I love what kids’ll do when they’ve got no explicit assignments, a bookshelf full-to-bursting, and a dress-up box under the bed.
The house? Messier. The snacks? Constant. My work? Suffering.
But I swear that this morning’s production of Little Red Riding Hood made up for any trouble. To set the scene, picture both daughters and a friend, some hysterical costumes and a good amount of face paint. Move the coffee table aside and call it a stage. I was the sole audience member and I couldn’t find my camera. They didn’t even care.
Most of the play unfolded pretty much as expected, except that Little Red sounded slightly Valley Girlesque and the wolf resembled an anteater. Other than that, it was the usual cape, basket, skipping through the woods routine.
But then arrived the last few scenes.
First of all, the woodsman slay the wolf with a broken sprinkler. Apparently this was as close as they could come to a weapon around here.
Next, Little Red and the woodsman sang a rousing version of “Ding, Dong, The Wolf is dead, Mean Old Wolf, the Wicked Wolf…” What a delicious take on fractured fairy tales.
And finally, right when I was expecting to see the final bow, two actors returned to stage wearing cardboard signs: Wolf’s Mom and Wolf’s Dad.
Wolf lay still as a stone on the living room rug.
The grieving parents moaned and sobbed and decorated Wolf’s final resting place with a paper cross reading: The Big Bad Wolf He Was Good
Sigh. Now they’re hula hooping. I’m really hoping September doesn’t come too soon.
Here I am, your trusty trend-o-meter, on the job again.
Remember awhile back when I undertook a study of why every book we picked up seemed to feature the venerable game of dodge ball?
Well, here’s the latest, similar puzzler:
Why’s everyone in every book we pick up named Bean?
To note: The imaginative trickster in Annie Barrows’ Ivy and Bean Alexander McCall Smith’s clever sleuth Harriet Bean Lauren Child’s utterly beanish dreamer Clarice Bean
I don’t recollect ever actually meeting anyone named Bean. You?
So what’s the deal?
Is Bean just a natural term of endearment? Starting from when newborns curl up in their sleep sacks and fall asleep in the crook of your neck? Those little beanareenos…
Does Bean just rhyme with too many cute words to resist? The Bean Machine… Lean Bean… Sweetest Bean I’ve Ever Seen…
Is it that Bean conjures up both brains (way to use the ol’ bean, kiddo) and whimsy (you’re full of beans, rascal), or that beans are healthy, hearty growers, which is what we want our kids to be?
My daughter thinks it’s a good, simple, practical name that goes well with frillier first names like Clarice and Harriet. OK, but whatever happened to Smith and Jones?
This just beats the heck outta me, but here are a few little pearls o’ wisdom for you:
1. Do name your children Bean — they’re sure to be both lovable and famous. 2. Don’t name your characters Bean — it’s been done. 3. Do host a Bean’s Bookclub for kids — and serve beans, ofcourse! (Baked, black or string should suffice) 4. Don’t make a lot of jokes about BeanTown and “Beans, beans, the musical fruit…” Those’ll date you… 5. Do try selling a screenplay about a bean playing dodge ball, and send me 5 dollars if you make it big. 6. Don’t tell your editor, agent or financial advisor that a bean playing dodge ball was my idea.
So my daughter wrote a very operatic new song about a herd of Appaloosas. In Trinidad. Whose favorite meal was lamb. And it’s told from the perspective of a little lamb.
Hunh.
“The weird part of the song, Mama,” she explained to me, “is that horses are vegetarian.”
Right.
I don’t even know where to begin deconstructing this baby.
I kind of thought I should give you a run at the lyrics, but I’ll bet you get the idea. So instead, a couple of poems about horses and lambs:
Spring Song, Meirionydd — John Dressel
A white combustion rules these fields, and testifies to men, and rams; the mind of winter thaws, and yields — Great God, the world is drunk with lambs.
The high grey stone is clean of snows, the streams come tumbling, far from dams; the wind is green, the day’s eye grows — Great God, the world is drunk with lambs.
The heart, gone light as all the ewes, redounds with milk, and epigrams that make no sense; except their news — Great God, the world is drunk with lambs.
In gold October, grown to size, they’ll know the hook, and hang with hams, but March is all their enterprise — Great God, the world is drunk with lambs.
I love that phrase, drunk with lambs. Don’t you? It’s so lush and surprising. I’m gonna figure out a way to slide that into my conversation this weekend, to be sure…
No. 6 –Charles Bukowski
I’ll settle for the 6 horse on a rainy afternoon a paper cup of coffee in my hand a little way to go, the wind twirling out small wrens from the upper grandstand roof, the jocks coming out for a middle race silent and the easy rain making everything at once almost alike, the horses at peace with each other before the drunken war and I am under the grandstand feeling for cigarettes settling for coffee, then the horses walk by taking their little men away — it is funeral and graceful and glad like the opening of flowers.
Sometimes I’m stunned at what a poet’s allowed to do, the language and images he or she’s allowed to put together — slap, bang — all in one little poem. The oddest things, made to seem inevitable. Cigarette and flowers, horses and lambs…
Are you girl, woman or crone? Can you walk, talk and chew gum at the same time? Do you live anywhere near Orlando, L.A., Austin, Chicago, Denver, New England, Seattle or NYC? Couldja get there? Do you like material that wicks and watches that get wet? Do you look fine in muscles? Do you wish you did? Do you have girlfriends? Wouldja do anything with ’em? Wouldja do anything for ’em? Do you like challenge? Do you like fun? Wouldja like to see breast cancer get beat? Are you healthy? Do you wish you were? Do you have a mother or daughter? Wouldja like to see them strong and smiling? Wouldja like them to see you that way? Have you ever crossed a finish line? Do you wanna?
I just finished my sixth Danskin Triathlon in nine years and the only ones I regret are those three I missed.
YOU should do the Danskin next year. You and your mom, sisters, girlfriends, daughters, friends or neighbors. Find a swimsuit that still has some elastic in it, pump up the ol’ bike tires and hit the trail. Women from 14 to 84 are doing it — I’ve seen ’em. And you should, too.
You’ll be strong, happy, inspired, giddy, proud, and all choked up. You’ll be a part of something very energized, very woman-power and very big. Even in this day and age, there is something really moving about seeing whole crowds of men — husbands, dads, brothers — cheering on 3,200 woman athletes. In front of our daughters and sons.
As they like to say on the Danskin circuit, You Go, Girl.
Sheesh, I’ve missed you all something fierce. I just spent an hour reading back blogs. What a fine fix.
My excused absence, as you’ll remember from my post on the 1st, is that my sister and family were cozied up with us in our bungalow for more than a week. (Insert countless exclamation points right here…)
The only moments not filled up with my talking were filled up with hers.
Here’s the thing. She and her family live in Tanzania. That’d be in Africa. So even when we do plan to phone or instant message, we’re talking about a 9-hour time difference. One of us with a cup of coffee at our elbow, the other with a beer.
This is the same sister with whom I shared a room for 10 years. Shared clothes in high school. Shared tent adventures and political rallies and babies’ births. Shared grandparents and the back seat of the Subaru on roadtrips and a mom and a dad.
As you might imagine, our current time/space disconnect can conjure up some serious grief, so when we get together we don’t fool around. Or rather, we do. In a big way.
This time we celebrated my recent birthday at a spa (I actually felt too noodley to walk down the steps after my lavendar oil massage), took the kids to SeaWorld (now would be the time to admit that I cried a little at the Shamu show), picked pounds of peaches, ran the Danskin (registered as twins so that we could start and finish together), and swam in no less than six pools, lakes or swimmin’ holes (it is summer in Texas after all).
But the most vivid part of the week was seeing our children (her two and my two) falling deeper and deeper into each other. We call them matchies because BOTH times, our pregnancies overlapped. When my neice celebrates her birthday tomorrow, we’ll have two 8- and two 6-year-olds between us.
When they were wee, we brainwashed them with photos and phone calls so they’d know and love each other. But honest-to-pete, other than buying the airline tickets, our persuasion program is now officially over. They’re enraptured.
The younger set dressed alike and slept in the same bed and made up a secret language. All in a week’s work. The elders are a boy and a girl and have less in common, but the myriad ways they work around that are so moving to me. If they create a “culture magazine” at my daughter’s whim, the center spread will be about Tae Kwan Do to please my sister’s son. If the water in the swimming pool is too chilly for my nephew, my girl will push him about in an inflatable tube. If they can’t agree on a puzzle or a game or a book, they’ll get on their scooters and race to the stop sign and back. About 45 times.
I grew up at a distance from most of my cousins, too, but our summers together — kick-the-can and rag-tag, Jolly Good soda and Mackinack fudge — taught me to support and tease and admire and defend and have a hoot with the folks I love. And they taught me to expect the same in return. As a grown-up, I’ve had all of this, in spades. My cousins are on my speed dial, if you know what I mean.
Nothing matters to me more than knowing my little ones are building (and are built of) the same strong stuff.
Somehow this makes it okay that my sister and her husband and my children’s cousins drove away at 5 a.m. yesterday. I’m all wrung out, but in a good way. Tired, pink and satisfied.
“We danced on the drums of jubilation Hot with the blood that made us one….” — Abdulkadir Noormohamed
Today’s chosen poem is in honor of my sister who is arriving at my house tomorrow for NINE (count ’em) NINE days, with my beloved brother-in-law, niece and nephew. Rapture.
And did I mention that they live on the other side of the world?
This is a daily ache for me. I often wish we were sharing one big stock pot of soup, but instead here am I and there she is. Way over there.
Sigh.
Fortunately, these days, there is email and airmail and Skype. But still, nothing counts like gettin’ up-close-and-personal.
So, I go away to Seattle for a coupla days and I just get clobbered on the playground. First, I been tagged by the witty women at A Year of Reading.
I have to come up with 8 facts or habits about myself that might be appropriate to share and, at the same time, not boring. Sigh.
Here goes:
1. I can sing all the state names in alphabetical order and with a good dose of pizazz.
2. I’ve been vegetarian since college. As a kid I lived on goose, duck and venison. I remember the feeling of having a round, metal bit of bird shot stuck in my teeth. Unrelated facts? I think not.
3. When I do a seriously vigorous yoga practice, I get an itchy head. Crazy itchy. The same thing happens to my sister. Weird, hunh?
4. I have 16 first cousins, 12 of whom are female. A serious matriarchy. In the dating era, though, it was the guys who lucked out since we all brought our friends around — some of whom the boys married.
5. I can still do backward crossovers on ice skates. Once a year whether I need to or not. Ditto, getting up on a slalom ski behind a waterski boat.
6. My favorite combination of colors for a bouquet of flowers is purple and yellow. But I’ve just found out that tulips can’t be mixed with any other flowers because they put out some toxin that kills the others! Isolationists!
7. I saw the Grateful Dead perform in multiple states. I mean states like Wisconsin, Nevada, Colorado. Not altered states. Don’t get funny with me.
8. When we take roadtrips I read novels out loud to my husband until I’m hoarse, especially mystery novels, which I never read otherwise. Oh, I also buy People magazine every time I travel by plane. But don’t tell anyone.
OK, so that’s that. Oh, and y’know how Franki said she liked Dots as movie candy? I always liked their shy cousin Drops (chewier) and I used a rhyme to remember which one I preferred: Drops are Tops, Dots are Not.
To all the rest of you, consider yourself TAGGED. (I think this one has made the rounds pretty well already).
Now, then. I also got tagged by Vivian at HipWriterMama who says I’m supposed to share four things that were new to me in the past four years, and four things I want to try in the next four years.
New in the past four years:
1. Mothering honest-to-goodness KIDS instead of babies and toddlers. Kids who can hike for miles… write, act in and direct spectacular theatrical productions… create amazing artwork… tell jokes… deliver breakfast in bed… and read! I will always feel nostaligic for my babies, but boy-oh-man do I love these kids.
2. Blogging. Very new. Very inspiring (the reading and the writing). Very immediate-gratificationist.
3. Goodness. My women’s artist lifeline, without which I’d be limping along and slogging through. I craved this community — didn’t even really know I craved this community — and now I want it for all of you. A writing group or a mama’s club or a spiritual clan or whatever village you need in your own particular life. Create it. I can assure you that the people you ask will say YES. Everybody’s hungry.
4. Writing an historical novel. This is not just new but ongoing, and an adventure at every juncture. Serves as the perfect transition from old new to new new….
New to come in the next four years:
1. Learn to play my exquisite mountain dulcimer. And I mean well enough that if a bunch of music-y folks were over for dinner, I’d be happy to pull it out and play. In public.
2. Travel to another new country. Or a few more countries. With our kids. They are master travellers already. A good number of stamps in the old passports, and that’s not showing where they’ve been in this country. Our eldest’s leaning and inclination is cultural anthropology and comparative religions, never mind that she’s 8. I want to keep on feeding this, in her and in us. I hate to sound naaive or grandiose, but I think it may be the key to peace on earth.
3. Finish mothering “kids” and begin mothering pre-teens. I think my secret cache of weapons will include travelling (see above), reading and discussing books, cultivating joy, and counting on my loving, steady, creative, patient and reliable husband/co-parent. We are going to relish our kids at each and every stage. Relish.
4. Celebrate the publication of my next books. Plural.
And finally, I have to say that we learned a new game this week from our cousins. I mean a real game. None of this virtual Tag You’re It business. It’s called Look Up, Look Down and it’s all about eye contact. Is that cool, or what?
Eye contact. That’s something I plan on cultivating more of these next four years. How’s about you?
In celebration of the fact that SCHOOL’S OUT, I thought I’d pass on this very funny link.
Remember that old dream, the exam you didn’t study for? The class you never showed up to? The public speaking in your p.j.s?
My particular favorite was one in which the professor handed me back my blue book with an F inked on the front cover and when I looked inside, I realized I had filled the pages with drawings of little woodland animals. Not a word written. That one chilled my blood for a few days.
Well, this link is that — brought to life. I like to think of these students as the “Creatively Unprepared.”
What if Joy and Resignation and Creativity and Competition were people? What would they be like? Would we recognize them as friends or foes? Would we see in them ourselves? Would we like them? Want to be them? Invite them to dinner?
Well, check it out: The Book of Qualities, by J. Ruth Gendler. It’s written in prose, but since it’s all metaphor it qualifies as poetry, absolutely.
My friend Lynn and her husband read from the book in their wedding ceremony, which just so happened to be the exact same day my husband and I were married — though we two couples didn’t know each other then — and the day a sacred white buffalo named Miracle was born, so I’m inclined to think that nearly everything that happened that day was auspicious.
But this little gem could’ve been handed to me on an ordinary Wednesday with no context at all and it would’ve stuck. It is such a tangible way to talk about these qualities of mood and temperment that I’m thinking it’s a perfect book for tweeners. I would’ve loved to have had this to hang onto when I was too muddled up to articulate much of anything.
Below, my own little dabbling with some portions that speak to me. But get the book yourselves. You won’t be sorry…
Me on a bad day:
Panic
Panic has thick curly hair and large frightened eyes. She has worked on too many projects meeting other people’s deadlines… She wakes up in the middle of the night pulling her hair out… Panic drives recklessly… Panic is sure no one can help her…
Depression
Depression is the child of Lethargy and Despair. She was born tired. She has always had beautiful dreams. As she grew up, she stopped believing in them….
Ugliness
Ugliness is a thief screaming, “I have been denied, I have been denied, I have been denied…”
Me on a good day:
Pleasure
Pleasure is wild and sweet. She likes purple flowers. She loves the sun and the wind and the night sky…
Trust
Trust rarely buys round-trip tickets because she is never sure how long she will be gone… Trust is at home in the desert and the city, with dolphins and tigers, with outlaws, lovers and saints. She is the mother of Love…
Beauty is startling. Excitement wears orange socks. Devotion lights candles at dusk.
Contentment has learned how to find out what she needs to know.
And how about this — Mo Willems is credited as one of the writers of a dodgeball cartoon!
So what gives?
Is it the movie? (Please tell me it’s not just the movie…)
Is it nostalgia for the days when kids could really let it rip in gym class and on the playground? (Sharp, rickety merry-go-round, anyone? Unanchored slide?)
Is it symbolic for the emotional brutality of childhood?
Or is it the perfect physical epitome of the narrative conflict, such that any kid lit author worth a pound of salt tosses a game in for good measure?
For me it conjures up a gruesome memory of 9th grade — Paul S., diving deep to avoid getting clobbered by the ball, going headfirst into the ceramic drinking fountain (which, oddly, is called a bubbler in Wisconsin).
When he sat up, birds and stars spinning around his bleeding head, a corner of the bubbler lying jagged on the gym floor, he called out, “Medic!” in a wobbly voice.
I’d just moved to Wisconsin from a hippy little ski town in Colorado. I didn’t understand the word bubbler, I didn’t understand 9th grade, and I didn’t understand dodgeball.
