pass on a zeal for something other than mainstream, radio station music? not to cast a slur on any other listening interests, or to say that everything else is somehow a lesser form of music, but to say, how can we pass on a spark of music that's not chintzy or sleazy? for instance, jazz that's really jazz, not just people pretending to produce jazz.

i could see last night why people shut their ears to classical music, why they find it blase. the musicians themselves played the old music apologetically. the tuba player said that all of bach's music was somber, serious, the result of composing in dark churches. i was sick to my stomach. the tanned, note-cracking trumpeter said, "now, it's time for the jazz!" which may not have been so bad if they had been incredible jazz musicians. if the musicians themselves are mediocre at best and hand out apologies for the music they're playing, how can they expect the audience to feel about it? no wonder the community concert will die with the ancient, permed, large-bottomed women passing out twix bars and clicking their tongues against their dentured teeth.

we have a tradition in my family to stretch a birthday into multiple days of celebration. we had pizza and presents on wednesday night with my parents. on the actual birthday we had the concert and cake. and tonight my parents are taking us out and we're going to stuff our faces with meat. sick.

my mom knocked on the door yesterday morning with a handful of these:



we've been spending the last few days dirtying ourselves, fingernails, cheeks and knees, under sunshine and tree branch. and the house is starting to look like the pit-stop it's become. i feel like dusting and organizing and vacuuming and folding and spritzing with windex. but, more so, i feel like rolling around in the grass.









somehow the look seems to fall off your face

two days of sunshine and blue sky. blue it is, this illinois sky. it's the kind of sky that stretches and swells overhead, that scarfs up the gray in one toothy mouthful and swallows it back down into the horizon.

crawling in the grass jude samples leaves and sticks and the leg of the chair. henry shoots the tree with his stick. then he shouts, "yah!" and rides away on the stick into the sunset over between the lilac bush and the breezy evergreen. when we open the back door, bubbles and red ball in hands, we are slapped in the face with spring. we don't feel cold. i don't think about coming inside as soon as i can drag them away from stick and rock, squirrel and bird. warm enough to feel the sun on the tops of the hairs of my head.

"winter, begone!"

a green suited jogger, tight pants, curled hair, red sweatbands (one for forehead, two for wrists) bounces by. he looks over his shoulder and crosses the street, swinging his hair up over the sweatband with banded wrist. "jog for fashion!" he seems to shout at the house, the squirrel at the bird feeder, the crayon scratches on the window-glass, at the bespectacled me glancing up from my desk.

onward marches the day. between the a walk to the park and loaves of golden bread there is much to be read, much to be kissed, much to be started and finished.



what a day for a daydream
custom made for a daydreamin' boy.

and it is, it is a glorious thing to be a pirate king

Oh, better far to live and die

Under the brave black flag I fly,

Than play a sanctimonious part

With a pirate head and a pirate heart.

Away to the cheating world go you,

Where pirates all are well-to-do;

But I'll be true to the song I sing,

And live and die a Pirate King.

For I am a Pirate King!

And it is, it is a glorious thing

To be a Pirate King!

For I am a Pirate King! - - Pirates of Penzance

one, two, three, four, can i have a little more?

somehow, it's come to this. i wonder if anyone takes advantage of the special because they're really only eating fish.



jude and his protruding teeth have discovered the joys of graham crackers. he crunches down on them and breaks pieces off with his barely visible bottom teeth. he sucks them into a sog and creates graham paste which he then smears over the table, the chair, my hands, his hands, his hair, his face, anywhere his fat pasty fingers can reach. if i do not clean the mess up immediately the stuff hardens into graham sticks and swirls and smears and waves and chunks. and these sticks, swirls, smears, waves and chunks dry multitudinous times harder than the original cracker. the original cracker who started out really quite small but is sucked down into a very large amount of paste. sigh.

it was really so much easier when he was content to just nurse. i don't understand mamas who rush into feeding babies real food -- it's so much more work! and mess! and confusion!

and yet, so much more fun.







In the park the lazy breeze are joining in the flowers, among the trees

in the wee hours of the morning i wake up hungry. the sun is peeking through winter trees, orange and green and a silvery blue black. above the green is a purple mist. above the purple some kind of pinkish orange fluff.

jude crawls and claps for himself. he smells like baby and although he only has a fuzz of hair, what he has is certainly junior bed-head, standing and poking in strange places.



henry was awake at five. he came into our room and put on his pirate boots. he did not want to sleep. it was dark then and ernie took him to his bed to stay until at least six. and now as the coffee perks and the baby plays and the sun does a blazing dance for the few of us who are up and watching, the two of them sleep in a pile, a white blanket and crazy hair and superman pyjama pile.

the sun is golden glitter shooting out in beams across the street through the glass and breaking into a thousand pieces against the wall, the piano, the chair, my hair.

at long last henry has discovered the joys of choosing ones own apparel and dressing oneself. just in time for summer, when his previous costume choices -- diaper and boots -- are perfectly acceptable for a small child to traipse the streets.

so far he chooses his pirate boots daily, hourly. he would sleep in them if he thought about it. and the matter of jude's shirts being years too small for henry to wear is insignificant.

why am i reminded of jodie foster in "freaky friday?"
















hey it's the sun and it makes me shine

this morning was balmy and blue. i sent ernie to work with a kiss and a smile. jude and i stood in the doorway and the trees overhead battered together on great, slow waves of wind. the clouds were white and silver in the morning sunlight. we took the backpack from the car and propped it by the door in anticipation of a morning trek over brick and mud to the library. but the weather told that billowing wind to turn a page and the day turned cold and gray and slow. we are turtles. we are snails. we are sloths hanging over the arms of the couch, sticky and furry in the haze. we are cabin fevered.







jude is in bed early. ernie and henry are splashing each other at the Y. the neighbors' house is dark. they are at the hospital waiting and watching the birth of the latest baby to add to their family tree. the neighbor dashed off to the hospital this morning with a shrug and a "no baby" mouthed at me through her car window, my study window. i sent her off with an "oh no!" and a wave and a smile.

you gotta be good
you gotta be strong
you gotta be two thousand places at once.



every one of us has what we need....

....sky of blue and sea of green.

my brother or my dad, one of the two, or both of them in cahoots one with the other, recently introduced henry to the beatles' movie yellow submarine. he sits on the couch at my parents' house and watches seriously, not running around and beating on things like he normally does while watching movies.



he sings the song, something like the song, more like a faint idea of the melody with the words "yellow submarine" sung at the appropriate places.

it's sunny today. warmer than yesterday, than the day before. sends us buzzing. the moodiness of the weather keeps us hopping. and hoping.

snow in hair:



blue skies, blue equipment:



blue eyes:





got canned heat in my heels tonight

there will be no more of this:



jude is everywhere. he crawls quickly and decisively wherever he pleases. i thought things were child-friendly at our house as henry is a pistol and can find an ingenius (though mischevious) use for anything and everything. jude explores everything by way of his drooling mouth. nothing is safe.

amazing, this drive to explore the world. somehow we're ever losing that curiosity, or at least channeling it into more serious pools of research. much of me has forgotten what it's like to be a child, a small universe of energy and resiliency, a whiz-bang of sparkle, an uncontrolled enjoyer of life.

it's a beautiful thing, this grace from God that gives me children and allows me to remember something of a joy that i've forgotten. surely i can extend a little of that grace child-ward as these boys are growing and experimenting with nature and relationship. "keep me humble, keep me patient, keep me joyful."

the fishes will laugh





we're working. the kitchen is half empty of the dishes that have been piling up since saturday. everything crashes over the weekend and we spend the week that follows putting the pieces back together with mod podge and 409 only to have another weekend come around with all its sleep and play.

it would not be so bad if the messes were mere clutter, piles of books and magazines, cups and saucers in innocent stacks on the kitchen table, shoes in a jumble just inside the door. there's plenty of that, and one could wager that the clutter and unruliness of my desk, a stack of paper, a pile of piano student payments to deposit, books for no rhyme or reason, are a permanent fixture in the room, the paper topics varying, the money dwindling and swelling in a rhythm, the book titles marching to their shelves and others marching back out onto the desk to make their own pile.

and it seems that the corner of the hallway has an ever-present rotation of homeless items camped out park-bench style, hats and mittens in a mismatch, one boot, one sock, a pair of diaper pins clipped together, yesterday's mail in a haphazard slump on the radiator, keeping warm through winter wind and snow.

but there is more than clutter. so much more that to write it down in a description of sorts would be an abomination.

something cosmic

how about a spot of astronomical color for a day like today?