stories

This began life as a comment (in my head...I never got over there to post it) on Becca's post on stories, but it kept growing and growing so I put it here.

So: why do ambivalent experiences make for better stories than happy ones?

(Can I just say, I love the intertextuality of blogs? I would never have gotten to this without the prompt from Becca...)

Well, there's Tolstoy's quip about happy and unhappy families. The unhappy families, experiences, whatever, give us the conflict we need to move a narrative along. Happiness is not really always static, but it is much harder to find the motive force, I think, in a happy story. (Not one with a happy ending--those are often pretty conflict-laden along the way.) Thus we spent a fabulous summer in England, but the story we most often tell is about the obnoxious neighbor who played the drums so badly and loudly. That's the story that has conflict. And, for that matter, resolution.

(Here's the short version of that story: early in our stay the woman next door came to tell us that her son and his mates practiced music on Saturdays and we said that would be fine. She said it would be loud and we said that was ok, we could probably go out. Then it started. It was really really loud. And really really bad: arhythmic drums, unmelodic, feedback-laden guitar and bass. Screaming. The whole bit. And then the practicing started happening on other days, other times. On rainy days Mark and the kids felt trapped in the house by the rain, assaulted by the noise. Finally he went over to remonstrate with them. No one came to the door. He went back later, when the mom was home from work. She brought her son and his mates over to the house, where they sat in the living room while Mark played the heavy. I believe the word "police" was mentioned. I believe "get a job" may also have been uttered. (Did I mention the son was 20-something?) The band returned to the previous practice schedule, the weather improved, and things got better. La-la.)

But that's not really ambivalent. So that brings me to my second thought, which is that, while we may tell the conflict-laden stories for entertainment, to amuse or delight or excite an audience, we may tell the ambivalent stories for ourselves. Ambivalence always has something to work out. And the more we tell those stories, the more we work through the issues about which we were ambivalent, the more we come to some kind of closure or resolution on them.

Maybe.

I"m not sure at all that this is what Becca really meant, actually, but it's where the thoughts led me. Which is why I need to read other people's words at least as much as I need to write, and indeed in order to write.

(Speaking of which: Gilead? Over there on the reading list? I can't remember the last time I finished a novel and wanted immediately to turn back to the beginning and start again. To buy copies for everyone I know. To keep it with me so I could quote lines from it at random times during the day. I know, I know, I'm late to the party, everyone already knows what a good book this is, but let me enjoy it anyway.)

fall cooking

In the fall of 2002 I opened a new word document that I ambitiously titled "A Year in Food." I detailed the meals I made, the baking I did, for about two months. So, not a year at all.

Looking over it late last night I was amazed at my productivity. No wonder I didn't publish much! (Though, actually, I think I got quite a bit out that year as well. Hmm.) There was bread almost every other day. There were soups, roasts, cookies, cakes. There were experiments that didn't work and many that did. There were, I believe, some additional pounds as well.

The weather has turned cooler and I've started fall cooking again. I have not yet pulled out the crock pot (indeed, I'd forgotten how much I liked using it, that fall). But I have baked three pear desserts in less than a week (pear brown betty from an old Food and Wine, walnut pear upside-down cake adapted from Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, and pear tarte tatin, if you want to know). The pear bounty is courtesy of my mother-in-law, who sent us two boxes of pear perfection. Oh, I also made pear-rosemary bread! (Scroll down for the recipe...) I've also made dinner in the oven a couple of times--always a sign that winter is approaching and I am back in casserole-and-roast mode.

I don't think I'll keep track of every meal this fall, but it is helpful to know what works and what doesn't. Too often I save a recipe even though we didn't much like it, or lose one that we did. After I made the bread the other night I found the exact same recipe written down on a slip of paper and shoved into the breadbox. I know I'd never made it before, but it must have looked good. It was.

I'm a winner!

Early morning. I'm sitting on the edge of Nick's bed, rubbing/scratching his head--the only visible body part.

"Mom, why are you scratching my head like one of those things that you scratch off to win something?"

"I don't know, Nick, maybe I think I'll win something, too."

"But you already won me and Mariah! What more could you win?"

Thursday

I meant to post this morning, but days when I don't teach often get away from me, and this was one of those. So instead I give you a very old "he really said this." Nick was three. Mariah was ten. We were visiting friends who have three girls, who were (then) ages 10, maybe 6, and maybe 2? The two little ones were on either side of Nick, in any event.

Their house was awash with pink, Disney, princesses, telephones, Barbies, you name it. Girlie stuff. Stuff Mariah had played with, too, but with three girls there was more than three times as much, somehow.

Nick fit in right away. He had a great time playing. The two older girls knew each other from before and got along great, and the three little ones played and played. Nick turned one of the phones into a gun, I remember--our friends were a little appalled, never having seen such behavior, but it made sense to him (and, I guess, us). He just turned the thing sideways and pointed the antenna (it was an old, retired, cordless phone handset) as if it were the barrel of the gun. Great.

The grownups were outside on the patio, finishing up dinner, sipping on margaritas or some such. It was a warm, pleasant evening and the kids seemed to be taking care of themselves. Then Nick and one of the little girls rushed out. She was clearly upset, though he was having a great time. He slammed a baby doll down on the picnic table and shouted "She's dead! She's dead! The bad guys shooted her and she's dead!"

I know girls' play can get violent and aggressive, but those words had never been said in that house before. And perhaps not since, if they're lucky.

We have not been so lucky, though Nick (who is going to be Darth Vader for Hallowe'en, did I mention that?) is a sweet kid. Somehow this is in him, too, and it's got to come out.

Baci Ice Cream

I don't know why this recipe is showing up in a Cooking Light forum; it is absolutely not light. However, it is absolutely one of the most delicious things I have ever eaten. I left out the hazelnut syrup (because I didn't have any) and the result was still amazing: almost like a frozen mousse, only even thicker and creamier. But small serving sizes are a must, I think. It's just way too rich to eat too much of.

Some of the forum participants thought it was too rich. Not us, though.

banned books: Me too!

I read from two of these last week at our Banned Books Week commemoration (celebration just sounds wrong). And I've seen this on some other blogs, so I thought I'd play, too: which of the 100 most frequently banned and challenged books have I read? Answers in bold:

Scary Stories (Series) by Alvin Schwartz
Daddy’s Roommate by Michael Willhoite
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Harry Potter (Series) by J.K. Rowling
Forever by Judy Blume
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
Alice (Series) by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
My Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Giver by Lois Lowry
It’s Perfectly Normal by Robie Harris
Goosebumps (Series) by R.L. Stine
A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Sex by Madonna
Earth’s Children (Series) by Jean M. Auel
The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
Go Ask Alice by Anonymous
Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers
In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
The Stupids (Series) by Harry Allard
The Witches by Roald Dahl
The New Joy of Gay Sex by Charles Silverstein
Anastasia Krupnik (Series) by Lois Lowry
The Goats by Brock Cole
Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane
Blubber by Judy Blume
Killing Mr. Griffin by Lois Duncan
Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam
We All Fall Down by Robert Cormier
Final Exit by Derek Humphry
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
What’s Happening to my Body? Book for Girls: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Daughters by Lynda Madaras
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Beloved by Toni Morrison
The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
The Pigman by Paul Zindel
Bumps in the Night by Harry Allard
Deenie by Judy Blume
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
Annie on my Mind by Nancy Garden
The Boy Who Lost His Face by Louis Sachar
Cross Your Fingers, Spit in Your Hat by Alvin Schwartz
A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Sleeping Beauty Trilogy by A.N. Roquelaure (Anne Rice)
Asking About Sex and Growing Up by Joanna Cole
Cujo by Stephen King
James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
The Anarchist Cookbook by William Powell
Boys and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy
Ordinary People by Judith Guest
American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
What’s Happening to my Body? Book for Boys: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Sons by Lynda Madaras
Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
Crazy Lady by Jane Conly
Athletic Shorts by Chris Crutcher
Fade by Robert Cormier
Guess What? by Mem Fox
The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende
The Face on the Milk Carton by Caroline Cooney
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Native Son by Richard Wright
Women on Top: How Real Life Has Changed Women’s Fantasies by Nancy Friday
Curses, Hexes and Spells by Daniel Cohen
Jack by A.M. Homes
Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo A. Anaya
Where Did I Come From? by Peter Mayle
Carrie by Stephen King
Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume
On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
Arizona Kid by Ron Koertge
Family Secrets by Norma Klein
Mommy Laid An Egg by Babette Cole
The Dead Zone by Stephen King
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
Always Running by Luis Rodriguez
Private Parts by Howard Stern
Where’s Waldo? by Martin Hanford
Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene
Little Black Sambo by Helen Bannerman
Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
Running Loose by Chris Crutcher
Sex Education by Jenny Davis
The Drowning of Stephen Jones by Bette Greene
Girls and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy
How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
View from the Cherry Tree by Willo Davis Roberts
The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
The Terrorist by Caroline Cooney
Jump Ship to Freedom by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier

I did include a couple--The Summer of My German Soldier and Flowers for Algernon, specifically--that I am pretty sure I read as a kid (I can still picture the covers) but about which I could tell you, really, nothing. So you can subtract those two if you want. It still feels like a respectable number (36, and I didn't count at least two for which I've seen the movie but not read the book...)

In case you care, I read In the Night Kitchen and a brief selection from Bridge to Terabithia at our event last week.

are we there yet?

No, we haven't been on a driving vacation in a while, and the kids are not too terribly whiney about them when we do. But I've been feeling lately like I'm on some bizarre funhouse ride and I'm ready to get off and it's just not going to happen. But, really, I'm ready for a rest. Or something.

Last weekend I went to a conference. I heard brilliant academic papers, sat through long interesting talks (but don't ask me to recapitulate them for you), attended a master class, and caught up with old friends. Some I hadn't seen in twelve years, since we've been living here. I also had a long phone conversation with a friend I haven't seen in a while. And I ate a terrific meal, too.

This was all good.

In the meantime I was not, of course, at home for much of the weekend. But life did not stand still in my absence: Mariah went to a birthday party, Nick played with friends, Mark took Nick out to lunch, they even cleaned the house! Nonetheless I felt somehow that I'd missed something important. This always happens when I go away--I want everything at home to stop so I can pick up where I left off, and no one will have missed me.

-------
Mariah's friends are driving. Can I just go to sleep for the next couple of years and wake up when she's learned how and I don't have to freak out every time I think of it?

Yes, I am aware that this desire to sleep through major changes in my daughter's life is in direct conflict with my desire that they freeze in place while I'm away. I cannot reconcile these incompatible desires.

comment spam

OK, count me among those now using "word verification" on comments to prevent spam. I've gotten some weird ones lately--including a link to a Narnia website?

Oh, and is everyone getting this little Vonage thing all over blogger lately? I'm sick of it, let me tell you.

Real post tomorrow, I promise.

Thursday morning miscellany

The weather is turning, finally. It's not hot when I walk out the door at 7 a.m. A walk around the lake at 9 doesn't end in a sweaty demand for iced coffee. I put on a jacket this morning.

The turning weather seems to have brought out my inner hibernator. I'm sleepy all the time. So are my students. It's odd; I find the weather energizing, theoretically, but I'm just too tired to take advantage. I hope this changes soon.

Over dinner last night there was much hysteria over noble gases and golgi bodies. Mariah's science classes have so far surpassed me that all I can do is make infantile jokes. I did, actually, take biology in high school, but golgi bodies are foreign objects to me. And the periodic table sounds like a place where you eat dinner, sometimes.

Mark and I have failed to watch three movies in the last month or so. We turned off In Good Company after about half an hour, a few weeks back. We could pretty much predict every move, and it didn't seem worth it to work through it all, though I liked the cast. We returned The Upside of Anger without even putting it into the player. (I do regret this, but somehow every night we were free to watch it, it wasn't what we wanted to see.) And then last night, we started to watch Rat Race. We gave it twenty minutes, maybe longer, and we were just so bored we had to give up. Why is this? John Cleese! Whoopie Goldberg! Rowan Atkinson! Have we totally lost our sense of humor, or was it really a stinker?

We'll never know.

lost you at the bakery

I am just listening to the obituary for Don Adams. I can hardly believe he was 82 years old. The music from "Get Smart" feels encoded in my deep brain structure, somehow. If you'd asked me to sing it a minute ago I probably couldn't have, but now it's on an endless loop.

My favorite repeating "bit" from "Get Smart" was how Max would drive the Chief crazy. Often it was direction: the Chief would go into detailed directions, Max nodding throughout. At the end, the Chief would say "OK?" and Max would say, "well, Chief, I lost you at the bakery"--or whatever the first thing in the directions had been. That used to break me up, every time.

Now that I'm the parent of one, I realize that Max was really a very bright eight-year-old (ok, with hormones). He was eager, and bright, and thrilled by gadgets, and totally convinced of his own cool, even when he was being an utter dork. And very distractable. They'll drive you nuts, those boys, but they generate infinite reserves of forgiveness, too. Luckily for all of us.

Yes, he really said that #1

A friend asked Nick how school was. The first week had just ended.

"Oh, well," he said, "it's a little enslaving."

We just looked at each other in amazed disbelief.

Back to School Night

There were letters to the parents on the desks in the third grade classroom. Here's the letter that was on Nick's desk.

Dear Mom and Dad,

Third grade is okay, but it does make me tired. I can't tell you much because I tell you what's going on after school. So I geuss all there is to say is nothing.

Love,
Nick

yes, she really said that #1

As I just posted in comments, I've decided to write down one thing one of my kids says every couple of days. I want to see if I can develop an ear for dialogue.

So here's this morning's entry, a bonus entry!

Mariah has been babysitting a lot lately. We were listening to NPR this morning, to a report on shift work, and it reminded her of a babysitting job she'd done recently for a medical resident who's working crazy hours.

"I'm so glad I babysat for them." Pause, just long enough for me to remember that the baby cried for the entire two hours, and she spent the whole time walking him up and down their narrow, dark hallway. But before I could say "why?" she continued. "They really needed it."

Another pause. "I love to see smart people with babies," she went on. "I mean, you and Daddy... the PhDs just go out the window! And with K and her husband, too; it's all 'ba-ba-ba-ba' and [very high voice] 'hi, sweetie!' It's hilarious! I mean, do babies think grown ups are really dumb?"

Um, thanks, hon.

The Morning Routine

An alarm goes off. It's not right by my head; that one is set to go off in five minutes, but so far this fall I've never heard it. I hear the one buzzing insistently in Mariah's room, and almost before I'm aware I'm out of bed, padding down the hall to peer into the darkness. "Wake up, honey!"

"I'll be up in--" she fumbles with the clock and her glasses-- "six minutes."

It's six o'clock.

I leave, go into the bathroom, turn on the water for the shower. Sometimes while I'm under water I hear the buzzing again, and eventually Mariah appears.

I turn on the hall light so I can get a little visibility in the bedroom. I don't want to wake Mark. Nick will sleep through everything, including his own alarm an hour (two?) later. I paw through clothes, hoping that what I find is clean, and fits, and matches. Sometimes it works. I keep thinking I should plan outfits the night before, but so far I haven't managed. Only once did I have to stop at Target after dropping Mariah and rework things, though.

Coffee, breakfast, prepare a lunch. It's usually 6:40 before I see Mariah; I'm already starting to worry about getting out the door by 7. She forces down some food, some vitamins I've gotten out for her. More coffee goes into the travel cup. Teeth brushed, hair, makeup, and we're out the door by 7, just as the sun is starting to rise. It's quiet out, not much traffic.

We get to the bus stop and sit for a minute or two waiting for the bus. She tells me stories about the kids she sees waiting: "It makes me sad, Mom, those freshman girls and those guys hang out with them because only the new girls will look up to them. They're such losers." Or, "those kids are fine on their own, but get them in a group…" She notices that the kids walking into the public high school where her bus stops are all black; the kids waiting for her bus, to a selective public arts school, are mixed. Integration hasn't made it very far here.

Some mornings it's NPR but usually I let her choose the music for the few minutes while we wait. Then the bus arrives and she's out the door, shouldering her bag and joining her people. And I drive off to work where I am the first one in the office, working in the quiet of the early morning. At home, Nick isn't even awake yet; Mark will do what I did last year,: cajole him out of bed, put together a quick breakfast and an even quicker lunch, and hustle out the door hoping to make it to school, only a mile away, before the tardy bell at 9:05. By then I'll have had a walk around the lake and be settled into the day.

I always thought I hated mornings, really. But there are some advantages to the new routine.

writing to assignment

I write best to assignment. I was always a good student in writing classes: give me a topic and I can give you a coherent, sometimes better than coherent, take on it. This worked for me in undergrad and even, to some extent, in grad school. Later in grad school, of course, I was supposed to come up with my own topics. When I did, I did fine. When I had trouble defining a topic, I got help. And even then I had deadlines and consequences and my writing, mostly, was good and on time.

Blogging is different. There are no set topics, no deadlines. And no pay, which is of course a profound (though rare) motivator.

This is, of course, why the best blogs are focused and frequent. Writing begets writing, for one thing, and a rich topic (kids works fine, so does politics, the academy, technology, etc.) generates sub-topics all the time.

I've had some set topics here and elsewhere, of course: motherhood, writing, kids, faith--but I have not yet found the edge, the focus that keeps things going. And it's been a rough couple of months for writing, too. Being away from home, then back but in flux, is not conducive to a regular posting schedule. So things have slipped. Not blogging is like not calling a friend--first you don't do it because you're busy, then because you didn't when you should have, then finally because you can't remember why you were going to anyway. But if you do (call, write) -- the words are there.

So I'm going to start setting some topics and some deadlines. Twice a week, at first, and daily (non-work) life topics. Simple ones. Ones I can handle. We'll see how it goes.

Center for Environmental Health: Lead in Children's Lunch Boxes

As if we didn't have enough to worry about! Center for Environmental Health: Lead in Children's Lunch Boxes

Nick rotates among several lunch boxes. One is a hard plastic one that looks like a miniature cooler. It's too big to fit comfortably in his backpack but he likes it, and carries it some days. The other three are all soft vinyl, like the ones listed here, though only one (I think) is really intended for kids. Still, I assume adult vinyl lunch boxes (I'm thinking of one I got as a freebie the last time I joined our local NPR affiliate) are just as bad.

Sigh. Paper bags are looking better and better.

first day of school

As usual the Yarn Harlot says it best: "it is a high holy day in the practice of parenting. It is, in the City of Toronto, in the province of Ontario, in this country we are proud to call Canada.....

The first day of school."

It's a high holy day here, too, though since I went back to school a week ago the sacredness seems somewhat diminished. Still, I think everyone's glad: the school supply runs are over, the back-to-school clothes are bought, and everyone has something to do in the morning. I had Mariah at her bus stop by 7 a.m. By the time I came home (after stopping at the grocery store for half-price stuff, a key benefit to being up early) Mark had already eaten the breakfast I hadn't had time to finish. But he'd made fresh coffee, so all was forgiven. Nick was all ready for school, though he didn't need to be there for an hour and a half.

And now I've got the school calendars for the year entered into my own calendar (no, the kids are not off school on the same teacher work days, thank you very much, nor is their spring break--ever--the same as mine. But we can still hope). And we've written the checks (school fees, soccer fees, PTSA fees) and signed the syllabi and filled out the emergency cards...when did school start to involve so much paperwork?

Tomorrow, we breathe. Deeply.

what's with blogroll?

I can't remember all the blogs I read or check in on periodically, so I use blogroll. Only for the last couple of days my blogroll only appears randomly on this page. And when I go to their site to check it I seem not to have any entries--except when, later, I do. So if I can't procrastinate by reading blogs, I guess I'm doing it by complaining about it instead. Back to work...

update: today they know about the problem. So that's a step forward.

gas

...was, I figure, about $8/gallon in England this summer while we were there, unless my math is worse than I think. It was about 1GBP per litre, and a litre is about a quart, right? So, four litres (or so) to a gallon, means 4GBP, at $1.80 (or so) per GBP, means, well, about $7.20/gallon. Plenty. More than twice what it is in my neighborhood right now. Part of me doesn't mind at all--I think we should think twice about driving, after all, and if this is what pushes us to use public transportation (to make public transportation better!), to carpool, to ride our bikes, then that's a good thing. We spent all summer without a car in Oxford, and I was glad of it. But we don't live in Oxford now, our lives don't quite work the same way here.

And so I'm glad one of our cars runs on diesel ($2.87/gallon today), and that we might be able to convert it to run on grease soon. We even have a supplier lined up!

Not Quite Sure: about blogging

I'm with Becca on this. Not Quite Sure

And in addition to these larger concerns (Darfur, Katrina, Badger) I also have my own: a house that's not fully renovated, a friend in a coma, school starting, a church community in crisis, kids who need things...

When I make the list like that only the friend matters, of course, and the last I heard there were some good signs (I haven't been able to blog about her until I knew there were good signs, actually). But the thing that keeps striking me is how long I can go, forgetting about one or another of these things, just thinking about whatever next thing is on my to-do list. In England this summer, after the London bombings, I kept being shocked to find myself not thinking about them, for minutes and then hours and then days on end. I guess it's how we cope--except in the moment of immediate crisis we simply live our lives, mundanely preoccupied with whether there are enough copies of the handout or what color to paint the bedroom when the renovation is finished. It's of course fine to be thinking about those things--even, in its own way, necessary, from time to time--but to blog about them seems callous or self-centered or trivial. And it is, all of the above. So, like Becca, I meta-blog.