family

terroir

(random photo, but going with the wine theme, August 2007)

“In wine it is called terroir: the peculiarities of the soil, the water, the very angle of the sun, the land that makes a wine distinctly itself.” (Meg Giles)

Terroir: originally a French term in wine, coffee and tea used to denote the special characteristics that geography bestowed upon particular varieties. At its core is the assumption that the land from which the grapes are grown imparts a unique quality… (wikipedia)

Terroir.

The soil in which we grow, which contributes mightily to who we become. Been thinking about that today. It seems to me that the terroir of our childhood is the most critical, though I believe that people we meet and experiences we have in adulthood continue to have major impact on who we are and who we grow into as well. Of course as we grow older we have more control over who we let become our terroir, more ability to shape the components of the soil out of which we grow.

My childhood was a rich terroir, full of transatlantic airplane trips, whole summer days spent playing outside with our neighbors on Fairfield Street, the four families, piles of books so omnipresent that you tripped over them, Daddy DC, a very early Macintosh computer, walking alone from school down Brattle Street to the CCAE, the ship room in Mattapoisett, the shag carpet and mirrored bureau in New Hampshire.

There were knee socks, two braids, baguettes, and my father running behind me on a pebbled driveway in the French countryside watching me bike away, for the first time on two wheels. Nana’s cosmos in a heavy-bottomed vase on Fleetwing, Gaga’s Miss Piggy books, Ba’s boiling water before cutting the asparagus, and Pops’ basement workshop full of intoxicating smells of fresh cut wood and the allure of projects. Hilary was on the ground when the stroller broke in the Arc de Triomphe traffic, I was in the emergency room on Cape Cod with a broken arm in a leotard, Dad was smiling at 40 with his new windsurfer, Mum was masterfully cooking delicious things in the kitchen with no recipe and letting us and our friends paint on the walls of the back hallway (still, the coolest mother in the world).

The weather, both internal and external, also contributes to our terroir. The humidity of Mattapoisett summers, the snapping cold of the Waterville chairlift, London’s gray rain, the dry air and dusty velvet curtains in our first Paris apartment. The internal weather is harder to map, shifting as it does daily, but it has for sure been stormy.

Just thinking about this today, about the people, places, and experiences that shape who we are. I believe there are a handful of people who have had significant impact on me, who have contributed enormously to the particular flavor of the wine I am becoming. You know who you are.

Bad host mother

I am a host family to two families at the school my kids go to. Two families joining my son in the pre-K class tomorrow. I have met neither family. Oops. I failed to connect with either one in person at the barbeque in May. I did not call. I did email them both…?

Anyway, one of the mothers called me today. Shockingly I picked up the phone (me and the phone? not so much. my classic move is to receive a voicemail and respond by email. don’t take it personally. it’s me and my I-ness). She had a question. I did not have an answer, but I did convey with great enthusiasm and not a little pride that wow, I had the same question!

Oddly she did not seem super reassured by the fact that I shared her question. She forged on with another question. Another one that I did not have an answer to. And then, with my classic verbal diarrhea problem (perhaps I shy away from the phone because I know I am just plain bad at the phone?) I proceeded to regale her with a story about on my son’s first day at nursery school, when he was 2, I had simply not noticed that I was supposed to pick him up after an hour. So, wow (insert giggle) I got that call at 10:15 that said hey your 2 year old is sitting here waiting for you.

She, again, did not seem very delighted with this tale. Poor woman. She sure hit the Host Family Jackpot with me.

Thoughts on a summer

Sunset, Wareham, August 31 2009 (iPhone picture)

Summer coming to an end. This morning, as I ran, I basically leapfrogged with a yellow school bus picking kids up (it would stop, I would run past, it would pass me, repeat). That is a pretty good sign my summer vacation is now taking place in the fall.

Reflections on the summer of 2009

Fastest summer in history, despite the fact that the early Memorial Day/late Labor Day one-two punch must have made this actually an extra long summer. More rain than I can ever remember in June.

In the past few weeks, with the slanting evening light, I’ve confronted my own shadow a bunch and have decided that I have Frankensteinishly square shoulders. It occurs to me I must be walking east a lot at the end of the day. Towards Mecca, enlightenment, both, or neither, I don’t know.

There are a couple of professional decisions slowly gaining purchase in my mind. I’m wondering where the line is between being patient while you allow your thoughts on something to settle (living the questions) and being a chicken and using that as an excuse.

Whit is, I think, officially swimming. Though his swimming is definitely in the graceless, dramatic-impersonation-of-drowning style, he seems to stay alive.

I endured my first real injury and had to take almost two months off of running. I am cautiously optimistic that I’ve rehabbed it now, though I need to keep being careful. As a condition of this rehab, my body required that my pride accept that for a while I will be running 8+ minute miles vs. 7:30+ minute miles. And my pride accepted that! (perhaps the greater accomplishment for me).

Grace is tentatively reading for real. Still not sure how much she enjoys it, but she’s delighted to have an excuse to sit in bed with me in the afternoons and read while I read (something deep and educational like US Weekly, usually – me, not her. She is read the Magic Treehouse series.). Of course this means I am a human dictionary, but I am still finding this quasi-charming.

My insomnia is in high gear and I am tired. One fall resolution is to lay off the elephant tranq doses of sleeping “aids” and to try to tough it out. Maybe I’ll get more reading done.

Whit skinned the equivalent of an entire body’s worth of skin. So basically he molted.

I quit biting my nails and then started again.

Feels like a lot of peopled died this summer: Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, Ted Kennedy, DJ AM (one of these things is not like the others?). Watched the Kennedy service at the Basin Harbor Club with with tears streaming down my face.

Grace lost a top tooth and the remaining one has migrated to the center of her mouth. It’s a weird look, and definitely a Big Girl one. I’m guessing orthodonture is in her future.

Summer’s End

A perfect way to bid farewell to August.

Hamburgers and hotdogs
White wine and rose
A sunset walk to the beach with ice cream cones
Swimming (and skinny dipping) at sunset
Old, dear friends
An outdoor shower, PJs, and a movie
Learning to play dominos
And new baby news!

Thank you, Hawkins!

Family

I read my friend Jessica Shattuck’s novel, Perfect Life, recently, and loved it. The marvelous book is about many things, but that which has stayed with me most is the exploration of how we create families. Of the various ways we give birth to and raise and love children, of the careful selection of who we want to live with and near, of who we coalesce with in the effort to feel stability, shared responsibility, love for the next generation.

The book made me think a lot about the ways that close friends have informed my own sense of family. Hilary and I grew up in the embrace of the “four families,” an extended network of eight adults and eight children who were as close to siblings as I can imagine. It’s not an exaggeration to say that Ethan and Tyler and Matt and Annie and Nella and Maja are almost as integral to my childhood memories as Hilary is. My parents co-owned homes with two of the other couples, and we all very much grew up together. The other six parents seemed like close, doting aunts or uncles, and did not hesitate to chime in when it came to discipline or other “parental” duties. I trusted all of those other six adults completely, and knew without any doubt that they cared about me almost as if I was theirs. When, at age 12, I woke up from general anesthesia after having my broken arm re-set (read: re-broken and re-set, including traction) the people in the recovery room waiting for me to come to were Susie and Eric, not my own parents. This was the kind of intimacy and communal responsibility that we shared with the four families.

It was lovely, growing up in this diffuse but loving web, with various adults paying partial attention. This was enough that nobody fell through, but not so much that any of us felt stifled. There was room for stuff like when Ethan and I put Matt into the dryer in the basement of my old house in Cambridge, or for when Hilary and Nella and Ann walked around Mattapoisett in white sheets wrapped around them as togas. There was plenty of time for plain old play, lots of running around in various back yards and falling asleep in front of movies while our parents lingered over dinner, with wine-fueled laughter filling the air.

This group parenting is something I’ve come to love dearly about my relationship with Christina and Elizabeth’s families. It is an extraordinary privilege and pleasure to know that they are there, in every sense of the word. I know that they are both caring for my children too, that as I watch Emma make her way up the stairs out of the corner of my eye, so will Christina notice when Grace is about to slam someone’s fingers in a door and Elizabeth will catch Whit before he takes off out of the driveway down the street on the ride-on Caterpillar tractor. Matt once April Fooled Christina by calling her to say that I was out of town, he was stuck downtown, and Grace was in the ER at Mount Auburn. She was in the car with her coat on before he could get out the fact that this was a joke.

We shared our pregnancies, and since then we’ve been able to experience every stage of this eventful and surprising journey together. We are very different from each other in many ways, and profoundly similar in others. We know each others’ mothers and we know each others’ children. We are each mother to both daughters and sons. We are now bound together forever by the bounds of godmotherhood. Whatever time we spend together, with or without the kids, with or without the husbands, is always full of uproarious laughter and usually some peeing in the parking lot. There is always good music and cocktails and great jewelry and occasional tears and deep mother love. We’ve been to weddings and christenings together, and I am sure there are funerals on the horizon. We have shared clothes, sleepless night, baby nurses, bottles of wine, despair, and triumph. Between us there are two minivans and three schools and five boys and three girls and a million memories and one shared story unfolding down the middle.

Jessica’s book made me think about family, broadly defined. Christina and Elizabeth, you are family to me (not to discount my Family of Origin, of course, you are primary!). You are the people I call first thing in the morning and you are the second mothers my children already love and trust completely. I hope I am that for C, J, W, B, E, and WA. Your children are my children’s dearest friends, and to watch their very real friendships develop is an absolute joy. I love the family we have made together and I look forward with great anticipation the years ahead. Thank you.

“Gratitude is one of the least articulate of the emotions, especially when it is deep.” – Felix Frankfurter