We watched a movie last night that had our third grade son nearly crying with laughter. Our first grade daughter giggled throughout, and it even made my husband and me laugh out loud a few times. It was The Sandlot, a film about nine fifth grade boys in the early 1960s, and their summer playing baseball in an empty sandlot in their neighborhood.
Though it terrified me of what we have to look forward to in the next few years, the hilarity of the film came from the inherent tension between the innocence of childhood and impending male puberty. At least that was what was funny to me – these little boys’ easy way with insulting each other while also being best friends, their accurate use of words like shit and hell and perv while also using words like blockhead, their unrealistic striving after Wendy, the beautiful lifeguard at the community pool.
Our son’s favorite part of the movie, the part that had him giggling at first, and then belly laughing by the time the scene had reached its crescendo, was when the sandlot kids and another local team – a team with actual uniforms – got into a battle of insults, throwing cheap shots like “moron” and “idiot” at each other, then escalating to stronger, viler boy smacks, like “scab eater” and “butt sniffer.” But the coup de grace, the shot that drew gasps and then silence from boys on both sides of the insult war, was when Ham, a sandlot boy, snarled “You play ball like a girl.”
The sandlot team proceeded to annihilate the other boys in a game of ball, then celebrated their win with a trip to the fair, where they chewed real chaw, just like the major leaguers. They shoved huge plugs into their mouths then jumped on a Tilt-a-Whirl type ride. I laughed and said, “This is not going to end well.” And it didn’t. That was my favorite scene in the movie (and it drew another round of belly laughter from our son.)
When the movie ended, all of us smiling at its charm and happy conclusion, I walked our daughter up to bed. She’s seven. She looked thoughtful, and a little confused, and she said, “When Ham said that thing about ‘you play ball like a girl?’”
“Yeah?”
“That insulted me.”
Wow. I love our daughter, but she’s not usually the most perceptive kid I know. She often accepts what other people say and assumes her own thoughts or feelings are wrong, while her brother, or kids on the playground, or character in a movie are right. I was proud that that scene had made her bristle.
“I know sweetie. That was pretty crappy huh? That crack insults girls more than it insults boys.”
After I tucked her in, I went in to say goodnight to our son. He too looked thoughtful.
“Mom?”
“Yeah?”
“You know that funny part in the movie where they were insulting each other?”
“Yeah.” I couldn’t wait to hear what he was going to say. There was so much material there to wonder about.
“Why would boys use ‘playing like a girl’ as an insult when girls wouldn’t use ‘playing like a boy’ as an insult?”
Wow, he and his sister hadn’t even talked after the movie. I was impressed.
“Well, you’re right. Most girls wouldn’t say, ‘You play like a boy’ to insult another girl. It used to be that boys thought girls were wimpy, or weak, or couldn’t play sports as well as boys.” And sometimes still is. There was a kid on his previous soccer team like that.
“They’re wrong, of course,” I added.
“Yeah, most of the girls in my class are really good at soccer.”
He thought a little more, mentally running through all the girls he knows. With slurs like “crap-face” and “fart-smeller,” it was obvious why they were insults. Nobody would want to be those things.
After three years in Minnesota, I keep wondering when winter will arrive in Blacksburg. It’s January now. Shouldn’t I be warming my mug so its cold, greedy clay won’t suck all the heat from my coffee? Or pulling our down comforter up to my ears rather than kicking it off in the middle of the night? Shouldn’t I be wearing long johns, and furry boots, snow gloves and a knee length down coat?
Shouldn’t I be worried that my eyes will freeze open?
It is a strange sensation, this waiting. I keep checking the forecast, wondering when it’s going to get cold. I will see highs in the 50s, 40s, and even 30s and think, “It’s not here yet.” The bone chilling cold of highs in the single digits, and lows below zero, has not yet come.
It wasn’t until we hiked the Cascades again today, and I heard the constant, deafening roar of rushing water – the river throwing itself against rocks, a billion wet droplets slapping cold stone, torrents surging downstream, moving, moving, always moving – that I thought, hesitantly at first, then with growing glee, maybe this is winter here.
For the sounds we heard in Minnesota, outdoors, in January, were not liquid. January sounds were stiff, crisp. Quiet.
In Minnesota, at first, we thrilled at the foreignness of the deep freeze. It was adventurous! New! I could go grocery shopping and not rush home for fear of the food spoiling!
We reveled in the richness of winter life in the Twin Cities. Snow sculptures, intricate as marble carvings – of viking ships, lions, Tom Sawyer’s fence – endured, larger than life, for days at the state fair grounds, for temperatures didn’t climb high enough to melt them. Ice sculptures of diamond dragons, and crystal palaces, glittered in Rice Park, unafraid of a melting sun. Art shanties, modeled after ice fishing huts, sat merrily, confident in their safety, atop a frozen lake that we walked on. That cars were parked on. That cracked under our feet – a deep, ominous pop – as a pickup truck drove by us on the 15-inch thick ice. The only evidence of the chilling liquid beneath was the darkness we saw as we looked down a fisherman’s hole in the ice.
And the glacial fear in my heart.
Our second winter in St. Paul, I bought a pair of snow shoes. I’d bundle up, as plump with clothing as Randy in A Christmas Story, and crunch into the silent wilderness of Ft. Snelling State Park, located on an island surrounded by the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers. When the snow was fresh and powdery, my snow shoes wouldn’t even crunch. They’d make more of a “poof” sound with each step. On those days, I’d poof, poof, poof over to the Mississippi River, and I would gaze in wonder at its stillness. For the surface of the mighty Mississippi, in January, was solid. Frozen. There were deer tracks in the snow that had fallen on it.
In Minnesota, I remember the relief, the dissolving, the thawing of my protective shell that came with the first time I would hear water drip outside. It was a beautiful sound, the sound of fat drops of water plopping to the ground. It was a sound full of life, and hope, and warmth after so much brittle cold.
So when we hiked today, and I heard the gushing of water in Little Stony Creek, and I watched its crystal-clear liquid cascade between mossy stones, I realized, this is January. This is our winter now. I relished every splash, every bubble, every sign of fluid. I snapped dozens of photographs of this streaming January water, with renegade droplets freezing like jewels on overhanging leaves, forming icicles that glistened with the full glory of winter’s crystalline beauty.
As we approached the waterfall, and the icicles grew thicker, and the air grew colder, and I had to put my camera away because my fingers were growing numb, I knew that winter will go deeper here. I know temperatures can plummet. I’ve seen pictures of the Cascades frozen over.
But there will also be Januaries like this one, where there are liquid and ice, and you don’t have to form a protective shell to make it through.
We went a lot of years without electronic road-trip entertainment for the kids. No game systems, no iPods, no DVD players. The closest we got to new technology was listening to books on CD instead of books on tape. And even then we listened to quaint titles like Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys.
This low tech choice was mostly due to circumstance. We were a family of four living on one graduate student income, so we prioritized things like food and shelter and winter coats in Minnesota over entertainment gadgetry.
Had we had the money for DVD players, though, I’m still not sure we would have bought them. I secretly wanted our kids to entertain themselves the old fashioned way, even though I cringed every time they asked me to play I spy or find-the-letters-of-the-alphabet-on-road-signs games. I have romantic notions of watching the landscape change, listening to music, having conversations, taking quiet time to think deep thoughts about things like men and their socks.
But the reality of road trips with kids is that the changing landscape out the windows does not interest them, you can’t enjoy your music because the kids are constantly talking over it, conversation is replaced by boring road trip games, and deep thoughts are interrupted by complaints of “I’m hungry,” “I’m bored,” and “my butt hurts in this seat.”
That all changed today, though, as our son pulled out his brand new 3DS, hand-held Nintendo game system, complete with his very own earbuds. Since he had this fancy new birthday toy, I loaded a couple of new games on my Nook and dusted off our ancient iPod, “purchased” with credit card rewards, and loaded it with all the High School Musical soundtracks for our daughter. We found her some earbuds and she is bopping silently in the backseat, knotting a friendship bracelet as I write.
And let me tell you, our road trip was glorious. I don’t regret or feel bad about their electronics, not even for a second. My husband and I got, not minutes of quiet in the back seat, but hours. Hours of satisfaction and contentment for the kids. Huge stretches of concentration for my husband, who navigated the treachery of sleet and fog and driving rain on steep, slick mountain passes. Wide expanses of time for me to watch rivulets of rain stream across my window, trees creep out of the fog, farms and hay bales and rolling hills drenched with December rain. I listened to the spatter of rain on the windshield, the hum of tires on the highway. I had conversations with my husband.
On this trip, our kids received the precious gifts of 3DSes, and iPods, and Nooks, and of unlimited screen time.
And I received the gift of putting pen to paper, of scratching inky words on lined paper, of writing the old fashioned way, my family all around me as I fulfilled my commitment to write 30 minutes a day.
You would think that in November, when the trees are stripped bare, and the mountains are gray with twiggy branches, and the ground is brown with dead leaves, you would think that the color green would be hard to find. At least, that’s what I thought, until with green on my mind for a photography project, I found it everywhere. We hiked the Cascades yesterday, an Appalachian waterfall about 30 minutes west of Blacksburg, and the stream-side trail was resplendent in winter greens. We saw mosses, lichens, rhododendron, hemlock – life, ever green, persisting beneath the naked skeletons of deciduous trees. We saw ferns, bridges and stone signs tinted green with algae, pools of green where the crashing down of waterfalls aerated the water, green M&Ms in our trail mix. And always at hand to capture words, my tiny green Moleskine, its lined pages scratched with haiku.
Yesterday was our eight year old son’s special day*, where he got to pick a meal and a family activity for the day. Knowing his tendency towards lounging all day in PJs, I bribed him. I told him, “If you pick an active family activity, like, I dunno, hiking Dragon’s Tooth, I’ll make cinnamon rolls for breakfast.” Lucky for us, his sweet tooth pulls more weight than his lazy bones.
We’ve taken our kids on several hikes around Blacksburg, and they always love the first third of the trail. Then it all looks the same to them, and the boredom sets in, and they begin asking for snacks, telling us their legs hurt, wondering, “Are we almost at the top? Are we almost done?” Neither of us care about pushing our kids to be any certain way except the way that they are – we won’t push them to be scientists just because their dad is, or pastry chefs just because I like donuts and cupcakes and croissants – but we really, really, really do hope that they will enjoy and appreciate the outdoors. So we try to make it fun for them, taking them to waterfalls, pointing out cool spider webs, oohing and ahhing over golden leaves, showing them boulders they can climb. Playing 20 questions if it comes to that.
And most importantly, finding new trails that will keep them excited about the woods.
When I hiked Dragons’ Tooth with two girl friends a couple of weeks ago, a 2.4 mile trail (4.8 round trip) that involves nearly a mile of scrabbling over rocks, I knew the kids would love it. Their most recent hike was a really steep 2.3 mile hike (Angel’s Rest) with great views at the top and a beautiful trail to boot, but after a demanding 4.6 mile round trip, I think they were done with hiking for a while. We knew we had to pull out the big guns to get them excited again, so I showed our son photographs from the Dragon’s Tooth. Pictures of metal ladder rungs bolted into rocks, shots of sheer rock faces with the white blazes of the Appalachian Trail painted on them, photos of trail that was nothing but jagged ledges of stone. And the prize at the end of the hike? The Dragon’s Tooth itself – a massive sheet of rock, jutting 35 feet out of the ground like an ancient snarled tooth. That, and trail mix with M&Ms.
Our kids ran a good portion of the first half of the trail. They could not wait to get to the rocky part. And once we hit the boulders, and the sheer faces marked with the AT’s white blazes, and the rocky ledges, our kids may as well have been at Disney World. They were high as kites scrambling over those rocks, picking their own paths, hopping from boulder to boulder, then sprinting up the steep trail to the next technical patch. Our son declared, at least four times, “Dragon’s Tooth is the Best Hike Ever!”
The best part for me, though, was not just how much the kids loved the rocks (though that helped). It was the conversation. The morning was grey and raw, we had the trail to ourselves, and everything looked different than our normal hikes – more mysterious because of the mist and the dampness. On our way up, I pointed out some pink leaves that were still hanging on – papery ovals quivering in the deserted forest, ready to fall at any moment – and our son observed them, trying to pinpoint their exact color, when he finally proclaimed that they were peach. Not the darker orange color of peach flesh, but the delicate pinkish orange of their skin. He was specific about this.
When I exclaimed over lichens, plump and green like I had never seen them before – they were the same shape as the dessicated lichen discs we often see, and I wondered if they were those same black lichens, only hydrated – our daughter said, “They look like those noodles I like – the ones stuffed with chicken and cheese? Ravioli! They look like green ravioli.” And indeed, that was exactly what they looked like. I jotted this down for a future haiku.
On our descent, after both kids had climbed partway up the Dragon’s Tooth (our daughter wanted to climb higher, our son said he would never climb the tooth itself again – getting down off of it was too “freaky”) and after the four of us had eaten nearly two pounds of trail mix, the kids were subdued. They loved the rocky parts on the descent, but they were quieter as they scaled them. Once we were back down to the regular old hiking trail, we feared the tiredness and boredom would set in.
So we talked about farts. For probably 15 minutes. We talked about animals farting in the woods, and our son asked why we never smell them. So we said, “You can’t smell their farts if they’re not even around. Have you seen any animals today?”
“Yeah, chipmunks.”
“Well, chipmunks are pretty small. We probably wouldn’t be able to smell them anyway if they farted.”
Meanwhile, our son explored a hole in a tree, sticking his head inside to see what he could see.
“Be careful,” I said. “A chipmunk might stick his butt out and fart on you.”
And then we talked about chipmunk farts and what they probably sound like (a short pffft or bzzt, according to Dad). We talked about a bear’s fart after hibernation, and how godawful it would smell after being held in for three months. To which our son replied, “I fart in my sleep, why wouldn’t a bear?” Yes, this is true. We talked about bird farts, and how we can’t smell them because they’d be even tinier than chipmunk farts, and besides, birds are dainty and would fart high in the sky, where nobody would ever know.
And so on.
After the fart conversation died, I slowed down with our daughter and held her hand while we strolled through the leaf litter. She told me, “I know what function means now.”
“Oh yeah? What’s it mean?”
“It’s the job something does. Like on a plant, the seed’s function is to grow a new plant. The stem’s function is to hold up the plant and bring water to its different parts. The leaves’ function is to make food, and the flower’s function is to make seeds.”
And then she told me about the life cycle of a plant, all the while warming my big hand with her little one, impressing me with her first grade knowledge of botany. I thought I’d stump her when I asked what part of a plant a pine needle might be, but after thinking about it a minute, she answered “I think it’s a leaf because it comes off of the stem.” Right-o, Smart Tart.
We ambled our way back to the parking lot, glad we had hit the trail early, because now the lot was full. I smiled to myself. After hearing our son say somewhere along the way, “I love those peach leaves, and the little baby pine trees, and the ravioli on the rocks. Basically, I just love all the things that nature makes,” I had to agree with him that Dragon’s Tooth was the Best Hike Ever.
The Dragon’s Tooth, Catawba, VA
Peach leaves
Ravioli Lichens
Ladder rungs on AT
Rocky trail
Dragon’s Tooth in the clouds
*We instituted Special Days last year after feeling bad for dragging the kids around on errands, or feeling like we could never all agree on what to do on a Saturday afternoon. So now, we rotate. Each weekend, one of us gets a special day. On a person’s special day, in addition to getting to choose the brunch menu, a special dinner, or a dessert on their day, the special person also gets to choose a family activity. This motivates my husband and me to set aside a chore-free, errand-free time for the four of us to hang out, and it has been a huge hit with the kids. They’ve had a lot of fun trying new foods, going to the antique car show for Dad, going to the conservatory for me, and especially, not having to go to Home Depot or the shoe store when it’s their turn to be special. I highly recommend it.
We finally made it to Gobble Cakes! That’s Blacksburg’s brand new cupcakery, and oh my god, y’all, it was all I could have hoped for. Cupcakes piled high with piped whipped frostings, elegant personal-sized confections on silver cake plates, ten flavors to choose from, and me standing there for fifteen minutes trying to decide between them.
The kids and I became huge fans of Food Network’s Cupcake Wars this summer. We watched bakers create and decorate cupcakes for Star Wars, Hotel Transylvania, Angry Birds, Tim Burton. We watched the show so often that the kids knew what the judges liked, which cake formulas would work, and when bakers were going down. Our eight year old son would say, “Oh, not an apple cake! Those never rise.” Or a novice who obviously hadn’t watched as many episodes as we have would feed the judges a traditional red velvet cake and our six year old daughter would say, “Uh oh. Florian’s not going to like that. He’s sick of red velvet.”
The show inspired us to make our own cupcakes, and we experimented with chocolate orange cakes and these peanut butter chocolate cupcakes (courtesy of The Nerd’s Wife) that make you groan when you eat them. They’re that good. But really, we’re amateurs, and we wanted more variety than we could make ourselves. I asked around on Twitter, and I kept hearing about this new place Gobble Cakes that was coming to town. I thought the name was adorable – Gobble Cakes! – it’s so fun to say and it just makes you want to gobble those cute little cakes up. It took me about six weeks to figure out the clever secondary (or maybe primary?) meaning of the name. Here in Blacksburg, the Virginia Tech mascot is the Hokiebird. A turkey. Get it?! Gobble gobble?!! My son rolled his eyes when I made this discovery and then excitedly told them the genius second meaning of the name. He had figured it out weeks ago.
Anyway, the kids and I must have checked every week to try to figure out when Gobble Cakes was going to open, and we were finally rewarded this weekend when we made a family trek downtown for cupcakes. As we drove into town and saw the streets hopping, we wondered if we would ever find a parking spot at 7:30 pm on the Friday before Halloween. Luckily it wasn’t as hard as we anticipated, and we enjoyed the excited energy of college-town Halloween revelry on our walk to the bakery. We heard the deck party sounds of laughter and beer bottles clanking, and watched twenty-somethings in fairy costumes, and motorcycle chaps, and our kids’ favorite, Waldo (three young men together, all dressed in red and white striped shirts, all wearing Waldo’s signature hat with the red pom pom on top. I hope they were going to a big party with scads of people so that they’d get lost in the crowd for live games of Where’s Waldo?)
Gobble Cakes was hopping, too, and when we walked in I couldn’t wipe the stupid grin off my face. There was a steady stream of customers, for one thing, which always adds exciting vibrancy to an eatery. But I loved the boutique feel of it, too. The place is polished – not just the confectionery display of cakes on silver plates behind glass, but the simple color palette of fun, tastefully pink walls, white trim, elegant black and white photos of Blacksburg and the VT stadium – and my favorite details – awnings over the blackboard menu and the interior multi-paned window that looked in on the kitchen. The kids and I loved that window. We oohed and aahed over the baking racks, the industrial-sized floor mixers, the giant sacks of flour that were bigger than the kids. Our daughter particularly loved the googly eyes the pastry chef was wearing for Halloween.
When I finally decided on a cupcake, I chose their Breast Cancer Awareness special for October – a lemon cake with a lemon pastry cream filling and a honey frosting. And I tell you what, that was the best cupcake I’ve ever eaten. I usually go for the frosting – I’m a big frosting fan, especially if it’s cream cheese – but this lemon cake was so good I didn’t even need the frosting. The flavor was light and bright and subtly lemony, but what really blew me away was the texture. It was moist and spongy, with a tender crispness on the outside, not unlike the crisp texture of a perfectly cooked chocolate chip cookie, but way more delicate. And the quiet crust didn’t just contribute texture, it lent flavor, too, because it had that slightly toasted sweetness that you only want a little bit of, to contrast against the lightness of the cupcake’s interior. Wow. That was good stuff. I wish I could figure out how to bake cake like that.
The rest of the family loved their cupcakes, too, and when I asked if the cupcakes were good enough to go back to Gobble Cakes, the kids’ eyes got wide and they both nodded emphatically and shouted, “Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!” Our daughter devoured an Apple Pie cake (it was light and moist – it had definitely risen) with cream cheese frosting, our son gobbled up a Drillfield Delight (chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting), and my husband savored his Hokie Love, red velvet with cream cheese frosting (sorry Florian – he said it was delicious). I agree that its worth a return visit. I can’t wait to go back and try the other cupcake I really wanted – the cinnamon cake with maple cream cheese frosting, topped with a crispy slice of candied bacon. My husband never jumped on the bacon and cake bandwagon, but I’m saving my pennies.
You can follow Gobble Cakes on Facebook and Twitter for coupon tips and flavor updates.
Butterfly Mind 