Random moments in my week

My head feels full of clay...only external inputs that can drill their way through six inches of solid, wet, sticky clay can actually penetrate to my brain...needless to say not much gets in. And not much gets out either. Which is why this will not be a coherent post but a string of unrelated paragraphs. Enjoy.

Last spring I signed up for a weekend writing workshop at a retreat center in western Massachusetts. All this time, I have been thinking that this workshop would take place next weekend, October 24-26. Yesterday it occurred to me to double-check the dates and I learned it will actually be taking place THIS weekend, October 17-19. Oops.

This morning as we were getting in the car to go to daycare, I mumbled to myself, "I'm so tired I'm going to die." Z overheard this and said, "No! Not my want you die." Awww.

Yesterday I dropped the kids at daycare just as the kids from School B left to catch their bus. All of the kids must sit and watch TV until School B leaves. After they were gone, the preschool "teacher" turned off the TV and announced, "The girls can go play in the (toy) kitchen. The boys can play cars." I just sort of gaped as I sat with E and Z eating their Cheerio's and Rice Krispies. "What are you going to play with?" I asked them. "Nofin'" Z said. After finishing their breakfast they got two bulldozers off a shelf and drove them around in the kitchen area (not the boy-sanctioned car rug). Can I look at this as a sign of them comfortably crossing (and defying) arbitrary gender roles? WTF?

Finally, M brought home from school last week a flier inviting, "Hey Kids! Come join the Good News Club!" Whenever you hear "good news" you gotta assume it's bad news, in the form of religious brainwashing...in this case the Child Evangelism Fellowship. I wrote three letters to the teacher and principal. I tore them up. I considered calling the principal, but I didn't. I'm holding onto the flier to take with me to the next PTA meeting, or parent teacher conferences and discuss it with him there. Double WTF???

Toot-toot-toot-toot

That's the sound of my own horn, because this week in the fiction section at Literary Mama my short story Measuring Rain appears. Check it out.

W.W.B.O.D.?

M's interest in politics has risen during this build-up to the election (his interest had waned since the days when he was about three and blamed everything bad on the president--if he saw litter on the ground he would say, "Must have been George Bush"). We've been talking about the candidates and the difference between Republicans and Democrats. Without apology I feed him my biases: "Republicans want to take money from poor people and give it to rich people, destroy the environment and start wars. Democrats want everyone to have equal access to health care and education, to take care of the environment and make friends around the world." (Actually that's more of a description of the Greens, but I'm throwing my chips in with the Dems this year--and they better not disappoint!)

Last night as I was getting everyone ready for bed, Z and M had an altercation. M made as if to hit Z.

"Hey, hey, hey," I said. "No hitting."

"I want to hit him really hard in the face," M said.

"That's what George Bush would do, isn't it?" I asked. He looked chastened.

"What would Barak Obama do?" I asked.

"Probably tell him to stop it," he replied.

Shameless, I know, but if it works I'll take it!

Life

I just went to a memorial service for a co-worker who died suddenly last week. It was a half-hour of silence in the wildlife garden outside of the building, under the autumn-blue sky, the sun shining down warmly. Crows cawed in the distance and this year's new seagulls flapped and soared over the nearby parking lot. A young spruce tree gave off a warm and piney smell. Threads of spiderwebs glistened in strands between shriveled flower stems. Tiny bugs wove through the air, lit by the sun, bravely spinning out their waning days. Dried maple leaves crackled under the feet of people as they came and went. It struck me, standing there, soaking up the sun and the aromas and the saddness...Life is beautiful and messy. Wonderful and tragic. And too short to waste time being angry, impatient, bored, resentful. And it's way too short to waste time doing things we don't want to do.

Blogger's Block

I haven’t been able to post in the last couple of weeks because I’ve had so many things swirling around in my head, but none of them has held still long enough for me to pin it down.

One of my issues, of course, as usual, has been time…not having enough of it, or wanting more. I seem to have these periods throughout the year when too many things happen at once. September started out well, with us getting back on a schedule, me getting to work on time--and even doing yoga in the mornings--thanks to the 7:30 a.m. school bus arrival. Then homework started coming in, and soccer practice and games, and class projects, open house night, PTA meetings (yes I joined the PTA…White House here I come!) Our weekends have been packed--both with self-inflicted activities like fairs and spending time with friends and with kid-centered stuff like soccer games, birthday parties and Bug Maine-ia (which caused M to have nightmares about giant ants).

The Solar Home Tour and Green Building Open House is coming up next weekend, which is a wonderful event for showcasing homes that use different forms of alternative energy and “environmentally friendly” building materials and techniques. It’s also great for C’s business. However it fills me with anxiety and resentment every year because of the amount of preparation involved (when you are showing off your house, it kind of can’t be in its usual state of sh*t-holeyness) and because after seven years I’m kind of tired of people poking around in my personal space.

I spent the weekend with my stomach in knots…due I think to a vague sense that I had a lot to do and was somehow unable to do anything (think ladybug stranded on its back). I hoped to get a jump on cleaning Friday morning before friends arrived for the afternoon, but after several interruptions, I had only managed to clean one bathroom while in the meantime E and Z took out pretty much every toy they own in the living room. I tried catching up on two weeks’ worth of laundry, but Hurricane Kyle showed up at noon, after I had already hung out three loads and had one more in the washer.

Even as I write this I cringe at the whineyness and insignificance of it all. C and I watched City of God last weekend, about the drug gangs of Rio de Janiero. It was incredibly well-done, but after I ended I said to C, “that was a terrible movie.” I've felt heartsick ever since with sadness and guilt and powerlessness. Even though it was a fictionalized account, it was based on real-life events and it broke my heart to watch babies not much older than my own being shot and killed, shooting and killing.

A hurricane destroys lives in the tropics; it interrupts my laundry schedule. Children die of malnutrition, contaminated water and violence every day; I worry about whether our Thomas trains have lead paint. I wrote recently about how much I was loving reading “The Maternal is Political.” After I read more of the book, however, I started thinking, “middle-class hand wringing…” (Someone help me out here…was Rebecca Walker’s essay a satire?) Of course education, health care, consumption, the environment, reproductive choice and war are absolutely vital political issues. But I felt something was missing. Where were the voices of women and mothers who were actually suffering as a result of our political system (other than Cindy Sheehan’s wonderful essay resigning as the face of the American peace movement, and rightfully calling the Dem’s to task)? Then I ask myself, do we invalidate these women’s experiences because they drive minivans? Belong to the PTA? Have the ability to choose public school over private (as opposed to having no choice)? Do I invalidate my own experience because I’m not forced to live in fear of my husband, boyfriend, pimp, landlord? Because I’m not a sex-worker or a squatter or a migrant farm-worker? Certainly not…we all have stories, and our experiences are what they are. I’m just disappointed that a book about the crux between motherhood and politics didn’t have any stories by moms who struggle to raise children on a convenience store salary, from the millions of women whose kindergarten children have no childcare after school, from those who have lost their homes in the recent foreclosure crisis. Maybe they’re too busy and tired and overwhelmed to put two sentences together.

And finally…Sarah Palin. I’m glad the conversation has finally moved on from her children to her frightening record and lack of knowledge and experience. But I stumbled upon a blog that had a picture of her face imposed on Rosie the Riveter, with the “We Can Do It” slogan and the blogger wrote how empowered she was feeling, like she can do anything (with Christ behind her), and I realized that there is a whole contingent of people who do feel inspired by her--women who have been oppressed by their fathers, husbands and churches for so long and now they see a woman just like them on her way to the White House. She’s kind of their answer to feminism. They will vote against their own economic self-interest and their children’s education and health because of their religious beliefs, but now they can vote for a woman who’s against their self-interest.

Recent conversations:

M: Can you believe I'm the only one in my class that doesn't hate math?

Well, yes, actually I can believe that because I always hated math (except geometry...I loved geometry!). Of course I don't say this.

M: Math is fun...it's like a detective story.

Exactly, only without the dead bodies, the suspense, the ambiguous threats to the protagonist's life and the resolution with a happy ending.

I don't know where I got this kid (actually I do...from his dad, who used to be called C. Computer and loved math until he hit calculus, and almost became an engineer....horrors!) but I'm sending him to MIT!

Later:

M (who at seven and a third is on the verge of losing his second tooth): Papa, I have a suspicion that my mom is the tooth fairy. Because last time she said the tooth fairy might bring me a gold dollar and the tooth fairy did.

I'm just glad he didn't get suspicious because I ran in and hugged him first thing in the morning, sliding both hands under the pillow to switch tooth for gold dollar.

They have concocted a plan to find out whether or not I am the tooth fairy by not telling me the next time he loses a tooth and seeing if any money appears. If it doesn't does that mean I'm off the hook for the next 18 teeth?

Speaking of teeth, have you heard of this trend for $5, $10 or even $20 for a tooth??? Sorry kid, but your pearly whites aren't worth $400.

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New post up at Capital Walks.

Books and Bread

A couple of weeks ago I hit the downslope to 40 and to celebrate, I ordered myself four books I’ve been wanting to read, but couldn’t get through interlibrary load. Unbelievably, I was able to find them all used, so I didn’t have to break any Buy Nothing rules (I did feel a twinge of guilt at the authors not getting my contribution to their royalties).

Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. I’ve been experimenting with Mark Bitman’s no-knead bread, with mixed success. This book takes a similar principle, but simplifies the process even further.



In the first weekend I had the book, I made three boules, two baguettes, a ciabatta and two pizzas--all delicious and easy (although the baguettes did come out slightly flat). Next I am going to try the whole wheat sandwich bread, because there’s only so much white bread a person can eat in one weekend (groan).

The Maternal is Political. I am only partway through this book, but I have loved every essay I’ve read so far--I feel so jazzed, so fired up, so “Right on Sistah!” when I read it. Not only is it really good writing by a variety of women--both writers and politicians--but it’s so varied in what constitutes politics and the political, in how these moms got involved or how they express it. Go read it now. And then go vote.

The Creative Family. I admit it, I’m something of a Soulemama addict. I go to her sight like some women turn to fashion magazines--to fuel my sense of inadequacy…so of course I was dying to read this book. I’m only partway through and while I agree with most of what she says about parenting and creativity, the way she says it rubs me the wrong way. The writing style is kind of condescending (it reminds me of when we write for the public at work-- “if you use the word ’we’ instead of ’you’ people won’t feel like you’re preaching.”) Still, it has a lot of neat project ideas in it (some of which I have already borrowed from her website), and I’m looking forward to trying the homemade glue (we’re almost out of Elmer’s and I’m slightly disturbed by that cow on the label--is that what the glue is made out of??). Also, even though reading Soulemama’s blog has promoted my inferiority complex, it’s pushed me to try harder to be creative and try more projects both with and for my kids and for myself.

Road Map to Holland. I first encountered Jennifer Graf Groneberg’s writing on Mamazine, and later found my way to her blog and Parent Dish Column. I was drawn to her writing by her beautiful prose and her unassuming honesty. I was especially interested in reading this book because her life parellel mine in some ways--three boys, one set of twins, four years between the older boy and his brothers--but diverges in that her twins were born prematurely and one of them has Down syndrome. But I also wanted to read it because of Jennifer’s lovely writing style, because I always enjoy a good motherhood memoir, because her casual references to the light in the cottonwoods or the change in the aspen leaves near her Montana home always give me a twinge of homesickness for my own native Colorado (a twinge I relish like a tongue probing a toothache), and because I was curious…curious to know if life with a baby with Down syndrome was that different from my own life, and if so how and why?

I devoured Roadmap to Holland in the first three days after it arrived, staying up too late at night. Jennifer’s writing has the power to bring her reader directly into the moment with her. I was in agony when, at the end of Chapter 3 the twins were still in the NICU (they are home by Chapter 5), and even though I did not have the complications of premature birth or an earth-shifting diagnosis, the book took me right back into those early months of bone-aching exhaustion, the confusion, the sense of being overwhelmed, that filling out a form or making a phone call was almost a Herculean feat.
I appreciate her stark honesty about her own emotions--shock, confusion, anger, guilt, sadness and how these emotions evolved over time, doubling back on each other (at one point the physical therapist says that development doesn’t take place in a straight line, but in circles with overlap; it’s almost as if emotions progress in the same fashion)--and how the story ends on a note of forgiveness. I also appreciate knowing more about Down syndrome and the challenges--and joys--the families of children with Down syndrome experience.

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P.S. New post up at Capital Walks.