Sketches

4 Responses to Sketches

1. mom and dad says:

   April 3, 2005 at 12:41 pm

   So sweet!! Take good care of that “little” bird. Love to all and a “rub on the tummy”
2. Steve says:

   April 27, 2005 at 5:21 pm

   babies are from space!
   **********************
   astronaut
   floating
   weightless
   floating
   waterspace
   floating
   wombspace
   floating
   universe
   waiting
   splashdown
   gravity
   motherspace
   gravity
   fatherspace
   gravity
   worldspace
   floating
   universe
   floating
3. sharon Allie says:

   May 1, 2005 at 9:01 pm

   This little sweet baby knows how much you love him or her. What a lovely family you have begun!
4. Sarah says:

   October 3, 2005 at 9:05 am

   Hey. So I had this wonderful comment with all sorts of outpouring of emotion and the most beautiful words, as if Shakespeare and Maya Angelou had forged a love-child, and I pressed “Tab” and it all went away and I couldn’t find it. *** In any event, I had written about how overwhelmed I was by the news, how it didn’t seem possible that just yesterday Kristin & I were driving home from Uncasville in the Skyhawk and today here she was with an actual kid. *** Marc’s description of the birth transformed the apartment into a rainforest for me, vines and greenery everywhere, the alcove a cave in the roots of a giant tree, Kristin pacing like a jaguar (pregnant jaguar), knowing that something was coming, yet not sure quite what it was. *** Knowing Kristin, (to the extent that I do), I’m sure the birth will be the most memorable experience of her life. *** And you ask for me to tell you of my day, of what happened on the day Abraham moved from his tiny universe to the big one… Well, how about if I tell you about the first FULL day of Abraham’s life in his new world? It’s far more adventurous than the Saturday in which I spent most of the day making grape jelly… *** Abraham: Well, darling, I suffer from what your father aptly terms a character flaw: I tend to assume that people should care about what I think. Therefore, though I know your Mom couldn’t care less about this, (though I did read something about football in Pa’s comments…), and, given your genes, I’m not sure this will ever mean much to you either, here was my October 2, 2005: The Boston Red Sox were going into the final day of the regular season, a game behind the New York Yankees who, by some bit of mathematics that I could never understand, had just clinched the American League East Division title the night before. The situation, as I understood it was as such: Should the Red Sox win on the day after your Birth Day COUPLED with a Cleveland Indians loss, the Sox would be in the playoffs as the wild card. Conversely, a loss by the Sox and an Indians win would send us to a wild card playoff game on Monday. You can imagine the stress…. Well, just to compound the anxiety, the New England Patriots were scheduled to play at 1, with the Sox game on at 2. I know, I know, what is one to do in sub-rural Vermont with a TV that gets 4 French-Canadian channels and an AM radio that only works when you position the dogs in the correct locations and fashion aluminum foil around their ears? At this point, I’m sure you realize, Abraham, that the situation is critical. *** But, there’s more. It is the weekend before Columbus Day, the busses filled with senior citizens are clogging our backroads, the bed and breakfasts are choking with maple sap buckets filled with chrysanthemums, and guess what? The leaves have not changed one iota. Mother Nature has decided that she (and I can’t help but agree with her on this one) has not had enough summer, so the cold nights have not yet descended upon us and the days are still scintillating, with 75 degree temperatures and blue-blue skies. Excluding the odd birch that’s gone yellow, the trees have not yet been set afire with color, which simply says to me that there’s still mowing to do. There is no way I will be spending ONE SECOND inside. I will be peeing behind bushes, eating raspberries, apples and cherry tomatoes for lunch, all the while behind my new 21″, 6hp Lawn Boy (probably using the recycling feature, not the bagger, as the grass is rather thick). *** I had finished most of the areas that I normally mow (I had cut all those spots on 2.5, thinking this may be the last mow), but I still had the “back 40” to do – the area that had been cleared this spring that was still rather unruly, filled with hillocks and stumps and rocks. I would be mowing this area on 3, and then maybe doing it again on 2.5, once I had refamiliarized myself with the natural hazards and obstacles. I jury-rigged some headphones onto a wind-up radio I had. I spent about 10 minutes charging it by winding the handle until I realized that it took batteries. I had exactly 2 AA batteries and decided that if I was ever going to use them, today was the day. *** And I thought about you, as I had on most of these days ramping up to your arrival. I thought that maybe you were already “here”, had taken your first breath outside of your confines. But, I thought, maybe it’s not here yet and Kristin is existing as an over-swollen olive on a toothpick; maybe weariness has dampened some of the anticipation as the due date has come and gone; maybe the catastrophic thinking has started to set in (what if it’s another week?)… I thought, as I did every day, that I should call, but with this time difference thing that you’ll learn about, I thought I would wait a bit, especially since I did have some previous knowledge of these Sunday repose/repast marathons your parents engaged in. *** So I set to mowing, and it took me all day. I pushed and pulled the mower, under the lilacs, carefully around a mysterious grassy knoll (aren’t they all?) where I’m quite sure something lives, avoiding the glacial deposits of bedrock slab, making sure I murdered those evil sumacs, burdocks and thistles, stopping periodically to scrape the underside of the mower and free it of the accumulated grass and mudpack that could hamper performance (there’s a lesson in there: always take care of your tools and they will take care of you). *** But I’m sure you’re wondering about the other bird I was killing with my stone I call time… The Patriots had started at 1 and by half-time the game was tied, 17-17. In the comprehensive history that I’m sure to write, you can read about the legacy – nay, dynasty, of the New England Patriots under the Bob Kraft/Bill Belichick years, but we’ll leave that for another day. Suffice to say that the Patriots had been a guaranteed win for us New England fans for just about the past 5 years. But it was not to be today. The Mighty Casey had struck out, as it were. The Patriots suffered a terrific defeat, 41-17, completely collapsing in the second half. So with 5 minutes to go in the 4th quarter and Tom Brady having thrown an interception at the New England 35, I knew the team had given up the ghost and it was time to fully turn my attention to baseball (which I had been checking in on from time to time). *** The Red Sox salvaged the day, humiliating the Yankees 10-1 behind the aging and heroic Curt Schilling. For their part, the Yankees might not have given a 100% effort, as they were already in the playoffs, though their half-assed effort may come back to bite the other half of their ass since they gave us the chance to see them again in the postseason and, perhaps, vanquish them to the nether regions of the off-season. *** So, little Abraham, I have given you a perspective of what happened in the world of New England sports on the day after you were born. You must admit that it’s probably the only description of its kind that you will get. It was a very exciting day, to say the least. And a productive day, what with the mowing and all. Which is more than I can say about the day today, as I have successfully spent 2.5 hours glorifying my sports teams and my lawn accomplishments while doing nothing here at the job which pays me the money which allows me to buy such fancy lawn mowers. *** I’m happy you’re here with your dark head of hair and scrunchy nose. I’m happy for your parents who are thrilled beyond words, and I’m happy to hear that you’ll be moving back to the east coast within three years. It’ll be far easier for you to follow the Red Sox from here rather than there. I can’t wait to see you. I wish you the best, I really do. XOXSEP

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