Southern Exposure

Long before there were many performers booked or details available, I bought us some tickets to go to this summer's FloydFest, an annual music festival held along the Blue Ridge Parkway near Floyd, Virginia. When, years ago, Nate and I took our honeymoon road trip across country, driving all the historic and scenic routes we could find, we loved the Blue Ridge Parkway and vowed to come back again and again. I guess that, combined with the fact that we haven't had a vacation just the three of us AND the incredible stationary feeling that comes with December in Michigan, is why it seemed like a good idea to lock in the tickets (besides, they were incredibly cheap back then, and I'm nothing if not a sucker for a good bargain). It didn't matter what the music was--I just liked the idea.

Last week as we were getting to leave, though, we were on the fence. Nate has almost no time off left, and I'm grudgingly going through my last days of work, showing up in body if not in spirit. Besides that, it's easy sometimes to get in a rut and stick with that which seems easy. And don't even get me started on Clementine's unpredictability in the car. We almost called it off, but now almost a week later I'm so very grateful we didn't. Nate and I spent the entire drive home trying to articulate just what it was about FloydFest that was so magical and wonderful. Time alone as a family to be sure, but also the community, the setting, the vibe--things were just so different in a truly significant way. It was just what we wanted from a vacation. In some ways I feel like I've been to a foreign country and am coming back dazzled by the new customs and people, but it's not that it was a foreign experience at all.

At first I was thinking it was the difference between the north and the south that marked this as unusual, and then I was wondering if it was an urban/rural difference. Maybe it was just the vibe of the festival, which attracted such a broad range of people I hardly know how to categorize, from hippies to cowboys, southern belles to punks, all sorts of parents you can't imagine wanting to pitch a tent in the woods and listen to the pounding drums and relentless bass until 3 AM while the smell of pot wafted about the tent. But even that is simplifying the experience.

Clementine had a blast, as pictures will prove when I sort through them tonight. She met all kinds of kids whose parents were just as open and enthusiastic as they were, sharing food, asking about us and where we were from, giving us the inside scoop on the festival and surrounding area. It was such a change from the kid scene in Detroit, which isn't nearly as open and friendly.

C's schedule is all mixed up, so I'm going to go drag her lazy ass out of bed and haul her to daycare so I can put in a few last company hours. UGH.

Meet Chewta

I do things on a daily basis as a parent that I thought I never would, including things I said I'd never do, things I used to be annoyed by when other people did them and things that are gross. Today I took my daughter to get ice cream with some friends of ours and allowed her to carry with her AT ALL TIMES a potentially dangerous bit of chain which she has proclaimed is the leash for her dog Chewta. People looked at me, and I could see in their minds that they thought I was either totally negligent to allow the darling to play with a rusty "I'm gonna beat your ass at the playground" kind of toy or too poor to buy her something more appropriate like those charming pull-along telephones or wooden animals with flappy feet. I wanted to explain to them that I had begged her to take along her special rocks purse or monkey backpack, her stuffed pony-in-a-purse, her little plastic car, all to no avail. She grabbed hold of one end of the chain that sits coiled beside our back door (because, after all, there are SOME limits), and lovingly dragged the other end behind her, telling me "Chewta get ice cream, too."



It's not that I am embarrassed by our new invisible friend: on the contrary, I LOVE Clementine's little imagination. She does get a little excited with Chewta, however, and that usually involves running around in circles with him until the chain whips her legs into little red welts, the likes of which she shares with anyone in Chewta's path. At an ice cream stand or in the park, I do tend to be a little sensitive to the damage she can do to other children (and, let's be honest, I hate the holier-than-thou glances from parents who were probably wondering what she could catch from being in such close proximity to something not made of primary color plastic). Chewta is welcome anywhere in my world; I just wish his chain would stay at home.

But it is the chain that is the very essence of Chewta. I suspect he was born not solely out of Clementine's obsession with dogs or hidden desire to depose our family cat and install a little puppy, but also of a crafty desire to avoid my wrath when she wouldn't put that damn length of chain down after the 20th time I asked her to the other day. At first it was a necklace and then a hat and then a swing and then a bracelet and then a little star and then "Clementine, if you don't put that down right now you're going to go inside!" followed by "But Mama it is for my tiny little puppy." I had never heard of the tiny little puppy before, so of course I had to know more. And that's how Chewta came to be.

Here's what we know so far (and it's surprising how little the details change): Chewta is a boy, he is green, he likes to travel by leash (damn chain) and also in Clementine's back pocket (I can't even begin to express how difficult it is to dress the child these days for at least ONE article of clothing on her person MUST have a pocket, even if Chewta isn't in the foreground of her mind). At night he sleeps in Daddy's shoe, and he can magically appear in Clementine's hand. He eats only peas, cherries and ice cream and he says only "Woof, woof," not "Bark, bark." He is an interesting specimen to say the least.

I'm at odds to day what the best part of Chewta is for me. I am not a dog lover and can't stand to think of there being one more thing in our house that needs attention and care (plants are long dead, and the laundry is dying a slow death). I like that we can walk the dog when we want but not have its cold nose snuffling at our feet while we eat dinner. We can pet him and roll around with him but still pack ourselves off for a weekend of camping without worrying about who will feed and walk him three times a day. Indeed, he can come with and I don't have to carry his poop around in little plastic bags or worry about whether or not he's allowed in restaurants. But none of this is why I love Chewta so much.

I love Chewta for the way he sprung from Clementine's imagination (or ingenuity) and continues to grow and change based on her understanding of the world. She calls all the shots with him, and I like the little glimpse this provides into what is important to her, what she's noticing about the things that go on around her. It reminds me a little of when my niece would talk to me on the phone about a new toy or short and say "Wanna see it?" holding the phone away from her ear without bothering to think of how that little piece of technology really worked. Chewta is what Clementine wants him to be, chain and all. I don't think he'll be something that stays with us long, but for now I'm happy to walk him and buy him ice cream, pet him and ask questions about what he likes to drink.

I’ve been working on a long post about all the ways in which we have been enjoying the summer—a million festivals, weekend trips, pools and fountains and music (oh my!), but I’ve had a hard time finishing it. Part of it is because I’ve never ever been so busy just experiencing a summer, trying to fit everything in and taking every single opportunity to get out and do something. Part of it is because work is sucking every last bit of energy out of me as we countdown to my last day in this job. And part of it, today anyway, is because I can’t stop thinking of Clementine and her new vociferous objections to being left at daycare.

In many ways, I feel like I’ve regressed to my first months back to work, when I noted every minute Clementine wasn’t in my care, took note of every small thing that bothered me about the daycare and Julie. I felt guilty at every turn and wondered how anyone manages to feel good about working and leaving his or her child in the care of someone else. Of course that all evened out eventually, and over the last school year I did nothing but beam when I thought of how great daycare was for all of us—I got to go to work everyday (mixed blessing, but it was time on my own, for me) and she got the benefit of even more loving adults in her life, not to mention a group of kids to hang with. And now when we talk about going to Julie’s, Clementine begs to “Stay in my house,” and when I drop her off she clings to me and screams “I need my mama!”

There’s a part of me that knows this is kind of normal kid stuff—along the same lines as wanting one parent when the other has her. But I hate the idea of not listening to her, of not believing that something has changed. A woman I work with reminds me that kids are manipulative and know how to “push your buttons to get anything their hearts desire,” but I’ve always wanted to reject that to some degree. Do I think kids should get everything they want? Of course not—just because Clementine says she needs ice cream doesn’t mean I want to honor her request. But I feel like the rules change a bit when she’s expressing something as complicated as this: a desire not to be somewhere, not to go to Julie’s. And it’s not that I think something is wrong or untoward there. Maybe she’s not getting something she needs. Hell, I can be so neurotic. But this is what’s taking up my time.

Also, cleaning five years’ worth of crap off my desk, resisting the urge to shop on the Internet and trying to look busy. It’s a wonder I can blog at all.

Instead of selling her to gypsies

I have a new threat for when Clementine gets all whiny or unreasonable: I can feed her to the bears. Too bad she isn't too afraid of them. When we walked into the visitor center at the park where we camped, she was instantly interested in dentistry, which is good since I've been disturbed by recent proclamations of things being scary (especially when she says Mama scary). While it tickled her to meet something she had only read about in books up close and personal, I wondered a little but about what it would like to come across a real bear...or real poison ivy, for that matter. The same visitor center had a display that allowed you to fondle fake poison ivy plants so to better be able to identify them. I think the concept of both was lost on her, but she sure did have fun:



That's right! I finally got my camping pictures off the camera after my mom mentioned for the tenth time that my sister's pictures sure were nice.

Clementine was very excited about a few things while we were camping, all of which you can see in abundance in the whole group of photos (click any photo to see more): Crocs, her cousins, Laura, her hoodie, the beach, the sand and being naked. Oh, and Macaroni and Cheese, which she pronounces "mock-ee cheese" every six or seven seconds whenever anyone is eating in her vicinity. Even after the first few days of blissfully warm water faded to days with cool breezes from the north and even cooler water, Clementine couldn't stay away from the lake:




We biked out the lighthouse, which didn't make much of an impression at the time--after she realized they weren't going to let her go to the top she was much more interested in dancing on the boardwalk and swapping Crocs with cousin Nora. But a few days later as we packed the car up to head home, we asked her where she thought we were going (thinking that of course she'd say "home" since she had been demanding "baby go home" all morning). Nope, she said lighthouse and then cried a good portion of the way out of town that she wanted to go the lighthouse, not home.



Since we hadn't thought to bring along her toy kitchen (or the myriad other outrageous toys she demanded at various points during the trip), we let her use the cook stove to make--you guessed it--Mac-y Cheese. She did such an excellent job that now Nate and I are developing a way for her to safely prepare all our meals while we sit on the couch and watch movies:



On the last day she demanded three ponies (her name for pony tails), gingerbread and pizza. We kept her in the wilderness with the bears too long: the kid has no manners and is very messy.




Somehow we managed to squeeze all the stuff from our luxury camping experience back into Nate's car and get home. Beneath it all, you can just make out the child:

In which we camped

We've been back in civilization for almost a week now (and what a joke that is--our camping is far from roughing it), and since the rest of the world has this week off, including my daycare, I've been back at work with my little assistant, darling C. After a week of sleeping outdoors and waking to ride bikes or hike or roll around in the sand dunes or sit beside Lake Michigan, the greatest of the Great Lakes if you ask me, it was strange to watch her beneath the fluorescent lights plugged into Pippi Longstocking, her obsession of the moment, so I could get a few things done. What a contrast.

Vacations like these are the things I hope Clementine remembers forever--a great group of families who have been camping together in one form or another for over 20 years (we're the newbies and the only ones with a toddler), days starting slowly with some romping in the tent before emerging to do one of a dozen outdoor activities, campfires at night, bugs and fish to examine, sunsets and ice cream at the beach each night. It was all good. But before I fade into a haze of the remembered paradise, there were, of course, some incidents. Take, for example, the crisis of the Crocs.

I don't resist trends just to resist trends, although Crocs really do bug me solely for the fact that they are so ubiquitous and come in such silly colors. But that's really an adult attitude. For a kid, they are great, and I thank my sister every day for bringing them into our lives--C's Crocs, which she pronounces "cocks," are one of two pairs of shoes that fit, and they are certainly the most acceptable ones for camping in dirt and walking through the sand, wading in the water and playing on the beach. You can imagine, then, my distress when I realized that somewhere along the way, C's Crocs were gone. They weren't in the bike basket. They weren't on the beach. They weren't at the ranger station. Shit. Try shoving Vans on a kid's sandy, sweaty feet so she doesn't just shuffle through the dirt floor of the campsite.

But I wasn't the only one upset. After the novelty of wearing cousin Nora's Crocs wore off, Clementine started getting more and more demanding: "Baby Crocs. Baby wear Baby Crocs. Baby Crocs NOW!" We did what I think anyone would do: drove to town and bought a new pair. In the store I showed her orange Crocs and green ones, purple and white, but she spied the turquoise ones and cried "Baby Crocs!" running toward them with such recognition and relief that I handed them over and paid the lady. This seamless transition from old to new was great...until, oh a whim, I asked the ranger a few days later if the shoes had turned up. Of course they had--a state park is no safe harbor for thieves of expensive little baby shoes. And so now we're the proud owners of two pairs of turquoise Crocs.

It seems strange that little episode stands out, but the rest of the trip was really uneventful. Clementine had such a great time frolicking--and that really is the word for it, marching around and chanting "La la Pippi Longstocking la la la," until I started to miss the oddly dubbed DVDs of the 70s Swedish show that Clementine has become enamored with. It was very fitting she fixated on that while camping because she had the same impish grin, the child's approach to just about everything, especially bedtime. This was the first time I could see the wheels turning for her: "Why do I have to go to bed when everyone else is up and eating sugar?"

Which I guess takes us to the sugar detox program we've been implementing since we've been home. After a few days camping she reverted to an animal state and would walk up to any of our friends who happened to be eating something delicious and would stand there, mouth open, waiting for a bite. Of course everyone always obliged, and I started to sound like the world's worst nag with the say please and say thank you and no, Clementine, you can't have anymore ice cream/cookies/chips/licorice/s'mores.

Of course there are pictures. In many of them she's so covered in dirt and sand and sweat and grime and sunscreen you can barely make out that it's her. In others she's asleep. While camping makes some look earthy and natural, I look sweaty and like I have big pores. I will post them, but for now I'm going to put the finishing touches on my Friday, which included a great little family dinner. When it was over we asked if she wanted to go the park, ride bikes or go to the bookstore. She picked bookstore and stuck with it, no matter what incentive I threw her way to make it an outdoor option. We've had to read her Tikki Tikke Tembo and Strega Nona twice now, and she's finally asleep.

We're back...

...and I've officially washed all the campfire smoke out of my hair, the last of my tribe to do so. I could write a love letter to Lake Michigan and the Ludington State Park for a beautiful week (albeit a little chilly, if you can imagine) but need to start the epic task of doing all my smoke-infused laundry and washing my dishes (CampSuds and cold well water don't seem quite good enough), putting our life back in order and continuing to adjust to a life not on vacation. And of course I need to get pictures off the camera so you all can see just how dirty a pint-sized camper can get in a day, despite braving the sometimes-freezing lake water to wash off.