I know, most of you will not read this till the day after the fact, but the day itself proved too busy for blogging. Still, I was just so delighted with Ben’s card, I had to share.

Most days we have to rouse him at 7, and if we’re doing well he’s out of bed by about twenty after. This morning, I heard him get up and head downstairs on his own before I even had my slippers on, and when I finally got downstairs, this is what greeted me on the kitchen island.

Love is the best. Literate children are pretty great, too.

I’ve been meaning to point you all away from my blog and toward the Literary Mama columns for a couple weeks now, ever since the latest installment of Libby‘s (on the question of boy books vs girl books) and Elrena‘s (on the question of the Bible’s setting boy rules and girl rules…) fabulous pieces.

Now, those columns have been joined by a whole new cycle: Susan Ito’s sweet Valentine to her husband; Ericka Lutz’s funny piece on binge writing; Ona Gritz’s and Rebecca Kaminsky’s different reflections on self-image; and Shari MacDonald Strong’s beautiful dream for a better world. So head on over to Literary Mama and dive in.

(the image is for Shari’s column; you can start there, but be warned: you’ll have “Yellow Submarine”thrumming through your head the rest of the day!)

Inspired by Hemingway, who (maybe) wrote:
“For sale: baby shoes. Never Worn.”
6-word memoirs by various writers.

My “memoir” earned a comp copy.
The entry? Inspired by my book:
“Closed a door, opened a life.”
Pretentious? perhaps, but certainly heartfelt, true.

I can’t put the book down!
My copy from e-friend Felicia Sullivan.
Her entry, page 150, quoted here:
“Weird quiet girl, fading from view.”
Others worth a look; my sister’s:
“Learned reading, writing, forgot arithmetic”
(Though note, it’s only five words!)

Also love this, from Ariana Huffington:
“Fearlessness is the mother of reinvention.”
And also, from writer Daniel Handler:
“What? Lemony Snicket? Lemony Snicket? What?”
or commercial approach from Martha Clarkson:
“Detergent girl: Bold. Tide. Cheer. All.”
And a thoughtful entry; Arthur Harris:
“Good, evil use the same font.”
Brilliant understatement from Roy Blount, Jr:
“Maybe you had to be there.”
And I relate to Barb Piper:
“Rich in degrees and student loans”
Ayelet Waldman always makes me laugh:
“New Jersey to California. Thank god.”

Get the book; read some more.

The fortune in my cookie tonight:

The world will soon be ready to receive your talents.

And they’re ready to be received.

Edited to add: Sometimes I feel sorry for Answer Boy (and the rest of us) for the barrage of questions we endure. But Question Boy has his work cut out for him, too. This morning, he tried valiantly to insist that he’s older than his older brother. Answer Boy, exasperated, finally said, “Did you notice when you were a tiny tiny baby that I was already alive? That’s another point.”
———————————–
I don’t know how it works in families with children very close in age, but here we have Question Boy and Answer Boy. Their questions and answers don’t always sync up, of course, but they do try.

Question: How does the light work?
Answer: There’s a switch in the wall, connected to wires. And when you press the switch, it makes the wires connect, and that makes a circuit which makes energy which goes to the light and it turns on!

Question: How does the house work?
Answer: What do you mean, how does the house work?! It has walls and a roof!

Question: How does the garden work?
Answer: You need dirt, and sun and rain. And seeds. Or you can start with plants. But seeds will grow into plants, and that makes a garden.

Question: How does a duck work?
Answer: It starts with an egg, and an egg has a little baby duck inside. Or maybe you start with the mama duck?

And with that, stumped by the question that has stumped great thinkers through the ages, Answer Boy gave up and just ate his breakfast.

Go check out the exhibit at the de Saisset Museum, Eye on the Sixties. Tony and I went to the opening Friday night, and rather than having to hunt for his dad’s sculpture, as we thought we might, were happy to meet up with it right in the front lobby, glowing in the light.

We’d never seen this one in person, and it was fun to see it in context with some other beautiful and unfamiliar acrylic and resin pieces, as well as some more famous pieces, like Claes Oldenburg’s creepy moving Ice Bag, and some great paintings and drawings as well. We introduced ourselves to a couple of Tony’s dad’s old friends, including Bruce Beasley (who pointed out how ill-suited most museums are to exhibiting sculpture: not much natural light, no cranes to lift heavy pieces…) and we chatted with the Andersons, who are quite charming and unassuming guardians of a multi-million dollar collection. But my favorite quote of the night was from Ronald Davis (that’s his piece, Spoke, at the top of the de Saisset Web site) who chimes in on the whole tangled question of abstract art vs. realism quite simply:

“The painting’s just gotta look better than the wallpaper.”

Indeed.

image copyright The Estate of James Grant.

Atonement: There was one moment in this otherwise too-dramatic-for-me film that I found moving, when the wrongly imprisoned young man, about to head to France to serve the rest of his jail term fighting in World War Two, meets with his young love and reaches a trembling hand out to touch her hand. That was it. At the end of the movie, when Vanessa Redgrave shows up to play the aged writer, the woman whose story had sent a man to jail and to war, I caught a glimpse of how interesting the novel must be. But I didn’t think the film was, very.

Winter Passing: The premise of this sounded so intriguing. An editor contacts the grown daughter of two esteemed writers, offering her $100,000 for publication rights to their love letters. The daughter, who is down and out, grieving the recent death of her mother and estranged from her father, thinks this might be an easy way to make some money, and goes home to collect the letters. Her father is a drunk and mired in writer’s block; one of his students, a woman somewhat younger than his daughter, lives with him as his cook and housekeeper (she’s thankfully not too fawning, nor does she seem to be sleeping with him — which would have been a tired old eww!), while Will Ferrell works as his handyman and security guard. If you love Will Ferrell, then maybe you could get past Ed Harris as the annoying cliche of the wild alcoholic writer, because Ferrell’s performance is compelling and nuanced. But I don’t love Will Ferrell enough. This is one of those movies that referred to, but did not tell, the story that interested me: the mom! What did she write, and what was her relationship with her daughter like, and what was her marriage like, and what did she write? What did she write?!? Oh, well.

My Kid Could Paint That: Oh, this one kept Tony and me up talking way past our bedtime! This is a documentary about Marla Olmstead, a child who paints. Because her father is a painter, and he wanted to get some work done one day, he gave her a canvas, some paints and brushes, and got to work while his daughter covered her canvas with a bright, abstract, typical preschool painting. Except, you know, on a proper canvas with quality paints, so it looked really, really good. A friend saw it and asked to hang it in his cafe, where a gallery owner saw it and asked if there were more, and before long, four year-old Marla Olmstead had a show. And then buyers. And then another show. And then some press. And then some very big sales. And then of course came the skeptics, led by 60 Minutes, to suggest that her daddy was really directing, if not in fact just doing, the paintings himself.

But the “Is she or isn’t she?” question wasn’t really the question that interested me so much. First, there’s the problem of abstract art (which we happen to be fans of in this house), and people’s strong reactions against it: It’s too easy; anyone can throw paint on a canvas and say “It’s a painting!” It doesn’t tell a story. It’s impossible to evaluate its quality (because of its refusal to represent “reality”). It thumbs its nose at the viewer as if to say, If you don’t like me, it’s because you’re not smart enough to get me. In the documentary, the strongest voice against abstract art happens to be the gallery owner representing Marla, a photo-realist painter who devotes months to a single painting and is peeved at how quickly she produces work. But not peeved enough to avoid making a buck on it.

But what made Tony and me both really sad was one tiny moment toward the end of the film, when Marla is painting and asks her dad to paint with her. And because of the skeptics, and because of all the money involved, he has to say no. The minute he kneels down to paint a picture with his little girl, the whole structure of her career collapses. But it seemed to me that their family had collapsed in some important way already, without their even noticing.

Persepolis: I thought the books were very good, though they didn’t knock me out (they’d been built up too much, I’m afraid). But at the risk of building up anticipation for the film too much, I thought it was spectacular. Here’s a rare instance when translating a book to film opens it up and deepens it; rather than the flat black & white images on the page (which are quite moving in their simplicity), the film gives you black & white and a thousand shades in between, moving subtly on screen, with incredible depth and beauty. Yes, the story’s been simplified a bit, but the film tells such a compelling story, I had to sit in the theater a while after it had emptied out and collect myself before I could leave.

One day this weekend, as a favor to me, Tony kept Eli going all afternoon without a nap. Tony was going out that night, which is no big deal (even when sick, I manage, of course, and plum the experience for a story) and he figured rather than leave me with a well-rested jack-in-the-box who would pop out of bed every 5 minutes, interrupting my work and disturbing his older brother to the point of tears (everybody’s) before finally crashing around 9pm, he’d leave me with a sweet and docile child who’d tuck in to bed happily at 7, leaving Ben to his rest and me to my work.

Well, that was the idea. Except this always backfires. Sometimes, whether due to intent or accident or a simple willful refusal, Eli doesn’t nap (he’s approaching the age when Ben dropped his nap), and it’s never good. Sometimes he winds up a cranky ball of tears by 6pm, sometimes he carries on like the Energizer bunny, fueled by adrenaline, until late. We should know better by now. And yet.

The other night was a variation on the theme that I hadn’t encountered before. Tony left around 4:30, the boys and I sat down on the couch to read a book, and by 4:45, Eli was nodding off to sleep. That wouldn’t do at all. Sure, it’s ok — even welcome–for a little baby to take a late afternoon nap, but a rest so late in the day would only give my toddler fuel to carry on into the wee hours; or if it was more than a nap, he was likely to wake up “for the day” at 4:30 or 5am. I had to take measures.

“Ben!” I said, enlisting the help of an expert. “We need to keep Eli awake or the night will be a disaster! What should we do?”

“Balloons,” said Ben.

(OK, his first suggestion was “Read Tintin to me!” but I didn’t even have to say a word for him to understand how wrong that was.)

And so we got out the balloons. And lo and behold, within 3 minutes, Eli was running around the house, merrily tossing his balloon around. He played, he ate dinner, by 7pm he was appropriately tired, it was all good.

And over the last few nights, the balloon game (or “baboon game,” as Eli calls it) has developed to the point that it is in fact the perfect game, one in a series of games that Tony and I (mostly Tony, to be honest) have perfected over the years, which require little to no energy nor imagination from the parent and lots of energy and imagination on the part of the child.

One of Tony’s classics is Napping, wherein he lies on any comfortable surface and submits quietly to tucking in, kisses, and storytelling. Another is “Hat On, Hat Off,” which involves him sitting in the living room arm chair wearing a hat while the child runs from the room. When the child returns, the hat is off. Child runs out of the room, Tony moves hat, child returns, etc. Somehow, this was wildly amusing to toddler Ben, and continues to produce shrieks of laughter from both kids.

So what started the other night as batting filled balloons around the house and then moved to letting untied balloons shoot around the living room has now, by some mysterious kid alchemy, developed to this: I sit in the armchair and blow up a balloon while the boys run out of the living room, run a circuit down the hall, through the kitchen and dining room, back to me, where they take the balloon, let it shoot into the air, retrieve it, hand it back to me, and so on. Lots of shrieking and running from them, nothing but breathing from me.

I’m not saying every day is a walk in the park, and of course now that I’ve written about it, the game may never be as much fun again, but for one night, baboons were all we needed.

The call to participate in a blog day for Patry Francis attracted my attention because I’d just enjoyed reading her profile on Literary Mama. To learn that she’s too ill, right now, from cancer treatment to promote her book, The Liar’s Diary, attracted my sympathy.

I don’t know Francis, and I admit I haven’t read her book, but having just started work on a publicity plan for my own book, I feel terrible at the thought of someone publishing a book and not being able to support it with readings and other events. It’s like putting your kid on a school bus for the first day of kindergarten and saying, “Bye! Good luck! See you at the end of the year!”

So if my writing about her writing can help raise attention to her work, I’m happy to participate. Here’s an excerpt from her profile that struck a chord with me:

I really admire writers who can get a lot of work done when their children are small. I was never one of them. For me, trying to understand who each child was and what they needed to grow and develop their own talents took all the creativity I had. There was no room for me to ponder the inner life of characters. Though I made many outlines and filled notebooks with ideas for the novels I hoped to write, nothing much was finished while there was a child under six in the house.

Writing, if it’s genuine and honest, is an act of supreme empathy. In writing a novel, I struggle to understand my characters, to accept their strengths and weaknesses, to allow them the freedom to be themselves (even when it doesn’t fit in with my plans), to celebrate them, forgive them and then to let them go. When you think of it, it’s very similar to the arc of parenting.

I also think my dedication to my work, both when I met with success and during the long years when I didn’t, has had a positive influence on my children. It’s taught them that if you truly love what you do, the process itself is always the greatest reward.

I have always loved my role as a mother, but I am also grateful to have something that is all my own. As my children are growing older and beginning to leave home, there is a sense of nostalgia and even loss, but that is counter-balanced by the joy I have in my other life: my work. Knowing that mom is busy and happy is also making the transition easier for the children. And, oh yes, one more thing: they are so proud of me.

And now go check out her blog, where she’s got many more lovely reflections on writing. And then (don’t forget!), check out her book, which sounds like a good creepy read for a winter’s night.

cross-posted at Literary Mama

I saw this first on Susan‘s blog, then Libby‘s, and since I want to see more of these posts, I’m doing it myself and tagging everyone who reads it! If you don’t have a blog, post your responses down in the comments.

1. Spell my name as it sounds: Karoliiiine? How can I convey that it’s not Karolihn? It rhymes with “valentine!”

2. Am I a worrier? Yes. I have a fortune cookie fortune on my desk that says “You are worrying about something that’s not going to happen.” But I don’t believe it.

3. What’s my favorite CD? Oh, it changes all the time. I’ve got the Into the Wild soundtrack (thanks, Vicki!), Amy Winehouse, Feist, and Bruce Springsteen on the shuffle right now. But I love Libby’s choices, too ( James Taylor’s “One Man Band,” and Hem’s “Rabbit Songs.”)

4. Favorite colour(s)? Blue

5. Does my home have an attic? Really just a crawl-space. The boys joke that the contractor who renovated our house still lives up there. I sort of wish he did.

6. Have I ever been to Canada? Yes, to New Brunswick on a fly-fishing trip with an old boyfriend and his dad.

7. Have I ever gone fishing? Yes, several times (see #6, above); also plain old hook and line fishing with my grandfather and uncle, and “party-boat fishing” on the Long Island Sound (which I don’t recommend).

8. Have I ever seen a celebrity? Yes. Ted Danson, Sean Penn, Mollie Katzen, Rusty Staub, Aaron Neville, Steve Young.

9. Have I ever been on a motorcycle? Yes, on my uncle’s when I was a little kid.

10. How much money do I have on me right now? None on me, but $13 in my wallet.

11. How many cars have I owned? Five; drive two of them currently.

12. How many jobs have I had? About 8 employers (several different jobs at some of them) since graduating from college. Five or six more (counting “babysitting” as just one job) before.

13. How tall am I? 5’5″.

14. Last person to call me: The accountant. On a Saturday. Goodness, that makes me feel old.

15. Last thing I yelled out loud: “Ben, stop! I don’t want you to fall and hurt yourself!” as he stood on a stool, reaching on a high shelf for the Ovaltine.

16. Last person I was in a car with: Eli and Ben.

17. Last time I ate at McDonald’s: High school?

18. Last thing I bought: Grilled cheese sandwiches for Eli and me at Tumble & Tea Cafe in Oakland.

19. Last person I saw: Ben.

20. Last time I cried: Last week sometime, in frustration with the kids.

21. Last time I laughed: This morning at Eli.

22. What is the temperature outside? 56F.

23. What time of the day did I get married? Late afternoon.

24. What did I do two nights ago? Read proofs for Mama, PhD.

25. Who’s birthday is coming up next? Libby‘s!

26. What time did I go to bed last night? 11:30.

27. What was the first thing I thought this morning? Really? it can’t be morning yet.

28. What are my plans for this weekend? Read Mama, PhD proofs, take Ben to his basketball game, revise an essay I’m working on, publish new writing on Literary Mama.

29. Lemonade or iced tea? Both, mixed half and half.

30. What do I dislike at this moment? My hair (too long), the weather (too rainy).

31. What did I dream about last night? Ugh- that the boys were kidnapped. Still haven’t shaken it off.

32. What’s the last TV show I watched? Project Runway.

33. What is my favorite piece of jewelry? Engagement ring.

34. Am I a dancer? Nope.

35. Have I ever cut my own hair? No!

36. What is my favorite treat? Dark chocolate salted caramels .

37. How many piercings/tattoos do I have? Pierced ears.

38. Where’s my
favorite place to be? Home, unless it’s a real mess.

39. Is there someone I haven’t seen in a while and miss? Yes, several friends.

40. Who was the last text I sent to? Tony. It took me about half an hour to text “Doing OK. Lots of love.” I keep meaning to practice this.

41. Do I care what strangers think about me? Strangers? no, not at all. People I know? a little bit.

42. Last person I talked to on Instant Messenger: Probably Elrena? via google docs, about Mama, PhD.

43. Last person to make me cry: Eli.

44. Who can I tell anything to? What Libby said: “Myself. That’s what writing’s for.”

45. What am I doing tomorrow? More of the same (see #28 above)

46. Do I have alcohol in my home? Wine, whiskey and bourbon (that’s Tony’s domain), various liqueurs, sherry.

47. Do I like ketchup? Yes, please. And mustard.

48. Do I think I will be on a vacation this summer? 2 weeks in France!

49. What colour is my master bathroom? Cream, blue, and slate grey.

50. Do I wear a bikini at the beach? Last summer; maybe not this summer.

51. Have I ever been to the Grand Canyon? No.

52. What is my favorite fruit? Peaches in the summer, satsumas in winter.

53. What did I really want to do today? Sleep in. Stay in bed a long time after I woke up, reading. Do some cooking (which in fact I’m doing: onion confit, chocolate toffee bars, pizza. Am I avoiding a writing project? Yes.)

54. Am I always cold? No.

55. Does it annoy me when someone says they’ll call or text, but don’t? It really, really does. A lot.