bearing blog

The importance of being a gung-ho newbie.

Last evening Mark and I hired a babysitter, bundled up, and walked to dinner.   We went to a new tapas restaurant about a mile away, a tiny little place that's proved very popular in our relatively-restaurant-starved neighborhood.   The tables were packed close together and we were seated almost shoulder-to-shoulder.

At first it was a little disconcerting to be able to overhear the people at the next table so well (especially since the four women six inches to our right were engaged in a vigorous, head-nodding discussion of one of their number's experience with artificial insemination), but I ordered another glass of sangria and eventually managed to ignore them, especially when the plates of food started to arrive.  After the table six inches to our left cleared out, the next thing I heard was a "Hello!"   The couple who had just arrived included someone I recognized well:  the instructor-owner of the preschool music class that I've been going to with one or another of my children for nine years.   And her husband, who teaches piano in the same studio space, but whom I'd never met.

Well, you can't exactly ignore something like that, so we wound up having a nice conversation about kids, and babysitters, and teenagers who are old enough to stay home and manage their own siblings for a couple of hours, and homeschooling, and South Minneapolis, and small businesses, and hiking trips, and the piquillos de atún.  Mark and I left before they did, and I reflected as we walked back on why I'd stuck with this particular music-and-movement class for so long.

I signed up for it in the first place because neither Mark nor I is the kind of person who spontaneously creates an environment rich in music. Mark can't noodle around on the piano (especially since we don't own one); I have a guitar but I don't think to pick it up and play it very much; neither of us are the sort who's always wandering around singing or humming.  

Now, I don't, actually, subscribe to the idea that extensive formal music training, beyond the basics, is a necessary part of every child's education.  I studied an instrument (entirely by choice) as a teenager; I had fun with it, and I acquired an appreciation for the amount of effort that goes into learning to play an instrument well.  To my mind, that kind of effort is best applied because someone wants to do it, not imposed as a requirement from outside.

But back when I was first starting out as a parent, I fervently believed that early music experiences were important for brain development, that if I could only give my children at least a little regular exposure I might be helping them if they ever chose to take on serious musical training in the future, and I might encourage them to have fun with music and rhythm.  Because I felt Mark and I were kind of deficient in the music-experience-generating department, I thought a weekly music class might fill the bill.  So when my firstborn was three and my secondborn was new, I signed us up.

It turned out that not only did the class provide what I hoped for musically, but the pedagogy was absolutely exactly in line with my new-parent, idealistic convictions of how one should teach small children. 

I remember those days.  I was on the "Continuum Concept" email list.  I was all about respecting children as human beings deserving of my full attention, but not idolizing them as the center of my universe; about living my own life and folding them into it.  I was all about giving children real tools to do real work, and modeling, rather than demanding, the behavior I wanted them to develop, and trusting that my little people were inherently social beings who naturally wanted to be like the adults around them.  I taught my eighteen-month-old to cut up vegetables safely with a real knife, the handle shortened  and the tip blunted especially for him, in Mark's workshop; that worked very well.  I gave him hammers and tacks and a little hand drill for making holes, and a child-sized shopping basket for when we went to the grocery store.  I used to take walks with that first little guy in parks, trying to get where we were going by walking ahead and discreetly peer back to see if he was catching up with me, because the books said that if parents only made it clear that we expected the children to stay with us, then they would.  (That one never worked, at least with my oldest.  I always had to give up and go fetch him.)  I bought discounted Montessori materials -- yes indeedy, I own a Pink Tower, though mine isn't pink -- and made some of my own.  I lamented the lack of a network of extended-family relationships among people who shared my value system, and set about trying to create one with some other like-minded families.

So when I settled into that first music class, I was thrilled to discover that the instructor -- the same woman we had dinner with last night -- talked to children as if they were people.  She spoke in an engaging voice, musically and with rhythm but never "sing-song."  She instructed the parents to avoid grasping the children's hands to demonstrate playing this shaker or that tambourine; the children were to be free to observe the adults having fun and making music.  She led the parents leading the children.  She clearly trusted that if the adults smiled and sang, moved with the music, echoed rhythms, clapped on cue, paused for beats of silence -- that the children would pick up on it and follow their parents' cues.  She didn't interrupt class with lengthy explanations, but incorporated instruction -- always aimed at giving the parents the tools to share music with their child -- into the singing and rhythm of the songs, so there were never any breaks in the music longer than a child's attention span.  Sometimes we would arrive to class to find technical notes -- definitions of musical terms, suggesting we listen for a particular instrument in a particular song -- on the chalkboard, but she never wasted class time on it.

Oh, and I should add that the music CDs are full of good music -- lots of folk music, a little blues, world music, spoken-word stuff.  It's not dumbed-down kid-music, it's real music chosen because it has wide human appeal.  Some of the singers are children, but they're children who sing on key.  I listen to it by choice in the car sometimes.  

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ANYWAY. 

I've stuck with this class for nine years because it's a sort of good habit.  The habit was born out of my young-mother, still-unjaded, trying-hard-to-do-everything-exactly-right zeal.  As the years have gone by, a lot of that has faded -- my energy is spread over more children, more education, more planning and organization to keep it all going smoothly.  It isn't that I reject the ideas I had when I was a first-time mother, or that I have tried them and found them impractical.  It's more that new things keep coming along and have to be incorporated, and the more time that goes by the more I see how those ideas must fit into a whole picture of a healthy life.  I also see that I don't have to work hard all the time to MAKE my life unfold according to the way I think it should.  I mostly have to live the life I have, according to my values.  If I remember those values, and don't give up on them, it all flows more naturally than I thought it would when I first started.

But sometimes in our zeal we MAKE ourselves create a habit that turns out to be sustaining.  I doubt I would have shelled out the cash for the music class (it isn't cheap) if I hadn't had this intense sense that I needed to fix a deficiency, and if I hadn't seen how well it clicked with other things I felt intensely at the time.  It's an intensity I don't really have anymore.  And yet, as we went there week after week (and as I wrote checks quarter after quarter) the music class melted into the background of our lives and became part of What We Do and Who We Are.  And it is one of the things that keeps me anchored in the way that --- deep down --- I still believe is the way I want to teach my young children, if I can.  It keeps me modeling what I want to see.

Another thing, of course, is that network of like-minded families I mentioned.  A decade later, with eleven children among us, we're all still working together to create an extended family for our kids.  If it weren't for early zeal, I'd never have done the work to make it happen.  Now that all that passionate intensity has faded into something a little tired and comfortable, easier -- now I can see the fruits.  It keeps me connected.  I can see what's really important slowly emerging, set in relief against the background that's worn away by the little abrasions of everyday life.

Augustine and attachment.

St. Augustine, in Book 1, Chapter 7, of The Confessions:

Who is there to remind me of the sin of my infancy (for sin there was:  no one is free from sin in your sight, not even an infant...); who can remind me of it?  Some ... tiny child now, in whom I might observe conduct I do not remember in myself?  

What then was my sin at that age?  Was it perhaps that I cried so greedily for those breasts?  Certainly if I behaved like that now, greedy... for food suitable to my age, I should provoke derision and be very properly rebuked.  

My behavior then was equally deserving of rebuke, but since I would not have been able to understand... neither custom nor common sense allowed any rebuke to be given.  

After all, we eradicate these habits and throw them off as we grow up.... so can we suppose that even in an infant such actions were good -- the actions of a child who

• begs tearfully for objects that would harm him if given, 
• gets into a tantrum when [persons] will not comply with his whims, 
• and tries to hurt many people... simply because they will not immediately... obey his commands, commands which would damage him if they were carried out?  

The only innocent feature in babies is the weakness of their frames; the minds of infants are far from innocent.

Yeah, I know.  It grates on me too.  But Augustine's writing about original sin, and that's not something I can reject out of hand.  Let's see what we can do about it.

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It grates because it sounds too hard on the normal, natural instincts of babies.  These are the instincts that drive maternal attachment and are their only means of communicating their needs to the adults that are charged with their care.  Those "greedy" cries are the same cries that stimulate a mother's milk, that activate compassion and an urge to protect the helpless child.  

You read something like that, and you kind of cringe, because someone is bound to take it too far and try to punish babies for crying.  (Though if they do, it's not Augustine's fault:   he approvingly describes parents and nurses who "charm away" and "cheerfully condone" babies' behavior, and says right there that "neither custom nor common sense" allows for a baby to be rebuked.)

Now that we know what we know about the biological basis of human attachment, can we really say that the "greediness" of babies is anything worthy of rebuke, or even that it is a consequence of original sin?

My edition of The Confessions (Ignatius Critical Editions, 2012) has a footnote here:

Critics of Augustine often point out how harsh he is toward babies... The point here, however, is not to condemn children for their seemingly selfish behavior when hungry or tired, but simply to point out that... we are born wholly "I-centered" with only our own interests in mind.  In a very mundane way, this now shows the noxious effects of the concupiscence Adam brought about when he turned himself and all his descendents away from God.  This is why we must learn to "speak" anew, to come to God with desires and intentions not turned in on self but on him.

Just like the parents and nurses Augustine describes, I'm used to treating infants' demands as necessary and natural communication.   So, if it's necessary and natural, how could it also be worthy of rebuke?  (Even if you add a modifier and make it "objectively" worthy of rebuke, the implication being that subjectively -- considering the infant's position -- it is not worthy of rebuke).

Consider this:  the adults who are charged with care of an infant, any infant -- its mother, father, siblings, other members of the household -- are themselves fallen creatures, self-centered, "I"-centered.  Perhaps we could consider the "wholly I-centered" nature of a newborn baby as a defense mechanism against the I-centeredness of adults.  If babies were not so relentlessly demanding, maybe more of them would be left unfed, unwarmed, untouched.  

And that makes it not so odd, then, to turn it around and say:  If adults were not themselves, by nature, "I"-centered, then babies might come programmed with an entirely different set of mechanisms to communicate their needs.  Maybe they wouldn't even need to communicate their needs because adults would provide for them before a need ever made itself known.

It's kind of like pain.  Pain is, we are told, a consequence of original sin.  Pain is objectively bad, but necessary in a world full of hazards; it communicates a bodily need.   So we can listen to it, and often we should immediately do its bidding.  We should be grateful for it, considering the circumstances in which we live.

• Move your hand away from that hot stove.  
• Stop walking and take the thorn from the sole of your foot.   
• Rest this limb until it feels better.

So it is with the "greed" of babies:   a necessary fault, one we should listen to and respond to immediately -- "cheerfully" even -- and be grateful for, considering the circumstances in which we live.

Once man and woman had fallen, maybe we could not have survived unless the most innocent -- those who have that feature, "the weakness of their frames" -- also shared the ability to clamor greedily from the very beginning.   Unless the greediness of the parents is somehow transmitted to the offspring, perhaps the offspring would not have had a chance in a world full of "I"-centered grownups who have the power to provide food and warmth, or to withhold it.

Parents who stay in touch with our babies know that the "greediness" of babies is something they need to have to make their way in the world, and so we respond to it.   We can appreciate the power they have of making their needs known, of drawing us outside of ourselves by clamoring from their own center.  We regard it, properly, as not a bug, but a feature.

A feature, that is, not of the original code, but instead of humanity's "plan B."  O felix culpa!  O happy fault!

At your service.

A video detailing something I've never heard of that made my jaw drop.  The Atlantic Monthly headlined their short piece on it, "How 4,000 Men Hand-Deliver 175,000 Lunches Around Mumbai in One Day:"

Dabbawalla from The Perennial Plate on Vimeo.

“Dabbawalla” comes from the term "tiffin dabba," referring to a tiered lunch box and “walla,” a carrier or vendor. As Saritha Rai explains in The New York Times, India’s dabbawalla network originated during the British colonial occupation after cities were flooded with new, regional workers as a way to bridge the distance [both literally and figuratively] between their work sites and their homes. Each morning, after the recipient has gone to work, family members who remain at home (mothers, wives, grandmothers, and sisters) prepare a freshly-cooked meal to be picked up by a dabbawalla, sorted and distributed at railway stations, and hand-delivered to their loved one at the office.

Today, Mumbai is home to approximately 4,000 dabbawallas who deliver tens of thousands of lunches via an intricate, 125-year-old coding system without fail. 

The NYT article is here.

 

Accepting apology.

I take my three-year-old to a birth-through-age-five, music-and-movement class that meets once a week in my neighborhood.  Our family's been doing the classes since my first was a toddler and my second a newborn, so -- nearly ten years!   

In those years we've seen many other families come and go.  A mother arrives with a toddler and a newborn; and a year or two later the older one disappears into the school system; and a year or two later the family is done with music class.  But we're still going.  I usually have one or two of the older ones with me, too; they stay in the anteroom and work on math or read books while I'm in the studio with the 3yo and the other children, singing and waving scarves.

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This quarter the class is fuller than usual -- due to a combination of babies being born during the course of the session, and a computer glitch that accidentally allowed too many families to sign up.  And it can get boisterous in there.   The instructor is very easygoing about the children getting up and moving around the room, as long as they're not running with claves, and I'm pretty used to that.  It is a music-and-movement class, after all.  

Today, however, in the middle of a song, a frustrated mother from across the room got up, walked over to me, and said:  "Can you please keep your son from running around the room?  All the other children are following him!"  (Including, I assume, her own two-year-old daughter.)

I was caught off guard because it's pretty usual for the children to be running around the room -- but I immediately saw three things:  (1) She was new, (2) there are more children than usual and so running around might actually be a problem in this particular class, (3) I was sitting right next to the instructor -- and I knew that I could trust the instructor to talk to us separately if there was a problem.  So I apologized to her, and then I grabbed my 3yo as he trotted by and pulled him into my lap for a Tickle of Redirection.

While I had him in my lap I whispered to him, "See that mommy over there?  She got worried because you were running around the room and her little girl wanted to do what you are doing.  It's okay to run, but can you help her forgive us?  Can you go apologize to her?"

I admit that part of me, feeling stung, wanted to show off my good-mothering skills.  As I've written before, the disciplinarian in me is pretty smug about having mastered the art of teaching kids to apologize.

"Okay, mama," he said, and a song or two later he danced over and said -- not actually to the correct mommy, but I think perhaps she heard him anyway -- "I'm sorry I was running, will you forgive me?"

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Part of me was a little indignant about this whole thing because it isn't, after all, against the rules for the small children to run and dance around the room in this class.  (Just as I was leaving the studio I caught sight of the instructor starting a conversation with the worrying mother, but I didn't stick around to eavesdrop.)  And I started to be indignant on behalf of my three-year-old.  Maybe I shouldn't have sent him to apologize.  Why should he feel ashamed or bad just because she didn't like the way he was playing?

And then I realized that he did not give any sign whatsoever of having felt ashamed or bad.  He had danced right over there, eagerly, and recited the words he has learned.

Apologies in our household are so common, so routine, and so ritualized that for most of us they don't have any connotation of humiliation.*  

I don't punish kids by making them apologize.  

I tell them that we do it to help the other person forgive them, and it doesn't matter whose fault something was or whether the other person was wrong; the point is to smooth the way to forgiveness, something we always should desire from anyone who is unhappy with our behavior -- justified or not.

It was a nice reminder, seeing my three-year-old cheerfully dancing around the room afterwards, free, and I felt my own indignation at "having been made to apologize" evaporating as I contemplated him.

I think there'd be a lot fewer "fake apologies" and "apology-non-apologies" in the world if we all understood that there's nothing inherently humiliating or false about apologies -- if we understood that the point of apology is nothing more than a desire for forgiveness -- for the sake of someone else who needs to forgive -- put into words and actions.  It's not necessarily or only a way of saying "I was wrong and I need your forgiveness."  It can also be a way of saying "You need to forgive me, and I want what's good for you."

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*I do have one child, age nine,  who finds it hard to summon the words "I'm sorry," even with a script.  He turns a little red and smiles nervously.  I think it's more performance anxiety than anything.  I find I need to take a little more care with him, so that he doesn't interpret the act of apologizing as a humiliating punishment -- but I still think that the practice is good for him, and that the repetition will make it easier eventually.

If you are looking for spiritual reading during Lent...

...may I suggest you try Introduction to the Devout Life by St. Francis de Sales?

I blogged about it at great length a couple of years ago, and I still think it is wonderful -- astonishingly modern, given when it was written. I particularly recommend the "Everyman's Library" edition that is translated by Father Michael Day. You should look for a translation with a contemporary and conversational tone, because the advice is contemporary and conversational -- avoid a translation that sounds stilted and archaic. If you cannot wait, you can find it online, but believe me, it is worth it to get a contemporary and friendly-sounding translation. St. Francis really deserves it -- he needs to sound as contemporary to us as he would have sounded to the people he spoke with in person.

I recommend, too, either reading the whole thing swiftly (without following any of the advice) to get an overview of the "program" before turning back to digest it more slowly; or else, following the chapters somewhat out of order. There is a clear structure to the book, but a sort of rearrangement of the chapters rings better to the modern ear that is used to self-help books.

Here's my suggestion:

• First, see my post on the overall structure of the book.
• Then, if you like, bookmark my chapter by chapter blog series on it.
• Read part 1, chapters 1 through 3. (One short chapter a day is fine if you want to spread it out.)
• You can skip part 1, chapter 4, unless you are considering getting a spiritual director.
• Read part 1, chapters 5-7. These are more introductory remarks.
• Stop before going on to part 1, chapter 8. Beginning there, you will prepare for a novena of sorts -- nine days, ten meditations. Before reading and especially before trying to follow the advice, I recommend turning ahead to part 2 and going carefully through chapters 1 through 8 in that chapter, taking notes and marking pages. Part 2, chapters 1-8, is a primer on how to pray and meditate, and it will be extremely useful to have read it before beginning the program of prayer that is described in the rest of part 1.
• Now you're going to embark on what I call "St. Francis's Three-Step Program For Getting Rid of Mortal Sin And Attachment To It."
• Step one is to attain perfect contrition. Do this by reading part 1, chapter 8, and then use the ten meditations that follow as a nine-day novena: one meditation per day on the first eight days, and then on the ninth day do the ninth and tenth meditations. While you are doing this, refer to the chapters you have already from part 2 (that is, chapters 1-8 of part 2) if you need to be reminded of St. Francis's method of prayer and meditation.
• Step two is to prepare for, and make, a good confession: a general confession, if possible. (You might want to make an appointment if you think it will be a quite thorough general confession). Prepare for the confession a couple of days ahead with these readings: Part 1, chapter 19; then part 2, chapter 19; then part 1, chapters 20 and 21. (Again, if you are making a thorough general confession, it may be wise to write out the results of your examination of conscience so you can refer to it in the confessional.). Bookmark part 2, chapter 19 for reference in future confessions. Write out a solemn resolution as described in part 1, chapter 20, and bring the resolution with you into the confessional. Make a good confession, accusing yourself directly, simply, and specifically as directed in part 1, chapter 19, and part 2, chapter 19.
• Step three: While still in the confessional, making your Act of Contrition -- in the part where you resolve to amend your life -- refer specifically to that solemn resolution that you wrote out and brought with you. Then, as directed in part 1, chapter 21, receive absolution and then go immediately to an appropriate place of prayer in the church. There, sign and date the resolution, then carry out the penance prescribed for you by the priest in the confessional.
• Finish reading part 1.
• Read the rest of part 2, one bit at a time, and trying to apply his advice in one chapter before moving on to the next: baby steps. These chapters are about everyday prayer and reception of the sacraments. After reading his advice about morning prayer in chapter 10, for example, you might compose a short morning prayer after his method (or choose a traditional formula); write it out; keep it by your bedside; and attempt to pray it for at least a few days before moving on to try the advice about evening prayer in chapter 11. When you get to the chapters about Communion, you might bookmark them and return to them regularly prior to receiving Communion for a while.
• Now you are going to choose just one or two virtues to work on developing in yourself. To discern which virtue you need to work on, first carefully reread part 1, chapters 22-24; then Part 3, chapters 1 and 2.
• Then, quickly and without trying to follow any of the advice in the chapters, read the remaining chapters in part 3 to get an overview of possible virtues that you could choose. I recommend reading the chapters in this order:
• First, a quick reread of chapters 1 and 2, along with 37, 23, and 24. All these deal with how to discern which virtues to focus on, and how to practice the virtues prudently, not to excess.
• Then, the chapters on practicing virtue in everyday life, in this order, taking it in chunks. Again, you are trying to discern which virtue you need to focus on, so don't follow the advice yet, just take it in and consider it. While reading Chapter 3 consider whether you need patience most. While reading chapters 4-7, consider whether you need to strengthen virtue when others are finding fault with you. While reading chapters 8-9, consider whether you need to develop these virtues that help you when faced with faults and frailties in yourself and others. Read chapters 10, 11, and -- note this -- 35, then consider whether you need to develop these virtues concerned with the performance of your duties. Skip to chapters 14-16 and consider whether you need to develop virtues that help you in times of material riches or material poverty. Read chapters 17-22 and consider the role of virtue in your friendships. Return to chapters 12 and 13, then read chapters 38-41, and consider the role of virtues in sexual matters. Finally, read the following chapters that give advice in dealings with society: chapter 25 on dressing attractively, chapters 26-30 on speaking honestly and respectfully, chapters 31-34 on having fun and recreation, and chapter 36 on fairness and reasonableness.
• Choose a virtue, return to the relevant chapter or chapters from part 3, and follow the advice relevant to that virtue alone while continuing to practice the skills taught in part 2 about prayer, meditation, and the sacraments. Do this for as long as it seems to be helping you to develop the virtue and grow in devotion. Give it a little bit of time if you seem to hit a plateau. But when you hit a plateau that seems permanent move on to part 4.
• Part 4 is the "troubleshooting guide" to the devout life. Read it through once quickly, without following any advice, before deciding how to proceed. It might be that you will find one or two chapters somewhere in it that specifically address a problem that you are specifically having, and you can go straight to them and begin following the instructions therein. Or you might decide to go back to the beginning of part 4 and slowly advance through it chapter by chapter, applying the advice in each chapter before moving on to the next, and continuing to try to follow the advice in the chosen chapters of part 3 (not ALL of part 3! Just the ones focused on your specifically chosen virtue!) and the general advice about prayer, meditation, and the sacraments from the chapters of part 2.

I don't include Part 5 in my bulleted list above, because all of Part 5 is an "annual review." You won't need to read it until approximately one year after the date of your signed resolution, or any time you want a "refresher" in the devout life. Or, if you have already gone through the method of the Introduction to the Devout Life, part 5 would make a good study for a spiritual retreat -- or for your Lenten renewal.

 

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This post is so I won't forget.

I am coming off an almost golden weekend, chiefly because I got enough sleep.  

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But perhaps the causality is not quite so simple.  Here's another data point:  Two weekends ago I also got plenty of sleep.  The last waking act I committed was, on Friday afternoon, to make a pot of chicken soup*, and then -- as soon as Mark got home -- I crawled into bed with a box of tissues and a bag of cough drops and stayed there until, oh, three or four o'clock on Sunday.  I did emerge, wrapped in a blanket, to watch Blue's Clues with the 2-year-old while everyone else went to Mass.

It was great.  I love it when I'm just sick enough to stay in bed and not be bothered, and there's actually someone else around to take care of everyone else and make it possible.  There's something wonderfully decadent about feeling just bad enough to justify spending the day in bed, and it's truly a luxury to be able to afford it -- because of a background of good health and another adult in the family who can take over for a couple of days.

I thought a lot about Jen Fulwiler during those hours, counting my blessings and offering them up.  I'd have offered my sufferings, what with being sick and all, but as you can see I was enjoying it far too much to make that possible.

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Again, that was two weekends ago.   I wrote on Facebook that my second superpower is, apparently, the ability to get sick on Friday afternoon and be up and about by Monday morning.**   But this past weekend I still felt kind of draggy, draggy enough that I rolled over and went back to sleep when my Saturday morning alarm went off.  

That's a big deal.  Normally I flee the house on Saturday mornings, desperate for a few hours to myself.  The thought of an omelette and a bottomless cup of coffee and a Wi-fi connection in a busy Lyndale Avenue café that opens at 6:30 a.m. is plenty motivation for me to roll out of bed and get started on a string of solitary errands.  Not this weekend.  I didn't wake up until 8:30 when children were jumping on me. 

So I got up, and Mark made coffee, and I made waffles and topped them with my stealthily-purchased, carefully-hdden half-pint of fresh blueberries.  As I munched on my waffles, I pondered the lovely feeling of having slept until late in the morning.  Over the waffles I made a deal with Mark that we would go to Mass at five o'clock and then we would sleep in on Sunday, which meant that I had to run my errands (and go to the gym, and have lunch) in a space of about four hours.  

He agreed, and offered to do the quarterly big-box discount-store dry-goods shopping while I was gone.  Now that's a good husband.

I ran some errands (library, office supply store), went to the gym and ran three miles, and then took myself out for a Vietnamese iced coffee and a killer bowl of bún bò Huế  for a late lunch at Quang.  It had to be done.  

(Man, if I ever move away from this town, one thing I'm going to miss are the Vietnamese restaurants.  Never lived in a town that had so many good ones, unless you count Lyon -- and back then I was distracted by other food.  Vietnamese restaurants are so well-integrated here that it's not terribly unusual to see bánh mì sandwiches on lunch menus among the reubens and bacon cheeseburgers.)

I made it back home in time to help put the paper towels and dish soap and toothbrush family-packs away, and then we went to Mass in time to send those who wanted to go into Confession first, and then it was back home for a late supper of falafel-from-a-box and coleslaw.  Mark and I split a big Belgian-style ale*** and stayed up late.  

And that ---  letting the dinner dishes sit and the children run away to play video games while the two of us kill a bottle together --- is about as good as domestic bliss gets around here.

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Sunday was for sleeping in.  I sent a child to fetch bacon from the basement freezer, and we made enough so that everyone could have LOTS (three whole strips!), plus I baked a batch of cinnamon drop biscuits -- read, ordinary drop biscuits with extra sugar and cinnamon added, and more sprinkled on top, so that no one felt the need to drown them in honey.  I don't think we had breakfast till 10:15, which is CRAZY.  

 I sat around in my pajamas and read stories to kids.  Mark wandered around in a bathrobe with a cup of coffee and occasionally moved pieces around on the chessboard, which was spread out among the breakfast dishes.  After a while we wandered downstairs (I dragged a blanket with me to wrap myself in) and sat amongst the junk in our kid-cave, discussing plans for it.

See, we have a basement that's a sort of half-hearted kid-cave.  We've already hit the maximum finished square footage we are allowed by the city to have in our house, so we can't "finish the basement" (well, we could, but we'd be breaking the law).  There's some drywall up to separate the space into a pantry, a shop, and a kid-cave, and there's a big carpet scrap on the floor, and a pile of mattresses under a dozen or so climbing holds that Mark bolted to the wall, and a 10-year-old TV/DVD combo (with a cathode ray tube in it!)  and a bunch of shelves that are supposed to store toys but generally stand empty.

Our new project is to transform the basement into a better kid cave -- and here's the key -- without actually "finishing" it. In the legal sense.

So we made some plans -- drew them in pencil on the wall, because you can do that when your basement is unfinished -- for more climbing holds and a real climbing-wall mat and such -- and then we went upstairs and bought a flat-screen TV with a tilting wall mount, so we can get rid of the old TV and the shelves right away.  At least as soon as it gets here.

+ + +

Somewhere in there we ate cereal and crackers and canned kippers for lunch.  And then I did my school planning while everyone else cleaned up the kitchen.  And then we went out for cheeseburgers and fries so we wouldn't have to clean the kitchen again. and I ATE A WHOLE PLATTER OF CHEESEBURGER AND FRIES BECAUSE I DO THAT SOMETIMES AND IT WAS GOOD.  It was Surly Sunday at the cheeseburger place (think Five-Guys style, only locally owned and with local beer) and so I split a Furious with Mark and leaned back and felt the mild buzz and felt full of cheeseburger and beer and listened to the kids chattering about Mario Kart and DAMMIT I was happy.

And then we came back to my clean house and played board games with the kids until bedtime.

And I swear it does not get better than this, forever and ever amen.

 

 

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Footnotes:

*recipe here, except I didn't have any potatoes and used a can of hominy instead, and it turned out great

**My first superpower is the ability to decide, just in the nick of time, that I really need to check on the kids.  Once I found my two-year-old, and H.'s, having just dumped a 5-lb sack of sugar on the driveway, on their hands and knees just about to start licking it up.  

***technically, brewed by Samuel Adams, but it tasted fine with falafel-from-a-box

 

 

At the movies.

We took the kids to see a matinee of Wreck-It Ralph yesterday.  

(Fun movie -- Mark and I liked it a lot -- and the short animated film that precedes it, "Paperman," is beautifully animated: classic Disney.)

The not-quite-three-year-old is not quite sure what he thinks about "big movies."  He sits on my lap, hides his face sometimes, studies the screen and doesn't smile or laugh, nurses a lot.

This time he watched most of the movie.  He started out squeezed between Mark and me (the theater armrests flip up and out of the way -- a benefit to bigger-these-days moviegoers, I guess, but I bet the teenagers appreciate it too).    Not too far into the film he climbed up on my lap and leaned back into me, watching the movie in the studious sort of way he does it, one little leg hanging down on either side.  I wrapped my arms around him and he took hold of the fingers of my hands in front and held them tightly.  I buried my nose in his hair from time to time in the darkness and inhaled the toddler fragrance:  fruit-scented shampoo, a faint whiff of Christmas chocolate.

Movie theaters give me a strange feeling of nostalgia.  It might simply be because I haven't gone often since we had children, which wasn't long after we were married and so being in one takes me back pretty far.   I remember being little, scared by the Blueberry Girl scene inWilly Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (the one with Gene Wilder) and having to be taken, sobbing, from the theater.  I remember going to see Dirty Dancing with my best friend in seventh grade, one of the first times I was allowed to go to a movie without adults, and the two of us gushing about it being the best movie ever afterwards. My most intense memory is of being deeply frightened and thrilled by Terminator 2 in the summer of 1991 -- in a dark theater, I can easily conjure up the sick feeling of watching that nuclear-bomb scene.  I remember going with Mark in 1997 to see the re-release of Episode IV of Star Wars in a brand new theater in Columbus with cushy captains' chairs -- I think it was actually on its opening night -- and being secretly charmed by the slightly younger geek behind me, who was positively bouncing in his chair with slavering excitement.  

My favorite memory:  I had the great good fortune to view Dr. Strangelove:  or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb -- for the first time -- in a packed movie theater on the Ohio State campus, as part of a Kubrick retrospective.  Comedy is funnier in a theater, you know -- and the evening I spent experiencing that gem of a satire in the company of a hundred other young adults, most of whom had never seen the movie before, was an experience I would not trade away for a hundred big-box matinees.

Yesterday, after the trailers finished and the lights dimmed, the Disney intro started ("when you wish upon a star....") with its swooping vista of the castle and fireworks, and I was taken back again.  It reminded me, briefly, of my late mom, who was one of the world's great appreciators of all movies, and who probably would have enjoyed the modern crop of high-standards animations put out by Disney, Pixar, and Dreamworks.

I hope I manage to squirrel away the memory of the warm, surprisingly heavy weight of my littlest guy leaning back in my lap, of his wide eyes and of his fingers wrapped around mine.  It won't be too long before he demands his own seat, first (probably) between his dad and me, and later (probably) with those big brothers at the other end of the row.

Serial numbers.

This is a moving piece about young people, the descendants of Holocaust survivors, having themselves tattooed with their grandparents' concentration camp numbers.

When Eli Sagir showed her grandfather, Yosef Diamant, the new tattoo on her left forearm, he bent his head to kiss it.

Mr. Diamant had the same tattoo, the number 157622, permanently inked on his own arm by the Nazis at Auschwitz. Nearly 70 years later, Ms. Sagir got hers at a hip tattoo parlor downtown after a high school trip to Poland. The next week, her mother and brother also had the six digits inscribed onto their forearms. This month, her uncle followed suit.

“All my generation knows nothing about the Holocaust,” said Ms. Sagir, 21, who has had the tattoo for four years. “You talk with people and they think it’s like the Exodus from Egypt, ancient history. I decided to do it to remind my generation: I want to tell them my grandfather’s story and the Holocaust story.”

This may sound like a strange association, but the first thing I thought on reading this was: it's like they're retweeting the tattoos, into the future.

 

Joy!

A short piece of news for those who are following along:

After an unhappy few weeks at a local charter school, and a new insight about the purpose of going through all of that, my dear friend's dear teenage daughter is back co-schooling with us again.  :-)

Entertaining Wikipedia article (unless you're afraid to fly).

Often, when our family takes a road trip, I bring along something to read aloud to Mark -- usually a nonfiction book. I like books that spur conversation between us, particularly pop-science books that we can argue about and analyze. This is fun even when the book is really bad. On the way down from Minneapolis to Ohio last week, we read The Psychopath Test, which turned out to be perfect road-trip reading -- entertaining, not entirely convincing (meaning that we had a chance to argue about it) and also, in general, food for thought.

I didn't have a book for the way back up, so I made do by following trails of links in Wikipedia to articles about things we didn't know. We started from an article about the Mars robot that landed earlier, and from there to previous Mars lander missions, including the one that famously failed because somebody forgot to convert newtons to pounds-force -- a mistake roundly mocked by everyone EXCEPT former engineering students because deep down, we all know THERE BUT FOR THE GRACE OF GOD GO I. If my life had been only a little bit different, I too might have broken NASA.

Anyway, from there we went to a list of disasters caused by metrication errors, and that led us to what must be (since I love engineering failure stories) the most entertaining Wikipedia article I have ever read in my life: the story of the "Gimli Glider."

It is only entertaining if you know how the story ends, so let me give you the spoiler first. EVERYBODY SURVIVED, NO MAJOR INJURIES. There you go. Now the teaser: this is the story of an airliner that ran out of gas at 41,000 feet because Canadians had just started converting to the metric system. Now you can read and enjoy.

I read this aloud to Mark, and we agreed that it could never have been made into a true-life disaster movie because no one would believe the chain of events. The aircraft was nearly uncontrollable -- but by a remarkable coincidence, the captain was an experienced glider pilot. The first officer proposed landing at the nearest runway, which happened to be at a nearby closed air force base -- which he knew well because he had once served there as a Canadian air force pilot. But he didn't know that the air force base had been converted to a race track complex. Or that there was a race going on (think NASCAR, but Canadian) and the runway area was full of cars and campers. Also that there were cars racing on the runway.

Anyway, if you thought the "Sully in the river" story was gripping, I think you should try this one.