Last Saturday we went to, not one, but two tailgate farmers markets. It must be spring in Asheville.
I still recall the days when I was living in Manhattan and the farmer's market meant a Sunday stroll through Union Square to purchase an oversized sticky bun. To me, the market was just like one of the ubiquitous fairs that fill the streets of Manhattan on weekends, except instead of curly fries and the ASPCA van hawking dogs and kittens for adoption it offered only vegetable and flower stands. Pretty, but I hadn't yet acquired an organic-local-small farmer consciousness, so I wasn't there to shop. It was, in my defense, the early '90's, and I didn't have Michael Pollan to point out the error of my ways. Or Hubby, who I'll admit is the one who reads the Michael Pollan books in our house and then passes the pertinent bits on to me.
We did have farmers markets when we lived in West Hollywood and Long Beach as well. But they weren't nearly the community affairs they feel like here. Stands pushed side-by-side in parking lots, they often required a lot of elbowing and skillful maneuvering around the kettle corn vendor, who seemed to attract the biggest crowds. Organic produce was surprisingly difficult to come by, and really no cheaper than what was available at Wild Oats. Or maybe I just told myself that.
Here in Asheville, however, we take our farmers markets seriously. You know the vendors grew the produce themselves, offering the opportunity either for a friendly chat or a dicey eyes-averted duck-and-bob as you head for more promising vegetal wares. The musician strumming a guitar and singing folk songs is far from polished and frequently just a little bit off key. Dogs are allowed to wander through with their owners, making me misty eyed for my baby Roxanne, who regularly saw her efforts to investigate the West Hollywood farmers market thwarted. (Our current dogs are not among those wandering the Asheville farmers market because Audrey doesn't know how to be polite to other dogs, which sometimes makes me miss Roxanne even more.)
We were particularly excited for last Saturday's market-going. Although the tailgate near us -- on the UNC Asheville campus -- professes to be year-round, it dwindled considerably by November. We returned once in December to buy a pristine Christmas tree, but there wasn't much edible to purchase, unless you count decorative gourds.
By then we were on a waiting list for a CSA -- Community Supported Agriculture. A new concept to me, CSA's are more or less like a co-op; you pay a flat fee up front and, come spring, the growers divvy up a portion of their produce among the CSA members. Every week you pick up your box of goodies and start cooking. The one to which we applied included an option to receive fresh flowers weekly (we signed up) and to lower the cost by volunteering hours working on the farm (we used The Boy as an excuse to decline).
Notice that we had to apply for the CSA. It even took some work just to find one who'd let us do that. Apparently, if you plan to own a small farm, you'd best do it in Western Carolina. Because we Ashevilleans are lining up for your offerings. So many of us, in fact, that a month ago I received the sad news that our one CSA hope was, yep, full.
I can't say I was too upset about that on Saturday morning. While we pretended we would have continued the Saturday ritual of strolling to the farmers market even as a CSA member, I tend to doubt the pull would have been nearly as strong if we already had a refrigerator full of produce at home. Plus, it's likely to be a much longer stroll this spring, with The Boy, at 25 pounds, able to walk himself and therefore rather disdainful of his stroller. Even if we could get him in it, I can vouch for the fact that there's little relaxed or fun about pushing 40 plus pounds of baby and stroller up the Asheville hills. Or so I'm reminded every afternoon when The Boy and I return from school.
At any rate, it was threatening rain on this particular Saturday, so the car was an easy choice. Even though there is something just plain wrong about driving your SUV (a crossover! and a Honda!) to the tailgate market so you can righteously purchase locally grown produce.
Turns out even doing that much was a bit of a struggle. The thing about those small local farms -- they tend to grow for the season. And, sun outside my window notwithstanding, the April season yields little in the way of edible produce. Plenty of lovely flowers were available for transplanting, but the gardener in our family didn't seem interested, and I'm not in a position to make backyard suggestions, seeing as I do zero work out there.
We left with a bag of watercress and some sausage from the local animal farm because they didn't have the pork loin Hubby was hoping for. Turns out the sausage wasn't such a great substitute; after an enthusiastic dinner of it on Wednesday night, The Boy spent an hour or so crying and producing some mighty evil-smelling poop. Belatedly, Hubby tasted the sausage and declared it surprisingly spicy. Henceforth, the meat-eating adult in this family will be tasting all animal flesh before I make it available to The Boy's tender toddler tummy.
"What about the downtown market?" I ventured hopefully as we pulled away from the tailgate, a whole morning still stretching before us. The downtown tailgate was new, and I envisioned a busy, festive atmosphere. Apparently my Union Square dilettantish farmers market days aren't entirely in my past.
Satisfied that he had done his best to support the folks at our own little tailgate, Hubby agreed.
The downtown market was in a bigger space, and there were more Ashevilleans wandering about, but if you can't grow produce during April in Western Carolina, then you can't grow produce during April in Western Carolina. It doesn't much matter which tailgate market you belong to.
Still, excited by the sights of neighbors and co-workers and better dog-watching for The Boy, I excitedly scooped up two tubs of goat cheese. Hubby dutifully handed me ten dollars before telling me that we were down to the last of our cash and he was hoping to find a pork loin waiting for him here.
Happily, there was, and he even had enough money to pay for it, with a nickel to spare. Between the meat, the goat cheese, and the dogs, we were all three pretty satisfied.
But not too satisfied to make our next stop Target. Because, like many Ashevilleans, I suspect, we love our community supported agriculture, but we still need to spend a little time under the fluorescent lights of a big, artificial box store to lend some balance to our lives.
Friday, April 25, 2008
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Going to See the Goats
On Sunday afternoon Hubby, The Boy, and I took Grandma to the Carl Sandburg House.
Normally, I would not make a point of spending my Sunday afternoon at the home of any famous dead person. I seem to have some kind of allergy to historic homes. The second I enter them the heavy, dust-smelling air turns to cotton wads in my brain, and before I can say, "Hey! Cool antique tea set!" my eyes are drifting closed.
Since I have known Hubby, I have visited historical homes with him only to prove my True Love. The first time, I dutifully feigned interest in colonial methods of spinning wool in Pawtucket, Rhode Island on our way home from a wedding. We weren't even engaged yet, and I suppose the romance of a wedding put me in the mind of working toward one myself. Or maybe it had been so long since I had consented to this sort of outing that I half hoped I would enjoy it, creating another shared activity for the two of us. Lucky we have plenty of others.
Most recently, Hubby and I stopped by a historic home in our historic home of Long Beach. The grounds were lovely, and we were in a part of town unfamiliar to us, so I was happy to be along. But when it came to agreeing to a guided tour of the house, I begged pregnancy and swollen ankles, even though they never really were.
By now, I feel secure enough in my marriage to know that I will never, ever have to go to another historical home with Hubby.
What persuaded me to join in the trip to the Carl Sandburg house on Sunday was the promise that we wouldn't have to tour the house. We were going to see the goats.
We had set out to visit Carl Sandburg's goats before. (I suppose these are more likely descendants of his goats, since he's been dead for a while. I can't say how long because I carefully avoided the plackets bearing information about him and his life. I did read one poem, though, and liked it very much.)
On Thanksgiving Day, when Hubby had to be at work at three o'clock, we cheerily decided to check out downtown Hendersonville, not far distant from the goats. We thought we could find a cozy restaurant serving a turkey-free Thanksgiving meal before tiring The Boy out with a goat encounter. In this way, I would have an actual holiday because he'd be so tired when back home alone with me all afternoon that entertaining him would require nothing more than choosing a movie I could half watch on TiVo and devoting the other half of my attention to whatever it was we used to play with before Christmas and his birthday rained the presents we play with now.
I still marvel at the fact that I was actually surprised to find no restaurants open in historic downtown Hendersonville on Thanksgiving Day. I felt sad and waifish wandering the gray street alongside people plainly walking off too many servings of mashed potatoes. By the time we were ready to concede, we were so hungry that we ditched the goats for a little Mexican restaurant we found on the way home, where we enjoyed being the only gringos among the Spanish-speaking workers and The Boy, not speaking any language, waved corn chips around and considered it a perfectly good Thanksgiving.
There have been other plans to see the goats. But we've never quite made it. Because, don't you know, there are so many fascinating distractions in the vicinity of Asheville.
At any rate, I was anxious to join the family on Sunday, as I had bowed out of their jaunt to the Cradle of Forestry on Saturday. Turns out it involved horses, but The Boy found them terrifying. Better to wait for the goats.
We set out in the car as The Boy settled in for his nap. Usually, having The Boy nap in the car works well -- but usually we are facing a drive of longer than half an hour. The Boy was already suffering from a cold wrought by our indulgently letting him skimp on sleep to spend time with his visiting aunt and cousin earlier in the week. Grandma was around for several more days, and I was adamant that he not be gypped out of his nap.
So we took the long way, winding past the charming mountain sights of car lots and strip malls. We zipped through historic downtown Hendersonville with only the faintest sigh of nostalgia and continued on to the Carl Sandburg House.
We drew near. The Boy snored.
"Let's keep going," I suggested, even though my bladder was suggesting otherwise.
And so, for half an hour more, we wandered, until I and my bladder concluded The Boy had enjoyed sufficient nap time. At which point Hubby concluded that he needed to eat in order to enjoy the goats.
We headed for historic downtown Flatrock, home of the Carl Sandburg House. Although it was not a national holiday, it was a Sunday, and we encountered exactly as many open restaurants as we had on Thanksgiving Day in historic Hendersonville.
Thank goodness for Mexican restaurants. We were decidedly not the only gringos in this one -- in fact, the only people who spoke Spanish (if you don't count my hesitant knowledge of words and phrases useful for conversation with our house cleaner) were the wait staff. But it was surprisingly good, considering the circumstances, and The Boy loves him some refried beans.
We finally pulled into the parking lot of the Carl Sandburg house as the sun, which had been warming up the car during the entire drive, slipped behind a thick padding of clouds. I drew The Boy close to me for warmth and noted with pleasure that we were in a park with trails. Carl Sandburg's house, I was happy to see, was only a minor attraction.
We headed over a little bridge and started up the hill in the direction of the goats. I was deep in the thick of a cold that had my chest feeling like a sack of overcooked grits, so I encouraged The Boy to hitch a ride with Daddy. Nothing doing.
Normally, I would be happy to climb a half mile hill carrying a twenty-five pound boy on a chilly April day after eating three shrimp tacos and stolen bites of The Boy's beans. But I was most uncharacteristically not in the mood for exercise.
The Boy consented to ride on Daddy's shoulders for a few blessed yards, then continued in my arms until we reached the top of the hill and we all decided it might be a good idea if he walked a ways himself.
Letting a newly walking toddler walk two-tenths of a mile under his own steam seems like a good idea only after you've carried him three-tenths of a mile up hill while wheezing from a cold. Especially when he stops every two feet to observe the older children passing him by on their way to the goats.
At some point, I grabbed him and pretended not to notice his squirms of toddler determination, nor his tearful assertions of independence. He'd shut up, I was certain, once he saw the goats.
I wasn't wrong. "Look! Goats!" I cried when they came into view, as if he could remember his past joyful encounter with goats two months ago at Disneyland. Still, they were furry four-legged creatures and patently not horses and therefore, he seemed to figure, worth checking out.
The Boy did find the goats interesting, though not as interesting as the goat dropping riddled sawdust in the barn. The chickens were pretty cool too; but the huge pile of dirt on the other side of the chicken house was even more intriguing. These attractions, as any parent knows, could be avoided only with clever distraction. To my disappointment, eight-day-old goat Thor wasn't much of a distraction, while the historic goat milking house was.
Ah well. The historic goat milking house was only a few rooms sporting very little written information to slow down people like Hubby and Grandma who actually read it. And it was cold enough to prevent me from falling too deeply asleep.
Plus, I discovered, historic homes are more fun with a little boy running joyously ahead of you and then turning to peer through doorways with a gap-toothed grin spread across his face.
Normally, I would not make a point of spending my Sunday afternoon at the home of any famous dead person. I seem to have some kind of allergy to historic homes. The second I enter them the heavy, dust-smelling air turns to cotton wads in my brain, and before I can say, "Hey! Cool antique tea set!" my eyes are drifting closed.
Since I have known Hubby, I have visited historical homes with him only to prove my True Love. The first time, I dutifully feigned interest in colonial methods of spinning wool in Pawtucket, Rhode Island on our way home from a wedding. We weren't even engaged yet, and I suppose the romance of a wedding put me in the mind of working toward one myself. Or maybe it had been so long since I had consented to this sort of outing that I half hoped I would enjoy it, creating another shared activity for the two of us. Lucky we have plenty of others.
Most recently, Hubby and I stopped by a historic home in our historic home of Long Beach. The grounds were lovely, and we were in a part of town unfamiliar to us, so I was happy to be along. But when it came to agreeing to a guided tour of the house, I begged pregnancy and swollen ankles, even though they never really were.
By now, I feel secure enough in my marriage to know that I will never, ever have to go to another historical home with Hubby.
What persuaded me to join in the trip to the Carl Sandburg house on Sunday was the promise that we wouldn't have to tour the house. We were going to see the goats.
We had set out to visit Carl Sandburg's goats before. (I suppose these are more likely descendants of his goats, since he's been dead for a while. I can't say how long because I carefully avoided the plackets bearing information about him and his life. I did read one poem, though, and liked it very much.)
On Thanksgiving Day, when Hubby had to be at work at three o'clock, we cheerily decided to check out downtown Hendersonville, not far distant from the goats. We thought we could find a cozy restaurant serving a turkey-free Thanksgiving meal before tiring The Boy out with a goat encounter. In this way, I would have an actual holiday because he'd be so tired when back home alone with me all afternoon that entertaining him would require nothing more than choosing a movie I could half watch on TiVo and devoting the other half of my attention to whatever it was we used to play with before Christmas and his birthday rained the presents we play with now.
I still marvel at the fact that I was actually surprised to find no restaurants open in historic downtown Hendersonville on Thanksgiving Day. I felt sad and waifish wandering the gray street alongside people plainly walking off too many servings of mashed potatoes. By the time we were ready to concede, we were so hungry that we ditched the goats for a little Mexican restaurant we found on the way home, where we enjoyed being the only gringos among the Spanish-speaking workers and The Boy, not speaking any language, waved corn chips around and considered it a perfectly good Thanksgiving.
There have been other plans to see the goats. But we've never quite made it. Because, don't you know, there are so many fascinating distractions in the vicinity of Asheville.
At any rate, I was anxious to join the family on Sunday, as I had bowed out of their jaunt to the Cradle of Forestry on Saturday. Turns out it involved horses, but The Boy found them terrifying. Better to wait for the goats.
We set out in the car as The Boy settled in for his nap. Usually, having The Boy nap in the car works well -- but usually we are facing a drive of longer than half an hour. The Boy was already suffering from a cold wrought by our indulgently letting him skimp on sleep to spend time with his visiting aunt and cousin earlier in the week. Grandma was around for several more days, and I was adamant that he not be gypped out of his nap.
So we took the long way, winding past the charming mountain sights of car lots and strip malls. We zipped through historic downtown Hendersonville with only the faintest sigh of nostalgia and continued on to the Carl Sandburg House.
We drew near. The Boy snored.
"Let's keep going," I suggested, even though my bladder was suggesting otherwise.
And so, for half an hour more, we wandered, until I and my bladder concluded The Boy had enjoyed sufficient nap time. At which point Hubby concluded that he needed to eat in order to enjoy the goats.
We headed for historic downtown Flatrock, home of the Carl Sandburg House. Although it was not a national holiday, it was a Sunday, and we encountered exactly as many open restaurants as we had on Thanksgiving Day in historic Hendersonville.
Thank goodness for Mexican restaurants. We were decidedly not the only gringos in this one -- in fact, the only people who spoke Spanish (if you don't count my hesitant knowledge of words and phrases useful for conversation with our house cleaner) were the wait staff. But it was surprisingly good, considering the circumstances, and The Boy loves him some refried beans.
We finally pulled into the parking lot of the Carl Sandburg house as the sun, which had been warming up the car during the entire drive, slipped behind a thick padding of clouds. I drew The Boy close to me for warmth and noted with pleasure that we were in a park with trails. Carl Sandburg's house, I was happy to see, was only a minor attraction.
We headed over a little bridge and started up the hill in the direction of the goats. I was deep in the thick of a cold that had my chest feeling like a sack of overcooked grits, so I encouraged The Boy to hitch a ride with Daddy. Nothing doing.
Normally, I would be happy to climb a half mile hill carrying a twenty-five pound boy on a chilly April day after eating three shrimp tacos and stolen bites of The Boy's beans. But I was most uncharacteristically not in the mood for exercise.
The Boy consented to ride on Daddy's shoulders for a few blessed yards, then continued in my arms until we reached the top of the hill and we all decided it might be a good idea if he walked a ways himself.
Letting a newly walking toddler walk two-tenths of a mile under his own steam seems like a good idea only after you've carried him three-tenths of a mile up hill while wheezing from a cold. Especially when he stops every two feet to observe the older children passing him by on their way to the goats.
At some point, I grabbed him and pretended not to notice his squirms of toddler determination, nor his tearful assertions of independence. He'd shut up, I was certain, once he saw the goats.
I wasn't wrong. "Look! Goats!" I cried when they came into view, as if he could remember his past joyful encounter with goats two months ago at Disneyland. Still, they were furry four-legged creatures and patently not horses and therefore, he seemed to figure, worth checking out.
The Boy did find the goats interesting, though not as interesting as the goat dropping riddled sawdust in the barn. The chickens were pretty cool too; but the huge pile of dirt on the other side of the chicken house was even more intriguing. These attractions, as any parent knows, could be avoided only with clever distraction. To my disappointment, eight-day-old goat Thor wasn't much of a distraction, while the historic goat milking house was.
Ah well. The historic goat milking house was only a few rooms sporting very little written information to slow down people like Hubby and Grandma who actually read it. And it was cold enough to prevent me from falling too deeply asleep.
Plus, I discovered, historic homes are more fun with a little boy running joyously ahead of you and then turning to peer through doorways with a gap-toothed grin spread across his face.
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Family Fun
Lately, I have, for some reason, become acutely aware of the life cycle of a "typical" person's desire to spend time with her family. (A disclaimer here: I have no idea what a "typical" person entails, really, and insufficient knowledge to take cultural differences into account. Nor do I possess the proper scientific background to support my claims. But I couldn't figure out any other way to phrase it, since what I'm about to say doesn't exactly describe me, and I can't speak for anyone else.)
We are born with an intense desire to spend time with our parents, especially any of them who happen to be breast feeding. I see this stage manifested in The Boy's bellows of "Mommy!" even when the second Mommy picks him up he kicks his legs and pikes energetically in a move designed to make her drop him one day if she isn't careful.
Some time between the age of The Boy's youngest cousin -- who is 11 and loves to spend time with her family -- and her brother -- who is 14 and begged off coming to visit us last week with some excuse that sounded to me like it had to do with washing the car (although his mother insists he's done no such thing this week or ever) -- things change. We enter that stage of adolescent cantankerousness that includes a violent aversion to anything that smacks of spending time with one's family. Eventually, we grow out of adolescence into something approximating adulthood, and we like spending time with our families again.
Some of us, it turns out, never really make it to that adulthood stage.
For example, I've been married to Hubby for almost four years, lived with him for almost five, and I'm just now getting the hang of wanting to hang out with family.
It could be that I merely entered the adolescent aversion stage a bit late. I recall my mother cleverly delaying it when I was in my early teens with frequent Saturday shopping trips on her credit card. It probably helped that my sister went away to college just as I hit my teenage years and packed enough parental hostility into her trips home for the both of us. Plus, I figured I kind of scored getting to be the only child at an age where I could appreciate it.
But somewhere along the line it finally kicked in, and -- as my recent move from 15 miles south of my parents' house to 2,500 miles east illustrates -- I haven't really recovered.
I was getting there -- at least where Hubby's family was concerned -- in the first couple years of my marriage. Hubby is one of those curious sorts who never seems to have gone through the aversion stage. I still marvel at how it is possible to cram three siblings, multiple significant others, and an abundance of children into a medium-sized house during a cold St. Louis Christmas and never hear a single voice raised in anything but excitement over opening and playing with gifts.
At first, I approached this family closeness with caution and no small amount of suspicion. It may not speak well of me, but I have to confess that the first thing I think of when I am planning a vacation is not whether my mother would like to come along. I frankly felt a little bit pressured, as if I was expected to find the same comfort in family gatherings as Hubby.
Instead, I contorted myself into a pretzel of anguish over trying to be a family member. I mean, I knew I was, but I didn't see how that earned me the right to automatically fit in. I felt like I had to pass unspoken challenges and gather points along the way to some unknown destination, like half of a team on The Amazing Race. (My partner, sadly, had no idea we were racing anywhere, and spent our family visits basking in the midst of this game I was still learning to play, making me feel like the person who twists her ankle and grimly limps toward certain elimination.)
But eventually it dawned on me that Hubby's family weren't a bunch of judges on a reality show, but just a bunch of people who loved me because he did. And then loved me just because.
This is not an easy concept for many people to understand. You mean, families just love you? Unconditionally? In books and Hallmark Hall of Fame movies, sure, but in real life?
And then, two years ago, I got pregnant and it started to make sense in a way that does not lend itself to explanation because, frankly, there is none. I had done the unconditional love thing with my basset hound Roxanne, but an awful lot of people don't get the love-your-dog-like-your-child thing. Being pregnant with a human being put me on the same playing field as my in-laws.
Until, that is, I had The Boy and discovered the whole new web of tensions that come with a baby -- a web that seems to start and end with a new mother's hormones. Still, much as I'm willing to take the lion's share of the blame, the truth is that different understandings of what family means come rushing to the surface when there's an infant in the house.
And so I entered a whole new cycle of fretting about what Hubby's family thought of me. Did they look down on me as the first of the family to use disposable diapers? (The water, the energy of washing cloth ones!) Did they think less of me for my less than abundant milk supply? (No, more! both mother- and sister-in-law cried when they saw what I went through to avoid putting The Boy on formula in a bottle.) Surely they found me a bit selfish for preferring to calm my crying baby myself instead of passing him along so I could take a break and a nap.
By the end of each visit, my mother-in-law and I would have a drink or two together and proclaim our undying love for each other, our admiration for the other's role in my son's life, a desire to wipe the slate clean of all the normal spats that come with family. "I love you, guy!" we seemed to cry, like fraternity brothers seeped in the camaraderie of too much keg beer and a soggy yearning for some ill-defined approximation of brotherhood.
But, alas, my mother-in-law would depart and I would sober up, return to my quiet life with my small, immediate family, and panic when I saw how excited Hubby became when we began planning the next family get-together.
Until this week. When, for whatever reason, I have emerged from the fog of youthful rebellion against all things grounding, and have embraced being a 40-ish mother hosting barbeques for three generations of her family and looking an awful lot like an ad in Martha Stewart Living. I imagine all of us caught in the frame with laughs of adoring family joy as we point at The Boy gripping the chair of his cousin and putting his beaming baby face up to hers. We are soft, un-funky, lit by the easy caress of a suburban sunset, and selling something like a cheap boxed wine.
[NB: We most definitely do not live in the suburbs, but that's the point -- feeling like I'm completely myself at a family barbeque veers dangerously close to this territory.]
Many of you are aware that I've lately committed myself to another blog, http://yogamamame.blogspot.com. (Ooh, was that blatant self-promotion? Good for me -- I'm usually so terrible at it.) It consists of me mulling over a daily dilemma raised by trying to achieve personhood while dealing with motherhood in a way I find personally amusing, and then addressing the dilemma with some principles of yoga that I probably won't actually follow myself. So much easier to be the teacher than the student.
Only, it turns out, I have been teaching myself something. Because in all my writing about untangling the knots into which we tie ourselves (both mentally and physically) I seem to have straightened myself out a bit. I've let go of fretting over what my in-laws expect of me and whether they like me and whether they think Hubby made a big, huge mistake or just confounded them with an odd choice in a life partner. I stopped trying to fit in and just fit.
And so I found myself relaxing on our deck on a soft spring evening punctuated by the shrill, almost-teenager cries of my nieces, sharing parental laughter with my sisters-in-law, and granting myself a place in the tableau of what she has created spread before my mother-in-law's eyes. The wine I am drinking, by the way, is pretty cheap, but we bought it at Trader Joe's, so that makes it okay.
And therein lies the secret. I can drink cheap wine and shop at Trader Joe's. I can be a mom in her 40's and still have a kick-ass yoga practice. And I can be part of a family I want to spend time with without losing the little edges that make me me.
In fact, now that I'm looking at it from the inside, I see that this family has some pretty interesting edges itself. If you care to spend enough time with it to appreciate them.
We are born with an intense desire to spend time with our parents, especially any of them who happen to be breast feeding. I see this stage manifested in The Boy's bellows of "Mommy!" even when the second Mommy picks him up he kicks his legs and pikes energetically in a move designed to make her drop him one day if she isn't careful.
Some time between the age of The Boy's youngest cousin -- who is 11 and loves to spend time with her family -- and her brother -- who is 14 and begged off coming to visit us last week with some excuse that sounded to me like it had to do with washing the car (although his mother insists he's done no such thing this week or ever) -- things change. We enter that stage of adolescent cantankerousness that includes a violent aversion to anything that smacks of spending time with one's family. Eventually, we grow out of adolescence into something approximating adulthood, and we like spending time with our families again.
Some of us, it turns out, never really make it to that adulthood stage.
For example, I've been married to Hubby for almost four years, lived with him for almost five, and I'm just now getting the hang of wanting to hang out with family.
It could be that I merely entered the adolescent aversion stage a bit late. I recall my mother cleverly delaying it when I was in my early teens with frequent Saturday shopping trips on her credit card. It probably helped that my sister went away to college just as I hit my teenage years and packed enough parental hostility into her trips home for the both of us. Plus, I figured I kind of scored getting to be the only child at an age where I could appreciate it.
But somewhere along the line it finally kicked in, and -- as my recent move from 15 miles south of my parents' house to 2,500 miles east illustrates -- I haven't really recovered.
I was getting there -- at least where Hubby's family was concerned -- in the first couple years of my marriage. Hubby is one of those curious sorts who never seems to have gone through the aversion stage. I still marvel at how it is possible to cram three siblings, multiple significant others, and an abundance of children into a medium-sized house during a cold St. Louis Christmas and never hear a single voice raised in anything but excitement over opening and playing with gifts.
At first, I approached this family closeness with caution and no small amount of suspicion. It may not speak well of me, but I have to confess that the first thing I think of when I am planning a vacation is not whether my mother would like to come along. I frankly felt a little bit pressured, as if I was expected to find the same comfort in family gatherings as Hubby.
Instead, I contorted myself into a pretzel of anguish over trying to be a family member. I mean, I knew I was, but I didn't see how that earned me the right to automatically fit in. I felt like I had to pass unspoken challenges and gather points along the way to some unknown destination, like half of a team on The Amazing Race. (My partner, sadly, had no idea we were racing anywhere, and spent our family visits basking in the midst of this game I was still learning to play, making me feel like the person who twists her ankle and grimly limps toward certain elimination.)
But eventually it dawned on me that Hubby's family weren't a bunch of judges on a reality show, but just a bunch of people who loved me because he did. And then loved me just because.
This is not an easy concept for many people to understand. You mean, families just love you? Unconditionally? In books and Hallmark Hall of Fame movies, sure, but in real life?
And then, two years ago, I got pregnant and it started to make sense in a way that does not lend itself to explanation because, frankly, there is none. I had done the unconditional love thing with my basset hound Roxanne, but an awful lot of people don't get the love-your-dog-like-your-child thing. Being pregnant with a human being put me on the same playing field as my in-laws.
Until, that is, I had The Boy and discovered the whole new web of tensions that come with a baby -- a web that seems to start and end with a new mother's hormones. Still, much as I'm willing to take the lion's share of the blame, the truth is that different understandings of what family means come rushing to the surface when there's an infant in the house.
And so I entered a whole new cycle of fretting about what Hubby's family thought of me. Did they look down on me as the first of the family to use disposable diapers? (The water, the energy of washing cloth ones!) Did they think less of me for my less than abundant milk supply? (No, more! both mother- and sister-in-law cried when they saw what I went through to avoid putting The Boy on formula in a bottle.) Surely they found me a bit selfish for preferring to calm my crying baby myself instead of passing him along so I could take a break and a nap.
By the end of each visit, my mother-in-law and I would have a drink or two together and proclaim our undying love for each other, our admiration for the other's role in my son's life, a desire to wipe the slate clean of all the normal spats that come with family. "I love you, guy!" we seemed to cry, like fraternity brothers seeped in the camaraderie of too much keg beer and a soggy yearning for some ill-defined approximation of brotherhood.
But, alas, my mother-in-law would depart and I would sober up, return to my quiet life with my small, immediate family, and panic when I saw how excited Hubby became when we began planning the next family get-together.
Until this week. When, for whatever reason, I have emerged from the fog of youthful rebellion against all things grounding, and have embraced being a 40-ish mother hosting barbeques for three generations of her family and looking an awful lot like an ad in Martha Stewart Living. I imagine all of us caught in the frame with laughs of adoring family joy as we point at The Boy gripping the chair of his cousin and putting his beaming baby face up to hers. We are soft, un-funky, lit by the easy caress of a suburban sunset, and selling something like a cheap boxed wine.
[NB: We most definitely do not live in the suburbs, but that's the point -- feeling like I'm completely myself at a family barbeque veers dangerously close to this territory.]
Many of you are aware that I've lately committed myself to another blog, http://yogamamame.blogspot.com. (Ooh, was that blatant self-promotion? Good for me -- I'm usually so terrible at it.) It consists of me mulling over a daily dilemma raised by trying to achieve personhood while dealing with motherhood in a way I find personally amusing, and then addressing the dilemma with some principles of yoga that I probably won't actually follow myself. So much easier to be the teacher than the student.
Only, it turns out, I have been teaching myself something. Because in all my writing about untangling the knots into which we tie ourselves (both mentally and physically) I seem to have straightened myself out a bit. I've let go of fretting over what my in-laws expect of me and whether they like me and whether they think Hubby made a big, huge mistake or just confounded them with an odd choice in a life partner. I stopped trying to fit in and just fit.
And so I found myself relaxing on our deck on a soft spring evening punctuated by the shrill, almost-teenager cries of my nieces, sharing parental laughter with my sisters-in-law, and granting myself a place in the tableau of what she has created spread before my mother-in-law's eyes. The wine I am drinking, by the way, is pretty cheap, but we bought it at Trader Joe's, so that makes it okay.
And therein lies the secret. I can drink cheap wine and shop at Trader Joe's. I can be a mom in her 40's and still have a kick-ass yoga practice. And I can be part of a family I want to spend time with without losing the little edges that make me me.
In fact, now that I'm looking at it from the inside, I see that this family has some pretty interesting edges itself. If you care to spend enough time with it to appreciate them.
Monday, April 7, 2008
The Boy's First Ball Game
Actually, we haven't yet been to The Boy's first actual baseball game. But we did spend a lovely hour or so at the ball park yesterday.
Asheville, I was thrilled to discover recently, is home to an A farm team for the Colorado Rockies. Not yet entirely adjusted to no longer living in a Major League city, I was sort of hoping that "A" ranked higher than "AA" and "AAA." I guess I was thinking about something like The A-Team; surely Mr. T wouldn't be a member of the A-Team if the AA-Team was better.
However, Hubby carefully explained to me, in baseball, the A team is, in his words, "one step above the Rookie League." I didn't even know there was such a thing. I guess growing up going to baseball games in a Major League city is sort of like buying your meat at the supermarket; it comes all cut up and inspected and wrapped up in cellophane so you have no idea where it really comes from.
Still, I've always wanted to go to a farm team game and I've never been, unless you count owning Bull Durham on video.
Hubby brought up the idea of taking The Boy to an Asheville Tourists game earlier in the week. (Doesn't the team name just make you want to come visit us? If so, don't read yesterday's post.) Good weather was predicted, we had no other plans, and we're always on the lookout for things to do with The Boy on weekends. Not that we desperately need him to go to school five days a week or anything.
The idea hovered in the air all week, bringing with it no concrete action, like, say, buying tickets. For some reason, I figured this was because we didn't have to worry about getting tickets in advance. We're not talking about Dodger Stadium, after all. It never dawned on me that, while Hubby has many strong points, buying tickets to anything ahead of time is not one of them. ("Do you think we should buy our tickets?" I recall asking one year three weeks before we were supposed to fly to Hawaii for Thanksgiving.)
And so, yesterday, we began our Sunday morning in eager anticipation of the Tourists' 2:00 start time. We ate breakfast, played, and read the paper secure in the knowledge that we had something exciting to do with the rest of our day.
By 11:00, Hubby announced that he was bored.
"We could go to breakfast," I said, as the only member of the family who'd not yet eaten any. Then I thought about the need to fit The Boy's nap in between the present moment and the 2:00 game time. "Except you already ate."
"I can always eat more," Hubby cried eagerly, halfway out the door. Did I mention he was bored?
He was also excited to introduce me to a new cafe downtown, where all the coffee is fair trade, all the food is organic, and there is excellent people-watching to be done by a 15-month-old boy. We settled ourselves at a table that afforded a perfect perch from which The Boy could loudly announce, "Dawh! Dawh!" at the sight of each passing pooch outside the windows.
He even gobbled down a whole sausage patty, making his meat-eating father inordinately proud. But by noon he still didn't seem nap-inclined.
"Let's take a walk and tire him out," Hubby suggested.
We concocted a vague plan. Before the start of the game we needed to: a) get The Boy to nap; b) buy tickets; and c) get some baby sunblock, since I had sent both of the tubes we had to The Boy's school after he broke out in a rash when they put the regular, reasonably priced stuff on him. It was hard enough buying a tube to take to his school at $17.99 for a few ounces; I just couldn't bring myself to purchase the additional one we would obviously need at home.
For some reason, the sunblock shopping was put off until later, and we walked in the direction of the stadium with some vague words about simultaneously tiring The Boy out and buying tickets. Then, I suppose, we were going to walk back to the car and drive around for an hour while The Boy slept before parking the car at the stadium, within walking distance of where it was currently parked. This made perfect sense to us, as do many things that shouldn't, because we are parents.
There is a certain joy you feel sad to know can't last in seeing your child doing his toddler run down sidewalks for the first time. Initially, The Boy carefully held onto my hand, letting go only for detours to every plate glass window that reflected a smiling little boy back at him. Then he got the hang of it and performed a scooting, wide-legged run down the hills, stopping every few steps to right himself or investigate a bottle top or cigarette butt strewn at the side of the road.
We made our way to a deserted playground on the east side of town, where he cheerfully climbed and slid and put wood chips in his mouth. But he still didn't seem all that tired.
"Should we put him in the car and drive him around?" Hubby asked.
I pointed out that we had the Times with us and no need to be at the park by 2:00, since The Boy was unlikely to last a full nine innings, even at an A-team game.
So, back to the car we hiked. We strapped The Boy in and headed in the direction of the stadium. "Where are we going?" I asked Hubby, unsure of what my plan was but fairly certain that we had agreed to do some other things before going to the game.
"I thought we should get tickets now," Hubby answered. It seemed a reasonable suggestion, with just an hour to go before game time. Then, I figured, we could buy sunblock.
To our surprise, the stadium was already bustling with patrons and the buzz of a ballpark on a Sunday afternoon.
"I'm not sure what to do," Hubby said, as we drove by.
"Let me out. I'll get the tickets," I said. By which time we found a parking spot that seemed too good not to take.
Since The Boy was still wide awake and intrigued by this adventure, we grabbed him and headed for the ticket booth together. No sooner had Hubby locked the car doors than a shifty-looking guy sidled up to him.
"Already have tickets?" he asked.
Wow, I thought to myself, not only do games sell out here, but there are actual scalpers.
"No," said Hubby, no doubt thinking something along the same lines.
Without a word, the man held up two tickets. He stared down at them with hooded eyes, avoiding Hubby's gaze.
Hubby reached for them. "Are they--?" he asked.
The man gave a slight wave over his shoulder as he departed, leaving the tickets in Hubby's still outstretched hand.
Unused to small towns and small town A-team ball games, my first thought was that we would be arrested upon presenting the tickets at the turnstile. I am ashamed to admit it, but it's true.
"They're general admission," Hubby said with an apologetic shrug. "He didn't say anything," he added, as if to explain why he took the tickets, why he didn't offer the guy some money for them, why we did not deserve to be arrested.
"If they're only general admission, maybe he had some extra and was just being nice," I said hopefully.
So now we had tickets, a parking space, and a wide-awake boy. "We still don't have sunblock," Hubby pointed out.
"He's wearing his hat," I said, sort of amazed that The Boy hadn't pulled off his little red baseball cap as soon as I put it on. Plainly there were too many sights distracting him.
"You know, we also forgot to bring the camera, and it's his first ball game," Hubby said somewhat sadly.
I agreed this was a shame, but we've been so lousy about taking pictures of The Boy lately that I'm getting used to it. Plus, only videos can capture the joy of him walking and saying "Dawh" and "Cah" (trans. "Dog" and "Car"), and we don't know how to post our videos so others can enjoy them, so I don't bother much with them either.
At any rate, it seemed decided for us. Or, at least, our poor planning skills had made it so. We were going to the ball park with a boy in need of a nap and sunblock, an hour before game time, without so much as a camera to record the event.
It didn't matter once we stepped into the stadium. Even with just a few food stands and a few more beer stands, the ballpark feeling melted over me. I spent two summers as an usher at Dodger Stadium when I was in college and likely absorbed so much hot dog grease that it lies latent in my system until activated by the sights and sounds of a stadium and then bursts forth in a splash of excitement for summer and childhood and the clean lines of a baseball diamond.
We passed under banners featuring famous past players for the Asheville Tourists -- Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson, Willie Stargell, and Cal Ripken among them. I pointed excitedly at them and felt part of two things at once -- both Major League Baseball with its circuit of big cities featuring huge stadiums and the smaller towns that feed it, home to parks where kids can still line up to have players autograph their gloves.
It turns out the General Admission seats were all in the sun -- and not really seats, just concrete risers where the folks who plan for such things spread out their portable chairs while they hide in the shade waiting for the game to start.
Hubby suggested we might warm someone else's seats in the hopes that they not show up and with the all purpose excuse a baby provides in case they did. So we made our way to some in the back, right next to the McDonald's Family Section that, Hubby pointed out with alarm, is alcohol free. We made a note of seat numbers to make sure we don't sit there if ever we manage to buy tickets ahead of time.
We settled in to the sounds of the announcer and the piped-in music, and the field as close to us in the last row as it is to season ticket holders at Dodger Stadium. The Boy munched on a soft pretzel with relish and watched the other kids with wide, serious eyes. After a while, he got a hang of the place, and left our laps to wander the length of the bench and smile at the man sitting at the end drinking a beer.
The announcement that start time had been delayed by an estimated hour came as we were watching them spread some kind of absorbent dirt over the field in what seemed to me to be a feeble attempt to dry it out after the previous night's rain. It wasn't looking good. Plus, The Boy had just decided it was time for him to sit on the ground and play.
"I'm afraid there are peanut shells down there," said Hubby of the peanut allergy. Not that a few peanut shells on the ground bother him, but his son who we suspect has inherited his allergy and who wanted to sit amongst them and likely put them in his mouth was another story.
"He's never going to take his nap here," I sighed. "And he doesn't care if we see the game or not. Plus, we got in for free," I added.
"I don't mind leaving," Hubby agreed. I think it had more to do with the fact that he could tell himself this didn't count as The Boy's first ball game and thus not feel bad about forgetting the camera than with anything I had said.
So we went home, making one person looking for a parking space almost as happy as our dogs.
I don't know if The Boy's enthusiastic response to his first almost-baseball game makes him more my son or his father's. Hubby, after all, still cares to follow baseball, watches games on t.v., and once even played on a team in his youth. I, on the other hand, have grown to appreciate the atmosphere of the ballpark more than the games. I'll always think of the major league season as it was when I went to Dodgers games with my father -- before realignment, when the play-offs were just five games, and when Marge Schott hadn't yet made me too embarrassed to be a Cincinnati Reds fan.
Whatever the reason, we all three love going to a game, and I know my family will be returning to see the Asheville Tourists play. Maybe we'll even get season tickets.
And when the next Jackie Robinson or Willie Stargell makes it to the major leagues, my son will be able to say he saw them up close when they played for his hometown team in Asheville.
Asheville, I was thrilled to discover recently, is home to an A farm team for the Colorado Rockies. Not yet entirely adjusted to no longer living in a Major League city, I was sort of hoping that "A" ranked higher than "AA" and "AAA." I guess I was thinking about something like The A-Team; surely Mr. T wouldn't be a member of the A-Team if the AA-Team was better.
However, Hubby carefully explained to me, in baseball, the A team is, in his words, "one step above the Rookie League." I didn't even know there was such a thing. I guess growing up going to baseball games in a Major League city is sort of like buying your meat at the supermarket; it comes all cut up and inspected and wrapped up in cellophane so you have no idea where it really comes from.
Still, I've always wanted to go to a farm team game and I've never been, unless you count owning Bull Durham on video.
Hubby brought up the idea of taking The Boy to an Asheville Tourists game earlier in the week. (Doesn't the team name just make you want to come visit us? If so, don't read yesterday's post.) Good weather was predicted, we had no other plans, and we're always on the lookout for things to do with The Boy on weekends. Not that we desperately need him to go to school five days a week or anything.
The idea hovered in the air all week, bringing with it no concrete action, like, say, buying tickets. For some reason, I figured this was because we didn't have to worry about getting tickets in advance. We're not talking about Dodger Stadium, after all. It never dawned on me that, while Hubby has many strong points, buying tickets to anything ahead of time is not one of them. ("Do you think we should buy our tickets?" I recall asking one year three weeks before we were supposed to fly to Hawaii for Thanksgiving.)
And so, yesterday, we began our Sunday morning in eager anticipation of the Tourists' 2:00 start time. We ate breakfast, played, and read the paper secure in the knowledge that we had something exciting to do with the rest of our day.
By 11:00, Hubby announced that he was bored.
"We could go to breakfast," I said, as the only member of the family who'd not yet eaten any. Then I thought about the need to fit The Boy's nap in between the present moment and the 2:00 game time. "Except you already ate."
"I can always eat more," Hubby cried eagerly, halfway out the door. Did I mention he was bored?
He was also excited to introduce me to a new cafe downtown, where all the coffee is fair trade, all the food is organic, and there is excellent people-watching to be done by a 15-month-old boy. We settled ourselves at a table that afforded a perfect perch from which The Boy could loudly announce, "Dawh! Dawh!" at the sight of each passing pooch outside the windows.
He even gobbled down a whole sausage patty, making his meat-eating father inordinately proud. But by noon he still didn't seem nap-inclined.
"Let's take a walk and tire him out," Hubby suggested.
We concocted a vague plan. Before the start of the game we needed to: a) get The Boy to nap; b) buy tickets; and c) get some baby sunblock, since I had sent both of the tubes we had to The Boy's school after he broke out in a rash when they put the regular, reasonably priced stuff on him. It was hard enough buying a tube to take to his school at $17.99 for a few ounces; I just couldn't bring myself to purchase the additional one we would obviously need at home.
For some reason, the sunblock shopping was put off until later, and we walked in the direction of the stadium with some vague words about simultaneously tiring The Boy out and buying tickets. Then, I suppose, we were going to walk back to the car and drive around for an hour while The Boy slept before parking the car at the stadium, within walking distance of where it was currently parked. This made perfect sense to us, as do many things that shouldn't, because we are parents.
There is a certain joy you feel sad to know can't last in seeing your child doing his toddler run down sidewalks for the first time. Initially, The Boy carefully held onto my hand, letting go only for detours to every plate glass window that reflected a smiling little boy back at him. Then he got the hang of it and performed a scooting, wide-legged run down the hills, stopping every few steps to right himself or investigate a bottle top or cigarette butt strewn at the side of the road.
We made our way to a deserted playground on the east side of town, where he cheerfully climbed and slid and put wood chips in his mouth. But he still didn't seem all that tired.
"Should we put him in the car and drive him around?" Hubby asked.
I pointed out that we had the Times with us and no need to be at the park by 2:00, since The Boy was unlikely to last a full nine innings, even at an A-team game.
So, back to the car we hiked. We strapped The Boy in and headed in the direction of the stadium. "Where are we going?" I asked Hubby, unsure of what my plan was but fairly certain that we had agreed to do some other things before going to the game.
"I thought we should get tickets now," Hubby answered. It seemed a reasonable suggestion, with just an hour to go before game time. Then, I figured, we could buy sunblock.
To our surprise, the stadium was already bustling with patrons and the buzz of a ballpark on a Sunday afternoon.
"I'm not sure what to do," Hubby said, as we drove by.
"Let me out. I'll get the tickets," I said. By which time we found a parking spot that seemed too good not to take.
Since The Boy was still wide awake and intrigued by this adventure, we grabbed him and headed for the ticket booth together. No sooner had Hubby locked the car doors than a shifty-looking guy sidled up to him.
"Already have tickets?" he asked.
Wow, I thought to myself, not only do games sell out here, but there are actual scalpers.
"No," said Hubby, no doubt thinking something along the same lines.
Without a word, the man held up two tickets. He stared down at them with hooded eyes, avoiding Hubby's gaze.
Hubby reached for them. "Are they--?" he asked.
The man gave a slight wave over his shoulder as he departed, leaving the tickets in Hubby's still outstretched hand.
Unused to small towns and small town A-team ball games, my first thought was that we would be arrested upon presenting the tickets at the turnstile. I am ashamed to admit it, but it's true.
"They're general admission," Hubby said with an apologetic shrug. "He didn't say anything," he added, as if to explain why he took the tickets, why he didn't offer the guy some money for them, why we did not deserve to be arrested.
"If they're only general admission, maybe he had some extra and was just being nice," I said hopefully.
So now we had tickets, a parking space, and a wide-awake boy. "We still don't have sunblock," Hubby pointed out.
"He's wearing his hat," I said, sort of amazed that The Boy hadn't pulled off his little red baseball cap as soon as I put it on. Plainly there were too many sights distracting him.
"You know, we also forgot to bring the camera, and it's his first ball game," Hubby said somewhat sadly.
I agreed this was a shame, but we've been so lousy about taking pictures of The Boy lately that I'm getting used to it. Plus, only videos can capture the joy of him walking and saying "Dawh" and "Cah" (trans. "Dog" and "Car"), and we don't know how to post our videos so others can enjoy them, so I don't bother much with them either.
At any rate, it seemed decided for us. Or, at least, our poor planning skills had made it so. We were going to the ball park with a boy in need of a nap and sunblock, an hour before game time, without so much as a camera to record the event.
It didn't matter once we stepped into the stadium. Even with just a few food stands and a few more beer stands, the ballpark feeling melted over me. I spent two summers as an usher at Dodger Stadium when I was in college and likely absorbed so much hot dog grease that it lies latent in my system until activated by the sights and sounds of a stadium and then bursts forth in a splash of excitement for summer and childhood and the clean lines of a baseball diamond.
We passed under banners featuring famous past players for the Asheville Tourists -- Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson, Willie Stargell, and Cal Ripken among them. I pointed excitedly at them and felt part of two things at once -- both Major League Baseball with its circuit of big cities featuring huge stadiums and the smaller towns that feed it, home to parks where kids can still line up to have players autograph their gloves.
It turns out the General Admission seats were all in the sun -- and not really seats, just concrete risers where the folks who plan for such things spread out their portable chairs while they hide in the shade waiting for the game to start.
Hubby suggested we might warm someone else's seats in the hopes that they not show up and with the all purpose excuse a baby provides in case they did. So we made our way to some in the back, right next to the McDonald's Family Section that, Hubby pointed out with alarm, is alcohol free. We made a note of seat numbers to make sure we don't sit there if ever we manage to buy tickets ahead of time.
We settled in to the sounds of the announcer and the piped-in music, and the field as close to us in the last row as it is to season ticket holders at Dodger Stadium. The Boy munched on a soft pretzel with relish and watched the other kids with wide, serious eyes. After a while, he got a hang of the place, and left our laps to wander the length of the bench and smile at the man sitting at the end drinking a beer.
The announcement that start time had been delayed by an estimated hour came as we were watching them spread some kind of absorbent dirt over the field in what seemed to me to be a feeble attempt to dry it out after the previous night's rain. It wasn't looking good. Plus, The Boy had just decided it was time for him to sit on the ground and play.
"I'm afraid there are peanut shells down there," said Hubby of the peanut allergy. Not that a few peanut shells on the ground bother him, but his son who we suspect has inherited his allergy and who wanted to sit amongst them and likely put them in his mouth was another story.
"He's never going to take his nap here," I sighed. "And he doesn't care if we see the game or not. Plus, we got in for free," I added.
"I don't mind leaving," Hubby agreed. I think it had more to do with the fact that he could tell himself this didn't count as The Boy's first ball game and thus not feel bad about forgetting the camera than with anything I had said.
So we went home, making one person looking for a parking space almost as happy as our dogs.
I don't know if The Boy's enthusiastic response to his first almost-baseball game makes him more my son or his father's. Hubby, after all, still cares to follow baseball, watches games on t.v., and once even played on a team in his youth. I, on the other hand, have grown to appreciate the atmosphere of the ballpark more than the games. I'll always think of the major league season as it was when I went to Dodgers games with my father -- before realignment, when the play-offs were just five games, and when Marge Schott hadn't yet made me too embarrassed to be a Cincinnati Reds fan.
Whatever the reason, we all three love going to a game, and I know my family will be returning to see the Asheville Tourists play. Maybe we'll even get season tickets.
And when the next Jackie Robinson or Willie Stargell makes it to the major leagues, my son will be able to say he saw them up close when they played for his hometown team in Asheville.
Saturday, April 5, 2008
Spring Visitors
My friend Steve flew in from Washington, D.C., last weekend (via Detroit -- no joke) and thus earned the title of our first Spring visitor. (And possibly last, after this story.)
I prepared for the trip by sending him links to information about absolutely every fabulous place I could think to take him.
There weren't many, so I was slightly puzzled when he emailed me back with a comment about how busy we'd be. I was certain that my pull-out-all-the-stops Asheville-and-vicinity itinerary would yield just enough entertainment to fill his 72 hours here and send him home with fond memories of Asheville but no need to return because, to be honest, there wouldn't be anything left to do. (Not that we don't want you return, Steve, if you're reading this.)
We started out, I thought, almost promisingly. He seemed to enjoy the half mile walk to The Boy's school ("I guess yours is the one running toward you," he observed when we arrived, no great kid person that he is), despite the hills. But almost as soon as we returned home I discovered I had sent Hubby off to work with the car seat car. Yes, loathe to capitulate entirely to frumpy parenthood, we own only one car that can accommodate The Boy's car seat. It is, unfortunately, also the only car we own that can accommodate the lawnmower Hubby took to get serviced that day. Which meant that Steve had to go pick up the pizza I ordered for the sitter on his own.
I know it's a little bit unusual to send your guest who's been in town all of two hours out by himself to pick up pizza, but all concerned agreed that option was far preferable to him staying home with The Boy. Besides, it's a pretty small town, and I felt confident he'd make it back.
Once the pizza and sitter were firmly in place, I was anxious to show Steve our lively downtown. He did me the favor of admiring it, both on the way for pre-dinner drinks and even more enthusiastically on our way to the restaurant, well oiled with martinis. And when we saw folks heading for the drum circle after dinner, he didn't even bat an eyelash, though I'm not certain he really knew what a drum circle is.
The real sense that we might not offer our friends a gala get-away weekend started the next morning. To his credit, Steve is not a high maintenance guest. Throw a couple of cinnamon raisin bagels from the shop around the corner at him for breakfast, and he can take care of himself. It's just that by 11:00 I imagine he was getting a little bit tired of watching us run around gathering supplies for an afternoon out with a toddler. As I may have mentioned, Steve will be the last person to label himself a lover of kids, although he did spend a good deal of his morning on the floor with the dogs. So, really, in retrospect, I think we were all okay.
To be fair, part of what was making entertainment difficult was the threat of rain. Asheville is sort of an outdoor place -- not many big museums or other indoor attractions, unless you count the Mall, which I don't.
So as soon as it started to clear, we went into action mode. Out the door, diaper bag in tow, and off to the Western Carolina Nature Center we went. This was one attraction I could wave at Steve with a feeling that we do live in a place worth the price of his plane ticket (and the time spent in the Detroit Airport). Steve is a big lover of the animals, especially wolves, and our Nature Center has them. A few were even out, looking soggy and annoyed, but willing to have their picture taken.
Then it was off for an authentic (as far as we know) lunch of Native American food, the highlights of which, I gathered, were the alligator bites and the fry bread. (Not "fried bread," Hubby scolded me. Just "fry bread.")
On my own, I would have started apologizing at this point. Steve had 48 more hours to spend in Asheville, and I couldn't think of anything rousing to do in the almost rain. We'd pretty much covered downtown last night -- its size seems charming and manageable when you plan correctly, but comes back to bite you when you take an evening walk after dinner and wipe out your plans for most of the following day.
Luckily, I now have Hubby to make up for my shortcomings as a hostess. He suggested that Steve might want to see Hendersonville, home of the camp where he was a counselor 30 years ago. (30? I'm doing the math now and I wonder if Steve stopped counting somewhere along the way.)
So we spent a few hours in Hendersonville, which I wouldn't include on the itinerary of future travelers who haven't been camp counselors there in the past, but satisfied Steve just fine.
It was Sunday when it began to dawn on me that friends come to see you, not the town in which you live. Steve kindly showed interest in our drive along the Blue Ridge Parkway, but brunch at Tupelo Honey was probably a bigger highlight for him. By dinner it was okay to go to a recommended sushi restaurant in a strip mall because if he had any opinion of Asheville, he'd formed it already, and taking him to a strip mall restaurant wasn't going to make me seem any less cool than I am. Which is cool enough to not like the idea of eating at strip mall restaurants but not so cool that I refuse to do it.
We spent Monday morning walking Audrey, and I finally got it. I've known Steve for 14 years. He's the one who brought me dinner the night after I had surgery on my toes and discovered I couldn't make it off my couch to find food. (To this day, I wonder why I told him a plain bagel would satisfy my hunger when I hadn't eaten all day and, even more, why he believed me.) He let me use his guest room for extended stays when I lived in Williamsburg and sanity demanded that I escape to DC every chance I had. He always spent some part of his visits to St. Louis fixing something in my house. Even when he visited us in Long Beach, where there were plenty of activities on offer, he took the time to play photographer for the last of my series of Roxanne holiday cards.
So, really, I was judging Asheville when Steve had no intention of judging it himself. I've always lived in destination cities -- Los Angeles, New York, DC. Even Williamsburg annually hosts more tourists than most U.S. cities, though I'm not sure why. And when I lived in St. Louis I was on a quest to show my coastal friends that there really is a thing or two to do in the midwest. There was always so much city to help with the entertaining I somehow forgot which one of us my friends were visiting.
Not that Asheville isn't a lovely place to see as well. There's the Nature Center and the Biltmore Estate, the galleries downtown, and the Grove Park Inn, and the Folk Art Center. But they all -- with the exception of the Biltmore Estate -- seem so unassuming next to the places I'm used to taking visitors.
And that, I suppose, is the crux of what I discovered as we head into our spring visitor season. When people come to visit me here, they will see that at some point over my years of living in destination cities, I've become a person who lives in Asheville. Someone who plays with her child until 11:00 on a Saturday, heads out to some local attraction, and might even go out to dinner in a strip mall.
Okay, so I'm no longer the young, single woman hopping amongst the bars on Columbus Avenue in Manhattan. My friends love me anyhow, or so they tell me. They love who I am now, not who I think I used to be, and I don't need to apologize for it any more than I need to apologize for Asheville.
Besides, come to think of it, I never really spent much time in those Columbus Avenue bars even when I could.
I prepared for the trip by sending him links to information about absolutely every fabulous place I could think to take him.
There weren't many, so I was slightly puzzled when he emailed me back with a comment about how busy we'd be. I was certain that my pull-out-all-the-stops Asheville-and-vicinity itinerary would yield just enough entertainment to fill his 72 hours here and send him home with fond memories of Asheville but no need to return because, to be honest, there wouldn't be anything left to do. (Not that we don't want you return, Steve, if you're reading this.)
We started out, I thought, almost promisingly. He seemed to enjoy the half mile walk to The Boy's school ("I guess yours is the one running toward you," he observed when we arrived, no great kid person that he is), despite the hills. But almost as soon as we returned home I discovered I had sent Hubby off to work with the car seat car. Yes, loathe to capitulate entirely to frumpy parenthood, we own only one car that can accommodate The Boy's car seat. It is, unfortunately, also the only car we own that can accommodate the lawnmower Hubby took to get serviced that day. Which meant that Steve had to go pick up the pizza I ordered for the sitter on his own.
I know it's a little bit unusual to send your guest who's been in town all of two hours out by himself to pick up pizza, but all concerned agreed that option was far preferable to him staying home with The Boy. Besides, it's a pretty small town, and I felt confident he'd make it back.
Once the pizza and sitter were firmly in place, I was anxious to show Steve our lively downtown. He did me the favor of admiring it, both on the way for pre-dinner drinks and even more enthusiastically on our way to the restaurant, well oiled with martinis. And when we saw folks heading for the drum circle after dinner, he didn't even bat an eyelash, though I'm not certain he really knew what a drum circle is.
The real sense that we might not offer our friends a gala get-away weekend started the next morning. To his credit, Steve is not a high maintenance guest. Throw a couple of cinnamon raisin bagels from the shop around the corner at him for breakfast, and he can take care of himself. It's just that by 11:00 I imagine he was getting a little bit tired of watching us run around gathering supplies for an afternoon out with a toddler. As I may have mentioned, Steve will be the last person to label himself a lover of kids, although he did spend a good deal of his morning on the floor with the dogs. So, really, in retrospect, I think we were all okay.
To be fair, part of what was making entertainment difficult was the threat of rain. Asheville is sort of an outdoor place -- not many big museums or other indoor attractions, unless you count the Mall, which I don't.
So as soon as it started to clear, we went into action mode. Out the door, diaper bag in tow, and off to the Western Carolina Nature Center we went. This was one attraction I could wave at Steve with a feeling that we do live in a place worth the price of his plane ticket (and the time spent in the Detroit Airport). Steve is a big lover of the animals, especially wolves, and our Nature Center has them. A few were even out, looking soggy and annoyed, but willing to have their picture taken.
Then it was off for an authentic (as far as we know) lunch of Native American food, the highlights of which, I gathered, were the alligator bites and the fry bread. (Not "fried bread," Hubby scolded me. Just "fry bread.")
On my own, I would have started apologizing at this point. Steve had 48 more hours to spend in Asheville, and I couldn't think of anything rousing to do in the almost rain. We'd pretty much covered downtown last night -- its size seems charming and manageable when you plan correctly, but comes back to bite you when you take an evening walk after dinner and wipe out your plans for most of the following day.
Luckily, I now have Hubby to make up for my shortcomings as a hostess. He suggested that Steve might want to see Hendersonville, home of the camp where he was a counselor 30 years ago. (30? I'm doing the math now and I wonder if Steve stopped counting somewhere along the way.)
So we spent a few hours in Hendersonville, which I wouldn't include on the itinerary of future travelers who haven't been camp counselors there in the past, but satisfied Steve just fine.
It was Sunday when it began to dawn on me that friends come to see you, not the town in which you live. Steve kindly showed interest in our drive along the Blue Ridge Parkway, but brunch at Tupelo Honey was probably a bigger highlight for him. By dinner it was okay to go to a recommended sushi restaurant in a strip mall because if he had any opinion of Asheville, he'd formed it already, and taking him to a strip mall restaurant wasn't going to make me seem any less cool than I am. Which is cool enough to not like the idea of eating at strip mall restaurants but not so cool that I refuse to do it.
We spent Monday morning walking Audrey, and I finally got it. I've known Steve for 14 years. He's the one who brought me dinner the night after I had surgery on my toes and discovered I couldn't make it off my couch to find food. (To this day, I wonder why I told him a plain bagel would satisfy my hunger when I hadn't eaten all day and, even more, why he believed me.) He let me use his guest room for extended stays when I lived in Williamsburg and sanity demanded that I escape to DC every chance I had. He always spent some part of his visits to St. Louis fixing something in my house. Even when he visited us in Long Beach, where there were plenty of activities on offer, he took the time to play photographer for the last of my series of Roxanne holiday cards.
So, really, I was judging Asheville when Steve had no intention of judging it himself. I've always lived in destination cities -- Los Angeles, New York, DC. Even Williamsburg annually hosts more tourists than most U.S. cities, though I'm not sure why. And when I lived in St. Louis I was on a quest to show my coastal friends that there really is a thing or two to do in the midwest. There was always so much city to help with the entertaining I somehow forgot which one of us my friends were visiting.
Not that Asheville isn't a lovely place to see as well. There's the Nature Center and the Biltmore Estate, the galleries downtown, and the Grove Park Inn, and the Folk Art Center. But they all -- with the exception of the Biltmore Estate -- seem so unassuming next to the places I'm used to taking visitors.
And that, I suppose, is the crux of what I discovered as we head into our spring visitor season. When people come to visit me here, they will see that at some point over my years of living in destination cities, I've become a person who lives in Asheville. Someone who plays with her child until 11:00 on a Saturday, heads out to some local attraction, and might even go out to dinner in a strip mall.
Okay, so I'm no longer the young, single woman hopping amongst the bars on Columbus Avenue in Manhattan. My friends love me anyhow, or so they tell me. They love who I am now, not who I think I used to be, and I don't need to apologize for it any more than I need to apologize for Asheville.
Besides, come to think of it, I never really spent much time in those Columbus Avenue bars even when I could.
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