Good Dog

Lucy really wants some new pets. Ones that are younger and smaller and smell better. Like a kitty or bunny or some little yippy dog. She sees our dogs as hand-me-downs. What she doesn't see: Clifford, who is lying next to her bed as she sleeps. Clifford, who'd jump into the car as I was buckling her into her car seat, just to be next to her, and look at me in his nervous way, as if to say, "Hey, don't hurt our baby, okay? Do you love me now? Just checking." Guinea pigs and Yorkies don't do that.

Why People Invented the Stork, the Cabbage Patch and Other Reproductive Myths

This morning as I am strapping her into her car seat, she asks, "Mom, what did you and Dad do before I was in your tummy?"

I freeze. Is she asking what I think she's asking? Surely not. "What do you mean?"

"Right before I was in your tummy, what did you and Dad do?"

Um, right before? Holy smokes: she's asking where babies coming from. I give her a quizzical look, stalling.

She takes a new tack: "Did you know I was in there before I came out? Were you missing me?"

That was a close one. "I did know you were in there. And yes, I did miss you. I was so happy when you came out."

Confidence Floats

Lucy has been taking swimming lessons, and today she swam the short length of the pool BY HERSELF. Maybe. Jason wonders that the swim instructor may have had a single finger under Lucy...which means it doesn't count? I'd argue she did swim by herself. How much can a finger be doing except giving her the confidence to do what she knows how to do?

All of our accomplishments require the buoy of confidence. Sometimes, my entire job is holding a finger under a bunch of bright creative people who don't quite realize they know how to...swim.

Watching the Olympics echoes this sentiment for me. Sure, there's the years of training and sacrifice, but confidence: that's the extra something.

Whew

Thank goodness Jason is home. It's been four long days of single parenthood (and I've even had some help from Baga and Nini). Gives me new appreciation for what a bad-ass of a dad Jason is, as well as appreciation for my own single-parent mom.

Last night, I was battling with Lucy about bedtime and I said, "I miss Dad." She said, "I miss Dad, too." In my exhausted, insecure state, I asked the inappropriate question "Do you like Dad better than Mom?" She was a diplomat: "No, I like you both the same. But I do miss Dad."

Is That a Fairy in Your Pants or Are You Happy to See Me?

As I picked Lu up from school today, Ms. Garrett said that Ms. Shepherd said that on the way to the Extended Day room, Lu was holding her stomach, saying it hurt. When I asked Lu if her stomach was okay, did she want to go to swimming lessons? "Yes!" Stomachache gone.

She was changing into her swimsuit, and WHAT should appear, as if by magic: a tiny plastic fairy, tucked into the waistband of her panties. A tiny plastic fairy that she was trying to SMUGGLE OUT OF SCHOOL. Was it the fairy pressed against her waist or the GUILT that was making her stomach hurt?

We had a little meeting about stealing.

The Decline of Duck?

Last night, as Nini and I were putting Lucy to bed, Lucy declared that Duck would be sleeping next to her bed and she'd be sleeping with some random doll instead. Nini and I are both like "Who the hell is that doll? How can you do this to Duck?" It was the very last of her babyhood, cast aside in a ratty heap beside her bed.

At 10:15, when she was STILL AWAKE, we realized that she had decided not to sleep with Duck so she wouldn't suck her thumb, so she wouldn't suck off the hot pink nail polish Baga had applied earlier in the day. After much reassurance, she went to sleep with Duck in hand and thumb in mouth.

This morning, she said she didn't want to take Duck to school, but I put him in her backpack anyway. The day will come, but it's not today.

Wimberley, Part 2

After we left camp on Saturday, we headed over to the Cleaves' Cypress Creek compound. I hadn't been there in probably 20 years, though as a child I spent a good amount of time there with Peggy (my mom's first cousin), Ted (my mom's second cousin, whose family owns all the glorious land and houses around Cypress Creek), David, Kim and Tad (their children, my second cousins). Peggy always took an interest in me, an only child, and often invited me to visit them in Wimberley, Corpus and Colorado so I'd get a taste of big family life.

Lu got a taste of that same family life hanging out with her third cousins Willow, Jack and Nathan Saturday and Sunday. They ran around like wild things, swimming, jumping, hiking and hollering. Saturday night, David set up the movie screen on the porch and we watched "Swiss Family Robinson," until Lu got too scared and we had to watch "Mary Poppins" instead.

I especially loved seeing Lu with Kim's daughter Willow, who is five. Peggy and my mom were best friends as little girls, so it's sweet to see their granddaughters as friends and cousins two generations later. Peggy says, "It's good for children to feel like they are part of a tribe." Indeed.



Wimberley, Part 1

Lucy and I had a magical Saturday and Sunday in Wimberley.

Our first stop was Camp. Yes, Camp with a capital C: Rocky River Ranch, the place where I spent two weeks to two months every summer of my adolescent life. I started going when I was nine years old, perhaps the zenith of my dorkiness. My mom dropped me off on one Sunday, leaving me in the care of a bunch of young women, and I didn't even have the sense to be afraid. I marched into the fray, chose some activities, made some friends and was...cool.

It's true, Camp is the only place in my life where I have ever been cool (maybe because everyone gets to be cool). And I can only think it's because Camp is like life in concentrate, a hyper-real place where it's impossible to be fake. There's no room for posturing or pretending. You're too busy swimming, canoeing, riding horses, laughing, singing bad songs and, if there's any time or energy left before you collapse into your bunk, making the fastest, most intimate friends of your whole life (ones who even accept collect calls from jail). I learned to be a person at Camp.

Being in the Grubstake Saturday afternoon, listening to the post-lunch singing, had me brimming with nostalgia. And to see Liz, my friend and former counselor, as Camp Director...the perfection of the plot line is as pat and sappy as a Lifetime movie.

At first, Lu clung to me, terrified of all the noise, but later she stood in the doorway of the Red Wagon, slack-jawed in her worship of the seven-year-olds who SLEEP in the wagons. Without their PARENTS. And she has been singing "What'll They Do to Her" (this very catchy camp song about a man on deathrow) ever since. I can't wait for her to go.

Bravo No! Where Did My Free Time Go?

I have an unfortunate habit of settling into bed and cuddling up next to whatever is on Austin Time Warner Cable channel 62: Bravo. A gaping maw of vapidity. A complete vacuum of substance. Scandals about pet food and crown molding! A bustier of coffee filters! Number 124 of 513 episodes of Law and Order!

The new Salman Rushdie novel idles on my nightstand, collecting dust alongside my good intentions of learning Portuguese and watching PBS. Sorry, Sal, Kathy Griffin's on.