THESE BUDS ARE FOR YOU

Sweetpea and I made her Mama a vase of flowers for Mothers' Day---a whimsical, Seussian little bouquet, just right for small hands to create, Mamas to 'preciate.

We began with glad hearts, good intentions, and a tangle of stuff from the craft box.   This girl has almost as many Tupperwares fulla stuff on the toy shelves as I do in the fridge.

We twisted, stood back and admired, gave a tweak here and there (not to mention some vain attempts to staple the noses on the flowers---one of those endeavours much better in the idea than the doing, like what Caro calls "like trying to stand up a jellyfish").  Good thing Sweetpea has a good eye for the Elmer's.

She also made a card---turning down the proffered pink for RED---Mommy LIKES red, and sticking on  haphazard stickers from several books, the card out of the leftover PAAS box, (but Mommy LIKES Easter Eggs) and one of the ones they stick on her shirt every time she goes to Kroger.

And if you enlarge the picture, you see she's also fond of sunshine, hence the TWO bright orbs over the bouquet on the card.

She also arranged every single flower in that vase.   I think this Summer, in addition to swimming lessons, I just might sign us up for an ikebana class. 

And a HAPPY MOTHERS' DAY to everyone!!

JUST IMAGINE . . .

We've had a busy morning outside---a few limbs trimmed and dragged to the back fence, some of the Winter-long litter of plastics and glass and ice melter and a handful of rain-slumped sidewalk chalk making pastel Rorschachs in the tub---all bagged and into the bin, and big clumps of soggy-leaf debris and who-knows-what-mixed-in scraped from beneath tables and carts and the patio rug.     We closed all the gates and chased and kicked her soccer ball til we were breathless, and ready for a cold drink and some lunch.

After our cleanup and a quick Sloppy Joe each, I walked to the shelf of young-folks' DVDs and gently removed a movie we'd never watched, for I had been concerned that the mere countenances and hulking sizes of the characters might be disturbing to Sweetpea.    I slit the smooth, unmarred cellophane sleeve, sat next to her on the ottoman, showed her the cover pictures.   I explained briefly and gently,
"This is a movie you've never seen, and although there are big creatures which look a little bit scary, with funny teeth and big eyes, they are kind and helpful and really, really care about children."  

This movie was a sweet little rendering of six of the books, with In the Night Kitchen and Chicken Soup,  almost as if the pages were being turned and the story read.

The action was stop and go a bit, making it more like a bedtime reading with your favorite Grandpa assuming all the voices of the characters and either turning pages too fast or not quite fast enough for your anticipation.    And there were lots of songs---I've been humming CHICK-en SOUP and Rice for the past twenty-something hours.    I  think that big sweeping Pixar rendition can wait a bit. 


   I'd really forgotten that we had the movie, for it had been put up "for later" and it languished there for perhaps two years. 
 
Until today. 

  Today we lost dear, kind, smart Maurice Sendak, whose various characters and illustrations have peopled the bedtime stories and gift books and learning-to-read and movie experiences of little ones for six decades.    His little stories encourage a child's own story-making---the stepping out, the trying, the transporting to another realm of exotic  plants and unusual animals and adventures.    Think of something and draw a line around it, and it's real.    Imaginations are gently and enthusiastically nurtured---no flight of fancy is too fanciful, and if you put your mind to it, you can fly yourself.

R. I. P. sweet Maurice---your legacy will live on forever in the imaginations of children.

. . . SIX BITS

Fuzzy Pup’s getting a haircut.   It’s gone on in three installments, beginning Saturday afternoon, and involving a pair of horse clippers (with no depth/length guide like the good WAHLs we’ve had for several years, and which provided a neat high-and-tight like from a military barbershop):

I’d had no idea we’d been harboring a walking equivalent of about a moo-hillion dandelions in the house, for the flying wisps of gold and white fluff were were lifting off into the wind from back door to garden gate, and settling on plants, cars, furniture, gazing balls and people in between. The whole back yard took on the floaty forest atmosphere of LEGEND---didn't you wonder how Tom Cruise could BREATHE for all that floof in the air?    From here to the arbor looked like early frost, until the rain set in again.

And in between clippings, there was a tub-bath, with good shampoo and rinsings and towelings and fla-fla-fla-flaaaap shakings and those dashing runs free in the breeze with a delight in his step occasioned only by a good bath and haircut. He gets so overjoyed he tries to meet himself coming back.

 

There was also a really raggedy, unfortunate look to the little fellow, like he’d just partially molted, and embarrassment had halted the process halfway through, with great clumps and valleys, and his whole belly the naked, shiny pink of baby pigs.

And even Caro took one look and asked, “Did you BLINDFOLD Chris before he went OUT THERE?”

So now he and Sweetpea and a resigned little dog are at it again, with flying floofs and big shorn spots, and his back like tan corduroy from the clipper-tracks.   Poor little guy.

Perhaps that’s what prompted Sweetpea to come running in just now, asking, “Where’s his COSTUME?” 

Me washing dishes:  “Whose costume?”---thinking innocently of Sock-Monkey, who wore a pair of Sweetpea’s tee-ninecy pants from babyhood and a little Pooh shirt to the soccer game and brunch on Saturday.

“FUZZY’S costume,” (in a tone of gentle regret for my backwardness)---“the PENGUIN ONE!”

Now, we haven’t had ANYTHING penguin in this house since that stuffed Opus that was gnawed to bits by another visiting GrandDog many years ago, so I had no idea where she got that---but I referred her back outside to Ganner.  Maybe she thought he'd get chilly, shorn to the skin and all.

And I’ll bet there’s enough fuzz on the patio table to knit another dog.

THE BRIDE-ELECT'S LACE

Guipure lace   internet photo
A recent letter to Miss Manners asked what in the world was a bride-elect, as the writer had never heard such usage before.   Indeed, those of us raised on small-town weekly papers knew exactly what was meant---we girls, especially, read that paper cover-to-cover every week, skipping only the farm stuff and dry announcements and ads from the inside-back page.  The little happenings of the entire county, rich and poor, were printed right there every week---from the Pund’s anniversary dinner at the Catfish Shack to The Caviness Girl’s wedding, which featured twelve attendants, flowers flown in from Holland, seafood trucked up from Gollott’s, and the biggest tent set up in the county since Jimmy Swaggart preached that time.

  Our Friday Leader was rife with brides-elect and grooms-elect, right up to the morning of the wedding, when the young lady was offically The Bride.  Showers and teas and little gatherings featured the fancy-hyphenated term, with glossy descriptions of the honoree’s attire and corsage and the menu of each event.

Even the little weekly columns of uneventful events were scattered with Mesdames and Mssrs. who motored here and there to their engagements and appointments.  In fact, the word “appointments” was almost as popular in the social pages as the recipes at the end of each column---the word mostly used to mean somewhere you were supposed to be---a meeting or doctor’s visit or a talk with your Insurance Man. 

   And table appointments---those were delineated in great detail, down to the lace of the cloth, the silver epergne, and the kinds of dainty sandwiches and individual iced cakes served on doilied-up borrowed platters.

Guipure Lace was featured occasionally in a wedding story, and was murmured for days after, just for the beauty of the words---often by ladies married decades, and whose own claim to bridal lace might have consisted of a small inset across the bosom of a new slip from Sears.  Even they---especially they---mumbled the word as though tasting a sumptuous, sweet bite of rare fruit.

Alencon lace   internet photo

 Most brides chose Alencon, and Allenconn was the ne plus unh-hunh of garnish on a veil, with brides and their mothers flaunting the word about in every conversation, including under the dryer, for months before the actual event.   One Aunt-Of-The-Bride who “wrote up” a lot of the local important gatherings (as opposed to the usual town reporter, who called everybody in her area during the week to glean the comings and goings and had-over-for-suppers of the folks in her own specific area) became so enamored of the word that she went a bit overboard.

When she looked it up in her set of 1964 World Book (with an update  volume added to the end of the row every year, smelling of fresh ink and slick pages), she immediately homed in on the little squiggle at the bottom of the “C.”  Finding that it was pronounced like the “c” in fah-sahd, she had a momentary pang of embarrassment at her error, then settled the pronunciation into her vocabulary, using it with firm conviction thereafter, though a lot of ladies still remained blithely ignorant of her élan.

But before she took those double-spaced, elaborately worded pages to the paper for Friday’s edition, she went through the whole thing again and carefully added the little diacritical hook, even making a special trip up to Breedlove’s Office Supply and Printing for a new typewriter ribbon the exact shade of the ink in her roller-ball pen.  Of course, the wedding write-up in the County Leader came out with the same plain old lettering it always used, but Aunt knew what she knew, and the ladies at the paper KNEW she knew, so that was worth the trip.

LADY KATHERINE'S TEA PARTY

Do go and peek in at Lady Katherine's Birthday Tea---she and her husband have been working for a couple of years restoring a wonderful old store-space down in her town in Mississippi, and its daily life is as a lively and popular cafe' now.

But when she invites her dearest friends in for Afternoon Tea---well, let's say that those Southern girls sure know how to give a gracious, welcoming, beautiful party.