together at the top of the world
Posted on April 24, 2007
Filed Under kids, parenting, homeownership |
It’s so hard to write when the weather turns fair. All but the most frivolous of thoughts find no purchase in my spring-sick brain. Back in high school and college (an eternity past) this same fever would paralyze me each Spring.
But somehow my G remains devoted to her craft, dashing of bits of verse and prose from her perch on the front steps. She surrounds herself with leaves and pebbles and feathers that she’s collected in the yard and gets right down to business. Pencil on paper, scratching away at her odes to Spring.
She’s just so glad that the sun has finally found us up here in the Great White North where whole months of the year are bleak and barren. She and her brother spent much of the Winter AND the last few grim weeks of atypical ice and snow wondering how long we were going to have to live in this Godforsaken place. “Are we going to live in this house forever, Mom?” they asked, hoping for a different response than the one they received. “Yes, absolutely all together in this old house at the top of the world. And when I get too ancient and defeated, you two will have to take over bailing the basement and plunging the toilets. Sound good?” I replied.
And they defiantly began playing ‘the things we miss about Miami game’ which breaks my heart a little each time I hear it. I think this is their intention. It usually begins with Nana’s house. They inform me that they miss Nana’s house where they had their own Noah’s Ark bedroom. A room so full of arks and animals and Noah himself that the eye couldn’t focus, and the brain could think only of giraffes and camels and doves that find dry land. They go to explain that they miss Nana’s house where they would eat animal crackers with milk for breakfast and eat box after miniature box of raisins from the crystal candy jar in the living room. Then they mourn the parrots that flew over our house each morning, waking us with their shrieking.
And they describe a powerful longing for Venetian pool, the coldest spring fed pool in all of South Florida with its lagoons and caves and waterfalls. Slowly the game sort of fades away and I realize their memories of the place they were born have grown fuzzy, dwindling in number and clarity.
During months of ice and gray, when mother nature is angry and biting, it is so hard to defend the choice we’ve made to move here. A superior school system is not a meaningful or persuasive argument to a child who can’t seem to remember what it was like NOT to have gym class, art class, music and school plays, a child who has, along with enrichment programs that he or she is taking for granted, cracked lips and chapped cheeks and a powerful longing to play outdoors after three months of weather induced house arrest.
We have thankfully entered the season when we can fully celebrate this relocation. There are wilderness trails to explore and concerts in the park on Wednesday evenings. Soon we will have pancake breakfasts on the town green and numerous farm stands from which to buy local berries and homemade ice cream. There are miles of beaches here with nesting plovers in protected dunes. Slowly, temporarily, we will crawl out from beneath the depressing shroud of Winter to spin circles in the sun.
G’s Ode to Spring
Spring is here
At last at last
Flouers at last
Bumbul bees at last
Buterflis at last
Sorts, sortslvs
At last
I say, Hallelujah.
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6 Responses to “together at the top of the world”
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This is beautiful, cce. Her prose and yours.
“spin circles in the sun”
Lovely.
Inspirational. Her poetry is better than my own!
Whatever it takes to drive children to poetry. Maybe someday she’ll be able to write about her childhood in the cold fondly, like Garrison Keillor:
“I grew up among Bible-believing people in Minnesota, a cold weather state when the jet stream slips and the wind blows steadily down from Manitoba; it gets so cold your skin hurts, your innards clench up, and a man’s testes shrink to the size of garden peas, but - Everyone else is just as cold as you are so don’t complain about it, this is not a personal experience, that’s what we say, and you comfort yourself with fried eggs and bacon and you bulk up a good deal by spring, but then everyone else is fat too, so it’s not a problem.”
Thanks for sharing Keillor’s take on cold locals. Here’s hoping G can parlay this love of verse into something Garrison Keillor-esque in success and reputation.
“At last”. I couldn’t agree with the poet more.
At last indeed.
Do you know Peter H. Reynolds’ book Ish? A wonderful story that celebrates children’s creativity.
Did Reynolds also write The Dot? We love that book around here!