Posts from — February 2010

Like most Americans, I have seen or read Our Town on at least fifty-three occasions (it seems to be a rite of passage to sniffle through Emily Webb’s ghost visit after she dies in childbirth.  WAIT–dies in childbirth–doesn’t that feel like it should be a deterrent to teen sex in the same vein of Scared Straight?  Why did we all have sex after reading that play?).  I realized as I walked through Shepherdstown how much an impact the words of that play had on what mentally shaped my ideal town.

Not the milkman or the church or even the high school sweethearts who grow up to marry one another–more the idea of community, the pace, the talking by the fence, knowing people for your entire life.  From birth to death.

I think it’s the reason I’m drawn to Smith Island, drawn to Chincoteague or Shelburne Falls or Montague.  Because they’re small towns where families stay for generations and whatever drawbacks that closeness can bring, it also brings with it an element of safety and belonging.

Josh is a city person and he really misses living downtown.  It was a major concession to live out here in our small town, which isn’t nearly small enough for my tastes.  I don’t love where we live, but it’s as close as I can get to a small town without dragging Josh even further from the city.

If I could build my ideal town it would be…

• a college town which would (1) give me a place to work and (2) attract speakers and fine arts performances.  Though it would be a somewhat cloistered campus, where we could get in, but the college kids couldn’t get out to pee on our lawn after their keggers.
• a beach town where the beach is separate from the commercial area.
• flat and easily bike-able, with good bike lanes that have a bit of a barrier from the cars.
• a state-of-the-art medical facility with hospital and fertility clinic.
• a view of a body of water from our home.
• children’s museum in town with a cafe on the main level.
• a community center with classes.
• bookstore and coffeehouse.
• large, varied food store with a built-in pharmacy.
• restaurants: pizza place, vegetarian sandwich shop, pan-Asian, and a burrito place.
• library with free internet service that lends books, music, and movies.
• cooking supply store and fabric/craft store.
• a movie theater that also has the ability to do live shows.
• sizable Jewish population, but only one shul for each denomination.  A kosher butcher in town and a mikveh.
• a single campus for the elementary, middle, and high school that serves as a focal point for the whole community.

Are you a city person, a suburb person, a rural person, a small town person, or…something else entirely?  And do you already live in the type of area that suits you, or are you really a city person trapped in a small town?

What are five things that would be in your hypothetical ideal town?

On the campus of Shepherd University, there is a house constructed in 1928 that is only ten feet tall.  It wasn’t just built to the scale of a child–it was literally built over several years by children with the help of adults.

Originally, it was part of a one-acre model farm, a laboratory setting where teaching students could observe children at play and children could try out their hand at farming.  A stream runs nearby, and a barn–also the scale of a child–still stands behind the house, though it now houses random equipment for the university.

It was the start of experiential education.

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We heard about the Little House on our second trip to Shepherdstown.  We drove around the campus trying to find it, pointing out various houses on the side streets wondering what constituted “little” when it came to Little House.  We tried two more times to find it and finally gave up.  Then, last summer, we were walking down a street that we had walked down dozens of times before and as we passed over the stream, I looked up and saw that we were facing a tiny, limestone house.

From that point on, every time we visited the town, we would go to the windows and peek inside.

It became a bit of an obsession, the idea of entering this tiny, living doll house, though that also didn’t become an actual possibility until a few weeks ago when I was buying the ring and the owner of the store, Plum, mentioned that her kids had been inside.

Cari sent me down to the Visitor’s Center and brilliantly wonderful Cheryl gave me a campus number and several phone calls later, landed a conversation with the incredible and amazing Holly who announced that we would have access to the Little House on February 20th at 1 p.m.  I hung up the phone and proceeded to run around the living room screeching with the twins.

You may think I’m being a bit overly effusive in doling out my adjectives, but you would use the same words if you were visiting the town on February 20th.

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On Saturday, a little before 1 p.m., we showed up outside the snowed in Little House and danced on the sidewalk to keep warm.  At two minutes past 1 p.m. the twins started dramatically asking if the volunteer had forgotten about us and we promised them that no, watches are often misaligned and there was no need to worry until at least 10 minutes had passed.

10 minutes turned to 15 and at 20 minutes past one, I walked up the street to the Visitor’s Center to inquire what one does when no one shows up at the Little House and there are two children with their noses pressed up against the window.  Except there is no protocol because apparently, the concept of setting up an appointment to see Little House is somewhat of a new operation.  Cheryl called people all over town, trying to hunt down a key, and sent us up to the teahouse so we could feed the kids while she continued to work on the problem.

Can you see why I love Shepherdstown and think it’s the greatest place on earth?*

Perhaps this is the reason why I am drawn to the small house, drawn to the small towns because size sometimes matters.  That there is a coldness that can descend over a large community, and as much as I love the choices inherent in living outside of Washington, D.C., what I miss from living in small towns is the care that is extended from one person to another.  And in this case, not even someone part of the community but rather a visitor, someone they could take or leave but chose to take.

As we were having our snack, Holly hunted us down at the teahouse, dangling a key as she crouched down by our table.  It was like the moment after a tornado, when the world falls calm and the air feels strange and everyone looks at each other and realizes that the storm is over.

Maybe it was that much sweeter when we stepped inside because we had spent two hours returning to the idea that it was an impossibility.  Josh remained outside, too tall to walk through the house easily, but I went inside with the twins.  I have to imagine that entering that house is the closest a human can come to knowing how Snow White felt when she found the home of the seven dwarfs.  It is the embodiment of safety and happiness–a tiny harbour in the craziness of a college campus.

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Even without heat, with the snow coming down through the chimney and settling on the real logs in the fireplace, the tiny home is cozy.  It proves the point of how little we need to create happiness.  The downstairs contains a living room with a reading chair next to the bookcase, a sofa, and a child-size piano.

There is a dining room and a small kitchen, with a back door that looks out onto the small stream that runs through the backyard.

Up a flight of wooden stairs are two bedrooms–one for a boy and one for a girl.

The ChickieNob noticed the symmetry from her life in the twin bedrooms before I reached the top landing.  “This is a house built for us,” she exclaimed, heading into her pink room-for-a-few-minutes with baby dolls in cradles.  She rocked her babies and fed her babies toy eggs that the Wolvog brought up from the kitchen below.

The Wolvog retreated to his blue room-for-a-few-minutes, austere and neat, with a stuffed animal dog watching over the bed.  Between the two rooms was a tiny alcove sitting room, with windows overlooking the lawn below.

After poking around the upstairs rooms, I returned to the dining room to wait for them.  There was something bittersweet to sit on the lower level and hear their feet moving over the wooden floors in their respective bedrooms.  At home they still share a bedroom, a situation that we know needs to come to an end soon as much as I wish we could let it go on indefinitely.  As much as they wish it could go on indefinitely.  As much as they need their own space, there is a coziness they are drawn to perhaps by the mere fact that they have never known–from conception until now–what it feels like to be alone.

After a few minutes, the ChickieNob decided that she would rather stay with the Wolvog in his room, and they shifted to become the mommy and daddy of the house, tending to the babies left in the other bedroom, with a live-in grandmother who cooks for them.  I moved into the living room, not wanting their game to end, and feeling terrible for the volunteer and Josh who were both standing on the snowy sidewalk outside.

I gave them a five minute warning, a two minute warning, and a final request to wrap up their playtime.  The drawfs are lucky that they never attempted to kick Snow White out of their miniature abode after giving her asylum from the evil queen.  It is not an easy task to eject someone from their own personal Garden of Eden.

The ChickieNob moved downstairs, the lower lip quivering over the idea of leaving the house behind.  The Wolvog paused by the front door and told me that he needed to take a picture of everything in the house before he could leave, even though he knew that I had taken multiple photographs of the various rooms.  He needed to do the task again, this time through his own eyes.

When I asked the Weekly What If question on Friday, it was pulled out of thin air.  But the Wolvog fell in step with me after we left the house and crossed behind it back to the main street.  “I’m never going to forget that,” he promised.  “I’m going to use these pictures so I never ever forget.”

Maybe it’s true that a picture can speak a thousand words because I am right now trying to write about it and finding that words fail to convey how magical it was to step inside this space that was made with children in mind, adults be damned.  I keep returning to the dozens of pictures I snapped while the twins played, running from room to room with their dolls and toy food, recreating everything they’ve ever observed in keeping house; setting up a new way to live life.

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Waiting for them on the tiny blue sofa made me think about how often the world and its spaces aren’t created for the people meant to utilize them.  The Kevin Smith/Southwest story keeps playing out in the news and at the end of the day, airline seats aren’t really created for any of us.  The slivers of seats are created that way to fit more seats and therefore, more revenue for the airline.

Or there are the spaces that are created with the body of the average man in mind, when nearly 50% of the world isn’t male at all, and how many of the remaining people fit that average body type the designers keep in mind when setting the height of the counter or the width of the bench?

We once went on a tour of a Frank Lloyd Wright house where the children’s section of the house was scaled to the owner’s children.  I could tuck easily into the tiny corners and narrow hallway, but the rest of the people on our tour, including Josh, were uncomfortable and unable to experience the space in its entirety.  And maybe that was Wright’s point–that we are all meant to have our own unique spaces that fit us and us alone.

Whether those spaces are physical or intangible is beside the point when you consider the emotion behind the statement.

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There is an anonymous poem written in 1945 printed on the information sheet given about the Little House.  Hopefully, the author will not mind the fact that I am reprinting it here and will know that I do so because it touched me so much even before the visit.  They were the words I thought about as I sat on the tiny blue sofa in the living room.

A Prayer for a Little House

G-d send us a little home
To come back to when we roam–
Red firelight and deep chairs,
Small white beds upstairs,
Great talk in little nooks,
Dim colours, rows of books,
One picture on each wall,
Not many things in all.

G-d send us a little ground–
Fall trees standing around,
Homely flowers in brown sod,
Overhead, the stars, O G-d!
G-d bless when winds blow
Our little home and all we know.

* Shepherdstown is literally the greatest day trip from Washington, D.C.  It’s about an hour and fifteen minutes away, nine miles from Harper’s Ferry.  The Visitor’s Center has a walking tour booklet and menus for all the local restaurants.  Our favourite spaces are the Shepherdstown Opera House (an indie movie theater), Four Seasons Books, Plum, One Two Kangaroo (toy store), O’Hurleys, Grapes & Grains Gourmet (for beer), China Kitchen (for egg rolls), Shaharazades (for tea), and Stone Soup Bistro (for nice meals).

I’m well aware that this is going to make me sound like those kids at the end of the Blair Witch Project (at least the one who stands in the corner of the room facing the wall), but when we finally went out of the house after 8 days of being inside due to the snow, I couldn’t handle it.  Everything outside felt too bright.  Too loud.  I literally couldn’t tune out the background noise at the food store.  Being dropped back into daily life was like being at a carnival.  With no clothes.  Or skin.

I cringed all the way through that first trip out, my stomach in knots.  How had this happened?  8 days in a house ruined me.

We’re finally settling back into life; into pushing my cart through the food store without wondering why there are so many people in my town and why they all need to talk so loudly.  And wear such brightly coloured clothes.  And move so quickly.

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Believe it or not, it’s that time of the month again.  No, not that one.  Well, yes, that one, but also it’s time for February’s IComLeavWe.  The list closes on Sunday if you want to join along this month.

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I not only could never go on Iron Chef because there is a fairly strong possibility that I wouldn’t eat the secret ingredient (much less all other ingredients), but I don’t actually taste many of the things I cook in my own kitchen.  Anything non-vegetarian is understandable–I make chicken weekly, though I obviously don’t eat chicken.  But I also won’t try a large subsection of things I like to make including pie.  Love to make it, can’t imagine eating it.

Lindsay called me the Mozart of cooking this week.  Which just amused me to no end.

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For awhile there, I was rocking StumbleUpon.  A lot of stuff I stumbled would get between 40–175 views.  Which was cool because it meant new eyes on your writing.  And then it seemed to stop working.  The stuff I stumbled the last few days only got a few views if any at all.  Very strange.  Come back, dear SU, come back.

This is not to say I’m defeated in letting you know my favourites.  This has only up’ed the challenge.

On a side note, I find it a bit annoying that Stumble will not tell you who stumbled you when you see traffic coming from the site.  And while this isn’t of utmost importance, I’ve been trying to tell people when possible that I’ve stumbled a post so they don’t have to wonder.  Which makes for an awkward comment.  But…I’m not really sure what else to do.  If you follow me on StumbleUpon, you should be able to see by going through my favourites if I’m the one who stumbled you.

The other thing is that you do not seem to be notified when someone subscribes to your favourites.  Therefore, if you subscribed to me and I’m not following you back, please let me know because I would like to read what you like too.  In fact, if you are on StumbleUpon, please add a link to your profile in the comment section below so other people can find you too.  Mine is here.

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The Weekly What If: what if you had to lose either your photographs or your blog/journal–either the visual or the written documentation of your memories–which one would you choose?  There are no work-arounds where you could photograph each post from your blog and then save the photographs.  It boils down to the fact that you would either lose your images or lose your words.

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Have you seen this ad campaign?  Without any gore, they manage to convey the need for a seat belt (that PSA of the teenagers texting and driving and being killed in the car couldn’t get out of my mind for weeks–it literally made me feel sick hence why I’m not linking to it and subjecting you to it in case you thankfully missed it).  Perhaps it is the fact that I am hormonal, but I bawled watching this.

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And now, the blogs…

For its honesty, I love IF Crossroad’s post about the funk that can come when you are pregnant after infertility.  While obviously appreciative that IVF worked, she discovers it was a cure for childlessness–not for infertility itself–and she is still carrying the feelings she had during infertility into this new leg of the journey.  She writes, “I want to be that girl I always thought I’d be once I got my BFP. I’m somebody completely different altogether and I don’t recognize this person.”  My only advice is to not deny how you feel, not sweep it under the rug, but instead confront it and move through it because there does not seem to be a route around it or over it.

Life from Here has a gorgeous post about helping her neighbour through labour.  It is about someone seeing the bigger picture, of a neighbour who is large-minded enough to know that Luna would be the perfect person for the job due to experience and empathy.  I loved that not only was she asked, but that she found it in herself to cross the street and help her neighbour when she needed her most.

Mrs. Spock has a post about buying a car and all the extra thoughts that come into play when you’re infertile.  It is the internal conversation between the optimist, the pessimist and the realist–one who doesn’t want to have to remake the choice down the road because it’s a pricey choice to make, but is frozen by the inability to even remotely predict the future at all.

Making Me Mom has a post about all the unconventional things we try to boost the chance of success on a given cycle.  I think she asks an excellent question: “How much are all of these ‘solutions’ playing on my fears? Fears that these are our last attempts at a biological child….and we’re paying a lot of money….so what if it doesn’t work? Of course I want to do anything it takes to improve our chances of success, but where is that line?”  Don’t forget to read through the comments too and jump in with your own.

Lastly, Trying Not to Scream has a post about when she stepped over the line from trying-to-conceive to infertile, explaining that it is just as much a state of mind as it is a diagnosis.  In fact, her transition wasn’t until a few months after discovering a problem.  It’s an interesting debate and while I’m sure there are people who would answer “after two months of trying,” I also wonder if there are those who could say they were in the TTC state well past the point where they were diagnosed with infertility.

The roundup to the Roundup: apparently, 8 days inside has ruined me.  IComLeavWe for this month kicks off on Sunday.  Lindsay says I’m the Mozart of cooking.  Adventures in StumbleUpon (and tell me if you’re on and I’m not subscribed to you).  Answer the Weekly What If (words or images?).  Greatest PSA I’ve seen this week.  And lots of great posts to read.

Show and Tell is wasted on elementary schoolers. Join several dozen bloggers weekly to show off an item, tell a story, and get the attention of the class. In other words, this is Show and Tell 2.0. Everyone is welcome to join, even if you have never posted before and just found out about Show and Tell for the first time today. So yank out a photo of the worst bridesmaid’s dress you ever wore and tell us the story; show off the homemade soup you cooked last night; or tell us all about the scarf you made for your first knitting project. Details on how to participate are located at the bottom of this post.

Let’s begin.

Yesterday, I went to buy material for the ChickieNob and Wolvog’s Purim costumes.  Josh and I picked their costumes until they were two and we went with ideas that go together.  One year, they were Jif peanut butter and a Hershey bar.  The next year, they were fish aquariums that had the twin fin-fin fish from Lucy Cousin’s Hooray for Fish.  When they were two, they wanted to be Mordechai and Queen Esther.  And then the symmetry fell off the cliff.

The next year, the ChickieNob designed a gown with me, a two-toned pink number with a long train that could be bustled as she ran around the playground.  She announced that she would be Queen Esther until she was 100 years old and so far, she has been true to that vision.  The Wolvog said he wanted to be an iPhone.  I tried to see a way these two costumes could go together.  Was he the Queen’s iPhone, and was there a way to put that little boy in a holster and stick him to his sister’s hip?  No?  He was going to be a walking, talking iPhone.  So be it.

Last year, they wanted to wear those same costumes again, but this year, it was time to design new ones.  The ChickieNob and I sat down at the kitchen table and spent 45 minutes designing a turquoise, floor-length gown, a slip dress with enormous sleeves and paste diamonds sewn into the bodice.  A taffeta open overskirt with pleats to make it extend as far as possible from the body.  A headdress fit for a Middle Eastern princess.  And what do you want to be, Wolvog?

He barely looked up from whatever he was doing and grunted one word, “Yoda.”

I went to the store and bought yards of turquoise material, spent the better part of an hour feeling different taffetas and organzas.  The saleswoman delighted in debating out the pros and cons of each fabric, coveting with me the gorgeous turquoise beaded silk that sold for $129 a yard.  After she had painstakingly cut out the different exquisite fabrics that made up the ChickieNob’s costume, she asked, “anything else?”

Um…a yard and a half of the most Yoda-looking brown polar fleece please?

I swear we didn’t aim to raise gender stereotypes.

What are you showing today?

Click here or scroll down to the bottom of this post if this is your first time joining along (Important: link to the permalink for the post, not the main url for your blog and use your blog’s name, not your name. Links not going to a Show and Tell post will be deleted). The list is open from now until late Friday night and a new one is posted every week.

Our bodies are slowly becoming gelatinous masses from watching way too many Olympic events (isn’t this a strange fact of the Olympics–we watch people in states of incredible physical fitness and by the very fact that we’re not moving as we watch them, we are moving farther away from physical fitness).  On the schedule today: speedskating and women’s luge.

What we’re really waiting for is skeleton, which seems to be luge done on your stomach instead of your back.  I’m not sure why we’re more excited to see people hurtling themselves down an icy track on their fronts rather than their backs, but we are.

What is your favourite event at the Olympics?  And while I pour virtual drinks, also catch us up on what has happened to you since last month’s Lushary.

As always, it has been about a month since we met, bitched, cried, comforted, and caught up each other on our cycles and lives. Pull up a seat and I’ll pour you a drink. Let everyone know what is happening in your life. The good, the bad, the ugly. My only request is that if a story catches your eye, you follow it back to the person’s blog and start reading their posts. Give some love, give some support, or laugh with someone until your drink comes out of your nose.

I have a ton of assvice in my back pocket and as a virtual bartender, I will give it to you unless you specifically tell me that this is simply a vent and you do not want to receive anything more than a hug.

So if you have been a lurker for a while (or if this is your first open bar), sit down and tell us about yourself. Remember to provide a link or a way for people to continue reading your story (or if you don’t have a blog–gasp!–you can always leave an email address if you’re looking for advice or support. If not, people can leave messages for that person here in the comments section too). If you’re a regular at the bar, I’ll get out your engraved martini glass while you make yourself comfortable. And anyone new, welcome. I’m glad you found this virtual bar.

For those who have no clue what I’m talking about when I say that the bar is open, click here to catch up and then jump into the conversation back on this current post.

So have an imaginary cocktail and tell us what is up with your life.