She is fascinated by soap shaped like seashells. Anything she finds in the house to her liking she takes down from the shelves and display tables, countertops and bureaus – even the bath tub ledge – and stuffs them into her baby stroller to push around the neighborhood like a miniature bag lady.
The stroller isn’t meant for real babies. The model she’s taken to is a miniature one intended for baby dolls with small wheels to carry light loads around a living room or to be pushed up and down a sidewalk, gently – not to carry the enormous weight that results from her collecting sprees. She loads the seat and its undercarriage with stuffed animals, puzzle pieces, pinecones, marbles, synthetic flower stems with the blossoms cut or fallen off, potato chip bags, a backpack and a hippo figurine. (more…)
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Tags: Kids
Back roads through the Kansas foothills wound us first past the Leavenworth military cemetery and then Lansing Prison, by hills raked with white headstones and haunted with barbed-wire shadows. The narrow streets were overhung with branches, bare, about to bud, and the sunshine covered the hills like a sheet kicked up and spread out on the flowing hills that rose and fell like dinosaur humps. By then, she’d gotten tired in the backseat and had given up on the scenery. She closed her eyes in trust and felt the climbs and the drops as her father drove on. (more…)
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Tags: Kids
Beneath the pulled shades and the night-light left glowing late into the morning, the house was almost still except for one early riser. Weak light tried its best to leak through the curtains but only managed a bright stain in the material. The little girl slept in the big bed with her body turned sideways, her head rested in a crook in her father’s arm from middle-night to now: half passed seven on an overly cold March morning. Blankets are tangled and rolled into large piles, folds have enveloped the toys she took to bed with her – a toy horse and a miniature bicycle it balances on. And she slept beyond her normal hour of rising by some two hours and her father guessed that maybe it was his presence that helped her sleep along.
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Tags: Kids
The following piece was actually written last winter in a spare few moments I had to fill. With the exception of a few minor edits for clarity, it’s almost completely untouched. This is the first time I’ve dipped into my unpublished catalog to post something. I’m not running out of steam creatively. I am actually trying to clear my PC of documents in order to find material easier. Much of the subject matter here still pertains to my writing environment on weekends (which I am especially looking forward to this week), except the children are much older and so am I. There’s also the familiar domestic theme that seems to influence so much of my work. Here goes: (more…)
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Tags: Kids
Brother and sister awaken in a semi-darkened bedroom at the same minute as the day before, when the window shade warms around the edges, aglow in a perfect box shape. Lying in beds side by side, they lazily study each other to see that the other’s eyes are open, wrestle with the covers a last time and in so doing realize they are awake to stay. Always the youngest – the little girl, Caroline – says the day’s first words in a hushed voice that she’s heard adults use while stooping to see that she’s covered by blankets and that her head lies on the pillow for the night. (more…)
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Tags: Kids, Morning
