bookworms

Gabriel has officially caught the reading bug. Just in time for the most beautiful spring day of 2011! We left the library with a stack of books this morning, and when we arrived home later he informed me that he was going to take off his shoes and read his books on the couch. I didn't get it at first. I'm going to read my books alone, he clarified. Then at naptime he selected his favorite, a slim volume on jumbo jets, and snuggled up next to it in bed with a contented sigh before drifting off to dream of jet engines.

It's hard not to grin when we watch him pore over picture books, and this new independent relationship to reading has coincided with a dawning awareness of phonics, which is very exciting. But joy of reading aside, there was no way I could countenance my children spending this glorious afternoon indoors. Luckily, after school they agreed to reading outside on our old favorite backyard blanket, a jungle-themed shower curtain handed to us free of charge at a yard sale years ago.

One of the most satisfying and long-anticipated delights of parenthood for me is revisiting beloved books from my own childhood. Frances and I read Stuart Little, then Charlotte's Web, when she was just four. Most of it was over her head but I simply could not bear to wait any longer. We gave her Little House in Big Woods when she was four and a half and gobbled it up together. I was reassured somewhat that Laura herself is four, then five in the book - see, it's completely age appropriate! (Of course by the time we got to Silver Lake and Laura was thirteen, that argument was useless.)

We generally want to share the things that are important to us with the people we care about, but this book thing of mine goes deeper than that. Certain books - the Little House series, the Narnia books, Betsy, Tacy & Tib, Madeleine L'Engle stories about the Austins and the O'Keefes, Anne of Green Gables - were a profoundly influential, orienting presence in my life. All my unruly childhood passions and inchoate adolescent yearnings got mapped onto those characters and plotlines.

Had I not connected so powerfully as a child with those books, I might be someone else today. Someone else's mother! So in a way, to know Laura is to know me. And to have the honor of introducing Frances to Laura and sharing a (thank goodness) similar breathless fascination with her pioneer life is to know Frances better too.   

Every once in awhile a picture book at the library calls out to me, and with a little shock of recognition I remember reading it as a small child, usually because there was something strange or upsetting going on in the story (as there almost always is in the very best children's books). Did you ever read Sylvester and the Magic Pebble? I had completely forgotten about that one til I stumbled upon it with Frances last year. The cover alone triggered a long lost memory of feeling intense worry. (Sylvester, a donkey, turns into a stone, and his adoring parents spend months grieving over him, unable to find him, imagining he is dead). A few weeks ago I found the Maurice Sendak book, Outside Over There. It's about Ida, who has to save her baby sister from terrible goblins all by herself. This book fascinated and disturbed me as a kid. So much so that I quickly tucked it back into the shelf before my kids saw me holding it. I'm not ready to revisit that one.

And today? I found Saint George and The Dragon, which is beautifully illustrated and features a detailed description of a bloody, violent, three day-long fight with an enormous dragon. I suddenly remembered savoring this book, just as Gabriel is doing now, mesmerized by its pictures and wanting to be alone with them so that no one could interrupt me and break the spell. So today I read it to the kids outside on the jungle shower curtain while they alternately pinched, snuggled, climbed over, and burrrowed into me - anything to help them tolerate the impossible suspense. A completely different reading experience from my first round with this book, but no less perfect.

And by the way, speaking of pioneering....I wanted to let you all know I've started blogging for the All Things Mothering community blog at www.mothering.com. Very exciting! You can read my first post, Frontier Life, here.

spring headstands

Nothing quite inspires like hanging around the house without a thing to do. Where would we be now if we hadn't logged all that time staring at ceiling fans as children? I'm convinced that creativity depends upon wide-open expanses of boredom in which it can incubate, eventually giving rise to particular expression. That's one angle, anyway. It's an argument that supports my intuitive belief in unscheduled time for children, and my persistent exasperation with the fact that Frances arrives home from kindergarten at 4 pm with homework in her backpack.

Though truthfully, no one was feeling bored this weekend. How could we, with grandparents visiting to celebrate Gabriel's birthday and so many excellent new toys to play with?

Because of the guests and the toys, we were able to enjoy the kind of time that stretches out wide before you, loose and breezy. Relatively contented children and many adoring adults made for walks, meandering chats, reading, drawing. Filling a glass bowl with purple and white violets, planting a few seeds. On Sunday, in the height of lazy afternoon-ness, I was struck by the urge to practice headstands so I could watch the kids swinging upside down.

As adults, we so rarely find ourselves in touch with that urge from childhood, to try something because it might be kind of neat. The inspiration to master a new trick, be it throwing a ball as high as you can, performing a tongue twister with incredible speed, or holding a perfect handstand in the pool longer than anyone else. Remember? Maybe it's not that the inclination fades with age; it's that the circumstance necessary for practicing tricks so rarely presents itself in adulthood. What we need is an afternoon with nothing to do.

We were supposed to go to the Air & Space Museum on Sunday. It was to be one last birthday hurrah for our resident lover of Things That Fly. Then the government almost shut down, and I prepared myself for the likelihood of shuttered museums. Then it miraculously didn't shut down, but by then I had gone too far down a different path and couldn't turn back.

It's my new anti on-the-go campaign. What shall the slogan be? Say No to Go? Don't Go? When you're on the go, you can't make papier mache, which is what I proposed in lieu of rocket ships to my children and mother, in the hopes of somehow sweetening the stay-at-home deal for them. They were skeptical, but the fact that no one made a case for the Air & Space Museum makes me think they weren't too disappointed to spend the day at home instead.

The first thing we did was shred the newspaper. That went over pretty well.

Frances helped whisk up some flour and water into a smooth goo. We used slightly more water than flour, playing with amounts until the consistency was just a little thicker than Gabriel's birthday cake batter.

 

Somehow we managed to collect all the newspaper in a grocery bag and bring it outside, along with two bowls of goo, three ceramic cereal bowls to serve as molds, vaseline to grease them with, and an empty cardboard toy box to serve as a workspace. (Did I mention my mom was there? This is definitely a project best undertaken when you have a 1:1 adult-kid ratio.)

After slathering the bowls in vaseline, we set to work dipping our newspaper in the sticky cake batter, squeezing off the excess, and laying strips. Everyone commented often on how ridiculously messy this all was. Gabriel finally asked at one point if we were ever going to wash our hands, because his bowl was already so very mah-SHAYED. 

Despite the low level distress that crusty flour goo caused him, he was right back out on the deck with me this morning, helping to put on another layer of sticky newspaper. Until it wasn't fun anymore, a few minutes later. He read his new book about rockets while I finished the job.

The day was gorgeous and sunny, so I left the bowls resting on old jars outside to speed along the drying process.

Tonight I managed to pry one of the bowls free from its mold. I know, it's not much to look at now, especially since the inside is yellowed with vaseline. But that can be fixed, and after we introduce these bowls to paint, glitter, and all the bling we can find in our crafting supplies, then give them the jobs of holding plastic dinosaurs (Gabriel) and drawing charcoal (Frances), I do think they will be quite beautiful. At least, they will be to me.

But do you know, I think I like those headstands as much as - if not more than - the bowls. An afternoon free of errands, during which my inner on-the-go addict was relatively quiet, so much so that instead of folding laundry I spent time on my head, complete with muddy knees and elbows and leaves in my hair? I can't tell you what it might have been exactly, but I like to think that while I was upside down, something shook loose.   

birthday's end

In the quiet, in-between moments today, Gabriel would look up at me with big eyes and ask hopefully, is it still my birthday? Since he was at day care for most of the day, busy celebrating and playing with friends, there weren't many opportunities to be still enough to wonder if the birthday might have tiptoed out the back door when he wasn't looking. But during pizza-making, and while looking for the right bedtime story, and watching the bath water drain out, he had to ask, just to be sure. Is it still my birthday?

The last time he asked was en route to his bed, after saying goodnight to his sister and his papa. I was carrying him in his pajamas towards his darkened room, where the humidifier was already humming in wait. Yes, it is, I told him. Then a little light went off in his clean, wet head.

But you can't go to bed on your birthday!! 

As if it were the craziest idea he ever heard. Going to sleep on your birthday? Come on!

Gabriel went along as I proceeded with the bedtime routine, still skeptical and a little sad, but worn out enough not to protest further. But then during the part when I stoop over him for the final sprinkle dusty and kiss, he whispered into my face: do happy birthday goodnights, Mama. Do them like this: happy birthday ... happy birthday ... happy birthday. I could feel him smiling in the dark, so pleased was he with this simple yet  brilliant idea.

Usually I say goodnight three times at his door, just before leaving the room. Sometimes I say squeak squeak squeak, if we are being a baby dormouse and his mother. Tonight I stood there and whispered happy birthday, happy birthday, happy birthday, and for some reason it felt so silly that we laughed through every one. Despite (or maybe because of) the solemnity of bedtime, we just couldn't help ourselves.

Then I regained my composure and said, I love you big three year old boy.

And he whispered, I love you too, Mama.

Then I shut the door, and the birthday was over.

Today I had coffee with someone who told me how her very close friend's husband is dying. I have heard about a number of deaths lately that are one or two steps removed from me - friends of friends, or parents of friends of friends. What to do in the face of such tragedy and loss? It is ridiculous to go to bed on your birthday, and it's ridiculous that people have to die. Completely bewildering.

Gabriel's response to the absurdity of endings is a comfort to me. He accepted bedtime, but not without sadness, and not without making some creative adjustments. He asked for my help and cooperation, maintained his fine sense of humor, and said I love you. May I have the grace and wisdom to do the same.

cultivating our garden

Maybe today offered a taste of summer where you live, too. Yesterday morning I dressed my children in heavy jackets; today we ate dinner on the back deck in bare feet. Like a first day of health after a bout of sickness, we stepped into the sunshine and didn't look back. It was as if winter had never happened.

The swiss chard and kale seedlings moved into the garden beds yesterday. I was reluctant to send them out of our kitchen and into the big wide world full of nasty bugs and bad weather, but today they looked well settled. Gabriel and I have developed a seed-planting routine over the past couple of weekends that we employed as we filled in bare spots in the dirt among the radish seedlings. He tells a story about how they are having a sleepover with all their seed friends, and we make their beds for them, then cover them up and tuck them in by patting down the dirt.

Over the weekend Mike and I came to the end of our agonizing about another green shoot in residence around here. We decided to enroll Frances in the private school I told you all about. After consulting with some older and wiser dear ones, thinking about what my dad would say, considering Frances' response to the school, Mike's lengthy visit, contemplating the meaning of education, and quite a few sleepless nights, we both knew that it was the right thing to do.

A week ago, I realized how troubled I was to think that we were the sort of people who send their kids to a fancy private school. What sort of person is that, exactly? Oh, I had some inchoate notions of indifference to the poor, opting out of a valuable community experience, celebrating privilege and flaunting consumption, pulling into a parking lot full of gleaming SUVs. Alignment with the world's evil forces, I guess. Then it struck me: what exactly do all those vague associations and prejudices of mine have to do with Frances, and her experience in the classroom? My vanity was seriously getting in the way.

Happily, this place doesn't resemble my fantasy of 'fancy private school' in the least. It is a beautiful school that employs a holistic and at the same time rigorous approach to educating children. And they gave us a very generous aid package, making something I assumed would be impossible a very definite possibility. Sometime Friday evening, I knew deep down that this was an opportunity that would be wrong to pass up - a place in which Frances might truly flourish.

So here's the thing: over the same weekend that we arrived at the school decision, a small group of dedicated people braved awful weather and made the Annapolis Elementary School new school food garden work party a great success. There were new raised beds alongside the blacktop today. The students started seeds in their classrooms last week. It is just terrific. And we weren't there.

There was so much to do at home, you see. (Plus the last time I volunteered with Gabriel in tow, he cried whenever I left his side and eventually threw up in the middle of the school cafeteria.)

But as I stood at the computer in the kitchen, reading the PTA president's email describing the work party, a quiet incoming tide of sadness started to lap at my feet. It wasn't regret, but rather the glamor-less adult realization that opening a new door nearly always means shutting an old one. I am so excited for Frances to experience the new educational environment that is waiting for her next year, and I am so sad that she won't be a part of her school anymore with its kids from the projects, its view of the harbor, its new garden.

Heather recently commented that she appreciated the honesty here, even when I can't offer a happy ending. Tonight's reflections are a mixed bag. So much of this blog is dedicated, at least in part, to making sense of how I am drawn to home and children. The delicate adjustments that go into finding a sustaining balance between outward and inward orientations in the world - what we give up and what we are given. Could it be that I need to loosen my grip on the sense I have of myself as a person who heads up community garden organizing efforts?* And if I give that up, what might fill the cleared space? We didn't go the school garden work party, and that makes me sad. That said, I'm pretty sure we were where we were supposed to be - home. Just as I'm sad to leave Annapolis Elementary, and also sure that The Key School will be a much better place for Frances to grow and learn.

My children will be children but once, and this is my chance to mother them through it. I miss my old identity(ies), but I'm growing more attached to a new one that is emerging of late. Who knew cultivating my garden would be a response to that mysterious yet persistent call that beckons to our most true and really real self: come out! I know I'll have to say goodbye to hosting seed sleepovers before too long, at which point I'll figure something else out. Hopefully the community garden will still have me.

 

*Don't worry - it's still me - I'm already trying to put together a weekly neighborhood yoga practice for the summer. Local friends, please talk to me if you're interested!