Being inveterate foodies, we have our little haunts.  The petals and I love a little place on the edge of Born.  On another occasion, I’ll show it to you.  For now, I’ll give you a peek at what really good gelato does to a couple of girls I know.

It’s all settled, then: gelato turns you into a supremely happy goofball, right alongside the other goofball who shares your birthday, your clothes, your hair nonsense, your Burt’s Bee’s, your love of the European ephemera you dream of repurposing for a DIY, etcetera, etcetera.

Provecho!

The camera caught Miss Lavender (aka Ninja Girl, sometimes) catching some prime air. For the teens out there who need some practice styling sentences different ways–or for anyone wanting to stretch their sentence-writing muscles–I thought I’d give this little exercise a go and invite you to pick your own photo and follow the pattern for your own workout. Generating sentences of various lengths and types is a serious skill builder and does more than anything else (I think) to help writers acquire what we (rather nebulously) call ‘style.’

One. Simple sentence: subject, verb.

Ninja Girl leaps.

Two. Compound sentence: two clauses joined by a coordinating conjunction.

Ninja Girl leaps, and her shadow leaps too.

Three. Complex sentence: an independent clause joined to a dependent clause by a subordinating conjunction.

Ninja Girl leaps away from her shadow because it attempted to speak to her.

Four. Compound-complex sentence: two independent clauses followed by a dependent clause.

Ninja Girl leaps away from her shadow, but her shadow holds on tight because it feels bound to deliver a message.

Five. Participial modifier followed by a complex sentence.

Haunted for days by something it witnessed in the land of shadows, Ninja Girl’s shadow attempts once, twice, ten times, to reveal what it knows about the secret rebellion stirring in the Shadow World.

Six. Simple sentence beginning with a coordinating conjunction (usually a “no-no” but often used to good effect).

But Ninja Girl won’t listen.

Seven. Simple sentence with a compound predicate, followed by a participial phrase.

So Ninja Girl’s shadow gathers itself and, in one explosive burst, channels all of its shadow energy into Ninja Girl, flooding her with knowledge and inhuman strength.

Eight. Three simple sentences, the first beginning with an adverb, the second with a compound subject, the third with a coordinating conjunction.

Suddenly, she understands! She and her shadow must join forces in order to avert a rebellion. And so they do.

Nine. A simple sentence so crazy I’d have to diagram it, which would get really boring and moreover I’m getting in way over my head with all this labeling business.

Ninja Girl and her shadow merge in order to fend off a shadow army bent on supplanting all human energy with shadow energy.

Ten. Compound-complex sentence. Independent clause flanked by dependent clauses (the first beginning with ‘if,’ the second beginning with ‘while.’)

If they lose the battle, all humans everywhere will be forever tethered to the ground, while shadows will leap and fly freely, dominating the world.

Eleven. Simple sentence, verb first.

Enter Ninja Boy!

Twelve. Prepositional modifier followed by a simple sentence.

At the ready, the most powerful Ninja Boy in the universe waits for the right moment to hurl himself into the fray.

Thirteen. Simple sentence, complex sentence.

No one on earth or beyond has ever seen anyone with the strength of this Ninja Boy. Even if ten thousand shadows combined their muscle and stylishness, they could not equal him.

Fourteen. Participial modifier, followed by Yikes!

Realizing she has an ally, Ninja Girl executes her most daring move yet: the leap-and-pike, a maneuver so dangerous it has proved the demise of every ninja who ever dared to attempt it.

Fifteen. Participial modifier followed by a simple sentence followed by another participial modifier followed by . . . hmm . . . anyone’s guess.

Leaping into his own sweet nock-an-arrow move, Ninja Boy flies into action too, matching his elegance to Ninja Girl’s raw power, the two of them sending a current of Pure Humanness through the shadow world and obliterating the shadow insurgency.

Sixteen. Simple sentence with a compound predicate.

Their Master Moves reset the delicate balance between human and shadow and restore the Natural Order.

Seventeen. Simple sentence, simple question.

Ninja Girl and her shadow allow themselves a congratulatory leap. Who could blame them?

Eighteen. Compound-complex sentence.

Meanwhile, Ninja Boy makes friends with the ten thousand shadows who are less strong than he, and they go and grab some Crema Catalunya gelato at Dino’s.

The End

Here’s what this little collection of sentences we can only very loosely call a story looks like without all the editorializing:

The Story Of Ninja Girl And Her Sidekick

Ninja Girl leaps.

Ninja Girl leaps, and her shadow leaps too.

Ninja Girl leaps away from her shadow because it attempted to speak to her.

Ninja Girl leaps away from her shadow, but her shadow holds on tight because it feels bound to deliver a message.

Haunted for days by something it witnessed in the land of shadows, Ninja Girl’s shadow has attempted once, twice, ten times, to reveal what it knows about the secret rebellion stirring in the Shadow World.

But Ninja Girl won’t listen.

So Ninja Girl’s shadow gathers itself and, in one explosive burst, channels all of its shadow energy, flooding Ninja Girl with knowledge and inhuman strength. Suddenly, she understands! She and her shadow must join forces in order to avert a rebellion. And so they do. Ninja Girl and her shadow merge in order to fend off a shadow army bent on supplanting all human energy with shadow energy. If they lose the battle, all humans everywhere will be forever tethered to the ground, while shadows will leap and fly freely, dominating the world.

Enter Ninja Boy! At the ready, the most powerful Ninja Boy in the universe waits for the right moment to hurl himself into the fray. No one on earth or beyond has ever seen anyone with the strength of this Ninja Boy. Even if ten thousand shadows combined their muscle and stylishness, they could not equal him.

Realizing she has an ally, Ninja Girl executes her most daring move yet: the leap-and-pike, a maneuver so dangerous it has proved the demise of every ninja who ever dared to attempt it. Leaping into his own sweet nock-an-arrow move, Ninja Boy flies into action too, matching his elegance to Ninja Girl’s raw power, the two of them sending a current of Pure Humanness through the Shadow World and obliterating the shadow insurgency. Their Master Moves reset the delicate balance between human and shadow and restore the Natural Order.

Ninja Girl and her shadow allow themselves a congratulatory leap. Who could blame them?

Meanwhile, Ninja Boy makes friends with the ten thousand shadows who are less strong than he, and they go and grab some Crema Catalunya gelato at Dino’s.

A few observations. This story will not win any Pulitzers. If you did not know my tongue was firmly in my cheek the whole time I was writing this, then I’m in trouble. I wanted to focus on sentences. Varying their length and type is a powerful way to fuel inject your writing style. After many years of teaching experience, writing experience, and teaching-writing experience, I can tell you that good sentences anchor good writing. When I write, I constantly think about the way I’m styling my sentences. It’s a conscious effort.

With some practice, anyone can write a stylish sentence. I’m convinced of it. And the best kind of practice is the shameless kind, where you take a sentence you find fun or even elegant and copy the form, hanging your own words on it. Here’s a great sentence that comes at the beginning of Prodigal Summer, by the (almost depressingly) insanely talented Barbara Kingsolver. It reads, “On the first evening she tried to distract or deceive her mind with books, and on the second she carefully bathed with teakettle and cloth and the soap she normally eschewed because it assaulted the noses of deer and other animals with the only human smell they knew, that of hunters–the scent of a predator.”

Here’s how I practice sentence writing using the bones of Kingsolver’s sentence. “From the beginning of her training, Ninja Girl attempted to rise at dawn and be the first one ready to practice, and early on her dedication paid off because she progressed more quickly and earned the respect of even the most senior initiates–something no other novice had done.”  Basic pattern:  compound-complex sentence.

If it seems a little forced, don’t panic. The point is to internalize all kinds of infrastructure so that when your own ideas and words need good form, you know how to build. If you do this enough with enough good sentences from the works of writers you respect, you’ll start to see your efforts pay off. I mean it.  (And you don’t need to be able to diagram sentence.  As you could see, my efforts got a little sketchy! . . .)

You’re welcome to write the next chapter of Ninja Girl And Her Sidekick and let me know how it turns out. In fact, I’ll be waiting breathlessly.

Image, Cicely Mary Barker, courtesy of flowerfairyprints.com

Some of you may wonder, Why Miss Lavender?  Why Miss Zinnia?  Why flower fairy names??

The practice grew out of a moment that occurred many years ago, when I was in a store one day and saw a framed print of one of Cicely Mary Barker’s flower fairies.  Enchanted by the image, I bought it and hung it on the wall in Miss Lavender’s room, certain that even though she was only a tiny thing, Miss Lavender was indeed a flower fairy.  Something about the faces of Barker’s fairies.  Study them!  You’ll spot the innocence right away, sure, but you’ll also notice flickers of other things:  cleverness, joy, even wisdom.  To me, flower fairies seem emblematic of the many kinds of Moments that comprise Being A Girl.

Sure, my older daughter looks like the Lavender Fairy.  I make a practice of choosing fairies who resemble the girls and women who bear their names.  And though my younger daughter has long outgrown the image of the Zinnia fairy (she looks more now like the Iris Fairy or maybe the Snowdrop), I swear the Zinnia fairy’s countenance still matches my daughter’s.

But it’s not just about resemblances.  Flowers themselves fascinate and inspire me.  Endlessly lovely and each with its own distinct energy and essence, flowers are considered by many to be a locus for all kinds of good things.  Lavender, for example, has tremendous healing properties.  Once, when my Miss Lavender was very small, her right arm and a few other patches of her little body were scalded by hot bathwater.  Terrible episode.  Beyond painful for her.  Beyond painful for me.  A wonderful sister-in-law told me about lavender oil and its uses for the skin, and we ordered the purest, best oil we could find and used it on Miss Lavender’s arm.  She and I both have a strong attachment to the smell of lavender as a result of experiencing the oil’s powerful effects.  It seemed to calm her even as it worked its dramatic flower magic on her burned skin, which (miraculously) never scarred.

I suppose it’s an unusual practice, giving every Eleven O’Clock Girl a flower fairy name.  But it works for me.  And those who have received their own name seem to have warmed both to the idea and to the fairy they are named for.  And as far as I’m concerned, Cicely Mary Barker was a peerless illustrator, don’t you agree?

(Which fairies do you warm to??)

Remember when you were a little kid, and when someone declared that they loved something, you’d chant, “Then why don’t you marry it!??” Let me just say of Sampaka Chocolates that I am ready to marry again. (No disrespect to my current partner, who is perfectly acceptable and a great Eleven O’Clock Dad.) Take a look at the goods, and you’ll certainly be willing to ratify my decision.

At the Sampaka store and chocolate café in downtown Barcelona, you’ll find artisan chocolates:  bars, truffles, ’tiles,’ creams and spreads, enrobed beans, and more. All divine. All perfectly marriageable. In fact, there is so much love in that place, I’ve watched people walk in, take off their dark glasses, and surrender, right on the spot, the depth of their spontaneous in-love-ness registering on their faces as a kind of beatific adoration, as if they’ve just seen Saint Someone-or-other with their own mortal eyes, except that what they’re probably seeing is the truffle bar.

And may I just gush about those?–the truffles, that is?  Fruit-infused, flower-infused, herb-infused, and the list goes on.  You have never seen–or tasted–such beauty, and believe me, I know my ganaches.

Or maybe folks are feeling the chocolate-hazelnut cream (which is divine on homemade crepes–just saying).

Or even the cacao powders for cooking, hot-chocolate-izing, and the like.

The love grows in the café, where you can sip things both delicate and complex, enjoy gelatos and confections, and generally feel eternally grateful that all this belongs to you by virtue of your having entered into that most sacred of contracts.

Marriage altar . . . chocolate altar. What’s the difference? Come worship:  Sampaka Chocolates, C/ Consell de Cent, 292, Barcelona.

What if a legendary fascination with roses grabbed an entire city? And, assuming such a thing were possible, what if every rose (both real and handmade) on the entire planet suddenly appeared on the streets of Barcelona? Flower sellers everywhere–on the street corners, at the metro stops, in the parks, on the ramblas. An effusion of roses!

Likewise, let’s imagine that every bookseller (and for that matter every organization even remotely connected to books) went and set up its own portable store on the streets of the city, so that just for a day, there were more books than people. Wouldn’t that be beyond grand?

Imagine it!–books and more books, everywhere you turned! Books in Spanish and Catalan. Books for adults and children. Books for your library, your bedside, your coffee table.

So let’s give the idea a name–Dia de Sant Jordi–and ordain one day a year, April 23rd, during which a man may present the woman in his life with a rose, while the woman presents her gentleman with a book. (We’ll forget for a second that women receiving flowers while men receive books is at all problematic.) Isn’t the whole affair just delightful?

According to legend, on April 23rd, Sant Jordi slew the dragon who had been terrorizing Catalunya, and from the dragon’s blood sprang a rose, which Sant Jordi gave to La Princesa, who presented him with a book in return.

Dia de Sant Jordi: possibly the most charming event I’ve ever witnessed. Roses for the women.

And books for the men. Naturally you could shake things up, if you wanted–give a flower to your guy while you treated yourself to a good read.

Wandering the ramblas felt like trying to thread your way along Colorado Boulevard the night before the Rose Parade. Seemed like everyone in the city was out!

Goose makes a fine Sant Jordi, doesn’t he?

All ready to slay dragons for the rose-loving/bookish girl in his life. (Wait–I think that’s me!)

One of my favorite moments during our day-long visit to Carcassonne’s castle: sitting down with Miss Zinnia in one of the old halls to watch a documentary about how the castle came to be, starting with the old Roman wall that still anchors one segment of it. I love learning the history of the places we land in. I also find myself wondering about the Women Of The Castles. I mean: there were women who lived there some of the time. I know this to be true. But the story of a castle often looks like this: guys stake it, build it, and hide out in it until other guys spy it, sack it, or take it over.

I’d love to go back in time and interview a couple of the women who had their own stake in places like Carcassonne. You know–get their take on things. I’d wager that half the time, they’d say stuff like, “My husband and I, we had the nicest little place in a grove, down by the river, you know?–and he wants to go and build Trump Tower up on the hill.  I mean–what’s that about? And now I’m supposed to pick up and move?  I really could not care less about the uptown address or the Duxiana bed. And . . . AND . . .  once the interest reserve is up on the loan??”–she shakes her head, disgusted–”gah!–don’t talk to me.”

I mean, whatever else they are, castles tend to be, well, big. And Carcassonne–it just kept getting bigger because through the centuries, people (read ‘guys’) kept adding onto it.  But bigness has its merits, not the least of which is that all that space means a greater likelihood that, if you’re a woman, you could find a room of your own–a place to tuck yourself and your friends away in for a few hours.  I like to think maybe there was a secret women’s ‘wing’ at some point, where Carcassonne Gals could commiserate about the challenges of menstruation in the middle ages, for example, or discuss the superiority of French butter and perfume, or start a manuscript illumination club.  You know–a ‘salon’ group of sorts.

I’d love to know what the Women Of The Castle thought about their inside-the-fortress-life, is all.  Wouldn’t you??

Driving from Point A to Point B in France reminds you that sometimes the drive is the Whole Point. That is, the journey itself takes center stage, just that fast.

Miss Lavender and Miss Zinnia felt similarly. When that Quintessentially French Yellow called, they felt bound to answer.

(As would anyone with a fondness for flowers.)

In fact, it occurs to me that Fondness For Flowers is a condition the French must be resigned to living with. (Wink.)

Because: how could you possibly want to live in the middle of nowhere, unless Nowhere looked like this?

No photo today.  In fact, that I know of, there may be only a small handful of photos of Miss Celandine and me together–ironic, considering how long and faithful and brilliant our friendship has been.  We met in graduate school, years ago.  We got on famously.  We still do.  I thought I’d talk about two big reasons Miss Celandine is a great favorite.

One.  She beat the rush, got on a plane, and came to Spain.  To see me.  She stayed for ten glorious days during which we hit up museums (MNAC! Picasso!), sampled gelato (Llet Merengada!), wandered the streets of Born, Gotic, and Eixample (Tous!), hiked every inch of Park Güell, braved the evening tapas crowds (yes, we survived Tapas 24 and have earned the right to tell the tale), and hopped a train to Tarragona to see the Roman ruins and claim a spot in the sand, where we soaked up the Mediterranean ocean and sun for an afternoon.  Incurably funny, she charmed the petals and teased Goose.  To us, she’s an Event.

Two.  She beat breast cancer last year.  Yes, she did this.  With the help of surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, and intense personal grit.  Here in Spain was only the second time I had seen her since her diagnosis.  This trip was both a vacation and a celebration for her.  I could say Miss Celandine is brave, that she’s a fighter, but these are platitudes.  What’s true is that she did the work, and it was unimaginably painful, and she is now well and as alive as I’ve ever seen her.

This morning I put her on a plane bound for JFK and then for home.  She’ll resume her life as a university professor and All Around Extraordinary Woman.  Fly safe, Miss Celandine.  And by the way:  the Eleven O’Clock Mom thinks you’re grand.

So I watch my kids interact with each other as we travel. Three things catch my attention.

One. So you’re playing.  It’s hard not to have affectionate feelings for people you play with. Seriously. Sure, occasionally somebody wants to be king or queen of the sandbox, and a battle for sovereignty ensues. But by and large, people who play together enjoy each other. Seems axiomatic, don’t you think?

Two. So you’re building something.  My kids record playtime as Happy Memories. That is, their happiest memories of siblings are linked to times they played together (or got into mischief together). Who doesn’t want to grow their cache of Happy Memories? You know–throw some more treasure onto the pile?

Three. So you’re seeing it.  Watching your kids play together makes you smile, which ups your happiness quotient. I defy any mother (or any-Anyone, for that matter) to witness a round of robust playtime and then decide she’d rather hang onto her so-so mood.  Really.  Me?–I find it hard to feel partly cloudly when my kids are spraying sunshine at each other.

Playtime.  Yep.

Seems like every town we passed on the road to Carcassonne had a centuries-old church parked in the middle of it. I’ve wondered to myself why I love old churches so much, and I suspect it has something to do with the fact that by its very definition, a church is a place meant to inspire quiet and encourage personal reflection. I can’t even count the number of churches both grand and modest I’ve been privileged to visit since last summer. But what I always notice is the way something in me falls silent the second I enter.

Now you’ve got to understand: my mind is seldom a silent place. Sometimes my thoughts manage me rather than the other way around.

However, when I step inside a church, I step into Quiet. The flickering of the votives, the cool of the stone floors and walls, the smell of wood and age, the way even whispers reverberate, the hush inspired by frescoes and altar pieces–all of it combines to slow my thoughts and open up a space for contemplation. It’s not necessarily about worship; I do that elsewhere. It’s about simply inhabiting the quiet the way I imagine other bodies and minds have perhaps inhabited the quiet.

My thoughts decelerate, instantly, and I find that for a few moments, I am at ease in my being.  And it.  Is.  Beautiful.