a snapshot of when

jay and james, john and dan, putting something together

Between the wooly bear caterpillar Tim has in a big water tumbler in the kitchen, and crawling around in the garden tonight, and Little Jay getting ready to go back to the dorm on Monday, I remembered this writing from a long time ago.

I wrote it for a homebirth newsletter, so that's the connection there, but it's a snapshot of life around this house about ten years ago, and life trudges forward, but here we all still are an awful lot the same.


"Hello!

Summer is always my favorite season, and this one has been very fine so far. On the fourth of July we spent a weekend in Wisconsin and our oldest daughters found monarch caterpillars.

We love hatching out monarchs, so we brought home a few caterpillars and an armload of milkweed for them to eat. Within days each one went through the intense hour of bending and flexing involved in cocooning.

We watched as the green seemed to exude from the caterpillar’s skin, until each one became a wonderful little lime green cocoon, with a sparkly row of perfect golden pin dots around the top edge.

Saturday night I noticed that the cocoons had turned dark and when I looked at them closely, I could see the patterns of monarch wings through the film. It was not a big surprise then when the kids told us in the morning that the butterflies had hatched, but it was still startling to see how huge they were compared to their little cocoons!

Jay carried the aquarium out to the wild flower patch in the garden and we carefully lifted them out on the milkweeds and put them in the flowers. Even though we live on a busy street, we sat by the garden for a long time in our nightgowns and pajamas, watching the butterflies among the bobbing wildflowers, fanning their wings slowly, drying them in the morning sun.

Late that night Dan and John, our oldest sons, came down to where their dad and I were working in the basement. It’s a cellar basement typical of old houses, but we’ve painted the walls white and the floor maroon and use it as a home office for our business.


Dan and John are moving to an apartment down by the university in the fall, and when they came downstairs, Dan was carrying the beautiful, antique maple rolling pin I had bought for them at a garage sale that Friday, accumulating dishes for them as I am.

He recounted the plot of the Simpsons episode he’d just watched, and as I listened to him, I wasn’t sure whether I was laughing more at the Simpsons or at Dan telling the story. Then he waved the rolling pin around and called it a “three dollar piece of firewood” and smacked it on his father’s desk and against the ceiling.


I asked him if he was trying to break it, and said I thought they might someday want to make cookies, and if not, then give it to Dannell (John’s girlfriend).

Still laughing, he waved the thing under my nose and said, “Mother. Do you know how much this scares me? In a few weeks I’m going to have the kind of life that… that might require a rolling pin??”

John said, “You’re feeling nervous too?” and we laughed some more. Something about this silly moment felt full of life.

I remember feeling this way when I was pregnant with John and excited friends and relatives kept bringing me things they’d picked up for the baby—a big kettle with a rack inside for sterilizing bottles? Urp cloths? Tiny undershirts and socks? It was unnerving and exhilarating all at once.

We had the same feeling a couple years ago on that last day when Jay left his job to start his own business. That van with our name on the side was a symbol of so many things.


For those families expecting babies right now, or thinking of inviting babies to join them, this leap into the unknown probably feels very familiar.

Birth would not be birth without this element, and life just might indeed require a rolling pin.

What we know for sure is that with or without cookies, nothing is ever going to be the same again."

Fun to remember, while I crawled around weeding in the roasting heat, listening to Jay and James play basketball, summer evenings I love, and caterpillars and college students too.

Oh, and the Simpsons. love, Val