now we are six

Quilt by Grandma Edith. Knitwear by Tante Hanne made originally for mama.

When I was One, I had just begun.

First day walking.

When I was Two, I was nearly new.

When I was Three, I was hardly Me.

When I was Four, I was not much more.

When I was Five, I was just alive.

But now I am Six, I'm as clever as clever.

So I think I'll be six now for ever and ever.

by A.A. Milne

first lost tooth

Thursday July 8, 2010 6:50pm: my daughter lost her first tooth.

There’s a tiny pink gap on the bottom of my child’s smile today.  She was eating oats while sitting on a big easy chair downstairs trying to cool down in the 92ْ F heatwave.  She did a little victory dance downstairs and invited us to come down and see the surprise.

She selected an altoids tin as her toothbox.  Curiously strong mints, except that these had been chocolate covered altoids, if you can believe it. A curiously chocolatey brown and golden tin.  We cut some fabric—green cotton with pink and purple butterflies—to line the tin and she placed her precious ivory inside.  On top were silver and gold wedding bell and Christmas stickers.  What a lucky tooth fairy!

Uncharacteristically, she woke up at 5am and reached under the pillow.  Inside the box was a golden coin, a Sacajawea dollar.  She thought maybe the woman on the coin was a fairy queen with a fairy baby on her back who knew the tooth fairy.  Her dad said it was a native American fairy.  It’s a special story since her great-great-great grandmother was a full-blood Apache who married a missionary in the 1800s.  A very special father-daughter connection.

It’s curious how new experiences spark old memories.  At breakfast today, my husband recalled that when he lost his first tooth, he found an Indian head nickel under his pillow.  That’s another precious father-daughter connection.

thankfulness on december 25

(at last moved from the paper archive to digital archive...)

Thankful for talent.  How precious to watch our five-year-old pull the wrappers from a home-felled white pine dollhouse.  Four stories high with slides for stairs, horse stables down below and an equipment shed.  Santa’s elves really showed their talent by building just what she wanted.  I wondered how I could get those elves to replace our stairs with slides.

Thankful for neighbors.  Our artist neighbor Aurora visited us for Christmas breakfast and brought us coffee cake and a tin brimming with home-grown garlic.  We sipped champagne, dipped home-baked Stollen in warm cups of coffee and admired ancient German ornaments on the tree.

Thankful for electricity.  It’s true that we lost electricity for an hour and a half, right in the middle of cooking Christmas dinner.  Our Yankee ingenuity spurred us to crank the wood stove a little higher and pull everything out of the oven and onto the wood stove under cover.  By the time dinner rolled around, we had lights to see what we were eating and everything tasted divine.

Thankful for music.  A couple friends and family joined us for dinner and brought their guitars.  We had fun nibbling, playing guitar, singing songs, trying to remember other songs, and dressing up in wrapping paper.

At the end of the day, I felt so grateful for all these wonderful gifts.  

I thought to post these two holiday remembrances after recently finding some Thanksgiving and Christmas stories I wrote about visits with our family friends the O'Grady's in the mid-1970s. 

big easy thanksgiving

(at last moved from the paper archive to digital archive….)

We spent another glorious Thanksgiving in New Orleans 2009 thanks to the tremendous generosity of our friends G and J on their fifth wedding anniversary.  Sample the flavor of our stay in this historic city from these snapshots.

(photo by Lajos)

The races.  The racetrack opens on Thanksgiving, so it’s a special day to go to the races.  We watched the horses promenade just before each race.  My small daughter was enthralled with the lively horses and colorful silks of the jockeys.  A small crowd gathered around her to bet on which horses she thought would win.  It was quite amusing when, after one of her horses lost, a dismayed gambler said anxiously to the assembled group, “Her horse lost, what does it mean?”

Thanksgiving feast.  A superb dinner was consumed at the Commander's Palace.  I had smoked goose and foie gras gumbo, shrimp and mirliton stuffing with redfish, bourbon pecan pie, and finished with chicory coffee.  Tasted some P&J oyster dressing, shrimp and tasso henican, and creole bread pudding souffle too.  It's hard to miss turkey and gravy with those flavors on the table!  We watched the sun start to set from our second-floor corner window overlooking the marvelous gardens at the Palace.

Aboard the paddle-steamer Natchez on the Mississippi R.

Paddleboat on the Mississippi. I confess that I really, really like taking the paddleboat Natchez down the Mississippa River.  Apparently, it’s the only true steam-operated paddleboat in North America.  Nice to glide by the two-mile long wharf, allegedly the longest dock in the world, and weave through freighters with their bright flags from all over the world.  The brass engine room is an engineer’s delight.  You can see just how low the ninth ward is and imagine how Hurricane Katrina waters gathered there.  The >90ْْ  curve in the river by Algiers Point is even more impressive from the water than watching from the levee!

Favorite carnival dress at the Louisiana State Museum!

Dress to the nines.  A supreme highlight for my daughter was visiting the Louisiana State Museum where many displays celebrate the parading that happens in the French Quarter.  Her eyes got wider and wider as she entered each successive room with all the sequined and feathered costumes.  I kept losing her until I figured out which were her favorite dresses.

Racetrack enthusiasts! (Lajos)

Good Samaritan.  On an early morning walk along the levee, I was turning around when a bicyclist next to me fell off his bike and smacked his head hard.  I thought he’d had a stroke as I dragged him and his bike off the trolley tracks.  I was doubly concerned when he said he was going to continue riding seven more miles…and he was an orthopedic surgeon.  I convinced him to call his family and waited with him 1.5 hours, all the while he was on the verge of leaving, all the while getting panhandled.  Finally, he realized he had a fractured femur, but forgot he hit his head.  I pointed out the gouges in his bike helmet… goodness gracious.