Writing the Open Road

Blog Swap, 2.10

2010-02-26T09:37:00.002-05:00

This week's post, "In the Closet," can be found on The Weekly Meat. Be sure to find your way back here next week for more Open Road adventures.

Our Missing Neighbor

2010-02-22T14:02:00.003-05:00

[By guest writer Ben Kauffman, author of The Weekly Meat]

Wilson's car is unmistakable. It's a 15-year-old matte-black Jetta with a paint-to-Bondo ratio of roughly 2:1.

The kids know it by sight. We know when Wilson is out, and when he is probably home. He has not been home in over two months.

I should say that we don't exactly live in a neighborhood where folks use "winter" as a verb — as in, "I find the snow positively abhorrent, so I winter down in Florida." Rather, we live in an area in which the nattering "bum" on the street may well be tenured at Harvard or MIT.

I should also say that though we are friendly and neighborly with Wilson, we're more acquaintances than friends. He's easygoing, and we stop and cross the street to chat when we run into him; share gardening tips. When we were away for a week last year, he is the one who told us of the near fire catastrophe outside our place (a transformer blew up, showering sparks down on a bag of dry leaves, which promptly lit, etc.). He is point of a fascination to the kids (young E-O pronounces his name "Oh-sun" and has gone through stages of asking what we think he's doing roughly every six and a half minutes), and a curiosity to AKL and me. But he didn't mention anything about going away. And now it's been a while, and we're both curiouser and concerned.

We've never asked, so we don't know much of Wilson's story. What he does, how old he is (somewhere between 30 and 50, but who knows where), where he's from. He has a bit of an accent, and looks — as handfuls of our neighbors do — like he might come from the islands.

I admit that worrying he might have died in Port au Prince is a bit of a melodramatic stretch. After all, he couldn't have driven there. Yet, like Jimmy Stewart, I can't help but think that something is up, and particular thoughts of Haiti have crossed my mind. His window shades haven't moved the entire time. And it's just my egocentric nature to assume that he would have told us of any long-term plans if he'd known them in advance.

And yet, I also wonder how well any of us really know our neighbors. I'm not big on local TV news (I tend to mockingly refer to it as my wife's "car crash and fire show"), but I do often think of the stock interview with the neighbors after local domestic tragedies and the like. There's something both poignant and perfunctory about the "they really just kept to themselves" and the "I never would have thought he was capable of something like that"s.

So, Wilson.

He could be dead and buried. Could be sick or in treatment. Could be training for bad things in the Hindu Kush. Who can say? But we're curious — anxious even — to know. While these things tend to be harmless and easily explained, I wonder sometimes what I would say about Wilson — or any of our neighbors — if interviewed by the local car crash and fire show. And I hope that tomorrow I wake up and kiss my kids and eat breakfast and when I walk outside to go to work, I know — know — that all is right in the world, because what I am looking at is a 15-year-old dinged-up Jetta with a bad paint job parked directly across the street, Wilson happily puttering around in his front yard.

Product Review: ThinkBaby Meal Set

2010-02-16T22:00:00.003-05:00

I almost never win anything, so it was a happy morning when I was contacted by Doreen at Mom Goes Green that I'd just swept the ThinkBaby giveaway, and would soon be expecting this very hip (and very green)
meal set for babes.

Since Devi started daycare, I'd been keeping an eye peeled for sustainable containers (rather than disposable plastic or plastic baggies) that could store food, be eaten from, and not leak any nasty chemical compounds. This set is basically as close to perfect as one could hope for, although you can't microwave anything in it (as the inner containers are stainless steel). The set includes two bowls and a bento box (I love imagining Dev carting her bento box to school like her diminuitive, Japanese counterparts), very ergonomic fork and spoon, and--this last one puzzles me--a mug. Perhaps there are some dexterous toddlers out there who have no trouble with this, but I think the mug must be for the moms who are slugging their coffee in one hand and feeding their babes with the other. Matching coffee mug and baby feeding set!

Okay, so there's a far more prudent review of the ThinkBaby Stainless Steel Feeding Set here. I recommend anyone concerned with the effects of plastic on food visit the ThinkBaby site. Thank you Doreen and Mom Goes Green! We'll use these in good health.

Settling Down and Writing It

2010-02-09T09:44:00.010-05:00

I was settling in last night and considering both an article from The Times (see below), which my friend Tina had sent along, I thought about an old friend, colleague and mentor, Karen Harris, who, like Lori (mentioned in the previous post), somehow found the time to form a second formidable band in Boston, teach, and have two kids.

Read "The Referendum," especially if you have children, and see if you agree:

The Referendum is a phenomenon typical of (but not limited to) midlife, whereby people, increasingly aware of the finiteness of their time in the world, the limitations placed on them by their choices so far, and the narrowing options remaining to them, start judging their peers’ differing choices with reactions ranging from envy to contempt. The Referendum can subtly poison formerly close and uncomplicated relationships, creating tensions between the married and the single, the childless and parents, careerists and the stay-at-home. It’s exacerbated by the far greater diversity of options available to us now than a few decades ago, when everyone had to follow the same drill. We’re all anxiously sizing up how everyone else’s decisions have worked out to reassure ourselves that our own are vindicated — that we are, in some sense, winning.

I found the article both wildly true and untrue, and considering the aforementioned rockstar women (both on this post and the former) who seem to Do It All, have no regrets, and are enjoying the best of both their mommy lives and creative lives, it seems more likely that I can too.

***

This morning, during second period Humanities class, one of my students remarked that "no one should get married before 27 or after 32." We were all amused, so asked him to elaborate. Paul said that until you're 27, you need to see the world and get all of your dating/partying out of your system, and after your early thirties, you're ready to settle down and "make money," so that you don't wind up a bachelor uncle who's the odd man out at family functions.

What's so bad about being the bachelor uncle, we all asked?

"Yeah," a kid retorted. "I have one of those. He's kind of sad."

"Not my bachelor uncle," another quipped. "He lives in Florida and gives me a lot of advice about women and stuff. He's got the life. He's happy."

Another student remarked that you'd better get "all your living done" before you have kids, because man, once you have them, Life. Is. Over. I wanted to tell the kids that my husband and I, who enjoyed traveling before we had our daughter, went to Japan with her for a week in August. But I was having too much fun listening to the reactions abounding.

For a few minutes, we were totally off-topic and went into why people might want to get married at all, or have children for that matter, when life seems so chock-full of Stuff To Do, like being in relationships without commitments or kids, or form rock bands, or bike across the Brooklyn Bridge to laze around a farmer's market on a Sunday, or see Kathmandu. Or write the great American novel.

In Up in the Air, Ryan, its protagonist, espouses that "the slower we live, the faster we die. Make no mistake, moving is living." The pace of Doing It All and doing it on your own time, when you want to, is supposedly how both this character and Tim Kreider see the married-with-children situation. It is, after all "settling down." But does that mean we're settling? Do the pursuits we dreamed about before our life partners and soulmates and children came along have to wait on the back burner, clamoring and clinking and steaming in the background?

Prioritizing, Revisited

2010-02-08T14:34:00.005-05:00

I met playwright John Cariani last week. He had flown in from Manhattan to watch both the professional and student versions of his play, "Almost, Maine," which was in production at Geva and for which a number of high school drama folks, including me, were involved in a project wherein the kids performed what their adult counterparts did. Cariani sat on the stage while we sat in the audience before him, humbled and awed; if you missed the play at Geva, and you happen to be a romantic--well, then, you missed a beautiful piece, replete with clever vignettes and a set that transformed a backdrop into a multitude of stars and the Northern Lights. But I digress.

The students got their chance to ask Cariani their questions, and he answered them as cleverly as I'd hope a writer would, but as humbly as a working actor might. He remarked at one point that he does what he does--take acting jobs--to eat, and he writes because he truly loves to. I had the chance to ask him how he balanced working (acting) and writing. Or making a living and doing something he loves and not being able to live off it (not immediately). Because you can love what you do, but not every minute: even if what you do is talk about writing and books and metaphors and art and history and music (and verbosity and run-on sentences). And you can love doing something that you don't get to do very often because it's just not economically feasible to do so. Like writing a blog, or short stories, or poetry.

Cariani's answer was this: that he writes when he finds time, but that admittedly he has no one to care for, and he lives far from family. He goes out to movies, out to dinner, has lunch dates--but when he's home, he writes. Somehow he just seems to work it out between shoots or takes of CSI or NUMB3RS or whatever commercial he happens to be doing.

For a second, I let myself think that OF COURSE this John Cariani can write fabulous plays and eat his cake, too. No one to be responsible for! No worries! Aha! There is no baby waiting to be picked up mid-afternoon who he's missed so much that he cannot conceive of sitting down to write while that baby plays with the ball-popping machine or points to Big Bird Goes to the City
for your 1700th dramatic reading.

And then I remembered Lori McKenna. This young, incredible singer-songwriter that a friend once introduced me to personally because he'd taken a liking to her music and had begun to follow her gigs around New England. By the time I left Boston, I'd seen her enough in concert that she recognized me, and once, we got to chatting as she was putting her equipment away. McKenna got down to writing and recording her music while a stay-at-home mom of three, but by the time she had her FIFTH kid, had already become quite the buzz. When did she find the time to write?

When the kids were napping, she said. And when they went to bed.

It comes down to finding the time, and if I'm worth my weight in ink and lead, I'll do that. Right after every last essay is graded. And I've read Big Bird in the City with verve and flair for the 1701st time.

My students wanted Cariani to sign their scripts after the talk, and so in a weak moment, I decided to also. Talk got to that I hadn't had any of my students in a theater arts class, since I'd been on maternity leave last year when it was offered.

"Really?" he said. "So you have a one-year-old?"

"Uh-huh."

"And you directed this play?"

"Yep."

"And you teach?"

"When do you sleep?" Cariani winked at me.

A Bermuda Triangle of Events

2010-02-02T21:08:00.003-05:00

An amalgam of baby (who turned one!), work (midterms week and grades due tomorrow), the play (performance was last night), and utter exhaustion has kept me from the Open Road. I'd love to follow this with a proper blog--hell, I'd be happy with an organized rant--but I'm going to bed. Until later...

M(i)LK Day

2010-01-15T12:17:00.004-05:00

Just a year ago this coming week, I was hoping that Devi would be born on one of two days considered auspicious (to us liberals, anyway): either Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday, or Obama's Inauguration Day, which happened to fall on consecutive days in 2009. She was born on the 19th, MLK day: auspicious not only because the day marked the birthday of one of the world's most important civil rights leaders, but because every now and then she'd be able to celebrate during a three-day weekend or at least a day off from school.

So because we're celebrating Devi's first birthday over the course of the next week and a half, it's fitting that the festivities ought to start with a major milestone in her development.

Yes, blog readers, try to contain your excitement and enthusiasm when I reveal that our child has transitioned to cow's milk.

And I think her first word (apart from mama and dada) is moo.

Stay tuned for accounts of the first-year festivities...
Post-script:

With the new year came the countdown to our tigerlily's birthday, and as all birthdays should be, Devi's will be celebrated over the course of a couple of weeks. The festivities began with a trip to the children's museum to see the exotic fish and butterflies on MLK day (a day off for me, and, apparently, everyone else with a child who visited the museum that day). Yesterday, we surprised Dev in with a bunch of balloons in her room. She wasn't sure quite what to make of them until she was really awake, and she's been swatting at them every chance she gets. Last night, the grandparents came over for a little dinner and cake--the baby's first real taste. (Of course, she's hooked.)

Foodies for Thought

2010-01-10T17:19:00.006-05:00

It happens most Sundays. I wake up with the intention of cleaning the house and preparing a week's worth of meals and getting all my essays graded and still find time for a nap. Oh, and laundry, which is the muli-tasker's crack.

I haven't napped since Devi was maybe five weeks old. There's just too damn much to do. I always loved when seasoned parents warned that if I didn't nap when the baby did, I'd lose points in the nap karma department, and then I'll never ever be able to again because before I know it she'll be 17 and asking for my car keys and then we'll just stay awake worried. Forever.

One thing I do with great success, most Sundays, is poke around food blogs. I love food. I love writing. So some of these are just a divine respite from the reality that nothing else is really getting done.

My friend Amy in Boston was my introduction to food writing and the meaning of a "foodie" (i.e., someone like Amy who will devote time to finding the perfect wheat flour for a particular recipe). Since exploring the pastries of Puerto Escondido with Amy and our friends Allison and Tina (ah, to be young), my own interest in the pleasures of the palette have matured. For one, Heath and I enjoy a subscription to Saveur, the covers of which on our humble coffee table always belie the baby foodstuffs in the pantry. But the food blogs are enough to carry me away for too long, languishing in the recommended pairings and recipes from true culinary connoisseurs.

Visit www.foodblogblog.com to see how extensive online food writing has become; the book/movie, Julie & Julia, depicting a woman's experimenting with Julia Child's recipes for 365 days and blogging about it isn't off trend. I tried a food writing unit with my seniors and they did well; but we were all a little humbled by the really good stuff. When I'd asked around on Facebook for suggestions of food writing to share with my classes, these were some of the responses:

Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Mineral
Use Real Butter
Isabel Allende's Aphrodite (apprently not suitable for young eyes)
Old issues of Gourmet Magazine (sniff, sniff)
Casual Kitchen
My Burning Kitchen
That Girl Can Eat
Ntozake Shange's If I Can Cook You Know God Can
Ed Behr on wine and cheese from The Art of Eating (a quarterly)
Untangling My Chopsticks, A Culinary Soujourn in Kyoto by Victoria Abbout Ricardi
Foodie Confessions
Patience Gray's Honey from a Weed

I'm still trying to get through the MFK Fischer's tome, The Art of Eating.

Bon Apetit!

Spanish-Style Toast with Tomato (Pan Con Tomate)
1 6" piece of baguette,
  halved lengthwise
1 clove garlic
2 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
1 very ripe large tomato
Coarse sea salt, to taste

1. Heat oven to 500˚. Put bread on a baking sheet and toast until golden brown, about 8 minutes. Rub garlic over cut surface of bread and drizzle with oil. 

2. Put a box grater into a large bowl and grate tomato over largest holes, discarding skin. Spoon grated tomato onto toast and sprinkle with sea salt.

SERVES 2

This article was first published in Saveur in Issue #126

Stage Moms

2010-01-07T20:26:00.004-05:00

Over the winter break from school, and finding myself with a few minutes between a book, the laundry, and waiting for my frozen pizza to heat up, I found this TLC show called "Toddlers and Tiaras."

And if you, like I, have seen it, you ran screaming from your t.v., swearing aloud that the world is a really f'ing crazy place and the people in it are completely tapped.

And then you went back to your t.v. and sat down, appauled and unable to move, transfixed by how insane some women can be about their daughters winning pageants for no apparent reason other than they very closely resemble miniature versions of a cross between The Stepford Wives (post lobotomy) and Tammy Faye Baker, hair, eyelashes, and sparkly costume all. While we watch the girls (some of them as young as 18 months) twirl themselves around the stage to canned, drum machine/keyboard music, the camera pans to their mothers, many of them once pageant girls themselves, miming and modeling the dance routine they've doubtlessly rehearsed in their living rooms to exhaustion, jumping around in faux-Fosse fashion.

I would like to think that I support all women, no less all mothers, in their tastes and desires for their babies to be what they think will make their children happiest and most fulfilled and nurtured. The show made me shudder, though, and when Devi woke up from her nap, still a little drowsy and warm from nuzzling her blanket, I made a quiet promise to both of us that I'm not sure I can iterate clearly in one sentence here--but it was partly to let her be little as long as she was little, to not rush her growing up, to let her personality emerge, and to try my hardest not to pin my own hopes or lost dreams on her (not that I'm sure I have any lost dreams--life's been pretty good--but I think if I had any talent with a guitar, I would have loved to be a rockstar, or at the very least, a really kick-ass soul back-up singer).

We took Dev to get her 1-year-old portraits done last Sunday. Alloted 30 minutes and three outfits, I chose a casual outfit she'd normally wear for play, a polka-dot dress I found on the clearance rack at Babies-R-Us two days prior, and a little shirt-dress I found in Japan that sports a strawberry and boasts the Champion logo and our hometown, the (old?) Champion HQ, from a Champion outlet store outside of Tokyo. During the shoot, the photographer did her best to get just the right angles and shots, while Heath worked his magic to make Devi laugh, and I worked mine. Apparently my magic is jumping up and down and making crazy sounds and faces like someone on a cocktail of mushrooms and crack.

And just as our photographer gleefully squealed that she got what she wanted, I had a flashback of those stage moms, jumping up and down and all about. It was a scary moment. Thankfully, no false eyelashes nor hair extensions on our stage, but I imagine there will come a day, maybe 6th grade, when she'll want to pierce a part she can't spell yet, or like the prom, when I won't help but be sentimental for the good ol' days when the dresses covered more than high breast tissue and thigh, and my girl will look like she's prematurely 35.

I, new mom and part-time control freak, just hope I have the fortitude to let her be herself.

Who Who's Clever

2010-01-05T20:43:00.006-05:00

Most of us know that Jewish folks (such as we are) consider it to be bad luck, or at the very least, premature, to decorate a baby room way ahead of the delivery of a baby. So when it came time to think about our baby's room--she was yet to be named, so we just called her Blueberry--we had plenty of time to figure it out. Some of my friends had their baby rooms decorated within seconds of their first ultrasound, so I was ancey to get started, and tried to sate my nesting instincts by organizing all the closets in the house.

We knew we liked a calm green color. The paint we chose was actually called sweet pea, or something like that, but that was totally unintentional. We knew we wanted to showcase a tree--a symbol of life and family that Heath and I love--on one of the main walls, and after much consideration of having people we knew over to paint one, we found this awesome (and easily removable) decal, worth every cent for it is easily peeled and replaced if you totally mess it up (as I did). And we had this great rug: a lucky rug, because it never would have made it home had it not been for a generous gift certificate to Pottery Barn, and a PB gift certificate left over from our wedding. It features our light green and a dark green, had a bird and an owl on it, and we thought the owl would make a cool motif.

And books. We knew there needed to be books in this room. So we have a little book corner where we read, and on a very neat and picked-up day, it looks like this:
As you can see, the owl motif took: the lamp and stuffed owl came from Target, and now there's a very wise vibe about the room. But let's be clear: this room is still coming together, and Devi's turning one in a week.

In today's mail, we received the potterybarnkids catalog that does little else than make a parent feel a.) completely disorganized or uncoordinated, b.) lacking in imagination, c.) poor, d.) like why should a 4-year-old get a mahogany desk with a file cabinet when I have to keep my mail piled up on the counter and I'm using the kitchen table for a desk?

But we noticed that the catalog featured owls (maybe it's a comeback for owls this year), and we gave ourselves a pat on the back. Devi's room rocks! And it only took a year to put together.
Oh--and Dev's favorite book at the moment? Peek-a-Who!

Zen Reinvention

2010-01-04T21:43:00.003-05:00

Glancing at my Facebook homepage briefly tonight, I found my friend Sejal had posted a link to an website dedicated to Zen Habits. Here's what it has to say about becoming your best (there were five suggestions, but here are the last three):

"3. Clear away distractions and focus.
Clear away email and Facebook and Twitter and your favorite blogs and news websites and social forums, clear away the iPhone or Blackberry or Android or cell phone, clear away all the little nagging work and chores and errands that pull at your attention, clear away the clutter that surrounds you (sweep it off to the side to deal with later).

In fact, if you can, shut off the Internet for awhile. You can come back to it when you take a break.

Now, find focus. Even if only for 15 or 20 minutes at first, but preferably for 30-60 minutes. You can take a break and check your email or whatever after you’ve focused. Focus on the thing that matters most. Do it for as long as you can, until you’re done if possible. Feel free to take breaks, but always return to your focus.

When you’re done, focus on the next thing that matters most, and so on.

4. Find happiness now.
Don’t look at happiness as something that will come when you’re done with this goal, or when you’ve attained a certain accomplishment or certain amount of wealth or material goods. Don’t look at happiness as a destination, something that you’ll get later.

Happiness is possible right now. Always remember that. When you push it back until later, it’ll never come. When you learn to be happy now, it’ll always be here.

When you’re doing whatever you’re passionate about, whatever matters most, whatever you decide is worthy of your time and heart and focus … be happy! You’re doing what you love. And that is truly a gift.

5. Reinvent yourself, every day.
Every day, you are reborn. Reinvent yourself and your life, every day. Do what matters most to you, that day.

It might be the same thing that mattered most yesterday, or it might not be. That isn’t important. What’s important is today — right now. Be passionate, be happy, right now.

You’ll have a fresh start every single day — not just on January 1. And that, my friends, is the best thing ever."

This last one reminds me of George Emerson from A Room with a View. You know--the guy who shouts "BEAUTY! LOVE!" from atop a tree in Italy? Passion. A good wheel to get behind. Onward! (And thanks for posting, Sejal!)

[Photo: Took this one in Ft. Cochin, India, right around the corner from the coolest little bookstore I'd ever seen. Thought it was appropriate, if you substitute "the lord" with "your soul."]

[N.b., 1/5/09: Thanks Marilyn in San Fran, for photoshopping.]

Auld Lang Syne

2010-01-03T21:46:00.004-05:00

I want to make good here and at least get one weekend post in, since it's been a steady rush to finish grading, laundry, groceries, and get in some serious playtime before we go back to where we go back to tomorrow. Oh, if I could only make it snow. One more day would be divine.

But since I've already been a little lax (not really--I actually haven't stopped moving pretty much these past ten days) on the blogging end, I'll simply wish all my faithful readers a happiest new year for the second decade of the 21st century. (When did that happen? I'm one of those people who feels like we were all just hording bottled water and batteries in case the supercomputers all shut down with the turn of 2000.)

Ten years ago, on the eve of the new century, my Newton, Mass. roomates and I threw a costume party. To be ironical, I went as a cave woman. Somewhere I have a picture of me--maybe it's on this computer, I'll have to forage for it--in a animal print headband. I was on our balcony when it was taken, and I remember wondering where we'd all be in ten years.

I'm happy to say that I still keep in touch with 90% of you. So thanks for coming to that party, and thanks for staying in touch.

Best Words of 2009

2009-12-30T22:11:00.011-05:00

A friend suggested that since I'd posted a list of grimy words that I ought to make good and post some that don't leave us feeling so much like we have poison ivy on the insides. So, in the interest of warming up for 2010 (the daily bloggers' theme for January is best), here's the official Gebell household list of best verbiage of the past year (including some from the past decade, given where we've been and what we've done, and yes, some of these will be compound nouns and some won't be nouns or words at all, and some will be in different languages, again, given where we've been and what we've done). Perhaps a pattern will emerge that will say something about how I've lived the past ten years. I'd love to hear some of your favorite words of the decade, too.

imagination
freedom
20's
Boston
Cambridge
Red Line
live music
Route 1
hiking
Green Mountains
White Mountains
Newport
Acadia
Revere Beach
sand
Fenway
Dylan
A.R.T.
villa
olive grove
vineyard
sunflower fields
Tuscany
girlfriends
la dolce fa niente
limoncello
Cinqueterre
sea kayaking
sun bathing
gelato
classroom
teaching method
method acting
publication
stagework
rehearsal
CompanyOne
The Fogg (on rainy days, especially)
spirit
curiosity
fortitude
30's
Oaxaca
Oaxacan chocolate
ecotourism
hostello
adventure
Puerto Escondido
apricot pastry
book club
Elephant Walk
Diesel Cafe
Open Mic at Lizard Lounge
Walden
walking Walden Pond
Concord, Lexington
New England autumn
West Coast summer
Bellingham
fellowship
friendship
native
smokehouse
vision
Redwood Forest
Olympic Mountains
O Beautiful
Moab
majestic
desert
Grand Canyon
dignified
silent
red rocks
Chinle
The Rez
flatbread
Springsteen (at Fenway!)
Prince (at Boston Garden)
Bowie
Club Passim
Pushkar camels
Amber Palace (by motorcycle! on my birthday!)
pink sand
treehouse (one accomodation in Kerala)
peacocks
flamingos
cave-dwelling goddesses
houseboat
ricepaddies
spice farm
tabla
sitar
elephants
muezzin
pied
henna
chai
home
Heath
vineyard
autumn in New York
bliss
employment
gainful
benefits
tango
empanadas
metro
humanities
humanity
mortality
memory
dad
restabilizing
relocation
Farmer's Market
new
love
engagement
nuptial
dance
family
growth
roof
garage (I'm especially thankful for this in January--the only garage I've ever had)
lawn
Weeping Cherry tree
botanist, hippie neighbors (no, not the nudist)
Park Ave.
islands
seaplane
killer whales
tree walking
seaport
Pike Place
Rainier cherries
Experience Music
dunes
waves
lighthouse
beacon
creativity
create
expecting
expectation
anticipation
labor
breathing
breath
life
receiving blankets
sweet
Devi
sink baths
toes
rosebud lips
toothless smile
swing
rock
lullaby
nestle
infant passport
Harajuku
Japanese grandmas
Maguro sushi
hot sake
chanting
temples
green tea
owl
bear
penguin
bunny
Goodnight Moon
words
walking
belly
kissing
laughing
love
pure
unadulterated
love.
[Also, I love the word twice.]

Sestina for Rochester

2009-12-28T16:25:00.004-05:00

Every year, when the snow comes, it's as if something's been holding back on us. Some people say they can smell the imminent snow; the more seasoned among us feel it in their joints.

I say winter really begins when Heath and I have to figure out which company can really handle early-morning driveway plowing (I like to leave for school around 7 a.m., though that rarely happens) and we start running up to the corner hardware store for Salt Melt. We'll make lists of all the cousins for whom we're going to get Chanukah presents, start figuring out what they'd like, and make our annual pilgrimage to Target and Toys-R-Us where Heath will delight in choosing exactly the right toys for each kid. Friends' holiday cards start coming in the mail, and better, witty holiday letters that detail the highlights of their years for better or worse.

One of our favorite rituals has become the most simple date: coffee (chai lattes at Spot Coffee) and a movie (at the Little Theater) on one of our mutual days off. This year, we managed two dates (even dinner and a movie!) thanks to Bubbe and Grandma and Zaide. Two dates in one week: ah, vacation. For some odd (really odd) reason I can't decipher, I appreciate the arctic chill so characteristic of our city in the winter. It makes us huddle closer while we're walking outside. It makes us snuggle closer in the not-warm-enough movie theater. That chill settles in our bones just so that I want to wear socks to bed, but know I won't need to.

One of the poems I shared with the Creative Writing class lately was this one: it's a really difficult form to manage, but Hecht does it beautifully. Yeah, this city's pretty bleak in the winter. Maybe AH didn't have someone to hold him close.

"Sestina d'Inverno" by Anthony Hecht:

Here in this bleak city of Rochester,
Where there are twenty-seven words for "snow,"
Not all of them polite, the wayward mind
Basks in some Yucatan of its own making,
Some coppery, sleek lagoon, or cinnamon island
Alive with lemon tints and burnished natives,

And O that we were there. But here the natives
Of this grey, sunless city of Rochester
Have sown whole mines of salt about their land
(Bare ruined Carthage that it is) while snow
Comes down as if The Flood were in the making.
Yet on that ocean Marvell called the mind

An ark sets forth which is itself the mind,
Bound for some pungent green, some shore whose natives
Blend coriander, cayenne, mint in making
Roasts that would gladden the Earl of Rochester
With sinfulness, and melt a polar snow.
It might be well to remember that an island

Was blessed heaven once, more than an island,
The grand, utopian dream of a noble mind.
In that kind climate the mere thought of snow
Was but a wedding cake; the youthful natives,
Unable to conceive of Rochester,
Made love, and were acrobatic in the making.

Dream as we may, there is far more to making
Do than some wistful reverie of an island,
Especially now when hope lies with the Rochester
Gas and Electric Co., which doesn't mind
Such profitable weather, while the natives
Sink, like Pompeians, under a world of snow.

The one thing indisputable here is snow,
The single verity of heaven's making,
Deeply indifferent to the dreams of the natives,
And the torn hoarding-posters of some island.
Under our igloo skies the frozen mind
Holds to one truth: it is grey, and called Rochester.

No island fantasy survives Rochester,
Where to the natives destiny is snow
That is neither to our mind nor of our making.

Late December Admission

2009-12-26T14:27:00.006-05:00

I am too busy and too tired to post everyday (right now). The other night, it had occurred to me that I hadn't written a lick since last week, and then I thought about all the stuff going on, like

the last week of school before break
entailing college rec's that need to get out
and preparing the midterm stuff
and grading stuff that needs to get graded
paying bills from the fall show
rehearsing the geva show
drama club officer appointments
lesson prep
grading quizzes
and the home stuff
like playing with devi
making food for devi
making food for us
making cookies for other people
helping devi learn to walk
reading devi books
reading heath's face
reading papers
rereading Romeo and Juliet
laundry
more laundry
and holiday stuff
getting presents
wrapping presents
unwrapping presents
cleaning up from chanukah
cleaning out the fridge
cleaning around playing devi
date night with heath
writing devi's 1st birthday invitations
addressing same (thank you, online white pages)
xmas dinner at aunt karen's
making stuff to bring to aunt karen's
laundry
waking up late and enjoying lazy mornings with my family
37,000 readings of hungry caterpillar and peek-a-who

and the like. Hope everyone had a lovely holiday season! Perhaps I can try this daily blogging thing next time I'm home on maternity leave.... Anyway, here's a glimpse into Devi's new occupation, hugging and kissing her Daddy.

The Stage Door Project

2009-12-17T17:20:00.004-05:00

Oh, you want another post, do you? Well, tough. I posted today on my OTHER (temporary) blog: http://www.gevatheatre.org/learn/blog/ .

In August, Skip Greer, the Artistic Director of Geva Theater and their Artist in Residence, asked me (and eight other area high school drama directors) to participate in this amazing (and humbling) undertaking. Each of us high school drama mamas are directing one scene from John Cariani's "Almost, Maine," which will appear on Geva's Mainstage in January--our high school collaboration, resulting in a different, more amateur but just as impassioned version, called The Stage Door Project, goes up on Geva's stage on FEBRUARY 1. Interested? Call me about tickets.

I'll write more about this project later, as we get closer to opening. It's so cool, though, and my actors, designer, and marketers are working their butts off! You can read more about "Almost, Maine" at http://gevatheatre.org/plays/almostmaine.html. You can also read more about the Project at http://gevatheatre.org/learn/stagedoor.html.

Ugly Words

2009-12-16T13:06:00.004-05:00

Today, in Creative Writing class, I had my students brainstorm the most beautiful words and the most ugly words they could imagine. The point of the exercise was that words are most powerful when they're together. For instance, the words

bile
vomit
toilet
mucus
blunder
itch
gripe

should right now be giving you, the reader, a general feeling of overall ickiness. If you're feeling icky right now, well, good.

But the exercise also stirred some slightly traumatic episodes from last night's adventures in teething. FILL IN THE BLANKS! Let's just say that two handfuls of baby _________, probably resulting from her swallowing too much of her own __________, was proof enough that I can handle anything disgusting this lovely little baby girl has to dish out.

I wonder what kinds of ads will pop up to the left after this is posted...

This Fuels my Wanderlust

2009-12-15T09:38:00.003-05:00

A colleague of mine showed me this today and I've been having the warm fuzzies all day. Please go to this site (click on the video), created by a self- proclaimed "deadbeat" who in his late 20's decided to gallavant around the planet. His friend recorded his bad dancing in Hanoi, and the rest is history.

There is no agenda here, no political message. What makes me happiest watching this, I think, are seeing the sheer joy on the faces of the people, but mainly the kids, who are dancing with Matt.

Devi's passport is newly broken in...I wonder where we'll all go next?

"Author, Author"

2009-12-14T22:12:00.003-05:00

Heath and I are sitting on the couch with our laptops, and the New York movie starring Al Pacino is on. It's a movie about a struggling father of six who also happens to be a major playwright. It's also a great bit of movie history (remember when people smoked in airports?), a hilarious insight into theater writing and production, and maybe a sneaky love letter to the Manhattan I fell in love with as a kid--the one that when I visited with my parents would make me tick like crazy. Lights. The lower west side. The Brooklyn Bridge, the Theater District.

A New York before cell phones.
A New York before 9/11.
A New York before AIDS awareness.

When doormen used whistles to call cops.

In college, I won a campus-wide essay contest (truth be told, 3rd place), and my dad, who I am missing so badly today, sent me a bouquet of flowers with a note attached:

"Author, author," it said.

He must have loved this movie too.

The Coolest Moment of the Weekend

2009-12-06T21:22:00.004-05:00

Heath, Devi, and I have now spent two afternoons--in a row--at Eastview Mall. It wasn't as crowded as I'd suspected, I think because we're still a few weeks out from Christmas and because Anthropolgie, the answer to my shopping prayers, my (and I'm sure thousands of other area women's) clothing Mecca, hasn't opened yet.

Yesterday was a designated shopping day: with 11 cousins to shop for, we felt like we were on a zany treasure hunt for just the right set of dinosaurs, princess stuff, books, toys, etc. The megalopolis we've come to know as Target helped us get a majority of the tasks accomplished. Also, we found some adorable bedroom accents for Devi (photos forthcoming!) to boot, and to our sheer delight, some vintage toys which we played with as children but are sure our parents sold at garage sales between 1977 and 1980. Weakened but not weary, we met some friends and their kids out for dinner, where we discovered Devi's fascination with balloons and where she had her first "real" kids' meal, chicken tenders and broccoli. Our wallet exhausted, we returned home triumphant and with several things to wrap before Friday, when Chanukah starts.

Today we ventured back to Eastview, this time to watch my sister-in-law, Rachel, perform with her music group from Hochstein Music School. Rachel's been a part of this amazing, dauntless, special-needs group for quite a while, and often asks us to make certain we attend the next concert, even if it's months away: the performances give her--and, doubtless, her peers--a visceral euphoria that nothing but music can give them. Witness Rachel sending up her arms in utter joy while singing today, the smile on her face sheer ecstacy, her eyes beaming. The typical holiday concert music ("Joy to the World"--not the Credence version) was peppered with some show-stoppers, like the duet "Do You Love Me?" from Fiddler on the Roof (thank you, Wade, for sparing us the comparatively meager dreidel song) and a Bollywood number during which the 30-odd performers danced simply and with alacrity, led by fabulous, genius Wade and the music therapy student interns. Awesome. (Pictured above is the group on their home turf, at Hochstein.)

But perhaps the most touching moment was watching Wade and one of the interns dance with Nomi, who is blind and wheelchair-bound; while the violins played, they whirled and gently spun the smiling Nomi, twirling her by the hands while Nomi seemed to glide through the space. It was like watching a ballet-a-trois, of sorts, that made one think of what a perfect world is supposed to be like.

Joy to the World, indeed. Thank you Wade M. Richards, for giving some very special people some incredible experiences, and for giving us the opportunity to share them.

It Makes a Great Teether, Too

2009-12-05T20:31:00.008-05:00

[N.B. The closest we came today to any sort of Mitzvah-doing (see yesterday's first post) was sparing some change to the Salvation Army Volunteer who opened the door to JC Penney's today while ringing that seasonally-ubiquitous bell. Otherwise, I'm at a loss for today's NaBloPoMo post, so I'll offer the short one that follows here, and promise to write about more than Devi, though she is deserving of a post a day because she ROCKS. Just see for yourself here.]

Among Devi's many accomplishments this month, in addition to her asking for her plush, pink bear by name ("Beh...beh...", though her real name is Pinky Tuscabearo and we realize that's too difficult for a 10-month-old to say right now), and pulling herself to standing on nearly every surface parallel with the floor in our house, is her near-mastery of the sippy cup. Let's let the video speak for itself.

A Day at the Museum of Play

2009-12-04T22:17:00.015-05:00

The NATIONAL Museum of Play, that is. Yes, right here in our (postage-stamp-sized) city backyard--literally, four minutes from our street--is the home to the National Toy Hall of Fame, the precious and sometimes eerie Strong Doll Collection, the exotic, breathtaking Butterfly Garden, and loads of hands-on stuff for kids to experience serious, and even educational, fun. At the moment, the two exhibits are about Superheroes (there's even a transformer-type machine to turn you into The Hulk) and the first arcade video games (I played Ms. Pac-Man for the first time in about 20 or so years). Heath and I had each taken Devi there, but not together, and we figured what better time than our joint day off for the Thanksgiving holiday.

At every turn, our little girl kicked her legs and rubbed her feet vigorously together in that way she does (her eyes get really wide and she starts making happy noises). We'd only just paid our entrance fees when she saw the gigantic aquarium and started her little freak-out/happy noises. So there we were for a good 15 minutes, just watching the fish go by, especially "Nemo" (there are two clownfish in one tank) and the big fish with the crazy nose, and the languid anemones wave with each fish's passing, like Hollywood starlets who can't be bothered to remove themselves from a divan.

A pit stop at Sesame Street, where Devi played with Elmo and we got nostalgic (remember Mr. Hooper?). This is a fun joint if you loved the vibe of Sesame Street, so ahead of its time for bilingual education, educational television programming, and messages of unity, tolerance, urban harmony, general peace, love, and happiness for all (including fuzzy monsters--because they have feelings too). A rumor was floating about that Cookie Monster can no longer be called so because of the childhood obesity epidemic. It was time to move on.

On to the incredible Butterfly Garden. It's like walking into something like Wonka's paradise, except there's no chocolate in sight so it can't truly be paradise. Yet just through the doors it's sensory overload: you've left the florescence of the museum for the natural light of this place, and that, coupled with the humidity and your being literally surrounded by tropical plants and hundreds of butterflies--beautiful, colorful, tranquil--transports you into this Seussical and yet sensuous place.
We've been making up the hand-sign for butterfly, crossing our wrists and fluttering our fingers as, I imagine, butterflies do--I don't know, maybe I was trying too hard to entertain Devi while she was in her highchair last week--but just a couple of nights ago, she put her food down and crossed her wrists, opening and closing her fists in imitation. I couldn't believe it. And when she did that for my mother, she made plans to take Devi right back to the Butterfly Garden. You'll have to pick up my jaw and hand it back to me if "butterfly" is Devi's first word, which it just might be.

A good time was had by all, and our curious little monkey fell asleep on the way home. I wonder if there were visions of fish, butterflies, and (Berenstein) bears dancing in her head.

NaBloPoMo (G'bless You)

2009-12-04T21:36:00.003-05:00

Here's a blogging phenomenon that's recently piqued my interest: blogging every day for an entire month. And according to NaBloPoMo's site, the theme for bloggers this month is MITZVAH (loosely translated from Yiddish/Hebrew, the act of doing good by others). Fitting that this is the theme for the month that nestles right up against the New Year.

It goes something like this: I'm supposed to try to blog every day for the month. Since I've already missed the first three days of December, I'll have to try to double-blog on those languid, lazy days I have oodles and oodles of hours to do nothing else, such as teach or read papers or grade papers or plan lessons or buy and cook and eat stuff or stare into my husband's beautiful eyes or write recommendation letters or oh yeah, RAISE A HUMAN BEING who has her father's beautiful eyes and who tries to eat recommendation letters instead of her squash.

Since this technically qualifies as my first entry for the month, I'll double blog tonight (go crazy, Monica) and take advantage of Devi's and Heath's having fallen asleep.

(Ok, who am I kidding? This is insane. There is no way I'll be able to post every day for a month. I feel a little like I'm about to go on one of those protein-only diets, where you know it's going to really suck for the first three weeks until you're so deliriously hungry you tell yourself it's not so bad, you love eating brazil nuts between meals and as meals, and there must be plenty of ways to make tofu taste good. Your vote of confidence will be in the form of suggestions for blog topics--so feel free to throw in your subject of choice.)

(Ok, but I teach Creative Writing, and I'm always going on about how writing is supposed to be a daily practice, even if it's brainstorming or freewriting, and how the more we write the better we write.)

So here goes. Day 1. Really, let's just call it Day 4, December 4. WRITE IT.

I Bet She Works a Mean Paper Snowflake

2009-11-20T14:10:00.003-05:00

Devi's first art project is this here Mr. Gobblegobble: she did it in daycare, and man, oh man, are we proud. Now THAT is some fancy footwork.

Read My Tush.

2009-11-20T09:44:00.004-05:00

Every morning when we peek in to the crib, Devi's blankets all askew as though they're the breadcrumb trail of her whereabouts during the night, we never know what we're going to see. Picutred here is this morning's peek-in, just before Devi woke up. Love it.