My children had a half-day of school today. I did not, which was fine, and important, and good. But it occurred to me more than once– I will admit it here– that I would have liked to be a “normal mother” today: to drive over to the school after their half-day and pick them up in car-lines, and maybe take them to Duke Gardens for a picnic.
Today was the first warm, sunny day in several weeks, it seems, and I am wanting to take them to the Gardens especially right now, as the wisteria is blooming everywhere in the trees along the roadsides, and I know that it must be exquisite at Duke. A gazebo there is covered with wisteria vines, and the grape-like blossom clusters have opened over the past few days. It would be so good to stand there under the gazebo and simply inhale them.
Funny, isn’t it, the gap between what one’s life Is and what one believes one’s life Should Be, and how sometimes that gap is all you notice?
After school I had an appointment, and so I didn’t get home until after five, which was extraordinarily late for even a regular school day. But I changed my clothes and the boys put on helmets and roller blades and Emma grabbed her bike, and soon we were out together for a little walk/skate/ride before dinnertime.
We weren’t past the end of our street when we decided to go see Elizabeth and Roberto and Daniela, and just as we stopped to eye and smell some low-growing wisteria at the street corner, Roberto himself drove by. He offered to give us a ride to his house, but we didn’t want it. Some of the reason for being out was for the vigor of it all, and for a having a destination, even if it wasn’t very far away.
“He’s going to beat us there,” Emma Grace observed as he drove off. I thought she was probably right.
She was. Moreover, Elizabeth and Daniela weren’t at home when we got there, but Roberto invited us in for lemonade anyway, and how can you say no to such a thing as this? The next thing we knew, we were taking turns at the kitchen sink, pressing the juice out of real lemons into a sieve and then into a bowl. The entire process had a sticky sort of charm to it, and I remembered my father teaching me a song about lemons back when I was five years old. We were visiting my nana in Florida and he was walking with me and my older sister to a park. We walked along a sidewalk bordered by a tall white wall, over the top of which hung branches of lemon trees, and lemons grew from these branches. My father sang:
Lemon tree very pretty and the lemon flower is sweet
But the fruit of the poor lemon is impossible to eat
Today I sang that for them, standing at the kitchen sink with the juicing tool in one hand and half a lemon in the other. I sang it for my children and for Roberto, and when I finished the second line, they all laughed. So I sang it again.
I remember that my father took us to the park that day and that I learned how to pump the swing myself, so that I no longer needed to be pushed. This seemed very important at the time.
Not long after, Elizabeth and Daniela came home, and soon we were all drinking lemonade that was really and truly delicious and definitely not too sweet but really sweet enough. We talked for a little while and the children played with Daniela’s guinea pig. Then it was time to go home.
We moved along nicely coming and going. Will is learning to skate backwards, Everett is learning to jump in the air and “do a 360.” Emma is learning not to ask me for help getting started when she really doesn’t need it. We stopped to blow the seeds from the white heads of dandelions. We watched for cars. I enjoyed how the long, late afternoon light comes through the new beginnings of the leaves.
We didn’t get home until 6:30, and then the breakfast dishes were waiting for me, as was the preparation of supper. But I had pulled a piece of wisteria from the low-growing bunch at the street corner, and I hung it on the frame of the kitchen-sink window.
It can’t live long–a day or two without water. But it looks lovely: the clusters of flowers hanging down over the window, and the smell of them filling the kitchen. We’ll enjoy it while it lasts.
