Volume

Remember those old movies from the ’40s and ’50s where the heroine would have to go to charm school? She’d learn all sorts of important skills such as walking about with books on her apparently flat head and how to pour tea. Very important stuff. Modulation was always part of the package, too.

It’s on my mind because the once silent and now chatty Jack has yet to learn to modulate his voice. Most of the time it goes unchecked but, occasionally, it rises to some unseen occasion. Lately it’s church that inspires him to check for an echo factor. Other times it’s the car. He’ll ask for a dropped toy or out-of-reach book– the first time at normal volume, the second at louder and more urgent volume and by the third time it’s at a very insistent boom.

We’ve been testing out whispering– which is only fun when you don’t really need to, or at least that seems to be Jack’s attitude.

Eventually he’ll get it, I know, and this, too, shall pass. I get that his brilliantly expanding mind is too busy with the accumulation of new words to control the volume of those he’s already gotten the hang of– for now we’ll manage as best we can.

Maybe I’ll try the books on his head and see how that goes in the meantime?

Spring in our step

You shouldn’t be sitting there reading this. I appreciate it and all but really, you should be outside while the weather is green and springlike. There’s a cold front coming and then wham! it’ll be muggy and mosquito-y and miserably hot.

But thanks.

As for us, well, we’re enjoying the great outdoors. We’re taking walks and finding all sorts of things like ants and sticks and dead leaves. Very exciting stuff. Did I mention the beautiful “flowers”?… you might call them dandelions.

Happy Spring.

On a lighter note

The news this week on the telly has been grim and dark. I’ll counter with a little burst of JackRabbit updating.

On Jack’s Current Agenda:

1. Jumping. “We” are very into jumping. Jumping off of things. Jumping over things (yet, ironically, not candlesticks). Jumping in place.

2. Singing “Twinkle Little Star” in an earnest little voice. On the rare occasion that he throws in some hand motions it brings down the house.

3. Licking lollypops. Very deliberately. And very much like the old turtle in the Tootsie Pop commercials.

4. Pretending. Some entire mornings are spent in his little kitchen area muttering and banging pots around. Other mornings are given over to his Thomas trains or blocks. He has these really cool magnetic tiles that his friend Joseph sent him. He uses the long triangles and the stubby triangles to make “ice-ceam cone”s and then pretends to lick them while sighing, “Mmmm!” (The sad truth being that he won’t touch actual ice-cream… too icey?)

5. Bonding with the Pup. They’re a unit now, conspiring against their daytime matron (me) and with the night patrol (Robby). They wear each other out. Today, leaving the house for lunch with AunT, Jack was heartbroken at having to leave behind “Philby.”

6. Inventing new catchphrases. On our favorite show, Caillou, the title character’s pet cat is named Gilbert. Usually the cat’s name is said with some exasperation as in, “Oh Gil-bert!” I’m not quite sure that Jack understands that… so when he or we do something silly or wrong Jack is quick to say, “Oh Gilbert!”

7. Exploring. Now that the weather is warm enough we try to get outdoors more often. Jack loves walking up and down our street. He’s usually armed with a stick in one hand that he’ll wave and knock against the trees. There’s no end to the discoveries we make… flowers, worms, and other dogs.

8. Negotiating. When it’s naptime and we announce that it is we often get a “Not yet!” out of our babe’s mouth. When it’s bedtime and he’s not ready it will be, “another booook?” Meal requests come in the form of “Pizza!!?” or “Grill Cheese!” even if it’s something entirely different on the plate. He’s more of a terrorist when he negotiates. It is all prone to break down into a “NOOOO!” but sometimes there’s a shred of hope for a peaceful outcome.

It all beats the evening news.

Wanted: One family

It’s been a weird Spring. A little isolating. My mother is in France, my in-laws touring the south, and, final straw, my sister and her girls went jetting off to be with my Mom for their SpringBreak (Woo!Hoo!)…

The latter groupling has returned and it’s made a real difference. Frankly, Jack gets tired of me and our routine. His glee at seeing his cousins (who dote on him) and his “AunTeeeee!” was completely heart felt. (My glee was tempered only slightly by the freakin’ speeding ticket I got after I’d picked them up from the airport. The cop was arrogant.)

It’s nice to have family around. Over the next month the rest will return, too, and Jack’s world will have other faces in it for a few weeks.

And I might get to go out for a grown up night to a quiet restaurant and a glass of Chianti. (My goals are shrinking. It used to be grad school, world travel, and learning Latin.)

Hoppin’ Down the JackRabbit Trail

It was a weird Easter. Our parents collectively orphaned us for warmer climes. It occured to Robby and I that this was the first Easter without some family in some way. No glorious meal of lamb or ham at his mother’s. No silly adventure with mine. Even my sister and her girls deserted us for Momma’s house in the South of France. (Okay, really, who could blame them on that one?)

So, on our own, we celebrated in a quieter way. We hid little eggs for Jack to find around the living room. They were the little plastic eggs that you can fill with treats– for Jack the treats were Baby Goldfish crackers, tiny cookies, and (for Philbin) Milkbones. Robby’s Mom had left an Easter basket for the Jack so we took it apart and hid the contents– little trucks and Thomas cars and toys around the room, too. Our contribution to the bounty– a little duffel bag shaped like Thomas the Tank Engine was also tucked behind a chair.

Jack was delighted with the whole process. It took him all the morning and then, after church, all the afternoon and evening to find all the eggs and surprises. He started to catch on in the late afternoon and the delight on his face was complete and pure joy.

Church was good, too. they’d pulled out the incense so it was spicey and smokey and lilyed. All the usual Easter hymns were sung with gusto and the pews were filled with the Chreaster masses. Jack was not in the mood to sit still and quiet so he and Robby (who also doesn’t really sit still well) spent a large chunk of time in the narthex. We skipped the big egg hunt after service for our own little ongoing hunt in the living room. Oh– and in lieu of big holiday meals at our mothers’ we had ham sandwiches for lunch and Chinese for supper.

Alleluia indeed.

Same Old, Same Old…

The little college that I went to has a tendency, at times, to be very narrow minded. For about half the time I was there I was editor of the college paper. The Me Then wasn’t the Me Now. I’m a lot grayer– and I don’t just mean my hairs.

The Me Then was very black and white. Like most 20 year olds I figured I had the world figured out and that anything that deviated from my way of thinking couldn’t possibly be correct. It’s not that I was intolerant– in that world I was ridiculously tolerant and open minded… And the rigid perimeters I imposed were mostly directed at myself. Still. I’m grayer now. The rules have exceptions. People make mistakes.

I had a beloved advisor in those years. (Fact is, I still do but now he’s much more lenient on my misused commas and other grammatical inconsistencies now that we are friends… in those days he was brutal.) He gently shoved me and my fellow press members on to greater heights than what we could reach on our own. And then, one awful day, he told us he was taking a sabbatical and we were left to our own devises and a much less wise faculty advisor for a year. It was during that Annus Horribulus (Sorry, the little college didn’t offer Latin) that a stupid incident occurred that had everyone choosing sides– faculty against students. We weren’t journalists really– just kids with a knack for words– but we felt all the righteousness of Woodward and Bernstein over the matter. (We were 20, of course we felt righteous…) In the end the Suits prevailed. We’d been using an outside insert created for college campuses filled with advertising and product reviews along with collegiate pop-culture-news. We got a kickback from it. One of the issues ran a review that used strong language. (To be fair, it wasn’t well written– the strong language wasn’t used appropriately. It was just there to shock people into thinking, “Oooh. How hip! How edgy!” when really it was just poor writing.) The college officials swept down on our little windowless office and demanded that we cease the insertions. We argued (my small staff was nothing if not loyal) that it was pretty hypocritical to accept the kickback so readily and to dump the content so easily… but it didn’t matter. We had no choice in the end if we wanted a student newspaper at all– the inserts had to go. Go they did in glorious fashion, by the way. We had a small bonfire until campus security (they on their bicycles) found our tribal ceremony. We continued with our usual jobs and very few people even noticed the sudden lack of inserts after the first issue.

But it’s stayed with me. That feeling of futility. We loved what we did in the windowless office. We loved producing something we felt mattered. To find that any power we felt was contingent on how nicely we obeyed was shattering.

It’s on my mind today because the same college is going through a similiar incident. I still wouldn’t wield any power– not enough to change the outcome or undo the damage that’s been done in the name of Propriety. My only consolation is that, as much as I wish it weren’t, the real world (or that outside that campus’ perimeters) isn’t all that much different.

And part of being Me Now came from the Me Then finding out just how unfair people can be. How intolerant, unkind, judgemental… how easily authority is misused. And how utterly, shatteringly cruel it is when a person who should be instructing, teaching, sharing turns out, behind the curtain, is the smallest minded person of all. If I try to Oprah up a little gratitude than it’s that this latest incident has a leg up on the one we endured– we went in without backup. Our pseudo advisor that year sold us out. This little group of cub reporters has the Father Bear behind them.

Not that he can do much. The pen is mightier than the sword but the sword still manages to do a lot of damage. And it’s always the idiots who get handed the swords.

Missing Pages from the Book of Common Prayer #43

Thank You O Gracious Father
for
Spit Chickens
Found
at the Grocery Store.

Thank you for the folly of their economics
That
I should be able to buy a cooked fowl
for less
Than I should cook one myself.

Thank you for their perfection
of grease
and flavor
and the
Simplicity
they bring to my day’s end.

And thank You, Dear Lord,
That there is still
a perfect Leg
for me to
Find tomorrow
Behind the orange juice.

Amen.