Month: November 2011

Still

This bird, which I think is a sparrow, has lately taken refuge in the corner of our front porch’s roof every few days.  The first time I saw him I had to look again, closely, wondering if he was alive.  I stood in the open door, watching for long minutes before I grew quiet enough to  finally see his little chest expanding and contracting. Yes.  He is alive.  The second time I saw him I thought: oh, wow, what a coincidence.

Now he’s familiar, no longer a shock, no longer a coincidence.  The first time I pointed him out to Grace and Whit they reacted in a way that surprised me: instinctively, their voices fell, their demeanor softened.  When he comes, they each choose to stand in the front door gazing up at him for much longer than I would have expected.  They are riveted, charmed, enchanted.  For some reason they treat him, and the space around him, with a kind of respect and reverence that is rare in the rest of their lives.  Now it is they who point him out to me, and his little corner is the first place they look every time they pass the door.

“Can I name him?” Grace asked me recently.  Of course, I answered.

“I’m going to think about it,” she said.  A couple of days later, she was sitting at breakfast eating her Cheerios in silence.  She chewed and looked quietly out the window.  I cleaned out the coffee maker.  Out of nowhere, she said, “Still.”

I turned to her.  “What, Grace?”

“Still.  That’s the bird’s name.”  I nodded at her.  Tears sprang to my eyes.  “Because he’s so still.”

And, I thought, because he’s still here.  He is still, motionless, quiet, calm.  And he is devoted, dedicated; he comes back.  And now, every time I see him, I can feel something solid and velvety burrow in my chest, can feel my exhales deepen.  And I think:

Still.

The Five Year Plan

Five years ago we celebrated Thanksgiving with my parents and my father’s whole family (picture above taken after I had bathed the children and was about to put Whit, in his red fleece footy pajamas – sob – into the car for the drive home).  Grace had just turned 4 and Whit was not yet 2.  I was still working at the consulting firm I spent almost 7 years with after business school.  We lived in this house.  One of my nieces was a baby, and the other was not born.

Where will I be in five years?  I really have no idea.  I will be 42.  Eek.  Grace will be 14 (EEEK!) and Whit will be 12.  It is possible Grace will be considering leaving home for boarding school.  I don’t know where we’ll be living, but if I had to guess, I’d say still in this little house (the “two years, three years, max” house we moved into in 2001).  I hope I am still working in search, which is a profession I finally really like.  I really, really, really hope I have written a book or articles or somehow more fully inhabited the mantle of “writer” that remains so elusive.  Most of all, I hope fervently that my family remains healthy and safe, my nuclear family and also my parents, sister, and extended family of blood and of choice.

If the last five years have taught me anything at all, however, it is about the futility of a five year plan.  I know how quickly the best plans can unravel.  Furthermore, and more importantly, I know how even a life that unfolds exactly according to plan can still be missing something essential.  That was the lesson I was just beginning to learn five years ago.  When I reflect on five years ago it feels both like yesterday and like a hundred years ago (as is true of all major things I remember).  Most of all, though I cannot believe the rocky, sometimes vertiginous emotional terrain I was about to embark upon.  Emerson said that the “years teach us much the days never know,” and it is certainly true that now, with the perspective of years, I can look back and realize how very much I’ve learned in five years.  How much I’ve learned about who I am and about what I want.  I’ve mourned certain things that are lost as well as some that will never be true.  I’ve celebrated other things I never dreamed I would.

And here I am.  “There are years that ask questions and years that answer,” Zora Neale Hurston famously wrote.  It has been a series of intense years, full of both questions and then, quickly, often startlingly, answers.  I’m not naive enough to imagine that the next five years won’t hold their own set of challenges and delights, of heartbreak and sudden joy.  I would like to believe that the woman the last five years have helped make me is more sturdy, less sensitive, but I actually suspect that the reverse is true.  I anticipate further switchbacks, more confusion, and a continued need to trust my headlights, even if they can only see a few feet into the fog.

And so we drive on.  Or beat on, boats against the current.  After all, what choice do we have?

I’m adding my voice to the chorus, sharing thoughts on five years ago and five years hence, and honoring, in so doing, those whose next five years are not assured.  Big Little Wolf started this, and my friends Kristen and Aidan have both participated.  This effort is in support of Ashley Quinones, the “kidney cutie,” who is raising money for a life-saving kidney transplant.  Please click here to learn more.

Reading with (and by) children

photo taken on Saturday late afternoon

Last week my dear friend Annie and I were discussing books our daughters were reading.  She asked me if I ever review kids’ books here.  No, I said, though I do write the occasional review for Boston Mamas.  Our conversation made me want to share some thoughts on reading, children, and specific titles.  Hopefully this timing is good, given the upcoming holidays.  Books are my favorite gift to give, whether for a birthday or Christmas.  I’ve actually been pleased by how Grace and Whit have reacted to this: I expected them to roll their eyes and complain that I wasn’t wrapping up something plastic and battery-operated for their friends’ birthdays.  Instead, they’ve gotten involved in helping to assemble a short bunch of their favorite current books, running their hands lovingly over the familiar covers as I stack them for wrapping.

For both my children, beginning to read has been surprisingly binary.  I expected that it would be a gradual process.  No.  In both cases, they were painstakingly sounding out three letter words and literally reading the next.

(An aside: sitting with a child, reading an early reader, biting your tongue while they sound out ddddd….oooooo……ggggggg is among the best metaphors for parenting I know.  Likewise: watching a child follow Lego instructions, observing them doing it wrong, watching them get frustrated, and having to sit on your hands to avoid just jumping in and doing it for them)

I still read to both kids, every night, and don’t have any plans to stop.  There are a few picture books we all still love, and sometimes even Grace will come to me bearing one of these favorites in her hand.  I read to them alone and together, I read to them during meals and in the tub, and, always, I read to them before bed, reminded over and over again how big they are when they jostle around, trying to get comfortable on my lap.

Some treasured picture books:

Space Boy – Leo Landry (a riff on Where the Wild Things Are, with beautiful, dreamy illustrations.  both kids love it)

Jethro Byrd, Fairy Child – Bob Graham (the power of the imagination, the existence of magic)

Firefighters in the Dark – Dashka Slater (dreaming, a gender-neutral firefighter, and magical realism)

The Winter King and the Summer Queen – Mary Lister and Ellen Verenieks (the natural world explained through the use of memorable characters, the force of good and sunshine)

Miss Rumphius – Barbara Cooney (leaving the world a more beautiful place, the impact an individual can have on the community he/she lives in, a strong female protagonist)

And some beloved chapter books:

100 Dresses – Eleanor Estes (between a picture book and a chapter book; strong message about bullying, and the content of our character being more important than what we wear)

The Magic Treehouse – Mary Pope Osborne (both of my children began their independent reading with this series and I still love the determined siblings, the empowered girl, and the broad range of historical themes)

Penny Dreadful – Laurel Snyder (Grace’s favorite book of the last year, great message about families being okay no matter what, what is inside of us matters more than our outsides)

Ramona & others – Beverly Cleary (Grace devoured all of Cleary’s books, as did I.  i am still charmed by their rambunctious heroine and their depiction of sisterhood and family life as loving, warm, and messy)

Harry Potter – JK Rowling (Where to begin?  This is among my favorite books, ever, of all, period.  Grace and I are reading them together and she has tumbled as wholly as I did into Harry’s – or, let’s face it, Hermione’s – world)

My own memories of childhood reading, in particular those from when I was Grace’s age, are incredibly rich.  So much so, in fact, that I sometimes fall in the trap of pushing books I adored onto her.  This has mixed results: she loved From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E Frankweiler and Harriet the Spy, but didn’t “get” Island of the Blue Dolphins and has thus far resisted The Phantom Tollbooth and Anne of Green Gables.  Next up in her queue (yes, she has her own stack) is A Wrinkle in Time and if she doesn’t worship it I’m not sure she’s actually my daughter.

Now, I am off to the local bookstore to buy some gifts for nieces, nephews, and godchildren!

What are some of your favorite books from your childhood, or books you have enjoyed reading with your children?

Watch with glittering eyes

And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you, because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places.  Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.

– Roald Dahl

Little wonders

Last week we biked to school.  Grace had her 9 year checkup so wasn’t going to stay at school.  I ran alongside them on the way there and was reminded of how close we live to school.  Then Grace and I took the bikes home (me riding Whit’s bike: major thigh work out.  Good GOD.).  Whit was so thrilled about this adventure that he put his helmet on before his pants that morning, and talked about it all week long.  I’m so proud that my son is still delighted by such little wonders.

On Friday, 11/11/11, Whit and I sat in the kitchen and watched the various digital clocks tick towards 11:11.  This screen shot was the closest I could get to capturing the moment because the clocks didn’t display the date.  I know, I know – it is an entirely artificial construct, this 11:11 on 11/11/11 thing.  Nonetheless, we both anticipated the moment and shared it with a quiet seriousness that verged on reverence.  Celebrating another little wonder.

On Sunday we raked leaves.  Our “yard” is small, so this takes about 20 minutes.  Grace and Whit put patagonias over their pajamas and spent long moments trying to throw the pods that a neighbor’s tree sheds from the porch into the big yard waste bag.  Then we all fell into silence when a familiar cardinal arrived, perched on our fence, looked around.  They watched him, awed, quiet, admiring a little wonder.

On Sunday Grace and I had what may well have been our last lunch at the American Girl store.  She’s still playing with her American Girls, but I know the days of imaginative play with Julie and Samantha are numbered.  All of her friends have already moved on.  I tried not to dwell on the last-ness of our lunch, but it was hard.  As she looked down at the menu, I snapped this picture.  I love it.  My mother’s childhood nickname for me echoes in my mind as I look at this picture, pressing itself into my lips.  It’s what I want to call Grace.  Mum always called me her little wonder.

Am I the only person who finds the very pavement a bewitching, beguiling, constantly changing poem?  I can’t stop looking down.  Well, that is, when I’m not looking up (aside: maybe it’s no wonder I trip more often than the average non-toddler.  I’m simply so absorbed in life around me that I don’t pay attention to my footing.  Surely there’s a metaphor here…) Everywhere I step I’m walking on color, on pattern, on message and beauty.  Little wonders, all around.