So I decided to try to remember the mothering models from my own childhood, as I keep thinking about the way all the mothers I know are perceived by all the children I know, and why, and how this will change as the children grow up. With really small children, I think most adults are sort of lumped together in the category of "adults," with some seeming nicer and some seeming stricter and some of no interest whatsoever. But as kids get older they are increasingly aware of parents, their own and other people's. I remember being around eleven or twelve and starting to assess the mothers of my friends, the mothers in particular, as unfortunately many of the dads were just shadowy figures who showed up for the big play and stood awkwardly at the back of the gym in their suits and expensive shoes.
And I remember the way some kids talked about their moms, too. I had a friend who was embarrassed by hers, and I knew this, even then. I had a classmate whose leaned on her too much for companionship, and I knew this too. And on one summer weekend right around this time I learned that one mother of my acquaintance was a drunk, a scary, mean one who passed as a regular mom at school pick-ups and other occasions, and I think this really hit home the notion that there was a whole range of mothers out there, and that I was extraordinarily lucky in mine.
I do feel a little perturbed when I think about some of the mothers I idealized at this time. They tended to be quite unlike mine, much as some of my friends around this time were quite unlike me. There was one in particular; I'll call her Mrs. L. She was young--she was probably just over 30 when I met her, if that, which is unfathomable to me now. She was blonde and pretty, like my mom, but flirty and trendy, unlike mine. Her husband, too, was extremely young, and both parents were sporty and outdoorsy in a golf and skiing kind of way mine were not. In fact, those are the qualities that were valued in this household: physical attractiveness, youth, sportsmanship, skiing prowess. There was no practicing the piano, or participation in the town library reading competition. Come to think of it, I am pretty sure neither the mom nor the dad had gone to college, and education was not a particular value either.
I thought Mrs. L was glamorous and gorgeous and fun. I can unwind a whole scene from a winter Saturday morning before we all went skiing when she opened a giant can of Spaghettios with an electric can opener and blithely spooned it into colored bowls for her four children and me, while wearing pale pink ski pants, her hair like the Barbie heads her daughter had upstairs: white blonde and styled in a flip. In what was hardly a coincidence, neither Spaghettios nor Barbies were found in my household, so a mom who looked like one, serving the other, for breakfast, before skiing, must have seemed like an alien creature to me. In fact, in my reel of this memory my mouth is a little bit open, in shock and awe, I suspect, as I watch Mrs. L flit about in her pretty kitchen.
Anyway. I am no Mrs. L. I am my mother's daughter, like her in some ways, unlike her in others, but formed in her household, under her care, exposed to her values and ideas. I wonder if Lily and Annika will have Mrs. L's and who they will be, and what they will see in them that they don't see in me, and--I guess ultimately what all this wondering is about--what kind of mothers they will be themselves, some day, if they choose to be mothers. And what I--and the work of these days of raising them--will have to do with it.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
The Gloss of Time
Parenting young children leaves so little time for self-reflection. It is immediate, active and often chaotic, and when it is not, there is everything else to be done. But every once in a while I find myself wondering what my children will think of me, now, when they are grown. In other words, how will they remember me at this time in my life?
As I lay in bed beside Lily tonight, reading her goodnight story and letting my mind wander as much as I could while reading, I found myself thinking about the surprise party my mother threw for my father when he turned 30. This is one of my earliest, if hazy memories. When my dad turned 30 I was just 3. I don't remember seeing photographs of this event, and it's not the subject of family lore, so I trust my hazy memories more than I do those of the morning my father cut off his finger in the lawnmower, for example, which I really only "remember" because we have talked about it so much.
This party, though. It was winter; my father's birthday is at the end of November. I remember the door opening: a blast of cold air and a black sky. It was night, which maybe I remember because it must have been late for me to be up? He had been at a basketball game, or playing basketball; I remember basketball, but maybe I am conflating memories here. There was an awful lot of basketball in those days. Was there a poker table with a green felt top? My mother's hair was very blonde and flipped out at the ends. My father's hair was dark and thick. The clearest image is of his face, a crinkling around the eyes, a smile.
That's it. I don't remember guests or music or food or even being allowed to stay awake and watch; I don't know if I was. But to think now that they were 30--almost a decade younger than I am now--and that I was a fully actualized little girl with the capacity to notice my father's smile, remember it, is both thrilling and terrifying to me. Today, for example, right now as I sit at my desk, I am afraid that I will be crystallized in Lily's mind in these hideous black culottes that are stretchy and were tolerable to those who know me well during my last trimester and C-section recovery but are long overdue for a trip to an incinerator. Will she remember me with my unbrushed hair pulled back into a messy bun with a stretched-out elastic and purplish circles under my eyes? (The last time I saw my father he kept saying, "Is there something wrong with your skin? Under your eyes?" until my mother finally heard and snapped, "I think she's tired, Joel," shutting him up.)
And that's just the physical. Will she recall our ongoing exchange de jour, where she ignores me or does something she's not supposed to do, I reprimand or call attention to the ignoring or misbehaving, she bursts into tears and yells, "Just stop yelling at me, Mama. Just stop all the yelling," as though my being pushed to the brink has nothing whatsoever to do with her and is rather causing her undue distress? Will she remember that? Will I?
The funny thing is that I sort of think she won't. Not really. And I'm not sure I will either. Memory is so cagey. It condenses everything and then filters it out as it chooses, selectively, of course, in slices. And my memories of my parents are mostly scenes: this party, and then more clear and concrete scenes as I get older, and they do: the time my mother poured a cup of water on my father's head in the old kitchen, my father weeding in the garden, my mother sitting with her friend on the patio in front of the house, scraping wallpaper off of the walls. I remember many times they were kind: my father bringing me a Fribble when I had mono and a painful sore throat, my mother staying up late, late, late on a work night to help me finish a report on Clipper ships. (Why? Why Clipper ships?) And I remember fights: my father wandering the grounds of my high school because I was five minutes late to meet him, my mother, cold, refusing to get involved in a sibling battle, a stolen headband, idiocy.
But I realize, as I write this, that my memories are kind, less judgmental than I imagine I felt at the time, feel so often now. I remember the atmosphere more than the incidents, the sense of being loved. That, I think, is finally something to strive for.
As I lay in bed beside Lily tonight, reading her goodnight story and letting my mind wander as much as I could while reading, I found myself thinking about the surprise party my mother threw for my father when he turned 30. This is one of my earliest, if hazy memories. When my dad turned 30 I was just 3. I don't remember seeing photographs of this event, and it's not the subject of family lore, so I trust my hazy memories more than I do those of the morning my father cut off his finger in the lawnmower, for example, which I really only "remember" because we have talked about it so much.
This party, though. It was winter; my father's birthday is at the end of November. I remember the door opening: a blast of cold air and a black sky. It was night, which maybe I remember because it must have been late for me to be up? He had been at a basketball game, or playing basketball; I remember basketball, but maybe I am conflating memories here. There was an awful lot of basketball in those days. Was there a poker table with a green felt top? My mother's hair was very blonde and flipped out at the ends. My father's hair was dark and thick. The clearest image is of his face, a crinkling around the eyes, a smile.
That's it. I don't remember guests or music or food or even being allowed to stay awake and watch; I don't know if I was. But to think now that they were 30--almost a decade younger than I am now--and that I was a fully actualized little girl with the capacity to notice my father's smile, remember it, is both thrilling and terrifying to me. Today, for example, right now as I sit at my desk, I am afraid that I will be crystallized in Lily's mind in these hideous black culottes that are stretchy and were tolerable to those who know me well during my last trimester and C-section recovery but are long overdue for a trip to an incinerator. Will she remember me with my unbrushed hair pulled back into a messy bun with a stretched-out elastic and purplish circles under my eyes? (The last time I saw my father he kept saying, "Is there something wrong with your skin? Under your eyes?" until my mother finally heard and snapped, "I think she's tired, Joel," shutting him up.)
And that's just the physical. Will she recall our ongoing exchange de jour, where she ignores me or does something she's not supposed to do, I reprimand or call attention to the ignoring or misbehaving, she bursts into tears and yells, "Just stop yelling at me, Mama. Just stop all the yelling," as though my being pushed to the brink has nothing whatsoever to do with her and is rather causing her undue distress? Will she remember that? Will I?
The funny thing is that I sort of think she won't. Not really. And I'm not sure I will either. Memory is so cagey. It condenses everything and then filters it out as it chooses, selectively, of course, in slices. And my memories of my parents are mostly scenes: this party, and then more clear and concrete scenes as I get older, and they do: the time my mother poured a cup of water on my father's head in the old kitchen, my father weeding in the garden, my mother sitting with her friend on the patio in front of the house, scraping wallpaper off of the walls. I remember many times they were kind: my father bringing me a Fribble when I had mono and a painful sore throat, my mother staying up late, late, late on a work night to help me finish a report on Clipper ships. (Why? Why Clipper ships?) And I remember fights: my father wandering the grounds of my high school because I was five minutes late to meet him, my mother, cold, refusing to get involved in a sibling battle, a stolen headband, idiocy.
But I realize, as I write this, that my memories are kind, less judgmental than I imagine I felt at the time, feel so often now. I remember the atmosphere more than the incidents, the sense of being loved. That, I think, is finally something to strive for.
Monday, July 28, 2008
Earlier today I read Lily the first four chapters of Stuart Little, and I was going to write about that--and about how she keeps asking me questions like, "But is Madeline real?" as she tries to figure out the line between truth and fiction (like the rest of us, I suppose), but then as I was sort of absent-mindedly sketching it all out in my head, I had another thought.
A close friend who lives very far away and has been reading this blog sent me an e-mail a few weeks ago that said, among many other things, "But I suppose it's not really much of a reflection of your life at all," about the blog, and she is right. If something I write here is about my life, it is one scene from a day of thousands, one eye cast upon one incident or thought or conversation, in a day that contained multitudes. In that way, it sometimes feels disingenuous to write about my life here, although of course it is often my chosen subject matter. But what occurred to me today is that it is an especially inaccurate, lopsided way to write about parenting.
So much of what I read about parenting annoys me in some way, and the way it most frequently annoys me is that it feels dishonest, even phony or stagy. And when I was plotting out my little sketch about me and Lily sitting in the reclining chair, each having our own experience with Stuart, I realized I was doing it too. Not that the experience of reading Stuart Little with Lily was not special or memorable, for it was. But it is also true that as I was reading, I was thinking about the New Yorker article I just read about the writing of Stuart Little, and trying to remember something funny Katharine White said about one of the book's critics, and that I was using this ability I have developed thanks to much less enjoyable books that I am sometimes forced to read to keep reading out loud while maintaining a totally separate train of thought of my own.
This, of course, flies in the face of "being in the moment" with your child, the holy grail of modern parenting, and a state which, in theory, I totally espouse. However, I also think that caring for an infant is often stultifyingly boring, and spending hours on end with a four-year-old sometimes can be viewed as a form of torture. While it did not surprise me to learn that the sound of a newborn wailing is sometimes piped into cells as an effective means of torture in prison camps, if I believed in torture I'd suggest instead an overtired preschooler whining on a loop while being, say, treated to a special lunch in a nice restaurant or being bought new shoes.
I could go on, elaborating on my theory that playing Go Fish or Chutes and Ladders as an adult qualifies as an actual glimpse into hell, or how much I loathe the fact that I have to change my clothes pretty much every time I pick up Annika, which quadruples the laundry and forces me to break out certain items of clothing that predate the Clinton administration, but that is as boring and stagy, in its own way, as the "precious moments" that I so want to avoid.
I guess my point is that I am setting myself a kind of a challenge in writing about parenting this week, and in general. Is there a way to encapsulate both the fact that Lily said, as we closed the Stuart Little book, "I really love that his family acts like he's just like the rest of them even though he's actually a mouse. Which is really weird," as well as the fact that her companionship can stimulate the intense, desperate need for an alcoholic beverage? The fact that Annika can throw her arms around me and plan an open kiss on my cheek that brings tears to my eyes and makes me feel that I need never do another thing in my life and that carrying her around the apartment when she wimpers at being put down makes me feel like brain cells are actually dying as the life I want to be living sails by like a boat on the Hudson?
I guess we shall see. But I do think it's important to paint as complete a picture as possible, for my own sake as well as for the sake of anyone reading.
A close friend who lives very far away and has been reading this blog sent me an e-mail a few weeks ago that said, among many other things, "But I suppose it's not really much of a reflection of your life at all," about the blog, and she is right. If something I write here is about my life, it is one scene from a day of thousands, one eye cast upon one incident or thought or conversation, in a day that contained multitudes. In that way, it sometimes feels disingenuous to write about my life here, although of course it is often my chosen subject matter. But what occurred to me today is that it is an especially inaccurate, lopsided way to write about parenting.
So much of what I read about parenting annoys me in some way, and the way it most frequently annoys me is that it feels dishonest, even phony or stagy. And when I was plotting out my little sketch about me and Lily sitting in the reclining chair, each having our own experience with Stuart, I realized I was doing it too. Not that the experience of reading Stuart Little with Lily was not special or memorable, for it was. But it is also true that as I was reading, I was thinking about the New Yorker article I just read about the writing of Stuart Little, and trying to remember something funny Katharine White said about one of the book's critics, and that I was using this ability I have developed thanks to much less enjoyable books that I am sometimes forced to read to keep reading out loud while maintaining a totally separate train of thought of my own.
This, of course, flies in the face of "being in the moment" with your child, the holy grail of modern parenting, and a state which, in theory, I totally espouse. However, I also think that caring for an infant is often stultifyingly boring, and spending hours on end with a four-year-old sometimes can be viewed as a form of torture. While it did not surprise me to learn that the sound of a newborn wailing is sometimes piped into cells as an effective means of torture in prison camps, if I believed in torture I'd suggest instead an overtired preschooler whining on a loop while being, say, treated to a special lunch in a nice restaurant or being bought new shoes.
I could go on, elaborating on my theory that playing Go Fish or Chutes and Ladders as an adult qualifies as an actual glimpse into hell, or how much I loathe the fact that I have to change my clothes pretty much every time I pick up Annika, which quadruples the laundry and forces me to break out certain items of clothing that predate the Clinton administration, but that is as boring and stagy, in its own way, as the "precious moments" that I so want to avoid.
I guess my point is that I am setting myself a kind of a challenge in writing about parenting this week, and in general. Is there a way to encapsulate both the fact that Lily said, as we closed the Stuart Little book, "I really love that his family acts like he's just like the rest of them even though he's actually a mouse. Which is really weird," as well as the fact that her companionship can stimulate the intense, desperate need for an alcoholic beverage? The fact that Annika can throw her arms around me and plan an open kiss on my cheek that brings tears to my eyes and makes me feel that I need never do another thing in my life and that carrying her around the apartment when she wimpers at being put down makes me feel like brain cells are actually dying as the life I want to be living sails by like a boat on the Hudson?
I guess we shall see. But I do think it's important to paint as complete a picture as possible, for my own sake as well as for the sake of anyone reading.
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Let It Be...Without Me
Note: No post yesterday on account of house being struck by lightning. I hope that's the only time I'll ever be able to use that excuse.
I recently had an exchange with an American parent living in Europe about the differences between the ways Europeans and Americans parent. We came to the joint conclusion that while many Europeans worship the child, many Americans today are fetishizing childhood in a way that, to me, seems detrimental to the child.
There are so many manifestations of this fetishization. For one, there are the baby and toddler "classes" that simply did not exist when I was born. I am not talking about piano lessons or drawing classes for older kids. I am talking about "enrichment activities" for pre-verbal children, sometimes babies who cannot yet walk. These classes are religiously attended where I live, and in the cities where many of my friends live, and I confess that I myself signed up for a handful of these classes when Lily was a toddler, largely out of my inability to listen to the voice in my head that told me they were inane. Or, a louder voice: that of my mother, who allowed and encouraged us to take all the classes we wanted when we were old enough to choose and desire them--and lord, we did--but who finds this new trend about as silly as taking $400 and ripping it up into confetti.
And although it has taken me a few years, I now both trust my instincts as a parent more, and have gathered sufficient empirical evidence to have determined that there is quite a bit of truth to the confetti argument. I wonder what would happen to this generation of children if their parents could just learn to step back?
Today, while playing out on the lawn by herself, Lily occupied well over two hours engaged in a game of her own devising. She took two small tents from the shed and placed them near each other on the lawn. She took a row of small chairs and footstools and set them up in rows. She had a cavalcade of dolls and animals arranged in various postures and locations, as well as countless other small objects she'd collected around the house and yard. There was scotch tape involved, and water. There was a full size stroller and two doll strollers she'd managed to connect with elaborate knots. All of the dolls and animals were dressed; those who didn't have ready-made clothes were wearing clothes she'd made with paper and leaves.
Every so often I would look out the window, amazed by how the world she was creating took shape. Not once did she ask me for help, or my opinion, or my feedback, or my praise. Once she appeared to be finished with the construction aspect of the project, she began to play. After a very long while, I made my way out in the yard, over to where she was playing. At first, she didn't even notice me. And then: "Oh, hi Mama. Do you by any chance want to be the bus driver?" Really, how could I say no?
Annika, if I am tempted to bring you to Baby French or Art for Tots or any other activity you cannot yet pronounce, I will buy you some more blocks, books or paints instead. And be the bus driver every once in a while. Although I suspect you won't need me to very often. There's somebody just waiting for you to be old enough to jump on the bus.
I recently had an exchange with an American parent living in Europe about the differences between the ways Europeans and Americans parent. We came to the joint conclusion that while many Europeans worship the child, many Americans today are fetishizing childhood in a way that, to me, seems detrimental to the child.
There are so many manifestations of this fetishization. For one, there are the baby and toddler "classes" that simply did not exist when I was born. I am not talking about piano lessons or drawing classes for older kids. I am talking about "enrichment activities" for pre-verbal children, sometimes babies who cannot yet walk. These classes are religiously attended where I live, and in the cities where many of my friends live, and I confess that I myself signed up for a handful of these classes when Lily was a toddler, largely out of my inability to listen to the voice in my head that told me they were inane. Or, a louder voice: that of my mother, who allowed and encouraged us to take all the classes we wanted when we were old enough to choose and desire them--and lord, we did--but who finds this new trend about as silly as taking $400 and ripping it up into confetti.
And although it has taken me a few years, I now both trust my instincts as a parent more, and have gathered sufficient empirical evidence to have determined that there is quite a bit of truth to the confetti argument. I wonder what would happen to this generation of children if their parents could just learn to step back?
Today, while playing out on the lawn by herself, Lily occupied well over two hours engaged in a game of her own devising. She took two small tents from the shed and placed them near each other on the lawn. She took a row of small chairs and footstools and set them up in rows. She had a cavalcade of dolls and animals arranged in various postures and locations, as well as countless other small objects she'd collected around the house and yard. There was scotch tape involved, and water. There was a full size stroller and two doll strollers she'd managed to connect with elaborate knots. All of the dolls and animals were dressed; those who didn't have ready-made clothes were wearing clothes she'd made with paper and leaves.
Every so often I would look out the window, amazed by how the world she was creating took shape. Not once did she ask me for help, or my opinion, or my feedback, or my praise. Once she appeared to be finished with the construction aspect of the project, she began to play. After a very long while, I made my way out in the yard, over to where she was playing. At first, she didn't even notice me. And then: "Oh, hi Mama. Do you by any chance want to be the bus driver?" Really, how could I say no?
Annika, if I am tempted to bring you to Baby French or Art for Tots or any other activity you cannot yet pronounce, I will buy you some more blocks, books or paints instead. And be the bus driver every once in a while. Although I suspect you won't need me to very often. There's somebody just waiting for you to be old enough to jump on the bus.
Friday, July 25, 2008
Thoughts on Babies and Dogs
Yesterday, with Annika in the Baby Bjorn, I was walking the dogs--two full-size collies--when a couple of women stopped me at the corner. They were speaking to each other in another language, German, I think, and didn't speak much English. After a few confusing minutes, during which it became clear their intentions were friendly, I finally realized they wanted to photograph the dogs.
This had actually happened once before, and although I find it odd--sort of like the way I find tourists photographing stationary objects such as the tree at Rockefeller Center odd--I see no reason to say no, so I stopped and let them take their pictures. When they were finished they thanked me, and one of them, struggling over the words and speaking loudly, the way I do when I attempt to use my French, said something along the lines of: We don't usually see anything like this in our country.
A neighbor, a guy I know who lives on my street, happened to be walking by as she said it, and he laughed. "We don't either," he said to the women. "That's just Amy."
I relay this anecdote as a conduit. I cannot count the number of times people, many of whom are related to me by blood or marriage and some of whom are strangers with opinions they feel the need to share, have made comments about the insanity of my choice to have those dogs. And it is my choice, in that I knew all along that I would be the one to feed and walk them, to nurture them on a daily basis, as--quite simply--I am the one who is always home.
The funny thing is that not for an instant have I ever minded the daily care of the dogs. They get fed twice a day, walked three times a day during the week, and every once in a while require a trip to a groomer or vet. Although there are times, such as when it is raining or cold, that I would prefer not to walk them, the work itself is simple, entirely physical in nature. And in return for their food and walks, as well as the easy physical affection I bestow upon them, these dogs give me the unconditional love pets are famous for, their own brand of uncomplicated affection, and loyal companionship around the clock. Whenever I get one of these "What were you thinking?" comments, I always smile to myself, knowing that I have the better end of the deal.
By now you may be wondering what, if anything, this has to do with parenting. If not for this past week, I would have a hard time knowing myself. But I never realized before how much the daily care of a baby has in common with the daily care of a dog. This was thrown into relief for me by virtue of the fact that Lily spent this past week with my parents in Massachusetts, leaving me--for the first time in years--alone with a baby for more than a couple of hours. Spending a full day with Annika requires feeding, airing, the facilitating of sleep, along with somewhat mindless narration and play. But the lack of emotional entanglement, of arguing, negotiating, manipulating and being manipulated, explaining, elaborating, enhancing, and calibrating in this week without a four-year-old around has made me realize that it is the mental work required of raising an older child that leaves me spent, not the excruciatingly dull, robotic work of unfolding diapers and filling bottles, over and over again.
I miss Lily. In fact, I feel bereft, a word I've never before used to describe my emotional state. But today, when I entered the living room and found three pairs of eyes, three nonverbal beings awaiting their lunches, I must confess my mind felt clean and clear.
Tomorrow, Lily returns. I think I'd better go rest up.
This had actually happened once before, and although I find it odd--sort of like the way I find tourists photographing stationary objects such as the tree at Rockefeller Center odd--I see no reason to say no, so I stopped and let them take their pictures. When they were finished they thanked me, and one of them, struggling over the words and speaking loudly, the way I do when I attempt to use my French, said something along the lines of: We don't usually see anything like this in our country.
A neighbor, a guy I know who lives on my street, happened to be walking by as she said it, and he laughed. "We don't either," he said to the women. "That's just Amy."
I relay this anecdote as a conduit. I cannot count the number of times people, many of whom are related to me by blood or marriage and some of whom are strangers with opinions they feel the need to share, have made comments about the insanity of my choice to have those dogs. And it is my choice, in that I knew all along that I would be the one to feed and walk them, to nurture them on a daily basis, as--quite simply--I am the one who is always home.
The funny thing is that not for an instant have I ever minded the daily care of the dogs. They get fed twice a day, walked three times a day during the week, and every once in a while require a trip to a groomer or vet. Although there are times, such as when it is raining or cold, that I would prefer not to walk them, the work itself is simple, entirely physical in nature. And in return for their food and walks, as well as the easy physical affection I bestow upon them, these dogs give me the unconditional love pets are famous for, their own brand of uncomplicated affection, and loyal companionship around the clock. Whenever I get one of these "What were you thinking?" comments, I always smile to myself, knowing that I have the better end of the deal.
By now you may be wondering what, if anything, this has to do with parenting. If not for this past week, I would have a hard time knowing myself. But I never realized before how much the daily care of a baby has in common with the daily care of a dog. This was thrown into relief for me by virtue of the fact that Lily spent this past week with my parents in Massachusetts, leaving me--for the first time in years--alone with a baby for more than a couple of hours. Spending a full day with Annika requires feeding, airing, the facilitating of sleep, along with somewhat mindless narration and play. But the lack of emotional entanglement, of arguing, negotiating, manipulating and being manipulated, explaining, elaborating, enhancing, and calibrating in this week without a four-year-old around has made me realize that it is the mental work required of raising an older child that leaves me spent, not the excruciatingly dull, robotic work of unfolding diapers and filling bottles, over and over again.
I miss Lily. In fact, I feel bereft, a word I've never before used to describe my emotional state. But today, when I entered the living room and found three pairs of eyes, three nonverbal beings awaiting their lunches, I must confess my mind felt clean and clear.
Tomorrow, Lily returns. I think I'd better go rest up.
A Quick Note
I made a decision today while I was working on Saving Scout and decided to write about it briefly in lieu of posting what I wrote today; I will post the next segment of the book when I have ten more pages or so. My decision is to let myself run with the parenting entries for a solid week and see how it goes. I have been really conflicted about the many parenting entries I have recorded here because they are not linked in any way to any current, active projects, but that is not to say that they couldn't be, and based on some of the feedback I have been getting and the way I feel about some of the work, maybe they should be. Regardless, I am going to stop feeling guilty or self-indulgent when I write about parenting or my children for one solid week and let the chips fall where they may. It is possible that the work is trying to tell me something and that I need to listen to it. I am so wary of alienating those who don't have or aren't interested in kids, as well as becoming one of those women who turns toward kids as a fallback subject due to a disengagement with the world at large. But I have a tendency to let fear inhibit what I write, and I'm a little tired of trying to figure out what other people want or don't want to read about and second guessing every notion that comes into my head. One week. Kids. Parenting. Bring it on.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Saving Scout, changes and new pages
Saving Scout
By Amy Wilensky
The day they moved in his grandfather was rainy and cold. An omen, thought Andy, as he watched grimly from his bedroom window on the second floor. First, a van turned into the driveway and pulled up to the house near where the ramp had been installed leading up to the rarely used side door. Then, the driver and a young guy wearing some sort of uniform—a nurse, Andy figured—got out of the van and said something to Andy’s mom, who was standing with her arms folded tight across her chest, her back to the van. She shook her head no. He could see her hair swing with the force of it.
“Andy?” his dad yelled from the bottom of the stairs. “Can you come give me a hand?” Andy stood up. His legs ached from crouching, so he pulled one foot back for a stretch, then the other, as though preparing for a run. He wished he were going for a run; he felt a nearly irrepressible urge to run down the stairs, past his cowardly father, past his angry mother, past the van from the hospital and down to the river, where the air would be colder, bitter, even, and his palms wouldn’t feel sweaty and the tears forming in the corners of his eyes would sting in a way that felt good, like the way running did when he’d run so long that he could no longer feel his legs, his feet roll one after the other on the pavement.
“Coming,” he yelled back, with a final glance out the window. He caught the back half of the wheelchair, a glimpse of his grandfather’s shock of white hair.
Andy had been surprised when his mother had told him his grandfather, her father, would be coming to stay with them. His mother had never been close to her father. At thirteen, Andy had probably met the man a dozen times, if that, at relatives' weddings, a tense family reunion at a cousin’s in California, once in New York City, when he and his mother had taken the train in from Boston because his grandfather had been giving a lecture at NYU.
Andy knew his grandfather was a (**WHAT) professor, and he knew that he had cancer, was dying, he thought, from the snippets of conversation he’d overheard late at night, when his parents thought he was sleeping and felt safe to argue, their voices becoming sharper and louder as the arguments intensified.
“I thought he was dying,” Andy had in fact asked his mother, when she’d broken the news, and for a moment he thought he saw her eyes flicker, the suggestion of sadness. But then she’d tilted her head, almost imperceptibly, and he decided he'd imagined it: a trick of the light.
“He is,” she said. He’s coming here from the hospice. He’s lived longer than they thought he would, and he can’t stay any longer. He’s coming here to die.”
Andy could tell she regretted it as soon as she’d said it, but she didn’t apologize. She was sitting at the kitchen table, her now cold breakfast coffee nearly untouched in front of her, and she reached up one hand and rubbed her eyes with her thumb and forefinger. Andy looked away, out the window over the sink at the back yard where he could see the skeleton of his old swingset by the trees that divided their yard from the neighbors’.
“That’s good to know, Mom,” he said, as sarcastically as he could manage. “Thanks so much for sharing.”
“Andy,” she said, as he pushed his own chair back and got up, walked over to the sink. There was a red bird, a cardinal, at the top of the slide, which Andy hadn’t been on in years. Occasionally, he’d go out and sit on one of the swings if he needed to be alone, but the slide, no. It was yellow, falsely cheerful it seemed to him now, as he watched the bird fly out and up, over the row of pines. A baby toy. He didn’t know why they were holding onto the swing set anyway. Probably neither one of them wanted to deal with getting it hauled off to the dump.
“Forget it. I’m fine,” he said, walking out, leaving her sitting there with her head in her hand.
After helping his father get his grandfather settled, Andy walked out into the backyard, past the swingset, all the way to the pine trees. He sat in his favorite spot against the trunk of the largest one, where he could not be seen from the house. He put his hands behind his head and closed his eyes. The rough bark dug into his skin, but he didn’t move. He wondered how long it would take his grandfather to die. To be honest, he didn’t even seem that sick, he seemed exactly the same as he had the last time Andy had seen him, about six months before, when his father had made them drive to New Jersey, where the * facility was.
“You’ll regret it if you don’t,” his father had hissed to his mother through clenched teeth in the front seat of the car. Andy had almost said, “I’m not actually deaf,” but had decided against it. The tension was thick enough, and besides, he didn’t really care. He knew that his mother hadn’t wanted to come. He didn’t quite get their thing, why she hated his grandfather so much, or exactly what was so bad about his grandfather. It’s not like he was taking Andy to Red Sox games or calling him to ask about school or anything, but he was always friendly, polite. Andy had known from as far back as he could remember that the man had little interest in him, but he had his father’s parents, who were like television sitcom grandparents, seriously: rosy cheeks, candy dish, presents to celebrate his half-birthdays let alone the real ones, lasagna and tossing the football around in the yard. It was almost too corny sometimes, but it was nice. It was enough. Couldn’t his mother see that? Or maybe it didn’t have anything to do with him.
That visit had gone badly. After about ten minutes of sitting on a threadbare chair in the big open room full of other dying old people that smelled like citronella and vanilla and something much less pleasant all at the same time, Andy had stood up and walked out, and nobody had noticed, or at least nobody had said anything at the time. He’d walked out back where there was what the nurses called a “garden” but looked like a parking lot with a few also dying geraniums in cracked pots.
“Four to a room seems crowded,” his mother had muttered one afternoon, looking over a brochure or something, and his father had said, ironically as it turned out, “What? You’d rather have him come here?”
After another half hour or so, Andy’s mother emerged from the entrance, where Andy was sitting on the bench playing an incredibly boring game on his cell phone. He looked up; his father was behind her, and he shook his head at Andy in a kind of a warning, which Andy decided to take. He got up, and the three of them walked to the car in total silence, which lasted all the way back to Massachusetts, through three states, although his father found a terrible radio station, the kind where they played classical music and then talked about it in the most excruciating way possible, so there was at least some sound to cover the awful silence.
They’d never talked about it again, Andy realized, as he got up and dusted bark and dirt from the back of his sweatshirt and jeans. In fact, the subject of his grandfather had not come up at all since that day, until his mother’s announcement, and now this. It didn’t seem real; he knew he was going to have to remind himself that his grandfather was actually living there for at least a week until the idea took hold. Unless, of course, the man decided to emerge from the bedroom.
Later, lying in bed with the covers over his head, Andy had described the afternoon to his friend Mia, who called most nights once she knew he was in bed. It was a routine they had developed over the course of the previous year, and on the nights when she didn’t call, for whatever reason, Andy always fell asleep feeling vaguely unsettled, as though he weren’t sure what had happened to him had really happened without the opportunity to tell Mia about it.
When Andy was finished, had told about the awkward pushing of the wheelchair up the ramp that his father--as it turned out--had not properly installed, about the way his grandfather had even more awkwardly hoisted himself out of the chair, onto the bed, and then turned on his side so his back was to them, and that Andy had seen (for the first time in his life) tears in his grandfather's eyes, Mia was silent.
"Well?" he finally said. She cleared her throat.
"There's not much to say," she said. Andy was annoyed. Mia was the kid the teacher had to ask NOT to raise her hand. She never had nothing to say.
"Can you believe my mother actually said that?" he pushed. "To me? It's like: Deal with it. You're the grown-up." His face felt hot, remembering. Although for some reason he hadn't said this to Mia, the thought of his grandfather dying right there in their house, where Andy could see him, could discover him, made him feel queasy and a little bit scared. He kept imagining the scene, him stumbling over the wheelchair blocking the doorway only to feel a chill in the room, confront his grandfather’s blank, frozen stare.
Again, Mia was quiet, but then she said, in an uncharacteristically quiet voice, "It's got to be terrible for your mom." Mia and Andy's mom had never quite clicked. Andy suspected his mother thought it was strange that his best friend was a girl but not his girlfriend. A lot of adults teased Andy about this, but he had expected more from his mother. He’d tried explaining that things weren’t like his mother’s junior high days anymore, with dates at the roller rink and holding hands behind the gym at school. There were girls he liked, and girls he was friends with, and they didn’t necessarily overlap. But Mia was different, and his mother didn’t get it. For the first few months of their friendship, whenever Mia called, or came over, his mother would ever so slightly raise her eyebrows with a little smile that made Andy want to crawl out of his skin.
Once she had said to him, "You know, in a few years I think Mia's going to be quite attractive," and Andy had seethed, said in his head: You know, just because you and dad don't like each other doesn't mean I can't have a friend who's a girl. But he hadn't. And after a while, with no reaction, she'd stopped. Suddenly Andy was feeling annoyed with Mia. What kind of a friend defended the enemy? She was supposed to be on his side. What else was the point? (TOO NEG)
"You know what?" he said. "Forget about it. You're right, she's just stressed out, and the whole thing's not a big deal. I won't even see him. He eats in the bedroom. On a stupid tray. Now can we please talk about my science project?"
Andy's science project had become the bane of his existence. He hated science. It was his worst subject every year, and this year was especially bad because his teacher, Mr.Gallagher, hated him. Whenever he expressed this complaint, Mia went off on her list of theories about Mr. Gallagher--he sidelined in Internet porn, he bought vintage GI Joe dolls on ebay, and on and on--Andy got the distinct feeling she was skirting around the reality of the situation, which was that Mr. Gallagher really didn't like Andy, and they weren’t sure why.
"I've got to say, you're in serious trouble," she said now, back to her old self. "I can't really imagine how you think you're going to pull this off in four days. There's no time to build it, to get the materials." Every year, the eighth graders at their school were given the same assignment: to design, build and demonstrate an invention that actually worked. Mia had constructed a lie detector test that measured the subjects heart rate based on a series of questions. It had a monitor, and extensive research conducted in part at a police academy in the city, where her mother’s college roommate worked in administration. It was not only a guaranteed A, it had impressed even Mia herself, who had not been sure, in the final weeks, that she could pull it off. She’d used Andy as a guinea pig. It was scary how well the thing worked.
“Well, that’s very helpful,” said Andy, as sarcastically as he could manage, considering his temples were starting to throb. He wasn’t jealous of Mia, exactly She deserved an A. She’d worked like a dog all spring. But still. She didn’t seem very sympathetic. “That’s why I called you, actually. So you could remind me how much trouble I’m in. I almost forgot.”
“I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “You’re right. Have you thought about going in to see him, asking him—begging him—for help?” It was one of the things Andy liked most about Mia: she was an eternal optimist. He knew that if he made an appointment during Mr. Gallagher’s office hours, the man would be waiting for him like a spider in her web. He’d only lectured them every day for months about “managing their time” and “spreading out the workload.” Each day Andy had carefully written the same note in his school-issued planner: Start Science project. And each night he had crossed it off, telling himself that he’d begin, for real, the following day.
“Won’t work,” Andy said, glumly. “Have you forgotten that he already, well… hates me? I need a project, and I need one fast, or I’ll fail science, and they won’t let me run track. High school will be even more miserable than we think it will be.” He could hear Mia rustling around in what he assumed was a kitchen cabinet, probably for a late-night snack. On top of everything else, she was a night owl, could work until midnight, or later, without getting tired. And she had a wicked sweet tooth. “What is that?” he teased. “Frozen snickers bar?”
“Ice cream sandwich,” she mumbled, her mouth full. “But don’t change the subject. You’re right. If you can’t run, then you might as well not even be in school.” Mia hated running, always said she didn’t see what the point was unless you were being chased, but she knew how much it meant to Andy. For the past few years she had been waiting at the finish line with her dad as Andy approached the old Presbyterian church in the center of town after the annual 5K. She was holding a bottle of cold water for him the last time around, and Andy’s mother had said, “Well, isn’t that sweet,” in a way that had made Mia feel like an idiot. “Let me think about it. Okay? I’ll make myself a goal: project idea within 24 hours.”
“That sounds great, Mia,” Andy said. And it did. For the rest of the evening, Andy felt optimistic for the first time in a long time. Mia would save the day: find him a project, provide him with all of the research and help him execute the invention. Dr. Gallagher loved Mia; she was the best student in the class. Maybe she could even go with him to the meeting, wait outside the office, make him look good. He thought about calling back to ask her but decided against it. He could ask her on the way to school the next morning. It wasn’t like he was going to forget.
The next morning, when Andy woke up, he was still in a guardedly good mood. It was a warm day, a spring day, and he had track practice after school. The only part of his day he was NOT looking forward to was his meeting with Dr. Gallagher. For once, he was showered, dressed and ready early enough to have actual breakfast, as opposed to grabbing a bagel thrust at him by one of his parents as he sprinted past them out the front door. When he entered the kitchen, however, he was taken aback when he realized that only his grandfather was seated at the table, the new table—high enough for the wheelchair to be pulled up to and then under it. Apparently the dying man still had an appetite. Or at least a desire for human interaction.
“Good morning, Andrew,” his grandfather said, in his new, shaky voice. Andy didn’t really remember his old voice, but his mother kept saying how different he sounded, how unlike how she remembered him, that Andy had started to think “new voice” every time his grandfather opened his mouth. As for the “Andrew,” he didn’t take it personally. The man wasn’t trying to bug him. His grandfather simply didn’t know that nobody else called him that.
Andy rummaged around in the cabinet until he found a box of cereal. Before junior high, he’d had cereal every morning. He and his dad, also a runner and an early riser who liked to jog at dawn when it was still cool, and the sidewalks clear, would sit together and eat, their spoons clinking against the china bowls, as the sky grew light behind them in the kitchen window, and Andy’s mother slept upstairs.
“Hey,” he said, not rude, not friendly, just neutral. He’d decided that was going to be his tone with his grandfather: neutral. It was fitting, a reflection of how he actually felt about the man. To be totally honest, he didn’t even know him well enough to feel sorry for him. I mean, it was obvious that things weren’t good. Even if his mother hadn’t over-shared, he would have sensed this, caught a whiff of death as he passed what had been the den, would surely be the den again before too long. He had not actually seen his grandfather get out of the chair, although he knew that he could, barely; his mother had told him so.
“School today?” his grandfather asked. Andy was surprised. Were they going to have an actual conversation? He sat across from his grandfather and stirred his cereal, drowning the dry pieces on top.
“Yup,” he answered. “Regular day.” Although of course it wasn’t. He hoped Mia had had one of her famous middle-of-the-night revelations; she kept a notebook by her bed solely for recording them. He could just see it: her sitting up in bed, reaching out for the notebook with a huge grin on her face, having just conceived of the best science project ever for him, possibly even better than her own. He would know soon enough.
“Do you take the bus?” his grandfather asked, as though to a stranger, making conversation. Andy checked his watch.
“Nope. I walk. And my friend’s going to be here any second, so I’ve got to run.” He wolfed down the last few bites as his grandfather watched in silence. He thought about picking up the bowl and slurping the rest of the milk, but then thought better of it as his grandfather picked up his napkin and patted gently around his mouth. Andy noticed how thin and veiny the skin on his face was. You could almost see through it. Andy got up. “So I guess I’ll see you later,” he said, although he suspected he would not. His grandfather had requested dinner on a tray in his room the previous evening, which Andy had thought would please his mother—no change in routine—but instead had seemed to annoy her. There was no reason to think tonight would be any different. And besides, he was pretty sure he wouldn’t have time to eat dinner. He’d need to be finishing up his science project.
As soon as he reached the curb, he could tell that Mia was distracted. She barely looked at him as they started walking the ten blocks to school. It was chilly for March, and their breath made little clouds in front of their faces as they walked. For a few seconds Andy just watched the puffs of breath form: gas to solid, sort of, he thought. That was a science project, wasn’t it? No. “So?” he finally said.
“So what?” said Mia, quickening her pace. Andy felt his chest tighten a bit.
“My project? What’s our idea? I know you have one.” Mia stopped walking, abruptly. Andy stopped too.
“No, Andy,” she said, speaking very slowly, as though he didn’t speak English and she was trying to give him directions to somewhere important. “I do not have a project for you. I guess you are just going to have to do the work yourself this time.” Andy’s face felt hot, in spite of the temperature. Mia was so rarely annoyed, he didn’t know what to do, how to react. For a moment he forgot all about the science project. They started walking again, even more quickly than before, thanks to Mia’s pace. Maybe she wasn’t a runner, but she sure could speedwalk
“Okay,” he said, trying to remain calm. “What’s going on? You sound, well, a little weird.” Mia gave him a look he couldn’t quite decipher.
“I’m fine,” she said. “Nothing I feel like talking about right now.” She didn’t say it, but the words “with you” hung in the air. The school appeared in front of them then, an old-fashioned brick building with odd, tacked-on 1970s additions in dark wood with slanted roof panels. Andy flipped open his phone. They had two minutes to get to homeroom.
“If you change your mind—“ he said, letting the sentiment drift off.
“Yup. Whatever,” said Mia. “I’ll see you at lunch.” She adjusted her backpack and ran into the school ahead of him. Andy stood on the courtyard for a moment, letting hurried students and teachers stream past him, occasionally knocking into him with a bag or a book. For once, the cockeyed, goofy building seemed ominous. At the very last second, as the last bell chimed, he ran in, too. It was unavoidable. Skipping out would just make it worse.
By the time sixth period rolled around, Andy had worked himself into a state. He waited until everyone else had filed into the classroom, then slipped in at the last possible second, into the seat by the radiator that nobody ever wanted, as it sputtered hot water and hissed periodically, making it hard to hear Mr. Gallagher, who believed in “notebook checks,” meaning that one actually had to take notes. Good ones. But the seat had one distinct advantage. It was in the back right corner of the classroom, about as far as it was possible to sit from Mr. Gallagher’s desk at the front of the room by the door.
“So today,” Mr. Gallagher began, “I’m going to go over the checklist for your invention projects. You should be basically done, but there are a few details I want to make sure we’ve reviewed, and of course, I will also take all of your last-minute questions. I don’t need to remind you how important this project is. It will be 75% of your grade this semester.” A few students opened their notebooks. Everybody took out the project instruction handouts. Silvia Dragun, the best student in Andy’s section, immediately raised her hand.
“Mr. Gallagher?” she began. Andy rolled his eyes. Silvia was so predictable. This would be the question designed to show how on top of things Silvia was. He and Mia had once decided that Silvia was the kind of person who would, ten years down the road, sit in job interviews telling people that her negative trait was being “too much of a perfectionist.” “I was wondering if you wanted our bibliographies to be annotated.” Even Mr. Gallagher looked taken aback. Andy was pretty sure most of the class didn’t even know what that meant. He did, because Mia had taken a class at the community college during the summer and had explained it to him. But even Silvia knew that annotated bibliographies were not generally required of junior high students.
“A regular bibliography, per the handout, should suffice, Silvia,” Mr. Gallagher said, sounding—was it possible?—a little bit weary. Andy surveyed his classmates. There was nobody in the room, he knew, who did not have a finished, or nearly finished, project at home. There were no slackers in this group. It was a fast track class, the “smart kids,” as the other kids called them. Silvia may have been the most annoying, but she had plenty of competition in terms of the work. Andy’s chest felt tight. He was doomed.
By some miracle, Mr. Gallagher left Andy alone in class. He asked a couple of kids to elaborate on their progress, which took up the first part of class, and when he opened the floor to questions, the brownnosers took over, following in Silvia’s illustrious footsteps. Andy sat back and watched the show, at first impressed in spite of himself by the projects his classmates had taken on. The dumbest kid in the class, Bobby Smythe, had built a miniature working cotton gin, based on Eli Whitney’s original. Mr. Gallagher’s eyes grew wide, as Bobby explained how he’d actually managed to improve upon one of the great inventions of the industrial revolution. Great, thought Andy. Even Bobby’s going for the A. But Mr. Gallagher didn’t so much look in Andy’s direction. It was as though he’d actually managed to make himself invisible. Now that would be a project, thought Andy.
As soon as the bell rang, however, Andy’s luck ran out. “Mr. Morris?” said Mr. Gallagher, pointing at Andy with his glasses, which he’d removed and was wielding like a weapon. A very bad sign, thought Andy. This was a sort of tic they’d observed in the teacher before; the glasses came off and were waved around for emphasis only when he was in a very bad mood. Andy met his eyes. “Please follow me to my office.”
When they were sitting in Mr. Gallagher’s tiny, hot office space, which he shared with two other science teachers, Mr. Gallagher finally put his glasses back on. Andy tried to look calm, but his mind was reeling. He couldn’t think of a lie. He could barely think of his own name.
“Andy.” Mr. Gallagher’s eyes were cold. “As far as I can tell you have done no work thus far on your invention project.” Andy opened his mouth, unsure of what he was going to say, but Mr. Gallagher held up his hand to stop him. “I suspect you are planning at some point to ask me for an extension.” Andy felt a glimmer of hope. Was he about to buy a little more time?
“Well,” Andy said, drawing out the word. “If I had just a few more days I could probably—“ Mr. Gallagher took off his glasses again.
“The answer is no. Your work this semester has been sloppy and often late. The rest of the class has been working hard on their projects, and I am not going to make an exception for you. If you don’t turn in a project with the rest of the class this Friday, you will fail science.” The teacher stood, waiting for Andy to join him. His face hot, his eyes welling up with tears he would not let Mr. Gallagher have the satisfaction of seeing, Andy rose too. “You may go,” said Mr. Gallagher, waving his glasses in the direction of the closed door.
By Amy Wilensky
The day they moved in his grandfather was rainy and cold. An omen, thought Andy, as he watched grimly from his bedroom window on the second floor. First, a van turned into the driveway and pulled up to the house near where the ramp had been installed leading up to the rarely used side door. Then, the driver and a young guy wearing some sort of uniform—a nurse, Andy figured—got out of the van and said something to Andy’s mom, who was standing with her arms folded tight across her chest, her back to the van. She shook her head no. He could see her hair swing with the force of it.
“Andy?” his dad yelled from the bottom of the stairs. “Can you come give me a hand?” Andy stood up. His legs ached from crouching, so he pulled one foot back for a stretch, then the other, as though preparing for a run. He wished he were going for a run; he felt a nearly irrepressible urge to run down the stairs, past his cowardly father, past his angry mother, past the van from the hospital and down to the river, where the air would be colder, bitter, even, and his palms wouldn’t feel sweaty and the tears forming in the corners of his eyes would sting in a way that felt good, like the way running did when he’d run so long that he could no longer feel his legs, his feet roll one after the other on the pavement.
“Coming,” he yelled back, with a final glance out the window. He caught the back half of the wheelchair, a glimpse of his grandfather’s shock of white hair.
Andy had been surprised when his mother had told him his grandfather, her father, would be coming to stay with them. His mother had never been close to her father. At thirteen, Andy had probably met the man a dozen times, if that, at relatives' weddings, a tense family reunion at a cousin’s in California, once in New York City, when he and his mother had taken the train in from Boston because his grandfather had been giving a lecture at NYU.
Andy knew his grandfather was a (**WHAT) professor, and he knew that he had cancer, was dying, he thought, from the snippets of conversation he’d overheard late at night, when his parents thought he was sleeping and felt safe to argue, their voices becoming sharper and louder as the arguments intensified.
“I thought he was dying,” Andy had in fact asked his mother, when she’d broken the news, and for a moment he thought he saw her eyes flicker, the suggestion of sadness. But then she’d tilted her head, almost imperceptibly, and he decided he'd imagined it: a trick of the light.
“He is,” she said. He’s coming here from the hospice. He’s lived longer than they thought he would, and he can’t stay any longer. He’s coming here to die.”
Andy could tell she regretted it as soon as she’d said it, but she didn’t apologize. She was sitting at the kitchen table, her now cold breakfast coffee nearly untouched in front of her, and she reached up one hand and rubbed her eyes with her thumb and forefinger. Andy looked away, out the window over the sink at the back yard where he could see the skeleton of his old swingset by the trees that divided their yard from the neighbors’.
“That’s good to know, Mom,” he said, as sarcastically as he could manage. “Thanks so much for sharing.”
“Andy,” she said, as he pushed his own chair back and got up, walked over to the sink. There was a red bird, a cardinal, at the top of the slide, which Andy hadn’t been on in years. Occasionally, he’d go out and sit on one of the swings if he needed to be alone, but the slide, no. It was yellow, falsely cheerful it seemed to him now, as he watched the bird fly out and up, over the row of pines. A baby toy. He didn’t know why they were holding onto the swing set anyway. Probably neither one of them wanted to deal with getting it hauled off to the dump.
“Forget it. I’m fine,” he said, walking out, leaving her sitting there with her head in her hand.
After helping his father get his grandfather settled, Andy walked out into the backyard, past the swingset, all the way to the pine trees. He sat in his favorite spot against the trunk of the largest one, where he could not be seen from the house. He put his hands behind his head and closed his eyes. The rough bark dug into his skin, but he didn’t move. He wondered how long it would take his grandfather to die. To be honest, he didn’t even seem that sick, he seemed exactly the same as he had the last time Andy had seen him, about six months before, when his father had made them drive to New Jersey, where the * facility was.
“You’ll regret it if you don’t,” his father had hissed to his mother through clenched teeth in the front seat of the car. Andy had almost said, “I’m not actually deaf,” but had decided against it. The tension was thick enough, and besides, he didn’t really care. He knew that his mother hadn’t wanted to come. He didn’t quite get their thing, why she hated his grandfather so much, or exactly what was so bad about his grandfather. It’s not like he was taking Andy to Red Sox games or calling him to ask about school or anything, but he was always friendly, polite. Andy had known from as far back as he could remember that the man had little interest in him, but he had his father’s parents, who were like television sitcom grandparents, seriously: rosy cheeks, candy dish, presents to celebrate his half-birthdays let alone the real ones, lasagna and tossing the football around in the yard. It was almost too corny sometimes, but it was nice. It was enough. Couldn’t his mother see that? Or maybe it didn’t have anything to do with him.
That visit had gone badly. After about ten minutes of sitting on a threadbare chair in the big open room full of other dying old people that smelled like citronella and vanilla and something much less pleasant all at the same time, Andy had stood up and walked out, and nobody had noticed, or at least nobody had said anything at the time. He’d walked out back where there was what the nurses called a “garden” but looked like a parking lot with a few also dying geraniums in cracked pots.
“Four to a room seems crowded,” his mother had muttered one afternoon, looking over a brochure or something, and his father had said, ironically as it turned out, “What? You’d rather have him come here?”
After another half hour or so, Andy’s mother emerged from the entrance, where Andy was sitting on the bench playing an incredibly boring game on his cell phone. He looked up; his father was behind her, and he shook his head at Andy in a kind of a warning, which Andy decided to take. He got up, and the three of them walked to the car in total silence, which lasted all the way back to Massachusetts, through three states, although his father found a terrible radio station, the kind where they played classical music and then talked about it in the most excruciating way possible, so there was at least some sound to cover the awful silence.
They’d never talked about it again, Andy realized, as he got up and dusted bark and dirt from the back of his sweatshirt and jeans. In fact, the subject of his grandfather had not come up at all since that day, until his mother’s announcement, and now this. It didn’t seem real; he knew he was going to have to remind himself that his grandfather was actually living there for at least a week until the idea took hold. Unless, of course, the man decided to emerge from the bedroom.
Later, lying in bed with the covers over his head, Andy had described the afternoon to his friend Mia, who called most nights once she knew he was in bed. It was a routine they had developed over the course of the previous year, and on the nights when she didn’t call, for whatever reason, Andy always fell asleep feeling vaguely unsettled, as though he weren’t sure what had happened to him had really happened without the opportunity to tell Mia about it.
When Andy was finished, had told about the awkward pushing of the wheelchair up the ramp that his father--as it turned out--had not properly installed, about the way his grandfather had even more awkwardly hoisted himself out of the chair, onto the bed, and then turned on his side so his back was to them, and that Andy had seen (for the first time in his life) tears in his grandfather's eyes, Mia was silent.
"Well?" he finally said. She cleared her throat.
"There's not much to say," she said. Andy was annoyed. Mia was the kid the teacher had to ask NOT to raise her hand. She never had nothing to say.
"Can you believe my mother actually said that?" he pushed. "To me? It's like: Deal with it. You're the grown-up." His face felt hot, remembering. Although for some reason he hadn't said this to Mia, the thought of his grandfather dying right there in their house, where Andy could see him, could discover him, made him feel queasy and a little bit scared. He kept imagining the scene, him stumbling over the wheelchair blocking the doorway only to feel a chill in the room, confront his grandfather’s blank, frozen stare.
Again, Mia was quiet, but then she said, in an uncharacteristically quiet voice, "It's got to be terrible for your mom." Mia and Andy's mom had never quite clicked. Andy suspected his mother thought it was strange that his best friend was a girl but not his girlfriend. A lot of adults teased Andy about this, but he had expected more from his mother. He’d tried explaining that things weren’t like his mother’s junior high days anymore, with dates at the roller rink and holding hands behind the gym at school. There were girls he liked, and girls he was friends with, and they didn’t necessarily overlap. But Mia was different, and his mother didn’t get it. For the first few months of their friendship, whenever Mia called, or came over, his mother would ever so slightly raise her eyebrows with a little smile that made Andy want to crawl out of his skin.
Once she had said to him, "You know, in a few years I think Mia's going to be quite attractive," and Andy had seethed, said in his head: You know, just because you and dad don't like each other doesn't mean I can't have a friend who's a girl. But he hadn't. And after a while, with no reaction, she'd stopped. Suddenly Andy was feeling annoyed with Mia. What kind of a friend defended the enemy? She was supposed to be on his side. What else was the point? (TOO NEG)
"You know what?" he said. "Forget about it. You're right, she's just stressed out, and the whole thing's not a big deal. I won't even see him. He eats in the bedroom. On a stupid tray. Now can we please talk about my science project?"
Andy's science project had become the bane of his existence. He hated science. It was his worst subject every year, and this year was especially bad because his teacher, Mr.Gallagher, hated him. Whenever he expressed this complaint, Mia went off on her list of theories about Mr. Gallagher--he sidelined in Internet porn, he bought vintage GI Joe dolls on ebay, and on and on--Andy got the distinct feeling she was skirting around the reality of the situation, which was that Mr. Gallagher really didn't like Andy, and they weren’t sure why.
"I've got to say, you're in serious trouble," she said now, back to her old self. "I can't really imagine how you think you're going to pull this off in four days. There's no time to build it, to get the materials." Every year, the eighth graders at their school were given the same assignment: to design, build and demonstrate an invention that actually worked. Mia had constructed a lie detector test that measured the subjects heart rate based on a series of questions. It had a monitor, and extensive research conducted in part at a police academy in the city, where her mother’s college roommate worked in administration. It was not only a guaranteed A, it had impressed even Mia herself, who had not been sure, in the final weeks, that she could pull it off. She’d used Andy as a guinea pig. It was scary how well the thing worked.
“Well, that’s very helpful,” said Andy, as sarcastically as he could manage, considering his temples were starting to throb. He wasn’t jealous of Mia, exactly She deserved an A. She’d worked like a dog all spring. But still. She didn’t seem very sympathetic. “That’s why I called you, actually. So you could remind me how much trouble I’m in. I almost forgot.”
“I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “You’re right. Have you thought about going in to see him, asking him—begging him—for help?” It was one of the things Andy liked most about Mia: she was an eternal optimist. He knew that if he made an appointment during Mr. Gallagher’s office hours, the man would be waiting for him like a spider in her web. He’d only lectured them every day for months about “managing their time” and “spreading out the workload.” Each day Andy had carefully written the same note in his school-issued planner: Start Science project. And each night he had crossed it off, telling himself that he’d begin, for real, the following day.
“Won’t work,” Andy said, glumly. “Have you forgotten that he already, well… hates me? I need a project, and I need one fast, or I’ll fail science, and they won’t let me run track. High school will be even more miserable than we think it will be.” He could hear Mia rustling around in what he assumed was a kitchen cabinet, probably for a late-night snack. On top of everything else, she was a night owl, could work until midnight, or later, without getting tired. And she had a wicked sweet tooth. “What is that?” he teased. “Frozen snickers bar?”
“Ice cream sandwich,” she mumbled, her mouth full. “But don’t change the subject. You’re right. If you can’t run, then you might as well not even be in school.” Mia hated running, always said she didn’t see what the point was unless you were being chased, but she knew how much it meant to Andy. For the past few years she had been waiting at the finish line with her dad as Andy approached the old Presbyterian church in the center of town after the annual 5K. She was holding a bottle of cold water for him the last time around, and Andy’s mother had said, “Well, isn’t that sweet,” in a way that had made Mia feel like an idiot. “Let me think about it. Okay? I’ll make myself a goal: project idea within 24 hours.”
“That sounds great, Mia,” Andy said. And it did. For the rest of the evening, Andy felt optimistic for the first time in a long time. Mia would save the day: find him a project, provide him with all of the research and help him execute the invention. Dr. Gallagher loved Mia; she was the best student in the class. Maybe she could even go with him to the meeting, wait outside the office, make him look good. He thought about calling back to ask her but decided against it. He could ask her on the way to school the next morning. It wasn’t like he was going to forget.
The next morning, when Andy woke up, he was still in a guardedly good mood. It was a warm day, a spring day, and he had track practice after school. The only part of his day he was NOT looking forward to was his meeting with Dr. Gallagher. For once, he was showered, dressed and ready early enough to have actual breakfast, as opposed to grabbing a bagel thrust at him by one of his parents as he sprinted past them out the front door. When he entered the kitchen, however, he was taken aback when he realized that only his grandfather was seated at the table, the new table—high enough for the wheelchair to be pulled up to and then under it. Apparently the dying man still had an appetite. Or at least a desire for human interaction.
“Good morning, Andrew,” his grandfather said, in his new, shaky voice. Andy didn’t really remember his old voice, but his mother kept saying how different he sounded, how unlike how she remembered him, that Andy had started to think “new voice” every time his grandfather opened his mouth. As for the “Andrew,” he didn’t take it personally. The man wasn’t trying to bug him. His grandfather simply didn’t know that nobody else called him that.
Andy rummaged around in the cabinet until he found a box of cereal. Before junior high, he’d had cereal every morning. He and his dad, also a runner and an early riser who liked to jog at dawn when it was still cool, and the sidewalks clear, would sit together and eat, their spoons clinking against the china bowls, as the sky grew light behind them in the kitchen window, and Andy’s mother slept upstairs.
“Hey,” he said, not rude, not friendly, just neutral. He’d decided that was going to be his tone with his grandfather: neutral. It was fitting, a reflection of how he actually felt about the man. To be totally honest, he didn’t even know him well enough to feel sorry for him. I mean, it was obvious that things weren’t good. Even if his mother hadn’t over-shared, he would have sensed this, caught a whiff of death as he passed what had been the den, would surely be the den again before too long. He had not actually seen his grandfather get out of the chair, although he knew that he could, barely; his mother had told him so.
“School today?” his grandfather asked. Andy was surprised. Were they going to have an actual conversation? He sat across from his grandfather and stirred his cereal, drowning the dry pieces on top.
“Yup,” he answered. “Regular day.” Although of course it wasn’t. He hoped Mia had had one of her famous middle-of-the-night revelations; she kept a notebook by her bed solely for recording them. He could just see it: her sitting up in bed, reaching out for the notebook with a huge grin on her face, having just conceived of the best science project ever for him, possibly even better than her own. He would know soon enough.
“Do you take the bus?” his grandfather asked, as though to a stranger, making conversation. Andy checked his watch.
“Nope. I walk. And my friend’s going to be here any second, so I’ve got to run.” He wolfed down the last few bites as his grandfather watched in silence. He thought about picking up the bowl and slurping the rest of the milk, but then thought better of it as his grandfather picked up his napkin and patted gently around his mouth. Andy noticed how thin and veiny the skin on his face was. You could almost see through it. Andy got up. “So I guess I’ll see you later,” he said, although he suspected he would not. His grandfather had requested dinner on a tray in his room the previous evening, which Andy had thought would please his mother—no change in routine—but instead had seemed to annoy her. There was no reason to think tonight would be any different. And besides, he was pretty sure he wouldn’t have time to eat dinner. He’d need to be finishing up his science project.
As soon as he reached the curb, he could tell that Mia was distracted. She barely looked at him as they started walking the ten blocks to school. It was chilly for March, and their breath made little clouds in front of their faces as they walked. For a few seconds Andy just watched the puffs of breath form: gas to solid, sort of, he thought. That was a science project, wasn’t it? No. “So?” he finally said.
“So what?” said Mia, quickening her pace. Andy felt his chest tighten a bit.
“My project? What’s our idea? I know you have one.” Mia stopped walking, abruptly. Andy stopped too.
“No, Andy,” she said, speaking very slowly, as though he didn’t speak English and she was trying to give him directions to somewhere important. “I do not have a project for you. I guess you are just going to have to do the work yourself this time.” Andy’s face felt hot, in spite of the temperature. Mia was so rarely annoyed, he didn’t know what to do, how to react. For a moment he forgot all about the science project. They started walking again, even more quickly than before, thanks to Mia’s pace. Maybe she wasn’t a runner, but she sure could speedwalk
“Okay,” he said, trying to remain calm. “What’s going on? You sound, well, a little weird.” Mia gave him a look he couldn’t quite decipher.
“I’m fine,” she said. “Nothing I feel like talking about right now.” She didn’t say it, but the words “with you” hung in the air. The school appeared in front of them then, an old-fashioned brick building with odd, tacked-on 1970s additions in dark wood with slanted roof panels. Andy flipped open his phone. They had two minutes to get to homeroom.
“If you change your mind—“ he said, letting the sentiment drift off.
“Yup. Whatever,” said Mia. “I’ll see you at lunch.” She adjusted her backpack and ran into the school ahead of him. Andy stood on the courtyard for a moment, letting hurried students and teachers stream past him, occasionally knocking into him with a bag or a book. For once, the cockeyed, goofy building seemed ominous. At the very last second, as the last bell chimed, he ran in, too. It was unavoidable. Skipping out would just make it worse.
By the time sixth period rolled around, Andy had worked himself into a state. He waited until everyone else had filed into the classroom, then slipped in at the last possible second, into the seat by the radiator that nobody ever wanted, as it sputtered hot water and hissed periodically, making it hard to hear Mr. Gallagher, who believed in “notebook checks,” meaning that one actually had to take notes. Good ones. But the seat had one distinct advantage. It was in the back right corner of the classroom, about as far as it was possible to sit from Mr. Gallagher’s desk at the front of the room by the door.
“So today,” Mr. Gallagher began, “I’m going to go over the checklist for your invention projects. You should be basically done, but there are a few details I want to make sure we’ve reviewed, and of course, I will also take all of your last-minute questions. I don’t need to remind you how important this project is. It will be 75% of your grade this semester.” A few students opened their notebooks. Everybody took out the project instruction handouts. Silvia Dragun, the best student in Andy’s section, immediately raised her hand.
“Mr. Gallagher?” she began. Andy rolled his eyes. Silvia was so predictable. This would be the question designed to show how on top of things Silvia was. He and Mia had once decided that Silvia was the kind of person who would, ten years down the road, sit in job interviews telling people that her negative trait was being “too much of a perfectionist.” “I was wondering if you wanted our bibliographies to be annotated.” Even Mr. Gallagher looked taken aback. Andy was pretty sure most of the class didn’t even know what that meant. He did, because Mia had taken a class at the community college during the summer and had explained it to him. But even Silvia knew that annotated bibliographies were not generally required of junior high students.
“A regular bibliography, per the handout, should suffice, Silvia,” Mr. Gallagher said, sounding—was it possible?—a little bit weary. Andy surveyed his classmates. There was nobody in the room, he knew, who did not have a finished, or nearly finished, project at home. There were no slackers in this group. It was a fast track class, the “smart kids,” as the other kids called them. Silvia may have been the most annoying, but she had plenty of competition in terms of the work. Andy’s chest felt tight. He was doomed.
By some miracle, Mr. Gallagher left Andy alone in class. He asked a couple of kids to elaborate on their progress, which took up the first part of class, and when he opened the floor to questions, the brownnosers took over, following in Silvia’s illustrious footsteps. Andy sat back and watched the show, at first impressed in spite of himself by the projects his classmates had taken on. The dumbest kid in the class, Bobby Smythe, had built a miniature working cotton gin, based on Eli Whitney’s original. Mr. Gallagher’s eyes grew wide, as Bobby explained how he’d actually managed to improve upon one of the great inventions of the industrial revolution. Great, thought Andy. Even Bobby’s going for the A. But Mr. Gallagher didn’t so much look in Andy’s direction. It was as though he’d actually managed to make himself invisible. Now that would be a project, thought Andy.
As soon as the bell rang, however, Andy’s luck ran out. “Mr. Morris?” said Mr. Gallagher, pointing at Andy with his glasses, which he’d removed and was wielding like a weapon. A very bad sign, thought Andy. This was a sort of tic they’d observed in the teacher before; the glasses came off and were waved around for emphasis only when he was in a very bad mood. Andy met his eyes. “Please follow me to my office.”
When they were sitting in Mr. Gallagher’s tiny, hot office space, which he shared with two other science teachers, Mr. Gallagher finally put his glasses back on. Andy tried to look calm, but his mind was reeling. He couldn’t think of a lie. He could barely think of his own name.
“Andy.” Mr. Gallagher’s eyes were cold. “As far as I can tell you have done no work thus far on your invention project.” Andy opened his mouth, unsure of what he was going to say, but Mr. Gallagher held up his hand to stop him. “I suspect you are planning at some point to ask me for an extension.” Andy felt a glimmer of hope. Was he about to buy a little more time?
“Well,” Andy said, drawing out the word. “If I had just a few more days I could probably—“ Mr. Gallagher took off his glasses again.
“The answer is no. Your work this semester has been sloppy and often late. The rest of the class has been working hard on their projects, and I am not going to make an exception for you. If you don’t turn in a project with the rest of the class this Friday, you will fail science.” The teacher stood, waiting for Andy to join him. His face hot, his eyes welling up with tears he would not let Mr. Gallagher have the satisfaction of seeing, Andy rose too. “You may go,” said Mr. Gallagher, waving his glasses in the direction of the closed door.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Life Cycles
Over the past four-and-a-half years, since Lily was born, my parents have driven many times from their home in Massachusetts to New York to spend the weekend with us here in the city. Almost always, they bring my grandmother, who will be 93 in February. Partly due to the fact that I grew up two miles away from her house, partly due to her longevity, and partly due to my personality, my grandmother and I know each other better than most grandparents and grandchildren ever have a chance to, regardless of factors such as proximity and desire. But due to her personality--a certain inscrutable quality shared to some extent by all three of her children--as well as profound, lifelong self-effacement, sometimes I feel I don't know her at all.
I can't decide if this is intentional or not on her part. There is no question that she is not, has never been, a forthcoming extrovert by nature or design, although she can be warm and silly and has a wicked if quiet and only occasionally unleashed sense of humor. This is made manifest, still, in out-of-the-blue, off the cuff asides that usually come when we have assumed she has not been able to hear the conversation around her. I cannot decide if this, too, is intentional.
Regardless, over these past few years, I have learned some things about my grandmother that I may not have known had I not had children and the opportunity to spend time with her and them together. One is that my grandmother has a very funny relationship to her independence. I have been struck time and again by the ways in which the very young and very old are similar in this regard, never more so than when we go out as a family, one of us pushing the youngest member of the group in a stroller, another pushing the oldest in a wheelchair, a very recent development that my grandmother resisted until she no longer could. She used to push the stroller herself, using it as a sort of a walker, a tangible bridge from the past to the future.
Much as Lily, and now Annika, need to be able to walk away from me but even more so need to know I am there if they fall, my grandmother both resents and craves the assistance she now needs after years of living alone and taking care of herself. She still lives alone, but she needs more help from my mother than she wants or wants to admit, rendering her dependent for the independence she refuses to give up.
Although I expected this relationship as a parent, the dicey balance between my daughters and their need to cling and push, it has been harder to acclimate to the way it affects not just my grandmother's relationship to my mother but to me. I think my grandmother would be the first to agree that the two of us have always been more forceful and independent than she is, it must be said that it is my grandmother who has lived alone for twenty-four years; we never have. And it is also true that our tendency to boss my grandmother around has generally had less to do with age and aging and more to do with the nature of our various temperaments and styles, although increasingly age is a factor, to--I believe--our shared dismay.
Which is where Lily, in particular, comes in. When we are together, now, I notice my grandmother making frequent comments about my mother, in particular, and the nature of her care. This past weekend, for example, she kept saying, "Lily, do you think Sands is the mother or I am the mother?" Lily wasn't sure why this kept coming up, but in her mind it was a pretty dumb question.
"You're Sands' mother," she said, every time, and although my mother and I were doing some internal eye-rolling, at the very least, I can't help thinking my grandmother liked--likes--hearing this uttered out loud.
That's all for now; more on this at a later date.
I can't decide if this is intentional or not on her part. There is no question that she is not, has never been, a forthcoming extrovert by nature or design, although she can be warm and silly and has a wicked if quiet and only occasionally unleashed sense of humor. This is made manifest, still, in out-of-the-blue, off the cuff asides that usually come when we have assumed she has not been able to hear the conversation around her. I cannot decide if this, too, is intentional.
Regardless, over these past few years, I have learned some things about my grandmother that I may not have known had I not had children and the opportunity to spend time with her and them together. One is that my grandmother has a very funny relationship to her independence. I have been struck time and again by the ways in which the very young and very old are similar in this regard, never more so than when we go out as a family, one of us pushing the youngest member of the group in a stroller, another pushing the oldest in a wheelchair, a very recent development that my grandmother resisted until she no longer could. She used to push the stroller herself, using it as a sort of a walker, a tangible bridge from the past to the future.
Much as Lily, and now Annika, need to be able to walk away from me but even more so need to know I am there if they fall, my grandmother both resents and craves the assistance she now needs after years of living alone and taking care of herself. She still lives alone, but she needs more help from my mother than she wants or wants to admit, rendering her dependent for the independence she refuses to give up.
Although I expected this relationship as a parent, the dicey balance between my daughters and their need to cling and push, it has been harder to acclimate to the way it affects not just my grandmother's relationship to my mother but to me. I think my grandmother would be the first to agree that the two of us have always been more forceful and independent than she is, it must be said that it is my grandmother who has lived alone for twenty-four years; we never have. And it is also true that our tendency to boss my grandmother around has generally had less to do with age and aging and more to do with the nature of our various temperaments and styles, although increasingly age is a factor, to--I believe--our shared dismay.
Which is where Lily, in particular, comes in. When we are together, now, I notice my grandmother making frequent comments about my mother, in particular, and the nature of her care. This past weekend, for example, she kept saying, "Lily, do you think Sands is the mother or I am the mother?" Lily wasn't sure why this kept coming up, but in her mind it was a pretty dumb question.
"You're Sands' mother," she said, every time, and although my mother and I were doing some internal eye-rolling, at the very least, I can't help thinking my grandmother liked--likes--hearing this uttered out loud.
That's all for now; more on this at a later date.
Monday, July 21, 2008
Just Say No!
A few weeks ago I went out to dinner with a group of women, half of whom I knew well and the other half of whom were recent acquaintances. Three of these women did not have children, and I realized something with a start as I looked around the table. These days, it is not so often that I spend much time with friends who don't have kids.
This is a mistake for many reasons, as was highlighted for me over the course of this evening, and as has become even more clear to me in subsequent weeks. Parenting young children can feel all-consuming. It almost always narrows the world of the parents, at least at first, when anxiety levels are high and the learning curve steep. And it throws parents together with other people who must spend time for the first time since childhood in playgrounds and ballet classes, preschools and swimming lessons: other parents.
But as I realize whenever I have a meal or even a conversation with my friends and relatives who do not have children, other parents are sometimes boring, quite often insufferable. It is all too easy to forget, apparently, that being a parent is not in and of itself of general interest, that one's children--even if known and loved by your companions--do not constitute a scintillating conversation by virtue of their sheer existence.
One of the women I was sitting next to at this dinner was a women I had met a few times before through a very close friend. I liked her the instant I met her, more so as the evening progressed. She is quick-witted, irreverent, widely read and traveled and an uninhibited daredevil who seems to speak her mind as a matter of course. She is also from my home state, and we have some superficial things in common that made it easy for us to feel familiar. I was pleased to see her again, pleased to be seated next to her.
When I asked her what she had been up to, she told me a really funny story about a recent trip she had taken that reminded me of a train ride I hadn't thought about in twenty years. I was about to start my story, when the woman across from us, who has two small children about the ages of my own, asked me a question about a school we are both interested in looking at for our older girls. I leaned forward, felt a familiar kind of tension flood my body. "Well," I began, but the woman next to me reached out and covered my mouth with her hand.
"No," she said. "I just can't do it tonight. I really like both of you, and I know you have other things to talk about besides kindergarten applications. Please." I felt my face grow hot. I saw the woman across from us color. I shook my head, mad at myself.
"You're right," I said. "I'm sorry."
"I'm sorry, too," the woman across from us added.
"Thank you," I said, and I meant it. And for the next hour and a half I had the best conversation about books that I've had in a very long time. It turned out that before we had kids, the woman across from me and I both used to be voracious readers. Now we are desperate readers, snatching moments late at night or on the subway back and forth to work. We spend way too much time cutting chicken breasts into tiny pieces and changing diapers. But that doesn't make it interesting.
I have been thinking of that gentle hand over my mouth since it happened. When I see this woman next, and I hope I do, I will thank her again. I can't be who I used to be if I let myself forget who she was.
This is a mistake for many reasons, as was highlighted for me over the course of this evening, and as has become even more clear to me in subsequent weeks. Parenting young children can feel all-consuming. It almost always narrows the world of the parents, at least at first, when anxiety levels are high and the learning curve steep. And it throws parents together with other people who must spend time for the first time since childhood in playgrounds and ballet classes, preschools and swimming lessons: other parents.
But as I realize whenever I have a meal or even a conversation with my friends and relatives who do not have children, other parents are sometimes boring, quite often insufferable. It is all too easy to forget, apparently, that being a parent is not in and of itself of general interest, that one's children--even if known and loved by your companions--do not constitute a scintillating conversation by virtue of their sheer existence.
One of the women I was sitting next to at this dinner was a women I had met a few times before through a very close friend. I liked her the instant I met her, more so as the evening progressed. She is quick-witted, irreverent, widely read and traveled and an uninhibited daredevil who seems to speak her mind as a matter of course. She is also from my home state, and we have some superficial things in common that made it easy for us to feel familiar. I was pleased to see her again, pleased to be seated next to her.
When I asked her what she had been up to, she told me a really funny story about a recent trip she had taken that reminded me of a train ride I hadn't thought about in twenty years. I was about to start my story, when the woman across from us, who has two small children about the ages of my own, asked me a question about a school we are both interested in looking at for our older girls. I leaned forward, felt a familiar kind of tension flood my body. "Well," I began, but the woman next to me reached out and covered my mouth with her hand.
"No," she said. "I just can't do it tonight. I really like both of you, and I know you have other things to talk about besides kindergarten applications. Please." I felt my face grow hot. I saw the woman across from us color. I shook my head, mad at myself.
"You're right," I said. "I'm sorry."
"I'm sorry, too," the woman across from us added.
"Thank you," I said, and I meant it. And for the next hour and a half I had the best conversation about books that I've had in a very long time. It turned out that before we had kids, the woman across from me and I both used to be voracious readers. Now we are desperate readers, snatching moments late at night or on the subway back and forth to work. We spend way too much time cutting chicken breasts into tiny pieces and changing diapers. But that doesn't make it interesting.
I have been thinking of that gentle hand over my mouth since it happened. When I see this woman next, and I hope I do, I will thank her again. I can't be who I used to be if I let myself forget who she was.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
It's still the weekend, and I have a lot on my mind, so I think I'm going to run with yesterday's theme a little more. Specifically, I am going to try to recount the stories I heard growing up from my own parents and grandmother--the ones that left the greatest impression on me.
My father's childhood memories center around pranks that he and his friends, and later his fraternity buddies, played on each other and other people. There is one about a squirrel that I will not recount, as he does not come off favorably, and another one about a chicken. There are also a number about his sister--such as the time he defended her reputation to their mother when a busybody neighbor was making up stories about her--and about food, such as his friend Herbie's father's caramel corn store. But the story that sticks with me the most somehow, is about how he and his sister used to play Monopoly in the back of the family car on trips to Atlantic City to visit their cousins. Now recently, I brought up my memory of hearing this story to my dad, and he said he did not remember this happening, or telling me about it. What to make of this? I don't know. But the image is so clear for me, so evocative of a time and a place. I can see them, almost: both small, with the same thick, dark, wavy hair, on either side of the game board, safe in the little world of the back of the car.
I have heard more stories about my mother's childhood largely because my mother has more living relatives, most of whom live within a five mile radius of my mother, and were around all the time when I was growing up. The memory of hers that has stuck with me the most closely, followed by the time my grandmother's friend gave her a bad home perm, is the time when the family was supposed to go away for a little vacation to Cape Cod. I think it was not meant to be for much more than a weekend, but as they never went on vacations, this was a big deal. My aunt, the youngest of the three kids, got sick, and the vacation was canceled. I think my mother's disappointment, or the memory of the disappointment, really, must have come across in the telling, because this is the story that always comes to mind for me when I think of her as a little girl.
My grandmother likes to tell stories of her childhood, and I have been trying to get her to write some of them down over the past few years. It seems increasingly essential to me to do this, to make a record: one of these things people like me do to pull a shade over the passing of time. Although the close second is a snippet about a girl who was holding her arm out a bus window when the bus rode close to a lamppost and turned a corner, pulling off the girl's arm (memorable for obvious reasons), the story of hers that I know I will never forget is about how her mother, whom I vaguely remember from my very early childhood, used to take all seven of her children into town to run errands. On the way, they passed an ice cream shop, and inevitably the younger ones, at least, would start begging for ice cream as soon as they left the house. So my great-grandmother made a rule. Everyone could have ice cream if nobody asked. Even if they started walking past the shop on the way home, the rule was clear: no asking. Apparently they didn't get ice cream very much.
I wonder what stories I tell again and again, or what stories will make an impression like these on my children? It seems a little unpredictable, with the exception of the gruesome arm story, which I think was meant as a cautionary tale after we were spoken to one too many times about dangling our arms out the windows of the back seat. Writing this, I am wondering if this story is true, although I have never questioned it until now. Hmmm. Memory is an erratic master.
My father's childhood memories center around pranks that he and his friends, and later his fraternity buddies, played on each other and other people. There is one about a squirrel that I will not recount, as he does not come off favorably, and another one about a chicken. There are also a number about his sister--such as the time he defended her reputation to their mother when a busybody neighbor was making up stories about her--and about food, such as his friend Herbie's father's caramel corn store. But the story that sticks with me the most somehow, is about how he and his sister used to play Monopoly in the back of the family car on trips to Atlantic City to visit their cousins. Now recently, I brought up my memory of hearing this story to my dad, and he said he did not remember this happening, or telling me about it. What to make of this? I don't know. But the image is so clear for me, so evocative of a time and a place. I can see them, almost: both small, with the same thick, dark, wavy hair, on either side of the game board, safe in the little world of the back of the car.
I have heard more stories about my mother's childhood largely because my mother has more living relatives, most of whom live within a five mile radius of my mother, and were around all the time when I was growing up. The memory of hers that has stuck with me the most closely, followed by the time my grandmother's friend gave her a bad home perm, is the time when the family was supposed to go away for a little vacation to Cape Cod. I think it was not meant to be for much more than a weekend, but as they never went on vacations, this was a big deal. My aunt, the youngest of the three kids, got sick, and the vacation was canceled. I think my mother's disappointment, or the memory of the disappointment, really, must have come across in the telling, because this is the story that always comes to mind for me when I think of her as a little girl.
My grandmother likes to tell stories of her childhood, and I have been trying to get her to write some of them down over the past few years. It seems increasingly essential to me to do this, to make a record: one of these things people like me do to pull a shade over the passing of time. Although the close second is a snippet about a girl who was holding her arm out a bus window when the bus rode close to a lamppost and turned a corner, pulling off the girl's arm (memorable for obvious reasons), the story of hers that I know I will never forget is about how her mother, whom I vaguely remember from my very early childhood, used to take all seven of her children into town to run errands. On the way, they passed an ice cream shop, and inevitably the younger ones, at least, would start begging for ice cream as soon as they left the house. So my great-grandmother made a rule. Everyone could have ice cream if nobody asked. Even if they started walking past the shop on the way home, the rule was clear: no asking. Apparently they didn't get ice cream very much.
I wonder what stories I tell again and again, or what stories will make an impression like these on my children? It seems a little unpredictable, with the exception of the gruesome arm story, which I think was meant as a cautionary tale after we were spoken to one too many times about dangling our arms out the windows of the back seat. Writing this, I am wondering if this story is true, although I have never questioned it until now. Hmmm. Memory is an erratic master.
Saturday, July 19, 2008
I Remember When, Except I Don't
Occasionally it has occurred to me that I should take an index card and write on it my five favorite books, movies and songs, so when, on the rare occasions I am asked what they are, I will be able to say something other than the most recent halfway decent book, movie or song I have read, seen or heard. In other words, I have a retrieval problem with this sort of information, and although I know some people's brains work this way--are able to categorize and recall information like this--mine does not.
But as someone who spends a lot of time thinking and writing about my own past, you would think it would be easy for me to recall my own memories. It used to be easier. Lily has become consumed by asking me to "tell me a story about when you were a little girl." She also enjoys asking Ben, my parents, my grandmother and other adults in her life this question, but mostly she asks it of me, and for the first 500 or so times I willingly complied. And then, the well ran dry. I started telling some of the stories again and again: the old chestnuts, her favorites. The time Alison and I locked ourselves in the bathroom when we had a babysitter had a run. The time my doll Bess was left on a train, another. And, for some reason, a desperation number with paltry action: the time we were in my grandparents' swimming pool with my cousins and an unexpected thunderstorm came on all of a sudden, and we had to run out of the pool in the rain. "And there was lightning?" she always asks, and I wish, for the dozenth time that I could fabricate a tree being split in half, and I say, as I always say, "Later. Later there was a little lightning."
I have started to dread the question. She doesn't want the oldies but goodies anymore; she wants new material, is desperate for it. And although I have been on this earth for 38 1/2 years, with a near photographic memory for about 35 of those, I simply cannot pull any more childhood stories out of my hat. What in god's name did I do every single day for the 17 hours I was awake for the first 12 years or so of my life, which is pretty much all she is interested in? We played outside, when it was nice, all day every day. We played inside when it was not. But I have described our regular activities, and the extraordinary ones, so many times now that I should record my voice and hit play, saving my breath for those increasingly rare occasions when a new memory does squeeze its way into my consciousness.
This happened the other night, in fact. Annika stirred; I rolled onto my side and looked over at the digital clock: 3:54. All of a sudden I sat up in bed. The mouse! The mouse on the edge of the wicker trash basket in Martha's Vineyard in the middle of the night holding the wrappers of our secret candy stash in his curled mouse paws! I had never told Lily this story. For a psychotic, sleep-deprived instant I considered waking her to share it. I did not. And actually, when I awoke, clearer heads or at least a clearer version of my own, prevailed, and I waited until bedtime, until the inevitable question, and when she asked it, I smiled, breathed a lung-filling sigh of relief, and began.
I will write more on this subject. I want to talk about my fascination with my parents' and grandparents' childhood memories, and the legacy we leave with the memories we share, and how incomplete it is, and how certain of the stories take hold in the imagination of a child at a particular age for a particular reason (or not) and how this is both like and not like the stories we create of the past from photographs and other artifacts of the older people we love. But this is all for now. Except another quote, that came to me as I started to write this, from a book I have not read in a very long time:
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
But as someone who spends a lot of time thinking and writing about my own past, you would think it would be easy for me to recall my own memories. It used to be easier. Lily has become consumed by asking me to "tell me a story about when you were a little girl." She also enjoys asking Ben, my parents, my grandmother and other adults in her life this question, but mostly she asks it of me, and for the first 500 or so times I willingly complied. And then, the well ran dry. I started telling some of the stories again and again: the old chestnuts, her favorites. The time Alison and I locked ourselves in the bathroom when we had a babysitter had a run. The time my doll Bess was left on a train, another. And, for some reason, a desperation number with paltry action: the time we were in my grandparents' swimming pool with my cousins and an unexpected thunderstorm came on all of a sudden, and we had to run out of the pool in the rain. "And there was lightning?" she always asks, and I wish, for the dozenth time that I could fabricate a tree being split in half, and I say, as I always say, "Later. Later there was a little lightning."
I have started to dread the question. She doesn't want the oldies but goodies anymore; she wants new material, is desperate for it. And although I have been on this earth for 38 1/2 years, with a near photographic memory for about 35 of those, I simply cannot pull any more childhood stories out of my hat. What in god's name did I do every single day for the 17 hours I was awake for the first 12 years or so of my life, which is pretty much all she is interested in? We played outside, when it was nice, all day every day. We played inside when it was not. But I have described our regular activities, and the extraordinary ones, so many times now that I should record my voice and hit play, saving my breath for those increasingly rare occasions when a new memory does squeeze its way into my consciousness.
This happened the other night, in fact. Annika stirred; I rolled onto my side and looked over at the digital clock: 3:54. All of a sudden I sat up in bed. The mouse! The mouse on the edge of the wicker trash basket in Martha's Vineyard in the middle of the night holding the wrappers of our secret candy stash in his curled mouse paws! I had never told Lily this story. For a psychotic, sleep-deprived instant I considered waking her to share it. I did not. And actually, when I awoke, clearer heads or at least a clearer version of my own, prevailed, and I waited until bedtime, until the inevitable question, and when she asked it, I smiled, breathed a lung-filling sigh of relief, and began.
I will write more on this subject. I want to talk about my fascination with my parents' and grandparents' childhood memories, and the legacy we leave with the memories we share, and how incomplete it is, and how certain of the stories take hold in the imagination of a child at a particular age for a particular reason (or not) and how this is both like and not like the stories we create of the past from photographs and other artifacts of the older people we love. But this is all for now. Except another quote, that came to me as I started to write this, from a book I have not read in a very long time:
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
Friday, July 18, 2008
The More Things Change?
I have been thinking a lot about children's books these days, as they are increasingly at the forefront of my personal life and my professional one. More specifically, as I have already written plenty about how much I have always loved to read children's books, as a child and throughout the course of my life, I have been thinking about the ways in which books for children have changed and wondering if they have changed as much as I think they have or if I just can't get enough distance to see the similarities.
Even as a child, I was drawn to the children's books of the past. At first, this was because these were the books we had at home, were introduced to by our parents. Later, it was because these were the books I loved most. I have always had a particular weakness for the staunchly old-fashioned romantic books by L.M. Montgomery, for example, and have been known to reread the entire oeuvre every few years. It has never occurred to me, nor did it when I was the age for which the books were written, to be turned off or taken aback by the fusty language or lack of relatable technological references or any of the other reasons parents cite to me when explaining why their kids won't read, say, The Phantom Tollbooth or The Wolves of Willoughby Chase.
Some of this is just me, I think. I have always been somewhat bizarrely disinterested in popular music from much after the 1970s and generally prefer old movies and even old television shows to their modern day counterparts. Maybe I just have fusty, old-fashioned taste? But no, a friend gave Lily an illustrated book written just recently as a birthday party favor, and we were both struck after the first read by how clever and appealing it is. I guess I just don't come across examples as often as I'd like.
And I wonder, too, if the books that were old-fashioned when I was enthralled by them, say the Betsy, Tacy and Tib books I also still regularly reread, are so old-fashioned for today's children as to actually be unrelatable. In other words, maybe when I was young, there was enough of Betsy's world still in the world to resonate with me. I think the problem is most jarring with realistic fiction, such as Little Women, as opposed to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which has the advantage of not requiring grounding signposts whatsoever. Candy never goes out of style; Pilgrim's Progress has. Many children love the Little House books, but they are really about another time and place, so the details are the point and not distracting or meaningless background noise.
I am going to try some experiments with Lily, with all this in mind. Don't worry; that sounds dramatic, but all I have in mind is reading. I am going to try Betsy-Tacy and one of my favorites, the little known No Flying in the House, which I have been wanting to read to somebody else (besides Alison) for about 30 years. Having so many legitimate reasons to read children's books is one of the great pleasures of my life these days. I am eagerly awaiting the day Annika, too, stops viewing books as food.
Even as a child, I was drawn to the children's books of the past. At first, this was because these were the books we had at home, were introduced to by our parents. Later, it was because these were the books I loved most. I have always had a particular weakness for the staunchly old-fashioned romantic books by L.M. Montgomery, for example, and have been known to reread the entire oeuvre every few years. It has never occurred to me, nor did it when I was the age for which the books were written, to be turned off or taken aback by the fusty language or lack of relatable technological references or any of the other reasons parents cite to me when explaining why their kids won't read, say, The Phantom Tollbooth or The Wolves of Willoughby Chase.
Some of this is just me, I think. I have always been somewhat bizarrely disinterested in popular music from much after the 1970s and generally prefer old movies and even old television shows to their modern day counterparts. Maybe I just have fusty, old-fashioned taste? But no, a friend gave Lily an illustrated book written just recently as a birthday party favor, and we were both struck after the first read by how clever and appealing it is. I guess I just don't come across examples as often as I'd like.
And I wonder, too, if the books that were old-fashioned when I was enthralled by them, say the Betsy, Tacy and Tib books I also still regularly reread, are so old-fashioned for today's children as to actually be unrelatable. In other words, maybe when I was young, there was enough of Betsy's world still in the world to resonate with me. I think the problem is most jarring with realistic fiction, such as Little Women, as opposed to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which has the advantage of not requiring grounding signposts whatsoever. Candy never goes out of style; Pilgrim's Progress has. Many children love the Little House books, but they are really about another time and place, so the details are the point and not distracting or meaningless background noise.
I am going to try some experiments with Lily, with all this in mind. Don't worry; that sounds dramatic, but all I have in mind is reading. I am going to try Betsy-Tacy and one of my favorites, the little known No Flying in the House, which I have been wanting to read to somebody else (besides Alison) for about 30 years. Having so many legitimate reasons to read children's books is one of the great pleasures of my life these days. I am eagerly awaiting the day Annika, too, stops viewing books as food.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
On Fudge and Frustration
A wise friend who is a writer and cook herself recently suggested to me that I write more about the relationship between writing and cooking. I have been mulling this over. It is true that many of the writers I know are also passionate cooks, but I also know many fine writers whose kitchens are repositories for reams of take-out menus and whose refrigerators contain the proverbial shriveled lemon and bottle of champagne.
So I guess, as is generally best, I should rein in my focus and write about how writing and cooking are related for me. I suspect that other writers like me, who write in fits and starts, and have a hard time jumping in, and can lose track of time altogether when on a tear, may cook for some of the same reasons.
Nothing is ever really finished when you write. I have typed the last word of an essay after hours and hours of editing and tweaking and revising, and breathed an immense sigh of relief, felt a tremendous sense of accomplishment, and yes, completion, and a mere 24 hours later--or twenty years later--looked at the same essay and felt profound chagrin at the words on the page.
We change every instant. Our molecules are constantly replacing themselves, to say nothing of our life experience, sensibilities and circumstances. So it makes perfect sense that our take on what we create changes, too, and I imagine most people who have ever set their thoughts down on paper for the purpose of constructing a finished piece of work at some point after the fact have regret for at least a word or two.
This is fine, to be expected, but it makes the endeavor itself an exercise in futility. Even after publication, there is no set in stone, no finished product in the writer's eye. And then, there is looming, constantly, in the moment of completion, the next idea, words, sentence, project down the line. It's enough to make a person, well, take to the kitchen.
When I was in graduate school, I lived with an old friend who is also a writer. She is not the kind of writer I am. She is much more diligent, disciplined, regimented. She works more slowly and methodically than I do; she is a perfectionist who worries every word. When she couldn't take it for one more second--the lack of completion--she went for a run. Or other things, too, but generally active pursuits that removed her from the physical space of writing, and gave her a new environment with which to engage. To her dismay, I cooked.
When a daunting assignment loomed, for school or for work, I would inevitably storm out of my room at some point headed for our tiny galley kitchen, little more than a demi-fridge and oven centered by a sink. Often, because it required precise measurements and technique, I made fudge, not fake fudge--marshmallow fluff stirred into melted Hershey bars or some such--but The Joy of Cooking's Fudge Cockaigne: real, old-fashioned, candy-thermometer-requiring fudge. Even in the height of summer.
It must be said, in defense of my roommate, who ultimately banned both the fudge and its making from our apartment, that I am not actually a big fan of fudge. My roommate, who has a sweet tooth, was. Is. So after a few weeks during which I was pushing forward on my thesis and the fudge production became untenable, it was forbidden. And although I wrung my hands a bit, I couldn't deny that the security guard who sat in the lobby of our building and had a sweet tooth to rival my roommate's had held up his arms in the shape of a giant X the last time I had approached with a pan.
I can't remember what I turned to next; it may have been omelets, which require not precise measurements, per se, but a perfecting of technique before improvisation should be introduced. Regardless, my point is this: If you have a task at hand and you are stalled, and you are running in circles in your own head and you don't like to run outside (which is far healthier, I admit), I suggest a batch of fudge. Not more than one, or possibly two, as it is all too easy to let this sort of cure get out of hand. But sometimes, after the sugar has boiled, the mixture set nicely on the windowsill, the mind is rested, too, and the work can actually begin.
So I guess, as is generally best, I should rein in my focus and write about how writing and cooking are related for me. I suspect that other writers like me, who write in fits and starts, and have a hard time jumping in, and can lose track of time altogether when on a tear, may cook for some of the same reasons.
Nothing is ever really finished when you write. I have typed the last word of an essay after hours and hours of editing and tweaking and revising, and breathed an immense sigh of relief, felt a tremendous sense of accomplishment, and yes, completion, and a mere 24 hours later--or twenty years later--looked at the same essay and felt profound chagrin at the words on the page.
We change every instant. Our molecules are constantly replacing themselves, to say nothing of our life experience, sensibilities and circumstances. So it makes perfect sense that our take on what we create changes, too, and I imagine most people who have ever set their thoughts down on paper for the purpose of constructing a finished piece of work at some point after the fact have regret for at least a word or two.
This is fine, to be expected, but it makes the endeavor itself an exercise in futility. Even after publication, there is no set in stone, no finished product in the writer's eye. And then, there is looming, constantly, in the moment of completion, the next idea, words, sentence, project down the line. It's enough to make a person, well, take to the kitchen.
When I was in graduate school, I lived with an old friend who is also a writer. She is not the kind of writer I am. She is much more diligent, disciplined, regimented. She works more slowly and methodically than I do; she is a perfectionist who worries every word. When she couldn't take it for one more second--the lack of completion--she went for a run. Or other things, too, but generally active pursuits that removed her from the physical space of writing, and gave her a new environment with which to engage. To her dismay, I cooked.
When a daunting assignment loomed, for school or for work, I would inevitably storm out of my room at some point headed for our tiny galley kitchen, little more than a demi-fridge and oven centered by a sink. Often, because it required precise measurements and technique, I made fudge, not fake fudge--marshmallow fluff stirred into melted Hershey bars or some such--but The Joy of Cooking's Fudge Cockaigne: real, old-fashioned, candy-thermometer-requiring fudge. Even in the height of summer.
It must be said, in defense of my roommate, who ultimately banned both the fudge and its making from our apartment, that I am not actually a big fan of fudge. My roommate, who has a sweet tooth, was. Is. So after a few weeks during which I was pushing forward on my thesis and the fudge production became untenable, it was forbidden. And although I wrung my hands a bit, I couldn't deny that the security guard who sat in the lobby of our building and had a sweet tooth to rival my roommate's had held up his arms in the shape of a giant X the last time I had approached with a pan.
I can't remember what I turned to next; it may have been omelets, which require not precise measurements, per se, but a perfecting of technique before improvisation should be introduced. Regardless, my point is this: If you have a task at hand and you are stalled, and you are running in circles in your own head and you don't like to run outside (which is far healthier, I admit), I suggest a batch of fudge. Not more than one, or possibly two, as it is all too easy to let this sort of cure get out of hand. But sometimes, after the sugar has boiled, the mixture set nicely on the windowsill, the mind is rested, too, and the work can actually begin.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
The Cricket and the Anachronism
I just finished reading The Cricket in Times Square to Lily. I think I remember really enjoying it as a kid myself, and on some level I really enjoyed reading it now. Lily loved it, for many of the reasons I thought and hoped she would. In the book, a cricket from Connecticut ends up accidentally coming to New York in a daytripper's picnic basket and is taken in by a boy named Mario, whose family has a newsstand at the Times Square subway station. We both enjoyed the familiar settings, especially the New York details that are already known to Lily: the shuttle from the Times Square station to Grand Central, the rush hour commuters (like the ones who hit me with their briefcases on the way to school, she commented), the excursions Mario takes to Chinatown to learn more about his new companion.
Actually, it was when Mario hit Chinatown for the first time that my own enthusiasm faltered first. I was reading along when I spotted up ahead a few lines a shockingly racist passage of dialogue. The "Chinaman" Mario visits speaks in pidgin English, complete with l's for r's, no articles, and frequent, simpering tee-hee's. Again, uncharted territory: I did not skip, I translated. In my version of The Cricket in Times Square, Sai Fong is a kind, insightful but very well-spoken Chinese-American man who is utterly fluent in the language of his adopted land. Although Lily can read much of what I am reading to her if she pays attention, she rarely tries when being read to, and I turned the book toward me in case she noticed. She did not.
And after the few offending chapters were through, and Mario had received his "ancient Chinee wisdom" from the caricature that was Mr. Fong, I started to let myself sink back into the story. But I can't stop thinking about it. This book was written in 1960. It won the highest prize in children's literature. Was this kind of thing really okay in 1960? I hated that I had to change the words that someone else had written, but there was no way I was going to introduce Lily to that kind of ugly caricaturing myself, voluntarily, at the age of 4. I wondered how many parents still read this book to their kids and didn't change the words, perhaps even took delight in uttering the silly, tiresome expressions in an exaggerated fake Chinese accent that has still not fallen entirely out of favor, I fear, in certain circles.
I am upset by this experience. I am not so naive as to be unable to forgive an author for writing in the context of his time, but I also believe that in 1960 an educated person would have thought better of resorting to this kind of thing in an otherwise delightful book for children. Someday, I will have this conversation with Lily. I am, will be, very curious to hear what she thinks.
Actually, it was when Mario hit Chinatown for the first time that my own enthusiasm faltered first. I was reading along when I spotted up ahead a few lines a shockingly racist passage of dialogue. The "Chinaman" Mario visits speaks in pidgin English, complete with l's for r's, no articles, and frequent, simpering tee-hee's. Again, uncharted territory: I did not skip, I translated. In my version of The Cricket in Times Square, Sai Fong is a kind, insightful but very well-spoken Chinese-American man who is utterly fluent in the language of his adopted land. Although Lily can read much of what I am reading to her if she pays attention, she rarely tries when being read to, and I turned the book toward me in case she noticed. She did not.
And after the few offending chapters were through, and Mario had received his "ancient Chinee wisdom" from the caricature that was Mr. Fong, I started to let myself sink back into the story. But I can't stop thinking about it. This book was written in 1960. It won the highest prize in children's literature. Was this kind of thing really okay in 1960? I hated that I had to change the words that someone else had written, but there was no way I was going to introduce Lily to that kind of ugly caricaturing myself, voluntarily, at the age of 4. I wondered how many parents still read this book to their kids and didn't change the words, perhaps even took delight in uttering the silly, tiresome expressions in an exaggerated fake Chinese accent that has still not fallen entirely out of favor, I fear, in certain circles.
I am upset by this experience. I am not so naive as to be unable to forgive an author for writing in the context of his time, but I also believe that in 1960 an educated person would have thought better of resorting to this kind of thing in an otherwise delightful book for children. Someday, I will have this conversation with Lily. I am, will be, very curious to hear what she thinks.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
May I Have This Dance?
When I was growing up, in my hometown, pretty much every kid between the ages of 12 and 14 signed up for the weekly ballroom dancing classes held at the junior high. They were so popular that although I didn't even go to school in town--my parents had switched us to a private, girls' school by that point--there was never any question that I too would partake. It was as much as a rite of passage as Sudbury has.
Do kids take ballroom dancing anymore? I suspect the answer is no, that today the art is considered antiquated, or that in the age of the "overscheduled child" recreational ballroom dancing fell by the wayside, considered more expendable than, say, ending poverty in Jakarta or playing 18 sports along with the violin. This, I feel, is a shame. Not because I believe ballroom dancing to be essential to an American, or any other, adolescence. In fact, having seen many of my fellow ballroom dancers attempt a first dance at their own weddings, I have to say that the retention rate--with the possible exception of the ever popular Funky Chicken--seems pretty low. But those evenings I spent navigating uncharted social terrain, learning how to be gracious, and kind, and take it when others both were and were not, are precious to me now, and I wouldn't trade them for all the AP prep courses or internet chat rooms in the world.
Of course it must be said that part of the reason Sudbury's ballroom dance classes were so renown was the instructor: a man famous throughout the Metrowest for his ability to tame a room of 200 testosterone and prematurely eye-shadowed preteens with a single raise of his eyebrows. Mr. Lamoureaux was my parents' friend, a school principal, a father of three charismatic children of his own, an incorrigible match for my father's sense of humor and love of a practical joke, and the closest thing Sudbury had to a rock star with the possible theoretical exception of the individual who opened the Dunkin' Donuts franchise, but as I don't even know who that is, I'm going to stick with Mr. Lamoureaux.
I don't think it's exagerrating to say that he was, simply, magic. How many voluntary group activities attract such a cross-section of kids that age: the popular, confident ones, the pathologically shy ones, the atheltic ones, the awkward ones and on and on and on? They all came, and they all stayed, and although there was always the thrill of the couples' dancing itself, the waiting to be asked, to ask, we were pretty young, and that was all pretty nerve-wracking. It was mostly Mr. Lamoureaux.
I have seen the man in many settings over the course of my life, in restaurants, at social occasions, at town events, and although he is always a draw, there was something about a group of kids that age, the music, the expansive gymnasium, the tension in the air, that turned him into Mick Jagger. He made a joke, and hundreds of kids laughed so hard their sides hurt. He made a suggestion, and you could practically hear hundreds of mental wheels turning, taking it in, pledging allegiance. He was fair and decent without being sappy and mockable, as were so many adults of our acquaintance. He was authoritative and respectful without being dry and remote, as the other half seemed. Is it enough to say that he made ballroom dancing one of the high points of early adolescence for generations of kids?
It wasn't just Mr. Lamoureaux, though, that made ballroom dancing such a fond memory for me. I loved getting the chance to spend time with the kids I missed from my old schools, and I loved the way it brought out the best in my relationship with my cousin Andy. Andy and I are just one month apart. As kids, we were rivals, best friends, conspirators, enemies, the two bosses when everyone knows the term demands one. As we got older, our worlds expanded, outside of our family, and we felt both the relief and the loss. But at ballroom dancing, we were each other's signpost, safety net--and what more does a 13-year-old need in the world?
We had a signal. If it was a "choice" dance, meaning that either the boys or the girls had the opportunity to ask a partner to dance, we gave each other a reasonable amount of time to be asked by a coveted partner. Somehow we both understood what--or who--this would be for the other. If a painful few seconds too many passed, and the askee was still unmoored, the member of the asker party would make a beeline for said askee, ensuring that neither one of us was ever left standing alone. Fortunately, we both generally did okay on our own. But knowing Andy was out there, that he had my back in the jungle that is junior high school, made the whole enterprise all the more satisfying.
So, on this sweltering July night in Lower Manhattan, as Andy and I approach 40, and Mr. Lamoureaux, I hope, is enjoying a summer full of kids to whom he is related, I want to state for the record that I can still, maybe, do a box step. I definitely remember, although will never again do, the Funky Chicken, and I like to think that there are thousands of other adults all over the country at this point who know that if someone does ask you to dance, you must smile, and say yes, because for one thing, you never know where one dance can lead, and for another, it's just the right thing to do.
Do kids take ballroom dancing anymore? I suspect the answer is no, that today the art is considered antiquated, or that in the age of the "overscheduled child" recreational ballroom dancing fell by the wayside, considered more expendable than, say, ending poverty in Jakarta or playing 18 sports along with the violin. This, I feel, is a shame. Not because I believe ballroom dancing to be essential to an American, or any other, adolescence. In fact, having seen many of my fellow ballroom dancers attempt a first dance at their own weddings, I have to say that the retention rate--with the possible exception of the ever popular Funky Chicken--seems pretty low. But those evenings I spent navigating uncharted social terrain, learning how to be gracious, and kind, and take it when others both were and were not, are precious to me now, and I wouldn't trade them for all the AP prep courses or internet chat rooms in the world.
Of course it must be said that part of the reason Sudbury's ballroom dance classes were so renown was the instructor: a man famous throughout the Metrowest for his ability to tame a room of 200 testosterone and prematurely eye-shadowed preteens with a single raise of his eyebrows. Mr. Lamoureaux was my parents' friend, a school principal, a father of three charismatic children of his own, an incorrigible match for my father's sense of humor and love of a practical joke, and the closest thing Sudbury had to a rock star with the possible theoretical exception of the individual who opened the Dunkin' Donuts franchise, but as I don't even know who that is, I'm going to stick with Mr. Lamoureaux.
I don't think it's exagerrating to say that he was, simply, magic. How many voluntary group activities attract such a cross-section of kids that age: the popular, confident ones, the pathologically shy ones, the atheltic ones, the awkward ones and on and on and on? They all came, and they all stayed, and although there was always the thrill of the couples' dancing itself, the waiting to be asked, to ask, we were pretty young, and that was all pretty nerve-wracking. It was mostly Mr. Lamoureaux.
I have seen the man in many settings over the course of my life, in restaurants, at social occasions, at town events, and although he is always a draw, there was something about a group of kids that age, the music, the expansive gymnasium, the tension in the air, that turned him into Mick Jagger. He made a joke, and hundreds of kids laughed so hard their sides hurt. He made a suggestion, and you could practically hear hundreds of mental wheels turning, taking it in, pledging allegiance. He was fair and decent without being sappy and mockable, as were so many adults of our acquaintance. He was authoritative and respectful without being dry and remote, as the other half seemed. Is it enough to say that he made ballroom dancing one of the high points of early adolescence for generations of kids?
It wasn't just Mr. Lamoureaux, though, that made ballroom dancing such a fond memory for me. I loved getting the chance to spend time with the kids I missed from my old schools, and I loved the way it brought out the best in my relationship with my cousin Andy. Andy and I are just one month apart. As kids, we were rivals, best friends, conspirators, enemies, the two bosses when everyone knows the term demands one. As we got older, our worlds expanded, outside of our family, and we felt both the relief and the loss. But at ballroom dancing, we were each other's signpost, safety net--and what more does a 13-year-old need in the world?
We had a signal. If it was a "choice" dance, meaning that either the boys or the girls had the opportunity to ask a partner to dance, we gave each other a reasonable amount of time to be asked by a coveted partner. Somehow we both understood what--or who--this would be for the other. If a painful few seconds too many passed, and the askee was still unmoored, the member of the asker party would make a beeline for said askee, ensuring that neither one of us was ever left standing alone. Fortunately, we both generally did okay on our own. But knowing Andy was out there, that he had my back in the jungle that is junior high school, made the whole enterprise all the more satisfying.
So, on this sweltering July night in Lower Manhattan, as Andy and I approach 40, and Mr. Lamoureaux, I hope, is enjoying a summer full of kids to whom he is related, I want to state for the record that I can still, maybe, do a box step. I definitely remember, although will never again do, the Funky Chicken, and I like to think that there are thousands of other adults all over the country at this point who know that if someone does ask you to dance, you must smile, and say yes, because for one thing, you never know where one dance can lead, and for another, it's just the right thing to do.
Monday, July 14, 2008
Two Quotes and An Awful Lot of Cheese
"A joy shared is a joy doubled," wrote Goethe, and in my experience this is never more true than when the joy is being shared with a four-year-old. Today, to break up a mythical expanse of time, I took Lily and Annika to the Essex Street Market in the afternoon on the subway, Lily holding my hand, Annika in the Baby Bjorn. The Essex Street Market is a relatively new indoor market on the Lower East Side that I have been meaning to check out since it opened. Lily and I looked it up online, and when she saw that there were two cheese stalls and a chocolatier, she was sold. Annika had no choice in the matter, but we figured she could be easily bribed to comply.
The trip down was relatively effortless, if hard on my back, and the market itself was a perfect small-scale excursion. There were Latino groceries with bins of coconuts, stripped cactus paddles and long, hard cords of yuca. Both cheese stalls were excellent, if tiny, and I knew the proprietor of one and had a tangential relationship to the other, so we were given lots of free samples: a love I have imparted to Lily by virtue of experience if she doesn't come by it naturally. We bought two, one from each purveyor: a rich, sharp, runny cheese called Winnemere, and a firm, complex, tangy cheese called Brebis Pardou from the other. I had heard of these cheeses, both of which are very hard to come by, but had never tried either. To my great delight, they were Lily's favorites at each stall, and both women selling were impressed. "She has excellent taste," said one, as Lily nabbed a forbidden second sample of salami, figuring I would be too pleased to intervene.
After we rounded off our cheese purchases with a bag of handmade butter toffee and a bunch of miniature bananas for Annika, we decided to walk around the neighborhood for a little while. Uncharacteristically, I told Lily she could pick which streets to turn on; I cannot remember--and suspect she could not--the last time we had wandered around with noplace to be, no reason for our being there. Perhaps we never have.
When we got home, it was time for Annika's nap, and we put her in her crib and set up a cheese plate. We sat side by side on the stools at the butcher block in the kitchen, eating cheese and talking for about a half an hour. I must confess that we ate almost all the cheese. "I think it's going to be dinner soon," Lily said at one point, with a worried look at me, and I cringed, inwardly. Did I have to be such a stickler about snacks that an afternoon cheesefest made her nervous?
Much, although not all, of our conversation centered around the cheese: its texture, mouthfeel, change in flavor as it warmed, our preference for one or the other, and so on. Several things occurred to me as we sat and ate and talked. One was that I felt incredibly lucky to have a daughter who shares my love for and near worship of cheese. Another was that the afternoon had reminded me of a William Blake quote my mother has always loved. I'd never thought about it much before, and I'm not sure what he meant when he said it, but to me it captures what I should strive for when spending time with my children. Or more accurately, it captures what four-year-olds do without even trying. Here it is, and if you are a parent maybe it can help temper your exasperation, too:
To see a world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wild flower,
To hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour.
The trip down was relatively effortless, if hard on my back, and the market itself was a perfect small-scale excursion. There were Latino groceries with bins of coconuts, stripped cactus paddles and long, hard cords of yuca. Both cheese stalls were excellent, if tiny, and I knew the proprietor of one and had a tangential relationship to the other, so we were given lots of free samples: a love I have imparted to Lily by virtue of experience if she doesn't come by it naturally. We bought two, one from each purveyor: a rich, sharp, runny cheese called Winnemere, and a firm, complex, tangy cheese called Brebis Pardou from the other. I had heard of these cheeses, both of which are very hard to come by, but had never tried either. To my great delight, they were Lily's favorites at each stall, and both women selling were impressed. "She has excellent taste," said one, as Lily nabbed a forbidden second sample of salami, figuring I would be too pleased to intervene.
After we rounded off our cheese purchases with a bag of handmade butter toffee and a bunch of miniature bananas for Annika, we decided to walk around the neighborhood for a little while. Uncharacteristically, I told Lily she could pick which streets to turn on; I cannot remember--and suspect she could not--the last time we had wandered around with noplace to be, no reason for our being there. Perhaps we never have.
When we got home, it was time for Annika's nap, and we put her in her crib and set up a cheese plate. We sat side by side on the stools at the butcher block in the kitchen, eating cheese and talking for about a half an hour. I must confess that we ate almost all the cheese. "I think it's going to be dinner soon," Lily said at one point, with a worried look at me, and I cringed, inwardly. Did I have to be such a stickler about snacks that an afternoon cheesefest made her nervous?
Much, although not all, of our conversation centered around the cheese: its texture, mouthfeel, change in flavor as it warmed, our preference for one or the other, and so on. Several things occurred to me as we sat and ate and talked. One was that I felt incredibly lucky to have a daughter who shares my love for and near worship of cheese. Another was that the afternoon had reminded me of a William Blake quote my mother has always loved. I'd never thought about it much before, and I'm not sure what he meant when he said it, but to me it captures what I should strive for when spending time with my children. Or more accurately, it captures what four-year-olds do without even trying. Here it is, and if you are a parent maybe it can help temper your exasperation, too:
To see a world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wild flower,
To hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Black Raspberries and What Summer Needs to Be
Today I drove to the nearby home of one of my closest friends to pick all of her flowers. Why did I do this? Said friend is away for the month, and as she has one of the loveliest, professionally-installed and maintained gardens I have ever seen, it seemed a shame to me that nobody would be there to enjoy what was in bloom in mid-July. I told my friend in advance of my plan, and she shrugged; I suspect she found the whole proposition a little strange, but that's okay. I have two huge bouquets in my apartment right now: one of lillies, and one of wildflowers, obtained by wading through a mini-field of poison ivy.
But this is not why I am writing. It was something else in my friend's yard that triggered a pretty intense memory for me, something I discovered as I walked around the expansive backyard, enjoying the beauty and the solitude. At one end of the lawn, there are three wide rows of wild, overgrown greenery. My friend had asked my grandmother, mother and me to come over one afternoon in late spring to help her determine what was growing, and we had recognized the then brown canes and vines immediately. Fruit.
To see it at the height of mid-summer was something else entirely. Bunches of green grapes--which will hang heavy and purple come fall--were everywhere. Blackberries and raspberries, too--so overgrown that I scratched my arms again and again as I picked them. Apple trees around the outskirts of the rows. And then. Black raspberries.
The berries themselves are smaller than raspberries and blackberries. They are a very dark crimson, really, as dark and winey as it is possible for a color to get before being black. The "segments" are smaller as well; they resemble miniature raspberries, a little, but taste less sweet, more tart than raspberries, much less sweet than blackberries, which they don't resemble at all. I have never seen them for sale anywhere, not even at the famous farmer's market or countless gourmet groceries near my home in New York.
As I stood in front of the first patch I found, I noticed that my hand had curled involuntarily by my side, as though to hold a glass. And in fact, on the summer mornings 30 years ago when my sister and I walked out into the field in front of our house to pick our own black raspberries, we were holding cups: translucent green ones, with red apples etched onto them, our regular drinking glasses, made of a thick, light plastic, though, not glass.
The berries grew in a bramble where the field met the road, about halfway up, and many, many mornings we would walk together to pick, sometimes through waist-high, dew-damp grass that had yet to be cut and transformed into cylindrical haystacks, other times on sun-parched, clean-smelling, newly-shorn grass that left wisps on our legs and our brown little feet. On a good morning, we would each get half a cupful or so--like all berry pickers we ate while we picked--enough to make my mother's famous blueberry muffin recipe with the black raspberries instead of the regular blueberries, which we also picked, often, but which did not grow wild.
The black raspberries were ours. The land they grew on, actually, was not. It belonged to the aforementioned inn, which had fired me as an assistant groundskeeper after less than one day, but nobody else ever picked them or seemed to know they were there. We had discovered them, we picked them, we ate them; they were ours.
And standing today in my friend's backyard, I closed my eyes and tried to see me and my sister in our summer nightgowns, holding our green plastic apple cups, pulling each berry off of its little nub and watching the pile grow higher and higher. I ate a few berries, and the taste--a little dusky, a little bit complicated--came back to me, too, reminding me of how summers used to be: me, my sister and the infinite expanse of a day, from the wet grass of just after dawn to the wilting hammock mid-day lounge to the rounding of the bases between the little groves of fir trees as the sun fought for one last hour and ultimately lost to the way the stars look lying on your back on the cool night lawn.
As a child, I understood summer implicitly. Now I need a little help sometimes. Thank you, my friend, for sharing your flowers, but also for the push to remember.
But this is not why I am writing. It was something else in my friend's yard that triggered a pretty intense memory for me, something I discovered as I walked around the expansive backyard, enjoying the beauty and the solitude. At one end of the lawn, there are three wide rows of wild, overgrown greenery. My friend had asked my grandmother, mother and me to come over one afternoon in late spring to help her determine what was growing, and we had recognized the then brown canes and vines immediately. Fruit.
To see it at the height of mid-summer was something else entirely. Bunches of green grapes--which will hang heavy and purple come fall--were everywhere. Blackberries and raspberries, too--so overgrown that I scratched my arms again and again as I picked them. Apple trees around the outskirts of the rows. And then. Black raspberries.
The berries themselves are smaller than raspberries and blackberries. They are a very dark crimson, really, as dark and winey as it is possible for a color to get before being black. The "segments" are smaller as well; they resemble miniature raspberries, a little, but taste less sweet, more tart than raspberries, much less sweet than blackberries, which they don't resemble at all. I have never seen them for sale anywhere, not even at the famous farmer's market or countless gourmet groceries near my home in New York.
As I stood in front of the first patch I found, I noticed that my hand had curled involuntarily by my side, as though to hold a glass. And in fact, on the summer mornings 30 years ago when my sister and I walked out into the field in front of our house to pick our own black raspberries, we were holding cups: translucent green ones, with red apples etched onto them, our regular drinking glasses, made of a thick, light plastic, though, not glass.
The berries grew in a bramble where the field met the road, about halfway up, and many, many mornings we would walk together to pick, sometimes through waist-high, dew-damp grass that had yet to be cut and transformed into cylindrical haystacks, other times on sun-parched, clean-smelling, newly-shorn grass that left wisps on our legs and our brown little feet. On a good morning, we would each get half a cupful or so--like all berry pickers we ate while we picked--enough to make my mother's famous blueberry muffin recipe with the black raspberries instead of the regular blueberries, which we also picked, often, but which did not grow wild.
The black raspberries were ours. The land they grew on, actually, was not. It belonged to the aforementioned inn, which had fired me as an assistant groundskeeper after less than one day, but nobody else ever picked them or seemed to know they were there. We had discovered them, we picked them, we ate them; they were ours.
And standing today in my friend's backyard, I closed my eyes and tried to see me and my sister in our summer nightgowns, holding our green plastic apple cups, pulling each berry off of its little nub and watching the pile grow higher and higher. I ate a few berries, and the taste--a little dusky, a little bit complicated--came back to me, too, reminding me of how summers used to be: me, my sister and the infinite expanse of a day, from the wet grass of just after dawn to the wilting hammock mid-day lounge to the rounding of the bases between the little groves of fir trees as the sun fought for one last hour and ultimately lost to the way the stars look lying on your back on the cool night lawn.
As a child, I understood summer implicitly. Now I need a little help sometimes. Thank you, my friend, for sharing your flowers, but also for the push to remember.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
The Job Not Taken (Involuntarily)
One summer when I was in college I got a coveted summer job at the historic inn just around the corner from my parents' house. I was to be a "groundskeeper," which doesn't sound so desirable in hindsight, but it paid well, would ensure I was outdoors all day and was, even more appealingly, a 3 minute walk from my bed, maximizing my morning sleep time.
On the first day, I showed up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed wearing cute shorts and a tennis camp T-shirt. The actual groundskeeper must have taken one look at me and made up his mind. He led me to an ancient-looking hand-operated lawnmower and told me to start, while pointing vaguely out at the horizon, where the inn's rolling lawns started about 4 miles away.
Or maybe 100 feet, but still. I had never actually operated a push mower, or any other kind of lawn mower. When I was three, my father cut off most of one finger in one while my sister and I watched, and although we always had plenty of chores around the house and yard, from this particular one we had been spared. I had done lots of weeding, and in fact, as I had confidently walked earlier that morning to the groundskeeper's shed, I had eyed the lovely flower gardens, imagining myself picking bouquets for the tables in the restaurants, plucking out the occasional clover.
Such was not to be my fate. It took me about an hour to get the thing running at all; I was too proud and too embarrassed to ask the guy how to do it. Once the motor surged, I felt a flood of relief: I still had all ten digits. And then I started pushing. It was hard, so much harder than I had imagined--or not bothered to--any time I had seen somebody else behind one on our own lawn or elsewhere. I have never been physically strong, and after 10 minutes my arms and legs ached with effort of pushing the mower through the tall grass.
After half an hour I had blisters on both hands as well as my feet, clad in unsensible sandals, and tears welled in my eyes as I struggled to turn the heavy contraption at the end of an uneven row. I looked at what I had done so far. The lawn looked as though a drunken alien had failed to complete some kind of signal visible from space for his home planet compatriots. I couldn't do it; I couldn't keep going. But I had to, because although I have become expert at the art of the half-assed job, I have never been a quitter.
By four o'clock, I had been fired. "Not for you," the groundskeeper had said, eyeing my progress, or lack thereof, and I walked home more slowly, head down, ignoring the flowers and the little brook we had caught sunfish in as children. I was exhausted, too physically spent and demoralized to even feel upset about the loss of the job. The next morning I could barely walk. My hands and feet scabbed over. And to top it off, I had been scorched. My face was so red my freckles faded into the background.
Why am I telling you this, remembering this now? Because at the end of today, after a twenty-four hour cycle of being the primary caretaker for two small, angelic-looking little girls, a cycle that included interludes with other people, a number of meals, and a modicum of sleep for each of us, it occured to me that compared to this, that day at the inn--my foray into assistant groundskeeping--was literally a walk in the park. How on earth do people do this?
I'll keep you posted.
On the first day, I showed up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed wearing cute shorts and a tennis camp T-shirt. The actual groundskeeper must have taken one look at me and made up his mind. He led me to an ancient-looking hand-operated lawnmower and told me to start, while pointing vaguely out at the horizon, where the inn's rolling lawns started about 4 miles away.
Or maybe 100 feet, but still. I had never actually operated a push mower, or any other kind of lawn mower. When I was three, my father cut off most of one finger in one while my sister and I watched, and although we always had plenty of chores around the house and yard, from this particular one we had been spared. I had done lots of weeding, and in fact, as I had confidently walked earlier that morning to the groundskeeper's shed, I had eyed the lovely flower gardens, imagining myself picking bouquets for the tables in the restaurants, plucking out the occasional clover.
Such was not to be my fate. It took me about an hour to get the thing running at all; I was too proud and too embarrassed to ask the guy how to do it. Once the motor surged, I felt a flood of relief: I still had all ten digits. And then I started pushing. It was hard, so much harder than I had imagined--or not bothered to--any time I had seen somebody else behind one on our own lawn or elsewhere. I have never been physically strong, and after 10 minutes my arms and legs ached with effort of pushing the mower through the tall grass.
After half an hour I had blisters on both hands as well as my feet, clad in unsensible sandals, and tears welled in my eyes as I struggled to turn the heavy contraption at the end of an uneven row. I looked at what I had done so far. The lawn looked as though a drunken alien had failed to complete some kind of signal visible from space for his home planet compatriots. I couldn't do it; I couldn't keep going. But I had to, because although I have become expert at the art of the half-assed job, I have never been a quitter.
By four o'clock, I had been fired. "Not for you," the groundskeeper had said, eyeing my progress, or lack thereof, and I walked home more slowly, head down, ignoring the flowers and the little brook we had caught sunfish in as children. I was exhausted, too physically spent and demoralized to even feel upset about the loss of the job. The next morning I could barely walk. My hands and feet scabbed over. And to top it off, I had been scorched. My face was so red my freckles faded into the background.
Why am I telling you this, remembering this now? Because at the end of today, after a twenty-four hour cycle of being the primary caretaker for two small, angelic-looking little girls, a cycle that included interludes with other people, a number of meals, and a modicum of sleep for each of us, it occured to me that compared to this, that day at the inn--my foray into assistant groundskeeping--was literally a walk in the park. How on earth do people do this?
I'll keep you posted.
Friday, July 11, 2008
Parenting
Operations suspended due to exhaustion. But that's what I'll write about tomorrow: the nature of this exhaustion.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
What Goes Around, Comes Around
Sometimes Lily says things that cause me to shiver in recognition, recognition of a former self I can no longer recall so well on my own. Today, she said to me, with no trigger I could identify, "Mama, I don't want to be a grown-up. I want to stay a kid forever." I couldn't even speak for a moment.
"I know what you mean," I said, finally, not sitting next to her on the subway at all but in my childhood bedroom on the night of December 10th, watching the minute hand on the clock draw closer to 12. When this happened, I had decided, and it was my tenth birthday, my childhood was officially over. Double digits. The beginning of the end. I curled up under the covers and wept.
Lily thought my response was funny. She giggled. "You don't know what I mean, silly," she said. "You're a grown-up."
"I was a kid once, too," I said.
"And did you want to stay a kid?" I thought about how to answer this. The last thing I want is to pass on my own neuroses in ways that are not genetic and therefore less avoidable. But I didn't want to lie. It was a real question that deserved a real answer.
"Sometimes," I said. Her eyes were wide and serious.
"But do you right now? Wish you were still a kid." Again, I thought. It had been a long day. We were all hot and tired and cranky, and we had dinner and bath-time and bed on the agenda, a series of events that when done solo leaves me depleted at best.
"Yes," I said. She nodded, somberly.
We rode the rest of the way in silence. We both had a lot to think about.
"I know what you mean," I said, finally, not sitting next to her on the subway at all but in my childhood bedroom on the night of December 10th, watching the minute hand on the clock draw closer to 12. When this happened, I had decided, and it was my tenth birthday, my childhood was officially over. Double digits. The beginning of the end. I curled up under the covers and wept.
Lily thought my response was funny. She giggled. "You don't know what I mean, silly," she said. "You're a grown-up."
"I was a kid once, too," I said.
"And did you want to stay a kid?" I thought about how to answer this. The last thing I want is to pass on my own neuroses in ways that are not genetic and therefore less avoidable. But I didn't want to lie. It was a real question that deserved a real answer.
"Sometimes," I said. Her eyes were wide and serious.
"But do you right now? Wish you were still a kid." Again, I thought. It had been a long day. We were all hot and tired and cranky, and we had dinner and bath-time and bed on the agenda, a series of events that when done solo leaves me depleted at best.
"Yes," I said. She nodded, somberly.
We rode the rest of the way in silence. We both had a lot to think about.
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
A Few Thoughts on Perspective
This evening, Lily, Annika and I met some of our favorite friends--another mother with two girls--at a gallery in Chelsea. The other mother, my friend, had discovered the place while wandering the neighborhood with her husband and called me afterward to tell me what a great place it would be to bring the kids. She was right.
The exhibit is pretty small, three rooms, really, but the art itself is enormous. "Humongous," as Lily told her father later on the telephone. The main room consists of giant dinner plates, six feet across, stacked in piles ten feet high. The other two rooms feature giant-sized folding chairs and card tables--the girls speculated you could fit "a hundred and one kids" on each chair seat--and another tall stack of pots and pans, each as big as an oven. There was also a room filled with 888 red objects: a Red Room.
We were all enchanted. The three older girls ran from stack to stack, threw their arms up in delight under the chairs, imagined how much pasta could be cooked in the largest of the pots. I found myself fascinated by the way the unexpected scale made me feel a little dizzy, disoriented. My friend told us all to walk around the stacks of plates in circles and see what happened. We did, and in a three-dimensional optical illusion par extraordinaire, the stacks appeared to be spinning themselves, around some invisible core.
The six-year-old and I were especially impressed by this. She asked me to watch her walk around and tell her if the plates spun while I was watching. I knew she was puzzling it out for herself, and I complied. "No," I said, as she circled. "They're not moving for me." Then, she wanted me to circle so she could watch. I walked around and around as she stood, hands on hips, head tilted, considering.
"No, not for me, either. I guess they only move if you're moving." Yes, I thought, as I kept circling, my eyes on the plates, which spun and spun. And then I stopped, finally, and they did, too.
"It's true," I said, as we walked away, leaving the stacks of plates--still, until the next circler would make them move again--behind us. "It's your own eyes, your own brain, that makes the moving happen. I can't make it happen for you, and you can't make it happen for me." She nodded. We walked toward the room where the rest of our group was contemplating the giant pots and pans again.
"But Amy?" she said.
"Yes," I answered.
"I like that it happens at all."
I'm going to keep that one in my back pocket as long as I can.
The End of the Affair
I knew on some level the moment we lay eyes on each other.
I have never believed in love at first sight, but until we met, everybody else had been so…wrong.
It was the little things, the way it always is at first. The “tells.” When she came in, she asked immediately where she could find the sink to wash her hands. “The subway,” she explained with a grimace, and I felt my heart swell. “May I hold her?” she asked, which nobody else had bothered to do. And the way she took her in her arms—my firstborn, this extension of me, the love of my life—was reassuring. Not a thrill, no. But “just right” enough.
And the first few weeks, the honeymoon phase, were amazing. Suddenly, I had my life back. I was my old self again, but better—more nuanced and well rounded, filled with a sense of possibility. I could do this, be a mother and a writer, or even—my secret real concern—a mother and a functioning member of society, capable of showering before noon.
We were both so polite, at the beginning, so eager to impress. I brushed my hair, was dressed when she arrived. She made me cups of tea, complimented my curtains. We were like newlyweds who had never lived together, bumping shoulders awkwardly in the kitchen, always saying “Excuse me,” with shy, grateful smiles. When the baby cried, we both started toward her. It took me a while to step back. And then I had to. I wasn’t home.
For a long time, everything ran like clockwork. I was able to work, she was able to work; it just worked. “Did she…” I would start, as I walked in the door at the end of the day. “…from 1 to 3,” she would say. We were finishing each other’s sentences. It was that good. She anticipated my needs. I would leave in the morning anxious about the towers of stained baby clothes and return to find each item scrubbed, soaked, and hanging to dry from the towel rods. She made chamomile tea for the baby when she fussed. This worked too.
At some point, as is its wont, reality set in. The seven-year itch, perhaps, but at about two years instead: a condensed version of the marital arc. When she arrived in the mornings I was bleary-eyed and still in pajamas, the little one barely diapered, banana in my unbrushed hair. She didn’t always change into her slippers anymore, the ones she’d so thoughtfully bought to avoid tracking in dirt from the street. She talked on the phone too much. I knew; I was paying the bill.
Disillusionment: it’s especially hard to track when you spend so much time apart. The cracks become wider. Wedges, in the form of white lies and bickering, find room. Irritation, disillusionment’s even less appealing cousin, joins the party. In our case, we both started eyeing the competition. I kept track of which of her competitors read books using different voices for the characters, played games as mind-numbingly dull as Candyland, went to museums the children liked instead of the Barnes and Noble nanny hangout. She mentioned mutual acquaintances who earned more, worked less. I wondered if she was moonlighting. I thought about a change, let myself imagine it. She, I’m sure, did too.
And then: Old Marrieds. We settled into each other’s foibles. If I forgot to go to the bank, she sighed but accepted with a shrug. If she was on the phone when I got home, I sighed, cleared my throat loudly until she hung up, but accepted as well. Our routine was ingrained, and although there were occasional flare-ups—a doctor’s appointment poorly timed on purpose, a late arrival on my part at the end of a very long day—we knew what we were dealing with, and in many ways it seemed vastly preferable to the other couples—or rather triangles—we saw out there. Even the arrival of the second baby didn’t faze us. We were in it for the long haul.
Except. Except of course we weren’t. True love may last forever, but nanny jobs do not.
The truth is: there was no infidelity, no blow-out fight, no fireworks upon a shocking discovery. As is true of most divorces, it was impossible to pinpoint precisely when we knew it would end. There were warnings signs; there always are. I had more help than I needed, could pay for in the moment. My older girl was soon to be in school all day. She needed more work, more pay. She has two girls herself, rising rent, expenses. The economy had soured. The timing was suddenly off. Our fortunes had been inextricably linked for four years; could we go our separate ways? We had to. I put off telling her as long as I could, and then I did. She nodded, somberly. My eyes filled with tears. Hers did not. It is always harder to be the person asked to leave.
Like finding a spouse, finding a nanny is about compatibility, yes, but also about biting the bullet and making a choice. Any parent worth his salt enters the relationship thinking: This is the one. And yet. We all know the marriage statistics; the nanny statistics are worse. Everyone I know has fired one; everyone I know has been quit on, too. The relationship between you and your children’s caregiver is unlike any other employer/employee relationship in the world. If ever a job was not just a job it is this.
The defining characteristic of the nanny job, however, is its finite nature. This is unspoken, but implicit in every second of every hour of every day. Nobody's nanny is forever; everybody's children grow up. Thus the illusion, the temporary lie: You are helping me raise my children; you are helping me survive. But someday, when I no longer need you, you will go. I will spend every minute when we are together pretending this is not so, but we both know it. You may like me, you may love my children—the best we can hope for—but not as much as I do. You, and not I, are expendable.
From the very beginning, as woman after woman filed into our home to be checked out, knowing it was too much of a luxury to reciprocate, I knew this relationship, once embarked upon, was going to be challenging for me. To be honest, I don’t even like the word “nanny.” I never called her that or even referred to her by the term when she wasn’t around. It seems dopey to me, both old-fashioned and demeaning, although most people I know, employers and nannies alike, look at me with furrowed brows when I express this point of view.
When a romantic relationship, duration: years, comes to an end, there is inevitably a mess. “A blessing they don’t have kids,” people always say, when the couple in question does not, in fact, have kids. But even a childless couple endures the heartbreak of the division of commingled possessions, the parceling out of friends, the decision of who will stay and who will have to find another home. A nanny break-up is so clean, in a way. There are no shared possessions, no furniture to be divvied up, no wedding gifts or photo albums to serve as mementoes of a happier time.
But there are children. My children, who loved her but love me more. At least I think they loved her, although I realize one day, a week after she is gone, that the older one will barely remember her soon; I have so few memories of my life before four. The younger one never will. She will become a character in a period of our shared past, a smiling figure in a handful of photographs, a person we will keep in touch with for a while, send holiday cards to, but who will move on herself, to another family, another woman to whom she will present nothing less than her life back, the chance to try to do it all.
Today, I am rummaging in the closet by the front door for something when I spot the slippers, the ones she bought early on to keep from tracking in dirt with her outdoor shoes. I pick up one and consider it. I put it back, gently. After all, not as clean a break as I’d thought.
I have never believed in love at first sight, but until we met, everybody else had been so…wrong.
It was the little things, the way it always is at first. The “tells.” When she came in, she asked immediately where she could find the sink to wash her hands. “The subway,” she explained with a grimace, and I felt my heart swell. “May I hold her?” she asked, which nobody else had bothered to do. And the way she took her in her arms—my firstborn, this extension of me, the love of my life—was reassuring. Not a thrill, no. But “just right” enough.
And the first few weeks, the honeymoon phase, were amazing. Suddenly, I had my life back. I was my old self again, but better—more nuanced and well rounded, filled with a sense of possibility. I could do this, be a mother and a writer, or even—my secret real concern—a mother and a functioning member of society, capable of showering before noon.
We were both so polite, at the beginning, so eager to impress. I brushed my hair, was dressed when she arrived. She made me cups of tea, complimented my curtains. We were like newlyweds who had never lived together, bumping shoulders awkwardly in the kitchen, always saying “Excuse me,” with shy, grateful smiles. When the baby cried, we both started toward her. It took me a while to step back. And then I had to. I wasn’t home.
For a long time, everything ran like clockwork. I was able to work, she was able to work; it just worked. “Did she…” I would start, as I walked in the door at the end of the day. “…from 1 to 3,” she would say. We were finishing each other’s sentences. It was that good. She anticipated my needs. I would leave in the morning anxious about the towers of stained baby clothes and return to find each item scrubbed, soaked, and hanging to dry from the towel rods. She made chamomile tea for the baby when she fussed. This worked too.
At some point, as is its wont, reality set in. The seven-year itch, perhaps, but at about two years instead: a condensed version of the marital arc. When she arrived in the mornings I was bleary-eyed and still in pajamas, the little one barely diapered, banana in my unbrushed hair. She didn’t always change into her slippers anymore, the ones she’d so thoughtfully bought to avoid tracking in dirt from the street. She talked on the phone too much. I knew; I was paying the bill.
Disillusionment: it’s especially hard to track when you spend so much time apart. The cracks become wider. Wedges, in the form of white lies and bickering, find room. Irritation, disillusionment’s even less appealing cousin, joins the party. In our case, we both started eyeing the competition. I kept track of which of her competitors read books using different voices for the characters, played games as mind-numbingly dull as Candyland, went to museums the children liked instead of the Barnes and Noble nanny hangout. She mentioned mutual acquaintances who earned more, worked less. I wondered if she was moonlighting. I thought about a change, let myself imagine it. She, I’m sure, did too.
And then: Old Marrieds. We settled into each other’s foibles. If I forgot to go to the bank, she sighed but accepted with a shrug. If she was on the phone when I got home, I sighed, cleared my throat loudly until she hung up, but accepted as well. Our routine was ingrained, and although there were occasional flare-ups—a doctor’s appointment poorly timed on purpose, a late arrival on my part at the end of a very long day—we knew what we were dealing with, and in many ways it seemed vastly preferable to the other couples—or rather triangles—we saw out there. Even the arrival of the second baby didn’t faze us. We were in it for the long haul.
Except. Except of course we weren’t. True love may last forever, but nanny jobs do not.
The truth is: there was no infidelity, no blow-out fight, no fireworks upon a shocking discovery. As is true of most divorces, it was impossible to pinpoint precisely when we knew it would end. There were warnings signs; there always are. I had more help than I needed, could pay for in the moment. My older girl was soon to be in school all day. She needed more work, more pay. She has two girls herself, rising rent, expenses. The economy had soured. The timing was suddenly off. Our fortunes had been inextricably linked for four years; could we go our separate ways? We had to. I put off telling her as long as I could, and then I did. She nodded, somberly. My eyes filled with tears. Hers did not. It is always harder to be the person asked to leave.
Like finding a spouse, finding a nanny is about compatibility, yes, but also about biting the bullet and making a choice. Any parent worth his salt enters the relationship thinking: This is the one. And yet. We all know the marriage statistics; the nanny statistics are worse. Everyone I know has fired one; everyone I know has been quit on, too. The relationship between you and your children’s caregiver is unlike any other employer/employee relationship in the world. If ever a job was not just a job it is this.
The defining characteristic of the nanny job, however, is its finite nature. This is unspoken, but implicit in every second of every hour of every day. Nobody's nanny is forever; everybody's children grow up. Thus the illusion, the temporary lie: You are helping me raise my children; you are helping me survive. But someday, when I no longer need you, you will go. I will spend every minute when we are together pretending this is not so, but we both know it. You may like me, you may love my children—the best we can hope for—but not as much as I do. You, and not I, are expendable.
From the very beginning, as woman after woman filed into our home to be checked out, knowing it was too much of a luxury to reciprocate, I knew this relationship, once embarked upon, was going to be challenging for me. To be honest, I don’t even like the word “nanny.” I never called her that or even referred to her by the term when she wasn’t around. It seems dopey to me, both old-fashioned and demeaning, although most people I know, employers and nannies alike, look at me with furrowed brows when I express this point of view.
When a romantic relationship, duration: years, comes to an end, there is inevitably a mess. “A blessing they don’t have kids,” people always say, when the couple in question does not, in fact, have kids. But even a childless couple endures the heartbreak of the division of commingled possessions, the parceling out of friends, the decision of who will stay and who will have to find another home. A nanny break-up is so clean, in a way. There are no shared possessions, no furniture to be divvied up, no wedding gifts or photo albums to serve as mementoes of a happier time.
But there are children. My children, who loved her but love me more. At least I think they loved her, although I realize one day, a week after she is gone, that the older one will barely remember her soon; I have so few memories of my life before four. The younger one never will. She will become a character in a period of our shared past, a smiling figure in a handful of photographs, a person we will keep in touch with for a while, send holiday cards to, but who will move on herself, to another family, another woman to whom she will present nothing less than her life back, the chance to try to do it all.
Today, I am rummaging in the closet by the front door for something when I spot the slippers, the ones she bought early on to keep from tracking in dirt with her outdoor shoes. I pick up one and consider it. I put it back, gently. After all, not as clean a break as I’d thought.
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