snowbound: the last four days

The scene outside on Saturday afternoon:

The scene inside Sunday morning:

We've had a pretty good run of baking, crafting, reading and games. See below for details. The most remarkable development of this snowstorm by far has been the advent of writing. Real, independent, inventive writing. Frances has been enjoying writing words and short notes for months now, but up until recently was unwilling to take risks with spelling and usually her 'notes' were made of strings of words she had memorized.

Something changed. Sunday morning Mike gave her a small spiral notebook, which quickly became her diary, which she wrote in nonstop all day long. She spelled words the way they sounded to her, like 'byoodful' for beautiful, and 'lownlee' for lonely. Everything runs together; there are no spaces between her small, regular letters. Here she is writing stories on the couch...

Reporting on the morning's events over lunch...

And just closing up briefly (wearing her new recycled sweater hat, my crafting triumph from the weekend) before tearing up the stairs to pee.

How she resented enforced separations from her diary! The entries are extraordinary, and I am tempted to photograph and show you, but she told me they were private. Sorry.

That night as we were tucking her into bed she leapt up and ran to the shelf where she had left the little book. "I forgot I have one more thing I need to write down!" We said no, it was bedtime now, save it for tomorrow. Sullen, she stomped back over to her bed. I hugged her goodnight and said, I love you, little writer. She looked back up and me and said very gravely: I'm not a writer. Writers take breaks, and I do not.

In between novellas, memoirs, poems and recipes


Frances made bread with Gabriel,

Used game pieces to facilitate some imaginative storytelling with her brother,

and even played a proper game of Memory with me (our first), during which we used our pairs to make towers, making the final tally a little challenging. She double checked, and she did win.


Gabriel was the world's most enthusiastic baking assistant, requesting we get started on pizza dough at 6:30 in the morning on Sunday, and later dragging the big chair from the dining room before I even finished uttering the word brownies.

So far Gabriel and I have made pancakes, bread, brownies and spice cookies. He stands at the counter on his chair and bounces in anticipation. I need a poon! he shouts gleefully, peering down into a bowl of flour. I wanna dump it in! And also, I kid you not, a series of 'I love' statements, announced with great feeling. Every time we bake he gets swept up in the beauty of it all and has to share. He says things like I love this bowl, Mama. I love this salt. I love this baking soda! When we made brownies, he watched me melt cocoa and butter over the stove, and repeated over and over: I love chocolate. I love chocolate. Mama, I love chocolate...When it comes to food, the boy does not joke around.

The brownies, made with lots of white sugar and white flour and butter and of course chocolate, did not last long. I am certain I consumed far more than my share.

You may be wondering about the crafting. Yes, there has been crafting. Some seasonal decor came first, made of classic construction paper and felt bits that the children decorated.

You may notice in the following picture that our drying spot is also the first official Papa Craft, a frame that Mike made from PVC pipe supporting lights that will hopefully coax out our first tomato and pepper seedlings. Yay Mike!

Yesterday I took yet another clue from Ms. Soule and cut up leftover felted sweater bits, along with some felt and an old thick solitary sock. I gave the children blunt embroidery needles with long pieces of thread and showed them how to string the fabric. They loved it. I highly recommend this little project, especially for families with young children of different ages/abilities -- the toddler and the preschooler both found it fun and satisfying. The process was a pleasure. They came up with the idea of adding beads. And they were both so proud of the finished project (a 'snake' for Gabriel, and a 'glamorous scarf' for Frances) that we hung them up in their bedrooms.




And the books! So, so many books.



Frances and I continue to immerse ourselves in Little House on the Prairie (the malaria chapter: whew), and Gabriel's latest favorite is In the Night Kitchen. He jumps on the couch and chants: Milk in the batter! Milk in the batter!

Frances's writing has been amazing, truly. Gabriel's baking keeps me in the kitchen, happily. But these days have also brought an intensification of the bond between Frances and Gabriel - this has been profound and joyful to witness. They have spent so much time together, and they both seem so happy. Mike turned to me the other day and said: it's like they're on the same team now! They are naughtier together than apart, but I am so tickled by the partners-in-crime thing that I can't even pretend to be mad at them. Gabriel sprinkled curry powder on the bread dough he was kneading this morning while I went to the bathroom and he and Frances were doing nothing less than chortling - guffawing! - when I came back downstairs. Ha ha, Mama!


We've had dance parties. Tea parties. Jumping on the bed parties. Endless rounds of goodnight-wake up-good morning! In this classic game - reader, I know you remember this one from your own childhood - Frances and Gabriel snuggle next to each other, either in his crib, or her bed, or ours, or on the couch, or the floor in the kitchen. They close their eyes, announce they are sleeping, then yell WAKE UP GOOD MORNING!!, giggling. The two of them are rarely apart and have not tolerated separation well (Frances woke Gabriel from his nap one afternoon; he rushed at her door yelling Didi wake up!! at 5 am yesterday).

It's snowing again now. I got an email from Frances's teacher explaining that school was going to be closed for the rest of the week, and with President's Day, Frances won't get back there until next Wednesday. This would normally make me want to weep. But tonight, it feels just fine.

stirred up by life on the prairie

We gave Frances Little House in the Big Woods for Christmas. I was almost embarrassingly eager to read it with her and when we finished it, I suggested we get the next book, Little House on the Prairie, from the library. Which we did.

Frances agreed, and she is not a child to agree to something she is not interested in doing. But I am not sure what sort of impact the books are having on her. I know how they are coloring my days; images from this life on the frontier surface up at different moments and I find myself wondering about Laura and Mary and Baby Carrie. And even more than the children, I wonder about Ma and Pa.

This time around I am reading as a parent. How in the world can Ma do all that work with a baby? Is it because Baby Carrie is the quietest, least-needy baby ever to grace the prairie? Do Ma and Pa ever get a moment alone? How do they make decisions, have fights, and have sex living in covered wagons and tiny one-room log cabins with their three children all the time??

On a deeper level, I am considering the impact Ma and Pa had on me as a child. Exceeding capable, good-humored, gentle and brave Pa. Enduring, patient, hard-working and discipline-enforcing Ma. Ma never complains about the places Pa takes them too - she is decidedly deferential when he bemoans the increasing numbers of settlers and picks up his family to start all over again in a more remote land.

I realize Ma and Pa were ideals for me as a child. Theirs was a beautiful marriage! They depended on each other entirely. There was the romance of making a world together, carving a tiny human space in each new piece of wilderness. Pa was a man who could build a log cabin entirely himself, calmly ride through a pack of wolves, and play the fiddle and sing his children to sleep every night. With a man like that by her side, of course Ma would provide no protest more serious than the occasional, light-hearted 'Oh, Charles!', bending back over the washing, content with her lot in life.

I loved these books. I read them all, more than once. When I think of my attraction to farm life, wilderness, my longing for homemade and homegrown, my romantic notions about things like canning and bee-keeping (as only a city girl with little experience of such labors can maintain) I trace the line right back to Laura Ingalls Wilder. Can I possibly trace less-than-helpful, deep-running expectations about gender to her as well?

It troubles me. I still love Pa. Laura is so adoring, it is hard not to join her. Truly, there is little not to love! But the marriage...? Was Ma raging inside? Was she really happy? (For more on this, and even more on Laura's adult life and writing, see this fascinating article from the New Yorker a few months back).

Despite all this, I want Frances to love these books too. When she told me that she and Mackenzie played Little House on the playground at school last week, my heart did a little celebratory song and dance number. When she told me she got to be Laura, I gave her a hug. The Ingalls family has made its way into her imagination! Whoopee!

Do I thrill because this imaginary play connects Frances to my childhood, and to her grandmother's childhood? Yes. The smokehouse, the butter-making, the maple sugar candy! Am I also inviting her into a powerful story that might play a part in connecting her to generations of women who were unable to be - or at least struggled to be - equal partners in their marriages?

Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle first brought this up for me. What stories are important to pass on to my children? I grew up in a family and a culture that encouraged me to pursue my passions and ambitions. Now here I am, reading formative books from my own childhood with my daughter, revisiting how I encountered and imagined my way into these books as a child. The experience of reading 'double' - remembering/re-experiencing the childhood reading and reading as an adult - somehow brings me to the disconnect between the sense of boundless professional possibilities I had from an early age, and what I imagined it would mean to be a wife and mother.

Don't get me wrong! I don't think anyone lied to me. I feel grateful to have grown up in the time and place and family I did, far from the frontier, speaking at the dinner table whether or not I was spoken to. I feel grateful for the endless hours I spent reading, something that was not possible - nor would it have been encouraged - for Laura Ingalls. And I feel grateful that as an adult I have been able to experience motherhood both as a working mother and a stay-at-home mother; that I had those choices to make.

But Caroline lurks within. I admire her still, despite knowing what I now know. It is not easy to say what I want, and what I need. It is not easy for me to recognize those wants and needs to begin with. This is not helpful to me, or anyone else! I hope that my daughter grows up with more ease and facility in this department. Perhaps the answer is to read these books together for their simple beauty and startling vision of another way of life. When Frances is older, we can talk more about them. In the meantime, I aspire to be mindful of my own voice, and the need to articulate my feelings. How I live, and how I am in relationship with Mike and my children seems ultimately more significant than how many hours I work outside the home. I always come back to this. The stakes are higher now, and it's a good thing. Being true to myself is not just about me anymore. Being true to myself - difficult though it may be! - is also being true to my children.

enter the (adorable) dragon

Well, it's happening. We knew it would eventually.

The Angel Gabriel has begun his long journey into toddlerhood, a land of irrational desires, frustrations galore, and unpredictable mood shifts. For now, the boy has only his toes wet (excuse the mixed up wacky metaphors going on here) but I imagine it will get worse before it gets better.

For now, it really isn't bad at all. Besides some annoying wrestling and cajoling when it is time to get dressed in the morning, his new assertions of will are mostly completely adorable. When he disagrees, he says "yes it is!" -- as if I had just said "oh no, it isn't." Consider the following exchanges from today:

M: Is that a horse?
G: It's a cow.
M: Really? It looks like a horse to me.
G: Yes it IS!!!

M: Gabriel is singing his own song this morning.
G: No singing!
M: Oh? I thought I heard your song.
G: YES IT IS!!

Etc.

My whole day was punctuated by such exchanges, each a bit more endearing than the last. He's serious, but not too serious. Nothing that a tickle or some other pleasant distraction can't ease.

Isn't it interesting that instead of denying others' views of things (the universal NO! of toddlers), he has been emphatically affirming his own view of reality?

Oh, yes it is.

Gabriel, the huggy, kissy, chocolate-loving, sleep-deprived big scary dragon.

a family is everybody all together

This weekend was completely, entirely normal. Our ambitions were moderate; the socializing was minimal. There was cereal for breakfast, there were naps, there was coloring and cutting and glueing; there was a bit more restful time for all of us than the week usually allows.

There was a beautiful snowfall all day Saturday.

Often on the weekends we have 'grown up dinner' after the children go to bed. A break from 5:30 dinners featuring spilled drinks and spoons banged on plates to the rhythm of The Wheels on the Bus feels so very civilizing. Plus, it provides a much needed chance to talk and reconnect over a long, quiet meal.

But this past Saturday afternoon, an overtired Frances fell asleep with me in my bed. She looked downright angelic as I carefully slipped my arms out from underneath her (a vision I really needed, given how tough she's been lately). She napped for over an hour and came downstairs acting like herself. Ah! She and Gabriel played. Everything felt so peaceful, I decided we would have a family dinner tonight, with lovely views of our glittering, snowy yard all around us.

I moved our chairs into a new arrangement at the table, so we could all see each other better. I made rice and dahl, a simple, satisfying favorite. We adults didn't have our mental lists of odds and ends we'd been waiting to report to one another all day, because we'd actually seen each other a bit already. The children were unusually rested and happy. So we talked all together, mostly about the performance of Papageno (a kid-sized version of The Magic Flute) I'd taken the children to that morning. It was a real, lengthy, spirited conversation!

Frances told the story, and Gabriel would jump in with the important details, such as: the dragon JUMPED! (punching the air with his fists above his head for added emphasis) The dragon JUMPED! He JUMPED!

Which made us all laugh, and made him laugh too.

The little pleasures continued. Gabriel carefully spooned way too much yogurt onto his dahl, murmuring to himself: it's good, it's good. Frances recounted her experience as a participant on stage with great relish - how she wore a frog mask and held the hand of the opera singer who played a witch but she really wasn't a witch in real life; she was just acting. Mike and I sat back and grinned at each other.

In my mind, I kept hearing Father from the Frances the badger books (A Baby Sister for Frances, specifically) putting down his evening newspaper and saying: Isn't that right! A family is everybody all together.

That night, the stars aligned, the conditions were perfect. We were everybody all together.

Parenting young children is so hard. Being a family is so joyful.