This morning, we woke to a dusting of snow, and snow still flying sideways, although it wasn’t sticking by then. A day late, snow, you missed the white Christmas by a day! After a few hours it was pretty much gone from the streets, melting as the temperature climbed a few degrees above zero. Driving into town later, the fields so recently brown and bare, were candy-striped green and white with snow in the tractor tracks and in the furrows. A red-tailed hawk perched on a leftover pile of sugarbeets; apparently the highest spot around.
Proof That I’m Not the Perfect Parent You Think I Am: I taught my daughter to lie today. To be honest (since we’re being honest, heh!) it’s not the first time. It happened once before in line for a ride at Tivoli, where a sign said the age limit was 6 to ride. “How old are you, Karin?” we asked, prepping her for the moment the attendant would. “Six,” stated our 5-year-old daughter with confidence. Today, she didn’t actually have to lie, but we prepped her just the same, because after all…we couldn’t take Martin to see Narnia and not her, now could we, despite the stated age limit of 7 on the site where we booked the tickets. “How old are you?” we asked her at intervals, unexpectedly. “Seven,” she said, without blinking. “Really?” we feigned astonishment. “When were you born?” …that took a moment of thought…”1998?” she guessed. After all that deceit-practice, no one even looked twice at our 6.5-year-old OR our 8-year-old for that matter, and the theater was FULL of families with children I’d swear were under 6.
Despite my initial fears that some of the scarier parts of the story would be too much for my kids, who have been a bit sensitive to scary scenes in the past, there was no problem, and they were totally enthralled, as was I even the 2nd time around. Every time a centaur was onscreen, Martin would tug my sleeve and whisper excitedly, “That’s me!” (his astrological sign is Sagittarius) Upon our departure from the theater, and emergence back into real life, we had a stunned moment of awe: were we still in Narnia after all?? It had snowed the entire 2 hours we were in the theater, and the world was powder-puffed with 3 inches of the fluffy stuff. Great fat flakes swirled down and around us, shining diffuse coronas about each streetlight. The trees were all filled out again, white with black branches. Negatives of themselves, you almost think that you wouldn’t even SEE the branches if it weren’t for the snow outlining them. Whap! A snowball smacks me right in the butt. Martin races past, laughing, his arms out for balance. Karin shrieks and squeals as Anders grabs a handful from a nearby bench and aims at her. We snowball fight all the way down the path by the canal.
I’m finishing Under the Tuscan Sun, not really the ideal book to be reading during the Christmas holidays, although any other time I’m sure I would have found it irresistable. Its sensuous descriptions of Italian summers, herbs in pots, delicious and succulent recipes, make me both yearn for a southern European summer and disorient me simultaneously. I saw the movie when it came to Sweden a couple of years ago and to be honest, I can’t understand where the 2 connect. The movie has nearly nothing to do with the book, and when I’m fresh off the amazing verisimilitude that infuses Narnia straight from the pages of the book I loved as a child, and still love as an adult, it’s a bit bothersome. After these final few pages are finished, I think I shall dive wholeheartedly back into Narnia for the eleventy-hundredth time and lose myself in the remnants of Mr Lewis’ magnificent imagination.
Swirly Snowy Wild and Wooly Birthday Wishes to scubatoe_eimi!