Had a companion in the office this morning. She’s taking a nap now, but left some of her friends behind. I am told that among this herd are Aurora Dawn, MoonPlanet, DaisyPink and some other names I didn’t catch but go good with purple braided tails and over-sized blue eyes. I look over at that chair, and it’s like I popped mushrooms.
Missing from photo: StarBottom the purple bear, she’s helping with the nap.
My next book (no title yet, earliest it will be out is August 2012) is much more focused on a man named Tom than it is on me or my family. But anyone who read Truck knows I have a soft spot for pickup trucks and girls, so here’s an excerpt from the current draft in which I am accompanied by my then 3-year-old, who is resolutely sucking her thumb as we hammer down the backroads:
Jane and I are on our way to visit Tom Hartwig. He’s going to cut and bend some steel for me. Normally the truck would be rolling on blacktop, but crews are resurfacing and reshaping the curves along this stretch of county road, so they have chomped and removed the asphalt. Gravel rattles in the wheel wells, and a whorl of dust spins from beneath the back bumper to drift in our wake. It’s good to drive a dirt road, especially in a pickup truck. You get a whole different feel coming up through the wheel. There’s a little give, a little float to the curves. You feel like maybe life is more liveable when everything doesn’t have to be all double-yellow perfect. Given time and good spirits in the company of a child I believe you should converse with that child, but right now Jane’s thumb is well-planted and furthermore I can cultivate in her worse habits than the love of watching farm fields slide past an open truck window to the tune of yesteryear’s country music legends, so I punch the radio button and dial up Moose Country 106.7. I do my best to raise my children right, but some lessons are best imparted by ladies, specifically among them Patsy, Tammy, Loretta, and even – especially – Dolly.
In advance of our trip to that side of the state, WUWM has re-aired an interview I did with Mitch Teich on Lake Effect awhile back. You can listen here.
(All scenes starring one … umm … independently-predisposed very-nearly four-year-old.)
1. A quote, as Mom leaves the driveway on an errand and very-nearly four-year-old is wailing and flailing: “But Mom makes me happier than you do!”
2. A lesson, precipitated by a particularly snappy comeback delivered by the very-nearly four-year-old whilst the family was motoring: If you decide to make good on the ol’ “Don’t make me pull over!” threat, do be sure that after you make your dramatic move to the shoulder of the road but before you leap out and attempt to even-more-dramatically sweep the side door open, that you hit the the master unlock button. When you yank on that handle and it’s locked, the whole production really loses some steam, plus there the whole issue of the dislocated shoulder.
3. Finally, if, as the waiter at the Indian restaurant delivers a basket of piping hot naan bread, the very-nearly four-year-old jumps up and down clapping her hands in joy and says, “Yaaayyy! LEFSE!“ well then, you know somewhere Mrs. Carlson is smiling.
From here I can see the pig hutch marooned in the snow (open end is turned toward the woods…it doubled as a deer blind in November). Plan is to get pigs again this summer, use’em (temporarily…) to till up some more garden ground. I hope so. Schedule is such that I’ll need help to pull it off, but it looks like that will happen.
With every passing day, the pigs and garden feel ever more essential. Last night the three-year-old and I made a bunch of miniature snowmen, practiced throwing (and eating) snowballs, and went scouting for deer. Highlight was when she threw a snowball and her mitten went with it. Funniest thing ever, apparently. And the joy in her voice when she spotted two deer pawing around beneath a young pine…
Full circle to backyard bacon and potatoes, though, is that moment when you look at the tot laughing there in the snow, standing on ground that stretches all the way around the shaky world, and you feel a flood of chill wondering how/if you’ll get her safely fed and growed and guided…
Then you just say, well, alrighty then, suck it up, walk it off, and get to it.
Well, that was a whomper. Now it’s ten below and I just climbed off the granary roof after clearing the photovoltaic panels using a telescoping scraper borrowed from my neighbor Jeremy (thank you!). Piles of snow everywhere and a few of our roads still heavily drifted.
We were lucky…our plow truck, a little tractor with a loader (thank you you-know-who) and all Sunday to carve paths where needed. Also plenty of dry wood in the woodshed, a crooked little Christmas tree glowing in the corner, and my wife as always making profound food appear out of thin air. Oh, and an insulated coop so this morning the chickens were perky and unaffected by the temps.
Favorite memory from yesterday: Eldest daughter has long been invited to meet the neighbor’s daughter of same age. With everything canceled yesterday and the neighbor girl and her family stranded at the far end of a socked-in driveway that nears a mile in length, daughter and I bundled up, put on snowshoes, and trekked cross-country (roughly a mile-and-a-half) and over the wind-carved expanses, then down through a snow-daubed pine grove to the neighbor’s house. I hiked home to continue plowing. By 7 p.m. the temperature had dropped to 4 degrees and the neighbors were still not plowed out (the snow was so drift-packed my pickup plow wouldn’t bust it, and our tractor scoop is no match for a driveway that long). So I dressed for the temperatures, put on a pair of cross-country skis, and my wife helped me lash my daughter’s skis and poles to a backpack and I set out again, this time in the dark. With those temps and relatively strong wind, I was concerned about my daughter making the trip home. But we took the time to dress right, with good layers and neck and ankle gaiters, and off we went.
We had headlamps, but we switched them off for most of the trip, as the sky was so starry and clear and the snow so dominant that the fingernail of moon lit the night so well we were casting crisp shadows.
She was a trouper. Not only uncomplaining about the cold but chattering about how much she enjoyed her visit, and stopping to pick out Orion’s belt. I cheated at the end, fishing out my cell phone and calling home so my wife could see our headlamps bobbing along the homestretch. She waved from the window.
I am by nature often a grumpy self-involved cuss. I worry sometimes about how my daughter will remember me. But I hope she reads this some day and knows how proud I was of how she just strapped those skis on and pushed off into the single-digit wind like it was the most natural thing in the world, and how – after listening to her talk and pick out stars and never break stride – when I bid her goodnight I was filled with a warmth that had nothing to do with that old woodstove of ours.
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