a Roxaboxen of their own

Beyond our back fence, under rambling, un-pruned limbs heavy with crab apples, there is a spot where four backyards meet, but it's forgotten and unused by all four families. That's right--it's not really there. It's off the map. It's uncharted territory. It belongs exclusively to about 8 or 9 neighborhood children who call it The Fort. I privately call it their very own Roxaboxen. In its current incarnation, it is a town, consisting of a circle of shops carefully constructed from low-hanging limbs, scrap lumber, and a couple of partially dismantled palates someone tossed back there long ago. And an old wagon. And fallen branches. Pine cones are their currency, and they sell art, crab apples, and a variety of weapons the nature of which I didn't quite follow. They were kind enough to explain all this to me when I wandered back for this photo. They politely invited me in, but I respectfully declined. That would just ruin everything, don't you think? There are only 4 kids in this snapshot, with The Fort behind them, but all day there have been many more. All day. Filthy and sweaty and glowingly happy.

I promised my children a trip today to a marvelous, fancy pool in the neighboring town we heard about, with two slides and water works, but they didn't want to leave The Fort. That absolutely thrills me, the joy they are creating for themselves, out of nothing. Out of everything.

Ever since I first found the book Roxaboxen, by Alice McLeron and illustrated by Barbara Cooney, I hoped that my children would have something like it for their own. We've got close before: the courtyard in Alabama, but it was out in the open and grown-ups barged through it all the time. Lacey Woods Park in Arlington, where another mom, a dear friend, and I would lurk around the edges and discuss how much freedom it made sense to give our small children in an urban park. The answer: not quite enough to make it a Roxaboxen. And just beyond our own fence, but a million miles away, here it is. Thank you, universe, for giving my children, and all these neighborhood children, this place.

I thought about getting Roxaboxen from the library--again--to share with Jacob and Leah. It's been a while since I checked it out last. But I don't think I will. To read about someone else's imaginings could influence yours too much, perhaps, when you're right in the middle of yours. It would give it a meta-fictional element--kids playing at playing, instead of playing. When you're writing a story, and someone tells you about another story on the same subject, you carefully avoid reading it just then. Maybe before, maybe after, but definitely not during the secret and delicate blooming of your own creation. Already I wonder how much they are thinking of Roxaboxen, and also the Shirley Hughes story in which Alfie and Annie Rose create a shop under a tree in their back garden. This one time, the literary references can wait.

You haven't come across Roxaboxen? You're assignment is to drop what you are doing and run out right now and procure yourself a copy. Why I haven't yet bought it is a mystery to me. I've checked it out dozens of times. It's a good one.

Library book love

I just started reading a new library book called The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop, by Lewis Buzbee. It is an absolutely gorgeous book--compact size, rough cut pages, excellent typeset. Lovingly designed. Well, I just couldn't stand to read a book that had attended to its own aesthetics so well with that slippery, crunchy library plastic over it. So, very very very carefully, I slipped it out. Ahhh. I promise to tape it back extremely carefully and return it just so.

Speaking of my library, I have to give a shout out to the Greene County Public Library system. My closest branch happens to be the biggest branch, and it's a very good place. My only complaint is that the children's section is exclusively fiction--all the children's non-fiction is interspursed with the grown-up titles in the main library. This doesn't work so well for that dreamy, serendipitous brousing that a non-fiction loving kid, like Jacob, enjoyed so much at our little branch library in north Arlington. Well, as in many things, we will adjust.

More summer reading

I just read Nora Ephron's collection of essays I Feel Bad About my Neck. You know Nora Ephron, who wrote and directed some of the most popular romantic comedies ever, generally starring Meg Ryan. I expected the essays to be very, very light and make me laugh a little. Well, I laughed a lot, out loud even. The first two essays were so very light, even silly, that I was almost put off, but the later essays carry much more gravitas and are surprisingly soulful. Highly recommended summer reading.

A book review, in brief

Here's a brief book review for you, though you don't need it, as I'm quite sure I'm the last woman in North America to read Elizabeth Gilbert's book, Eat, Pray, Love.

She can write, no doubt about it. It's an engaging book, even if you ask yourself, as I did, um, why am I still reading this? The subtitle is "one woman's search for everything through Italy, India, and Indonesia." I offer this alternate subtitle: "spiritual renewal through total self-absorption." Or, perhaps, "how the world will peel you a grape if you are a tall, lithe blonde American with a fetching smile." Or how about, "how you might kill a year if you had absolutely no responsibilities and money was no object."

So, I guess I didn't love it, although there were sections that felt true and right, and she's good company for a summer read.

State of confusion

When someone asks me where I live, I can say "Ohio!" quickly enough. I don't have to stop and think about it. But there are some other situations in which I can't quite seem to place myself.

For example: when I order something on line, and I get to the part where you type in your address, I'm thrown by those drop-down menus where you select your state. What is it about that alphabetical list of states? For a fraction of a second, I just don't know. Which state am I in? Who can tell? If I'm just a little distracted, perhaps thinking about the Sale I just took advantage of or the free shipping, I can actually scroll down the list of states, waiting for one to look familiar, before I catch myself. It's Ohio, goofball. Go to the Os.

I would like to report this as a new development, just in the month since I've moved to Ohio, because that seems excusable enough. But honesty compels me to tell you that I always do this. I always have that split second "huh!" when I confront that menu, whether I'm in Ohio or Virginia. Or Washington state. Or Hawaii. Or Alabama. Alabama was nice because that state was helpfully first on the list. (There are also the two foreign countries I've lived in, but that's another story.)

I have another example of this confusion that dates back to my early memories of television. My dad used to watch a national news program, and it included a weather report with a map of the United States. The viewer is supposed to locate herself on that map, and then have a general idea of tomorrow's temperatures. This turned out to be challenging. If someone had said, point to California/Illinois/Ohio/Utah or whichever state I was currently living in, I could have done so quickly. But there was something about the passive task of self-identifying my location that made my head spin, and frankly, still does. I still look at a map of the United States and go uh, ur, oh yeah, here.

I imagine most people turn their heads instinctively toward their home soil.

The Gado Gado Disaster. Or, children at the table

I made Gado Gado the other night, a multi-layered Indonesian concoction that I took from Mollie Katsen's All New Moosewood cookbook. Okay, so Justin doesn't really care for tofu, but he'd like this extra firm tofu, lightly pan-seared! And Leah doesn't like broccoli and carrots, but she'll like them in these micro-thin strips! And Jacob, unaccountably, claims not to like peanut sauce, but he's going to like it homemade! (That sauce was so wonderful, Reader, I had to restrain myself from eating it from the food processor with a spoon.) Sprinkled on top with toasted coconut and crushed peanuts, it was just gorgeous. I just knew, before we sat down, that I had figured out a recipe to feed them these great foods in a way they'd love. They'd even ask for more!

Um, no.

There were tears, dear Reader, actual tears when I served this. Well, not my husband, who finished off his plate with a "if my wife makes it, then I eat it!" kind of vibe, and, notably, did not ask for more. The children at the table, they whined, they cajoled, they insulted the cook and the cook's sense of justice and the cook's common sense.

This turned out to be just a little bit, shall we say, grating.

Yeah, it made me mad. It was a really good meal, lovingly made, and it took no small amount of time to make it. And it was, empirically, simply, as Alton Brown would say, good eats.

I know, I know, you have to present a new food at least seven times to the youngest palates before they are ready for them. Most the time I'm pretty sanguine about their antics, and wait them out, and soldier forth, and focus on all the many foods they do eat which is more than a lot of kids I know....but this time it just pretty much got under my skin.

In How to Eat Supper, the WONDERFUL new cookbook/food information book from Lynne Rossetto Kasper and Sally Swift (who bring us The Splendid Table on NPR), there's a quote from the nutritionist and food researcher, Dr. Marion Nestle. "You would never know it by going to a supermarket, but children are supposed to eat the same food as their parents."

We're trying to do that here, all eat the same food. Some nights it's not as easy.

In the plum of summer

We have a plum tree in our backyard. It doesn't look like much, and I didn't expect much from it. Boy, was I wrong. Bumper crop! Of the cutest, tiniest, sweetest and juiciest plums you've tasted. So many! The kids and all the neighbor kids snack on them all the time, plucking them off the tree and into their mouths. We've left a ladder by the tree so anyone can grab one from the higher branches any time. There are still plenty for the birds and the squirrels and the butterflies and other bugs, and still there are so many. We took bowls to the neighbors. I made Plum Upside Down Cake, which was eaten so fast there was a vacuuming sound.

By the way, check out those summer legs. Dirt, bruises, scratches, bug bites, band-aids. I can't recall when I last saw shoes on those feet.

Ahh, summer. Happy August, everyone.