calling all women who rock

I forgot to bring my earphones to the gym this morning, and so found myself flipping through the discarded magazines on the shelf behind the elliptical machines, looking for something to read on the decidedly uncool (yet somehow alluring) stair climber. I settled on the December issue of Rolling Stone.

It's a magazine I flip through probably once or twice a year, just to confront the extent to which I've lost touch with popular culture. Sometimes I catch a reference and feel a little bit better. The cover story this morning promised at least some name recognition: the 100 greatest rock guitarists of all time. Yes, I do believe I've heard of Eric Clapton!

Curious, I began flipping through photographs of bare-chested rock gods and the accompanying appreciations written by fellow rock gods, and around #58 (was it Slash?) I realized there was not a single woman on the list thus far. Surely there would be a few fine women from the entire history of rock n' roll that made it on? I kept flipping pages, and only at #78 did I hit Joni Mitchell. Bonnie Raitt was also on the list (#80-something). That's it.

team kitchen

Banana bread is something, not unlike chocolate chip cookies, that everyone seems to have a favorite go to recipe for, an approach that never fails to satisfy. So I don't know why I'm bothering to share this recipe with you...maybe it's because Gabriel and I enjoyed making and eating it so much. I just had to share the love. This stuff definitely ranks up there with peanut butter on the relish-able scale.

Part of the fun stemmed from my decision to accept the mess, embrace the unpredictable process, and cede a lot of kitchen control over to my able three year old assistant. After I found a whisk and a spatula dripping in batter in the (clean) cooking utensil jar, I explained to Gabriel that it would be better to put things on the counter when he's finished using them. He thought about that. 

But Mama. Then we'd have to clean off the counter.

Yes, but now I have to clean the jar. 

He looked at me with an expression that said: ...and? The counter clearly seemed a more difficult mess to deal with. We all have our own ways in the kitchen, don't we? Our boy is already developing his.

what's going right

Today I helped at Gabriel's preschool. While the children ran and climbed on the playground, his teacher and I stood back and watched him playing with a friend.

He is such an amazing kid, said Miss Kim.

I looked at her. She meant it. I know, I said. He really is.

So often the worries and difficulties of parenthood are louder than anything else; they take center stage while all that is going right quietly continues off in the shadows of stage left. Why is that? My diaries from adolescence are filled with woe; I only thought to take them out and write when boys and friends and inchoate aspirations were confusing and/or depressing. I call my mom when I'm sick. I never call her to tell her that I'm healthy. Wouldn't it be nice if I did, though? Hello, Mom? I feel great! Just wanted to let you know!

But watching my dear boy today--capable with a clementine at snack time, exuberant running through the meadow at school--I determined to turn the mental volume down on all that is going wrong and notice all that is going right. I am a practiced worrier. I fear it may even be a default mode sometimes with my children: am I a deficient enforcer of cleaning up? are their diets awful? will that nose ever stop running? do they have enough friends? And when a problem resolves, often I don't even notice. We parents can't take a minute to celebrate the end of sand-throwing on the playground or needing help in the bathroom because we've already moved on to the next thing.

hating on mama

This is how the children chose to spend the last twenty minutes before naptime today: hurling ice chunks and snowballs at the sliding glass door separating us. They were aiming for my head. Get her!! they yelled with maniacal grins on their faces. The monster, the witch! The mean lady who denied them a second video, who makes Gabriel take a nap every dang day, and who, come to think of it, fails consistently to meet expectations in the role tacitly ascribe to her, that of Supreme Alleviator of Every Imaginable Discomfort.

They love to team up against the powers of Mama. When I slid open the door to tell them they had five more minutes before it was time for stories, Gabriel looked at me with wild eyes and announced "We're destroying your house!" Two flushed faces looked at me with held breath and crazed, fixed smiles. Then the snowballs began to fly again.

I quickly shut the glass door. Ha ha ha ha ha.

jailhouse bunk bed blues

This morning I woke up coughing, way too early. So I finished my novel, then stared at the final page for a long while, listening to the dark murmuring house. The murmurs grew louder after six: the heating system whooshed, bed springs down the hall creaked, and when Mike clicked on the gas burner beneath the red kettle to make coffee I finally slipped out of bed, determining to have a peaceful, quiet morning with Gabriel. We had a rare day with nothing on the calendar. Time to stop running around and get over this cough.

Fast forward two hours. I'm shouldering large pieces of furniture up and down the stairs, hunting for stray washers, and sweating up a storm. Gabriel is following me around with tools in hand. How did this happen?

Friends had given us their son's old bunk bed over the summer. We painstakingly took it apart at their house and moved it piece by piece to our basement, unable to then muster the reserves needed to reassemble it in Gabriel's room. Months passed, and it never seemed like the right time to tackle the big black beast. When I asked Gabriel what he'd like to do together this morning, he suggested we put together his bunk bed. Between his spontaneity, bright enthusiasm, and sparkling eyes, I was persuaded. A surge of confidence moved through me, despite the daunting task before us. Yes. Yes we can.

operation rainbow house

I have often been neglectful of my environment. I haven't given everyday beauty its due in our varied living spaces, instead finding a kind of strange, adolescent satisfaction in the hodge-podge effect that years of hand-me-downs and thrift store shopping creates. Mid-century modern? Art deco? Country? Sure, those are fine decorating styles, but why don't we ever read about Eclectic Rescued-from-the-Sidewalk Chic?

terrible horrible no good very bad

Yesterday started out just fine. My mother was here and played with the kids while I went to an early morning yoga class. Then we went together to a friend's house who is moving and was looking to give us some old clothes and toys. All good things, right? 

But then we bid adieu to Gramma (after the usual drawn out goodbye, during which Frances clings to my mother's legs like a determined barnacle). I remembered that Mike would be working all day, and looked at the piles of laundry and dishes to be done, and suddenly the mood turned south. 

relish this moment

Gabriel listened to the entirety of All of a Kind Family with us, despite the fact that his sister and I shared reading duty and that it is about a family of five girls who occasionally indulge in anti-boy talk (I resisted the urge to cover his tender ears). The ethos of a big, loving Jewish family living on the Lower East Side in 1912 is what drew him to this story. It suits him perfectly. The descriptions of close family life and in particular the centrality of food resonated in his little big heart. I do believe Gabriel is happiest at home, surrounded by his family, standing on a chair at the kitchen counter, stirring and tasting away.

When I read how Charlie relished his potato kugel, Gabriel stopped me. He knew the noun relish, but not the verb. What did it mean?

Like when you close your eyes at dinner, I explained.

love hurts

This is one of many arresting acrostics I've received from my dear literary daughter. It's evocative and unconventional (moonlight!), but then ... hmm, kind of strange with the mine business...and then oh dear, always mine makes it sound like it's coming from the pen of a poetic stalker. Or just a very direct, earnest little girl.

Lately Frances has been possessive and particularly resentful of the attentions her super cute little brother gracefully receives. Alternately a pretend baby and a shockingly accurate adolescent-in-training (she matter-of-factly told me she was taking the shoelaces out of her sparkly sneakers yesterday, except that's not what they're called. Mama! I have told you a hundred times they're not called sparkly sneakers!), Frances seems to be uncomfortable in her own six-year-old skin. 

craftlandia

Feast your eyes upon the balance board that I made for my family for Christmas. Yes, I made it! And yes, those zig zags are nothing more than duct tape painstakingly applied over a much longer time than one would think necessary, something I could never have seen through til the late-night end without the support of friends who came over to drink wine and make balance boards with me.

It's weird that it took me this long to organize some adult crafting. I love making stuff with my kids, but that requires valuing process over product, flexibility, tolerating messes, and navigating the limits of their patience. Making things with an adult crowd is so different. I can indulge my perfectionist tendencies! And laugh at them with friends--while still refusing to slow down the perfectionist train!

I was probably inspired in some way by Crafternoon, a book and terrific concept (which is, as far as I understand it, getting together to make stuff with your friends) promoted by the best pal of one of our best pals. Of course, with little ones around, crafternoons are not always possible. But post-bedtime crafting? Some encrafted evening? A craftastic night? Lordy, somebody stop me. But you get my meaning: it was super fun. I'll do it again.

fresh intentions

I'm a year-round maker of resolutions. The varied commitments I privately, persistently make - everything from drinking more water to giving more to charity, from reading more poetry to eating more kale - have at times set me teetering on the edge of pathology (maybe it's already in the DSM? Self-improving Personality Disorder?). So no, I'm not making any resolutions today. Instead, I have a few lines to share with you that have been coloring my vision over the past few days, lending me a sense of fresh intention about motherhood.

The first I encountered in a book loaned to me long ago. Everyday Blessings had been collecting alarming amounts of dust on my bedside table until I picked it up and shook it off recently, opening to this quote:

Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky.

-Rilke