Callie's Blog

I always think I’m going to get a ton of work done on the weekends and I never do. I think about doing work. I even plan to do work. I’ll tell Jesse, “I need to work.” I’ll pack my bag full with notebooks and pens and books to read and mark up. I’ll leave the house and go to the spots I go to during the week so as to promote that “Callie put your butt in the chair and write” feeling. But the most I ever produce is little scribbles on the backs of receipts or my hand, or the church bulletin or the inside cover of one of the girls’ coloring books.

Things just feel different on the weekends, don’t you think? I think they might not be for work.

Weekends are for Peter Pan birthday parties.  They’re for sitting around the Lost Boys’ campfire and wondering if they’ll show up. They’re for playing Throw-The-Hula-Hoop- Around-The-Crocodile’s-Neck, and they’re for walking the plank.

Do you see the ukulele on the table (sort of next to my beer)?  While the kids were running around at the party, Jesse and I sat with the other parents and chatted, and one of the dads picked up the ukulele and began to tune it.  He played that song Judd Nelson’s character plays in the Breakfast Club. You know the one I’m talking about? Is it a Led Zeppelin song? Anyway, he played and we chuckled while the kids ran around Neverland.

Weekends are for finding new pizza places. Weekends are for having so much fun that you stick around for ice-cream and games underneath penguins listening to headphones, or, “radio penguins” as Harper called them.

Weekends are for staying up past your bed time and singing songs on the way home from the new pizza place.  They’re for giggling over the fact that your daughters know all the words to Taylor Swift’s songs, and they’re for, “Mama can you take us to a Taylor Swift concert sometime?”

“Ummm, maybe.  We’ll see.”

“What concerts have you been to, Mama?”

“U2, Dave Matthews Band, Salt-n-Pepa…”

“Who was the Puffin guy? The one you asked for his autograph?”

“You mean Hootie and the Blowfish?”

“Yes, will you tell that story about the time you saw him in the hallway of your school and asked him for his autograph except you thought his name was Hootie and it was really Darius and he said, ‘My name’s Darius!’ Will you tell that story again?”

Maybe weekends are for retelling stories while the new ones are happening.

Happy Weekend to you.

Here’s a picture of Hadley and Harper about five minutes before they went to school Monday morning. About fifteen minutes before this picture was taken they were having a contest to see who could throw her underpants and hit the ceiling first. I clean the breakfast dishes up during the contest. Yes, it is a daily thing – the underpants contest – not so much the cleaning of the breakfast dishes.  That doesn’t always happen. But if you walk into our home around eight in the morning you are very likely to get smacked in the face with Cinderella underpants.  You are also very likely to hear me say, “Get dressed,” in increasing volume increments, ending with, “Why does it have to get to the point where I’m screaming? Why do I have to be mean mommy?  Get your underpants off the floor!”

But then they get dressed, and they brush their teeth, and they use the bathroom, and how long have they been able to do that without any help from me?  When did that happen?

Early Monday evening the three of us went to the gym and as we were driving, Hadley asked, “Mama, what happened to your back?”  She was referring to the somewhat large scar on my right shoulder.

“I had a birthmark removed when I was six.”

“Did you have stitches? Did you have a band-aid? Did you cry?”

“Yes, I had stitches, and a band-aid, and no, I didn’t cry during the surgery because I was asleep. I might have cried when I was awake but I don’t remember.”

“I hope that never happens to me,” Harper said.

“It wasn’t so bad. I got to eat a lot of popsicles.”

“How many popsicles?” They asked this in unison.

“A lot.”

“I feel so bad that this happened to you, Mama,” Hadley said.

“Thanks, Hadley.  It really wasn’t so bad.  Plus, I made up a story about my scar.  When people ask now I tell them I used to be a surfer and got bit by a shark.”

“Do they believe you?”

“Usually.  I’m can be a pretty good story teller.”

We drove for a few more minutes and were just about to turn into the parking lot, but we couldn’t because two cars had collided and were blocking the intersection.  The accident was pretty bad. One car was flipped and another looked like an accordion.  I have no idea how it happened; they both had to be driving fast.

I made a u-turn to try and avoid it but the girls saw it and wanted to know what happened. I told them I wasn’t sure but that there was an accident. “Let’s say a prayer,” I suggested.

“OK,” they said and the car was silent for about half a minute until Hadley said, “Done.”  A few seconds later Harper said, “Done.”

“I finished first, and I prayed for everyone in the car accident,” Hadley explained.

“I finished second. I prayed for everyone in the car accident and I prayed for God.”

“You prayed for God?” Hadley asked.

“Yes, I did.”

“You don’t need to pray for God.”

“Well, I did. I prayed for God.”

We pulled into a parking spot in front of the gym and I said, “Thanks for praying, you guys.  That was a nice thing to do. And God likes to hear your thoughts.”

“But not just when we’re in trouble, right?” Harper asked.

“That’s right. He likes to hear from you when you’re happy, sad, scared, excited….”

“God’s love does not separate,” Hadley said.  ”Like chocolate and vanilla swirled ice-cream. You can’t pull those flavors apart once you swirl ‘em.”

No, you really can’t.  Pastors of the world? There’s your next sermon.  Extra points if you can work in the underpants contest.

Last week Hadley went on a field trip to the zoo with her class.  For weeks, they had been researching an animal of their choosing; reading books, going to the computer lab, drawing pictures, all rather impressive things for Kindergartners to do, I’d say. Last week, they roamed the zoo to see the real, live thing. Hadley searched for the cheetah.

On the way to school, Hadley said, “I feel bad for the cheetah.”

“Why is that?” I asked, thinking she was going to tell me that it is an endangered animal, or that maybe its habitat is threatened because we use too much hairspray or drink too much coffee.

“I feel bad for researching it.”

“You feel bad researching the cheetah?”

“Yes. I feel like I’m taking something away from it.”

Here’s a picture of me and Celena on her wedding day.  We are in Vieques, Puerto Rico. I learned that evening from her father that Celena’s name means, “Gift from God.”  I didn’t know that literally, but I think from the day she introduced herself during a lunch recess at Percy Julian Junior High, I felt it.

Here’s a picture of me in the best coffee shop I’ve ever been in.  I’m sick I can’t go back and do all my reading and writing there.  On each of the tables is a bucket with pencils and loose leaf notebook paper to write and sketch on.  When you leave, you can drop your words and pictures into a bucket called “Offerings.” I would’ve left mine but I wanted to keep the ideas I wrote down: that one wall of this coffee shop is painted so it looks exactly like a piece of notebook paper, a red margin line, three holes, and blue lines for writing. That there was a wine bottle, emptied and decoupaged with poetry and flowers placed inside.  That another wall has large chalkboard squares on it, and “The Original Story of a Girl” titled above them.  Patrons can sketch part of the story and write a caption for it.  I sketched the chalkboard idea and wrote, “What about, ‘The Stories of Two Original Girls’ instead?” I wondered if I could duplicate this for Hadley and Harper’s room; my two original girls.  Oh, Starbucks, why can’t you be more like this coffee shop? The world would be a much better place, I think.

Here’s a picture of drawings of ships that Jesse and I found when we explored a fort in Old San Juan that was occupied from the 1600s until after World War II.  The room with these sketches was a dungeon where a captain was captured and waiting to be executed. The room was sweltering and small and there was one window as narrow as the width of my arm and so deep that I don’t think you could toss a small rock and get it to the world outside. And even if you could, it would plummet to the ocean below. Way below.

The sketches were protected by glass, otherwise that is all that was in the room. I wondered how the sailor got a pencil. Maybe he used a stone? Or a piece of charcoal? I wondered if the ships were messages to his crew, what to be aware of, or maybe where secret supplies were stored. Then I wondered if maybe drawing the ships comforted him in some way. That the movement of his hand on the rocky wall calmed him for what he knew was coming. That creating something helped him steady himself.  I wondered what I would draw or write about if I were in his situation.

When we got home from our little vacation, all this pink was gone, and Harper was so sad. “It’s just green leaves now,” she said. I told her the pink doesn’t last too long, but they’ll be back next year. “And I took a picture of it,” I told her.

“It’s not the same,” she said.

No, it’s not.  It’s not the same as being in the picture. It’s not the same as living it. And when you look at it again, I suppose a little bit of that moment is taken away.

Maybe Hadley’s right.

I don’t know, though. There seems to be a lot to learn about the cheetah. Maybe this summer the girls and I will take a trip to the zoo and stand in front of it and wonder about it. Maybe Hadley will tell us what she knows about the cheetah, and maybe Harper will have a question that Hadley can’t answer so we’ll stop by the library on the way home to check out books on the cheetah.  Maybe we’ll have to read the books at the frozen yogurt shop across the street. Hadley will read from the book and Harper will draw cheetahs on napkins using pens from my purse because I always have pens in my purse.

Except that time in the coffee shop in Old San Juan.  That time, though, they were waiting for me as I sat down with my espresso. Gifts at the perfect time I needed them.

Bye-bye, blue.

It’s been real but there’s a new color in town.

Can we also talk about what’s going on in these pictures?

Come and knock on our door!

Harper’s new past time is getting dressed.  She picks outfits out all by herself, then lays them on the floor of her bedroom to “see how they look.”

She does it for Hadley, too.

Hadley’s a good sport and puts on anything Harper lays out for her.  Besides, Hadley’s more interested in organizing her paperbacks.

I believe the ones on their spines have been read. The others are “to be read.”

Hadley also likes to read what I’m reading.

I highly recommend Booked, by the way.  It is a must read, and after you read it you are going to want to write just like Ms Swallow Prior.  And when I write “you” I mean me.

Speaking of what we want to be when we grow up, here’s a gem of a conversation between the girls and me.  Hadley expressed interest in becoming a teacher.  I told her being a teacher is a great job.

“Does it cost a lot of money?”

“To be a teacher?”

“Yes. How much do you have to pay to be a teacher?”

“No, no,” I said to Hadley, “you get PAID to be a teacher.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, really!”

“So, jobs pay you?” Hadley spoke as though she might have won the lotto. “Hairdressers get paid?  And those people who stand on the side of the road dressed like smoothies and hot dogs?  They get paid, too?”

“Yes, they all get paid.” 

“Great,” Hadley said with relief.

“Mom?” Harper asked.

“Yes?”

“When I grow up can I get paid to be a princess?”

So we have the hot dog guy, a teacher, and being a princess as possible careers so far. That’s cool. I wanted to be a Luv-a-Bull when I grew up. And Scarlet O’Hara. Or somebody who shops for a living.  No, no. Not a personal shopper. Just somebody who gets paid to shop for herself. This is why I always failed those career surveys in high school. Those kinds of things are not on career lists.

I made a new friend.  She asked me about writing one day and I started running at the mouth. Have you read this book? Do you know about this technique? What are you working on? Oh, sorry. I forgot I heard once you should never ask another writer what they’re working on but here’s what I’m working on….But do you love it? I mean, do you love writing?  It’s hard but it’s great to sit in that uncertainty even though it’s scary, isn’t it? What’s that? You own a yoga studio? We should team teach a writing and yoga class.  Haha! I’ll do the writing part you do the yoga part. Wouldn’t that be great?  You think so, too?  Really?

So that’s what we’re doing.  Will you join us?

Click on the link below and share it with others if you want.  Or just tell them about this here blog.  Because, it’s not such a bad place to spend a few minutes, is it?

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