Journals -- Second Day
Well! More beach walks, then a trip to tour the Newport Mansions (still posh, but far less overwhelming to me now than they were in my childhood). We took in the most New-England-ish of food places on the way—“Flo’s Crab Shack.” It was indeed a shack, and the food was both fearful and wonderful. We enjoyed the experience wholeheartedly.
Dinner passed, and ice cream passed (at a real ice cream place, outside, with the cow in the back pasture!), and the only recurring themes of the day were Mike’s shutterbug-ness and Marjorie’s ardent interest in playing tricks on her sisters’ beaus. Charity and I, hearing her bloodthirsty plans, are suddenly very thankful that we have no beaus at present for her to practice upon. Motion-detecting siren lights with sprinklers attached is the kindest of her ideas. I told Mom and Dad that if they expected me to court at home, as is proper and traditional, they will have to “control their young”—which made them laugh heartily, because it is a quote from Night at the Museum.
The books we have brought or found here are continuing to be hot commodities. I think we kids spend most of our time either combing the beach, sleeping, or reading. That is, when we aren’t touring or playing games, or eating with the grandparents. I have finished the most popular new trilogy (a very good one, by the way) and relinquished it to my sisters, sister-in-law (Casey), and Nathan. My attention is at present engaged by the book version of North and South, and by a rediscovery of the Anne of Green Gables collection. How long it has been since I read them! Our excellent and worthy grandmother-by-marriage, Grandma Kit, long ago stocked our bunk room in the guest wing of their house with volumes from the Swallows and Amazons series, the entire Chronicles of Narnia set, the Anne books, and others.
Last summer I rediscovered The Silver Chair and The Last Battle. This summer I have rediscovered Anne. I also finished arranging in my mind the details of my ideal nursery, which is a fit brought on by the upcoming birth of my first niece, Nora Caryl (due in November), and I suppose by working in Children’s Ministry.
“My ideal nursery,” I explained to Casey on a long ramble up the beach, “is first of all a real European nursery—that is, all the children of both genders tumble up together in it until they are about twelve. Like the nursery in Peter Pan. It is one big room, and bright, and airy, and has a chair rail going round the walls about here”—I indicated a spot somewhere about my collar bone—“and beneath that it is all parchment-washed so that the children can write on it, with some places whiteboard-washed so that they can draw and it will come off. Then above the chair rail I want to paste all the very best pictures—the nicest illustrations from fairy tales and stories—you know, the ones where the dragons look real and the knights look brave and generous, and the ladies as if they know how to suffer cheerfully, and the fairies are ethereal—I want to copy them out whenever I find them and just cover the walls, so that my children can pick a favorite and fall asleep looking at it every night. I want them to have great imaginings!”
My mother says that I shall make a very creative mother, but she said it because I had just proposed a family car wash day (where everybody brings their cars and washes them all together and has a water fight in the bargain), so I am not sure whether to take that as a compliment or not. I think, however, that I shall at least make a highly fanciful aunt. If adults think of me as a fairy-ish person—and an extraordinary number of them do, to my bewilderment, since I am not tiny and elfish, like Brittainy, nor tall and white and grave-but-playful, like the High Queen—but if they, as grown-ups, think me fairy-ish, what will Nora make of me? Good heavens, she may take me for a fairy altogether, and expect at any moment that I will whisk us both off to the fairy-land of which I am so fondly making up stories!
I wish I could. I can hardly wait until David and Casey have a baby (which will no doubt be some time from now), because they both have water-star eyes and know how to “make things up”—so their first child, which I hope devoutly will be a boy, will perhaps share my enthusiasm for the sea and star-flowers, and will perhaps look up at me out of water-star eyes like his parents’ and laugh with their smiles.
Oh dear, I am becoming hopelessly infatuated with a child not yet born, and more not yet begotten. Profit by my example, young women, and do not rush headlong into the excesses of devoted aunt-hood before it is time to do so. Yet, dear young women, if it were your niece that was going to be born, and named Nora, and open her eyes at last on you, and perhaps smile, or wriggle, or make a baby noise—if a brand-new soul, bound to a body with bits of your blood (or at least of similar DNA, however the genetics of it works) in it, was going to be born, how could you help but be all over rapturous and awed?
Dinner passed, and ice cream passed (at a real ice cream place, outside, with the cow in the back pasture!), and the only recurring themes of the day were Mike’s shutterbug-ness and Marjorie’s ardent interest in playing tricks on her sisters’ beaus. Charity and I, hearing her bloodthirsty plans, are suddenly very thankful that we have no beaus at present for her to practice upon. Motion-detecting siren lights with sprinklers attached is the kindest of her ideas. I told Mom and Dad that if they expected me to court at home, as is proper and traditional, they will have to “control their young”—which made them laugh heartily, because it is a quote from Night at the Museum.
The books we have brought or found here are continuing to be hot commodities. I think we kids spend most of our time either combing the beach, sleeping, or reading. That is, when we aren’t touring or playing games, or eating with the grandparents. I have finished the most popular new trilogy (a very good one, by the way) and relinquished it to my sisters, sister-in-law (Casey), and Nathan. My attention is at present engaged by the book version of North and South, and by a rediscovery of the Anne of Green Gables collection. How long it has been since I read them! Our excellent and worthy grandmother-by-marriage, Grandma Kit, long ago stocked our bunk room in the guest wing of their house with volumes from the Swallows and Amazons series, the entire Chronicles of Narnia set, the Anne books, and others.
Last summer I rediscovered The Silver Chair and The Last Battle. This summer I have rediscovered Anne. I also finished arranging in my mind the details of my ideal nursery, which is a fit brought on by the upcoming birth of my first niece, Nora Caryl (due in November), and I suppose by working in Children’s Ministry.
“My ideal nursery,” I explained to Casey on a long ramble up the beach, “is first of all a real European nursery—that is, all the children of both genders tumble up together in it until they are about twelve. Like the nursery in Peter Pan. It is one big room, and bright, and airy, and has a chair rail going round the walls about here”—I indicated a spot somewhere about my collar bone—“and beneath that it is all parchment-washed so that the children can write on it, with some places whiteboard-washed so that they can draw and it will come off. Then above the chair rail I want to paste all the very best pictures—the nicest illustrations from fairy tales and stories—you know, the ones where the dragons look real and the knights look brave and generous, and the ladies as if they know how to suffer cheerfully, and the fairies are ethereal—I want to copy them out whenever I find them and just cover the walls, so that my children can pick a favorite and fall asleep looking at it every night. I want them to have great imaginings!”
My mother says that I shall make a very creative mother, but she said it because I had just proposed a family car wash day (where everybody brings their cars and washes them all together and has a water fight in the bargain), so I am not sure whether to take that as a compliment or not. I think, however, that I shall at least make a highly fanciful aunt. If adults think of me as a fairy-ish person—and an extraordinary number of them do, to my bewilderment, since I am not tiny and elfish, like Brittainy, nor tall and white and grave-but-playful, like the High Queen—but if they, as grown-ups, think me fairy-ish, what will Nora make of me? Good heavens, she may take me for a fairy altogether, and expect at any moment that I will whisk us both off to the fairy-land of which I am so fondly making up stories!
I wish I could. I can hardly wait until David and Casey have a baby (which will no doubt be some time from now), because they both have water-star eyes and know how to “make things up”—so their first child, which I hope devoutly will be a boy, will perhaps share my enthusiasm for the sea and star-flowers, and will perhaps look up at me out of water-star eyes like his parents’ and laugh with their smiles.
Oh dear, I am becoming hopelessly infatuated with a child not yet born, and more not yet begotten. Profit by my example, young women, and do not rush headlong into the excesses of devoted aunt-hood before it is time to do so. Yet, dear young women, if it were your niece that was going to be born, and named Nora, and open her eyes at last on you, and perhaps smile, or wriggle, or make a baby noise—if a brand-new soul, bound to a body with bits of your blood (or at least of similar DNA, however the genetics of it works) in it, was going to be born, how could you help but be all over rapturous and awed?
posted by Praelucor at 10:10 AM
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