Big Red Barn

We're back in Minneapolis. We got back from the "Big Red Barn" (as the boys call my parents house in upstate New York) a day later than planned thanks to a canceled flight, but otherwise, we had a nice trip and time with family. We had to get up at 3:30 in the morning to make the rescheduled flight. I got sick with a stomach bug the day after we got back, and then got a chest cold, so I'm writing this in the midst of a to do list a mile long, but really all is well, just kind of chaotic and busy. I don't have pictures to post, but Emil*y and Scot*'s baby girl was born last Wednesday. Baby Aug*st and her parents are doing well. I haven't met her yet because I've been sick, but I can't wait, and if they give their permission I'll post some pictures after that. I can't wait to see what the next family gathering will be like, with four little ones around.

Our boys, though, are not so little anymore. The first thing that comes out of everyone's mouth when they see them is something like, "Wow! They're so big!". They've really had a growth spurt this summer, fitting comfortably into 4T clothing and size 9.5 and 10 shoes. Oliv*r is leaner than before, and he's getting the long limbs of a preschooler. No*ah is on the skinny side, kind of like a lanky 10 month old puppy, all limbs and big hands and feet. Every night we read stories and I still have one boy on each knee when we read, but they take up my whole lap and then some.

We're almost done with Oliv*r's room. Ste*ve put a door on it for us when we were gone. I'm a little sad about separating them, but right now we put Ol*lie to sleep in our room and move him before we go to bed, and wow, they go to sleep so much better. They slept apart just fine in New York too, so I think it's for the best.

Air travel went well despite the delays and cancellation, and the boys were very good. They had a great time at my parents' house, running all over the place and seeing all the bits of farm life. Anything involving tractors is incredibly exciting for them, though only Oli*ver actually wanted to ride on one that was moving.



We actually spied a tractor with Oliv*r's name on the side, so we pulled over, plopped him on it and took some pictures.





He took that to mean he could sit on every tractor we saw.




Both my mom and I just read Barbara Kingsolver's latest book, so we were inspired to explore some of the local fresh meat and produce that's abundantly available in upstate New York. We visited a sheep farm and an organic farm that grew all kinds of heirloom vegetables and raised chickens. I took the time to explain to the boys that some chickens get eaten. They looked kind of surprised and serious, but seemed to take it in stride. Now I can stop talking in code when meat is on the table, referring to chicken as "poultry".





I don't think that coop would meet grandpa's standards! The farmers at this farm actually sleep with their kids in a tent next to their coop so that their dog will stay near them and keep predators away.

My uncle and two cousins were visiting as well. I alway so enjoy seeing them. The two boys are kind of the antithesis of the stereotypical American teenager. They talk easily with adults and are helpful and polite, as well as just fun to be around. I'd be very proud to have teenagers like them someday. At this rate, I think the boys might also be 6 footers by then.

My brother, another 6+ foot Dutchman, was there too, and he brought a lovely woman with him for us to finally meet. It was nice for Jo*el to have someone to speak English with!





The Big Red Barn is especially fun for the boys now that they can run longer distances and really explore the land there. I think they took the longest walks of their young lives so far when we were there.

















Omie had a nice play corner and lots of books for the boys to read.




Oliv*r did get into a wee bit of trouble when he found a tub of Ke*an's toothpaste, ripped it open with his teeth, and spread it all over an antique stool and the bathroom rug. I had my back turned for all of a minute when this happened. Such is life at the moment.

Why worry about that baby gate when you can just climb the outside of the staircase instead?



P.S. I had another essay published - this time for an online magazine called Mombo. It can be found here.

those boys

(there's a chicken post below this one, also posted on 8/11/07)

The other day, during the preparation of kale, refried bean, and tomato tostadas, I remember that the boys were giggling and saying something about "wopes". We read some stories while they baked, and then we sat down to eat. All of a sudden, No*ah yelled "my wopes!" and Oli*ver yelled, "wopes!". N pulled some twist ties out of his tostada, put there (and thus baked) by one of my little stinkers when they were messing around in the kitchen drawer at prep time. Wopes.

The boys seem to love anything between two tortillas. I hate to mention this to my mother, who hates beets, but the boys love those too.

The boys really enjoy a smörgåsbord of options, and eat all kinds of things, including spicy food. Their daddy cooks them giant breakfasts of pancakes, hot cereal, and eggs dishes, and they wolf it down. They also have their picky days about some foods, like most toddler do.

What's a little fingerpaint between brothers?

Speaking of painting, I think the difference in how they paint is kind of interesting. Here are two takes on the same art project:




It's kind of the opposite of how they eat, as No*ah is quite neat, and Oliv*er, well, not. This is what our kitchen wall looks like right now. I'm about to take it all down and put it up in the garage, since we start new classes and such in September. I know a lot of moms complain about the constant craft projects and how to know what to do with them, but I have to say, I so enjoy this. We'll see how I feel by the time they're in third grade.



The boys tried a bouncy house for the first time last week, and thought they'd gone to heaven.






Oliv*er is still gaily purposing to take anything he can find apart, sometimes using his teeth, and we're doing our best to keep him occupied and safe. It was actually No*ah who broke our front window last week, so our efforts may need to be more equitably divided. I'll consider it a successful summer if we can keep both boys out of the emergency department for the length of it... Such good intentions, but so many bad ideas.






We had a borrowed bike and Burley trailer to use for a few days, which the boys greatly enjoyed.

What, don't you play the kazoo in your underwear?

update on the "ladies"

Well, with all that seriousness lately, I thought I'd give an update on our chickens.



We have eggs! Small eggs, but the real thing. The eggs will get bigger as the chickens get older.

Mea*gan* found one in the next box yesterday, and then today, we found three more, so I think maybe two or three of the girls are laying now.



Marcy has been quite agitated lately, but she's been cool as a cucumber the last couple of days, so she must be please with herself.


All the ladies are doing well and they've grown a lot.



They spend a couple of hours or so a day hanging out in our fenced backyard. So far, nobody has tried to escape. Why would they, when they have such a lovely coop?



They often hang out under the spirea bushes, taking dust baths. I've not seen a slug this year that wasn't in a chicken's mouth.




This garden bed is fallow this year, as it was used pretty heavily for four years straight, and the chickens are doing a nice job of fertilizing it. I also take their bedding and spread it there when I clean the coop, tilling it in a little. This bed should be in great shape come spring, and perhaps by then, the boys will have enough self-control not to eat everything they have access to. The care an feeding take less than an hour a week, and we've had enough compost to give them that they don't need a whole lot of feed. Taking care of chickens is quite simple and easy compared to a dog, or even a cat. The litter sure doesn't smell as bad.


Every morning, the boys go out to the co*op with Jo*el before breakfast, usually in their underwear and pajama tops. If Mea*gan hasn't let them out yet, they open the door to the coop, and the boys give any extras like leftover salad or cereal to the hens. The also throw them some scratch grain to keep them busy and happy. The boys love it, crooning sweetly to them, "Good morning, girls! Here's some scratch!" If we're out and about for a long time, No*ah says we have to go home, because the chickens are lonely.





We still plan on getting a couple more hens next summer or spring, but for now, we're very happy taking care of our four hens.

Stage two: anger

The Kübler-Ross model of grief says that there are five stages for those grieving— denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. I think, as a city, we are well into stage two, and that includes me. Frankly, I’m choking on outrage at the moment: when I think about the fallen bridge and how this possibly could have happened, bile rises to my throat like acid. This is a rich country. We spend hundreds of billions on this seemingly endless war, but fail to ensure that all Americans have access to health care and a decent education. We send our young men and women—especially low-income men and women with few other options— to war and fail to treat them fairly and decently when they finally come home. Freedom isn’t the only thing that isn’t free (not that freedom is gained by bombs and guns to begin with). Education isn’t free. Health care isn’t free. Treating veterans decently isn’t free. Infrastructure isn’t free.

My expectations are not all that high. I don’t expect affordable health care here; I don’t expect our inner city schools to be funded adequately. I really, really wish those things were different, but I don’t expect them to be. I did expect, however, that when my fellow Twin Citians and I drove over a bridge, that bridge would hold up every single time. The people that died or were injured didn’t willingly gamble their lives when they attempted to cross the Mississippi. That disbelief that echoed around the world this week? I share it entirely.

Certain politicians are claiming that it isn’t helpful to point fingers, but you know what? They don’t get to say that, in my book. They don’t have the right to be in charge of our resources and not have fingers pointed in their direction when things go horribly wrong under their leadership. The people of this fine city and state (and country) will darn well point fingers, loudly and insistently, until we have some decent answers and until we have a plan in place that will ensure that this never, ever happens again. It’s going to cost money, and for once it’s the politicians who will claim to want to save us a buck who are going to leave a bad taste in our mouths. I imagine that those who hail from New Orleans probably have a pretty good idea how we feel. It seems that the people and institutions who may turn out to have had a hand in failing to prevent this tragedy would like for us to move neatly past the anger and right onto acceptance, and in the process to accept their tidy spin on how this happened. No-one I know here is ready to do that.

Most of the victims went to the hospital where I work, and some are still there. We all did what we could to help this week, and the atmosphere was one of quiet resolution, working together to help people heal and get their lives back. There were blessedly few deaths in the end – far fewer than initially expected. There were many heroes that day, including our own Meag*an, who along with her boyfriend, knowingly put her life at risk to help rescue severely injured people just after the collapse. What people who don’t live here may not entirely understand is that the whole city pretty much feels like it’s cheated death. Almost all of us crossed that bridge regularly – 140,000 a day is almost half the population of Minneapolis, and everywhere I go I hear stories of those who were just ahead of or just behind the tragedy. It could have been almost any of us, and yet it wasn’t. For many of is, it will be a long time before we can drive across the Mississippi River without remembering what was and what could have been.

On Saturday, I drove the boys to the Children’s Muse*m in St. Paul. For a weekend morning, traffic was heavy on 94, mostly due to the reroute. As we slowly crossed the river on yet another highway bridge, my boys singing Old MacDonald in the back like any other day, I couldn’t help but imagine the accident, the horrible end to an ordinary stop-and-go commute, a bridge suddenly giving way underneath us.

It was the word accident that most stuck in my mind, though, even more than the terrible images. Bridges don’t just fall down, at least they didn't used to. Whatever the exact cause, this was almost certainly preventable. If we don’t take proper care of our basic infrastructure, if we don’t dare spend the money to do it properly and thoroughly, this will probably happen again. This was a horrible accident, but it was also an opportunity to get some very basic things right. If we don’t, then the now predictable result cannot fairly be called accidental.

wide as a river

This afternoon, Jennif*r and Zoe accompanied the boys and I on a walk to a campy neighborhood festival by the lake near our house. It was a time as lovely and bucolic as it gets in the city, first-time bouncy house for bouncing boys, giggling and spinning over blue and yellow vinyl, having a picnic of watermelon, corn and sandwiches next to the playground, going on a pony ride, led by another boy of perhaps eleven, sweet and kind. My cell phone rang, first during the pony ride, ignored while watching N’s impossibly giant smile, his whole body tense with the happiness of his body moving in rhythm with the pony, clip-clopping over the almost dead grass. It rang again as we were leaving; I made a move to answer it, or at least see who was calling, but I needed to hold my niece as we got our three children, two bags and two strollers going in one direction through a growing crowd of festival goers.

The ringing forgotten, we women with our strollers walked easily in the windy heat, the crispy leaves of drought blowing across our feet as if it was early Fall. We talked about sleep schedules, family news, the ordinary stuff of friendly conversations. When we got home, the phone was ringing, and finally realizing that there might be some urgent reason to answer it, I ran to pick it up. It was Meag*an, and she was breathless, crying, and could hardly get the words out. Horrible words.

We’re OK – I’m OK – I’m so relieved you’re OK! The bridge is down! The 35W bridge – it’s collapsed, into the Mississippi River . All the cars with it. I’m there – it was a block from Phi*l’s house. We’re trying to help - There’s smoke everywhere...

This city, this beautiful city, holding on one side, a brown-haired boy on a brown pony, smile as wide as a river, and at the same moment, three miles North, terror, horror, shock, trauma, death. A bridge, crossed countless times by most of the people I hold dear, crossing it, the most beautiful view of the city to be had, showing downtown’s skyscrapers, the old flour mills, industry, new modern buildings and green parkland, all in one sweeping vista seen best from the middle of its' eight-lane concrete span, right before choosing from one of three highways, all arteries into the heart of this city's Southside neighborhoods. An entire bridge, dropped unevenly into the Mississippi, all the cars with it, all the people whose loved ones fear that they might have been near or even on it calling each other at once, all the procedures and rescuers following plans no-one ever wants to have to put into place. Torn up, burned up and half-drowned people flooding the Emergency Room of the hospital where I work, Meag*an and Phi*l pulling a bloody man out of the wreckage and up the steep banks of the river. Sixty children on a school bus; sixty children still alive. Miracles and tragedies, large and small, everywhere. 7 confirmed dead, 35 injured, 20 missing, their loved ones waiting and hoping. May God be with them all.

After connecting with everyone I needed to, after Jennif*er left in her minivan with my almost sleeping niece, after my boys, thankfully oblivious, were tucked into bed, after J got home, and I tended to the ordinary tasks of dinner and cleanup, I walked outside. I came out the front door to a green sky, with no wind at all, the threat of bad weather that never did come, the flickering lights of televisions seen through all the front windows. There was not another soul on the street, almost dead silence, the air full and heavy, just a few drops of rain, fat tears on the pavement of our front walk.

Minneapolis , my beloved adopted hometown, city of lakes, and bridges, and one mighty green river, tonight I cry for you.