Dalai Mama Dishes

"Cheese lightning?" Birdy asks from the back of the car, and I laugh. "No, honey. Heat lightning." She's silent for a couple of seconds, then says, "Wait — what?"

It's hot again, and the sky is flashing and silent, though in another couple of minutes rain will come pouring out of the sky all at once, like the world has been turned upside down and the oceans are above us and suddenly remembering about gravity. We'll race screaming from the car, race screaming through the house, closing windows, and then everyone will get their hair rubbed with a towel, like we're wet dogs. When it lets up a tiny bit, Birdy will snap up her raincoat, humming quietly, and let herself out the back door so she can swing her crazy-soggy self through the rain, pumping...

^{Ever wonder what Catherine sounds like? Listen to her read this blog entry.}

It's late. Michael's out watching basketball with a couple of friends, and the kids are asleep in our room, which is still where I put them to bed when it's just me; they drift off so happily on either side of me, as if the very fact of my ever having nursed them still hums like a lullaby in the air. All I have to do is lie there with the headlamp on, reading, and I hear their breathing slow, watch their lips fall open. Then I can sneak quietly away, even though I have a novel I'm eager to return to: Out Stealing Horses, which is so understatedly lovely that I can't shake images of the dappled Norwegian forest out of my head, even though here it is all sultry New England...

^{Ever wonder what Catherine sounds like? Listen to her read this blog entry.}

You are always forgetting to tell the children things they need to know. Like when you introduce Ben to an old friend who says, "Ben, it's so nice to meet you!" And Ben says, "Oh." Later, when you tell him that "It's nice to meet you too" is a conventional polite response, Ben says, "Oh!" He had no idea. So you're wondering if it's possible that you've neglected to tell Birdy that, during a heat wave, when your entire home is like a public sauna housed in the armpit of a sweltering giant — well, lying on top of you is not the quickest route to coolsville. But if she can't scorch you completely, then, at the very least, she would like to throw one sticky leg and one sticky arm over your unhappy back. "Birdy," you finally groan,...

^{Ever wonder what Catherine sounds like? Listen to her read this blog entry.}

The children have $5 each to spend in the gift shop. Ben fingers a green foam crown, studies a commemorative box of mints with his name printed on it, and compares two miniature models of the statue, one plain and one decked out with Christmas garlands. Birdy flickers a torch-shaped flashlight. They've already been waiting in various lines all day, and it's not even noon yet. They're hot and tired and hungry: they want to ogle souvenirs and then eat more cashews in the shade with their grandparents and cousins; they need to pee; they wish good-naturedly that they had enough money to buy the model and the mints, though Birdy is indignant that there are no tins with her name...

^{Ever wonder what Catherine sounds like? Listen to her read this blog entry.}

Birdy and I are out in the backyard, squatting down to admire the wildflowers. The faint breeze makes it feel as though the earth itself is exhaling, breathing out the perfume of violets and lilies of the valley. Birdy touches a stem of tiny white bells with one finger. She is in pants and no shirt, wind-swept and pink-cheeked and framed by the dazzling green of the newborn world, and I cannot take my eyes off of her. I feel like I'm turning the pages of a beautiful old picture book. I'm willing time to stand still even as the downy shelf of clouds scuds past overhead to remind me that it won't.

Ever wonder what Catherine sounds like? Listen to her read this blog entry.

I want to start a The Giving Tree flickr group, and what it will be is a kind of collective parental revision of the book, offered in a diverse series of newly imagined scenes. Like, maybe I would draw a little picture of the tree lying on the couch with a beer, and the speech bubble over her head will say, "Could you stop picking at my apples for five seconds? Please. Go get a pear or something from the fruit bowl." Maybe in another illustration a child is complaining that he can't find any good wood for his bonfire, and the tree is shrugging sympathetically, hugging her branches to herself and saying, "That's too bad, sweetie." I like the idea of split panel illustration, and on one side a tire swing hangs from a...