sunshine

After tumultuous, cold days, full of threat, wind and precipitation, today we wake up to the pot of gold: sunshine!

The garden is still suspicious. The flowers are were they were a week ago. But I am absolutely convinced that this guy will not be standing alone by the end of the day!






Speaking of guys, it is, of course, Monday. Sparrow is here!






(what a suck up!!)






Come on, Sparrow, let's face the camera (timed release) head on!






Breakfast: yesterday with Snowdrop, today with Sparrow.






(studying the book, in and out, up and down)






(loving music, in any shape or form; if you sing, he will sing along!)






(outdoor time? but of course!)






(too young for sandbox; happy to simply watch Happy!)






The sun keeps shining, the temperatures keep rising. By the time I pick up Snowdrop, I feel we've resumed the march toward warm spring days.

Do you want to go to the playground?
Yes!











Can I go in the water?
I think it's too cold...






(the cookie? hers. the iced tea? mine.)






There is book called Mary Poppins?? And you have it, grandma??






She goes home. I listen to BBC news on the subject of Notre Dame in Paris. No one will be surprised to hear that I am terribly saddened by this fluke of circumstance (if it was that): one day it's there, next day it's burning and Parisians watch, dumbfounded. Perhaps you could argue that Paris is flush with iconic structures. Eiffel Tower of course. Arc de Triomphe. Still, for this significantly Catholic and at the same time significantly not religious nation, Notre Dame stands alone: it is a cultural giant. It's architecture it's religion it's literature it's music it's eternity it's tourism it's personal it's beauty it's art.

Well, the icons burn but the soul survives. Feelings don't go up in flames at the strike of a match. A roof of a cathedral falls, but we are as we were before. And that's such a good thing.

Sunday

It was a late night for the little girl, late night for her mommy, late night for grandma. Only Ed seems to have slept as he always sleeps -- which is to say, without any predictability or schedule.

You can mess with bedtime easily enough, but it's harder to mess with wake up time. I am up as early as on any day. I have it in my head that I must feed the cats before the stampede takes place (meaning before the cheepers are set free).

Brrrr!! It is another very cold morning. I read that it is to be the final very cold morning, but knowing that does not make it any more pleasant to be outside. Indeed, spring appears to be suspended: nothing new is blooming. The same daffodils that came out early are hanging in there, but they are alone in their efforts.







The rest of the pack is stalled.






(This Helleborus is next in line to bloom. It really should have opened up the end of March. Here we are in mid-April and I bet you can barely see its purple flower head.)






Eventually, the sleeping bandits trickle downstairs. Snowdrop is at the head of the line. Note dark circles under the eyes!






Breakfast! Pancakes and bacon of course.






... with fruit to make pancake faces and maple syrup, just because.






There is a bit of drama after the morning meal. A pack of hawks settles on the barn roof. One of them begins to circle the farmland paths. I go out immediately. The cheepers are mindful of the threat. I can't see them anywhere. Except for Pepper, who seems either oblivious or confused. She walks slowly. Happy hovers. I do the arm waving thing and I make threatening noises. It always works -- the hawks all join together to hover, as in battle with me, but eventually they recede. It is a reminder that these huge birds will never really go away. But of course, everyone who allows their chickens to free range knows this. You can protect your flock, but only so much.

Our girls come out unscathed today, thanks to the sharp eyes of Snowdrop and her mom.  I'm hoping that this particular family of hawks has moved on.

In the evening, the young family returns, this time as a complete set!

(taller than mommy already??)




(before coming in, they sit down to have a serious conversation about stuff...)






(all's right with the world!)






I am repeating a pasta with seafood dish. It's just too popular with everyone to put aside for another time. Today, I add squid to the shrimp and scallops and Snowdrop proclaims that she looooves the little eight legged creatures. She fishes out every last one (in addition to the shrimp and scallop, which she also adores.)






I think Sparrow is not pleased that all he gets is a puree of peas, brown rice and spinach. But, he make the best of it. Puffy rice treats from his sister help.






(happy children)






Later, much later, the clouds begin to recede. The setting sun throws warm light on the tips of trees.





Sunshine tomorrow. And a return to spring. I'm sure of it.

Saturday sleepover

We'd been talking about it for weeks: a sleepover at the farmhouse, with Snowdrop's mommy joining us for a double feature movie! Snowdrop will share with me her favorite (Moana) and I get to share with her a favorite from my childhood.

We could not have picked a better day and evening for it. It continues to be cold and there is no pleasure in doing anything outdoors. I know we will have great improvement in the weather in weeks to come, but we're still chugging along through early spring misery here (I don't consider a high of 40f, or 4c to be reasonable for mid April). Forget about prepping flower beds. Forget about sitting on the picnic bench and watching spring unfold. A double feature in the living room of the farmhouse sounds just great to me.

But of course, there are the morning chores.

(well well, look who has coming calling, looking for breakfast! Hi Jacket, hi Dance!)






(at least we have morning sunshine!)






(sigh... a rabbit, right there on the path. Possibly the culprit in the butchering of tulips out front.)






It's the first day of the farmers market downtown. The hardy and the tourists are there for it. And Ed! He scoots down on my moped to deliver four dozen eggs to a farmer and returns with cheese curds. It's a fair exchange!

Breakfast. Fruits, flowers...






... and cheese curds and Ed.






And in the afternoon, the girl and her mom come over.





It's not a smooth beginning: I asked Ed to test the ancient DVD player he dragged over from the sheep shed (to replace my almost as ancient one which indeed is broken) and sure enough, unless you enjoy hiccups and pauses throughout your viewing experience, you may as well give up. Consider it broken. I send Ed out to get a new player just as the girls arrive.

No matter. There are books to read in the interim!





Finally. The movie theater is open for business.

We start with Moana. [In case you're not familiar with it, it has to do with a girl venturing across the waters, away from her island, to find and return the missing heart to its rightful place.] She has seen it several times and she has coaxed me into improvising the Moana story, with our own unique twists and turns added to it, on numerous car rides to and from her house. But for me, it is a totally new viewing.

I think -- how different are her movie adventures as compared to my own childhood stuff! True, I remember liking "101 Dalmations," but otherwise, I did not watch cartoons and I rarely saw animation on the big screen. My own daughters were the transition: they endured some of my favorites from the "olden days" (I was a huge Hayley Mills fan), but they also loved the new Disney hits. You know the stuff -- Lion King, Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast. Snowdrop is a total fan of film and so one has to meter out things slowly and only in bad weather! Where will her tastes fall? We will see.

(munching predinner veggies and watching Moana)






(dancing to Moana)






First film, with all its ocean storms, pirate greed, and fire and fury behind us, we sit down to pizza. With asparagus on the side, because I said so. It's a running joke that Gogs pushes vegetables on the side with pizza dinners.





Movie number two is to be from my childhood. What to pick for this freshly four year old, who tends to be sensitive to hurt and drama in stories or movies?

Mary Poppins! I mean, where might you find fearful stuff in this lovely film of flying nannies and dancing penguins?





Watching Mary Poppins after Moana (by a girl who has only seen a handful of movies in her life, all of them animated) is like riding a camel after getting off the Polar Express.

Her eyes never leave the screen. (Popcorn!)






For all 139 minutes of it.






(Ed, on the other hand, gave up the ship halfway through...)





I hadn't quite realized how long the movie is!

There are many things to discuss, talk about, explain. We'll save it. The girl is up two hours past her bedtime already.

What a thrilling day! Volcanic lava, chimney sweeps, twopence for birds, flying kites and all!

Friday

Yesterday, someone mentioned something to me about our past history of letter writing. Of course, no one I know writes letters anymore. Few people even write emails -- of the personal nature, to friends. Phone calls aren't commonplace either. You want to exchange information? You text. You want a more personal contact, say with a child? You Facetime (or do some such version of a video call). So are we worse off than we were in the past? Do you miss the paper trail of your most intimate exchanges?

In terms of keeping in touch -- I don't miss letter writing at all. In my experience, letters were never as fantastic as we now think they were. People are not good letter writers, or at least, they rarely connect well with the letter recipient through their written message. I should know. Living far away from family and friends all my life put me at the mercy of letters early on. It wasn't a great way to stay close. When sitting down to write someone a letter, you have to imagine what the friend or lover or cousin really wants to hear. Me, I loved personal content. I still love personal content. Observations, frustrations, whimsical musings, thoughts on what brings pleasure, or worries about ones place on this planet, recounts of delightful encounters, of love -- reading this, to me, is sublime. But few people are up for writing this stuff down. I have received too many letters in my life that are as dry as a sock that's spun too long in the drying machine.

(Not to say I was any better at hitting it right: my letters were always too hastily written, as if I was already thinking about how long I'd have to wait for a response if I didn't send something off right away!)

Are emails better? Yes, they are. You can counter! Ask for a clarification, and press for the thoughts, musings that you are so hungry for. And of course, you don't have to wait. At least not in the same way you did before. Oh, the disappointment when day after day the mail delivered nothing of value -- no personal envelope, nothing at all beyond the ubiquitous junk mail. I no longer expect letters in the (physical)  mail box. Waiting for an email response is far less tortuous. And it can come at any time! Mail delivery person no longer required!

Text messages? Useful stuff! I have no complaints about those either! With emojis to help infuse a mood into a message, you can really hit a person's soft spot pretty nicely. Getting a sweet daughter message is thrilling, for example! (Ed doesn't text. Ed also doesn't lay out his feelings in an email. Unless I send despairing reminders that I need to see emotion. He has, at least, gotten in the habit of capitalizing all the letters in love when he signs off. I like that.)

All this to say that I don't miss letters. And the more modern proliferation of communication tools is, for me, extraordinarily wonderful.

You could say, of course, that Ocean is a communication tool as well. The caveat here is that I have to step gingerly. This isn't a letter to a best friend across the ocean. It's a letter to a reader I often may not even know. Like a pen pal (remember those?) whom I'll never meet and who will never respond. And in guarding myself too much here, the possibility that Ocean content will become dry, like that endlessly spinning sock in the machine, is very real. Every day I work with conflicting thoughts: "make it personal!" and "not that personal!"

In many ways, what I put down here is what I wish I knew about other people's days. I wish I knew how you braved the cold spell, the storms. What your kids or grandkids blurted out on a car ride home. What you cooked for dinner that made you proud. I wish I could see the changes in your faces over the years. Or what you did when your doc told you to do more strenuous exercise. Or what game you played and whose soft skin you liked to bury your face into when the world felt rotten. Every once in a while, a commenter will send a thought or recall something from their lives and that just brings out the smile in me. But even if I don't hear from you, I imagine that your day is not that much different from mine. What's here on Ocean is not unique. Merely a summary of our common experience.


Well I might think about such stuff as writing, communicating, taking note. I'm trying to ignore the mean weather outside. Better to focus for once on what's inside the head than on the wind that blows around cold air with no intention of letting up.


Again, a morning walk...
















Again a breakfast in the kitchen...






Again a morning of grocery shopping.


And again, in the afternoon, I pick up Snowdrop.

She considers visiting with the cheepers. She really does. But in the end, the farmhouse has to win. She turns around and runs to the front door.





At some late point in the day, she goes back to my stack of French kid books. I typically pick up one or two when I am in Paris, but I never quite know how to introduce them and so they sit to the side, until Snowdrop just can't resist asking what they're about.

Today, she reached for two. The second one, La Plus Belle Maman du Monde (the most beautiful mother in the world) is actually based on an old Russian folk tale, where a girl loses her mother in a busy place and, in trying to describe her, uses words that are accurate for her, given her great love for her mom.
















Snowdrop is mesmerized by this tale. Being used to chapter books that have sequel upon sequel, she asks -- is there one after this? About the little girl and her mother?

Oh, the sweet feeling of sadness when a good book comes to an end!

Dinner. I picked up a lovely piece of fish at the store today. Now I pamper it, marinate it briefly, sautee it and marvel at how lucky we are to have so much good food within reach each day.

stormy Thursday

It could have been so much worse. In fact, it was so much worse elsewhere. We had the hail, the winds, the rain. The thunder, the dark skies, the cold temperatures. But, the snow is gone. And in all that wet rage that fell from the skies, there were pauses. Long enough, for example, for me to feed the cats and for Ed to feed the cheepers (buffeted here by the fierce winds!).






(buds closed tight, waiting for better times...)






Breakfast indoors and with the furnace running!






Of course, Snowdrop finds greatness even in the dismal, wet weather. A chance to bring out the pink umbrella!






I bring her home. She is in top form. Hail? Winds? That's over there. Here -- we have our imaginations to make something beautiful of this afternoon.






A pretend phone call. Did I really hear her say this? -- "It dignifies something when you shake it a little." I keep quiet. She continues her conversation...






Spinning, spinning...






Evening. I never even step outside. Ed takes care of the cheepers. Me, I use their eggs as a base for supper. I have to. We're flooded with eggs!

We wont be warming up for a while, but today's near freezing temps have moved on. And that's really a good thing!