The Moment Between Past and Future

Posted March 17, 2008

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Photo of Ben and Birdy

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

We're eating soup, sitting around our beautiful oak table, the one I bought a decade and a half ago with my friend Robin in Santa Cruz, California. ("Masons," Michael corrected me at the time, when I explained who we'd bought it from. "Masons are the people. Masonite is the Formica.") Is it the season that does this? Makes me feel suddenly like someone is tilting the bottle, and the years are gushing out as quick and bubbling as seltzer? I cannot gulp fast enough. While Birdy sprinkles more and more cilantro into her bowl, Ben gazes out the window, at the golden red ribbon of sunset woven through our trees. Are all kids like this - the way you can see the question forming on his face, brightening his eyes with wonder, long before he asks it?

"Do you think that in, like, a billion years, scientists will have found a way to shrink people?" Ben pantomimes this feat of reduction with a thumb and forefinger nearly touching -- a hand gesture Birdy must not see from behind her heaping bowl of herbs, because she says, "Ben, they already have! Like with old people --how they get shorter!" We all laugh and Ben says, "Um, I don't think that was exactly anyone's idea."

"It would just be so much fun to ride our toy train," Ben sighs. "Or to live in the dollhouse." "Oooh, I would love that!" Birdy agrees. "Because of that gumball machine!" I don't mention that if it's a gumball she's after, she could actually spend one of her own actual full-sized coins and get one from a real machine since I, too, would love to be small enough to put my poppyseed of a penny into a tiny one. I'd also like to take a bath in that nice little clawfoot tub, even though Grandpa remains perpetually on the toilet in there, with a bowl full of clay poops to show for his efforts. Ben is thinking something similar: "I mean, if I were small enough to live in the dollhouse, then I could actually hire a plumber to come and hook that teeny toilet up so it would actually flush." Yes, that would be key.

And notice that we're still having this conversation because I haven't answered Ben's original question with cynicism. "In a billion years, the earth will be one big stubbed-out cosmic cigarette butt," I don't say. And it's partly because I like to spare the children my outbursts of pessimistic angst. And it's partly because the pink of their cheeks hypnotizes me. Raising children is an inherently hopeful act, and sometimes I find myself brimming over with hope. Like tonight. The children wandered in while I was making the posole -- a gorgeous Mexican soup full of pork and hominy, deep red with chiles, rich and delicious -- and they were looking for work, and I put them in charge of the garnishes. And so, in the fading light, they filled every white bowl in the house -- with cilantro leaves and crushed tortilla chips, with lime wedges and shredded cabbage, with cubed cheese and diced avocado (okay, Birdy was in charge of the avocado, so it was more like slabbed avocado). And we had Tracy Chapman on, and she was talking about a revolution, and it sounded like more than a whisper, and our home was filled with warmth and the harmony of purpose.

Sometimes every single thing I do feels like an act of love: putting bowls of good soup on the table, pulling the comforter tighter around a sleeping body, putting a paycheck in the bank, folding small pairs of sweatpants, sweeping grit into a dustpan, stopping to look at the stars. Last week every single thing I did felt like an act of PMS: it entered the room with me like a cloud of mustard gas, like a chain gang shackling me to a dozen versions of myself, every one of them a criminal. But today I could write the book on happiness, and it would be about hominy and candlelight, about the pair of cardinals at our feeder and the way the willows turn gold with possibility long before the spring comes. And every word would be true.

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The Moment Between Past and Future

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by Catherine Newman

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

Dalai Mama Dishes

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

The Moment Between Past and Future

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