Graduation/trees/anniversaries: Eccentric musings

Libby had her pre-school graduation yesterday. It was wonderful--the kids sang and danced, then put on purple caps and gowns and received "diplomas". Libby was a little worried that she wouldn't be able to curtsy properly, but she did, and she was so charming and radiant in the performances that I couldn't stop smiling as I watched!

After graduation, and pizza, cookies, and ice cream, we drove home. As always, getting home was chaotic and nerve-jangling. I escaped to the back yard to lie in my hammock, my favorite refuge, just to settle myself down before tackling the second shift. I looked upward, and instead of my gorgeous green canopy, I stared into . . . nothingness. Blank sky.

Someone had cut down my tree. It was a dead tree. But it still had leaves, and many birds and animals had homes in it.

So I leapt up, screaming and swearing--not usually my style, but I was shocked and horrified.

Pierre expressed great annoyance at my outcry. Really, he was pissed off. He said I was eccentric, that only a crazy person would get so upset over a tree that was dead, and a safety hazard to boot, and that it was further confirmation that I am weird. This was really the crux of the matter, my eccentricity.

I truly don't think of myself that way at all. Unconventional maybe, creative, perhaps a bit immature, but eccentric? Weird? Crazy? No, I don't agree with that assessment, and I don't like it.

I asked my friend Ed if he thought I was eccentric. "Yes," he said, "but that's a good thing!"
Not reassured, I asked my friend Gail. "Yes," she said, "but so am I!"
I asked my friend Regina at work today, and she took a while to answer, so I knew before she said it . . . she thought I was eccentric too.

Last night I dreamed that I was watching a news report about the Catholic Church, and it was an expose of how they had built a school in an inner city neighborhood, and how the school had imposed its beliefs on the students, and not respected their culture . . . I stood up in my living room, where various friends and family had assembled, and said "I'm SICK of people putting down other people who try to do the right thing!!!!! No one else built a school!!! No one else provided a free education!!!! (this was a dream remember) So they made some mistakes!!!! Why not acknowledge that they tried to do something good?!!!?"

I thought when I woke up this was because of a long talk I had with my friend Katrina who is producing a documentary on the New England slave trade, about racism, white people's guilt over slavery. But now I think it is about the "eccentric"label too. Words are so powerful, and yet they can be so flexible. My eccentricity over the tree could be, in someone else's eyes, sensitivity. Why can't people be more positive? Why can't we all just get along?????? Someone said to me a few weeks ago, "There's a blessedness about you," and I didn't know what he meant exactly, but perhaps it was a more positive way of saying "you're so eccentric!" I like it much better!

So, the tree is gone (my neighbor and Pierre had apparently planned this together, but Pierre hadn't known when it was going to happen), and my 25th wedding anniversary is on the horizon. We're off to revisit the scene of the honeymoon, Nantucket, near Surfside Beach. For my feelings on the eve of this anniversary trip, see the cover of the August 28, 2006 New Yorker. So appropos, if you color the kids' hair black, and give them ponytails.

Happy Anniversary to me, goodbye to my tree, congratulations to my beautiful Libby!

Lulu/Leilei

Lulu already has an exceedingly long name: Eleanor Grace XiLe Tripp Spy, plus the most complicated naming history of anyone in our family. First we called her Lele (like the French article, doubled), then we changed to Lulu (which we found adorable), now she wishes to be called Leilei (like the Hawaiian flower garland)!

Ever since her reunion visit with XingXing (who called her Leilei) Lulu/Leilei has insisted on being called what apparently was her actual nickname in China. "This-a not-a Lulu", she says, pointing at herself. "This-a Leilei." She says Leilei slowly, and emphatically, as if to a very slow learner (me, her mom. Who does, in fact, tend to be a slow learner.)

So what's in a name, anyway? Shakespeare says a rose would be a rose no matter what . . . but Anne of Green Gables said something else, something like a rose would NOT be as lovely if it were called a skunk cabbage . . . I shall have to look it up, but that's the sense of it, and I am on Anne's wavelength all the way.

Lulu's (hence, I shall refer to her in writing as Lulu, but probably as Leilei in life, until I can convince her otherwise!) names have enormous significance to me, and, apparently, to her. Her Chinese name, XiLe, means "hoping for happiness". It is such a lovely name that I regret that I didn't keep it as her first name. And Leilei, I think, represents identity to Lulu. It is what she calls herself, what the first people who loved and cared for her called her. It is her only treasure, what she brought with her from China.

I thought after the fact that I should never have given Lulu another name. "Eleanor" was a hotly contested choice, and was basically the only name I liked that the rest of the family tolerated. It means, I think, "shining light", and my girl Lulu is all about the energy of a sunbean, or a flash of lightning. It also happens to be the name of a powerful queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, a woman I wouldn't mind my daughter emulating in some respects! So my name for her is important, too; my way of claiming her for my own, and a way of wishing her a certain kind of future.

Then, "Grace". That's after my mom, of course, whose middle name it was. Kit has her first name, "Rose" as a middle name. Libby's middle name is "Audrey", after my beloved aunt. So these names are important--handles the girls can grab hold of, to keep them steady, and remind them of strong women who went before them, and, as my mom wrote to me, will love them "from wherever I am"!

All the kids got stuck with "Tripp" as one of their middle names. Again, an act of claiming. I'm the only one in the family with a different last name, and I like to be linked with them that way.

"Lulu"--well, it's a nickname, and like my old nickname, Skyppi, it may have served its purpose. I can't give it up too easily, though--I had it printed, at great expense, on all the adoption announcments! And it suits her so well! Maybe someday she will agree . . .
For now, her name is Eleanor XiLe, and she calls herself Leilei, but everyone knows her as Lulu.

Anyone who wants to help me find the Anne Shirley quote can check online:
www.literature.org/authors/montgomery-lucy-maud/anne-of-green-gables
(I think) (my links don't always link! where is kevo when I need help???!!!!)

Slowing summer down . . .

Alice and the Hatter:
Alice: What a funny watch! It tells the day of the month, and doesn't tell what o'clock it is!
Hatter: Why should it? Does your watch tell you what year it is?
Alice: Of course not, but that's because it stays the same year for such a long time together.
Hatter: . . . which is just the case with mine.

You all know this: Time management is a problem for me. I don't like watching the clock, don't like watching the calendar . . . don't wear a watch, and recently moved my kitchen clock to a somewhat more out-of-the-way location so I wouldn't catch sight of it without trying. But even in my peculiar wonderland, time passes. Summer's slipping away, and though I try to hold to the concept of the astronomical end of summer, Sept. 21, years of academic conditioning have led me to sense summer's psychological end, during these precious last weeks of August.

I have a checklist for summer, and time is running out.
On the plus side, I have been to the beach, and been swimming in the ocean several times, though not nearly enough.
The little summer house (glorified tent) is set up, and I have spent many pleasant hours reading in the yard, in the evening.
I've spent good time in my hammock, my absolute favorite spot at home.

But . . . I missed Shakespeare on the Common this year--first time ever, haven't been to Jacob's Pillow yet, haven't made much of a dent in my "summer reading" list--soon to be converted to my "fall reading" list, haven't been to a Red Sox game.

Feeling urgency about filling up summer seems counterproductive--summer should be about relaxing, being outdoors as much as possible, preferably with friends and family, watching the Meteor Showers, hugging trees--Therefore, I resolve to celebrate the rest of August appropriately. For example, by trying NOT to fit too much into a day, or into a season.

Wishing you all a relaxing end-of-summer! Let us wander, sip, look off into space . . .
And eat popsicles and ice cream (check out Christina's in Cambridge!) www.christinasicecream.com

And buy a pie at Allandale Farm. www.allandalefarm.com

Swing on the swings at Milennium Park. http://kitingusa.com

Drink ice coffee! Ok, I'll stop now . . .

Thinking I'm too old for this . . .

Invariably, people (as opposed to friends-who-know-me) , upon learning that I recently adopted a 4 year old, blurt out some variation of "you must be crazy!" Meaning, I think, that at 53 I am too old to want to parent a little kid. One commuting acquaintance, when I told her I was planning to adopt Lulu, actually said "but isn't there an age limit????!!!" (to which I wittily replied, "Oh, I'm actually much younger than I look!) The lady sitting next to me on the train snorted.

But I digress. My response when people ask "Why would you want to do this (parenting) all over again?" is to ask, in what I hope is a tactful way, "Why wouldn't I?" Life is 10 times more fun and exciting when you're exploring it with a child.

Except when it's not. Yesterday Pierre and I took the little ones to the Newport Folk Festival. This was all my idea. Last weekend we had gone to the Lowell Folk Festival, and had a grand time: lots of good music, good food, fun train rides to and from venues, free and plentiful crafts and games for kids. So I thought the fun would continue in Newport . . .

Wrong. While the day was clear and lovely and we did get to hear excellent sets by Madeleine Peyroux, the Meters, and the Indigo Girls, the whole thing was experienced through a miasma of complaining, requests to revisit the portapotties, open rebellion, and physical torture perpetrated by lemonade-guzzling Thing One and Thing Two (my new names for Libby and Lulu!)

To placate them, I fed them ice cream, allowed them to get insanely expensive painted "tattoos",
played endless games of Animal Rummy . . . finally, desperately, I decided I'd let them do anything they wanted, short of hurting themselves or others, so I could watch and listen to the Indigo Girls. I gave them a whole box of graham crackers. They fell upon in, ripping it open, like a scene from Lord of the Flies. Once they realized I wasn't going to intervene, they crammed 4 and 5 layers of entire cracker slabs in their mouths. Libby sat on my lap, facing me, trying out different ways of chewing the crackers into a foul paste. I sat there, stoicly singing along with the I.G. Only when she started letting the paste dribble onto my clothing did I react, and by then the show was over. We began the long march to the shuttle buses to the parking lot. I felt I had aged 10 years over the course of the day.

On the way home, they fell asleep in the car. Pierre carried Libby, I carried Lulu, and we gratefully deposited them in their beds, still in their sundresses. Looking at them, so angelic when they're sleeping, I was so happy to be doing it over again.

But when next summer comes around, I want everyone who cares about me to remind me I do NOT want to go to the Newport Folk Festival with small children EVER AGAIN!!!!!

Lulu goes to school

Today was Lulu's first full day at the Acorn Preschool. Thank God she is finally in an air-conditioned place. The weather here is terribly hot.

Now Lulu, Libby, and I will commute together. What fun! This morning's highlights included riding on an un-airconditioned bus, holding both girls on my lap, at their insistence. When I asked the driver if we could open a window, he told me they are bolted shut! HUH? Is this safe? As the bus ride approached sauna-like conditions, I noted the one poster on the bus:
"Our buses are too cool for words!
We have responded to our customers' requests for comfortable conditions.
If this bus is not cool, please call customer service, blah blah blah"

Dialing my cell phone with sweaty fingers, balancing the slippery, because also sweating girls, I called customer service, and got a busy signal.
An elderly Chinese woman kept fanning me with her fan, which helped me avoid passing out.
Libby and Lulu ran through all the Chinese folk songs they know, at top volume, enchanting the elderly fanning lady, but annoying everyone else.

We staggered off the bus, made our way to the Orange Line.

It was cool! There were seats! Immediately the girls began squabbling over identical plastic bags of Cinnamon Toast Crunch. "thisa mine!" (Lulu) "No, this one is mine!!!!" (Libby). Lulu
smacked me, and Libby kicked me repeatedly as I tried to keep them separated, as we traveled to New England Medical Center. (Please, no parenting tips. I know all the right things to do, they just don't work under these adverse conditions. )

Lulu arrived 1/2 hour late at school. I arrived 40 minutes late at work. Sigh.