The Tent

The tent is up today, much to James' delight. When we put it up two days ago he was cautious and cranky-looking. I'd arrived home from work about an hour earlier carrying a bag full of hot dogs, buns, s'more materials, and then the tent bag. The tent had lain forgotten in our storage unit for months, packed away in an inaccessible cranny as the solution to the problem of "what can I throw back in this unreachable hole that I know we aren't likely to need for the entire time our residence in Brighton?" The tent was buried before that under mounds of boxes in the laundry room in Spencerport, and in the basement at St. Vivian's before that.

The tent was originally a gift from the former head of the Roberts music department. A decidedly single and pessimistic woman, she'd given it to us on our wedding day so that "we'd at least never be completely homeless." It was quite touching that she came, actually, although the seven hour trip to our wedding and back again has become a legendary tale of patience to the friend of ours who shared her car. Her left-handed blessing has been a reminder from time to time of just how good we have it. Going on seven years married we've always had jobs, and we're going on our fourth year now of making a comfortable living doing nothing except performing and teaching. Today has been a day when I've been a little blue about practicing and paying bills and taking auditions, and it's good to have a visible reminder in the living room that we've actually done a pretty good job of music as a career, at least so far.

REAL LIFE UPDATE:
I was writing this blog in the living room when I heard James bounce up from his nap and pitter-patter into the living room, asking through the binky in his mouth to "read oo-ah." He's been told several times today that the age of the binky is now drawn to an end, and this will be his first night sleeping without it. When I told him that we could read oo-ah when gave me the binky, he retreated back to his room and got into his bed again. That was 30 minutes ago. He's been sitting back there the entire time, looking straight ahead, sucking on that binky. I tried to lure him out with animal crackers at one point, but he just said "No, ginky." Maybe he thinks that if he stays in his bed until 7:30 he'll just be able to keep it for another night. It wouldn't be his first use of this tactic, as will be discussed below.

Anyhow, J remembers that we set up the tent once in North Carolina, but I have no memory of this. My first memory of the tent is the summer that we lived with my parents. (Yes, we are very successful musicians.) We took the tent back to Grandpa's pond and camped out with Lux, Calvus, and Martha. Most of my childhood camping experiences were with Pax, and they never really involved setting up a tent. We would just drag out a tarp and two sleeping bags, and if it rained (and it always did rain) we would wake up in a start and go flying back to the house, sometimes remembering to bring the sleeping bags. Those were glorious summer nights, with a dark country sky full of bright stars and early mornings with the smell of dewy grass. Also, we would argue a lot.

Arguing was theme for our camping experience at Grandpa's pond. We swore by the end that our tent, which is supposed to be a two-person tent, couldn't be set up without at least three people. Lux ended up being the unlucky third, and I'm afraid we might have scared him out of ever getting married. When we laughed about it later with Mom, she said that painting a room together is the other true test of marriage, which we still haven't attempted.

We couldn't make heads or tails of the instructions, but by trial and error and a certain amount of luck we managed to get the tent erected. We had a lovely campfire that night, put out lanterns, sang songs, and went for some early morning fishing in the canoe. And that was the entire usage of our tent up until this week.

I try to have interesting dates for us every Tuesday evening, and this week it was the camping theme. When J opened the door for me and saw the tent, she exclaimed "Cool, what a great idea!" And the night just got better from there. We woke James up to watch, and the whole process went smoothly. As noted above, he was a little wary of the big canvas on the living room floor at first, and we didn't know what he was thinking when we started to lift up the tent poles. As soon as they went into the air, he took off running for his bedroom and I figured that he was scared again. A minute later he came back carrying all the stuffed animals he could imagine, which he promptly deposited inside the tent before going back for a load of trains and cars.

He played in there all afternoon, fiddled with the lantern, and did constant laps in and out through the entrance. (He made J zip it almost all the way down so that he'd have to crawl through a small hole.) We took a brief break to make dinner, which was roasted andouille sausages (James, these are like hot dogs but way better) sweet potato fries and roasted brussel sprouts. When I got back from a church meeting, we did s'mores in the microwave, and when we put him to sleep in his bed he was completely exhausted from the fun of it all.

J and I slept in the tent on top of our old futon mattress, and while it wasn't quite like waking up to the smell of the dew, we did both sleep very deeply. I had rehearsal the next morning, and received periodic updates about what they were doing together. (Having breakfast in the tent, reading books in the tent, playing iPad in the tent, practicing running in and out of the tent.)

J had to take the tent down to teach a lesson in the afternoon, and James staged his first lie-in protest. He gathered all his animals, spread-eagled on the mattress, and wouldn't move until he was promised that we'd put the tent up again later. We did that night, and it went up in just a few minutes. J remarked that we'd made a lot of progress in our marriage. It was a shame Lux wasn't there to see it.

And now, I need to take the tent down for good. And I need to take the binky away for good. I put some pizza dough in the bread machine for dinner (stay tuned for a follow-up blog entry if that goes as well as it usually does) and I have a student coming in a few hours. James has been awake now for an hour, and all good things must come to an end. But don't worry...if he still doesn't want animal crackers I may offer him a s'more.