Family Vacations.

My day started at 6:15 am, with my son climbing on my head. “I just felt like climbing on you,” he said. The sun was streaming into the window, and the birds were singing loudly. I was so tired.

It was day six of our family vacation, and I keep thinking that the idea of a nuclear family being this perfect unit is ridiculous. We're at an old family house near the beach, just the four of us, and I would give my right arm for more friends or family members, my sisters, my mother and father, a nanny--if only so that someone else could be climbed on or answer questions like, "How old are you?" "Can I see your mouth?" just for a few minutes.
“You two have to learn to amuse yourselves,” I said yesterday. It was one o'clock and we’d already gone for a small hike, out to breakfast, to the pond, and had lunch.
“We don’t know how,” said Liam.
“Why don’t you pretend you’re monster chasers,” I said. “When we were little and stayed here in the summer that’s what we did.”(Although we might have been a little older than three and five.)
“How did you do that?” said Liam.
“We’d pretend the phone was ringing and then we’d pretend someone was calling to say they had vampires in their basements and then we’d go get them out.”
“I’m calling Boppy,” said Dawson.
“Okay,” said Tommy, and dialed the number.
“hello?” Dawson said. “Do you have vampires in your basement?”
Finally Tommy called a friend of his and we invited ourselves over to her house for the afternoon. I had met Tommy’s friend Jen years ago when I had just had Dawson, but never her children who were very sweet. Her niece Evelyn, who was five years old like Liam, was also there, and Liam immediately asked her where she was born. “In Ohio,” she said. “Ohio!” said Liam. "That's where I was born."
“Yes you were," I said. "And you didn’t want to come out."
“I got stuck in my Mom’s vagina,” Liam said earnestly to Evelyn.
“Oh,” said Evelyn, knowingly.
I turned to Jen. “That’s not exactly where he got stuck.”
“I didn’t think so,” she said kindly.
“In fact, nothing’s ever gotten stuck in there,” I went on. “Just for the record.”
“Understood,” she said.
Meanwhile, my parents are arriving soon, thank God.

And by the way

Maren got poison ivy. Liam did not.

Even Punk Rockers Love their Mothers

Yesterday my friend Cara came over and we were sitting in the kitchen talking about the revisions she's making on her novel when Liam and Dawson came in and said, "When is Eli coming over to show us how to make spaceships?"
Cara's son Eli had given them an old Lego set of his about six weeks ago. I think the set has something to do with Star Wars, but it's very complicated, with lots of small pieces and things that look like they could be parts of spaceships or monsters but no pictures.
"I'm calling him right now," Cara said.
So she called Eli, who is seventeen and in a punk rock band and was hanging out at the pizza shop with his friends.
"Hi," she said. "it's me. Listen, you need to come to Rebecca's house right now to show these boys how to put together the Legos...You promised them a month ago...I don't care...You need to, you made a promise...Then bring Jason if you want to...No, now. Now...Because you promised" Long pause.
"One....Two.."
She hung up the phone. "He's on his way," she said.
"I can't believe counting still works at 17," I said.
"That sh*t works forever," she said.

Two minutes later Eli walked into the door all long legs and hipster belt and and Doc Martens and put his knapsack heavily on the table. "All right," he said. "I'm here."
"YAY!" said Liam and Dawson. "HOORAY! Eli's here! Eli's here!"
Then they ran upstairs and started to get out all of their toys to they could show him everything.
"I'm only here to show you the Legos," Eli said.
"You're mad," said Cara.
"I'm irate," said Eli.
"Do you know what vampires eat?" said Dawson.
"Okay little boys," said Eli. "Pay attention. The thing about Legos is that the fun is figuring them out on your own. So really, having someone come over and tell you how to do it kind of defeats the purpose." Then he gave his mother a withering look that said "Especially if that someone was down at the pizza shop with his friends before his mother called and made him come talk to some toddlers.
" Eli," said Cara."These are pretty complicated Legos."
"I was only three or four when I got these and I figured them out myself," Eli said. "And I had a LEARNING DISABILITY."
"So you're saying my children are morons," I said happily.
Eli gave me the same scathing look he had just given his mother.
("That means he likes you," Cara said later."He considers you family.")

For some reason the whole scene reminded me of an interview I recently listened to on NPR with Terri Gross and Iggy Pop, which was hilarious, especially when he's talking about how he hates wearing clothes and taking showers and then discusses the fearlessness of his 12 pound Maltese dog. There's one point where Terri and Mr. Pop are talking about near death experiences and Iggy says that once when he O.D.'d he was so close to death that he heard celestial music (which he describes as insipid) and then he heard his mother calling to him and he came back to the living. "That's interesting that it was her voice that brought you back," says Terri. "Not your friends' or bandmates'." At which point Iggy Pop seems about to fall off his chair. "Band mates??!!" he sputters. "Listen, rock bands are pretty vicious aggregates of associates. There a certain amount of friendships, but..don't try this at home kids. It's not as good as it looks." Then he collects himself a little. "No," he adds. "(My mother) was who cared for me. In this world."
You can tell by the tenderness in his voice (and by the fact that earlier in the interview he'd referred to his mother as a beautiful person) how much his mother matters to him. It's a really good moment.

So even punk rockers love their mothers and here is the result of Cara, caring for hers (punk rocker, that is, not her mother.) And I'm keeping this picture so that when Eli is a world famous rock star who won't wear a shirt, I can say, "Hey! See this? That guy came over and insulted your intelligence when you were three and five."

Honestly. My children don't know how lucky they are.

Summer

It is mid-June and summer is here in full force. Everything is lush and green and the peonies and poppies are in bloom in my mother's garden. I remember one summer telling my grandmother's friend Barbara, who was in her seventies and had a wonderful garden and many cats, that I was trying to work and she said, "Oh, that's ridiculous. Who can work in the summer?" (Barbara also once said, "Oh those weathermen, they never know what's going on. Poor things.") So after turning in the first two thirds of my novel to my agent on Monday, I've spent the week enjoying the season. Yesterday we went strawberry picking at Sweet Land Farm where we have a share and the berries were huge and hot from the sun and so delicious.
"I can't believe the bounty around here," I said later to Domenica. We were at their house for dinner and I had just taken the kids out for a walk to the pond behind their house. On the way back I said to Liam, "Don't go into that thicket, honey. It's full of poison ivy."
"I don't get poison ivy," he said.
"That's because I always tell you to get away from it," I said.
"No," he said. "I just don't get it."
"Your Daddy said that, too, once," I said. "He said he didn't need to wear a shirt while making a path to the pond at the Cape house and later he came home COVERED with it."
"That was a very unfortunate summer," said Tommy.
Liam ignored me and walked through the thicket of grass and poison ivy.
"I don't think there's any poison ivy in there," Justin said.
"Really?" I said. To tell the truth, I'm never exactly sure what is poison ivy and what isn't. There seems to be a plant around here that likes to impersonate it, and how do you know because the trouble doesn't start until three or four days after exposure? Who wants to take a chance? So whenever I see a viney plant with three pointy leaves I say, "That's poison ivy! Don't touch it!"
"Well," I said to Justin, "better safe than sorry."
Which was when Liam sat down at the picnic table and said, "I rubbed poison ivy all over my body and I don't even itch!!"
"You what?!!" I said.
"Maren told me which plant was the poison ivy and I rubbed it all over me. And it doesn't even sting!"
Domenica burst out laughing. "There's one for your blog," she said.

So far, however, Liam has not broken out in a rash, so either Maren showed him the wrong plant or it wasn't poison ivy. Or it's going to hit in a few days. We'll find out soon.
In any case, yay summer! (Or as Dawson would say, "YAY STRAWBERRIES!"--and as I suppose Liam would say, "YAY POISON IVY!", which loosely translated meant "I am right and Mommy's wrong!")

Okay, I know I'm on break but..

One of today's headlines on aol.com: Planet Could Hit Earth (!)*

*exclamation point is mine.

It turns out that there's about a one percent chance that this could happen!
Well. Good. Now I can worry less about the economy.

Main St. Diaries is on a short break.

Dear Readers,

Main St. Diaries is taking a short vacation to recharge creative juices and focus on the novel.

Will resume blogging again mid-June.

In the mean time, I highly recommend the Brazilian soap opera I've been watching for entertainment. It's an HBO series called Alice (you can get it on HBO on demand) and I am COMPLETELY hooked. The other day I sat down to breakfast with my husband and said, "Well, everyone is mad at Alice. Her grandmother came to visit from Palmas and Alice was too busy doing cocaine and trying to drum up business for the nightclub she started to spend time with her family."
"Oh no," said my husband.
"But do you know what grandmothers do in Brazil?" I went on. "They don't just sit at home waiting for their granddaughters to show up. No sir. They go out to a bar, have a beer, and play pool until two in the morning." (Or at least one grandmother does. On TV.)
I want to move to Brazil. It seems like everything is much more dramatic and fun. And then the nice thing about Alice is that in spite of the cocaine, family drama, and the heroine's struggles, it always manages to end on an uplifting note, like a lesbian wedding with a Chinese/Indian theme and tons of silver confetti. I can't wait until the next season.


Will be back in a few weeks. I'll probably repost some old entries here and there while I'm off for those of you who are newcomers.

Cheers!