peevish mama

A  couple weeks ago when we chatted about minutiae and what we remember, I said I haven’t figured out any rhyme or reason for what sticks. Days later as I finished up our book club selection, July, July by Tim O’Brien, I came across the following passage, a post-coital tête-à-tête between Paulette and Billy:

“They agreed that a human life mostly erased itself at the instant that it was lived. They agreed, too, that out of their combined time on earth, which amounted to more than a century, only a scant few hours survived in memory. ‘It’s what we decide that sticks,’ Paulette said. ‘When we say yes, when we say no. Those over-the-cliff choices we make . . .  That’s what makes a life a life, because you lose everything else – peeing, soap operas, scabs, vacations, almost every phone conversation you ever had. Huge chunks of time. Like you never used your own life.’” p. 292

Fancy that! After I had just chewed on this very thing, I stumble upon this passage. And it was after our actual book club meeting because I wasn’t quite finished when we met. Books are amazing that way. I feel like when we read, we do so through our own personal filter, so we each experience a book in an organic and completely unique way. Maybe the beginning of the book planted the seeds for this passage, surely it did, which in the deep wrinkles of my unconscious got me thinking about memory, which led to my post. Any way you look at it, the act of reading fiction is a dance between art and life and you never quite know how it’s going to turn out – the book or your life. It’s as if a book has the potential to unfurl in a completely different way depending on whose hands crack the spine.

Having said that, I’m not sure I agree with what O’Brien proposes here. I think we do remember the choices we make, but just as often we remember the exact sound of the school bell, the feel of the mesh cots for napping in kindergarten, the withering sensation when an older boy walked in on you pretending to be a ballerina with a tutu pulled up over your corduroys. There are things that make an impression precisely because you don’t get to pick them.

I am, however, flattened by O’Brien’s hubris in putting actual temporal parameters on how much we remember. To say that mere hours survive out of more than a hundred years of lived lives is staggering. Almost cruel. I can’t say I disagree, but I can’t say I like it.

post script: if you’ve never read Tim O’Brien, do, but don’t read July, July. The Things They Carried is much better. More Vietnam, less mopey baby boomers.

Last night as I shampooed Devil Baby’s hair, my thoughts kept straying to my weekend away with the book club ladies. Mere hours before, I had been sitting in one of the various roving sloppy circles of the weekend (in front of the windows with the view of the lake, in front of the fire place, around the wooden farm table, on two benches in the sun at the tip of Stout’s Island) surrounded by a near constant flow of words and laughter, maybe a few tears and quiet moments. Devil Baby didn’t want me to wash her hair and as she whined and resisted, I thought about the women who let me say what I needed to say, without judgment, with nods and murmurs of understanding, with stories of their own. I felt physically exhausted (more on that in a second), but mentally alert – almost limber. The way you’d feel after one of those rare classes in college where you felt like you cracked through to some greater truths, some deeper understanding of whatever topic you were discussing.

I’ve said it before, but these book club ladies are super analytical. They are processors and thinkers. They’re also highly verbal people. So you sit in enough circles with them and you’re going to hear really nuanced and insightful explanations or theories about the stuff that’s on their minds. They are also lyrical and romantic and curious. Lady Shutterbug has this completely endearing habit of saying “O.K., I’ve got a question for you guys . . .” and throwing out some juicy dilemma or a giant octopus of a topic. The word soulful came up a few times over the weekend – it’s what we look for in a yoga teacher, in a book, in a song, in a friend. But to be soulful, I think you must be honest. And to be honest, you must be brave. And the ladies are brave. (Not that you’d know it, judging by our mini frights over the course of the weekend: country folk on snowmobiles with night vision goggles, cat burglars, cracking ice, grandpa poltergeists). I think my take-away from the weekend, the reason I feel so clear in my head (despite all the wine, etcetera) is that I got to speak and hear the truth for hours and hours and hours. A mother’s truth. A wife’s truth. A woman’s truth. 

I wasn’t privvy to every single conversation, but as we meandered through the thicket of our lives right now – motherhood, sex, food, balance, friendship, botox (just talking, just talking), work, non-work, house work, clothes, husbands, art, faith, bras, meditation, moods, yoga, books – I felt like there was so much disclosure, so much sharing, but equally as much listening and mental note taking. We are not old, but we are not young. As such, I think we’re aware that we’re learning a few things along the way. The tricks, tips, and shortcuts. The surefire cures, the hit recipes, the best this or that, the worse this or that. I’m a huge fan of a “hot tip” and I feel like I was scurrying around, gathering the ladies’ hot tips like falling leaves. On the topic of food alone, I can’t wait to make Lady Pretty Twigs’ green goddess dressing, Lady Doctah K’s oven ribs and mushroom barley soup, Lady Tabouli’s kugel, Lady Shutterbug’s eggbake, Lady Homeslice’s chocolate mousse cake, and Lady Peace’s salad with stir fried veggies. And Lady Doctah Poodle, her fruit was fab, but what I really can’t stop thinking about is something she said right before I left: that perhaps it’s not a question of being a good mother or a bad mother, but of being an authentic mother. This is a really beautiful way to look at this job we have now and will have for the rest of our lives. It allows for imperfections and yet the standard is lofty, one worth calling to mind again and again, like a mantra.

But the weekend wasn’t all talk. There might have been a little drinking. There might have been a little dancing. There might have been a little singing. And there might have been some shrieking and laughing. And some of that might have happened indoors. But it all might have happened out on the white expanse of the frozen lake under a full moon, too. I must say, the ladies went a little crazy. A little really crazy. They cut loose. Soooooper loose. They even indulged me and my ridiculous notions and took turns with my cushy headphones and did a little tiny dancing. OH, TINY DANCING, HOW I LOVE AND ADORE YOU! We gave those country folk in their icehouses an eyeful and an earful, I’m afraid.  The image of my friends, running, spinning, swaying, singing, falling onto their backs and gaping up at the moon is something I’ll not soon forget. And I suspect the same goes for the country folk cowering in those ice houses.

Lady Doctah K and Doctor Mister Lady Doctah K throw a lovely holiday party every year. It is elegant and pretty, warm and inviting. There are beautiful flower arrangements, delicious food, lovely wines and a well stocked bar. And. And there is always a gaggle of loud rowdy women from book club who storm in lookin’ all fancy with bemused partners in tow, get their hands on a cocktail within seconds and start to surf the waves of shrieks and cackles that crash through the house for the duration of the fest. I describe this as if I am nothing more than a detached observer to the phenomenon, a curious sociologist scribbling notes, when truth be told I may actually, kind of, sort of be in the midst of the ruckus. This year Doctor Dash was on-call and Lady Shutterbug was also stag, which I think upped the ante a little bit. Without the calming influences of our well behaved hubbies, we went in fast and hard on the gin and tonics and ended up staying until two a.m. Although this hardly explains Lady Homeslice’s behavior, as Mister Lady Homeslice was in da house and she still managed to titillate a group of innocent fireside sitters with her silver panted gyrations. Twice! Oh, it was beautiful. By the end of the night my bookish sisters were screaming and dancing to Tom Petty, getting their sequins all tangled up and laughing. Laughing and laughing. 

I can’t even figure out why we laugh so much. Half the time no one has even said anything and there we are, eyes locked on one another, horse faces in full neigh (OK, maybe that’s just me), the hysterics bubbling forth like a shaken bottle of champagne. There’s a piece of it that’s purely and joyfully auditory. Every one in the book club has an uh, umm, uhhh, robust laugh. So if one person starts, it’s hard not to follow. This month we’re reading Foxfire by Joyce Carol Oates who describes Goldie, one of the members of the girl gang, as follows: “(she was) famous for her hyena laugh which had the unnerving power to draw your laughter with it whether it was your wish to laugh or not or whether there was logic to such laughter or not . . . ”  So there’s a bit of that, except everyone’s a Goddamn Goldie, so you can imagine. Also, I think that because month after month we delve into all sorts of difficult issues through our books, the emotional barriers between us are gauzy, stretched almost to the point of transparency. When you talk about books, you’re really talking about yourself a lot of the time. I feel like I’m always right there at the surface with these guys, hence the hair trigger tipping into laughter. And finally, but most simply, there’s the obvious fact that being as smart as they are, these ladies are funny – plain and simple. They just say and do funny things. They crack my ass up. Alas, Lady Doctah Poodle and Lady Peace had left by the time Lady Shutterbug unearthed her camera and some of the other ladies were MIA, but, hey, there’s always next year (or next month).

In the post mortem flurry of emails, Lady Tabouli wrote something to the effect of: Did you ever think you’d meet women who would make you laugh like this in your late thirties and forties? The answer for me is a resounding no. I never thought I would. But I have. And I thank my lucky stars for the giggly gift of them.

We’re reading I Married a Communist by Philip Roth for book club this month, and while I shouldn’t be surprised that I had one of those reading moments when you stop, exhale, raise your eyebrows, go back and read the passage again, I was sort of surprised that it happened on the first page.

We read American Pastoral last year and it was a giant octopus of a book. Sometimes it thrashed in countless directions, in anger and fear. Sometimes it swam along as graceful and smooth as can be. And it went deep. (Hmm, this metaphor has legs! Ho!) It was gorgeous and challenging and we wrestled with it – on our own, reading it – at book club, dissecting it and putting it back together, or trying to anyway. That book club meeting was about a week after my knee surgery. I was on crutches, my injuries still felt fresh, personal. My mom was in town to help out, so I brought her with me so she could have a glass of wine, meet my book club ladies, and understand why it is such a source of joy in my life. I read American Pastoral under duress. I was frantically preparing to be on crutches for six weeks, gingerly probing worse case scenarios like a tongue returning to a sore tooth. Desperate to lose myself, it was rich and thick, the perfect book to take up the whole of my mind. I was a ball of angst, agitation and worry and American Pastoral is nothing if not a monument to angst, agitation and worry. Maybe that’s why it resonated so much with me.

Or maybe, it was just that good.

We’ve been back to school for a couple of weeks. Saint James seems muted about it. I’m not sure what to make of it. I’m not sure what he needs. What exactly does he expect to be doing with his time right now? He can’t very well hunt for creatures in the bushes and play soccer all day long. Maybe it’s too much to expect him to be excited about school – being a fourth grader is essentially his job. How many people do we know who are excited by their jobs? And yet, I wish he was. I wish he was fired up, tingling, hungry. 

So the passage that stopped me cold? It’s Roth simply introducing a character – that of Murray Ringold, a teacher. And in his muscular prose, Roth brings him to life and makes me want him for my son. To light that fire.

“His passion was to explain, to clarify, to make us understand, with the result that every last subject we talked about he broke down into its principal elements no less meticulously than he diagrammed sentences on the blackboard. His special talent was for dramatizing inquiry, for casting a strong narrative spell even when he was being strictly analytic and scrutinizing aloud, in his clear cut way, what we read and wrote.

Along with the brawn and the conspicuous braininess, Mr. Ringold brought with him into the classroom a charge of visceral spontaneity that was a revelation to tamed, respectablized kids who were yet to comprehend that obeying a teacher’s rules of decorum had nothing to do with mental development. There was more importance than perhaps even he imagined in his winning predilection for heaving a blackboard eraser in your direction when the answer you gave didn’t hit the mark. Or maybe there wasn’t. Maybe Mr. Ringold knew very well that what boys like me needed to learn was not only how to express themselves with precision and acquire a more discerning response to words, but how to be rambunctious without being stupid, how not to be too well concealed or too well behaved, how to begin to release the masculine intensities from the institutional rectitude that intimidated bright kids the most.”

Holy smokes, Philip Roth. Is it mere coincidence that twice now, your words feed me precisely what I’m craving?

Or are you just that good?

We went up north for Labor Day weekend. Hastily assembled, last minute planning yielded three days, more relaxing and action packed than I would have thought possible. Sometimes, last minute is the best way. We pulled the kids out of school on Friday and set off due north with a minivan chocked to the gills with food, fishing poles, water colors, and anything else I could think of to keep our short attention spans from unravelling into pervasive, crotchety boredom.

I needn’t have worried.

The lake. It was beautiful. Deep. Almost primordial. Its dark, velvety waters were cold enough to make swimming something for which you had to summon up courage. It was cold enough to feel curative. And it was vast, with undulating shorelines, eddies and bays, silent islands, promontories and fingers of land, beckoning or accusatory, depending on how you looked at them. There seemed to be a secret code of earth and water we had to approach with caution and respect. Dash and I had to navigate, eyes skimming the horizon and darting back to the map, to reconcile the two dimensional with the three, to keep our bearings, to find our way home. It was challenging, but it got easier. We learned something new. We grinned madly, feeling slightly less the rubes on a pontoon. We squinted into the sun, proud, almost seaworthy. 

Fish. There are fish in Lake Vermillion. All hungry for worms and willing to be caught by Saint James and Supergirl (Dash too, but with less success – I think the jerky line of a child-held rod must make those worms dance extra seductively). They fished off the docks, they fished off the boat. It was the go-to activity for three whole days. It was what filled up the hours in the sun. And Devil Baby watched and cheered, played with the worms, touched the slippery bodies of the fish, and essentially hung around doing nothing in a way I’ve never seen her do before. It was gratifying to watch them do something contemplative, something that requires patience, quiet, sustained attention with eyes trained on the water.

Kitchen. More time and less stuff, I found myself enjoying the simpler, pared down ritual of preparing meals. I found it meditative: the opening and shutting of drawers, looking for a potato peeler, a whisk, a bottle opener; stopping to take a sip of wine and gaze out the enormous kitchen windows at the lake; washing dishes by hand, keeping my workspace neat. Without the rush, meal preparation is a completely different animal and in the silence of the cabin, broken only by the occasional triumphant whoop from the nearby dock, I remembered everything I love about cooking.

Reading. I was forced to unplug. No wireless, no phone. No twitter, no blog. Just my books. I have been feeling scattered lately. Unmoored. I have been finding it hard to focus, to lose myself in a book. Perhaps it’s because there has been so much end of the summer action to attend to. Perhaps, I too am losing the power of sustained attention, giving way to the rat-like compulsion to check my email, tweet and surf every few minutes. In the quiet of the north woods, I became that mother – the reading mother. On the chaise, with her nose in a book, occasionally peering over the pages with narrowed eyes and an amused smile, luxuriating in the act of reading deeply while her family plays almost, almost, out of earshot. They fished, I read. My heart slowed down. Everyone was engaged, so I could disengage and dive into my books: Snow by Orhan Pamuk, challenging reading, testing my patience, but a book whose layers slowly unfold drawing you further and deeper. It’ll be worth it, I think. Time will tell. And Dangerous Laughter by Steven Millhauser, a tightly wrought collection of short stories, the few I have read so far are intriguing, smart, mildly menacing – he is a beautiful writer.

Fish. Each catch was followed by a few seconds of tense hook extraction. Saint James and Supergirl would bow their heads in concentration, working against the ticking seconds and the struggling fish to get the hook out as gently and quickly as possible. They’d toss it back in the water, peer into the depths and inevitably yell “Yep, he made it!” with joy and relief. For them a fair fishing bargain involves no more than a few seconds of discomfort on the part of the fish. They are tender and respectful toward nature. I am not sure whether this is something you can teach, or whether this is something that just naturally occurs in a child.  

Kitchen. I brought everything, even my sharp knife and cilantro. But even when you bring everything, there are things you wish you had brought. As I made salads and salsas, mixing and matching my ingredients like edible Garanimals, I thought of Jumpa Lahiri’s piece in the NY Times earlier this summer. I thought of all the things I would remember next time (honey, white pepper, soy sauce, hot sauce, gin, the pickled eggplant I just made) and all the things I was so glad to have brought (my knife, sea salt, avocado, cilantro, olives, strawberries, fancy cheeses, sauvignon blanc, baby spinach, garlic, tomatoes, baguettes, Hope Creamery butter, two kinds of vinegar and olive oil).

Fire. Doctor Dash made two fires a night. One with charcoal for grilling steaks and salmon. One with wood for roasting s’mores. The fire drew the children out of the brush, away from the beach. Like young natives, they watched the flames, flicking and dancing against the darkening sky. Or maybe they were just hungry.

Fish. One morning I glanced up from my book and saw a stout fireplug of a man talking to Doctor Dash on the dock where he and the kids were fishing. Our cabin neighbor had ostensibly come out to introduce himself to Dash, but in fact needed to flip Dash’s rod right side up before showing him a picture of the 53 inch Muskie he had caught the day before. We chuckled about this the rest of the day, picturing the poor guy grimacing over his coffee mug as he looked out the window watching Dash cast with an upside down rod. He probably muttered through his pain and agitation for a good fifteen minutes before getting so exasperated he burst through his back door to save Dash from himself. Hilarious.  

Watercolors. I’m so glad I brought them. Devil Baby painted and painted. Busy, quiet, happy. Just how I like her.

Feathers. The bald eagles. They were incredible. We had no idea they all hung out in the north woods. We saw more eagles than seagulls, yet they never lost the power to startle us, to elicit a gasp, a pause in the action to watch their muscular flight, their graceful hunting, their branch shaking landing in the tops of trees. There was an island where a bunch of them seemed to perch and to hover right below them in a quiet kayak was pure magic. And then there were the loons. My kids said the cries of the loons reminded them of our neighbor, Evan’s, cry. Somewhere between a giggle and a sob, suspended between joy and loss, the loons stopped us in our tracks over and over again.

Haunting and beautiful. Just like that lake.

You may or may not have noticed that new column over there to the right, down a bit, yep, there. I just sort of slipped it in casually, pretending it’s been there all along, half hoping you wouldn’t notice because God knows, I certainly don’t want to diminish my tenuous, paltry readership by pointing you in the direction of other, better blogs! To tell the truth, when I started this blog, I didn’t read many, if any blogs, so a blogroll didn’t even occur to me. Then as I started to wade around in the murky waters of the internet, I realized just how deep it is, just how vast. Wow, I could swim in this! Shit, I could drown! Fashion blogs, mommy blogs, literature blogs, food blogs, political blogs, design blogs, funny blogs, sad blogs, freaky blogs.

Easily overwhelmed, I was overwhelmed. Easily demoralized, I was demoralized. What is the point of adding my voice to this chattering chaos? Who cares? Who is ever going to find me and hear me? Maybe I really am spewing words into the ether. So I had a little freak out and stopped writing for a while until I realized, no, remembered, that spewing words feels pretty fucking good – regardless of whether anyone is reading. So I started spewing again, and here I am. Spewing and also pointing you to other, better blogs. I am one ballsy and reckless fool today.

In my blogroll live both friends and strangers whose words I have come to really like and anticipate. I have figured out that there’s a little clique of mommy blogs – funny, irreverent, mommy blogs that don’t make me want to stick my head in the oven à la Sylvia Plath. They all seem to know each other and love each other and hang out all the time and go on crazy adventures, notwithstanding the fact that they’re scattered around the country. I feel like the girl on the playground sullenly looking on with her fingers crooked around the chain link fence and one knee sock drooping down around her ankle, wishing they would ask her to join in. But they don’t know me. They don’t see me. They’re having too much fun sharing links and laughs and witticisms and Bonnie Bell Lip Smacker. So I’m just gonna turn around, sit on the crabby crass, behead dandelions and scratch my mosquito bites. 

One of the funny popular girls is Finslippy, who recently raved about a blog by a friend of hers (see? they’re all friends – I’m not making this up) called The Diamond in the Window, and because I trust Finslippy, I checked it out. It really is wonderful. It’s a blog about books and girls and books for girls (to be fair, boys too) and is written so beautifully that I just want to crawl into my yellow beanbag chair and read The Little House on the Prairie. This woman clearly loves books, but what I find magical is that she is still breathtakingly in touch with what books meant to her as a girl. Maybe it’s because she has girls, but I think it’s because you never really out grow being a bookworm. This blog brings me right back to that heady feeling of pedaling home from the library on Deep Wood Road, my backpack filled with treasures, shimmering and shivering to get out. I loved books. I read at the table, on the toilet, in the tree, in my bean bag chair, on a shag rug, in my bed, in my parent’s bed, on the bus, in the car, at recess. If I had a good book in my armpit, the only thing I could think of was finding a spot to drop and tuck into it.

If you are, were or are raising a bookworm, check out this lovely blog. 

And now, back to the playground. Mama had a baby and her head popped off.

Cafe Ena – a couple weeks ago Nanook and Crackerjack rescued me from myself and swept me away to this Kingfield Neighborhood gem for a little Monday night love. I’ve always loved Cafe Ena for lunch with the kids because it’s never too crowded, has awesome grown up food but a totally kids are welcome here vibe. It’s the holy grail for foodies with chitlins. This was my first time for dinner and, lucky us, bottles of wine are half off on Monday nights. So we indulged in some beautiful South American whites while chatting and tucking into our toothsome dinners. Were I a real food critic, I would have made a point of trying everyone’s food, but alas I was too distracted by my jambalaya because it ROCKED! I pretty much hovered over my own plate until every last snappy, succulent grain of rice had disappeared. I ordered it spicy and it was perfect – although I was most definitely on the verge in the best way – high color in the cheeks, slightly glassy eyes, fiery buzz. Mark my words. I will be back for that jambalaya. 

Birchbark Books – The other day when I was going for my post preschool drop off sanity drive, my minivan somehow ended up parked in front of this adorable Kenwood Neighborhood bookstore. I have always loved Birchbark Books, but since it’s not on my flight path, I don’t often make it over there. Pity, because stepping in, you feel like you are trespassing in the hidden away cabin of an earthy and magical book witch. It really is enchanting. My heart quickens in any bookstore, but more so here. Something about how the books are displayed, the soulful Native American presence, the carefully edited choices, make me feel like a kid in a candy store – like anything I pluck off a shelf will be a treat and a treasure. Maybe the book witch touch comes from its owner, an author I love, Louise Erdrich, who writes many of the handwritten reviews taped up on little cards in the stacks, drawing your eye to the really special books – the ones that really are words spun into magic. I cannot possibly improve upon their mission statement, so here it is: Boozhoo! Welcome! Birchbark Books is operated by a spirited collection of people who believe in the power of good writing, the beauty of hand made art, the strength of Native culture, and the importance of small and intimate bookstores. Our books are lovingly chosen. Our store is tended with care.

Liberty Custard – Apparently frozen custard is a big Wisconsin thing – not surprising that the folks who thought to batter and deep fry cheese curds should think it a fine idea to add more cream to ice cream. But I’m glad they did. On both counts. Liberty is housed in a cleverly converted gas station and manages to be retro, industrial and homey at the same time. Aside from the amazing custard, they serve really fresh sandwiches, (including a new Scott Ja-Mamas‘ pulled pork sandwich that has my name written on it), soups, hotdogs, pizza, and fancy coffee. They have vintage pinball and other games to occupy the kids, as well as a little red car that bumps along for 25 cents worth of minutes and has made each of my children grin and imagine wild rides in their toddler years. Best of all they sell toy guns and candy cigarettes. How’s that for refreshingly un-pc? Independent, indeed!

Share the love. For more info on the 3/50 Project.

You stopped me dead in my tracks with this:

“The look scared her, the body slant. He walked through the apartment, bent slightly to one side, a twisted guilt in his smile, ready to break up a table and burn it so he could take out his dick and piss on the flames.”*

I would love to believe that there aren’t any meaningful difference between male and female writers. This proves that there is a difference – that there should be. Hats off, dude.

*Lianne thinking about her ex on page 104 of Falling Man.

Indulgent? Ambitious? Definitely. Maybe. But it’s six weeks. Just looking at this pile is sure to heal.

Before I begin this post, there is a housekeeping matter I would like to address. I am going back to calling my youngest girl Devil Baby. Angel Baby is just too saccharine for this blog and this kid. Devil Baby suits her better, even though everything I said here still holds true. For the most part. 

I am also going to go on record as the only person in the history of the world to say something negative about the Wild Rumpus. I’ll probably be tarred and feathered by all those fresh faced mommies I saw there yesterday, but so be it. The Wild Rumpus is a really cute bookstore tucked away in a really cute Minneapolis neighborhood, with a child-size purple door and a coterie of animals, most of which are allowed to wander around freely, all of which are allowed to spread their dander and feathers and other animal debris and respiratory pollutants throughout. Chickens strut around the store, in and out of people’s legs, taking refuge behind the front desk if a kid gets too gropey. Cats lounge on ratty armchairs and in the windowsills, generally ignoring the chubby hands that pet and poke them. There are salamanders, tarantulas, ferrets, chinchillas, rats, frogs, a bunch of different cooing birds.

Normally, I love the place. It’s magical – a lovely treasure trove of children’s books, a pantheon of book-love, blah blah blah, but yesterday – yesterday everything about the Wild Rumpus just SUCKED. It was the Wild Suckus. I had decided to take Devil Baby there for “Tale Time” – get it? She’s on spring break this week, so I thought I’d start us off with a nice activity after we dropped Supergirl and Saint James off at school. The place was packed – quite literally a zoo – so after Devil Baby harassed a chicken with deformed feet (pigeon toes?), we found a spot on the crowded rug. I looked around. I could have been on Jupiter for all the connection I felt with these well scrubbed women and their pallid children.

Story time began and Devil Baby was having none of it. She was squirming and trying to lie down on the floor – she insisted on closing her eyes and pretending to snore. She kept asking for fruit snacks, gum, chapstick, hand cream. Listen to the lady, Devil Baby, I would whisper, trying to keep my growing irritation at bay. Then came the song time and – slap in the face – the child who sings constantly refused to sing, refused to do the little hand motions. Jesus! Why did I even care? But I did care. A lot. I didn’t drag myself to this hot, stinky bookstore and squish myself onto a ratty old rug, shoulder to shoulder with Minneapolis’ most earnest and loving nannies, young mommies and grandmas for nothing. Sing child! For the love of God – it’s the freaking itsy bitsy spider, child, your favorite – SING!!! But instead she flopped back for some more snoring action. I watched all the other caretakers sway and sing their hearts out, smug, blissful looks plastered on their pasty faces, and I began to feel the sticky fingers of disgust closing around my throat. Are you actually enjoying this? Like, for yourselves?

The banality of it all started to drive me crazy and to more than a few uncharitable, borderline evil thoughts. For which God promptly repaid me with an allergic puffy eye.

Despite my maniacal obsession with keeping my hands away from my face, I must have slipped and it felt like one of the cats had climbed up under my eyelid to work out a hairball. I was dying, but I couldn’t rub it or I would make it worse, turning a wretched itchy eye into a swollen monstrosity. This much, at least, I have learned in my life. In desperation I rubbed my eye on Devil Baby’s shirt. Oh shit, she’s been dragging herself all over this Godforsaken temple of dander. Goddamn it itches! Aah. Fuck me. But fuck me more if I’m going to leave before this goddam story time is over, you stupid bitches! Aaaahhhh. The agony. Itches. Itches. Shit, it itches! More fake snoring from Devil Baby. That does is. Fuck it. We are so out of here.

So I retreated as gracefully as I could with my eye in screaming red hot spasms, trying not to step on any little fingers with my size 10 knee-high Wellington boots. What a bust. What a total bust. I drove us home, horribly depressed because I am not deluded enough to think I was even vaguely in the right for having been so deeply disgusted by the whole scenario. Obviously, if it’s me versus thirty-some women and their offspring, I’m the one with the problem. I may have anger issues, but I have not lost my grip on reality.

It’s me. Devil Baby has no attention span for storytime because, um, I haven’t taken her very many times. At least not when you compare to Saint James and Supergirl. When I offer to read Devil Baby a book she runs away screaming because she thinks I’m going to try to put her to bed. My child – my child – my poor, pathetic, third born, daughter-of-a-spent-husk-of-a-mother child, is a philistine at the tender age of two. I have let her watch too much TV. She knows the words to commercials for acne creams but can’t sit still in a room full of kids to watch a very animated young woman read books. She can take pictures of herself with the Mac, but she doesn’t know that it’s ok, actually encouraged, to read books during the day time. Her favorite song is Rihanna’s Disturbia, but she won’t row row row her boat with the rest of the kids. I feel like a failure when it comes to Devil Baby. I feel like I got all used up with the first two.

Have all my songs been sung? At least those not involving thumpin’ base lines, catchy hooks, screaming guitars or trippy synth?

After the Wild Suckus debacle, I loomed around in a state of melancholy, the weight of my inadequacies crushing my chest. My head felt like a waterballoon, stretched precariously thin, ready to pop and gush forth tears of guilt and self-pity at the slightest provocation. The weather sucks, there is no easy out like going to the park where fresh air and the smell of green can act as its own balm on our ragged psyches. I just needed the day to be over.

And that’s the beauty of days. They end. And start again. Today the weather still sucks, but I decided I would take Devil Baby to Club Kid so I could go to yoga. Club Kid is a pay by the hour child care alternative which I only use in a pinch, mostly because it smells like a daycare which sends me Proustian synapsing back to my working days and because the hourly pay thing feels like the kiddie equivalent of a hooker motel. Today, however, qualified as a pinch. For everyone’s sake, I needed to fix my head and my heart and there is no better way known to me than a good sweaty yoga class. And it worked. What’s more, I ran into my betties and was able to vent, just a bit, just enough, bless their hearts. Thank you Nanook and JJ. I feel better. 

And right now I’m home with Devil Baby. She’s watching TV while I type, but we’re under the same blanket. She keeps pressing her little feet into the side of my leg. And this, I think . . . I hope, is good enough for today.

Someone once said that a good title will get you half way there. Actually, I just made that up. But it’s true, I think. Which is why I would have picked up Another Bullshit Night in Suck City if I had seen it in a bookstore, even without the recommendation of our good friend, Flan. To tell the truth, Flan could recommend a book called Beige Slacks and I’d probably still give it a try. I love this title and I love this book. A memoir by Nick Flynn, it’s raw and beautifully written, pain and humor, grit, blood and spittle spun into something fragile, translucent, vivid and incredibly complex and textured. I can’t help but think of Chihuly’s work. Flynn uses such a light hand and strings each chapter together with the most tenuous of invisible strings – the whole book feels a mere gust away from crashing to the ground in a pile of tragic shards. Instead it soars. One example of countless:

“When my grandmother comes to dinner at our house she always carries her own jar of Turner’s Special Blend. She knows how much she needs and doesn’t want to be caught short. My brother remembers her at Christmas one year, an especially weepy time for her, when she put her hands around his neck and murmured, My little angel, you wouldn’t be so hard to kill. And though he knew it was only the whiskey talking, he also knew that the whiskey talked daily.”

I can’t get that image out of my head. Her wrinkled hand against the smooth pale skin of the boy’s neck. At a certain point, what really separates a caress from an atrocity? Just a bit of pressure for a few minutes. Man.

Another title I love is from Atmosphere’s last album: If Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold. Genius. And they back it up – it’s a great album.  These boys have a knack though, because in 2002 they released an album called God Loves Ugly, which are my sentiments exactly.  Offensively stinky cheeses, drinks so strong they make you grimace, books that make you cry, music laced in rage or grief, meat – what can be sadder than eating meat? That’s the good stuff.

That murky water hole where pretty and ugly swirl together? That’s where I want to wallow.

* Saffron Tower, by Dale Chihuly on exhibition at the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix, AZ until May 31, 2009. Wish I could go.

So I’m reading a book and it’s rocking my world.  Not necessarily in a good way.  It’s making me stressed and anxious – it leaves me fretting and wringing my hands.  My mantra:  we are so fucked – so so so so fucked.

I’m reading Hot, Flat, and Crowded by Thomas Friedman and if all of our problems were embodied by a wild boar erratically and voraciously wreaking havoc in our backyard, then Friedman deftly succeeds in cornering, subduing, slaughtering, trussing, dressing, and turning the beast into bite size pieces of wild boar sausage.  In short, he tackles the morass of issues our planet is facing right now and breaks it down in a really compelling, common sensical, and terrifying way.  Sometimes I turn to Dash, wild eyed with panic, my nails white from clutching the book so tightly and he calmly urges me to read on. “The second half is all about the solutions,” he intones, his eyes like slits – a Yoda in my bed.  Solutions?  SOLUTIONS? WHAT SOLUTIONS?  WE’RE SO FUCKED!  SO SO SO SO FUCKED!!!

Basically, Friedman posits that our planet is becoming hot(global warming), flat (because of globalization, technology and the internet, more and more people are able to rise out of poverty, see how “the other half” lives, strive for and attain a middle class lifestyle), and crowded (rising birthrates and life expectancies).  This trifecta of stressors is taking a huge, soon to be irreversible toll on our physical and political planet because of the paradigm that we Americans established for how to live and thrive on this earth: one that is based on the consumption of massive amounts of fossil fuels.  Friedman writes: “In particular, the convergence of hot, flat, and crowded is tightening energy supplies, intensifying the extinction of plants and animals, deepening energy poverty, strengthening petrodictatorships, and accelerating climate change.”  Ay, mamasita!

As always, the devil is in the details and he is able to illustrate each of these problems with such life and color that one is left chilled to the bone.  The tentacles of this energy crisis not only wrap around issues of climate change, loss of biodiversity and global politics – but women’s rights, education, healthcare.  Friedman isn’t an alarmist, though.  This isn’t simply shrill hysteria and hyperbole.  His arguments wouldn’t resonate as much as they do if he wasn’t able to build his case, piece by piece, in the cool (for now) light of day.  I haven’t gotten to the solutions yet, but I suppose there is some small comfort in understanding the scope and details of the problem.  The way it is far better to know it’s a wild boar in your backyard than to just hear mysterious and grotesque squealing and grunting in the night, waking up to wreckage and destruction.  It doesn’t make it any better.  You still have a big problem.  But at least you know what it is.  

Friedman asserts that America needs to take the lead in creating the technologies, the ethics and the systems to mitigate the fact that our world is becoming hot, flat and crowded and lead the way to a cleaner and more sustainable way of living and growing.  It’s the least we can do, considering we are largely responsible for our current predicament.  It would hardly be fair for us to turn to China and India and tell them not to do what we just did.  And it would go a long way toward making us one of the popular kids again.

There is so much information in this book.  It is so important and I so want to understand and get it right.  Aside from: 1.we’re so fucked and 2. at least I know how and why we are so fucked, I am left with my hands clutched at my heart, praying for the one man whose slender shoulders will bear the brunt of this call for change.  It’s beyond words, and I wish it wasn’t so, but you are it, Barack.  It all depends on you.

I won’t even get into the missed opportunities for change and betterment that slipped by in the weeks and months after September 11.  It’s all part if the very intricate jigsaw puzzle set forth in this book.  I cannot recommend it highly enough.  It is horrifying and fascinating.  It should be required reading for high school seniors – and the rest of us.  Give it to someone for Christmas, then borrow it back.  You won’t be sorry.  Or maybe you will.

I guess I just don’t want to let this day pass without paying my respects to David Foster Wallace.  

Last night Doctor Dash got home from work around ten thirty at night, looking ragged and hangdog in the shadows of the mud room.  The first words out of his mouth: I just read something really sad . . . David Foster Wallace hanged himself.   Noooo I softly wailed from the couch, no, no, no.  Suddenly, the flickering lights of the TV seemed garish and intrusive.  Oh God, no.  

We are not among his most diehard fans, but fans we are.  We both read Wallace’s crazy, genius, and hilarious Infinite Jest and loved it.  Dash is the only other person I know personally who actually finished it (besides me).  We have lots of friends who tried to read it but put it down.  It is an enormous and sweeping book, and almost too much for one brain to process, which is to say nothing of how incredible it is that one brain created it.  This book, 981 pages long, with nearly a hundred additional pages of tiny-printed footnotes that serve as lush background, insane riffs, convoluted tangents, vivid color, and hysterical, hyper-focused explanations, is a work of pure literary muscle pounding away with so much force yet such finesse.  Wallace’s mastery of the English language leaves you dripping wet on the floor, mouth agape and exhausted.  Words, words, words, strung together in ways so insanely poetic and, I’ll say it again, hilarious, and dark and sad and shameful and shocking and redeeming and tender and exaggerated and true. Never for a second, does he stray from what is true – no matter how insane and over the top, Wallace is true.  True to himself.  True to his characters.  True to his reader.  

Where the hell does he come up with this crazy shit?  Never have I flipped a book over so many times to look at the picture of the author.

Dash and I read this book before having kids, when we could invest that kind of time in art. We went to see him at the Boston Public Library when he spoke for a book signing.  Dash stood in line with our copy of Infinite Jest and his pharmacology book from med school for Wallace to sign (there is a ton of really specific and, according to Dash, spot-on pharmacology know-how in this book – not surprising, considering it is set in a half-way house and a posh tennis academy where the kids used lemon-scented  Pledge as sunscreen).  Wallace turned Dash’s pharmacology book over curiously, chuckled and signed it.  

Dash said he felt like the wind got knocked out of him when he read that Wallace had hanged himself.  I knew exactly how he felt.  It’s not like we know him or are some sort of fawning disciples.  We aren’t seeking out vigils and lighting candles and trying to talk about this with people.  It’s just that we read what will now be his greatest accomplishment and were blown away by his talent.  The world is a poorer place without him in it.  A huge loss.  Even if he never wrote another word, his passing is a huge loss.  

But what is sadder than our collective loss, much much sadder, is the fact that Wallace was so sad.  His despair must have been blacker than black. It must have been razor sharp and unfathomably deep - superhuman and incredibly exhausting to be able to quash his will, his spirit, his ability to experience pleasure.  I don’t know anything about him, but I can only assume that creating Lateral Alice Moore, a secretary who could only move sideways, had to have made him chuckle.  Les Assassins de Fauteuils Roulants (the Wheelchair Assassins), are a Quebecois Separatist group in the novel who all lost their legs because their initiation involved playing chicken with freight trains.  Those with the biggest balls were pulverized, but the next ballsiest ended up amputees and the top tier of the AFR’s leadership.  How could this not have brought Wallace pleasure, exquisitely warm and velvety pleasure?  I would be hugging myself for the rest of my life if I had come up with that and it was just one tiny hair in the thick textured braid that was the novel.  The self-discipline alone it must have taken to write Infinite Jest proves that Wallace was anything but a quitter.  He was a sorcerer with language and story, but any one who has ever tried to write anything knows magic is never enough.  He had to have been one hard-nosed and determined son of a bitch to finish that book.  

Hell, what do I know?  This kind of thing happens over and over and every time it is such a waste and such a pity and so very very sad.  I am just so sorry he was so sad.  

I have nothing left to say.  

Sometimes, apparently, words are not enough.

I’m having a personal pendulum swing moment.  After years of watching my children like a hawk, not letting them go anywhere without me, hovering, ever vigilant, scanning the horizon for signs of danger – pitbulls, clowns, men in trench coats, fat ladies with puppies and candy, rusty vans – I am starting to mellow.  In my gut, I have been feeling like Saint James and Supergirl need a little space, a little freedom – for them, for me.  Maybe I’m just exhausted and the jagged edges of my catastrophe-addled mind are being worn smooth by the day to day struggle of keeping everyone fed, dressed, relatively clean and happy.  Or maybe, just maybe, I’m doing that thing that we humans do so well – I am learning.

Stranger danger.  There is nothing, and I mean NOTHINGmore terrifying than the thought of my child being abducted.  It is the stuff of nightmares and masochistic calamitizing.  (To calamitize is to imagine horrible scenarios, letting them play out in your mind in painfully vivid detail.  I thought I was the only one who did this, who could literally make myself cry imagining, for example, my funeral, my kids and husband sitting in a pew with their dear heads bent, sobbing, dressed like somber mismatched ragamuffins.  Then I started to ask some friends and it seems many women and girls do it – it’s not so much a guy thing.  Why would you do that? asks Doctor Dash, mystified by the strange and alarming workings of my mind.  I’m not sure why I do it.  Is it preparation?  An attempt to ward off horrible events?  You know, the whole if you think about it, it won’t happen theory?  Somewhere, I stumbled upon the term calamatizing and just having a name for these peculiar self-induced flights of the psyche appealed to my need to categorize things.)  In any event, the combustible combination of the media’s bloodthirsty, sensationalistic, scavenging coverage of abduction cases, muddled with my own calamitizing could easily send me over the brink, imagining pedophiles and kidnappers lurking in every nook and cranny.  

Fortunately, although I do have a vivid imagination, I have an adequate grip on reality.  I know that the incidence of abduction by strangers has not increased in the last fifty years, it’s just that we hear about cases in Florida and Nebraska on the news so it feels like it’s happening every day, in our own back yards.  It’s fear mongering, plain and simple, and I have been feeling the need to push back.

To me, the trick has always been to keep a watchful eye on my guys, without their knowing it.  If they can’t actually have the freedom we had to run around the neighborhood all day, returning home sweaty, dirty and mosquito-bitten at dusk, then they at least deserve to have the perception of freedom.  I have always felt this in my core, in an amorphous, non specific way:  there cannot be too much fear, or there will be no courage.  

And now I’m reading this book.  (You knew I was gearing up for something).  The book is called Last Child in the Woods, by Richard Louve, and it is rocking my world.  It’s one of those books that is compelling and provocative and perfectly pitched for where I am right now.  Louv’s message dovetails with the vague stirrings I’ve been experiencing.  Embedded within his larger message about the crisis being brought about by divorcing our children from unfettered, unstructured contact with nature (more on that at a later date, for sure), is a discussion of stranger danger.  It is one of many reasons our kids are being shooed out of the woods and into their homes. 

What struck me most about all of this is that by attempting to protect our children, we may actually be putting them at greater risk.  In short, by keeping them safe inside, we are basically raising a bunch of pussies.  He didn’t quite put it that way, but that’s the gist.  Kids need real world sensory experience, idle dream time, space for imaginative play, opportunity for spontaneous socializing and conflict resolution.  These things breed self confidence, inner fortitude, street smarts, world smarts – the first lines of defense against bad people.  We don’t want our kids to be afraid of all adults – what kind of adults will they be?  We want them to be open, to be community minded, to be involved and engaged in the lives of the people around them, to be able to discern the good guys from the bad guys (and not just on a video screen).  If everyone is out and talking to and watching out for each other, it makes for a safer and healthier community.  How likely is a kid to care about the old lady down the street when he grew up with a joy stick in one hand and a bag of Cheetos in the other?

So in reading this book, I have shifted from believing that my kids need to experience perceived freedom to believing that they need real, actual freedom.  They need to brush up against the world, with all its potholes and dark corners, and feel empowered to navigate it.  I’m not at all sure how to go about this.  I haven’t even begun to figure this out.  I can only hope that in my awareness and intent lie the seeds of change.  We all want to keep our kids safe.  But at what cost?  

I just saw Kate DiCamillo, walking along my very own path by the creek!  There she was!  With a scruffy dog that looked just like Winn Dixie!  Wow.  She’s a hero of mine.  I once read that she started writing by promising herself she would write one hour every day, no matter what.  I think of her often.  She’s a perfect example of what a little hardheaded perseverance (and a whole hell of a lot of talent) can yield – beautiful magical books that manage to bewitch children and adults alike, fancifully woven tales chocked full with lessons about perseverance, loyalty, and friendship.  She’s great. 

And I can’t believe I saw her today of all days!!!  I just started The Tale of Despereaux last night with Supergirl.  Of all the gosh darn coincidences!  On Sunday we saw the preview for the movie, so I made a deal with Supergirl that we would go to see the movie after I read the book to her.  Saint James and I have done that so many times, but Supergirl has yet to experience the delicious sense of anticipation, the time and rigor involved in reading and savoring a whole big complicated book and the LESSON, that all important no-other-way-to-learn-it lesson:  THE BOOK IS ALWAYS BETTER THAN THE MOVIE.  (Not that I’m in any way dogging movies – I love movies!  In fact, if it had been Joel and Ethan Coen on the path today, an industrial-sized spatula would have been required to scrape up my swooning carcass.  I’m simply saying, if there is a source and a derivative, go to the source.)  After reading the first Harry Potter book and watching the movie, Saint James quietly observed that there is a lot more stuff in the book.  Indeed there is, young Jedi, indeed there is.  

So back to Kate DiCamillo, who is one of the people I mildly stalk out of sheer admiration (the other is Dara Moscowitz who used to write wildly colorful and entertaining restaurant reviews for the City Pages and has moved on to other things but who should come back because her successor is boring and bland and safe and makes me never want to eat out again.)  Kate was walking along in a brown t-shirt and jeans.  Imagine that!  Blue jeans!  On this hot steamy day.  Surely she was just clearing her head, having left her laptop open, the fan blowing on her empty chair.  Maybe she’s having trouble with a turn of phrase, an ending, a character’s motivation.  Oh, sooooo coooool!  I’m such a loser writer wannabe.

And what a perfect level of celebrity/anonymity!  Authors are virtually unrecognizable except to people who have read their stuff.  It’s a totally self selecting audience:  if you’re a successful self-help guru, the needy and suggestible will flock to you; if you’re Danielle Steele, slightly tacky,  overweight lonely hearts with fresh manicures and garish clothes will be your fan base; if you’re Martin Amis, borderline alcoholics with a penchant for dark, smart (sometimes sick, but always brilliant) humor will be the only ones to glance twice when you get your morning coffee.  Do you think Brad Pitt could have survived a fatwa?  

If you are recognized at all, it is for something that has come from your brain and your heart and your guts.  It is very pure, yet contained.  (O.K., I’ll admit it, I’ve daydreamed of book tours and signings, the gorgeous outfits I’d pull together to sit on a stool and read from my novel . . .  I would always bring a glass made of glass for ice water – no plastic bottles for me, please . . . she’s really cool and down to earth, except for her water bottle issue – she gets quite peevish about plastic, apparently . . . )   

I might have been imagining it, but Kate seemed to have a wary look on her face when she passed by me.  It could have been my crazy fierce arm pumping fast walking, my enormous smudged sunglasses, or the goofy look on my face.  Or maybe she’s used to women my age gushing all over her, trying to get her autograph for their children, thanking her for her lovely books full of whimsy and heart.  

I didn’t interrupt her walk.  I would never.  That’s what I love about fans like me . . . (But just for the record, if I ever become a famous author, please, please feel free to stop me and tell me how much you love me.)