Mommy's Martini -- think. write. laugh. love.

Coping

2012-02-24T20:22:00.000-05:00

Three weeks ago, my son was hit by a car.

Nearly every parent I know personally, on hearing the news, called or emailed or hugged me and offered some version of a horror-struck observation, "that is my worst nightmare." All I could do was nod dumbly, and then nod again, take the proffered hug and clutch it to my heart like a lifeline.

Often I would try to respond, but it is very hard to know what to say. He survived. In fact, he survived miraculously intact. His only injury was a broken leg. A barrage of possible responses, all focused on the ultimately positive outcome, would come bubbling to my lips: doctors tell me he will be running around again by June...I am so grateful he had on a helmet...there were no other marks--not a single injury on his lovely skin--apart from the faintest of pink smudges on his collar-bone...his brain is fine... his internal organs? fine...today he was laughing and giving me sass from the couch...he should be able to play on sports teams again in the fall.

With every positive statement, I would see a mother's shoulders relax, a father's jaw slightly unclench. I would feel a palpable relief, hear a sigh over the phone. Thank God. Thank goodness. Thank every power in which you believe that is higher than us. Thank you. He is alive and will recover.

And yet, every time I said those things I knew dispelled that nightmare, I also felt like I was lying. Or like I wanted to scream out the other side to the story. The story I saw.

Yes, I wanted to say, he only has a broken leg. But have you ever been walking down the street with your dog and your children, happily enjoying an unseasonably warm winter's afternoon, watching them circling cul-de-sacs gleefully on their bikes or scooters, and then stunningly, horrifyingly, unexpectedly, watched a car plow into your child? Have you ever seen what it looks like to have your eight-year-old first-born plastered to the front grill of a gold-tan minivan and then drop to a heap on the street? Have you ever, I wanted to shout at the top of my voice, have you ever sprinted shrieking and hysterical down the street to gather up in your arms your precious, only-oldest child--not knowing what you will find when you arrive by his side?

Yes, he was talking. No, he had not been knocked out.

But in those endless, racing, hideous moments before finding that out, when your heart was bursting and your legs felt like they were moving without even touching the pavement, have you ever known the fear of the very real possibility that you may not find your child alive at the end of the longest short run of your life?

I could not and did not say any of those things to people who offered immediate condolences and aid. And yet, I could not bring myself to say either, "he only has a broken leg." Because the fact was, I felt like so much more had broken that day.

My most regular gesture towards getting rid of that "only" was to explain that he'd had surgery to repair the leg, to say that I was so deeply grateful that we live in proximity of one of the best children's hospitals in the country, to mention with some wonder that he'd been hit around 5pm and was in surgery by 8:30. Most parents can imagine that icy clutch of worry over the idea of their child in emergency surgery. In fact, it's far easier to imagine than is the horror of witnessing what I saw. Mentioning the surgery, the morphine, the two nights in the hospital, became my default way to indicate the seriousness of the accident without delving into my own sense of trauma--which, I felt, might have been a burden and also might have seemed like a kind of melodramatic excess. He is, after all, expected to recover fully.

My closest friends, of course, know that I've been struggling myself. They know that I spent the first two weeks after the accident sleeping in my son's queen-sized bed with him. I had to wake him every four hours to take pain medicine.

But I have not much said aloud that I also needed to reassure myself--at least every four hours--that he was still breathing. That he was sleeping peacefully, soft, warm, calm. That his thick, dark hair, long overdue for a cut, was still falling in locks over his eyebrows; that his body, miraculously, was lying there next to mine. When he was just coming out of the post-surgery anesthesia, groggy and floppy, with a raspy voice and little control over his limbs, his first sentence after holding out his arms for a hug was, "I need to see my leg." It made so much sense to me, over and over, in that first week, that he would need reassurance that the leg was not lost.

I needed the same reassurance about him.

After the first few nights, I stopped seeing the accident every time I closed my eyes. But it took more than a week before I could fully believe the many doctors and nurses who had told me there was nothing else wrong with him. When he got headaches and dizziness from one of the pain medications, I felt a chill horror again: had they missed something that was really wrong with his head?

They had not.

It was not until they changed the medication, and the dizziness went away immediately, that I finally began to think it was possible that somehow he really had come out of this with only a broken leg. After his first check-up, two weeks after the surgery, when I saw the x-rays (he has two internal pins, each the length of his entire femur) and heard the surgeon exclaim, "this looks fantastic!" I finally began to relax.

I have been tremendously lucky throughout all of this. Those first anguished nights in the hospital, social workers and doctors and friends and family all reached out to let me know that I was supported. A grandmother I didn't know, and saw only that once, stopped in the hallway to give me a long hug and reassure me that "we've all been there" as I sobbed quietly outside the door of my son's room, loathe to let him know the depth of my own fear. Her grandson was a long-time resident of the oncology ward, and I felt humbled and incredibly fortunate that my own child would be leaving the hospital so soon. So temporarily injured.

The outpouring of friendship within our town has been incredible. My son has received nearly a hundred cards--most of them handmade--from classmates, kids who ride his bus, neighbors, kids who play with him in after-school care, and relatives. People have shown up unannounced on our doorstep with pots of chili, homemade pasta sauce, muffins. All have come bearing sympathy. One mother organized classmates to drop by every afternoon to cheer up the long hours. Another came over with her dog, so that I would have a companion on that first, difficult walk that I would take again with my pet on a leash through the neighborhood. Close friends scooped up our daughter and kept her for more than 24 hours when we were first in the hospital, entertaining her with trips to the candy store and a hundred other fun moments.

It turns out that this accident, while awful, has not been a parent's worst nightmare.

My child is in physical therapy, slowly recovering his flexibility and strength. He still cannot lift his own leg an inch off the couch. But last week, he could not move himself into a sitting position without help, and today, he looked at me with a withering glance when I asked him about setting up an aide to help him to the bathroom when he returns to school on Monday. "I can go to the bathroom by myself," he said, a new-found confidence in his voice.

When he stumbles on his crutches, he panics, and I can see flash across his face all the terror of the most recent, shocking time he was knocked over. I can relate. A few days ago, I drove by a neighbor boy's scooter lying abandoned in their driveway and had to fight back waves of my own panic and nausea at the sight of an empty, fallen scooter on blacktop.

But we are coping, both of us.

Every time he stumbles and rights himself, he gets stronger. Every time I walk the dog, am passed by a car, and nothing bad happens, I breathe a little easier.

And every day, the tremendous community in which I find myself so fortunate to reside reminds me of how lucky we are. We have knit ourselves into a group of friends that are dear, but we have also become members of a far larger community of an elementary school and a town that looks out for each other. Parents I know only in passing have reached out with genuine kindnesses. Ones I knew only a little more have become friends.

I am thankful every day for the knowing looks and follow-up calls and emails from mothers who really have tried to imagine those awful first moments, and who have done their utmost to heal my spirit just as my son's leg is healing itself.

They have all made me realize that coping is a process best undertaken with the help of many many outstretched hands. I will be eternally grateful for the ones they have extended.

Fun and Games, 2011 Version

2011-12-30T21:23:00.000-05:00

This year, my Drafts folder, like my cup, runneth over. It is filled with glimmering tidbits, languishing un-fleshed-out. While one might be tempted to find something poignant to say about this, I am actually too buoyed up by tonight's Wii Family Obstacle Course and Slalom Skiing Showdown to seek out the maudlin or nostalgic.

Instead, then, I treat this like a little treasure-trove, a reminder of all the many good moments of the year.

Two great questions from the past year

His (after some weeks of discussing, in more or less detail, how the baby gets out): "But Mama, How does the baby get IN?"

Hers (standing on her bed and brandishing her dolly):
"Did you know my baby can fly?"
Me: "No, I didn't."
Her: "She can. Watch this." (hurling the baby-doll across the room)

Most pointed "I really ought to organize my life" moment

Inventory of the pocket of my car door, taken in June: preschool Sunscreen Alert form (from the previous year); pair of neoprene gloves (perfect for shoveling the driveway of snow); cozy ear band (THAT's where it went!); extra socks, size 5T, pink, slightly dirty.

Best overheard conversation, in serious tones

Friend: ". . . I was going to buy a van with my money because I have like a hundred dollars in my bank account, but then I decided not to because I have more money at home, so I have like a thousand dollars, and I decided to save it because I'm going to buy my own house, and then I don't have to live with my parents and I can do whatever I want, like watch movies any time I want..."

Son: "Yeah, but you have to be at least [pausing to consider] thirty to have your own house..."

Friend: "I know."

Son: "So you can't buy your own house."

Friend: "But I would put it right next to my parents' house, in the backyard."

Son: "Like a playhouse?"

Friend: "No, a real house."

Son: "Well, the police would put you in jail for breaking a law."

Friend: [still vaguely hopeful] "I know. . ."

Son: "So you can't have your own house."

Friend: "I know." [dejected sigh]

Awesome personal revelation

Grocery shopping with children is like parkour without the coolness. The only thing that redeems the exhaustion of climbing walls (or preventing your children from climbing displays) is that sometimes, they will come home from the grocery store and eat goat cheese and like it. And then they will try to learn how to pronounce "chevre" with the French gutteral "r." And then, just as with childbirth, the miracle of the aftermath overshadows the previous grim bits, and you feel convinced you could do that whole thing all over again next week.

(Unlike with childbirth, you actually will do the whole thing over again next week.)

Best proof that "dumb" animals are smarter than we think

Right around Halloween, the new pup (age 10 months) chose to chew up Bicycling Barbie, effectively turning her into Bicycling Zombie Barbie by removing her face but not fully destroying her. Her smiling mouth, chin and most of one cheek lay in one spot on the floor, while her eyes and the rest of her head perched a few feet away. The body looked as though it had never even met a dog. It was a perfectly zombie moment, perfectly timed for the holiday.

And then, around Christmas, though I hadn't managed to take a photo of Zombie Barbie to post online (but I also hadn't managed to throw her away), the dog found the head again and worried at it a little more. I found her hair on the staircase. Just one day after we watched John Wayne in The Searchers--a movie containing truly awful moments of racism against Indians--my dog scalped my daughter's Zombie Barbie.

In summary

2011 was a year of great family hilarity and so much fun that I found less time to write than I would have liked. In recompense, I was a whole lot happier than I had been the year before--which surely seems more than worth it.

Here's hoping you and yours have a 2012 worth celebrating!

Farm Children

2011-11-24T10:13:00.001-05:00

The slanting morning sun turns the ginkgo into something more like a blazing candle than a tree. But the children, oblivious to everything that is not the antique tractor, only notice the tree when its branches interfere with their clamoring play.

"There are still some plums on that tree over there," their grandfather says.

They do not register the offering--not because they do not hear him, or because they do not like plums, but because the sentence itself does not compute in their Midwestern brains.

I walk over to the tree, laden with the last of the dusty purple fruits. "Do you want a plum?" I call over to my children.

"YES!" my son shouts, leaping off the tractor, then pauses. "Wait. Where?" He looks around, confused.

"Right here," I say, pointing to the tree. "You have to choose the one you want."

He and his sister come running, wide-eyed. The small tree, purposefully kept to a height that makes plucking fruit a simple task, offers a wealth of choices to children who have never seen a plum that wasn't stacked in a grocery store display. It takes them a fraction of a second to choose their first plum, but many additional minutes to inspect a dozen more to ensure they have made the right choice before they actually do the picking. We wash off the dust at the outdoor spout, and bite deep into the pale, golden flesh. Tree-ripened to perfection. My son smiles and rolls his eyes in that peculiar way he has to indicate bliss.

Clutching their sticky, half-eaten treasures, the children climb to the top of another piece of once-useful farm equipment. As they munch plums, they look out over the land their father's family farmed for decades.

Three rows of gnarled peach trees mark the limit of their growing. Across the dirt road--in what used to be acres of grape vines tethered to their wires every summer by a boy who remembers the itchy sensation of rising allergies as he worked--the land is leased. The new farmer's tidy rows of baby clementine trees are encased in the high-tech drip irrigation system that has replaced the old irrigation ditch that once doubled as a children's swimming-hole on especially hot days.

My children are not nostalgic for these things. They simply marvel at the plums. "Can we have more?" they want to know.

"Of course," I tell them. I point out the limits of the family property--the rows of peaches on the south side, good for playing under now that the fruit is over, the dirt road the house faces, the bare track where the yard ends on the north side. "You can have anything you like from any of these trees. You don't have to ask permission. You can just pick what you want to eat -- only be sure to wash it first because it's very dusty." I point out the pear tree too. Tossing plum pits on the ground, we walk towards the backyard and spot a pomegranate tree. Pomegranates! So ripe they are literally bursting on the branches.

For an hour, my son sits diligently picking seeds out of the pomegranate, his fingers and face slowly turning crimson. "They look like red teeth," my daughter observes, poking at the fruit. She doesn't care for it too much, so I lead her to the two rows of grape vines that mark the back edge of the yard. Her grandfather has promised there should still be some good grapes back there, "though I didn't take very good care of them this year."

We have to walk past the small vegetable garden--hot peppers, eggplants, tomatoes--all neatly laid out in raised boxes, on our way to the grapes. (You cannot keep a farmer from farming, even when he's retired.) Next we stumble through a confusion of squash vines, hidden from view by the clipped hedge that borders the small lawn. Finally, we reach the grapes--towering, mountainous vines creating perfect hiding spots or forts. "Where are the grapes?" my daughter wants to know. "Look closely," I tell her. And then she spots them. The bunches are few and far between this late in the season, but the grapes, a dusky red, are still firm. She chooses two clusters and carries her treasures back to the spigot to wash them.

We have offered everything we picked to the grandparents, though they smiled and politely declined. "I don't eat much fruit," their grandfather says from his patio recliner. Again, my children seem not to understand. Surrounded by all of this, how can you do anything but gorge yourself on the ripe wonder?

And so they do, eating so much fruit that even the boy who is always hungry is too full to eat lunch.

Later that afternoon, our daughter looks around and says to her father, "This was a good farm." She pauses. "Wasn't it, daddy?"

"Yes," he says to her, "it was a good farm."

Things We Were Very Sure We Knew--But We Really Didn't Know at All--Back When We Were Teenagers

2011-11-15T21:27:00.000-05:00

(This is an easy list to start, though it may in fact be impossible to end.)

How to drive on the highway.
What "flabby" thighs looked like. On us.
All the words to that one song that Adam could play so great on his guitar and we all loved to sing softly late at night when we were supposed to be home already but we just had to stay out a few minutes longer and sing that one song, you know the one that goes...
How much curl was the right amount of curl to make our hair as perfect as possible.

Senior yearbook photo, circa 1987

Also: bangs, the value and proportion of.
Heartbreak.
That we would always, all our whole lives, be able to finish at midnight, with the help of just one laughing friend, a box of a dozen Krispy Kreme donuts--so hot and fresh that they dissolved into little puddles of happiness on our tongues.
That we were artists.
That no one would ever fall in love with us.
Fashion. More specifically: that your father's size extra-large, shell pink button down looked great on all of us (who were about size 5 back when that meant something). That earrings should be worn in threes, but none of the three should match. That multiple pairs of socks, of different colors, layered over one another and topped by shoes that channeled 1920s football boots looked good on anyone.
That the most boring thing in the world is dusting. (It turns out to be lying silent and stone still in your toddler's narrow bed at 8pm, uncomfortably pregnant, highly conscious of the fact that you have papers to grade and that if you make the slightest move to leave his room until he is completely asleep, this whole process will have to start all over. Closely followed by starting to grade those papers at 9pm.)
That the best place to read is in a tree.
That only babies and old people take baths.
That doing chores to loud music first thing on Saturday morning is a hardship.

The stuff we were (mostly) right about?

Boone's Farm Strawberry Wine. (It is gross. However, we don't have to drink it.)
That whatever you have to face, if you have at least one true friend to see you through, things will be fine on the other side. (Or, at least, finer than they were without that friend along for the ride.)
Leggings. (!)
That writing an outline before writing the paper is a stupid waste of time (because how are you supposed to know what your ideas are going to turn out to be until you've written the paper?)
That homemade macaroni-and-cheese is the best comfort food ever.

What goes on your lists?

Cozy Food

2011-11-01T20:27:00.000-04:00

There's a real bite in the air and frost on the grass every morning. In my book, that means it's time to start baking things, stewing things and making soup. In the last week, I've used a pound of butter in various breads, pies and crumbles. I've made a savory beef-and-mushroom pie, drunk good red wine and, tonight, concocted a soup that even the seven-year-old ate with relish. In case you need an easy soup that is satisfying (and that contains nothing they will pick around or moan about), I highly recommend the following.

Hearty Vegetable Soup with Cod

Combine the following ingredients in a stock pot. Bring to a boil, and then let simmer for approximately 20 minutes, or until potatoes and carrots are soft.

2 quarts water
2 Tbsp. good chicken bouillon
1 chopped onion
5-6 small red, russet, or gold potatoes (a combination is nice), chopped
3 small carrots, chopped
1 handful fresh spinach
4 cloves garlic
1/2 a yellow bell pepper, chopped bite-size
1/2 a red bell pepper, chopped bite-size
1 T. grated asiago or parmesan cheese

Season soup with the following, and then puree thoroughly with immersion blender until the mixture is very smooth.

1 tsp. thyme
good pinch salt
fresh ground black pepper

Adjust seasoning to taste. Then add to the pot:

1 pound cod, cut into bite-size pieces

Turn heat off, and leave pot covered, while you sautee the following in a small amount of olive oil, just until the peas are cooked, making sure to leave everything nice and crisp.

1/2 a yellow bell pepper, chopped bite-size
1/2 a red bell pepper, chopped bite-size
2 cups sugar snap peas (or other pea pods; or 1 cup shelled peas)

Check to make sure cod is cooked through. Then dump veggies into soup, and serve.

The soup broth becomes lovely and creamy with the potatoes for a base, and the richness of so many different vegetable flavors is delicious. It was a very nice contrast to the thick bites of cod and few crisp floating veggies.

The beautiful thing about this recipe is that as long as you make sure you have a good mixture of veggies simmering to make the broth nice and rich, you can vary what you choose to puree versus leave whole, depending on what the pickiest in your family will/won't eat in soup. I don't think any kind of peas in pods will puree nicely, so if your household won't eat pea pods, I'd recommend using shelled peas. Also, you could easily substitute shrimp, scallops, or some other firm fish for cod, as well as use other veggies that you like.

All you have to do is procure a crusty loaf to serve alongside, and delicious fall dinner is ready in almost no time.

Dual Citizens?

2011-10-27T08:36:00.001-04:00

Daily, with diligence if not enthusiasm, my children pledge allegiance to the Republic of Witchistan.

Mind you, they also pledge allegiance to the United States of America.

They do not seem to be bothered by--or even really to notice--the potential conflict of pledging allegiance to two nations simultaneously.

I would say that perhaps they've reconciled this in their own minds thanks to the whole "one nation, under God" bit. But I'm pretty sure that they haven't thought this through that thoroughly.

Or even really at all.

While it's funny to hear a five-year-old solemnly repeating this pledge over and over in your bed in the dark of the early morning (where "funny" = a better way to wake up than being poked in the ribs by the tiny-but-extraordinarily-pokey toes of the same five-year-old), it also makes you stop and think.

Actually, it made her stop and think. "What's justice?" she asked me this morning. I explained it meant fairness. "Oh," she said, murmuring her way through another rendition, "...with liverty and justice for all."

"Do you know what liBerty is?" I asked, emphasizing the B, so as to help remind her that we weren't talking about internal organs here.

"No," she replied, not really concerned at all.

"It means freedom," I said. "So, 'with liBerty and justice for all' means the country is supposed to have freedom and fairness for everyone."

She seemed unimpressed. Or at least, uninspired. I suppose it is difficult, at age five, growing up in a comfortable house and going to a good school where all the kids have their own desks and plenty of paper and the ones whose home breakfasts are scant or non-existent have a supplement from the school, to imagine a world in which freedom and fairness are NOT inalienable rights.

All the more reason, in my mind, for the teachers who are dutifully drumming this pledge into my kids' heads to do something to explain it to them. To give them a mini history lesson once a week. To explain why this pledge was written, why the flag is an important symbol.

At the very least, to explain to them that they do not, in fact, live in the Republic of Witchistan.

On Homework

2011-10-15T20:59:00.000-04:00

Partway through the year in Mrs. Zawarski's first-grade class, I was already a pretty good reader. And I was bored. A lot. When we did worksheets, we sat quietly at our desks until everyone was done. I was usually among the first to finish, and so I spent a lot of time just sitting at my desk. Quietly. Doing not much of anything that I can recall.

...Thankfully, once I entered second grade, I was allowed to check out books from the library--and after that, I was never bored because I always had a book tucked into my desk. But that was still a year away...

At one point, I tore a little scrap of paper from the corner of something, and penciled a tiny note. "Please give me some homework," it read. I stood up, and silently delivered it to the teacher while other children were still finishing their worksheets.

Mrs. Zawarski looked at the note, smiled at me, and said, "We don't have homework in first grade." And then she dismissed me by looking away. There was nothing I could say in response to her definitive claim, and so I wandered back to my seat. That was that.

Fast forward thirty-plus years.

I have a kindergartner of my own.

Last week, this was her homework:

1 short, repetitive book to read aloud daily
2 handwriting pages
a non-fiction book I was supposed to read aloud to her, and to which she is supposed to record her response in a journal
2 math pages done in class, to complete and/or correct the incorrect problems
a set of number-recognition flash cards to quiz on (preferably daily)
a set of sight-word flash cards to quiz on (preferably daily)
"sharing" items to bring in, that start with the letter of the week
an activities sheet to check off, indicating how many activities she did this week that start with the letter F

She is five. Let me repeat: in kindergarten.

Actually, broken down over the course of a week, this is probably half-an-hour to forty-five minutes of work each day. That doesn't seem like much, I realize. And I am not complaining, exactly.

But I am wondering: is it better (i.e. more productive for her? more likely to result in her learning these concepts) for her to do this rote work or for me to read her three books every night before bed? Because since kindergarten started, we're lucky if there's one book before lights-out any more.

Is it more useful for her to drill numbers or to bake with me and count scoops of flour, measure, pour, and begin learning the basis of fractions as we do all these things? Because we don't have time for baking during the week now that we have this homework to do.

I'm sure we're not the only family in the school whose kids like to rake leaves and jump in them, bike around the cul-de-sac with their friends, take the dog for walks, dig in the garden, paint pictures, have a dance party in the kitchen, or play board games while eating popcorn.

But between the after-school care a few days a week, and the ONE day per week (I made sure all the activities were centralized this year) that we go to ballet, soccer and skating (not everyone does every activity), it's not possible both to do homework and to play on the same day after school. Really.

And I'm not quite sure that missing out on playing is a very good idea. Isn't it through play that we learn to invent stories? We build narratives about what our dolls are doing in the doll house. We create back-stories for the pictures we paint. We invent relationships between our puppets, our lego guys, ourselves ("You be the puppy, and I'll be the owner -- [tossing a ball] FETCH!") Through play with others, we learn to share, to compromise, to negotiate. Through play on our own, we learn to be self-sufficient, imaginative, capable of feeling happy in our selves.

Through play, we flex our muscles and our minds.

There is something I fear we are losing through all this homework. I'm sure my daughter will be a good reader by the time she enters first grade. But I also want her to be a happy child, a creative spirit, able to entertain herself, willing to try new activities, able to invent activities to fill the stretches of time that inevitably crop up in our lives. Stretches that used be every single Monday-Friday afternoon from 3-6pm, and every weekend, and all summer, but now are shrinking to the point where they feel like precious stolen moments rather than daily life.

Yesterday, a friend came home from school with Son. They played football in the yard while Daughter painted. They came in and set up the iPod (volume: loud) to make a dance party in the kitchen. The friend saw Daughter painting at the kitchen table and wanted to paint too. So they all painted, while bobbing up and down to the music in their chairs. They took my challenge to create whole paintings using nothing but dots, which led us to look up examples of pointillism online.

It was an impulsive, active, completely delightful afternoon. They might have learned something in the process. But more importantly, they had such a good time that it was almost a shock when dinner-time was suddenly upon us.

I want days like that to be de rigeur. But I fear they will be the glittering highlights, the random special moments we manage to tuck between the trudging days of flashcards, like occasional brave stars shining through on a cloudy night.

Presumably, the homework only gets to be more intense as the grades progress. How to manage it while still enabling the kind of creative, open-ended free time I think is so important for children's development will surely grow to be a bigger conundrum. Any tips you have would be gratefully appreciated.

Balance

2011-10-01T11:00:00.001-04:00

"Stupid dog," I mutter under my breath. The shrill-barking beagle, the one who will not stay off the furniture, is still in his crate downstairs. He cannot hear my invective, though certainly we can hear his baying. And it is only day two of dog-sitting.

"What did you say?" my son asks.

"Oh, nothing," I reply, vaguely too ashamed to have to repeat my frustration in a louder, clearer voice.

"Because I thought you said he was a stupid dog," my son adds, snuggling deeper under the comforter in the chill of the fall morning. "He's not really a stupid dog," he says, speaking slowly, as if feeling his way into his idea, "it's probably really hard to stay in a place where all the rules are completely the opposite of the rules where you normally live."

He is seven, this sage of mine.

I hug him close, affirming how deeply correct he is. "Yes," I say. "I need to have more patience with him. You are absolutely right."

I can hardly believe that here, with his head pressed into the hollow of my shoulder, his feet are approaching my own. How many more of these pre-dawn conversations do I have left? How many months before he sleeps through this precious half-hour, this sliver of our day in which we can talk freely about his interests, his fears, his triumphs, the difficulties he faces at school? In which we can listen to, and really hear, each other?

I wrap my arms around his sinewy child self, breathing deeply the smell of his hair, where still lingers the scent of the baby he used to be. How quickly will this child, who has his own ideas now about how his hair should be cut, outgrow wanting to talk to his mama first thing in the morning?

This fall, he suddenly seems to me to be poised on the edge of older-child-hood. Recently, he is shy of telling me he loves me too as he walks out the door to meet the school bus, though he is also still child enough to look me full in the face, smiling, and tell me he won't tell me he loves me because that laughing defiance is our code for the start of a tickle retaliation. He is wise--wiser than I am sometimes about matters that require patience and empathy, as he innocently reminds me on this chill fall morning. And he is silly--silly enough to squabble with his sister about who gets which bowl of berries at snack time.

I marvel at the balance he maintains. Effortlessly standing on the mid-line between work and play, between the sunshine of sudden full-face smiles and the brooding moodiness of an older child, between observations whose insight stuns me and pouting petulance over having to eat the meat he has been served at dinner.

He is balanced. To perfection. Precisely in the spot between six-years-old and eight-years-old.

In my own efforts at balance, I have neglected this blog for the past four months. I have poured myself into exciting projects and unexpected opportunities that work has given me. I have read, and written, and thought, and read some more. In between that, I have been ice skating with my daughter, reading with my son, walking our new dog, laughing with my husband. I have helped a dear friend move away, and I have made a new friend in one who similarly felt the giant hole our Chicago-bound-girlfriend left behind. I have striven for a balance between work and play.

And while I have made great strides (yes, I can do a half-lutz! I am learning a scratch spin! my four-volume edited collection is nearly done! my daughter has started kindergarten! my son has started playing a new sport! my husband and I have had several real date nights!), I have missed writing here. And I have missed you, my online community. I've been reading your words, feeling somewhat bereft of my own. I have been keeping up with your lives as best I can, feeling my way towards that balance of living my own and not losing a sense of yours.

And so, I am back. I hope more regularly, though probably not every day. I need this kind of creative outlet. I need to write. And I need this sense of community.

Here I am then, trying to take a page from my son's book. Perfectly inhabiting his age, his present, his life, he is a better role model than many others I might identify right now. Balanced, almost effortlessly.

It feels a worthy goal, in this instance, to try to emulate a child.

"You'll see."

2011-05-28T20:32:00.002-04:00

I'm not one of those people whose favorite time of life was high school.

Yes, there are those people. I've met them. At forty, they are still able to make me feel fundamentally certain that I am not part of the Popular Crowd.

Early in high school, I was the bespectacled, quiet, geeky kid who did better than most people on most tests and didn't get into any trouble. Later in high school, I was the contact-wearing, quiet, geeky kid who did better than most people on most tests and didn't get into any trouble.

I had friends, but they were a small circle.

Okay, "they" were one person. "They" were my best and dearest friend, who has gotten me through every heartbreak and triumph of the last thirty years. She was the kind of bubbly, out-going, hilarious, hip, and small-enough-to-be-carried-around-by-joking-boys girl that I wanted to be. She had a million friends. By extension, because she and I were dubbed Siamee I and Siamee II since we were never apart, I had a million friends-ish. "Ish" because while I was went to most of the parties, I knew that had it not been for her, I would have been welcome at none.

High school wasn't awful. I wasn't tortured or a loner or a screw-up. I was captain of this and editor of that and had big parts in all the school plays. (Perhaps I can act; perhaps it's just that my mother is a professional seamstress who will donate untold hours of sewing to her daughter's high school drama club if they are putting on Pride and Prejudice--which contains five daughters, a friend, and two mothers, all of whom appear in five acts and need different dresses in each--and they have a $100 budget for costumes.) I had great days--days when my brush curling iron produced perfect wings in my hair, and I rocked two layered pairs of different colored socks and three giant mis-matched hoop earrings (obviously only my left ear was double-pierced). And I had terrible days--days when I described my favorite animal in two words in creative writing class ("huge and graceful," as whales are) and everyone laughed at me when we had to read the words aloud after being told that they described how we secretly saw ourselves.

High school wasn't awful. But it wasn't the best time of my life either.

There were long afternoons lying drowsily on the bottle-green carpet in my attic bedroom, chin resting on my fists, listening to Madonna's "Crazy for You" over and over and thinking despairingly of The Boy in art class who never showed interest in me.

There were countless moments that seemed to me to prove that I lived on the fringes of the high school world. The Ecology Club camp-out where I had to sleep in an Army Surplus sleeping bag instead of a North Face one, and I was the only camper in our squirrel's nest platform not to sneak out--or even to be invited to sneak out--to drink rum and cokes in the woods...the Junior Prom for which I had no date...the less tangible but no less certain sense that I was not "in," discernible in all those subtle-but-powerful ways that fifteen-year-olds have of constantly, inexorably reinforcing the pecking order.

The ache and the longing of teenage-hood surrounded me. I wanted to be more, to feel different. To feel beloved. Witty. Pretty. Confident.

In short, I was as insecure as everyone else, only without the mask of real Izod shirts and orange base makeup precisely following my jawline to suggest smug confidence.

Of course, there were suggestions that life promised more. Such as the day in the middle of sixth period when I ran into Kirk in the otherwise silent hall, and this macho, velvet-voiced star of the gospel choir stopped me dead in my tracks by unabashedly looking me up and down and then asking, "Do you have a boyfriend?"

"No," I managed to whisper back, heart pounding, half dreading whatever was coming next.

He gave his head a short, sorrowful shake. "Man," he breathed, turning the word into a swear, "the white boys at Decatur sure are stupid."

And then he kept walking, surely unaware how completely stunned I was by the sentence that had burst out of him. Unaware that no one, ever, had given me a compliment so raw and genuine as that. Both of us ignorant of the fact that twenty-five years later, I would remember that moment as if it had happened yesterday, and that his appraisal was somehow profound in its ability to begin a shift in my sense of self.

Moments such as that--moments when we can pinpoint a sea-change--are rare, indeed. It is stunning thus to see ourselves through another's eyes and suddenly feel the power of honesty, instead of all the uncertainty and cliques and media-induced self-deprecation and the rest of the baggage that we learn to carry around with us from a very early age. With a flash of clarity, we see that being Being Popular is not as satisfying as knowing ourselves for whom we truly are. And even if we do not manage to embrace this as a permanent truth, even if we drop into the self-doubt and longing and angst of being sixteen again (which we will, probably at 16 and 26 and 36 and beyond), those moments are etched indelibly within us and gently help to propel us forward through dark days.

It must be said, however, that these moments are not the sum total of high school. In fact, they are in many ways the antithesis of high school. Their unexpected flash may glow fleetingly, occasionally, during those years, but hardly in a sufficient sum to make high school the best of one's days.

I don't care how Popular you were. There is far too much worry...about zits and brand names and who saw you talking to whom during the halftime show and who would give you a ride home and whether your mom was the only one uncool enough to insist you get home at midnight from the seniors' graduation party when you were a junior and a thousand other things...to make high school the best of life.

And yet, despite the lack of confidence and the longing and the feeling of being not-quite-whole without knowing why, high school--even high school boys, who have a notoriously bad rap for lack of emotional maturity--can provide moments that are breath-taking in their ability to show you the future, if only you are wise enough to see it.

I looked into my old yearbooks recently, and I found an upside-down note from Joe. It contained the lines, "You are a very attractive, intelligent, good girl. You'll see." At the time, I have no idea what I thought that meant. I don't even remember reading it. But now, with the wisdom of retrospect, I know that Joe saw what I did not: that my lack of confidence was hampering me, that if I could only give myself a few years, and grow into college where the boys were a little less emotionally stupid, I might find that my brand of quiet was attractive to some. That all it would take was time for me to become the person I wanted to be. And that, for the moment, I desperately needed someone to notice me for who I already was. I was awestruck a few weeks ago when I read those sentences. Who knew a high school boy could be so perceptive?

I am still fundamentally certain that I am not part of the Popular Crowd. I know women whose glances and mannerisms remind me of that pecking-order fact every time I run into them at elementary school functions with our children. Though I did not know them in high school, I know they were the Popular Crowd back then.

And they know I was not.

But the thing I am happy to have realized is that, unlike them, I have no desire to relive high school--its great moments or its angst. I no longer wish I were the sort of bubbly, petite girl that joking boys could pick up and carry around on the grassy hillside at lunch. I am not her (though she is wonderful). I am instead someone who was--like most of us in high school--unable to see what I might become.

Now that I am forty, and I find myself actually becoming some of that, I am deeply grateful. Grateful that high school is over. And grateful that there are Kirks and Joes in the world, boys who are wiser than their years, who will help prop up the quiet, insecure girls in ways the girls themselves do not even clearly understand at the time.

I wish I knew where either one of them were today. I would like to tell them thank you. And that I finally see.

And that I hope my son offers up a sentence or two to a high school girl one day to let her know that someone truly sees her.

Finally! Crocs Perfect for a Four-Season Climate

2011-05-26T11:27:00.001-04:00

Well, the two-part verdict is in. The new lined Crocs are awesome. And four-year-olds are not the most eloquent marketers--though their enthusiasm is hard to beat.

Following is an interview with my preschooler, who was lucky enough to receive a pair of Crocs (in pink, of course) with their newest lining option. Ever since she received them, they've been her go-to shoe of choice.

What are Crocs good for?
If they don't have Crocs, they could use sandals for the beach. But instead of just sandals, they can use Crocs too for it. My Crocs are good for running. And playing at the beach. {Editor's note: we haven't been to the beach since last July, so I'm pretty sure this is the winter/grey springtime blues talking.}

What do you use your Crocs for now?
Now I use them lots of times when I am at school inside, and I use them for playing when it's warm out. {Of course, since we live in Michigan, it hasn't been warm out since last October. But see below for why I think they are great for indoor school play.}

What's the best part about your Crocs?
Playing at the sandy sandy beach. And when it's summertime I like to...hmmm...I'm still thinking about it...the best part of it is playing at school with it. {Ah, yes, the sandy sandy beach...}

What do you think about the color of your Crocs?
I like it. But I wish it could have a little purple and blue on it too. {Sorry, Crocs, that's what happens when you ask a four-year-old about color schemes. She wants all her favorites mixed together.}

Which Crocs do you like better? Your old ones without the lining or these new ones?
I love the ones with the linings because it keeps me comfortable.

She may not be the most flowery in her language, but rest assured, she loves these Crocs. If you have little feet in your house, here's my two cents about why you should get them these shoes too.

First, I love this new lining. It's not that heavy sherpa fleece, which I think looks ultra-warm and cozy but doesn't seem year-round useful to me. Instead, it's a cushiony lining that reminds me of the footbed of high-tech water shoes. It's thick enough to keep out the drafts while not being too hot. I would imagine that in summer, it will be the perfect solution to the problem of getting little bits of gravel and bark in her shoes on the playground, something that drives her crazy. And, when we do get to the beach, she will be able to use these, and the lining will clearly dry quickly.

Second, these are great preschool shoes for a winter climate, when the kids are pulling on their own snow boots for playground time and need an easy option for changing back to indoor shoes again. These are quick to get on and off (obviously), and the lining makes them warmer than traditional Crocs. So, they work year-round!

And finally, they come in great colors and seem to have more foot support than the traditional Crocs. What's not to love?

In fact, if my son didn't already have a new(ish) pair of Crocs, I would buy him some of these too.

Though I doubt he would find them quite as fashion-versatile as my daughter does. She especially likes to wear them with satin party dresses.

Disclosure: we were offered a free pair of Crocs of our choice to test-drive (test-run?) in exchange for posting a review. All opinions expressed here are our own.

I Can't Seem to Stop them Growing

2011-05-06T08:55:00.001-04:00

Son has lost six teeth. When I tuck him in at night, he doesn't always kiss me (though at least he always tells me he "loves me too"). When I pick him up at school wearing the hat he thinks is "stupid," he looks mortified and begs me not to wear that thing in the school. Of course, since he is only just seven, he whines this request.

He still crumples into tears when he gets truly hurt. He has lately taken to turning on the whine-and-cry faucet when the injustices practiced upon him by his pest of a little sister get to be too much.

And yet, there is no denying that my children are getting bigger. It is not just that I can hardly pick up Son or that the clothes that fit both of them in the fall are now perilously short in the legs and sleeves.

It is that they are growing up.

Son, I am realizing, has long conversations with his friends. Actual conversations. Because his best friend at school knew that Son's backpack zipper had broken, and so we had ordered a new one, but it was going to take a few days to arrive, and so he was carrying his boots and folder to school in a bag until the new backpack got here (and so on, in one enormous, breathless sentence). And she knew what he wanted for his birthday. He has friends who may well know things about him that I do not. He has connections and conversations and time that he spends over which I have no control.

Sure, he went to daycare and had hours at a time over which I had no direct supervision. But when I picked him up there, I could check the little chart on the wall to see what items of his lunch he ate (or not) or how long his nap was. He would chatter in the car all the way home about who said what, and who played with the truck first on the playground, and what tricks the visiting magician had done, and who didn't eat all of his fruit at lunch, and who had three time outs, and every other item he considered noteworthy of the day.

Now, I meet him at the school bus, ask him how his day was, and he murmurs, "good." When I ask him what he did, he responds, "I don't know." It's not that he can't have a conversation. In fact, he can have good ones about food or Star Wars or snowman building. But not about school. It's as if school is private. It's not that it's not going well. I get the sense, more, that it is that he has certain things he wants to keep to himself. That he doesn't want to share absolutely everything about his life. That he has a sense of independence at school, and that he wants to preserve that independence for himself.

Daughter, in her own right, is becoming more independent. She has recently announced, "I am going to do some art," and then gotten out her art box and spent two hours on her own, cutting and gluing and beglittering and decorating. She has firm ideas about what she wants to wear every day (a dress, "a pretty one," and no, a skirt is not the same as a dress, even though it also requires tights). The two of them can keep each other giggling for half an hour.

Make no mistake, they still need me plenty. "Mama!" she shouts from the bedroom, "Can you find me a show?" and that's my cue to go wield the remote through all the menus that require reading. "Mama," he beckons as I'm cooking dinner, "can you help me with these Legos?" "Mama," she whines, "he slammed himself in my face and closed the door and won't let me in." "MAMA!" he squawks, indignant, " she won't stop touching my airplane." And so on. They need me to mediate, to soothe boo boos, to help them read the directions, to keep them on task, to make their lunches and wash their clothes, to give them their special tucks in bed every night.

But I wonder sometimes how much longer they will snuzzle me in the morning. I worry that there may soon come a day when, instead of me asking them not to hang all over me, they suddenly do not want to sit on the same chair as I am using. I hope that I am teaching them kindness and empathy and a sense of emotional connection so that even when they outgrow their Mama adoration, they will not only still love their parents but be able to expand their hearts into loving other people as well.

But, oh, even as I admire their new skills (he will read to her! for an hour! she can ice skate! without holding onto anything!), I feel a little tug at my heartstrings for the babies melting away before my eyes.

Rude or Incompetent? You Be the Judge

2011-03-07T07:36:00.003-05:00

Today's rant is entitled: Seriously? Ten more steps is too far for you to walk pushing that completely empty grocery cart?

The title pretty much says it all, but I don't think one sentence constitutes a rant, so I'm just going to get it off my chest. People who are too lazy to walk their shopping carts to the cart corral and who leave them instead tucked on the lines that separate the parking spaces in the lot drive me crazy. You've just walked all over the entire grocery super store. Is it really that hard to spend thirty seconds walking to the nearest available cart corral? (And yes, you would get a pass if you get to park in the disabled section. But since I just saw you sashay out of the store and walk to the very far end of the row where you'd parked your shiny new car so no one would ding it, I know you can walk just fine.)

And also: If I bring in enough grocery totes to hold all my groceries, do you really think I want you to fill them half-full and then hand me a bunch of disposable plastic bags from your store, each containing no more than three items?

I realize that the flimsy plastic totes with the store logo on them can only hold three cans, but my bags are heavy-duty, with proper, sewn-on handles. They are large so that you can fill them with stuff. Two cans of soup, one head of lettuce and a loaf of bread does not constitute full. All of my vegetables could fit into that one bag that you stuffed with only five grapefruits, six apples, and one head of broccoli.

And, yes, I do care if you put my raw meat in with my fresh vegetables. Just because you can put a lot in each bag doesn't mean you have to be all food-poisoning-stupid about doing so. Here's a thought: fresh produce in one; cold and frozen goods in another; raw foods in a third; and cans in a the last one (like, maybe in that one that's got internal dividers separating it into columns that--shockingly!--are about the right size to hold cans). I even tried to help you out by separating my groceries into those clusters as I was putting them onto the belt and then leaving all the really light stuff for the end to tuck on top of the bags. So why did you put my bananas and tomatoes in with my cans of soup again?

And also: If I arrive at 9:30 for my 9:30 appointment, and I sit in a not-fully-closing sack of a gown for forty-five minutes on an exam table waiting for you to come in to see me, and you walk in at 10:20, I expect some kind of acknowledgment that you are running late. Especially since it's hard to imagine precisely what would constitutes a dermatological emergency that could make you run that late.

You check moles all day, dude. What could you possibly be doing in your first two appointments that would force you to need an extra forty-five minutes before getting to me?

I could have done all my grocery shopping in that amount of time.

With a preschooler in tow.

And bagged it myself. Just the way I like it.

The Birthday Party Principle

2011-02-18T14:09:00.000-05:00

At 9:30 this morning, the last load of laundry for the weekend went into the washer. 9:30am. On Friday.

The birthday present for the surprise party Husband and I are attending tonight? Was purchased and wrapped last Friday. One whole week early.

The new blouse I am going to wear? The black, silk, sleeveless, gorgeous, new blouse? I planned out the rest of the outfit last night, which includes even special "foundation garments" that have already been purchased and are just lying in wait.

[You know where this is going, don't you? You have that feeling of doom? The one I should have had when I realized everything was falling so nicely into place? Oh, yes, yes, you do.]

The fact that I kept forgetting to call the sitter, despite being so excited about an evening out with my husband at a swanky jazz club? Doesn't matter because my delightful neighbor offered to have the kids for a sleep-over with her son, and insisted that I bring them over an hour before we have to leave, so that I can have time to shower and do make-up and get ready like a proper grown up. And then the children will sleep over, so we not only don't have to pay a small fortune to a sitter: we also don't have to be home at any particular time, and we don't have to be worried that someone will creep into our room in the middle of the night...

By 1:00 this afternoon, I had spent an hour and a half volunteering at my son's school doing a creative and engaging art project with the class while teaching them about the great Louis Comfort Tiffany. The grocery shopping was all done and put away, and I had even organized the pantry to boot.

And then, at 1:23? It all came crashing down.

Hello, stomach flu. Not the slightest bit nice to see you. As much as my poor daughter hates you right now? I hate you even more.

It is a fair bet, however, that my son will not catch this bug from her. How do I know, you ask? Because he is supposed to attend a birthday party tomorrow. One for which there is no present as yet purchased, let alone wrapped. One for which I am not even sure the location and will certainly have to scramble to determine the where and when. And because we are completely unprepared for this party, nothing will stand in the way of his attendance.

Just as, because I am completely prepared for the jazz club birthday tonight, with its famous chef, and its grown up conversation, and its black silk attire, and its empty house afterwards, I will not be able to attend.

Because that is the Birthday Party Principle.

If you are the mother of a pre-schooler.

Signs of Love

2011-02-11T11:06:00.001-05:00

With the Holiday of Romance just around the corner, I've been thinking a lot about what constitutes the romantic.

Remember back in elementary school, where the litmus test of a good Valentine's Day was if the brown paper bag hanging on the back of your chair was pleasantly full? Back in those cruel days, not everyone's mother made them address a card to every kid in the class--so it was perfectly possible to have many more or far fewer cards than your classmates. The really really good cards came with a candy heart tucked into the envelope, and--if your own three hours of deep deliberation over who should get which card was any indication--those tiny bright pink stamped letters meant something. Sure, maybe Matt K. had tucked a candy heart into every Valentine he addressed, and maybe his mother (like yours) made him designate a card for each kid in the class, but surely the fact that the candy heart you received said "YOU'RE GREAT" meant he liked you. And not just liked you the way that he liked sandwiches, but liked you liked you. [Those sighs you hear in the background are the expression of the deep longings of the ten-year-old heart.]

And then at some point, paper bags taped on the backs of chairs were totally for babies.

And that year, Matt K. gave Kristen an actual Hallmark card. AND a flower. A real, live, long-stemmed carnation. [Those whooshing sounds you hear in the background are the wildfire-quick spreadings of twelve-year-old gossip.]

[That silence you hear is middle school. During which time no one knows anything about how to behave, in love or otherwise.]

In high school, Valentine's Day was saved from utter humiliation only by a circle of girlfriends who, thank goodness, understood the unspoken rule that it was deeply important to order Beta Club carnations to send to each other, so that by second period, all of you would be wearing multiple corsages. You were bedecked and therefore beloved. And if no boy had written any message on a Beta Club order form and chosen you a red flower, well, no one else was any the wiser. [If you listen carefully, you will hear the quiet ache of unrequited love beating beneath those giggles.]

Somewhere along the way, your notions of romance evolved (not coincidentally, the boys you liked evolved too, if "evolved" means "grew up a little"). They began to include long walks in snowstorms, stories read aloud to each other over the phone, mix-tapes, home-made chocolate cakes, large envelopes full of small papers covered in poetry.

And then, the epitome of romance: the unsigned Valentine. Tucked under your dorm-room door, this English tradition amazed you with its profundity. What could be more romantic than a small, home-made card containing a typed poem and a message of love and clever clues as to the identity of the sender? How about TWO such cards? Both unsigned. Both expressing admiration and a crush. Both leaving you to speculate about who among your circle was thus half-declaring himself? [That sparkle you hear is a young heart filling with the wonder of potential delight.]

As an adult, the love has been less tinged with mystery. It has been more deeply felt, no doubt--declared in an over-sized, wonderfully home-made Valentine of proposal; in sushi-dinner traditions; in cards expressing love and given on no particular date but just because it seemed a good day to say so. It has been more stable, less agonizing. More journey, less quest. [That hum you hear is the warmth of contentment.]

It cannot be denied that there was something perversely appealing in the mystery. That the uncertainty, while filled with ache, also carried the excitement of anticipation...the mystery of not knowing whether he liked you liked you or not...the mystery of wondering whether anyone, ever, would kiss you--especially if he would...the mystery of whether this one was the one.

The romance of the uncharted waters, like the unsigned Valentine, carried a wealth of potential.

[That crack you hear is the realization that potential does not always materialize.]

[That smile you hear is the realization that you do not ever have to be fifteen again.]

[That tearing you hear is the opening of a hand-made, crayon-lettered Valentine addressed to "Mama."]

[That deep breath you hear is the realization that signs of love, thankfully, abound in your life. And you do not ever have to be fifteen again.]

Happy Birthday, Charlie, Old Boy!

2011-02-07T15:17:00.000-05:00

Charles Dickens was born Feburary 7, 1812. If he were still alive, he'd be 199 years old. Since I read something written by him at least once every semester, he seems more "alive" to me than dead -- and I find it somewhat astonishing to be forced to recall that, in fact, his best work is over 150 years old. It's not like this makes me feel old; after all, I was never at any of the raucous parties at which he famously trotted out magic tricks or kept the entire company in stitches till 2am. But it does make me feel a little in awe of the fact that some authors can manage to write things that are still worth reading all that long time later. You may beg to differ, of course. Especially if you are no fan of nineteenth-century prose. But if you love a madcap, eccentric character, or a detailed description so vivid you can see the place as if it were right before your eyes, you have to love at least bits of Dickens's work.

Though I have nothing particularly profound to say today about the man himself, I thought I would repost something I wrote about him two years ago, which might make you laugh. Some of the items on this list (Dickens's Facebook meme) will be funnier if you've ever read any of his novels -- and some of them suggest he wasn't just a chuckling old grandfatherly type. But there's truth to be found buried in the criticism, I'd wager, and I'm not sure even the old boy himself would disagree. So, without further ado, I give you:

Twenty-Five Things About Me;
Being But an Incomplete List of the Idiosyncrasies that Together Form the Better Part of One Man's Existence in the Present Age

by Charles Dickens

Author of The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, Martin Chuzzlewit, Hard Times, David Copperfield, &cetera, and Editor of Household Words

1. My life has been filled with the best of times. (The worst of times I choose not to mention.)

2. When I was a child, my father called me "Chuckles," in jesting reference to my less than enthusiastic reaction on being taken from school and sent to work in a blacking factory to help pay his debts.

3. The schoolmaster Mr. M'Choakumchild is based on a real teacher in my grammar school, who did his best to educate me according to his own philosophy (until I was sent to work in a blacking factory). I found his real name, Mr. Gentlesweet, to be odiously inappropriate. I am of the opinion that a name should reveal something accurate of a man's character.

4. And that children should not be sent to work in blacking factories.

5. I feel a desperate urge to throw stones every time I visit the Crystal Palace Exhibition. However, my friend Wilkie argues even I could not excuse such behavior in an immense glass-house by blaming the sparrows, which are an avowed annoyance. Pity.

6. I have a particular fondness for an elegant turn of phrase; and find that a descriptive passage, when once properly constructed, veritably takes on a life of its own and brings before the reader a vision of such power and vividness as to render him almost breathless.

7. I am paid by the page for my prose.

8. I have never read the whole of Bleak House.

9. My mother was a pretty, silent, persevering, delicate, loving, little thing. Had it not been for my father, she would have been quite perfect.

10. I would like to write more romantic scenes in my fiction and cannot fathom why I am unable to do so successfully.

11. My wife, Catherine, has chosen lilac for the drawing-room. I cannot abide lilac. I am not convinced she has considered this carefully as a means of torturing me; however, she is nothing but indifferent to the tremendous strains and pressures of my extensive work obligations.

12. I like my slippers just so, and my pipe already filled when I retire to the drawing room of an evening. Catherine cannot seem to recall this. I suspect laziness on her part.

13. I have lately lost my ninth child, a sweet infant called Dora, and am most crushed by the loss.

14. My other children are some comfort, but Catherine is positively useless. I cannot think why she is not more supportive of me in my grief. Certainly it affects my writing.

15. I am partial to hand-cut swan quill pens, constructed of right-wing feathers. I do not feel it is too much to ask that my desk be prepared accordingly before I come down to write of a morning.

16. Catherine cannot manage this either. I cannot fathom what she does all day long to make such a simple thing impossible to recall.

17. Once and for all, David Copperfield is not myself. The fact that he is sent to work in a bottle factory, having been removed summarily from school at the age of ten despite his promising intelligence, is merely coincidence.

18. I am of the opinion that every man would do well to mature far beyond the child he once was.

19. I find gruel abhorrent and would rather take nothing at all.

20. I strongly resist attending any dinner party that I reasonably suspect will not end with several games at charades and at least one impromptu set of magical tricks.

21. I have asked my publishers to withhold all mail suggesting plot changes for my novels while they are running serially. Having once been coerced by popular opinion to alter the outcome of a novel, much to my own dissatisfaction, I have sworn firmly to resist such influence forevermore.

22. In my experience, Americans have an ill-formed sense of humour when it comes to considering themselves. However, they have a quite proper respect for fame.

23. I once had an aunt who could not abide donkeys on the village green. She would chase them off with sticks. I used to lure donkeys to the village green with carrots, just to watch her emerge running from her house in her enormous turban (the headwear that had been fashionable in her youth, and that she saw no reason to change on a sudden whim after forty-years' passage of time).

24. I am unaccountably timid of railway travel.

25. I find David Copperfield to be the funniest of the productions of my pen and will be much gratified if the public adjudges it likewise. I should so like to be remembered as a man who could make people laugh.

Blizzard Schmizzard

2011-02-02T11:12:00.000-05:00

I know all you meteorologists out there will beg to differ on a technicality, but the Detroit verison of "Snowpocalypse 2011" really is a huge let down. Oh, sure, somewhere around 2am, it was a justifiable blizzard here--all crazy high-pitched wind and snow being hurled at the house so hard it sounded like furious sleet. But the net result is something like six or eight inches of snow cover, which, any way you shovel it, is pretty anti-climactic.

It's hard to tell precisely how much snow we got because the wind sent it drifting to such an extent that it was about four inches deep along the entire length of our driveway on the south side, and eight or ten inches deep along the north side.

So, I guess that counts as some kind of cool blizzard-y phenomenon.

But it's hardly something to write to my sister about. You know, the sister who lives in the Boston area. The one whose house saw 68" of snow in January alone. The one who, without a snow-blower, has been routinely removing 14" or 22" or 26" of snow from her driveway. The one who lost her five-year-old a few times the day they went out to shovel the snow off the back deck because they were worried about how deep it was getting. Lost her. In the snow drifts.

I look out my window, and it just looks like a snowy day. I can't see the grass. The margins between driveway, yard, and street are completely erased in a sea of undifferentiated white. I find it pleasant to be visually marooned this way, drinking coffee laced with heavy cream (I have decided any other kind of coffee is pointless), and reading and writing at my desk. I like the sensation of winter stillness, the muffle of passing cars, the slow sifting downward of heavy flakes.

The stiffness in my back attests to the fact that shoveling this morning was much more work than it has been recently. But NOAA photos notwithstanding,

Cloud cover over the US as of yesterday afternoon. No small storm system.

I basically feel cheated.

I was all excited for a real, honest-to-goodness, two feet of snow, no one's going anywhere in a hurry, kind of blizzard. I've never been in that kind of snowstorm before, and it sounded fun. (I know, everyone on the East Coast is throwing rotten tomatoes at me right now. Sorry.) It sounded like an adventure.

The word blizzard is vaguely thrilling. Dangerous sounding. Enticing.

We basically got eight inches of snow with the promise of a few more today.

There's a word for that too.

It's winter.

Not that I don't like winter. (See above.) I was just hankering for its more exciting cousin--as I was promised.

The moral? Don't believe the Weather Channel hype.

The good news? Since I long-ago learned that most meteorologists could do with a good dose of look-out-the-window-occasionally-buddy, I sort of already knew that about the Weather Channel. Hence: I didn't run out to the store yesterday in a panic for milk, eggs, or other "essentials" -- so at least I don't have to eat spaghetti-o's for the next two days.

Memo

2011-01-17T07:12:00.004-05:00

To: Everybodee
From: Grover
Re: Alone and Together

Hello, Everybodee! This is your furry pal Grover speaking. I am here to talk to you today about Alone and Together.

Alone is when you are all by yourself. You see, here I am, alone. All by myself. Alone.

Together is when you are with someone. You see, here I am, together with my friend Elmo. We are so happy together in our superhero outfits.

Let's practice this again.

Alone.

Together.

Alone.

Together.

Got it? Very good. You are very smart.

Now, let's talk about some times that it is good to be alone. I'll bet your Mommy could tell you some of those.

It is good to be alone when you are on the potty. It is true. (Are you laughing? That is okay.)

It is good to be alone when you are on the telephone.

It is good to be alone in the middle of the night in your very own big-kid bed, when you are sleeping so nicely and not waking anyone else up.

It is good to be alone when you are in the shower because you cannot hear the questions anyone asks you when the water and shampoo are in your ears. Also, you cannot fix any problems because you are all wet!

It is good to be alone when you are reading a book to yourself very quietly and just want to think about the words in your own head.

Now, can you think of some times when it is good to be together? I'll bet your Mommy knows the answer to this one too!

It is good to be together when you are out shopping with a grown-up who does not want to lose you.

It is good to be together when you are having dinner with your family and talking about your day.

It is good to be together when you are reading stories out loud and laughing at the funny bits.

Okay, so, do you understand alone and together now? You do? Very good. Can you tell me all about alone? Wait...where are you going? To be with your Mommy? Isn't she on the phone right now? That would be together...not alone...wait...come back...I thought you were going to tell me about alone...

And now, here I am. Grover. All alone.

Perhaps I should also teach you about near and far.

Old Dog, New Tricks

2011-01-07T12:49:00.002-05:00

This week, I have embraced the fact that one of the perks of being a grown up is that you can take charge of your own life and do that thing you always wanted to do but never got around to doing.

For me, that thing is learning how to ice skate. And I don't mean any old wobbling my way around the rink in slow circles, either. I mean really ice skate. With jumps and spins and grace and footwork and rhythm and soaring speed. And maybe even with music.

I started lessons when I was about six, making my way through the first four levels of figure skating basics in a year or so, until my mother got tired of the long drive to the rink, my sisters got old enough to want to do activities too, and somehow we all switched over to dance. Ballet was fine. Tap was fine. But neither of them gave me that sense of freedom, of flying, like ice skating had.

As I got older, I would go skating with friends whenever the chance presented itself (which wasn't very often in Georgia). Mostly, I traced endless circles on our quiet street in my roller skates, perfecting my limited skills, pretending asphalt was ice, dreaming of sparkly skirts that floated enticingly around powerful legs skimming effortlessly over the frozen ground.

Preparing to go off to college, I had a $100 prize that I'd won from my high school and, bound for Vermont, I bought myself a good pair of ice skates with the money. This seemed at once an extravagance and an absolute necessity. I took ice skating to fulfill my PE requirement. I went to the rink during open practice sessions and glided around on the ice to my heart's content. It felt like coming home.

My sophomore year, I discovered the water trap in the golf course that backed up to campus, and--armed with a borrowed cafeteria tray--I cleared its frozen surface of snow. One thing about winters in Vermont: if it's not snowing, it's brilliantly sunny. So it didn't take more than a few days for the surface I'd cleared to become as smooth as glass. All that winter, whenever I felt stressed or in need of a little solitude, I went out to my own private rink and dipped and soared and imagined that I had the grace of ballerina and the skills of an Olympian.

In truth, I had neither. But I could skate smoothly and fast, do a few minor tricks. And I could, in my mind's eye, perform brilliantly. At the ideas of ice skating, I was second to none. My body felt one with the skates; the peace, the utter rightness of the way it felt to move across the frozen surface, were incomparable.

By the time I started graduate school, I could manage a wobbly spin or two, a basic waltz jump. It somehow didn't surprise me that I ended up living on a street that bordered a wonderful park whose pond system was kept cleared all winter for skating. There was a loop for speed skaters, an area for hockey practice, and sections for those of us who just wanted to glide and dream of what we might do, if only anyone had ever taught us how. That first winter, the cold hit hard and fast, and I learned the miracle of black ice: ponds frozen so quickly that the ice was perfectly clear to a depth of two feet or more. Apart from starburst fissures below the surface--like comets with fantastical tails frozen in time--the ice was clear and glassy, with a surface smoother than any Zamboni could ever have produced. That winter, I must have skated miles, forwards, backwards, in giant arching loops, feeling a combination of exhilaration and intense longing. My body, unfettered by shoes, unmoored from its usual pace, felt poised to take flight. And yet, I could only manage three-turns and crossovers, the entrance to a spin, but not a lovely spin itself. Icebound, afraid to trust my body to the air, I did not jump but only glided along dreaming of jumping.

Until last fall, it had been years since I went ice skating. And then, on a whim, I bought some skates--new for me, used for Daughter--and we started going weekly to the rink that's five minutes from our house. She got to the point where she could toddle across the ice without holding onto anything, and I found my rhythm again. I hit that stride where I could hear the music, feel the power and the grace, sense the longing for more.

And so, I signed us both up for lessons.

In twenty-five minutes this past Tuesday, an instructor managed to correct half a dozen problems I was having, showing me how lifting up through my ribcage here, or twisting more there, or being conscious not to flick my heel at that point, would change everything. There are no other adults signed up for lessons at 10am on a Tuesday. The preschoolers are all clad in snowpants and helmets, marching around, leaning down to pick up stuffed toys as a ploy to practice their balance while shifting their weight. Wee ones with hockey sticks in hand smack at pucks they can only send scuttering six feet across the ice.

And at one end of the rink, a forty year old woman in black sport pants dips and glides, guided by the first real skating instructor she's had in thirty-odd years.

The eight levels of Figure Skating Basics are condensed to four for adults; it turns out that I already have all the skills of the first two, so she will starting testing me through level three next week. The instructor told me we will move on to some ice dancing. I think this is code for, "you're too old to manage those gravity-defying jumps the young whippersnappers are practicing"--since ice dancing is all about footwork and grace rather than mind-blowing tricks--but I'm okay with that. I told her I would like to get to the point that I can manage some basic spins, perhaps a jump or two, but I have no desire to break anything.

I spent two hours practicing yesterday and could feel the difference in my skating just from that first lesson. To be sure, I had to take some ibuprofen for my aching knees last night, but that did absolutely nothing to mute the glorious freedom of movement that still clung to me from the morning.

There may not be glittery, floating skirts in my future; I will never be an Olympian; but finally, as a grown up, I am going to learn to do what all my life I have longed to do--come as close to flying as is humanly possible, given that we don't have wings.

2011: The Tentative Steps Version

2011-01-02T21:12:00.000-05:00

2010 was a pretty good year.

On Son's part, there was a lot of tooth loss--mostly of the natural causes variety--and much learning to read. He matured enough to tell me, one night as I praised him for helping out his sister after he'd inadvertently upset her, "yeah, I've been trying to do that more, figure out how to make it better when I accidentally mess up." And his exponential vocabulary increase (thanks, reading!) was matched by a real growth in both wit and timing. At 6 1/2, he became fully capable of a slight eye roll and a withering tone, as he (correctly, if none too sympathetically) informed his little sister, "You don't have to answer that. It was just a rhetorical question."

For Daughter's portion, her grace and creativity have blossomed. She can occupy herself for hours with art projects. She walks on tiptoe to the bathroom to brush her teeth, her arms slowly fluttering up and down, and informs me, "this is how ballerinas walk everywhere." She is beginning to get the idea of spelling and of counting past 20. She, too, is a master of the dry retort. "Mama, look, I wrote you a note," she said not long ago, handing me a tiny piece of paper covered with scribbles and curlicues. "Oh, thank you, sweetie!" I exclaimed. "What does it say?" She gave me her own version of the withering glance (perhaps learned from her big brother) and replied, "I don't know. I can't read cursive."

They have both become better helpers around the house.

Quite suddenly, they are a pleasure to take out to restaurants.

They eat mushrooms.

Just at the bitter end (New Year's Eve), they suddenly became old enough and self-sufficient enough that I overheard one of them--while bickering over some issue that I did not have to go referee--trot out for the very first time perhaps the most hallowed sentence of sibling-dom, "I don't have to: you're not the boss of me!"

In so many ways, they are children instead of babies or toddlers or even preschoolers (though she, technically, is still a preschooler).

And so, with a start, I am finding myself reevaluating myself too. I no longer have to help anyone clean up after themselves post-potty. I don't have to dress anyone. I don't always have to supervise or referee. I have time; they have some independence; and so I find myself emerging from the cocoon of mother-martyrdom and towards some other kind of grown up existence.

This is not to cast aspersions on the years of being physically connected to children. I would not trade those years, even the really really hard parts of them, for anything. But it is to marvel in the fact that now, they no longer need to cling to me...and to ponder the what next?

It's not as though everything is changing in one fell swoop. Mine is still the lap they seek out, the hand they reach for, the goodnight kiss they request. But I feel like I have more air to breathe, more time in which to breathe it, and the space to recover those parts of me that were lost in bleary-eyed night feedings, the endless redirections away from danger, the diapers, and the exhaustion of small, incessant voices asking Why?

And so my goal for 2011 is to find those parts of me that I have lost along the way. To reclaim my body as not only maternal but also womanly and to feel at home in that body once again. To spend more time on my emotional life and on my marriage. To pursue my academic goals in a more sustained and conscious way, rather than haphazardly and in snatched moments that feel stolen from time I "ought" to be spending with the children. To model for my children what it means to be focused and driven, and still empathetic and deeply involved with one's family. To love them enough to let them spend a little time making their own mistakes, and to pick them up afterwards, brush them off, and take them out for ice cream.

To figure out, in short, how to be a mother to children who--almost without my noticing--have suddenly reached a point where they do not need me every minute of the day.

And to remind myself of that it is all right to be a woman who defines herself in ways that encompass, but are not completely bounded by, her children.

Things I Ponder

2010-12-28T09:28:00.000-05:00

If I walk around all day in heels (this usually only happens when I'm teaching, so I'm on my feet a lot), my calf muscles hurt by the time I get home at night. Does this mean I can say I've been exercising all day long?

How is it possible to be too tired to do anything productive but too awake to go to bed?

Why do home highlights last 2-3 weeks and salon ones last twice as long (or more)?

Who invented pockets in jersey/microfiber pants, and why? All they do is ruin the line of your clothes and make unsightly wrinkles. And provide you with an excuse to use the phrase "unsightly wrinkles" which, really, doesn't get used often enough.

Why do children who are overtired, and hence hyper-sensitive to being touched, insist on remaining within four square inches of each other and then whining that they are being touched and don't like it?

How late can you send out Happy New Year! cards without being completely ridiculous if, just hypothetically mind you, you didn't send out Christmas cards but would like to write personal notes to friends who live far away that you don't get to see very often? If you get them mailed before New Year's Eve, even though they will arrive after the New Year hits, is that still considered acceptable?

Got answers? I'll take them...

In Love (aka: All I Want for Christmas is this Gorgeous Stuff I Don't Really Need)

2010-12-22T22:45:00.000-05:00

I have just discovered the J. Peterman Catalogue.

I know. I know. I should realize that I have known about this since the 1980s, thanks to Seinfeld.

But here's the thing: while I knew that "Elaine Benis" worked for a guy who actually in real life had a catalogue full of luxury products described in impossibly purple prose, I never bothered to look at the catalogue. And then, the other day, one arrived in the mail.

And I fell in love with this dress

And this coat

And this skirt

And this blouse

And then I realized that there is a prerequisite to owning thousands of dollars of such luscious clothing (other than the bank account): I need a fancier life. A life in which I need beaded flapper dresses and opera coats or sexy, silky halter-backed tops...a life that still has sweet, small children in it, but that is centered in some major city, with the time and connections to take advantage of all manner of sartorial elegance.

I don't have such a life. And I don't need such clothes. But, oh, isn't it a lovely holiday fantasy that there is a party somewhere, for which an engraved invitation with my name on it is about to be mailed, and to which I will need to wear something magnificent? Something with the alluring swish of beaded fringe...

Ah...

Corners of Minds

2010-11-30T19:12:00.001-05:00

Did you ever--if you are female--listen to a boy/man watching a sporting event and wonder how on earth he knew all that stuff about where the player had gone to college and how many touchdowns he'd scored last season and what his RBI was and all that other sports trivia that seems completely impossible to keep in mind?

To me, that stuff always seemed hopelessly complex, relatively useless, and difficult to retain. Like, say, memorizing numerical codes for colors or something else equally mundane.

But here in my own house lately, I can see the process starting. Son has long loved watching sports with his dad. Last year, his questions were all about the rules of the game. This year, he's moved on to asking about strategies. But in addition, he is suddenly, without any apparent effort, absorbing the kind of sports knowledge that his father manages to retain without even trying. Son has known, for most of this college football season, not only the rankings of key teams we care about (mostly Wisconsin's Badgers), but also who else needed to win or lose what other games in order for Wisconsin to move up in the rankings. He knows not only the names of key players--even on rival teams--but also what numbers they wear on their jerseys, how many points they scored last week, and what the most outstanding plays of the games were then, so that he knows what to watch out for now.

His mind is a font of "trivia" about scores, players, averages, teams, rankings, plays, and who had an easy week.

I no longer find it mind-boggling how men know this stuff because the answer is suddenly crystal clear: they know it because their fathers taught them how to learn it back when they were in first grade, so that by the time they were in high school, accumulating that knowledge and filing it away in the proper places for easy recall was simply second nature.

Sort of like the way that I can talk on the phone, fold laundry, pack tomorrow's school bags for each kid who has different supplies, and log a reminder about the dentist appointments all at the same time. Or how I can hold in my head who has dance/sports/library/gym/art on what days, and what time I have to show up for Motor Moms the second week of December, and whose birthdays need buying for, and the dates I need to mail out stuff for Hanukkah as opposed to Christmas, and when Son has run out of pants and needs more laundry done, and what size snow boots everyone needs this year, and whether it's time to buy more stamps or not.

It's not that I think men couldn't hold these things in their heads. In fact, unlike me, Husband is particularly good at remembering the random things we need at the grocery story--you know, the things that we only buy once in a blue moon, so they're out of the regular route through the store. I contend that I have a harder time remembering these things because I am always shopping with one or two kids in tow, so I am distracted, whereas he goes to the store alone, on his way home from work. But the truth is, I'm a hopelessly bad at remembering the random groceries we need.

On the other hand, I can shop for the holidays and remember all the appointments for a whole family full of people with little trouble--all while doing at least two things at the same time because doing only one thing at a time is a waste of time.

I think, the older I get, that it is simply a matter of priorities: a human brain only has so much space for the leftovers. You know, the things that are tiny and not part of any bigger picture. Stuff like: pick up the dry-cleaning, order Mom flowers, and schedule your annual exam now because you know the doctor always books three months out and you are due for one in March.

And some people choose to fill those corners and crevices of their minds with the tiny tasks that occupy the "idle" moments of the day, with reminders and lists and keep-the-family-running-smoothly minutia, while other people choose to fill those corners with batting averages and running records, scores, ranks and plays.

We could call this a gendered choice, and in some ways in our culture it is. We are more likely to find women adept at multi-tasking and men adept at sports facts. But it's certainly not the case that we each wouldn't be capable of the other, were we only interested in it. I know plenty of women sports fans who know all this stuff; I just am not interested enough in sports to bother tucking away those facts into the limited number of brain cells I have available for more important things like which day of the week is the next Drinks Night out with my friends. And I know men who do the bulk of the family-appointment-planning-detail-oriented stuff (though, admittedly, not as many as I know women who are fonts of sports knowledge).

Still, I do find it fascinating to realize that there is no question that the gender acculturation happens early: Son is addicted to sports, and to spending time with Daddy, while Daughter is more interested in art and would rather come cook with me than watch a game of any kind on TV. And, without meaning to, we reinforce this by taking Son out to play sports during halftime, while keeping Daughter in to help bake the cookies. And by teaching through example: Mama isn't that interested in sports, so Daughter isn't either.

It would bother me, this realization that I am apparently inculcating gender stereotypes into my children already at this tender age, and despite the fact that I resist doing so as much as I can. However, I also know that my boy loves to read and is a wonder at sympathy, while my daughter is physically fearless and strong. So I've decided to let the sports fandom slide. Daddy and Son can watch their games on the weekend; Daughter and I will do "projects" of every description instead.

But I am determined that somehow, through all of this, I will teach this boy to multi-task too. After all, why on earth would you spend half an hour on the phone without getting all that laundry folded at the same time?

On Letters

2010-11-23T20:42:00.000-05:00

Do you remember, back in the day, when if you wanted to get in touch with someone who didn't live in your town, you wrote a letter? This required an actual pen, and paper, and time. You needed the quiet of an afternoon and a table in a sunny corner, or a blustery evening and a comforting mug of tea, or a wintery morning with the flakes softly falling and the coffee brewing. You needed the physical and emotional space to compose. You had to be able to think about what you wanted to say and how you wanted to say it. More than that, you wanted to be able to think about what you wanted to say and how to say it. You actually spent time crafting your prose--or, at the very least, writing complete sentences in which one might find attention even to obscure grammar rules like not ending with a preposition.

You couldn't just dash off a quick three lines, hit "send"and have an answer by 2pm. Sure, if you were alive in 1845 in London, you could do that. Back then, the post came three times a day, and you could send a letter across town at 10am inviting someone to dinner and know by 3pm whether to set an extra place or not.

But if you were born this side of the turn of the twentieth century, or in the vastly bigger spaces of the United States, you wrote letters to which you would not have answers for days. You sent something off on a Tuesday knowing full well that if your correspondent were really dedicated and wrote you back almost instantly, you still wouldn't have a reply until a week from Friday. And that was okay. You went about the rest of your life, secure in the knowledge that your words were winging their way to your family/friends/beloved, and then in nine days or so, you started haunting the mailbox, eagerly anticipating the reply.

I had an epistolary relationship once (even just the word "epistolary" makes me happy). I was in college and had fallen in love during my junior year abroad. Once I came home, I found myself every night writing a portion of a letter to him. He did the same. Once I'd filled all the pages I could fill and still keep the letter's weight low enough that I would only need one international stamp (which cost the princely sum of 50 cents) to send it, I would mail the letter. This was almost always every five days. And every five days, I would get a letter from him. Of course, the letter I got was not in response to the one I'd just sent. Instead, we concocted our own convoluted kind of correspondence, in which we partially told each other what was going on in our lives, partly answered questions that had come in the last letter, and partly just prattled on about how goo-goo-eyed we felt about each other.

Interesting aside: The fastest I ever got mail from the US to England was three days, but that letter was an exception; it was a particularly important one that I'd spent hours writing, and I lost it on the way to the Post Office to buy the stamp. Apparently, some kind soul put it in the mailbox for me. It reached my boyfriend as if it had traveled by special messenger -- without any stamp at all... I was convinced at the time that true love really could conquer all.

Of course, I learned true love could not win out in every situation. Such as, when you have decided that since you are so far apart, seeing other people will be a good idea. Or when you come to the realization that the person whose letters you love is not actually a person whose person you love. But still, the power of the letters is seductive.

I am thinking about this right now because the weather has just turned cold. Over the course of today, the temperature dropped more than fifteen degrees--and that was during the sunny hours. I have eaten myself completely silly, drunk multiple cups of coffee and tea, and generally found myself retreating inwards to the warmth of blankets over my knees and other cozy things. And this is the time when I begin to think of letters, when I miss the pen-and-ink correspondences that I used to have with my friends all those years ago before email and cell phones and text messages and eight frillion other ways to find out instantly how they are doing.

I miss those slow, pleasurable hours of writing. I miss the thrill of seeing well-known handwriting adorning an envelope in my mailbox. I miss the spreading happiness of reading the words someone else has taken the time to pen.

I am terrible at letter writing these days. I tend to rely on email and phone calls just like everyone else. But I am thinking, lately, that perhaps I should go back to it. Perhaps I should set aside a few hours each week to write to my friends. Perhaps they would even write me back. You might think that there is nothing that can be said in a letter that you can't convey more efficiently in some other way--and I will agree with you as to the communication of facts. It is faster by far to pass on information in other ways. But there are things that letters convey that no other media can manage, things about time and tone and thought, about eloquence, about the poetry of life. Things, I think, that we may be sadly lacking in our hyper-media age.

It is that last, that sense of poetry, that makes me want to make a place for letters again in my life. Language is too precious to be reduced to mere conveyance of information. At least, in my world.

That Trick of the Light

2010-11-19T16:33:00.001-05:00

There is a certain quality of light on late-fall days that induces melancholy in me. It is golden light but somehow seems a little thin. It shines through the bare branches of the trees in the latter half of the afternoon but holds no warmth; its only promise is that the chill in the air will deepen, the darkness will set in early, the recent summer freshness of the earth will continue to brown.

It's odd, this light, and it's odd what it does to me.

I normally love the changing of the seasons. I adore that crispness in the air that hearkens fall and alluring reminds me of turtlenecks and soft scarves, warm cups of coffee and the earthy scent of fallen leaves. I like to rake and watch my children splashing in the red-orange-yellow piles. I like to know that the heat of summer has abated and to anticipate the coming snows. I relish putting on dark, rich colors like cranberry and chocolate brown. I luxuriate in the idea of wrapping myself in cozy sweaters and snuggling under blankets to read.

And yet, on an afternoon like today's, when it seems the only music that random selection provides to me is mournful, when the sky is a wan, half-hearted shade of blue, when my dearest friends all live in other states or have journeyed out of town, I cannot help but feel as washed out as the sky.

I long for something sharp and wonderful...

...For a glimpse of the stars such as one can only see while camping in the desert: intense crystals pulsing with promise against the endless depth of blackest night.

...Or for the taste of a new food: peppery hot and surprising in its fragrance.

...Or for the thunderclap of falling in love: that shock of warmth spreading outward from the belly that hits when one first acknowledges "I love you, I love you, I love you"--whether the object of that love is man or baby or woman or friend.

I am surrounded by love, of course. My children climbed into the bed this morning before six, insinuated themselves under the covers, draped themselves over me, curled their arms possessively around my neck, bickered over who would lie close enough to nuzzle my hair. My sleepy husband's bare feet rubbed my own as we made room for the small beings filled with the largest love.

It is not a literal lack on which this trick of light shines. It is a merely a soulful gap, a melancholy moment of emptiness fueled by the ambivalent breath of the wind that cuts across my face as I retrieve the mail.

It is the light, no doubt, that quickens poets to give wordful wings to their introspections.

It is the light that makes me wish that for a day, I could be bird or wind or light. Or, at the very least, poet.

In Our Own Image

2010-11-11T23:15:00.000-05:00

We all parent our children hoping they will become kind and conscientious. We want them to be motivated, hard-working, and goal-oriented. We want them to find things at which they can become successful, and we hope that they will be happy and well-rounded and interesting.

But we also, deep inside, want them to be a little bit like us.

We want them to be athletic if we ourselves are sporty. We want them to love coaxing small tender plants from the earth if we are gardeners. We hope they will be math whizzes if we are engineers or painters if we are artists. We want them to be sensitive or pragmatic, creative or architectural, just as we are.

And, if we are lovers of words, we want them to fall in love with reading too.

It's no surprise, perhaps, that the first grade son of a literature professor is already a pretty competent reader. As his teacher told us at parent-teacher conferences today, he can read pretty much any words that you put in front of him. (It's the decoding of implicit meaning that is more difficult.)

But far more heart-warming than his teacher's matter-of-fact statement of Son's abilities was the incident a few days ago on the bus.

I had a friend over, and we were drinking tea and waiting for the school bus to arrive. The main street that leads to our subdivision is under pretty major repaving construction right now, so the bus is sometimes delayed by the one-lane traffic.

About five minutes after the bus normally arrives, I heard Son unlocking the side door of the house with his key. I opened the front door wider, only to see the bus sitting right in front of our driveway, facing the wrong way. It was weird, this positioning of the bus, and I couldn't quite figure it out, since the bus was only a few minutes later than normal. The driver waved to me, almost frantically, reassuringly, smiling all the while and pointing at Son who was letting himself in by the other door. I nodded to her, and she drove off.

"Why are you using your key?" I asked him.

He looked at me, a little discombobulated. "I forgot to get off the bus," he said.

Since he was, in fact, off the bus and standing in our front hall, I was a little confused. "But why are you using your key?" I asked again--pointing out that the front door was open and I was home.

He looked at me a little shyly, and then smiled. "I was reading," he said simply. "I didn't see that the bus was at our stop, so I didn't get off. And the driver didn't see me. But then, when all the other kids were off the bus, she noticed me. So she brought me home." And then, without any sense of the momentous nature of this event in my eyes, he sauntered away, dropping his backpack on the ground and seeking after a snack.

I stood stunned in the hallway.

My boy. MY boy. My boy. So deep in a book that he forgot to get off the school bus.

There are some things you cannot teach but can only hope one day to witness. For a mother who is also a lover of literature, one of those things is a child so immersed in reading that all the rest of the world fades away.

I have had my moment.

I can only hope it sticks.

I can only hope that, somehow, I have managed to raise a reader.

Just like me.