Day 12. The reckless (& futile) concerns of my mind have peaked, consumed me, tossed me about like a ship in a hurricane, and then, God bless, subsided. I am free now, at peace, liberated, but I still sometimes sense that there are white shapes moving between the trees...
The kids come screaming down the hill. Screaming! I am sure that this is it---the leg caught in a tractor; the snake bite; the fall from the barn roof. I hear the screams every five minutes. I hear the screams in my sleep. I am a city mother---I take my child rearing neat, clean and ultra-supervised. Life-on-a-Norwegian-farm-where-diplomats-live? Well it's just so... rustic.
But the children are running, screaming and laughing. Phew, as I stand in the door watching them take the last steps down the hill. Mummy! Mummy! Come see the Smudge Wall by Liv & Haakon!! "Smudge" and "wall"? See? Totally rustic.
We're a cross between our parents and hippies in a tent, sings Greg Brown. I've had that line stuck in my head since my daughter was born seven years ago. And I feel the pull happen again within me as I stand before my children's Smudge Wall: how my mother would respond; how a hippie in a tent would respond. I pause and admire. The drawings are done with magic marker, then smudged with dirty hands. They have drawn frames on the wall around the drawings. I reach through the arbitrariness that is my parenting style---seven years and I'm still waiting for the memo, or the conference, or even the a conversation where it will all be revealed. Then I'll be up to speed. Then I won't feel under-employed. Then I will find such joy in coloring! Then I will bring dinner to the table effortlessly and lovingly. Then I will get in the cold water, and teach them how to swim. Until then, however, I'm a babysitter waiting for the parents to return, and I'm a little pissed off that there's no Diet Coke in the fridge.
"That's cool," I say to my two, proud, mural-smudge-painting children. "You should get the camera and take a picture."
I walk back outside, checking the laundry on the line as I pass. The sheets are dry so I take them down and fold them to make room for the next load. As I finish, I remember I was looking for the clippers to prune the bushes a while ago, before I started the laundry, and the writing, and the outdoor pillow fluffing, and the Sound of Music dance performance watching, which led me to get the boom box out of the barn and hook it up to the ipod and play early Bob Dylan tunes on the back porch. I find the clipper and return to this new art of mine. I think I might be a genius with this pruning thing, and I'm sort of surprised my Norwegian family hasn't commented on my work. I always take care to not cut any flowers or buds---would be like shooting a pregnant deer, I think as I snip away. Although when I'm done, I wonder if it would be generous to shoot the deer, and put it out of its misery.
But it is 12:37pm in Norway and the children have just alerted me that the U.S. President is coming for two hours and he would like some proper music, nothing New York, maybe a disco song. Play that Funky Music comes on. The President will love that song! Haakon says, and so that's decided. But so many more preparations still to complete, oh so much to do.


