Anatomy of a Halloween Party

Two weeks ago:

Plan Halloween party for all preschool children in the neighborhood. Lovely to share  American customs and extend hospitality. Preschool parties are  easy. Will chat with neighbors while  children play. No pressure. Keep it simple.

Invitations are created, printed, and delivered by A and E-Grrrl to seven children under five in our neighborhood.

We’ll have game stations: a ball toss into a pumpkin basket, a bowling game, a game with Nerf guns, and two craft areas. Fun, fun, fun.

Day after invitations go out:

Party is a bad idea! Belgians don’t really celebrate Halloween.

Do any of my neighbors object to Halloween for religious reasons? Do they consider it another over-the-top commercialized expression of American excess and consumerism?

I’m being a bad global citizen, a stereotypical American trying to colonialize someone else’s native culture with bizarre American rituals. Oh no!

One and half weeks ago:

No one has responded to the invitations. Everyone hates us. It’s George Bush’s fault. People think we are rude, boorish people and horrible pagans. They do not want to expose their children to our evil ways

One week ago:

Must start getting things in order for party, even though I have only heard from only one family.

Drop $30 on streamers, cups, plates, napkins, goody bags, Russel Stover’s holiday candy, a Halloween coloring book, and a disposable tablecloth. Come home and go to put items away. Realize I already owned at least half of what I bought. Oops. Who knew? How American.

Have not researched Halloween snacks in detail, so while I’m at the military commissary, I stock up on typical ingredients recipes for kids: pretzel sticks, marshamallows, chocolate chips, Ritz crackers.

Will keep things simple for the adults, and just make a pumpkin spice cake and serve hot apple cider.

Six days ago:

Hear back from another family. Good, there will be three children there.

Start cleaning house. Pick up all kids' junk, straighten up book shelves, clear off dining room table. Things are already looking better!

Decide to taste just one Hershey caramel kiss. Oh my. These are really good.

Research Halloween snacks online, looking for ones that aren’t scary or disgusting so I don’t offend my neighbors or frighten their children. E-Grrrl helps choose recipes.

Three days ago:

Have heard from all invitees. Everyone is coming!

Dust and polish all furniture. Feeling serene and satisfied. On my way to lovely party for neighbors. Congratulate self on being good global citizen.

Two days ago:

Make homemade playdough to put at my party craft station. Immediately realize that anything that requires cooking flour and water in a pan on the stove is going to be very messy.

Playdough comes out perfect. Pan is DOA.

Clean and polish kitchen cabinet doors.

Am proud of myself for spreading the party preparation work out over several days. No stress!

Eat last Hershey caramel kiss in the bag. I am a bad, bad woman.

Yesterday morning:

Eliminate tower of papers and kid stuff on desk. Takes hours to discard, file, and put things away. Desk top looks attractive and professional, but perhaps I should have been cleaning the bathrooms instead? And washing the windows? And vacuuming?

Flemish have reputation for cleanliness that is exceeded only by the uber organized Germans. House is not clean enough! Consider scrubbing grout between floor tiles with toothbrush. Worry that my house smells weird. Go on cobweb patrol. Nothing is as it should be.

Resigned that I’ll disgrace my country by my slovenliness.

Yesterday afternoon:

Dash off shopping list to E. Need Nutter Butters, Diet Pepsi, Caramels, M & Ms, more pretzels, more chips, string licorice, white frosting, rubberbands, bread, milk, cheese!

They are out of white frosting in the American shop. I was going to use it to frost the Nutter Butters and use chocolate chips to create eyes on them and thus turn them into ghost cookies. Damn. Oh well, will make frosting from scratch tomorrow.

Realize son does not have costume. Must find one.

Last night:

Go to Belgian discount store. Limited Halloween items have been sold at 50 percent already and the aisle has been overtaken by Christmas decorations. This is un-American—you never discount the Halloween stuff until the day after it's over! Another cultural slap in the face.  Though at least they have the Christmas stuff out--they're catching on to our commerical U.S. ways.

Go to toy aisle and buy son toy pistol, badge, and holster so he can be a cowboy.

Get home, think OMG, my son is dressing as a cowboy! Not the image I want to project—it’s so BUSH, so Republican, so violent, so macho. No, no, no!

Wish I had not talked my lil’ gunslinger out of a knight costume but was afraid he’d whack some kid with the big plastic sword and be considered violent and aggressive. Consider the merits of knights vs. cowboys. Who is better?

Decide I love the American cowboy best—better clothes and a better period in history. No crusades and killing and torturing in God's name. Go cowboys!

After the kids go to bed last night:

Must start baking and getting things ready. Was just going to make the pumpkin bundt cake for the adults but suddenly have flashback to major spread put out by neighbor during her housewarming. Can do better. Must do better!

Cake and coffee are not enough! Must have savory food too! Toast pecans and make pecan-cranberry cream cheese spread to serve on crackers, then wonder whether making it 36 hours before the party is wise. Will it have a disgusting slimey texture on Sunday? If it does, can I pretend it's a Halloween recipe and is supposed to be gross?

Decide to forego making cupcakes from scratch and instead bake brownie mix in cupcake holders. Easy! Will frost them tomorrow. Brownie mix fills more than one muffin tray and must be baked in separate batches. At 10:30 pm, they’re still cooling.

Decide to mix dry ingredients for pumpkin cake the night before to get a head start on next day’s baking. So smart! Kids can frost Nutter Butters in morning and all will be well. Will relax in the afternoon and enjoy my Saturday.

Saturday morning:

Get up just after 7 a.m. Wander downstairs in my bathrobe. Go into basement to find bundt pan. Get ready to start cake. Realize bowl I need to use is in dishwasher. Dishwasher will run for 2 hours and 48 minutes. Sigh.

Clean open shelves in kitchen while waiting. Scrub and remove all hardwater deposits from sink. Clean dish drainer. Attack bathroom sink with boiling vinegar and a scraper to remove calc deposits from around faucet and drain.

Miss daughter’s final soccer game—the one where she scored her first goal. Sigh.

Still in PJs and robe, begin making bundt cake.Must alternate additions of flour and eggs and put a streusel swirl in the center. Tell self: this will be delicious, a wonderful cake with some pizzazz. Other part of brain says: This is a big pain in the ass.

While cake is baking, make a sour cream, Tex-Mex flavored dip for adults. Think: is this too spicy? Do Belgians eat spicy food? Husband and Belgian mother-in-law do NOT like spicy food. Sigh.

Well, too damn bad. V-Grrrl lurves her spicy food. You don’t like it, you can kiss my saucy ass.

Kids turn Tootsie pops into ghost pops. E-Grrrl washes windows. Mr A cleans hamster cage. E-Grrrl goes through a huge bag of M & Ms and removes all the orange, yellow, and brown ones for a recipe. Mr. A is determined to eat the red, green, and blue ones.

Cake is done! Looks perfect! Must make frosting and frost Nutter Butters and make them into ghosts.

Realize as frosting Nutter Butters that I need to send cookies to Embassy Halloween party this afternoon. Do I have enough for our party and theirs? Lots of counting on fingers and calculating of average cookie consumption.

Run out of frosting before I finish doing all the Nutter Butters. Decide to send half ghost cookies and half plain Nutter Butters to Embassy party. Package neatly in box.

Oops. Don’t have enough powdered sugar now to glaze cake or frost cupcakes. Send E into the Dutch baking aisle at local store to find powdered sugar. No, Honey, superfine sugar is not the same thing!

E finds powdered sugar (though it comes in little cans, not big honking boxes). Brings many cans of powdered sugar home. Takes children to Halloween party. Forgets box of cookies.

1:30 pm. Still in bathrobe, I glaze cake and start on popcorn balls. Realize recipe printed from online site lacks details—what size bag of caramels? How many M & Ms? What size can of roasted peanuts? Feeling bold and confident, I wing it, guessing at quantities and throwing stuff into a big pot.

Good Lord—what a mess! How sticky is this? I can’t stir it! My M & Ms are cracking! The peanuts are all falling to the bottom! Wax paper. Must have wax paper. Must grease hands. Must hurry! Hurry! Hurry! Hurry! It's starting to set.

Popcorn balls formed. Good!

 No, bad!  Bad popcorn balls.  Imagine them in little sticky pieces all over floor and rugs as preschoolers try to eat them. What the hell was I thinking?

2:30 p.m. Cannot stand up another minute. Must escape kitchen. Must still frost and decorate cupcakes and make tea sandwiches. I am making WAY too much food. Am Italian—cannot stop myself.

Skinny, petite bikini-wearing neighbors and fussy toddlers will never consume this much food. V-Grrrl will eat leftovers and make her new jeans groan at the seams.

I’m going to blog the party prep, just so I can sit in a chair for an hour.

3:30 p.m. Must return to kitchen of dirty pans and sticky surfaces and finish cooking. Must get E to do floors and finish bathroom. Still need to decorate and hang streamers and set up games and make goody bags and, and, and....

Hear the sofa call my name. Must not answer….

October 28, 2006

Copyright 2006 Veronica McCabe Deschambault. All rights reserved. www.v-grrrl.com

The end

(This is the final installment in a three-part series. If you would like to start at the beginning, scroll down to the post titled "Why I Support St. Jude's.")

After more than a week in the hospital, my son had a CAT scan that located an infection in his abdomen, behind the incision from his surgery. This meant a second surgery, and I didn’t even try to hide my anguish from the doctors—up until this point everything had gone wrong. I’d lost my ability to believe in good outcomes. Happily, this surgery went well.

The incision was reopened and the infection was cleaned out. My son’s fever immediately broke and he was remarkably perky in the recovery room. Unfortunately the incision could not be closed. We were told it had to heal from the inside out in case any bacteria were lingering there. My son now had a four-inch wide incision just below his belly that was a gaping wound. It would need to remain bandaged and be packed with saline-soaked gauze; three times a day, the old packing would need to be removed and new packing put in.

“Can you do it?” the surgeon asked.

As if I had any choice. I wanted my son to heal, I wanted to take him home as quickly as possible, I would steel myself to do whatever I had to do to accomplish that.

The first time they showed me his incision, I was freaked out. An entire fat roll of gauze had been packed into it. I watched with disbelief as the doctor used tweezers to carefully extract what looked like two feet of gauze, and then used swabs to poke more gauze in. E couldn’t bear watching, and admitted he couldn’t handle dealing directly with the incision at all. I swallowed my fear and revulsion and over the course of a day or two, learned how to pack and dress my son’s wound. The constant putting down and tearing off of the surgical tape was damaging his tender skin, so the nurses worked on a system to hold his dressings in place.

We finally got to go home TEN days after we’d arrived at the hospital for what we thought would be a half-day visit. We hired a nurse to come and help with the dressing changes. Our insurance company only covered a limited number of home health care visits and E had to travel for work so I was often doing the dressing changes completely on my own. Cathy, the visiting nurse, worked with me and gave me courage. Her entire home health career had revolved around adults, most of them elderly. She had never had a pediatric patient before and had to adjust. We were in this together, and she did an amazing job.

The day I took my son to the hospital for his final post-op checkup, I started to bleed. The next day I was at my doctor’s office, watching with dread as my obstetrician’s face reflected bad news during the ultrasound. She sent me off for blood work.

It was Halloween. I heard the staff hush as I walked out of the office, and I knew the blood tests would confirm what the ultrasound suggested: I was losing the baby. I was nearly 12 weeks along and wondered whether the stress I’d experienced at the hospital had caused me to miscarry. I’ll never know.

The good news is my son fully recovered from his surgery, though he had horrible nightmares for months afterwards. While I was devastated by my miscarriage and had to have a D & C, I became pregnant again two months later and was blessed with my little girl. Interestingly enough, she was born a year to the day of my son’s surgery—a karmic consolation prize for all the heartache we’d endured.

Despite our happy ending, I’ve never forgotten the horrors of the pediatric wing and the challenges and pain faced by the children and parents who spend time there. What could be worse than having a seriously ill or chronically ill child?

This is why E and I donate to St. Jude’s. Anything we can do to make a sick child’s life better matters more than we can express. I encourage you to consider supporting your local children’s hospital or a research hospital like St. Jude’s. The children, the parents, and the staff need and deserve our prayers and contributions.

October 27, 2006

Copyright 2006 Veronica McCabe Deschambault. All rights reserved. www.v-grrrl.com

Life in the Hospital

(This is the second installment in a three-part series. You may wish to scroll down one entry to "Why We Support St. Jude's" to read the first part.)

We were in the process of being discharged from the hospital the next day when the nurse took our son’s temperature one more time for his chart, and he was running a fever. His discharge was cancelled, and he was returned to the stainless steel crib. We were left waiting for answers.

For the next week or so, he endured a battery of tests to try and locate the source of the infection causing his fever. His ears, nose, and throat were repeatedly checked, his lungs and heart listened to, his body x-rayed. He had blood draw after blood draw after blood draw, including several in the middle of the night. E and I felt ourselves dying inside each time we faced the trauma of another visit from the phlebotomist. We never got to sleep, and neither did our son. His fever raged on. He stopped nursing, and my stress reached new heights as my patience reached a new low.

When an intern examining my son's abdomen said to another intern that "God, this kid was a screamer," I looked him straight in the face and told him that if five strangers came and pinned him down, pulled off his trousers, pressed on a surgical site, and manhandled his testicles, I’d imagine he’d make a little noise, no? I was pissed. Pissed enough to ream him out in front of the head of surgery. I wanted him and the other "not-quite-doctors" to get the message how STUPID and insensitive his comment was. 

And while all this was happening in our sad little corner of the hospital, there were far more wrenching stories unfolding around me. Walking the floor, I could see the children that should have had hair but didn’t, the mothers with frozen expressions of grief, the kids walking with their IV poles, the sunken-eyed ones who couldn’t get out of bed, and the unending background noise of crying babies and toddlers.

In the morning I could tell when the doctors started making their rounds before dawn because the sound of crying children would start on one end of the hall and methodically increase as they went from room to room. I heard a little one screaming “Mama! Mama! Mama!” but Mama wasn't there to answer the call.

 The hospital, located in an urban area, attracted patients from every socio-economic group. Often, there was only one parent involved in the child’s life. Often, their jobs and circumstances didn’t allow them to spend hours at the hospital with their child. And often, dare I say it, the parents didn’t give a damn. They viewed a hospitalized child as one in Medicaid-funded daycare. One family dropped their child off for surgery and LEFT for the day. Oh yeah, why miss a chance to go out to eat and hangout at the mall.

Remember the baby crying in the room next door? Its mother finally showed up on the weekend, with several other children in tow. When her child started crying, the woman screamed at it, “Shut up! Shut up! Will you just shut up?” A sick baby, alone all week, being yelled at during its only visit from its mother. I felt bile rise in my throat. Life in the hospital was truly hell.

(To be continued...)

October 26, 2006

Copyright 2006 Veronica McCabe Deschambault. All rights reserved. www.v-grrrl.com

Why We Support St. Jude's

(First in a three-part series)

Yesterday E-Grrrl watched us sorting the mail, and her dad noted that we’d received Christmas address labels from St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee .

She was immediately intrigued, first by the labels themselves, featuring drawings by sick children, and then by the story of St. Jude’s, a hospital devoted to researching and treating catastrophic illnesses in children. I shared with her why we were connected to it.

E and I became supporters of St. Jude’s ten years ago when our son was only a year old. He had to have surgery for a minor condition, a simple outpatient procedure that nonetheless loomed especially large in our consciousness because we were new parents, he was our first child, and our need to protect him from any kind of harm was ingrained and fierce. I was pregnant with our second child, and my maternal hormones were in full swing.

No matter what my logical mind absorbed regarding the need for this minor, common procedure and the outstanding credentials of the surgeon and hospital involved, my emotions were churning.

On the morning of his surgery, we rose while it was still dark to get to the hospital early, and I could see from my son’s face that he wondered why he was being pulled from his crib and strapped into his car seat before the sun was up. We spent the hour long ride to the teaching hospital in silence.

Once there, I dressed my son in a hospital gown and slippers and gave him the sedative the doctor supplied. We waited for it to take effect as he pushed a shopping cart around the patient playroom, admiring how cute he looked in his mini Tweety Bird gown and slippers. When the time came to actually hand him over to the surgical team, I felt my heart drop in my chest. My drugged son didn’t cry, but I did, my eyes welling with tears, which ran down my face as soon as we were alone in the waiting room. All I could think: THEY ARE CUTTING MY BABY AND I’M LETTING THEM DO THIS. I felt sick.

When the nurse came out about 45 minutes later, I thought she’d take us to our son and we’d all go home together—just as we’d planned. Instead she delivered bad news: there were complications, it would be a while. I broke into sobs this time, burying my face in E’s chest. The surgery took hours.

When I finally was led into the crowded recovery room, I was shocked by my boy’s appearance. He was pale and lethargic and mewing like a kitten. He couldn’t even cry. I tried to nurse him, and I held him, singing a lullaby.

Because the surgery had been more involved than expected, the surgeon wanted to keep him overnight. He was placed in a stainless steel crib in the pediatric ward, and E and I settled into chairs in his room.

This was the beginning of a nightmare. That night we hardly slept at all,  disturbed by the day's events and a baby crying relentlessly next door. Every fiber in my body wanted to go in and comfort that child, but the nurses told me I could not. I wondered where the baby’s parents were, what was wrong with it, why no one was there. And, of course, I spent the night praying for my own child. When the sun came up I had only one thought on my mind:

I couldn’t wait to get home.

(To be continued...)

October 25, 2006

Copyright 2006 Veronica McCabe Deschambault. All rights reserved.

Missing Halloween

Fall in Virginia in the U.S. is a magical time. While the days are normally warm, the nights are cool and crisp and the stars grow sharper in the sky. Sweater weather usually creeps in during October, and by the middle of the month, the leaves are showing their colors.

Americans love to mark the change of seasons with house decorations, and fall inspires a lot of harvest-related displays. Pumpkins appear on porches along with potted mums and Indian corn may be hung on a door. Bales of straw become seats for scarecrows and corn sheafs are bundled and placed for effect.

The weekends are full of harvest-themed activities. There are trips to the pumpkin farm, apple picking outings, hay rides, bonfires, and various festivals, but the highlight of the month arrives on its very last day—Halloween.

This is second only to Christmas in commercialism. Elaborate decorations, costumes, parties, and events occupy adults as well as children. Trick or treating (going door to door in a costume and gathering candy) is the fulfillment of many children’s fantasies. When you’re a child, life doesn’t get better than this.

While I think fall brings the best weather Belgium has to offer, Halloween and harvest aren’t celebrated much here and it’s something I really miss. You can spot the expat houses in a neighborhood because they’re the ones with pumpkins on the steps. I remember reading last year that while there are Belgian communities where Halloween is catching on, it’s a sensitive issue culturally. Many Belgians and Europeans aren’t comfortable importing a commercialized American holiday, and trick-or-treating isn’t embraced because there are youth who are a little too happy to use it as an excuse to cause mischief and engage in vandalism. In a country that is divided and diverse, Halloween’s darker side invites trouble.

I understand that rationale, but fall without Halloween doesn’t feel like fall at all. Last year my children went trick-or-treating with friends at some American offices, but it lacked the sense of fun and drama one gets from leaving the house after dark and walking through the neighborhood through drifting leaves, flashlights cutting a path, laughter bubbling up from the street.

It was a time to stop and savor the children in the neighborhood and meet people you had seen but never spoken to before. I don’t know which part of the experience I liked more—welcoming trick-or-treaters to my door or traipsing about in the dark, holding my children’s hands and admiring the smiling jack-o-lanterns peering at us from so many directions.

After debating what to do about Halloween this year, my children and I have decided to share our Halloween tradition with our Belgian neighbors. By hosting a party for the children we know under the age of five, we can bring Halloween’s best side to light with crafts, games, and treats—creating a little magic for children and extending hospitality to our neighbors.

© 2006 Veronica McCabe Deschambault. All rights reserved. www.v-grrrl.com

My life in purchases

We’ve all done it—stood in a checkout line, studied the contents of someone’s shopping cart, and dared to imagine their life:

The college studient buying beer, Doritoes, and condoms on a Friday night; the young mom with Lucky Charms, milk, Poptarts, Wonder Bread, hotdogs, mac n cheese, and diapers; the chick buying salad, Diet Coke, sugarless pudding, People magazine, and a package of Oreos; the woman with her cell phone stuck to her ear and her cart loaded with produce, organic dairy products, and two good steaks;  the guy in dusty work pants checking out frozen sausage biscuits, Pepsi, a package of ham, loaf of bread, Velveeta cheese slices, and a six pack of beer.

Today I give you a glimpse into my shopping cart and into my life.

What went into the shopping cart at the military PX  on Saturday:

1 pair of girl’s Lee jeans

2 pairs of boy's Levi jeans

4 pairs of men’s socks

1 Lancôme bronzer compact

1 Lancôme Hypnose mascara in black

1 L’Oreal eye shadow quad

Justin Timberlake Future Sex Love Sounds CD

John Mayer Continuum CD

Over the Hedge DVD

Poseidon DVD

1 bag of Hershey’s caramel kisses

1 bag of Mounds snack bars

2 rolls of orange streamers

2 rolls of yellow streamers

3 paper Mache pumpkins

1 full size steam iron

1 potato peeler

1 Yankee candle in Home Sweet Home

1 Dr. Scholl’s foot file

2 bottles of enteric coated aspirin

1 bottle of acetametaphine

1 bottle of ibuprofen

2 boxes of Sudafed

1 box of Breathe Right strips

2 boxes of Thermacare heat wraps

3 sheets of poster board

1 black spiral file folder holder

1 box of thumb tacks

1 Rubbermaid desk drawer organizer

1 square Rubbermaid stain-resistant container

1 Polish pottery plate

1 women’s Timex watch

1 box of cinnamon Mentos

2 Hershey’s S’More bars

1 Mary Engelbreit desk calendar for 2007

What my purchases say about me:

restocking kids clothes yet again

wondering whether men’s socks will fit me better than women’s

replacing my favorite makeup

looking for musical inspiration

wasting my Netflix rental fees by buying E and the kids movies

ready for Halloween

courting good intentions and my husband’s approval

shocked that my pototato peeler broke after 20 some years of service

addicted to candles and the smell of cinnamon

continuing my zero-tolerance policy for rough heels, even though sandal season is over

trying to prevent keeling over from a stroke by taking three aspirin a day

equipped for cold season

anticipating cold-weather back spasms

getting prepared for school projects

drowning in school papers

organizing my desk and small stamping supplies

rebelling against round storage containers that can’t be stacked

slowly collecting a second set of dishes with smaller plates than my Mikasa set

unable to read the face on my old watch without my reading glasses

desperately craving  chewy, hot, sweet, and spicy

treating my two kids to something sweet

thinking about the New Year, indulging my sentimental side

October 24, 2006

Copyright 2006 Veronica McCabe Deschambault. All rights reserved. www.v-grrrl.com

Sunday afternoon in the park

Hundreds of photos of the residents of Chez V.

That’s what my blogger friend Di is facing this morning.

Di, a New Zealand expat living in Antwerp, Belgium, is launching a photography business after enduring the endless bureaucracy and delays of the residency permit and the professional licensing process here. Last week she sent me an e-mail, asking if my family would be willing to be photographed so she could add a group portrait to her portfolio.

I’ve long admired Di’s work and jumped at the opportunity. My children have been photographed endlessly, but E and I haven’t been professionally photographed since 1992 and we’ve never had a family portrait done. To catch what may be the last bit of nice weather for a long while, we scheduled the shoot for 3 p.m. on Sunday afternoon at a large park near our home.

Our weekend was crazy. E-Grrrl had a soccer game on Saturday morning, and E got caught in an enormous traffic jam. More than 45 minutes after leaving the house, they still hadn’t made it to the playing field, so E just turned around and came home. We’d set aside Saturday afternoon for a marathon shopping session at the nearest commissary and PX, which is more than an hour away. Our son, A, needed a haircut before the shoot, so that was on the agenda as well. We got home late, and Sunday morning came early. The kids had acolyte training and Sunday school as well as church, followed by a school carnival and then the photo shoot. We were on a tight schedule.

After the carnival, I put on makeup and got dressed in a mad rush, slicked down my son’s hair and argued about the shirt he wanted to wear, threw a bunch of props in a shopping bag and rushed off to the park to meet Di and her husband Gert.

Tightly wound up from a busy weekend and excitement, I slowly inhaled, exhaled, and tried to relax. Sometimes the harder you try to relax, the harder it is to relax.

This was the first time I’d met Di. I’ve been reading her blog for close to a year now. We wandered through the park getting to know one another as E-Grrrl chattered about everything while carrying her favorite porcelain doll in a basket, "A" looked for the irresistible combination of sticks and water, and E and Gert followed along. We enjoyed a number of green and shady places, next to gardens and ponds and in the woods.

The children posed among pine needles and pumpkins, peeking out of a stand of bamboo, sitting on grassy banks, leaning over the rail of a bridge. In between planned shots, Di trailed them with the camera. "A" was a little rough around the edges, full of nervous energy, and prone to cutting up at key moments, E-Grrrl was her cuddly self, ready to cozy up with E and I and smile for the camera. E and I were trying to just be ourselves and loosen up, and not get too distracted by the prospect of "A" falling into water or inadvertently whacking someone with a bamboo switch.

At one point Di had E and I positioned next to one another and suggested we turn and look directly at one another. A simple request. Why couldn’t I do this with a straight face? I kept breaking into nervous laughter, all the while thinking, “My God, we never really make full eye contact during our day-to-day life.” My mind wandered as I considered why we don’t spend any time face to face  and what did this say about us as a couple. Are we forever looking past each other? I was comforted by the memory of a quote by the French novelist Antoine de Saint –Exupery: “Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward in the same direction. ”

A little more than two hours and four hundred photos later, we finished the shoot and headed back to Chez V for a casual supper, the night winding down around 9 p.m., the day living on in digital photos we’ll always treasure.

October 23, 2006

Copyright 2006 Veronica McCabe Deschambault. All rights reserved. www.v-grrrl.com

Hope is the thing with feathers...

I just read the most amazing post.

Inspired.

Stunning.

Dare I say it--transformational.

This isn't the first time Amber at Believing Soul  has completely blown me out of the water with her wisdom, her faith, her grace.  She's an inspiration to anyone who has ever been in a dark place, a desperate circumstance, or been stuck in a life of grief and instability.

So many people need to read what she shared today. Don't just slip over and check it out for yourself--link to it on your sites, e-mail it to your friends, and spread the message around:

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops – at all –

Emily Dickinson

Top Ten Romantic Songs

Last week I posted on my top ten favorite sexy songs. This week, I thought I’d list my favorite romantic songs. You know the ones that make you want to dance in happiness, do a little twirl, get all gushy.

This has been a far harder list to come up with than the sexy songs; maybe I’m not a romantic Grrrl. A lot of love songs just make me want to slap some sense into the singer and tell them to get a grip, for God’s sake. Sigh. I’m not a woman who is easily swept away by sentimental ballads, but hey I’m not impervious. Here are my romantic songs

Moondance by Van Morrison—This song sets the standard for romance for me. The jazzy tempo and the vivid fall imagery always take me away to a terrace under starry skies.

True Companion by Marc Cohn—Heartfelt and earnest, this is an over-the-top proposal, completely romantic. My favorite part is how he sings of growing old together, “When the years have done irreparable harm/I still see us walking slowly arm in arm”

You Bring Me Joy by Anita Baker—Anita Baker has such a unique voice and when she croons “You bring me joy…,” it gets right to the heart of a good relationship.

Thunder Road by Bruce Springsteen—This won’t seem like a romantic song to most people, but it’s a song of second chances. When Springsteen sings, “So you’re scared and you’re thinking that maybe we’re not that young anymore/Show a little faith, there’s magic in the night/ You ain’t a beauty but hey you’re all right/And that’s all right with me” this middle-aged non-beauty is ready to jump in the car and grab that “one last chance to make it real.”

Cinnamon Girl by Neil Young—“A dreamer of pictures, I run through the night, you see us together, chasing the moonlight, my Cinnamon Girl.” Wish that were me.

Something in the Way She Moves by James Taylor---Sweet baby James. Smooth, soft, and casual, love is like a great pair of jeans. “I feel fine anytime she’s around me…”

Has Anyone Ever Written Anything for You by Stevie Nicks—A song I used to put on repeat and get lost in. Evocative. There’s nothing more meaningful to me than the idea of someone giving me a piece of themselves and their art. “Has anyone ever written anything for you?” So different from writing to someone. I’ve written for very few people. “Poet—priest of nothing.”

Beginning by Chicago—Chicago was a great band, and this song takes me back to a good time in my life. Love the contrast of laughter and silence this song addresses, because “mostly I’m silent.”

Groovy Kind of Love by Phil Collins—What a stupid, insipid song—why do I like this? Don’t know. Just do.

Soul Provider by Michael Bolton—I still remember the first time I heard Michael Bolton sing, “How Am I Supposed to Live Without You.” It hit a bit too close to home. I bought the CD, and discovered I loved the title track, “Soul Provider,” best. I liked the idea of someone feeding my soul, and I also loved the wordplay of soul provider vs. sole provider.

October 19, 2006

Copyright 2006 Veronica McCabe Deschambault. All rights reserved. www.v-grrrl.com

Killing me softly

I’ve often written about my children’s love of all living things. My son "A," in particular, loves and nurtures animals with a passion. Not just typical pets but frogs, grasshoppers, crickets, roly-polys, beetles, ladybugs, lizards, and other wild things. When we lived in the States, both A and E-Grrrl attended Camp Creepy Crawly, an educational camp run by a herpetologist and elementary school teacher. It was all about the exciting world of  amphibians and reptiles.

We encourage this respect and appreciation for all living things in part because it develops compassion and an appreciation for the Creator. I also believe it’s a blessing to find wonder in unexpected places in the natural world.

And so my children have always had their own plants to tend and care for as well as the family dog, cat, fish, and hamster. We’ve had an ant farm, seen moths and butterflies emerge from coccoons, have raised frogs from tadpoles nearly every summer, set up terrariums for lizards and bugs, and cared for a variety of small creatures.

In dealing with wild animals like the frogs, our approach was always to have our son research the animal’s care, set up a habitat for it, tend to its needs, study it for a finite period of time (weeks or months), and then release it back to the place where it was collected.

"A" has always been responsible and careful in this regard and never lost interest or taken shortcuts in caring for his menageries. He dutifully caught bugs all summer long for his frogs and even collected mosquito larvae for their terrarium “pond” so they would have an ongoing source of fresh food. He collected aphids for his ladybugs, grubs for his beetles, and let his creatures go after a period of time. The sad and disturbing truth though is that accidents happen, and sometimes in the process of caring for an animal, it gets killed.

This was the case with our first hamster, who was so beloved the children were constantly handling it. One day A had it out to play with and put it down on the floor so it could “exercise,” which it did until E-Grrrl stepped on it . While my children sobbed, I held the quivering hamster in my hand and witnessed its last death gasps. It was awful.

Ditto the two tree frogs we’d cared for for months. Peeper and Popper were fun to watch, but in August it was time to return them to their natural habitat. They lived in a terrarium on our covered terrace. On the day they were to be released, the terrarium had been moved slightly on the terrace. When the sun unexpectedly came out, it shone into their habitat, and they became overheated and died. The cruelty of it all—to be killed by sunshine in a summer where the temperature had rarely reached 65 degrees and the clouds and rain had been relentless. To die on the day that freedom was calling.

This past July, "A" amazed us by catching a lizard at a castle we were visiting. He brought it home, researched it, and set up a sandy and rocky habitat for it. The source of water was a jar lid, shallow and not too wide. We kept the lizard for about two weeks and then one morning came out to discover it had drowned in its tiny oasis of water. All we can guess is that the slick bottom of the lid made it impossible for it to climb out of once it went inside. I don’t know. More tears, more pet funerals.

Last weekend, "A" was camping and found a baby mouse. Its mother and siblings had been killed by a cat and it was left in the nest to die. "A" brought it on home, and we fed it every few hours from a one-milliliter dropper, mixing up formula that we bought at a pet store. We tucked it into a fleece nest with a rock we periodically warmed in the microwave, and much to our surprise, this tiny creature, no bigger than my pinky with its eyes still closeded, thrived, learning to "nurse" from the dropper and becoming more and more active—until this morning.

"A" was trying to feed it and accidentally dropped it onto the unforgiving surface of the ceramic tile floor. He didn’t tell me about the fall until later. I felt sick when I tried to feed it later, and blood and spittle bubbled from its mouth as it struggled for life.

Such guilt for causing suffering and death in this poor animal, as well as some of the others that were in our care.

I know that these creatures are fragile, that their natural life spans in the wild are short and often end abruptly when they become another creature’s meal. I know we did our best to care for each and every one of them, but the fact remains that we killed some of them. And while the kids are the ones who openly mourn and cry, I can assure you my soul shrivels up a bit each time this happens, and I question whether we should have brought the animal home in the first place.

A favorite Native American prayer:

Dear Father hear and bless

Thy beasts and singing birds

And guard with tenderness

Small things that have no words.

October 18, 2006

Copyright 2006 Veronica McCabe Deschambault. All rights reserved. www.v-grrrl.com