Reflections on the Thirteenth Week of Spring – “I’m Gonna Tell Your Children”

Snowdrops

“I’m gonna tell your children,” my husband Spence said from close behind me.

On that chilly March morning, I lay stomach down on Creek Road and formed a tripod with my elbows and hands to hold the long camera lens steady. I aimed the lens at snowdrops growing on the bank by the blue colonial house. “There’s no other angle for a decent picture.” I adjusted the focus. “The curved stems tilt the flowers facedown.”

He chuckled. “You’re lying on the road.”

He had a point.

But I preferred he didn’t embarrass me by telling our son Charlie and daughter Ellen I’d done something wacky. They might think I’d lost my reasoning and they needed to research nursing homes for their aging parent.

For an eye-to-eye please don’t plea, I twisted and looked over my shoulder.

Spence’s posture distracted me. He stood above me with his feet straddling my knees and his head swiveling left to right.

“What are you doing?” I said.

“I’m protecting you from cars.”

Figuring he’d forget to tell the children by the time we walked three-quarters of a mile home, I turned and framed the snowdrops in my viewfinder.

The telling-the-children threat continued.

The fifth-seventh or so incident occurred several years later on a cold January morning when the temperature inside the log house dipped to 59ºF (15ºC). I carried my clothes to the wood stove. Orange flames licked crackling logs. Keeping as close to the stove as I could without singeing my full length, flannel nightgown, an accomplishment I didn’t need to repeat, I pulled my arms through the sleeves and into the narrow nightgown tent. Then I reached through the neck opening to pull my bra inside. Squirming, I maneuvered my arms through the straps and hooked the band behind me. The flannel billowed and undulated as if blown by a tree-bending wind.

Standing beside the electric range across the great room, Spence looked up from a cast iron skillet. “It’s fun being here with you. You’re so silly. You are a laugh a minute.”

Reaching out through the nightgown’s neck again, I pulled the top part of my long underwear over my head and through the opening. “Keeping warm is no laughing matter.” I shoved my arms into the underwear sleeves.

He chuckled. “I’m gonna tell your children.”

Sheesh. Would they respect a silly mother who’s a laugh a minute? “I’d rather you didn’t, Spence.”

He shrugged his shoulders and flipped an omelet.

Much later, way past his hundredth telling-your-children threat and after a Tuesday morning breakfast, I grabbed the crotch of my swimsuit that I’d hung from a Boston fern pot by the sliding glass door in the great room. The suit felt damp―too wet to wear under my clothes. I took the suit off the hanger, walked to the kitchen, and shoved the suit inside the oven.

Spence stopped tapping computer keys. “Are you baking your swimsuit?”

“No.” I closed the oven door. “Just drying it. The oven’s still warm from when you cooked breakfast while I did yoga.”

“You know your suit will get wet in the pool.”

“Yeah. But it’s more convenient to wear it under my clothes for the drive to the YMCA. It saves time and reduces butt-belly-and-breast exposure in the locker room.”

He tapped a few keys. “Most people would dry a bathing suit in the dryer.”

“Well, this is a chlorine resistant Krinkle swimsuit. The label says drip-dry only.” I headed to the bathroom to pack my shampoo and conditioner.

He chuckled. “I’m gonna tell your children.”

Sheesh. My children think I’m quirky enough. They don’t need more examples to doubt my reasoning.

You’re reasoning’s fine. You need to practice the quirky first person narrator that Catherine E. McLean says holds a reader’s attention.

Wouldn’t they rather have a normal mother?

Normal is boring. Accentuate your flaws.

But putting a bathing suit in the oven sounds daft.

Explain. They’ll understand.

Carrying a packed swim bag, I walked back to the great room. “Be sure and tell the children the oven was off―just warm.”

He typed at his computer. Composing the telling email?

“And let them know the suit didn’t drip-dry completely after Monday’s lap swim.”

Tapping keys covered his silence.

“Are you emailing the children?”

He looked up. “No. You got too excited about it. I won’t email now.”

Pile on the details, pretend his idea pleases me, and Spence gives up. Why hadn’t I’d thought of that tactic years ago?

I had this telling-your-children threat under control―until two weeks ago. On Sunday evening, a thunderstorm knocked out the power. The washing machine stopped with a nearly finished load of towels. Sigh.

When the machine had stopped mid cycle because the water pressure dropped too low, I had to reach behind the machine, disconnect the plug, then reconnect it before starting the machine at the beginning of the cycle. Would the power outage require the same remedy?

Four and a half hours later, the power hadn’t returned so I strapped on my foot wraps to calm my restless legs, pulled up the covers, and shone a flashlight on Ann Hazelwood’s Josephine’s Guest House Quilt. I read one sentence. The lights flashed on, the washing machine whirred, and my son Charlie opened the front door.

He walked down the hall and stopped in the bedroom doorway. “Hey.” He smiled ear to ear and waved.

I shut off the flashlight and patted the quilt beside me.

He sat. We chatted. And the washing machine finished its cycle.

Throwing off the covers, I lowered myself to the floor then crawled away from the bed.

Charlie followed. “What are you doing?”

“Crawling.” I pulled my nightgown away from my knees to make faster progress. “I can’t walk when I’m wearing food wraps. The directions say not to put pressure on the bottom of the foot. And I want to put the wet towels into the dryer.”

“They can wait until morning.”

“And get mildew? Not my first choice.” I turned into the bathroom and rose up on my knees to open the doors on the front of the washer and stacked-on-top dryer.

Charlie continued down the hall to the great room.

While I tossed towels into the dryer, I heard Charlie talk to Spence.

“Mom’s crawling.”

“Yeah. She does stuff like that.”

“But she’s crawling!” 

 

Spence chuckled. “Text your sister.”

Sheesh. I faced a morphed version of “I’m gonna tell your children.”

Self Portrait Bag - Portrait Made with Leftover Lace from My Wedding Dress

Reflections on the Twelfth Week of Spring – A.B.C Part 2

Fairy Castle

Huh?

I squinted and concentrated on the backlit tablet screen. I’d skimmed my daughter Ellen’s latest Ireland emails before morning yoga on May 26, but because our old friends Eric and Kay came to celebrate Spence’s birthday, I’d waited until bedtime to absorb Ellen’s messages. Kicking my legs under the covers of the loft bed, I focused on her latest set. The first message and photo made sense.

           A.B.C.―Another Bloody Castle―in this case 

          Dunguaire Castle.

The second photo puzzled me.

          Leprechauns. We stopped by a fairy castle too. Still in 

          County Clare, near Galway. A donkey grazed across 

          the road.

  

The structure shouted castle. What made it a fairy castle? I studied the rock walls.

Ten rows of rectangular rocks formed a single room. Duh! And the grass growing beside it indicated the rocks weren’t Egyptian pyramid size. If Ellen’s husband Chris had stood beside the castle, the photo wouldn’t have tricked my sleep-bleary eyes.

Forcing my eyes to stay open, I scrolled down.

           Baby Cliffs. Before the Cliffs of Moher, we went to the 

          "baby cliffs" for a pre-show.

She’d attached two photos. Gray rocks shared the screen with a navy blue sea in the first photo. In the other, a boulder, shaped like a weathered baby bootee, perched toe-toward-the-sea on a grass and rock slope.

           Cliffs of Moher. Just ... beautiful!

This time she’d attached three photos which made me scooch back in bed. The drop to the water (at the highest seven hundred two feet according to Wikipedia) would give people plenty of time to regret getting close to the edge.

I tucked the tablet under my pillow and dreamed of paddling a kayak below the Cliffs of Moher. At 2:47 a.m., the bathroom door clicked closed, someone’s snores floated up the spiral stairs, and the tablet pinged six times for six incoming emails.

Sheesh! My armchair travel following Ellen and Chris around Ireland abandoned its donkey cart pace and zoomed like a launching rocket. Could I keep up?

Not wanting to open my eyes, I rolled over. Later. I’d catch up later.

But the next day, I spent all of my solitary time polishing the story about neighbor Mary Ann [See “Walks Through My Heart” May 27, 2018] before six Pittsburgh Wellses and our son Charlie joined Eric, Kay, Spence and me for a Sunday-before-Memorial-Day Wells Wood celebration.

• Walk to gaze at iris, check the beaver dam, and see what three-year-old great niece Addy could see along the dusty dirt road.
• Chat about work, retirement, and absent relatives’ adventures.
• Watch one-year-old Amelia walk and shove stuffed penguins into her mouth.
• Listen to Addy roll the tattered baseball she’d found on the dirt road. Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr-bonk―up and down the deck ramp.

By the time I washed dishes, found containers for all the leftovers, and collected Amelia’s hot dog bun crumbs for the worm composting factory, I didn’t have the energy to stare at the tablet screen.

I set the tablet on the bedside table. I could catch up with Ellen, Chris, and scenic Southwest Ireland in the morning.

Chris and Ellen at Giant's Causeway

Before my morning dash to the bathroom, I opened Ellen’s latest email and read she’d already left for Northern Ireland.

                 In Belfast, we went on a black cab political tour which 

          was fairly interesting. Here are some signs a in 

          Protestant neighborhood.

She attached photos of murals including “Women’s Voices Matter . . . Equality for all.”

                The tour continued with a visit to the "Peace Wall" 

          which has gates that still close at night. The locals 

          referred to it as a wall of segregation and said more 

          needs done to promote understanding―integrating 

          schools (now Protestant/Catholic specific) and making

          good on the promise to bring down the peace wall.

Hadn’t peace come to Northern Ireland in 1998? I set the tablet down and picked up Fodor’s Essential Ireland, the same edition Ellen had packed for her trip. On page 543 Fodor explained “The Troubles” and on page 544 stated that though the situation today “. . . may not be perfect, it is infinitely better than the dark days of the Troubles.” Like the Civil War still affecting relationships in the U.S.? What effect will Brexit have on Northern Ireland?

I didn’t ponder answers to either question―time for that bathroom dash.

Okay, my armchair travel had morphed into lie-in-bed travel. Later, after Ellen returned home, I’d sit in the Adirondack chair, download her emails, save her photos, and revel in rereading her messages. But while she traveled? I managed the zooming rocket pace horizontally.

           I am writing to you from the airport. We’re about to 

           come back to the US! On the last day we had several 

           adventures. They are filming Game of Thrones in 

           Northern Ireland so many sites where they filmed are 

           now big attractions. First stop was the Black Hedge,  

           which is really birch trees.

A tree canopy, like the one we have over West Creek Road, topped her Black Hedge photo. The twisty Irish birch branches invoked a mystical fairy-tale feeling which our straighter Pennsylvania branches don’t. Three hours after she’d sent her email, I typed a response.

          Thank you, Ellen! Writing to you from bed. It's

          great waking up and finding your emails cued

          in my inbox. Love the birch walk.

  

The relaxing nature suited my horizontal travel and brain better than the political tensions in Belfast.

           We hiked 1 km to and from the Carrick Rope Bridge.

           We didn’t have tickets to go on the bridge, but the 

           views were spectacular.

Sheesh! I flipped to page 581 in Fodor’s guide―Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge is sixty feet long and hangs a hundred feet over the sea. No way would I cross that flimsy, vertigo-inducing structure! Maybe Belfast politics had its place on a vacation. I answered,

           So green. So blue. So rugged. Love the Irish

           landscapes. And I’d buy tickets NOT to walk on

           the rope bridge. Its swaying would be too 

           scary.

To change the topic, I opened Ellen’s next email.

           Giant’s Causeway. Look up the story for this one. It’s 

           amusing. Geographically, this was due to large 

           volcanic eruptions under a glacier.

I flipped to page 585 in Fodor’s for a full page photo of the causeway made of mashed-together hexagonal columns. “As all Ulster folks know,” the giant Finn McCool built the stepping stones to reach a giantess on the Isle of Staffa. When McCool reached the island, her boyfriend started a fight. In the fight, Finn picked up a part of the causeway and threw it at his rival. Fairy-tale indeed.

Shifting the pillow under my head, I opened the last email in the cue.

           Final photo of a castle, Dunluce Castle. Part of the 

          castle literally fell into the North Sea. Also a Game of

          Thrones filming location. Back in the U.S. soon!

Gratitude warmed every cell in my body. Ellen’s nineteen texts, twenty-eight emails, and forty-eight photos gave me a treasured tour of Ireland, a trip much more than just A.B.C.―Another Bloody Castle―in this case Dunluce Castle.

Dunluce Castle

Reflections on the Eleventh Week of Spring – A.B.C.

Dunguaire Castle

I yawned and squinted at the backlit tablet screen. Above the picture of a weathered castle, my daughter Ellen wrote 

          A.B.C.―Another Bloody Castle―in this case

          Dunguaire Castle

In the tablet’s upper right corner, tiny numbers announced 2:56 a.m.

Sheesh. Ellen must be eating breakfast in Galway City, Ireland. She and her husband Chris would head off for another day before I got out of bed.

I shoved the tablet under my pillow, tugged the sheet up to my neck, and closed my drooping eyelids.

The tablet binged four more times, way more incoming emails than I’d expected after Ellen declined Spence’s birthday cookout invitation by emailing her father

           I’ll be in Ireland.

That early May day, when he had told me the sad news, I squealed “Ooh, Ireland!” and plotted. With my travel limitations―more than two hours in a car or on a plane induced vertigo―I couldn’t fly to Ireland. Maybe I could follow Ellen’s travel via the computer. Would she go for the idea?

No adult wants her mother tagging along.

I wouldn’t be tagging along―just looking up landmarks she visited.

A Purdue University professor leading an international course abroad needs an interfering mother?

How is sitting in my Adirondack chair and reading about Dublin interfering?

Ask her. Don’t presume.

I emailed.

           Do you have an itinerary of your activities that 

           I could follow? Would you mind if I made an

           "armchair traveler" blog of me following along 

          with you and Chris?

She took twenty-four hours to answer.

             I dunno about this blog.

           We’re taking a lot of undergrads who haven’t agreed 

           to this. Itinerary below.

She had a point. She’d be busy. I wasn’t the mother of the students taking the environmental health course. And Chris, a chaperone for the trip, wasn’t the type to email newsy updates.

If I followed Ellen’s itinerary using Internet photos, how would she know? I studied the itinerary. It began

           5/14: Leave for Ireland

and ended

           5/30: Come back to USA.

Two thirds of the way down her list she’d written

             5/24: Dublin

           Check out of hotel

           Wave goodbye to students

           Ellen and Chris to Guinness Storehouse.

Ellen and Chris on tour without the students! I could wait until May 24 for armchair traveling. I emailed.

              Thanks for the itinerary. Maybe I could follow  

           you and Chris AFTER the students leave? 

           Maybe not. The armchair traveler blog angle 

           might prove too tricky.

No response. Was she frustrated with my persistence?

She called on Mother’s Day. During our hour and a half chat, she said, “I bought Fodor’sEssential Ireland for the trip. You can get one on Amazon for about ten dollars.”

Okay. Not frustrated.

I ordered the guide.

While Ellen worked with students at Dublin Institute of Technology Wednesday, May 16, I prepared for Spence’s birthday company. With pots and skillets, spice bottles and canned fruit, dishes and utensils scattered helter-skelter on counters, the kitchen table, and chair seats, I scrubbed plastic cupboard liners.

A UPS driver scrapped open the porch gate and dropped a bag onto the welcome mat.

Fodor’s Essential Ireland? Time for a break.

I wiped my soapy hands, ripped open the bag, and plopped into my Adirondack chair. Sigh. The guide had more text than photos. I flipped through pages until page 161 caught my eye with a picture of a medieval High Cross next to a Round Tower at Monasterboice. Would Ellen see a high cross? I’d ask when the course ended.

Okay, I didn’t wait that long.

The next day I sewed patches on my son’s black work pants and listened to the On Point radio broadcast discussing the campaign for repealing Ireland’s antiabortion amendment. “Abortion politics in Ireland . . . strident conflict . . . in the streets of Dublin . . .”

Signs Referring to Vote Repealing Antiabortion Amendment

Streets of Dublin? Maybe Ellen and her students walked by the protesters.

I could ask.

Don’t pester her. She’s working.

She’d sent a text about her plane debacle.

           Travel drama! Flights yesterday were 

           canceled―rescheduled for today―then those were 

           canceled. Chris and I and two students are in Chicago

           waiting to go to Brussels then Dublin.

Duh. In an airport waiting for a plane? Much different that herding students and giving lectures.

She can ignore my text if she’s busy.

Stop your hovering-mothering.

I flipped the cover on my phone and typed with one finger.

           Are you running into any demonstrations for 

           abortion rights?  They’re in the news here.

She replied within a minute.

           Lots of signs for both sides. People handing out 

          leaflets. When we were in class there was some noise

          that sounded like a protest, but I could not tell

           what it was for, so . . . maybe?

And she sent another text. 

 

           Went to the Kingfisher Restaurant tonight for dinner. 

          It’s in the Dublin North section. Staying at Academy 

          Plaza Hotel.

I grabbed the Fodor’s guide and opened to Dublin North section. 

On page 104 the review started, “Don’t let the down-at-heel 

canteen decor put you off.” I visualized Ellen and Chris soaking in 

“lively community atmosphere” while consuming a whole sea bass 

at a wooden table marred with people’s initials.

The guide didn’t list the Academy Plaza Hotel, but the Internet did. 

The hotel looked comfy to me.

And three days later, while I revised part two of the quilt guild 

blog, she sent a photo with a text.

           These signs are all over!

Ellen must have returned from taking her students to Newgrange

the ancient passage tomb in Boyne Valley. I gazed at the phone

 

photo, clicked “save” on my quilt saga blog, and set the computer 

on the coffee table to answer her text.

             Amazing! Is that Dublin? Did you see a high cross

       in Boyne Valley?

The phone pinged and a photo of students clustered around a high cross arrived.

               Monasterboice. The prior photo was this morning right 

         outside Trinity College.

She had free time!

           Gorgeous, thanks. 

 

After sending me nine more texts that Irish evening/Wells Wood afternoon, she immersed herself in the course again―lectures and student poster presentations. But I didn’t feel neglected. I took afternoon breaks in the Adirondack chair to study Fodor’s, search web sites, reread her nineteen texts, and gawk at her three photos. My armchair travel moseyed along like a ride in a donkey cart with ample time to soak in the scenic views.

Then Friday, at 3:41 p.m., I lifted the mattress to slip on the corner of a freshly laundered sheet for Spence’s elementary school friend Eric, and my cell phone pinged. An email from Ellen! Before I opened it, I smoothed the sheets, pull up the quilt, and toted my sleeping gear to the loft.

The phone binged ten more times.

Hustling to my Adirondack chair to enjoy Ellen’s emails, I heard gravel crunch under tires in the driveway.

Sheesh. Ellen had switched to vacation mode, and our company had arrived. My armchair adventure abandoned the donkey to zoom like a launching rocket. Could I keep up?

End of Part 1

Chris and Ellen at Gravity Bar in Guinness Storehouse