Edie and I went for a long walk in the woods today.
Before we went, though, we stopped by Trader Joe’s, to stock up on provisions for the journey and to look for “Kermit the Crab” (Carl the Crab is a plush toy hidden somewhere in the store; If you find Carl, somebody in a Hawaiian shirt will hand you a basket of organic lollipops and let you pick one. Edie has the adorable habit of repeatedly calling things by the wrong name. Like yesterday for dinner, we had “Huevos Mancheros.”). Edie approached a man wearing a surgical mask over his mouth and nose, and said, “I like your shoes!”
The man, whose shoes were ordinary and black, didn’t hear Edie. He leaned down and said, “I’m wearing this mask on my face to protect myself from germs. I can’t get sick because I have a new heart!”
I laughed and told him that Edie liked his shoes. He laughed and thanked her. He said he assumed she was asking about the mask. I had assumed the same thing. Maybe she was curious about his mask but thought it better not to ask and so she complimented his shoes instead.
We bought a couple of dried fruit bars. They come two to a package, back to back. You have to peel them apart so the leather is less chewy. Edie asked me to open hers in the car. We were both really hungry because picnic- and record-shopping at the store next door took a little longer than it should have. I opened the raspberry fruit leather and, remembering that there are two strips in each package, pulled one out and bit into it as I handed Edie the other piece. She told me to stop but I didn’t.
“There’s two! We can share! You can have the other piece of the strawberry one when we get to the park!”
“NO MOMMY! I DON’T WANT TO SHARE MINE! STOP EATING IT!”
But it was too late. I hadn’t even realized I was hungry until I’d forced Edie to share her snack, after she’d trusted me to open the plastic wrapper and hand it back.
“I’m so mad that you didn’t listen to me. You ate my snack.”
I apologized. I told her that I was sorry, and that I should have listened. I explained that I was really hungry, and that she could have the whole other strawberry fruit leather.
She told me, “you didn’t listen to my words, and so you get a consequence! So no KNITTING for the rest of the day!”
She stumped me. I told her that it doesn’t really work like that, that she doesn’t get to give me consequences…but I lacked conviction. Why shouldn’t I have consequences for breaking the same rules I expect her to follow? She gets in trouble if she doesn’t listen to me, and I should be setting an example for her to follow.
Like I’d go a day without knitting.
So we took a long long walk. We parked at the top and walked down the trail, through the woods. We followed the progress of the creek, winding its way to the beach alongside our trail. We saw lots of people, geared up for rain. We got rained on a little. We talked to the ranger’s wife, who lives at the bottom of the park. We ate dried mango. We watched the water streaming. We got our hands sandy and peed in port-a-potties at the beginning, middle, and end of the hike. We ate salads in the mist. We walked through a tunnel. We pet multiple doggies. We stopped in the middle of the trail to dig up rocks with our walking sticks, and I am tossing around the word “we” to imply a harmony that was not always there. For half of our walk, I was pushing and pulling and prodding the child.
Eeeeeeeedeeeeeeeee! Come on! Let’s go! Keep moving! I’m not stopping anymore!
Then we settled into a rhythm. I slowed my pace way down, but kept walking no matter what. I let there be an uncomfortable amount of space between the child and myself; and the distance became comfortable. I told her the story of the Tortoise and the Hare to illustrate how keeping a steady pace might be more effective than short bursts of running followed by pretending to be stuck in the mud, begging to be carried. I am proud to say that I only carried her for a little while, at the beginning of the ascent. Then, we found suitable walking sticks and plodded like tortoises. Edie’s stick soon had a voice of its own, and I walked backwards so I could watch her and her stick interacting with imaginary things.
“You didn’t see that trick I did, did you!?”
“What trick?”
“That trick of imagination back there.”
Edie stopped at a “resting bench” that was sitting in front of a smaller trail. She told me she had to show me something. Three things, in fact. “They are back there. Come on.”
We walked a bit up the other trail, as I protested that I didn’t know where it led, and didn’t want to get lost in the woods (which happened awhile back when we went exploring in the rain). Edie said, “It’s just after we climb over those logs, there’s the thing I want to show you.”
We climbed over the logs, and Edie looked around, thinking.
“Here is what I wanted to show you – it’s these plants all over here.”
I told her that they are called ferns, and that I like them too. I tried to head back but she said, “there’s THREE things I have to show you! The ferns are one.”
Then she walked toward a little thicket of thorn sticks. I don’t know what plants they are, really. They are just thorny sticks, sticking out of the ground, thickly. I told her they were too thorny, let’s go. I guess I was tired, or maybe it was just cold and rainy and three hours into our walk by then. She said there was one more thing she had to show me and, not wanting to wait for her to think of a third thing, I pointed to some lichen growing on a tree. “Here it is! Show me this lichen!”
We walked back to the main path and climbed further up. She was moving so slowly, and stopping so often, that I used her trick on her. I was far ahead of her on the path so I ducked off to the side, where there were a few trees and some clear, hilly ground. “Hey Edie! I need to show you something, come here!”
She picked her feet up and marched up the hill to where I was.
“What is it, Mama?”
“This is our house, Edie. We live in the woods.”
“You mean this is where we live?” She hurried under the trees with me.
“Yes,” I told her, “where do you want your room to be?”
She picked out a spot, overlooking the creek. “My bed is here, by the window.”
I told her it was a great spot, and picked out another spot like it on the other side of the house.
“My bed is over here, by this window.”
She wanted to go outside, by my bedroom door. We sat on the porch for a minute, enjoying the view.
There are more shades of green in Washington than anywhere else. Probably.
“This is where I have my coffee in the morning, Edie.”
“Can we come back to our house next time we come here?”
Of course, I told her, and we headed up the hill to sit on another resting bench.
On the way home, Edie’s shovel became a train. She picked up a lot of little passengers – pebbles who kept to themselves, mostly. Miles, Jill, Kendal, Edie, Kenneth, Paul. They fell off a lot, but Edie rescued them every time. It took so long, but by the end of our walk I didn’t mind at all. I could have watched her trudging up the muddy path through the darkening woods for hours and hours, while she made up stick songs and screamed tiny pebbly cries of distress whenever the rock family fell overboard.
Pretty soon it was time to go to Grandma’s house to get changed, and then to Daddy’s house for a sleepover. “Tomorrow is a school day, and after that is a Grandma day, and another after that, but after that is a stay home with Mommy day, and we can come back here again.”
Oh, Edie.
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