Happy Birthday Bug!

Bug is 18 today. Eighteen! How did that happen? I mean, I haven't changed at all in twelve years!


I talked to her a few weeks ago and she said that she was looking forward to being 18 so she could vote against the Republicans in the next election.




I turned 18 a few weeks after arriving at college. At Puget Sound, it was traditional to be tossed in Jones Fountain on your birthday (I wonder if it still is? Jones Fountain has been prettied up a lot since I was a student, and the benches could serve as barriers). My new friends duly did so, and though I yelled and carried on as they manhandled me over the fountain's edge, I was secretly pleased that they liked me enough to follow the tradition in my honor.


A month or so later I sat on the floor of my dorm room and pricked holes in my California ballot. I remember thinking it would have been much more exciting if the first election in which I got to vote were a Presidential one. It will be for Bug.

A Mocha Mix Moment

YaYa Words of Thunder and I spent two hours on the phone this morning having a virtual Mocha Mix Moment. Back when I started spending the night out at the family's place, she introduced me to Mocha Mix, which has about as much in common with cream as Gardenburgers do with hamburgers, but does make coffee creamy. I drank a lot of coffee today, with regular dairy in it. Zirpu doesn't approve of Mocha Mix, and it makes Mom apoplectic when I drink the space-age polymer that comes in the yellow carton.

YaYaWOT, YoYoWOT, Pia, Bug, and Boy lived in a split-level house in the woods outside Vernonia. YoYoWOT left very early in the morning and would make the coffee before heading out. Each morning of my Vernonia weekends (which were off days as I worked on Saturdays) I got up and poured myself and YaYaWOT coffee, added Mocha Mix to both and two teaspoons of sugar to hers, and got in on YoYoWOT's side of the bed. Bug and Pia would have left for school, and Boy would eventually come downstairs also to watch Blue's Clues. YaYaWOT and I laid in bed, drank our coffee, and talked every morning before our day really began.


That is how I adopted her and her family, and how they adopted me. In November of the first year I knew them, Bug turned seven and plans were made to take her and some friends to Chuck E. Cheese for pizza and games. YaYaWOT and her mother, The Is, were going to chaperone the kids and I volunteered to go along at the end of my weekend. There was no power out at the house for three days leading up to Bug's birthday party (trees often fell on the power lines), so we spent the days in the family room near the wood stove playing Scrabble and Uno. Everywhere else in the house was very very cold, and I slept with a hat on.

When I got home I sent a postcard to YaYaWOT and The Is on which I'd drawn a picture of all of us in a handbasket, with a thought balloon over the three of us adults thinking, "Where are we going?" I joke about it by saying that Chuck E. Cheese isn't hell, but you can see it from there, and YaYaWOT and I laugh about it because it was fun: We didn't have to watch the kids and every so often they would drop by and report how many tickets they'd won. The pizza was so bad we didn't attempt the coffee and just drank Cokes, but Bug was really happy with her birthday party and that's what mattered.


I had no idea I would still know this family eleven years later. I didn't think I would, but now I can't imagine not knowing them into the fourth generation (the third having arrived). YaYaWOT and I became sisters that summer and I gained a lot of family that way: her husband, her kids (one of whom has a husband and child of her own now), her mother, her sister-in-law, and the other YaYas.

Rarely do members of the same family
grow up under the same roof.

~ Richard Bach, Illusions

Loops of Love

I just wrote about family and I feel compelled to write about family again.

I have been lucky to be taken into not one but two families with children young enough to not remember a time when they didn't know me. I love them, they love me, and we create feedback loops of love.

I met Words of Thunder when her children were 16, six and half, and three and half. The first time I drove up to their house in the woods, Boy was standing on the parking pad and yelled, "She's here!" running inside to spread the news. I was welcomed by a child who was apparently disposed to love me even though we hadn't met yet.

Of course, I was disposed to love him, and Bug, and Pia. It's hard not to love children who love you, who show you when they are brave enough to ride a bike down a hill, who ask you for help with the silent "e," who ask you whether they should eat lunch before they have another popsicle.



The first time I met TL's children TL and I had planned to go for coffee and bring the kids with us (Zocalo has a children's play area). By the time I got to her house, TL's husband had come home and agreed to keep Lizard and Batman with himwhile we went for coffee break. The children were very upset by the change of plans, and while trying to placate them I said to Lizard, "You can come next time."

Every time I came pick up TL for the meeting, which doesn't even start until after their bedtime, Lizard would say accusingly, "This is next time!" Finally we all went for coffee (well, the kids had hot chocolates), and I landed firmly in Lizard's good graces. Lizard is my best four year old friend. When I walk in the door Lizard rushes me with a hug around the waist, cheering my name, and no matter what kind of mood I've been in, I feel like a queen because Lizard loves me.