Coming Home

I'm back from another trip, this time to Kentucky. More school visits. My husband works hard to keep things going while I'm gone, and I have to give him his props: he does a pretty dang good job. I came home to children who were alive, basically clean, and in good spirits. The laundry and dishes were done. The fish had not died (I'm very fond of this fish, despite the fact it has remained nameless for over a year now; it always seems so happy to see me when I walk into the room). Nobody had gone to school lunchless or underpantless. In short, a job well done.

But the fact remains, that my husband, while possessing a healthy respect for cleanliness, cares not one whit for tidiness. He does not do tidy. He does not notice when things are untidy, when the school papers (checked homework, field trip notices, Read-a-thon sheets, Weekly Readers) pile up on the tables and under the tables, when the mail teeters precariously on the edge of the kitchen counter, when the rinsed recyclables seem to have taken up permanent residence beside the sink. Not even on his radar. So my job upon returning from my travels is to tidy up, room by room.

I don't mind tidying, though when I'm away, I always have grander visions of what I'll do when I get home. This time I thought maybe I'd finally whip that attic into order. We have a walk-in attic off the second floor, a wonderful and dangerous thing. In our old house, we had no storage space; here, we have the attic and a garage (detached, no less). The temptation to just chuck everything in there that doesn't fit in the closet is just too great to be resisted, and resist it we don't.

But suddenly, on the road, I envisioned an attic of order and light. An attic where there is a corner devoted to children's toys that are only played with on occasion, and a corner for the Christmas decorations, and a neat stack of file boxes against one wall ...

I remember when I read Anna Karenina a few years back, one of the scenes that struck me most is when Levin is riding home on the train; he's been away for a while and now he is filled with hundreds of plans for what he'll do the minute he arrives. He'll fix this and plant that and get the whole place in ship shape order. When he finally does get home, his energy completely evaporates and all he can do for a couple of days is wander around aimlessly.

That's me. Get me out of the house, all I can do is come up with big plans for the house. Return me to the house, all I can do is tidy up here and there and wonder when I can sneak in a nap.

So today I tidied. The attic remains lumpy and dumpy, everything strewn hither and yon. It is safe for another day--or probably another month. But the living room has been voided of clutter and all the Star Wars paraphenalia has been returned to its rightful owners, and the ten billion catalogs that arrived during the three days I was out of town have been recycled. That's about what I can do for now. That attic will have to wait.

Entropy

At some point during the cleaning cycle, my house completely loses it. By cleaning cycle I mean this: At the beginning of the cycle, I clean frantically before a) the arrival of out-of-town guests or b) my book group meeting, and then I rest lazily on my laurels for the next two-to-three weeks until I can no longer walk into the upstairs bathroom without sinking into despair. During week two of the cycle, the house teeters on the edge of respectability, and then one day it falls into the abyss of the downright dirty.

It seems to happen suddenly, this falling off, but of course on some level of my psyche I'm observing it as it happens. There is a certain amount of denial that goes on. I do a little touch up around the sink with toilet paper, wiping up little hairs (how I hate them) and bits of dried toothpaste, and I tell myself, "There, that should do it for another week." I dab at spilled juice in the fridge, run a finger over a bookshelf, and feel the house has been rightly restored to its pristine state.

Yesterday I realized that my house and I have come to one of our frequent impasses. It desperately needs to be cleaned, I desperately need to do a dozen other things. But while it's possible to put off dusting for long stretches of time, and the junk drawer can be reorganized at a later date, there comes a time when bathrooms can no longer be ignored. And if the floors aren't swept and vacuumed sooner rather than later, who knows what manner of vermin will feel free to move in and settle down?

So today I am cleaning. I am taking little breaks between the tubs and the beds and the desktops strewn with debris (kleenex, tiny car wheels, game pieces, sundry playing cards, Valentines from 2003, Kohl's price tags) to write this. Right now I am full of energy. After I clean Jack and Will's bathroom, I will probably be done for. It is a horrid bathroom, tiny and full of nooks and crannies. We moved into this house in May, and it is a good 1,000 square feet bigger than our last house (which was quite small--I don't want you to get the idea we've moved into a McMansion or anything), but the bathrooms are miniscule (the house was built in 1965, long before luxury bathrooms were all the rage).

So, take one tiny bathroom, and two boys who are not always possessed of the most accurate aim, and a bathtub filled with assorted plastic pieces that were once attached to other plastic pieces, but now float around rather abstractly by themselves, and add one woman and a spray bottle of Mrs. Meyers, which smells so good but doesn't actually clean all that much (I'll pull out the Comet and other toxic cleaners when nobody is looking), and you have me and my morning. An island of frustration and little tiny hairs. Fingers crossed that I'll survive.

An Ode to Quilts and the Quilters Who Quilt Them

I am almost finished with the quilted patchwork throw I've been working on since the summer. This is my first foray into anything resembling quilting, and I've really loved it. I don't think I'll ever be a classic quilter; I am too messy for that. But I found a book in the library called Liberated Quilting, and I'm pretty sure this is the art form for me.

Liberated quilting, from what I can tell, is quilting for people who can't color inside the lines. It is for people who understand a little messiness is a natural part of life. It is, in short, for left-handed people who have difficulty sewing in a straight line.

I found Liberated Quilting by Gwen Marsten when I was at the library looking for books on the kind of quilts I would love to be able to make. Most of these quilts are by or are inspired by African American quilters. They have wild colors and rhythms and are rarely symmetrical. Straight lines are not required. And they are beautiful. Incredibly, heart-renderingly beautiful.

This afternoon I sat down with a quilting book I have checked out more than once from the library, and one day will actually buy: The Quilts of Gee's Bend, a whopper of a coffee table book that is filled with the quilts and words of an an amazing group of women, all of whom live or lived in the same tiny community in Alabama and made quilts that are nothing less than art.

You can evaluate these quilts formally if you wish; talk about pattern, rhythm, line. And many of them show the handiwork of artists who intuitively or intentionally made great use of classical elements in their work. But what I love so much is that these great works of art come from the stuff of daily life, work clothes and curtains and dish towels and old Easter dresses. Go look at what's inside your laundry basket and imagine it as material for artwork that I would argue rivals the great modernist painters. Ain't that a pip?

I have always wanted to paint, but I am a lousy painter. But I can see making abstract, liberated quilts. I could see quitting knitting and taking up quilting full time. A confession: I am not one of those people who goes all crazy over yarn. I go into yarn shops and see lots of beautiful stuff, but it doesn't make me swoon. I appreciate it, I like the feel of it, but I don't end up spending hundreds of dollars and then hiding the credit card bill. I have virtually no stash.

Fabric, on the other hand, I could look at for hours. I'm nuts about it. And now I have reason to believe I can actually do something with it. This is big. This is very big.

When You're Too Tired to Cook ...

Last week I went to South Carolina for four days. Three of those days were spent talking to middle school students, doing a song and dance I do about writing and books, signing copies of my books, and hanging out with media specialists, formerly known as librarians.

When I came back, I was exhausted. But there was no time for relaxing--I had a conference to attend here in my hometown, a meeting of the regional Society for Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. My editor, who came down from New York, and I did on an hour-long session on how we work together. I worried that the session would seem solipsistic and self-congratulatory, so both Caitlyn and I focused on how much work it takes to make a book, how many revisions we go through, how getting a book accepted for publication is just the beginning. We spent very little time gushing over one another. We didn't want anyone in the audience to throw up.

Caitlyn was here with her family (after the conference they would continue to drive south, destination Hilton Head), so the weekend also involved entertaining her husband and two little girls, which turned out to be an easy job indeed (her five-year-old daughter and any my almost five-year-old son were clearly separated at birth--they are both a mix of sociability and contrariness, lots of bluster, a good dose of sweetness tempered by an impressive self-assertiveness--they had a great time together). Nonetheless, by the time the weekend was over, I was beat. I'd planned to make salmon and new potatoes for dinner, but when the time came, I couldn't muster the energy.

Sick of pizza, my husband suggested something just as easy and a lot cheaper: spinach linguine. This is something I avoided for a long time after starting Weight Watchers. There are certain meals it's hard for me to control myself around (there is a pasta dish I make with sausage and mozzarella and tomatoes that completely does me in), and spinach linguine has been one of them. It is serious comfort food. But we tried it a few weeks ago and I did the Weight Watcher's approved half cup of pasta, and I was good with that. Also, since I no longer serve it with fabulous, buttered Italian bread, there are fewer calories overall to be consumed.

Here's what you need for spinach linguine: a package of Stouffer's creamed spinach and 12 ounces of linguine. You can use a whole pound, but it spreads the creamed spinach a little thin.

Boil the pasta according to directions and microwave the creamed spinach according to directions. When they're done, mix them together in a large bowl. I add salt, pepper and about a half teaspoon of nutmeg, and if I have parmesan cheese on hand I throw some while I'm mixing things around and also put a bowl of it on the table.

This dish takes as long as it takes to boil the pasta (ten minutes; the creamed spinach microwaves in four). It tastes high in fat, but is actually not. It's warm, it's filling, and best of all, it's quite tasty. Jack likes it. If Will actually ate food, he might like it, too. A girl can dream.

The World's Most Perfect Food

My friend Amy is going to the beach this week. That is the only reason I'm not completely despondent over the resurgence of warm weather we're having--back in the high 80s after a week of mid-70s. Just when it was feeling like fall, summer comes back for another slap in the face. But since it will make the beach nicer for Amy and her family, I can live for another week of unbearable weather (which will be even more unbearable in South Carolina, where I'm headed this afternoon for three days of school visits, where I'll talk about my books and be asked "Where do you get your ideas" approximately 587 times).

Anyway, for me, the beach is about one thing: sitting on the screened porch and eating pimento cheese crackers. My husband and I live on pimento cheese crackers at the beach, supplemented by tall, icy glasses of Coke. This year, for the first time, Jack got into the game, too. He'd resisted pimento cheese for a full eight years, but finally, he could resist no longer. It happens to the best of us.

I never had pimento cheese until I moved back to North Carolina after several years of graduate school up North. I'd heard of it, seen it in little plastic containers in the Food Lion, but had not once been moved to eat it. I don't know what happened. I think my husband, a native North Carolinian, must have challenged me to try it (he did the same thing with liver mush, which is also downright yummy when fried up in a pan). I tried it. I liked it. And one day I made some myself.

Unlike banana pudding, you can have pimento cheese whenever you want it. However, I like keeping things seasonal and special, and besides, pimento cheese isn't exactly health food. So I make pimento cheese twice a year--beach week and the Christmas holidays. It is simple to make, and so delicious that you can't stop eating it. Here's the recipe:

Pimento Cheese

8 oz. extra sharp cheddar cheese, grated
2 oz. pimentos, drained
1-2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 Tbs. dijon mustard
1/2 cup onion, minced as fine as you can get it
enough mayo to hold everything together (start with 2-3 tablespoons and keep adding til you have it like you like it)

Pretty much you just mix everything together and let it sit for twenty-four hours before you eat it. When we go to the beach, I make pimento cheese as soon as we've checked into our house, so it will be ready by lunch the next day. It really is important to let it sit so all the flavors can blend in with each other.

When grating the cheese, try to grate it so the pieces are kind of short and stubby. That gives the pimento cheese a more pleasing texture.

I haven't given an exact measurement for the mayo because mayonnaise is a very personal thing. I personally can't stand too much, where the mayonnaise overwhelms everything else, but you have to have enough to hold things together and to make the cheese spreadable. Usually I start with a couple of tablespoons and just keep adding until it's right.

Serve on sturdy crackers--I use those Stone Wheat ones you get in the semi-fancy cracker section of the supermarket.

Once you have eaten homemade pimento cheese, you will never turn back.

Last night I made my son a peanut butter sandwich. It was the first peanut butter sandwich I'd made him in six years.

He wouldn't eat it. In fact, he was pretty sure it would kill him if he did.

When Jack was two (yep, I'm outing Fine Young Son No. 1, because I'm tired of writing Fine Young Son No. 1 and No. 2) he ate a cashew at playgroup. I didn't think a thing about it. A minute or two later, he started to complain that his throat hurt. Suck it up, I told him, or something equally as warm and maternal. He continued to complain. I thought he must be tired and ready to go home, so we left.

In the car, he complained that his eyes itched. Checking him out in the rearview mirror, I saw the skin around his eyes was a blotchy pink. I finally made the connection between the cashew and Jack's symptoms. As it happened, we were right by an Urgent Care facility, so I whipped into the parking lot, grabbed Jack, and ran inside, screaming that someone had to see Jack that very minute, that he was having an allergic reaction to nuts. I thought he was going to die.

Long story short: Jack was indeed allergic to nuts. He didn't go into anaphylactic shock on that day, nor has he ever. In fact, he has only had one other allergic reaction. About six months later, I bought some Nestle's Chocolate Chunks to make cookies with. I knew that Nestle's chocolate chips were nut free, and I assumed that the Chunks were too. Jack ate a handful, and almost immediately hives popped up around his eyes. I checked the package, and there it was, plain as day: This product may have been processed on machinery that also processes peanuts.

When Jack was diagnosed as being allergic to nuts, I went into a deep funk. Knowing your child is just a nut-laden cookie away from death can really get to a girl. And every time I thought I'd made peace with Jack's condition, some kid would get near to him with a peanut butter sandwich, and I'd just about lose it. His first day of preschool, the mom in charge of snack brought in peanut butter crackers, despite the letter that went out to all the parents in Jack's class that no snacks with nuts were allowed. After telling Jack a hundred times not to eat those crackers, I went back to my car and wept.

How on earth were we going to get through school and birthday parties and Halloween and the people who don't believe in nut allergies and the people who say, "Oh, this cake--these cookies--this chocolate candy doesn't have nuts in it," and then are stunned when they actually read the label to find out it does have nuts? How would he survive--how would we survive--without keeping Jack under constant surveillance?

Sixth months after starting preschool at age four, Jack taught himself to read. This was a blessing, because now Jack could read food labels for himself. In fact, he has done an amazing job of self-policing over the years. And he has been a great sport. He has had to pass up all sorts of birthday cakes because the cake mix box had been thrown out or the store label had been torn off the plastic box and we had no way of knowing whether or not the cake was nut-free.

I should take a second here to give a shout-out to our many friends and neighbors who went rooting through the trash to find empty cake mix boxes or cookie packages or called the bakery that made the birthday cake. Another one goes to my friends who never forgot about Jack's allergies, who always made certifiably nut-free cakes and cookies, who always checked the labels on the crackers or the chips without having to be asked.

When Fine Young Son No. 2--aka Will--came along, we treated him as though he were allergic to nuts, too. It wasn't hard to do, since we don't keep peanut butter or any nuts at all in the house. We told his preschool teachers that we were treating him as potentially allergic to nuts, and they asked parents to bring in nut free snacks for snack time.

We were told we should get Jack tested around age eight, and so yesterday, we did. For good measure, we got Will tested, too. A nurse swabbed their backs, drew a lot of little horizontal lines, each one with a little code under it, and then she poked and pricked and we waited. One of the pokes was with a histamine, and on both boys that turned into a welt almost immediately. Other than that one welt, Will's back stayed clear. A short line of four welts appeared on Jack's back. When the nurse examined him, she said: Cashews. Almonds. English Walnuts. Hazelnuts.


No peanuts.

When you have spent six years worrying that your child will die after innocently consuming a fraction of a peanut, it is an amazing and wonderous thing to hear that he is safe.

"Let's go buy some peanut butter!" the boys yelled. And so, on our way home, we stopped at a mini-mart and bought a small jar of Jif. When we got home, I made the first peanut butter sandwich I'd made in six years.

No one would touch it.

Will, of course, does not eat strange food on principle, even when the idea of the food is appealing to him. Jack, on the other hand, is more adventurous. But psychologically, it must be hard to eat something that for your entire thinking life you have assumed would kill you. He may never eat peanut butter. I wouldn't blame him.

But if he wants to, he can. And I can let him go to Europe now, and New York City, and all those other places that would take him far away from me and his dad, without worrying that if we're not there to save him, who will? We'll still worry about drunk drivers and child predators and freak accidents and a wide and various assortment of diseases. But not peanuts. They're off our list.

But I'm keeping the epi-pen, just in case.

So last night I'm at the preschool Parents' Night. The teacher describes all the interesting, neat things the kids are doing this year, which makes me want to be a fly on the wall everyday just to watch. Then she points to a row of drawings on the wall and tells us these are pictures the children have drawn of themselves doing their favorite things. Beneath each picture, the teacher has written a caption. "Go to the fair." "Play with Trucks." "Play with my friends."

All the parents scan the wall eagerly. What have their precious children drawn? It only takes me a second to find Fine Young Son No. 2's portrait. He has drawn himself using a gold crayon, little head, cocoon-like body, no neck or legs (but feet). The caption reads "Eat lunch at home."

My children are not subtle. When we took Fine Young Son No. 1 to the hospital for a tour before his brother was born, he was given a crafts project to do. Draw a happy face on this paper circle, the nice tour lady told all the children, and then we'll glue it to the popsicle stick, and when baby brother or sister is born, you can wave your picture at them--baby's love to look! The other children drew happy, smiling faces, clown faces, flower faces. My son, age three-and-a-half, scrawled a monster face all in black. With fangs. I still have it, little portent of things to come that it is.

Now, another parent in the preschool classroom, seeing FYS2's self-portrait, might get warm, fuzzy feelings imagining what FYS2 means by "Eat lunch at home." Grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup at the kitchen table while he tells Mommy all about his day. A mug of hot chocolate. A plate of freshly baked cookies. When FYS2 is done eating, a crust or two left on his plate, he runs off to play with his trucks, pausing first to give Mommy a sweet kiss on the cheek. "T'anks for the great lunch, Mommy," he croons into her ear.

Lovely.

The only problem is, FYS2 doesn't actually eat. He scorns food, gives it the hairy eyeball, finds everything but frozen waffles and goldfish highly suspicious. I believe the only reason he continues to grow at a fairly regular rate is that he drinks copious amounts of chocolate milk.

Last year I tried to get him to go to lunch bunch. Give me one more hour, I pleaded silently. Out loud, I told him it would be like a daily play date with his best friend Benjamin, a longtime lunch buncher. I bought him a Batman lunch box. I bought juice boxes, which we usually only get for special treats. FYS2 was excited--until he realized the lunch bunch ladies actually expected him to eat his lunch. At that point, he rebelled. No more lunch bunch.

Every month or so, I'd ask him if he'd changed his mind. Nope. He wasn't going to do it. And I should say it wasn't just about the eating. If it had been, I might have pushed a little harder. But it was clear that three hours of school was enough for him. It wore him out. He loved school, but school was a lot of sound and color and light coming at him all at once. He could only take so much of it. Fair enough.

This year, I haven't even mentioned lunch bunch. Knowing my son, if I bring it up, he'll just dig in his heels more deeply. I hope that by spring he'll want to try it, because I worry about next year, when he'll be in school all day. He needs to start training for the marathon. But I have kept my mouth shut. No dropping of subtle lunch bunch hints, no wondering aloud about how much fun the lunch bunchers are having out on the playground. I've played it cool. It's a nonissue.

But FYS2 is taking no chances. What's your favorite thing to do, sweet pea, his teacher asks. And instead of saying, "Playing with my superhero guys," or "Dressing up as Batman," or "Pestering my big brother about watching his computer time," he says, "Eating lunch at home." Just in case anyone's thinking about making him stay for lunch bunch. He's Mr. Strategy, Mr. Taking No Chances. Now they probably wouldn't let him come to lunch bunch if he begged them to. "Go home and eat that nice grilled cheese, sweet heart," the lunch bunch ladies would tell him. "We can't take that away from you."

Smart, this kid. Very smart.