Dalai Mama Dishes

by Catherine Newman

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

Dalai Mama Dishes

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

Back to Blog Main Page

Spring Fever

Posted April 07, 2008
2  | 
I found this helpful Thank You! Your vote will be tallied soon!

Because it's such a lovely evening - a rainy blue twilight, the birds trailing banners behind them with the word SPRING written in flowery loops, yet still chilly enough for a crackly-cozy fire in the woodstove - the children are, naturally, feeling a bit cantankerous. All the obvious problems arise. For example, this urgent question: Who is better at the kazoo version of "Oh My Darling Clementine," but performed with no actual kazoos, just honked, lyricless, out your nose? That's a hard one. Oh wait - I won't judge yet, since Birdy got interrupted somehow at the very end of her turn, and is now starting over from the beginning and yes it is fair, Ben, it is. Okay. Let's see...Birdy's sounds more consistent, and with a wonderfully deep tone to it? But Ben's has the excellent vibrato, that great nasal twang. I'm going to have go with: tie. "Well Ben's was a little bit screechy?" "Well Birdy's sounded more like a person - a person just honking something out their nose." Heaven forefend! But I am steadfast: tie.

With this debate settled to nobody's satisfaction, Birdy wanders over to snuggle with me on the kitchen couch, in the warming glow of the fire. "I like your flower, Mama!" she says brightly. I am learning to embroider, and have spent the better part of a thousand hours embellishing a dishtowel with a purple daisy the size of a...uh...daisy. "I think you should cut it out," Birdy says, and moves her finger in a circle around the flower. "It looks a little bit plain on this big towel." I explain that I'm still hoping to use the dishtowel as a dishtowel, just with a nice little flower to look at. She thinks about this for a moment. "Well then maybe you should embroider some more? I mean, so it doesn't look so plain." That's a great idea, assuming I live to be a million years old. "Also?" She points to the flower's center. "You said that color was gold? But gold is my favorite color, and that is so not my favorite color. I like the shiny kind. That's more like brownish-yellow. Not my favorite color. Definitely." I get this. I used to feel the same way about Sunshine Fruit Bars: "fruit" means pineapple, peaches, cherries; you want to make a cracker filled with raisins, fine, but call it a Raisin Cracker. "And Mama? Not to hurt your feelings? But your sewing looks kind of messy on the back."

I tease her a little bit - "Hang on a sec, Birdy, let me get a pen so I can write down all the things you don't like about my embroidery!" - but it's a mistake, because she turns red with shame. "Don't!" she cries. "I like your sewing! I was just saying different things." "Oh, I know," I say, and kiss her on the top of the head. It's stopped raining now, and Birdy is squinting out the window at the noisy tumult of birds gathered to feed in the last of the light. "I love the male cardinal?" she says. "But the female is the exact color brown that is so not my favorite."

Michael gets out his guitar, and everyone's mood changes instantly. We sing a moody something from the Once soundtrack - a song we all love, even though none of us really understands the lyrics - then we sing "Worrisome Years," Ben's favorite Greg Brown song, and "Birds," my favorite Neil Young song. By the time we head up to bed, we are bursting with love, and only when Ben looks up from writing in his journal and says, "What?" do I realize that I'm gazing at him with a kind of wild fondness. "Have a hissing contest with me," he says, and so I do, and Ben smiles and hisses lispily through his gappy teeth and laughs and cries, "Oh my God - I cheated, and you still won!" He wonders if there's a world record for hissing, and when I tell him about the Guinness Book, which he's never heard of, he mis-hears my example. "How would they even decide that?" he wonders. "Saddest person? Like, 'My dog died, I'm the saddest person.' 'No, both my cats died, I'm sadder than you.'" "Fattest," I say, laughing, and he laughs too: "Now that makes more sense!"

Nobody can fall asleep. There's practically a current of electricity running through the dark. We hear Birdy climb out of her bed, and then she's running, leaping onto us and laughing, and maybe the kids can't sleep because their legs are growing like something from a horror movie, uncoiling like vines and sending tendrils out past the bottoms of their pants legs, the covers, the window, the county...Everything is alive. "Kiss me!" Birdy demands, kissing me, and then cries, "Oooh! Your mustache tickled me!" But then she remembers her manners and says, encouragingly, "I mean - not your mustache. Your whiskers."

Member Comments On...

Spring Fever

Back to Main Blog Page
Search Recipes
300x250

About Catherine Newman

Catherine Newman is the author of the memoir, Waiting for Birdy: A Year of Frantic Tedium, Neurotic Angst, and the Wild Magic of Growing a Family, available online and in bookstores nationwide.

View My Profile View My Guestbook
March 2011
February 2011
January 2011
December 2010
November 2010
October 2010
September 2010
August 2010
July 2010
June 2010
May 2010
April 2010
March 2010
February 2010
January 2010
December 2009
November 2009
October 2009
September 2009
August 2009
July 2009
June 2009
May 2009
April 2009
March 2009
February 2009
January 2009
December 2008
November 2008
October 2008
September 2008
August 2008
July 2008
June 2008
May 2008
April 2008
March 2008
February 2008
January 2008
December 2007
November 2007
October 2007
September 2007
August 2007
August 2006
300x250
728x90
Please log in ...
Close
You must be logged in to use this feature.
Become a member

Thank You!

Thank you for helping us maintain a friendly, high quality community at Family.com. This comment will be reviewed by a community moderator.

Flag as Not Acceptable?

We review flagged content and enforce our Terms of Use, in which content must never be:

See full Terms of Use.