Who Knew?

Today I was working with one of my high school students when he suddenly held out a pack of gum. "Want a piece?" he asked.

For some reason, I said yes. I cannot remember the last time I have chewed a piece of gum. I was never a big gum chewer even in the days when it wouldn't have been notable, but really, it's been years. And as you will see, I have not purchased a pack of gum in what might be a decade.

I took a piece and unwrapped it as my student watched. "You know," he said, "You don't actually need to do that anymore." 

"What?" I said, genuinely confused.

"The wrapper. You can just eat it. It dissolves into the gum as you chew." 

This particular student is a bit of a prankster, and I assumed he was kidding. "Ha, ha," I said.

"No, really," he insisted. All the gum is like that now. Except for Juicy Fruit. That has a foil wrapper. Don't try chewing that." Thanks, I said in my head, wryly, displeased that my student, while entrusting his higher education to me clearly thought on some level I was a dimwit of extravagant proportions, dumb enough to eat metal.

I watched as he popped a wrapped piece in his own mouth, chewed for a few seconds, and then proudly announced that any trace of the wrapper was gone, absorbed fully into the chewed wad of gum in his mouth, which he knew well enough not to show me. It took all of my will-power, my complete desire not to sound like somebody's biddy great-aunt, not to say, "Well, what do you know? Isn't that something!"

I am tempted to write something here about my thoughts on my fortieth birthday, which will take place at the end of this year, and the sense that on some level as time marches on we are forced to let some paths stay gated, some information closed off. But I won't--I tried, a few times, and it was all generic rubbish, immediately identifiable as such, unlike the rubbish that I see so clearly a day after the fact and feel too ashamed to conspicuously remove.

I will say for the benefit of those who, like me, have been living in the dark ages, that it is entirely possible that but for this chance encounter this afternoon, I may never have known that today, in 2009--brave new world that it is--gum wrappers, the non-foil ones, anyway, are entirely edible.

Mafiosa Baby

I'm really spent. Long day today, longer one tomorrow. So I bring you a (very) brief anecdote from bedtime on 16th Street.

Lily is climbing into bed, Annika toddles in carrying as many of the fish pieces from her fishing puzzle as she can fit in her two cupped hands. 

"Look, Mama," Lily says, pointing. "Annika wants to sleep with her puzzle pieces. Is that a good idea?" 

I bend down to Annika's level, try gently to take the wooden fish from her. She shakes her head, says, "No, no, no." 

"Okay," I say, giving in easy. "Looks like you want to sleep with the fishes." Yikes, I think, as soon as the words come out of my mouth. How often does that line roll off one's tongue out of context? I consider sharing the joke with Lily, but then--wisely--reconsider. 

In the words of the immortal Vito Corleone, "I have a sentimental weakness for my children." Okay. Not quote the same thing. But still.

Ice

Today, Lily and I went ice skating, she for the first time, me for the first time in, oh, about twenty-some-odd years. There is a lot to say about this experience, from Lily's excited anticipation to the inevitable disappointment when it turned out to be not just harder but also different than what she'd expected. "I thought the ice would be different," she kept saying. "I didn't expect it to be so slippery." And my own initial strangeness on skates, and then gradual easing into the motions that used to be automatic. And Lily's admission hours later at dinner that she didn't want to go ice skating again. It was too hard; she only wanted to do things she was "really good at." And the pit in my stomach at this--oh, again, bells of recognition--and the subsequent conversation about how absolutely essential it is to do things that are hard, that you don't know how to do, to fail, to never be afraid to fail, again and again sometimes, because it is in the effort that we discover who and what we are.

But instead, I want to write about the two memories this afternoon on ice evoked for me. One was of an afternoon spent skating on the pond across the street from my grandmother's house with my sister and three cousins, no grown-ups, so we must have been in our early teens. We had hockey sticks and wool hats, our own worn-in skates, and the promise of hot chocolate after an hour or so of racing around in the bitter cold. I remember the scene not from this specific day, as our skating was not a one-time occurrence, but from a number of similar days combined. But I do remember a few flashes: one cousin's red cheeks and blue, blue eyes, a squirrel leaping from one tree to another, a crack in the ice, low down, the sound of it, the instant of fear, the realization of safety.

And then, a more particular memory, one of the few I hold from childhood as a perfect afternoon. The girls in my class, about eighteen of us, skating together on the small pond behind our school, skating backward, spinning, showing off. A red scarf, someone singing, the younger children watching us from a classroom window. And my parents arriving, as it was the last day before vacation, and we were going away, down south. And I saw them approaching, coming to get me, and in that moment was so perfectly happy in where I was and in where I was going that I looked up at the blue sky, cloudless, and smiled into the cold, watching a puff of breath form in front of me and then just as quickly disappear.

Too Bad About the Work

This is how I spent today, or about 90% of it. Hearing Annika take all the toothbrushes out of the bathroom every time I walked more than ten feet away from her.  Allowing her to strew the toothbrushes all over the apartment as I attempted to, say, answer the telephone, pour my coffee, feed the dogs. Walking all over searching for the toothbrushes, returning them to the bathroom, then waiting five minutes for a repeat performance.

Variation: Substitute "toothbrushes" for "pot lids" and you get the idea.

I found myself thinking of Sisyphus, as I bent over a tiny toothbrush at about four in the afternoon, my back already starting to ache. I know you may be thinking: Why oh why did the foolish woman not just relocate the toothbrushes and the pot lids? Because, my friends, if not the toothbrushes and the pot lids, then the printer paper or the dog toys. Or the tea boxes and and the socks. Unless you want to come over to my house and build me one continuous wall shelf about five feet off the ground that is sturdy enough to hold, well, every single item we own, then I'm not that interested in your criticism. I know some of you, with small tornados at home, know just what I mean.

At one point I felt Lily's eyes on me as I lay on the floor trying to get a pot lid from under the couch. I met them. She was reading a book in her pajamas, very casual, quite content. When she realized I had noticed she was watching me, she made a sympathetic face.

"Too bad about the work, Mama," she said. "Babies are tough."

"Thanks, Lil," I said, pleased she'd acknowledged the clean-up, remembering she'd cleaned up her own mess earlier in the morning. 

"And when you're done, do you think you could make me a sandwich?" 

What do we think about 5-year-olds and the judicious use of knives that can spread?

Waste of Time

Earlier this evening I was writing to a friend who had sent me a link to a website featuring photos of and writing by women who have had children. The idea is that the site can serve as a forum for women to talk about how childbearing changes their bodies and their body images, and to promote self-acceptance. My friend had asked me and a few other friends what we thought about the site, and I wrote back, saying I had found it interesting and was, as a mother of girls, very concerned about protecting them from all the ways society chips away at healthy body image, creating, instead, generation after generation of women who are never satisfied with the way they look. I said that I wanted my girls to know the importance of healthy, strong bodies and to always feel good about the bodies they inhabited. 

Then, a couple of hours later, as I was lying on the couch, I found myself thinking about the hair rollers. For years, when I was a teenager and beyond, I used to curl my hair. I used to get body waves, which is a hair salon way of saying a light perm, I think, and I owned an arsenal of curling irons, hot rollers, foam rollers, blow dryers and more. As I lay on the couch, I started trying to calculate how many hours over the years had been spent trying to cajole my straight, fine hair into some semblance of the flowing waves I so desperately wanted. The short answer is: many. A longer answer is: way too many. What a colossal waste of time.

And then I started to think of some of the other ways I had found to not be doing other, exciting, productive, enriching or just enjoyable activities in my teen years and twenties. The exercise bike in my bedroom. The frozen yogurt and diet coke. The make-up counters. The shopping. 

I maintain that I was, for a young women, at the very low end of the appearance-preoccupied scale, but still! To contemplate the wasted time, time spent primping and micro-focusing, time spent deciding my head looked strange if I wore a ponytail, my legs looked funny if I wore flat shoes, my skin looked blotchy if I didn't wear cover-up. 

At thirty-nine, still straight-haired, freckle-faced and disdainful of both frozen yogurt and exercise bikes, which I used to use as tools of self-improvement, I want that time back, every single last minute of it. Why did it take so long to learn that no, I would not be happier if my legs were longer, prettier if my hair were curlier, more fulfilled if I could just find the right clothes to wear out on a Saturday night. 

So I would revise my email to my friend if I hadn't already sent it. I still feel what I wrote to her to be true. But it is not fair to me, or to my girls, to be so blase about it, to write as though I were the vanity-free person I like to think of myself as, the high-minded mind over matter, brain over body, gym-shunner, diet-mocker, above-it-all fantasy me.

The truth is, in between times, in the shadows and wrinkles of those years, I wasted an awful lot of time. I don't want my girls to waste it too. 

More Gratitude (Because It Feels So Good to Be Grateful!)

Earlier in the school year, last fall, I was dropping off Lily in her classroom and helping her put her things in her cubby, when I suddenly realized I had a work commitment in the afternoon and had forgotten to make arrangements for her to get picked up from school. "What are we going to do with you this afternoon," I mused, really to myself, but she was listening.

"What do you mean, Mama?" she said, not alarmed but curious.

"Well, I just have to figure out how you're going to get home today," I said, hoping other parents in the vicinity were not hearing this discussion. Lily looked at me as though I were wearing a bowl of fruit on my head. 

"That's silly," she said. "Of course I will just go with one of my friends."

"Which friend?" I asked, the wheels turning as I wondered who owed me a favor, would be willing to take home one extra kid. Again, the quizzical expression.

"ANY of them, Mama," she said. "It doesn't matter. Everyone here is my friend."

I was able to change my appointment and pick her up myself that day, but I have not forgotten the absolute assurance with which she knew any child in her class of 17, the parents of these children, would envelop her unquestioningly. The puzzlement bordering on disdain when it appeared I did not take this for granted in quite the same way. 

And what I felt after all, was immense gratitude, both for my child who so naturally and effortlessly befriends, and the community that has made her feel like a member of a very large and unorthodox family.

That's all. 

Anticipating Loss

For years I have thought about writing something about the way photographs start to look so dated so quickly and the way I always wonder when looking at current photos when they, too, will start to date themselves by virtue of the details: the clothing, hairstyles, carpeting or lack thereof. 

I haven't ever written about this for many reasons, but mostly because there's not actually that much to say. I sort of already said it. And writing about photographs is notoriously challenging. But I am still always struck by this uncanny dated factor whenever I look at old photos, or even those that aren't, technically, that old.

I was just on Facebook looking at some photos posted by old friends when I stopped on one I could have jumped right into had I been wearing my burgundy-colored Levis cords and my thick shelf of bangs. I could almost hear The Brady Bunch playing on the black-and-white TV with the bent rabbit ear antennae in the background of the shot. 

I looked harder. Orange carpet, those faux wood bookshelves, the complete Encyclopedia Britanica with its faux leather covers (a lot of faux in the 70s). The dried flowers in a pottery vase in autumnal shades on the mantelpiece. The polyester blend stripes, the sneakers, the whole damn thing. 

I guess, to try to explain a little better, it's as though certain years, decades even, never existed until I glance at somebody else's random snapshot and then all of a sudden can't think about anything else but where our Lite-Brite was stored in the toy closet, the plaid wallpaper on the basement walls, Shake-and-Bake fried chicken and really short gym shorts with the white piping down the sides.

And then, back to what I started with. When will my pictures of now--me in a Bush's Last Day baseball cap standing in a friend's suburban driveway in front of a minivan with Annika in my arms, my parents on the beach reading the newspaper while Lily plays at the shoreline with rocks--when will these photos, too, reek so intensely of the past? And how will I bear when it happens? 

I Knew I Was Going to Like 2009

A little lame, I know, when I am so close to my 365 day original goal, but I think I will let tonight slide by saying, merely...

Yes, we did! 

And it feels fantastic. Onward...

Canceling Out

Last night, about an hour after I'd gone to sleep, I woke up to a loud thump from Lily's room, followed by her appearance in our bedroom doorway. She uttered the words no parent wants to hear in the middle of the night from a child too old to shower solo: Mama. I threw up.

She was cool to the touch, felt better already, and we both decided the combination of foods she had consumed at the birthday party she'd attended and then when we went shopping that evening had likely caused the "situation." Which was that every single piece of bedding in her room, as well as her pajamas, the floor, several stuffed animals, all of the pillows and her face, neck and hair were coated in vomit. I stripped the bed, stripped her, at which point she said, stating the obvious, I think you will have to put me in the bathtub. I did, and hosed her down with the hand-held shower head, and rubbed her dry with a towel, and found her clean pajamas, and didn't protest when she said she wanted me to sleep with her in the big bed in Annika's room. As she drifted off in my arms I whispered, Now don't throw up on me. Turn away if you feel sick again, at which she giggled--almost asleep--and said, Oh, Mama. You're teasing me.

No, I thought to myself, as I lay in the unfamiliar bed, now wide awake, my slight, newly sweet-smelling, wet-haired girl snoring lightly in my arms. I'm not teasing. And for a change, a refreshing change, I felt old in a good way, old enough to be the person to clean up the mess so thoroughly, to handle the crisis so capably, and most of all, to offer comfort and solace, as I remember so vividly being offered it myself in the middle of the night, as recently as the night this very child I was holding was born.

And then this morning, with no recurrence of sickness, I was tired, daunted by the laundry in the cold light of day, distracted by the snowfall and other matters, and too scattered to focus on proper mothering as I drank my first of many subsequent cups of coffee. Which is why when I watched Annika watch Sadie slurp water from her metal dog dish, held off the ground in a rack that holds two, and then crouch down on the floor in front of the dish Sadie had just lapped from, I knew what was coming, and I just kept watching.

A few laps, and then she stood up, pleased with herself, and padded over to me, embracing my legs. Wa-wa, she said. Agua.

Yes, I agreed. Water.

I wish my mother weren't going to read this. I will refrain from any other (unnecessary) commentary.

The Tiniest Blueberry

In the gardening class I am teaching at Lily's school we have been making a book on gardening to put in our gardening "shed" for the other children in the school to look through. The book, still a work in progress, is a hilarious study in personality, a reflection of eight extremely different growing minds and aesthetics. One child makes sunflower pages, over and over again. Sometimes she chooses a red crayon instead of a yellow one and says to me, head cocked, "Today, I think I will draw roses instead." And then, at the very last minute, she changes her mind. Another child draws increasingly elaborate scenes featuring a sibling that are so tangentially related to gardening even the other children pipe in. "How about if you guys are watering a plant on that aircraft carrier," one will suggest, kindly, if a bit exasperated.

I try to sit back and let the artists go where they will. If pressed for advice I will demur; if really pressed, I will try to ask open-ended questions to spur the artist on without putting ideas in her head that stem from me. Sometimes, when I am tired, or the children are really wild and trying my patience, I slip up.

Last week, a girl was drawing a page from a seed catalogue. She made boxes, as in the real seed catalogues we had looked at, then colored one fruit in each box, from watermelon to blueberries. I happened to be sitting next to her, watching, waiting for her to ask me to "write her words," as most of the children prefer to dictate their text. She had drawn a big pile of blueberries on one side of a box. Then, on the other side, with the tip of a marker, she had made tiny blue dots, also in a cluster. We had spent the whole first part of the class talking about seeds, and seeds and fruit, and seed catalogues. The child nodded, indicating she was ready for me to start writing. "Blueberries," she said, tapping the large blue dots. I obliged and wrote the word. Then she tapped the tiny specks.

"Blueberry seeds," I said, actually starting to write. She grabbed my marker. She looked appalled.

"No!" she said. "Those are extremely tiny blueberries!"

One of the many things I love about working with small children. They don't let you get away with a thing.

Sleep Deprived

Baby up; back tomorrow. 

Hello Old Self, Of Sorts

I'm up too late with too much work, and I just peeked in my email in-box after forbidding myself to do so. I was shocked to find a letter from my former self. Not really, of course. But a letter from a young person, a writer, a funny, clever, ambitious girl I've never met or heard of, who just graduated from my alma mater, got my email address from the alumni office, and was asking for a little advice.

Although in certain slants of light this could have made me feel either wistful, pleased with myself, mildly put-upon, about a hundred and ten years old, and so on, reading it just made me smile. I know this girl. I knew this girl. I was this girl. What I want to tell her, and maybe I will in some way, because I will write back, is that in so many ways, I still am. 

I am becoming reconciled to the idea (today, anyway) that on a grand scale, there is no peak I am going to scale that will render me complete. Instead, there are lots of peaks, and valleys, and hurricanes (hello, 2008) and just me, with no legitimate hiking gear, incompatible tendencies toward impossibly lofty ambitions and wild inertia, and--saving grace--a healthy amount of small-f faith. 

I know tonight as I try to fall asleep, I will be both making mental lists and schedules of how I will finish the work I need to finish tomorrow and composing my response to this girl. I was taught by my mother, learned myself, and see in Lily the truth in the notion that if you really want to learn something, teach it to somebody else. I think this is true for advice, now that I think about it. If you really want to know what you should do, make your case to the least jaded recipient you can locate.

Selves

I wish I didn't always feel like I was rounding a street corner and running smack into myself head-on, painfully. I can only explain what I mean by that by saying that I spent the morning working, the early afternoon at a Toddler Group with Annika and six other babies, the late afternoon sauteeing zucchini and reading about ladybugs with Lily, and the evening talking about books with five brilliant readers and writers, while eating homemade Indian food and feeling, for the first time all day, as though my time was entirely my own. 

And then, on the way home: a conversation with two other working mothers, whose work encompasses reading and writing like mine, about babies, and how challenging it is to raise them, and how time-consuming their care is, and my admission, made always with guilt but a sense of relief, that I prefer children, even my own, when they are old enough to communicate with words, to speak, to reason, to exchange. 

And then, and then, re-entry. My home, my work, again, the desk, the dogs, the words, but first, a silent pushing open of the bedroom door where my new life--five years is new at my age--makes itself so manifest. In the crib, Annika stirs. She opens her eyes, rolls over, cries out. She sees me, stands, wobbling, throws herself into my arms. I pick her up, just to feel her body, her weight against me, and she settles in, puts her tiny hand on my back, head on my shoulder, is instantly asleep. I set her down in her crib, gently, look over at the bed and have to stifle a laugh as Lily turns in her sleep, faces me. She is wearing her Superman costume, complete with cape. Earlier in the evening, she was Super Lily, Scout was Super Dog, Annika was Super Baby, the ultimate sidekick. But to sleep, the cape was all hers. Her ponytails splayed on the pillow. Her blue tights shone in the light from the window. 

I lie, sometimes, when I do my talk about the babies, about how it's not "my thing." And yet, I don't. See what I mean? Two selves, both everything, rounding the corner, all the time. I would prefer them to shake hands, make peace, merge? Time. It is happening more. I think I might be getting closer. Hope.

Why So Mean?

Today I was waiting on the subway platform waiting for the express train when a dad about my age and a boy about Lily's age came up and stood beside me, waiting themselves. My mind had been wandering, but for some reason I started listening to them talk. 

"I'm so cold," the little boy complained. He was wearing a parka over a t-shirt but no hat or mittens, and today was bitterly cold in New York. The father, who looked pleasant if a little bit tired, shook his head. 

"You know what, buddy?" he said, in a tone that sounded vaguely familiar. "I told you it was freezing out, and you refused to wear what I set out for you. There's nothing to be done. You're just going to have to be cold." The boy hunched over and pulled his hands inside his sleeves. His face fell. The father folded his arms and stared down the tunnel at the empty tracks. He did not look at his son, who just stood there, lower lip protruding, shivering. Finally, the local train came, and the father carefully, lovingly, almost involuntarily, put his hand on his son's shoulder to direct him onto the train with him. The boy leaned into him slightly as I watched them get on from the platform.

Then, I gauged my reactions to the scene. Standing there alone, without my children, I had bristled when the man spoke harshly to his son. His voice had oozed frustration, sounded cold and unfeeling. The poor boy, I had thought. He's so small. He's cold. And his father's being a jerk. Why so mean? Then, I realized why his tone had sounded so familiar. Exasperation. It colors my voice too, so very often, sometimes merited, other times maybe not so much. And then I remembered a virtually identical cold weather gear scenario I'd had with Lily not so long ago, and so many more of the, "No, you can't bring Toy X because I will end up carrying it and I have too much to carry and fine, if you promise you'll carry it," and then flash forward to five minutes later as I stagger down the sidewalk with Annika, two bags of groceries and an enormous elephant in a doll stroller under my two, yes only two, arms, Lily stomping beside me, upset but still defiant, made indignant by my perfectly legitimate annoyance.

I think I am going to try to have the "Why so mean?" reaction more often when I hear my own voice take on this tone, however earned the anger fueling it. Apparently, it takes a long time to learn that an enormous elephant in a doll stroller is unwieldy to carry down a city sidewalk. But there are a lot of things I am still learning myself with the benefit of years of experience. 

Lily is preoccupied somewhat these days by the differences between children and adults. Although I often think children get the long end of the stick, one big one occurred to me today. Adults don't get reprimanded for trying to figure stuff out.

Old Friends

The other day I received a message online from a childhood friend I haven't seen since kindergarten. We loved each other as five-year-olds, played all the time that year and the following year, and then went off to different schools and different lives that never managed to intersect. Until I got this message and was flooded by memories of this friend, who I can still see as plain as day, and her house, and her sister, and her father, and her housekeeper, standing in the kitchen, and the game we played in her bedroom, and her closet, and the fact that I knew that her mother had died, and that she was the first person I ever knew who had lost a parent and how much time I spent trying to imagine this, and failing, and then looking for clues as to how the family was functioning whenever I went to their house.

But mostly, I just felt overwhelming fondness for this old, good friend, who was lovely and warm and good at five and in her adult message seemed just the same, somehow, and although I haven't responded yet, I will, and I will tell her how happy it made me to receive her message, a trip back in time, on a cold, dark January morning.

And I was thinking about her again, today, when Lily ran into her first friend at an indoor market here near our apartment, earlier today, after we'd been to the movies. I was walking ahead and suddenly heard her squeal with laughter. I turned and saw her embracing a boy I recognized instantly, although I had never spent much time with him myself. Lily's first babysitter had been close friends with his babysitter, and the two children had spent hours together while their parents were working, during the first three years of their lives, before they were in regular school. And although I think a full two years may have passed since they have seen each other, and experts say long term memory doesn't kick in much before the age of four for most people, these two children were connected as powerfully as ever, instantaneously and effortlessly and joyfully, right in front of all four of their marvelling parents' eyes.

There is just something about those connections we form when we are very small. They are irrevocable, they are formative, they are intense, and they are important. So tonight I am feeling grateful for my old friends, and grateful for those who will someday be Lily's.

Just Say Yes

So we decided tonight would be our first Family Movie Night, which means that Ben and Lily and I will watch a movie together every Saturday, a movie that is appealing to all three of us, which includes a surprising number of movies. Late this afternoon we all drove to the movie rental place, and Lily and I went in to choose. I gave her a brief synopsis of a number of 70s favorites, from The Black Stallion to Benji to Freaky Friday, which was her ultimate choice, I think because she suspected I was angling for Benji.

With a slight complicating factor, a small one that starts with an "A" and ends with an "nnika," who had zero interest in movie night and showed her displeasure, in fact, by chucking pieces of pineapple and trying to press cookie cutters into our faces, movie night was a tremendous success. Lily found Freaky Friday, which I saw at a matinee with my mother the year it came out in the theaters when I must have been a little bit older than Lily is, fascinating. Funny. She liked the car chase, which I noticed takes place on the same set as the climactic scene of Grease, and the water-skiing. As we watched, I thought of a hundred other movies for future Saturdays, from Herbie to Bedknobs and Broomsticks, to Black Beauty to Star Wars to the original Parent Trap and on and on and on.

When it was over, she sank into the couch between us and sighed a happy sigh. "I don't even mind that it's bedtime," she said, and I carried her up the stairs and watched as she brushed her teeth, readied herself. I was tired, too, and when I tucked her in, and she asked, as she sometimes does here, where she has her own room, "Will you lie with me, Mama?" I almost said no. Not a harsh no, of course, but a no, not tonight, Mama has things to do, which is true, is always true, so instead--surprising myself, almost, I said yes. And I did.

And for about fifteen minutes, we lay side by side, her little arm slung over me, whispering in the darkness ("It's all dark, even with my eyes open," she whispered.) about the movie, and about the snowfall, and about whatever came to Lily's mind. At one point, into a silence, she whispered, "sense of humor."

"What do you mean?" I whispered back, and she giggled.

"I just thought you'd like to hear it," she said, and I explained to her what it means, which she sort of knew anyway, and when I'd finished, there was another moment of silence before she said, "Thank you for advice, Mama," and finally fell asleep.

I lay there for a few more minutes, listening to her lightly snore, taking in the darkness, watching the vertical stripe of snow fall under the streetlight, and then realized that I had stayed with her tonight, partly on the advice of someone I admire, who has said, many times, about children, "Go to them when they need you. Go to them when they call. There's only a finite time it will happen. Don't let it slip by." So tonight, as the snow still falls, and two girls sleep peacefully upstairs, I echo Lily, in gratitude for those who help me know what best to do.

Thank you for advice.

To Sleep

Fell asleep in the car on the way to Connecticut and missed the crucial scene in our thriller-on-CD. Fell asleep on the couch while trying to generate writing ideas with blanket over my head. Now? To sleep for real, perchance to dream.

Practice Makes

I have it in my head that Lily ought to be--needs to be--having piano lessons, the fact that we are not currently in possession of a piano notwithstanding, and I keep having flashbacks to my own piano lessons, which began I was about Lily's age and continued on into my teenage years.

It is such a cliche that parents have to browbeat their kids into practicing their musical instruments, and while I may not have consistently practiced as much as I was supposed to, I actually loved playing the piano, practice and all. Sometimes when I am at my parents' house now, and nobody is paying attention, I will go into the living room and close the door and play scales, or even songs from some of the old sheet music in the piano bench. It's not quite like riding a bike, but my fingers still know pretty much what to do. With a little bit of practice...

The truth is, although I really do want Lily to have piano lessons, and suspect she would really like playing the piano, I actually want to play again, too. Although for the most part I am drawn to large scale, amorphous plans and dreams, most of the time I like to have one concrete sure thing going as a counterpoint, something with fleeting yet eminently satisfying results.

Now I suppose it's true that this blog is a sort of practicing: practicing writing. But not really, not in the way I mean. Exercising is not practicing; it is keeping muscles limber, building strength. It is what it is: there is no finished exercise. The blog is more like this: I am keeping my muscles limber, building strength, perhaps, sometimes with the goal of a finished piece, but I had no expectation of starting small and ending up big, setting forth a few faltering lines, ending up with the great American novel. More like exercise, I think. Maintenance.

And although it is true that like no essay or story is ever finished until the writer says so, on her own terms, and can always go back and, well, unfinish it whenever she wants to, a piece of music is never conquered either, not really. There is no universal standard of mastery. But when you learn a new piece, you start with symbols on a page. That's all: there is no music, yet. And once you understand the symbols, can read them, you start, slowly at first, then more competently, then more confidently, until at last, after real practice, you can play a song. Your version of a song, yes. But a song, from start to finish.

Maybe I am talking about writing, too, although I didn't think so when I started. But I would still like to play the piano again. I would still like to learn a new song. Songs.

Why New York?

The first in an occasional (or perhaps never to be repeated) series (I recognize that if this is a one-off, the word "series" is inaccurate) observation on why, after fifteen years, I still see those corny "I Love NY" t-shirts and think, "You know it, baby."

So today I'm on my way to pick up Lily at school and I'm walking up 32nd Street from the subway station trying to decide if I need yet another cup of coffee. At the end of the street I decide in the affirmative, and suddenly remember that there's a Dunkin' Donuts, like a comforting way-station to a Massachusetts native, one block south that I've walked by but never stopped in. I turn, and start the 20 second walk. As I walk, I look in the windows of the shops, which I've never actually done before on this particular block, because when I walk it, I always have Lily, and am preoccupied with her, or her massive amounts of stuff. I stop in front of a shop I have never noticed before, although I must have walked by it dozens of times.

It is a hat shop. It has an old fashioned name, something starting with a "B," I think, like Bartleby's Hats, although that isn't it at all. But you get the idea. And in the window are actual hats: not chic little knitted berets or baseball caps or ski-wear but real hats, wool and felt bowlers and houndstooth caps, hats with brims and structure, hats from straight out of a black-and-white movie. Although I can barely remember this, about as much as I can remember my father's brief foray into mustache-hood and my grandmother's fashion wigs, my father and my grandfather both had hats like these. JFK wore a hat like one of these. Men who were Men wore hats like these. Holden Caulfield had a hat like one of these, I am sure of it, to look older, more mature.

And as I stood there, looking in the window, I found myself thinking: Who wears hats like these today? How can this store, which somehow managed to give the impression it had been there for a hundred years (and maybe it has) stay in business?

And I kept standing there, staring in the window, and then I registered a man, an old man, wearing a sportcoat and leaning on a cane, trying on hats, considering them, and I somehow knew that he would buy one, although I had to keep walking then, if I wanted my coffee in time for school pick-up, which I did.

And as I walked back up the short block to Lily's school, which is in a building surrounded by Korean restaurants and delis, the ubiquitous Starbucks and CVS, I felt tremendously glad that this weird little hat shop, which I will never go in, never have need for, exists quite seemingly comfortably, right there on the corner of 31st and 5th. And that this little old man, who must have been 80, is walking around his neighborhood, maybe even this neighborhood, wearing an actual hat.

That's it. Thank you, NYC.

Another Golden Rule

This evening I had to run out to two stores to buy diaper cream and milk ( I know; very glamorous), and at the grocery store, my last stop, I found myself waiting in a short line by the fruit display. As I stood there mindlessly surveying the fruit, my eyes stopped on a box of yellow raspberries. Those are pretty, I thought. I've only had yellow raspberries a few times in my life, mostly on desserts at formal restaurants. Yet here was a big stack of boxes of them in my neighborhood grocery store right there by the cash register, and they weren't even expensive. Lily and Annika will like those, I thought, as they both love berries of all kinds, and I knew they'd never seen, let alone, eaten, the yellow variety. I placed a box on the conveyor next to my carton of milk.

When I got home, I put the milk in the fridge and left the box of berries on the counter, forgetting about it. Later, after dinner, Lily went in to get herself a glass of water and came out holding it. What are these? she asked. Can we eat them?

I thought you'd have them for breakfast, I said, but if you're still hungry, sure. You can eat them right now.

Lily opened the box and ate a few of the raspberries. Wow! These are delicious, she said. Come here, Annika. You've got to try these yellow raspberries. Annika came running over, and a few minutes later the raspberries were gone. They had alternated taking small handfuls and savored them, Lily providing running commentary, as usual, and Annika oohing and ahhing with enthusiasm. I hadn't even tried a berry; I was too busy watching them enjoy them.

Lily brought the empty container to me. You might have to get some more of these, Mama, she said. I guess you can see we really, really liked them. I took the container, smiling, and brought it into the kitchen to put in the recycling bin. Before I did, I glanced at the cover. Golden raspberries, that's right. I thought. They call them golden raspberries.

Of course they do. Raspberries in any color but red are highly unusual, hard-to-come-by, rare, and even the plain old red ones are pretty luxurious, as anyone who's ever spent an hour or two picking to take home a few meager boxes will testify. Why yellow, when golden works just as well, lends credence--enhances--their specialness?

And children are very good, exceptional, really, at noticing special things, new things, details. Lily notices whenever there is a sliver of a crescent moon, when I wear a sweater I haven't worn in ages. Annika notices when I am not wearing my glasses, when there are flowers in the house.

A lesson, in this, for me? Raspberries are delicious, yellow raspberries are special, golden raspberries, by virtue of the name alone, are golden. Crowns are golden, sunlight is golden, silence is golden: Gold is timeless, priceless. If you are standing in a line at a grocery store and you see some golden raspberries, I suggest you buy a box. They're not always so easy to find. And make sure you remember what they're called as you eat them.

Standing on the Corner in Winslow, Arizona

One of the most unexpected things that has happened to me since becoming a parent is the constant reassessment of my own parents' lives. Although I have been an adult for a long time now, I am realizing more and more how much I always saw them as existing in my own solar system. At times, oftentimes, they were each or both the sun, but the sun of my solar system: the givers of heat and light and life to me.

Do I exist this way for Lily? Will I for Annika? I'm not sure. Sometimes I see Lily watching me, head cocked slightly, observing me do something with a slightly worried expression in her eyes. This weekend I was listening to the radio and started singing along, enthusiastically, to an Eagles song I hadn't heard in a while, and I saw that look in her eyes as she assessed the situation. "I didn't know you knew this song," she said, a bit accusingly, or rather hurt, as though I'd been keeping something essential from her.

"Do you know this song?" I asked, surprised.

"No," she said. "I've never heard it before. But I didn't know you knew it." Oh, Lily.

I get this, now that I think about it. And much of the time, it feels good to be the sun. Important. It is scary as a small child and sometimes even as a grown-up, to imagine the people who anchor your world out there strolling around in someone else's solar system, doing things you don't know about, singing songs with unfamiliar lyrics. It can come as a shock to see someone you love make manifest an aspect, an angle, that reveals vast or even minuscule unknowns. I can remember moments like this from my own childhood: My father, murmuring a prayer in Hebrew at a second cousin's bar mitzvah, my mother, laughing with a friend on the patio, a different laugh than the laugh she laughed with us.

A glimpse, then, of these other selves. They are people. They exist when I am not around. They may exist differently when I am not around. And then, forgotten. On purpose and involuntarily both. Do we need to see the people we love the way we want to see them? Is it necessary for them to break out on occasion, chip away at this limiting shell, in order for us to see them at all?

It is true, on some level, that I am so connected now to these two girls that no matter where I am or who I'm with or what I'm doing they are there, too, at the outer edges of the solar system or right there too close to the sun. Look away; you can't. Thus, the conundrum. It's all tricks of light and angles. There is no other solar system once your children are born. They will have theirs, too, but yours will be encircled eventually. And this, I think, is what is supposed to be.

No More Sorting Crackers

Lists seem to be de rigeur for the New Year, so here's my contribution:

• made sandwich for Lily's back-to-school lunch tomorrow
• organized rarely used box of cake decorating tools, sprinkles and candles
• watched 15 minutes of the Sex and the City episode in which Carrie and Samantha ride cross-country on a train; have seen at least 5 times over the years, cleaned coffee pot as I watched
• sorted Annika's shoes into pairs
• put all the crackers in mostly empty boxes into one large Ziplock bag
• ate one Double Stuff Oreo from bag hidden on the top of the refrigerator
• polished my glasses
• glued broken piece of china tray back on

This is perhaps the most boring list ever compiled. What makes it interesting, to me at least, is that it is a list of the things I did after midnight in order to keep from sitting down to write. I was afraid to sit down and write, waited too long, had nothing to say, didn't feel like coming up with some device to make me do it coherently.

I need to immerse myself in a writing project, this is very clear to me. New Year's pledge, list of one item only: Make the time and space to do it. I know this is a writing project, technically speaking, but this is not what I mean. Back to some work. Back to the drawing board, in whatever way that happens. No more grouping crackers. Maybe I'll change the resolution to that. Seems less insurmountable.

If I remember...

...one Christmas present from this past holiday it will be the red cashmere robe my mother made for Lily by carefully making a pattern and cutting pieces from an old robe of my grandmother's that was riddled with moth holes. You see, my mother always wears a robe when she gets up, and Lily has put on her terry-cloth bathrobe many times in the morning to "look like Sands," whether my mom is around or not. So the robe itself was a thoughtful gift, but the fact that it was made by hand from a formerly beloved robe of my grandmother's that I remember her wearing--well, enough said. That's all.

New Snow

Spur of the moment New Year's excursion to Vermont with no computer, so missed two days. Sleigh ride behind a big black horse named Oatie, Lily's first ski class, sledding for all four girls--Lily, Annika and two friends, the children of old friends of mine--fondue by the fire, and lots and lots of snow.

But I wrote a lot in my head, which was something, I think. On the drive up, which took forever, it was snowing heavily in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. The driving was slow, and out the windows in every direction all was white. It was beautiful, even from the highway, and reminded me of childhood winters and of how much I love the snow, love when it is falling in particular.

One of the reasons I love when it snows is that in a world in which we control so much, feel the desire to control so much, we cannot control the snow. It comes when it wants, as much or as little as it wants, and we are rendered servants to its master. The snow falls thickly, and our cars seem silly. Our ability to get where we want to on our own terms is erased by a blanket of white. We bundle up in our expensive "snow-proof" gear, and our feet get wet, our hands get cold. The snow is indomitable, firm, unmoved.

In a year that has so often made me feel overwhelmed and overburdened, cluttered and all mucked up, this snow--on New Year's Eve, the night before the fresh new year--felt clean and clear, clean as in the proverbial clean slate, clear in its flat, unaltered whiteness. It felt like the end of something and the beginning of something. And as we drove through it, I watched, and thought, and hoped.