The only thing more endearing than Emlet's irrepressible giggle every time I mooed at her was watching her figuring out how to tell the joke.
"Knock, knock."
"Who's there?"
"Interrupting Cow."
"Interrupt--"
"MOO!"
Except she's a very polite child, and four, so it took her a while to figure out how to MOO! before the respondent completes the response "Interrrupting Cow Who?"
There was plenty of other endearing stuff. She's as devoted to Nanabush as I was to Booboo as a child (I only wish I had given him to her), she has delightfully Continental consonants, enunciating t's as few Americans do (she says "twenty" and "mitten" instead of "twenny" or "mih-en" and even hypercorrects "cuddle" and "middle"), and for the first time she addressed me by name: "Tante Liesl."
ZBD and I were talking about the riddles Gollum and Bilbo ask each other. The only one I remember, besides nothing or string in the pocketses, is "30 white horses on a red hill, first they champ, then they stamp, then they stand still." Gollum jeers "Chestnuts!" at Bilbo because that's such an old obvious one, and that's what ZBD thought the answer was! I am so in love with her. She can tell you umpteen details from The Silmarillion and where the Rangers are from (she, not I, remembers their proper name) and contemplate the origins of Tom Bombadil but she has enough child's literalism to take a figure of speech straight. Also, her least favorite chronicles of Narnia are also The Silver Chair and The Last Battle, demonstrating her good taste.
Siblet doesn't speak much yet, just lots of purposeful babble in no particular language but her own. She has at least one extremely French gesture that never failed to crack me up: arms up and bent bringing spread hands to shoulders, and a shrug, indicating "I don't know" or "no more" or "such is the state of the world," depending on facial expression. Unfortunately I never quite captured that on film, only on brain cell. After fruitless searching of Kazoo & Co. and the zoo and the Museum of Nature and Science, I had no idea where to find a zebra until Maven told me that the herb and tea shop Apothecarie Tinctura had one (I mentioned my quest when Scarf received a lovely monkey for the Monkey at her baby shower).
Emlet saw the zebra change hands and asked if I had brought anything for her. I reminded her of the Playmobil giraffe and the Jan Brett beaver that had gone swimming in the hot tub, and she nodded, and then I gave her the cardinal. It's the Audubon series that sounds the bird's call when you press it, and though Emlet is not quite coordinated enough to press hard enough in just the right spot, she could tell what she was meant to do: "Press here," she read aloud.
It was an Everyone weekend but I still had good one-on-one Nisou time. She picked me up at Framingham and we talked from 11:15 when she fetched me to 2:00. On Friday SEM and his girlfriend arrived, and TJZD and her two kids RED and ALD; the younger just turned one but I hadn't met her, except in utero, yet. I knew I was going to like Girlfriend, and I did--we toured the house and garden and brook, talking--and RED and Emlet are two months apart and play well together. It was chilly enough that, once in, I wanted to stay in the hot tub, but the kids, afraid of being too hot, stood on a bench up to their knees for minutes on end. Brr.
SEM and Girlfriend were home for the weekend for his stepbrother's wedding, and Nisou and TJZD and I signed a card I harebrainedly managed to remember to get for him and his bride.
We left a generous Maman with the four under-fives and nipped out for lunch, stopping at Tranquility because we saw a car with New York plates and there plucked up N. She didn't remember me, but I am Elephantine not only in belly but in memory too and I remembered her. At lunch, a schoolmate of the local set whom I had not met showed up, and her father popped in to say hi. He taught music theory and I told him his class was my husband's favorite from UConn, and he'd probably remember him, he sat on the left? This is funny only if you know that that course was taught in von der Mehden, a 400-person auditorium I know best from its Friday night art flicks.
In the evening, many more locals arrived. I am a pathe enough freak really to want to go to their 20th high school reunion, but a self-aware enough freak to know that wouldn't be right. Also, coincidentally, the day after I got home I had e-mail from one of my own classmates, emerging from the woodwork and wondering what was up with our reunion, and from one of the organizers, promising she'd get on the ball right quick. There were photograph albums and yearbooks at Charenton that night, and when I actually counted up my acquainti, I realized anew that while I do have more friends from that school than from mine, I know only about two dozen (plus several outliers from other classes) altogether, whereas I could reel off many more of my own classmates' names and perhaps recognize them. I am not such a yearbook-memorizing freak as that seems: I recently compiled a contact list of not only the 120 people I graduated with but also the other 60 or so who appeared in a yearbook between sixth and eleventh grades. But I'm still a nostalgic freak.
At Charenton Friday night, then, were all my heavy people--a Kate Bush phrase, for me meaning this set of friends--except PLT and his family, and then some. Seven kids--six under five--and 16 adults including me: a good time. Nisou's newest niece baptized my arm and I showed my childfree colors by immediately thrusting her at her father with a "here's your spitting child" and stalking off to rinse my arm. The elder niece, named for Maman, is the size of a five-year-old (she's a bit more than 2) and I heartily approved her wardrobe--lots of overalls, and when the snaps on the inner perimeter of the legs are unsnapped, they look like dresses.
Saturday some of us went for a short stroll along the Nipmuck Trail in the rain. The pond just upstream of the grist mill looked temptingly clear and wet, even in the rain, even in the cold (it was about 40), and I flung off my clothes and jumped in. For less than a minute: my companions were waiting. Or maybe a bit more than a minute, because you should always swim for longer than it takes to undress and redress. The only bad bit was putting on socks over wet feet.
In the afternoon we continued the perusal of photograph albums. Nisou has pictures of NCS and me that I had never seen. I haven't seen him since 1994? and so in the picture he looks like my memory of him, but I look like such a child! I think I have only one picture of the two of us, and because it is familiar to me, the same 20-year-old face doesn't look as infantile as in Nisou's unfamiliar one.
Sunday morning I visited the Beasts, meeting the new batch of cats and admiring the renovated house and garden. In the afternoon the children and I dyed Easter eggs. Red vinegar works as well to fix the color, or whatever vinegar does to dye, as white. Next time, balsamic! Also we searched for chicken eggs, and the Easter egg hunt can only be easier than that, since humans will have hidden red and aqua (and one lovely celadon one that says "Liesl") eggs rather than hens hiding pale green and brown ones. In the evening Nisou crashed early and I stayed up late with Maman and Papa talking, and then she woke up and we stayed up later talking.
Monday morning we had a run involving some hills, which are not so much in my flatlander's repertoire. Maman asked if I had room in my luggage for sirop d'érable ou pain, or both, and what a question! I would leave something behind rather than pass up Charenton Pretty Virgin syrup* or her bread. But my luggage was now minus a zebra, a cardinal, three jars of Nütella (which went over well), Miss Hickory, and two Playmobil figurines, plus a wee plastic hedgehog and an equally wee beaver, so space there was plenty. Lunch was leftover paëlla and quantities of Maman's bread with framboise, and it ended late, with noticings of the time and last-second photographs and hugs.
*Is that as funny a grade as I think? I love the punly options of "relatively virgin" and "attractive virgin."
Papa drove me to Framingham and I just caught the 3:30. Thank goodness, because the 4:00 would have encountered more traffic and possibly delivered me to Logan a hairsbreadth too late. Me, I prefer an entire hare between me and departure.
Maven was going to lend me Morgan for the night so I wouldn't have to sleep in an empty house but I just crashed. The sleeping went fine: I don't actually sleep with Blake and he doesn't snore, so I didn't notice his absence. But the solitary breakfast with a whole bowl of cereal to myself felt wrong; if a cockatiel doesn't share my cereal I would appreciate at least to drink my orange juice cuddling with a four-year-old having her milk.