Four Days at Russell Pond

"Less than a mile up the trail and the space between my shoulder blades already aches. I’m regretting the overpriced mini tube of sunblock, which the dense trees and clouds have rendered unnecessary, the extra layer I threw in at the last minute, and my insistence on healthful foods that caused me to pack two pounds of green beans and carrots fresh from the garden, a jar of sunflower seed butter, and three loaves of German bread the size, shape, and weight of bricks."

If you'd like to know how the rest of the trip went, please read the rest of "Four Days at Russell Pond: A First-Time Family Backpacking Trip" in Issue 19 of TrailGroove Magazine.

In other writing news, as you may (or may not) know, I recently joined the editorial staff at Literary Mama. We have just opened submissions in the Literary Reflections department, where we seek essays focused on the creative process and literature--writing, reading, sharing books with your kids. Please check out our submissions guidelines and our archives and consider drafting and submitting an essay reflecting on your experience with literature, writing, and motherhood.

Literary Mama is also starting to incorporate photographs on the site and seeks original images that reflect the various sections of the site. I know I've got a few great photographers among my readers, and I encourage you to check out the call for submissions and send in some photos.

And, finally, Happy Thanksgiving, dear readers. My seven-year blog anniversary just went by, unacknowledged, and I want to express my gratitude to those of you who have been with me since the start (are there any original readers out there?) and to those of you who have just joined me, and to all who fall somewhere in between. Thank You!

Full Tilt

I feel like summer's running away with me, like a semi-feral horse onto whose bare back I've climbed and whose mane I've just barely managed to wind in my fingers before kicking its flanks.

Maybe it's all of life that's galloping full tilt.

A few evenings ago we were sitting around the living room with my niece, who was visiting for a few days, when C brought in the mail. He handed me an envelope, which was a card from my mom, wishing us a happy anniversary.

"Our anniversary's tomorrow!" I exclaimed. "Did you remember that?"

"No," C said. "Did you."

"I think it's our fifteenth, too," I said. "Isn't that like the pewter or tupperware anniversary?"

"Has it really been fifteen?"

"Yeah, 'cause it was nineteen-ninety-nine," my niece chimed in. "That means it was fifteen years ago last time I was here?"

"Doesn't that make you feel old?" I asked.

A little while later, while I was brushing my teeth, it occurred to me, Oh yeah, this is two-thousand-twelve, not two-thousand-fourteen! 

"Good news," I said to C as I got into bed. "We've only been married thirteen years, not fifteen."

"I thought the math was off," he said.

"My math was fine, I just had the year wrong."

Now, while most people in Maine wish it was 2014 right now (except for the few who enjoy having a lunatic at the state's helm), I'm not in any rush to have a thirteen-year-old and two nine-year-olds. 

Life is speeding by fast, but it's not every day that you get back two whole years.

And they danced by the light of the moon, the moon, the moon...

When C and I got married, eleven years ago this past Saturday, it must have been The Summer of Marriage, because it seems like we attended a lot of matrimonial festivities that year (twenty-five must be the age at which one's biological clock begins to tick on overdrive). Many of those ceremonies turned out to be solemn affairs, with a surprising amount of heavy-handed godliness for a bunch of hippies from COA.

I wanted to bring a sense of joy to our ceremony, a light-heartedness and a bit of irreverence. We didn't want our friends to be bored, and we certainly didn't want to depress anyone. So, along with a number of pagan-ish readings from this book, C and I read Edward Lear's nonsense poem "The Owl and the Pussycat." C's friends appreciated the reference to the "land where the bong tree grows," while mine (those bad girls) snickered over the owl's waxing poetic over his "lovely pussy." Everyone got a huge kick out of the two being married by the "turkey who lives on the hill," at the expense of our officiant, our dear, dear departed friend Al.

"The Owl and the Pussycat" was one of my older sister's and my favorite stories when we were young, and we heard it many, many times (oddly, I can't remember what book it was in, or what the illustrations were like). It's one of the few poems I know by heart (along with about half of "Kubla Khan," and "Candy is dandy/But liquor is quicker." My sister, just to show how psychic we sometimes are, got us the book (illustrated by Jan Brett) for a wedding present and planned to read it at the reception for her toast. She was not pleased to be upstaged by the bride and groom.

This is just a really, really long way of explaining why I was so thrilled when Heather Ross came out with Owl and Pussycat fabric this summer...I knew right away exactly what I needed to do with it...a commemorative pillow for our anniversary (in disguise as my gift to C). I found a picture M drew of those very characters when he was about five years old and visiting friends of ours. I embroidered the picture and framed it with happy, sleeping moons and owls and pussycats in their beautiful pea green boat, sort of following the quilting technique form Patchwork Style, only I didn't read the directions very well and missed some steps. It's all a bit crooked and wonky...I'd like to blame my old sewing machine, but it was probably more due to me a) being lazy and b) starting the damn thing at 10:30 Thursday night (it did give me the chance to step outside sometime after midnight and view one shooting star--the Perseids were peaking that night).

(The back)

We dropped the kids off at friends' on the coast Friday night (the very friends at whose house M drew that picture), and went out to our favorite restaurant, El Camino (here's me savouring my Mexican Chocolate Pot de Creme with ancho chile powder...mmmm),

then spent the night at a bed & breakfast--yes our first night away from kids since we went to Philadelphia almost two years ago. We did not dance by the light of the moon (it was a new moon), but we did sit in the park in Brunswick and, you know, have an actual conversation. With complete sentences and stuff. We even played a few hands of Rummy (like the old days when we didn't have kids or a TV). I have to say it ended far, far too soon Saturday afternoon (why is it one's children always seem so much louder and, I don't know, like there are more of them, after one has been away from them for a bit?). Next time, we're taking a week!