It’s a chilly morning by the opened window that ushers in the cold air. I’m snuggled under the feather-filled duvet hoping to revel in my dreams for hours more, but the thin mucus that drizzles down the back of my throat wrestles me out of sleep. Propping my pillows against the headboard for vertical relief, The Husband gives me a start as he snorts in his sleep. Meanwhile through the walls, alternatively each child coughs and tosses in their beds. Clearly, a slow viral torture is in progress with my family’s complete envelopment and submission being the end result. The morning seems close enough to justify getting out of bed and avoiding further throat agony. Around the breakfast table we sit drinking oolong tea with honey. The sickness fades into the background as talk of mounting the familiar and favorite metal steed pushes out the virus cloud and replaces the space with anticipation of what the day might bring.

Three opinions on what to do and where to go send us wandering in the streets until the Waters of Leith pathway presents itself and our bicycles wheel onto the muddy path trailing the water. Possibly it is named “walkway” because walking, as opposed to biking, might be the best idea given every bridge presents a steep set of stairs. The children and I use our newfound confidence and can-do attitude to heave the bikes up forty steps over the bridge and down again. Then we repeat that action at several bridges and feel strong and capable. Last month before our injection of common sense, we would have remained at bottom of the stairs whining about the insurmountable task.

Around the city we ride in the seclusion of a tree-covered path alongside a rippling stream while the city stirs above our heads. Hunger overtakes us, and as we have packed no picnic (tsk tsk says Irish Wife) we emerge from the low trail, climb a mighty set of steps and enter the city for a serving of the ever popular cheese and butter baguette with a side of hot chocolate (oink).

Maneuvering through the streets we come upon the lonely rail station where we briefly stopped back in June on our way to the Highlands. Seeing Arthur’s Seat in the distant and other landmarks that begin to reveal themselves, we have an inkling of where we are and before long we arrive at the terrace of Edinburgh Castle. Thinking it will be most clever to cut through the cemetery at the Parish Church of St. Cuthbert’s we race down the ancient pavement and turn the corner to find the most surprising and desirable site our hearts can image — brightly painted horses on a Victorian carousel gallop in circles to the happy music of the “Magic Flute”.

Audibly we gasped as fireworks shot off in our heads. Cotton candy borders the cozy eatery, children spin on a rope twirler, maidens shriek from a miniature play castle, howls of laughter come from children affixed to bungee ropes somersaulting in an enormous hollow golf ball. Flowers, benches and lush patches of green hills rim the area. For one month this paradise escaped us. No longer. For the next two hours we devour every bite of it.

Like eating cotton candy, somehow a body knows when to stop. We get our bags and head to the bikes that are locked to a pole in the cemetery. Like an old mare the giant rusty bike I ride with its wobbly plastic baby seat leans there waiting for me, and its most needy baby, the jaunty yellow bike belonging to the young master of our rental house nestles next to it. However, the little red baby bicycle is missing!

Mumbling, stumbling, blaming, the children turn on each in a game of who-forgot-to-lock-the-bikes. “You were supposed to lock them! I already left,” defends the Big One. “I couldn’t get it locked and Mommy said not to talk to her because she was writing,” cries the Little One who knows it’s fault and something really bad is going to happen to him.

Right there in the middle of hundreds of souls who wait in Pergatory and watch with a good seat for my show, I lay into the children with a mix of the usual phrases appropriate for loss of property:

“For the love of Pete! How could you be so irresponsible?
How do you think you’re going to replace that bike?
Do you think we are made of money?
Is it all easy-come-easy-go for you people?
That was someone else’s property – what if someone carelessly left your bike unlocked in a cemetery?
What is Dad going to say?”

The show goes on and on, and as we walk through the cemetery I feel like I am portraying the role of Mother quite well. The children grimly looked down at the ground while the Little One’s lip trembles and the Big One who must have watched Mommy Dearest knows what to say in times of trouble because she repeats, “Yes ‘mam. We’re sorry, Mommy. We will never leave the bikes unlocked again.” I remind her how she left her bike at home unlocked and how it too was stolen.

Suddenly Big One jumps up and down with a gleeful expression. She’s spotted the missing bike. It’s thrown against a tombstone and left for dead. “We’re lucky, Mommy!” Yes, we are lucky. (I mean, isn’t it beat-you-on-the-head obvious we are lucky?) “We’re lucky but we’re lazy, I correct,” in an effort to ruin their lives with guilt. Then I fast forward to Track 13 of the Mommy Guilt Trip, and as we walk through the tombstones toward the busy streets my words turn into yarn that is wound into a ball and thrown into the gutter.

Flowers from the garden

Random bagpiper

With our friend Robert The Bruce

Attack of the dancing bagpipers

Is there any doubt this hawk-owning woman cast a spell on Baby G? That is why his nose is running today.

Baby Mary (Queen of Scots) was crowned in the room. There is a potty underneath the throne because the King and Queen had to grant audiences for long periods of time. How could that work??

For Stephanie Klein, author of Moose and Stephanie’s Greek Tragedy who needs to know what to pack for New York

The fur tam adds a bit of mystery and certainly a full serving of glamour, especially paired with the Battlestar Galactica belt, but since I didn’t bring boots and it’s summer, the mink hat gets thrown back into the dress-up chest. It’s probably part of her father’s official academic gown and dress anyway. However, there is no way I’m taking off the thick strap of brown leather excessively adorned with brass brads. Clearly, Medieval Mommy picked up this gem in a fit of hope that her husband would fancy her a Tudor or Roman goddess, but the more likely story is that he stole the belt and dressed his boyfriend as a pirate merchant and punished him for a petting crime. These parents have not put the belt to proper use, and at all costs I will persuade the seven-year old owner of the wicker costume chest to donate this belt to my cause where I will give it due consideration before the public eye.

Remember back in May when you helped me contemplate how to pack for four people for two months in two suitcases? Considering that one suitcase mostly held books, a breathing machine, and a surplus of American branded toiletries the real question reduced the packing challenge to one suitcase.

What I packed for summer vacation:
Jeans
Black tee
White tee
Oatmeal tee
White pants
Kelly green tee
Sky-blue pashmina
Oatmeal thin sweater
French blue ultra thin pullover
Black thing that can be worn a number of ways:
long skirt, short strapless dress, halter long top and other weird way.

It’s been great. Everyday I combine several of these garments with one of my four pairs of earrings and a coordinating hairstyle that typically involves a low, high or split ponytail. Honestly, the same outfit rarely happens twice and everyday I feel like the winner of Top Design.

When I get home these clothes won’t be with me, as the threadbare rags will be in a Scotland dumpster, but I might limit myself to fewer clothes. It is mentally draining to manage too many clothes, plus the creativity is virtually non-existent. You end up wearing part of a look that the week before hung in a window and was styled for someone else. In other words, you look like what RM from Julian Gold wanted to sell you.

The rope connected to the lifesaving ring didn’t snap, nor did it erode, instead, quite simply, an unforeseen force untied the rope from the ring, and the little family drifted out into the great big, rolling sea. In other words, the Irish Family left for holiday.

At 9:00 a.m. the telephone didn’t ring with a lyrical voice on the other end suggesting a bicycle ride to the paint store or an outing to the beach. By 10:00 a.m. it sank in that the Irish Family really meant it when they said they were leaving for a seaside cottage visit and then onward to their family homestead on a little tip of Ireland.

Gathering my strength I followed the old pattern and conjured a day like ones we enjoyed with the Irish Family. With mustered confidence I prepare a picnic, fill water bottles, pack rain gear, locate notebooks, scrounge money, sunscreen children, affix helmets, unlock bicycles and consult maps. Two children and one lonely mother set off on the cycle path for the next neighborhood to reproduce a visit to a fabric store where Irish Husband bought one of my children a zipper and the other a pompom. Today, one child hopes to secure an enamel charm in the likeness of a dog wearing a crown to add to her valued bracelet that came free in a magazine.

Step One: complete. Miraculously, the children remembered the circuitous route that Irish Husband had cycled them before to an industrial part of a neighboring town. Good work, team. Next step is cycle to Portobello beach for a picnic on the sand. I’ll write and the children will build castles. Ralph Waldo Emerson will float down from the sky and validate the outing. We’ll be home and tired just in time for dinner.

Eh, there is a mild problem. Baby G refused to ride the bike emblazoned with “SassyGirl” which is too bad because the girly bike is the right size for him. The vanity of appearing too feminine motivated him to dig in the basket of keys by the door and try every key to see which one unlocked the big red bicycle. Several crashes later he was not dissuaded from mastering the red monster. Riding behind him caused me to gasp for air when he repeatedly dove into the hedgerow, but pride overcame my fear, which is why I took him on the city streets in the bike lane. What was I thinking?

“Stay behind me. DO NOT veer into the traffic,” I barked. No, I think. This is not how Irish Wife would lead us in traffic. “Come ducks. Put that wheel right behind mine and don’t take your eyes off me. Here we go, loves.” Possibly, it occurs to me, Irish Wife drank with breakfast.

It is pouring rain, OF COURSE, as the children and I bike through a part of town where panhandlers emerge from all directions and numerous violations of the open alcohol container law go unchecked. Channeling Irish Wife I grab a pedestrian and grill him on directions. I do not consider that he might not know the way or that he doesn’t want to talk to me. Instead, I force him to tell me the way to Portobello.

“Eh, the motorway ‘tis up thar. I wouldn’t take me children on it, though.” Shah. The cycle path doesn’t actually go to the beach, which is why Irish Husband took the car out of hiding for the beach trip that day. Cut the loses – we need to return to the paved floral lined path leading us back to the bubble of renovated Victorian homes overlooking the Waters of Leith. “Pedal, boy, pedal that red monster. Get outta here. Don’t look back!”

Safely ensconced in our loaned home, Baby G and I shop the Internet for school clothes, lest we arrive in Texas and have to commune with the masses at the mall. Horrors of all horrors, the Internet goes down. WTFelse could happen? PLEASE come home Irish Family. It’s no fun without you.

The backdoor is open and the howling cries of a child in the midst of a beating fill my ears… comforts my soul, actually, as at least someone else makes their children cry. The cry is horrid. This spanking is out of control. Playing the role of nosy neighbor, I walk outside and cock my ear toward the sound hoping to eavesdrop on someone’s trouble. “Mommy! Mommy!” Kids sound the same everywhere. Sounds just like my daughter. It IS my daughter!

Panicked I climb the plastic kiddie slide next to the tool shed and wrestle my body onto the top of the little building. Grabbing the top of the stone fence I hurl myself over the fence and race through the urban forest to locate K who is emitting ear-piercing screams of, “Mommy, help me. Please find me. I fell out of the tree.”

Dragging her home with Baby G providing exactly the right support, we tuck into the bathroom where I patch her leg, side, shoulder, finger and arm using an entire boxful of bandages while she tells me about climbing the tree to write a story (heart tug) and falling backwards into nettle.

Maybe I should have given up, turned on the television for the children, who haven’t viewed the beast since we left home and opened a bag of potato chips. However, after all the weeks of training that Irish Wife invested in me, to spit on all her work seemed wrong.

Grabbing swimsuits we scooter, bus and walk from the north end of town almost to the southern city limits to a Victorian bathe house. With such an effort to find the hidden gem I’m hoping this activity will redeem the day.

Wearing our “bathing costumes” we follow another family toward the water. “Not yet. Two minutes until the pool is open for free swim,” says Mr. Pool Rules. The other mother drags her child out of the pool and the clock that says 4:30p.m ticks until 4:32 when Pool Rules lets us in.

Well, actually, he doesn’t let K and me in. “No shirts in the pool,” he tells me about K’s shirt. Most definitely there is no child in the entire world more body conscious than my daughter. She wears long board shorts and rash guard shirt for swimming except Irish Wife left the shirt part of K’s suit at their club last week.

“Well,” I reason with Pool Rules, “since she is a girl she can’t swim without her shirt.”

“The shirt is white and when it gets wet it will become see-through,” Pool Rules says.

I am dumbfounded and snipe, “Uh, she’s eight-years old! I hardly think that is an issue.”

“Perhaps she can wear a vest and then put the shirt over the vest,” he blathers. “This is to preserve her dignity. If I let her swim then you need to stand by the pool when she gets out and have a towel ready to wrap around her.”

Yep. I’ll get right on that. I blow him off and glide into the water thinking K is right behind me. Like a flea on a dog, Baby G leaps onto me and the pool fun begins. However, when I turn around K is not in the water and just as I twist my head I see her close the door of the tiny dressing room where she will remain for the duration of our pool time.

Beating a path to console her and get her out and into the pool I beg, “Come on. Fuck him. He’s an idiot. Don’t let him ruin your time. Get in the water with us. We’ll have fun.”

No can do. “He said everyone will look at my boobies and they will,” cries a wounded little girl who has been the victim of someone’s misspent authority.

No amount of consolation or support can undo her humiliation, and we decide to leave. After I redress I walk along the side of the pool to put my swimsuit in the spinner. “No shoes! You can’t wear shoes by the pool!” calls Pool Rules.

Whipping around, I kick-off my shoes and one shoe inadvertently whirls toward Pool Rules as I begin a tirade that he will replay until his last day on Earth. “I’ll get a supervisor,” says the cowering fool as he whines, “Supervisor!”

Pool Rules is about forty-years old and his supervisor, the guy who also works the cash register, is no older than twenty-two. Humiliation oozed onto everyone. The supervisor profusely apologized, but now K is even more embarrassed and sculks out of the building.

On the long walk home we talked the situation into the ground, and finally when I told her that I should have ripped my bathing suit top off and flashed Pool Rules saying, “THESE are the kind of breasts you want to hide from the eyes of the public,” did she break into a fit of laughter and let go of the shame heaped on her by Pool Rules.

Gee-awd, as if my enormous love of the Irish family was not enough, I love all their friends too. We have thoroughly latched onto their social connections and their friends now invite us to “come ‘round”. The come ‘round dissolves me into a fit of giggles each time I hear it. “We hope you can come ‘round on Saturday night. Say around five?” Or, “Mrs. X, can Baby G come ‘round tomorrow for tea?” The quaintness slays me.

Yesterday we were out to see a bit of Celtic dancing in the countryside, and amongst hundreds of plaid clad people, I was one of the few not carrying a handled basket with “tea”. Never think of tea being liquid – tea is a meal, snack or food in general, i.e. Tea (dinner) is at six o’clock; Did you bring tea (food) for the children?

Tonight we went ‘round for nursery tea, and I brought champagne, food (tea) and flowers in basket just like Bree Vandecamp does on Desperate Housewives. In America people in movies carry food in baskets, but real people use Tupperware or bowls covered with Sarah Wrap. It’s like serving berries for dessert. Americans might serve berries for dessert, but nobody really buys it. We eat the berries and then secretly eat a piece of cake when nobody is watching. In Scotland people really bring homemade food in baskets and honestly eat berries for dessert.

The people at tonight’s party were full of layers and rich with captivating histories, like a bowl of hearty beef stew – no consommé. The guests included the consul general from an unmentioned but important country; a dermatologist who will next month unveil a secret study saying sun exposure is linked to healthy hearts; a doctor just back from Nairobi whose friend died in her arms from malaria; a psychologist from Kentucky who treats Appalachian prison patients via video conference, the editor of the biggest newspaper in (the world?), and a gorgeous political journalist who had all the scoop in addition to large exposed breasts that made for a confusing tone. Time was the unwanted guest who interrupted all the interesting conversations.

Apparently the children had a rocketing good time as the hostess said she overheard Baby G at the children’s table screeching in an over-high pitched voice, “I’m the only boy with five girls and you are you all wearing panties!” Is it officially certain he will grow up to be a pervert? At one point I walked past the living room where the children were wildly dancing and playing a game of “musical statues”.

When time to leave arrived too soon we couldn’t find K or two of the other girls. Finally we found them in a closet playing “sardines”. The three girls had been in a small closet for an hour and a half (so they said.) What fun. If I hadn’t been enjoying myself so much I would have wished I were my children.

The bottom line is that the get-togethers here are so casual. There is no dressing-up and hullabaloo – just good company and entertainment. In fact, I felt compelled to wear the same clothes I had on earlier in the day when I ran into the hostess at a coffee shop. If I changed, it would have somehow been a faux pas. The menu, at best, was hodgepodge. An hour before the party when I dropped by to collect my children, who were busy wrecking the party-giver’s house, the hostess was digging in the garden. When I have a party, I work all day — bring out the china, plan the menu, buy special clothes, send the children away, cook like Martha Stewart (with paid help) and get into a good fight with The Husband about his inability to intuit his chore list.

As with everything I’ve lately learned, I’m taking a note.

P.S. Lithuanian person who reads this blog everyday, who are you? Tell us about life in Lithuania. Shall I next visit you in Lithuania?

P.S.S. Was that last post a turd in the punch bowl? Do you only like me with money and fun? Is reality too difficult to read?

‘Who wears short-shorts?” sings the television. Twelve-year old me, and I accessorize them with metal-wheeled white roller skates, a side ponytail and spearmint-kissing potion hanging around my neck. Who skates down the sidewalk, carefully navigating the cracks, in the bursting sun on a hot Texas day? The girl who completes her Saturday house cleaning routine, that’s who! However, the girl who instead chooses to alphabetize her books while passively watching the Three Stooges on a thirteen-inch black and white television and generally procrastinating her cleaning tasks stays inside her smoke-clouded trailer all day.

Vacuuming the rust colored shag carpet and dusting the lacquered faux wood furniture could have been completed in thirty minutes. In ten minutes I could have wiggled the obscenely short, fringed denim shorts over my smooth Naired legs, laced up those skates and exited the hollow front door with its milky rectangle of plastic glass. All day with the sun teasing my freckles I could have skated backward and held hands with Tammy Fraley as we put on a show for those two ugly eighth-grade girls. Instead, I fought Saturday’s to-do list with self-designed weapons aimed at cutting off my nose to spite my face.

When the Three Stooges ended their movie, Betty Davis then wanted me to know what had happened to Baby Jane. Betty lured me into her movie when she pushed her sister down the stairs and again when she served a juicy rat for dinner, but the small television could not hold my attention. It seemed that organizing my dozens of plush animal friends, Ted Bear in the role of patriarch, for a group photo taken by my Instamatic camera won out over Betty’s lunatic antics. When I finally got around to my weekly tasks, I discovered much more than vacuuming and dusting needed to happen to make the place presentable, surely more than an afternoon’s work, and quite possibly a lifetime of work.

Cleaning the over-flowing ashtrays, ridding the kitchen table of hundreds of broken or inkless of pens and pencils, neatening gargantuan piles of papers (catalogs mixed with birth certificates), wiping gooey bottles of grenadine and finding the caps for the vodka bottles took an hour in itself, then there was the bathroom. The tub-shower combination, difficult to use because the curtain rod was packed to the hilt with hanging clothes, seemed to court mold. Scrubbing the corroded tub and walls could take the better part of an afternoon.

Ducking under the longer garments and climbing into the tub, I pushed aside the plastic cleaner bags to spy an olive green tassel that pretended to hold the disintegrating shower curtain as if to say that once upon a time there had been a nod to beauty. Inside the tub I tackled the project inch-by-inch and minute-by-minute until the afternoon turned into dusk.

My mother was oblivious to aesthetics unless it involved something she wore: shoes, hair, breasts, clothes, fingernails, eyelashes, jewelry – on all accounts, the bigger the better. With such intense focus on bodily adornment, it might be shocking to know that there was zero attention paid to our home decor. The tiny yard was covered in cigarette butts, mostly deposited by my father who smoked and flicked while he crafted knives in a little shop set between our trailer and the next trailer that sat only twelve feet away from our front door.

Not a childhood home meant to nurture the senses or inspire the soul, its purpose was to warehouse three people in the off hours when the lights of life turned off. No matter the cloud of futility, a constant craving to create small altars to beauty and purge my world of dirt and filth constantly pestered me.

All this build up is to say that the past two nights I’ve tackled the Scotland rental house and cleaned it like a hooker at a revival. As we are paying a tidy sum for the rental, I should give a care as to whether or not the refrigerator is dissembled and scrubbed or the bathroom corners are purged of cobwebs, hair and grit. However, my need to relive Larry, Moe, Curly and Betty is irresistible. No matter that I’ve learned leave the house and let the sun tickle my freckles, once the children are asleep I go to what I know, cleaning.

The odd bedfellow is The Husband, who also bears the burden of needing to clean. Like two addicts we give the children every last drop of love they demand, but the minute their eyes close we beat a path to the kitchen where he tackles the never-before-cleaned trashcan-recycling bin-compost contraption. With a vacuum The Husband collects the bits of food, dirt and micro-litter that would never see the light of day in our Texas house. Then he gets the forbidden bleach that our eco-friendly homeowners seem to have banned from their home. With a toothbrush he works the metal slides for the rubbish bin while the actual bins soak in cleaning solution on the terrace.

Meanwhile, I disassemble the shelves in the refrigerator and orgasmically discard past-dated cheese, mint jelly, sprouts, yogurt and ceramic containers that formerly held cream but the cream appears to have evaporated months ago. Scalding hot, soapy water (gained by adjusting the hot water heater well past the “safe” temperature) bathes the inside refrigerator walls that are coated with splashes and dashes that have never been tackled. I feel complete satisfaction until I notice the seam between the cabinetry and stove that is packed with one hundred and fifty years of crumbs that have fallen from the stove. With synchronicity of thought, The Husband and I begin planning on how to move the one thousand pound Aga stove. The power that underpins and legitimizes our existence, gives us strength.

Listening to Wagner both The Husband and I reach simultaneous cleaning completion. The music makes me wonder if it’s all pointless and the family will return home, ignore the new cleanliness of their abode. Might they choose to keep their lifestyle of fun in the sun and not select a life that keeps them inside neurotically cleaning tiny areas of their dirty home with a toothbrush? My husband, on the other hand, surely is staring out the window thinking that the hero of the opera, Siegfried, is gripped by a primeval panic when he meets his first woman (second, in my case) and nervously wonders if I might be his mother.

2:30 am Couldn’t sleep. Read about Anne Boylen (book) and Michael Jackson (web).

5:30 am Returned to bed for sleep.

8:30 am Baby G could wait no longer to mount his bicycle.

9:00 am On the street running to keep up with biking boy and scootering girl.

9:20 am After mile to special breakfast café sign read:
CLOSED FAMILY BEREAVEMENT

9:40 am Back home to drop scooter and bike.

9:45 am Set off to climb hill toward Centre City.

10:30 am 1st Café – only vegetarian fare.
2nd café – no wi-fi
3rd café – hot basement

10:55am Revolt: Children having traveled several miles with no breakfast turn beastly.

11:00 am Pret Manger – chain restaurant provided immediate gratification of cheese and butter sandwiches with a side of pain au chocolat.
Jenny Craig, please save me a spot.

11:10 am Sent children outside restaurant for ten minutes to write in peace.

11:11 am Children wrestling one another on sidewalk as café patrons stare at me. In fear of furthering bad reputation of Americans I slam my computer shut and leave.

11:12 am Bitter.

11:15 am Stop at Harvey Nichols and purchase fancy hair-hat-headband piece with black feathers on wire.

11:30 am Resentment gone.

12:00 pm Lost in city trying to find hideous purple fur rug that K is desperate to own.

12:30 pm Own ugly rug and headed home.

1:15 pm Drop rug and get bikes.

1:30-3:00 pm Miles and miles pass under pouring rain. We are lost in the net of cycle paths.

3:00 pm Tea.

3:30-4:30pm Lost again, but this time in the glorioussun.
Quote from son, “Mommy, you look pretty riding slow on the bike with that basket in front.”

4:31 pm Whatever.

Quick, send ideas. I need to make food to take to a party. What impressive, tasty dish can I bring to convey American hospitality? BBQ is out of my league and next week I’m hosting Tex-Mex night so no Mexican fare. Gotta be able to cook it in the Aga too.

Dear Readers,

Cheers (‘cause I’m affected like a 19-year old coming back from junior year abroad and will be saying annoying phrases like “Cheers” and “I’ll nip over to get you.” Also, upon my return to Texas I’ll start eating with my fork overturned in my left hand and asking for my dinnermates to pass the toMAToes. Really, though, I won’t. I promise.)

*************************************************************
Sitting on the park bench Lauren tears the doughy bread of her egg salad sandwich with her front teeth and momentarily regrets offering half of the tasty eggy mayonnaise lunch to her friend Douglas. However, in return Douglas passes Lauren a thermos lid of his steamy hot chocolate. Swallowing a mouthful of egg tainted with chocolate, Lauren begins a rant that should have waited one swallow later, after the completed first step of peristalsis when all the food was out the mouth and safely on its way down the esophagus.

“In swift order of ways I find Timothy and Vivi’s relationship offensive is that it’s built on a lie. I mean if you are a homosexual pretending to be a heterosexual, then you’re lying. Secondly, he demeans Vivi in that hideous way that only a homosexual man can humiliate a hetero woman. You know, that ever present criticism that is hatred in diguise. ‘Red is not your color. Try brown.’

While Timothy is busy debasing Vivi in the slyest, most polite way, he simultaneously acts as her supreme dictator and ruler. He tells her what products to use to clean the oven, what skirts to buy the girls and what to flowers to plant in the garden. It’s like she is his personal slave.

Finally, he misappropriates their limited resources and does not participate in the actual work of raising their children. Spending all that money on traveling for ‘work’ cuts into their limited budget and forces her to shop at the freaking thrift store and pretend like it’s something novel that she enjoys. Fuck him!”

Lauren refolds her pashmina and wraps herself against the breezy day like the redressing can bandage the gush of her brief brash tirade. The wind blows her wrap across her face and the tinge of anger flares again.

“Then his sorry ass comes home and directs how the children are to turn out, yet he hasn’t bothered to contribute any actual parenting. Just stop me because I can go on all day about how I would ring his skinny, prissy neck if he walked through my front door after having been out of town for weeks and said in that affected, imperious voice ‘Vivi- anne, the children’s toys are scattered in such a fuss. Why are they not in the proper bins?’ Uh, because Timothy, I’ve purposely strewn them about the room so that when you came home I could shove them up your ass – in case you haven’t gotten enough of that during your travels!’”

Douglas tightens his silver thermos and stacks the Japanese plastic kiddie cups that he has brought for the children’s hot chocolate and says, “It’s Timothy’s burden to bear, and everyday he fights his urges to be with Paul, or as far as I know, other men as well. I’ve seen him. Trish and were walking the dogs last fall – you remember, it was the week after school started and he sent Vivi on that extremely generous trip to Italy?

Trish and I were out for a walk with the dog and rounded the corner at St. Bart’s park, the one up by that neighborhood where all the Swedes live, and I almost dropped my coffee when I saw Timothy with Paul jumping on the trampoline, hand in hand! They were both giggling like maniacs and holding hands while they jumped like two Nancy-girls. The worst of the situation that sticks in my mind so vividly is Vivi’s baby blue ruffled scarf tied around Timothy’s neck! One week without Vivi and Timothy is wearing her clothes.

The extra strange part is that I’ve never seen Timothy so happy. Seriously, all the years I have known him, never have I seen him with a more effusive and beatific look on his face. Without the peering eyes of friends or Vivi, Timothy and Paul were in paradise.”

Lauren, on the edge of the park bench, obviously entranced by the story of Timothy, the husband of her mutual friend Vivi, living a double life with Paul their boarder, wanted nothing more to hear more details about Timothy’s cloaked homosexual life, but the need to attend the crying child running toward her took precedence.

“She put her hands around my neck and, and, and,” sobbed Elyse. “She did it to me first!” stomped Teddy’s purple boots with the doll in the secret compartment of the heel. “I didn’t want her to kill me first so I had to choke her back,” rationalizes an over-confident Teddy.

“It’s alright everybody. Let me see. Are you bleeding? Looks like everything is in order. How about a gingersnap for both girls?” mediates Lauren. “Here’s the deal. No touching like that. OK? Our hands may not go around one another’s necks. Understand? It is very dangerous business to place our hands on the necks of other people. Choking our friends is not how we play. Do you see me choking Douglas? No. We act like good friends and share hot chocolate.”

“NOOOooo. You can’t drink my hot chocolate! That is my hot chocolate!” Elyse further dissolves into tears, but Douglas gives her a supportive hug as the calories of the cookies are absorbed and begin dissolving the fit. Within moments both children race back to the playground.

Repacking the picnic bag, Lauren transitions back in thought to Timothy and Paul jumping on a trampoline holding hands while Timothy wears her friend’s frilly scarf. “So you think Timothy goes to his office on the third floor next to the room Paul rents while oblivious Vivi toils downstairs and nothing sexual happens – they don’t melt into one another’s arms or whatever it is they might be inclined to do?”

With zero hesitation Douglas answers, “Absolutely not. Timothy is a pious man, and Trish and I have discussed this. For goodness sakes, he is a religious studies lecturer! He fights his sinful impulses everyday. We cannot know how hard it is for him and what a good man he is that every minute of the day he battles his urges. God gives us all different impulses to manage. Timothy’s is just harder than ours. Yes, I am positive that Timothy is a homosexual, but no, he does not cheat on Vivi. All those conferences he goes to, he clearly must go to drink and flirt, but I am all but sure that he does not act on those desires.”

“Well, fuck him. He’s a liar if you ask me, and a chicken shit. I know you and I have different views on religion, but it makes no sense to me how living a lie is more holy than being a homosexual. It seems like dressing your wife in the clothes of a teenage boy and forbidding her to wear make-up while making her feel really crappy about herself is far worse than being with someone you love. Timothy has manipulated Vivi into downplaying any feminine qualities so she looks like the boy he had hoped to marry. Meanwhile she feels like shit because she looks like Oliver Twist and is confused as to why she can’t keep him interested. Face it, the only thing that interests Timothy about Vivi is her family’s money that he hopes to soon inherit.”

Douglas warms up to begin the difficult religious defense of how his church is justified in condemning gays. Instead, Lauren keeps the floor, “And those poor children. At some point they will realize their prancing, prissy father is kin to Dorothy and then what will they think? Where will they go? They won’t be able to fall into the strong arms of Vivi who is too afraid to admit her husband is a liar who formerly screwed the upstairs tenant back in his single days, but since the marriage to their mother he’s changed his tune and fully committed to a faithful life of being a heterosexual. Even if they buy the faithful part, how weird is it that Timothy houses his former lover in the same house as his family?”

Like he is remembering some course in how to defend his Catholic religion Douglas gives the same version of his former defense, “I just know that Timothy is doing it – he is fighting urges that must overwhelm him each day. That is why he has to go for long walks every day, and I’m sure that is why he has to get away and go to all those conferences.”

“Oh. My. God. I would kill him were he my husband, and just to be generous I still might kill him on behalf of Vivi. Seriously, I would build a rope and pulley system that would snag his ankle when he walked in the front door and suspend him, hog-tied, while I gave him the sodomy he desired – with a hot fire iron. How dare him leave Vivi with all responsibilities of raising those children while he’s off cruising guys or fighting his “urges.” I don’t care if my husband was unhooking from the dialysis machine, I would not give him a pass to stop parenting, and if he ever told me what to or not to wear, there would be a sad awakening for him.”

Douglas caves and can no longer resist joining the rant against Timothy. He’ll check the mental box that he tried, but the truth of the matter is that he doesn’t want to risk alienating Lauren. As a stay-at-home-father, compatible play date companions are slim. Since he and Lauren began spending every day together in the park, at the beach or at a museum he has never been happier, which is why he begins a new topic on adultery and how he is religiously opposed to it. Clearly, he identifies with Timothy’s constant fight on the urges that tempt him.

Dear Laura Ingalls Wilder,

Darling, how is life on the American frontier? Hope you are well in your cotton dresses and braided piggies. It’s late July here in the Northern Motherland and today it is a tad over 50-degrees Fahrenheit and raining like the Devil is beating his wife, though we are keeping warm by the Aga. In fact, I am cooking more than usual as an excuse to stand close to the heat of the stove.

The house smells of ham or bacon or more specifically a ham-bacon hybrid the locals call rashers. The tiny little refrigerator here in the homeland doesn’t hold much food, and lest we lose the rashers, I cooked them as a morning snack for the growing boy. Fortunately for me, I enjoy the piggy smell of rashers because the drying rack that holds my damp bed sheets is very nearly over the Aga.

Knowing your situation in the cabin out in Kansas, I am sure you fully understand the concept of drying laundry inside when there is bad weather outside. In a panic, a former state of mind for me, I arose early to roll The Husband off the bed and strip the platform of its bedclothes. If I didn’t get the sheets and duvet washed early, they would not dry in time for tonight’s sleep. What a treat it will be for The Husband and me to revel in the tang of bacon for the next week. Next linen laundry day I will make elderflower jam and avoid cooking fish.

The Irish girl I’ve written to you about rang the bell this morning with her two ducks in tow, and I hurried her through the door and out of the rain for cozy cuppa. We planned to cycle to Lauriston Castle, but clearly the downpour meant a change of plans. But no, “Ooo-f, it’s a soft day,” she says fluffing her thick auburn hair that has been shielding from the downpour under a rain jacket hood. With a bit of a hillbilly, slow and confused look I open my eyes to ask if she is suggesting we carry on with our plans to visit the castle in the pouring rain. Yep. That appeared to be her suggestion.

“Look. I’ve got waterproofs for ye,” says the Irish girl. Yea, well, I put on my “raincoat” and slipped my wee one into his “water resistant” jacket. It’s all the same material, right? In the rain we mount the bicycles and set off on a six-mile roundtrip bike ride to the castle. The littlest child only learned to ride a bicycle yesterday so despite the weather the entire trip is wildly ambitious. Motoring on 12” inch wheels my son pedals like a sewing machine. I count, and for every time I pedal once, he pedals on average twelve times.

About a mile into the trip when my jeans are soaked and my children’s clothes are drenched we stop under a bridge and put on the “waterproofs”. The Irish family is wearing water pants and jackets and presumably underneath they are dry and toasty. However, by the time we reach the castle and all strip down in the toilet, the truth is that everybody is soaked to their underwear.

Wringing water out of clothes yields at least a half-gallon of water. The little children are shivering, but the Irish woman keeps spirits high and says, “Ooch, look at the view from here. You can’t get this from inside the house!”

In the toilet house (did I mention the castle was closed?) on the grounds of the castle, the four children and two mothers prance half clothed as we dry our clothes under the hand dryer and on doorknobs, and pass the thermos of Irish Girl’s homemade hot chocolate. The children and I are all set to eat our picnic on the dry bench in the toilet house, but not Irish Girl, “We’ll find a dry tree!” Honestly, I thought the next plan of action involved a taxi.

All morning long through pelting rain, I chugged behind the unflappable Irish Girl inhaling the fragrant landscape and singing out loud with the children as we blared through puddles of water trying to get each other wetter, as if that was possible. All the while, I was writing you a mental note about how Irish Girl could teach an American pioneer woman a thing or two. After a hundred stories about the grit and determination of a tough pioneer woman I think the Irish Girl could best an 1860’s Texas ranch woman. Not only does she trudge through the elements and do the hard work, she also builds morale with her troupes using her beguiling and lyrical voice, “Come along lovelies. Just around the corner it will be dry.” It’s Irish Girl’s grace that steals the show and wins the war.

In the same situation The Husband and I would have turned on one another, and in a bigger puddle than the rain created, we would have melted in a fit of incompetence, vanity and shaky self-esteem. Irish Girl knows herself, knows failure is not an option and knows that unpleasantness ruins it for everyone.

I took a note as the Irish Girl coaxed the five of us out of the toilet house and through the misting rain to a bench in the Japanese garden. In a separate negotiation, apparently, the Irish Girl charmed the rain to stop, and we ate our picnic of cheese and tomato sandwiches, pistachios, melon and special cookies stuffed with jam.

Ooch, it seemed the Irish Girl only negotiated with the rain to stop for our lunch because as soon as we finished, the rain began again in full force. Three miles home – five thousand rotations for the little guy – we sang and contemplated life. Happily, at the door of our home we stripped off the soggy clothes and headed upstairs for a hot bath. The little guy could barely make it up the stairs because his knees were red and swollen from six miles of pedaling on a toy bicycle.

Gotta hop, Laura. Will write later when we receive new ink for the pen.

All my love,

Bitsy