Amanda Knox was freed from prison last week. The media are all abuzz. Is she guilty? Is she innocent? We will probably never know the truth about her roommate’s murder. It’s too bad Poirot’s not around to sort it all out. As he once said,
There are more important things than finding the murderer. And justice is a fine word, but it is sometimes difficult to say exactly what one means by it. In my opinion, the important thing is to clear the innocent.
from Death in the Air
Dear Livia,
I once posted a comment on Facebook about one of my late-night ruminations. You had woken me up for a feeding and I needed a bib for you. The first one I grabbed was Marshall’s old Patriots bib, and my knee-jerk reaction was to put it aside because it was a “boy’s bib.” That was a ridiculous thought, of course. Why can’t a girl like football? So I joked that I was going to have to turn you into the world’s biggest Patriots fan to prove that I hadn’t succumbed to “princess brainwashing.”
I don’t know if I’m up to the task. I’m not exactly a sports afficionada myself. However, I promise to teach you what I can. I will teach you, for example, to tell the difference between a hockey puck and a Ring Ding. That’s very important. I will also teach you that it’s impossible to guess the outcome of a football game based on which mascot could kick the other mascot’s butt. Armed with this knowledge, you will never pick teams for the office betting pool so foolishly. And though I don’t fully understand the rules of baseball, I will teach you not to ask questions in the middle of the game, because I’m told that’s annoying.
Love,
Mom
Dear Marshall,
You have become very sensitive to mosquito bites. You had a few recently that you scratched to an oozing state. It pained me to see them. It was my punishment for allowing you to be bitten, though I don’t see how we could prevent every bite, with or without insect repellent, since the mosquitoes get in the house sometimes and bite you at night. There was sort of a bright side to the situation, though. You called your scratched bites “booboo bites,” which was utterly adorable. I’m glad that mosquito season is almost over, but I will miss that phrase.
Love,
Mom
Dear Livia,
When it’s time to put you to bed, we bring you upstairs, change your diaper, put you in your sleep sack, turn down the lights, and feed you your last bottle of the day. The other night, you were just about done with your bedtime bottle when you reached over and caressed my arm as if to say, “Thanks, Mom.” Then you smacked it, as if to say, “But next time bring more.” Then you turned your head and you were asleep.
I watched you for a while afterward. You look different when you’re asleep. Awake, you’re so eager, so full of smiles, so gung-ho to explore that I don’t really think of you as an infant. When you’re asleep, with your delicate features in repose and your little body unmoving, suddenly you seem vulnerable, a precious baby who needs her parents’ protection. But whether you look like you need my protection or not, you’ll have it for as long as you need it, and then some.
Love,
Mom
I went for a walk in our woods yesterday. The clouds swept across the hill just before I left, darkening the sky and threatening rain. The woods were dim and damp. Mushrooms abounded. A white fungus or mold blotched the trail in spots. Branches and twigs littered the path, suggesting that no one had been walking these woods since before Irene.
Reaching the Scenic Overlook I was amazed, as I always am, by the stark beauty of the rocks and mosses, lichens and stunted oaks. Who knew there were so many distinct shades of gray, green, and brown? And the plants and lichens grow in what always strike me as tiny gardens. It’s almost impossible to capture that idea in a photograph, but I will try to show you.
Here is one of the tiny gardens shown from ground level. The stone-hugging lichen is the lowest level of growth. Next is a vibrant green turfy moss. Behind it grows a taller, bushy moss. Sometimes the bushy moss mixes with a scraggly lichen, like so.
And behind the bushy moss, grows the “tree” of this tiny garden, a red-tinged grass.
I have always thought that the story of the Garden of Eden contains an important kernel of truth about the human race. We are at heart gardeners. We cannot help but want to shape our environment. Since there are things growing in our environment, we want to control them, to best arrange them to suit our needs and desires of the moment.
As I looked upon this scene, my fingers twitched to pull out the plants that I didn’t like, to remove the dead twigs and other bits of detritus, to bring human order to this random little patch of natural growth. It was partly for the sake of the pictures I was trying to take, but I think too that I saw beauty in its rawest form, and I wanted to bring that beauty out, to make the scene before my eyes match the image in my head.
It amuses me to think about tending this tiny garden, adding little ornaments of polished stone and glass, building miniature benches and creating bordered paths, and maybe even engineering an ornamental pond or two. Don’t put it past me. If I can ever manage regular walks, I might just try it.
Dear Marshall,
When you want something (a cookie, a TV show, etc.), you try to convince us by saying, “One!” As if we couldn’t possibly refuse such a small, reasonable request! When we give you what you want, you smile and accept your treat. It’s never enough, though. When you’re done with it, you come back and say, “One!” And if we ignore your request, you repeat it over and over again, each time a little louder and poutier—“One! ONE! ONNNNNNNNNE!”
At night when it’s time for bed, I tell you to grab one book to read. You start stacking a bunch of books. So I say, “One!” You pick up the stack, which takes a while because a couple of them try to slide out. “That’s six, Marshall. I said, ‘One.’ We’re only going to read one!” You ignore me and take your stack over to the bed. “ONE! ONE! ONE!” I say. You sit down and pick out the first book for me to read to you. “ONE!” I say one last time, then sit down and read six.
Love,
Mom
Poirot once said,
Ah, but life is like that! It does not permit you to arrange and order it as you will. It will not permit you to escape emotion, to live by the intellect and by reason! You cannot say, ‘I will feel so much and no more.’ Life, . . . whatever else it is, is not reasonable!
from Sad Cypress
Dear Marshall,
I miss your old nighttime routine. It was complicated, but it was also kind of fun. Here’s how it went.
First, bedtime must be announced. We find that it goes better if you know that bedtime is coming soon. It’s not good to just spring it on you.
Next, the teeth must be brushed and the hippopotamus washed. The hippo is a little plastic bath toy that came with a set of bath products. It’s your favorite toy right now. You bring it to bed with you, but before he goes to bed, he must be washed in the sink.
Then we have to change your diaper and put you in your jam-jammies. You can’t decide between your monkey jammies and your car jammies. If I try to go all-monkey, you scream, “Car!” And if I try to go all-car, you scream, “Gockey!” So I’ve been putting you in your gockey top and your car bottoms.
Then come the books. I always give you a number of books that I’m willing to read for you before bed. You always ignore it. You put all of your books in a stack, hemming and hawing over the order, behaving as if you fully expect me to read them all.
After reading one or two books more than planned, I announce that it’s time to get into bed, and I turn out the light. I learned this from your dad. There is no clearer sign of intent than turning off the light. Sometimes you still throw a fit, but most of the time you crawl into bed.
Then it’s time to say, “Night-night!” I have to kiss not only you, but also the hippo, and sometimes also the stuffed bear. And usually once isn’t enough. I have to kiss everyone repeatedly. Sometimes I even make the bear and the hippo kiss. That makes you giggle. How I love to get those giggles out of you!
That’s how it used to go. Lately, you haven’t insisted on washing the hippo, and you wear whichever jammies I put on you. The trick is to get you to stop moving long enough to change your diaper and put your jammies on! You run around and around. Sometimes you hand me the bells and insist I sing “Jingle Bells” so you can do your “dance.” You use that and the books as your primary stalling tactics, but you have also learned that time-honored tactic practiced by millions of children before you: the glass of water. If your father and I are both there to put you to sleep, we joke about how you’re such a staller. Well, bedtime wouldn’t be quite so much fun if you didn’t drag it out, one way or another.
Love,
Mom
Technically this post shouldn’t fall under the category of “My Favorite Things,” because the thing in question belongs to Marshall. I hope he won’t mind if I treat it as my own for a while.
Here it is.
Yes, it’s a soccer ball. And it says, “Kick me!” Isn’t that great?
Dear Marshall,
You love your sandbox, which you call a “sandbopf.” After playing in it, you usually get a bath, and you love that, too. And there is nothing cuter in this world than you running around in your monkey towel after a bath.
Love,
Mom
© 2007-2026 Author of Blue-Footed Musings All Rights Reserved
