yesterday started out a bit intense. vesta is sick with a cold/sore throat thing, rodney is still injured and in pain (and out of pain pills, so grumpier than usual), and i still had (and have) mastitis. hazel is healthy as a horse and whenever the rest of us are sick she frolics around exuberantly and has no concept of quietness and mellowness for the sake of sickies. but yesterday she began the day with a meltdown. she had been working on this craft project that involves these tiny little "bead tubes" of colored plastic that fit over hard plastic prongs that are like stencils of things...in this case a horse. these things are hard to work with. the tube things are small, the prongs are not tall enough and are spaced super close to each other so that when you try to fit a bead over a prong, you are a miracle worker if you do not knock off like three other beads in the process. bad design. she kept messing it up (like any person trying to do this craft would!) and knocking off beads and not being able to get them where they go...then there weren't enough of the color she needed. on and on until tears and the horrid whiny voice appeared. so after the end of whiny voice, which garners nothing from me beyond, "please do not use that voice", i attempted to help her problem solve. but! my fingers are bigger and clumsier than hers! i couldn't do it, either. so i advised her to take a break and come back to it fresh later. which she did on and off throughout the day. she went off to a play date, vesta and i lumped around as lazy as we could be (not very lazy for me, as jubal is not sick and needed constant interaction and care!), rodney slept all day...then she returned from her play date and i made her supper, which she didn't want right away, as she was going to work some more on her horse, which she'd decided to make a paint, as the "right" colored beads were scarce. well, she filled it all in and it was just gorgeous, so she ate her supper and i heated up the iron--which is another delicate process of this craft. you have to heat it up so the little beads melt together and hold each other in place...you have to do this without knocking any beads off the too small prongs and without over or under melting any part of the damn thing. i managed to do it! thank the gods of horribly designed children's crafts. after her initial meltdown, she went back to it and just worked with patience and diligence. no more tears. no more whining. no more " I CAN'T DOOOOOOO IIIIIIITTTT!!!!". i was so completely proud of her, i could barely breathe for a minute. of course i told her so, and that it was beautiful--much better than the design the stencil recommended. a beautiful paint horse.
sometimes hazel doesn't stand out, people are so overwhelmed with babybabybaby or amazingartistamazingartistamazingartist....they don't always notice hazel's astonishingly beautiful eye for design and her hugely open, kind heart. she is a jewel.
before bed she was hunched over the table working on something with a pen and paper. i was trying to rush everyone to bed because i was exhausted and ready for as much aloneness as i could get with jubal still up...she went and brushed her teeth when asked, but she quietly came back to the table, asking me once how to spell "journey". i let her finish, and she presented me with this story:
I WISH I KAUD HAV A JOURNEY FOR FOR UWAY IN A WRLD AV FAUN IT WIL HAV FAN AND GAMS THEAT IS WUT!
(translation: i wish i could have a journey far far away in a world of fun. it will have fun and games, that is what!)
followed by a little smiley face and with every individual word circled. that sucker went RIGHT on the wall.
i love hazel and today i am purely and simply grateful for her, to the power of 5. at least.
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an excerpt from a work-in-progress
they ate breakfast together: an omlettle he made filled with spinach and cream cheese and tomatoes and a bagel they split with salmon and more of the cream cheese and some capers she went back to the fridge for. they amused themselves discussing what capers are and how they came to be in jars at upscale markets for them to buy and eat on bagels with salmon. he liked to think they came from the sea somehow, and she assured him they were really little berries of some sort of fragrant bush. she fished the capers out of the tall jar as they talked and ate more than usual, something about their brininess described a hunger for her that she didn’t know she had, and then filled it. they drank steaming mugs of rich coffee with cream (and two sugars in his). she loaded the dishwasher and wiped off the counter while he cleaned the coffeegrounds and little spills from the coffee pot. the sun shone cleanly into their white kitchen and onto their bodies as they moved about their tasks and then they kissed one another and left for work, him to an office in town and her upstairs to her office where she worked as a freelance ad designer. it was a perfect morning. it was the perfect morning.
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