Pig

Dear all,

I haven’t told you about my Mothers Day gift, Pig.  Pig is a Jack Russell Terrier with the looks and markings of a beagle so he is a cuter than most.  He has a good temperament for a Jack Russell, which isn’t saying much since they are a notoriously difficult breed.  Pig is an English hunting dog through and through, which I hope sends images of red coats and horses into your head, however briefly. Jack Russells are working dogs, though, bred to hunt rats, not foxes. During our Summer of the Rat, Pig remains blissfully unaware.  Perhaps he is working on his upward social mobility (so difficult in England), aspiring to become a setter or maybe a retriever.  Once R had to throw a dog treat next to a rat so that Pig would take notice of it (then, true to roots, the dog went crazy). 

Pig came to live with us in March (England’s ‘Mothering Day’ weekend).  He settled in well at first, however, the more comfortable he became, the more he began to act up by way of marking everything in our house.  I had my initial pang of buyer’s remorse when he peed the FIRST time on top of our kitchen table.  No matter how hard I tried, I no longer could see the value in this dog.  And while I am the first to admit I’ve had a bit of buyer’s remorse with every dog (and child for that matter-still do, occasionally), the heinousness of this particular incident disturbed me deeply.  The situation did not improve no matter how much I roared at J (The dog was HIS idea, see how that works?).  And so it went until we had him fixed (the dog, not J) which is not a standard procedure in this country.  ‘Let this be a lesson to you boys,’ I wagged my finger, ‘Do you see how I deal with young males who cross me?  I’d keep your room clean, if I were you.  And do some homework, while you’re at it.’

We introduced the cage after Pig jumped up on the dining room table while I was gone and ate/ground three chocolate bars (wrapped and in a grocery bag) into the carpet. I am aware how dangerous chocolate is to dogs.  I was not concerned.  I was PRAYING for a slow doggy death by chocolate. 

Now that he has stopped peeing all over the house and is no longer jumping on tables, I have fallen in love with him again. Pig is now nearly perfect except for the bit about wanting to attack every animal he sees.  Still working on that.

Pig is far from the big, fluffy dogs we usually go for but we are discovering that smart dogs are just as challenging as dumb dogs.  No one would deny that Barley, as loveable as she was, was the world’s dumbest dog.  With a smile and grateful heart, she happily lived at the bottom of our pack.  Pig needs constant daily reminders of his place.  Still, I see the advantages of small and shorthaired Pig: he is portable, doesn’t slobber, doesn’t barf in the back seat and is nearly bullet proof. 

We failed to enquire about life expectancy when we adopted Pig.  A mistake.  Jack Russells can live for more than TWENTY YEARS, which SO would have been a deal breaker. J will be pushing 70, kids long gone and we will still have this dog to walk.  J couldn’t be more thrilled.  A dog is for life, you know, not just for Christmas 

With love from England,

T-Ann 

The Strike

Dear all,

It is all just unfortunate timing, really.  Who could have guessed that the rubbish collectors’ strike (second time since we’ve been here) would coincide with the local drains being replaced?  I’ll share with you a thing or two I’ve come to know about English rats.  First of all, I think a rabbit sized rat is impressive by anyone’s standards, especially when it is dangling from a vine, inches from your window.  This makes you feel, well, rather uncomfortable.  Second, the sight of rats in England, even the smaller, cuddly, cute ones, the ones that my two younger sons fancy we should keep as pets, recalls images of the London in high school history books or at the very least, scenes from Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life.  I just can’t get ‘Ring Around the Rosie’ out of my head...

Sure, rat watching is fun for now, a jolly good diversion from our over cast and chilly summer, but I can’t help thinking this new sport of ours may grow old in time.  It's doubtful that the situation will improve anytime soon and I just don’t think the NHS is equipped to handle The Black Plague.  Send supplies.

With love from England,

T-Ann

A's House

 Dear all,

Today is one of those days when I contemplate, not without the occasional watery eye, the two chapters of our lives:  Before England and In England, the two very different childhoods the big kids and A will have had. R is off at cricket camp, S off with a friend swinging from the treetops in at an outdoor park in Cirencester.  M chose to spend the day walking the dog and cleaning up the kitchen (poorly) in order to avoid possibly having to exert energy and speak in complete sentences.  ‘Forget about it,’ I said to A as we jumped into the car, ‘you and I will have fun without him.’

We spent the day at Sudeley Castle (sudeleycastle.co.uk), which is in the ancient Saxon town of Winchcombe.  We spent the day wandering the gardens, looking into ponds for koi and avoiding goose poop.  There is a brand new, magnificent wooden climbing castle for the kids, which makes you long for the days before our country was litigation happy.  It has a big ‘ole metal slide that would have been outlawed in The States a generation ago.  As luck would have it a friend of A’s was there with her family, so A was quite happy to stay for hours.

I have this little boy who only ever swims in pools.  He has never placed one little toe into Forest Lake (the lake we lived on for more than ten years).  He was too young in Prairie Crossing to remember the magical world of the organic farm, prairie grass or bugs (I’m going to digress: M once saved an egg sack of praying mantis.  He put it into the green velvet hatbox, which houses all our family’s most precious treasures, tissue wrapped treasures, like dead butterflies, a raccoon skull, cicada shells, leaves too perfect to leave behind and the like.  Months later, I removed the lid of the hatbox to add the most perfect pebble someone had collected, when out exploded- I am NOT kidding- hundreds if not THOUSANDS of baby preying mantis all over me- yes, in my hair- like a Stephen King movie.  Go on.  Take a moment to imagine THAT scene.  M was safe at school, lucky him. The hatbox lived outside for quite some time after that.). 

A will never know a childhood with herds of children thundering in and out of neighborhood homes.  Or the security of knowing that someone, anyone will take care of you in a tight knit neighborhood if you are hurt or hungry or thirsty.  He’ll not have eaten corn dogs or pickles on sticks at the state fair. He will not own a pair of beaded moccasins purchased in the Wisconsin Dells, which is more disappointing to me than you might guess.

But this is what he WILL know:  travel and adventure, how to act in an airport and a cathedral.  He will have eaten squid, snails, rabbit, horse, octopus and black sausage. He will have spent long summer days at castles pretending he was a knight and the Tewkesbury Park Hotel, swimming.  He will have worn winter jammies all year long.  He will remember walking into town for almost every need we have and he'll remember handing the lady in the Post Office 10p for a sweet after school. 

While I was on the phone with my cousin, Claudia, the other day, A was doodling on a notepad nearby.  Later, I picked up the notepad to see his drawing and without even realizing why, my eyes filled with tears and my throat was grabbed in a way that was both sad and happy.  It was a drawing of a boy next to his house.  The boy’s head was balloon like from which unsteady arms and legs protruded. Next to the boy was a house.  This house wasn’t the inverted ‘v’ with two walls like American children draw.  It was a very tall, narrow house, with lots of windows and an impressive front door- a massive doorknob in the middle- and curly cues for the iron balcony.  It is a drawing of the only kind of house A really knows:  An English Regency townhouse.

With love from England,

T-Ann

Broadway

Dear everyone,

The beginning of our summer holiday was very wet.  Thursday it rained all day without a break, which is unusual in England.  Normally, a rain cloud will empty and then move on.  Often it will softly rain when the sky is blue and sunny.  I have learned to look to the West.  If I see a dark cloud, I wait five minutes to leave the house.  Once it has passed it is safe to go outside.  I can say that the rain rarely catches me.  If it does rain, you simply pop into a shop or stop for a cup of tea and wait till it passes.  

So Sunday we went to our sweet church, St. Phillip and St. James (Pip and Jim’s) and afterwards pounced on the sunny day.  J took the boys golfing while S, A and I went out for a drive in the country.  We headed to Broadway, a picturesque Cotswold village.  I mean this town is cute. It is a postcard village with honey colored Cotswold stone houses with worn steps and many with impossibly small front doors.  Each house looks so content, joyfully sitting in the same place for hundreds of years, maybe leaning just a bit with age. Every house is covered in wisteria and heavily scented roses in such a way that I wonder if one could exist without the other.  Gardens explode with color-always shades of pink and purple and white.  You’ve never seen more plump and satisfied bees.  Every so often, just for punctuation, there will stand a storybook thatched roof cottage with a cheerfully painted front door, window boxes bursting and dripping and timbered walls alive with ambling roses.  The houses often have names, not number for addresses, names like Tittlemouse House and The Old Bakery. Tipsy Cottage and Snowdrop House.  Or The Rabbit Box.  I am SO naming our house when we go home…

On High Street, girls serve ice cream from old fashioned white carts wearing white Capri pants, pink shirts and straw boater hats, pink ribbons fluttering in every breeze 

Because S and I were not overpowered by testosterone, we decided to take the long way home.  Understand that to get from Cheltenham to Broadway you take a scenic two-lane road.  Such was the beauty of the day, even a two-lane road seemed too fast paced for us. With lavender fields in my rear view mirror, we found a one-lane road that took us up hills and down into valleys, through miles of crazy quilt farmland separated by stone fences.  We passed hundreds of fluffy sheep, but not a house for miles.  We drove downward through dense forest, which had the feel of burrowing and when the occasional beam of sunlight broke through, the damp air and dust made the light swirl like a dream. It was a fairy tale.  Indeed, I told A that he should keep an eye out for fairies; as everyone knows these are the sorts of places fairies prefer to gather. S empathically agreed.  ‘The fairies are all dead,’ was A’s response from the back seat after a minute or two of looking. S is now concerned about his mental health.

When we reemerged onto a two-lane road, we followed another crooked wooden sign in the shape of an arrow.  We drove down a wonderfully winding and wooded road, a deep ravine on the passenger’s side.  We curled our way through one more chocolate box village, avoiding walkers and horses in the roadway.  In town, people are less willing to smile, but in the country everyone smiles, waves and nods.  There is an agreeable sense of unity when you share sunshine and unhurried space with bikers, walkers and riders.

Memories like these will make my heart ache when we return to the US.

With love from England,

T-Ann

The End of the Year

 Dear all,

The end-of-the-year parties are over. Thank God.  I won’t bore you with details and honestly, I am not sure I can come up with any more descriptions of refined English school parties. It is all the same:  blah, blah, blah, BEAUTIFUL FROCKS, blah, blah, blah, CHAMPAGNE.  I hope I never have to peer into another picnic basket as long as I live.

M and S’s day houses hosted a BBQ Friday, the 4^th of July, complete with American flag bunting, a band and fireworks.  Afterwards, I was spent.  I just didn’t think I could get through another day of picnics.  Long before tea was served in the marquee the following afternoon at the Junior’s Parents Day, I slipped into the car and fell asleep.  I was like the Little Engine Who Couldn’t: I simply could not go on chatting one more minute.  We were home by mid afternoon, in jammies and watching what I consider to be one of the finest low budget movies ever made:  Employee of the Month.  This film is remarkable, not in the least because its writer did such an astonishing job of capturing the essence of twelve-year-old boy humor.  Pure genius. So many writers try to sustain this kind of humor, but fail to deliver for a full hour and a half. And with Costco as a set, how can you lose? Brilliant.

I came home Saturday afternoon and I didn’t leave the house for two days.  It was glorious, but now I am beginning to think our plans for staying home this summer were a bit short sighted.  The instigator, R, is driving me crazy already.   R walks around the house starting arguments with everyone.  Even if you do not hear his footsteps or voice, you can locate R by the argument that develops.  It’s R’s own take on GPS. We received his grades early in the week.  We were, how do I say it, less than impressed. R apparently gave himself permission to take off the last term of school.  That is the thanks you get when you raise independent thinkers.  If only he was graded on immature antics, poor penmanship and talking during class.  He’d be headed to Harvard.

On Thursday morning, M strolled into the kitchen after 11:30.  I tried not to notice. I tried to be upbeat.  I tried to remind myself that it was only the first week of summer vacation and that it was raining.  I tried to remind myself that he was growing and he needed his sleep.  In the end, it just didn’t matter. I exploded about his lack plans for the summer (except receiving serious Latin tutoring, which should be a whole lot of fun. All kidding aside, even M had to agree this was a MUCH better scenario than the Latin Camp I was threatening-even I thought Latin Camp was harsh.).  He came to visit me later that day at work.  He, A and Pig were all soaking wet from a long walk in the rain, but very upbeat:  M, with his little brother and dog in tow, secured a paper route for the summer.  He is now like his twin sister who has taken over my hours at Blue: gainfully employed.  So, once he delivers the papers each morning and studies his Latin, he is free to sleep and eat all day long.

With love from England,

T-Ann

Road Works

Good morning,

In the U.S. you are all, no doubt, sharing in the glory that is Construction Season.  In England we too have our share, however, you would NEVER believe ‘road works’ in this country.  First of all, if you can imagine, the streets are completely closed.  No access to businesses.  No flaggers or temporary lights to allow traffic through, albeit slowly.  They will close a two-mile stretch of road for a week or two even though they will only work one block at a time. If you are the unfortunate owner of a small business at the far end of the planned construction, the road in front of your business is likely to be completely closed to all traffic for a full week to 10 days before the construction crews reach your section of road. 

The construction companies start later in the morning than back home, they break for lunch and tea and wrap up their days about 4:30.  There are no detour signs.  No one works at night.   The thing that I find impossible to understand is that business owners don’t complain!  The Brits still carry the attitude of  ‘make do and mend’.  People ask me, when I enquire about business, what construction is like in Chicago.  Ha!  Political elections (and in all likelihood lives) would be lost if construction was handled in this manner.  Here, the mild mannered English shrug and say, ‘But what can we do?’

The construction has put even more bikes on the road.  Bikes and motorcycles are such a danger here.  They do not follow motoring rules of the road.  Motorcyclists are able to be both vehicle and pedestrian simultaneously and I cannot tell you how dangerous this makes the narrow roads. 

On our block alone this week, there have been three bicyclists hit by cars (One cyclist hit and thrown off his bike just two feet in front of M and me one morning-thankfully he was shaken and sore, but okay.  He had dropped off his five-year-old daughter who had been riding on the back of the bike, just minutes before at school.).  Judging by the squealing of bike brakes and abusive language, a fourth one was narrowly avoided this morning. 

We are blessed to live in town where my car is hardly driven (I have the privilege of WALKING through street construction.  With all the construction workers, this is, either degrading or ego boosting, I haven’t figured out which.).  Because my car is small and rarely used, I fill up my tank only every couple of months; so infrequently, in fact, it is the warning light on the dashboard that reminds me-a trait J finds much more than frustrating-but have I EVER run out of gas?  No.  I’m in no hurry to fill up. Petrol is about $10 a gallon, with prices expected to rise over the summer.

With love from England,

T-Ann 

A Teenage Boy

Dear all,

M has grown up so quickly.  When did it happen?  Wasn’t it just yesterday I was telling him how to pee into the toilet?  Oh, that’s right.  I DID just have to talk to him yesterday about this.  Wasn’t it just yesterday I was encouraging him to string more and more words together to form sentences?  Right.  Same thing.  Just yesterday I had to beg him to stop grunting.  Wasn’t it just yesterday he’d take two naps a day and shove food into his face with glee?  Ditto.  It WAS yesterday.  So being a teenage boy isn’t that different from being a toddler, from what I can tell, except he isn’t nearly as cute as he used to be.  I had unflinching patience when he was chubby and cuddly.  My patience is now directly related to the amount of words in M’s limited vocabulary.

M has a vocab of about five words, but these are sounds, really and do not qualify as words per se.  Mostly he communicates with one word, ‘Wa’.  I think this means, ‘What’, but it is hard to tell because he uses this sound as a response to each question or statement directed at him.  ‘Huh’ is another popular response for either question or statement. ‘Nnn’ is ‘no’ and ‘yy’ means ‘yes’.  ‘Mmm’ is a bit trickier because it has at least three or four meanings. It is as likely to mean ‘what’ as it is to mean ‘yes’.    It could also mean he likes the dinner he is shoveling into his mouth.  (Don’t mistake this for a compliment, however. It is only a primal response to the filling of his stomach, which is always empty.) There is also an outside chance that he is using this particular grunt to communicate that he agrees with you, but this is unlikely.

About four months ago, his room took on an odor that can only be described as stench. While he was away recently, S and I dragged his mattress into the yard to air every day for four days.  I thoroughly cleaned the room.  Aired out his shoes.  Got rid of old clothes that may have been retaining odor. By the end of the week, the room smelled just fine.  M returned and within days it again smelled like the inside of a gym bag/mouth/decaying bowel system.  HE doesn’t smell, so is it the chemistry of a teenage boy that makes the room so pungent:  a caustic combination of otherwise subtle odors that just blows your mind? Does it fade in time? Will he ever move out? 

The most foreboding aspect of all of this is that R cannot smell anything in M’s room.  Please don’t tell me that in a couple of years, BOTH their rooms will smell like this!

With love from England,

T-Ann

The NHS, again

Dear all,

I am sitting here wondering if I should unload on you (again) about the National Health Service.  Are you saturated with my NHS complaints yet?  I’m not.  I think I could write about the NHS forever.  There is something undeniably nostalgic about reliving the 1970’s every time you enter a doctor’s office in England. 

I have surrendered to the sinus infection that I’ve been brewing for quite awhile. Even the Chinese medicine man cannot fix me. When I called our surgery (medical practice) I spoke with the same doctor whom I confronted last year citing her lack of ethics and medical skills in an award winning performance, complete with tears, that was somewhere between a justice seeking Sally Fields and an insane Glenn Close. S was suffering from pain and blood in her urine for MONTHS and we were told repeatedly to go home and hope the problem would go away.  This lack of care coincided with R having his second bout of issues with, shall we say, his bits.  The doctor’s answer to R’s problems were,  ‘Well, everyone has pain and swelling sometimes.  This is just his time.’ At the same time, M had warts removed from his feet by yet another doctor who did not wash his hands or wear gloves.  How FREAKING nasty is that? All these problems fell on the heels of R having a seriously infected cut on his finger, which looked more like something you’d purchase at the butcher and throw on the grill than an actual appendage.  I questioned the doctor’s choice of antibiotics (Four times a day?  You are joking). The doctor spent five minutes thumbing through a manual for alternative antibiotics.  There weren’t any.  Only two types:  penicillin or tetracycline.  Having an opinion about your care is, well, frowned upon here.  Doctors do not like informed patients.

So, Friday, when the doctor asked me what antibiotics are most effective for me, I laughed and said that the American Z Pack, the once a day/five day antibiotic works beautifully.  Long pause.  ‘Mrs. Pierce,’ the doctor said in a tone of forced calm, like she was asking me to hand over the gun, ‘You know we do not have anything like that in this country.’ When CAN we expect it in this country, I enquired?  ‘Mrs. Pierce,’ same pause, same tone, ‘You know I cannot answer that question.’ So I will try to remember to take the old four times day penicillin that she assures me ‘works just fine for British bugs in British people’. 

Wasn’t I just saying I’d embrace all that was good enough for the British?  I may have lied. 

With love from England,

T-Ann

Last Week

Good morning,

Is it possible I forgot to write about our hip and happening last week? June 21, J and I attended the Cheltenham College Junior School ball.  This year’s ball was even more enjoyable than last.  We had what I was lovingly referring to as a Pre Prom Party:  four other couples who were sharing our table joined us for canapés (appetizers) and Cheltenham’s drink of choice, champagne.   We have always had exceptionally fun friends, I must say, so this was just a wonderful evening of dancing and the best of company.   The English have an endearing phrase on ball invitations, ‘Carriages at 1:00 a.m.’.  For some reason, we always seem to be the last to leave and, therefore, our ‘carriage’ didn’t arrive until closer to 2:00 a.m.    As you might imagine, the following day, J’s birthday, was a bit of a gentle affair…

On Tuesday evening, this edgy mum headed into Birmingham for the John Mayer concert.  John Mayer is relatively unknown in this country.  S and a friend, Mary who discovered John Mayer while in the USA this past winter, organized tickets to the concert months ago.  Unfortunately, S was not able to attend because she was participating in the Duke Of Edinburgh Awards.  Currently, she is working towards a bronze award:  out door training, survival skills, orienteering and camping skills. The kids go onto earn silver and gold awards in the following years, the gold award being achieved when you are dropped in the middle of nowhere, survive on your own and manage to find your way home. Isn’t that called hazing?  The best students from school were chosen.  I find it odd that the best and brightest are chosen to survive alone in the dark and wet of Wales. I’ve been a teacher.  I think the pain in the ass kids should be made to survive in the wilderness.

So. Back to young and trendy me going to the concert.  First of all, I wish I could describe the look of horror when I told S that I’d attend the concert without her. Like I was too old to hang with the students.  Please.  Mary and her mother and another lucky girl all went.

Here is the truth:  I am too old to hang with the students.  Although Mary assured us there were seats, there weren’t (she knew we wouldn’t go otherwise).  The venue reminded me SO much of the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago (or ‘brawl’ room as we referred to it).  With me so far, former youth of the greater Chicagoland area?  Sticky floors, no a/c, smelly, lots of bars, one small filthy bathroom.  Wow.  I wanted to go home.  The concert was okay, although John Mayer was not as hot as I thought he ought to have been considering what we paid for the tickets.   I’m just saying, for the price, he could have worked a bit harder on his biceps, that’s all.  And re-thought the black wife beater he was sporting.  So Helen and I left the girls to rock it out, while we hung out towards the back, close to a fire exit.

The thing that really got me about the concert was the fact that he didn’t sing his big hit, the one that made him ‘John Mayer’, Your Body is a Wonderland, because years ago he decided that he was tired of singing it and that he didn’t want to be remembered by that one ‘wedding song’.  First of all, I have to say, whose wedding?  If, at my wedding, I had played a song about not showing up for work so I could suck on someone’s ‘bubble gum tongue’, I don’t think my mother would have ever fully recovered.  No one has ever played that song at a wedding.  Second, get over yourself, John!  It is not like you are ELTON JOHN who has decided, after decades, to no longer sing Candle in the Wind. And, God help me, wouldn’t it be wonderful to live in a world where we never had to LISTEN to that song again?

With love from England,

T-Ann

The Talent Show

Dear all,

I have been asked how I manage to be myself around some of the world’s brightest and/or most talented people who are fellow parents at school. Saturday, I think I figured out why it doesn’t intimidate me. 

Saturday afternoon and evening were spent feting our school.  The occasion was the celebration of the Junior School’s 100 years on its current site.  There were a ton of people and, this shouldn’t surprise you, picnicking.  I swear, eight hours of small talk can wear even me out, but as I stood there chatting with other parents that day, I figured something out. 

As part of the day’s activities there was a children’s talent show.  Fifty-eight kids auditioned and only seventeen acts were chosen.  R was chosen for two acts. That’s right, TWO!  You can imagine my beaming face when R took his place on the outdoor stage; his image projected onto a massive screen for the curious who were too far away to catch the subtleties of  his performance. His first act was (a drum roll please…) smooshing an empty 7-UP can between his shoulder blades and, additionally, carrying a shoe around between his aforementioned shoulder blades.  Very well received by the audience, by the way.  His second act was himself and a friend wrestling, while on their knees in what appeared to be some sort of yoga position.  The audience received this with lesser enthusiasm.  His older siblings were horrified.

Other acts included a band and other children displaying athletic skills.

So you wonder how any of this relates to me feeling confident enough to talk to other parents with ease?  I’ll tell you.  The girl in the band has a famous father who wasn’t there that night because he is touring the US to sold out shows all summer long.  The kid with athletic skills has a father who is an English national treasure and has a statue of his likeness in town.  How could I NOT feel confident with these people?  Of course their children will be talented! How could they not be talented?  These kids are blessed with good genes not to mention the reserves of money that seem to go hand in hand with talent, brains and ability.  But our children?  Just look at their parents:  ZERO talent.  Our children are wonderful because they have risen to life’s challenges despite coming from a gene pool void of any talent!  They are bright even though their mother’s answer to any and all questions is, ‘I don’t know.  Go google it.’ Sheer determination to rise above their watery gene pool.  It makes me proud.  It makes me good enough.

I feel at ease, I suppose, because I am just as proud of my kids as the famous parents are of their children.  Let’s just see THEIR kid walk around on a stage, shirt off, boxer shorts a good three or four inches above his jeans-and who knows the last time they were changed- carrying a dirty shoe around on his boney back.  We’re all just the same, proud of our kids, doing what we hope is best and wishing someone would do something, ANYTHING, to ease congestion every morning in the school parking lot. 

With love from England,

T-Ann