I've lived in Northern California for more than a decade, and it still does not cease to amaze me that summer here is tan rather than green; crackly rather than lush; sunny and blue, but warm more often than it is hot.
 |
| this Sunday's hike: Arastradero Preserve & lake |
I know I've said it many times before, but it also doesn't cease to amaze me that this is the landscape--and these the smells and sights--which some days my children will remember as the background to their childhood.
My Black Sea will mean nothing to them, and neither will the extravagant gardens in my grandparents' villages, from which carloads of freshly ripened fruits and vegetables made their way weekly to our diminutive concrete apartment in the city.
Instead, if at least part of their memory yields to the influences which we work hard to weave effortlessly into their lives, summer for them will evoke long weekend walks along parched open hills or under damp verdant redwoods in protected spaces which belong to everyone and no one.
Hours spent throwing stones in ponds where children's urge to wade in the water and to begin splashing is curbed by the stronger imperative to protect wildlife and to revere nature from a distance.
It's all good, really, and while I miss the deceptive simplicity of my own childhood, insulated behind the proverbial curtain of Communism, I also believe that there is infinite potential for beauty and joy in what our children experience and learn to remember daily.
Climbing trees for a ride on the "steam engine" driven by brother.
Viewing the world from a perch that is not made of metal or plastic.
Marveling at a roly-poly for a quarter of an hour.
Getting a ride in that most special of back carriers.
As I prepare to go back to teaching part-time, these slivers will likely become shorter but no less sweet. I am acutely aware of a new routine hovering over our lives as the new school year approaches, and have been trying to savor every minute with the kids.
*****
Starting to get the hang of these zoomed-in, close-up on our kids' transient emotions. It happens so fast sometimes that when I look back at the photos, I struggle to recall what they may have been feeling or saying. Their faces have such amazingly candid expressive potential that it makes me want to freeze them in time and never let them grow wiser, smarter, and more cynical.
When he came to find us after the mandatory thirty minutes of daily rest this afternoon, Sava hopped on our bed, and exclaimed excitedly, when we told him that he was going to the pool, Mommy, tati, I think over-rested by about half a minute today! Let's go to the pool!
He is done with summer Pre-K camp, and while the first day at home with him and Raya felt a bit endless, we are adjusting to the new routine. He has infinite patience with his sister, which often helps modulate my own attitude towards both of them.
Rado reports that when she found herself naked after a swim in the pool today, Raya pointed to her nipple with surprise, and peeped (in Bulgarian): Ha! Yaya has a button! (Yaya ima kopche!) Now when we ask her where her buttons are, she points to them proudly.
During bath tonight, she picked up one of her rubber ducks, and queried with an inflection that precisely echoed mine when we pick Sava from school at lunch, Hi, duck! How was your day at school, duck?
She face-planted while riding her scooter this week, scraping her chin all along the surface of the hemangioma, and biting the inside of her lip in a most brutal way. Sported a massively swollen lip for two days, and spoke with a slight lips that did not keep her from talking endlessly.
The girl never stops talking, basically. Other parents at playgrounds remark on how "verbal" she is all the time, and I constantly waver between delighting in her volubility and feeling slightly embarrassed about her unselfconscious narcissism.
If not the center of everyone's attention, she will interrupt any conversation, insert herself into every space, and demand focus in ways that walk the very thin line between obnoxious and adorable. It takes a lot of mental energy to keep her presence from overwhelming everybody else.
*****
She is still fascinated with Phoebe's baby brother, and often pretends to "sleep like a baby" in one of the plastic storage bins which she converts into a crib; it is utterly hilarious.
This mama takes special delight in a girl who, so far at least, loves playing with trains and legos.
*****
Some day I will turn on the camera and capture on video the precise moment when Rado walks in the door after a day of work; I suppose the reaction is the same in every home where a parent is gone for most of the day, and the scene is not unlike that of two puppies greeting their master.
Then follow prolonged games on the floor and reading sessions, which mommy is only too happy to be watching from a safe distance.
*****
Sava loves playing the big brother not only to Raya, but to all of Raya's friends.
It is so dear, every time.
I have to remind myself frequently that he is only five, excited about his "five-and-a-half birthday" already.
*****
We took out the stomp rockets this week,
and Raya figured out how to do them on her own.
******
More than five years later, Sava finally loves the swings without any trace of fear, and his happy laughter when I push him "hard, mommy!" is contagious.
And of course, whatever he loves, she does, too, so it is happiness all around
Happy new week, everyone.
No comments:
Post a Comment