Halloween 2013
"Kids in this neighbourhood actually play outside all the time," she said to her mother, unloading the dishwasher and balancing the phone with her shoulder. "There are so many kids his age, and they all play these complicated pretend games-"
"Like what?" said her mother, who had a healthy distrust of pretending.
"Oh, I don't know. The other day he said they were rounding up cattle. Then they were astronauts. One day they were cave people. You know, cute kid stuff."
There was a brief rustling sound and she looked up to see five children staring at her from the other side of the yard's sliding door.
"Oh my goodness, mom! They're all here and wanting snacks! I didn't even hear them come into the yard! Talk to you later!' and she hung up without regret on her mother and let the silent children into the kitchen for cheese and crackers.
"Everything all right, Austin?" she asked. Her child looked up at her, startled. "I thought I heard you guys singing down the street earlier. Was that you and your friends?"
Austin looked cautiously at his friends. The little girl in pink - the one she had decided was the bossy one - nodded her head slightly at him, an oddly adult gesture in a six year old girl.
"Yes mom," Austin said. "We were singing and playing a game. Everything is fine."
He had a screaming nightmare that night, clutching his mother with terrified hands when she ran into his room.
"Austin, baby," his mom said, smoothing back his damp hair. "What's going on? Why are you so scared?"
He pressed his face into her shoulder and then smiled up at her. "Nothing, mommy! Just a bad dream."
"Have you met the other parents?" her mother said, sharply, on the phone the next afternoon.
"Mom, come ON," she said. "This is a nice neighbourhood. I'm sure they're all fine. But something is definitely bothering him."
"Have you tried WATCHING what's going on?" her mother said. "Something is frightening him."
When she ended the phone call, she had a knot of tight worry in her stomach. "I will not be my mother," she said to herself, but found herself silently leaving the house anyhow and walking down the tree-lined quiet sidewalk of her new street where nothing bad could ever happen, following the sound of children's singing voices.
It was, as she got closer, not quite a song. Not quite English, she thought to herself, as she quietly walked across a stranger's yard to peer over the fence and saw her son and a group of other children dancing, she supposed, until the dancing took a new shape and strange lights flickered in the yard and one by one the children flickered and were gone.
Thursday, October 10, 2013
Monday, March 18, 2013
Frankly
My planned post (tentatively titled "No, I Am Totally Correct About Marriage") has been temporarily shelved because of my household's Current Cat Tragedy.
And if there's one thing I know, it's that this world is full of things MUCH MUCH sadder than my old cat's peaceful, kind death. I know this. But it's my own current little tragedy and it's all my fault, no matter how gently intended, so I'm going to wallow just for this post and then I'll get back to ranting about Bad Ideas In Marriages Today or What The Eff Is Gwyneth Paltrow Feeding Her Poor Kids or My Hair: Why Do I Still Not Know What To Do With It or whatever other pressing matters I feel need attending.
Frank was from my parents' farm, heavier-boned than most of their cats and with a shy sweetness that set him apart from the usual brazen, bad-tempered farm cats who either begged for attention or were aloofly disdainful. He was - and I say this in the usual way of spurned lovers - special and so I loved him and that is my excuse. And I've written about him already with what I find an embarrassing frequency because HE WAS A CAT and I HAVE BECOME SOMEONE WHO WRITES ABOUT THEIR CAT.
"You are such a nice, nice boy, Frank," the gentle-eyed farm vet said to him, petting him. "It will all be okay." And then Frank died. It was a kindness.
We will get his body from the vet next month and bury him when the ground thaws and he will become this fixed spot in the past, receding away from me. And so I guess this is my formal goodbye to him, the last words I will ever write about him. He was just a cat, but he was MY cat and I'm pretty blue about him. The end.
And if there's one thing I know, it's that this world is full of things MUCH MUCH sadder than my old cat's peaceful, kind death. I know this. But it's my own current little tragedy and it's all my fault, no matter how gently intended, so I'm going to wallow just for this post and then I'll get back to ranting about Bad Ideas In Marriages Today or What The Eff Is Gwyneth Paltrow Feeding Her Poor Kids or My Hair: Why Do I Still Not Know What To Do With It or whatever other pressing matters I feel need attending.
Frank was from my parents' farm, heavier-boned than most of their cats and with a shy sweetness that set him apart from the usual brazen, bad-tempered farm cats who either begged for attention or were aloofly disdainful. He was - and I say this in the usual way of spurned lovers - special and so I loved him and that is my excuse. And I've written about him already with what I find an embarrassing frequency because HE WAS A CAT and I HAVE BECOME SOMEONE WHO WRITES ABOUT THEIR CAT.
"You are such a nice, nice boy, Frank," the gentle-eyed farm vet said to him, petting him. "It will all be okay." And then Frank died. It was a kindness.
We will get his body from the vet next month and bury him when the ground thaws and he will become this fixed spot in the past, receding away from me. And so I guess this is my formal goodbye to him, the last words I will ever write about him. He was just a cat, but he was MY cat and I'm pretty blue about him. The end.
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
I Don't Get Marriage
Certainly by now you've heard about Ben Affleck's marriage-dooming Oscar acceptance speech, where he thanked Jennifer Garner thusly:
I want to thank you for working on marriage for 10 Christmases. It’s good, it is work, but it’s the best kind of work, and there’s no one I’d rather work with.
And marriage certainly MAY take work, but to refer to it as such is ungentlemanly - not as ungentlemanly as completely diminishing the Canadian role in the rescue of the American diplomats in Argo, certainly, but not great for a marriage's long-term prospects either.
A LOT of people disagree with me. Here is a post stating that people (like me) who found that reference off-putting "don't get marriage." And I am currently being disagreed with by EVERYONE ON TWITTER. But I stand by my position! And to agree with me, here's Mindy Kaling from her rather fantastic "Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?":
I also became familiar with an entirely new category of person: the unhappily married person. They are everywhere, and they are ten thousand times more depressing than a divorced person. My friend Tim, whose name I've changed, obviously, has gotten more and more depressing since he married his girlfriend of seven years. Tim is the kind of guy who corners you at a party to tell you, vehemently, that marriage is work. And that you have to work on it constantly. And that going to couples' therapy is not only normal but something that everyone needs to do. Tim has a kind of maniac, cult-y look in his eyes from paying thousands of dollars to a marriage counselor. He is convinced that his daily work on his marriage, and his acknowledgement that it is basically a living hell, is modern. The result is that he has helped to relieve me of any romantic notions I had about marriage.
I am just guessing here, but I'm betting that it's harder being married to me than it is to be married to Jennifer Garner. I mean, I have my good points (I am funny and somewhat cute and can really bake, mainly), but I've also been hospitalized several times for various life-threatening medical problems over the past few years, gone through multiple bouts of soul-searing depression, lost my MIND each time I had a baby, weighed nearly TWICE what I did when we started dating (when I was an anorexic 18 year old, let's be fair here), been a panicky, unemployable agoraphobic (don't I sound like a treat?) AS WELL as the usual sort of marital things that happen when people are married for nearly FIFTEEN YEARS. 15 years! So being married to me is not only probably a full-time job - it's probably also a candidacy for the sainthood. But Bill has never implied anything of the sort.
And here is why: it would cruelly undermine my fragile sense that at least I have my marriage to rely on if Bill laid bare the secret mechanisms of our marriage. I know full well that being married to me MUST be hard work and really, really don't need confirming proof from Bill who lies like the good, good man he is whenever I press him on this topic. (My favorite statement from Bill: "Being married to you is nothing but pleasure." Oh sure it is.)
I am probably more emotionally fragile than Jennifer Garner, beautiful in a beautiful dress, but another secret is that we're all pretty fragile, at heart, and like Mindy Kaling, I don't find calling marriage "work" bracingly modern or what have you - I find it chilling, further proof of a cold, hard world where every good thing takes endless hellish effort to maintain and is probably not even worth it, in the end.
I think, actually, that a good marriage is built on a solid foundation of being a complete and total LIAR, of not only holding up the fiction that one's spouse is as youthfully irresistible as when you first got together but also the fact that at heart, we're all pretty unlovable and flawed and disappointing. We shelter each other from not only what time certainly does but also from the knowledge that each of us is a pretty big let down. And this - this sheltering - IS work, but it is the sort of underwater emotional work that I don't think needs a lot of exposure to air. It is the secret work of marriage and we make it too open at our peril.
There's an old Billy Bragg song that always springs to mind when I think of things like this:
The temptation
To take the precious things we have apart
To see how they work
Must be resisted for they never fit together again
Maybe I don't get how marriage works, but I do know that if Bill was winning an Oscar (and for what? Probably special effects.), he would thank me and say some pretty, inconsequential words about me, because he does know how marriage works, how the mechanisms of our fragile, precious marriage work.
He would know to shelter me (beautiful in a beautiful dress) from the cold chill of the word "work" next to my name.
I want to thank you for working on marriage for 10 Christmases. It’s good, it is work, but it’s the best kind of work, and there’s no one I’d rather work with.
And marriage certainly MAY take work, but to refer to it as such is ungentlemanly - not as ungentlemanly as completely diminishing the Canadian role in the rescue of the American diplomats in Argo, certainly, but not great for a marriage's long-term prospects either.
A LOT of people disagree with me. Here is a post stating that people (like me) who found that reference off-putting "don't get marriage." And I am currently being disagreed with by EVERYONE ON TWITTER. But I stand by my position! And to agree with me, here's Mindy Kaling from her rather fantastic "Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?":
I also became familiar with an entirely new category of person: the unhappily married person. They are everywhere, and they are ten thousand times more depressing than a divorced person. My friend Tim, whose name I've changed, obviously, has gotten more and more depressing since he married his girlfriend of seven years. Tim is the kind of guy who corners you at a party to tell you, vehemently, that marriage is work. And that you have to work on it constantly. And that going to couples' therapy is not only normal but something that everyone needs to do. Tim has a kind of maniac, cult-y look in his eyes from paying thousands of dollars to a marriage counselor. He is convinced that his daily work on his marriage, and his acknowledgement that it is basically a living hell, is modern. The result is that he has helped to relieve me of any romantic notions I had about marriage.
I am just guessing here, but I'm betting that it's harder being married to me than it is to be married to Jennifer Garner. I mean, I have my good points (I am funny and somewhat cute and can really bake, mainly), but I've also been hospitalized several times for various life-threatening medical problems over the past few years, gone through multiple bouts of soul-searing depression, lost my MIND each time I had a baby, weighed nearly TWICE what I did when we started dating (when I was an anorexic 18 year old, let's be fair here), been a panicky, unemployable agoraphobic (don't I sound like a treat?) AS WELL as the usual sort of marital things that happen when people are married for nearly FIFTEEN YEARS. 15 years! So being married to me is not only probably a full-time job - it's probably also a candidacy for the sainthood. But Bill has never implied anything of the sort.
And here is why: it would cruelly undermine my fragile sense that at least I have my marriage to rely on if Bill laid bare the secret mechanisms of our marriage. I know full well that being married to me MUST be hard work and really, really don't need confirming proof from Bill who lies like the good, good man he is whenever I press him on this topic. (My favorite statement from Bill: "Being married to you is nothing but pleasure." Oh sure it is.)
I am probably more emotionally fragile than Jennifer Garner, beautiful in a beautiful dress, but another secret is that we're all pretty fragile, at heart, and like Mindy Kaling, I don't find calling marriage "work" bracingly modern or what have you - I find it chilling, further proof of a cold, hard world where every good thing takes endless hellish effort to maintain and is probably not even worth it, in the end.
I think, actually, that a good marriage is built on a solid foundation of being a complete and total LIAR, of not only holding up the fiction that one's spouse is as youthfully irresistible as when you first got together but also the fact that at heart, we're all pretty unlovable and flawed and disappointing. We shelter each other from not only what time certainly does but also from the knowledge that each of us is a pretty big let down. And this - this sheltering - IS work, but it is the sort of underwater emotional work that I don't think needs a lot of exposure to air. It is the secret work of marriage and we make it too open at our peril.
There's an old Billy Bragg song that always springs to mind when I think of things like this:
The temptation
To take the precious things we have apart
To see how they work
Must be resisted for they never fit together again
Maybe I don't get how marriage works, but I do know that if Bill was winning an Oscar (and for what? Probably special effects.), he would thank me and say some pretty, inconsequential words about me, because he does know how marriage works, how the mechanisms of our fragile, precious marriage work.
He would know to shelter me (beautiful in a beautiful dress) from the cold chill of the word "work" next to my name.
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Pst! Over here!
Today's lunch post is me ranting about how unfair school pizza day is, so you're probably just wild to read that, eh?
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Big Lunch News!
A few years ago - and I was SHOCKED to realize that this much time has gone by - right before I got sick, some friends and I started a collaborative blog about school lunches. It was such a fun project and I was really enthusiastic about it but waaah wah waaah, I got sick and the whole thing fell by the wayside.
Lately, though, I realized that it was something I'd like to start up again: I still found myself making 15 annoying lunches a week and the school lunches I saw online had very little in common with them - I don't know about you, but I don't really get my jollies packing elaborate Bento lunches for my kids. So I approached the original authors of the blog and we decided to not only start it up again, but to include more writers in our weekly line-up.
The hilarious Nicole from Girl in a Boy House is going to be writing on Mondays.
Janet - who is funny and astute and thoughtful - will be writing on Tuesdays.
I'll have the Wednesday posts.
And Hannah - the busy, busy mom from Hodgepodge and Strawberries - will be writing the Thursday posts.
Fridays will be saved for guest posts, recipes and links and who knows what else.
I hope that you'll find our posts helpful and fun and that you'll enjoy reading them. See you there!
Lately, though, I realized that it was something I'd like to start up again: I still found myself making 15 annoying lunches a week and the school lunches I saw online had very little in common with them - I don't know about you, but I don't really get my jollies packing elaborate Bento lunches for my kids. So I approached the original authors of the blog and we decided to not only start it up again, but to include more writers in our weekly line-up.
The hilarious Nicole from Girl in a Boy House is going to be writing on Mondays.
Janet - who is funny and astute and thoughtful - will be writing on Tuesdays.
I'll have the Wednesday posts.
And Hannah - the busy, busy mom from Hodgepodge and Strawberries - will be writing the Thursday posts.
Fridays will be saved for guest posts, recipes and links and who knows what else.
I hope that you'll find our posts helpful and fun and that you'll enjoy reading them. See you there!
Friday, December 21, 2012
The Best Way To Spread Christmas Cheer
It's the last day of school for the year! Or it would be if the kids weren't having a snowday thanks to ALL THIS SNOW. The younger two went outside and frolicked in the snow and the oldest kid stayed inside and worked on her Christmas presents, bless her industrious little heart. And it is SO close to Christmas, which means that I will now show you my favorite Christmas decorations.
This is what our tree looks like this year. As you can see by our coloured Christmas lights, we are not Communists:
I spent all of Christmas tree set-up day last weekend feeling PRETTY hard done by because our tree is a bit.. spartan. Charlie-Brown-esque. But throw on a zillion decorations and three miles of lights and you can barely tell!
And now for the close-up tour:
SANTA! I KNOW HIM!
He's REALLY old - from about 1900 and super-fragile blown glass. He used to have an elf buddy with a mushroom hat but I broke him because I suck.
COOL DOWN, DUTCH KIDS, THIS IS A FAMILY TREE:
Also note the leering snowmen who like where this is headed. Anyhow, someone brought ups back the kissing kouple from a trip to Holland.
The kids had Monday off, too - geez, what a short week - and we made cinnamon-applesauce dough and cut out hearts for the tree and our house smelled OVERPOWERINGLY of cinnamon for a few days.
SO CRAFTY. We made tons of these hearts.
St. Nicholas sometimes brings Christmas ornament kits, which is wise of him and one year we made zillions of these pretty little angels:
Isn't she sweet? Less sweet is the memory of the tense day we made them, when one kid was in trouble in her room ALL DAY LONG. But the angels are pretty! Begone, actual memories!
SNIFF HERE IS A PICTURE OF MY OLDEST KID AT 6
CATS IN THE CRADLE AND THE SILLLVERR SPOOOOON.
I don't love these dumb lumpy bears but the kids do. They have magnets in their noses, so no matter where they are, they swing together like a lovestruck new couple:
They look dusty in the picture but they're actually covered in tiny fine cracks!
I love this time of year. And now I am off to bake some cookies. Merry Christmas and happy holidays to you and your family.
This is what our tree looks like this year. As you can see by our coloured Christmas lights, we are not Communists:
And now for the close-up tour:
SANTA! I KNOW HIM!
COOL DOWN, DUTCH KIDS, THIS IS A FAMILY TREE:
The kids had Monday off, too - geez, what a short week - and we made cinnamon-applesauce dough and cut out hearts for the tree and our house smelled OVERPOWERINGLY of cinnamon for a few days.
St. Nicholas sometimes brings Christmas ornament kits, which is wise of him and one year we made zillions of these pretty little angels:
SNIFF HERE IS A PICTURE OF MY OLDEST KID AT 6
I don't love these dumb lumpy bears but the kids do. They have magnets in their noses, so no matter where they are, they swing together like a lovestruck new couple:
GET A ROOM, PERVERT BEARS.
This is my favorite thing - it's a winged girl holding a white fox, riding on a deer and Bill put her in my stocking the Christmas we were expecting The Girl:
I see the ornament and I briefly feel again that wild fear and that wild hope.
This is a very fragile old tree topper - too small to go on top of our tree, so it just hangs hugely off to the side:
It used to be on my grandma's tree and now it is on mine.
These are my favorite - wee little birthday candle-holding angels, long broken. I think they're from the 30s:
They have the sweetest wistful little faces. Also seen in this picture: OUR MAGNIFICENT GINGERBREAD PALACE. The Girl made it this year and she is obviously going Big Gingerbread Places.
She also made this gorgeous tree at school out of a magazine, spraypaint and glitter:
"You must be really artistic too," some well-meaning soul said to me the other day and I laughed and laughed. My friend C gave me the stern bookish angel behind the tree.
And here you can see the box the angels get stored in and that I set out because it's so pretty, the Christmas card my Uncle Ron and Aunt Lori sent (made with one of his photographs), and a jar full of antique glass balls - too fragile to hang up anymore:
I love this time of year. And now I am off to bake some cookies. Merry Christmas and happy holidays to you and your family.
Monday, December 10, 2012
Gift Ideas for Husbands, Specifically MINE.
Bill is a prince among husbands, a fantastic guy all around - devoted, compassionate, hard-working - and if everyone was more like him, the world would be a better place unless you used bad fonts on a menu, in which case you'd probably be shot.
But what DOES one get a fine, artsy guy like that? The automatic lazy male defaults - sports stuff! beer products! socks! - would just make him sad.
You get him books like this: The Upset: Young Contemporary Art. That was easy.
He would also like the Sawvivor Saw for Christmas.
Nothing says "Merry Chirstmas, Baby!" like a fine camping saw, I always say. NOTHING.
I WAS going to get him a copy of Cards Against Humanity, but they were sold out the day I was shopping. It would still be a dandy choice for him. He loves games like that.
Makey Makey
DOESN'T THAT LOOK LIKE FUN?
I also tend to get Bill soulful yet manly short story collections. This year's pick: What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver.
I also got him a fine squishy old Irish guy hat, which the website no longer has but I bought it at Old Navy. GREAT CHOICE, ME.
He also loves Baileys so I tend to get him some of that in both drinkable and candy form. It's CHRISTMAS. Have both.
Another book! Shop Class as Soulcraft, just so he can feel justified in his lifelong insistence that it's very important that kids learn practical skills with their hands.
And that's it! That's all he's getting. It should be - I hope - a merry Christmas for him. And for you and your family, too. What are you getting YOUR husband/partner/self for Christmas this year?
(for more fun gift lists, check out Nicole's suggestions for Nicole and Nan's suggestions for Star Trek fans.)
But what DOES one get a fine, artsy guy like that? The automatic lazy male defaults - sports stuff! beer products! socks! - would just make him sad.
You get him books like this: The Upset: Young Contemporary Art. That was easy.
He would also like the Sawvivor Saw for Christmas.
Nothing says "Merry Chirstmas, Baby!" like a fine camping saw, I always say. NOTHING.
I WAS going to get him a copy of Cards Against Humanity, but they were sold out the day I was shopping. It would still be a dandy choice for him. He loves games like that.
Makey Makey
DOESN'T THAT LOOK LIKE FUN?
I also tend to get Bill soulful yet manly short story collections. This year's pick: What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver.
I also got him a fine squishy old Irish guy hat, which the website no longer has but I bought it at Old Navy. GREAT CHOICE, ME.
He also loves Baileys so I tend to get him some of that in both drinkable and candy form. It's CHRISTMAS. Have both.
Another book! Shop Class as Soulcraft, just so he can feel justified in his lifelong insistence that it's very important that kids learn practical skills with their hands.
And that's it! That's all he's getting. It should be - I hope - a merry Christmas for him. And for you and your family, too. What are you getting YOUR husband/partner/self for Christmas this year?
(for more fun gift lists, check out Nicole's suggestions for Nicole and Nan's suggestions for Star Trek fans.)
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