Got home around 8:45, and the kids settled in to do some drawing and have some dessert. In front of the budding fire in the stove, drawing afterward at the coffee table, Q reprising the style - forceful, graceful, stark, but soft and subtle - of the drawing he'd done earlier in the day for his homework, T drawing plants and animals and showing me in narrative form just how one goes about making bubble letters. And it struck me that bubble letters might be a very gendered thing - I know relatively few guys who can do them well, but almost no women who can't. And here's T doing them like a pro at 5. Off to bed just thereafter, whereinto they tumbled gratefully.
Because they had been falling asleep in the big booth where we had dinner, at the '6 House out on route 7. Pub fare - the kids had spaghetti and meatballs and grilled cheese, respectively in reverse order of birth. Good place, fine food, great service, nice, roomy yet cozy atmosphere. There's a shelf midway across the big dining area with magazines on it; the kids got squirrelly right before the food came, so we collected two National Geographics and had the kids find their favorite pictures in them. T's was from 1978.
When I was 9 years old, just like Q. But when I was 9, I couldn't ski. Q sure can. We had just come from Jiminy Peak, where we had taken advantage of our passes - which are no good on holiday weekends...until after 3:00. So we shot up there around 2:30, and by 3:30 we were zishing and zhushing down the mountainside. T goes pretty damn fast now, such that whoever pairs up with her for the descent is no longer relegated to smiling and oohing and cheering through a loooong descent. She boogies to the bottom now, with no rest. But Q! On one of the runs he and I went down...oh, I can't remember the name of the run. But it was the two of us, and we zoomed down that thing, sliding up the edges of the run and catching air, as I believe the teenagers call it, off the moguls, and for the first time since we took up this crazy suicidal hobby I found myself whooping out loud for joy. We high-fived at the bottom and caught our breath. What a hoot! We did a total of five runs, with a break after the second one for hot tea (Janneke), cold tea (me), and chocolate milk (James Garfield and Martin Luther King).
Whose day it is tomorrow, and of whom Q spent part of the early afternoon drawing a portrait for his poster. It's the same one he reprised later in the evening. I cut out a thirteen-by-ten bit of graph paper and framed a photo from a book and blew the scale up so that Q is able to transfer it pretty faithfully. It took some grumbling and tears on Q's part, and some teeth-grinding on mine, but we managed to establish a good working relationship where I give him pointers and show him how to see the drawing. It can really come out great when it all comes together. Behold:
But come together it did not for me at lunch. I was just not hungry, so I sat with the other three as they munched and worked on the fire, which was sputtering for some reason. Didn't get the driest of firewood this year again - our firewood guy is about a fifty-fifty prospect in terms of quality wood.
And the reason I was not hungry is that I had made pancakes and bacon for breakfast, at the request of the kids. The bacon was from Caretaker Farm - whereto I recently heard that our friends Don and Bridget, proprietors, have returned from two months in Chile. We'll have to pick their brains. They're going to be invaluable, advice-wise, for our own junket abroad, tentatively set for 2012-2013. I feel confident about their advice - they sure raise fine bacon, anyway. That must be said.
It was a late breakfast - I didn't roll out until after 8:00, and neither did Janneke. Which, if you know Janneke, you probably don't believe. But it's true: we were wiped. Because the night before, we had had a very wonderful, long, warm evening with our friends Brad and Betsy, whom we hadn't seen since before Christmas. We got completely full on both wine and cheese, since we had cheese fondue for dinner. (The grown-ups, not the kids - they all tried it, and to a man were unimpressed. Which is why they got french fries and Quorn nuggets.) We discussed the past and made big plans for the future (involving Christmas in Puerto Rico and Janneke learning to play the drums and Betsy, the bass, forming the rhythm section for the band Brad wants to start, where he and I will share frontman duties - my humble name suggestion: "Püp von Dü"), and didn't say goodnight until damn near midnight. By the time the smoke had cleared and it was time to clear away the evening's detritus, we had pretty much ruined four bottles of wine and at least one beer. No head trouble this morning for me, though, because I remembered the most valuable lesson I ever picked up in my years at University: Drink at least three full, large glasses of water before going to bed. I practically cartwheeled into the kitchen this morning to take care of my fatherly pancake duties- no hangovers for me.
Though had I actually tried to literally cartwheel, I'd have collapsed into (and, given the sheer volume of cheese fondue still working its way through me, quite probably through) the drywall in the hallway, because my back was a complete mess. The previous afternoon, you see, Q and I had wheeled thirteen wheelbarrows (well, actually, one wheelbarrow thirteen times) of firewood into the garage. It was one of the most pleasant little whiles I recall with Q over the last few months - we talked politics, aging, global warming, and Martha Coakley. But pushing that wheelbarrow through slippery snow and up a slight rise while it was heaped high with firewood must have called upon my back to contort in some pretty extreme ways, because even now I'm a little hunched and gingerly.
Which probably means I should get to bed. MLK day tomorrow - gotta be at my best to make sure that poster gets finished. (By the way, for a good long time there, Spellcheck knew that "Sdrawkcab" was up to no good. But it deemed "Yllacigolonorhc" to be perfectly acceptable. Must have stunned it into silence.)
No comments:
Post a Comment