Camp Crisp: By the Numbers
25 Jul 2008 2 Comments
in A Zany Life Tags: camping, family, vacation
1
# of fish caught with a pole, # of fish caught with bare hands, # of times Bacon washed dishes, # of new book ideas, # of lost cameras, # of lost gas caps
2
# of ancient Indian Kivas explored
3
# of museums visited, # of coffee pots used every morning, # of little girl cousins: Cherry, Coco, Rascal
4
# of day trips to Santa Fe, # of dogs: Lilly, Daisy, TiKi, Missy
5
# of white ice chests, # of blog entries written but not yet published
6
# of cakes baked and consumed, # of hikers to Cave Creek plus 1 schnauzer, # of members of the Brave Girls Club
7
# of Crisp horseback riders
8
# of books read completely
9
# of vehicles: 3 RVs, 2 cars, 2 pickup trucks, 2 motorcycles
10
# of coffee can stilts made and balanced upon
11
# of mule deer sited
12
# of days that it rained for at least part of the day
13
# of nights at Holy Ghost Campground
431
# of photos taken with the camera purchased after the first one was lost
Holy Ghost
12 Jul 2008 2 Comments
in A Zany Life, Writers Write Tags: camping, Thoreau
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
Henry David Thoreau
We’re headed out on our yearly visit to Holy Ghost Campground near Pecos, NM. Packed and stacked, our mini van and pop-up trailer are facing toward the road for a new adventure. This is an unplugged experience. HG is place without computers or cell phone reception, so don’t expect much in the way of blog posts. I’ll have a lot to write about when I’m back in a few weeks. Happy Trails!
The Clock
09 Jul 2008 2 Comments
in Joined at the Heart, Mouths of Babes, Writers Write Tags: family, loss, memory
We opened the pop-up camping trailer for the first time in a year. It’s pretty much the way we left it. After tossing a few moldy pillows, we discovered the rest wasn’t too worse for wear. Cherry checked out the cooking utensils. Inside the silverware drawer, she found the wind up travel alarm clock.
“Papa gave this to me.” She turned it over in her hands. “I remember that day. This came from his camper.”
The clock is square with a plastic cover that opens like a locket making its own stand. Cherry opened it, and turned it over to look at the face. Her eyes were glossy with memory. She adored her Papa, my father. A year ago he made this trip with us. He watched the girls play in the creek. He made them hot chocolate in the morning. He played Go Fish with Coco. He was alive. A few months later, he was gone.
This week we’re going without him, and I’m apprehensive. I can’t not go. He’d hate that. Yet going reminds me he isn’t. I saw all of my emotions flash across my eight year old’s face. It was more than I could bear without tears. Since I’m not a crier, I said, ”Put the clock back in the drawer. It’ll remind us of Papa while we’re camping.”
Cherry was obedient. She placed the clock in the drawer with the knives, forks, and spoons. I shoved the drawer shut and tried not to think about it. But it’s there, the loss as certain as the look on Cherry’s face, a tenderness too overwhelming to acknowledge.
When we get there, we’ll take the clock out and wind it, and we’ll remember.
Bacon, Coco, Papa, and Cherry at Holy Ghost Campground, July 2007
My Finished Kitchen
05 Jul 2008 2 Comments
in A Zany Life, Housekeeping, Joined at the Heart Tags: Cottage kitchen, family, home repairs
When Coco was three, I decided to repaint the kitchen. I removed the cabinet doors, filled the holes with wood putty, primed everything, and finished the uppers. Half finished, what was done looked great. Then life got in the way. I was the stay-at-home mom of two preschoolers. I had to ask myself. What possessed me to disrupt our lives with three gallons of red alkaloid enamel?
Three years later, Coco is six. My brother and sister-in-law came to help after I was hospitalized with an inner ear problem. It was during this dizzy spell that my sister-in-law, Cookie, volunteered to paint the lowers. For the better part of three years, she looked at those disassembled, distressed kitchen counters. She saw an opening. Unable to pass a sobriety test, my pride was down, and my defenses were weak.
I’m aware that I don’t deserve these two. My sister-in-law was willing to be stained permanently by a less than conventional color choice. My brother made a dozen trips to Home Depot and Sherwin Williams when the first can of paint looked more like Mercuricrome than Fire Engine. By the end of the week, the lowers matched the uppers, and the silverware drawer (broken the day we moved in) no longer fell out when I tried to retrieve a spoon. My neighborhood friends wanted to know where they could get a Cookie and a BBC2. I had to break the bad news. They’re both one of a kind.
Timing
01 Jul 2008 Leave a Comment
in A Zany Life, Mouths of Babes Tags: change of seasons, competitive swimming
On the way to school one morning this spring, Coco pointed to something out the window of the minivan. ”Mama look! The pool.”
The opening of the neighborhood swimming pool is the official prologue to summer. In semi-tropical San Antonio, we mark the seasons by the condition of the water. When school starts, transparent-blue turns algae-emerald, then leafy-gold, then amebic-brown until early spring. When white concrete is exposed, we know the pool’s been drained for resurfacing. Near the end of April, the rush of Niagara flows from the spigot, and it’s time.
Cherry and Coco are water babies. They love nothing more than a frosty splash at 8:00 a.m. The girls began competitive swimming at ages 3 and 5, and for the past four years, summer swim league defines the months of May and June at our house.
This year’s league championships were held last Sunday morning. It was a great season. Now, for the rest of the summer, the girls will splash and play without swimming laps, and Mom won’t have to get up before dawn to take them to the pool.
Here are a few pictures of my baby dolphins at the last meet.
Sleepy girls before 6:30 a.m. warm-ups
Smiley-faced Cherry with her team before the race
Coco getting ready to swim
Team warm-ups at Josh Davis Natatorium
Pink swim caps make it easy to spot our girls from the stands.
crisp |krisp| adjective
