Linda W’s comment about her possums with the bubble-wrap butt bows had me spontaneously bursting out giggling the whole rest of the day. Oh my goodness. I can just see it.

A note first about this picture: I never let my kids hit each other growing up, and no she didn’t; twelve years ago, my kids were play-acting whack-a-mole together on that redwood log. That thing was big enough for a tall 11-year-old boy to stand up in, and as soon as I lifted the camera, his sister gave us a variation on the classic give-your-brother-bunny-ears shot. Ergo the caption.

Now, then.  In those same woods as that picture. On the subject of raccoons…

There’s a state park in the Santa Cruz mountains not far from here, Big Basin, with one of the last local old-growth redwood forests in the area. If you make the mistake of taking the shorter route there, you get there via a long, hilly, insanely twisty lane-and-a-half-wide road, not for the faint of heart nor stomach. (I thought loudly at my husband but did not say, Barf bags in the car are from YOUR side of the family. Dear.)

We noted the “Do not feed the wildlife” signs wryly as we checked in and picked a campsite; good luck with that one. We were unloading the minivan and starting to set things up. A couple of us were putting the food over on the picnic table while others fussed with the tent when a raccoon, bold as you could ask for, came out of the woods and jumped into the back of the van and got shooed away by an indignant child. Another ‘coon snatched the bag of potato chips that had just been put down at the other end of the table from me, as I spluttered, “But I was standing right here!” while it took off with it. I was suddenly glad I’d bought the type I had.

Jalapeno flavored.

When I was growing up in a house in Maryland set back in the woods that ran alongside a ten-mile-long watershed preserve, one of the signs of spring was having a pregnant raccoon fairly often at the back door at dinnertime, nosing around the dining room window while we ate a few feet away, ready to saunter inside and swap recipes with Mom.

I remember the ugly rat-nosed possums that fell into the trashcan, and, unlike the raccoons, who had so kindly lifted the lids off for them, couldn’t always hoist themselves back out. Dad would tip the can over, give its metal bottom a good thwack with a broom (we had a genuine Fuller Brush Man model, with a metal handle), and go back inside. You couldn’t scare the thing out, he’d learned, it just faints on you and there it is; you’re certainly not about to stick your hand in and pull it out, either. But you want to teach the thing that there’s no such thing as a free lunch. So, a booming thwack to reverberate in its ears a moment, a retreat, a wait for it to come to, and a hope that you made it a sufficiently unpleasant experience that it leaves.

Maybe after it’s eaten its dinner in there. All in good time, my dear man, all in good time.

We occasionally, somewhat despite our parents’ common sense, opened that back door and tried to feed the mom-coon out of our hands. It was so cute; what we really wanted to do was pet it. But there was a particular one that liked the smells that were behind us better than the stuff we were offering, and tried to slip quickly past the two of us kids sitting on the stoop and zip right on in and help itself. You know how moms are. They’re used to being in charge. We jumped quickly together to block it, and it thought better of it, but only quite reluctantly. It turned back around towards us, ready to make another attempt. That got us an, “Okay, kids–time to close that door!” And that was the last time I remember us trying to do that.

While my computer is being a cat arching its back and hissing at my camera, one of my readers sent me a picture of the friendly animal she’s got in her back yard that comes peering in the window hoping for a meal. Tunie has named him Rupert. Just don’t open the door, ‘k?

I was in Trader Joe’s yesterday, and picked up a bag of a type of apple I’d never heard of before, a Jazz apple. Huh. Well, always curious to try a new type, sure.

I ate one in the evening and immediately wanted a lifetime supply on hand. This was *good*! Where do I get me a tree of these to put in the backyard!? Longtime readers will remember my mourning the lack of Spencers in California, but oh my goodness these were what an apple is supposed to be like! Googling the name, I came up with this link.

One tangent danced me straight to another. To remembering Tim, one of the best teachers my kids ever had in school, who taught them to love to play music and to love jazz and to love one another. He taught jazz at both the middle and high schools. His older band participated in a national high school competition at the Monterey Jazz Festival, and did so well that his kids were invited to come back for the main Festival and play as professionals in the fall! Our kids aspired to be in that second band.

So we drove the family to Monterey to hear the juniors and seniors play at that competition. One of the pieces they placed with was written by one of the kids in that group. Another was Bedtime for Bigfoot. I LOVE that piece. And I loved watching those kids having the time of their lives. Tim, bless him, started them on the downbeat, and then, with a huge smile on his face and a nod to his kids, walked off the stage: this was their shining moment, they knew how to do it, and he wanted the glory to all go to them, not him. Bigfoot never had such a good time as they did that day. I can still picture them. Rock on!

They performed it again later in the year at the high school, and an hour after that concert was over, I asked my then-11-year-old son to sing me the first note of that piece. He nailed it dead on. And that’s when I absolutely knew that that child had perfect pitch too, a musician like his mom. More than, definitely–he totally outshines me now, which is a lot of fun. You know the “hum a few bars and I’ll play it?” Outrageously well? That’s him.

Tim left to pursue a doctorate and left a deep gap behind him. We still hear from him from time to time, to our great delight when he checks in. He got married last summer, and I knitted up something new: one of my circular shawls in a laceweight rather than fingering weight, designed just for them, in white, fine enough to go through a wedding ring except for being snug at those reinforced neck stitches. Better make it a man’s size wedding ring.

Bedtime for Bigfoot. As I eat my Jazz apple.

And suddenly–what, three years after I knitted and named the first one?–it hits me. Why I named my feather-and-fan-variant shawl in my book what I did. Yeah, because it’s an expansion of the Rabbit Tracks pattern, but…

Bigfoot.

And just before Tim moved away, I bought the CD of those kids playing. I play my CDs while I’m sitting knitting. Bedtime for Bigfoot. I just never, ever put it together before.

I want me more of those apples.

Totally stealing the concept from Stephanie and Lene. From William Carlos Williams, a pediatrician whose poetry was my favorite in college, written, if I remember correctly, about a six-year-old oncology patient of his:

The Red Wheelbarrow

Trying not to violate copyright, I offer the link. I used to think of this poem when my children, especially when they were little, would fixate on some one particular thing and how important it became to them for a passing time. My youngest, at about 18 months, was given a little red plastic hammer by a friend of mine that for ten days afterwards was in his hands round the clock, asleep or awake. If you tried to remove it from his sleeping clutch, he would wake up. “Mine!” and he would groggily reach for it back and roll over with it tucked safely half under him. With three older siblings, he learned that word early on.

When he was awake, he was constantly, constantly tap-tapping it on every surface he toddled past, listening to the sound that that one would make. Now that one. The wall. The fridge. Mom’s leg. Assessing the interaction between it and everything he could reach. Same hammer, but such different effects. It completely absorbed his world day after day, and I liked to think he was training his ear for future musicianship.

I think he did.

“so much depends

upon

the red wheel

barrow… “

Lara, it turned out, is one of those people that you meet and instantly adore.

My nephew Elliott called last year at the start of spring break, saying he was thinking of jumping in the car, driving the 800 miles from BYU, and playing tourist with a friend of his: San Francisco, the redwoods… Would we have space for them if they came?

Would we! Watch me jumping up and down! Yes!! It was while I was getting the house ready that one of my kids, who also goes to BYU, mentioned casually, You do know that his friend is likely going to be Lara? That he’s got a girlfriend?

Oh. Okay. He didn’t mention that little fact. Two rooms… (Hey. We’re all good little Mormons.)

And so we had a far too short but absolutely delightful visit. I asked Elliott at one point how they’d met, and he said they were old college friends; he mentioned some to-do where he was supposed to bring a date, and he didn’t have a date, and he just thought, eh, I’ll invite Lara, why not. He had never thought of her as a potential date before–but when he agreed to the thought, “I was just..so…HAPPY.” He kind of shook his head a little at the memory of it, with this big and slightly bewildered smile on his face.

Have you ever had the experience where you see a couple and you instantly know they were meant for each other? But I was careful not to say anything too presumptuous sounding, because it wasn’t my decision to make.

Months later, I got another call I loved: they were engaged, and he wanted me to know that their visit here was what got them each thinking of their old friend as, actually, the person they couldn’t imagine not spending the rest of their lives with.

Lara is from Fairbanks. The date was set for last week. Um… They looked at it, and realized that for almost everyone that would want to be in attendance, it would be a destination wedding because of the remoteness of where she grew up, and–who in their right mind heads to Alaska in January?

And so they went for the opposite idea. They kept it very small (although, with a large reception to follow in Salt Lake City). For the actual wedding at the Mormon Temple, I know on his side, there were his parents, his three living grandparents, and his brother playing photographer.

In Hawaii.

My sister Carolyn, his mother, forwarded me some of her older son’s pictures and gave me permission to put them here. The first is one that Joel snapped not knowing why he was getting the expressions on their faces he was, but he caught it just immediately before the surprise big wave on the calm day swamped him and then them. The second is after the wave.

And a good time was had by all. Happy forever, Elliott and Lara, I love you dearly. And I am SO glad you came!

Rosemary at designsbyromi.com was quoting Abraham Lincoln, and asked if anyone else had any favorites quotes from him.

I do, but it wouldn’t make sense unless you also quoted Daniel H. Wells–who happens to be my grandmother’s grandfather. It’s one of those family stories that will endure forever.

They passed each other on the road, back in the early days of Illinois, two very tall men, Wells with flaming red hair. Lincoln challenged Wells with, “Stranger! Prepare to die. I promised myself if I ever met a man uglier than me, I would shoot him on sight!”

To which Wells responded, “Stranger! Go ahead and shoot. If I’m uglier than you, I don’t want to live!”

And both men headed off chuckling.

I had a post in mind to write today, but then I read Stephanie’s. Go read yarnharlot.ca if you haven’t yet. Beignets and bottle trees–that is the best-written piece on New Orleans I have ever read. Absolutely essential. And boy did it bring back memories: I will try to add some old pictures in when the technical help in the household is around. I loved the place.

I was 16, my little sister was 15. We had had a fabulous dinner at the Commodore Inn, where the cute waiter actually flirted with me, which, when you’re 16, is totally and dizzily mindblowing. We were staying in the French Quarter.

After dinner, Dad told us, “Come on, girls, I want to show you where jazz was born.” We started walking along Bourbon Street. There was a street musician sitting at a corner, playing a jazzy tune, smiling and nodding to us as we went by, including us in in his fine summer evening.

Being a good little Mormon girl, I knew nothing of the culture of the bar scene, so when I saw one door that was right up against the pedestrian-only street with a sign saying, “No Cover,” I opened my mouth to ask Dad what that meant. Just then the door was thrown open and a girl stumbled out, fast. I looked at her and what popped out of my mouth instead was, “Dad. The sign’s right.”

My father, boulevers’e with embarrassment at exposing his teenage daughters to more than he’d expected, wheeled around on the spot and pronounced emphatically, “I think you’ve seen enough of where jazz was born!”

A few thoughts on yesterday’s post: during WWII, my father was young enough to enlist and be stationed at the Presidio in San Francisco, but the war ended before he could be sent overseas.

He had two older brothers, one a captain serving in the Pacific. The other’s letters home were heavily censored and pieces snipped out, but one letter that got through declared to his mother simply that, six weeks after he got overseas, the war would be over. She dismissed it as a young soldier’s boasting.

My Grandmother Jeppson, meantime, anguished that the war had taken the last of her three sons, headed the local Red Cross effort to knit for the troops; as she put it in a letter I have read, she felt that the harder she knitted, the faster and more likely her sons would somehow arrive safely home (and they did). Hours and hours and hours a day, and how, I do not know; nor do I know at what age her rheumatoid arthritis began and whether it was an issue to her at the time.

But her middle son proved correct in his declaration. He wanted to put a stop to all the killing. He wanted to put a stop to the evil that threatened the world, and felt it had to be done before the Germans’ own efforts became what the Americans had at hand. Oppenheimer had had his group sent to Yale, Harvard, and MIT to learn as much as they could of what they needed to know.

Morris R. Jeppson did what he felt had to be done on the world’s most famously-named airplane. Hoping hard there would not be a second plane, nor any other such flight ever.

Reading Stephanie Pearl-McPhee’s post at yarnharlot.ca today brought to mind an old memory, I guess my earliest road-trip memory. I was five or six years old, and, given our large family, I was sitting in what was the coveted position of the front seat of the station wagon between my parents. We were in Virginia, going past a Civil War battlefield, and I didn’t understand all those things in the grass. As Dad pulled off the main road and the car faced up a hill, with an ancient wooden fence to either side of the road as we faced that battlefield, my father, a vet, gently, sadly explained to me what a war was. I will never forget the moment the concept sank in.