Bub and Pie

Good Writer, Bad Person

2010-02-18T11:32:00.006-05:00

Pie has been coming home from kindergarten lately with some strange worksheets.

"What do you want more?" one sheet asked. "A new car or a new house?" Pie answered by drawing a picture of a house and writing beneath it, "I need a new house." (A bigger one, she explained later, with an extra room to allow her best friend to move in and become her sister.) Our house is already new; we hardly need a new or bigger one, and it seemed odd to me that teachers would encourage kindergarten students to press their parents for such large-ticket items.

"I want an iPod Touch," another petition urged. The school has purchased a set of iPods, presumably for educational purposes, and the students have been urged to buy raffle tickets to win one of their very own.

As far as I know, the purpose of these writing/colouring exercises is to lay the foundation for the persuasive writing curriculum. The teachers are harnessing the children's natural greed and attempting to use it for good: by writing their parents these letters, the children begin, in a rudimentary way, to express their desires in writing, to take a position and back it up with argumentation.

The trouble is, my children are not naturally acquisitive; they almost never ask me to buy them things. They zealously defend their property rights in relation to things they already own, but the idea of begging for new stuff - especially high-tech gadgets like an iPod or, um, a new car - is foreign to them. In the name of teaching persuasive writing, the teachers are actually fostering acquisitiveness and greed.

A friend of mine who is a grade five teacher has a similarly troubling story. The principal at her school made an announcement one day: the school board has cancelled summer vacation! The students were, naturally, up in arms. For a week they pooled their resources to write persuasive letters to the board, demanding a return to the ten-month school year. At the end of the week, the principal confessed: the whole thing had been a stunt, a white lie told in the name of education. Naturally, the students felt betrayed. The exercise had worked - they had learned a lot about how to marshal arguments and express them clearly - but the sense of empowerment they had achieved through the exercise proved to be illusory.

Is there something about the act of persuasive writing that is vaguely shady? E.B. White ends his novel, Charlotte's Web with the following famous remark: "It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both." I have always assumed that White was referring to the notorious artistic temperament, to the selfishness of those who devote their lives to a creative muse. But does it go deeper than that? Can something as apparently useful and innocuous and persuasive writing be inimical to the development of one's character?

I teach persuasive writing to adults, and it strikes me that in doing so I often take open-minded students who are able to see all sides of an issue and bully or cajole them into taking a side. The art of persuasive writing is the art of twisting the facts, carefully framing sentences so that contradictory evidence appears to support your cause. Rhetoric is about manipulation and deception; it's about making your case look better than it is. My students come to me unable to pull off this feat, and if I do my job, they leave my class savvier and more corrupt.

Of course, that isn't all I do. In an expository writing course I also take students who are wholly wedded to their own point of view and teach them to anticipate opposing arguments, to consider the beliefs and values of their audience, to characterize their opponents fairly and even charitably. When they write rebuttal papers, students repeatedly make the mistake of overheating their rhetoric; I counsel them to tone down the vitriol, to assume a more reasonable tone and give their readers a chance to see for themselves how bigoted and absurd their opponents' arguments are. If I do my job, they leave my class equipped to represent themselves as open-minded and fair people. But at the end of the day, they do this for one reason only: to win the argument.

Persuasive writing is, in some ways, the opposite of learning. We write persuasively in order to get what we want, to bully people into coming around to our point of view. It may well be the case that the two qualities that most necessary to the success of any essay-writer are (1) arrogance and (2) the ability to conceal one's arrogance from others.

These reflections are all the more disturbing because I have recently made it a priority to develop Bub's writing skills. Writing is his Achilles heel, academically, so I've come up with a solution: blogging. Each school day, before he's allowed to use the computer recreationally, Bub must write a post in his "diary." His first few posts included a short story, several calendars marked with special days, and a number of how-to guides on topics like soccer and Pokemon. But yesterday he spontaneously shifted gears and attempted a persuasive essay. Sniff Your Bum Please was the title of his post, and the body of the post went like this: "please please please please do what the title says and do not change your mind."

Well, at least he's polite.

I. Am. Canadian.

2010-02-17T08:43:00.004-05:00

During these scandal-plagued Olympic games, it seems appropriate somehow that the main thing my children are learning about Canadian patriotism is the importance of drinking beer.

"Drop your gear for beer!" my pastor chanted periodically Friday night, after the CTV coverage of the opening ceremonies began with a clip of the MuchMusic VJs lounging in a hot tub with bikini-clad twelve-year-olds while audience members competed in what appeared to be an impromptu stripping contest. The pastor and her family were visiting during the opening ceremonies and, luckily for us, the children had left the room just in time to miss the VJs doing "body shots" (though not in time to avoid seeing horrific footage of the fatal luge accident).

Refusing to learn from experience, I called my kids into the living room last night to watch Maelle Ricker compete in the snowboard cross finals. "I always cheer for Canada," Pie confided, snuggling in beside me on the couch, and as the four of us hooted and hollered at Maelle's gold-medal performance, Bub noticed something on the TV.

"Hey, we should get that Canadian drink!" he exclaimed, pointing excitedly at the screen.

"Is it Canada Dry ginger ale?" hubby asked from the kitchen.

"No," I answered. "It's the other Canadian drink."

*****

I am a patriot, but even I balk at the idea of serving my six-year-old beer. I will, however, serve up pancakes with maple syrup, so we celebrated Shrove Tuesday last night with chocolate-chip pancakes and (uncharacteristically) a generous dollop of artificial table syrup. We are normally a real maple syrup family, purchasing our syrup from a local farm that offers hay rides and pumpkin tosses in the fall, along with sugar bush tours in the spring. But we laid in a supply of the artificial stuff this year because hubby was in charge of making French Toast for the Valentine's Day church breakfast.

It has been years since I've tasted fake maple syrup, and I was surprised at how good it was - and at how readily it took me back to the last time I'd tried it. "It tastes like camp," I told hubby on Sunday morning. With my first bite I was transported instantly to a dining hall full of kids chanting "Bea, Bea, if you're able, keep your elbows off the table! This is not a horses' stable, but a first-class dining table!"

So I shouldn't have been so surprised last night when Bub ran in excitedly, holding out his plate full of pancakes. "These pancakes are making my tummy ... are making my whole body remember what we used to do!" he spluttered. "We used to go to a Santa party!"

It was a few moments before I figured out what he meant. Two Christmases ago we went up to the local farm to have breakfast with Santa. It wasn't a great success - we were expected to huddle over our breakfasts in a tent heated inadequately by an electric space heater, so we bolted down pancakes with syrup and blueberry sauce while Santa did his best to whip up some enthusiasm with his jingle bells. It was a forgettable morning, at least until last night, when his first taste of table syrup called up the memory in Bub's tummy.

This was a first of sorts: Bub's first encounter with the phenomenon of sense memory, his first discovery of the way the present can suddenly be invaded by the past at the whiff of cloves or the taste of syrup on the tongue.

Free Time

2010-02-10T12:18:00.007-05:00

According to a recent article in the Washington Post, women today have, on average, thirty hours of leisure time per week. In Dani's post on the subject, she admits that despite the pressure of near-constant busy-ness, she manages to find 20 hours each week for photography, working out, and other leisure pursuits. I'm a bit embarrassed to admit that some quick number-crunching put my weekly leisure hours at around 40. (My embarrassment is, incidentally, confirmation of one of the Post article's major points: it's not so much that we are busy nowadays as that we are conditioned to associate busy-ness with status.)

I'm not under the impression that I am crazy busy. During March and November, when the marking season hits, I make hefty withdrawals from that 40-hour fund, but right now, I'm pretty relaxed. My house is clean. I feel confident, most days, that I will get through my allotment of classes without that panicky mid-lecture feeling that when the current sentence comes to an end I will have no idea what to say next.

By any measure, I have a pretty comfortable amount of leisure time. I go out for lunch twice a week, once with my husband and once with a friend. I keep up with a demanding television schedule that includes (at the moment) Bachelor, House, Survivor, Lost, and Grey's Anatomy with HGTV to fill the gaps. I subscribe to four different magazines, not to mention some eighty-odd blogs. Nevertheless, the task of adding up my leisure hours reveals some ambiguities. Does it count as leisure if I read a book during a quiet office hour? I'm not free to leave the room; I am, technically, being paid to sit there. Given the choice, I might prefer a good round of Guitar Hero, or even an hour at my computer to catch up on some marking. But an hour spent chuckling over an Alexander McCall Smith or Nick Hornby novel seems pretty self-indulgent. Into the leisure column it goes.

I did not, on the other hand, put my commute into the leisure column. It's a relaxing drive through an often very beautiful countryside, and it's time I often use for work-purposes, thinking my way through an upcoming lecture. But what if I spend that 45 minutes composing a blog post? (My posting record should make it clear that I don't do so, but what if I did?) One reason I enjoy housecleaning is that I can pop in the Greatest Hits of 1983 and listen to "Karma Charmeleon" while I sweep the kitchen floor. Listening to music is a leisure pursuit; scrubbing toilets clearly is not. What happens when I do both at the same time?

The distinction between work and leisure seems obvious, but the more I think about it the blurrier those categories become. Most workplaces include opportunities for pleasurable and not entirely work-related activities like gossiping with co-workers or updating Facebook. In their leisure time, people often embrace challenging and productive activities like jogging, volunteering, or learning Italian. The difficulty in distinguishing work from leisure may even be a marker of happiness: the happiest people are those who enjoy their work (getting paid to do something they would otherwise do voluntarily) and who have enough energy left over at the end of the day to take on leisure activities more stimulating and meaningful than predicting who'll leave empty-handed from this week's rose ceremony.

The distinction between work and leisure is never more problematic than when we consider time spent with children. John Robinson, the expert quoted in the Post article, includes child-care in his definition of leisure time. His point, I think, is that contrary to popular myth, parents are not in fact working too hard to spend time with their kids. Parents today actually spend more time talking and playing with their children than parents in the 1960s. This is a point worth making, but it also radically changes the impact of his pronouncement that women have abundant leisure time. I assume he does not include in his tally the time spent changing diapers or packing lunches, but even so, time spent in the company of a crying baby or an active toddler does not, in any way that I can think of, qualify as leisure.

Baby-care is not leisure; toddler-care is emphatically not leisure; but school-aged children complicate matters somewhat. When I sit down with my kids to cringe through an episode of Sailor Moon I don't feel that I am settling in for a bit of free time. But what about the half-hour I spent last Saturday sharing their enjoyment of the sword-fighting scene in The Princess Bride? Anime crimefighters are one thing; a young Cary Elwes is another.

The problem with Robinson's inclusion of child-care in the leisure category is that it conflicts with most people's assumption that by leisure time we mean free time: activities we engage in freely because we enjoy them, not from a sense of duty or obligation. For me, at least, the first five years of child-care are driven by duty. I love my children; I am fascinated by their development and dedicated to the task of learning who they are. But assembling Dora puzzles and playing games of Uno are not examples of free time. Neither is shivering at the top of a tobogganing hill.

Nevertheless, the joy of the last couple of years, for me, has been the gradual erosion of this distinction. When I take my children to the beach, that is not leisure: it is suffering endured for a cause. But increasingly, there are times when my free time dovetails with my children's. Bub belts out "We Are the Champions" on Rock Band while hubby and I accompany him on guitar. Pie and her best friend sip apple juice at the local tea shop while their mothers down cups of Irish Breakfast with brownies.

I remember the first time I realized that spending time with me could qualify as free time for my mother. We had gone shopping downtown at the old Eaton's building and then we ate lunch in the department-store cafeteria. I had chocolate milk and a croissant and at some point during that meal it dawned on me that my mother wasn't taking care of me anymore: she was hanging out with me; she was doing this because it was fun, for her as well as for me. That probably wasn't the first time she had experienced her time with me as leisure rather than work, but it was the first time I realized that our relationship had shifted in that way.

Already with my children I catch glimpses of that kind of interaction. Shopping is rarely the best way to achieve it: 4-year-olds have different taste in stores than almost-40-year-olds and even when we can agree on where to shop, we disagree on when to leave - either the children get bored long before I do, or else they flatly refuse to go until I bribe, threaten, and/or drag them from the premises kicking and screaming. But every once in awhile we get it right. Like that time last summer when Pie and I peeked into a little home decorating shop in a neighbouring town; I found a candle in the exact shade of blue I had been looking for and Pie found an Ugly Doll exactly like the one she had spotted excitedly in a recent issue of Canadian House and Home. We made our purchases triumphantly and exited the store with expressions of mutual congratulation. Times like that are not merely leisure time - they're the best leisure hours of them all.

None of That Either

2010-01-18T16:11:00.002-05:00

"I don't want any more hitting," I lectured the children the other day, "and no more fighting!"

Bub agreed. "No body-checking either."

It was a surprising observation, not only because Bub is perhaps the only boy in this hockey town who refuses to learn to skate, but also because he has been past master in the art of body-checking ever since a few time outs three years ago taught him that a hand raised against his baby sister meant immediate loss of privileges.

"Do you know what body-checking is, Bub?" I asked him.

"Yeah," he replied. "It's when you check a look to see what your body looks like."

Irony

2010-01-10T20:23:00.005-05:00

The town I live in is full of hills. In the winter parents pick up their kids from school with a sled tucked under one arm, and when I'm driving home each day I see a row of toques lined up at the top of the hill. All last winter I felt guilty about the fact that my children have never gone tobogganing, not once in this snowy, hilly town. Over the Christmas holidays this year we were even invited tobogganing with friends and I turned the opportunity down, preferring to nurse my chest cold with a cup of hot chocolate by the fire. I had an iron-clad excuse, but I also knew the real reason for my children's tobogganing virginity: I am a chicken.

I am that hovering parent, the one who can so easily be blamed for her children's physical timidity. Mine are the children who cling to the wall at the skating rink, who look on aghast at the playground as other, braver children slide down the fireman's pole. I blame nature rather than nurture, but certainly if a parent can create a fearful child, it would be a parent like me who does it. While other parents sit chatting on benches, I shadow my children, leaping to pull them out of the way of errant swings and gasping when they step too close to the gap at the top of the jungle gym.

So it was with an acute sense of my own absurdity that I bundled my children and their sled into the car this weekend, not at all convinced that we would all return alive. I had purchased the most cushiony sled I could find, an inflatable tube with plenty of hand-grips. If we hit a tree in such a contraption, the worst that could happen is that we would bounce. Our choice of hill was based not only on proximity to our house but also on an informal risk-assessment: no danger from street traffic, no fence to crash into - only a not-entirely-frozen river at the end of a reassuringly long straightaway. The hill itself was streaked with tracks, all of which ended at the foot of the hill.

You know where this story is going of course, so I will reassure you at once that nobody ends up in the river. That's only because my husband tried the sled first and managed to get his boot into the snow in time to stop our friction-free inflatable tube from zipping lightly and easily right into the water. After that, we posted him at the foot of the hill, where he never failed to catch the sled before it could careen over the riverbank.

No, the danger in this story is not from the river's icy waters but instead from my son's belief that it would be fun to intercept his sister in the sled about halfway down the hill, while hubby and I hollered, "Bub! Get out of the way!" from our positions at the top and bottom. Grinning mischievously and ignoring our cries, Bub moved steadily into the path of the oncoming sled, which cut his feet out from under him and catapulted him into the air, head over heels, feet flying, until he finally made contact with the ground cheek-first.

He jumped up quickly, doing the silent scream, his jaw moving up and down in astonishment - but at least it was evident that he had not broken his neck or back, contrary to all probability. A dad who was with his kids on another part of the hill yelled "Oh God!" and sprinted over there to scoop him up while I stood dazedly rooted to the spot.

"I'm injured!" Bub gasped finally as he struggled back up the hill. He was more frightened than hurt, and the most regrettable thing about the entire incident, really, is that I didn't have a video camera with me. But the whole thing reminds me of that Alanis song everybody liked to dismiss so scathingly a few years ago: "Mr. Play It Safe was afraid to fly. He packed his suitcase and kissed his kids goodbye. He waited all his whole damn life just to take that flight, and as the plane crashed down, he thought, 'Well isn't this nice.' Isn't that ironic? Don't you think?" So yes, maybe technically that situation is more sucky than ironic, but it certainly feels like irony when your most absurd fears turn out to be absurdly prophetic.

Future Shock

2009-12-28T10:31:00.003-05:00

"When I grow up, I'm going to be just like my Dad," Bub told me yesterday. "Except ... I'm going to cook a lot quicker. That way I don't have to wait for my food."

Bub has been thinking a lot about the future lately. He's worried that when he's a grown-up he'll have to eat grown-up food instead of his current diet of breakfast cereal, baloney sandwiches, peach yogourt, and peas. Totally uncomforted by my assurance that food tastes different when you grow up, he finally relaxed when I pointed out that grown-ups don't have anybody to make them eat stuff they don't want to. (This, I find, is one of the major perks.) He plans to name his first son Ben, though he had to alter his ideas somewhat when we informed him that the baby wouldn't be coming out of his tummy.

Pie, too, has become increasingly aware of the decades stretching out ahead of her. We watched Up yesterday and after witnessing the montage of Carl and Ellie's marriage she looked at my tear-streaked face and said quietly, "They were doing so well! And then ... they weren't."

For her, the long years ahead are doubly poignant because she will have to live them without the help of her dearly departed soothers. On Christmas Day, we packed them all up into a Ziploc bag and handed them off to her newborn cousin. We've been talking about this day for months and though she seemed ready, I wasn't. Pie is four and a half. She is approximately twice as old as most children the day their parents decide they're old enough to give up their pacifier habit. But Pie's addiction has been kept in check: she uses them only in her bed - so, at night or during the day when she is troubled enough to curl up with her dolls and comfort herself with a few drags on her soother. She has an overbite and a lisp - both slight, but evident - which may or may not have been caused by her extended oral fixation, but in the end I've been reluctant to require her to give up something which creates so much comfort and so little harm. What is there in my life that offers the same kind of payoff with so few calories?

Christmas Day, Pie stoically handed over her bag of soothers with little sign of distress - until bedtime. Then the tears came. Not a tantrum, no anger or sulkiness - just deep, heart-wrenching sobs. She has made it through the night without a soother before, on occasions where we've forgotten to pack them, but this night was different - this time, it was forever.

I wonder how many of our griefs are like that, the payback for our knowledge of time. If we lived in three dimensions we would still suffer from momentary pains and discomforts, but how much true suffering is contingent on our awareness of the future? As I sobbed my way through Up yesterday I reflected that the melancholy in that film is attached almost entirely to the passage of time. Time is simultaneously the most mundane and the most startling aspect of life. C.S. Lewis argued that the jolt we feel at the passage of time suggests that we were created for some other condition. None of us have ever known a static existence. Mutability is the most omnipresent, unavoidable aspect of our lives and yet we never quite get over the shock of it.

Pan

2009-12-09T09:51:00.004-05:00

I found her huddled in the corner of her bedroom, looking sad.

"I don't want to be a grown-up!" she wailed.

I don't know what brought this on, what tipped her off to the perils of adulthood, but a bit of probing revealed a pressing concern: "When I'm a grown-up, I won't be able to play with Mary anymore." Mary is her best friend, a bit of an on-again off-again playmate whom Pie was apparently imagining in an eternal kindergarten, playing with other kids while Pie was forced inexorably to grow up.

"You know," I told her, "when you're a grown-up, Mary will be grown up too."

Pie's face lit up, her arms raised in a V for victory, but then suddenly her face fell. "But then you'll be the grandma. And I don't want that!"

I pulled her onto my lap and tried out various comforting strategies. You don't have to move out until you want to. You won't be a grown-up for a long, long time. Finally I found something that worked. "When you're a grown-up," I promised, "I will call you on the phone every single day."

Comforted, Pie snuggled into bed and when I came in to wake her up the following morning the first rapturous words out of her mouth were, "I love that you're going to call me every day when I'm a grown-up."

*****

When I'm teaching Peter Pan I always call J.M. Barrie out for his nostalgia for lost childhood. This, I explain to my students, is not how children feel about adulthood. Children want to grow up. They look at garbage collectors and gas station attendants and assume they do those jobs for fun. To a child, adult life represents freedom and power. No child ever greets a birthday with a groan of dismay. Growing up is a child's Holy Grail.

So I've had to eat my words since that conversation with Pie - and deal with some flack from hubby, who thinks it's a bit rash to promise the children that they never have to leave home. In hubby's family, independence is the highest value. My in-laws are gems precisely because they place such a priority on the ideal of non-interference. But Pie is her father's daughter, as well as mine, so the other day she returned to our earlier conversation.

"What did you say you were going to do again, when I'm a grown-up?" she asked.

I smiled lovingly. "Call you every day!"

"That's right," Pie confirmed with a nod. But then she frowned. "Well," she added in an exasperated tone, "not every day!"

Report Cards

2009-12-04T20:53:00.004-05:00

I am inundated right now with angry emails from students who are convinced that their essays have been badly misgraded by their T.A.s and that I should upgrade them to a minimum of 70%. Somewhat more polite - and yet simmering with unexpressed rage - are the emails from students with marks like 78% or 83%, who want to know exactly how they lost those marks and how they can improve. So there is a certain amount of poetic justice in the dismay I felt when I opened Bub's first report card this week and saw a mixture of B's (in math, science, and social studies) and C's (in visual arts, writing, and oral communication), along with one A- (in reading). I scanned the marks and morphed instantaneously into a caricature of my least likeable students. Why is he getting C's in written and oral communication when he has a diagnosed communication disorder? What exactly has he failed to grasp in math and science? Most importantly of all, what is that MINUS all about in reading???

I've become a little complacent about Bub lately. The aspect of his academic performance I'm most familiar with is his reading ability, and there he seems almost preternaturally strong. This time last year he couldn't recognize all the letters of the alphabet and now he reads fluently, expressively, and with evident enjoyment. He may get a bit daunted with chapter books, but he can work his way through any picture book with ease.

The minus, it turns out, has to do with his ability to make inferences and personal connections. He grasps the content of the books he reads, but when it comes to puzzling out characters' motivations, or the likely outcome of events, he struggles.

So last night when I was reading to him and Pie I decided to throw in a few questions. We were reading about a mouse getting ready to go outside in the snow. The mouse put on his long johns, and then his parka. He put on a toque, and a scarf, and five pairs of socks. In each subsequent illustration he got rounder and puffier until finally he donned a ski mask and prepared to head outside.

"Do you think he's feeling warm right now, or cold?" I asked.

For once Bub was the first to answer, and as he was opening his mouth to speak I suddenly knew what he would say. "I think cold," he answered.

"No," Pie interrupted, sure of her ground. "He's warm!"

Indeed, the very next sentence dwelt on how very uncomfortably warm the mouse was, all flushed and sweaty under his comically excessive piles of clothing. Pie got the answer right, and she did so because she approached the question using her capacity for empathy: she imagined what it would be like to wear all those layers of fleece and wool and knew she would be warm. Bub, on the other hand, went by a sense of association: hats and mittens are cold-weather clothes, and when we have them on we're often still cold, despite the protection they provide. His answer wasn't the one I was looking for - it wasn't the one that accurately predicted the next sentence of the story - but it did make a certain kind of sense.

It was easier to target Bub's language deficits when he was missing whole parts of speech from his vocabulary. Now, what we're working on is that lapse of time between question and answer, that moment when his brain darts around in the dark, looking to unearth the words that can bring his thoughts into the light.

I Don't Mind

2009-11-24T19:38:00.003-05:00

Tuesday is my early morning these days. While the rest of my family is sleeping I am up, fully clothed, munching my Life cereal over the morning paper. Bub found me that way this morning and asked in astonishment, "Are you the only one here? Did you get up and come down here all by yourself?"

When I confirmed that this was, indeed, the case, Bub replied, "Well, you have me now. So you don't need to be alone anymore."

*****

Bub's new favourite expression is "I don't mind." He uses it in situations where he might be expected to mind a great deal: taking medicine, turning off the computer, letting Pie have a turn with the Leapster. It's as though the turn of phrase has revealed to him a whole new weapon in his arsenal of response. He could let out a shriek of rage OR ... he could simply choose not to mind.

Not minding has its advantages. It promotes serenity. There is a beatific quality to Bub these days, as he explores his newfound Zen. All around him may be chaos but at the centre is Bub, not minding.

"You know what it's called when you don't mind things very much?" I asked him the other day. "It's called being easy-going. And you know who else is easy-going? Your Dad."

"You mean Daddy's going easy-going, just like me?" Bub asked in delight. He seems to sense that in not minding he has found an unexpected form of power, a power that is not about getting but about letting go.

Our Hero

2009-09-24T08:09:00.003-04:00

Pie: We went for the Terry Fox Walk today!

Hubby: Do you know who Terry Fox is?

Pie: He runned and runned and runned and runned, but then his neck started hurting, and he had to take medicine ... and then he died.

Bub: I think it was from drinking the medicine!

Pie: Or maybe it was because of all that running he did.

Bub: But wait. He was running so that other people wouldn't have to get sick. That's why he's a hero.

Pie: Yeah. He's our hero.

Snippets

2009-09-21T16:12:00.003-04:00

...A bit too long for a tweet, not quite long enough for a post.

Pie came up to me on the weekend looking disgruntled. "I don't have anything I want to do," she said slowly, searching for the right words to capture this peculiar emotion, "and I want you to think of something for me to do." There is a word in the English language that we use for this situation. And I did not tell her what it was.
When I came downstairs for breakfast this morning, Bub had something to show me. "It's my loose tooth!" he announced, holding it out proudly. "But the tooth fairy didn't come." I exchanged glances with hubby, aghast, assuming that he had forgotten to tell me Bub's tooth had fallen out. In fact, it came out last night after Bub was in bed, so he popped it under the pillow and was a bit surprised (though not at all upset) to find it still there this morning.
I went out for coffee yesterday with a woman whose oldest son is one year behind Bub in school. She has two younger sons at home in addition to her kindergartener, and though I realized she was younger than I am, I was startled to find out that she is 22 years old. She had her first baby when she was seventeen and married his father two years later. The problem, she explained, is that she has absolutely no peer group. The other happily married moms of preschoolers are all in their thirties, or at least late twenties, and the other moms her age don't have husbands or three children. And it will always be this way. When she's 35 and her kids are in high-school, she still won't have any age peers in a similar situation. That would suck. And I can sympathize with her situation, but the fact remains that I was sixteen years old when she was born.

Pride and Joy

2009-09-11T12:46:00.004-04:00

I am acutely aware, sometimes, of just how much mental real estate is taken up by worry and anxiety over Bub. Before his first day of Grade One last week, I was counting down the days with equal parts excitement and dread. Pie's first day of junior kindergarten, on the other hand, snuck up on me, lost in the shuffle of her first days in her new day-care situation and my first day of classes. I actually had to remind myself last night that she would be going to kindergarten today, and I would have completely forgotten about her special apple dress if she hadn't remembered for me.

It's not entirely my fault. Friday is a silly day for a first day of school, and with Pie's first day falling a full ten days after Bub's, I just haven't been able to sustain the excitement. Those factors aside, though, the real issue here is that I know Pie is going to be fine. She's a shy girl, and in a new situation she is inclined to appear silent and morose. But she's not anxious or unhappy while in that state: she just prefers to keep a careful eye on things from the sidelines. I've never had a single complaint about her behaviour from other caregivers - she reserves her angry, controlling, bossy, and tantrum-throwing behaviour for me. She has had a year to watch her brother go off to kindergarten and she knows the drill. She is ready for this. She will be fine.

So it was almost an afterthought this morning when I snapped these few photos:

Portrait of a four-year-old who is TOTALLY READY for junior kindergarten.

Who is that matronly woman between a concerned Bub and a momentarily clingy Pie?

Portrait of a four-year-old who has located her best friend and is TOTALLY GOING TO BE FINE.

I don't have a portrait of that matronly woman SOBBING all the way home while singing along with Madonna's "Like a Prayer" on the radio. But I'm pretty sure she was crying because she's just so happy and proud.

The Technological Divide

2009-09-02T15:03:00.004-04:00

With university classes set to begin next week, I visited my new classroom yesterday, a soaring cathedral-like space with stained-glass windows and a balcony. For the first time in almost ten years, I will be teaching in a large lecture theatre, so I wanted to scope out the space ahead of time. I had Pie run to the back of the room to test out the acoustics, which were perfect: a four-year-old's murmur carries effortlessly. I'm hoping that will allow me to speak without a microphone - I hate using microphones almost as much as I hate PowerPoint, overhead projectors, and even whiteboards. My classroom, I noted with pleasure, comes equipped with a good old-fashioned chalkboard.

I have sound pedagogical reasons for avoiding technology in the classroom: the darkness alone has a soporific effect and although my students would love more movie clips, I have found that five minutes of video footage have the power to erase whatever impression the students' reading may have made on them. Even if the whole point of the movie clip is to show the profound alteration of meaning produced by a few apparently superficial changes, in the end, students always write about the movie on the exam, thinking they're writing about the book.

My defense of low-tech teaching is well worked-out, but the truth is, I avoid technology in the classroom because I'm afraid of it. I like the security of knowing that everything I need for my lecture is printed out in black and white, securely fastened to my clipboard. The idea of fumbling about with rewind buttons and remote controls in front of an impatient audience of 200 students is enough to make me panic. I got an email a few minutes ago letting me know that my classroom has a video-data projector and a USB port, and it's enough to make me break out in a cold sweat.

Luckily for Bub, his Grade One teacher is a bit less technophobic. On the way home from his first day of school yesterday he actually volunteered the information that the board in his class is a computer board, and when you touch it, the pictures move, and when the teacher types into the computer, the words go up on the board! Bub is enchanted. They had math class yesterday with numbers floating down the screen and the kids had to decide whether they were even or odd. When quizzed, Bub demonstrated no ability whatsoever to distinguish between even and odd numbers (and how do you even explain that concept to children who don't yet know how to multiply or divide?), but he is more excited about school than I had dreamed possible based on my own recollection of Grade One as a lot of sitting around in desks and doing work. If there is one way to get Bub interested in school, it is turning the whole thing into a giant computer.

This boy loves to learn.

I have been imagining the first day of school for months now, picturing a cool, sunny September morning, with children and parents crowded around the class lists posted in the schoolyard and Bub kitted out in his running shoes and backpack, ready for his first day. For once, it all played out exactly as I had pictured it. Bub stood at the front of the line, following his new teacher into the school without hesitation or a backward glance. After the students filed in and the doors closed behind them, Pie and I stood there for a minute in the sudden quiet, as if waiting for something else to happen. Next week, it will be Pie's turn, but for now, the two of us are rattling around the house on our own, enjoying these last few days of relaxation, but asking every so often, in a burst of curiosity, "I wonder what Bub is doing?" He has stepped into a world that is his now. I can peek into his classroom and do my best to figure out what goes on in there, but from now on, most of what I know about his world will be what he chooses to tell me.

Weird

2009-08-24T07:11:00.004-04:00

The children stayed with their grandparents at the beach last night so that hubby and I could go out for a date. (Italian sausage ravioli followed by Inglourious Basterds, if you're interested. I recommend both.) When we returned home from the movie, almost everything felt just a little bit weird. Instead of getting an update from the babysitter and then tiptoeing to bed, we found the house in darkness. We turned on all the lights, and I kept catching myself whispering unnecessarily, the absence of sleeping children an alienating, strange condition, something that made my house just a little bit odd, almost like the Other Mother's world in Coraline. It was weird being able to talk about the movie in normal, audible tones before turning out the light. It felt strange to wake up to find curtains open in every room, beds already made.

It was not always so. When I brought Bub home from the hospital as a baby, one of the most daunting thoughts in my wound-up, sleep-deprived state was that he just wasn't ever going to go away. Day and night, the baby was always there, and I knew that even when he was old enough to sleep through the night he would still be there, breathing in the next room. I would never get a good night's sleep again. The kind of deep, unthinking sleep that had characterized my pre-baby life was gone forever, and gone with it was a certain feeling of home as a refuge from disturbance and stress. My home had turned into the epicentre of stress.

I slept well last night. But to sleep in a childless house no longer felt comfortable and safe the way it did before I had my babies. Part of me can remember a time when I was free to turn on any light in the house at eleven o'clock, when I could watch TV as loud as I wanted and sleep in late. But that's no longer a norm my children are disturbing - that seems like a weird, alien way of life. I actually set the alarm last night, but I didn't need it - I woke up to a sun-filled room at 6:56, and the deep stillness of the house felt not peaceful but empty.

Body Memory

2009-08-21T14:32:00.003-04:00

Wanna hear about the dream I had last night? (That has to be the worst opening for a conversation ever. The answer is universally "no," and yet people are usually too polite to say so.)

I was out shopping when I suddenly noticed that I was about to have a baby. How lucky! I thought. I haven't had a single contraction, and the baby is crowning already! The store clerks were somewhat alarmed when I pulled off my shorts, right there in the store, and announced that the baby was coming NOW, but I was as cool as a cucumber, confident that I could deliver this baby without complications, with or without medical assistance. Some panicked person called 911 while I relaxed on the carpeted floor, wondering how many pushes it would take.

I'm all done having babies, and that is a decision I made easily, happily, with virtually no trauma or conflict. I have no desire to be pregnant again; I don't miss the baby stage. But all day today, as I've been settling fights and picking up toys, I've flashed back to the intensity of that body memory. The pain of childbirth I can't recall, but the sensation of a baby's head pressing down urgently on my cervix ... My body remembers that.

Winning and Losing

2009-08-10T10:09:00.005-04:00

"I have to win!" Pie panted as we ran along the beach last weekend in an impromptu game of tag. "I have to win, or else I might ... lose!"

Winning and losing is a concept that dawns gradually for preschoolers, I find. Pie's first exposure to it was in our games of Dora Uno last summer. At first she was thrilled just to be playing with me, but gradually her expression started to turn sour whenever I happened to win. From there we built up some strategies - if you lose, I explained, just play again. Maybe you'll win next time. In recent months, Pie has become simultaneously more competitive and a slightly better loser: instead of sulking or refusing to play, she dives into the next round with a renewed determination to beat me.

Sore losing is like an allergic response - it doesn't flare up on one's first exposure, and each additional exposure prompts a more intense response. There is a stage in toddlerhood where games are pure activity; children are too young to understand the rules or even the object of the game, so instead of taking turns catching fish and then counting their catch to see who wins, they simply cooperate, arranging the fish into families and then taking everyone on a picnic.

Once children are able to play organized games, competitiveness begins to emerge, but it's still focused on process rather than the end result. Three-year-old soccer is a perfect demonstration of this principle. Not all the kids have grasped the concept yet: many of them are still wandering off to pick dandelions or enthusiastically kicking the ball into their own net. But even among the most competitive, the ones who consistently and skilfully score all the goals, there is no urge to keep score, no need to find out who won at the end of the game. By age five, though, the scorekeeping urge has begun to take over. "You guys are really good!" one of the parents said at Bub's last soccer game.

"Yeah," the goalie replied modestly, "the green team has all the best players."

One of the things I enjoy about Bub is his excellent sportsmanship. Sportsmanship is, perhaps, the wrong word, since it implies someone who is actually willing to participate rather than lying down in the middle of the field or gathering kids from the opposing team to show them the workings of his Ben Ten Omnitrix. But Bub has a genuine and disarming ability to rejoice in others' success. "You won!" he'll exclaim excitedly at the end of a game, adding as an afterthought, "I guess that means I lose!"

I was thus a bit surprised the other day when he was playing a game of roll-the-dice with Pie. It was Balderdash, actually, but without the cards or definitions, a simple game of moving pieces around the board to see who would reach the letter Z first. Bub won the first round and Pie, a veteran of numerous rounds of Dora Uno, cheerfully proposed a second game. When Pie won the second round, however, Bub melted down with startling rapidity and abandon.

Bub is a less experienced game-player than Pie, having until recently resisted activities that involve being told and/or shown what to do. He has yet to acquire the strategies that Pie has developed to cope with the agony of defeat. This was by no means his first experience of losing a game, however. I think what is new is his realization that the alternative to winning is losing, and that the person who loses is the loser.

All of this is developmentally normal and no cause for concern, but what I am struck by is the evidence of my own maternal naivete. In The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, the autistic narrator explains, "I do not tell lies. Mother used to say that this was because I was a good person. But it is not because I am a good person. It is because I can't tell lies."

It's a comical moment in the novel because Christopher's mother is such a cliche, crediting her son with virtues he does not really possess. This passage takes an attribute that sets Christopher apart from the norm and combines it with a maternal response that is nearly universal. What is more, readers almost universally share Christopher's mother's naivete. It doesn't matter how clearly Christopher explains his condition - readers are still willing to credit his innocence to him as righteousness.

It's something we do with our children as well, a biological imperative perhaps, an interpretive error with direct ties to the continuation of the species. We are charmed by the honesty of toddlers, even when technically we realize that they are not yet old enough to engage in deliberate deception. We delight in a two-year-old's capacity for living in the moment even though it merely reflects her inability to anticipate or conceptualize the future.

Bub has in some ways remained innocent longer than other children his age - longer, even, than Pie whose social awareness is acute. He hasn't learned yet to be jealous, to compare his possessions with those of his neighbour. He hasn't learned yet to temper his enthusiasm, to crack jokes at others' expense. He will learn these things, I know, just as he has already begun to learn the power of the words "I hate you" or "I don't want to be your friend." Like all other children, he has to learn to be worse before he can learn to be better. But in the meantime there is something shining and irresistible about his excitement when someone gives him candy - Bub hates candy, but he loves giving it to his sister. "Do you think Pie will like this?" he'll ask excitedly as he hurries over to give it to her, and I can't help admiring in him the purity of heart that so few adults are able to achieve.

Notes From the Beach

2009-08-04T11:29:00.003-04:00

My grandmother raised two sons in a house as big as this cottage: two bedrooms, one bathroom, a sitting room, and a kitchen just big enough to fit a table in the middle. It is, technically, all that a family of four needs, and both the best and worst thing about it is that you can hear one another all the time.
Taking a four- and five-year-old to the beach for the weekend is significantly easier than taking, say, a two- and three-year-old, mainly because they no longer want to be on the beach every single second of the day. They can dig in the sand beside the cottage while I wash up the breakfast dishes without succumbing all at once to the siren song of the lake and flying down the path down to the water, their pyjamas fluttering behind them.
Bub, while out for a sail with his grandfather on a windy day: "There's nothing in the Bakugan handbook about GIANT WAVES!" (Bub is capable now of original speech, but he still thoroughly enjoys the opportunity to pull an apt quote from a book or TV show when the opportunity arises.)
The children gave every evidence of enjoying themselves on our beach holiday, diving into their sand-digging, ice-cream-eating, and wave-jumping duties with gusto, but Bub nevertheless kept a careful eye on the schedule. "We're going home tomorrow, Mama!" he informed me Sunday morning, "and then we're never coming back here again." I half suspected him of missing his TV and computer, but when asked what was so great about home, the best he could do was to say, "We got a new house, and we pretended that it was our home, and we called it, 'The New House.'" This time last year, we sent the kids to the cottage with their grandparents while we unpacked from the move. I think Bub was enjoying himself this year, but he was anxious, wanting to check that his home was still here, the same as ever.
This is the first time since we moved that I've been away from home long enough for the house to feel a bit strange and new upon my return. I am enjoying afresh the softness of the carpets under my feet, the quantity of space and silence as we settle in today to a day of doing absolutely nothing.

Then and Now

2009-07-28T15:07:00.003-04:00

A year ago ...

Now:

A month ago ...

Now:

Four years ago ...

Now (well, two days ago, to be exact):

My house is a year old, my lawn is a week old, and my wee girl is four. All three are beautiful, high-maintenance, and a source of endless delight. Happy (belated) birthday, little Pie.

How My Son Asks For Breakfast

2009-07-22T09:21:00.004-04:00

Bub: Mama, click on the one you want! Cheerios...
Special K...
Or a glass of milk!
Me: Um, Cheerios?

Bub: (encouragingly) Try again. Click on another picture.

Me: A glass of milk.

Bub: Try again. Better luck next time!

Me: How about some Special K?

Bub: Correct! You got the right answer!

Intimations of Mortality

2009-07-07T11:33:00.004-04:00

Occasionally, I have that dream where suddenly my teeth start falling out. I clutch my mouth, trying to catch them and force them back in, horrified by the sudden, unexpected loss of so necessary and useful a part of my body. I've been told this is a common nightmare, and I've always assumed that it is a haunting reminder of our mortality, our sheer helplessness in the face of our bodies' slow and inevitable decay.

This, roughly, has been Bub's reaction to his first loose tooth. He was morose and subdued all day Sunday, but our first hint of the reason for his mood came during dinner, when he bit into a pickle and suddenly let out a wail of anguish. His bottom middle tooth was tilting wildly back and forth, and Bub was grief-stricken at the news that it was going to come out.

"I love my teeth!" he wailed. "I need my teeth! I just want them to go back to normal!"

Adult attempts at reassurance proved to make matters worse. "I lost my teeth when I was your age," hubby assured him. "And look what I've got now!" Bub took one look at his giant grin and let out another shriek of despair.

"You know what's worse than losing your teeth?" my father-in-law asked. "Losing your hair!" Bub quickly raised a hand to his head and tugged on his hair to make sure it was still firmly rooted, tears tumbling down his cheeks. It was a half hour at least before he could be calmed sufficiently to choke down a bit of applesauce for his supper.

Like everything about Bub, this reaction seems both unusual and eminently reasonable. He is concerned less about the pain or inconvenience of the missing tooth than about the broader implications. His comfortable, friendly body, so apparently stable and unchanging, has betrayed him. He does not fully grasp the meaning of death, but he is glimpsing its hideous visage every time he wobbles that tooth with his tongue. Mutability and change are his enemies already, but now they are hitting closer to home, an invasion that is deeply unsettling. When I look at his tear-stained face I find myself thinking of cultures without dentistry where the loss of one's teeth (in old age rather than youth) means bidding a final farewell to food.

This most ordinary childhood rite of passage would be comical and endearing if it weren't so sad. After one joyful week of summer vacation, Bub is depressed. "It's a no good, very bad day," he announced this morning before dragging his feet to the breakfast table.

At swimming lessons, though, we finally caught a break. Less than forty-eight hours after the first wobble, Bub's tooth came out in the pool. Bub was thrown but cheerful, especially when we explained that the tooth fairy will still come, even though the tooth itself is somewhere at the bottom of the pool. The wobbly tooth gone, Bub's spirit is rising to the task of embracing the new, big-boy reality that these bodies aren't ours for keeps.

The Power of No

2009-06-30T08:08:00.004-04:00

"Stop following me!"

"I'm playing by myself. You're not my friend."

"Go away. I don't want you."

These are the phrases that punctuate Bub's play lately. Every so often I have to barge in and mop up the Pie's heartbroken tears as Bub flexes his muscles, experimenting with the newly discovered power of rejection.

It's a skill he's learned the hard way, in the piranha pool of the McDonald's PlayPlace Friday afternoon, when he spent half an hour playing enthusiastically, happily, with a pair of slightly bigger boys who plotted strategies to get rid of him, like telling him there was pizza at the bottom of the slide. "Pizza?" Bub exclaimed delightedly, and then raced down to gobble up the imaginary snack before rejoining his "friends," who I could hear grumbling, "Does he have to keep following us all the time?"

I looked on, paralyzed by the tunnel-structures that make direct intervention difficult, if not impossible. The younger of the two boys seemed friendly enough, but the older boy scowled at Bub, shoving him out of the way whenever he tried to join in. Bub took all of this as playful roughhousing, reacting only when the older boy turned to him and said, in a serious tone, "Stop following us. We don't want you."

"Oh! Sorry!" Bub replied immediately, scampering off to the opposite end of the PlayPlace. Moments later a howl of pain went up from somewhere in the bowels of the tunnel structure. "You stay away from me, you dangerous boys!" Bub yelled. When he emerged, clutching his arm, the younger boy confirmed that the bigger one had hit him. It's hard to say how Bub would have reacted to the "Stop following us" remark by itself, but the physical attack left no doubt in his mind. He had been rejected, violently, by dangerous yet compellingly powerful adversaries.

The post I would have written on Friday about this incident would have focused on my bewildering realization that motherly love doesn't actually help all that much in the face of peer rejection. Bub and I had been having a wonderful morning. He had been putting on a clinic in cute remarks; I had spent the morning exchanging amused glances with other adults as Bub received his Ice Age II: Dawn of the Dinosaurs toy with the words, "I'm a lucky man!" or greeted the little girl at the next table with the words, "I'm so happy to meet you!" Bub is a happy, extraverted child. His teachers rave about how polite he is; adults are invariably charmed by his artless optimism. Unfortunately, what works with grown-ups does not necessarily work with peers. Perhaps I should be teaching him to greet new acquaintances by pretending to fart on them.

As traumatic as I found Friday's drive-by bullying, I couldn't quite shake the glow from the rest of the morning, my gratitude and pleasure in the companionable little chap my grouchy baby has grown into. And it seemed startling, somehow, to remember how little my own pangs of childhood rejection were relieved by the balm of motherly love.

After three days of watching Bub process his feelings by rejecting his sister, I'm less interested in my own trauma than in his mysterious learning processes. Learning to recognize when you're being rejected is an important social skill. Even more important, perhaps, is figuring out what to do with that experience. Before my very eyes, my son has become ever-so-slightly less trusting, visibly determined to do the rejecting before he can be rejected again. It strikes me that the most magical and unlikely moment in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is not the owl mail or Platform Nine and Three-Quarters, but rather Harry's decision, after a lifetime of being bullied, not to join Draco's incipient gang of bullies but to befriend the underdog Ron instead.

Grouch

2009-06-11T08:34:00.004-04:00

I am very cross right now. Here's why:

1) Several months ago, I signed my kids up for soccer, having been promised (a) that they would be on the same team, and (b) that Bub's friend Jake would also be on their team. I had visions of warm summer evenings, sitting around with Jake's mom on a blanket and eating the kids' watermelon while they ran around on the field. Instead, Pie and Bub were placed in entirely separate leagues, and although the two leagues play on the same night, they are in opposite corners of the high school field, so I sit by myself watching one team while hubby sits by himself watching the other team. Meanwhile, Jake's mom hangs out with all our other friends who signed up late but managed to be placed on the same team.

2) I have so had it with soccer already. The universal consensus (and by "universal" I mean "the consensus between my husband and my mother") is that this makes me a bad mother, unwilling to sacrifice an hour of my time once or twice a week so that my children can Get Exercise and Have Fun. What I see, on Monday and Wednesday nights, is not children having fun. It is children being miserable and being forced by parents to "get back on the field" with arguments like "we paid good money for this" and "if you don't get back out there we're not coming back" and "if you don't start playing right now we're not getting any ice cream!" Why, exactly, are we doing this again?

3) Several months ago, I signed Pie up for kindergarten, filling out multiple forms both at the school and at day-care so that Pie can be placed in a morning class, with on-site care after school. Then, a few weeks ago, with no warning or consultation with anyone, the principal decided to scrap the morning and afternoon classes and move all kindergarten classes to the alternate day system. Not Mondays, Wednesdays and alternate Fridays or anything like that - alternate day: Monday, Wednesday, Friday one week; Tuesday and Thursday the next. As far as I can tell, nobody except the principal actually likes this system, but as an added bonus, Pie has been assigned to a class that conflicts with the on-site day-care, so every other day we have to drop her off at the Catholic school on the other side of town, while all her friends from day-care this year remain together in the on-site class.

4) The courses I've been offered to teach for the fall are in conflicting time slots, and after two weeks I am still unable to get any clear information about whether the schedule can be modified. Textbook orders are due on Monday, and I still don't know for sure which courses I'm teaching or what my schedule will be.

Why must I continually be subjected to minor inconveniences? All I ask is for sharks with fricking laser beams attached to their heads!

Spring Fever

2009-05-24T09:05:00.004-04:00

I'm restless, lately. My days are busy, so much so that I've been finding it a bit overwhelming when the weekend, also, is filled with plans: a trip out of town to visit friends, an outing to "Family Camp" to toast marshmallows and watch fireworks while huddling around the fire to escape the freezing-cold temperatures. It's a relief, almost, when plans get cancelled due to the inevitable sickness of one of the children (in the last week and a half, for instance, there have been only two days when all four members of my family were healthy). But that relief is followed, almost instantly, by restlessness. I can smell other people's barbecues, hear their children playing on the lawn, and it feels like I'm missing something, that life is happening somewhere, out there, and I'm stuck inside reading magazines, grading essays, and stroking my children's feverish brows.

I never feel this way during the winter. Winter provides a splendid, blanket permission to do nothing. There is no pressure to seek excitement or fill the days with activity. I may be vaguely aware that other families are out there skiing or tobogganing, but mostly I'm content to shrug my shoulders at such madness. A cup of hot chocolate and a good round of Guitar Hero are all I need to keep me happy.

Spring, on the other hand, seems to transform me into a glum thirteen-year-old, cringing in embarrassment at the dullness of my life, even though there's no one around to see it except my inner audience of imaginary spectators, that group of old high-school frenemies who pop up in my consciousness now and then to pass judgment on the narrow predictability of my life.

Part of the problem, this year, is that we still have no grass. Our builder promised us sod and a paved driveway somewhere around the end of May, but as the end of May approaches with nothing but the occasional breeze to disturb the knee-high weeds surrounding our house, I'm becoming increasingly agitated. I can look out my windows at the outdoor world, but there's a sea of mud and weeds between me and it.

On the other side of that barrier lie the normal people: the ones whose children ride bikes up and down their paved driveways, whose backyards feature things like swingsets and decks. My children seem to share my own ineptitude for outdoor life: they can't quite seem to get the hang of their bicycles, preferring to squabble over whose turn it is to ride the toddler trike. They show up to the first soccer practice of the year, the only kids wearing plain runners instead of soccer cleats and shinpads. But oh wait, that's me again, the one for whom the world beyond my doorstep is a foreign land, one I visit from time to time, but without a map and not speaking the language.

Praise Junkie

2009-05-23T10:35:00.002-04:00

"You thrive on praise," my husband accused last night. It's true. There are few things I enjoy more than praise.

That's why I'm so fortunate to have a son who is not afraid to dish out a few wholehearted compliments now and then. After I helped him with something this morning he turned to me and said, "Thanks mom. You're really great."

I must have looked as pleased as I felt because he went on to elaborate: "You're really good at wiping bums!"

You Go to School to Learn, Not for a Fashion Show

2009-05-19T09:18:00.003-04:00

Incarnation

2009-05-11T09:04:00.003-04:00

My three-year-old daughter doesn't like God.

Thanks to my inept attempts at early-childhood religious education, she seems to regard him as a kind of creepy intruder who hangs around in her bedroom. "I don't want him here!" she scowled when I explained that God is everywhere, even right here in her room. Omnipresence, apparently, is not her favourite doctrine.

Invisibility is also a problem. We've been in the habit of nightly prayer for quite some time now, but only recently has Pie realized that "saying prayers" means "talking to God." She is not pleased.

"But what does God look like?" she demands. I am tempted to foster this instinct of idolatry and reply, "He is pink. And fluffy." Instead I embark upon an explanation of incorporeality. "But," I add, grasping at straws, "did you know that God invented pink? He invented pink knowing that you, Pie, would like it!" We're on stronger ground here, so I add some references to flowers, rainbows, and sunsets, all created by God especially for her. (I'm willing to permit a little egocentrism if it will foster her acceptance of theism.)

But we're moving onto shaky ground. I am impressed, in a way, with Pie's insistence that she will not love or pray to a God she doesn't know. Even peer pressure is of no avail: when all the kids in Sunday School made cards saying, "God loves me," I asked Pie if God loved her. She shook her head adamantly. She can't love God, she explains, because she still doesn't know who he is.

I can't recall having any such reservations as a child. I accepted that God loved me and was extremely useful at times when I was scared of big dogs. I never demanded proof of his nature before inviting him into my heart. Pie is of a much more suspicious nature. This God who creeps around people's rooms uninvited seems a bit of a shady character - someone who seems an awful lot like a stranger, and she knows better than to talk to strangers.

She has anticipated a key question all religious believers must face. Who is this God you worship? And what makes you think that he is worth worshipping?

God, the inventor of rainbows and butterflies, must also inevitably become God, inventor of cancer and tsunamis. The God we infer from the world as we know it is not the same God I worship. The central claim of my faith is that the world around us is a most imperfect reflection of the God who created it, that the touchstone for our knowledge of God must always be Christ's claim that "He who has seen me has seen the Father."

So we pulled out the children's Bible again last night, and I read Pie the story of Mary and Martha (she likes that one because there are women in it), and the story of the feeding of the five thousand. Jesus she will grudgingly accept. He is a man and an adult, as alien to her as the first-century Galilean must in some ways be to us all. Sin and atonement are doctrines far beyond her reach, as are incarnation and immortality. She can begin only with a man who, when approached by an irate Martha, chose not to make Mary run along and do some housework.

Superpowers

2009-05-05T12:59:00.001-04:00

If you could read my mind, would you?

If you possessed the power of mind control, would you use it for the good of society, or would you consider such use to violate a fundamental human right?

Screenwriters and novelists seem to be of two minds about these important ethical questions. In The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien displays a lively awareness of the moral dangers posed by superpowers. In The Hobbit, for instance, Bilbo's ring of invisibility must be handled with care. Almost as soon as it falls into his hands, Bilbo is tempted to take advantage of it. He resists the urge to kill Gollum under cover of invisibility, but he can't quite overcome the temptation to sneak up on his friends the dwarves and then take full credit for his amazing ability to evade detection.

Harry Potter, on the other hand, can be entrusted with an Invisibility Cloak with no real danger to his moral well-being. He uses it to circumvent Hogwarts' rules and regulations, especially those regarding curfew, but he is never seriously tempted to become a bully or a sneak.

Mind-reading must be an even more dangerous superpower, as mind-readers become accustomed to a routine violation of the most fundamental boundaries of personhood and privacy. On Heroes, Matt Parkman seems to have some ability to control his power: in order to get into the minds of his enemies (or girlfriend), he has to do a little squinty glance, jutting his chin out for emphasis. (Facial expressions are extremely important on that show: time-travel, for instance, is linked to squeezing your eyes shut and scrunching your nose.) It is taken for granted that Parkman is entitled to use his power. Certainly when bad guys are chasing him (as they generally are), he has to use whatever means are at his disposal to evade capture. Using mind control to get his ex-wife to remarry him, however, is taboo. There are some limits on the legitimate use of superpowers, but much more emphasis is placed in the show on the moral imperative of tolerance: the true ethical dilemma is not for the Heroes to use their powers responsibly but for the rest of society to accept and tolerate their presence. There is, of course, the standard choice between good guys and bad guys, but so long as you're not slicing people's skulls open, you're good.

If fantasy writers tend, as a group, to reject a wholesale ban on the use of superpowers, they also tend to avoid the opposite ethical position: that those with superpowers have an obligation to use them for the good of humanity. In the Twilight novels, for instance, Edward has both superhuman strength and the capacity to read minds. At one point in his life (or, rather, his undeath), he was a crimefighter, tracking down murderers and sucking their blood. Edward now rejects this uneasy compromise between appetite and conscience and leads a vegetarian lifestyle. Even when Bella is being stalked by would-be rapists, Edward recognizes a moral imperative to restrain his anger but does not consider himself bound to use his abilities to prevent similar crimes from being committed against other victims. In Meyer's Edward's-eye-view version of Twilight she makes it clear that Edward arranges for the would-be rapist to be conveniently arrested, but this brief foray into crimefighting is a sideline rather than a full-time vocation. Indeed, at no time in the original novel are readers asked to consider whether it is right for Edward to spend his time pretending to attend high school and spooning with Bella rather than eliminating the various horrific crimes that he is uniquely equipped to prevent.

That omission - both on Meyer's part and on most readers' - reflects, perhaps, the general principle that our moral obligations are influenced by proximity. My strongest moral duties are to my family; beyond that I have a duty to those with whom I have a relationship either personally or professionally. This circumscription of my moral duties reflects my own limitations of time and resources. But superpowers tilt the scales a bit. What if I have abilities that no one else has? Can I spend my time playing chess and composing piano pieces, acknowledging obligations only to my family? Or do I have a responsibility to do for the rest of humanity the things that only I am equipped to do?

What do you think are the ethical obligations of mind-readers? Would any use of such power be an unjustifiable violation of privacy? Would such a power incur an obligation to prevent crime? Or are mind-readers entitled to live their own lives just like the rest of us?

My Town

2009-04-27T19:07:00.002-04:00

I love it here.

All I Ever Wanted

2009-04-25T06:30:00.003-04:00

Hubby and I have signed up for a marriage course at our church for the next eight weeks. Our pastor's husband is a great cook, and each session includes a full meal, including non-alcoholic girly drinks when we arrive, main course, and dessert served to each couple on a tray with tea and coffee. Plus, I get to force my husband to talk about his feelings for three hours every Friday night until June.

One of the assignments last night was to think of a, quote, special time in our marriage. This wasn't a go-in-the-corner-and-talk assignment - it was just a sit-in-your-seats-and-talk-for-five-minutes bit. That's how I know that hubby and I were not the only ones totally unable to recall a special time in our marriage within a five-minute period.

Part of the problem was a lack of clarity about the purpose of the exercise. Is it an attempt to revitalize the marriage by hearkening back to our dating days? I am a big proponent of that - one of my biggest incentives for going was the news that each couple would begin by explaining how they met. John Gottman claims that one measure of the health of a marriage is how much pleasure a couple takes in telling their story. I adore reliving the courtship days - but it seemed a bit pathetic, somehow, that when asked to recall a special time in our marriage our first instinct was to think of a time before we were married.

If we focus only on the time since the wedding, the natural candidate for a, quote, special time in our marriage would be a vacation. Hubby and I are somewhat impaired here since we have haven't really had a vacation since our honeymoon. But again I object to the premise. Vacations are fun, and much more easily remembered than ordinary day-to-day life, but I have always found them to be ever so slightly empty. There is the sightseeing, the forced and expensive fun, but nothing you do on vacation has much long-term meaning. This is most evident when you're a teenager vacationing with your family. Even the most mind-numbingly boring day of ordinary high-school life is alive with certain possibilities; each action has a ripple effect on a whole network of social relationships. Vacations are detached from all that, unless you happen to go to Italy with your high-school travel club, in which case you get the statue of David and all the glee and anguish of adolescent social interaction, just in a more impressive European setting.

Vacations are all very well in their place, but to me the fabric of a marriage has to be at home, in the dailiness of ordinary life. Of course, I can't really call to mind a special time in our marriage if by that I mean a completely ordinary time in our marriage. Maybe it was the day I poured hubby a really big bowl of Rice Krispies. It was a bedtime snack, and the box was almost empty, so I poured the whole thing in until the bowl was full to the brim and overflowing, and when hubby saw it I laughed so hard that to this day I occasionally ask him, "Do you remember the time I gave you a really big bowl of Rice Krispies?" and start cracking up all over again.

In the play Our Town, Emily Webb has the chance to relive a single day in her life. All her fellow graveyard inhabitants urge her not to do it, and when she will not be persuaded, the play's Narrator tells her to pick the most ordinary, insignificant day she can come up with. The experience will be far more painful than she realizes; he's trying to shelter her from the pain of regaining, for a moment, everything she has lost. But their advice is misguided. From the grave, it's not my trips to Italy I will miss, or even my days at the beach. It's oatmeal for breakfast and reading the newspaper, sitting at the table doing the crossword while my children pester me for crayons and Play-Doh. It's grading exams at the dining room table and meeting hubby for lunch at Coffee Culture. If my life were suddenly snatched away from me and I could have only one day of it back, I'd choose the most ordinary day of all, not to spare myself the pangs of longing but to cling on to the part of my life that was the most real.

Teflon

2009-04-17T09:17:00.004-04:00

Since Good Friday, I've been brewing up a post on guilt - or lack thereof, perhaps, because guilt is something I very rarely feel. I've always been comforted by Mr. Bennet's conversation with Lizzie in Pride and Prejudice. Realizing that Lydia's elopement was caused primarily by his neglect, Mr. Bennet blames himself:

"You must not be too severe upon yourself," replied Elizabeth.

"You may well warn me against such an evil. Human nature is so prone to fall into it! No, Lizzy, let me once in my life feel how much I have been to blame. I am not afraid of being overpowered by the impression. It will pass away soon enough."

That has been exactly my experience of guilt: though I may experience it from time to time, it is transitory. I don't necessarily have to talk myself out of it, or do something to dispel it - I can just wait awhile and I find that it evaporates of its own accord.

But in spite of Mr. Bennet's ironic reflections on how prone human nature is to excessive guilt, I know that there are people who are habitually too severe upon themselves. My mother is one of them. In fact, one theory I have about the origins of my mental Teflon is that a lifetime of listening to my mother beating herself up about things that are not actually her fault has made me skeptical about the usefulness of guilt. (My other theory is that guilt levels are purely hereditary, and I got mine from my father.)

Related to my ability to deflect guilt is my ability to convince myself that my character flaws are actually strengths. In this case, my inborn resistance to guilt has a number of positive side effects. I do not have to engage in destructive guilt-avoidance practices like blaming the victim. I am not traumatized by or resentful of the guilt trips inflicted upon me by others. (Well, okay, I am traumatized and resentful, but surely not AS traumatized and resentful as I would be if I were more guilt-prone.) Of course, I also do not have the life-changing remorse that would allow me to emerge as a much better person ... but you can't have everything, can you?

The mental Teflon that protects me against guilt also has other uses. It convinces me that my tummy roll is actually invisible to the naked eye when concealed by a long shirt. It allows me to ignore the students falling asleep during my lectures so that I remember only the alert, engaged faces of the two students who spent the class doing something other than catching up on Facebook.

A bit of amateur dabbling in psychology suggests that these are fairly widespread traits. Most people consider themselves to be above-average drivers. Men, at least, habitually overestimate how attractive they are to the opposite sex. Selective awareness seems to be the norm rather than the aberration.

Perhaps what makes this quality feel unusual to me is that it's not the norm among MY people: the bloggers, the book-readers, the introspectors. My mother, I think, is more typical of people like us. She's the kind of person who, when someone is rude to her, dwells for hours on what she did to provoke it. She lives with a general free-floating guilt about not doing enough, and not doing what she does well enough. She is one of the most beautiful 65-year-old women you will ever see, but when she looks in the mirror, all she sees are jowls.

Which kind are you? Guilt-proof or guilt-prone? And where do you think those traits come from? Is it in our DNA or the product of our upbringing?

Portents

2009-04-13T16:12:00.003-04:00

By the time I noticed the conversation, Bub was in what Bridget Jones would call full autowitter: "... and there's Guilmon, and Terriermon, and Renemon! And there's Kabuterimon and Megakabuterimon..." The recipient of this monologue about Digimon (digital monsters) was a girl who looked about nine or ten years old. As soon as she could, she extracted herself from the conversation and joined her brother on the swings, where moments later I heard the two of them trading "mons" back and forth. "That's so retarded!" the girl sneered.

"So, you spend your Saturday afternoons hanging around the park bullying five-year-olds," I said to her. "Wow, you're so cool!"

Actually, I said nothing, but I prepared sarcastic remarks so that I'd have them at the ready if her mockery came within Bub's notice.

*****

We were getting ready to leave church when Anna rushed out. "I have to say goodbye to Bub!" she cried, blonde curls bouncing as she leaned over Pie's carseat to tell him goodbye properly.

Anna is in Bub's class at school, a just-turned-five junior kindergartener, and when her mother asked her the other day about Marshall, another little boy in her class, Anna scornfully replied, "He's not my boyfriend! Bub is my boyfriend!"

*****

At kindergarten pick-up the other day, a little boy came over with a skinned knee. Bub was most solicitous. "Maybe you need a Band-Aid!" he suggested. (Though not addicted to Band-Aids anymore, Bub is still a firm believer in their efficacy.) Devin thought he'd be okay without a Band-Aid.

"Do you know what happens when you hurt your knee?" Bub asked. "It turns into a scab, and then the scab comes off and it's all better!" This is recently acquired knowledge, applicable to many life situations. I'm pleased to see my son tailoring his knowledge-sharing to the needs of the recipient.

*****

"High-five!" Derek hollers, running up to Bub as we exit the school lot. Bub slaps his upraised hand, and as we head toward the car we hear the thudding of running feet behind us. "Another high-five!" Derek shouts again, darting in front of us to get in one last farewell before we go.

*****

All the professionals at Bub's placement meeting agree: he should go on to Grade One. He should be with an E.A. (emphatically), but in a Grade One classroom. I know that he is ready academically, though perhaps not behaviorally or socially. What bothers me is that most of Bub's friendships are with the junior kindergarten kids, who hail him as one of their own. The SK kids are kind, but warier. They notice his quirks, whereas the younger grade is too young and inexperienced to care.

One rationale for moving Bub up a grade is that keeping him back only delays the inevitable: eventually, his peers will all be old enough to notice that he's different. A more optimistic rationale recognizes that Bub is rapidly closing the gap between himself and his peers: it would be senseless to hold him back because of a few mild quirks that he is rapidly overcoming. My concern is that he falls somewhere in between these two interpretations, that he is capable of fitting in but would do so much more easily if he were the oldest kid in the class rather than the youngest.

If I knew that another year of kindergarten were the right thing for Bub I would fight for it, even against the advice of his teacher, principal, and resource worker. But I don't know - so I signed on the dotted line, agreeing to a placement in a Grade One classroom. I even bought the official graduation t-shirt. The propaganda has already started in the classroom - the SKs are being groomed for next year, for the big leap up into the world of desks and worksheets. So far Bub thinks it sounds a lot like camp. I haven't yet told him otherwise.

Is This Thing Still On?

2009-04-09T14:26:00.003-04:00

For most of my adult life I've assumed that I have certain inherent personality traits: optimism, resilience, a degree of creativity. But it turns out that really all that time I was just healthy.

A month ago I was driving home from work with a bagful of spring clothes for myself and the Pie, and I was brewing up a post about the joy of wearing things that look like candy. I used to have these drop earrings that looked exactly like pieces of Gold Rush gum, only in pink, purple, and blue as well as yellow. (Where did those earrings go? I certainly never threw them out.) The half-hour country drive between work and home affords plenty of time for mental composition, so I wrote the post in my head: One of the joys of having a daughter, I reflected, is that I have a good excuse to wear candy-clothes. Pie likes to wear matching outfits (colours, really - I have not yet succumbed to the mother-daughter clothing vortex of doom), so when I'm buying her sets of 3T capris and t-shirts for the summer it's easy to throw in a raspberry-pink ruffly shirt for me. I didn't always appreciate the pink side of girls' clothing, but now I'm a convert. Especially in springtime I like to plunge myself into juicy shades of lime and berry.

Thus far had I gotten in my composition process when I arrived home, but then life took over: I had to pick up Bub from kindergarten, buy groceries and put them away, slice up chicken breasts for supper and stir-fry them with korma sauce. Then there was all the clean-up: rinse the dishes, wipe the counters, bathe the children and tuck them into bed. The fact that I casually do all these things every evening is not always as astonishing to me as it should be. Each day requires gargantuan amounts of energy, organization, and discipline. And at around 8:00 pm that night, my energy fell away from me, and it didn't come back for about three weeks.

It was only the flu, though I like to call it "the influenza" because it sounds much more impressive. It was all the usual stuff: fever, achiness, coughing. But what I wasn't prepared for was how totally it obliterated my personality.

The physical symptoms weren't that bad: they were not unpleasant enough, by themselves, to warrant much more than a few days in bed and a nightly mug of Neo Citron. But the psychological symptoms were terrible. It was as if all the beauty were drained from the world. I was not sad or depressed, but I was incapable of registering pleasure in anything from the sunny weather to the Saturday-morning crossword. When, two weeks later, I glanced at the yellow cowbell on my bedside table and felt that familiar flicker of pleasure at its colour I was jolted by the strangeness of the sensation. It was like sitting down to do a math assignment after a long summer holiday, that feeling of exercising mental muscles that had long been out of commission.

It's taken me awhile to come back to my blog because I needed to be myself again for awhile before I could slip back into that comfortable illusion of being me. It's easy to rationalize away that stolid, unimaginative sick person I was a few weeks ago as a temporary aberration, to identify my real self as the norm from which my sick self temporarily departed. But it's harder to shake the realization that much of what I think of as essential to who I am is really just a physiological side effect of a healthy state over which I have no control.

Hot Tip

2009-03-04T09:06:00.004-05:00

I found this great decorating tip in Canadian Home & Country magazine: decorate your bathroom by tucking paint chips into the mirror frame. Technically, this tip wasn't in the actual magazine: it was in the Febreze advertising insert. You might wonder if it's really a good idea to derive one's unique decor ideas from a product that's used primarily to eradicate the odour of barf from one's couch. On the other hand, if there's anyone who SHOULD be using paint chips as a decor statement, it's me.

So I picked out a few paint chips, mostly colours I had wanted to use in my home but didn't: Kennebunkport Green, Nacho Cheese, Roxbury Caramel. Not only do they add a festive splash of colour to a bathroom that's otherwise just a little bit dull, but the mirror is a perfect spot for them, a place where it's perfectly natural (irresistible, actually) to lean forward and read the names on the chips.

When hubby got home, he confirmed that my new decorating statement looks utterly ridiculous. Pie even got into the act, angrily pulling down all my chips the other morning after she finished washing her hands. But that's the beauty of it: you can swap out new paint chips all the time, recreating your colour scheme on the fly. The real question is not "Why do you have paint chips in your mirror?" but rather "Is there any limit to how far you can take this inspired design idea?"

So far, I've limited myself to a 5"x7" frame on the dresser in my bedroom (that's Moccasin, Brick Red, and Whitall Brown you see there). But I'm just getting started.

Bub Logic

2009-02-22T09:56:00.004-05:00

At Bub's IEP meeting last week, his kindergarten teacher remarked that he's a boy who speaks his mind. "He's very logical," she observed.

Naturally, I was delighted by this statement of the obvious. I adore logical men, and since that meeting I've been newly aware of the logic of Bub's thought processes. He employs deductive rather than inductive reasoning: instead of observing particulars and then establishing general principles based on his observations, he makes categorical statements and then applies them to particular situations. There is a certain freedom in this approach: Bub's reasoning usually works to his advantage since he's the one making up the rules. But there's also a startling verisimilitude in many of his broad, absolute statements.

"Moms don't have privacy," he observed yesterday when my ability to get him a glass of milk was impeded by the fact that I was on the potty. "No privacy for moms!"

I've been listening more carefully to his words as he's recovered from the uncanny silence produced by the flu bug that swept through our house last week. Both children succumbed within a few hours of each other, and for two days the only sound in the house was the murmur of countless TV cartoons. Awake or asleep, feverish or not, the children simply sat limply on the couch. Only when they began to recover did I realize how much their presence in the house is normally signalled by sound: Pie began to sing tuneless melodies under her breath, and Bub resumed his habitual commentary.

"I'm not sick!" he insisted, even though the milk he drank had made a prompt and unwelcome reappearance. "Sometimes I barf when I'm sick, but sometimes I'm not sick, and I still barf!" His conclusion was false, but, as hubby observed, his argument displays a remarkable ability to resist syllogistic reasoning: sickness leads to barfing, but barfing may or may not indicate sickness. A causes B, but the presence of B may or may not indicate A. (In reality, of course, the reverse is true: You can be sick with or without barfing, but if you barf, you're definitely sick.)

I have vivid memories of arguing with my parents when I was growing up - usually about whether or not my best friend should be allowed to sleep over. My parents made the cardinal error of reversing their position in response to my ~~nagging~~ compelling arguments, so I was both inventive and tenacious in my attempts to argue my way out of whatever unpleasant demands they happened to place upon me. I was aware at the time that giving in to a child's arguments was not widely considered to be an effective parenting tactic, a position that infuriated me. How was I supposed to learn how to develop airtight, convincing arguments if not by practising on my parents?

Those memories have shaped my own parenting: once I commit myself to a position I don't back down, knowing just how determined a child who scents weakness can become. But I'm delighted to see in Bub that fledgling instinct that the best way to get one's way is not through tantrums or deviousness but rather through head-on argument.

And I Am Being Facetious

2009-02-20T10:12:00.003-05:00

Here's my theory: when we talk about developing a personal style in our blog-writing, what we really mean is establishing an exact ratio of facetious:serious content. And when drive-by commenters misinterpret our writing, it's usually because they get that ratio wrong. Perhaps we should include a warning right under our profile pics: the content of this blog is 87% facetious.

"Facetious" is a word that has many opposites. Its opposite could be "literal" or "sincere" or "precisely accurate." If I say, "I'm going to strangle my husband," my words are not literally true, but they are probably sincerely heartfelt. That remark is true on an emotional level; it is facetious only because it is not to be taken literally.

If, on the other hand, I say, "Children are a practical demonstration of the doctrine of Original Sin," (not that I would ever say something like that at, say, a small-group Bible study and then have to face down the shocked stares from everyone else in the room), my words do not represent my sincere emotions: they are facetious in that fuzzier sense of being true, but only kind of true.

I once had someone link to a post in which I made the following remark: "After a year of practising family law, hubby says that divorces always happen for the same reason: one partner is crazy, and the other is controlling." The linker commented - probably facetiously - that she had always assumed her ex-husband was both crazy and controlling, but now she had to rethink. Her commenters responded with a chorus of sincere and literal outrage. How could anyone make so offensive and untrue a statement? How disturbing that someone holding such beliefs was practising family law!

Regular readers of my blog seemed to take that remark in the spirit in which it was meant: when I say "always," what I usually mean is "maybe about fifty percent of the time." (This is why it's my husband who's the lawyer and not me: he naturally loads his remarks with qualifications to ensure technical accuracy. So not only was his remark not to be taken in an absolute or literal sense, but it was also probably misquoted.)

Facetiousness is a lot easier to recognize when it's funny. According to Dictionary.com, the word has the following meanings:

1. not meant to be taken seriously or literally: a facetious remark.
2. amusing; humorous.
3. lacking serious intent; concerned with something nonessential, amusing, or frivolous: a facetious person.

The third definition, I think, has always been characteristic of my personal writing style, dating back to Grade Seven when Mr. Steers criticized my school diary for being overly concerned with trivialities. The second definition is trickier. Not all amusing or humorous remarks are facetious; to be considered facetious, a remark must be funny precisely because we know the speaker doesn't sincerely or literally consider it to be true.

A great example of humorous facetious writing is this recap of Heroes:

Sylar and his new padawan Luke are on a road trip in the Griswald family truckster, and Sylar totally made a mixed tape with such staples as Steppenwolf's Born to be Wild- the extended cut. Luke doesn't understand the word "skanky" as he uses it to describe a diner, which is unlike every diner I've ever been in but exactly like the one I'd like to go to.

This is exactly what facetious humour is supposed to look like. The first part is funny merely because of the Star Wars/Vacation movie references; the facetious part kicks in in the second half of the first sentence. Sylar did not make a mix tape; Sylar would never make a mix tape because he's too busy stalking people with superpowers so he can cut their heads open with his finger. The writer knows this and readers familiar with the show know this, so the remark is funny precisely because it's not true (and because the weird emphasis in the show on the road-trip music makes it seem kind of plausible). The second sentence is facetious humour for the rest of us: whether or not we watch the show, we can recognize that expressing a desire to visit a skanky diner is the kind of thing that is both sarcastic and sincere at the same time.

Mostly true but kind of not true. (Or, alternatively, clearly untrue but kind of true anyway.) The Heroes review works because it deploys this kind of facetiousness in every single paragraph. My blog, on the other hand, uses facetiousness only in emergencies, and thus alienates readers unaccustomed to my writing style who don't know when and to what extent I'm being sincere.

Perhaps a good user's guide to this blog would go something like this:

The following blog may contain vast overgeneralizations. These statements are not usually made sarcastically, and may well contain a nugget of truth. It is the reader's responsibility to supply the omitted qualifications: phrases such as "in most cases" and "with some exceptions" are not included. Use at your own risk.

Does your blog need a user's guide? What would it say?

The Trouble With Cylons

2009-02-12T17:50:00.006-05:00

When it comes to Battlestar Galactica, I've always been in it for the ontology. When machines develop the ability to think for themselves, where do we draw the line between humanity and everything else? This is not a question that arises with any particular insistence in The Terminator; there, the machines can think, and what they think about is how much they like killing people. T2 did make Arnold Schwarzenegger into a rather lovable killing machine, but still - his destiny was always to sacrifice himself in order to save humanity and prevent his own kind from coming into being, thus preserving the supremacy of the maker over the made.

In the Battlestar version of this myth, the question is considerably more complicated. The first-generation metal "centurion" Cylons have given way to "skin jobs" - Cylons who are physically indistinguishable from humans. At first it appears that these human replicas are the perfect secret agents: they infiltrate human society and disable the twelve colonies' defense systems. These Cylons look human, but their agenda and loyalties are always pure Cylon. More intriguing are the Cylons represented by Boomer: "sleeper" Cylons who are totally unaware of their true identity. Boomer has human experiences and human loyalties, but in her essence she is a machine: when she is activated, she will do whatever her programming dictates.

Or maybe not. There are signs that Boomer can resist her programming (as indeed the first generation of centurions had done), that her human emotional connections might override her machine origins. Later, another model from the same line, Athena, will throw her lot in with the humans. Athena falls in love, bears a child, and appears able to make free decisions based on these very person-like emotions.

Cylons like Athena pose a question that has both a political and philosophical edge. What confers personhood - one's origin or one's nature? Emotion and freedom emerge as the defining traits of personhood; if someone can form genuine emotional bonds and make choices based on those loyalties, then the word "toaster" no longer seems like an apt description.

The Cylons have always been intriguing because their nature seems so at odds with their origins. They are machines, invented by humans only a few decades ago. They have acquired the ability to think for themselves and they seem bent not only on destroying the human race but also on imitating it. The "skin-jobs," as it turns out, are not merely a line of spy-robots, but rather the dominant species of Cylon; the centurions who - presumably - invented them are now obedient servants, a subordinate race of manual labourers. (Perhaps this is the natural way of things for technological beings; the most recent generation will always be the most technologically advanced.) Each decision the Cylons make seems designed to allow them to approximate human life more closely. They are trying to unlock the secret to biological reproduction; they have destroyed their resurrection ship so that they can experience the quintessentially human trait of mortality. Humanity, it would appear, is not something one is but something one does.

Unless, of course, it turns out that the Cylons originated on Earth 2000 years ago. Human prejudice against the Cylons has always been based not only on vengeance but also on a kind of xenophobia: Cylons are hated not for what they have done, but for what they are. But what does the word "machine" mean in reference to a thinking, breathing, organic creature? Terms like "toaster" are reminders of the Cylons' origins: we invented you, they say; you are a thing created, not begotten.

This, then, is my beef with the fifth season of Battlestar. It began with a huge revelation: the origins of the Cylons are not at all what we had supposed. And having dropped that little bombshell, the writers have simply left it alone. No one is asking where the Cylons came from or what it means that their history precedes that of the twelve colonies. It reminds me of the first season of 24, when the writers, with a blithe disregard for probability or continuity, decided that Nina was working with the terrorists. A big "twist" isn't worth it if it's purchased at the price of the very thing that made the show worth watching in the first place.

Ode to Ikea

2009-02-09T12:05:00.003-05:00

An article in last week's business section announced, to readers' unanimous dismay, that once again London will not be getting an Ikea store. The rumour that Ikea is coming to London is so widespread and long-standing that it amounts to an urban legend. Within hours of reading the article I was overhearing staff-room conversations in which less experienced Londoners expressed their surprise and disappointment. They had heard London was getting an Ikea. We all have. It's not.

I can imagine, if I try, how amazing it would be to have an Ikea location closer than the current 90 minutes' drive (barring traffic). I could pop by on my lunch hour and pick up some frog-shaped bowls and 99-cent dishcloths. Swedish meatballs would be mine for the asking (complete with lingonberry sauce). On the weekend my children could play in the ball pit while I scoured the showrooms for decorating tips.

Such Ikea nirvana will never be mine. But I'm not wholly disappointed. If Ikea were closer it wouldn't be quite the same. There would be no more church buses heading up to the Toronto area for an Ikea-themed getaway. There would be no more need for people to go in together on a van and make a day of it. Would we really value Ikea in the same way if it were just around the corner? Would I exclaim, "Hey, that's a Leksvik five-drawer dresser!" with quite so much enthusiasm when I visited friends' homes if the language of Ikea simply entered into the local dialect?

On a local radio station there is a morning-show call-in game called "Ikea furniture? Or Lord of the Rings character?" Callers have to guess whether "Grima," "Faramir" and "Krokshult" are orcs, elves, or end tables. The names are, clearly, part of the Ikea fun. I still know the names of most of my Ikea furniture: I have Detolf display cases, a Timmerman end table, and a pair of crummy Ivar bookshelves that I've always planned to replace, but no other bookshelf on the market holds quite so many books as those old Ivars.

If Ikea opened up a location five minutes away from my workplace, I would go. Indeed, I would celebrate, just as I have celebrated the sudden influx of Bath and Body Works products into Canadian stores. But I would also mourn the end of an era. The fun of shopping has always had something to do with the lure of scarcity: there's nothing better than the sensation of stumbling upon a rare item or stepping into the warm Swedish glow of a store you get to visit only once a year. If Ikea came to my neighbourhood, I'd have more access to some-assembly-required furniture, but less access to that particular shiver of delight, and my shopping holy grail would have to move across the border into Michigan, where I'll soon need a passport to get to the nearest location of Target.

The Secret to Happiness (And The Cure for Insomnia)

2009-02-04T10:56:00.005-05:00

On House this week, the team treated a woman who had recently left her career as a pediatric cancer researcher to devote her life to being happy. Somebody else can cure the dying children, she explained, but a health scare had taught her that she couldn't postpone her happiness any longer. Instead of pursuing meaning, as House's diagnosticians were doing, she pursued pleasure, working in her garden and studying cookery under a top chef.

It was an odd storyline. The woman said the word "happy" so many times that it started to sound like a word from Dr. Seuss. Since when, I wondered, have we had to choose between meaningful work and personal happiness?

Since high school I've known that happiness is detectable only to the peripheral vision. Look at it head-on and it vanishes. You can set the stage for happiness by getting lots of sleep and keeping an optimal balance between work and leisure, but you can't just sit on the pitcher's mound of your personal field of dreams, waiting for happiness to show up - instead you just get on with things and hope that happiness will sneak into the bleacher seats sometime before the seventh-inning stretch.

To House, the cynic, all decisions ultimately boil down to a single motive: the search for happiness. His patient pursues happiness by taking up hobbies; he and his team pursue happiness by doing their jobs. "I don't do my job to be happy," Kutner objects. "I do it to help people."

"No," House retorts. "You do it because helping people makes you happy."

It's an old argument, that idea that all actions are morally equivalent because all are selfishly motivated. So Mother Teresa finds that working with the poor makes her happy - bully for her. If House finds that harassing people and making sarcastic remarks is what makes him happy, that's just as good. The big joke, of course, is that the grim, misanthropistic Dr. House is hardly a poster-boy for happiness. As Sheryl Crow would say, "If it makes you happy, then why the hell are you so sad?"

Happiness is a lot more important than some of the things people pursue instead: money, prestige, fame. But both House and his patient seem to overlook the fact that happiness just doesn't work very well as a motive or a goal. It's too sneaky, too slippery, a master criminal that always manages to escape just before he gets caught.

When I awaken during the night, jolted out of my sleep by a child's nightmare or just to anxiously check the clock to make sure it's not yet 6:45, my best cure for insomnia is to meditate upon how happy I am. When I start imagining how exhausted I'll be in the morning, how unsafe it will be for me to drive my car if I'm functioning on only 90 minutes of sleep, I switch mental tracks and start focusing on how soft my flannel sheets are, how lucky I am to be warm and cozy, to have hours stretching before me in which I won't be required to get up and pack lunches or grade papers - just hours of dark, blissful nothingness.

It doesn't always work, this attempt to enjoy the conscious experience of sleeplessness. But when it does work, when a dull happiness creeps in and takes the place of frustration and panic, I only find out about it hours later when the daylight comes to remind me that those dark moments of conscious happiness were replaced, almost immediately, by sweet oblivion.

My Myers-Briggs Analysis of HGTV

2009-01-30T09:24:00.005-05:00

Ever since we switched from cable to satellite TV, our service has been patchy at best. The channel guide works maybe 50% of the time, the picture goes wonky whenever we switch back from a gaming console, and the whole system needs to be reset periodically (often during Survivor). But even by those standards, the television's behaviour over the Christmas holidays seemed odd. Whenever I sat down to watch some Home and Garden Television, the channel would spontaneously switch, halfway through a show, to a football game or Spike TV. It was like I was in that stereotypical battle for the remote, but not even with my own husband - with the TV itself.

Eventually it was hubby's secretary who solved the problem. Her daughter is dating our new next-door-neighbour, a young single guy who owns a local restaurant. "Are you having any trouble with your TV?" she asked hubby one day. It turns out our satellite was on the same channel as Joel's. Joel's mother works at the library, and she filled me in on the details: "Whenever he tried to watch a show," she explained, "it kept switching over to HGTV!"

I find it amusing to think of poor Joel next door, trying to enjoy a beer and a football game but forced repeatedly to watch the Sarah's House marathon. It all makes sense now - those times I would repeatedly hit "channel return," only to find myself switched back again to TSN. HGTV is, by definition, girl TV. It's not quite as openly girly as the W network, but almost.

It has been a bit surprising to me, then, that so many of the shows focus on a central male figure. There are the gay designers, of course, but there is also a host of macho men of the kind featured in Canadian Tire Christmas commercials, the ones who go to sleep on Christmas Eve with visions of power tools dancing in their heads. Mike Holmes, for instance, is shown in the opening credits of Holmes on Homes wielding what I would be inclined to call a pneumatic drill (though it may be something else entirely). "Judge ... jury ... and trusted contractor," the commercials call him, as he scours the country looking for examples of shoddy workmanship so he can make it right.

Mike Holmes is the macho sentimentalist, that staple of Super Bowl locker rooms. I'm not sure that athletes in any sport other than football are ever quite so nakedly emotional, possibly because none of them get to wear those giant shoulder pads. The same principle applies to home-renovation shows: only the men wielding the biggest power tools get to wallow in sentimental feel-good plotlines about helping hapless homeowners with their renovation nightmares. (Ty Pennington is another prime example, for you Americans out there.) At the end of each episode, Mike enjoys a long hug from the lady of the house he has just cleansed of mould and damp, followed by a closing reflection on how good it feels to help people in need.

There's nothing especially ground-breaking about this particular blend of macho masculinity and emotional sentimentality, but what fascinates me about Mike Holmes is that he is so classic an SJ. In Myers-Briggs terms, SJs are detail-oriented, concrete thinkers who embrace rules, regulations, and black-and-white thinking. This is exactly what you want in a contractor: someone who pays close attention to detail, firmly believes that there is one right way to do everything, and takes pride in doing a job properly. "Proper" is in fact Mike's favourite word. "That's proper, isn't it?" he'll say appreciatively at the end of a job, admiring his own work not so much for its aesthetic value as for its strict adherence to the One Right Way.

If Mike Holmes is a classic SJ male, Peter Fallico of Home to Flip is a not-quite-so classic SP. A flipper is, by definition almost, an opportunist, someone looking to make a quick buck, comfortable with risk but with an eye on the bottom line. SPs, according to Myers-Briggs, are practical rather than idealistic, but unlike the SJs they are spontaneous risk-takers, and they are most comfortable working for themselves rather than taking orders from authority figures. Flipping a house requires considerable organizational skills, so Peter does not run quite so true to the MBTI stereotype as Mike, but there's something ever-so-slightly crooked about him that shouts SP to me.

Much like Mike Holmes, however, Peter Fallico is both macho and unexpectedly feminine. He is the purest kind of capitalist, stereotypically masculine not in the power-tool-wielding sense but rather in his unabashed focus on making money. At the same time, when he clashes with his designer Ulya, it's often because his taste is more girly than hers: on the episode where he redesigned his front porch, his brainchild was to sew and install curtain panels. Ulya wrinkled her nose and made reference to Little House on the Prairie, but Peter, undeterred, purchased the fabric and offered viewers a quick how-to on sewing your own curtains.

There is some kind of lesson buried in here, I'm sure, about how heterosexual masculinity is constructed in our culture as a kind of smorgasbord where so long as you heap enough roast beef on your plate you're allowed to help yourself to a serving of strawberry shortcake. This seems like maybe it's something everybody but me already knew, and perhaps I'm only discovering it now because the men in my life have chosen so differently, taking a main course of stoicism and logic rather than sports and power tools. It turns out that masculinity is like one of those set menus restaurants offer on New Year's Eve, where if you order logic as a main course you don't get to have emotion for dessert.

Turns Out, My Job is Kind of Silly

2009-01-21T09:50:00.003-05:00

I dropped by a friend's house for lunch the other day on my way to work. Her youngest two kids are the same age as mine, and until recently she stayed at home with them, but has since gone to work part-time at Starbucks. On Mondays, though, she's home with her two youngest and willing to serve me a bowl of tomato soup in exchange for some conversation and an occasional offering of chocolates or cookies. So when I arrived this week, the kids were delighted to see me. Was I going to stay and play with them? Did I bring them anything yummy to eat? Unfortunately not - I could come in for lunch, but then I would have to go to work.

My friend's daughter looked at me sorrowfully. "It's sad when people have to go to work," she observed, "especially mothers." (You can see why returning to the work force nearly gave my friend a nervous breakdown. I've never seen so sincere and finely tuned a guilt trip, much less from a three-year-old.)

"Do you work at Starbucks?" her five-year-old son asked.

"No," I said. "I'm a teacher. I teach some big kids - the biggest kids of all."

This, in my experience, always comes as a bolt from the blue to the kindergarten set. My own children generally respond to this announcement with a moment of stunned silence, and then shake their heads laughing, "Nooooo." I'm not sure what they think I do when I go to work, but they flatly refuse to believe it involves teaching anybody anything. So when I told Ben that I was a teacher of big kids, I expected some opposition.

"You mean ... teenagers?" he squeaked. I shook my head.

"Not even. Bigger kids than teenagers."

He pondered that for a second. "You mean, you teach adults? But I thought adults knew everything already!"

He continued to chew over this amazing information as we sat down at the table for our lunch. "So," he asked, "do you teach the adults where everything comes from and how it works?"

Um, no. Actually I teach them to read books and poems, and then to write essays about them. It's a very important job, but I can't exactly explain why.

Ben's face brightened. "You teach them how to write books?"

Not really. Let's maybe not talk about my job anymore and just eat our lunch.

Signs That You're a Blogging Geriatric

2009-01-18T16:57:00.005-05:00

Your blogroll could aptly be titled, "Our Fallen Comrades...Lest We Forget."
You still have a blogroll...and you can't update it because you don't remember your Blogrolling password.
The word "Bitacle" still makes shivers run down your spine.
Checking Bloglines makes you feel like your grandmother reading the newspaper: you turn first to the obituaries to see who's the latest to close up shop.
Whenever you write a post, you have the vague feeling that maybe you've said exactly these things before, but you can't remember when.
You have a few sharp-eyed readers who will actually remember the post where you used exactly those words and ideas two years ago.
Having resisted the lure of Facebook, you're now stodgily refusing to open up a Twitter account. (Are they even called accounts? I can't keep up with all the lingo you kids speak these days.)
You've outgrown the urge to update your blog template every season. Instead, you're all, "If this orange-and-brown colour scheme looked good in 2006, that's good enough for me."
If there were a Wii Fit for blogging, you're pretty sure you'd clock in at around 78 years of age.

What about you? What's your age in bloggy years?

Playing Favourites

2009-01-15T13:40:00.004-05:00

"I like that blue," Pie said gravely, staring into the innards of our toilet. This is her new thing - whenever she flushes the toilet, she wants me to lift the lid from the tank so she can watch the water level rising all the way to the blue plastic cap at the top. "I like that blue, and I like that black."

"You like colours, don't you," I observed. "Do colours make you happy?"

"Yeah," Pie mused. "It's like, 'Hey! Purple! I like that!'"

Indeed. That is exactly what it is like: her life summed up in a nutshell. Pie is the pink and purple police, constantly scanning her environment for pastel-coloured objects. When she finds one - even in books that she reads every night - she must stop and point it out: "I like that pink. I like that purple."

This, clearly, is an inherited trait. I imagine it even serves a Darwinian purpose. If I had been born in a hunter-gatherer society, I would have been the one to save the tribe from scurvy by scanning the environment for wild lemon trees. If all that stood between my family and starvation were a few half-buried yellow peppers, I would be the one to spot them first.

It's a bit harder to imagine how a preference for pink or purple would confer a survival advantage. Perhaps they help to attract a mate? The most confounding colour preferences, though, are green and brown. Green and brown are everywhere; it's hard to see how our pleasure in these colours serves any kind of biological purpose.

The joy of colour seems related to what theologians sometimes call "the problem of pleasure." If theists must account for the presence of pain and suffering in a world created by a loving God, then atheists must equally account for the surfeit of pleasure our world offers us. Some pleasures, to be sure, have a clear biological payoff, but others seem like a tantalizing excess, a pure gift. They speak to the presence of something transcendent in our relationship to our physical environment.

I was advised, once, to thank God for my favourite colour. Ever since that day, the concept of praise has made more sense to me. Praise involves thankfulness not so much for what we have as for everything that is. To praise God for creating the colour yellow not only allows me to perceive something joyous and vibrant in the Creator, but also to recognize a connectedness between me, personally, and the world around me. One of the reasons that God created the colour yellow was because I, individually, would enjoy it so much.

Favourite colours, though, are a bit of a mystery to me. Not everyone has one, and I'm not sure that sufficient psychological studies have been done to determine why and how some people bond so passionately and permanently to a single colour. I have never wavered in my preference for yellow, which I know was well-established by the time I was three, the age Pie is now. Pie's preference for pink and purple may not be equally long-lasting: right now, her devotion to these colours is an expression of gender identity as much as aesthetic taste - she likes pink and purple (and is compelled to say so aloud at every opportunity) because doing so helps define for her who she is and where she fits into her social environment. She likes pink and purple at least in part because she believes that this is what all girls do. I, on the other hand, have always appreciated the idiosyncracy of my preference for yellow. My best friend prefers green; her sister likes orange. For all of us, this favourite colour business is a defining quirk - if I were to suddenly start preferring blue to yellow, I would no longer be me - the next thing you know I'd join a volleyball team and start leaving my bed unmade in the morning.

I've been revisiting my paint chips lately, conferring madly with Mad about the colours for her new kitchen. It's a bit of a relief to me to discover that paint chips are equally compelling to me whether they are for my house or someone else's. Colour has been a source of pleasure for me since I was small, and it's reassuring to know that such pleasure can be detached from the shallower lures of consumerism and acquisition.

A Boy and His Band-Aid

2009-01-14T10:15:00.003-05:00

It started in early December. Bub came sprinting up the stairs, howling in agony. "Part of my thumb," he panted, "it came OFF!" He held up his thumb, and the nail was split halfway down. I quickly pulled out a box of Batman Band-Aids and calm was restored.

Fast forward three weeks. The thumb is now perfectly healed. The nail has grown in, and Bub has even permitted me to trim it. It's time, I tell him, to stop replacing the Band-Aid.

I've been looking forward to this day for weeks. Bub is no fool. He knows that when he washes his hands, his Band-Aid is at risk for falling off, so he has become determined to avoid washing his hands by any and all means necessary, including not going pee ever again. His faith in the Band-Aid is also (naturally) tied to the Batman logo: if the Band-Aid falls off while he's at school or out Christmas shopping, no regular Band-Aid will do - on one outing I had to make an unplanned pit-stop at the grocery store to buy an emergency supply.

So when I announce that we're quitting the Band-Aid cold turkey, Bub predictably falls apart at the seams. His thumb is no longer injured, but it is cold. He needs the Band-Aid to warm it up (this from a boy who flatly refuses to wear mittens when he goes outside). I hold firm - it's time to move on, get back on the wagon and leave the Batman Band-Aid security blanket behind. Distracted by a strategically planned episode of Transformers, he appears to agree. It's several hours, actually, before I realize that he has snuck back into the kitchen, stood on a chair to get the Band-Aid box out of the tall cupboard, used scissors to open the packaging, and replaced the Band-Aid himself. It's an impressive feat of planning and dexterity, but it also means we are back to square one.

That was two weeks ago. We are now up to three Band-Aids. A scuffle with Pie bent back the fingernail on his index finger, and a slight scratch to his other thumb brought our total up to three. All these injuries are now completely healed, but the Band-Aids remain. At this point, I'm shrugging my shoulders and using it to my advantage. I just hope no one calls child services on me when they hear me threatening my son, "Do you want me to take off your Band-Aid? Well okay then - get into the car."

Blink

2009-01-08T14:51:00.004-05:00

All week people have been asking me, "How was your Christmas?" and I've been answering, with somewhat startling and unnecessary enthusiasm, "It was awesome!" For two whole weeks I sat around at home with my kids and (sometimes) husband, and baked double-chocolate cookies, played Guitar Hero, watched hours of home-reno shows on my newly acquired "Lifestyle Package" of TV channels, and did two excessively difficult and kind of annoying jigsaw puzzles.

I can't remember the last time I've had so much time to play. To fiddle around, to sit around the house, to accomplish nothing useful.

The key, of course, the trick to all of this unheard-of leisure, is that while I was busy learning how to master "Welcome to the Jungle" on medium without being booed off the stage, my kids were busy too. Santa brought them a whole roster of Digimon toys, and so while I flipped back and forth between Kitchen Nightmares and Holmes on Homes they kept up an unbroken commentary of "Tentomon, digivolve to ... Kabuterimon!" and "I'll attack him with my Howling Blaster!"

For the first time in five years, I can spend time at home with my kids and it feels more like play than work. I still have to settle fights and heat up macaroni and cheese, but these are interruptions to the tenor of my day, not a full-time occupation. Hanging around at home on the weekend is starting to feel more like what I remember from my own childhood: downtime, time to fill with all kinds of meaningless and pleasurable puttering.

A year or so ago, a certain headline-grabbing study proclaimed that babies don't make their parents happy. Childless adults report the highest level of happiness, rivaled only by adults whose children have grown up and left home. In between those two eras of life, however, the study suggested that there is a period of time when one's happiness level recovers: after the children hit school-age but before teenage rebellion sets in, parents report levels of happiness that almost rival those of their childless counterparts.

We all wrote scathing posts about this study at the time, but I tucked away that little tidbit in my back pocket and have been secretly awaiting the happy school-age years with a certain amount of anticipation.

One of my post-Christmas leisure pursuits has been watching my way through a box set of Freaks and Geeks (how is it possible that I've lasted this long without watching this show?). The two main characters, a brother and a sister, are fourteen and sixteen respectively, and their parents are full of bad ideas. They persuade their ninth-grade son to ask a girl to the school dance; they think it's a good idea for their newly rebellious daughter to dress up in full costume for Halloween to help give out candy at the door. As parental advice-givers, they seem constantly to concoct new ways for their children to commit social suicide.

In one early episode, the mother sits glumly on Halloween night, looking at photographs of past Halloweens, her kids dressed up in costume, all eagerness and excitement. Meanwhile, her teenage daughter is out smashing pumpkins while her son is being pelted with eggs by local bullies. She's sad because she knows it is ending, that brief era of family life, that ten-year-window between the hard labour of infant care and the long twilight of adolescence. That era is just barely beginning for me, but already I can see the end on the horizon, a mere decade or so away.

Because I Am A Sheep

2009-01-02T13:19:00.003-05:00

January: It’s hard to blog when you’re spending all your time compulsively checking the MLS listings and scanning online floor plans.

(Does this mean that if I do this meme again next year I'll have the SAME first sentence as this year? If so, it will still be accurate.)

February: It felt like a jailbreak, the escape from high school into the freedom and anonymity of university.

March: There's a certain stiffness of bearing that can only be seen when a jeans- and t-shirt-clad woman leaves the hair salon with a six-foot bridal veil attached to her head.

(Not much of a year in review, this. More of a life in review. But that particular first sentence was not an anniversary tribute to hubby but rather a metaphorical lead-in to my post on home-staging.)

April: I spent Earth Hour last weekend sorting through six months' worth of photos on hubby's computer.

Ho hum.

May: We turned the TV on last night for the first time in weeks.

So I immediately wrote a post about it.

June: They say there are no atheists in foxholes.

July: Last summer I was full of sentimental mourning for the transformation Bub was about to undergo as he entered nursery school.

August: First meal...

... at the new house.

September: Bub: But Mama, on TV it says Frogs Bunny.

October: "I never look back, darling," Edna tells Mr. Incredible.

November: My new favourite Shakespeare heroine is Emilia from Othello.

December: Has anyone noticed how the morning newspaper has turned into a morality play?

So, am I the only one who kept accidentally copying the first sentence from the last post of the month (i.e. the one at the top of the archive page)? This meme is hard.

Other

2008-12-29T09:18:00.003-05:00

I'm noticing, lately, how my children are not me.

Pie, for instance, was showing my mother her fingers the other day. "You've got four fingers!" my mother enthused, "And a thumb!"

"Yes," Pie replied solemnly, "but one of them hurts."

Her finger hurts, a private soreness that she experiences without my awareness of it - a part of her subjective experience (however minor) from which I am excluded.

Perhaps it's the Christmas holidays. During the school year, my children head off bravely each morning to face the day on their own, Bub glowering resentfully, Pie gliding zombie-like towards the terrifying groups of playing children at her day-care. I realize, usually, that my children are not me.

For these couple of weeks, however, we return to something like our old symbiotic connection, spending the days holed up at home while snowmageddon rages outside. I keep mental track throughout the day of how long it has been since Pie peed on the potty; I notice when Bub does the dance that means he needs to be nudged in that direction. But all along they are thinking their private thoughts, living in a world of which I am only tangentially aware.

Yesterday we went to a birthday party. This was not a party for the faint of heart: it included upwards of fifteen children aged five and under, all gathered at a conservation area which featured a birds of prey exhibit and a play barn full of horses and sheep. A guide led us from place to place, stopping the children periodically to quiz them on trivia questions like "What does a chicken say?" and "What is a baby duck called?"

Bub was mostly oblivious to these questions, scampering around the barn while the other children clucked obediently. The one exception to this pattern occurred during the birds of prey show. The children sat on a series of risers as the guide showed them a Great Horned owl. "What do you think this owl would like to eat?" she asked. Chicken, someone suggested, with surprising accuracy. "Yes," the guide answered, "this bird does like to eat chicken. Is there anything else it might eat besides chicken?"

There was a short pause, and then Bub's voice rang out. "Frosted Flakes!"

Bub does not even eat Frosted Flakes. What would make him so confident of this strange answer that he would belt it out in that setting? "I think he knew he was saying something funny," hubby suggested to me afterwards. "He had quite a smirk on his face."

As we drove home later that night, Pie slept in the back seat while hubby and I analyzed the day in the front. Suddenly we heard Bub chuckling to himself. I turned around to see him grinning widely. "I said the owl would eat Frosted Flakes!" he muttered, chuckling again, his private joke like a tiny window into an inner conversation from which I am still mostly excluded.

By The Chimney With Care

2008-12-24T21:55:00.002-05:00

All Is Calm

2008-12-23T21:45:00.000-05:00

Storm

2008-12-19T09:41:00.004-05:00

The snowpocalypse is coming.

Actually, the word being used - repeatedly - in the newspapers is "snowmageddon." Is it possible that this is the first time anyone has coined that particular word? Because I laugh every time I see it and now that it's out there, everybody is using it.

This particular snowstorm does not otherwise seem to be especially unusual. High winds and 10-15 centimetres' accumulation. Not a great day for tobogganing, necessarily, but not as bad as the 50 cm we saw last month. But last month we didn't have the word "snowmageddon" to throw around, along with its various progeny: "snowlebration," "snowstivities" and "snowpalooza."

"What time are the snowstivities getting started?" one might ask. Or, if you're my mom, you might get confused and ask people if they're ready for "stormageddon."

Canadians love to heap scorn upon the snowdrifts that would keep other, lesser mortals housebound. None of the moms and dads at the kindergarten pick-up yesterday seemed particularly impressed by the weather system heading our way. Of course, it's easy to talk big when you're not actually planning to go anywhere. Personally, I plan to spend the weekend holed up at home, watching the snow pile up around my house and feeling theoretically superior to those who consider a minor little snowfall like this a sign of the end of days.

Babylon Revisited

2008-12-08T15:58:00.003-05:00

Has anyone noticed how the morning newspaper has turned into a morality play?

Greed, a top economist noted last week, is the cause of the economic crisis. Greed! All my life I've been told that capitalism had tamed greed, turned it into a hardworking domestic animal, rather like the horse used to be. And now greed has suddenly bared its teeth at us. There's something distinctly old-fashioned about this, the realization that the origin of all social ills is something as quaintly Victorian as the sinful human heart.

Today's newspaper featured a new kind of real-estate agent: a scruffy housebreaker who matches people-less houses to homeless people. The police look politely aside, commenting only that it's up to homeowners to protect their property. In the accompanying photo, a woman and her baby inspect the tile floors of the vacant dwelling they're claiming as their own. There is something apocalyptic about this shift: the first will be last and the last shall be first.

I've been haunted, these silent weeks, by the book of Revelation. In the eighteenth chapter the mighty city of Babylon has fallen and the incense of her destruction rises to heaven. But meanwhile the city's inhabitants mourn. "What is like this great city?" they ask. Where once there was the sound of harpists, flutists and trumpeters, there is now only silence. At one time, any man with a ship could become wealthy at her rich seaports, but in an hour she has been made desolate:

And the merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her, for no one buys their merchandise anymore: merchandise of gold and silver, precious stones and pearls, fine linen and purple, silk and scarlet, every kind of citron wood, every kind of object of ivory, every kind of object of most precious wood, bronze, iron, and marble; and cinnamon and incense, fragrant oil and frankincense, wine and oil, fine flour and wheat, cattle and sheep, horses and chariots, and bodies and souls of men.

Economic collapse is what this passage describes - the downfall of an immensely productive economy that has created not only wealth but also an unparalleled flowering of music, art, and culture, and has done so on the backs of other nations.

All my life I've been told that Babylon was communist Russia, or the Roman Catholic church, or the ancient Roman Empire. But in the whole book of Revelation I find myself most sympathetic to the bewildered citizens of fallen Babylon. Angels fly over the city in the hours before her ruin, calling "Come out of her, my people - Babylon the great is fallen!" But where can we go?

Five

2008-11-12T19:19:00.002-05:00

You need to be reminded - repeatedly - that you have presents to open.

You can change a transformer from robot to airplane in three seconds flat.

Each morning at breakfast you say, remorsefully, "I'm sorry I dumped out the Special K," even though that was, like, two days ago.

Happy birthday, sweet boy. Don't fly away from me too soon.

Nature's First Hue

2008-11-08T16:13:00.005-05:00

After a few months of tweaking all the knick-knacks in my new house, I have a developed an increasingly simple decorating philosophy:

1) Figure out what makes you happy.
2) Put it everywhere.

Any questions?

Truth-Tellers

2008-11-03T20:54:00.003-05:00

My new favourite Shakespeare heroine is Emilia from Othello. While poor Desdemona spends her dying breath refusing to speak a word against her husband, Emilia starts talking and doesn't stop. All through Act V she blisters the men with her tongue, raking Othello over the coals for mistreating his wife and exposing Iago's evil schemes while he splutters things like, "Go to!" and "Zounds, hold your peace!"

"I peace?" Emilia retorts, "No, I will speak as liberal as the north. / Let heaven and men and devils, let them all, / All, all cry shame against me, yet I'll speak."

Emilia is a truth-teller - she blazes with the truth that is burning on her tongue. At the end of the play she lies dead on the bed alongside Desdemona and Othello - but her words have torn down the whole edifice of Iago's deception and set the world to rights again.

Anne of Green Gables is another truth-teller. She believes God might be more interested in Superintendent Bell's prayers if he would just spice them up a bit. She tells Mrs. Rachel Lynde - to her face - that she's fat, ugly, and rude.

Of course, Mrs. Rachel is a truth-teller herself, a woman who prides herself on speaking her mind, but she is the more conventional kind of truth-teller - the kind for whom telling the truth is a thinly veiled excuse for gossiping, interfering, and bossing people around. The most powerful truth-tellers, the ones whose freedom radiates from them most visibly, are the ones whose truth is something more than mere malice.

In The Blue Castle, Valancy Stirling becomes a truth-teller when a doctor informs her she has less than a year to live. Freed from a lifetime of kowtowing to her many aunts and uncles, Valancy starts to operate without an interior monologue, saying whatever comes into her head. To be sure, some of the things she has to say aren't very nice: she accuses her relatives of being evil-minded gossips and makes an unflattering allusion to the number of Aunt Isabel's chins. But my favourite remarks are her random observations: "'People who don't like cats,' said Valancy, attacking her dessert with a relish, 'always seem to think there is some particular virtue in not liking them.'"

If you could switch off your inner censor - if you really didn't care what other people think - what would you say?

Winded

2008-10-31T13:12:00.003-04:00

The boys come pounding up the stairs - five-year-old cousins, three months apart in age. "Where's Bub?" Jake's mother asks.

"Downstairs."

"Well, could you go ask if he would like a snack?"

Obediently, Jake trots downstairs, returning a moment later. "He said no."

*****

"Bub's E.A. is all excited about these playdates," Ashley remarks. "I said, well, we've gotten together once." She pauses delicately. "I'm just worried because sometimes Jake can be a bit of a jerk. I wouldn't want Bub to count on this as part of his routine."

*****

"Remember, there are three of you today," Ashley tells Jake and his cousin as they disappear downstairs, hockey sticks in hand. "Three boys. That means three get to play."

*****

Pie pulls on my hand, tugging me downstairs to help her get an out-of-reach toy. The boys are playing hockey. An older cousin is the goaltender; Jake and Kevin are passing the puck back and forth, angling for their best shot.

"You missed!" Bub shouts gleefully, pouncing on a puck that shot just wide of the net. He's having fun. He doesn't notice that he's the only one without a stick, playing by rules of his own devising.

*****

It's time to leave and Bub is hiding behind the couch, emerging only when a return visit is promised. Next week - same time, same place. Jack and Kevin are back downstairs already, having delivered their obligatory goodbyes.

"Thanks for having us," I say as we climb in the car. Ashley helps buckle Bub in.

"Anytime," she replies, heartily enough that it takes several blocks before I realize that I can't breathe.

Kids, Parents, and Friendships

2008-10-28T15:49:00.003-04:00

I made my first friend when I was three years old. The way I did it was this: I approached her and said, "Will you be my friend?" and she said, "Yes." That friendship came to a natural close when I graduated from our Montessori school and went to kindergarten the following year, but I can still remember the swell of pride I felt at having made my first friend.

That was not, of course, the first time I had ever played with another child. My mother had taken me to play with the daughters of her friends, occasions I looked forward to and enjoyed. I had even gone to birthday parties and had these little girls over to the house for my birthday. But clearly in my three-year-old mind, the term "friend" did not apply to these children. A friend was something you made, not something your mom handed you on a silver platter.

When we moved to a new town for grade one, I spent more than five lonely months wandering the playground alone at recess. I had learned enough about social rejection by then that the direct approach I had favoured as a three-year-old no longer seemed like an option. My friendless state continued until I was forcibly adopted by Tracey, a big, bossy girl, tall enough to be mistaken for a ten-year-old. My relief was intense.

I've thought of these anecdotes many times over the years, mostly in terms of what they reveal about my personality. Already at age three I was a shy child; I desperately wanted friends but wasn't confident of my ability to secure them. More accurately, I should say that I wanted a friend - I had no interest in the promiscuous behaviour of my peers: one monogamous friendship was enough for me.

In the three decades since my forlorn six-year-old self wandered the playground alone, I have recalled these stories often, but one thought that has never crossed my mind is, "Wow, my parents really dropped the ball on that one."

In yesterday's post at Apathy Lounge, the blogger, a substitute teacher, described the plight of Casey, a new boy in town who's having a hard time adjusting to second grade. His struggles are not helped by his negligent parents who, among other lapses in parental attention, have failed to get to know other parents or arrange playdates so that Casey could start fitting into his new community.

Baffled might be the best word to describe my reaction to this assumption that childhood social success is contingent upon parental involvement. (Some of the comments on my "Playdate Paranoia" post made the same connection and provoked a similar response.) In my recollection, the world of childhood friendship was a kids-only environment, a jungle impenetrable to well-meaning parents whose attempts to interfere couldn't do much good and might do some harm. At best parents might provide a listening ear and some sage advice, but none of the schoolyard friendships I knew of as a child had been fostered (much less created) by parental plotting and scheming. There were, to be sure, kids in my class whose mothers were close friends, but these children regarded one another with a kind of distant wariness. Whatever went on at home, everyone understood that the politics of the primary-school environment were ours to craft for ourselves.

In retrospect, though, I wonder how many of our peer assessments reflected the parents' traits more than the kids'. I can remember Belinda, for instance, who always arrived at school five minutes late, her hair looking like a bird's nest as her frazzled mother hurriedly bundled her and her brother to their classrooms. Belinda occupied a position somewhere on the periphery of social acceptance, but was that because of her chronic lateness and dishevelled appearance, or because she invariably landed in the lowest math and reading groups?

My own mother sent me off to school nicely dressed in turtlenecks and culottes - but whatever she managed to achieve in that direction must have been undermined by my habit of wiping my nose on my sleeve. Well into the third grade I came home from school each winter afternoon with my nice, clean shirts a snot-encrusted mess. It stands to reason that prompt haircuts, well-fitting clothes, and nicely trimmed fingernails would promote popularity, but can these measures really stand a chance in that primary-school world where children will still accost their classmates at recess, demanding a bite of their Oreo cookies? (Or maybe that was just me.)

How much power do you think parents have over their children's social acceptance? To what extent do you make parenting decisions - about what shows your children watch, what clothes they wear and what snacks they take to school - based on the desire to foster your child's friendships and popularity?

Evil, Parenting, and Moral Goodness

2008-10-26T20:39:00.006-04:00

This week I've been reading Mary Henley Rubio's long-awaited biography of L.M. Montgomery, The Gift of Wings. In it she draws attention to a trend in Montgomery's journals. As she grew older, Montgomery continued to write novels about bright, imaginative girls thwarted in their ambitions by narrow-minded adults, but in her journals she began to collect another kind of tale: stories of parents let down by their ne'er-do-well children. Young men embezzling funds from the church offering plate - young women requiring hastily-arranged weddings ... these are the characters peopling her private chronicles.

Montgomery had reason to be worried: her son Chester had demonstrated a lifelong tendency towards dishonesty and self-indulgence. He pilfered jewelry from their housemaids; he was a compulsive eater; he did his best to corner neighbourhood girls, who soon learned to keep out of his clutches.

Writers don't always make the best mothers, and Montgomery was no exception: even her "good son," Stuart, remembered pushing flowers under the door of his mother's office when she was holed up inside, laughing aloud in private merriment as she concocted her latest novel. What time she could spare for her sons involved policing their social and academic lives, promoting friendships with suitably wealthy and prestigious neighbours and discouraging attachments with those she considered beneath her family's social station. It's not difficult to find parenting mistakes when you're looking for them, yet I cannot believe that Montgomery can be held responsible for her son's misdemeanours (which in due course became full-fledged crimes).

The issue of maternal culpability is central to another book I read last year: Lionel Shriver's We Need to Talk About Kevin. The narrator of that novel is Eva Khatchadourian, member of a small and exclusive club of mothers whose sons have committed high-school massacres. The novel is made up of letters from Eva to Kevin's father, Franklin, and they all deal, overtly or otherwise, with Franklin's unstated accusation that Eva was responsible for her son's murders.

Eva's recollections of Kevin's infancy and childhood point to the classic symptoms of a sociopathic disorder. Kevin is cold, detached, and malicious, traits he carefully conceals under a mask of bonhomie. His father is taken in, but Eva always insists that there's something wrong. Reading her account, I find it impossible to blame her for her son's crimes, yet what makes the novel so haunting - and lifts it above mere sensationalism - are the hints that his rampage could have been prevented. Long after finishing the novel, I am most haunted by a scene in which Kevin is ill; he briefly drops his usual antagonism and defensiveness, actually accepting and even seeking his mother's affection. This brief glimpse of a Kevin who is not merely vulnerable but, more importantly, capable of attachment suggests that Kevin is more than the "bad seed" - that there is potential in him, even if there's no obvious way to unlock it.

As parents we are responsible for the moral growth of our children. In Montgomery's day this task was described as teaching them right from wrong: it involved instruction in moral and religious precepts, reinforced with punishments for bad behaviour. When Montgomery comments in her journals that six-year-old Chester has always been difficult to "train," she is acknowledging the failure of these tried-and-true methods. More recently, the task of moral education has evolved into meeting the child's emotional needs: our more optimistic generation has concluded that children who are shown love and empathy will learn to display those traits themselves. I suspect that both approaches work well with normal children.

A third parenting approach is explored in the television series Dexter. The protagonist, Dexter Morgan, is a phenomenon that does not occur in nature: a serial killer who kills only other murderers. In the first two seasons the show uses flashbacks to trace the origins of this strange hybrid of monster and hero. There are hints that Dexter may have a genetic predisposition towards sociopathy; if so, the childhood traumas he endured merely sealed his fate. The turning point in his life, however, is a conversation with his father, Harry, who has just discovered that his son has been killing animals, including the neighbours' dog. Harry's reaction is complex: he looks sickened, but he puts his arm around Dexter's shoulders. He knows the signs of what his son is becoming, but he doesn't turn away. Instead he trains Dexter, channeling his propensities for violence in socially beneficial ways and creating the code that Dexter continues to follow as an adult.

Harry is credited for doing what few parents could: facing his son's darkness head-on, without pretense, and loving him unconditionally. As a result, Dexter retains some ability to form emotional connections: he remains attached to his sister and even manages a reasonably successful relationship with his girlfriend and her two kids. But the show always toys with the possibility that Harry, far from saving Dexter from a worse fate, has schooled him to become what Harry believed he already was: a heartless killer. We see a teenaged Dexter reading books on sociopathy, seeing himself reflected in the symptomology and constructing his sense of self accordingly. We see Harry showing Dexter an MRI of his brain, pointing out the enlarged areas governing aggression and the shrunken centres of empathy. No other child has ever been trained, so carefully and lovingly, to see himself as a serial killer.

There is something fascinating about stories of evil children. For Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin grew from a kind of worst-case-scenario thinking - this is every would-be parent's worst nightmare. But for me the fascination arises from the possibility of remediation, the lurking hints that these compulsive liars, these thieves and killers, have some core that is redeemable. According to Mary Rubio, Chester's classmates at school recalled that they "loved 'to get him going' because he created such a lively uproar. Children teased and tormented him because he would react angrily to provocations and retaliate by lunging at offenders, and his clumsy attempts to catch his skinny, fast-footed classmates created a comic delight. They all said, independently, as adults looking back, that he was by nature a 'loner.' He wanted desperately to be accepted, but was socially inept and ostracized." With parents who both suffered from debilitating mental illnesses, Chester seems all too likely to have inherited some kind of personality disorder.

But when I read that passage, describing a boy with a life of failure and criminal disgrace ahead of him, I think not that he needs a good spanking, nor even that he just needs love and affection, but rather that there must have been some way to teach him the things those other children all knew without being taught - that the empathy that springs up so readily in some might still be a plant that can be cultivated in others. Unable to crack the code of social interaction as a boy, Chester was later unable to rely on social cues to restrain the impulses that most of us learn to curb on the playground. He had been told that stealing was wrong - he knew that if he were caught he'd be punished - but is it possible that with the right kind of social skills, he might have learned to acquire what the rest of us think of as a conscience?

Vegephobe

2008-10-23T22:44:00.003-04:00

I don't like plants.

For a long time, I thought that I was merely incompetent with them - they invariably wither and die under my care, so I've learned not to throw good money after bad. But that's not it. I actually don't like them. (Perhaps they perceive my dislike and shrivel up not so much from dehydration as from emotional thirst.)

First of all, I'm suspicious of how much water they drink. I've been pouring a cup of water on my hardy mums every night, and though they are visibly drying up and dying, I refuse to believe that they actually require more. (They're like Dan on Survivor, shoveling in the rice and corn and worrying about waking up hungry at midnight.) All the other potted mums in the neighbourhood are still orange and yellow, not the crispy brown shade mine have gradually turned. I am starting to suspect that my neighbours are replacing their mums every couple of weeks to keep them looking fresh.

The outdoor plants I can tolerate, though - they, at least, are in their natural environment. My beef is with the indoor plants. I received two of these as housewarming gifts. One I actually almost like: it's by the front door, which is almost as good as being outside. The other, however, epitomizes everything that is wrong with indoor plants: it's a leatherette treasure chest full of dark green leaves. For awhile it sat by the kitchen sink (which at least made it easy to water), but then I had the brainstorm of moving it into the bathroom, where I can glare at it each night before bed.

Interior designers love to bring the outdoors in (a decorating strategy I always trace for my students in Anne of Green Gables, where Anne's influence over Marilla is measured by the steady encroachment of apple blossoms into her bedroom, first in a cracked vase on the bureau and eventually on a dainty wallpaper). I myself prefer to keep the outdoors out. I would not have wanted to be one of the homeowners on that early episode of Trading Spaces where crazy Genevieve hung an entire bedroom wall with moss. (When the unfortunate couple was led in, blindfolded, they wrinkled their noses at the smell.)

The real problem with plants, I think, is the leaves. Cut flowers I can enjoy, especially the big Gerbera daisies with their sturdy, leafless stems. But the profusion of leaves in a potted plant always strikes me as vaguely depressing. Leaves are such blatant reminders of mortality: they dry up, fall off, turn yellow or brown - or, alternatively, they grow grotesquely huge, dwarfing the still-pretty flowers they surround. Leaves are a no-win situation.

My bathroom plant has managed to survive nearly two months of my abuse and neglect. It gets a dousing of water every three or four days, enough to keep it a kind of limbo between death and life. If it finally manages to die, I'll have a nice spot for some knick-knacks. Not candles, though - I hate those too, but that's another post.

The Secret to Happiness

2008-10-19T22:33:00.004-04:00

I'm marking rebuttal essays this weekend, which means that my students have mined the internet for ignorant, illogical, and ill-expressed opinions with which they disagree. In the last two days I have read editorials arguing that university students shouldn't have to take science courses (they're too hard), that fat children should be removed from their parents' custody, and that homosexuals should not be allowed to marry because marriage has historically been developed by and for fertile women, so that they can know who the father of their children is.

Amid this sludge, however, I've discovered one apparently reputable psychology researcher who has stumbled upon the secret to happiness: hard manual labour. Models of a happy life include nomads in hunter-gatherer societies and Caroline Ingalls. Their secret? Plenty of arduous, complex physical tasks done with their hands (the hands are important) and directly linked to survival. To get the biggest happiness-charge, we need not only physical exercise, but purposeful exercise that involves anticipation (of, say, a delicious meal), challenge, and tangible results.

Modern life affords almost no opportunities for this kind of activity. I would say, from personal experience, that walking a treadmill engages the pleasure-centers of the brain in almost no noticeable way. Athletic competition is more purposeful and, I've heard, is considered enjoyable by those with rudimentary eye-hand coordination. But scoring a goal against an opponent is a very different thing from cooperating with a neighbour to trap a wild boar that will feed the tribe for a week.

I am always skeptical of arguments based on a combination of biological determinism and a rosy idealization of the primitive past. Throw the word "wired" in there and you've pretty much lost me. I can imagine that hunting for survival might provide some mood-enhancing jolts of adrenaline, but I'm less convinced that scrubbing laundry by hand with lye soap would chemically rewire my brain for happiness. That said, there is a certain plausibility to the idea that hard physical labour can promote happiness so long as it is meaningful, productive, and complex. Laying bricks for $1/hour doesn't qualify - but apple-picking might.

It's the difference between packing and unpacking. Packing up the house for the move last August was tedious beyond belief, but it was relieved by joyous bouts of unpacking. Whenever I move I'm the same way: I've learned to invest in good shoes because I'm on my feet constantly, sleeping in brief five-hour spurts before whirling into action again. Within twenty-four hours I am in the nailing-pictures-on-the-wall stage, simultaneously restless and deeply content. There is something satisfying in working hard and seeing the results of your work take physical form.

I can imagine that the cooks and the crafters feel this way too - and the gardeners. But I will never be one of them. For better or worse, I am the girl who shops at the craft bazaar, not the craft-supply store. I watch the Food Network and read home renovation magazines, but at the end of the day I'd much rather write a blog post about the pleasures of manual labour than actually engage in any.

Huh.

2008-10-16T22:04:00.005-04:00

Now that the fall television season is underway, I've been enjoying the Global television commercial-break series of "Huh" snippets - things like, "The actor who plays the Haitian on Heroes grew up in ... Haiti. Huh." So I thought I'd do my own snippety post of things that make me go, "Huh."

*****

A newspaper article this morning claims that the Conservative victory in the federal election was determined over the Thanksgiving weekend. Polls last week showed that the Liberals were narrowing the gap, but by Sunday night, the polls indicated a shift blue-ward. (In Canada, blue is right-wing and red is left. Go figure.) Pundits say that the election was settled over Thanksgiving dinner as people talked through the issues and came to a decision. All I can say is poor Jack Layton - stuck at the kitchen table while the election was being decided just one room over around the dining room table.

*****

If you owned this poster and planned to put it up on a wall in your house, which room would you put it in?

If you said, "The baby's nursery, of course, where I can pair it with a disco-ball and a magic-mushroom nightlight for an Alice-in-Wonderland-goes-psychedelic theme," then you are exactly the mom Cookie magazine is apparently aimed at.

After blinking dazedly at the photo spread, I looked for an online equivalent and found this:

Same room, but no magic mushrooms and no Angela Davis print. What do you think happened? Burglars? A delayed-onset bout of sanity?

*****

Bub and Pie were playing with marbles in the living room this morning when Bub complained that the "chairs" were in his way. I tugged the two ottomans aside, but then realized that I had foiled his plan to lounge across the ottomans (ottomen?) while shooting marbles from an elevated position.

"Ugh," Bub grunted as he struggled to move them back into place, "that witch moved my chairs!"

Playdate Paralysis

2008-10-13T09:26:00.004-04:00

The Background: Ten days ago, I took the kids for a playdate to the home of Ashley, the bookkeeper from hubby's office whose two youngest children are the same age and gender as mine. The playdate had been arranged as follows: I bumped into Ashley at the school and invited her to bring the kids to my house; she replied that she doesn't have a vehicle during the day and invited us to hers. After a successful morning, I dragged my screaming children to the car while Ashley assured them they were welcome to return the following week.

The Sequel: A few days later, I realized that I had double-booked myself: Bub had an O.T. assessment scheduled for the same morning as our return visit to Ashley's house. I dealt with the situation by making several resolutions to call Ashley, none of which I fulfilled until the last minute. I did call to cancel, but not until the morning of our scheduled playdate and without, I fear, sufficient expressions of regret. "We'll do it another time," she assured me, but did not name a day.

The Dilemma: Friday mornings are really the only time I have available to get together. Do I call and arrange a date, or do I wait for Ashley to call me?

Reasons Not to Call:

It's her house. It's no use inviting her to our house, because she has no transportation. I could suggest a weekend get-together, but she has indicated that their weekends are really busy.
The vagueness of her "We'll do it again sometime" might indicate (a) that she's offended at the lacksadaisical way I canceled our previous engagement; (b) that she didn't actually like me that much to begin with; and/or (c) that she invited us back the first time only in a desperate effort to assuage Bub's despair.
I called her last time. It's her turn.

Reasons to Call:

I'm the one who canceled our previous engagement, thus potentially conveying the (false) idea that (a) I didn't like her much; and/or (b) I agreed to the return visit only in a desperate effort to assuage Bub's despair.
My phone number isn't in the phone book. She could get it by calling hubby's office, of course, but it would require some extra effort.
I canceled our last playdate, which makes it my turn.

Other Relevant Information:
Ashley is, based on my observations after one playdate plus one office Christmas party, an ESFJ. She was popular in high school and describes herself as laid-back up to a point. It seems unlikely that she would write me off after a single canceled playdate, but it's also possible that I'm just not quite normal enough for her. It's also possible that Bub is not quite normal enough for her friendly, happy-go-lucky son Jake who looked on in evident astonishment as Bub melted down at the conclusion of our first playdate.

Welcome to the inside of my head. Aren't you glad you don't live here?

Then and Now

2008-10-01T15:07:00.003-04:00

"I never look back, darling," Edna tells Mr. Incredible. "It distracts from the now." As laudable as her attitude might seem to self-help gurus, I'm not convinced that The Now is all it's cracked up to be. Sure, there are a few downsides to worrying about the future and regretting the past, but for me the idea of living in the present seems kind of ... one-dimensional. (Technically, I suppose, the term I'm looking for here is three-dimensional. But still. My point is that four dimensions are more dimensional than three.)

I spent hours last summer selecting paint colours, furniture, and floor coverings for my new home, but it was only when I moved in that I realized how ... 1970s all my choices turned out to be. I have shag carpets everywhere, dark brown curtains hanging from every window, and the yellow paint on my kitchen walls is only a shade more Tuscan than the buttercup-yellow curtains my mother hung on her kitchen windows when she moved into her brand-new house in 1977. My carefully selected couches are upholstered in a woven fabric that is uncannily similar to that of the couch I sat on to watch Sesame Street and Electric Company.

It's not just the house. It's the Meet-the-Teacher BBQ and P.D. days and packing lunches. When my children were infants I was blazing a new trail, but now that they're in school it's more clear: I've turned into my mother. And there's something so reassuring to me about the act of placing my feet carefully in her footsteps.

In The Mill on the Floss, Maggie Tulliver reacts to her father's bankruptcy with the dismayed sense that there will be nothing at the end of her life that is the same as it was at the beginning. These days, we no longer expect to find ourselves surrounded, on our deathbeds, with familiar, well-worn objects. Our houses are disposable and our beds and tables even moreso. But that urge to preserve the past has always driven me to diarize, to preserve the past, to stretch the now like a thin piece of crepe so that the past shines through it and illuminates it.

Today I was blindsided by a sudden sense of panic. I reeled from a sense of impending betrayal, an almost physical sensation of pain. And then I remembered. It's the first of October - the tenth anniversary of this conversation. Thinking about that day doesn't hurt me anymore, but the pain is still there, a kind of companion to these fall days, a dark friend that lends a new dimension to the now.

Smarties

2008-09-29T15:00:00.005-04:00

"Is it today still?" Pie asked. We were on our way home from an outing and she was anxiously awaiting her opportunity to sit on the potty and earn two Smarties. Cleverly, we had decided to reward her with two Smarties for every potty visit and a whole Halloween-size box for a successful deposit. Not so cleverly, we had warned her that her sitting fee would be halved tomorrow: two Smarties for sitting on the potty TODAY; one Smartie for sitting on the potty tomorrow.

"Is it today still?" she asked again a moment later. Yes, we explained. It would stay today until she went to sleep for the night and then woke up and had breakfast. Then it would be tomorrow. Except we would call it "today". "Do I get TWO Smarties when we get home?" she asked anxiously. Yes, dear. Two Smarties.

"If you go pee on the potty," I added encouragingly, "then you get a whole box!"

"But I don't want to pee on the potty," Pie replied. "I want to sit on the potty and then get two." This is why, at age three-and-two-months, she is still not even partially potty-trained.

"Is it two today?" she asked. "Two Smarties?" Yes, and yes.

By the time we got home, the winds had shifted. Pie didn't want to sit on the potty; she didn't want Smarties; she didn't want a treat. This from a girl who had given herself a hemorrhoid that morning squeezing out a tiny turd in exchange for a box of candy. I can only conclude that the intensity of her desire became self-defeating: the pressure of wanting two Smarties, and worrying that today might suddenly turn to tomorrow, cutting her Smartie-salary in half, became too much. It was easier just to stop wanting than to continue in that anxious state of anticipation.

Is that something we outgrow - the ability to switch off our desires in self-defense? Are there things I really, truly want that I've persuaded myself to abandon out of fear or helplessness? Once, I wanted a tenure-track job - I was ready to pick up and move across the country for the sake of anyone who offered me one. And when I decided to stop wanting that, I threw the switch every bit as thoroughly as Pie did, directing all my energies into my new goal to stay here, have babies, and never, ever move away. Everything I value in my life right now came from that decision, but I'm always dimly aware that there's a part of me that really craves a good box of Smarties.

I, Introvert

2008-09-26T09:46:00.004-04:00

Do you consider the word "extravert" to be a compliment or an insult? My theory - and I believe I've expressed it here before - is that Canadians and Americans define this word differently. To Americans, an extravert is a popular, outgoing guy who is more likely than an introvert to show leadership skills, work well with others, and succeed in the workplace. To Canadians, an extravert is a shallow poser with no inner life.

Setting aside the cultural differences underlying these opposing definitions, I think they arise from conflicting ways of defining the introvert/extravert scale. The American definition assumes that people are drawn to what they like: extraverts like people; introverts (suspiciously) like to be alone. Canadians, on the other hand, focus on the flip side: introverts don't like people, but extraverts (even more suspiciously) can't stand to be alone.

The traditional wording of the Myers-Briggs personality quiz supports the American definition. "Where do you get your energy from?" it asks, the two possible answers being "other people" or "time alone." I'm always tempted to opt for the unstated third possibility: "food and sleep." For me the question is not so much where my energy comes from but rather where it goes. I am an introvert not so much because I treasure my alone time (though, admittedly, I do) but because I find social interactions draining.

Not all introverts are like this. I'm sure many of them are introverted because they enjoy solitary pursuits. But there is a subset of introverts, I believe, whose withdrawal from social situations arises not so much from misanthropy or poor social skills as from a hyper-awareness of social cues.

When I was dating my ex-husband I was often surprised by how little awareness he had of social cues that seemed glaringly obvious to me. We would stop to chat with some acquaintances and I would notice everything: the quick exchanged glance that suggested criticism or amusement; the body language suggesting a desire to end the conversation; the barely-suppressed raised eyebrow in response to a risque joke. Now, the ex was, in many ways, not a stellar example of extraversion, but he was far more comfortable in these exchanges than I was precisely because so much of the interaction went below his radar.

Shyness, I concluded, was not merely a matter of social awkwardness. It is also, surprisingly, the byproduct of too much social awareness. Shy people are more likely than extraverts to perceive (or imagine) snubs and slights, and they are more likely to perceive, and try to follow, social rules.

Take, for instance, the multiple and conflicting rules governing large-group social situations. In a one-on-one conversation, the rules are comparatively simple: give the other person a chance to talk; make sure the conversation includes both parties. Throw in a few extra participants, however, and the rules become much harder to follow. How do you determine whose turn it is to speak? At what point does it become necessary to use questions to draw in the quietest person at the table? If the group is larger than four or five people, at what point is it acceptable (and even required) to detach from one conversation and join another?

The shy person is aware, to a debilitating degree, of these dilemmas. Shy people not only notice these social undercurrents, but also care about them. Extraverts, I think, have stronger armour. They are more likely to jump into the conversation simply because it interests them, without keeping track of who has done the most talking or noticing the stifled yawns of those bored by the direction the conversation has taken. It's not so much that extraverts have better social skills as that they enjoy a kind of freedom from the information-overload introverts often experience in social situations.

The chain of cause-and-effect seems pretty clear here: I am hyper-aware of social cues and social rules, so I find social situations draining and need time alone. But then I look at my children. Neither of them is old enough to grasp the inner workings of the social world. Snubs, cliques, rules, and hierarchies are all still mercifully shrouded in the mists of the future. But their personalities are already evident.

I vividly remember my own shock as I discovered, at the age of four and five, that girls could be mean. Yet my shyness was ingrained long before I knew about the petty exclusions of the little-girl world. Pie is the same way: she looks at other people warily. She may not know yet what they're capable of, but she knows enough to be suspicious. Bub, on the other hand, is hail-fellow-well-met. He never met a plumber he didn't like. Grocery-store clerks are his new best friends. He is supremely confident that the people he meets will be passionately interested in the fact that he just watched the movie Madagascar. When his overtures meet with a lukewarm response, he is undaunted. Pie, meanwhile, watches from the wings. She doesn't know yet what to watch for, but she's learning. Her instinct for distrust will, in due time, teach her the signs of rejection, disapproval, and dislike that will keep her mutely at the edge of the high-school cafeteria. She will avoid certain pitfalls that others overlook, but she will never know the blithe freedom of those extraverted peers whose innate trust in the human race preserves them in blissful ignorance.

I Am

2008-09-23T16:35:00.004-04:00

I'm teaching The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time again this week, and my students adore it. They love Christopher's blunt innocence and sharp intelligence, and when asked whether they ever find themselves disagreeing with Christopher's opinions, they shake their heads solemnly.

That's when I get them to turn to p. 116. "People think computers are different from people because they don't have minds," Christopher says, "but the mind is just a complicated machine." People like to believe that they have an essential self, he claims, but that belief is itself a trick of the brain. There is no homunculus, no "little man" living inside our heads receiving inputs from the outside world and driving the brain as if it were a stick-shift.

Not surprisingly, that notion meets with stiff resistance. I resist it, though I don't pretend to be able to build an airtight argument in defense of old-fashioned Cartesian mind-body dualism. Perhaps more interesting than the old, vexed question of the relationship between mind and body is the question Andrea posed today in a book review: the book "make[s] the tantalizing point that sentience takes up so much of our mental real estate and consumes so much energy that it has to be good for something, even if we haven't figured out what yet." Consciousness - what is it good for? We not only exist, but we know that we exist. What possible purpose does that serve?

According to St. Anselm, existence is a good. Existence is not merely a prerequisite for other good things, but is good in itself. To exist is better than not to exist. St. Anselm uses this concept as the basis for what I have always found to be one of the sketchier arguments for the existence of God. But the idea has broader implications. Is my life a burden I agree to assume only so long as I am experiencing happiness and pleasure at least 51% of the time? Or does it work the other way around? Is mere existence so valuable a good that even under conditions of overwhelming sadness and pain I will still pursue my continued existence at all costs?

It's easy for me to grasp the value of my existence in September. September is my favourite month of the year. The coolness of the air stirs my blood; the crisp edges of the leaves hint at all the coming fall pleasures like hot applesauce and pumpkin spice lattes. Fall feels right to me in a way that no other season does - I feel healthy and energetic; to exist is evidently so very much better than not to exist. But I also feel oddly surprised at the idea that existence, under any conditions short of intolerable suffering, might be considered a good in itself. I have so much else to be thankful for that I have forgotten, til now, to be amazed at how improbable and even inconceivable it is that I should not only exist, but also know that I exist, and rejoice.

My (New) Hometown

2008-09-18T13:44:00.005-04:00

I've been feeling a bit disconnected from the kids since they started school. Hubby has been doing more of the drop-offs and pick-ups since we moved, and as a result I have to interrogate the children if I want to get a sense of what they've done that day. Bub's report is always the same: he played with a new boy who had a red shirt. I'm not sure whether this is a default response, or whether he really does select his playmates based on their shirt colour. Pie's reports are more mysterious. There was a TV at day-care yesterday, she claims, but they weren't allowed to watch it. "Somebody's mom stayed at my preschool," she insisted. "But I don't know her name. The mom wouldn't let us watch TV."

Huh?

Fortunately, this is a small town, so I know where to go when I need the inside scoop on how my kids are doing: the grocery store.

My initiation into small-town life occurred last week when I pulled into the parking lot and saw the teacher from Bub's Best Start program. Bub had a good morning, she reported, aside from a small altercation when it was time to go inside. "I have to be the boss," he growled at her. Her eyebrows flew up, so he drove home his advantage: "I am the boss."

So it was no real surprise the other day when I heard my name (mispronounced) as I pushed my cart down the dairy aisle. It was Mrs. Rowe, Bub's kindergarten teacher. I am usually too intimidated to approach the teacher directly for an after-school report: she has that awe-inspiring aura of calm authority that I associate with the best primary-school teachers. As soon as I see her benevolent, smiling face I feel irresistibly compelled to be on my best behaviour.

"I'm glad I ran into you!" she said. "I put a note in Bub's backpack but I'd rather explain what happened today in person." It had been school picture day; the schedule was thrown off and the afternoon was very rushed. Bub was having trouble transitioning and - to make a long story short - he bit his E.A. (a wonderful woman with a wealth of experience working with autism).

I left the grocery store in tears, but not because of the biting incident. "Bub is fitting in so well," Mrs. Rowe assured me. She and Josie (the biting victim) love him - he's so full of personality. Bub has even formed a fledgling friendship: he and a little boy named Jake play together a lot - she's even seen them reaching out to touch each other's faces. When she's had autistic children in her class before, it has always been necessary to explain their differences to the rest of the class, but she and Josie have decided to say nothing - Bub is finding his place in the class and there's no need to call attention to his differences.

It's not a bad perk of small-town life when I can pick up a dose of reassurance at the grocery store along with my loaf of bread, container of milk, and stick of butter.

Clothes Make the Man

2008-09-16T09:20:00.004-04:00

In the pilot episode of My So-Called Life, Angela Chase dyes her hair red. "I know she did it to get a rise out of me," her mother insists, but of course that's not at all why she did it. She dyed her hair because she felt trapped inside everybody else's perception of her as the shy, quiet, yearbook-committee-joining good-girl. She did it because she felt that altering her appearance could somehow free her to be a different person.

Fairy tales are largely responsible for this fantasy, I think. Cinderella can be a scullery maid or a princess - it all depends on her gown and glass slippers. In "The Goose Girl," a maid forces a princess to trade dresses with her, and when they arrive at the palace, nobody questions their identity-swap. Even in "Little Red Riding Hood" the nameless heroine is less important than her defining attire. More accurately, perhaps, we might say that the heroine is her attire.

There is something intoxicating about the idea of recreating oneself with a simple change of clothing and, perhaps, hairstyle. My favourite stories have always been makeover stories: books like The Blue Castle or movies like Strictly Ballroom in which the dowdy heroine sheds her braces and limp locks and emerges as an independent, self-defined and compellingly beautiful swan.

Bub is not immune to the power of this fantasy. His favourite stories may not offer many make-up tips, but the common element is the moment of metamorphosis. For months after watching Brother Bear he would freeze in the middle of an activity, a far-away look in his eye, then turn slowly on the spot before announcing, in a hushed whisper, "I turned into a bear!" When his fascination with Brother Bear waned, the Incredible Hulk took its place. Bub was quick to recognize the link between anger and power, the way anger transforms mild-mannered Bruce Banner into a monster of enormous strength. The Incredible Hulk is not really a good story for small children. I'm just saying.

When we asked Bub what he wanted to be for Halloween this year, he answered immediately and decisively, "The Green Lantern." This response was surprising for a couple of reasons: (a) Bub rarely responds to questions about his preferences or about such shadowy, hypothetical future events as Halloween; (b) I'm not entirely sure who the Green Lantern is. He's a superhero, but is he one of the SuperFriends? What, exactly, are his powers? How did Bub become so well acquainted with him as to form a definite and unchanging desire to become him for Halloween?

"Did you cut the green shirt yet?" Bub asked hubby a few mornings ago. We exchanged glances. Hubby had told Bub about his costume plans, but we hadn't realized that Bub was actually listening. Not only was he listening, but he has become strongly attached to the idea. When asked what he's going to be for Halloween, his answer is always the same: "Daddy's going to cut the green shirt, and I'm going to turn into the Green Lantern!"

The Green Lantern costume has become something of a project for hubby. He has debated the various versions of the costume (Alan Scott vs. Hal Jordan); he has confiscated every round object from the kitchen in order to trace out the perfect logo. The costume is still very much a work in progress right now, but the bones of it are there: a shirt and pants in black, stretchy fabric; a green vest and matching boot-covers. When we showed it to Bub he stood stock-still and then breathed, "I love it!" He pulled it on, paused expectantly, and then his face fell. "I don't like this," he glowered. "I'm taking it off."

It's possible that Bub doesn't like the sensation of the stretchy fabric on his skin. But I think the real explanation for his sudden aversion to his Green Lantern costume is the let-down: he thought that the costume would allow him to transform, to metamorphose into somebody strong and powerful: a superhero. There's nothing more crushing than to pull on a new set of clothes only to find yourself unchanged: just a small boy dressed up in Nike workout gear and a shirt with holes cut in the sides of it.

Senseless Acts of Self-Discipline

2008-09-14T14:44:00.005-04:00

I won't let myself check last Sunday's crossword answers until this Sunday's crossword is complete. This is not a superstition - luck has nothing to do with it - and it's not a reward - completing the crossword is its own reward - but it's an ingrained habit in the same class as brushing my teeth before bed.
I make steel-cut oatmeal every weekend, but I won't make it on a weekday morning, even if I have time. Monday to Friday, it's Multigrain Life cereal for me.
I have a sample of EasyGlide dental floss that I keep in my cosmetic bag for when I go on vacation. The rest of the time, I use the cheaper mint-flavoured Johnson & Johnson. Frugality is a possible motive for this one, but considering my lax habits in all my other spending, there's still a certain senselessness to this lone act of penny-pinching.
When I'm craving an apple, I often decide not to eat one on the grounds that I should save healthy food like that for the children.
When I buy a home-decorating magazine, I make myself read all the articles, even the ones I'm not interested in. (However, I no longer force myself to finish reading books I'm not enjoying, abandoning them as soon as something better comes along. Recent books to receive this treatment are The Birth House, Effigy, and Eat, Pray, Love, any of which I may return to if my stash of more compelling reads dwindles sufficiently.) (Furthermore, I don't apply this "get your money's worth" reasoning to food: if I am full, or I'm not enjoying the meal I ordered in a restaurant, I never force myself to keep eating.)
I never throw out a set of pyjamas. I still own (and occasionally wear) flannel nightgowns that date back to the 1980s.

What about you? What senseless forms of self-discipline do you practise?

Nice, But Not Friendly

2008-09-11T11:48:00.004-04:00

It's a friendly workplace I'm in this term. And it's kind of freaking me out.

Most of my teaching this year is at a small college that prides itself on exceptional personal commitment to students. Perhaps "incestuous" is too negative a term to describe the atmosphere - let's go with "close-knit." When class ends and I'm busy packing away my textbooks, the prof for the next class invariably comes bounding in with a cheerful greeting of, "How are your classes going so far?"

I'm not good in these situations. Clearly, the appropriate response would be to reciprocate the friendly inquiry, but instead I freeze. I say "Fine" and then stand there silently for a minute or two searching for something else to add before giving up and exiting in haste.

At the faculty meeting last week a colleague expressed surprise that we had never spoken before. Both of us have been teaching there for several years - her face is very familiar to me - but we've never been formally introduced. "I'm just an antisocial person," I explained. "I arrive late for meetings and then skulk out as fast as I can."

"Your face is deceptive, then," she replied. "You look friendly!"

I shook my head. "I'm not friendly. I'm nice, but I'm not friendly."

My problem - and it's not an uncommon one, I realize - is that I have no small talk. If I arrive ten minutes before class and find my students milling about in the hallway, I'll duck into the photocopy room just to avoid the awkwardness of either making conversation or standing silently wondering if I should START making conversation. This behaviour, which I thought was so subtle as to be undetectable, attracted a certain amount of unfavourable comment in my student evaluations last year. The word "hiding" was used (not without some justification).

One of the more lasting side effects of motherhood for me is the freedom it provides from my usual tongue-tied demeanour. Though completely unable to engage in casual repartee about the weekend or the weather, I am never at a loss for words when confronted with a baby. One of my summer students this year became a grandmother midway through our course: her sixteen-year-old daughter had a baby girl after twelve hours of labour with no epidural. As standoffish as I can be in most situations, I have no problem hitting a pregnant woman or a new mother with a barrage of nosy questions. I've read enough blog posts to know that many women find these questions intrusive, but it's almost as if the presence of a baby (in or ex utero) turns my personality inside out.

The secretary at Friendly College is a woman whose father was the pastor of the church I grew up in: I used to babysit her and her siblings when I was in Grade Seven, and her mother taught me Sunday School all through high school. This is exactly the kind of person I have the most difficulty interacting with: a distant acquaintance with whom I don't share any current circumstances that might provide conversation fodder. Most of last year, I jumped guiltily every time I saw her, knowing that I ought to make friendly conversation yet wholly unable to do so. This year, however, it's different: she's due in November, only a few days before Bub's birthday. When I saw her the other day in the faculty lounge, I pounced. "Do you know if it's a boy or a girl?" "Do you have a midwife or an OB?" "Will this be the first grandbaby for your parents?" "Which hospital are you delivering at?" At least I didn't ask to touch her belly. Even I have some boundaries.

I don't know if the poor woman really welcomed my interrogation, but I think I know why I can ask these questions even though I can never bring myself to ask my students how their weekend went. It's because I really want to know the answer.

On the Way Home From School

2008-09-10T07:57:00.002-04:00

Me: So Pie, did you play with anybody today at your preschool?

Pie: No. Just by myself.

Me: Do you want to play with the other kids, or would you rather play by yourself?

Pie: By myself.

Me: Pie, which do you like better - Brenda's house [her old caregiver] or the new preschool?

Pie: (enthusiastically) Brenda's house!!!

Me: Why?

Pie: I like the kids there. I like Allie ... and Selma! I like Selma.

Me: Maybe you'll like some of the kids at your new preschool once you get to know them.

Pie: No. I can only like two. Allie and Selma. Those are two.

Me: Hey Bub - which do you like better? Nursery school or kindergarten?

(silence)

Me: Bub? Are you there?

Bub: I can't talk.

Pie: (taken aback) But you have a mouf. And you just did talk!

Bumbling Amateur

2008-09-05T13:32:00.004-04:00

I'm such a novice at this kindergarten thing. I'm the mom who forgets the hat and sunscreen, who sends a snack that requires a spoon, who arrives five minutes late for the second day of kindergarten because, as it turns out, fifteen minutes ahead of time is not soon enough to start bundling a four-year-old and a three-year-old into the car for a three-minute drive.

I can't even remember what those hand-out things are called, the ones the teacher sends home with forms to fill out and calendars of important dates. Take-home papers? That doesn't sound right. Do they have a name, those things?

I'm the mom who forgets to take a photo for the first day of school, who sends her son off in a t-shirt and denim shorts, forgetting until it's too late that there is supposed to be a ritual to this first day of school, even when it's just a half-day of kindergarten. (Especially then.)

I could have arranged Bub at the front door, with our unpaved driveway and unsodded lot as a backdrop. I might even have gotten him to put on his Cars backpack and say "Cheese!" But that photo would not have captured the look of glee on his face as he ran to do lunges with the other kids for their morning "exercises". It would not have caught his tone of voice at the end of the day when his E.A. said "See you tomorrow!" and he replied, "To have more fun?" A snapshot might have caught something of the new jauntiness in his step, the confidence of being a bona fide big kid. It could not possibly have reflected the full measure of my relief.

You Learn Something New Every Day

2008-09-03T10:09:00.003-04:00

Bub: But Mama, on TV it says Frogs Bunny.
Me: No, Bub. It really doesn't.
Bub: (stunned disbelief)

A Foreign Tongue

2008-08-29T15:16:00.003-04:00

"Let's find the boys!" Bub pleaded as we arrived last night at the open house for the Best Start program he'll be attending every morning (with kindergarten in the afternoons). The room was buzzing with parents and children, but Bub spied a few boys in a corner playing with cars. He looked up at me excitedly, jabbing a finger in their direction.

Boys are strange beasts. I don't fully understand them. The kindergarten-aged girls are fully comprehensible to me. They come in two varieties: there are the bold ones who march up and show me their Barbies, and then there are the shy ones like Pie, peeking out from behind their mothers' knees. With boys the social cues are harder for me to interpret. The two boys Bub had his eye on were pushing cars back and forth, eyes glued to their toys. Was this parallel play or some complicated boy-game?

Bub stood behind them, carefully enunciating the words his speech therapist had taught him. "Hello. My name is Bub. What's your name?" When the boys continued to vroom softly, he shot a confused look in my direction. "Hello?" he asked, as if he were talking on a disconnected telephone. "Hello? Hello?"

If he feels pained by these moments of rejection, Bub gives no sign of it. A year ago, he was the one steadily ignoring the social gestures of others. Now he knows that he wants to play with other children. He knows that he would rather play with boys than girls. And perhaps I am over-inclined to hold him responsible for such failed attempts at communication. If I can't pinpoint what he's doing wrong, perhaps that's because he's not actually doing anything wrong. His approach, I'm sure, would work with any of the gregarious girls who buttonholed the Pie at the sand table. But I suspect that with boys first contact must always be made by the toys rather than their owners. Only after one boy's Superman has established a rapport with the other boy's Batman can further pleasantries be exchanged.

I had a chance to test out this theory this morning when a friend of mine visited with her six-year-old son. Bub was ecstatic. He trailed about after Jonathan, offering up anecdotes. "We went to the beach and saw grandpa we ate macaroni and cheese we went swimming in the water it was fun!" Faced again with a total lack of response, Bub tried another tack. "Hey Jonathan, do you want to go watch some TV?" After a suitable pause, Bub suggested a reply: "How about you say, 'Sure Bub! Let's go watch TV!'"

Bub is strongly motivated to establish social relationships; he just doesn't seem to have cracked the code that would allow him admission into the social world of kindergarten-age boys. I hover uncertainly at times like this, convinced that if I can learn the rules and impart them to Bub, he will eventually put them into practice. But I'm a grown-up, a foreigner struggling ludicrously to pass on the mangled idioms of a language I don't speak myself. My input does little more than call attention to whatever invisible gaffes my son might be making.

I made macaroni and cheese for lunch today, and by the time I had finished boiling the noodles and mixing in the margarine, Bub and his new friend had negotiated a rapprochement. "I will shoot you with my gun!" they hollered joyfully, wielding their flashlights like lethal weapons. I listened from the sidelines, bemused but glad for my son's fledgling facility in a language I will never speak.

Home

2008-08-23T21:23:00.007-04:00

Bub complained the whole way here.

"We need to turn!" he instructed urgently. "Our home is that way!"

I explained, for the several-hundredth time, that all our things had been taken away in the big truck. All our toys, all our chairs, all our beds, all our dressers. "But I don't want to go to the new house," Bub protested, his face tight with misery. "When we get there, I'm going to smash it!"

(At this point in the conversation, Pie would routinely dissolve into tears. "But my animals are there!" she would protest, and when I reassured her that I would protect the house, Bub vowed that I would not be able to stop him from smashing it.)

At one point, Pie mentioned her Master Monkey toy. "I think that toy's at home," Bub told her.

"At the old house?" Pie asked. Bub shook his head. "At the new house?" No, not the new house either. "Then where?"

Home, Bub insisted. Home is not a word like toy or book, something that denotes any one of several possible things. Home is home, an absolute term free of adjectives. And as Bub was dimly beginning to grasp, moving to the new house meant never being home again.

Daddy was already at the house when we pulled into the driveway. Pie, enthusiastically on board with this whole new venture, raced in the door exclaiming, "I know you're in here somewhere!" Bub followed behind her, dragging his feet. And then for awhile I was busy bringing in boxes and so I used my ears rather than my eyes to follow their exploration. They found Daddy - they looked for their bedrooms - and then Bub's astonished tones drifted down to where I was pulling off sandals and juggling boxes. "There it is! It's here!"

Home. Or, as Bub called it when we got back from our new Sunday School this morning, our new-house home.

My House Will Never Look This Good Again

2008-08-18T20:53:00.003-04:00

All the new furniture has been delivered, but none of our old stuff is moved in yet. Everything is shiny new, except for the stuff we've been picking up at antique stores ever since I bought a copy of Flea Market Style magazine and found a whole new lease on life (now that the paint chip fixation has become obsolete). Now just add three boxes of toys and about 700 books and we'll be all moved in.

Three Phone Calls

2008-08-15T09:13:00.002-04:00

I got home from my class at three o'clock yesterday afternoon, a stack of unmarked essays waiting for me to grade. But first I decided to place a few phone calls. I didn't call the hydro company to cancel our account or the Visa hotline to change my address; I didn't return the calls from the flooring store asking if we're satisfied with our hardwood installation (we're not); but I did make the following three calls:

Shelley at the Small Town Early Years Centre
My experience of calling day-care centres in the city has been that they courteously take all your information, and then one of three things happens:

(1) you never hear from them again
(2) you get a call a year later asking if you still want to be on the waiting list
OR
(3) you are offered a full-time spot in mid-October when what you needed (and eventually found in home-care) was a part-time spot beginning in September.

Small Town, though, is a very different kind of place. Pie's spot has been reserved for her since I first called last spring. I pay only for the four days a week that I need, and I don't need to pay anything to hold the spot. She'll be in what they refer to as "the pink room" (a factor I've emphasized with her in conversation), along with three teachers and 23 other three-year-olds. It seems astonishing to me that she will spend her days in that kind of an environment after the laid-back pace of her home-care this year, but when I mention that to my mother or her current caregiver, their responses have been identical and immediate: "She'll be fine." And she will. She exudes a sense of capability. At the photographer's, she can hold any pose; at the Little Gym she can try her hand at any trick. She has even called an official cessation of hostilities between herself and the rest of the human race: the children at day-care whom she used to allude to dismissively as "the babies" are now rapturously identified as "my girls." She's ready for anything the Small Town Early Years Centre wants to send her way.

Bub's schedule is a bit more complicated. He'll go to a Best Start program (a kind of complement to kindergarten) in the mornings, kindergarten in the afternoons, and, as I confirmed yesterday, after-school programming on Mondays and Wednesdays. That means three separate care settings, an irregular schedule, and a new house, all within the next three weeks. Fun! Don't you wish you were Bub? Or me?

Jeff, The Guy Who Will Finish our Roughed-In Phone and Cable Outlets For a Mere $500
On Tuesday.

This I established after a long and confusing conversation about wiring for high-speed internet, given that we don't have dual access phone lines (or something). This dilemma was resolved when I recalled that since we have a WIRELESS router, we don't actually need any wires to be installed.

Laurence, The Guy Who Will Measure Our Windows For a Mere $50
Laurence was busy with an installation, so he asked me to call him back in the evening, when he would have his appointment book handy. This I blithely agreed to do, forgetting that the mental and emotional energy required for the placing of phone calls is something I can muster only until about 5 pm. By 8:30, when the kids were in bed, the task of introducing myself to a stranger, explaining to him what I needed, and writing down the appointment on the calendar seemed too overwhelming to contemplate. So instead I wrote up the exam for my course, graded two essays and recorded the marks, and went to bed.

Posts I Would Write If I Had The Time

2008-08-07T22:31:00.003-04:00

Nuggets of Wisdom From My Students' Exams

Growing up is essential to the growth and maturity of every child.
It is a well-known fact that "good people" have higher ethical standards than "evil people."
In Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone Voldemort is considered to be evil.

Impassioned Defense of the Twilight Series
I know everybody is having a good time trashing the series now that Breaking ~~Wind~~ Dawn has been published, but I have to speak up in the books' defence. And I will do so - eloquently - as soon as I am finished swooning over Edward's topaz eyes.

How obedient do you expect your children to be?
Because mine aren't very.

A Positive Parenting video I saw once had a "Compliance Routine" for parents to implement. You instruct the child to do something, and wait ten seconds. If the child does not comply, you repeat the instruction and wait another ten seconds. If there is still no compliance, you put the child in time-out, releasing him only when he has sat quietly for a set period of time. This routine applies to all requests throughout the day.

If I did this, my children would never leave time out. Our Compliance Routine goes something like this:

Me: Bub, it's time to go out to the car.
Bub: No, I'm not going, I'm never ever going.
Me: (extracting Bub from the bathroom moments before he manages to lock the door) Do you want to wear sandals or Crocs?
Bub: Nooooo!
Me: (grabbing Bub by the shoulder and marching him to the front door) Do you want milk in a straw cup in the car or no milk in a straw cup?
Bub: (caving) Okay, milk in a straw cup. (he puts on sandals and walks out to the car)

That is what I would describe as an ordinary example of compliance in our household. What about yours?

Exciting and New

2008-08-05T15:06:00.003-04:00

First meal...

... at the new house.

We don't move in officially for another couple of weeks, but as of last Wednesday, the place is ours.

Farewell Summer

2008-07-24T10:35:00.004-04:00

When I was teaching last spring I was happy. Buoyed up by sunlight and sleep, I spent six weeks in a permanently good mood, thriving on my daily routine of reading, lecturing, and grading papers on Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Treasure Island. I've taught Children's Literature enough times by now that it's effortless: my lectures are the product of my first year of teaching, when I would spend four or five hours preparing for each 50-minute class. They flow. They're easy to relearn and deliver. The level of effort is low, but the payoff is high: I'm still seeing new connections, learning new things. I'm still excited to teach each day.

This year, though, is a bit different. My grading load has doubled. I have a lingering sore throat that sends me into paroxysms of coughing, interrupting my classes and keeping me up at night. I feel drained by all the paint chips and shopping trips, the emails and mortgage documents. Teaching always gives me energy - no matter how exhausted I am I always wake up in the classroom - but at the end of the day there simply isn't enough of me to go around. At night Bub tells me, "I love you, Mama. I missed you today." And when I say, "I love you too" he corrects me. "No, Mama. Say, 'I missed you too, Bub.'" I did. I do.

Last July I was cracking a bit under the pressure of my baptism of fire as a stay-at-home mom. I was burning the grilled-cheese sandwiches, losing track of my kids at the toy store, and sweating profusely during long, humid days at the beach. This summer, beach days have been replaced by day camp and Teletoon Retro. The children come home with fridge magnets made of popsicle sticks and we collapse together on the couch, mesmerized by Road Runner and Scooby-Doo. August will bring us the packing and the moving, and by the time the dust settles in September I'll wonder what happened to the summer that passed me by when I was too tired to notice.

The First Coat Is On!

2008-07-18T20:55:00.006-04:00

And here's what it looks like:

I have the yellowest kitchen in the world. (But I actually love this picture. Some of the other pictures are a bit too electrifying even for my taste. I'll find out what it looks like in real life tomorrow. Right now I'm just going by the pictures hubby took this afternoon.)

My dining room is very red.

I chickened out of the Biscotti colour I had chosen previously and went with Benjamin Moore Stone House instead. Now I'm wishing I'd stuck with something deeper and warmer. But I'll reserve judgment until the floors are in.

Beauti-Tone Milkshake in the upstairs hall.

This is Sherwin Williams Nuthatch in the master bedroom (the colour I had to choose on Wednesday's emergency trip). It's not the dramatic deep brown I originally had in mind, but I think I could learn to like it.

Things That Are Stressing Me Out Right Now

2008-07-17T09:14:00.003-04:00

The builder called yesterday to say that there will be a $1500 up-charge for the dark red and brown paints we had chosen for the dining room and master bedroom, since they require more expensive primer and 3-4 coats of paint. (I knew that extra coats might be necessary and was prepared to pay for them, but "pay" in my mind meant a couple hundred extra dollars, maybe.) This meant an emergency rifle-through of my paint chip collection, an emergency trip to Benjamin Moore to pick up the large chip of "Maple Fudge," an emergency trip to Small Town to test it in the dining room (gross), and then an emergency trip to Sherwin Williams to pick up "Nuthatch," the lighter brown we're switching to for the office and master bedroom. Total driving time: 2.5 hours. Total stress increase: immeasurable.
Hubby wants to have his name removed from the title to the house, so that means we need to rebook our mortgage. But mortgage rates have gone up since we first booked, so now we're considering a variable rate instead of a fixed rate. Any opinions on variable- vs. fixed-rate mortgages? (Aren't you glad you read my blog? Isn't this fun?)
The bricks are on the house now, and I don't like them. Can they possibly have been that orangey when I was picking them out?
My workload this month adds up officially to 72 hours per week. I can do the work in less than that, but that doesn't include the hours I spend groaning and pulling my hair out over the abysmal quality of the essays I have to grade.
I've turned into Mama Shrew. My communication with my children has devolved into an endless stream of "Time to put your clothes on NOW!" and "That's enough - I mean it!" and "Stop throwing your food, you're going to your room" and "That's it - I've had it!" All of the above are basically expressions of the same inner thought: "I'm too exhausted right now to figure out an appropriate consequence, so instead I'll see if my anger intimidates you into good behaviour." So far the result of that experiment is no. It doesn't.
My to-do list for today: Call the flooring place to make sure they've rebooked the hardwood installer. Write a letter of recommendation for a student who's applying for her Masters of Biology (because apparently the Department of Biology highly values my opinion.) Figure out how to print documents even though there is no printer driver available for my operating system. Flip through decorating magazines to find examples of the wood stain I want for my staircase. Check my blog periodically for responses to this whiny, miserable post.

An Occupational Hazard

2008-07-14T16:21:00.006-04:00

To the students whose essays I marked this afternoon:

WHY MUST YOU MAKE ME SUFFER?

Here are a few simple writing tips:

1) If your thesis is "The characters in these novels are all different, but they share many similarities" YOUR ESSAY WILL SUCK.

2) If there are serious grammatical errors in EVERY SINGLE SENTENCE of your introductory paragraph, my head will explode.

3) The following ideas are not interesting or challenging enough to be worthy of proving in a university paper. They are ideas that are immediately obvious to every reader, including small children.

Villains play a key role in advancing the plot of the novel.

Without the villain, the heroes would not have had anyone to fight against and there would not have been a story.

The villain is an evil character, but good always wins out in the end, proving that you should always have hope.

4) If this sentence appears anywhere in the essay, I will clutch the arms of my chair in agony and I will groan aloud:

Throughout this essay the different characteristics in which a villain can possess will be examined leading to an analysis of the crucial role a villain plays in progressing the plot and developing the theme of good verses evil.

My eyes! My eyes!

Oedipus Redux

2008-07-08T09:20:00.003-04:00

One of the biggest changes in Bub over the past year is that he has moved into the fourth dimension. He remembers; he anticipates; the things he sees and does have a larger context of before and after. In parenting terms, this development has certain benefits: Bub can wait his turn; he can be motivated by promised future treats. It has also altered his relationship to books and movies: a year ago, we were watching Baby Einstein and reading Hop on Pop. The pleasures of watching and reading had to do with recognizing familiar words and objects. Now, Bub has moved into the world of story. He has discovered the pleasures of plot, the mechanisms of suspense and cause and effect.

Bub takes a particular interest in stories of metamorphosis. For months after watching Brother Bear one of his favourite games was to turn slowly on the spot, arms floating at his sides, and then solemnly announce, "I am a bear." More recently the Incredible Hulk has attracted his attention. The transformation of mild-mannered Bruce Banner into a green-skinned monster of rage seems linked in Bub's mind to that more common yet equally extraordinary transformation: the change from boy into man. "I'm going to grow up into a man," he informed his Little Gym instructor yesterday. "And I'm going to go to the office."

This is a new discovery for him, and a fascinating one. "When I grow into a man," he told me last night, "I'll be too big for this bed." I tried to explain that a twin bed is actually big enough for a man or a boy, but he was having none of it. "No," he insisted, "I will need a mommy-and-daddy's bed. That's my favourite kind of bed."

"Will you have a wife to sleep with you in the bed?" I asked.

He was highly amused. "No, silly! You will sleep with me in the bed. And Daddy will be a small, growing boy!"

Maybe I need to revise the lecture I gave my Children's Literature class yesterday on how the Oedipus complex is not something we need to take literally anymore.

Why I Like Paint Chips

2008-07-03T21:11:00.003-04:00

As I devoured a magazine called "Colour Tutorial" this morning, a friend of mine suggested I might like to help her pick colours for scrapbooking. I stifled the shriek of horror that erupts whenever I hear the term "scrapbooking" and explained that I am not interested in colour. I am only interested in paint chips.

I think my obsession with paint chips derives from a trait I have in common with my husband. In his case, this personality quirk manifested itself in an unusual preference for Canadian tax law as his favourite course in law school. Like a Benjamin Moore fandeck, the Canadian tax code is a self-contained system, an interlocking web of rules and principles. For hubby, mastering the intricacies of tax law had some of the same appeal as mastering the rules of Warhammer or D&D.

In my case, the appeal of paint chips is related to the way the colours are named and numbered. Subtle variations of hue and intensity are nailed down and categorized, anchored to words. As everybody knows, the names themselves are wonderfully excessive, ranging from the metaphorical (Lust, Heaven) to the prosaically descriptive (Yellow Raincoat). But that's not really the point. Even the most basic of names would have the same effect: by accessing the verbal centres of the brain, I am suddenly able to learn, remember, and see colour in a way that I've never been able to do before. I can be wandering through the Children's Museum, as I do every Friday, and suddenly shout "Semolina!" as I enter a vibrantly yellow room. Sure enough, the paint chip confirms: the colour is a dead-on match. The thrill of identifying Middlebury Brown or Roxbury Caramel on sight reminds me of the hours I spent in childhood acquiring equally difficult and useless skills: snapping my fingers, shuffling a deck of cards, juggling two balls in one hand. I'm not double-jointed; I never learned to do a front walkover in gymnastics. My parlour tricks are few and to acquire one this late in life is a rare pleasure.

Equally intrinsic to the appeal of paint chips is the body of knowledge required to interpret those slippery, deceptive squares of colour. Yellow, I have discovered, changes its hue dramatically when it moves from natural to electric light. A yellow that's rich and buttery by lamplight turns pale and lemony in strong sunlight, and the yellow that's rich and buttery in the sun turns blazing orange when the lights are on. Warm beiges have a tendency to tilt pink; neutral beiges tilt green; some good tilt-free beiges are Shaker Beige, Stone House, and Wheeling Neutral.

Paint chips, unlike other named and numbered sets of colours (like, say, nail polish) involve a gargantuan act of imagination. When you choose paint colours you are never merely assessing which one you like best; instead you're choosing between visions you must construct yourself of floors, curtains, and couches set against a backdrop that varies in light and shade. Everyone warns that colours intensify when you put them on the walls: bright colours get brighter, dark colours get darker. But these warnings can be deceiving: when I painted my front door Whitall Brown I was shocked at how light it was - I held up the chip disbelievingly, but it was identical. The problem was that I had been imagining it two shades darker. I don't know yet how good I am at imagining how my colours will look on the wall, but I know I find it HARD, this act of spatial and visual imagining. The words on the paint chips are my home turf, a comfortable and familiar launching pad for the very foreign and challenging act of envisioning. I've never been good at forming mental pictures. I'm having fun learning to try.

Final Paint Choices (This Time I Mean It)

2008-07-02T17:15:00.006-04:00

My walls:

My colours:

From left to right they are:

Yellow - Benjamin Moore Semolina (kitchen)
Red - Sherwin Williams Stolen Kiss (dining room, half of Bub's room, one wall in living room)
Cream - Sherwin Williams Fragile Beauty (hallways, upstairs bathrooms, Pie's room; may be swapped with Beauti-tone Milkshake, which is a shade or two deeper)
Brown - Sherwin Williams Plantation Brown (powder room, master bedroom)
Large chip in background - Benjamin Moore Biscotti (living room, office, mudroom)

The Highest Compliment

2008-07-01T08:00:00.004-04:00

Last summer I was full of sentimental mourning for the transformation Bub was about to undergo as he entered nursery school. Hitherto, he had been all mine - his experiences were my experiences; his words were adapted from contexts I could recall and share. This was true, somehow, even though he had always been in part-time day-care, mostly in home settings with his sister and maybe one other child. But nursery school would mean peers, curriculum, a learning environment that I would know only through its effects.

A year later, the transformation is complete. Bub is a boy. He plans to grow up one day into a man so that he can transform into the Incredible Hulk. But I no longer feel any nostalgia for his simpler self; I relish it when he uses words I didn't think he knew, displays knowledge I didn't realize he had. Like yesterday.

A friend of mine has just had a baby, so I was ransacking the cupboard for the ingredients to my world famous Delight Squares (I'm serious about the world famous part - I just used Google to track down the post with the recipe, and I'm glad to see that I'm still on the first page of results for "Delight Squares"). As I pulled down the measuring cups, Bub asked in astonishment, "What are you baking?"

(This is a testament to how rarely he sees me doing anything in the kitchen other than reading blogs.)

"Are you baking, just like that time when Ruby" - his nursery school teacher - "baked muffins?"

I confirmed that this was, indeed, the case. Bub mulled that over a bit and then concluded, admiringly, "Mama - you're just like Ratatouille!"

(Now imagine that I'm all clever with the Photoshop like O The Joys, and my head is superimposed on the rat's body.)

Only Me

2008-06-30T07:52:00.005-04:00

Pie has a startlingly strong sense of her own identity. She fondly embraces the number 2 whenever she sees it, because she is two (or, as she once put it, "my name is 2"). She is a gender crusader, vigorously dividing the world into boy/girl categories (Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast are "girly" movies; Cars, Peter Pan, and even A Bug's Life are boys' movies). She resists nicknames and even adjectives, though yesterday she did admit, "I'm your prickly Pie." Selfhood is her hobby, her mantra, her consuming interest. And her new favourite expression is "only me."

You don't like the colour pink, Mama. Only me!

Only I like Cinderella. Not you!

Only I am the best.

I don't quite know what to make of the fact that her strong drive for individualism is wedded right now to her preference for the colour pink and her enjoyment of the Disney Princesses. Since her primary rival for attention and toys is her brother, it makes sense that she would attach herself to gender as a means of differentiating herself. The Thomas trains lie unattended these days; the toy cars are mouldering in the box. Pie's acquisitive, envious heart has gone out into the world searching for something that is hers alone, and this is what she's found:

Much of the pleasure of the Princess empire is related to mastery: like the Super Heroes and Thomas Trains, the Princesses challenge a child's ability to process and coordinate information. Percy is a green train with the number 6; Iron Man wears a robot suit and can fly; Belle wears a yellow dress and marries the Beast. It's the thrill of recognition, of expertise, that drives a child's enjoyment of the franchise. I know where Pie's Princess-obsession is coming from; I just don't always like where it takes her. At the bookstore, she brings me product-linked I-Can-Read books to read aloud. The plot of one of them revolves around princesses dreaming about dancing. In this book no one does anything: Ariel, Aurora, and Cinderella simply daydream about balls in which they are inexplicably dressed in ballet costume, dancing with the prince. Pie already has a bit of a crush on Prince Eric; she's already aware that her curly hair and blue eyes bring her far more compliments and attention than anything she might achieve through her own efforts.

When Pie was a baby I quickly grew impatient with all the hand-wringing over Bratz dolls and right-wing toy-makers' antifeminist conspiracies. I was thrilled to have a girl, and I was - and still am - unconvinced that girliness is something to be ashamed of. I always preferred Anne Shirley, who longs for puffed sleeves even as she's cracking slates over Gilbert Blythe's head, to tomboyish Jo March, who wants to be a man so she can join the army. I've never bought into the idea that being strong means being like a boy.

But I grew up before the era of the Disney Princess. We had Cinderella and Snow White in my day, of course, but they had not yet formed a posse and achieved world domination.

"What about Lady and the Tramp?" I asked Pie the other day when she was cataloguing movies into gender-based categories.

"That one's a boy movie!" she insisted scornfully.

"Well, how about The Incredibles?"

That was a poser. "Hmmm," she pondered. "There's a girl in that one..."

Help us Elastigirl. You're our only hope.

Kid World

2008-06-22T22:44:00.003-04:00

Their Toys:
1 Cars sleeping bag
1 Disney Princess sleeping bag
2 flashlights

Our Toys:
8 issues of Canadian House and Home
1 Benjamin Moore fandeck
1 TV showing Euro Cup soccer

Their Food:
chicken fingers
peaches in a light syrup
peas

Our Food:
three-cheese spinach dip
peppercorn burger
strawberries

Their Conversation:
"This thing? It's a cold pack that you put on a boo boo to make it better. I NEED that because I have a boo boo right here. I'm pretending that it's cold."

Our Conversation:
"Is a money order just as good as a certified cheque? What's the difference between a draft and a certified cheque? I didn't know that you actually needed to bring a regular cheque to the bank in order to get it certified. Did you know that?"

Their Fort:
In the bedroom, made from a blanket, with a campfire in it.

Our Fort:
In the kitchen, with magazines spread out over the island and legal documents all over the kitchen table.

We visited friends this weekend, whose children quickly formed a posse with ours. While the grown-ups nibbled Belgian chocolates and processed the sale of their home, the children disappeared into Kid World, a place with secret rituals that I can no longer fully unfold, even when I stand eavesdropping outside the bedroom door. Kid World is a private place; my presence is not always wanted, so I creep back to the kitchen to sip my tall Americano in peace.

War

2008-06-20T08:35:00.005-04:00

A grey and white cat prowls our neighbourhood. She's a tiny ball of fluff, and she's the terror of the local squirrels and birds. Occasionally she takes refuge on our windowsill. Her presence will be announced by the volley of growls erupting from my own mild-mannered felines, who crouch warningly and then leap at the window, bashing their skulls in an attempt to expel the invader. Hissing and spitting, claws extended, they are transformed from lazy couch-dwellers into the epitome of pure aggression.

They remind me a lot of my children lately.

One symptom missing from Bub's autism diagnosis is the specialized interest. He definitely has the capacity to latch onto a single interest and obsess about it for weeks on end, but once he's learned all he can about the subject, he usually moves on. The latest interest was fasteners - anything with a buckle, button or zipper would absorb him for hours at a time. The end result of this phase was that he can now dress himself. He's ready to move on, and he seems to have latched onto something new: tormenting his sister.

I realize that this represents a huge leap forward into social awareness. Instead of manipulating objects, he has begun to experiment with manipulating people. I would be happy about this - really I would - if only the screaming would stop for five minutes.

It starts the moment they get up in the morning. Pie is snuggled under the covers with me, and when Bub makes a move to burrow in with us Pie sends out the opening volley: "No! I will trap you!" The Nonsense Olympics have begun.

Bub: You won't trap me! First I will turn you into the Incredible Hulk!

Pie: [wailing] I'm not the Incredible Hulk! I'm Pie!

Bub: You are the Incredible Hulk, and I will snap you down!

Eventually, the verbal warfare devolves into physical combat. Slapping, biting, and pulling hair are part of the repertoire, but since the children realize that these tactics put them at high risk for time-out, they usually start with pulling feet, grabbing pyjamas, sitting on top of one another, and hurling pillows.

This goes on all day.

They have always fought, of course - they are siblings, so that goes without saying. But until now their fighting has had a purpose: they both want the same toy, or they can't agree on which video to watch. Now, fighting is an end in itself, a hobby that can be pursued anytime, anywhere.

Social learning is very important. My children are a kind of lab for one another, an experimental environment in which they can attain a comprehensive knowledge of human emotions and responses. But I've had it. Seriously. I am done.

Two Random Theories

2008-06-16T14:35:00.005-04:00

Theory #1: Gender and Marriage

After a year of practising family law, hubby says that divorces always happen for the same reason: one partner is crazy, and the other is controlling. When a new client walks in the door, it's just a matter of finding out which one it is. Your wife is crazy? Oh, hello, Mr. Controlling. Your husband is controlling? Hey, Crazy Lady. Gender is a useful predictor: most of the time, it's the wife who's crazy and the husband who's controlling. At first glance that seems counterintuitive to me. None of the women I know have controlling husbands. Lazy husbands, sure. Distracted, inattentive, unromantic husbands, yes. But not controlling ones. I know plenty of husbands, though, who would say that their wives are too controlling. (Okay, maybe those are just my husbands.) Perhaps the true lesson to be learned here is that when the husband is controlling, it leads to divorce, but when the wife is controlling, it's all for the greater good. (My mother-in-law and I had a good laugh at that idea. FIL and hubby were less amused.)

Theory #2: Performer and Audience

Bub's best friend is the kind of kid whose presence in the room is felt by everyone. He has a big voice, big emotions, and an enormous appetite for adventure. It's no mystery why the two of them connect so well: Adrian is like a roller-coaster and Bub loves going along for the ride. A bit more mysterious is the Pie's adoration. "Adrian is my favourite!" she sighs happily whenever she sees him, despite the fact that he has spent the entire time smashing swords with Bub. Pie at age two is not much different from my teenage self: she does not require actual interaction to sustain her love. If Bub is a giddy passenger on the Adrian roller-coaster, Pie is content to be spectator, enjoying the excitement at a remove.

"Adrian's a Performer and my children are Audience," I told his mother yesterday. In most friendships, I suspect, people are allotted one role or the other. Performance can take many forms: the Performer can be a class clown, a teller of anecdotes, or even a provider of wise counsel. The key is the element of appreciation. An Audience friend nods, laughs, and smiles, applauding enthusiastically while the Performer does his shtick. The engine that drives the friendship is the Audience's willingness to buy what the Performer is selling.

I'm a Performer at heart, despite the fact that I'm not especially funny, adventurous, or zany. I'm the kind of person whose teenage diaries contain occasional disclaimers from my BFF, scrawled in margins or on the back cover, warning readers, "I am not a mere sidekick, as depicted in these pages. I am a real person." I have occupied the sidekick role a few times in my life, but never very successfully. Being an Audience friend has taken me places I would never have gone otherwise, but my Performer friends have always had a tendency to move on (perhaps to a better Audience), and their departure has always been something of a relief.

Which do you prefer to be, in friendships or romantic relationships? Audience or Performer?

Flooring Dilemma

2008-06-11T10:44:00.005-04:00

It's floor-picking time. Here's the floor (and cabinetry and countertop) for our ensuite bathroom:

And here's our kitchen floor and cabinets (the floor is cork):

I found a good deal on this hardwood (5" planks, hand-scraped engineered maple), but I'm worried that it's too orange with the red walls:

Do you think it looks better with Chocolate Fondue?

A Life Half-Lived

2008-06-10T10:06:00.004-04:00

Many, many years ago I saw the remake of The Thomas Crown Affair, starring Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo. I remember the film because it established for me that Pierce Brosnan had gotten kind of icky since his glory days as Remington Steele. It's a strange kind of ickiness - he is a classically handsome man with symmetrical features and plenty of hair. It has something to do with his smile, the "I'm so sexy" grin he puts on, his jaw jutting out exultantly. The ick-factor seriously interfered with my ability to enjoy the film, since halfway through the movie the art-heist plot is replaced by a prolonged celebration of his relationship with Russo. He's a daredevil! He flies planes! And she gets to join him in his extreme-sport-playing, jet-setting lifestyle! The whole movie is a homage to the idea that living life to the fullest means risking one's neck in death-defying stunts.

In Myers-Briggs terms, these characters are SPs: spontaneous, impulse-driven concrete thinkers who function best when they can live most fully in their bodies, suspending conscious awareness in favour of a pure adrenaline rush. I have never been under the impression that I would be happier if I adopted a similar lifestyle. When I was ten years old a friend of mine got a motor-bike and we all got to try it out on the front lawn. I knew I didn't want to get on that bike, but I feared the social stigma of refusing. Against my better judgment I climbed on, frozen in terror and unable to hear the instructions over the pounding in my ears. I squeezed something (the throttle?) and blasted forward, gripping the handlebars for dear life as I crashed straight into the fence. Afterwards I stumbled home, clutching my scratched knuckles and enjoying the melodrama far more than I had the brief burst of speed that preceded it.

I am risk-averse. I don't like sports. Even the hay-ride at the ranch I took Bub to for a nursery-school field trip was a little too scary to be wholly enjoyable for me. (There were no bars along the side of the wagon, so parents sat around the perimeter. The path was bumpy and sometimes steep.) The things I enjoy mostly take place in my mind. I read books. I write. I imagine.

I don't think you get to have it both ways. One of my students recently remarked that she had never enjoyed imagining things. (This was in response to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, a novel she found too imaginative to be enjoyable.) She was a tomboy; she played soccer at an age when I was holed up in my bedroom, building a fort in the closet and writing a soap opera featuring all the kids in my class. That's not to say that bookish people can't be good at sports, just that the main source of pleasure and meaning in one's life is usually either inward or outward. And as humiliating as it was to be picked last in gym class, I always knew which way I'd rather be.

There are two refrains I often hear in blogland that seem to embrace the idea that it would be better if we (and our children) weren't quite so ... bloggy. We want our children to be fearless; we worry about their anxiety, their hesitation and caution. And we want to be parents who live in the moment, who are capable of shutting down the analytical mind long enough simply to experience each day as it comes. There are people who live like that - who jump in feet first, who live each moment fully without analyzing it or mentally composing blog posts about it. But they're not better. They're not happier. The fact that they would be miserable leading my life doesn't mean I'd be happy leading theirs.

Making the Case for Benign Neglect

2008-06-04T11:47:00.004-04:00

Biological parents in nineteenth-century children's literature are a sorry lot, to say the least. They are constantly succumbing to influenza or typhoid, and when they manage to survive past their offspring's tenth birthday, as Jim Hawkins' mother does in Treasure Island, their behaviour is an almost suicidal mix of foolishness and cowardice. They may be kind and loving, but a few white blood cells and a rudimentary survival instinct would go a long way.

Twentieth-century parents are an almost equally endangered species, as Harry Potter and the Baudelaire orphans can attest, but now they tend to be murder victims, prey to the machinations of Voldemort and Count Olaf. No longer can writers depend upon a convenient outbreak of illness to set the stage for adventure.

Neil Gaiman's children's books embrace the adventure formula with gusto, but instead of murdering the parents or wiping them out in an outbreak of avian flu, Gaiman simply distracts them. In The Wolves in the Walls for instance (a book my children's literature students regard as sure to afflict my children with buried traumas, due to the wolves' gory obsession with strawberry jam), the parents blithely disregard the heroine's many warnings about the scratchings and clawings coming from within the walls. When the wolves finally emerge, it's up to Lucy to save the day while her parents play the tuba and plan out fantasy vacations.

Perhaps more to the point, Gaiman's other picture book, The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish features a dad who placidly reads his newspaper while the neighbourhood children pass him along in a series of swaps for items such as a gorilla mask and a pet rabbit. When his son finally tracks him down, the dad is absent-mindedly munching lettuce in a rabbit pen, wholly oblivious to his surroundings. As his son solemnly quips, "My dad doesn't notice much of anything when he's reading the newspaper."

I picked up Gaiman's juvenile novel Coraline last week while Pie and I were at the bookstore. While Pie browsed through a stack of Disney-themed I Can Read books, I swallowed the novel in a single gulp. Coraline is an only child whose parents are experts in benign neglect. Her mother serves microwaved meals, but her father is worse: he cooks up meals with ingredients like fennel and goat cheese (as Coraline reminds him, "You know I don't like recipes!"). Both parents work from home and spend most of their time absent-mindedly telling their daughter to run along and play. When Coraline finds a secret doorway in the wall, leading to a mirror-world inhabited by her "other mother," there is a certain appeal.

The other mother is an excellent cook: she prepares all of Coraline's favourite meals and stocks her other bedroom with carefully selected toys. Most of all, she gives the girl her undivided attention. All the time. Coraline quickly grows weary of this disturbingly intense focus and spends the bulk of the novel trying to rescue her oblivious parents from the other mother's captivity. (When she succeeds, her parents manage not to notice that two days have passed of which they have no recollection.)

The earliest children's novels - Little Women is a good example - feature docile children learning from the wise example of their benevolent parents. Roald Dahl may be the best example of the backlash against this trend: his novels are usually touted for their child-centered focus. Adults in Dahl's novels are either monstrously abusive or more childlike than the children; their villainy and incompetence set the stage for the powerful child hero to emerge.

Gaiman's brilliant innovation, I think, is that he takes this "child-centered" formula and makes it irresistibly appealing to parents. The parents in his novels are distracted, inattentive, and beloved. Their children are confident of their parents' love and willing to undertake significant risks to rescue them from peril. Gaiman's child characters actually prefer their parents' unavailability to the alternative: a kind of devouring attention that would eat them alive. I have no doubts about the appeal of this rather transparently self-serving adult fantasy; what I'm less sure of is whether it's as good for the kids as it is for us parents.

Lost Things

2008-06-02T13:59:00.003-04:00

They say there are no atheists in foxholes. This, I suspect, is a case of hyperbole. There may be no agnostics, perhaps, but I'm sure that a survey of foxhole residents would turn up a few atheistic stalwarts, staring death down without flinching. Hyperbole aside, however, the saying captures what I'm sure is a true observation: for those who do not pray regularly, mortal peril is the top summons to prayer.

But what's in second place? If I were a contestant on Family Feud I'd bet it's "misplaced objects."

I am not a Roman Catholic, so I am not intimately acquainted with the ins and outs of praying to the saints. I know that particular saints are assigned certain tasks: some take care of the sick, others keep a solicitous eye out for mothers, while others look after people in their travels. The only saint I know by both name and function is St. Anthony, patron of lost things. Even the most lapsed Catholic will summon St. Anthony's assistance when looking for a misplaced pair of glasses or a vanished set of keys.

I am wary of prayers that seem designed to avoid inconvenience. When explaining the reality of answered prayer last week, my pastor gave an example of a lost screw that was recovered after a few earnest prayers. I squirmed uncomfortably in my pew. So saving the hassle of a trip to the hardware store is higher on God's list of priorities than ending war, disease, and world hunger?

Yet the idea that God is concerned with lost objects has a certain universality to it. Catholics petition St. Anthony; Protestants preach sermons about the miraculous recovery of nails and screws; even the New Testament is full of parables about lost sheep, pearls of great price, objects that people search for feverishly, their desire to restore what has been lost functioning as a metaphor for God's love and concern for humanity.

These stories have a certain personal resonance for me right now. My cell phone is beeping and I can't find the charger. It's supposed to be in the kitchen pantry, a location that is cluttered enough that I can never quite be sure I've searched it thoroughly. I am also missing the mailbox key for the new house (issued a few months ago along with our postal code). I can remember tucking that mailbox key away - I knew I wouldn't be using it for a few months, so I put it someplace safe, where it wouldn't get lost. But where?

Lost things are not as different from foxholes as they seem. They taunt us with our fallibility; they serve as glaring reminders of the gaps in our memory. There is always a moment of disbelief that accompanies the discovery of such a loss. I knew it was here. How can it be gone? Even when the lost object is something that can easily and cheaply be replaced, I will turn the house upside down looking for it. Once I lost a paint chip and stomped around the house muttering, "It was right here!" Hubby pointed out that I could go back to the store and get another one and I replied, "I've already got another one. That's not the point!"

The point, I think, is that lost objects shake our faith in the stability and knowability of the physical world. To lose something is to be confronted with that greater loss, the loss of our past selves, the selves that disappear each moment, despite our attempts to anchor them in scrapbooks and blog posts. I sorted through clothing for a garage sale this weekend, setting aside a few well-loved sleepers before boxing the rest up for sale. What startled me most is how many little outfits seemed wholly unfamiliar to me. I have no memory of a six-month-old Bub wearing that Winnie the Pooh romper. Where has that chubby boy gone, leaving nothing behind, not even a memory? It's no wonder that a missing object, no matter how trivial in and of itself, sends us running to God, praying that Someone is holding our lives in His hands, preserving each moment as it flees from our spotty, imperfect minds.

It sometimes happens when looking for
Lost objects, a book, a picture or
A coin or spoon,
That something falls across the mind -
Not quite a shadow but what a shadow would be
In a place that lacked light.

As though the lost things have withdrawn
Into themselves, books returned
To paper or wood or thought,
Coins and spoons to simple ores,
Lustreless and without history,
Waiting out of sight

And becoming part of a larger loss
Without a name
Or definition or form
Not unlike what touches us
In moments of shame.

"Lost Things" by Mary Swann (as created by Carol Shields)

We Have Brick

2008-05-29T17:35:00.002-04:00

(SNIP long meditation on how blind I once was to colours and shapes, how revelatory it is to have my vision so honed that I can recognize at a glance the difference between genuine reclaimed brick and new imitations thereof, not to mention my newfound ability to identify on sight the difference between Concord Ivory and Wyndham Cream paint. It's like the ear training I used to do for my piano exams, only for my eyes.

CUT directly to photos.)

Brick and siding:

Maybe a yellow door?

Random house I drove past that looks like it has similar brick and siding:

(Regular blogging to resume sometime in September.)

Shy Girls

2008-05-27T16:57:00.003-04:00

It's not unusual for parents to be dismayed by signs of shyness in their children. There's nothing mysterious or baffling in that response - there's a reason the most commonly applied adjective for shyness is "painful." Shyness can be torture; it can be incapacitating. But that hasn't stopped me from feeling just a little bit smug about my daughter's shyness. Pie is the girl who hides under the piano bench when visitors arrive; she's the one who darts around the corner in alarm when the nursery school teacher says hello. I, too, was that girl, and I know how uncomfortable shyness can be. So why am I so pleased to see signs of shyness in the Pie?

Shy girls know their own power. Their very body language expresses a certain dignity, while all around them more gregarious children bounce around like puppy dogs, lapping up attention. Other children compete for attention; shy girls bestow it.

It's an honour to have the loyalty of a shy girl. Pie keeps an internal list of her "favourites" - Grandma, Mama, Daddy. The list does not reflect the vagaries of a moment's anger; it represents a psychological boundary she has erected around her inner circle, the trusted, permanent fixtures of her life. I picture her as a young Queen Elizabeth I, repelling the Spanish Armada with the help of a few trusted counsellors.

All the best children's books are about shy girls. (Except Anne of Green Gables. And maybe Little Women.) To be a shy girl, and a reader, is to be surrounded by prickly, hostile, self-contained peers. Mary Lennox, Emily Starr, Harriet M. Welsch - all of them help nurture a sense that there is something deeply fascinating about controlled, introspective young girls who do most of their living in imaginary landscapes. Talkative, popular girls have an undeniable appeal, of course, but the shy ones are more individualized. Still waters run deep.

Shy girls don't necessarily become shy women. Growing up has a way of taming shyness into a more conventional kind of introversion. In adult life, a former shy girl no longer has the option of scowling at an unwelcome greeting or scurrying for cover when a distant acquaintance approaches. The formerly shy adult develops subtler mechanisms, perfects the art of not making eye contact in the grocery store in order to evade an exchange of pleasantries. The formerly shy develop personas, often very polished ones. They ask leading questions; they draw others out; they learn the intricacies of self-deprecating humour. But inside they have a private space that others can't touch. They know who they are.

It's Not Just Paint That Comes In Chips

2008-05-23T16:27:00.004-04:00

... counter-tops do too. (At least if you get the cheap ones.)

It took two hours, and left me totally exhausted, but I managed to make the following four choices yesterday:

Kitchen cupboards:

Desk and island:

Kitchen counters:

Bathroom counters:

Now I get to wait two weeks for the full design in order to find out if I can afford this stuff. The best part? The kitchen counter is called Rocky Road - just like the ice cream AND just like the Benjamin Moore colour right beside Cabot Trail (which has now replaced Flagstone as my front-runner for living-room/dining-room after this week's discussion of whether it was grey or brown).

Reader Opinion Poll

2008-05-22T11:18:00.005-04:00

Situation: I'm in the car, listening to the Barenaked Ladies' new kids' CD,
Snack Time, and laughing at their parody of CBC radio: at the end of a little jazz number called "Food Party" a silky smooth voice comes on announcing, "Next up on Radio C-A-K-E, Bar-uh-NAH-ked La-DEE-es with 'The Canadian Snacktime Trilogy.'" There are a few chords from an acoustic guitar and then Gordon Lightfoot's mellow voice fills the car singing, "Ohhhh, snack time. Ohhhh, snack time."

Why am I crying?

Answers:
(a) Whenever I hear Gordon Lightfoot I remember how I was listening to his Greatest Hits CD in the delivery room when the Pie was born. ("It's daylight Katy, come on!")

(b) The inside joke for grownups - clearly aimed over the heads of the child listeners - reminds me that I'm right in the middle, now, of that brief window of time when the children and I occupy the same cultural space - where the best songs and stories for them will be the ones with some kind of entertainment value for me in these brief years before literacy and headphones wedge us apart.

(c) I have PMS.

(d) All of the above.

Biography of a House

2008-05-21T08:47:00.005-04:00

Past:

Present:

Future:

An (almost) Wordless Wednesday.

Odd, But in a Good Way

2008-05-20T11:57:00.006-04:00

I have a habit of putting too much emphasis on the first syllable of proper nouns. SWISS Chalet. PIER 1 Imports. Nothing makes me feel so loved as the snort of affectionate laughter my best friend produces whenever I do that. There is recognition in that snort; there is history, knowledge, acceptance.

The great thing about blogger meet-ups is that they are punctuated with such moments of familiarity and recognition. After a blissful weekend of bed-and-breakfasting with maritime bloggers (and Upper Canadian imports), I'm nostalgic for that atmosphere of affectionate mockery. All weekend long we mocked Cinnamon Gurl for putting ketchup and tabasco sauce on her omelet; we mocked Niobe for the condiment-phobia that had her averting her eyes in disgust; we mocked Bon for eating all the dessert and Mad Hatter for her uncanny memory for the month and year in which particular blog posts were published. Thordora mocked me for the paint chips I kept pulling out of my purse (I pulled them out once, in a store in Lunenberg, just to see if someone would catch me in the act and mock me for it). I would like to write a whole post about all the delicious food we ate (banana pancakes, corn fritters, French toast with freshly stewed rhubarb, fish cakes and key lime pie, whipped cream on everything, home-baked chocolate chip cookies, sandwiches with cream cheese, pecans and sliced pears...) - but I know if I did that they'd all come here and mock me.

It was a sad day in my unhappy first marriage when I realized that the phrase, "That's so you" - uttered fondly by my friends - would only ever come from my husband as a kind of accusation. It is my personal definition of friendship, perhaps, that those characteristic traits are welcomed with mockery rather than rejected with disgust. We are quirky, annoying, damaged people, we bloggers. When we get together we skip the polite tittle-tattle, filling the air instead with talk that seems almost designed to frighten the hapless ordinary folk within earshot. We tell our birth stories in harrowing obstetrical detail; we talk about sex, drugs, mental illness, marriage, politics, and the Myers-Briggs personality types (okay, that was just me), all at length and at high volume. We try (without success) to drum up creative synonyms for the word "half-wit." When we gather around the fireplace in our plaid flannel housecoats we can wear our quirks on our sleeves, basking in the affection that can only come from people who have long ago stopped caring about being normal. It's a marvelously freeing sensation.

Mad and me, and a little bit of ocean.

Magnetism

2008-05-13T13:09:00.004-04:00

When I dropped Pie off at day-care this morning, Maddy came up to give her a big hug. Maddy is around eighteen months old, one of several children Pie refers to dismissively as "the babies." In reaction to her greeting, Pie shrugged off her embrace and glared.

This is typical of my daughter's response to other human beings. She mostly doesn't like them and wishes they would leave her alone. There are a few exceptions to this rule: her immediate family, her grandmothers (though decidedly NOT her grandfathers), and all five-year-old girls, whom she worships and admires. The other exception is Claudia.

We met Claudia at Pie's Little Gym class. She is just Pie's height, but all chubby belly and crinkly eyes. She takes everything at a run, giggling irrepressibly. I have never met a more contagiously happy person. She radiates joy and no one can resist her, including the Pie. If Claudia jumps off a cliff (or a stack of gym mats), Pie will follow.

After dropping my antisocial daughter off at daycare, I moved on to Bub's nursery school, where he approached a group of children playing with blocks. "Hi, Bub!" a friendly girl greeted him as he brushed by.

"We're building a house for the aminals!" another boy explained jovially. No response.

Suddenly Bub's face lit up. "Look who came to play!" he announced ecstatically. "It's Robert! Let's go tap him on the shoulder!" Recalling his sessions on social communication with his speech therapist, Bub approached and tapped him on the shoulder, saying his name as he'd been taught. "Hi Robert!"

Unimpressed, Robert shrugged his shoulders. As he turned, I could see that his lip was swollen - a souvenir of his latest mischief, I suspect. (When his mother was telling stories about him at the last parent meeting, they tended to begin with comments like, "Have I told you the one about the chandelier?") Robert is not quite four, but he is undeniably cool. His dad is a firefighter and he has inherited his adventurous spirit. His is the only name that elicits anecdotes from Bub when I ask about his day. Robert wore a lion suit! Robert was funny.

It amazes me how easy they are to identify, the Roberts and Claudias - people with a powerful magnetism that can't help but reach everyone around them, even my own prickly, oblivious children.