Last week, I was here…

I don’t think I’ve mentioned that a couple of weeks before his fourth birthday, The Boy took flight and was able to start swimming on his own. He has wanted this for so long and suddenly everything just clicked and he started swimming like a little eel, or water lizard, or whatever animal that swims well that you like. I was so proud. But honestly, this is nothing compared to how AMAZED I was when I saw him not only start diving in head first, but diving off the DIVING BOARD. Let me be clear. They won’t let anyone dive in if there’s anyone swimming “in the well”. This means that whoever jumps in must swim well enough to make it back to the side of the pool on their own. And there’s my little guy, diving in head first, going down deep, coming back up, and swimming back over to the side. Wow. I don’t think I learned to dive off a diving board until I was 8 or 10. I can remember spending hours standing on the end, looking down at all that water and thinking how deep down my head was going to go when I went in head first. I just couldn’t do it (and I LOVE water). 

Anyway, I’m proud and I just wanted to share that.

Here’s a tip. Whenever you stay in a hotel/motel, make sure to check the alarm clock before you go to bed. Especially if you DON’T want to wake up at a certain time in the morning. Usually hotels/motels have alarm clocks that are loud enough to wake the dead, so you definitely don’t want it going off at say…6am, when you were hoping to sleep until 8 or 9.

And if you’re a really kind and thoughtful person, you’ll turn the alarm to the “off” position when you check out.

If you’re a bastard, you’ll turn the alarm back on again to whatever time you woke up.

And if you’re a real sonnofa bitch, you’ll take the time to set the clock EVEN EARLIER than you—or any normal person—would ever get up. That way the person sleeping in your room next will get a little SURPISE! at say…4:45am.

And if you’re a lucky sonnofa bitch, no one will even be in your room when the alarm goes off to swear loudly, throw the thing across the room, then drift angrily back to sleep. But someone will be in the adjacent rooms, maybe even on the floor below. So that at 4am, all the people around your room will be blasted from sleep and confused about where the noise is coming from. Maybe they’ll be too tired to move, but the noise will be too loud to sleep with, even with a big pillow over their heads. And maybe they’ll have young children, maybe say…a four-year-old, who desperately needs sleep if he’s going to make it through the long day ahead of him. And maybe that four-year-old will get “freaked out” by the noise, which he will describe as making him “more and more awake every minute, until my eyes are opening and opening and my voice is getting louder and louder.” And maybe there will be no chance of getting that four-year-old back to sleep again once you’ve called down to the front desk to report the noise, because it takes them absolutely forever to find the room with the blasting alarm in it. Maybe that will happen. If you’re a really lucky sonnofa bitch.

Yes, it’s been quite exciting to get so much validation and attention recently as an artist/craftster. People have been more than generous with their compliments. Too much so sometimes (that’s another posting).But one of the odd side-effects of people seeing you designing and making clothing is that they finally know someone (even if they’ve just met me) who sews. It seems that there are two types of people in this world: Those who sew (much better than I could ever hope to sew); and those who don’t even own a needle, much less know how to thread it. How exciting, then, to meet someone with a MACHINE that does this sewing thing. Certainly a MACHINE must make things that much easier. And such a FANCY machine to boot. In fact, several machines. Even one that knits edges closed. Wow.

While the vast majority of people are appreciative of my art, there are those who–upon seeing my work–think: Ah-ha. Someone who can sew! Then ask if I wouldn’t mind sewing a button on for them. Or they have the sweetest most adorable little top that has a strap that has come loose…and, well, you can see the problem. I just can’t wear it like THAT. Would you… could you..? 

NO!

I have a closet full of my own mending that I never get to. In fact the shorts I’m wearing right now lost the button over a year ago and I’ve never had the time (or inclination) to sew it back on. Sure I have the button. And sure I want my pants to close so that I no longer look like a flasher pervert. But it just ain’t happenin. 

Asking me to do your mending for you is like meeting Picasso, finding out he’s a painter, then asking him to paint your kitchen. For sure I am not now, nor will I ever be as great an artist as Picasso. But you get the idea. It’s insulting. So don’t do it unless you want me to hate you.

So last Thursday The Boy turned 4. I won’t go on and on here about how quickly they grow up (they do), or how amazed I am that I made it this far (I am). I will tell you that this event has really got me thinking a lot about what I value in life and how I want to live my life. And I must say that these days, things for me are better than they’ve ever been, and much better than I ever expected my life to be (why I never expected this is between me and my therapist). And The Boy turning 4 has helped in this. It’s prompted me to slow down a little more and really appreciate as many moments as I can. I know life will always have its ups and downs, so at the moment I’m just reveling in what a nice up this is.

And The Boy is FOUR already! Wow. And what an amazing little being he is.

Of course he’s been anticipating his Birthday for a good four or five months now, ever since his friends started turning four he’s been asking, “Is it my birthday soon?” “When is my birthday?” “It’s my birthday too, right?”

On his actual birthday, we took it easy in the morning, playing trains (he likes to play morning commuter rush-hour with his subway trains), and though the little people catching their trains were in a rush, The Boy and I were in no hurry to do much of anything. Then, in the afternoon, we rode the ACTUAL metro train into town (one of The Boy’s favorite pastimes, of course), rode plenty of elevators along the way (another favorite activity), then went BOWLING (his new fav.).

He discovered bowling over the Christmas break we went to The Grandparent’s house in Tennessee. The Boy LOVED it! The balls! The pins! The objective of knocking things down! What a perfect game for a three (and now four) year old!

Sunday was the party and we were lucky to have it at our Pool. Honestly, the Pool is one of the very best things about living here. I mean, it’s like an unplanned party every day and every night. Most of the people we know are members, our kids all know each other and play together, it’s always at least 10 degrees cooler over there than everywhere else around here, and we don’t have to plan playdates for kids OR adults. Everyone just shows up, cooks food, eats, swims, hangs out. I LOVE the Pool.

So it was a great place for a 4^th Birthday Party. Kids went swimming, parents went swimming, grandparents went swimming, we all sat around chatting in the shade… After everyone had played and swam for awhile, we busted out mini-cupcakes with sprinkles served on a fancy cupcake tree and sang Happy Birthday. The only “planned” event was to Make Your Own Sundae, which involved me scooping delicious vanilla bean ice cream into bowls and everyone else piling on as many toppings as they wanted. We had fresh strawberries and blueberries and pineapple (which I cut and crushed myself that morning), all sorts of chocolate chips (milk, semi-sweet, white), peanut butter chips, cookie crumbles, sunspire chips, nuts, whipped cream, cherries, bananas… If it tastes good on ice cream, we tried to have it. People had a blast making their fantasy sundae, and no indulgence was seen as “too much”. Honestly, it was the perfect summer Birthday Party.

And the bonus is, The Boy has had ENOUGH of the whole Birthday thing for awhile. By the end of the party, when people were leaving and saying “Thank you” and “Happy Birthday” to him one last time, he was saying, “I don’t want you to say that any more. I’m all done with that.” Ah, to be four and to be so straightforward and honest again.

Would it be wrong to book a trip to Portland just because I’m really jonesin’ for some Voodoo Doughnuts?

Mmmm doughnuts.

The Washington City Paper is spotlighting me on their Crafty Bastards blog this week. Read the fabulous answers I gave to their questions here.

Like many of my women friends with sons, I can get a little frustrated that people are always telling me not only that my son LOOKS just like my husband (does he?), but reminds them of my husband. In fact, my son reminds ME a lot of my husband. Evolutionarily speaking, they say this is a good thing. I know he’s my son. I pushed him out. I remember that day fairly well (despite the tiredness and natural pain-numbing opiates). But men don’t have it so easy. Of course when The Boy came out and we saw the squiggles of wet reddish hair, the midwife seemed to breathe a sigh of relief and said something to the effect that we knew whose son that was. (That moment must be rough on midwives when the father is present). Not that you can see any of that red-headedness these days. But I have a feeling it will show up again as he grows older.

Anyway, I guess it’s great that my son reminds me of my husband. I love my husband and he has many wonderful qualities (though my son shares the qualities—stubbornness for example—that can make me want to tear at my hair as well).

But it often leaves me wondering, Where am I in him?

On Thursday The Boy woke up as usual, ate his breakfast, then told me that he remembered seeing some people in Eugene wearing their shirts backward (this is entirely possible), and so had decided that this was the way he was going to wear his button-down shirts from now on. I asked him what he was going to say when people wanted to know why he was wearing his shirt that way. He said, “Because I want to.”

I’ve never been so proud.

So I buttoned up his shirt for him and packed him off to camp that way. Shirt backwards.

As soon as we arrived, one of his little friends, a five-year-old girl The Boy adores, came up and asked me why The Boy was wearing his shirt that way. I smiled and told her, “Because he wants to.” And thought: finally something of me in him.

And he kept it that way all day. It was backwards when we went to Occupational Therapy; it was backwards at the farmer’s market where we ran into several of his friends; it was backwards when he played with the neighbor kids from across the street. Backwards all day.

Thinking back, the first glimmer of seeing myself in him might have been when he preferred to wear mismatched socks, or when he insisted on my painting his toenails orange, green, and black. Just two days earlier a little boy at camp had asked me why The Boy’s toenails were painted if he was a boy. Then he informed me that painted toenails were for girls. I told him that anyone could paint their toenails. He looked at me like he was trying to decide whether everything he’d been taught by his caregivers (and society) was wrong, or I was crazy.

What was really encouraging about this whole adventure was that not only did The Boy have his own ideas about how he wanted to look, but he honestly didn’t seem to care what his peers thought or said.

Unfortunately, the next day he wore his shirt backward again, and got into a bunch of fights with the other kids who he said were, “Saying mean things.” He hit so many of them that he got kicked out of camp.

It’s a rough row to hoe this individuality thing.

To add even more insult to his injuries, when I went to pick him up at camp his shirt was on front wards. He was very upset about this and said the counselors MADE him strip down and put his shirt on the other way.

Just a week before his fourth Birthday, I guess I can say that not only is he developing into a real individual, but that his innocence and ignorance are over. He’s been firmly introduced to “The Way We Do Things Here” and the consequences of deviating from that norm.

And of course I’m left asking myself if it’s really such a good thing that my son reminds me of me.

July 4th at Park