To all the young dudes*

[Fiction] Friday writing prompt: Drunk on _________. Fill in the blank, then write a quick description of your character in that state.

A boy with freckled skin and brown hair wrapped his belt around his neck and cinched it tight, squashing arteries and veins so blood backed up, his brain screamed for oxygen, his heart crashed against his chest, and his body crumpled. He was 14 years old, playing the choking game and drunk on death.

*Mott the Hoople

In which I drop the hot coal I'm holding

Photo courtesy of themillersweb

My children bicker and I smolder. The door slams and I grit my teeth. The baby wakes up a half-hour into his nap and I curse. I'm annoyed with the weeds growing among the flowers. I'm irritated with the cat for meowing. I'm frustrated with yesterday's blog post. If I could yell "I'm angry!" right in your face, I would.

I've struggled with anger since I've become a mother. I'd cork up the feelings until I exploded and mean, sarcastic lava-filled words oozed out all over my husband and children. "Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned," the Buddha said. So I try to direct it at the yard, knocking over splintered fences and moving thorny old rose bushes. I fill journals with pages of scrawled thoughts. I run.

The snarly codes of DNA that make me difficult to live with have been passed down to one of my sons. When he was small, his face would turn red and crumple up like a washcloth. At 7, his temper sends his siblings running for cover. Today, they were trying to hide from both of us, so I sent them on ahead to school so the angry son and angry mother could stomp down the street together. About half way there, he cooled off, his complaining stopped and he dropped the Buddha's hot coal. When I returned home, I sat down at the computer and dropped mine.

Quitting

Photo courtesy of Stephen Mcleod, Creative Commons

Steve felt tense and jittery, like he did after drinking the sludge at the bottom of the communal coffee pot. It looked like everyone was feeling the same way when they came into work, heads tucked into their shoulders, as if it'd keep their necks off the chopping block.

He looked around to see if anyone was missing, but apparently no one had lost a job -- yet. The tweakers were still in shipping; Steve couldn't figure out how they were passing their pee tests. And there was the Mexican always trying to sell tamales at lunch. And the two old ladies in the front office who fussed over him like his mother. And then there was the driver -- the big, bald guy who always wore overalls. What was his name? Bob? Steve wished he could ask one of them what was going on, but he'd never bothered to get to know them, hadn't wanted to, and now, after working there a year, it was too late.

He'd taken the job because it was the first one offered after he'd graduated and moved, and because it left him time for his music. But his mom and dad were always bugging him about when he was going to use his degree, and how he was going to pay off the college loans. Fuck 'em, he thought as he shoved car parts into the assigned slots. Fuck 'em and fuck the job, and he pocketed one of the parts, not knowing or caring what it was for. Maybe it'd fetch something on Craigslist.

One of the guys from receiving walked past, biting his lip, shaking his head, not making eye contact. Steve was next. In the conference room were his boss and two men in suits -- from headquarters, the boss said. Papers were stacked on the table. A briefcase lay open. Shit, Steve thought.

"I don't know how to say this," the boss said. "Don't want to say this. But ... well... There's nothing I can do about it, it's the law and all."

The boss coughed, moved some papers and looked at the suits. They nodded back.

"It's about Bob. He's been with us forever, and well, he's quitting. Well, not technically. He's returning on Monday. He wants to be called Tiffany."

"Bob. Tiffany," Steve shrugged and stood. "I'm cool with it."

And as he walked out, the car part lay heavy in his pocket.

Written in response to Sunday Scribbling's prompt: Quitting.

Skin deep

Photo courtesy of Mary Harrsch

My belly is as squishy and warm as bread dough, as round and dimpled as the Venus of Willendorf, and it's been an irresistible draw for my twin sons since they were toddlers. With the chubby hands of 2-year-olds, they'd pinch a tiny piece between their fingers and roll it back and forth while they cuddled on either side and nursed. Five years later they still love my tummy, reaching out quietly to stroke the old skin when I'm distracted.

I'm glad they like it, because they're teaching me to love a part of my body I find embarrassing. The role my children are playing in my internal battle over motherhood, sexuality and feminism is interesting. As my daughter nears 10, her internal compass swings radically, first toward issues like weight, clothes and friends, and then back to pirate princesses and treasure hunts.
And as she advances toward adolescence, she aims a critical eye on my body and compares it to hers, all angles and flat planes.

"Will I look like you after I have a baby?" she asks, wrinkling her nose and pointing at my tummy from where I lay in the bathtub.

"You mean will you have a jelly belly?" I ask and grab a handful of skin.

We giggle and I admit that I don't know what will happen to her body. Then I lie and tell her that I love the hundreds of stretch marks that crisscross the puckered surface, and am honored to wear this belly badge, proof I carried her brothers to 38 1/2 weeks.

Why tell the lie? Because I hope it will ferment like yeast, releasing tiny gas bubbles that will expand both our minds. Consciousness rising, er, raising. I'd like to be a warrior, but it's hard to do battle in a culture that objectifies women as Marthas and MILFs, and debates Vanity Fair's sexy pictures of tween idol Mylie Cyrus aka Hannah Montana.

So when I discovered The Shape of a Mother, a blog devoted to pictures of real women's bodies, it felt like reinforcements had arrived. I was no longer alone, but surrounded by other women who shared saggy boobs dripping milk, smiling red cesarean scars and wrinkles round the middle. In these images there is a beauty that runs deep, and at least one of my twin sons has tapped it. His eyes register amazement when he looks at my stretched skin and imagines sharing the space inside. And when he strokes my doughy belly, his wiry small body melts, his breath slows, and I think, yes, here is a boy who will grow into a man who will love a woman as she really is.

Another twisted tale

One of the Little Golden Book's covers for this tale.

In a house on a hill lived a little red-headed woman and her family. One day, the little red-headed woman got out of bed, walked into the kitchen and surveyed stacks of dirty dishes, cereal all over the counter and a bursting trash can.

"Arrg!" she yelled. "Who's going to help me clean the kitchen?"

"Not I," said the daughter, reading her book.

"Not I," said the son, getting up from the table and leaving his cereal bowl behind.

"Not I," said the husband from behind the newspaper.

"Then I'll do it myself," sighed the little red-headed woman, and she strapped the baby to her back, filled a sink with soapy water and scrubbed all the dishes, wiped the counter and emptied the trash.

The next day, the little red-headed woman was poked awake by her daughter, who complained she had no clean underwear. The baby was down to the last diaper, her son was wearing a shirt with yesterday's spaghetti dinner on it and her husband scowled because his slacks weren't ironed.

The little red-headed woman stumbled out of bed and went to the washing machine.

"Who's going to help me do the laundry?" she asked.

"Not I," said the daughter, discovering a pair of clean underwear in the back of her drawer.

"Not I," said the son, turning his shirt inside out.

"Not I," said the husband, pulling on his jeans.

"Then I will," sighed the little red-headed woman, and she put the dirty diapers in the washing machine. But when she began folding the clean clothes on the couch the baby knocked them over so she gave up.

The next day the beep and rumble of the garbage truck woke the little red-headed woman, who rushed outside in her pajamas to pull the can to the curb. She glanced over at the lawn dotted with buttery dandelions, and she asked, "Who's going to help me weed the lawn?"

"Not I," said the son, strapping on his bike helmet and pedaling away.

"Not I," said the daughter, reading her book.

"Not I," said the husband, buttering a piece of toast.

"Then I'll do it myself," sighed the little red-headed woman, and she picked the dandelions, braided them into a crown and placed them on the baby's head. Then she mowed the lawn.

That evening, the little red-headed woman opened the refrigerator and found one egg, some slimy beets and a pound of hamburger just starting to thaw.

"Who's going to help me make dinner?" she asked.

No one answered. So instead, she mixed up a box of brownies. Then she filled the bathtub with hot water, squirted in some dish soap and took the brownies out of the oven. The warm, chocolate smell filled the house and wafted out the window.

The son sniffed, dropped his soccer ball and ran into the kitchen. The daughter sniffed and walked into the kitchen while reading her book. The husband sniffed, turned off the T.V. and walked into the kitchen, just as the little red-headed woman cut a large brownie out of the center of the pan and poured a glass of red wine.

"Can I have some?" asked the son.

"Can I have some?" asked the daughter.

"Can I have some?" asked the husband.

"I've cleaned the kitchen, I've washed the laundry and I've mowed the lawn," said the little red-headed woman. "And now I'm going to take a bath, all by myself."

Then she sank into the hot water and clouds of bubbles, ate the brownie and drank the wine. And when she was done, she slipped inside a bubble and floated away.

This story is dedicated to my son Samuel William, one hard-working little chick and fellow lover of Ghirardelli's Double Chocolate Brownies. Together, we can polish off an entire pan.

Bento binge

One of my more successful lunches:
Egg salad sandwich, oranges and kiwi,
black olives, tomatoes and baby pickle.

The Japanese lunch box is my latest obsession. It satisfies my desire for organization. It rewards my love of tasty food. And it eases my conscience, pricked by the number of plastic sandwich baggies I was using.

My bentos aren't works of food art. I can't be the mother turning rice balls into cute panda faces when I've got four lunches to pack every morning, but I can aim to provide a diverse, healthy lunch in a box. During my learning curve, I spent oodles of time scouring the Internet for teeny tiny sauce bottles and leak-proof plastic boxes while my family suffered soggy sandwiches, spilled sauces and jumbled messes.

As lunch menus expanded, my frustrations with the endless chores and clutter that accompany a big family were shrinking. As silly as it sounds, achieving order over the lunch box allowed me to let other things go. And with time my bentos are becoming diverse, healthy lunches. It's evident each day I achieve this goal -- boxes come home empty, and my family is happy because, my husband confides, a beautifully packed bento is a work of love.

Many thanks to Lunch in a Box for its wealth of knowledge and inspiration.

A tale, twisted

Photo of book cover courtesy of
HoldThatTiger, Creative Commons

Once upon a time there was a smart, strong girl named Cindy, who was the new kid at school. Being new, she was lonely, and spent most of her time reading or hanging out on the edge of a circle of girls, listening and trying to fit in.

One day two girls made space for Cindy in their circle. She spent less time reading and more time giggling with her new friends. But as time passed, Cindy became bored with talking and walking around the playground.

She looked at the soccer game the boys played at recess, and wished she could join. Then one day the ball landed at her feet. An invitation! She kicked it back and asked to play. The boys nodded and tossed her the ball.

Recesses became glorious fun! Everyday, Cindy wore her sneakers so she could dance up and down the school yard, racing after the ball and cheering when her team scored a goal. But her two friends scowled and teetered up to her in their high-heeled shoes. "You have no fashion-sense," one told her.

So Cindy set aside the ball and went to a party where everyone painted their nails and curled their hair. When fumes from the polish and hairspray clouded the air, she went outside, climbed a tree and smudged her nails. At school, her friends stopped sitting next to her at lunch. They whispered loudly that she was a geek because she got straight A's.

Their words hurt, and Cindy was lonely once again. The school counselor and teacher tried to quell the squabbling, but the mean words continued. Cindy grew tired of being alone. She grew tired of the fighting. She joined a game of tag and made new friends.

"You're a stupid brat," her old friends told her. Cindy turned and walked away, and the game moved with her.

This riff on "Cinderella" is in response to the [Fiction] Friday challenge to pick a favorite fairy tale or legend and briefly describe how you could update it to the modern day, and it's dedicated to my 9-year-old daughter, Chaja Maureen, who is learning to be a brave, independent young woman.

Soar

Photo courtesy of Jerry I. Downs, Creative Commons

The vultures have moved into the trees behind our house, giant evergreens with boughs thick enough to hold these heavy, ugly birds. I can see them outside the bathroom window, spreading their stiff, cold wings to catch the warm eastern sunlight. And I search the sky for them as my kids and I walk to school because the vultures comfort me in a way I never thought possible.

Perhaps it's their mixture of the sacred and profane, for they remind me of awkward angels, cast-offs from heaven. The vulture's body is repulsive with its small head, bald and red, featherless so it's easier to shove a beak into rotting refuse. But their flight is divine -- a heavy flapping of wings, the tree shuddering as it loses the extra weight, and then soaring into the clean morning air.

I stop my children and silence their chatter. "Look." And they search in front of them and finally lift their eyes upward. Some days, their response is a shrug and "oh, yeah," but today we kept watching, and the sounds of a suburb waking up faded as we concentrated on the 20-odd vultures above us, circling higher and higher like bubbles rising in a giant blue kettle of sky.

Continually reconnecting my kids to nature is one of my jobs as a parent, because it reminds them that they don't belong at the center of the world, that hidden in front of our eyes is a parallel universe. People worry that today's children are alienated from the natural world and suffer from "nature-deficit disorder" because as parents we're too busy and too paranoid to let them run wild in the woods. So, what do we do?

Helping children discover this sense of wonder means tearing up to-do lists and eliminating activities. It means letting go of fear so they can take their first solo flight around the block, and it means holding them close as they cry and bury the baby bird found in the back yard, a bird who will now nourish the tree that houses the vultures.

This isn't the first time the turkey vulture has inspired my writing. I first wrote about this bird for Mamazine; this post was in response to Sunday Scribbling's writing prompt "soar/sore."

Morsels are my manna

Photo courtesy of ayelie, Creative Commons

Chocolate is my salvation, saving me from the sins of motherhood -- irritation, boredom and sarcasm. I can gauge the day by the amount of chocolate I eat. A good day is a small, exquisite piece of chocolate with a cup of tea. A bad day is fistfuls of chocolate chips shoved into my mouth.

When life is motoring along, maybe I hit a few bumps, but I can keep afloat, keep laughing, then it's definitely a chocolate chip cookie day. The chocolate chip cookie has defined my life since I was a little girl. My first memory of this perfect treat is of the softball-sized cookies, loaded with tiny chips that my grandma would offer me from Stickney's Hickory House in Santa Clara, California where she was the bakery manager. The cookie was half the size of my face, and I would nibble it slowly, trying to eat just one chip at a time.

At home, my mom always had a bag of chocolate chips on hand, and so when any of the kids hankered for a warm cookie, it was just a mixing bowl away. There were two rules when it came to chocolate chip cookies. First, we had to use just half a bag of chips for a full batch of cookies. (A money-saving trick, my mother admitted later.) Secondly, and most importantly, was ownership of the cookies.

The dozens of cookies cooling on brown paper bags in the kitchen belonged to the baker, and how the smaller siblings would delight in their power over the older ones! Being baker was like playing God, people prayed for your cookies, promised things for one, so you doled or denied on whim.

One couldn't blame the baker. In a family of eight, a batch of cookies was as ephemeral as the sweet smell that emanated from the oven -- as soon as the baking stopped, the cookies were gone. In an effort to prevent this, the baker counted and stacked her sweets, but a slow walk around the cooling cookies, a nonchalant leaning against the table, and the surreptitious hand depleted her stash quickly. Then the baker would demand a showing of hands, and sometimes even a whiff of the accused's breath, in search of telltale chocolate and a determination of guilt or innocence.

So I was surprised on a recent raid of my mom's cupboard to find bags of old chocolate chips, stale chips, white and chalky tasting. These bags must have been years old. Can there be a time in life when cookies aren't required, when chocolate isn't needed to save yourself? I can't believe that. A cupboard without chocolate chips demands an emergency trip to the grocery store. I'm talking necessity, because a week without a cookie is a sad, sad thing.

My tried-and-true recipe is baked into my brain, and comes from Nothing To It's kitchen coach Jennifer Bushman. Throw it all together and within minutes, you've got a hot cookie in hand. Cream: 2 cubes of butter, 3/4 cup brown sugar, 3/4 cup white sugar. Add 2 eggs, 2 teaspoons of vanilla, and cream some more. Mix in: 3 cups flour -- white, wheat or whole wheat pastry, depending on whether you want to offset your guilt with high fiber -- 1 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon baking soda. When combined add: 2 cups chocolate chips. Bake at 375 for 10 minutes or until golden brown.

Absolute bliss: Alone in the bathtub

Photo courtesy of Henning Lind, Creative Commons

Inspired by Six-Word Momoirs, a challenge to define your motherhood experience in just six words.

Here's another -- Mama porn: Asleep in bed, alone -- a riff on a great essay by Bridget Quinn at MomsRising. Or what about My commute: Coffee, couch, baby, boob. And when I cheat a little ... Two practices, two games, one car: Soccer sadist.

Can you think of one?

Rules to weed by

Photo courtesy of stonebird, Creative Commons

Standing at my door was the neighbor kid, a skinny girl with her purse weighing down her shoulder, pulling her T-shirt tight enough for me to see the outline of her changing chest.

"I'm trying to earn $20 so I can go roller skating with my class," she said. "I can babysit. I've done jobs round the house, mainly inside, you know. But I've mowed lawns and pulled weeds, too."

Her family's new to our street, moving into the rental across from us a few months earlier. She's the youngest in this extended family, who live life loudly, whether hanging out on the stoop or pacing the sidewalk while talking on cell phones. More people keep moving in and the mountain of shoes grows next to their front door, which is rarely closed.

I learn her name, that she's in sixth grade, and invite her and her mother to take a look at our back yard. I've seen the two walking down the street, the girl a block ahead of the mom, who is hollering her name and commanding her to "Wait up!"

"I'm Old School," the mother tells me, while I point out what's a weed and what's a flower. "I want my children to earn their own money." And so we agree that her daughter can return tomorrow to tackle the foot-high weeds. If she can get the whole yard cleared, I'd gladly pay her the 20 bucks.

This was my first mistake.

Day two brings another knock, and there she stands in jelly shoes, purse at her side. I hand her gloves and tools, and she weeds and talks while I hang laundry and listen.

"I asked to go the bathroom during class and the teacher said no, so I went anyway. And then she said I had to apologize, so I said 'I apologize' and she said, 'You have to say you're sorry,' and I said, 'I apologize. That's the same as saying I'm sorry.' And when I tried to walk away she grabbed hold of my arm and left a bruise and red marks."

"Hmm," I respond.

"We went to the office and the principal gave me a citation and called my parents, and they're going to have a meeting. I could sue her."

She weeds. Asks for water. Asks me to check her work. An hour and a half role by, and I explain that I have to run an errand and she'll have to return later. She says she's almost done, and I say O.K.

That was mistake number two.

It's now 7 p.m. My husband's doing dinner dishes and the kids are getting ready for bed, when her mother and father cross the street and come up to our door. They explain that their daughter hasn't returned home yet so they'll finish the weeding for her.

Our mouths drop, and before we know it, we've made the third mistake, and led them to the backyard and handed them shovels. Two adults pulling my weeds.Ugh! A half-hour later, I'm $20 poorer and yard's still not weed-free.

Hiring a neighbor kid is just like weeding a garden -- hard work. I hire not only to avoid an unpleasant chore, but because I hope the kid learns a little responsibility. But my mistakes made it impossible for this girl to learn the value of job done well. Instead, I contributed to her entitlement, the flip side of responsibility. So, I've come up with some guidelines when it comes to hiring kids:

Rule1Keep the job small (weed this flower bed) and specific (pull the weeds by the root). Never outline the whole job and agree to pay the full amount because the kid might get overwhelmed by the task and begin to do quick, shoddy workRule2Hire for a half-hour and then judge the work. If pleased, have the kid continue. If not, say it's not working out, pay them for the time, and ask them to leaveRule3Never, ever let the parents finish the job.

The neighbor girl learned the wrong lesson, but I didn't. A half-hour later, her older brother knocked on my door and offered to mow the lawn for $15. Which brings me to the final rule: Don't make the same mistake twice. I told him no.

Telephone: Reach out and touch someone

Sunday Scribblings challenge of the week: Write about a particularly memorable phone call you made or received, or about your first telephone, or maybe a time you needed one but didn't have one. Or, remember way back a few years ago when everyone didn't have cell phones? Write about phones.

Photo courtesy of magandafille, Creative Commons

The family phone hung on the kitchen wall, an arm's reach from the sink and table, its cord hung to the floor, stretched and twisted by our efforts to have a private conversation in a home crammed with people.

Getting the phone wasn't easy, but then nothing was after my parents moved us to Silver Springs, a patch of scrub brush pocked and brittle from the hot, dry wind. We were the first to move onto Badger Street, and our tin trailer was an island in this ocean of tumbleweed and alkali. For you see, we moved in without electricity, running water, nor telephone. Why? I shrug. Can any child explain their parents' actions? Maybe they were too tired or too poor, it doesn't really matter, because the end result was the same: A lonely family, marooned in the desert.

The telephone became my mother's mission. She couldn't afford to bring the power line down our street, and the task of building a water tank and windmill was my father's. But she could dig the ditch and lay the phone line to connect our trailer to the rest of humanity. There I picture her, a strong, determined woman in waffle-stomping hiking boots and shorts, tank top exposing breast and unshaved armpit, digging to keep herself sane.

That first ring was beautiful, the trilling of the metal bells shattering the air, so heavy with solitude. Can something be filled with emptiness? I argue that it can. Those days of our first summer there were filled with nothing. I'd walk outside the trailer and be swallowed up in the vastness of desert, the expanse of sky, the brightness of the sun. My hair tangling in the wind, my eyes squinting against the glare, I'd join my brother in a hunt for the largest scorpion, or a game of hide-and-seek among the sagebrush. But the best game of all was the race for the phone. It's musical ring sent us dashing for the receiver, knocking over chairs, pushing each other out of the way. The winner answering it with a breathless, desperate, "Hello?"

One beautiful sentence

Swallow Print by Sarah Parrott, Little Paper Planes

I'm reading "Madame Bovary" and vacillate between identifying with Emma because her life isn't her own, and despising her for being so passive-aggressive. Regardless, Madame Bovary is a wreck, and had she lived today, she'd be popping handfuls of anti-depressants to deal with her life.

The book is filled with images that are beautiful and concise. Unlike many books that wander into paragraphs of description for no sake other than the author is in love with words, Gustave Flaubert is relentless in his demand that every sentence carry forward the story of Emma Bovary's revolt against the ordinariness of her life. Here's one superb example:

"... What deplorable mania had driven (Emma) to ruin her life with constant self-sacrifice? She recalled all her yearnings for luxury, all the privations of her soul, the degradations of marriage and housekeeping, her dreams fallen into the mud like wounded swallows, everything she had desired, everything she had denied herself, everything she might have had! And why? Why?"

Challenged by the blog Write Now is Good to find a sentence that moves me, I settle on the words above, on the simile, "dreams fallen into the mud like wounded swallows" because the picture, the words, struggle inside my head: birds fighting, wings caked in dirt, too heavy to lift. One such swallow carries my dream to write.

Evolution of a game

Photo courtesy of Chris Darling at Ctd 2005.

There's a game of pickup soccer every morning at the elementary school that has a life of its own. And like any life form, the game is hungry, gobbling up children like raw energy, moving from sandy field into the crooked lines of backpacks and lunch bags, through the jungle gym, and then back out onto the field.

On any given morning, a big game gobbles smaller ones, feisty little games develop inside the middle of a bigger one. In the 10 or 15 minutes before the school bell rings and classes begin, the game has split apart maybe a dozen times, breathing in and exhaling children as it rolls across the playground.

As a bystander, it's hard to figure out the rules, but they do exist. Like cells sharing invisible chains of DNA, the game passes along its knowledge to its players as they brush against one another. This universal code that governs playground pickup soccer, making it organic and alive, is the same code that allows a referee to ignore the 17 Laws of the Game in the "spirit of fair play," according to National Geographic magazine's ode to the sport.

In pickup, there are no time-outs, no choosing teams nor defining boundaries, as the game shifts and snaps up new recruits. The game may begin with a clump of children against a single goalie, his back against the wall, blocking not just one, but two, sometimes three balls hurling toward him. But a wayward kick will shift the game into the clusters of girls, giggling and sharing secrets. Reluctantly, they become teammates, standing solidly in a group until the ball comes their direction and then bam! A kick sends the ball bouncing to a different corner of the playground, and the game releases the girls from its grasp.

The girls have been slow to join, but when their noses turned cold and pink, and conversations turned catty, soccer was eyed with greater interest. The first request to play, made by a single girl, was met by silence, then a quick counsel among the boys, and finally a mumbled acquiescence. She joined the game and changed it. With time one girl became two, sometimes three, and by spring, players no longer defined and divided themselves by gender, but had fused into something entirely new.

Living with shadows

"Hand Shadows to Be Thrown Upon the Wall" by Henry Bursill (1859).
Image courtesy of carla216

She lived in darkness and shadows. Long-forgotten memories possessed the shadows around her and flitted along the walls. The smaller shadows along the living-room wall took the form of her two children...(They) crawled and fought silently as slivers of moonlight filtered through them. In the kitchen, a larger shadow slouched back in a chair and kicked up his heels.

Excerpt from "Saints Alive" by Scott Alan Anderson, published in Glimmer Train, Winter 2008

There's an old lady across the street living in the darkness and shadow that Anderson writes about. Her name is Betty and I can see her house from my kitchen window. It's a house that draws no breath, heaves no sighs. It's old, quiet, the opposite of mine where there's so much frustration and laughter and tears that the house can't contain us, so the energy spills outside and runs crazy-cat through the yard and up a tree and then back inside where it sprawls across the couch, and pants.

Nope, Betty's house is hidden behind heavy drapes that are never opened. Maybe she's just too damn weak to pull them aside. She wears turtle necks in July and looks thin enough to snap, like one of the cigarettes that she smokes. Her stoop smells of an ashtray and her door doesn't open willingly. She's never answered my knocks at Christmas time, so I leave the cookies or jam on her porch, and she'll totter over a few days later with a bag of walnuts or M&M's in its own plastic candy dish.

"My son gave me too many nuts," she'd say. Or "Thought your kids would enjoy these. Mine use to."

Then she'd slip back inside her house and I wouldn't see her for weeks, maybe a month. No smoke from the chimney, her pale blue sedan idle in the driveway, not a footstep across the snowy lawn, and I'd start to wonder if she were dead and if she was, how would anyone know?

In the summer, Betty's next-door neighbor waters and mows the lawn. In return, she lets her poodle shit in the yard next to Betty's car and never cleans it up. Is that their agreement, or is it the price the neighbor has decided her goodwill is worth? In the middle of the lawn is a bush that bursts into bloom, and I imagine there's a link between Betty's life and its lacy pink flowers. That the sap that warms in the sun knows of the house's shadows and darkness, that it listens to the familiar old thump-thump of Betty's heart, so if she were to die, it would stop blooming.

And I would shrug my shoulders and mention at dinner that Betty had died. And Marcel would say, "Ah, that's too bad." And the kids would ask, "Who's Betty?"

"You know, the old lady who lived at the corner? The one with the blue car?"

"Oh."

And they'd jump up from dinner and run outside, where'd they play until I yelled at them to come in and do the dishes.

A tale of elusive heat

"Simplicity" by suvodeb.

Once upon a time there was woman who woke one morning and couldn't get warm.

She drank two cups of coffee. But she was still cold. She drank a cup of black tea. But she was still cold. Outside snow fell. Inside, her cold fingers tapped on the keyboard, and she shivered thinking of the laps she'd committed to swim at noon.

"How shall I convince myself to stick a toe in the water?" she asked.

Then she remembered a small cafe called the Aroma Club that served hot chocolate spiked with chili. The drink was sinfully thick and surprisingly spicy, with each sip making love to her mouth and leaving a slow burn in her throat. For weeks afterward, she tried to recreate the experience.

She melted an entire Lindt chili chocolate bar in milk. But it was too bland.

She explored the tiny Latino market down the street and left with high hopes that the "genuine Mexican chocolate" made by Ibarra would do the trick. But it was much too sweet.

She became a cooking chemist, combining cinnamon and chili and coriander with cocoa. But it was too spicy.

But the woman wouldn't despair. Instead, she packed her swimsuit, goggles and a promise that when she finished her laps, she'd get in her car, crank up the heat and drive across town to the cafe where, she knew, they got it just right.

Spoilsport

State lawmaker wants to cancel caucuses because of fighting and hurt feelings.

The Reno Gazette-Journal reported Tuesday that Senate Minority Leader Dina Titus plans to sponsor a bill that would cancel future caucuses and reinstate presidential primaries.

"This notion of neighbors getting together with neighbors to talk about politics, that's just not Nevada," Titus said. "What I found in my caucus is that the meeting didn't lead to collaboration, cooperation and a good discussion. It led to hostility."

Jeez! Is Titus a boob or what?

The caucus was an awesome thing. Voter interest was so high that precincts such as mine ran out of ballots and voters had to write in their candidate's name on slips of blank paper. Why would Titus want to squelch such enthusiasm?

And where does she get off saying that Nevadans can't talk politics? Two weeks before the caucus I got together with a group of loosely connected friends to share information on the candidates' positions on key issues like foreign policy, health care and the environment. This was a group consisting of Democrats and Republicans, small business owners and liberal intellectuals, and no, we didn't all agree, and yes, sometimes people sounded kinda uninformed. But we enjoyed each other and learned a little too.

A caucus is hyper-local politics, and in a society as digitized and disconnected as ours, it's refreshing to physically sit in one spot and talk face-to-face. Caucuses dredge up the lost art of political discourse and encourage civility. I'm all for 'em.

To tell Titus to get a clue, email her at dtitus@sen.state.nv.us.

Grassroots politics

After all the hype leading up to Nevada's Democratic caucus, it was kinda a let down. For two hours, I sat on a bleacher in a middle school and cast first one vote and then another for Barak Obama. We cheered and clapped when someone from another political corner defected and joined ours, but there wasn't any raucous debating or even polite persuasion for entertainment. No. Just neighbor meeting neighbor so that next summer we can wave and chat over lawnmowers.

But it's the local connection that makes a caucus so cool. While it's great that a caucus empowers voters and amplifies Nevada's voice at the national level, it's the community that was created Saturday that really mattered. I met people who were interesting and funny and thoughtful, and learned that we shared not just party lines but property lines too.

The newest currency

Ivan Joseph Levy was born Nov. 14, 2007. Labor sputtered and stalled for 3 days, but kicked into high gear about 11:30 p.m. Contractions came quick and strong as Marcel called the midwife and I tried to blow, not push. Ivan's head crowned just after the midwife arrived, and at 12:55 a.m. he slipped into the world. His big sister, Chaja, cut his cord. We blew out our birth candle, and went to bed happy that our third son had finally decided to join us!

Learning who Ivan is and what he is all about has consumed the better part of my life since his arrival. This is what I've discovered so far:

A fourth baby is just as much work as the first. I had convinced myself that after three children, Ivan would be a cakewalk. Ha! The amount of jiggling, shushing and walking he required during the first month and a half was exhausting. The majority of each evening was spent in the bathroom because only the sound of the fan calmed him. Our thanks to "Happiest Baby on the Block" author Dr. Harvey Karp for giving us the tools to help us over this first hump.

My tolerance for vomit and excrement has increased. I can spend the whole day in a shirt that Ivan has spit up on, even going out in public with stains on my shoulder and chest. I can sleep in a bed that smells of sour milk. And I'm embarrassed to admit it, but the other night I climbed into bed stained with baby poop. Too tired to change the sheets, I laid a towel on top and fell asleep.

A dairy-free diet sucks. I've cut out milk and cheese in hopes of reducing Ivan's flaky skin and stuffed nose, and it appears to help. But giving up my hot chocolate and slices of sharp cheddar with apple fills me with self pity. So, what do I do but comfort myself by eating more sweets, and while rolls of fat look adorable on Ivan's thighs, they don't look so great on my own!

But his smiles are worth a million, or at least all the colic, filth and self-deprivation of the past two months.

Insomnia

Photo courtesy of neil-san.

To walk my street, alone at 12:30 a.m., is exhilarating, which isn't the emotion I should be striving for at this hour of night, but when one can't sleep... I had awakened to the dripping of rain off the eaves and couldn't get back to sleep, so finally pulled on a coat, hat and scarf and walked outside. The trees are dripping and the streetlights glitter on the grass. Our cat crawls out from beneath the minivan and meows before slipping into shadow.

I walk through the steady patter of rain hitting pavement, the occasional plink of a heavy drop falling into the gutter, the gurgle of the two outdoor fountains from the house four east of mine. I walk through patches of darkness and then into the glare of a streetlight, allowing the neighbor's dog to spot me from its front window and bark furiously through the glass.

I listen to the faraway whistle of a train, the whir of cars speeding down Pyramid Highway, my breath as a contraction seizes my belly. I walk up and down the middle of the street, forgoing sidewalks because the shrouds of shadow make me nervous. I am a horse at the track, warming up for the big race, steadily finding my pace as contractions grip and release. Two, three, four times, I walk along this stretch of H Street between G and 4th. H for home, for hope, for hurry. The rain lets up and I come inside for a mug of steamed milk with sugar and nutmeg, my eyes heavy and ready for sleep.