Stargazers

My papa was a Hotshot in the US Forest Service - those crazy guys who go running into flames when deer go running the other way. The job meant that he was ace with a chainsaw, and could navigate around Big Sur with only a topographical map and the stars. It also meant that, unlike his daughter, he rarely panicked even when fire was involved.

Remember to look up. (JP Stanley, 2006) 

One time my papa found himself walled into a meadow by flames. There was little he could do in the circumstances but wait, so he curled up next to the embers of a smoldering log and decided to get some rest. Back to the burnt earth, eyes to the heavens, he watched the long-dead fires of ghosting stars blink overhead, and felt the resigned peace of a tiny ant in a gargantuan universe.

This is my memory of a story I was told when I was little. Due to the challenges of stargazing through smoke, I am probably embellishing some of the details. But it is true that my papa made a point of showing me the constellations when I was a girl.

When Ana was born, my initial course of action was to obsessively hover over her to make sure she was still breathing. Papa's main concern in the was getting me to stop hovering and go the heck to sleep. His next priority was to take her outside and show her the stars. Apparently - and he remembers this like I remember the Big Sur story - he was taken outside and shown the stars in his infancy.

I did eventually stopped hovering. Ana kept on breathing, and she even got to gurgle at the stars like a baby ant. Thank goodness for papas.

This week at Chaos HQ...

...we are thinking about papas: those wonderful guys who make the world go round and carry us home when we fall over exhausted.

You'll never walk alone. 

They do this and a hundred other things without Entonox, an epidural, or a decent night's rest. They ask for nothing in return, and they never stop.

But we notice. And even if we are sometimes too tired to remark upon it, our heart's are filled with joy and gratitude.

Thanks Papa Bear, we love you.

The unexamined life

A very long time ago, around when organisms first crawled from primordial soup towards certain violence and bitter disappointment (not intended as a birthing euphemism), the eternally-wise Alyson tagged me in a game of 20ish questions as per the Guardian. Here, many evolutionary stages later, follow my answers to the questionnaire, abridged to save on reader eye strain.

You may wish to whip out this affidavit the next time you can't sleep. Or if you ever suspect that your own life is very boring, a quick glance back here should convince you of your rock star powers. 

Who would play you in the film of your life?
I'd like to say Jessica Rabbit, but I suspect it would be Gene Wilder.

What is your favourite smell?
Earth after a thunderstorm.

Where would you like to live?

In a Taos adobe with a chilli patch.

What is your favourite book?

Something Wicked This Way Comes.

Wake up time

It's half term and Chaos HQ has been riding the tube like a trio of hobos on the rails. We've been the scourge of the freebie museum circuit, the aquarium and the zoo.

Ana and I passed a busker on the way out of the underground yesterday. He was a beat-up broken sort of folk singer with a golden set of pipes. Ana, music lover and pirate, put some treasure in his cap and we carried on.

Rock me, baby.

On the way home we saw a different busker in exactly the same spot. Although he was similarly broken-looking, he sang from a different songbook, namely the one containing 'Always Look On the Bright Side of Life'. He sang it with the sort of earnest feeling that Monty Python never quite pulled off.

It was the middle of the day and the commuter crowd had dispersed, leaving him to sing to no one but himself and the footstep-modulated sunshine streaming in from the street above. I was struck by the stark loneliness of the image - a man in an empty rabbit run singing to the ether.

This town is silly with good musicians. They play in the street and sing to the underground as the human school swarms in and out on the working tide, unnoticing. They sing with persistence in the face of persistent ignoring.

My other half was born with the gift of music. He picked up a guitar somewhere in his youth and never put it down. And he's always been a singer. Over the years he has cultivated an eclectic arsenal of folk, gospel, blues, ranchera, and rock tunes. Like Steve Zissou, the girls and I (and sometimes Neffe too) live with a guitar-strummer in every scene, and our family life has a rolling soundtrack. We are hugely blessed in this regard, although I suppose we've become accustomed to it in the manner that you can become accustomed to any amazing thing that you experience every day.

Short folk. 

Music has been an important part of the girls' lives since they were days old. It quickly became Papa's means of quieting them when they were deep in the throws of pediatric demon possession. At one point just after Ana was born, the only thing that comforted her was Papa singing 'Silent Night' on eternal repeat. 

The job of household master musician is a lonely one. Papa plays on when his kids are trying to chew the guitar strings off. There is no profit and no reward. They usually don't even remember to clap. Often they wander off in the middle of a particularly lovely rendition of 'Life in a Northern Town' to smack their heads on toys in the other room. I've frequently seen grown-ups respond in a similar manner to beautiful music - it just seems to be a folk musician's lot in life. 

I wasn't born with the musical gift. I can do a very accurate impression of a rusty hinge warbling. I don't demonstrate this skill at parties anymore, because there's no better way to ruin a festive atmosphere than to burst an eardrum.

I've noticed something about the lonely musicians in my house and on the underground: they achieve total focus, and they really wail. My research indicates that their real trick* is to hit song hard and not give a toss about who's listening. A trick I've never managed to pull off in life, but I hope my girls will. Because with confidence like that, you could do just about anything.

Baby blues. 

Occasionally I manage to escape my captors for five minutes and find a keyboard (qwerty) that hasn't been slathered in ketchup. Sometimes scribbling is great fun, but other times it feels like a chore. I begin to wonder if I should instead concentrate my limited spare energy on more useful stuff, like cultivating an intentional hairstyle and paying the gas bill.

At one point last week I found myself staring blankly at the monitor, drifting off on a really boring daydream about soup (vegetable - the boringest of soups). I looked down and realised that my trousers were covered in a colourful Jackson Pollock of kid-food detritus. Then I looked up and found Ana standing stock still at my elbow. Her face made it clear that she was about to drop wisdom.

'Mama,' she said, 'wake up.'

A thought I've been mulling over a lot this week, as I listen to one of my favourite songs.

*I don't mean the trick to paying the gas bill. There are better tricks for that, and I am a lousy expert in that department. What I mean some sort of fuzzy hippie notion about finding equilibrium and joy.