This year, with the advent of the MLK holiday, Zoe has been coming home with her lessons about Martin Luther King, Jr :

“Martin Luther King, Jr. was a great man!”

“He won the Nobel Peace Prize.”

“He once said, ‘I have a dream!”

They’re sweet and simplified lessons and are a nice introduction to the holiday, the man, and the history of our country.

Or, are they?

“Those peach skinned people were craaazy back then! Why in the world would someone make the brown skinned kids go to a different school?!” she said one day last week on the way home from school.

“Mom, did you know that police men once told their dogs to attack some brown skinned people? Why in the world would they do that?!” was her comment the next day.

And then, “Rosa Parks was a woman who stood up by sitting down. Why did the peach skinned people want her to go to the back of the bus?”

There are no simple answers to these questions. And the answers certainly aren’t sweet.

Thing is, there’s nothing about this country’s history of racial relations that’s simple or sweet. And while I realize that I cannot raise children in this society without at some time broaching the topic, I fear that simplifying it into oblivion at an early age isn’t the right answer, either. How do you talk to a six year old about race?

I’ve always taken a very open approach to talking to my kids about sex. As they’ve asked, I’ve provided information — clear, concise, and, yes, simplified — as best as I was able. It’s made for some interesting conversation and more than once taxed my ability to find just the right words to allow them to understand the answers to their questions.

The difference, though, between sex and race is that one is decidedly natural and normal and the other — in terms of our history — is decidedly unnatural and abnormal. Describing just how a baby gets in mommy’s tummy — and out — requires far less moralizing than describing why some children were barred from their fundamental right to an education. And while one can leave out some particular details about sex and still maintain an accurate description of the course of events, leaving out some details about the history of our race relations seems only to minimize something that simply cannot be minimized.

So, how do you talk to a six year old about race?  I don’t have an answer to that question any more than I have an answer to why the peach-skinned people wanted to send Rosa Parks to the back of the bus.

My client had stumbled upon this artist, whose work is available here and here. She’d picked up the cow and chicken oil paintings on the artist’s ebay shop, and then had been the lucky winner of the “email-me-a-photo-of-your-pet-and-maybe-I’ll-paint-it-” lottery that this artist runs off of the same ebay shop. The painting of her dog was nothing short of perfect, capturing Willie’s personality to a T. In short, it made me smile.

I immediately thought of this artist when I went searching for someone to paint Cal’s portrait. I’ve seen plenty of pet portraits that attempt to capture a realistic image of the animal. Usually, while they might achieve a fair facsimile of the animal, they fall woefully short on capturing the pet. Not so, this artist. Not so at all:

I realize that “naming rights” to an artist’s work belong solidly to the artist. However, I hope she understands just how much regard I hold for her work when I say that I will be tacking on a subtitle to whatever it is she chooses to name this portrait. The subtitle? “The moment before yet another cookie disappears from the counter.” A perfect capture of Cal, indeed.

He’ll hang in the kitchen, right alongside the wicker chickens.

“Zoe Eleanor!” I called, sweetly, into the other room.

“Yes?” Zoe replied.

“Come here, please.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Mimi wants to talk to you.”

As she plodded into my room, I heard an audible sigh of relief from Zoe.

“Mom, please don’t call me by my full name.”

“Oh, okay,” I replied, with only a bit of confusion in my voice.

But all was made completely clear with what followed:  “It makes me think I’m in trouble!”

Well…she has a point.

That lasted about two weeks. After enduring two weeks of listening to Zoe whine throughout Evan’s entire class — what the hell were they thinking when they (gasp!) made the waiting room into an actual observation area?!? — I gave up on the concept of “individual” activities and enrolled Zoe as well. The unexpected benefit — at the cost of an additional $50 a month — was an hour a week in (relative) peace and quiet during their shared class time. Enduring the whining of each child for only 15 minutes as one waited for the other to finish their class seemed to be far superior to a full hour of whining.  The concept of my children’s activities having as much benefit for myself as for them began to have great appeal.

To that end, I thought I’d managed to improve upon the situation this fall, as I enrolled them in classes with exactly overlapping times. No more “But he gets to go in early!” or “But she’s still in there!” I would have one full hour of quiet time, with nary a single complaint to spoil the silence.

Alas, as the school year arrived, I realized I’d hardly improved upon the situation at all.  Sure, they got to go to gymnastics, and had some great instructors and social interaction to boot.  But, for me (and that’s all that really matters, right?), discovering that the pre-school gymnastics-going set is a far smaller group than school age gymnasts was a difficult discovery, indeed. Instead of a few moms milling about mid-morning in the waiting room of a near-empty gymnasium, my hour of quiet time was transformed into an hour of enduring crowds of parents oohing and ahhing over the flips and flops of their child — their one child among, oh, seventy-five or eighty filling the gymnasium in the evenings. And then there were the siblings. And the other siblings. And coaches. And. And. And. Quiet, it was not.

After one semester of this nonsense, I was struck with yet another brilliant idea. Why not enroll Evan in a mid-day pre-school class and keep Zoe in her evening class? One of us could surely keep Evan at home in the evenings (ostensibly, for quality one-on-one time with a parent), and I would get quality quiet time during his mid-day pre-school class.  Not a bad idea, indeed.

So it was with renewed visions of peace, quiet and tranquility that I arrived at the gym yesterday with my knitting in hand.  I was gleefully anticipating the entire hour Evan was to be in his lesson whilst I waited, nearly alone, in the quiet, sparsely occupied observation area.  Oh, the joy!

And then I walked in the door to the gym.  I saw not one, not two, but three girlfriends of mine who, apparently, have their children enrolled in the same mid-day class.  If ever I’ve wondered how much my life has changed since I became a mother, I learned, exactly, as I tossed my knitting aside in resignation, sat down next to them, forced a smile and resigned myself to an hour of god-damned friendly conversation and socializing.  Ha-rumph.

I’m enjoying knitting my lace wrap so much, I’ve become a bit obsessed with patterns in knitting.  I can  hardly wait until my shipment of sock yarn arrives — with it, I’m set to knit lacy socks until my sock drawer is entirely revitalized.  And this time, I’m going to try out the two circulars method for knitting them.  This way, the thing I’ve HATED about sock knitting here-to-fore — that is, the fact that when you’re done with one sock, you’re only half-way done with the project — will be solved.  Whew.  The excitement!  You can hardly contain yourself, I’m sure.

(Like I said….mining nuggets worth writing about from my day-to-day living is a finely honed skill.  Let’s just say the knife, she’s not so sharp these days.)

S’more Nachos

Graham Crackers
Chocolate Chips
Mini Marshmallows

Layer graham crackers on foil-lined cookie sheet. Sprinkle chocolate chips and mini marshmallows on top.  Place under broiler in oven until marshmallows begin to brown.  (Believe it or not, you can get that same crusty-on-the-outside-gooey-on-the-inside effect with your oven broiler as you can with a campfire!!)

I haven’t had my plate of collards and black-eyed peas today, but I have made steps toward having a green new year. Early this morning we set up our composter, which was a gift to Tim for the holidays, and then we set up our rain barrel — also a gift to Tim. (And just yesterday, I used our new shopping bags as I purchased our New Year’s fare.) My garden will be all the richer!

Happy New Year!

I’ve been neglecting the wicker chickens lately.  Lately, as in…well…almost all of last year.  So my simple resolution — my December 31st resolution — is to give myself the time most days to sit down and write.  Nothing deep.  Nothing skilled.  Just.  Writing.   So, here I am.

The last few weeks have been rough on me.  Cal’s passing was sudden and very unexpected, and not a day has gone by that I haven’t ached for his goofy, pain-in-the-ass, loving self.  We went up to the lake house last weekend and tossed his ashes into the lake.  If ever there is a heaven for Cal, that lake is it.

I needed something to soothe my sadness, so I picked up my knitting needles and cast on.  I had had some yarn in my stash that I’d intended for a sweater, but I stumbled upon a lace pattern that I simply couldn’t resist.

I’ve always thought of wraps as grandmotherly-like things and have shied away from them.  But for some reason, this lace, this yarn…well, it speaks to me.  A wrap it is to be.  I can hardly wait to toss it on over a brown t-shirt and jeans.

They say knitting’s therapy.  There’s no doubt in my mind of that.  I have a chair in my home, that, though the fabric is loud, is the quietest place to be found in my house.  Away from the kids’ rooms, the play room, and even the kitchen, it’s tucked into a corner with  natural light and just enough warmth under its bamboo blanket to keep things cozy.  I’ve spent hours there lately.  And in that chair, tucked under that blanket, and knitting that wrap, I’ve worked out a little bit of my grief.

One word.  A thousand.  No matter how many, they’re never enough and too many at the same time.  Page after page, word after word – they lie crumpled on the floor, lifeless.  Ashes sprinkled into the wind.

How do you say goodbye?  Tallying the time, chronicling your life with us, synthesizing the memories of all your sounds, describing the space you hold in our lives – all those efforts fall woefully short. Still, I’m left with a hole in my heart.

So, I’ll let these one hundred words fail as magnificently as any other number.

Farewell, my dear, sweet Cal.

Now, hmm.  Where was I?  Yes, that’s right, the week’s weather: hot, hot, and, um, let me see, more hot.  And even though today we’re being blessed with some much-needed rain, the hours in between the storms are — you got it! — hot!  And sticky!

But here in the Hansen house, particularly the kitchen, we will not let a little (or a lot) of hot weather get us down.  We shall singlehandedly bring on Fall with this week’s menu:

Chicken Chili

Corn and Poblano Soup

Macaroni and Cheese

Pot Roast

and, for dessert: Apple Pie

So, for those of you who are, like me, still searching for Fall, stop by my house for dinner.  Because there’s nothing like a hot bowl of spicy chili when it’s 80 degrees out.

Soup’s on!