Things I love
There are a few of you who will understand what a bizarrely rich blessing landed on our heads when these two spent five days visiting over the weekend. I stole this picture off of facebook because sometimes when Very Important Events happen I get stupid and have a camera blank. I forget that cameras exist, in this case, because I was too busy getting fully in my dear friend Joy's face.
Joy has been a friend of ours for a very long time. Here's a list of important events in our lives that she was a huge part of.
*chaperoning tree climbing with my Superstar husband, waaaayyyy back in the day, before he was my Superstar husband.
*my very first trek in the torrential rain in Thailand.
*my very first bamboo raft ride in the torrential rain in Thailand.
*our wedding.
*she was there to hold Kid A when he was hours old.
*our very lecture from the police on Humboldt State University Campus for dumpster diving.
And it goes on and on.
Now she brings David into our lives, and I thanked her again for having the good sense to have her wedding when we happened to be back in the US for a few months two years ago. David in turn thanked us for flying all the way out to California from India to photograph their wedding. Well, however you choose to see it, I LOVE them. I mean, LOVE them. It was amazing to have them here. They're living in Bali, right now, which was close enough for them to hop, skip, and jump on over.
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Instead of the word "girl," Solo says "gray-ul." This will end one day, just vanish into the tiny sea of lost baby sayings. He always calls things like spinach, kale, and lettuce, "flowers." As in, "I want some rice but with no flowers in it."
In the future, he may think it uncool to stride down the street with too-small Superman jammies on, a closed pink polka-dotted umbrella jauntily flung over one shoulder, just in case of rain. Now, I'm almost certain that he feels extremely cool, walking like that. Masterful, even.
Leafy has left the era of his life of having only one front tooth. He lost the other one a few days ago. I was out for tea at the time, and no one remembered to tell me. I discovered it, myself, later that night, when there was a suspicious extra lisp loitering in his sentences. The ffff that he uses instead of thhhh was even fluffier than normal. One day those hubcap sized teeth will grow in. One day he'll say all of his "thank you's" and "three's" properly, instead of "fank you's" and "free's." My favorite is when he spells things with 'f's.' I found a google search page on the iPad the other day that was searching for "clone trooper wif pizza." I was surprised to see that there are indeed a few cases of clone troopers ordering pizza. I'm sure Leafy took it all in stride.
YaYa often says to me, "You're right of course, Mama. You're always right."
Though that opinion of hers will never change. I'm sure of it. Sure like I'm sure of a popsicle stick bridge.
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I often think of things I love when I'm out in the market, wrestling over which vegetables to buy and how many bags I can carry. I love pears, I think. I love this one lady who always tries to teach me a new word of Thai. I love learning and knitting and miso in a cup. I love the way that Kid A has looked the same since he was a baby, except that he's so much taller and bigger now, his shoulders squaring out, his feet the size of small boats.
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I love the lady at the noodle soup place. The kids and I walked there today, Solo in his superman jammies which he tells everyone means he's a SuperHERO, not SuperMAN. We ate soup and one of the girls who works there (this is a major problem for me- I don't know what to call people of the female gender. I like being called a girl, but is it disrespectful? I would not like to be called a woman or a lady. Like, that woman with all the kids. You can call me that girl with all the kids, or that girl who writes. And this girl at the noodle soup place is younger than me. But I still just don't know. I'll call her Nong, younger sister in Thai) pulled up a chair to sit with us while we ate, she asked the kids all about themselves, when their birthdays are, how old they'll be. We have a couple coming up- a soon to be four-year-old Solo, a soon to be ten-year-old Kid A. She invited herself to Solo's birthday. She told him she'll bring a cake with ten boiled eggs on the top, because every time we go there, he asks for a boiled egg, and then for another one when he's finished.
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I love it when Leafy tries to overcome his shyness and he does so by bulging his eyes out and making really weird faces while covering his mouth and saying his name at the same time. It's so beautifully quirky and almost worrisome, when he's doing it. I can imagine what is going on in people's minds. "Is that child choking? Why is he jerking his face around like that?" Leafy's imitation of what he thinks a normal friendly face should be is so different from what it really is, which you can see when he's relaxed, around the house, and no one is asking him his name.
But oh, how I love that he tries.
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I love writing fiction. I love finishing 1000 words in the morning, before anyone gets up.
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Do you ever have tasks that you somehow sabotage without meaning to? I have these things that utterly block me, that bring a whole wall of resistance with them. My garden has failed because I need better soil. So on my list of things to do is to buy a few more bags of soil as well as a whole bunch of ki wa or ki chang (cow dung or elephant dung) to dump on my garden space, in heaps and heaps. And I can't get it done. Everytime I think of taking the chariot out and going down to the garden stall, I find a reason not to.
I'm sure I'm afraid of failing.
Ki wa was one of the first words I learned in Thai. Because I LOVE gardening (and cow dung!) Now that I've confessed this little block, I'm sure I'll be able to take off in the chariot, first thing in the morning, and bring lots of dirt and poop home with me to get those plants to grow grow grow!