parenting

– Lice removal machine

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Jimmy found some archival videos from an earlier time in our children’s lives when lice seemed to be visiting in regular waves. I hosted them on my head, too, more than once. I itched, and the girls diagnosed me. Here’s one of those lost moments:

Incidentally, the video captures a scene in “Little Creatures,” an essay I wrote about head lice, which is really about love. Last week I got word from PMS poemmemoirstory that they will publish it in the upcoming issue. Hooray.

Dear reader, did you land here looking for lice advice? Top searches that get visitors to this blog have something to do with lice, lice treatments, and lice removal, because I’ve written about this subject before. To answer the questions implied in these searches, Continue reading →

– One way to pass time

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This is what Grace said, in sequential increments, after I gently asked her to stop reading over my shoulder:

I am just going to lie down on the couch…

and use my mind…

to keep busy…

and make objects move…

and race across the room…

and watch them.

And so I watched eight-year-old Grace, and that indeed is what she seemed to be doing. As she lay on the couch, her head swiveled as though tracking something, and her eyebrows occasionally tented in surprise. Her lips moved, ghost talking.

– All facts

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I am a slow eater. Or, perhaps I live with fast ones.

At dinner, I said to the kids, “Slow down, slow down.”

I added, “I just read that people who eat fast are two times more likely to be overweight than people who don’t.”

Lydia: “You read that? Where?”

Jane: “Yes. In my Diabetes Forecast.”

Lydia: “So, it’s a fact.”

Jane: “Yes, and don’t you like facts?”

Lydia: “I love facts. There should be a magazine called All Facts. People would love it.”

Jane: [thinking…] “I agree.”

Lydia: “Like almanacs. Have you ever read the Almanac? That’s all facts.”

She said this with a kind of relish, my fact-lover.

And I’m with her.

– Eye of the family storm

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In the fall of 2004, I participated in a faculty development workshop at Simmons College, where I then worked and taught, on the teaching of writing. There were about 15 of us, and it was led by Lowry Pei and it was great. We got together weekly, we talked about students (in general, not gossipy), we puzzled over how to teach academic writing, and we did some writing, too. Some of it was formal and academic; some of it was free.

I’ve been digging in my archives from that workshop, looking for material. Here’s an excerpt from a 30-minute freewrite I did at 7:30am on a Sunday in November, 2004.  Eli was 12; Lydia 8; and Grace 4.  As I wrote, I tried to let family interruptions become part of the writing, and so I documented them along with my train of thought. Eventually, the interruptions became the train.

Freewrite #6:

I often wait for the perfect conditions within which to write (quiet, long stretch of time, well rested) and those perfect conditions present themselves to me, or I’m able to make them happen not –

–interruption.  Lydia is doing some algebra problems, for fun, that I created for her.  She doesn’t get “2x = 24” – that “x” is unknown and that multiplication is implied.  She thought that “x” meant “double the number” and she came up with 4.  I explain.  She says, “so two times twelve?”  That’s right, because value for x in this instance is 12.

And I only get perfect conditions about two hours per week.  That’s not a lot of time in which to do much.  So, doing things on the fly has to work for me.  I’m attracted to the short form for this reason, or that’s what I want to believe.  Continue reading →

– Day one: salute

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Walnut Hill Cemetery, January 2008.

Walnut Hill Cemetery, January 2008.

These flags, marking the plain graves of veterans in our local cemetery, seem to me to be like the first bulbs of spring, in a way, pushing through as winter hangs on. They remind us to persevere, and look ahead.

I know, I know, my metaphor does not work perfectly, and yet no metaphor does. Still, today I feel the pricklings of hope, as well as the determination of a New England gardener, to roll up my sleeves and make what I can of a new season. What we sow, we sow on old, ancient, and even dead ground, but, still, what grows there can be glorious.

Last night at dinner, the five of us, who watched the Inauguration in five separate locations, talked first about our reactions to the ceremony itself.  And then the talk moved, remarkably, to what we should work on, from the long list of pressing national tasks that clamor for doing.

That Obama’s ethos of work and service reached Jimmy and me, two adults with liberal and even leftist leanings, is no surprise. However, that his message has reached three children, too, is a sign of its power and his tenacity.

I got my shovel out. Gloves are on. Feeling strong. Ready.

– Good use of time?

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Without the energy to start a new knitting or sewing project, much less decide on one, I experimented on knitting the same thing — a small leaf — in different materials: yarn, wire, plastic bag shreds, and dried grass.  The straight-up yarn leaf in marled red came out pretty nice, and it’s in the banner photo above.

With me, Grace sat and clicked her needles, too.  She has a few projects going on, all in yarn.  (She loves beginnings. Me? I like finishing.) She admired my yarn leaf and even the one done up in green plastic, from loops I had cut from a grocery bag.

About my attempt to harvest, tie together, and knit the dried ornamental grass that grows alongside our driveway, she said, “Now that’s a waste of time.”

“I don’t think so,” I replied.

knitting-grass

“Why are you doing it? It doesn’t even look good!” Grace smiled; I know she loves me.

“It’s an experiment. Somethin’ to do. And I’ll learn something.”

Grace shrugged.

I learned that grass is difficult to tie together securely, although not difficult to knit, albeit with care. Furthermore, odd textiles do not always make for odd beauty — sometimes the result is just a wicked mess.

leafy-leaf

I also was reminded that the mind makes interesting associative leaps while the hands are busy. The needles and my fingers seems like a convergence of beaks; I was a bird among birds, building a nest. For eggs. For baby birds.

Or for baby Moses, in his rush basket on the Nile River, with his sister Miriam watching him.

Or baby Barbie, in his knitted leaf nest on the green chair, with Jane photographing him.

moses

– Hidden badness

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Yesterday I made a turkey tortilla soup for lunch. It was to be the vehicle for a delicious, surprising chili accessory that I ate recently at my friend Brandi’s home: a dollop of sour cream, into which was mixed lime zest and juice. It was just the thing that turned her good chili into one of those meals that makes you feel loved and delighted.

The limed sour cream was just as delicious at my house.  I did wonder out loud to my fellow diners, however, if the combination constituted what my brother Brian recently called a hidden badness: a food that contains ingredients that you can’t see or identify. (An example of hidden badness, apparently, is fruited yogurt. And American chop suey.)

Lydia, at the lunch table, said, “Yeah, that’s a hidden badness.” She avoided the sour cream with lime.

Eli, the food adventurer, disagreed.  “I would call this, and other things like this, the hidden goodness.” He dropped more sour cream into his soup and ate the whole bowl.

And so did Jimmy.  And so did I.

Grace, at a friend’s house, escaped the moment.

– Lunch love notes

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I made the school lunches today.  The food was so-so (sandwich, Cheez-Its®, apple), but I also added a treat: little notes.

lunch-note

My mother occasionally packed one of these in my sack lunch when I was in elementary school. Finding the note, which I kept to myself, made the afternoon at school glow.

– Sunken treasure?

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Where was the scrap of paper on which I had written down the date and time for a long overdue haircut? I remembered inserting that scrap between some others I’ve accumulated in my school bag.

I couldn’t find it.  I took my wallet, notebook, pencil case, and glucose monitor kit out of my bag, and I peered into the morass.  I stirred the papers and other items resting on the bottom. The scrap I had in mind did not float up.

I dumped out the bag onto the floor in the hall. Although I didn’t find what I was looking for, I did find all this: the evidence of an autumn that has flown by.

the things she carried, 12.9.2008

the things she carried, 12.9.2008

Yes, I did style the pile a bit to make the contents distinctly visible and composed.

Here’s the list.  Make of it what you will.

  • notes for a handout on presentations for 2.009, a class
  • grocery store receipt, dated 11.19.08, amount due $149.36
  • hair clip (what Emily calls a “chip clip” for hair)
  • wrinkled, yet clean, tissue
  • dollar
  • coins
  • $10 off coupon to DSW, where I’ve gone twice to search for perfect black boots and failed
  • feedback from Grace’s fall parent/teacher conference, dated 11.12.08 (favorite phrase in it: “pours an abundance of energy”)
  • letter to me on Joslin Clinic stationery
  • receipt from ATM at MIT, dated 10.07.08, in amount of $50
  • green Sharpie
  • white-coated paperclip
  • bandaid (I usually carry enough to share.)
  • Neutrogena chapstick (“The best,” say I.)
  • mustard packet from the snack/sandwich bar at school (an extra from the occasional ham & Swiss sandwich I buy there)
  • scraps of paper, cut into approximate 4 x 6″ squares, on which I first storyboarded a conference presentation I made on 11.22.08
  • agenda of last week’s staff meeting for 2.009

Not junk, not junk at all. Really, artifacts.

And now I’m going to start something from this.  Let’s call it the School Bag Meme.  I tag my blogging and college teaching friends Alex, Dr. Poppy, James, Jan, and Rosemary.  What’s in yours, at this very moment? And how or why did it get there?

– Big books

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It’s a few minutes before the girls have to leave for school, and Grace is gathering her accoutrement: ponytail holder, socks, a tattered bag of yarn.  She also plunks down a pile of books.  I wonder how she’ll get all this into her pouch and up the hill to school.

big. books.

big. books.

I ask, “Why so many books? Is it library day?”

Without pausing (as though she has been waiting for this question), she tunefully replies, “Nope. I like big books and I cannot lie.”

Which seems to me a much better use of that song than the song itself.

—-

P.S. Dear Mom and Dad, you might not want to click through to the song video, in the line above. (Or now you might, because I’ve activated your curiosity.) The things your grandchildren are exposed to, on the tv and radio? Well, more than I was at their ages. Yes, times have changed.