Detective Lincoln at the theater

Writer/producer/actor in The Mystery of the Million Dollar Mugwump at the Depot Theater. 

lunch date

Stellar teacher conferences, half day, lovely spring weather, local voting, special lunch, just Lincoln, with both of his proud parents who feel very grateful for days like this.

Interacting

with contemporary art. Crouching under the Bourgeois spider; offering a counterpoint to this familiar representation of maternal ambivalence. Rolling about on a grey upholstered bench in a room full of etherial Agnes Martin work. They want to touch everything. They try to touch everything. The do not touch everything, to the relief of dozens of black-clad gallery attendants.  In this context it seems very strange, how nearly all of these objects strongly invite the very thing that the institutions that elevate them strictly prohibit. On the one hand I strongly support these prohibitions. I'd like these works to endure for others to enjoy. And John and I diligently curb the curious and destructive fingers of our three gleeful children. Except the one time Zephyr breaks free and runs smack into Untitled, c. 1959. Maybe on purpose.  And I'm horrified. And I angrily drag her out of there. And I think about the immense contempt we must invoke in museum staff--we desperate people who bring our children here. There must be so many meetings about what to do with us. (Besides, of course, dip into our wallets.) And yet--it seems a shame somehow. I wish there was a room of aging Sol Lewitt wall drawings smeared in grubby fingerprints.  A warehouse of Bourgeois sculptures bent and twisted and fully altered by little climbing arms and legs. Warhols you could stomp on. I think about the contrast between how I used to experience Untitled  c. 1959 and how I experienced it today. It's absurd. But we are drawn here now, to this museum, on a regular basis, by a portico full of Serra's torqued ellipses in which minds and senses, young and old, can run and delight and get lost.  

Thinkers.

on delaying

7AM snowing lightly, one school's start time delayed, morning plan disrupted. There was a beat, and I had a thought about just dragging Linc along on my previously scheduled commitments after I dropped the twins at preschool.  Another beat.  Linc, excitedly: "Mama the last time it was just you and me was on Halloween!" A third beat in which I saw his swollen newborn eyes taking in the strange world around him and felt an immense sense of my life rushing past. Now, every plan for this day fading, tepid and unimportant.  I stop on the way home and buy him a lollipop and we return to the kitchen table to play his game of choice--Stratego--until the ice melted.  Brian Lehrer was on the radio talking about the debate last night and Lincoln had a million questions about a million details of an analysis I had thought was over his head. We talked about Trump and political parties and  Clinton and how primaries work and who might become our next president and when he'd be able to vote too. His miner blew through a few bombs and captured my flag just before it was time to leave. And we donned our winter coats and walked the few blocks to school with snow blowing softly on our cheeks. Just the two of us.

Sunday morning walk

With Grandpop.

derby day

Lincoln spent a grand pinewood derby day racing cars, eating Doritos, hanging with Dad and Grandpop, amazing his sister and brother and losing his 3rd tooth (or rather, Mama yanking it out, on request, right in the middle of the 69th heat). His cool design came in a pretty consistent 4th out of 5 each try and he enjoyed the thrill of it even so. A pretty successful first showing all around. 

too loud

TOs and FROMs

Making things for other people just to show them you like them and you care that they are in this world. Making things that require a fair amount of your time. Time away from what you were just doing right now. Making things that your parent could totally just make in your stead if she was into lying and raising lazy selfish jerks. 

With these kinds of projects, the twins are mostly ambivalent and occasionally hostile.  Linc is *just* starting to come around (although he teeters on the brink of that selfish abyss when faced with a few dozen TOs and FROMs: "My teacher said you can either bring something for everybody or for nobody.... I was thinking maybe nobody.") But he eventually found some motivation in the prospect of making people laugh with Star Wars jokes.  And O & Z were actually fairly eager to make a mess with Zeph's fingerprint kit from Aunt Debbie. So these three kids did some amount of creative work. They made their respective marks.  I'd call this a slightly less self-centered enterprise than it was last year.  I'll take it.   L seemed most excited about addressing an extra card to himself and the little guys actually do not show any signs of understanding the concept of exchanging valentines at all. 

But I'll get them yet.  Just you wait.

pinewood preparation

Lincoln has always been keen on engineering and design (I've got an archive full of his detailed schematics for battleships, spaceships and fantasy worlds), but today he emerged from his perpetual imaginative state and turned one of these plans into a prototype.  John supervised the design and construction phase and I dug out the paints for the finishing process. Lincoln sawed and sanded and made design adjustments midstream, and hammered and carved and painted. And made a little car with fins. A "future car" he calls it as he talks about its twin jet engines and glow-in-the-dark green headlights (though it is oddly reminiscent of a 1970s cadillac).  He's got weights and speed trials yet to complete but I can say with a good level of confidence that he felt very proud of himself today. And John and I had a moment together where we just sat back and watched this, and felt full of warmth and love and awareness of his fast acceleration toward an independent self.

Lincoln's preferred reading position

He's a champion edge-sitter (and edge-falling-off-er). While reading. While eating. Pretty much while doing anything. 

Six.

A year later...Lincoln is 6.

Today I randomly decided to visit this abandoned little blog, just to see where I'd left off and how much it would take to catch it up to the present. Apparently I blinked and an entire year has passed. An. Entire. Year. Precisely. To the day.  I'm not sure if it is a poetic discovery or an ironic one. It is certainly a species of the parental. And the working. And the tired. And, well, the living.

'It has been a busy year' doesn't explain even a fraction of 2015. But here I am, in the very last hours of Lincoln's 6th birthday, looking at a new year fast approaching, and leaving it at that.

party

Lincoln is 5.

Annual birthday photo session (shot exactly 12 minutes before his party guests arrived):

There were a few of these harmonica breaks in between shots, for reasons that should be obvious:

obsession

Today Lincoln tried very convincingly to opt out of attending a birthday party. With cake. And probably ice cream. And farm animals and games and hot chocolate and crafts and many friends from his class and a million other things he really loves and doesn't get to do that often. Forget all that crap. He didn't want to go. Why not, you ask? He had something better to do.

 He wanted to stay home and dress up.

He'd already worn his Jedi robe, tunic, boots and lightsaber all morning at home and then he wore it out to the farmer's market for over an hour in 38 degree weather whilst staunchly refusing to incorporate into the getup his winter coat (which I had brought along 'just in case') because it would have ruined the authenticity of the costume. He was actually still in full Jedi regalia at the moment I found myself facing him in disbelief as he argued very eloquently for skipping the birthday party so he could stay home ALONE and dress up in more and better costumes. Costumes which he can adorn any old day. Costumes which live with him in his room and in the cracks of the couch and under the kitchen table and pretty much in every nook and cranny of his domicile. You'd think he'd get tired of the whole endeavor. You'd think it wouldn't hold a candle to the icing he loves to lick off of birthday cupcakes. I thought that. But I was wrong.

And what costumed promise in his mind trumped cake and goody bags and games and friends and all manner of fun today?

Darth. Vader.

"Dark Hartford"

We have a kind of nighttime routine going here lately. The small guys take a bath, brush teeth and read a book and then do a little of what Lincoln calls "dark dancing." The lights go out in O & Z's room and the star turtle nightlight comes on and John or I stream a song on our phones while everyone spins and twirls to the beat. Zeph is especially fond of this ritual. She's a bit of a groover. Orson mostly tries to infuriate us by repeatedly turning the nightlight off so that everyone starts bumping into each other.  Linc usually dances for a bit and then announces that he'd like the babies to go to bed. But today he left the room for a full minute and then re-appeared in the doorway in full costume.

He's a good guy, he assured me. Even though he felt he looked like a bad guy. And after all the grooving and twirling was finished, and his sister and brother were tucked in, he explained to me the entire backstory of this bad-looking good guy.  The character was loosely based on this, apparently:

But he added his own twist:  "My name is Dark Hartford, Mama," he said, "The goodest marksman that has ever been known." 

stripes on the couch

Kindergartner