Friday

It's not my move, of course. It's Snowdrop's and the young family's. Still, moves are stressful and if we can help make it less so, we'll do what we can.

Snowdrop is excited.

Not because of the new home idea (though she is young enough that she doesn't appear at all disturbed by what's ahead), but because her farmhouse bedroom has been invaded for the night by her parents.

She is up two hours too early and there is no coaxing her back to sleep. On the upside, she is feeling much better and her energy level is high (but she can't go to school today: you need to be fever free for a day before you can jump into the fray once more).

Still, we are all draaaaaaagging! Except for Snowdrop.












Slow down, little girl, slow down today! How about a book?






... or two or three...






Breakfast is a jumble of different people eating at different times, though in the end, Ed and I sit down together and Snowdrop comes along for the ride, if only for a short while.






After -- she is again a whirlwind of activity.






Can I put on your lipstick, mommy -- asks the little girl in the astronaut pj's.
Okay, but just a little..

It's not just a little.






Later in the morning, the parents are off to sell one house and buy the other...





(I'm sweeping up chicken droppings... as always, Snowdrop helps.)






...and I begin to nudge the little girl toward a bath.

I move her along to where she is without clothes and the little tub is ready and waiting (in the kitchen sink!), but she will not stop playing...


Want to sit next to me ahah and pretend to eat peaches?







He never says no.






Come inside the tent, gaga!






And this continues all the way until lunch time.

Snowdrop, you really must have a bath now! 


Finally, bath checked off, we turn to lunch, on the porch.

Pesto pasta.






Ice cream sandwiches...





And she really should be so tired now, but she keeps on truckin'!

I'm drawing my hands with mittens on them.
Well I'm drawing butterfly wings with mittens on them!






Going strong!





Until I take out the books and the bowl of fruits -- a signal to stop and nap.


As for my garden -- well, somewhere in there I cleaned the bed by the porch. It's just too in my face to leave alone. Again, it feels like the lilies are really waning. And yet I remove 75 spent blooms just from this one bed. (And I stop at that for today.)






(The cheepers are never too far away...)






(These lilies are at the side of the driveway: they're real August girls!)






Late afternoon. I nudge Snowdrop to wake up.

It's time to go home. Your new home.

She's on it!






How many times in her life will she run up the hill to the front door?





Boxes are still coming in, but some stuff is out already. She finds her hedgehog. Familiar, silly, comfy.

She's home.





Time for us to go home as well. A quiet farmhouse, across the road from a  field of sandhills, who appear to me at least to look up, in search of that friendly wave of a little one, calling out to them -- hi cranes!

transition, or -- best laid plans

I wake up knowing I should keep my medical appointment this morning. I should I should I should.

I do, but of course it proves to be a time suck and since I am healthy (that's a best guess... I am 64 after all!), perhaps I could have skipped it just this once.

No no, neglect the garden, take care of your health!

(Leaving a garden unattended for now...)





My early morning drive is past the crane fields. I am alone and though the birds do still seem majestic, I can't share that swell of emotion as I pause to watch. Better to witness them with a small child!





Two and a half hours later (I told you it was a time suck), I am back, on the porch, having my one quiet moment with Ed, over breakfast.





Do I have time for the flowers? I do not. Still, maybe just the lily field by the porch...

It looks much more light and airy, doesn't it? And yet I pick off 100 blooms!

I stop work at 100. The rest of the garden -- meh. It will hold. Until... well, I don't know when. Next year!





The young family and I had a complicated but workable strategy as to how we could do it all, fit it in, make smooth the transition as they move from one home to the next. But as I begin to gather together the necessary components of play with Snowdrop (don't forget the swimsuit this time!), I get that phone call from her mom: the school called, the child is sick.

Uff!

Parents pick her up and bring her over. Mom snuggles babe for a while and dad goes to sheep shed to coax two out of the three cats out of their hiding places.





Parents leave. They have movers loading a truck!

Babe tries to rally. She eats her fruit and has enough energy to tell me she needs to cook. She reaches for my pots.





I suggest she use her own...





But really, perhaps it's best if you napped, Snowdrop!

She does. Oh, does she need that nap!

Afterwards -- well, you know how kids are: one minute they seem to be recovering, fine, up and running...





... next minute they feel sick again.


Bedtime. A story, read in a modern way (on a phone)....






And then many more, read conventionally.

Such an evening! Did I worry that the farmhouse would be September 1st-like quiet, too quiet?

Not a chance. 

farmhouse vacation conclusion

I do not remember with any clarity the first three years of my life. I lived with my grandparents then, in a deeply rural Polish village (no electricity, no plumbing). Or maybe I do retain something, but it has all become jumbled with later memories? Most of my childhood and adolescent summers were spent in that village house and even though the house itself changed (my grandpa added rooms, electrification eventually took place, and with it, a pump could bring water into the house), there was a certain sameness to everything -- a sameness that I loved throughout my childhood and one that I can taste, smell and feel to this day. These sensual images may well have elements of my earliest years there.

When I was three, I moved back to Warsaw to live with my parents, but at the end of each school year, my sister and I were back in the village, all the way until September 1st. My grandmother had her hands full with us there. She planned and purchased (or grew) food for three solid meals each day, needing to stoke the fire in the stove each morning and foraging the farmsteads for foods to fill her basement and pantry. For many years there wasn't even a store in the vicinity (nor was there a paved road, to say nothing of transportation) and when something did eventually open, it offered little that you would want to cook for a family meal.

My grandma went to sleep by 8 and was up at 5. I had the room next to the kitchen and in the mornings I could hear her moving about. It was heavenly to stay in bed, watch the sunlight come in through the curtains, and hear the kitchen sounds of a new day in the making on the other side of the very narrow door.

I think about this on my last day (out of only five) of Snowdrop's farmhouse vacation. I think about how for her visit, I made lists of foods for her three meals each day and how one of them (Sunday lunch) was Amy's frozen mac and cheese which took all of four minutes to microwave. And still, I made those lists and worked in prep times when she napped or after she went to sleep. Between tending to the flowers and playing with the little one and keeping to a schedule of meals and farmhouse maintenance, I felt like my days were completely full.

At the end of each summer, my grandma grew sad. She always cried when we left: quiet tears, streaming down her old face. Many years passed before I understood how lonely it may have felt to shift from a crazy busy happy summer schedule to a quiet cold empty winter one. Oh, she would come into the city by train every now and then, bringing farm products and baked goods for us and eventually, when we acquired a car, we would go there for a day or two come weekends, but still, the switch from crazy busy to quiet and still on September 1st must have been pronounced.

It's evening now at the farmette and the farmhouse, like her village house, is remarkably quiet. I no longer plan meals or think about fitting in a shower at the community pool so that Snowdrop can have her daily "bath." (Today, she enjoyed her post-pool shower so much that she would not leave, standing under the pounding water and singing songs to herself...) Ed is out biking, I'm thinking back to what it was like to have Snowdrop dictate my day's activities from morning 'til night.


And how was this last day with the little girl? Well, lovely of course. The weather cooperated for us once more and we woke to a beautiful morning.

(Hey, you three -- I can focus on you once more, though honestly, you've become a handful! Scotch, quit hiding at night  somewhere outside the coop! It's not safe out there and we can't ever find you! Nor your eggs!)





Here's a shot of the a teeny corner of the garden in the morning light -- not cleaned up yet, but so pretty nonetheless!






Again Ed is still sleeping as I wake Snowdrop at 8. She and I eat breakfast together. It's my breakfast no. 1.






Into the car, past fields of cranes. We pause to admire them, talk to them, take in their beauty...






And now she is at school (it's funny to see her on the arrival, as I've taken so many pics of her on the return)...






And then I hurry home to work in the garden... Fewer than 300 spent blooms today!





Phew! Bugs waved away, I'm safely inside the porch now, getting ready for breakfast no. 2, with Ed. He's not in the photo because he can't match (or even come close to) Snowdrop's winning smile!






And from here, I drive to meet my friend who is in town right now. She, like Snowdrop, always has a beautiful smile to offer...






And from there, I hurry to pick up Snowdrop.

On our walk, I talk to her about the next four days. They will have everything grand and everything strange in them: the return of her mommy and daddy (grand!), her last night in her old home, the move of her three cats to the sheep shed for a while until the move is over and done with, the return of the whole family to overnight here, and then a move into their new home, with a visit of aunt and uncle thrown in. I list it all. I think she got it! Or, part of it. Maybe most of it. We've been reading the moving books (recommended by you, commenters!) pretty regularly.

I ask how she wants to play this afternoon.

Playground!






Then pool. I come prepared!

Well, maybe not so much. I have with me the towel, my own bathing suit bottoms, the sun screen, the shampoo... I forgot her swimsuit.

I explain the predicament: Gaga forgot... do you want to swim in your panties? 
Yes!

I find it interesting that there isn't a single other wee kid in the pool (among hundreds!) in just panties. I don't think I myself owned a swimsuit until I was six or seven.

It's a beautiful day to be in the pool!






A few minutes of play before nap...






Rest time, then a forced wake up because parents are almost here!






(Watching out for mommy...)






Reverting to her favorite excitement containment strategy: wheeling baby around in a stroller.






And now the girl has left, the cats have arrived, Ed is biking, the house is quiet. I'm inbetween crazy busy days. Still, there is this evening: quiet and reflective.

It's good to pause and think every now and then. Tonight I'm lost in thought.

farmhouse vacation, continued

Photos and numbers -- this is what you get on our last full day of Snowdrop's visit at the farmhouse.

First, breakfast: at eight, with Ed asleep, so just the two of us.






She steals three pieces of peach from my bowl.






On the way to school, we hail the cranes. So many cranes!






Sunshine, on her shoulders, makes me happy...






At the farmette: snipping lilies. It seems to me that the fields have so few blooms by now and yet I count 328 spent lilies in my bucket.






So few, yet so full of color!






The Great Bed, receding, but still gorgeous.






Breakfast, just the two of us, though a different twosome.






11:00 haircut, in the neighborhood of Snowdrop's school. As Lyndsy (the haircut person) massages my neck and temples, I'm thinking -- wow, this is so about me... weird... in a nice sort of way...
12:15 I'm at her school again.





She says she doesn't want the community pool (yesterday's punch still in her memory bank?). Just the wading tub on the farmhouse porch. Well okay, so maybe we should take the time to go to the playground first?

Gaga, I'm a bird!!






She wants to play picnic. But where's the picnic table? (It's been moved.)





Can I sit on that rock?
Well, okay, but it's no place to have a picnic...





How about that bench?
That'll work. 
A selfie!





And then she changes her mind: can we go to the big pool?
It's a good thing that I come prepared.





Spotted, after the pool, on our walk to the car: just one monarch butterfly. But what a beauty!





It's quite late by the time we pull into the farmette driveway. I slowly coax her toward her bedroom for a nap.

It's no use. She is up there for one hour, spinning stories that make me smile (I hear them on the monitor) again and again and then at 4:30, I finally go up and say -- you're done with your nap, aren't you?

She can't believe her luck and confirms again and again -- I'm done with my nap! (What nap?)

I know the price and I know the benefit: she will be a tad more fragile this evening, but she'll be ready to hit the sack early.

I try to keep it mellow.
Want to color?





But she really doesn't want to just color. She finds this apple that Ed picked. It's from our old orchard. Ed feels compelled to pick and eat a few each year.

Can I eat it?
Yes, but I don't like it. Ahah likes it, but I do not.
I like it too.
She eats most of it. I question her taste in apples.





They play. He tries to catch the headlines on TV, but they're so dismal today that perhaps it's just as well that she pulls him away.





I like to introduce her to different foods here, at the farmette, but today is her last night with us and so I offer something I know she loves with a passion: cheese tortellini in sun-dried tomato pesto.

She devours many.






Dessert. One-half of an ice cream sandwich, two pieces of watermelon. Heaven.






One last snuggle...





... one last book, one last hug.

Good night you sweet child... goodnight  good night to you all...