HAPPY 97TH BIRTHDAY AUNT FLORENCE!
Love, Spud.
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Adventures With Emily
I know I've said this before, but it is my firm opinion that everyone needs to have a teen-aged daughter. They are so very interesting, not to mention aggravating, surprising, insightful, wildly happy, deeply depressed, brilliant, clueless, entrancingly lovely, discouragingly unkempt, meticulous, slovenly, and utterly delightful. In other words, I really don't know what I'm going to get when I wake up every morning. It keeps life on an unsettled plane, to be sure, but that's doubtless good for me. Like marriages, teens are more than likely designed for the sanctification of those who acquire them.
This last week was a high point in my summer, as Emily spent every afternoon with me at the library. She had a ceramics class in the morning, and would show up at my door in the afternoon caked with clay and smudged with paint, asleep on her feet and blissfully happy. She spent long hours exploring the building or curled up in a chair on an upper floor reading. She also went off to feed the ducks at the lake every afternoon, and knew them all personally in no time. There was a fluffy yellow baby duck that enchanted her, two white ones who always fought over everything (probably siblings), and among others one with a black and white bill who would waddle up out of the water and settle himself down comfortably by her side as she fed the others, obviously overseeing operations. I'm afraid they subsisted on Poptarts until she told me what she'd been up to and I found her some bread.
One day she staggered in and proclaimed that she simply must have apple juice, so I toddled down to the coffee bar in search of it. The people who work the coffee bar were so intrigued by the girl who urgently required apple juice that they threw in a free pastry thing, which Em promptly took out to the ducks. I hope they liked cinnamon. Another day my umbrella was sitting open on the floor behind me, as the skies had poured rain on me earlier, and for some unknown reason Emily decided that my umbrella was a thing of great beauty and interest, and she sat contently under it for some time, smiling with serene simplicity out at humankind. She looked for all the world like a small Totoro.
Did you know that there are three ways to fire ceramics in a kiln? I learned this, naturally, from my daughter. There is low fire, which produces the brightest colors, high fire, which produces more subdued colors but a food-safe finish, and raku. For raku, you start out the piece in a high fire, and then partway through you put on all your hazard gear, carefully remove your pottery from the kiln, and throw it into a burning trash can. Em said it was great fun to watch the flames whoosh up out of the trash can. I can only imagine. I paid money for this experience.
Today we went to buy school shoes. For school this year Emily will have four pairs: black keds, leather tennis shoes (one of which is white and one of which is white and fluorescent green, orange, and yellow), red converse sneakers, and black-with-assorted-paint-spatters high-tops. The last two pairs are new. I made her throw out two old pairs, one of which was broken up red keds and one of which was blue and covered with little sheep. Em is a conservative dresser otherwise, thank heaven, but when it comes to her feet that personality comes right out.
Ceramics class is over for the summer, and I won't have Em coming in to work any more. I do believe that it's going to be very colorless in there now, and I'm going to miss her. But in only a week we take her to see the sights in New York City. Do you know what two things she wanted to see, among all those wonders? The Nintendo World store, and graffiti. Go figure. She doesn't know what awaits her, but she will soon, and it'll be fun to watch her take it all in. Never a dull moment. I wouldn't have it any other way.
Love, Spud.
This last week was a high point in my summer, as Emily spent every afternoon with me at the library. She had a ceramics class in the morning, and would show up at my door in the afternoon caked with clay and smudged with paint, asleep on her feet and blissfully happy. She spent long hours exploring the building or curled up in a chair on an upper floor reading. She also went off to feed the ducks at the lake every afternoon, and knew them all personally in no time. There was a fluffy yellow baby duck that enchanted her, two white ones who always fought over everything (probably siblings), and among others one with a black and white bill who would waddle up out of the water and settle himself down comfortably by her side as she fed the others, obviously overseeing operations. I'm afraid they subsisted on Poptarts until she told me what she'd been up to and I found her some bread.
One day she staggered in and proclaimed that she simply must have apple juice, so I toddled down to the coffee bar in search of it. The people who work the coffee bar were so intrigued by the girl who urgently required apple juice that they threw in a free pastry thing, which Em promptly took out to the ducks. I hope they liked cinnamon. Another day my umbrella was sitting open on the floor behind me, as the skies had poured rain on me earlier, and for some unknown reason Emily decided that my umbrella was a thing of great beauty and interest, and she sat contently under it for some time, smiling with serene simplicity out at humankind. She looked for all the world like a small Totoro.
Did you know that there are three ways to fire ceramics in a kiln? I learned this, naturally, from my daughter. There is low fire, which produces the brightest colors, high fire, which produces more subdued colors but a food-safe finish, and raku. For raku, you start out the piece in a high fire, and then partway through you put on all your hazard gear, carefully remove your pottery from the kiln, and throw it into a burning trash can. Em said it was great fun to watch the flames whoosh up out of the trash can. I can only imagine. I paid money for this experience.
Today we went to buy school shoes. For school this year Emily will have four pairs: black keds, leather tennis shoes (one of which is white and one of which is white and fluorescent green, orange, and yellow), red converse sneakers, and black-with-assorted-paint-spatters high-tops. The last two pairs are new. I made her throw out two old pairs, one of which was broken up red keds and one of which was blue and covered with little sheep. Em is a conservative dresser otherwise, thank heaven, but when it comes to her feet that personality comes right out.
Ceramics class is over for the summer, and I won't have Em coming in to work any more. I do believe that it's going to be very colorless in there now, and I'm going to miss her. But in only a week we take her to see the sights in New York City. Do you know what two things she wanted to see, among all those wonders? The Nintendo World store, and graffiti. Go figure. She doesn't know what awaits her, but she will soon, and it'll be fun to watch her take it all in. Never a dull moment. I wouldn't have it any other way.
Love, Spud.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)