The hundred-year flood

Perhaps Noah became New Mexico's most popular baby boy name through a collective yearning for rain during the drought. In hindsite, such an abundant crop of little Noahs seems like an omen.

The flood started with a gentle pitter-patter one evening. By midnight it was a steady tempest that took no tea breaks. If there are male rains and female rains, this was the mother of all downpours.

It just kept on raining.

By morning, the whimsical Pecos had become the mighty Mississippi. The river embraced dead meanders like old friends, etching out familiar pathways from the last great hundred-year flood.

It kept on raining.

Full-grown cottonwood trunks and oil barrels sailed past. The river ate the tractor over yonder, and devoured the swather in the field below. We prayed for marooned cows and lamented lost machines.

It kept raining.

There was nothing we could do but watch the water rise with an uneasy feeling in our guts.

By afternoon the road was an impassable mess, bisected by roaring washes. The acequia rose up, threatening to burst its banks and explore our house. Papa fended it off with a pick and shovel.

The rain let up for about an hour that evening, but it was neither olive branch nor rainbow sign. The clouds remained up there, regrouping. So we loaded up the kids and mud-shimmied down the road to higher ground, just making it through the deep washes.

The radar showed another big, black cloud on the way, so we pushed on to the city. Just over twenty-four hours later, the Little Guy was born.

It kept on raining. But we didn't call him Noah.

Birthday letter

Dear Niece,

You are one. Hooray!

At this age, you may be battling certain frustrations, like:

1. Aiming a spoon at the correct orifice. 

   

   It gets better...and worse. 

2. Copious boogers vs precious little nose space. 
3. A damp backside that remains stubbornly damp, even when you crawl like hell away from it. 
4. Occasional abandonment by PARENT-GODS OF THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE. 
5. Not having your own spaceship and CONTROL OF THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE. 

You have my sympathy. But trust me - there are many advantages to being the magical age of one. For instance:

1. Your lack of spoon precision means that anti-cake diets are many years off. 
2. When your nose runs, it is somebody else's problem. 
3. You can pee anywhere without being arrested. Take it from this pregnant non-boy: this gets very complicated later on. 
4. When PARENT-GODS OF THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE momentarily abandon you to take a grown-up pee (see item 3), they are sure to come back soon because you are that darned cute. 
5. You don't have to make car payments on the spaceship. And in practice, running the ENTIRE UNIVERSE mostly involves washing crap and filling in forms. 

Happy birthday Nichte! May the year ahead bring you more spoon precision and fewer boogers.

With love always,

Tanta

A boy named Cate

Pregnancy is a journey down the rabbit hole. The wonderland of expectation rarely involves croquet or Cheshire cats, but it is chock full of characters telling you what to do based on crackers laudanum logic.

What to expect. 

Happily, pregnancy is also a journey into the kindness of strangers (not the Tennessee Williams kind).

Strangers regularly express sympathy over my frontal planet and offer directions to the nearest swimming hole. The random kindness phenomenon happens even in Britain, where late pregnancy is considered one of the only acceptable loopholes in the no-conversing-with-strangers rule.

Friends and family have again surrounded me with help, affection, celebration, delicious food (including suggestive cake...) and a plethora of lovely little boy-shaped clothes.

In my pre-ultrasound days, acquaintances proved surprisingly astute at detecting the presence of a boy, in spite of my insistence that I was carrying a girl called Cate. Apparently my shape (large beach ball) and that green pallor in my cheeks all indicated a male of the species.

My own predictive abilities are weaker. I have now thrice mispredicted the gender of my children, and twice mispredicted the birth date. So I've quit trying to predict anything. For the moment, all this generous good will it is a lovely way to pass time while I await my date with the inductioner (out with her baby!).

I know from experience that some of this voluntary kindness will will taper off when I am the proud owner of a screaming infant.

The mother of monsoon seasons

Sunflowers as high as an elephant's eye.

In the years I was gone, the grass fell away and the cows were sold. 'Monsoon' came to mean the memory of a teaspoon of rain that fell on a solitary August afternoon.

When I was a kid, monsoon meant a month of afternoon thundershowers, leading to tall green grass and fat black caterpillars by the end of summer.

In my wandering years more sand dunes were grown than grass. Then over a month ago, the clouds rolled in and it began to rain.

Perhaps fate declared revenge on the a nice man who offered to help us build a flagstone porch back in June, and has been waiting for a dry afternoon ever since. Perhaps we brought the rain back with us from England.

Whatever it is, you can hear the aquifers filling deep under the earth, and the plants singing on the

Growing puddles. 

surface. The river has risen and weird aquatic bugs tango on my porch at night. The awful weeds - nightshade, cockleburrs, tumbleweeds - have grown perilously high and are demanding voting rights.

Each year at the Taos Pueblo church, a statue of Mary on the alter wears a water-blue dress to mark the monsoon season. I wonder how many dust-colored summers she has hopefully weathered in blue.

When it is dry, it feels like it will never rain again. But a wise man once told me: "How do I know what the weather will do tomorrow? I don't even know what I will do tomorrow."

While you were napping

By: Ali, resident three-year old

Scientists have shown that late pregnancy on the llano in August leads to severe afternoon narcolepsy in 110% of women, and occasionally men too. It's just that damn hot.

So what's a kid to do while mama's asleep at the wheel?

It's good to get precautions over first. Draw something on her face to see if she's faking. Grown-ups can be very sneaky like that. Then go for the chip bag. Most waking mamas can detect even the slightest disturbance in the crinkly forbidden snack bag force.

Lock and load. 

Snoozing tests successfully completed, you have clearence to move on to bigger fish. Go draw some fish on the bathroom mirror with a sharpie. Repeat process with crayon on the bathroom floor.

Even planetary mothers often have a stash of lipstick somewhere. Locate lipstick and reload.

It has now been several minutes since the chip crinkle test, and you may be getting hungry. Pantry spelunking is a good solution. Here you will find cake mix, bags of sugar, and boxes of flour. These are really great substances for filling up dresser drawers and recently-vacuumed rugs, ensuring that your naptime efforts will continue to be appreciated for days to come.

Ice cream is a great way to slake a thirst built up from lipstick and cake mix. Although designed by grown-ups to keep ice cream away from kids, freezer safes are pretty easy to crack. Once in, locate the Blue Bunny box. Make sure to dissect the cardboard container completely using scissors to ensure maximum chocolate goo coverage.

Next, conduct a scientific experiment: what happens to sunscreen if you spread it all over clean bedsheets? Add honey for good measure.

Pet your cat's fur in the wrong direction. Pull his tale once or twice. No one can stop you from sparring with the cat now, except for the cat.

By now you will probably be out of fun stuff to do and getting bored. Don't bother cleaning up or hiding the evidence. Say THE GHOST did it and Mama will love you anyway because she is a sucker.

Pass the remaining time by locating some good cartoons on any touch screen device you can find with chocolatey fingers. We all need a break right?

The Tomten's house

Once upon a time someone came to this place, deep in the middle of the forest, and built a home and a garden.

The Tomten lives in the middle of an old piñion tree in the woods. He only comes out at night when the humans are asleep. Sometimes they see his prints in the dirt, but no one has ever seen the Tomten.

He is an old, old Tomten, and no one knows when he came to the woods. Although no one has ever seen him, they know he is there.

On small silent feet, the Tomten moves about in the moonlight, making little tracks in the dirt. He talks to sleeping forest animals in Tomten language, a silent little language animals can understand.

"Droughts come and droughts go,

Thunderstorms come and thunderstorms go,

Soon the grass will grow green and tall again."

The house where the humans live is silent. The grown-ups sleep through the hours of cricket song, not knowing that the Tomten is there.

The Tomten tiptoes to the children's room, and stands silently wishing they would wake up so that he could speak to them in Tomten language, a silent little language that children can understand.

Night is brief here in the middle of summer. The Tomten leaves milk for the cat before returning to the pinion tree.

The grown-ups rise with the sun and go about their business, but the children see his tracks.

Every night here in the wood, everyone will be fast asleep. Everyone but one...

Year follows year, but as long as humans live near the old woods, the Tomten will traipse between the old piñion tree and their houses on his little silent feet.

- Credit for this Tomten flight of fancy goes firstly to Astrid Lindgren, secondly to the Randall Davey Audubon Center in Santa Fe for a wonderful summer camp week of bug-chasing, and thirdly to one three-year old's profoundly overactive imagination left to run wild in the woods, speaking only a language that Tomten's can understand. Although no one saw exactly where the imaginagion went, in the morning there were little tracks everywhere. 

Little tent in the big woods

I make a rubbish pioneer woman. If I lived in a little house on the prairie 100+ years ago, my children would've surely been eaten by locusts and blizzards by now.

Chasing rain fairies. 

Since fortune has returned me to the land of carving one's destiny from Earth using only bare hands and duct tape, and I am doing my best to wade back out into the physical world without injury. Last weekend for instance, I returned to the mountains for the first time in many years.

And I am pleased to report that it all went wonderfully. As I discovered, the trick to happiness in the wild is this: go with contemporary pioneers. These are people who can tie knots in their sleep, assemble tents blindfolded, build campfires in hurricanes, and send even the most rabid of imaginary bears whimpering back into the woods with a mere nod.

I had forgotten how rain sounds on a tent flap, and the shape the mist takes when it munches up pine trees from top to bottom. I'd forgotten the smell of rich, black mountain dirt, strangely simlar to that of a new baby. Meadow flowers are taller than I had recalled, and brighter. Mountain streams are colder.

Ana tells me she wants to move to the mountains where the rain fairies live, and she never wants to return home. I seem to remember having this same thought years ago too, long before a fear of bears and tent-failure set in. 

The tortoise and the haircut

When in the course of human events:

1. The scissors go missing
2. Your kid decides to hide out in the bathroom for twenty minutes.

Call the SWAT team.

Do not - I repeat DO NOT - react like a lethargic turtle. Trust me.

Weapon of hair destruction. 

I blame our deforestation incident on Haircut Compulsion Disorder (HCD), which runs in my family.

In addition to HCD, babysitting karma has a long memory.

Years ago BC, I was entrusted with the care and feeding of someone else's kids for a mere hour. A haircut incident occurred about five minutes into my supervisory tenure, the result of which was about what Fozzie Bear would look like if he tried to give himself a modern art mohawk after drinking three bottles of gin.

Their unfortunate mother had to view the haircut without the help of gin, and was understandably not amused. In the silver linings department, after my experience this morning, I finally feel that have finally repaid my debt to society for that episode.

Of course, babysitting karma and me are not through with each other yet.

There was that other time I was on watch and the kids found a sharp implement with which to mow down all the plants in the backyard, the result of which was about what Fozzie Bear's yard would look like if he tried to give it a modern art mohawk after drinking three bottles of gin...

The past is another country

Unlike other Royal Parks, the gates of Primrose Hill remain open long after dusk. Faux gaslights line the paths, enticing lovers and other nighttime eccentrics to come have a wander inside.

From the top, lights spill out into the distance, making London look less like a human financial services treadmill, and more like a magical fairy civilization in the region of Alpha Centauri.

Conversing with the memory moon. 

If you used to live here, this is the place to trace out the streets that correspond to the memories. This is the perfect spot to remember only the fond bits. 

Visiting one homeland from another is a strange feeling. On both sides, someone greets me with a smile and says: "Welcome home." And both greeters are correct. 

I hit the third trimester for the third time somewhere over the Atlantic, which means I won't be visiting Primrose Hill again for a spell. It also means that I will mostly be napping through the scorching hellfire summer I have returned to.  

But be it two or twenty years when I return, I know London will be precisely as I left it. This is because of the somewhat distressing reality that no person can ever change the fabric of such a humongous, crazy, fairyland.

Primrose Hill is covered in rain 98.9% of the time. But from the very top, William Blake speaks from the stonework: "I have conversed with the spiritual sun. I saw him on Primrose Hill."

Professionalism

Like any over-reaching parent, I discuss career options with my offspring. And like true professionals, my children never limit their ambitions to tangible reality.

Ana wants to be a veterinarian when she grows up. She wants to work with guard toads and battle toads, who sustain many injuries in their line of work. She would rather switch careers than work with bookworms (they are abominable).

Battle toad. 

Much of her current veterinary training takes the form of sketching unicorns and hundred-tailed cats with a purposefulness that any scatterbrained grown-up can admire (she formerly wanted to be an artist).

Ali wants to be Papa when she grows up. Upon graduation into life, she will promptly grow a beard and become a guitar ninja.

While this was Ali's standard answer for yonks, but it abruptly changed the other day:

Mama: 'So kid, what do you want to be when you grow up?'
Ali: 'I don't know.'

Aside from a lack of grey hair and a profound disinterest in the Financial Times, this new answer may mean that she has already grown up. I reckon the typical age cycle of the question goes about like this:

Q: 'So, what do you want to be when you grow up?'

Toddler: 'Astronaut!'
Adolescent: 'Rockstar!'
Grown-up: 'No clue. Better-rested?'