Tangled Date Night: History and Science

Get this, you guys.
The Chief Lou and I were having a romantic evening last night. We really went all out.
We put the kids to bed early and they actually fell asleep when they went to bed.
We slipped into something a little more comfortable (read: flannel pants), turned the lights down, heated up a great big bowl of queso and got the fiesta sized bag of chips, and snuggled up to watch NOVA on PBS.

It was hot.

Very hot.

It was about volcanoes.

Not just any volcano. Mount Saint Helens.

So, if you're roughly my age, images of the explosive eruption of Mount Saint Helens may be burned into your unconscious along with Ronald Reagan and the Cold War. I remember sitting and watching people on the news try to uncover streets, cars, houses, beloved pets that were covered in ash. I remember people being vaporized in the nuclear fallout and singing with Michael Jackson and Bruce Springsteen. I remember images of rescue workers in yellow suits helping deal with the aftermath. I remember mushroom clouds. I remember Plasticine hair and large white teeth. OK, so maybe I was pretty young and it all kind of ran together in my mind. But I do remember when the communists made Mount Saint Helens erupt and all the trickle down ash. Of course, I was living in Vermont at the time, so we were about as far removed from the whole thing as you could get and still be in the US. Those poor foreigners in the State of Washington - not DC where my grandmother lived, but that distant galaxy of Ewok planets where the trees grew so large and there were things like volcanoes. Listen, if you're older than I am and less demented, your memories of the thing may be a little different. But what is that thing people are always saying? That children often see things more clearly than adults do? This is obviously a case of that, so don't be harshing my buzz. Anyway, it was 1981. Anything was possible.

So, as life goes on and you have man-made disasters to confront and store away in the unconscious, these mere volcanic eruptions get pushed aside in favor of other horrors. Like Milli Vanilli and the 2000 election and stuff like that. Until you are snuggled down with your sweetie and suddenly realize that you recognize the footage that they are showing of the surrounding areas. I've been camping near there! With my babies! I've stopped to pee at that exit on the freeway! This is so about my life! So we watched the geologists (they're a wild and photogenic bunch, aren't they?) as they explained all about the lava dome that has grown in the crater and there were a lot of seismograph action shots [I do love a seismograph!], a few thermal computer images and lots of helicopter shots of blowing ash. It was just riveting and here is what I learned:

- Geologists are insane. It is like an extreme profession. I never would have guessed it what with the rocks and the bazillions of years and all that.

- After an eruption, the volcano continues to burble out lava and it hardens in the cooler air and forms a bit of a cork for the volcano. A massive cork made of rock.

- There are pretty much non-stop tremors after an eruption as the volcano continues to burp and clear its throat.

- That sucker erupted again in 2004 and 2007 and NOBODY TOLD ME ABOUT IT! In 2004 I was safely away in the land of Ohio, but in 2007 I was RIGHT HERE. (I told you. This is all about me.)

- Once the volcano settles down some more, it occasionally belches out "spines" of rock the size of sky scrapers, sometimes at a rate of 16 feet an hour. That's not terribly fast if you're driving to the mall, but if you're watching a whole building breaching like a whale out of a volcano crater, that's entirely too fast to be at all comfortable with. All of this is just happening a short way down the freeway from me!

- The insane and photogenic geologists did some really fun things with core samples and newly exposed rock walls and a fancy microscope and explained very patiently to me that Mount Saint Helens is "like a bottle of soda that has gone flat" just as casual as you please. Apparently the belching is from trapped gases and as of late, she's had a Tums and a good dump and is resting quietly now. The relief was palpable in our TV room, let me tell you. Except...

- They have no idea, nor any idea how to predict, how long it will be until those gases build back up again. Cheerful Crazy Geologist Guy just shrugged and pushed up his glasses and said "It could be three hundred years, it could be three years."

In summation: there is a big honkin' rock cork stuck in the champagne bottle of a mountain near me that is being steadily shaken until who knows when it will pop that cork with a mighty vigor and I will die in my bed, or at the very least have to get my carpets cleaned.

Here's the best part though. This is the part that made me cry. In the crater of the  volcano where everything was dead. Dead as a doornail. (Someone please explain this to me, what is a doornail and why is it deader than other things?) It looked like the surface of the moon. All dust and gray and black and ash and igneous rock. Barren and destroyed. Obliterated. Just dead. Except...

Right smack in the middle of the crater was a burst of color. A wild prairie lupine had sprung up amid the destruction. Not just managed to grow, but was thriving. It is a plant that usually grows at higher elevations but there it was, just standing tall and bravely blooming its delicate purple flowers. How did it accomplish such a thing? Crazy Geologist Guy with Ponytail explained it to me. It nourishes itself. It has bacterium that live on its roots that convert something into nitrogen to feed the plant, which in turn grows and photosynthesizes and feeds the bacterium a simple sugar. So there, in the middle of such desolation and complete annihilation, this plant gave itself some sugar and insisted on growing. Not only that, but because this plant decided that it would just, you know, grow, it has helped to pave the way for life to slowly return to the crater and surrounding areas.

Come to think of it, I may just survive a volcanic eruption after all.

Landmarks

I have been awash, away.
A river of cardboard boxes, paint rollers, memories, plans.
I have been wandering aimlessly crosscurrent, barking my shins on the newness of things.
At some point I picked up my feet and let the current take me where it would.

It has taken me away.
Away from endless words and constructions of small sentence empires.
Away from the interior decoration of my own skull and into the other muscles in my frame.
The ones that scoot and lift and tote and adjust and fold and hang and sweep away the debris of change.

My words have leaked outward into the necessary conversations of conversion to a new locale.
The words to comfort, soothe and share excitement with tiny people overwhelmed.
The words for new things - that bit of hardware that holds a drawer in place, the properties of machines that cut grass, the jargon, syntax, rhythm, grammar of finding a toothbrush, a cherished doll, a clean pair of socks.

I have floated and tossed, awash, away on the strength of will to do this one last thing before I sleep.
My life preservers of ibuprofen, glucosamine, chondroitin, tied together with an Ace bandage to hold in the tiny screams of old injury - they float with me, crashing into the mattress every night to sleep with mouth agape, arms outflung, dreamless and sinking, sinking, sinking like a well-tossed stone.

My life preservers in the daylight hours besides an endless stream of coffee are the crooked smiles and still-small hands that seek comfort in my own, the strong back and quiet patience of a man who rises early, works a day, comes home and works another day again before he gets to sleep beside me.

I have been awash for days, neglecting things that matter for things that matter more.
I have come ashore in a new place, different from where I started, but my senses remember this is a place I've stood so many times before.
I have come ashore with creaking joints and have prized apart my rusted chest of words. It screams and groans with the effort and resists the light of day.
I tire with the effort and make excuses to walk away, to leave it where it sits, to convince myself it does not contain treasure but only silt and slime and small dead fish who lost their way.

I have sat on this stubborn, heavy trunk I carry with me everywhere I go and gazed into the foggy night of acquiescence and there, like beacons in the distance, a steady winking string of lights that flash and catch my eye. These are landmarks I know, they are the presence of a familiar, comforting path, not so far away as it feels.

These are landmarks. These are you. Your words. You continue through the night. Your struggles, preoccupations, triumphs, mundane - they are not mine, but they continue on simultaneous, steady and intermittent, the blips on sonar that show the contours of a shoreline that I've been drifting right beside.
They are you.
Standing there and patiently blinking until I realize I'm not drifting.
I'm tethered not so far from shore.


This is dedicated to the loyal readers and writers who have inexplicably shared this whole writing escapade with me thus far. With special thoughts for Deb at Kicking Corners who is working down to a final deadline and asked for others to share what inspires us along the way. Without a doubt, my inspiration comes from all of you. You who read and share and believe what I sometimes find impossible - that I can do this writing thing. You who write and share and say amazing things in ways that I never even considered before. I love this cacophony of voices more than I can say.

A Spoonful of Crazy Helps the Math Homework Go Down

"Let Nanny help you. Catch those digits and write them down before they escape! Naughty little numbers!" This is to be read in your best falsetto, bad English accent. This is how math homework gets done around here. My Jaybird does more math homework in grade 2 than I think I did in all of high school. If we don't do a little every day, we end up with the big, buff-colored packet of doom that must be vanquished on Sunday afternoon. In a flurry of broken pencil lead, carried tens and tears, we try to power through.

My little girl has been independent since she was born. Since before she was born. While I was in labor (and labor and labor and labor) with her, my midwife shrugged as my daughter spent hours refusing to crown, swimming around and getting tangled in her cord, pooping in her water and then suddenly launching herself out sideways: "She's just going to do it her way." This pretty much characterizes how her life has gone so far. Whatever preconceived notions I've had about "how things should go" have been pretty much chucked out the window with regards to my little girl. It's one of the things I love best about her, makes me proudest of her, and drives me the most insane. We of the strong female personalities can (gasp!) occasionally push each other's buttons. We are just similar enough to get all up on each other's nerves and just opposite enough to get all up on each other's nerves. Add to that healthy dose of independent spirit a bizarre, almost visceral attachment to each other; and math homework time can get explosive. She wants to do it her way. She wants me to be proud. She wants to succeed, and like her Mama, she has a hard time seeing sometimes how making mistakes are part of success. "Help me, Mama!" quickly turns to "I know how to do this!" and back again until we are both sweating and crying and covered in graphite and pink eraser shavings. Sometime last week I decided I didn't want to do this anymore, but I didn't know how to do it differently. Math homework drama was the subject of many late night, tearful conversations with the Chief Lou. Usually along the lines of "I'm failing completely as a mother because..." and some helpful cluck-cluck, pat-pat, kiss-kiss from the Chief Lou.

I guess my subconscious (or perhaps my alter-ego) had been working on this problem for me. Lou and the Hooligan conveniently disappeared to the library yesterday afternoon to give the Jaybird some space for thinking and doing about 50 pages of Sudoku-style math puzzles. "I'm right here if you need help," I told her and went about my business with my blood pressure already rising. So was hers. I heard a furious scratch scratch, rub rub rub, sighing from the dining table while she worked and I held my breath and waited for the wail. There was no wail, just a quiet sobbing: "Can I just do this later? I have a headache." My heart broke in half and out popped an English nanny.

"Tish tosh, let's look at these silly little numbers!" I bellowed, surprising even myself. She looked up and giggled while the tears were still rolling. "Why, that 3 hasn't enough to subtract 7! She'll have to go next door and borrow a 10. Hallllooooo! Mr. Six!!! May we have a 10 please and thank you very much? There, there, much better. Now subtract!" The Psycho-Nanny plowed on while, through what were now tears of laughter, my little girl worked out the problems. It took us almost an hour and there were still mistakes, still some challenging problems, but it was all smiles and laughs and "Oh my! I believe you've written pee pee! Such naughty words on math homework?! Oh no, those are just some backward nines. Oh my. Nanny needs her hankie." We were just finishing the last problem as Lou and the Hooligan got home. My Jaybird winked at me and whispered "Let's keep Nanny as our secret," before she turned to my husband and said, "Mom is so awesome, but I can't tell you why."

I know for a fact that if I had taken my usual route of being The Mom, patiently trying to explain and encourage, our homework session would have ended in its usual breakdown. Through that strange chemistry of mother-daughter pyrotechnics, it's hard for my little girl to ask me, The Mom, for help. But Nanny? She can help. She can even point out mistakes and convince that little independent soul to "soldier on, dear," when she starts to flag. This all sounds a little insane now that I've typed it out. But I've come to believe that motherhood is, in and of itself, a form of insanity. I would walk through fire for my little girl. What mother wouldn't? But I don't have to do that just yet. Right now, I can let Nanny do it for me.