DUOFILIA

(Part I)

After living in various places in California and Oregon we finally settled in Beaverton, Oregon, which was at that time a smallish suburb with rural areas of mostly hazelnut and apple orchards. It is ironic that although I now live an hour away, I work in Beaverton, which is now an overpopulated city (home of Nike!) with clotted freeways and photo-radar intersections. I drive by my old house occasionally to make sure they haven’t cut down the grape vine in the backyard. So far so good. Although they did cut down the apple tree upon which my dad grafted pears. Fascists.

The old house was pea-green and had two small bedrooms and one bathroom with a deep tub but no shower. The area under the kitchen sink was covered with curtains and it was where we kept the bucket for kitchen scraps which would eventually be put in the compost pile outside for our perennial vegetable garden. I shared my room with my obnoxious sister (I like you much better now, Mia, but at the time you were a huge pain, unlike me who was nearly angelic. Stop choking.) who is six years older than me. There were built in drawers in the room and if you opened them you couldn’t open the bedroom door. Which was how my sister locked me out of out room on a regular basis while she chatted with friends about Leif Garrett and Scott Baio. I retaliated by following her and her friends around as much as I could and asking obnoxious questions and steal her Bonne Bell lip gloss.

Our neighbor and landlord lived next door on a corner lot. He had a huge Queen Anne cherry tree and we’d climb high into its branches, eat cherries, and drop the pits onto cars passing below. On the other side of our house was the neighbor where I practiced piano before I had my own. She was old and her house smelled like old things but was extremely fascinating to me and I liked to explore it since it was much bigger than ours. Like my mom, our neighbor had a pantry with rows and rows of sparkling Kerr jars of tomatoes, peaches, applesauce. We made grape juice every year from our grape vines, dried fruit from our fig tree in the dehydrator and canned tomatoes from the garden. Every house I’ve owned as an adult I’ve had a vegetable garden and we plant trees. Currently we have apples, plums, figs, peaches, nectarines, pawpaws and olives. Trees are a very important part of my life. Must have trees!

I played by myself most of the time. I was mostly a Hot Wheels car girl and made roads in the dirt. I had a few dolls, but had the most fun with homemade paper dolls and the Dandelion Ladies (see instructions in my previous post) that Mia taught me how to make. Childhood seemed to last a lifetime, which was sometimes good and sometimes not. But elementary and junior high ended, as did life at the old house.

1) Pick a dandelion, making sure it has at least a 3-4” stem.

2) With your fingernails, carefully peel the stem back into halves lengthwise, leaving about a 1” section of stem by the blossom intact.

3) Peel the halves into halves and halves again, careful not to break them, until you have several “streamers.”

4) Place the split stem into cold or tap water. Watch the streamers curl before your eyes!

5) Stand the finished dandelion doll on its blossom, which is the skirt. Now you have a curly topped, yellow skirted little lady. Make a dozen of them and watch how each of them curls differently.

For this Three Link Thursday I’m going to list links that I visit regularly.

Kids — Two educational and fun links for kids and great for homeschooling: Funschool and Starfall.

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Food — I visit VegWeb nearly everyday for great recipe ideas and some of the recipes are my own. Epicurious is another site that gives me great ideas for great eats.

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Health — The superb and scientifically based PCRM and the odd but also scientifically based Not Milk. Enter either at your own risk and be prepared to change your nutrition paradigm, if you dare!

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Ok, that was more like six links. Three, six, whatever. I was never good at math. Get over it.

Burns, germs, aches, pains. Happiness.

My aunt and uncle are vacationing for a week in Welches, Oregon, in the mountains near grand Mt. Hood, renting a two bedroom condo. They invited us up and so we drove up there Saturday evening. It’s only a 40-45 min drive from our home and we’ve been there before, and while its very beautiful I don’t remember it being quite so gorgeous as it was this weekend.

Sunday morning we woke up and drove 15 minutes up the mountain to a snow park. We bundled the girls and took them inner-tubing for the first time in their lives. Fortunately, the park has a tow-rope otherwise I would have died after the first hike to the top, a permanent snow angel. After my multiple back surgeries I’ve never quite gotten back into shape and knew the day would likely kill me off, but nothing could have kept me away from enjoying my daughters’ play.

After sliding down several times, Sydney informed me she had to go potty. So she and I stomped into the lodge at the top of the hill while her sister and daddy stayed behind. Anyone who has gone skiing, snowboarding, sledding, or any other snow activity knows what a pain it is to use the bathroom. Double that with children. They ought to make a suit with a built-in urinal system, or maybe diapers like the Chinese do when waiting in line at the subway.

We were alone in the 12 stall restroom. I carefully peeled the layers off Sydney. I had both girls’ and my own hats and gloves stuffed in the front of my ski jacket. As I bent over to do the post-pee dabbing, I dropped my black knit hat into the toilet. I snatched it out, hoping to have been so fast that the fluid molecules hadn’t touched the hat molecules. Right.

I lifted Sydney off and rushed to a sink, filling it with hot water and soap. Sydney watched me with great interest. The old faucet didn’t have hot and cold marked and I blasted the cold water to rinse my hat. Instead, the water went from Hot to Blister and I burned my knuckles.

By the time we got back outside David and Summerlyn were at the bottom of the hill, so Sydney and I tubed our way back down and I handed David all the gloves and hats, handing him my own last. He looked down in surprise at the soggy hat in his hand, but not so surprised as when I told him I fished it out of the toilet. That was amusing for a few moments until I told him it was washed. But still.

That night David, who apparently still loves me, and I left the twinlets with my aunt and uncle and we went to Don Guido’s, a good Italian restaurant in Rhododendron. The food was excellent, save for the garlic bread. We sat in a half-circle vinyl booth, surrounded by several others, so we felt like we were on the teacup ride at Disneyland, the Italian version, expecting to start spinning any moment. Soft rock from the seventies played overhead and David and I looked deeply into each other’s eyes and spoke the lyrics in time with the music, in very droll tones.

“Every sha la la la, every whoa uh oh, still shines. Every shing a ling ling…”

The other patrons probably thought we were on leave from the state hospital, as we snickered our way through our pasta. But that’s our way of bonding. The most romantic thing was later when we crawled into bed, smiling. Not because anything was going to be any action that night but because our tiny girls were sleeping in their sleeping bags at the foot of our bed and we were comforted by their presence and our hearts were in love with the togetherness of our family.

Alertment! (As the girls would say) as of last night:

“If you pinch your nose shut for years and years until Jesus comes, you will die.” — Surgeon General Summerlyn (age 4 years 11 months)