T minus two days and we are wheels up to Hawaii. As I mentioned before, our furniture is gone so pretty much all that is left in our apartment are stacks of clothes to be packed and bizarre food items from the back of the cupboard left to be consumed before we leave. The boys seem to be adjusting mightily well. Finn enjoys the expansive carpet space to park his cars and trucks in broader lots of OCD organization and Henry really couldn't care less whether he is sleeping in a fancy crib or a blanket on the floor next to our air bed. It's been an interesting week:
Finn once again ran out of diapers before we realized it so while James scanned the aisle at Target for the smallest possible bag of diapers so we don't have to carry them with us to Hawaii, Finn went "nakie". We have been slowly introducing the idea of potty training but not wanting to start something in the middle of major transition (babywise peeps would be so proud of me), we have put off actual training until we get to Hawaii. Even so, Finn yelled over the women of the View this morning, "I need to pee", we ran into the downstairs bathroom, I hoisted him up to aiming level and he peed. I realize that for many of you who read this and do not have children, this is a sort of uncomfortable and unnecessary anecdote for me to be sharing. But for those of you with access to kids, this, you realize is a momentous moment that makes your heart swell with pride on a first words, first steps sort of level.
Using up the cupboard and fridge food makes for interesting meals. Monday, James made grilled cheese with the last bit of creamy tomato basil soup and supplemented with the final contents of a can of spaghetti sauce to make it go further. We've eaten kiwi with nearly every meal because I found an entire bag of them in the back of the fridge behind boxes of leftovers. And this morning Finn and I made pancakes with the last bit of mix in the box. We have about one table spoon of butter left and no syrup so feeling very martha stewart-y, I thought to sprinkle some powdered sugar on top for taste and aesthetic appeal. I keep the powdered sugar in an old ball canning jar and when I went to sprinkle, I dumped a huge pile on top of the pancakes that resembled a science fair rendition of Mount Hood. Finn promptly plunged both hands into the sugar and then clapped. This all took place during the nakie portion of the morning so wrapped in a towel, sitting on the counter, he covered us both in fine, sticky white powdered sugar and grinned from ear to ear.
Finn's language skills seem to grow with surprising speed and content these days. He often latches on to a word or phrase caught from some unknown origin and repeats it in every possible scenario to try it out. This week's phrases have included "ride it like a horse" and "backing up, backing up" as well as the Happy Birthday song sung in a monotonous zombie-ish voice that makes James and me laugh a little nervously, not sure if we should be entertained or disturbed.
I read the Babywise books one and two over the last couple of days because Mandy mentioned that their philosphy on baby-raising is most closely aligned with hers and Scott's sense of how they would like to parent Jake. But having already traversed the stages they talk about with two kids, I'm having some guilt that I didn't implement these strategies with my kids for their obvious health and emotional benefits. It's like reading the directions on a super-elaborate barbecue grill after you already assembled it willy nilly and turned the propane valve on, thinking, "wow it's a good thing nothing exploded."
I also read Anne Patchett's newest book Run and really loved it. I'd heard it wasn't so good and had even thought about taking my name off the waiting list at the library but then, as is my custom, I forgot about it and got an e-mail that it was waiting for me at the holds desk. Since I'd been something like #940 on the waiting list and I was already at the library picking up the Babywise books, I thought I might as well skim it. I was really pleasantly surprised. Anne Patchett has a way of making really unlikely situations very reasonable and accessible while still successfully making her prose full of lovely descriptions and unexpected connections--sort of the best of a romance novel, a political thriller and a naturalist's walk through the woods.
More once we get to Oahu....
These last few weeks have been a flurry of changes and decisions leading up to a monumentally exciting move to Hawaii. The accompanying emotions are mixed.
We are getting the chance to live in Hawaii rent free in a five bedroom house a stone's throw from one of the most beautiful beaches in the world for six months. James has gotten the Ok to work from home on Pacific time (5-2 in Hawaii) so we will be going to bed early, exploring the island, taking naps and watching for "LOST" stars. We'll pay off some lingering debt more quickly, save up for a newer car and live a life we might not ever get the chance to live. It's really an amazing opportunity that I think anyone would fanangle their lives to allow.
But the initiating reason for us going is that my sister Mandy--whose house it is and whose son I will be caring for--is getting deployed to Afghanistan and is in fact already in the middle of Texas in the middle of the hot season getting ready to be shipped out. Via Skype, she seems in relatively good spirits, resigned to this reality as part of the deal, but maybe slightly more crabby and less impressed with all that the military has done for her. Sitting here with Henry squawking beside me, I just can't really imagine.
As a part of this move, we are packing up our apartment, paring down our belongings once again-less than a year since we moved out of our house in Indiana and did the same thing. Good friends who have recently moved to the Portland area and had no attachment to their previous furniture have given ours a new home while we are away, an easy, free storage system that benefits all involved.
So our living room is a parking lot for finny's trucks and cars and the boxes that vary in stages of fullness. I mentioned before my inability to time the weaning process of food in our fridge before a vacation. I seem to be about as good at packing up a house without putting something ridiculously necessary like a warm sweater for each of the boys in cool Portland spring or spatulas in the bottom of a box not to be found again until the next arrival.
We sold our car to a lovely girl who bought it for a song for her sister, also a lovely girl who seemed a bit down on her luck. I felt good about giving her the keys. But as she drove away and the boys and I stood in the cold rain at a Fred Meyer on the northeast side of Portland, waiting for our ride, I got very nostalgic and sad. With all of its quirks (awful handling, bizarre dash lights constantly blinking on to betray a new chronic problem, electrical malfunction making the back windows and the sun roof unusable), we brought both of the boys home from the hospital in this car. It's come a long way with us.
This all sounds very negative considering the unbeatable situation we have been handed. I am really excited about this chapter for James and me and the boys-Jake and Scott included. I think I'm just focused right now on the leaving and not as much on the arriving. I can't quite see the forest yet for the trees.
If praying is something you do, I would ask for yours especially right now. For the details of leaving; for Mandy, Scott and Jake's comfort and relative ease in transition; for a smoothing over of all the possible difficulties of living in community, for safety, and I guess also for a respectful, effective end to these wars.
As usual, this reminds me of Eliot, "not farewell but fare forward"
Fare forward, travellers! Not escaping from the past
Into indifferent lives, or into any future;
You are not the same people who left that station
Or who will arrive at any terminus,
While the narrowing rails slide together behind you;
And on the deck of the drumming liner
Watching the furrow that widens behind you,
You shall not think 'the past is finished'
Or 'the future is before us'...
Here between the hither and the farther shore
While time is withdrawn, consider the future
And the past with an equal mind.
I picture the two of you very vividly as hippy parent inventor extraordinaires: well tanned and with lovely accents (you are Australian after all), athletically thin (you make jogging strollers) and bearing the characteristic idiosyncrasies of both the modern progressive parent and the self made business men that you are (this part I'm just conjecturing). And with this image in my mind--a sort of boyscout meets crocodile dundee meets metrosexual dad of three with a Subaru forrester and a compost pile sort of image--I write you this letter of appreciation believing that it means something to you to hear it.
I love your strollers. I mean really. I really love your strollers.
I fancy myself a progressive parent in my own right, but more of the garage sale-ing, taking mass transit, carrying a canvas tote everywhere I go kind of progressive (see here-less money than your typical granola mom) so your stroller, with its hefty price tag and slightly yuppy looking exterior would normally not appeal to me. But here's the thing, the whole design of the double stroller that converts so simply for varying children in different stages and does so with such minimal bulk is really just so very brilliant. So brilliant in fact that when I first saw one of your strollers on a clandestined day at a Borders in Beaverton, I chased the man down who was pushing it and bombarded him with questions as he hastily tried to find his wife and make his escape. I actually followed him through the store marveling at the apple green stroller with his two toddler aged sons riding comfortably double decker as their father swiveled and maneuvered between narrow bookshelves and dawdling customers. I dropped my books on a table near the door, waved my husband down and followed this man with the stroller out the front door to continue my interview.
The very next day, I went to the store of his direction and found the vary same Phil&Ted's stroller parked just inside the front door. A week later, after much rationalizing and some financial fanangling, we took our own green apple stroller home. As it would happen, we found the last stroller of a certain shipment from your lovely company that had been specially priced so that the double kit came free. It seemed like a good omen.
Ever since, I have pushed my stroller proudly to all manner of events and places, through airports and MAX stations, festivals and carnivals, on dirt and on grass and on pavement. And it has been worth every penny we paid for it and more. I live in a lovely city where it rains unforgivably often and as a newcomer, I know very few people. It would be very easy for me to stay home with my newborn and two-year-old sons and mournfully look out the drizzly windows. But with the initial motivation of making sure I got my money's worth and then for the continued joy of being outside and finding the trails and playgrounds in an ever-broadening radius from our house, we use it all the time.
I realize this sounds like hyperbole. And to some extent I know it is hyperbole. We would live quite effectively with a less lovely stroller and in fact would probably continue to breathe without a stroller at all. But my point is, your design is useful to my life. I walk more often: to buy groceries for dinner, to send a birthday present, to get coffee and then play at the park. And if walking more isn't progressive, than I don't know what is.
Thank you for the ingenious design of your double jogging stroller. I believe I am a better mom for its convenience and comfort.
Very best,
Kate Rohl
PS. While I appreciate the stroller's jogging capacity, I should disclaim that I have not yet utilized it for actual jogging.
PPS: Your company might want to think seriously about issuing me some sort of commission structure as I am easily persuaded into conversations with perfect strangers about the brilliance of your strollers and then a subsequent demonstration of its function. I have also introduced the stroller to entirely new markets visiting friends in both Indiana and Arizona where you, Phil&Ted are not nearly as well represented as you are here in cutting edge Portland.