November weekend + sonnet

This was a fairly chill weekend, at least compared with the past few. The kids were off school on Friday, and my sitter went to her kid’s classroom in the afternoon for Halloween festivities, so it was a half-day for me as well. I supervised a playdate, made a Starbucks run, dyed my hair (it was time) and then started driving people to various Halloween gatherings. My older two kids went trick-or-treating with friends, and then my husband and I took the two little guys. We hit up two really walkable neighborhoods in our area, plus the haunted house in the fire station. The 10-year-old had a truly terrifying costume — Ghost Face, but with this squirt system that pumped fake blood into his mask, which would then trickle down and drain…yikes!

We then watched Game 6 of the World Series while popping out to go pick up the older kids (no one stayed out too late – like 9:30).

Saturday the 5-year-old had his last flag football game of the season. The report was that he made it to half time before declaring that he was done. So they wound up home early. The 10-year-old hosted a playdate for a while. I went to a rehearsal for my church choir’s All Saints music. We were singing five a cappella pieces in the service Sunday. While on some level this doesn’t sound so bad, they were not easy pieces (think Harris’ two-choir Faire is the Heaven) and so even with rehearsing them for two hours on Thursday and then two hours on Saturday I did not have a sense that we would breeze through them.

My husband and I did our runs in the afternoon on Saturday, and then I took the three younger kids to Chanticleer garden. This required a lot of cajoling as people would have preferred to sit with their iPads and their hands in the Halloween candy bags, but I promised it would be quick, and the garden is closing for the season next weekend. We went and walked around and…it was actually pretty nice! The kids had fun looking at the koi pond, and then rolling down the giant grass hill, and then doing a little snuggle-mommy competition, which I was not unhappy about. Plus there were beautiful flowers and colorful fall leaves. So I was feeling vindicated about at least getting them out for a little exercise. (And yes, they basically watched their iPads with their hands in the candy bags the rest of the evening but oh well.)

I watched Game 7 of the World Series Saturday night. This turned out to be quite a nail biter…and long. I turned it off at about 11:45 when the 11th inning started because I wanted to go to bed but as my husband and I were up in the room I guess he looked at his phone and said “something happened” so we went back down and (we were taping the game) watched the Dodgers get that run that put them up. So at that point we were in to the end. I would have preferred Toronto won but it was pretty amazing baseball all around.

The time change overnight was…fine. For the first time in a while the kids just slept. Amazing. I keep getting signs that I am coming out of the little kid years. I got up and got myself to church for one more rehearsal, and then my husband took at least the three little kids to the service (I suspect the 16-year-old did not go). We sang all our pieces and they mostly went OK. The first one (Song for Athene, by John Tavener) may have been a bit shaky, which was strange because we performed that one four times in France last summer. But we made it through. There were no train wrecks in Faire is the Heaven.

After, I took the 14-year-old and 10-year-old to their back-to-back tennis lessons at a nearby place. During each kid’s lesson I took the other to their bribery spot of choice: Wawa for the 10-year-old, Starbucks for the 14-year-old. I came home to host another playdate while my husband went to the gym, and then I went for a lovely run in the twilight, which is now happening at…4 p.m. Sigh. The leaves were truly gorgeous though. Then Sunday ended with music lessons (trumpet, trombone) and scouts, as it always does. I am pondering ways to get the 10-year-old to practice his trombone a bit more. I think he would actually be quite good if he put his mind to it and practiced and I know that when you get good enough at an instrument it becomes a lot more fun to play (the 14-year-old was playing all sorts of Christmas carols on the trumpet with her teacher accompanying her on the piano during her lesson and she was enjoying getting in the Christmas spirit). So I’m wondering if some sort of incentive, limited to the next 6-8 months (when he might clear the bar to get into the middle school’s competitive jazz ensemble), might be prudent. I am unsure what this would be though.

Anyway, with all the beautiful leaves, I keep trying to take pictures of them, but of course the light on the colors never quite shows up on my phone pictures the way I see it. I wrote this sonnet after several failed photo attempts, and then seeing various versions of Monet paintings with different lights and shadows last weekend at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

Autumn Light

These chairs have lingered by the wall since June
inviting anyone to pause and rest
My life has little lingering, but soon
it’s fall and and as I stand here, facing west,

the sun is sinking. Two black walnuts, gold,
are glowing, and the dogwood shimmers, red.
I take a picture, try to capture, hold
the changing light, the image in my head,

but on the screen all’s dim. Monet would paint
the lilies twenty times, or might repeat
a field with different shadows, bold or faint
to capture magic lurking in the wheat.

Perhaps he did, but soon my moment flees.
What’s ever-changing slips off like the breeze.

Finally (this is a long blog post…) I am running a campaign through Daffy along with iHeartMedia to raise money for Feeding America, which provides food to people in need. We are currently at $4000 and welcome other donations! I believe the ads will start running this week on the podcast.