Skipping Town

Last weekend, we went to NH for my birthday--our last trip of the season, which meant we had to say goodbye until next May. Usually we get to go once more in November, but this year we can't. We were all very sad to leave. It was a quick trip--Friday night through Sunday late afternoon--but worth it, as it always is. I love being up there in the fall--this October trip always feels so moody and final. It's not a place that's all that welcoming for outsiders once the weather drops, and there's the feeling of being ushered out, we who don't really belong there, we who won't be around when the snow piles up around the barn. It's time to leave the house, and the woods, to the ghosts--whose presence we both feel strongly, especially once summer draws to a close. It was not only cold this weekend but rainy, but we managed to squeeze in the things we love. Saturday, we went to our favorite farm to pick pumpkins and run through the corn maze. We celebrated my bi...

I love card catalogs. I never gave them much thought until about twelve years ago, during grad school, when I read Nicholson Baker's 1994 essay "Discards," a doom-filled ode to the superiority of actual card catalogues over digital databases. This struck a nerve with me, probably tilted me to the techno-skeptic side of the world that I still inhabit, and, perhaps most importantly, sparked a true affection for card catalogues that remains to this day. A year or so later, I bought a small, lovely card catalogue at the Chelsea Flea Market (sadly empty of cards). I used it as a TV stand for several years, and it is now in the library of our house. I have a small collection of old card-catalogue cards, too, though not even enough to fill one drawer. But now--I have added to my card-catalogue holdings. Last month, the Carnegie Library in my hometown decided to sell their card catalogues--three of them--through a blind-bidding process. Andrew and I visited the library during a...

Lucia, when I went into her room after she woke up from her nap today: “A bat was in my nursery. It scared me while I was sleeping.” There was no bat. But all the vestiges of Halloween—bats, ghosts, witches, pumpkins, and monsters—have become regular characters in Lucia’s world lately. When we make a house with a blanket draped over her crib, ghosts and witches regularly come to visit, usually bearing a gift of “new markers.” Bats fly all around her nursery and the rest of the apartment. “I see a bat!” she’ll exclaim at random times. She’ll dramatically whip her head from side to side, as though following a bat as it swoops wildly around the room. Much of this is just her leftover—and lingering—interest in all the Halloween decorations she saw in October. Some comes from books we read, and some comes from the Olivia episodes she’s most fond of. The pure, scary ghost sightings are a thing of the past. Now she’s as likely to say “There’s a ghost coming through the window!” or “I see a wi...

Lucia’s ghost followed us to Connellsville. “I see a ghost,” she’d say, just like she does here in Brooklyn. “I see a ghost coming through,” she said once, looking at the stairway. When she and my mom went down to the basement, Lucia asked often if there was a ghost. When I put her down for a nap one afternoon, she lay down then raised her head and said, “Ghost?” Ghosts may have been on her mind because one of her favorite books of last week, Patrick Goes to Bed, had Patrick worried that a ghost would come through his open window; but it was only the wind. Still, though. And today, I was washing Lucia’s hands in the bathroom, and when we came back to the hallway, she said, “I heard a ghost! I heard a ghost coming through!” She then stared down the hall to her nursery and began saying, “Bye bye, ghost!” Then she turned to me and said, “I saying goodbye to the ghost.” Again to the nursery doorway—“Bye bye, ghost!” When I asked her where the ghost was going, she said it was going to Gra’s...

The ghost continues to make appearances in our kitchen. Yesterday, Lucia was about to enter the kitchen but stopped short and said, “I see a ghost.” She said the ghost was at the stove, cooking soup. When she said she saw the ghost, she actually hurried behind me, as though hiding. A day or two before that, the ghost was first in the kitchen and then outside: “Ghost outside, looking for stones.” (The ghost is often carrying stones while in the kitchen.) And also recently (can’t remember the specific days) she was running back and forth from the living room into the kitchen—until she said a ghost was in the kitchen, at which point she would come to a screeching halt at the kitchen threshold and refuse to enter. I’m really intrigued by all this, especially the idea that she somehow has understood that a ghost is something to be afraid of, something to avoid. Where did this knowledge come from? And just what is it that she’s seeing?

Yesterday, Lucia was kicking a beachball around the living room while I nursed Greta on the couch. She was in a testy mood, and she kept kicking the ball dangerously close to me. Trying to deflect a confrontation, I suggested she kick the ball into the kitchen. “No,” she said. “Ghost.” She said it matter-of-factly. “There’s a ghost in the kitchen?” I said. “Yes,” she said. Further questioning revealed that the ghost is (still) a baby, and it was standing by the stove, cooking soup.

Late this afternoon, Andrew, Lucia, and I were all in the living room while Greta napped in her bouncy chair in the office. Lucia had just woken up from her nap but, nonetheless, was in a cheery mood. She was performing some acrobatics on the floor—spinning, splits—and giggling. Then, out of the blue, she looked at us and said, “Ghost in kitchen.” And then kept saying it, just as she did yesterday. “Ghost in kitchen. Ghost in kitchen.” She answered our questions consistently: “What’s in the kitchen, Lucia?” “A ghost.” “Where is the ghost?” “In the kitchen.” I asked her where the ghost was standing—by the island, the stove, the table? “By the table.” We asked if the ghost was a man or a woman, or a baby. “A baby!” “What is the ghost wearing?” “A dress.” “What color?” “Pink.” Then I asked if the ghost was carrying anything, and Lucia said immediately, “Stones.” This was all pretty freaky. But it got downright terrifying when Andrew asked if Gray Bunny wanted to say hi to the ghost, and s...

Lucia genuinely freaked me out tonight. It was around 4:30pm, dark outside, and she and I were in the living room; Greta had just gone down for a nap in our bedroom. Most of the apartment was dark. Since we play almost exclusively in the living room, by the end of the day we usually have lights on only in the kitchen and living room. I was sitting on the couch, and Lucia was playing with something on the floor. Then, suddenly, she ran into the kitchen, looked around, and said, "Ghost came through the kitchen. Ghost came through the kitchen." She ran back to me and just kept repeating this over and over and over again, staring at me with her saucer eyes. "Ghost came through the kitchen. Ghost came through the kitchen." She said it exactly the same way every single time. I kept asking her to explain what she meant, or say it a different way, or show me the ghost. At one point she ran to the kitchen doorway and called out to the ghost: "Ghost.....Ghost....Ghost......