Did you have a good weekend?
Did it feel to you like today was the first day of spring?
I'm wrapping up the day with a sack of Polish chocolate candies and a shot glass full of Zubrowka, Bison Grass Vodka, both gifts from Megan, who returned home yesterday from her semester abroad. The chocolate is quite good and comes with coconut, berry, caramel, and vanilla fillings, all wrapped in gaudy red, yellow, and foil-lined wrappers so that if you walked by my writing station right now I look a bit like those women at Skinner's Pub with the spent pull-tabs in mini-hills all around their drinking glasses. The "wodka" is 40 proof and has a long blade of grass lined diagonally inside the bottle. Megan and her class of American students were studying the divided states of Europe and how Scandinavia, in particular, is handling human rights and its role in the world. Since much of the first wave of labor workers came into Norway from Poland, they spent two weeks in Krakow and Warsaw studying human rights. After spending as much as $20.00 for a six-pack of good beer in Oslo, she and her comrades were quite thrilled to find draughts at the Polish pubs for as little as a dollar and vodka to bring home that wouldn't break the bank. It's quite good and a perfect nightcap to a full weekend in May.
Did you get outside? Was your weekend as sunny and breezy and green as we had here in St. Paul? We are all sunburned and our lips got chapped, too, so we've smeared them with dabs of Vaseline from the jar. The neighbors were out in full force: garage sale-going, dog walking, neglected garden tending. We had company both days and had lots of cooking and talking and the drinking of the wine and wodka on the porch. It was my side of the family and with Megan's return to the U.S. and my not-often-seen brother also making a surprise appearance, I had my hands full.
But I also had a chance to sit outside in the company of some good friends and wear my favorite white T-shirt with no jacket. Bare arms. Felt so good. No wonder the First Lady is always eager to bare hers (never mind she's got those enviable guns). I see that I've washed my white T-shirt so much I have what looks like a little moth hole in the middle of my belly. I got out the sandals, too. My mom said if I painted my toenails to match I would look quite nice at work. It's funny what moms choose to notice and comment about. At first I resented the comment on my appearance but then I remembered that just a few hours earlier I had looked at my daughter's rough feet and thought she could use a pedicure. Is the big difference that I chose not to say anything? Do we accept our mother's close inspection or does it just drum up uncomfortable feelings? For women, is there anything we can do about this, this complicated relationship? My mother spots my daughter's feet and offers to help her soak and loofah them. Is their generational difference wide enough for my daughter to accept the comment as love--and nothing else? What is it I can do to emulate that?
The little kids at the ball game wore their old shorts and sucked lollipops while hanging upside down at the monkey bars. No one warned them about choking. We were glad to drink cokes and show our bare arms and necks to the sun, no sunscreen. Out on the field, the fifteen year olds are getting better at turning double-plays and working the strike zone. One slight kid hit a near-homer to left center and all the players on the bench yelled out "STEROIDS!" The kid was scrawnier than Pawlenty so it was a funny cheer.
I hope you had a good weekend. Maybe you'll cut some lilacs to put in a jar for your desk. Maybe you'll put on your favorite tee under your button-down or paint your toenails to show under last year's sandals, for spring's posterity. If we didn't have our weekends, how would we ever know what spring feels like?
Did it feel to you like today was the first day of spring?
I'm wrapping up the day with a sack of Polish chocolate candies and a shot glass full of Zubrowka, Bison Grass Vodka, both gifts from Megan, who returned home yesterday from her semester abroad. The chocolate is quite good and comes with coconut, berry, caramel, and vanilla fillings, all wrapped in gaudy red, yellow, and foil-lined wrappers so that if you walked by my writing station right now I look a bit like those women at Skinner's Pub with the spent pull-tabs in mini-hills all around their drinking glasses. The "wodka" is 40 proof and has a long blade of grass lined diagonally inside the bottle. Megan and her class of American students were studying the divided states of Europe and how Scandinavia, in particular, is handling human rights and its role in the world. Since much of the first wave of labor workers came into Norway from Poland, they spent two weeks in Krakow and Warsaw studying human rights. After spending as much as $20.00 for a six-pack of good beer in Oslo, she and her comrades were quite thrilled to find draughts at the Polish pubs for as little as a dollar and vodka to bring home that wouldn't break the bank. It's quite good and a perfect nightcap to a full weekend in May.
Did you get outside? Was your weekend as sunny and breezy and green as we had here in St. Paul? We are all sunburned and our lips got chapped, too, so we've smeared them with dabs of Vaseline from the jar. The neighbors were out in full force: garage sale-going, dog walking, neglected garden tending. We had company both days and had lots of cooking and talking and the drinking of the wine and wodka on the porch. It was my side of the family and with Megan's return to the U.S. and my not-often-seen brother also making a surprise appearance, I had my hands full.
But I also had a chance to sit outside in the company of some good friends and wear my favorite white T-shirt with no jacket. Bare arms. Felt so good. No wonder the First Lady is always eager to bare hers (never mind she's got those enviable guns). I see that I've washed my white T-shirt so much I have what looks like a little moth hole in the middle of my belly. I got out the sandals, too. My mom said if I painted my toenails to match I would look quite nice at work. It's funny what moms choose to notice and comment about. At first I resented the comment on my appearance but then I remembered that just a few hours earlier I had looked at my daughter's rough feet and thought she could use a pedicure. Is the big difference that I chose not to say anything? Do we accept our mother's close inspection or does it just drum up uncomfortable feelings? For women, is there anything we can do about this, this complicated relationship? My mother spots my daughter's feet and offers to help her soak and loofah them. Is their generational difference wide enough for my daughter to accept the comment as love--and nothing else? What is it I can do to emulate that?
The little kids at the ball game wore their old shorts and sucked lollipops while hanging upside down at the monkey bars. No one warned them about choking. We were glad to drink cokes and show our bare arms and necks to the sun, no sunscreen. Out on the field, the fifteen year olds are getting better at turning double-plays and working the strike zone. One slight kid hit a near-homer to left center and all the players on the bench yelled out "STEROIDS!" The kid was scrawnier than Pawlenty so it was a funny cheer.
I hope you had a good weekend. Maybe you'll cut some lilacs to put in a jar for your desk. Maybe you'll put on your favorite tee under your button-down or paint your toenails to show under last year's sandals, for spring's posterity. If we didn't have our weekends, how would we ever know what spring feels like?
4 comments:
My mom and I have the *same* rough heels and raggedy feet, so we commiserate (a form of love, I guess) and occasionally paint our nails. My daughter's feet look so much like her dad's (thank goodness) that I don't have the need to critique, just make double-pedicure appointments as a treat.
But you're SO right that the feminine attentiveness cultivated in we women does cause us/me to pause . . . . :-(
You're so much better than me, I think, at this intergenerational thing.
p.s. Enjoy Zoe's homecoming.
Than I, I suppose.
As I should have said "us women" I suppose . . . the errors of editors sting especially, huh?
Post a Comment