September 20, 2011

Dear JackRabbit–

When you were in kindergarten I could not fathom how you, too, would one day be a gangly little second grader. Those kids seemed huge compared to your little round-faced smallness. And now here you are– one of them.

You are so independent lately. The other night I was too tired to wake you up so that you’d go to the bathroom. Daddy usually does that when he and I come upstairs to bed… and I’ve done a good job of it while Daddy’s been in Japan– but that night I was too tired. I went into my room and laid down and dozed off– only to wake up when I heard your feet hit your floor and pad down the hall to the bathroom all by yourself! I was so proud of you and (bonus!) was very happy to have you snuggle up with me in my bed for the rest of the night.

You’re helping me take care of your school things and the dogs. You’re making great choices about your lunches and clothes. When it’s homework time you don’t complain — you just work to get it done. In the car you buckle yourself in. You’re trying new foods. And new words.

You love space. Anything space related captures you. There’s StarWars, of course– but also astronauts and planets and dwarf planets and the temperature and distance of the sun. You read these things and store them up for the car rides to school when they come out in the form of, “MOMmy! Did you know that….” or as a question (some of which requires me to do some googling…)

This past Sunday afternoon I offered to ride bikes with you. You were very excited and we walked toward the garage– only to be intercepted by your pal Colin. (“Backyard Colin, Mommy, not Colin H-.”) I saw the hesitation in your eyes and sent you off to play with Colin– he wanted to show you his friend and the deer stand his Dad had put together in their backyard. “Mom– I’ll be back in a few minutes and then we can go riding, okay?” I weeded while you walked around the corner with Colin and listened for your chatter. I don’t get you all to myself anymore– you have friends and plans. I realize how lucky I am that you are still excited about coming back to go for a bike ride with me.

It’s really neat to see you growing up. I still don’t know how we got from the hospital– just yesterday or last week– to this point– but I have loved every day of it.

This has been a great year– you had such a good time with Ms. Hughes in first grade; went to that fun rental cabin for Thanksgiving with Momma & Eric (and us, too); became a Tiger Scout; came up with being a “Capital One Viking” for Halloween; visited Disney World with AunT & Maddie & Keegan– and had a week’s worth of fun adventures there and the way to Florida and back; worked out with the big kids at soccer camp; “oh!’ed at the explosions at Science Camp; went up to The Lake for a week; went to waterparks; read all sorts of new books; discovered Phineas & Ferb and Lego StarWars; got baptized; spent a week at Family Camp… really, an awful lot of adventures for a seven year old.

Seven. It’s just so hard to believe.

I love you, sweet baby. I love being your Mommy. I love watching you discover things and figure things out. I love hearing you sound out words (“dis-entry” and “Chor-lee” came out a few weeks ago while you were playing Oregon Trail on my iPhone). I love that you are beginning to think about things in a true inquirer fashion. “MOMmy! Daddy! Is that a good learner question?” I love watching you sort out where the wiggle room is on negotiations with us (that 7:30 bedtime is still a sore spot. “Daddy! Damon goes to bed at 9 o’clock!”)

And I love that I can still convince you that baked egg cups are exactly what young jedis eat.

I wouldn’t change a single hair on your head– except to somehow make time go a little slower. Still– as you say you are “to be continued” and I’m excited to see how what happens next.

I hope tomorrow is a happy 7th birthday. It’s strange to plan this without your Daddy here to help me. I’ll do the things he would do if he were here and not on his business trip to Japan– I’ll cover your floor with balloons and give you lots of kisses at 4:01 p.m. when you are officially 7. And AunT & Keegan will be on hand to sing with your church family and buddies after choir practice. (Miss Claudia’s even making spaghetti especially for you!)

I love you so very, very much,

Mommy

I’m reading as fast as I can

I’ve upped my reading lately. I’m using the library’s hold system to snag the new releases. The fact that it’s a new book and that there must be a queue of other eager readers out there spurs me on to finish it as quickly as I can so that I don’t hold up the next person. (I’m number 6 in line for a book… I know how it feels.)

I’m ploughing through Nina Sankovitch’s Tolstoy & the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading right now. It’s an interesting premise… Sankovitch vows to read a new book each day for a year. She limits herself to only books she hasn’t read and only one book per author.

It sounds ghastly to me. This is supposed to be pleasure reading. Not academic or technical reading– but novels and stories. A great weekend up north (or anywhere) includes reading a book for each day we’re at the Lake– but that’s to fill the drought that sometimes occurs when work and life impede on my reading hours. And what of the books that are meant to be savored? Or that ache at the end of a really, really well-crafted story that bids me to wait a few days before opening a new story. Some books leave you still lingering in the world within its pages. This summer I read two similiar books about WW2 back to back… and occasionally overlapped them in my head. I should have read something between them.

One of her criteria for choosing books became the thickness of it. Which seems cruel. A whole year without something thick and lovely and dense?

She also wrote a review of the books she read. Within a few weeks of her project she fell into a rhythm of starting the day with writing a review of the book she read the day before. She also had a life. A husband and three sons, a house to maintain, meals to cook, etc.

I’m only halfway through her book (I’ve been reading it for two days, by the way– not all in one sitting) so I don’t know how it pans out or if she completes the task she set before herself. She’s framed her reading, mentioning the books here and there in context of the theme of the chapter. Her grief over the death of her sister in her mid-40s to cancer overshadows the book. It’s the constant theme. She seems sure that she is holding on to her sister and the memory of her sister through the words she’s reading. Or she filled up the days to push aside the grief.

I’m adding it to the list of Books With an Interesting Premise (ie; anything by A.J. Jacobs, Julie & Julia, The Reading Promise, A Year Off, etc.).

The Help & How it helped overcome the debacle of Snowflower

We took Maddie to the movies tonight. She leaves for college next week– we’re all suddenly, painfully aware that she is leaving.

Jack is panicked about it. In his head, when Maddie leaves, she is gone for the next four years. Period. We’ve tried to reassure him that we’ll see her– she’ll come home, we’ll visit– but he shakes his head sadly in disbelief.

A few weeks ago we took her to see Snowflower & the Secret Fan. Trish and I had loved the book and thought it would be a great way to share it with Maddie. Turns out the movie was based on the book. We’re pretty sure “based on” meant they used a hardcover copy of the novel to prop up a camera tripod or something because very little of our beloved story was left on the screen. It was easily one of the worst movies we’ve ever seen.

Which made for a great night of bonding.

We redeemed our selves last night with The Help. Again, it was a book that Trish and I had read and loved and were eager to share with Maddie. It’s on her stack of books to read– she’s still in the last third of the Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows so Skeeter and the junior league of Jackson, Mississippi will have to wait a few weeks. Rarely do great books translate near-perfectly on screen. They did a great job with The Help– the casting is pitch perfect. Celia Foote, Johnny, Abilene, Minnie, Hilly…. they’ve all leapt up from the page beautifully. Sissy Spacek as Miz Walters is exquisite.

Not that there aren’t nagging issues. Some plot points are condensed or lost. Minnie’s terror of Mr. Johnny is muted. The show down between Charlotte and Hilly doesn’t happen in the book. Constantine’s story is completely changed (which changes Charlotte’s story, too.) Skeeter (played by Emma Stone) is supposed to have unruly hair to set her apart from the carefully coifed young wives she grew up with– poor Emma was saddled with possibly the worst hair piece in movie history with nary an attempt at being period correct for the era.

Still, I don’t think Maddie will be disappointed when she reads the book now just as Trish and I were pleased with the movie version.

The theater, by the way, was packed. Packed. Granted it was “$5 night” which was our draw, too– but wow. It was like a midnight premiere of a Twilight movie– mostly women with a smattering of men here and there. Trish and I laughed at the differences between those who had read the book vs. those who had not. It was particularly evident when Minnie first appears with a chocolate pie in her hand. We started laughing. It took the non-readers a while to catch on.

It won’t be the last time we sit in a dark theater with our oldest girl– but it might be a little while. I’m glad we’re tiding over with a good movie.

 

Anger, Duggar Style.

I was mad at Robby and Jack last night. We’d run to Walmart (and I hate Walmart– so that wasn’t adding anything positive to my mood) and I was trying to tell Robby something about the day. Jack interrupted. I tried again. Robby interrupted to scold Jack for interrupting. I tried again. Was interrupted again. I went silent. Counted to 10. Conjugated a few German verbs. And then tried to explain to Robby why I was upset– only to be interrupted AGAIN with him telling me why he’d interrupted.

I just looked at him.

And then walked away. I went to the one of two places in Walmart that I don’t hate– the little section where they keep books and magazines. I picked up the newest book by the Duggars and sat down and started to read it– using the bottom shelf as a little perch.

The Duggars, as you might know, are the family in Arkansas raising 19 biological children who have a reality television show on TLC called 19 Kids & Counting… They live by a conservative Christian code that is a mish mash of Old Testament rules, homeschooling, and their own “Duggar Rules.” It’s about the only thing in prime-time that we let Jack watch. He loves it. He can name all 19 children. And the two grandchildren and daughter-in-law. (Not an easy task since all 19 kids have names that start with the letter J.)

I don’t always agree with the Duggars. They’re a little too conservative and “not of this world” for my own codes… but I do admire their debt-free living and their unflappable faith. However, I’m a little creeped out by their cheerful admission that they follow some directive from Leviticus as to when they can “resume intimacy” after the birth of a male or female child… (Mothers of daughters have a longer “wait”.)

I got pretty far in the book– one because Robby and Jack were still shopping and they didn’t think of where to look for me (after 16 years of marriage it still doesn’t occur to Robby that if I don’t answer I’m probably reading something) and two because Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar write in a ridiculously conversational style. That they graduated from only high school is somewhat apparent in their limited vocabulary… or it might be due to the fact that, for 20 years, they’ve had a toddler in the house.

Two things struck me. One is that all the recipes I’d encountered thus far (there is one every 5 pages or so) are incredibly unhealthy. [One thing that really drives me nuts when I watch their show is how much styrofoam and paperplates they go through. I'll never understand why Christians-- conservative or not-- in general are such terrible enviromentalists. We, of all people, should be leading the charge in being good "stewards" of the Earth's resources.] The other is that there definition of “The Will of God” is refreshingly simple… it’s “the choice we’d make if we knew all the facts.” [And yes, I will be stealing that for Sunday School some week when the topic comes up.]

By the time the boys found me I was about a third of the way through the book. (I read fast, they walk slow?) The Duggars did me good. All their talk (and walk) about being kind and patient tempered my irritation with the interrupters somewhat.

And I ate a really unhealthy donut in a nutrionless shout-out to the nearly two dozen Duggars.

I’m still a little mad, though.

 

Still Mourning Borders.

We went to the flagship Borders yesterday. We’d gone to Ann Arbor to see the art fair and look for Jesus. (There’s almost always some guy walking around in a toga and sandals who looks like the old Sunday School images of Jesus…) We came up short on any Messiah doppelgangers but we saw a lot of art. (And a lot of “art.”)

Hitting Borders is always part of our Art Fair experience. Walking past the panhandlers into the cool of the first floor is always a welcomed relief after the hot pavement of the fair.

Yesterday the relief was short-lived. The store was crawling with vultures.

Overheard:

“Oh my gawd! there’s so many books here– who would buy this many books?”

“It’s only 10% off? Big deal!”

“I don’t know why we’re even here– it’s not like I ever read.”

[On phone] “Well tell her I’ll get the ones she hasn’t read. They’re having some kind of sale.”

“Seriously– who goes to book stores anyway?”

“To infinity and beyond!!” (David-behind-the-counter)

“How will they get rid of all these books? It’s not like anyone bought them before…”

“I’ve never been here– it’s too bad it’s closing.”

“May the force be with you!” (David-behind-the-counter)

I walked around sadly taking in the yellowy wood shelves and picking up a little stack of books. I bought a reusable Borders shopping bag. I thought about all the times I’d pulled the little step stools up to a shelf and read all the spines looking for a new read.

The line was long to check-out– a cruel irony. I told Jack (who was clutching two new books) to remember this kind of place– two floors of books to buy. “Are they closing for a long time, Mommy?”

And kudos to the clerks. To the exuberant David who cheerfully punctuated each sale with a fist pump. To our kind man who has been with the store almost as long as it’s been opened in “the old Jacobsons building.” In light of the fact that, for me, it was like going to a funeral and having the cast of the Jersey Shore come crashing in with drinks in their hands… the staff was patient and helpful and kind. (I would have been bitter and annoyed and slow.) I hope they all find good places to land.

 

 

 

All is well.

We’ve seen our last Harry Potter movie. We’ve read all the books. We’ve seen all the movies. There’s still the potential of the Pottermore site– but the feeling of discovery and wonder has probably ended.

For now. Like JK’s gift of an epilogue that let us know, truly, All was well, we still have one last moment of “oh!” ahead. One of these days we’ll get to start reading them to Jack. And then we’ll watch the movies together, too. Not yet– but some not-so-far-off day. It will be good to introduce him to our dear friends– Harry, Ron, and Hermione. He’ll have the fun of rolling the names around on his tongue– Neville Longbottom, Bellatrix LeStrange, Nymphadora Tonks, Sirius Black. We’ll walk him through the Great Hall of Hogwarts, up the winding stairs to the headmaster’s office, soar over the Quidditch pitch, roll deep into the dark warren of Gringott’s looking for Harry’s vault. We’ll hold his hand in Diagon Alley when the Malfoys draw near and then let him run loose on the path to Hagrid’s cozy hut.

Movies and books each come with their own advantages and limitations. Rowling’s sometimes stilted dialogue on the page (“he said. She said. He exclaimed. She exclaimed.”) worked coming from the mouths of the young actors. Christopher Columbus and his successors filled in the blanks of Hogwarts and made Quidditch easier to follow even if the way to Madame Trewlany’s hazy classroom wasn’t ever quite right on film. Bits that sometimes dragged on the page were condensed on the screen while, more often than not, things on the page weren’t given the screen time they deserved.

Overall though the books and the films played nicely together. The cast was with nary a misstep– and who knew that the kids would turn out okay in the end? That Emma Watson wouldn’t start running with Lindsay Lohan’s crowd? Who guessed that Neville would turn into a handsome man from the round headed gaped mouth boy?

Read the books if you haven’t. Tonight I reread the epilogue at the end of Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows. It’s even better than I remember it. And even better than the movie’s shortened version of it. The page has one last little go with Ron’s humor, Hermione’s furrowing, and Harry’s legacy.

I really look forward to reading the books with Jack. I look forward to diving back into that world with him. I wish we could give him the sense of anticipation that we had– closing one book, satisfied, and having an agonizing wait until the next was released.

In the meantime we’ll rest easy knowing that, on film, and on the page, all was left well.

 

Mourning Borders

I feel like I killed Borders.

I’ve made a concentrated effort in the past two or three years to use our library more and buy less books. I still buy books– but not like I used to– not a great canvas bag full of them all at once. Most of the books I have bought in the last 24 months have been from church and Friends of the Library sales. The kind where I can pick up a deliciously heavy stack of hardcovers and out-of-print books for the same amount I’d pay for a new book.

I’ve bought a few books online, too. Whenever we order something for someone else– a birthday gift or a Christmas surprise– Robby often lets me get a book, too.

And I hit my favorite bookstores– the small, independent shops that have nice, matte covered paperbacks.

I used to buy a lot of books at Borders. We use the Maynard St. parking garage a lot– so we’d pop into Borders to “get the ticket validated” which was a way of softening the blow for Robby that I would, inevitably, walk to the clerk with a new book in hand. When we were feeling flush we’d all leave happy– Jack would have a book tucked under his arm, too, and Robby would have a cup of Seattle’s Best in his hand.

I’ve spent hours in the tiny travel section scanning the shelves for a new memoir I hadn’t already read. When Jack was in my tummy I read a lot of books on babies and parenting in the section tucked behind the wall of the children’s area. Jack’s favorite place is the footstool near the twirling rack of “I Can Read!” level books. (“Mommy– am I proficient?”)

In the Chicago Borders I’d get lost in the foreign periodicals. The British parenting magazines hallooed from across the expanse of State Street. I’d leave with a stack of glossy magazines that cost nearly as much as a small pile of books.

But then money got tight. Robby bought me a subscription to Hello magazine– a gift he renews every Christmas. It still comes dear but it’s a fraction of the cost of paying for an issue on the racks at Borders. We stopped getting our parking validated and just paid for the parking. I started making trips to the library and using the “hold” system there to get the books I wanted.

It’s like the bloody knife is in my hand.

What makes it even worse is that I could see it coming. I hoped it wouldn’t. I might have prayed that it wouldn’t. But the writing was on the wall– there was a sparseness in the last few months. The displays no longer overflowed with new titles and emerging authors. There was more “stuff”– gimmicky things and board games and cheap movies. More movie tie-in junk.

What kind of world is it when Jack will barely remember such a magical place as a bookstore with an elevator and ramps that led from floor to floor to floor? How will he spend a rainy afternoon that ends with an agonizing selection process of the books he can get that day vs. the ones that will have to wait– all found while wondering from section to section or sitting in the nook of one of the literature bays picking out books by the fonts the titles use on the spine?

I see the value of an e-reader for reading but not for trolling. How do you find the books you want to read from a sterile little description on a screen? Where is the weight? The delightful surprise of an interesting font? A thick, uncut page?

Years ago I went to Denver for a student journalism conference with my friend Christy and blogfather Wally (then our professor and advisor). He knew his way around the Mile High City having spent some time there the summer before and took us to the Tattered Cover Bookstore. It has– to the best of my memory 4 or 5 stories of books. A wonderful place. The flagship Borders evoked a near-feeling to it.

Our library has a majestic quality, too– it’s a Carnegie building and is filled with marble and sweeping stairways that almost make up for the gauntlet of loiterers you have to walk through. A library acquaintance noted today on facebook that first it will be bookstores and then libraries.

I probably don’t get a say in this– with my impending murder conviction hanging over my head– but I hope she’s wrong.

 

 

Lapping up the dog days

It’s hot out. The kind of thick, humid hot that makes everyone dull and lethargic. There are all sorts of heat warnings out today and the air is heavy with unbroken storms.

Our little window air conditioner is working overtime. It keeps the living room comfortable– but the upstairs is miserably close and stuffy. Maddie and Jack escaped to the movies today– and I appreciated the cool office. Poor Robby is stuck watching a new line run in the production area — he will come home wet and spent.

We’ll eat salad tonight and grocery store chicken. It’s about all I can think to throw together– the idea of turning the stove or oven on is unbearable. I have a meeting at church (hopefully, also air conditioned) and then we’ll drive down to see Granny. Hopefully, by the time we get back it will have cooled off some.

It was hot up north this week, too. Combined with the utter lack of any pressing schedule I was slothy. Read. Ate. Slept. Jack was entertained by me and the grandparents and the dogs– we each took it in turns to kick the ball in the backyard or thrust the lightsabers or read stories. While he watched movies or played with the grandparents I read. Three books. A stack of magazines. When Robby joined us we went to the beach. I pulled the cooler over and used it as a chair so that I could sit with my feet in the waves and still read.

The library had a stack of books waiting for me when I came home. And the heat will break soon– it never lasts for too long here. In the meantime we’ll keep making iced tea and eating cold suppers.

And moving slower.

Proof that Motherhood has chipped away at your selfishness…

When you use your birthday Borders gift card on the book that your six year old son picks out for himself. Sigh.

 

Late to the Party and nary a Vanity Cake in sight.

One of the biggest irritations in my life is the litany of titles of books that I’d wished I’d written. The latest is the book I just finished– The Wilder Life by Wendy McClure. It started out so promising that I could barely read it for all the green envy coloring the page. “I was born in 1867 in a log cabin in Wisconsin and maybe you were, too.”

Genius. In one sentence she captured the kinship that all of us Laura lovers out here have felt since we first read the Big Woods. The bits and pieces I’ve read and heard about The Wilder Life led me to believe that in her attempts to dive into what she refers to as the “Laura World” she’d go all out. Turns out she sputtered out. Sure– she did several attempts at making melt-in-your-mouth Vanity Cakes and bought a churn to try her hand at buttermaking… and she dragged her good natured husband, Chris, along the Laura trail to see the sites… but then the book loses it’s footing (like Ma when the log comes crashing down on her ankle) and meanders through a repetitive slough of McClure’s sense that nothing is like she’d thought it would be.

It had started as a better book.

I also wish I’d been clever (or desperate) enough to try to tackle Julia Child’s cookbook with a new recipe every day. I’m ticked that someone wrote the children’s book version of the Donner Party. The Triange Shirtwaist Factory has also been given recent and good treatment which renders it moot for any future Terri scribblings. Anne Lamott and Bob Greene have the “I had a baby and now I’ll thoughtfully write about it” territory covered.

Sigh. I was moaning about the books I wish I’d written. Wally (the Blogfather/Boss Man/Former Professor/Friend) suggested a book title for that book as Late to the Party. I’m afraid to google that. Someone else probably already did it.