77/365 Join the Club

The bar, you know, you put across your steering wheel in your car to make it less likely that some joy riding teenager will steal your car and crash it six blocks away.

I've never managed to be bothered enough to get one. I should, I know. I should run out today and get one and put it on my car. And unlike, say, bars on my windows and armed security guards to escort my children to school, a club does not have a negative effect on my quality of life. It doesn't block the view or make me feel like a prisoner in my own home. It might make my car feel less unguarded and naked sitting out there on the street all night.

Maybe in the spring when crime picks up again. Maybe.

76/365 My steps

I had to run out to the car a few nights ago to retrieve something I'd left out there. Probably a bag from Target. I was barefoot and carefully made my way down my steps--my grandmother called them Mississippi concrete, but I'm not sure where that term comes from. They are rough underfoot, set with gravel and cement. The top step of the stoop is caving out from the underside, due to root migration and erosion over 100 years. I know we'll have to patch it come next spring, with some ill-matching cement patch Jake finds at the hardware store. And the patch will catch my eye and irritate me for years until I start to forget the jagged edge and see the patch as just another part of the steps.

A few weeds try to grow in the crack between the second and third steps, but this is a place where I sit to watch kids run up and down the sidewalk, and then pulling weeds is an idle hobby, not a chore. They never last long.

These are my steps. This is the bridge between my private life and my public face. This is where I greet the delivery man and the guy asking for money for the bus. I stand here in my bare feet, almost always in my bare feet, and feel the clammy concrete feel my presence.

75/365 Garden in its sagging beauty

It is September. The cucumbers are pulled up and the tomatoes are flaunting their fruitlessness. The butterfly bush is ragged looking. The phlox is too. Bulbs are done for the year and the trees are getting just a kiss of color. But this little potted plant I stuck in the ground to hide the downspout pipe is still giving all its summer glory as I walk past it on my way to and from my house.

74/365 Fleur de lis

St. Louis is coated in this symbol, the fleur de lis. It's been popular throughout our architectural history, and therefore, my own history as well. My grandparents' door knocker was a fleur de lis. The university I graduated from has a fleur de lis as its symbol. It is on our houses: this is across the street from me. It hides in my house, in every room with a wall air vent, the cover to the vent has one imprinted on it. It is literally everywhere. And it's so odd to visit other cities and it is completely absent--and yet here, it's just subtly present. Nothing overt.

73/365 Swingset

I have a hand-me-down swingset in the backyard, donated by a friend whose kids are too big. It has a tower with a slide and space for three swings. Basic by todays' standards but compared to the metal ones I knew as a kid, it's awesome to be able to switch in and out the swings and the rings and the baby seat and all that in different combinations.

It isn't going to last forever and we've started talking about its replacement, which will probably involve a treehouse in the maple tree (or built around it), incorporating parts of the current set but stabilized and larger, since our kids are larger and there's more of them.

Thursday evening, I was washing dishes after dinner and looked up because I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. Squirrels like my yard so I wasn't immediately alarmed. That happened once I focused and realized that Kenna and Adam were on the swingset.

The Friedman family used to live across the street from me, but Bruce let me know that they had moved into the apartment building they own, located behind me and down the alley a bit. Adam has some neurological problems and the big honkin houses we live in were too much acreage for him. He needed some place smaller, on one floor, where they could see him and keep a hold of him more easily. I have not walked a mile in their moccasins, so I don't have much to say about that, but I will say that looking out and seeing these two kids in my yard was not what I needed.

It wouldn't have been any big thing if they'd been, say, swinging on the swing set. I would have stepped outside and said, "Does your dad know you're here?" and advised them that perhaps, considering the time, they should head home. But no.

Kenna was walking on the top of it. Like, 7 feet in the air, balancing on rungs designed for hand-over-hand monkey bar stuff. And Adam was hanging upside down by his knees, no hands. It's not like this swingset is over a padded urethane surface or even over a thick layer of gravel or sand. It's about a half inch of tired mulch over dirt. Not the place to pull this kind of stuff.

I blow out my back door before I know what I'm going to say. And I say something equivalent to "Get the hell out of my yard." I didn't use those words, and I wasn't that succinct, but somewhere in paragraph one I let them know that they hadn't been invited and they weren't to be on the swingset without permission.

Kenna is the younger one, and obviously the follower. She was contrite and embarrassed. Adam was too, but it was different. He is different. He was apologizing and she was ducking away and they realized they didn't know how to leave.

"Well, how'd you get in?"

"Uh, I guess we jumped the fence," he admits.

He's seven.

I sigh and open the back gate, which is covered with Boston ivy, admittedly, and camouflaged with the rest of the fence. I open the back gate, and there's Bruce on his bike.

"Your kids were in my yard?"

"Huh?"

Adam and Kenna run out next to me.

"I've been looking for them--I didn't know where they were."

"They were in my yard. They jumped the fence."

Adam is still saying sorry as he runs over to his dad. I don't stay to find out what is said. I walk back into the yard and think about this space.

Not only is there a rundown swingset (that the neighbor kids that come over regularly know how to use right), but there's a big old galvanized pool. It's drained right now, and on its way to the alley next week for bulk trash pick up (we're going with a more easily dismantled plastic next summer), but what if it were filled and they'd jumped the fence? What if one of them had accidentally drowned in my backyard? Falling and breaking an arm is one thing. Drowning makes me sick to even think about. I mean, I've seen these two kids try to jump out a second story window onto pillows they'd put on the ground to soften their landing. And if they can jump the fence, the 6 foot fence, what can I do?

72/365 On the way home

On the way home from the festival and the ice cream, Bree and Fiona were making plans to get together with the other two girls on the block. And Bree started talking, like she does sometimes:

"You know, I like Iris because we both like to read and we like horses. And I like playing Polly Pockets with Eliza and she lives right next door. But you and me, we have the most things in common. I don't have to find something specific."

And Fiona, as she is a girl of few words in comparison, simply replied: "Yeah! Me too!"

71/365 Dance and Ice Cream

Fiona danced in the park today. And that was fine and good--but afterward Zelda and Travis asked if Bree might join us as we walked around the festival. That was no big deal, I traded a dress for an extra child.

We found a bit of lunch and some water for Fiona, and then walked around the vendors. Fiona had mentioned getting a hair wrap, you know, like you get on the beach in Mexico, with embroidery floss and beads. Hippie stuff. She'd had it done about 4 years ago and had asked every summer since. So we found the same old woman at the Peruvian stand and waited. Bree debated: did she want to spend her own money on this or not? She waited with Sophia for 15 minutes before deciding it wasn't worth it. So she played with Billy in the grass behind the booths while I paced and waited and acted patient.

It was an act. I wasn't impatient because of the two girls in front of Fiona--you wait your turn, 'nuff said. But after the second girl was done, her sister's beads fell out and the woman had to redo the bottom of hers. Also not a big deal, except that she spent at least 10 minutes fussing with her husband, straightening crap in front of her booth, wandering, drinking something that looked like beer, and shuffling around. Billy was a trooper, and so was Bree. Fiona's turn finally came and she got her hair done and it was great. Super. She was happy and looked like a ragamuffin and I paid the lady and we left.

Fiona and Bree shopped a bit more--even at $1.50 an inch, it hadn't broke Fiona's bank since her hair is so short. We were all hot and tired, though, and I suggested we go over to the ice cream place on the corner. Fiona was all over that suggestion but Bree looked hesitant.

"My treat, for waiting so patiently for Fiona."

Her face relaxed. I think she'd spent the rest of her allowance on tiny crocheted dolls from Nicaragua and stuff like that (just like Fiona had, and Iris and Eliza when we ran into them earlier...).

Chocolate for Bree, mint for Fiona, and Billy and I split a Texas pecan. Ah. We sat in the air conditioning and had a nice moment before we walked the three blocks home (which was no big thing after walking all over creation earlier). And Bree? She must have thanked me a dozen times for the ice cream. And frankly, I'll take her for ice cream anytime. I don't know if kids just don't get that, that if you're gracious and grateful and polite, adults really like you. And if you're a snot who think you're entitled to things, adults tire of that quickly.