Writerly Language

Every other night or so, my daughter and I stretch out on her duvet cover and prop ourselves on our elbows while I read aloud to her from a chapter book. Since she learned to read by herself, these times have become less and less frequent. I used to dread the nightly routine and its myriad of stalling techniques, but since we started doing this together, I linger a little longer over the books, watch her expression and field wayward questions with patience instead of the tick-tock of the clock in my head.

***

I haven’t kept up with a weekly post this month because I’m busy diving into details, dialogue and the “I” narrator in the creative nonfiction class I’m taking this month.

Lesson number one: the notes in my slim black notebook (or on the back of a receipt) have been all wrong. I haven’t been writing down the color of the jacket worn by the sad-looking woman in front of me in line at the post office or noting the smell of the wet football field the day I walked past and felt such a rush of longing. I’ve been journaling, writing down my feelings instead. After the first week’s lesson on details in writing, I realized that recapturing a feeling during a certain conversation or revelatory moment isn’t that difficult to remember (that’s why I remember it), but the details can be a different story.

It’s also changing the way I read. I’m more appreciative of simple, descriptive language (and in awe of the writer who puts it to the page so well). Turns out, someone else in our house is on the same wavelength.

***

Tonight, my daughter and I were reading one of the last chapters out of the title book in the Little House series. (This means we can read a staple of American childrens’ literature AND address blatant racism at the same time! But that’s the subject of another post.) I read this line, “His black pony came trotting willingly, sniffing the wind that blew its mane and tail like fluttering banners.”

“Writerly language!” she interrupted.

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“Well,” she said, “if it said, ‘He had a black pony,’ that wouldn’t have been interesting. But it says, ‘that blew its mane and tail like fluttering banners.’ ” She nodded with approval.

I shared with her that I’m learning the same thing right now in my class and she nodded again, though without the same heart. So I think I’ll start up some mother-daughter bonding. Tomorrow, when I find an especially beautiful phrase, I’ll say, “Listen to this.”

Photo courtesy of Carolina Gonzalez (via Creative Commons).

And Your Zombie Can Sing

Anyone who knows my son knows that he loves the Beatles. For Christmas we gave him one of their albums. The CD jacket is enough to keep him interested for long periods of time, with frequent pauses to interrogate us: Who’s that?

We respond over and over again: That’s Paul McCartney. That’s Ringo Starr. George Harrison. John Lennon.

John is his favorite. The beard and glasses in later photos make him an irresistible topic of conversation. He asked one or the other of us so many times, Where’s John Lennon?, that we finally explained to him that John Lennon died.

The scenario happened again the other day. I was in the kitchen making dinner. Revolver was playing on our portable CD player. My son was sitting on the kitchen floor, engrossed in close-ups of the Fab Four. My daughter was circling the house in her new roller skates.

Per usual, he asked me the identities of each band member over and over again. Then he piped up, Did John Lennon died?

I felt a familiar tightening in my chest. Yes, honey. John Lennon died.

Did his glasses died?

Smile. Sigh. No, sweetie. Glasses don’t die.

Did George Harrison died?

It went on like this for a bit and then, with a big smile, he asked, Did I died? I died, too! I died!

Of course, being just shy of three, he doesn’t understand what he’s saying. But hearing my child talk about his own death pushed me into a hollow, sad place. There will come a day when my kids will understand mortality. There will come a day when, like all of us, they will have to face life’s final limitation.

I wanted to stop talking about it. But now it was a game: I died, too!

I forced an upbeat tone into my voice. No, silly! You’re alive! Mommy’s alive, too!

I’m alive! I died!

As a parent I’ve noticed that if there’s one thing I’m barred from doing, it’s thinking about any one thing for too long. Normally, our some-of-the-Beatles-are-dead conversations fizzle out and we move on to nurse a bumped head or find a missing toy. And in this case, I appreciate it.

I don’t want to plug my ears and pretend death doesn’t exist. But I do want to avoid living in a morbid place characterized by fear or regret. I need the ability to look mortality in the face and then move ahead, honestly and cheerfully. I need a thumb-your-nose-at-death attitude. And humor. I need lots of humor.

In this case, my daughter provided it.

My son was crowing, I’m alive! I died, too!

My daughter, in a deadpan to rival any stand-up comic, interjected, He thinks we’re zombies.

I think it would have made John Lennon laugh for a long time. I did.

Photo courtesy of Jamie Guimond Productions (Creative Commons).

Santa: Magical or Meddlesome?

You may remember what happened last year on Christmas Eve. Our daughter (age five) figured out Santa — or at least had high suspicions. It felt heartbreaking at the time with the presents wrapped and stockings on the verge of being stuffed. By the time we had our Tooth Fairy conversation later in the year, I figured it was all over. But when the Christmas season began, I felt ready to have her as an ally in the St. Nick charade with her brother.

The thing is, she’s conveniently forgotten the whole conversation. Or maybe it was too heartbreaking for her, so she’s choosing to buy in. So we’re back to all the questions…where does he live? what time will he come? Instead of simply uncomfortable (I’m a reluctant Santa), I’m feeling annoyed.

For each child, we bought one gift from the big guy plus stocking stuffers. That’s it. Every other gift is tagged with the names of real people who talk and breathe and consume cookies right in front of you. Our Santa gifts are inspired. We bought our daughter (shhh!) roller skates, the only item on her list other than candy and “surprise gifts.” And for our son, Beatles fan to beat them all, a real ukelele to replace a soundless, plastic “guitar” I bought at Value Village one day when he wouldn’t let go of it.

Here’s my problem: it’s one day before Christmas and I’m wrestling with how to label these gift tags. I’m in a fiesty competition with the big man. I want those gifts to be from us. I don’t want my son telling people all year that Santa gave him the instrument that makes a real sound. And I don’t want my daughter regressing into starry-eyed wonder every time I take her to the skating rink. It gets worse — yesterday I compulsively bought an additional toy for each child from Mommy and Daddy, simply because I don’t want to feel left out.

My husband would tell you I’m over-thinking this, and I am. I’m re-living the Santa conversations from the past, wondering why we didn’t relegate the stout old man to the mantel. I’m wonder why it feels so hard to switch the program mid-stream and then wonder why this has to feel like such a big deal.

You know, the Santa thing is supposed to make Christmas magical. It’s supposed to indulge the best in our kids — the part of them that loves a good story and is capable of stepping into it entirely. Here are my choices: I can either back off from my own ambivalence enough to allow them to indulge in the magic or decide that Santa smacks of too much consumerism and put him in his place. Either way, the outcome is only the name on the tags of two gifts, certainly not something I should lose sleep over tonight.

Photo courtesy of Grzegorz Lobinski (via Creative Commons).

Winter Solstice

Am I the only who’s a little bit sad that there will be, after today, not more darkness, but less?

As I write this, it’s early in the morning, before six a.m. The doors leading to the back yard have black, rectangular windows framed by trim that looks gray in a shadow cast by the light above our dining room table. All I hear is cat-and-dog rain.

I can hear textures in the rainfall. Thrumming on the roof shingles, rat-a-tat-tat-ing on the skylight’s acrylic dome, sharp smacking sounds on our back deck’s corrugated awning. The collective sound rises and falls, as if a cosmic fourth-grader is learning to sustain notes on a woodwind instrument and intermittently coming up for air.

I’m aware of this: if it weren’t dark I’d be writing about Light, the seducer! (So full of tricks! So convinced that sight is the only worthy sense!) During a session at a writer’s conference this fall, one of the presenters stressed that essayists need to incorporate what we hear and what we smell into our descriptions. In the dark, I’m more dependent on these neglected senses and, I notice, freed from the compulsion to describe everything by sight alone.

I know visual artists benefit from seasons of darkness, too. About three years ago, my husband and I purchased an oil painting with dabs of electric blue highlighting a muted backdrop of furniture on an Italian veranda. When we talked to the artist about the piece, she told us she painted it in the middle of the night using a headlamp. Everything is different in the dark.

People talk about the celebration of the winter solstice with relief: tomorrow will be lighter, just like every day for the next six months. But I’m a little down. It’s only December and I feel like I’ve just dipped my toes into the inky dark.

***

Now it’s almost four o’clock. I’m off to light a fire so we can enjoy its cozy flames all afternoon and remember how we lit candles together on the shortest day and hoped for a snowfall to celebrate the coming of winter.

Photo courtesy of kainr (via Creative Commons).

neglected sense: hearing/suggestion to incorporate hearing and smell into essays. maybe this would happen more if we wrote in the dark.

Reconsidering the Harvest

I stepped out on the front porch in my felt clogs one icy morning last week and wiped out on the front porch. This was just before I tried to pull a carrot from the ground for my daughter’s lunch and ended up with a fistful of worthless, frozen greens. Irritated, I slinked back in to assemble her lunch sans veggie dippers.

In the evening, I was determined to use one of the stuck carrots. We were out of onions and I needed something to fill out our pilaf. This time, I went out in boots and carried a dandelion weeder. I started to dig. I was rewarded with two pitiful half-carrots, their skins in shreds. After I peeled and sliced them in half, I could see that they were frozen to the core. I put them in a pan with garlic and thought about all those gorgeous roots in the earth where, apparently, I couldn’t get to them. And I thought about their neighbors, the frozen beets, with formerly stunning greens now limp in gooey sun shapes on the flat dirt. Grr.

But when I came into the house with the disintegrating carrots, the fire under the rice pot was blue and hot. I could smell sweet brown basmati and shredded coconut bubbling away under the lid. I pulled out some frozen chard that my husband harvested and blanched in the summer and set it on the back burner with a little water, a bay leaf and a whole slew of frozen peas.

I may not be an instinctive gardener (or seamstress — that’s another story!) but there are things I do well, like cooking up fresh food.

This summer, my aunt and I were talking about the garden. We have a small space, just three raised beds. I was telling her how I’d like to learn how to pack and rotate a large variety of food into the space we have, now that I’ve realized that we need only  a few plants of each kind of vegetable for our family (not *ahem* two rows of chard, for instance). She didn’t miss a beat but said, I think you ought to harvest your writing instead.

You know, I could read up on compact gardening methods and come up with a detailed plan for the upcoming season. And I may do a little thinking about how to maximize the space we have. But instead of devoting a lot of time to the garden right now, I’d like to spend my time practicing something I want to do well: writing.

This week it’s warmed up enough that I can harvest a bunch of carrots and beets this weekend in case they freeze over again. And I’ll enjoy cooking them. But as I do, instead of dreaming about my garden plot this winter, I’ll hunker down, look forward to the memoir class I’m taking in a few weeks, free-write, and brainstorm some new submission goals for this spring.

Photo courtesy of Lida Rose (via Creative Commons).

Tiny Little Post

My son has been taking a stab at spelling lately. As in, “Cup starts with B,” and “Truck starts with M.”

This is inexcusably cheesy, but this morning he made me want to hug his sweet, little-boy self close to my heart when he amended the spelling game and said, “Mommy starts with Love.”

Opt Out, Chill Out: Buy Nothing Day

Is your shopping list ready? Then wait. Just one more day.

I will. Adbusters is having a campaign encouraging people to consume nothing at all this Friday, in an attempt to transform Black Friday into Buy Nothing Day. They’re suggesting people consider going so far as to unplug the phone and the computer and keep the car parked for a day. Adbusters says, “You may find that it’s harder than you think, that the impulse to buy is more ingrained in you than you ever realized.”

This may be true, but it could also be a relief. I’ve observed Buy Nothing Day in years past and it not only frees me from the compulsion to shop, but acts as a good bookend to the hectic preparations leading up to the Thanksgiving meal.

Here are my top reasons for participating:

I get to spend time alone. Really alone. On a typical day, I’m around my kids, other parents, my spouse and, inevitably, other consumers. When I’m “by myself,” I’m not, really. Not entirely. I’m interacting with people on Facebook and responding to emails. Maybe on Friday I’ll take a walk, read a book or take a nap. Or maybe I’ll just look at something I can’t consume. Like the sky.

I get to spend time with other people. Opting out of buying activities means I won’t be running errands with people I love, but relating to them. My daughter is newly interested in games, so I’m looking forward to some Apples to Apples or Clue, Jr. on Friday. Maybe I’ll even participate in StoryCorps‘ National Day of Listening. What a great idea (a big thank you to Louise at Thoughts Happen for making me aware of this. Read her post on StoryCorps here).

I get to model anti-consumerism to my kids. I often talk to them about the untruths in advertising but still feel like I cop out when it comes to my own buying habits. By not consuming on Friday, I’ll become aware of my own impulse to buy. I’ll also show them (and myself) that putting a halt to acquiring stuff is not only possible but desirable.

I get to avoid “mall head.” Though I try to shop local, especially around the holidays, I always seem to find myself in the mall. I don’t know if it’s their heating and cooling systems or if my head is rebelling against rows of stores under one roof, but I inevitably get a head-stuffed-with-cotton headache after shopping at the mall. Maybe it’s an allergy.

After a day of bounty, it makes sense to take it easy. If you’ve opted out of the buying frenzy in years past or decide to do so this year, let me know what you experience and how you fill your day.

Photo courtesy of laffy4k (via Creative Commons).

Swimming Upstream

This morning, my son had an all-out fit when I gave him a different brand of O’s than his sister. I tried. I knew it might be a sticking point, so I went so far as to move the internal bag from the new box into the old one before pouring them into his bowl.

Ohhhh, no. He wasn’t fooled for a second. His rage escalated and he ended up screaming for something like all morning. I repeatedly sat him down on a futon in the other room, explaining to him in a not-so-quiet voice (otherwise he wouldn’t hear me over the din) that he could come rejoin the family when he settled down.

This was one deep rabbit hole. He couldn’t shake it. He didn’t want me to hold him. It was already past his usual time for breakfast so he was hungry, too. All he wanted to do was dig the old box out of the recycling bin (I finally gave up the ruse and tossed it in), hold it, and scream.

To get him away from my daughter — I figured at least someone could enjoy a few minutes of quiet — I took him upstairs, plopped him on our bed, and sat next to him with my fingers in my ears. When the screaming began to be punctuated with breathing spells, I picked him up and told him he did a good job settling down. He found his voice and told me he wanted to go to his own bed. Phew.

After taking my daughter to school, coming back for breakfast, and packing snacks for our preschool group, he was calm and happy again. That is, until we had to get in the car. He just wanted to stand in the (freezing) driveway. The toddler dawdle. Sensing the ticking of the clock, I finally picked him up, kindly, and strapped him in the car. He started up the screaming again, but I figured he’d work it out by the time we reached the nature trail where our group was already congregating.

And, guess what? He stopped crying before we reached the end of the block.

On the trail, he sloshed along the path with the other kids, peered over the railings at his own reflection in the water and marveled along with the rest of us at the return of the salmon.

As I watched the fish alternating resting spells with sprints against the current, I saw the same resilience in them as in my son. I’m just so proud of the little guy for pulling out of a crummy morning so beautifully.

Even though it’s hard for me to navigate his strong emotions, I need to remember that sometimes the turnaround goes the right way.

Photo courtesy of GlennFleishman (Creative Commons).

Reaching Out, Staying Sane. Over Drinks.

 

Several friends and I have kicked around the idea of hearkening back to our grandparents’ generation by organizing cocktail hours designed to get us through the late-afternoon push. The idea is that whining and general chaos have a greater chance of being neutralized if we can persuade our kids into thinking it’s not really the end of the day. That they’re not really starved for one-on-one attention right at the hour when we need to be prepping dinner. That what they really need is a little creative play with some peers while their parents sit around or cook over drinks.

A friend and stay-at-home dad said to me the other day, Parenting isn’t like PTSD because it’s ongoing.

Tongue-in-cheek as that may sound, it rings a bell. Constant parenting can make you feel diagnosable.

My advice to him and, had I been able to give it, to myself over the last two years, is this: be as aggressively proactive as your stretched-thin, bleary-eyed self can manage about getting support. Call other parents, grandparents, babysitters. Organize a babysitting co-op, trade kids with friends for the morning, plan a time at the gym together, have play dates every day. Every hour if you need them.

And this: be honest about how difficult staying home with young children can be.

I’m not advocating pity-parties that don’t lead to anything but more despair (no, despair is not an over-statement). I’m not suggesting we ignore the creativity of our kids or moan constantly about lost freedoms or parenting dilemmas (though moaning can be cathartic).

I’m suggesting that no one try to pretend this gig is easy.

My husband said he’s heard parenting referred to as the tyranny of the now. It’s true. It’s not that any of us resent our children for needing to be bathed and clothed and nurtured. Of course not. It’s this: for long, long stretches of time, there isn’t room for anything else.

Our family is lucky, really lucky, to live within driving distance of most our kids’ grandparents (in the case of my in-laws, we’re within a few miles). After living in another part of the country for the first three years of my daughter’s life, I don’t take built-in babysitters for granted one little bit.

But even people with family in town need other folks to help carry the load. We can’t impose on our parents all the time. We want to respect the effort, time and love they give our kids while still holding down full-time jobs and running their own households and social schedules. Plus, we just need other people.

I know I do. So, here’s to friends. Here’s to late-afternoon distraction and play. Here’s to sanity. Here’s to happy hour!

 

These images courtesy of Monocle (via Creative Commons).

Fairy Dust and Health Care Reform

If you’ve read past posts about our son, you know we’ve dealt with screaming fits a lot in the past year. Strident, who-knows-where-they-come-from, all-out wailing episodes.

One morning this summer, when the windows were open and he didn’t want his diaper changed, he launched into a 20-minute fit. During breakfast, just after we managed to help him settle into a normal morning routine, a policeman showed up at our door. Really. It was that bad.

I want to acknowledge that he doesn’t scream all the time. In fact, we’re having a blissful week. He’s cheerful and funny. He shows us dance moves. He comes up with little scenarios. “I tell you about truck, Mommy,” he says, “and you be funny.” That means, “and you laugh.”

Partly, he’s coming into his own.

Partly, he’s just plain feeling better.

Two weeks ago both he and his dad were sick. For my son, this meant grumpy sick. Mild-fever sick. Clingy sick. Mommy’s-going-to-pull-her-hair-out sick. And, yes, screaming-fit sick.

I know his recurrent, uncontrollable outbursts are not usually due to illness. Their absence this week just makes me hyper-aware of how great it is to live in a harmonious, healthy household.

Which makes my thoughts turn, now that I have fewer coughs to dodge, to health care. I know not everyone’s well. I know not everyone will kick their illnesses like our boys did that nasty virus.

For the record, this is what I think:

All people should have access to preventive care to help keep them from getting sick and urgent care when they need it.

People who have chronic illnesses should have access to adequate, affordable health care all the time. These families and individuals should not be obligated to fight a third party so they can have the care and supplies they need.

If people are healthy, they will be more effective, more creative, more involved citizens. It is civilized, and good sense, to ensure that all people are covered.

***

A friend of mine who’s a teacher has a little humorous thing she does with her fourth graders. If they leave their seat to ask her a question during a time when it’s inappropriate for them to be doing so (such as when she’s teaching or when they’re supposed to be working silently on an assignment), she looks at them with her twinkly teacher eye, feigns a tossing of fairy dust and says, Poof! As in, I’m just going to pretend you’re still at your desk!

Kids laugh when they get poofed and remember the rule the next time.

I wish this approach would work with insurance companies.

You know, Poof! We know you know better than to deny babies health coverage because they’re in the 99th percentile for weight.* Oops! You just forgot common sense! We know you’ll remember next time.

Or, Poof! Uh, oh! We have a little something to talk about. You know that woman who had breast cancer? Well, your job is not to fight bills that come in after her surgery. You forgot? Okay. Since she’s covered by your company, please pay the bills instead of looking for ways to deny coverage. Don’t put her and her family through more stress. They did, after all, live through the horror of cancer.

No. Poof won’t work with these companies. It’s time for reform, folks.

I’m busy. It’s hard for me to find time to read up on health care reform and even more difficult (and exasperating) to wade through the din of the debate.

But now that my family is feeling better, I have more time to keep up with this issue — and more time to devote to lots of other things, too. Just like the people who will benefit from health care reform.

Photo courtesy of hyperscholar (Creative Commons).

*The heavy infant in the linked story above was, in a reversal by the insurance company, approved for coverage following the flurry of media attention.