C O N T E X T

Sometime in January

After the blizzard that dropped 22" on us, then 2 weeks of almost daily dusting to keep the drifts looking fresh, last weekend it rained, got everything good and wet, then froze again. So now the mountains of snow left behind after the bulldozer cleared the street, the mounds on the corners, hillocks along the parkway, are all frozen up tight. A kid could knock himself out, falling and hitting his head on that stuff.

H O M E W O R K  

Gus's homework, over the break, was to write in his journal everyday. He didn't do it. So in the first week back he had to write a four page essay on the subject of what had been happening during the time away. He wrote about the lizard he got for christmas and the games he played and the snow. While he wrote he mourned the time spent working/not playing.

I haven't written in my journal either. My homework has been the slow unfurling from our packed-up, hunkered-down existence. In otherwords—finding where I stored the mixing bowls, the cutting board, winter boots. Sucking up a lot of dust. Moving furniture. Moving books. Throwing out old saved scraps of paper, bad photographs, graceless fast-food kids meal toys.

That's been my weekend work, this holiday season. During the work-week, I've been getting up at 4, working till 7 when it's time to wake the kids and get them to school. Back at my desk by 9, work till 3:30, go back to get the boys, home by 5, rustle up dinner, orchestrate the doing of homework, bathing, bedtime stories. Collapse.

Yesterday, getting ready to go back to school after a three-day weekend, Jacob handed me a note from his teacher saying I really need to do a better job seeing that Jake gets his homework done and handed in. She's right, of course. Still it came as a blow. I spent the morning reciting the litany of all the responsibilties I bear, playing out the evening scene—me beat from a full-day's work, the boys going off like fireworks, me trying to clean up from breakfast, cook and serve dinner, do laundry and oversee homework simultaneously. Coming around to knowing all this means nothing, working really really hard isn't enough. I have to do better. I have to make it work better. And this means, I have to find a way to come into this part of my day less exhausted, better prepared.

Sat the boys down at the table when we got home last night. Talked things through. Gus moaned about how much work he has and how little time to play. I looked him in the eye and said, "Yep." Jacob just rolled his eyes. That's alright, I can handle that. We just all have to know that this work must be taken on, head-on.

It was good. We got a lot done. And working with Jake, I realized something else. It's true I haven't been on him as much as I am Gus about getting his work done. But then, Jacob does very good work. Jacob gets it. Jacob can first look at his spelling list the morning of the test and come home with a perfect score. It's fun working with Jake on his homework, because its easy. He gets it. So when I work with him, my clearest sense is, he doesn't need me the way Gus does. And beyond that, Jacob is always studying, it's how he lives. He's always thinking about things, the workings behind things. Gus comes home expounding on the game played at recess, the final score, the best plays. He is occupied with superheros, competition and games of his own creation. Jake, on the other hand, will look over my shoulder at the night sky out the window and tell me that it's black because the earth, the point of the earth that we're on, is turned away from the sun and facing out into space. He'll tell me about orbits and rotation, planets visible to the naked eye and the color of their light.

It's clear to me how I can have been lax about monitoring Jacob's homework. I look at him and see no crisis. We'll get a better system going. I'll work on teaching him organization skills and responsibility. That's all he needs, really. The wonder and the capacity to understand, those things he was born with.

C O N T E X T

T O U C H E D  

It's past nine. I'm used up, fall into bed. Gus upstairs in his own world, winding down. Jake and Tucker still deep in play. I maintain just enough conciousness to know no one is unhappy or in need, beyond that I am rock. I am lump. Eventually, the boy voices still. Jacob sleeps. Tucker, left on his own, comes to me. He climbs over me onto my bed. His hands press (my face, my shoulder, my ribs) as he climbs. The feel of it lingers (the press of Tucker) as he burrows down behind me, continuing the game's narrative in a chattering whisper. It soaks through the haze of my exhaustion (the memory of the press of Tucker). Impersonal as sunlight. Sweet beyond belief.

C O N T E X T

A P P E A R A N C E S  

Looking over his spelling book, Jacob hits on a page on which he was supposed to write something on the subject: "What's special about me". He looks at the line of his own printing and asks me what it says. I remember the night he wrote it. It was a head to head night, too late to still be working on homework, both of us tired. Jacob came up with his line and would not budge, till finally I gave in, thinking I was making it worse by fighting over it, remembering times when I was young and wrote out similar declarations as if it was somehow necessary sometimes. So I spelled it out for him to write.

I read it out for him now, "I am an idiot," it says.

"Oh," he says, "yeah. My teacher was asking me about this. She wanted to know who helped me spell it."

Oh yeah, looking good.

C O N T E X T

P L A Y I N G  W I T H  D O L L S

For christmas this year, all four boys (3 kids and 1 dad) got "Ultimate Soldiers". These are barbie sized fighting men with lots of accessories, weaponry and uniforms. The four of them will sit for hours, changing boots and hats and automatic rifles. Watt keeps saying, "We need a barbie for mama so she can be the nurse." He says it to goad me, and it works.

"No way. I don't want any barbie girl. And I never would be the nurse anyway. Jacob's the medic, you don't need a nurse." And when that doesn't fly I threaten, "I'd be a peace protester, I'd just stick flowers in your guns and gum up the works."

This weekend, for Valentine's day, Watt came home with a Barbie in a wheel chair for me and new weapons for all the soldiers. Happy Valentine's day. Ok. Fine. One thing I know is when someone gives you a present you say thank you and try to like it. So I took the doll and admired her hair which is just the color of Tucker's. Watt laughed when he caught me brushing it. He hadn't expected me to accept the gift and thought he'd get himself a wheelchair out of the deal. Realizing that made me mad. I don't like to be toyed with. If he wanted the darn thing he should have just been honest about it and bought it for himself. But he didn't. He presented it as a gift to me and put me on the spot. I didn't want to be rude and reject it, but I wasn't going to let him squeeze me into some girly slot either. I outfitted "Becky" with soldier-abilia that the boys offered to share, a canteen, a grenade, a helmet a knife stuck down in her combat boot. If I had to have a Barbie I was going to make her one tough cookie. Then Tucker took her and started to dress and undress her which upset Gus and Jake. "Give her back to mom." But I didn't mind because really, I was finished. I'd plumbed the depths and had enough. I weazled my way out by going to make lunch.

Now all weekendlong the boys keep saying, "Let's play ultimate soldiers, come on mom." I've lost my graceful out. Now we've all got to come to grips with the fact that, I, the sole female in this house, am the only one who can't stand playing with dolls.