Dishing on Books

Michelle tagged me in a meme about reading and I just couldn’t resist. I decided, though, that since my girls love to read as much or more than I do, I would see if they were interested in playing along, too.  They were.  Here are our answers to the questions Michelle crafted:

1) What is the quality in a
book that makes you want to dive in and keep turning the page? Name a book that
demonstrates this quality.
Eve – strong characters.
“Wither” by Lauren DeStefano
Lola – lots of action. “The
Wishlist” by Eion Colfer
Kari – Strong, sincere
emotion and/or a storyline that explores the human condition. “Me Who Dove
Into the Heart of the World” by Sabina Berman or anything by Mary Karr.
2) What’s the first book
you read that made you cry? Why did it make you cry?
Eve – “Speak” (by Laurie
Halse Anderson) made me cry because it seemed like something that would
actually happen and it was so sad. 
Lola – “Where the Red Fern
Grows.” Because my mom was reading it to me and she was crying.
Kari – “Charlotte’s Web” for
certain. Absolutely, because it was so easy to identify with the animals when I
read books as a child. As I got older it was more of a challenge, although I
didn’t empathize with them any less. I tend to cry very easily when I read to
this day because I get wrapped up in the story. I have cried at so many books
since then – “Where the Red Fern Grows,” “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,” “Don’t
Let’s Go to the Dog’s Tonight,” (or most any sad memoir, for that matter)…
3) How has social media
impacted your reading/writing time?
Eve – I get distracted by
social media and don’t read as much as I used to.
Lola – it doesn’t impact my
reading time. (note: Lola is 10, so she doesn’t have a Facebook page and only
checks her email once every few weeks. I hope this stays true for a while).
Kari – Social media doesn’t
impact my reading time much except that I read blogs a lot, so maybe it has
increased it overall.  I am in the
lucky position of being a book reviewer for Bookpleasures.com, so I feel
obligated to read a lot ;-).  I do,
however, get derailed by social media when it comes to writing time and I often
find myself wrestling with whether or not to stop reading blogs so I can
write.  It is difficult because I
feel like reading more makes me a better writer, and when I don’t follow the
usual blogs, I worry that I’m missing important information or the writer is
wondering where I’ve gotten to. 
4) Have you ever loved a book
so much you kissed it? (Not made out with it, but offered it a sweet
kiss on it’s cover, like giving a friend a kiss on the cheek)? Yeah…me neither.
Eve – No. But if I did, it
would be “The Hunger Games.”
Lola – Yes. “Stargirl” by
Jerry Spinelli
Kari – I don’t think so, but
if I had, it would have been in my emotional-high teenage years and it probably
would have been “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” or “Are You There God? It’s Me,
Margaret.”
5) Describe the ultimate
reading conditions for you. Where? What? When? How? Go big.
Eve – Reading a book of
fiction with a cup of hot chocolate in a local café by myself.
Lola – Reading  a paperback in front of the fireplace
with a cup of hot chocolate and a fuzzy blanket.
Kari – Lying on a chaise
lounge in the sunshine near a pool with a huge cup of fizzy water by my side
and a paperback in my hand.  I
should also have a notebook and pen handy so that if inspiration strikes I can
jot something down quickly.  It
would also be nice to have someone bring me fruit to nibble on every once in a
while and adjust my umbrella so the shade covers my book.  I should be reading something painfully
true and funny like nonfiction by Anne Lamott and nobody ought to look at me
sideways when I laugh out loud. 
Also, I should have a companion who is mostly quiet but indulges me when
I need to read passages I find particularly brilliant out loud to them. 
6) True or false: (Tongue
firmly in cheek)
If you can’t be bothered to
read to them, you should not have children.
Eve – True.
Lola – True.
Kari – Mostly true, although,
in my day I have heard some parents read out loud to their children who really
ought not to. They don’t do different voices or they read in a monotone or so
quickly that the child can’t follow the story and I just don’t know how that
can be inspiring. I think it is important to introduce your children to books
and sometimes let them take the lead on how to read them (ie. Should we look at
the illustrations on this one page for twenty minutes before we are satisfied? Should
we read the story backwards and see what happens?).
7) Have you or have you not read
Daughter of the Drunk at the bar?
Kari – I didn’t put this question
to either of my girls because I know they haven’t, but I have and I loved it
and I wrote a review of it and I passed the book along to a friend. 

And now I get to make up my own questions and tag people. I’m tagging Elizabeth, Deb, Alicia, and Lyz. 

Here is your mission, ladies, should you choose to accept it.

1.  Are there any books you wish you had been able to read, either because they are “classics” or because someone recommended them, but you just couldn’t slog through them?
2. What kinds of books (or specific books) make you want to write more? Which ones make you feel so inadequate that you feel like you can’t ever write again?
3.  Do you and your partner read the same kinds of books? What is different about the way you read? Genre? Enjoyment? Ebook versus ‘real’ book? Purpose?
4.   What is your favorite guilty pleasure, book-wise? Did you used to devour Harlequin Romance books? Do you enjoy graphic novels that your kids leave lying around?
5.  What is your favorite picture book of all time? What is the one that you hope to never have to read again? EVER!
6.  If you could inhabit the body, mind and soul of any writer for one week, whom would you choose? No limits.
7.  If “O Magazine” were to headline your memoir in one of its issues, what would the headline read?  


Readers, if you weren’t tagged, it’s not because I don’t care about your answers to the questions, it’s just that you don’t have a blog to publish them in.  Please, use the comments field to dish on your favorite books.


Choosing My Own Memories

I had the opportunity to spend a day watching my nieces over the holiday break. Eve, Lola and I arrived ready to entertain two incredibly active four-year-olds for a few hours while their parents headed to the science center for the King Tut exhibit.  I was excited to share my homemade play-dough recipe with them, adding essential oils and food coloring to make it even better.  Since we don’t live near these lovely little fairies, I don’t often get to exercise my toddler-parenting chops and Eve and Lola have far outgrown needing me to design their entertainment.

We had a ball, breaking out all sorts of non-traditional tools like frosting tips and turkey timers and the girls loved playing with grapefruit and cinnamon-scented dough.  They were little angels, sharing all of the colors and giggling at each others’ creations, and Eve and Lola were the sweetest big cousins, letting them experiment and stepping in to help whenever asked.

We took a break for cornbread with honey and then decided to go for a walk since the sun was shining for a short while.  Lola designed a scavenger hunt list of things we needed to look for on our stroll and when the little ones got chilly we sneaked into a corner cafe for a cup of hot cocoa to warm up.  Nobody got cranky or cried. Nobody spilled their cocoa or whined for more.  It was idyllic.

When we got back to the house, one of the girls wanted to resume playing with the dough and the other one dragged Eve off to play hide and seek.  I merely supervised until the girls wanted me to chase them.  Each toddler had a “big girl” to protect her so that when I got close to catching one of them, they were swooped to safety by either Eve or Lola.  We ran around the house for fifteen minutes or so and then Lola got distracted by the doorbell.  Without her protector, one of the girls got truly frightened as I jogged after her and she dashed under the table, crying.  I felt horrible, remembering how fully immersed children can get in imaginary games and assured her I wouldn’t “get” her.  Fortunately, Lola returned to save her from the monster and all was well within minutes.

We played a board game together and took some silly photos, but I couldn’t shake the picture in my mind of the stark fear on my poor niece’s face.  I wondered idly whether she would remember it vividly when she looked back on our day together.

There was no mention of the incident over the next few days (or upon her parents’ return), and I found myself hoping she erased it from her memory altogether.  Reflecting on my own childhood memories, I wonder how many frightening things I filed away that may have been so inconsequential.  I am reminded of the wholly subjective nature of memory often – all it takes is a conversation with my siblings to see that we each remember certain events in a radically different way.  My memories of that day will be fond because I was afforded an opportunity to interact with my nieces in a way I don’t often get to and we did things together that were vastly different from the kinds of things they normally do.  I also got to see Eve and Lola in a very different light than I normally do; as big-girl role models and caring cousins.  But what if the fear my niece felt was powerful enough to imprint a stronger memory in her brain than the pleasure of the scavenger hunt and the play-dough?  What if the cafe and the games don’t measure up to the raw emotion she felt as I chased her? I can’t argue with her memory or the way she felt any more than someone from my past could change what I believe happened on any particular day in my life.  It is said that memories are influenced by emotion and I can attest to the fact that I am more prone to recall incidents I have imbued with negative emotions than those that simply left me feeling content or peaceful.  Perhaps the trick is to place some sort of emphasis or exclamation point on the pleasant memories and, over time, they will come to weigh as much as the unhappy ones.

I also think it is helpful to exercise our attention to the positive in our lives.  I know that when I started my daily gratitude practice, over time I was more likely to notice things in my daily life that I was grateful for.  From the beginning of time, fear was a tool we used to keep us alive, but now that I no longer have to worry about being eaten by a saber-tooth tiger while I’m out for a walk, I can choose to notice the sunshine on my face and the pattern the ice crystals make in the puddle on the sidewalk and reflect on how at ease I feel.  I can revel in the taking of a clear, deep breath after a week of coughing and sniffling or savor the way my tea tastes when it has steeped to just the right strength.

I don’t want to manipulate my nieces’ impressions of our day together, nor am I concerned that either of them was affected by the momentary fear during our game.  I am simply grateful that I was given the chance to see them (and my daughters) through a different lens for a few hours and to have gotten the reminder that I can choose which memories to accent in my own mind.

What I’ve Always Wanted for Christmas

To be a published author.  On paper. And now, a mere five days before the day itself, I have proof that I am!

Several months ago the lovely, wise Michelle alerted me to a call for submissions she thought would be ‘right up my alley.’ It was.  Cherry Bomb Books was putting together an anthology in response to what the media was calling the “War on Women” in the United States.  I submitted an idea, the editor decided to run with it, and the last few months have been a whirlwind of writing, re-writing, editing, more re-writing, and more editing.  Kim Wyatt has my undying gratitude for her masterful ideas and the way she pulled more out of my words than I ever could have alone, and I can’t wait for people to read this book.  Follow the link to Cherry Bomb’s site to learn more and preorder the book.  It will be released on the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, January 22, 2013, and I am so proud to be included in this list of magnificent writers.

Eve and Lola saw the cover art and raised their eyebrows, read the title and promptly said, “We can’t talk about this to Grandpa!” and giggled.  I agree it’s provocative, but that’s the point, isn’t it?  More to the point, however, is the myriad of perspectives from a terrific group of women 40 years after Roe v. Wade became the law of the land, despite the battles that have been fought over it.

That’s the Way We Roll: Holiday Version

It is our first Christmas in the new house and so far, it has been a lot of fun to figure out how exactly we will do things differently this year.  Where is the best place for the Christmas tree? Where will everyone sleep when they come? Which bathroom gets the holiday towels, or should we put them in the kitchen?

Some things don’t change, like the girls putting on Santa hats and Christmas music while they decorate the tree together, Bubba and I popping in to stuff something yummy into one mouth or another and hang a favorite ornament.  Others had to change; we have no lights on the outside of the house this year because this 100-year old gem doesn’t have an electrical outlet outside.  We mixed a few things up by going to the Nutcracker for the first time in years to see four of Eve’s classmates dance and by getting our shopping done early so we could have time to prepare for the arrival of Bubba’s entire family this year.

But what won’t ever change is the odd little things that make us who we are.  You know, those unexpected events that you just can’t plan for or that make you laugh when you realize how others must see them.

For example…

Every year around Halloween, Eve and Lola begin deciding what they’ll make for everyone for Christmas.  I started this tradition when they were toddlers with salt dough ornaments that they painted and gave to grandparents and aunts and uncles.  As they aged, the girls had fun exchanging homemade gifts with their cousins, too, and every year we work to come up with something that will be fun and meaningful without being useless.  Just in case any relatives happen to read this before December 25, I won’t reveal what Lola chose to make for everyone, but Eve, well, since we had to come up with Plan B, I can say that she wanted to make dark chocolate almond biscotti for her gifts this year.  We amassed all of the ingredients and spent hours on Sunday making our own gluten-free flour blend, toasting almonds, and mixing the dough.  I have never made biscotti before and didn’t realize it is a two-step process, where you bake the loaves of dough once, cool them, slice them and then bake them again until they are crisp and crunchy.  The house smelled divine.

We finally finished late Sunday evening and couldn’t package the treats until they were cool, so we set them aside until morning.  Monday morning was a mad dash to get to school on time and I nearly came home and tucked each biscotti into its own gift bag but decided Eve would probably really enjoy doing that herself, decorating each one with ribbons and labeling them appropriately.  I ran around the house, cleaning up and making lists and when I left to get the girls from school the biscotti still sat in neat rows on the cookie sheet near the stove.  When I came home the pan was overturned, the kitchen floor was coated in a fine dust of crumbs and the dog lay under the kitchen table moaning, his whiskers sprinkled with evidence.  He had eaten them all.  Off of the kitchen counter.  In the 20 minutes I was gone.

Predictably, Eve was furious at the loss of hours of hard work and panicky that we wouldn’t have time, between basketball practice and homework this week, to make more.  I was disgusted with the dog and myself for not packing them all up safely, and more than a little worried that the dog had ingested a lot of chocolate.  Beyond being incredibly thirsty all night, he didn’t seem to show any outward signs of illness, and I figured we would be lucky if he just ended up with a serious case of constipation.

Tuesday morning I took him for a walk after dropping the kids at school and was rewarded with, well, chocolate biscotti.  Not only was he not constipated, but he filled three bags with poop that was dark, dark brown and studded with almonds.  Slightly different shape, same look.  If I hadn’t known better….

So this morning I headed out to the UPS store to mail the goodies the girls made to family members we won’t see this year.  I had everything divided in to three groups that just needed boxes and packaging.  As the clerk began typing in the addresses one by one, he remarked that each of the destinations was within a short distance of the others with two being in the same town.

“Too bad these people aren’t all getting together for the holidays, and you could just send it all in one box and save yourself some money.”

“Nope,” was my reply. “They all know each other, but…”  my voice trailed off as I realized the irony.

As the groups of gifts were lined up, they were going to

a.  my dad’s first wife (my mom),
b.  my dad’s second wife,
c.  my dad’s third wife.

With a line of people behind me, I pointed that out to the clerk who laughed and admitted he’d never heard that before.

Oh, well. We’re quirky like that.

A Messy Kind of Gratitude

On Friday I was inconsolable for much of the day, my grief only giving way to let flashes of anger and indignance in as I posted sharp calls for gun control and increased funding for mental health on my Facebook page.  Mostly, though, I sobbed.

At some point, I knew I had to turn off the radio and move forward, however slowly, and so when I picked Eve and Lola up from school, I decided I was done for a bit.  We talked about the Newtown school shooting until Lola plugged her ears and begged us to stop and then we all huddled together in a shaky hug and agreed to let it sit for a while.

The weekend was full of affection and family time.  We didn’t turn on the news at all – radio or TV – and instead went to see The Hobbit and baked holiday treats to share with family.  I checked Facebook and my email very sparingly and only once or twice asked myself whether I was avoiding something I ought to be paying attention to.  I didn’t answer myself.

Despite a friend’s suggestion to watch President Obama’s speech at the interfaith service held on Sunday, I skipped it.  I am not sure whether I was afraid it would crack me wide open again or if there was something else at work but this morning I feel as though I know how I can best frame all of this for myself.  At least for now.

I started a gratitude practice about a year ago in an effort to ward off depression.  When I was really wrestling with darkness, mornings were the most challenging time for me.  I often woke up with only one eye at a time so I could gauge whether that semi truck of pain and longing was heading for me before I put my feet on the floor.  A friend suggested that before I open my eyes, I start a list of things for which I am truly grateful. A sort of shield against that truck hurtling my way.  I figured it couldn’t hurt.

In the beginning it was hard to come up with a list. Not because I don’t have many, many blessings in my life, but because I have an innate tendency to qualify them.  As soon as I think of one, I either compare it to someone else and feel guilty that, say, my kids are healthy and my friend’s aren’t, which effectively soils the gratitude, or it feels trite and petty, like being grateful that I have enough money to pay my bills.  Even in my gratitude practice, I found myself wanting – either for more ‘pure’ things like love (which feel too nebulous to me to be grateful for sometimes), or for deep, profound items on my list.  I am nothing if not stubborn, though, and motivated to keep the depression at bay, and so, pathetic as my lists could be sometimes, I kept going. I hoped that maybe tomorrow I would come up with something beyond my kids, my husband, and my health to be grateful for.

I have, to be sure, developed my understanding of gratitude over the past year, but this morning I came to a much greater sense of how to incorporate it into my life.  Since I began this practice, I have seen gratitude as a balance sheet, a yin and yang where the black never bleeds into the white.  Where the two sides are separate and I can choose to exist in either one world or the other at any given time.  Where even if I saw something on that ugly side of the page that felt overwhelming like the Newtown shooting I could quickly jump to the other side and say to myself, “My kids are healthy and safe at their school right now. I am so grateful for that.”

This morning things got a little muddy.  Because the fact is, I do exist in both of those realities simultaneously and I don’t want to compare the two things.  I came to realize that I can be knee-deep in the muck that is my sadness and grief about the events of last Friday and still find beauty in the world.  The two things simply are.  One does not cancel the other out.  One does not mitigate the effects of the other.  One does not explain or deny the other. They both simply are.  And I can be in both at the same time and have both utter desolation and an appreciation for the gifts I experience without judging.

When my father was dying and we both knew it,  we were devastated.  We could sit together and acknowledge that we wouldn’t likely have much time left together and still find joy in silly things like stories about my girls’ antics or watching a football game.  It wasn’t about forgetting or denying that he was dying, it was about recognizing that and allowing it and sitting with it as we found love and companionship.

I think, too, it is about acknowledging my particular place.  That I can be a force for love and light in the world when I remember to do so. And that there will be times I am fully flawed and I spew anger or create chaos, but that both the dark and the light exist within me, not in discrete spaces sealed off from each other, but swirled together in a vast, cosmic mud puddle where I will sometimes squish into the muck and other times splash with joy.  And I am but a small reflection of the world in which I reside that also contains both of these elements.  In this way, choosing to honor those things for which I am grateful is not a denial or refusal to look at the things I find painful or ugly, but an acceptance that they are as real and as valid as the other.  Today, that makes the beauty a little messier, but no less wonderful.

News Flash: I Don’t Have All the Answers. No, Really, I Don’t

I finished my Christmas shopping yesterday.  And before you stop reading and curse me, letting phrases like, “F*&^ you!” and “well, la tee dah” fly, I want to take you on a thought journey.  Please. Indulge me.

It all began with an afternoon latte and a friend who was talking about a business class she once took. Never mind that the entire notion of her taking a business class shook me nearly out of my seat – she was a theater arts major with a beautiful singing voice and I have known her for more than half our lives. I didn’t have the presence of mind to stop her narrative to ask, WTF? You? Took a business class?  She is a fast talker – my father used to call those of us who love to talk ‘motormouth’ – and she blithely continued on before I could stop her. Good thing. Because she started talking about something called manageable chunks. Not prioritizing or triaging or anything that places importance on one set of tasks or ideas over another, but manageable chunks. And it occurred to me that this is a vanilla enough phrase that it can mean many things to many different people.  And that is precisely why I liked it.

You see, for me, editing my latest book review was not manageable yesterday. Neither was phoning my naturopath’s bookkeeper and then the insurance company and then the administrator of my HSA to talk about why my deductible has not yet been met even though it is nearly the end of the year.  Even less manageable for me would have been sitting down to crunch numbers on the landscape project Bubba and I are toying with doing.  Manageable? Shopping. Driving to some cute local stores to look at stocking stuffers and purchase a book or two to round out my holiday gift lists.  Coming home and hauling all of the wrapping paper and ribbons out of storage and staging a Santa’s elves helper area for the girls to fully immerse themselves in – that was manageable. Yesterday. I’m not saying it would be next Tuesday.  Or any other day. But yesterday, that was the one piece of my To-Do List that I felt I could tackle with the mindset, energy and ability I had.

And then, as the girls and I sat swapping scissors for tape for ribbon and doing our best to make all of the packages pretty despite the black fur that was sticking to everything (we were wrapping in front of the fireplace which is where the dog and the cat do most of their lounging), I saw it on the news.  A lone, masked man entered a busy shopping mall in Portland, Oregon yesterday and began shooting randomly, killing two people and wounding a 15-year old girl before killing himself.  I have been in that mall many times.  My sister used to work there.  My friend Carrie took her son to see Santa there 24 hours prior to this horrible incident.  I was struck still.  No thoughts, very little breath, no movement.  No emotion, even, for a moment in the beginning.  And then I was sad and then grateful that more people weren’t injured. And then I wondered who this poor man was and why he felt as though he had to do something like this. And then I was still again because I have no answers. And that is where I stayed (mentally) until now.

Logically, I know I don’t have all the answers. Viscerally, I disagree entirely.  Logically, I don’t even want to have all the answers. God forbid someone call me up one day and say, “Kari? Good, you’re there. I’m taking a break for a bit and I need you to mind the Universe until I come back, okay? Thanks.”  I would wet myself.  I would stutter and sputter and perhaps vomit.  Because that, my friends, is a lot of responsibility.

But sometimes I fantasize that whomever that person is that is in charge will call and ask me for one piece of the puzzle.  That I can eloquently and articulately present my argument for, say, organic foods or holistic health care or safer environmental practices and leave them saying, “Damn! You’re good! Of course we will implement that right away. We are so glad we asked you. Can we keep your number in case we have other questions?”

Often I rail at the powers-that-be who must surely possess the wisdom that I have and, yet, are not doing a damn thing about it to change some of the major things that bother me: poverty, environmental degradation, and human rights abuses, to name a few.

And before you think you know where I’m going with this (manageable chunks) I will throw you for a bit of a loop.  Because it occurred to me that every moment of every day there are things being done.  Things that I don’t even know about or understand and didn’t set in motion.  And while they may not entirely cancel out or eradicate the things that make me gnash my teeth in anger or frustration, they constitute motion.  It occurred to me that, even as I notice a new crack in my index finger – a result of the eczema I deal with every year at this time – my body is working to repair some other damage or create some new cell somewhere else that I can’t see.  So maybe I can give my finger a leg up by slathering some cream on it and trying to keep it out of hot water and mitigate some of the work my body has to do so it can use it elsewhere.

I am surely part of the solution, but only part.  And I can only operate within the boundaries of what I know as Truth (remember this post?) and do the rest of the Universe the enormous favor of not challenging every damn little thing it says or does.  Because I don’t have all the answers. And I can’t see the whole picture, but I do know that everywhere, simultaneously, throughout this vast wondrous place we live in, healing is happening at the same time as harm.  And I believe with a very strong conviction that as long as I stick to my manageable chunks, progress is being made.

Ironically, admitting that I don’t have the answers is a little, teensy bit freeing.  While the Teacher’s Pet in me is right now kicking my shins furiously and sticking out her tongue, it is a huge load off to accept the fact that perhaps I don’t have to go out there and fix things all the time.  And it is an even bigger revelation that part of the reason I have avoided certain people and situations in my life is because I felt as though I was expected to provide some solution that I honestly did not have in me.  While I generally chalked those avoidances up to less enlightened things like, “She’s a total freaking mess and it’s not my responsibility” or simply, “He’s an ass,” it turns out that what I was really avoiding was the fear of acknowledging the simple truth that I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO IN THIS INSTANCE.  Once I face that fear and shove it out of the way, there is room for compassion – both for myself in all my ignorance and for the other person who must be feeling really shitty right now.  Having spent most of my life trying to convince everyone that I was mature/intelligent/capable enough to handle anything, it’s a little bit of a turnaround to suddenly realize I’m not any of those things.  I suspect it will take practice. Lots of practice.  And faith that somewhere, someone has a few of the answers I don’t have and still others have their particular pieces of the puzzle, and me? I have my manageable chunks and my not-so-manageable chunks and I have a few answers. Just not all of ’em.

Birthday Melancholy

Eve stayed up later than usual last night.  After I went upstairs to kiss her goodnight, I came back down to the family room, settled on the couch and began my nightly ritual of scanning the on-screen guide to see if there was anything on TV that I could stand to watch.

There wasn’t.

Just as I was pressing the power button, I heard the stairs squeak and Eve’s head peered around the corner.  She sat on the opposite end of the couch from me and looked all around my face, avoiding my eyes.  At first I thought she was afraid of getting in trouble for coming back downstairs, but it didn’t take me long to figure out what was really going on.

It was the last night she would ever be twelve.
The last night before becoming a teenager.
There was no going back.

Eve is generally fairly stoic, at least when it comes to uncomfortable emotion.  She is perfectly happy to  show her support or enthusiasm for something and feels free to express her excitement in most every situation. What she doesn’t do easily is talk about things that bother her or cry in front of anyone.

I waited.

She talked a little about something that made her mad that day and said she wished I didn’t just assume I knew how she would react.  And then it came,

“…just because I’m older. Just because I’m a teenager now, doesn’t mean I don’t care about that stuff anymore.”

I put my hand on the blanket beside me, welcoming her to come sit with me.

“Why?” It was more wary than questioning.

“Because I want to give you a hug. I’m sorry you are unhappy and I will do my best to ask you for your input each and every time, no matter what your age from now on.”

She booted the cat off the couch and snuggled into my side, her hip in the curve of my waist, her head tucked into the side of my neck.

And I told her a story.  About being pregnant with her and knowing that I had all the answers. I decided that my kid wasn’t going to be a “binky baby,” that she would be exclusively breastfed and that she would always, always sleep in her own bed.  And I knew with certainty that if I just started out this way and never wavered, it would be a piece of cake.

Turns out cake doesn’t agree with me (unless it’s gluten free).

By day 3, I was tired of spending my days with my pinky finger stuck in her mouth as she sucked to self-soothe. I picked the shortest route to Target and bought a dozen pacifiers, stuck one in each car and in every room of the house, and tethered one to the frontpack I carried her in.  Finally, peace and a non-soggy finger!

Eve and I were the world’s worst breastfeeding duo. I had inverted nipples and enough milk to feed a small African country and she had a gag reflex that rivaled any I’ve ever seen.  She was starving, I was bleeding and pumping off three or more ounces every couple of hours just to get her to latch on.  It was miserable.  We did finally figure it out, but it took six weeks for me to feel comfortable leaving the house when I thought I might have to nurse her in public because it was such an intricate dance.

And the sleeping.  Well, that was the hardest part.  On paper, it sounded like the right thing to do.  We had a bassinet in our room for her, but it was winter and she was cold in there. Plus, I carried her around all day long in the front pack, so she was used to being nestled up right against a human while she slept.  And the thing is, I loved it.  I loved going through my day sniffing her soft downy head and taking every opportunity to reach down and stroke her chubby little cheek.

We would put her to bed in her bassinet and within 30 minutes she would howl.  I knew that I would be feeding her at least twice in the night anyway, and it was so much easier to bring her back to my bed, nurse her and fall asleep than it was to finish feeding her and get out of bed to put her back.  And even back then, Bubba traveled a lot for work, so having her next to me in bed was lovely and comforting.

Eve was never a snuggler. Bubba’s dad was frustrated that she wouldn’t just climb into his lap for a story as a toddler. She wanted to sit next to him and turn the pages, but not on him.  She didn’t like other people besides Bubba and me picking her up, even as an infant.  She gave great hugs, but didn’t cuddle like some kids.  But when we were asleep, she would curl right into me for a little while and sigh. It was absolute Heaven.

As I look at her now, turning 13 today, I know she is filled with excitement and trepidation. I know she can’t wait to have some of the trappings of teenager-dom, but she is feeling a little melancholy about growing up.  I am, too.  I am so proud of her and the person she is becoming and I miss rolling over and seeing her dark hair splayed out across the pillow on the other side of the bed.  I feel so lucky that she sat with me on the couch last night and let me play with her hair and tell her a story of how much I cherish the sweet times we had together.

Happy birthday, my girl! You are my treasure.

My Latest Book Review and Other Books I Read for the Fun of It

I just finished reading Susannah Cahalan’s Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness, for BookPleasures. You can find my review here. It is a quick read, but frightening in the way psychological thrillers can be – that is, if you’re prone to being a tad bit of a hypochondriac when it comes to your own mental health.

I have also read several other good books lately that I thought I’d pass along in case anyone is looking for something to give to themselves this holiday season.  I generally read more than one book at a time, one on my iPad, one from the library, and one I couldn’t resist buying from the used bookstore.  In addition to that, there are always magazines lying around in different places, propped open to various pages, that I can pick up and peruse when I only have 15 minutes or so before dashing off to do something.  My favorite magazines are The Sun and Natural Health, but my new favorite is a literary magazine out of Portland, Oregon called Stealing Time. It is geared towards all things parenting and may be a new place for all you writers out there to send submissions. It is truly fantastic, with poetry and photographs and essays both fictional and non-fiction.  
The books I have read most recently on my iPad, in no particular order, are:
  •  Louise Erdrich’s “The Round House” (she is a wonder, this one – I love everything she writes), 
  • Alex Mitchell’s “All Gone” – a memoir about her mother’s memory loss/dementia and how the author copes by cooking up memories of her childhood dishes. I enjoyed this one, but am glad I didn’t spend the money for the hard copy because it was such a quick read.
  • Karen Thompson Walker’s “The Age of Miracles” – I am sad that this one is on my iPad because I know both of my girls would LOVE this book, but they have Kindles, so I may need to buy it again for them.  The premise is incredibly unique and the story was fascinating, especially to someone who tends to get lost in philosophical reverie. I didn’t even know it was supposed to be a teen book until after I read it. Loved this one!
  • Amanda Coplin’s “The Orchardist” – this one felt like a Pacific Northwest, caucasian “Roots” in a way. It was epic, spanned generations, and completely sucked me in with the imagery and the fact that I live not far from where it was set.  Tremendous read. 
  • M.L. Stedman’s “The Light Between Oceans” – this book made me cry in a good way. Again, the premise was unique and made me think well beyond the pages of the book. Loved it.
  • Darcy Lockman’s ” Brooklyn Zoo: The Education of a Psychotherapist” – a memoir of Lockman’s residence in a Brooklyn psych hospital. Well-written, quick read. Mostly it made me sad about the state of our healthcare system (especially as it relates to mental illness) and how we train our physicians. 
  • Sarina Berman’s “Me, Who Dove into the Heart of the World” – Amazing story! Amazing. I devoured this book and was so sad when it was over. One of my favorite works of fiction this year.
  • Laura Moriarty’s “The Chaperone” – fun, light read that I would recommend for summer vacation.
  • John Irving’s “In One Person” – I had to work to finish this one.  Actually, it was the first third of the book that was work. The rest was pleasurable, but I only kept reading it because I heard Irving interviewed on a local public radio station and I find him so fascinating.  Ultimately, I enjoyed it, but felt like it could have used some editing. (Look at me – novice writer saying that about John Irving! Ha! Who do I think I am?)
  • Liz Moore’s “Heft” – My friend Carrie raved about this book, and I trust her taste, so I downloaded it. What a beautiful story! Another favorite fictional work, for sure.
  • Tupelo Hassman’s “girlchild” – I think I wrote about this book earlier this year, but I have to say it again – I think it’s brilliant.
  • Laura Hillenbrand’s “Unbroken” – this one made me grieve so much for the folks fighting wars all over the planet. It also made me wish they could all unburden themselves of their stories and see them in a different light.
I just gifted myself Anne Lamott’s new book “Help Thanks Wow” and Brene Brown’s newest, “Daring Greatly.” I can’t wait to start them, but first I have a teen fiction book to review that I have to finish because Eve read the back the other day and is chomping at the bit to read it when I’m done.  
Happy reading!

Where My Mind Shouldn’t Go

Three posts in four days. That used to be the norm, but in the last year, I have gone to one or two a week and felt just fine with it.  I know I’m working something out in my psyche when I feel the need to write here more often and I also know it when I start to live in the stream of consciousness.

Stream of consciousness thinking is a way for me to dissociate. It feels like skating on a frozen pond, gliding across without any fear, gazing down below my feet and noticing fish darting about.  Every once in a while I magically breach the ice and reach in to get a closer look at one particular fish and sometimes I follow it for a while before letting go and coming back up to the surface.

I think that this process allows me to divorce myself from my normal routine or patterns of thinking and simply float through thoughts until one snags my attention.  Strings of thought emerge as I begin to notice which kinds of things are pulling me in and often I am able to come to some deeper understanding than I would have if I had diligently worked on finding a solution.

Sometimes, though, the things that catch my attention pull me in ways I’d rather not go.  At my physical yesterday, my doctor told me she felt a lump on my thyroid gland and wanted me to get an ultrasound to look at it.  She wasn’t concerned at all and figured it was simply a benign nodule, but she wanted to be sure.  I took my original cue from her calm demeanor, scheduled the ultrasound for the next day, and went on my way.

Over the next 24 hours I skated on that pond, only looking at the fish that reminded me of my mother’s thyroidectomy some 20 years ago and the one that suggested maybe my hair was thinning and that might be a bad sign.  I skated past signs that said pithy things like, “If you’re going to get cancer, thyroid cancer is the one to get.”  I read my friend Emily’s blog, Holy Sit, where she writes about spending a year eradicating her cervical cancer using alternative medicine.  I woke up a full hour before my alarm went off, wishing I were tired because when I sleep I forget.  Opening my eyes, I looked at the dark room and rattled off a list of things for which I am grateful and that’s when the shaking began.

I managed to get the girls to school without betraying my emotions, only letting tears fall as I walked the dog around the block to pee.  I wondered who would help Bubba raise my girls if I die. Or who would run the household for me if I get sick and lie in bed for a year.  I shoved the dire predictions out of my head with an impatient shake and decided to skate circles on that pond until my appointment, floating above everything else as long as I could.

When I got to the radiology department, more practical concerns entered my head.  I have a ‘thing’ about my neck.  I don’t like things touching it.  I wondered idly what would happen if I started gagging or giggling when the technician pressed the wand into my throat.  I wondered if I would be allowed to swallow while she did the exam.  I wondered if, on the off chance I started to cry, she would be able to discern the lump in my throat on her screen.  I wondered what causes that lump, anyway, when you are about to cry.

I had to lie on my back with a foam cylinder under my neck that tilted my head back and exposed my throat. I felt like a chicken on my great-grandmother’s chopping block.  ‘Make it quick!’ I imagined myself saying and felt like laughing at my own joke.  I had to turn left and then right as she swirled the wand over my throat through the warm goo, clicking keys on her keyboard and taking 40 pictures or more.  When I swung my head to the right, I could see the screen clearly and watched as she marked off measurements, “THYROID SUP,” “L LAT THYROID.”  Then she started marking off smaller areas just to the side of my thyroid and a tear slid from the corner of my eye into my right ear.

After 30 minutes, she handed me a towel and told me she saw nothing out of the ordinary.  There are nodules.  They are perfectly normal – happens to a lot of people.  It may not affect how my thyroid functions at all, but now that we know they are there, we will want to keep an eye on them.

When she left the room so I could change out of the gown, I let myself cry hot tears of relief.  I buried my face in the gown and sobbed. And then I went to the grocery store.  After all, Eve’s birthday slumber party is tonight and we have to have supplies.

Post-Holiday Stream of Consciousness

I guess, technically, it’s pre-holiday, too, considering that Christmas is coming up, but Thanksgiving and Christmas always sort of lump together in my mind and heart like one long slow hill up to the top of this rickety roller coaster that dumps me down a thrilling dive to Christmas, up another little dip and down again on New Year’s.  I wonder when or if I will ever see these holidays as different.  My image of them has been shaped by the school calendar, anticipating the break from routine just as much as the actual decorating and annual Nutcracker viewing and rip-and-tear on the morning of the 25th.

I had my annual physical today and was grateful for so many things.  The doctor who comes in and doesn’t touch me for at least 20 minutes as she asks me how I’m doing and what’s going on in my life. The fact that she remembers the stories I told her of stress and my husband’s health history and my writing three months ago when I was there.  The enormous, green vein nestled in the crook of my left elbow (antecubital fossa – that’s forever my favorite anatomy term) that is easily visible to any lab tech and gives up blood without rolling or closing down or even making a squeak.  I was enormously grateful to Bubba for being in town to get the girls ready and off to school so I could schedule my physical first thing in the morning and not have to go without coffee or food for too long.  Tremendously grateful for health insurance that allows me to make this annual pilgrimage to keep tabs on my health.

I am having so much fun shopping for the kids in the family this year. I always do, but forget about it throughout the year. Even if some of them won’t be with me when they open them, I delight in finding goofy little things that conjure up memories or that one special item I know they can’t get where they are. I used to start shopping in August because I thought I was supposed to get a jump on the holidays, but I always ended up with a closet full of gifts, too many to give each person, embarrassed by the amount of money I had spent.  I shifted to making lists  of possible ideas starting in August, but quickly realized that stressed me out more than anything – making sure the items would still be available when I was ready to buy them. When we shifted to drawing names for adults so that each of us only bought for one other person, I began to get back into the joy of finding that one special gift.  We still buy gifts for all the kids, though, and that is my favorite part.  Like most things, I’m much more sanguine about that these days, picking up things as I come across them in my daily errands or leafing through catalogs in the evenings.

A few years ago I started making anti-gift lists for Eve and Lola in an effort to avoid the things we either had too many of or simply didn’t want in the house. Barbie dolls, Polly Pocket, anything pink (in Lola’s case)….I may have added a few things to that list that weren’t preapproved by the girls but I figure that’s my prerogative as the mom.  This year, I happened to mention to my sister-in-law that if she got Eve gift cards to either Hollister or Abercrombie (which she put high on her list of desires), she could get me a corresponding gift by offering to take her shopping there for me.  I hate both of those stores for so many reasons.  I have a girlfriend who calls them both “the naked boy store” because the shopping bags have black and white photos of half-naked boy-men on them with their jeans pulled down to show their hip bones.  There are posters of these boys throughout the store – not that you can see them very well because the stores are so dimly lit that I have been known to mortify Eve by pulling out my phone to shine it on a price tag or two.  There is an overwhelming stench of perfume, so much so that within five minutes of being inside, I can taste it in the back of my throat and begin hacking like a cat with a hairball.  There is never anyone at the locked dressing rooms which means someone has to go hunting for help. At first, I offered to stand in line while Eve went, but that generally resulted in her becoming distracted by other items she wanted to try on and inevitably I stood there for 15 minutes before she finally came back and said she was too shy to ask anyone.  There is only ever one person behind the checkout counter, with five or six other employees scattered throughout the store folding clothes and putting them back on racks.  This means that I stand in line while Eve wanders to look for other things and then I have to step out of line while she goes to try “just one more thing” on. I may have spewed all of this frustration to my SIL. I may have been a little vehement about it.  I may have just put the kibosh on any gift cards from either of those stores. Depends on how badly she wants to be the celebrity aunt. Or how much wine she has before shopping…