Heather Barton

And no, we weren’t drunk…we were in Minnesota!

So we decided to get started on dinner (for 16)  One of the frozen lasagnas was to go in the oven at the Log Cabin.  Three fully capable mother’s took on the daunting task.

My sister, Erin was holding her 2 year old, Arden while my sister-in-law, Holly and I were blissfully free of children.  All of us in the spacious kitchen of my family 1920’s log cabin.  Holly read the instructions for the lasagna to me.  First instruction…set the oven to 400 degrees.  So Erin promptly turned the dial as she said at the same time, “This isn’t one of those light the pilot ones, is it?”

“Yeah” I said, “Unless the pilot is already lit. 

So Erin grabs the lighter and I open the grill door to see if the pilot is lit.  I get a big whiff of gas and say, “Whew!”   Erin handed me the lighter in a rush and says, “Oh! Well then hurry!  Hurry” So I clicked the lighter on, which took a few seconds because its child proofed up to the age of 50, and WHOOOSH!

All I see is a quick blue edged nimbus and sparks.   All I heard was an “Oh! Sissy!” from Erin.   As a writer I was thinking…’wow, look at that.’

Holly hadn’t actually seen anything having wisely turned away before I lit the oven to “duck and cover”. 

We’re all in shock and all I can think to say is, “Am I on fire?” 

Without missing a beat Erin said, “Not anymore.”

I looked up at Holly and she had her sweater bunched up at her mouth and I realized she was laughing.  The absurdity of the moment hit me and I started cracking up.  Erin starts laughing too but she was also trying to find out if I’m o.k. between the giggling.  Arden thought it was a great game.

“I’m fine”, I say all blasé about it.  “I just wanted to add a little burnt Heather to the lasagna”.

Then they get a good look at my hair and they start laughing even harder.  By now we are laughing so hard we might as well be high!

Still laughing I manage to get out, “Do I still have my eyebrows!” 

I’d singed all the flyaway strands of my long hair on the right side of my head and crisped up the ends of my bangs.  The whole kitchen smelled like burnt hair.  “Thank God for glasses!” I yelled loudly to even be heard over the laughter the three of us were practically doubled over.

It was a little hard to try and de-singe my hair without scissors and with the three of use laughing over the whole situation.  My mother-in-law was in the living room reading a book.  “Isn’t it nice that the three of them are so close they can laugh like that,” she thought. 

She had no idea what we found so funny!

Yesterday was the first trip to the beach of the summer.

I will admit I’m not the best parent when it comes to doing ‘activities’ for the boys.  I wouldn’t call myself a recluse…but I enjoy the relaxing sport of sloth.  Especially when you couple it with gluttony.  Which is exactly how I got myself too chunky and what I try to avoid these days.

Wait…I’m off track.  This is about the beach.  Right.  Back to it, then.

The boys took to the water like true normal kids.  Begging to get to it while I’m trying to get them to eat a little, drink a little and help a little with the set up.   Then two seconds of going in and there are tears because the salt water stings any cuts and exclamations because the water is “freezing”.   This isn’t cold, you wussies, I tell them jokingly and hand them their boogie boards and shoving them at the water.  The baby’s too little yet so he just sports in the waves.

My friend Eithne and her girls went with us.   The youngest eagerly grabbed her board and joined in.   The oldest (ah the lovely site of a moody, preteen 12 year old girl sulking…good times.)  she refused to go in due to a sudden feeling her suit wasn’t up to par and wanted to go boarding in her shirt and shorts, leaving nothing to wear AFTER the day of swimming.

I parked myself in my beach chair and appraised the cubs lying near us.  Very nice.  It felt wonderful to look pretty good in a bathing suit again.  I was by NO means the hottest mother there but I’d like to think (and it could just be my ego!) that I was ONE of the many hot mom’s on the beach yesterday.

The day was perfectly overcast, lessening my fear the youngest would come home with skin as red as his hair.  I mean I’ve got waterproof spf 70 on him hourly and still!!

The overcast day kept Eithne complaining it was too cold as she huddled in her suit, clothes and a beach towel.  You think coming from Ireland she’d have thicker skin.  She’s only been in America, what 15 years, and apparently she has over-acclimatized to the Southern California weather…where we freak out when it rains and things like the cold and clouds startle us.

Not me, I’m fearless…or is that stupid…no I got it I’m foolish!  Wait…what was I talking about….scroll up.    Ah, yes…the beach…scroll down.

The kids had a blast.  No one got excessively burned and no one turned blue from the cold water which happens with my oldest and youngest who don’t have any body fat on their body.  I think the middle one sucks it out of them while they all sleep.  And I got wonderful girl-time with one of my best friends.  A good day, indeed.  Very relaxing.

When I was growing up my cousins lived in Malibu about an hour’s walk to the beach and we went a lot.  It remember body surfing, all six of us, for hours.  So long that when we decided to get out and get food we were so far down the beach it was a really long walk back to our moms.

As an adult I’m sure they had a much closer eye on us than we thought.  I know Eithne and I ‘count heads’ all the time when the kids are in the water.  Especially since mine don’t really know how to swim.  I KNOW…stop nagging…teaching takes practice and that takes time and motivation on their part and both are in short supply.

Anyway…the beach has always been a part of my life, but not as big a part as other Southern Californians.  I’m not overly fond of sand.  And while I tan well, I’m also not overly fond of cancer.   But I’ve had friends who dragged me to the beach in the summer all my life and Eithne is the current one.  She adores it and boogie boarding so during the summer months I try to coordinate 2 trips a month for the kids sake.

Since I always try to leave with a funny, I’ll tell you the story of the weirdest beach experience I had.  My then friend Lydia and I went to the beach.  She was a transplant from Alabama who also adored the beach, I shrugged and did my friend thing.   So we drove the long hour, fought for parking, dragged the stuff to the beach and sat out.

We went on a Saturday so of course the beach was PACKED.  We finally found a clear spot and while it wasn’t the best spot we were the queens of making do.  And so the day went on as usual and finally ended.  When we were packing it in I noticed that the HUGE mound of seaweed we’d been next to was actually a dead seal or sea lion.   We had to act casual or look like idiots for NOT knowing we’d been next to a dead thing for 4 hours but boy did we let our willies out when we got to the car.

That explained why there were so… many… flies…. everywhere!   Eewh!

When I was growing up we had a mini-farm in our backyard.   Apparently, you are allowed 25 small animals in the City of Burbank within a certain radius of all living spaces.  At one time or another we had chickens and ducks and rabbits, cats, a dog, my rat, my sister’s hamster and a blue headed conure parrot and also a peach tree, giant blackberry bush, strawberries, corn, squash of all varieties and rhubarb.

How did we get such a menagerie.  Well it all started with my mother’s organic kick which was started by my first trip to the dentist at 6 where it was discovered I had 12 cavities.  Appalled the dentist asked my mother “What are you feeding these kids!” (My brother had 8…he was only 5)  “Oh, frosted flakes, pop tarts, donuts…my husband likes those foods,”  was the innocent reply from my mother.

She was quickly educated and, of course, went to the opposite extreme.  No more white bread, junk food, chocolate milk or even normal sugar.  No, we had homemade whole wheat bread (which as an adult…yum!…but on peanut butter & jelly sandwiches as a kid…yuck.)   Unpasteurized Raw Milk delivered from Alta Dena Dairy and we had raw sugar which is unrefined, brown, won’t melt on anything sugar.  Makes cereal so much fun and needed as we no longer had sugared cereals.  Ovaltine, if we were lucky.  And easy desert just about disappeared.

So this prompted planting strawberries in the backyard, where my mother discovered the aphids were a problem.  Her solution, ladybugs.  The organic solution, of course… no pesticides for her.  Ladybugs ate aphids.  And she found a place she could order, through the mail, a box of ladybugs.

Now our mailman was a nice enough guy.  Stew.  Stew got one of my mother’s fruitcakes every year and we all knew Stew.  He walked up, stuck the mail in the slot and walked on.  He liked us because we didn’t have a dog…at the time.  So one day Stew knocks on the door instead of dropping off the mail.  When my mother opens the door there he stands with his arm held out as far away from his body as he can get it.  The arm is holding a box about 4″x4″ with a fine mesh screen which looks hairy.  No, it’s not hairy…it’s leggy.  It’s a box of a gazillion ladybugs and what you’re seeing are the ones crawling all over the screen.

“Oh, my ladybugs!” my mother cries and happily takes the box trying not to notice the odd look Stew is giving her.  “For my strawberries,” she tries to explain.

The released ladybugs fly everywhere in the yard, disappear and do nothing to help the poor strawberries.  My mother is not daunted.  She has my father break up a large section of pavement in the backyard so my mother can plant a garden.  The ants are very, very happy over her decision.  They love what she plants.

Then, my brother comes home on Spring vacation with 6 baby chicks from the 1st grade science project of hatching them.  It was him or death for the little guys.  Lucky for my brother, my great grandfather used to sell eggs during the depression so my mother had an ‘expert’ to turn to.  But she is secretly hoping none of them make it.

Hope dashed, they all survive.  She turns to her good friend who not only has a carpenter husband to built a coop but also is Mormon so they keep having kids and they are very keen on the idea of saving money by raising chickens for the eggs.  THAT’s when she finds out Burbank lets you have 25 small animals.  Because they decide to go back to the ‘catalog’ and buy chicks through the mail.

Now, realize this is the late 60’s and early 70’s and only parenting  and the lack of  getting high is keeping my mother and her friends from being labeled hippies.  They’re canning and farming and trying to go organic while everyone around them is shopping at the grocery store.  Segway example…my mother told me to “bleach” my leg hairs in the sun instead of shaving them when I was a teen.  You can visualize the “Can you get any crazier” look I gave her.

My mother and her friend Karen decide they each can have 25.  They then assume that half the chicks they order will arrive dead…so they order 100.  And that is what gets delivered to the post office.  100 live baby chicks in a box, in the cavernous sorting space of our local post office at 4 am…cheeping.  All of them are cheeping…loudly and it’s echoing everywhere.

Brave Stew waits until the decent hour of 7 am to call my mother.

“Mrs. Frantz, did you order baby chicks?”

“Oh yes Stew!  They’re here, that’s great.  How many made it?”

“All of them.  But you need to come down to the post office right now because I cannot guarantee their safety for much longer.  If we have to listen to this noise for another hour no telling what condition they’ll be in by the time you get here.”

“Oh,” was all she could say and she rushed down to get the box and realize…shit, what am I going to do now with my share of 50 chickens!