Tova's Day Out

Down here in my snug little corner of the country, wrapped up in mountains on three sides and then snuggled into an ocean on the other, bizarre things are happening with our usual 75-degrees and sunny. Very strange.

Of course, being a northerner all of my bluishly pale existence, I find 75-degrees rather odd truth be told. But this post isn't about me (really, it is, I always bring it back to me . . . I'm so self-centered), it's about the sky and the winds and the sun and the dirt that holds me to this dear earth of ours.

Right now, that precious dirt is washing away down my hilly street out onto El Camino Real several blocks away. On that notable California road, that sends itself careening along California's length just like one of our famous fault lines, cars are pressed up against each other with their silly little California drivers jerkily applying breaks after having forgotten those rainy rules back from Driver's Ed days. Finally, I find myself tucked into our sort of new and partially repurposed and practically freshly adorned office to tell you about all this quirkiness.

Let me start by saying that our nanny answered the phone today to be confronted by a spastically perky water district employee who excitedly informed her that the Lars Viking Family had just won an award for our family's water conservation effort. In these here parts, water conservation is huge, in the past year our tidy little group has taken on conservation with renewed fervor. The newspapers and local websites are riddled with pictures of tanned and wrinkled farmers holding handfuls of their parched soil to the wind, weepily watching it blow away with the Santa Anas and her relentless and fiery sisters. Finally, it has become shameful to wash your car with anything more than a small bucket of water, my neighbors no longer even sneak out in the middle of the night to spray off their dusty drive-ways lest they get spotted being so raunchy during the day, newly constructed pools sit dry in beautifully landscaped back yards, and the lagoons' waters are have been quickly receding back to the ocean.

Down here, we are thirsty. Parched and dry mouthed. We've been heaving and choking on our dry air, with arched eyebrows we worriedly implore the sky for relief. But at 75-degrees and sunny, it's hard to complain.

Monday the sky began to mangle itself around it's own cloudy entrails, pulsing and contracting and chilling the air to a frigid 55-degrees. Finally, no longer able to sustain the pressure, a slow and soft leak of tiny droplets began to sprinkle toward the ground. But just like when any one of us tries to just pee a little bit when we have a full bladder, just like us, the sky above us wet its' pants.

Now we are soggy Californians, walking around schools and malls and Super Targets in our soaked-through Uggs that were formerly meant for decorative purposes in our typical balmy times. There I was scrambling to get out of the Super Target parking lot with my mushy boots on, practically tossing my middle children into the van while Tova stared around her with wondrous eyes. What could this be she wondered? It's not a shower, and yet here I am all wet? She patiently sat in the cart, diligently strapped in for safety while I threw our purchases in to the back end of the car, the trunk door pathetically shielded us from driving rain. In order to close the trunk on the van, I had to nudge Tova and the cart forward so she wouldn't get bashed. Now, out from under the roof of the trunk door, Tova became a sopping and curious victim of the wetness as she quietly took it all in. At last, everything put in it's proper place, we pulled out of our parking spot into the dark, angry evening.

The drive home reminded me of those Michigan white-out days when you couldn't see 2-feet beyond your windshield, oblivious to what may have been going outside the bubble of one's own car. But instead of that magical quiet that accompanied the blankets of snow laying themselves down, this rain was loud like a symphony of freight trains driving just over your head. The kids sat quietly in the back end, sensing my tension as I maneuvered our tin-can through the streets. Driving through our hilly streets can be an adventure on a dry day, but on a dark and rainy night, driving up hill is like trying to drive up Victoria Falls with water speeding down the hill exceeding laws of physics and celebrating Newtonian parables. And then, as suddenly as the deluge had began, it quickly transitioned to a lazy drizzle. My colleagues on the road, shaken and not trusting of another imminent blast of rain, continued to cautiously creep along the streets, upper backs hunched toward their dashboards, hands furiously clenched around the steering wheels of their Porsche Carreras and Audi A6s. It was then that I realized that the car was awfully quiet. I looked in the rear-view mirror, with Petra accounted for at the gym, there was Annike in her Marathon zonked out and mouth ajar, Soren dozily twitching in his booster seat. But Tova, who sits in a rear facing position behind the passenger seat, I could not see. Where the F-Bomb was Tova? Holy Mother of God! Please (gasp) Lord (gasp), my baby! My Tova! At that moment, I could not, just could not remember getting her into the car after loading up the laundry detergent. All I remembered was pushing her out of the way as I slammed the trunk shut. Gulp. Is she careening down El Camino Real, strapped into a Super Target cart, narrowly missing ostentatious and big bellied SUVs at they fish-tail on their monstropolous wheels?

Just as I was about to scream to the middles (my middle children, that is) the wind and the rain picked up again. The could not be roused despite my loud begging, the rain was louder than me. Tell me you see Tova in her seat, I commanded. I screamed, but I could not overcome the blasts of wind and thunder. God have mercy on my soul, what kind of pathetic mother leaves her baby in a parking lot, tethered to a shopping cart? With traffic around me skidding through stop lights and swerving through lanes, I had to keep my eyes on the road, lest I too become a victim of the weather. Terror rose within me as I imagined all the scenarios in which she surely enduring at that very moment. My darling sweetie-pie, in her pink and red striped pants and a red sweatshirt with a heart embroidered on the tummy, must be so angry with her mommy right now. I could only hope.

But before me a pause, a break up ahead, I wheeled my head around, craned my neck toward her end of the car, and there out of the corner of my eye was her tiny little Robee attached to her foot, which was attached to the rest of her precious body and very much inside the car that I was presently driving.

Today was a good day, the farmers can grow avocados again, Tova had a nice nap, and I still have not become the what-kind-of-mother mother.