Radios and Summer Days

We are slowly filtering our way out of school and text books and our educational season groups and commitments...its kind of down to baseball and outdoor play, church and the Farmer's Market suddenly. I love this time of year. How can you not? The air smells like jasmine and honeysuckle, every afternoon is sunny and every evening falls gently with grills firing up all around the neighborhood. The little boy from two doors down has begun popping by for driveway games of scooter chase and basketball and Ru has learned to run the lawnmower himself and is keeping the air humming with the rattle of the engine and the bright scent of fresh cut grass.

 I am starting to hunt around again for something for Dee to be part of on his own. He enjoyed a Rainbow Loom group over the winter and now that Ru's baseball team is blasting their way through the Tournament of Champions, its clearly time for him to have a little more of his own time to shine. I have considered a chess group which he enjoys, golf or tennis which he's said he'd be interested in and I know that in Connecticut he really loved a marine ecology course for kids with lots of hands on sampling and equipment use. Sure would be fun to leverage the ocean again since we're near another one now and summer feels like the time to be at the shore. Tricky stuff trying to give each kid their turn in the sun without being indulgent or pushy!

 I sure have enjoyed being Team Mom for Ru's baseball team this season. Its been less work than I feared a lot more rewarding than I hoped which is a pretty fabulous equation. I continue to really be impressed with the camaraderie, the generosity of the coaches and the quality of the families involved. Baseball might be in our life for a while.

 Nib has asked me to give him cooking lessons over the summer. He told me very earnestly that he'd like to learn to cook and that he's concerned that the only thing he knows how to cook now is microwaved hot chocolate. I tried to reassure him that at 6 he's doing fine with that "recipe" as his starting point but he wouldn't be placated. He asked if he could please have instruction in cooking: (his list)

1. Asparagus
2. Cakes
3. Lemonade
4. S'mores

I think its going to be a delicious summer. I plan to actualize on all of the above. Look out camping....we will have private lessons on s'more cookery before we hit the campsite we registered for in August!

I am journaling in the morning and in the evening right now with the newly discovered The Five Minute Journal which, one week in has made a big boosting lift in my energy and productivity as well as mood. What a great resource! I think I found it through Tim Ferriss. I am having a huge Tim Ferriss fan-girl stage. I read a couple of his books awhile ago and enjoyed them but have recently discovered his podcast which is a great way to start my day in the kitchen alone after breakfast when A is working on math lessons with the big kids and the little kids are playing. As much as I love podcasts (also check out Magic Lessons by Elisabeth Gilbert if looking for great listening material), I also really, really want a radio in the house and in the car. Sometimes you just wanna turn on some background tunes! We have been trying to have a streaming audio system in the house but it isn't the same and also isn't reliable about coming in steadily and our car's audio system had to be ripped out recently because it was installed wrong or was faulty or something and it was draining our battery. No more audio books for my while driving about to appointments. Now there is just a rectangular, empty socket on the dash staring at me as I navigate through kid appointments and traffic and try to deep breath without distraction when kids are having meltdowns. Ah, self-reliance....you are lovely....but so is a radio! I miss it. Must wire my life back up again.

The Scent of Grandmothers

We are in high floral season here at our house and when I wander out to catch a whiff of what are now the tail end of the lilacs....I think of my Grandma Joyce. She is the only grandparent left that I can visit with in the flesh. One very special grandma who stocked lilac scented spray in her bathroom all through my childhood.

There's something very exciting and alluring about your grandma's bathroom when you're a little girl...all those jeweled lipstick cases, the fluffy towels and various hydrating lotions and curlers that were such mysteries from exotic lands. I always lingered and lingered  there in that land of forbidden treasures where I was alone behind a closed door. I admit to sometimes requiring parental retrieval in the bathrooms at all of my grandma's houses.

Somehow, through their bathrooms, each of them imprinted themselves on my mind in the form of a scent. Whenever I smell lilacs I think of Grandma Joyce and smile, remembering the pretty painted design on the side of the oh-so-exotic room spray she faithfully stocked in her upstairs bathroom. I'm thinking of her often these days since the smell of lilacs is always on the wind and really looking forward to putting Baby into her wise arms for the first time this summer when we visit.

My artistic Grandma Sally is the oiled scent pressed out of geranium leaves. I climbed up on her bathroom counter and sat cross-legged, fondling tiny, little guest soaps, printed with geranium blossoms that she brought back home from her amazing visits to The Grand Hotel on Mackinaw Island and kept against another day. In her sun room, a few steps below the kitchen, live geraniums were in near perpetual bloom, creeping along the windowsills in numerous colors and varieties no matter the time of year. I think about her every time my watering can brushes the leaves on my geranium as I make my rounds in my own sun room now, giving out plant drinks.

Great-grandma Grace lived in a farmhouse, out in front of the family vineyard where I was married. I was a very small girl when I first absorbed the hot pink smell of old rose in the little half-bath off her farm wife's kitchen. I am remember washing my hands an extra time or two just so that I would be sure to smell that dusty scent on my hands after I had dried them on her pretty little terrycloth towels. She was a little woman with translucent white waves in her hair, incredibly soft palms and a soft smile, always there, standing quietly in her kitchen....living forever in my memory in a misty cloud of eau de old rose. All June I'll think of her whenever the scent drifts down the sidewalk from a neighbor's garden.