porch

i do not endorse speeding, especially among teenagers, nor do i endorse riding horses.

sunday in the catskills is a day to sit on the porch. at home. where there are pancakes. at a place that serves local beer. whatever porches there are out there in summer, you should put yourself on them in the biggest chair available and you should eat and drink and enjoy looking around you. if the chair you find yourself in is of the rocking kind you are welcome to count yourself extremely fortunate and if the porches you find yourself on are of the covered variety, you can sit out there during the worst (which really is to say the best) of thunderstorms doing just what you were doing, which is a form of nothing perfected in the summer on porches up in those mountains.

so it is not surprising that on one of the first days of the real summer the sweetie and i found ourselves leaning back on the covered porch of a place that promised an upsetting variety of pancakes. there were locals and tourists and a handful of the ever-present harley riders, everyone sitting out there in the sun and storm mix, staring into those pancakes or into the sky. and there are often impromptu parades of motorcycles along the main street of this particular town, harleys mostly, with apologetic ninjas and other dirt-bike looking things sprinkled in. but today, somewhere nearby, a classic car show was brewing and a few old cars came purring along, mixed in with a chopper, a sport bike, a harley decked out like my grandpa's winnebago. but when i looked up from sneaking a slab of the sweetie's cottage cheese pancakes (you wouldn't think it, but they're worth stealing) i caught sight of an old impala sauntering low down the street, long, white, the backside of it looking like cat-eye glasses. i'm not good with times but it looked like maybe a 1959 and my breath caught at the sight of it.

now, what you may not know is that when i was seventeen, my dear, sweet parents gave me a car for my birthday. a 1970 chevy impala hardtop, four doors. a color tom waits refers to as "monkey shit brown". it was not a car i had the grace to appreciate right away there in the mid-eighties. it took months for me to realize that, although the parents had decided on this car because they were confident i could drive it into a brick wall at high speed and walk away, the relative safety would scoot itself out of my way and the high speed would step up in my mind. and when i looked at the speedometer in my friends' smaller, sportier, eighties cars, spedometers that stopped at 85, i laughed. until one afternoon out on jj highway just past belle center, i pushed the impala to prove it was worth putting in a spedometer that went on up to 120. and i will tell you now 120 is not a speed a person can maintain with any confidence for any length of time on a two lane country highway, but with two copilots screaming and laughing, that car shot through a landscape of farm ponds and tailing piles and strip mines effortlessly. not a shimmy. not a whine. like breathing. there is no way to describe with langauge how my insides felt, how my brain felt, coming up over rises and down into valleys, the car changing this road i'd travelled all my life into a new place, the speed changing who i was. so when that old white impala came past it whispered to me, reminded me that i am not the person i pretend to be, that my honda and volvo and subaru owning self knows some other world.

now later on in the evening we drove over to another little town with another wide front porch full of folks eating and drinking. we sat ourselves down at a table and ordered dinner. the sweetie ordered himself a german beer and i got myself a belgian style ale made by local folks just a few miles down the road. while we were waiting for our food, the sweetie began babbling about horses and a cart, some sort of rambling that didn't make sense at all. he seemed committed to this strangeness, the talk of the horses, a pair, and i stared at him until i heard the clopping.

here is where i should tell you about horses. as a child, i adored them. i recall a trip to see clydesdales and a falling in love that required me to collect little iron horses for quite some time. but real horses, non-clydesdale varieties at least, don't like me. not a bit. i have been told more than once that they can sense fear. i think they can sense crazy. they don't like it a bit when someone is as high-strung as they are and they let folks know. as a result, i have spent most of my time on horseback clutching to reins, mane, saddle, as frantic horses have attempted to buck me off, run away with/from me, and even rear up on hind legs and back into a car in an attempt to get rid of me. horses do not like me. except draft horses. those big monsters with crushing hooves and eyes the size of dinner plates. they are not at all afraid of me and so i like them, am grateful.

and of course you have to know that's what i saw coming along with the clopping. two fat belgian draft horses the color of wet sand, the color of my beer. they pulled a two wheeled cart and seemed to be just out for a stroll. they went down to the end of town and came back, rolling slow like that impala. folks on the porch yelled out to them, asked about the horses and the people yelled back about them being belgians like my beer. and today must have been the day to be whispered to on the porch because those horses whispered to me, too. they whispered about how i have been on the back of a runaway horse and survived, how i have been on a horse rearing up like a statue without falling off. their whispers suggested that all my whining about the bus and subway are nothing. that they know, like that ancient white impala, that i know another world.

adventures of dad

well, i don't have a good drawing of dad with a push mower yet, but i did dig up this one from the time he got a summer job mowing at the golf course. dad will mow in the heat of the day, ignoring things like thirst, sweat, heat stroke, hallucinations and any attempts to reason with him. this makes him an ideal candidate for mowing at the golf course. he will put a sandwich slathered with mayo in his back pocket and drive around until the mayo has seeped into the bread. then he'll eat it, out there on a green, no shade around, 105 degrees. i am pretty sure i drew this to show dad my concerns over his reckless teenage attitude. as a recall, he called me the next day to let me know he's mowed the golf course in 200 degree heat with no water. at least he's wearing clothing.

because dad lives so far away, i get some news late, secondhand or filtered. you know, things like surgeries, arrests, emergency room visits. at some point, dad captured the attention of g-men. i don't know how or why, but i drew a cartoon of it, so it must be true. it's certainly possible someone else was concerned with dad's mysterious ways and worried the g-men would catch up with him. a nephew might have expressed some concern. they never did whisk him away so i'm sure everything is fine now. i certainly would have heard if things were otherwise.

quite some years ago while i still lived in michigan i started a lime tree from a seed. i dragged the thing with me here to brooklyn where it flourished for years, until it was felled by some sort of awful parasites. somewhere during this time, my dad developed an interest in lemon trees and got himself a potted one with a pretty good shot at bearing fruit. he sent me a lemon tree as well, a replacement for my lime, but dad has had better luck with his lemon tree, living in a sunny place, retired as he is and able to spend a lot of free time babying a plant. he also has a tendency to gloat about the blooms on the tree. the glossy leaves. the fruit. but it's not all sweetness and light. there's a sinister side that's slipped into his horticulture. sinister and suspect, i tell you. perhaps it's what those g-men were looking for.

recently dad sold a boat he'd been keeping out at a friend's lake. a pond, i guess, but a good place to fish. he's used the thing quite a bit at first, but it was more cumbersome than he'd planned and he wanted something maybe smaller, maybe newer, maybe less labor intensive. but before that, dad spent some time out on the lake/pond fishing and i guess that's where it comes from, this last drawing. it is a birthday card, but i can't for anything remember dad actually being lost out there on the lake. maybe it was something someone worried about, dad being out there with no cell service, out of gas and water. because dad won't take a bottle of water with him anywhere for anything. not to the grand canyon, even with a small child. even on a hot day. not at all. so that's probably where that comes from. dad's teenage behavior. and i have to say that when i was a child dad was not reckless. there were no g-men looking for him then and he had no summer job. he certainly wasn't threatening fruit trees. he was being a dad. but this new dad, new to me for the last ten years or so, is pretty interesting with all his wildness. i think it may be the grandpa personality. my own grandpas, all three of them, were wild and reckless, with no regard for the rules, for the man, for anything but bowling and smoking cigars and driving motor homes all over the place. so i suspect dad is trying out several grandpa personae. i will be happy to continue chronicling his wild grandpa behavior here.

mowing the lawn on father's day

today is father's day. my first official duty today was mowing the lawn. it felt good to be outside after being trapped indoors with the flu pig. but since today is father's day, i did my lawn mowing a little bit differently, the way my dad would.

i pulled out the red push mower. now, honestly, it's one of those things that drags you along with it and you don't really get the joy you should out of pushing it around, but because i am still feeble i had to lean into it quite a bit.it almost felt real. i could not find a cowboy hat. i know there's one in brooklyn and i think there's one here, but i searched and came up empty. my dad would have a hat. to match this hat, my dad would wear his cowboy boots with white tube socks. my own cowboy boots are sitting in brooklyn with the hat, i guess, so i donned my frog green rain boots, of similar enough size and shape to create the desired effect. i pulled up my hiking socks so they'd peek over the tops of the boots, but they'd slink back down as soon as i started to walk.

next my dad would wear some raggedy cut off denim shorts. not daisy dukes or anything, but still, shorts that would make you take a mental note that you'd seen a man mowing the lawn in cutoff jeans and cowboy boots. i do not have cutoff jeans for a variety of reasons. i do have a pair of brown corduroy pants that i spilled oil all over. they're cut off now and worked quite well, i think, with the lovely rain boots. i intended to wear an old undershirt so my armpit hairs could sway in the breeze like my dad's, but it was too cool outside for armpit hairs and instead i wore a black t shirt. i am sure the neighbors are grateful.

still, i think anyone driving by today who might have venutured this far north and east would have seen me shoving the mower across the clover in the front yard and would have recognized, not so much me, but the spirit of my dad.

thanks, dad.

conversations with medications

after a full day of tamiflu i woke up friday with my skeleton comfortably back in place, my eyes set firmly into lava-free sockets, a rash that could brag only of color, not of texture and a temperature hovering somewhere around 99. the sweetie's coworkers had encouraged him to stay home and tend to me, so with a renewed ability to sit up for extended periods of time and a day to burn, we loaded up the pups and headed upstate. i certainly wasn't well, but we figured being under the weather in view of the mountains is way better than being under the weather in view of a garbage truck and the train tracks. then, there's always an opportunity to breathe air that wasn't just exhaled by thousands of nyc school children. and a chance to escape my own germs. i popped in a capsule of my new best friend tamiflu and we headed north.

i might want to remind you that tamiflu requires food. it will let you know when food supplies are low by creating waves of nausea which will be followed by vomiting if not promptly addressed. having spent sixteen years with a medication that requires food, i'm familiar with the situation and generally carry a little snack, peanuts or one of those protein bars. but the fever and all impaired my judgment and i hopped in the car with nothing. and just over the george washington bridge the tamiflu tapped me on the shoulder. tap tap tap. uh, yes? get... food....! well, we're in the car and all. we'll be at a rest stop pretty... what are you? an idiot or something? don't you know who i am? don't you now what i'm doing in here? well, sure. and i'm mighty grateful to you... grateful? really? i'm in here slaving all morning. you don't feel the hooves anymore, do you? that's because of me. i'm saving your stupid life and all you can do is whine about some rest stop! look, i'm sorry. it's a quizzno's. you'll like it. we'll be there soon. hey, all i'm saying is i'm keeping your stupid carcass alive and you gotta figure out whether you want that. oh, i definitely want that. being alive has been really enjoyable so far and i expect it to.... shut up! i could walk away right now. that pig is down but i could walk out and he'd get right back up, hooves and all. then where would you be? i...

this is about when the side effects mentioned on the label and my own paranoia shook hands and i said out loud to the sweetie, "my hands feel like gloves that don't fit." they did. in my mind i was remembering a passage by a book called stiff by mary roach about how cadavers have a stage of decay where the hands experience "gloving". the skin loosens and slips down like a glove. that's what it seemed like my skin was doing. coming off. making its own choices. and the sweetie's attempt to calm me down produced hysterical crying all the way to the quizzno's at the rest stop. i devoured a bowl of broccoli cheese soup, much to the delight of the tamiflu. on the way out, it suggested i grab a bag of trail mix, just in case. there was nothing but crappy trail mix, the kind without chocolate bits, but the tamiflu was glaring so i got a bag with yogurt raisins. it turned out to be a good thing i did.

the rest of the ride was uneventful but later in the day there was tapping again. what on earth are you trying to do to me? don't i take care of you? this was not the tamiflu. this was the medication i take to keep the scary and strange at bay. you are not in a good place if the medication you take to keep scary things at bay is mad at you. uh, hi. everything's cool. just been a little sick. taking some tamiflu. you could have warned me. you could have mentioned about the hallucinations. about the paranoia. i might have worked out a bit, beefed up. i didn't know. the flu comes on sort of quick. i didn't know my doctor would have drugs for it... sixteen years i toil in here, keeping you from seeing fanged zebras and fifty foot spiders. sixteen years i keep you happy, employed, in a relationship. i give you everything! how do you thank me? you drop some sort of lunatic wizard in here conjuring up plaid penguins and loose skin. fantastic! look! i'm trying. if i didn't take the medicine, my fever would have exploded me. that wouldn't have worked either! my doctor said it wouldn't interfere with you. interfere? i'm battling shadow tigers in here! don't i get you safely on the subway every day? well, actually, no. lately i've been having some trouble and i've noticed you're not doing all you could be doing to keep me from freaking out. hey! i can't do it all. you have to take some responsibility there. do that stupid yoga breathing. knit. grow up a little. or realize the train is just a scary place. get over it. why are you such a jerk?

at this point, there's another tap. tap tap tap. hey, somebody order some cramps? heh, heh, heh. i got an order of cramps here, with a side of emotional overreaction, courtesy of the pms factory. i am beginning to wonder if my hand skin had the right idea. get out now. i think about how to extricate myself from the warring factions of body and drug but i'm stuck. we're all in this rash covered, cramping, dizzy, weepy body together. there's only one thing that will make all of them happy. a cheeseburger. with pickles and onions. and accidental bacon. a side of fries. it will fortify the tamiflu in its final fight with the flu pig. it will boost the power of the medication i take to keep me sane. it will fend off cramps (okay, actually yoga will do this, but the cramps often arrive with a craving for cheeseburgers and the like, so deal with it.). but mostly, the crying, whether a side effect of the tamiflu, a malfunction of the sanity medication, a terrible consolation prize for pms or some unfortunate mixing of the three, will stop. it is impossible to enjoy a good cheeseburger with bacon while crying.

flu pig

warning: this post written by someone who may or may not be delirious due to fever and medication.

i have the flu. my doctor says it doesn't really matter, that whatever kind i have i'll be well from it before the tests come back. pig or no pig. treatment is the same for healthy folks like me no matter what the animal. stay home until the fever has been gone 24 hours. drink loads of fluids. take tamiflu.

so here i am, melting in the ears, my eyelashes and toenails aching, crackling, my skeleton trying to escape the boiling cauldron that is me. the dogs have been helping by piling themselves on top of me, probably to keep my skeleton from getting out. my hair hurts. my eyes have fallen out more than once and guthrie has brought them back for me. each time they fall out, lava flows from the sockets a while. lava eye hurts plenty.

there is a horrible rash on my chest, a rash you might have seen illustrated in a very old post, that crawls up my neck, a thick slab of red to indicate, probably, the places my skeleton has slammed against the inside of me in its attempts to escape. or perhaps it's where the flu pig attacked me to get into my poor miserable self. or where it's oozing back out after depleting me of all my healthy innards, as flu pigs do, of course. either way, it's pretty likely some sort of awful portal for something coming or going. one of those ever swinging saloon-type kitchen doors. a turnstile of hideous suffering.

the sweetie took the day off to take me in to see my doctor. going on a train at rush hour with possible flu pig is just irresponsible. so we drove in, spent more than ten minutes in a tunnel and the entire rest of the day in a rain so heavy it helped me understand what sheets of rain means. on the way back home, i read the tamiflu box. i have a terrible habit of reading the medical info sheets on whatever medication someone suggests i try. this has been helpful on several occasions, the scariest of which was when a doctor gave me something she called a "wonder drug" developed for the army to keep troops awake for extended periods in the field. hint: don't ever take a drug developed for the army. especially if it's called provigil. especially if it's being prescribed to amp you up from three other drugs your doctor has swirling around on your insides. in fact, find yourself a doctor who causes less swirling.

but this tamiflu warns a flu pig victim to freak out upon developing a rash. what am i supposed to do if i already have this rash? the doctor mentioned that if i became nauseous or started vomiting i should freak out and call for help, but the tamiflu box said the drug would cause nausea and vomiting in some. the pharmacist told me to eat a lot of food to keep this from happening. i've shoveled in a steady stream of pepperoni pizza just to be on the safe side. then there's dizziness. look, my natural state is dizziness. a cup of tea makes me dizzy. taking my meds without enough protein makes me dizzy. pms makes me dizzy. walking over a bridge makes me dizzy. how on earth am i to know whether any dizziness i might get is tamiflu related or just me? but my favorite special side effects are, basically, hallucination and mental disorientation. look. i take a medication to keep those things at bay. i'm hoping it will just sidle up to the tamiflu and mention that's why it's floating around in my body. "i don't want no trouble, man. you do your job, i'll do mine." says my all-the-time medication to the tamiflu. perhaps the mental disorientation has begun.

i am already hostile to the tv. i can't read because my eyes and brain aren't working together that well. knitting is out because of the fact that my hands feel like they have a very fancy form of arthritis. i will not go to school tomorrow. i will lie around on the couch another day, accompanied by dogs. and maybe a few penguins, if my hallucinations are good.

barnstorming

http://www.oldrhinebeck.org/

if you've never spent a day at a real aerodrome, not just a landing strip but all the word aerodrome drags along with it, there's a whole list of things your life is short on. things that could throw of the balance of things and send you sliding ever nearer an edge of a world composed mostly of sadness and missed opportunity. and i'm not saying it will be easy for you to find one. the word itself doesn't even fit itself into conversation anymore. not since the second of the large wars. but you'd be a fool to pass up a chance to go if you found one nearby. fortunately for those of us in the new york state area, there's rhinebeck.

saturday was opening day at the aerodrome and the sweetie and i drove the fortyish valley miles through green mountains. rhinebeck, if you've never been, is an old town. the folks there enjoy this and have kept a substantial section of this place curled up against the hudson as close to just as it used to be as they can. i think they do a fine job. the aerodrome itself is off one of those roads that seems major in a small town, even though there's nothing at all like a house nearby. it's out by where small towns keep their big stores. an intersection everyone can get to and nobody lives near. but turing from that intersection brings you to a gently winding road with nothing around but leafy green.

you could miss it in all the trees, but you turn and there it is. the parking lot is a dirt loop between some old barnlike things and the airfield, full of fat, loaded down harleys, a few pointy motorcycles that look like they belong in a circus and a variety of truck and truck like vehicles. you walk up the dirt loop to the top of the rise where three bedraggled "hangars" sit. each one holds a few planes and parts and motors. you get the sense of visiting the pound, seeing musty, eager pets someone else forgot about or didn't want. you'll find yourself wanting to touch them, the canvas wings, the smooth propellers. there are little notes scattered all around reminding you how it's not nice to touch the planes but you see the planes waiting for you, planes born before your grandparents, some of them, and you know if you could get all the other slackjawed tourists out of one of those sheds for just a second you'd reach over the rough twine that serves for velvet rope in this sort of place and you'd touch every one of the planes. you would.

at least that's how i felt. the sweetie got a little worried about the homes the planes were staying in. barnsheds full of holes, buildings with doors on some of the hinges. places with dirt floors. when you pay your money you walk into a small clearing with a couple of snack bars and a gift shop. get some fries. there is malt vinegar at the condiments table and this should make you happy. get a sno cone to turn your lips purple or green or red. there are burgers and nachos and something called steak. i don't know.

there is a raised stand, a grandstand, sort of. a man on the platform barks over loudspeakers that somehow sound old fashioned about finding a seat. the seats are planks on cinder blocks. they fill up close to the entrance, close to the snack bars. keep walking. go past the rides booth and plant yourself on a plank. the man will tell you in tin can words about the planes you will see. they are like giant insects, butterflies, dragonflies, fireflies. they look like they're made of matchsticks. old ones. with tissue paper. they are things you would hold carefully cupped in both hands.

the first plane up is giving rides. it's a vehicle made in 1929 and you realize that you want, at least a little bit, to ride it. you enter a raffle to do just that but are probably pretty relieved when a girl who is not you wins instead. the rides go on a bit. the other planes begin to line up. one of them flies up and, in an attempt to prove aero agility, the pilot tosses out a roll of toilet paper. it slithers out of the plane and dribbles down against a bright blue sky. the pilot turns the plane around and cuts the paper over and over, turning and returning. you are surprised how impressed you are with something like this. cutting toilet paper into strips.

the planes that follow ease out. you expect old men in pajamas to be flying them. most of them need help to turn while on the ground. two men go out and shove the planes around when they get to the edge of the grass. there is all this ricketiness, all this ramshackle, fallingdown oldness there but when the oldest plane flying in america grasshoppers across the green field you know you are seeing into the past. you know you are getting something most people walking around out there won't ever get. so you sit there with your lips sno cone red, shoveling popcorn in your mouth, watching men who are so much in love with these flying beasts they are willing to climb inside them over and over, men who are so much in love they want you to see the planes the way they do, as butterflies, as angels, as protectors of the free world and everything.

classwork

the last day of classes is a day when kids expect to run around wild and silly. when the last day is a monday, half the kids don't show up, but the few who do really, really expect to run around wild. and quite silly. i started letting the kids know the very first day of school that i'd be teaching right up to and including the last day. it's not out of any professional anything. it's not out of love of power. it's just that i can't take chaos. i can't take noise. and most of all, i can't take boredom. so i started talking about it the very first day and have stepped up the reminders the last week or so. if you show up monday, there will be an assignment. i'll expect you to do this assignment. the truth is i don't expect them to do much. i just feel like i have to have something for them to do.

so the last day came. monday. cool and rainy. miserable. and the kids showed up. some kids i hadn't seen in weeks. in months. kids i barely knew. funny how age and experience can make you absolutely sure that if you were a student, you'd stay home on a day like this. but they came in and sat down. there was an assignment written out on an overhead sheet, a letter i wanted them to write. take it seriously. it's important. and to my surprise they did. i knew they wouldn't have pens or paper so i had that ready. each child wrote. and not just a little. a page. two pages. the better part of an hour each class wrote a letter to the english teacher they'd meet next year. a letter saying the secret things teachers always wish they could find out before they start working with a kid. there's a new baby at home and i'm babysitting all the time. i take two trains and a bus from east new york to get here. i like stories but i'm not good at reading.

four classes came and went and with each new class i was surprised again. they'd come in howling about how i was evil for giving them work. true. always true. they'd say nobody else gave them anything. i'd say that should make it easy to do just this one thing. but none of them said, "this is stupid. i'm not doing it." the letters are resting in a folder on my desk. there will be schedules and revamping of schedules over the summer. sometime in the first week of the fall term i'll open the folder. i'll sort the letters and give them to the appropriate teachers. i don't know that these teachers will read the letters. i don't know that it will matter. but the kids thought it was a good idea. while other kids were running down hallways, screaming, throwing stink bombs, pouring water on each other, they wrote letters.

read

don't ever let anyone tell you roses aren't heavy. they certainly are. at least when it's before 6am and you're on the train, then bus and 48 long legged roses aren't the only things you're dragging along with you. and so the day begins, rain falling down in such fine mist it feels like cold sweat, the before 6am trains and buses running only every so often, me carrying things that didn't seem heavy when i left the house with them but now seem to be taking on weight with every step. and generally, during the real day, folks will smile at a person carrying 48 delicate peach long legged roses in the rain at the bus stop, but the before am folks will scowl at anything. they do not see pretty. they are rarely amused.

i guess maybe because i knew things they didn't know i just didn't care about their scowling. maybe the faint smell of roses redecorating the whole bus was enough to make me feel like i'd accomplished something for the day. i sat with my face close to the velvety petals and smiled the whole way to work. what i knew that all those miserable folks didn't was that my ninth graders would be reading their stories aloud to a real and live and public audience in a few hours, that i had tricked them into it, and was bringing roses, cheese made with lapsang souchon tea and handmade ginger ice cream to sweeten the deal.

we do it every year, the literary salon. i tell the kids they have to write these massive historical fiction pieces and they end up doing it, surprising lots of folks, but most often themselves. a few days ago a boy who has spent most of his ninth grade career telling me no was sitting at his computer, typing away. he would ask me from time to time for help. he needed encouragement more than help and i gave as much of that as i could scrounge up. he yelled for me across the room and said loudly, "i have three pages." "i know," i said, with as much nonchalance as my brain could muster considering my desire to do cartwheels after the kid got a sentence on the page. "why are you making such a big deal of it? it's what i expected you to do." now this really is true, but it's also true that a page would have been a big deal. at two pages, i'd had to walk away from his desk to hide the fact that my eyes had been misting up. i'd been practicing stoicism for his third page announcement. but just like i know these kids, they know me and he smiled and went back to his typing, knowing three pages was the biggest deal ever.

there were seven readers. one child invited her mother and although i'm pretty sure the mom felt a little uncomfortable being the only parent there, i hope she knows what a big deal it was for her to show up. when you have a fourteen year old daughter who invites you to see her read her own written work at school during the day, you've got something serious.

we get a microphone and amp for the thing. the kids i work with tend to be shy about things like reading their own work and their lunchroom-loud voices shrivel up when people are staring at them. it is never really about the stories, although often they are good, and sometimes even the readings of them are good. i like to see the kids in a different place, one where they've got literature and are powerful because of it. they read their own words like a drunk running down stairs but somehow folks catch a line here or there and eyebrows raise. smiles bloom.

they liked the sorbet- mango, lemon, coconut. more than one person asked where it came from. they liked the ice cream. ginger is not a flavor brooklyn teens seek out for ice cream. they slathered everything with nutella and after a few kids watched me toss raspberries into a champagne glass of perrier, watched the raspberries hiss and fizz, they began to float fruit across drinks. they liked the smoky gentleness of cheese made with lapsang souchon tea leaves.

when the guests left they cleaned up, then sat around variously working on the last bits of their stories, snacking on the remaining fruit and cheese or trying to outdo each other with the most delicious photos of muscle cars the internet could dredge up. i found myself in that latter group, trying to impress with my promise to spend the following day at the rhinebeck aerodrome with all sorts of ancient planes. there was drooling. a child flashed a screen full of truck, twelve cylinders. not a particularly attractive truck to my eyes, but i could almost smell twelve cylinders. the child promised me that if i'd get my license before he bought the truck, he'd let me drive it. i suspect he's been talking to the sweetie.

there was a bell and they went home. i locked up and headed downstairs. several grown folks said charming and generous things about the event. a woman whose russian accent trips me up from time to time was trying to tell me something. she likes what i do with the kids and likes this particular event every year. i strained to hear but it didn't help that she was across a noisy room and is generally rather quiet. another woman, nearer the first and considerably louder, said, "she says your class is like a family."

enchanted

the newer supernatural nephew has been in town and i have to say that although he's trying to be subtle about his supernaturality, folks seem to notice. i mean, i know evildoers are always on the lookout for a supernatural in its vulnerable larval stage, but things got a little bit out of hand.

on saturday, we took the child and his family to the round barn farm market near the house. we got plenty of cheese and stopped by to watch an accordion and fiddle duo. in fact, the supernatural was dancing to the music when an arch enemy of unknown origin spotted him from afar and stomped straight toward the child, entourage in tow. now, his entourage may or may not have included his mother (she was vague about this) and a sister of nearly the same age, twoish (although the adult insisted rather oddly at one point the two children she was shepherding were strangers only minutes ago). now, you may have read a milder version of this story written by the supernatural's mother. she's trying to downplay the dangers in the world. if that's what you read, you may want to sit down and even possibly bolt on that hat you're wearing, because you've been sheltered. protected. your eyes won't just be opened. you're gonna feel like your eyelids were taken off in a tornado. but i digress...

so the supernatural is grooving to the mellow sounds of an accordion and fiddle when this nemesis, this archvillain, this spawn of unspeakable heinousness stormed up, scowl planted firmly on a face you wouldn't think would have room for it. he stopped, cowboy at high noon, and took the most grownup swing i've ever seen. the supernatural stood there like he was in church, just stood right at the end of that archvillain's hand, millimeters away, unflinching. because, as you know, he can control things. matter. time. can stretch them a bit with powers still new, the paint still drying on them. and he stretched things just a bit, the space between them, let the archvillain's swing slide past him and hang there in the air, fist still clenched, motionless. until the motherwoman said in an otherworldly voice, "now, that's not the way to play with a baby." a baby? how about that's not the way to play. period. with anyone. ever.

and as she was saying those useless few words the nemeis child kicked up a shower of gravel at the supernatural. still, he just smiled, one ear keeping the music of that accordion and that fiddle all swirling around in him, the other listening to the skittering of gravel on the ground. he could tell by the sound. enchanted gravel. he knew. and any good supernatural knows enchanted gravel can't be used against a true child of good. especially not by an archvillain. and he just smiled at that devilish child, pitying him, quite likely. this completely enraged the miserable child who reached down to grab a handful of the gravel. he tossed it with all his might, flanked by his mysterious adult and child companions who seemed completely unaware of the inappropriateness of his behavior. but he didn't know, as many spawn of unspeakable heinousness don't. the enchanted gravel flew from his hand and dropped harmlessly on the ground between the supernatural and his new enemy. and the angry child's fists clenched. but the supernatural and his companions simply turned and walked away.

now, you shouldn't worry that the dear supernatural nephew's life is all thwarting evildoers. certainly life will hold plenty of that for him, but he is young enough that a great deal of his training appears to be recreation to him.

after a long day of keeping the world relatively safe from the likes of the gravel boy of the catskills, the newer supernatural nephew enjoys lounging in the spa with his faithful sidekick guthrie. they soak their aching muscles and play a relaxing game or two of fishball.

although the child thinks he's just playing with a vintage coney island roller coaster wind up toy, he's actually learning how to prevent the next taking of pelham 123. he's controlling the cars with his hands for now, but after a few sessions, he'll be able to maneuver full size subway cars just by thinking about them. aren't you glad he's one of the good guys?

this looks like an innocent male bonding type hike through the beautiful springtime catskills. what's really happening here is that the supernatural, accompanied by his brave assistants, is searching for enchanted chipmunks. perhaps you know but then maybe you don't that any supernatural hoping to be accepted into any of the leagues of good is required to do a great deal of community service work to show dedication to a cause and willingness to humble oneself for the greater good. our own supernatural has been learning a great deal about enchanting, both good and bad, and has recently mastered the skill of freeing small mammals enchanted by wickedness. this may seem pretty easy to you. find an enchanted chipmunk. work whatever magic. free said chipmunk. well, it's not that easy. it just isn't. i'm not really at liberty to say more.