on being a reader and being a mother

My dear friend Edith is a full time nursing student, a dedicated wife, mother and friend, and possibly the busiest person I know at the moment. So I was surprised to hear that she had recently joined a singing group. She told me it was very good thing, despite having to cram it into the rest of her life, because doing it makes her remember who she is.

It's an activity that links her to her past, to the best parts of herself, to the really real Edith who loves music.

Another friend, Emily, asked me about what I was reading in a recent email. I then asked about what she was reading, sort of awe-struck that she had even asked, that she was even thinking about novels, as she has a toddler and a little baby. She wrote that last summer, after two years of parenthood, she decided to become a reader again. She made the decision and stuck to it.

Something similar happened to me too. I needed to remember myself, especially after we moved and I became a stay at home parent. I made my way back to novels.

I am a reader. It is one identity that I can claim with very little anxiety about misleading you, or pretending to be something that deep down I am not. Which is curious, because it has been many years since I've lived a reader's life - at least the reader's life I used to live - the pinnacle of which is lying on my back on the couch with one leg flung up over the back, able to shut out any and all external stimulus, completely absorbed in a book, for a very very long time.

I think becoming a mother made me constitutionally incapable of this, just as I am no longer a heavy sleeper. Nowadays I read maybe 15 pages at a time. But life without a novel in progress feels off, strange. I am a reader, even if I spend very little time reading. After nearly five years of parenthood I've become accustomed to reading a scant half of an article in the New Yorker and renewing a 200 page library book three times in order to finish it. The sad thing is, for me Parenthood began but three short weeks after the conclusion of Graduate School, which in my experience was yet another great threat to reading for pleasure.

That makes a total of at least seven years without a delicious day spent with a book, draped over various pieces of furniture in heavy-limbed quiet happiness.

So why does my sense of myself as a reader persist? It only occured to me yesterday: it's because I read all day long. Here is how my day went:

In the morning I bathed the kids, took Frances to school, took Gabriel with me to the rec center, played on the basketball courts, went grocery shopping, brought Gabriel home for lunch and a nap, worked, woke him up to drive Mike to campus in the rain, picked up Frances at school, brought the kids back to campus to deliver them to the babysitter, did some more work, brought everyone home, scurried to make dinner, rushed through a story for Gabriel, put him to bed, then shut his bedroom door behind me and slowly slowly descended the stairs, looking towards the couch and Frances with a happy weariness, anticipating a snuggle and a chapter of something perfect together.

And what did she ask to read? A chapter of Cam Jansen and Mystery of the Stolen Corn Popper, which she had borrowed from the school library that day.

My heart sank. I wanted to cry. Please oh please can we read the Secret Garden?
No.
By the Shores of Silver Lake??
No. Cam Jansen!!
How to explain to her that this is a Bad Book? There is no pleasure in the language. There is no art to it. None. I think a computer wrote it, along with every other mystery in the interminable series. I wanted to say: Frances, I haven't read with you at all today, and this is how you want to squander our last precious minutes together??

I gave in and read it, but my borderline nutty disappointment made me realize how attached I am to reading good books with my kids. Sometimes it seems like we read all day, and the three of us love it. It is my new version of being sprawled out on the couch with a novel, except now I am sinking back into the couch cushions, one little body curled up on either side of mine, reading books I love. These books are shorter, and must hold up to serious repetition. But the truth is I don't mind reading Madeline and the Bad Hat, or any Frances the Badger book, or anything by Dr. Seuss or Margaret Wise Brown or Kevin Henkes or good gracious while we're at it the extraordinary William Steig, or James Marshall, especially if it features his hippo geniuses of friendship George and Martha ten more times. And now too, for the past few months, the joy of sharing books from my own childhood with Frances: the austere and beautiful Little House books, linguistic delights by Roald Dahl, the springtime song that is the Secret Garden.

How could I think I left reading behind? I never did, and what's more, it occurs to me that we are together becoming a family of readers. And someday - maybe sooner than I would like - I'll be able to read silently on the couch again, for more than a few minutes at a time, because my children will also be reading on the couch. Except we'll all be reading our own books, wrapped up in separate universes.

I hope my big kids will indulge their mama and let me read aloud to them, even then. It is a pleasure I would be so very sad to give up.

alphabet sweet potato pancakes

I had to share these pancakes with you. They were light, moist and sweet; it is hard to imagine a more perfect vegetable delivery system for a certain picky four year old.

I must warn you, these quantities are rough approximations.

Combine 1 cup whole wheat pastry flour, 1/4 cup ground flax seed, 1 tsp baking powder, a pinch of salt, a scant tablespoon of brown sugar, a tsp of cinnamon and a hearty sprinkle of allspice and nutmeg in a bowl.

Lightly beat an egg in a 2 cup Pyrex measuring cup. Add about 3/4 cup pureed sweet potato and 1/4 cup applesauce, then fill up the rest of the cup with soy milk (or cow's milk, or whatever you have - we used vanilla soy milk). Pour in your dry ingredients, mix lightly (or a lot, if you are making these with an enthusiastic two year old, as I was). Finally add a tbsp of oil to the mix.

Voila. Letter shapes consumed with maple syrupy yogurt floated the little boats in my house this morning. So happy were we that on a whim, after dropping Frances off at school, I headed to beautiful Quiet Waters park to take Gabriel out on an actual boat. He had a pink kayak in mind. Yes!

Sadly the boat rentals aren't open yet. Who wants to meet us there in two weeks for some toddler-style seafaring? 

another good day

Coming off of this perfect spring weekend, I feel sunned and tired and happy. And deeply grateful for the peaceful, happy birthday party we had for Gabriel yesterday.

What was so good about it, you ask? Well, geez, if you really want to know, I suppose I'll have to share some highlights. Just picture:

*A delighted boy and girl, reveling in the attentions of all three of their grandparents.

*Me, reveling in the space and freedom that comes with three adoring grandparents in the house.

*Me, struck by intermittent tidal waves of gratitude for the harmony and ease between my mother and Mike's parents. And love for all three of them.

*The simple joy of chocolate cake (and the simple joy of making a chocolate cake that one's children blissfully devour).

*A confluence of events that I can only look to the path of the stars in their heavens to explain: I was able to set aside my deep-running Fear of Sport and my children were happily engaged by other people instead of hanging on my legs and Mike and I were together on a beautiful sunny afternoon feeling full of life and what do you think happened? My husband and I had a catch! With Gabriel's new blue-and-orange foam football! And I LOVED it!! I felt giddy, like Frances, who...but wait, that's another item:

*Frances played catch! She caught the ball five times in a row with her Poppy! She did not walk away discouraged, she did not turn the game into some crazy imaginary scenario that no one else can enter into - she played. And she was thrilled to be playing. We all shared her happiness, wholeheartedly. She also liked the party hats and was a wizard most of the day.

*Our wonderful friends made the party a party, bringing festive energy, a love of cake and ice cream, and a willingness to make friends with everyone else in attendance. And I got to play soccer with Nathaniel - a real soccer player - and quibble over goal lines. One game of catch and I'm ready to get serious over backyard sports.

So. It was all beautiful. Today was beautiful too, and my favorite part was the first truly successful, mutually satisfying family gardening endeavor of the season: planting seed potatoes. I highly recommend it for the five and under set. And the five and over set, come to think of it. What could be more satisfying than digging holes and dropping golf ball-sized potato chunks into them?

You laugh. Don't knock it til you try it.

I hope the spring is just as beautiful where you are, and that life is allowing you the time and inclination to enjoy it. To be renewed by it. Happy basking, friends.

a good day

I haven't blogged in quite awhile, and mostly that is because we've been busy.

No wait.

Life is always busy, and usually I find the time somewhere, because writing and connecting with all of you is a joy. The sad truth is I have had very little motivation to write because of the relentlessly irritable mood that has gripped me over the past few days. The object of my outrage? Exhibit A, the monstrous little girl you see here, reflecting on the lifespan of the chicken at Kinder Farm Park this morning.

 

On Monday at a beautiful local playground I refused to push her on the swings and insisted that she practice pumping. I confessed to bouts of irrational anger over Frances' behavior to my kind friend Milena as I watched her push Frances with generosity and good humor. I told her that I hardly recognized my kid sometimes. Who was this child? She was so quick to pick a fight, and so utterly resistant to complying with even the tiniest request.

Most disturbing of all was the way I hardly recognized myself. Where was the rage coming from? Why not bend a little, rather than break? I did tell Milena that the lack of sleep in our household was getting to be seriously problematic and perhaps this had something to do with our short tempers.

Well, did it ever. Last night, due to a cold, I got in bed with a book at 7:30. I didn't exactly have the best night of sleep,  but when the morning came at 4:15, I wasn't as groggy as I normally would be. With a clear head, I refused to let our wacko sleeper wake up Frances before 6 am one more day. Taking uncharacteristic action, I put on some pants and whisked out the door with noisy Gabriel on my hip, through the warm darkness and into the car.

We admired the moon. We admired the trucks on the road. I took him to a 24 hour diner, where we made towers of little jellies, shared some eggs, read Hop on Pop, and admired the work of an artist who was carefully penciling a scene featuring wild ponies racing down a hill. Our waiter told us the illustrator often comes in around 11 pm and works all night, drawing in his booth.

I held out until around 6:30, when we returned home. Frances was still sleeping. Success! She came down a little after we got home (wish I'd stayed away longer) and Mike and I immediately noted a difference. She was pleasant, she was alert, she was ready to get dressed and go visit the baby animals at Kinder Farm. 

I wanted to shout out happily, like Gabriel does when I return from work: YOU CAME BACK!! We spent time looking at the animals, joked together, played on the playground, and even squeezed in some classic Frances-style metaphysical wondering over a snack. We were talking about my dad. She had wanted to hear stories about him in the car on the way earlier that morning. She told me that he was with God in heaven. That was very far away, but she could maybe just faintly hear him talking now. He was saying: I still love you, even since I'm dead. Wait, there's more...he is also saying: If I were alive, we would do lots of things together Frances, and I would come to see you every day.

She looked at me with the widest eyes, the same wide eyes from Christmas time and talk of Santa, from stories about fairies that maybe come into her room at night. You can watch her eyes get bigger as her imagination starts to become her reality. Mama, Grandpa was really talking to me! And then: Mama, if Grandpa were alive, I would love him so much. Much more than I love the color blue.

I just listened. We were both happy, all day. When the sitter arrived this afternoon so I could do some work, both children protested. Inwardly, I did too. Usually I am ready and willing to pass them off by 3 pm. But today I was the one prolonging our see-you-soon hug. It felt so good to be myself with my daughter, who was also being her extraordinary self. 

Today was a good day. What an extra hour of sleep can do! 

Now the question is - what to do tomorrow at 4:30?