thursday, fifteen july: daughter of cups
On the card, the daughter of cups is a duckling casting a rainbow shadow. The guidebook says she represents a creative and emotional person, distressed by conflict.
Today is definitely a “daughter” day, since today’s expedition is a trip to my parents with Declan. They have a membership at a swim club with an artificial lake, and every year I suspect they’re holding on to this membership for the small handful of days each summer that Declan and I manage to go to the lake with them. My mother says that they go sometimes in the evening to eat dinner at the picnic table and enjoy the breeze–she claims the small artificial lake somehow has a lake breeze?
Dec is still at that age where his brain is focused on finding routines, and he finds both comfort and joy in situations where we do things the same way as we’ve always done it, which sometimes just means the same way we did it last time, but whatever. There’s definitely a routine to days where we go to the lake with Nana, over the last few years. As soon as he’s awake we pack up our stuff, and our first stop is bagels. I’ll eat my bagel while I’m driving, he’ll pick listlessly at his because somehow he doesn’t actually like bagels? (I am one hundred percent sure that he would love bagels if he would agree to get his toasted and buttered, but he says no, and while I will pester him about food I won’t fight or force him, so he takes his sad dry cinnamon raisin bagel and picks the raisins out of it.) We pick up bagels for my parents too; my mom says to not bring them any extras, just one bagel each, my dad says to bring half a dozen sesame. It’s a toss-up every time which parent I will disappoint.
At my parents’ house, my mother will make eggs or something for Declan, sometimes French toast, don’t worry, my child isn’t starving over the bagel issue. Then my parents will bicker extensively as we get ready to go to the lake. My mother packs a small cooler with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, juice boxes, bits of fruit wrapped up in paper towels, a little ziploc of damp paper towels to use as hand wipes. They will argue over who is taking which car (we need two cars to bring four people a distance of two miles, but my parents have four cars for a two-person household, I mean, what is even going on there) and who is running what errands on the way, why can’t my mother bring the beach chairs in her car, why does my father have boxes of cardboard in his trunk anyway, who asked you you fucking idiot, you keep your goddamn mouth shut, etc etc. It’s a whole process.
At the lake, my parents will try to relax, but they aren’t good at it. My mother can’t ever just sit in the moment, she’s always thinking of the next moment. (This is a woman who sets the table for Christmas dinner two weeks in advance.) Most of the other kids at the lake are much younger than Declan, I think all the suburban soon-to-be-fourth-graders are in summer camps, but he likes playing with little kids, it’s fine. There’s a very large and very clever crow that stalks the picnic tables. Every time he comes near us, my mother will scream about death omens. I’ll buy everyone some french fries from the snack stand, and later ice cream bars. My dad will ask about Declan’s “marks” at school and I’ll try for a few minutes to explain what report cards look like in Declan’s school before giving up and just saying he’s doing well. (Is he getting an A in math? Well that’s an interesting question, Dad. He got 3s in “demonstrates understanding of bar models,” “demonstrates proficiency in subtraction with regrouping,” and “applies strategies when solving word problems.” In the spring trimester he dropped to a 2 in “utilizes mental math strategies” but I honestly think that’s more about his teacher than him.) I’ll bring a book but it’s not clear how much I’ll get to read, which is fine actually, because there are always things my parents and I need to talk about, and we actually have some good conversations at the lake.
Thinking ahead to the fact that we’ll need to start getting dinner ready around five, my mother will leave the lake in a hurry sometime before two. At some point in the afternoon, Declan and I will negotiate–either we’re going to leave and go back to the house, or he’s going to have to reapply sunscreen. By midafternoon most of the other kids are gone anyway and Declan is just forlornly floating in the shallow water, so we’ll go back to my parents’ and start figuring out who’s showering when. I make fun of my mother’s neuroses about cleaning, but I have my own–that lake water has so many weird chemicals in it, we’re scrubbing that crap off as soon as we can.
So yeah, happy Thursday y’all.