I have entered a very painful time in my relationship with my son. I knew it would happen someday, but I thought I had until he was at least 13 before I was totally annoyed with him and he hated me. Apparently, with the right impetus, the schism can happen when your child is as young as six. And that impetus for us is writing stories together.
It's not like we are sitting down and engaging in fun and free writing where anything is possible and the entire English language is at our service (or not if we don't want it). Rather, every week, he has ten disparate spelling words that he must weave into a coherent narrative. Couple that task with shaky handwriting skills at best and a patchy knowledge of English conventions and you have a definite challenge for any six-year-old.
The challenge for me is not letting him know just how thin my patience gets when we are doing this part of his homework. That's not easy: he's freaking annoying as hell.
Composing a narrative should be easy for him. He can tell stories like no one's business--most beginning with "When I was three"--yet when it comes to actually writing these stories down, he's suddenly pen-tied (oh no, not tongue-tied because even as he whines that he has nothing to say, he manages to keep up a nearly constant patter of talk that in no way uses a single spelling word) and completely unable to just. sit. still.
(Like Moby) I try. I bribe. I yell. I threaten. I look at each spelling word and find connections to our life ("Look honey, 'whale' is one of your words. We live on a bay that is full of whales. Would you like to write about that?" "Nah." "Okay. Here are some pictures of whales on the Internet. Oh look, the blue whale is the biggest animal ever. Even bigger than dinosaurs. Would you like to write about that?" "Nah."). I even (gulp) make connections to his video games ("We can write a story about Sonic and a whale." "Nah, I want to write about Mario and a whale" "[Ecstatic that we are getting somewhere] Okay, let's do that!" "Nah.").
Nothing works. In fact, the more I try to engage his writerly self, the more active his body becomes in a Tourette's-like litany of wiggles and twitches and rolling and pencil tossing and exorcist-like head rotations, searching for any distraction at all ("Mom, why is there a turtle in that picture? Mom, look at that bird out there on the house. Mom, check out how my pencil rolls farther than this cookie."). One second he writes a single letter (poorly) and the next he is doing a three-legged down dog.
Nothing. Works. And then I lose it. I leave the room (instantly he drops to the floor and starts playing with the cat, singing his spelling words instead of writing them down), and I start screaming in my head:
Why doesn't he love writing like I do?
Is he even my son?
He hates salsa too, maybe there was a switch at the hospital.
Why won't he stop moving?
Is he going to be a dumb jock?
I am so just going to give up.
It's not worth it.
Let him be a math nerd.
I don't care.
I won't share my books anymore with him, see how he feels then.
How is his writing process different from mine?
I stop there.
How is his writing process different from mine?
I get ready to write every morning. Then I wander the house, call a friend, write a sentence or two, fold laundry, do dishes, make tea, put on some music, check to see if the chickens have laid any eggs, write another sentence or so, delete it all, dance a little to a really good song, check Twitter, etc . . . I may fake a bit more purpose than holding a pencil in my mouth and barking like a dog, but my writing process isn't really all that different from my son's six-year-old version.
Ultimately, we are both trying to accomplish the same thing: we are seeking order in the colorful, butterfly-winged words that skitter and flit and zoom and swoop constantly in our heads. All our movement and procrastination is an attempt to shake these words into a semblance of form without being overwhelmed by their sheer power--to pin them down in a way that makes sense on the confines of 70% recycled, brown, lined paper.
I loosened up. The story about Mario feeding a singing whale a cube of chopped old and new fish got written. Peace reigned again in our house.
Until next week at least.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Breathing Through Tomorrow
The vibration of the seven-forty-seven moves
my body like the shaking apart of the tangles
in marionette strings. The film of no time falls over me,
creating a greasy layer of plastic skin. The gray
Pacific's glazed surface below gives no indication
of the International Dateline. I know that tonight,
it will be tomorrow morning. And after I meet you,
stiff unable to embrace properly because 28 hours
of flight has frozen my joints and slimed my limbs,
I will drop dead--pass out cold at eight p.m.. You'll have
to carry me up the spiral staircase, careful not to lean
too hard on the PVC pipe banister or bang my head
against the hard iron, cylindrical center or my foot
against the cinderblock door jamb. I'll wake up
at four thirty the next morning, ready to play
and won't understand for a few moments why
it's so dark when my body says the sun is high
and I have over-slept my morning class. Even
when I am finally able to stay up until midnight
and wake to the island morning, a tiny lump at the base
of my diaphragm, right where it meets the spine,
will remind me that something isn't right. That little
lump will keep me from taking full, deep, purging
breaths of the trade wind tossed tropical air as a wet,
impossibly green banana leaf slicks across my face
while I struggle through the jungle to summit Nimitz Hill,
dripping red blood from a delicate tracery of paper-fine
cuts of saw grass. I'll feel it when I gasp under
the hammering cold of Cetti waterfall and writhe
internally as tiny, pearly pink, freshwater shrimp
climb between my bare toes. It'll still be there when I
simultaneously fall into and fly over the Marianas
Trench while still sweating in the tepid salt water
off Apra Harbor. That lump will remain until three
months, four days, and 28 hours later when I--bound
for San Diego--arrive at LAX, where the smog layer
makes the multicolored pillars of light look like glow sticks
through fake fog at a warehouse party. Then as I breathe
in that unbelievably salty, dry, chilled air, the lump will
finally dissolve and my lungs will expand in satiation.
my body like the shaking apart of the tangles
in marionette strings. The film of no time falls over me,
creating a greasy layer of plastic skin. The gray
Pacific's glazed surface below gives no indication
of the International Dateline. I know that tonight,
it will be tomorrow morning. And after I meet you,
stiff unable to embrace properly because 28 hours
of flight has frozen my joints and slimed my limbs,
I will drop dead--pass out cold at eight p.m.. You'll have
to carry me up the spiral staircase, careful not to lean
too hard on the PVC pipe banister or bang my head
against the hard iron, cylindrical center or my foot
against the cinderblock door jamb. I'll wake up
at four thirty the next morning, ready to play
and won't understand for a few moments why
it's so dark when my body says the sun is high
and I have over-slept my morning class. Even
when I am finally able to stay up until midnight
and wake to the island morning, a tiny lump at the base
of my diaphragm, right where it meets the spine,
will remind me that something isn't right. That little
lump will keep me from taking full, deep, purging
breaths of the trade wind tossed tropical air as a wet,
impossibly green banana leaf slicks across my face
while I struggle through the jungle to summit Nimitz Hill,
dripping red blood from a delicate tracery of paper-fine
cuts of saw grass. I'll feel it when I gasp under
the hammering cold of Cetti waterfall and writhe
internally as tiny, pearly pink, freshwater shrimp
climb between my bare toes. It'll still be there when I
simultaneously fall into and fly over the Marianas
Trench while still sweating in the tepid salt water
off Apra Harbor. That lump will remain until three
months, four days, and 28 hours later when I--bound
for San Diego--arrive at LAX, where the smog layer
makes the multicolored pillars of light look like glow sticks
through fake fog at a warehouse party. Then as I breathe
in that unbelievably salty, dry, chilled air, the lump will
finally dissolve and my lungs will expand in satiation.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
This is My Future
Except I probably won't have such a nice, quirky house. And, if the past is any indicator, I'll be reading while doing something dangerous like straightening my hair, and then I will accidentally burn my face. True story.
Monday, December 6, 2010
Paris Stories Take One: Packing Lightly
I went to Paris this summer with my Australian wife, D, and had a few experiences as one is wont to do when one travels to that city. I meant to post a few of these earlier, but didn't really have a chance what with moving and being bitter and all. So here they are now in small increments.
[a few of you have already read this one, but the others will be new to you--and most likely new to me since the trip happened months ago]
Having traveled a wee bit in our lives, getting to Paris was simple. As was the transfer from airport to train into the City of Light. We could read the signs (I have a rudimentary French background and D is fairly fluent though she'll modestly argue that point), could understand instructions, and since metro systems don't really vary from country to country all that much, knew how to move around in the underground warren of trains. At this point, both my traveling companion and I were operating on 20+ hours of being awake. But sleepiness fled as we entered the bustle and energy of the metro station. We were here! Not just a sterile airport, but the metro that natives used in their day to day lives! We were listening to French being spoken by real live French people en masse! And understanding it! We looked fairly sassy despite our flight! And if we kept our mouths shut and looked purposeful, we would pass for fellow Europeans (though most likely not French Europeans)!
The excitement kept building as we quietly discussed our plans for the day so that no one could overhear our nasal English (wine, wine, and more wine, then maybe some rich and fatty food followed by even more wine). D and I could feel the gathering strength of our travel mojo. This high on life feeling was going to last us the entire week, we were certain. The adrenaline rush you can get when you travel is amazing and being in Paris makes that rush even more so, especially when, suddenly, you get your large and distinctly American luggage firmly and irrevocably wedged into the metro turnstile. All that adrenaline soars and shifts magnificently into a fight or flight mode. Or in our cases, flight or flight.
Both D and I are no strangers to the myth of the American-hating French. Both of us also had on good authority that Paris is the epicenter of such fomenting disdain. In fact, we were hoping to get through this trip with exciting as little of that sentiment as possible. So, needless to say, both of our hearts sunk into our practical yet fashionable heels. She and I exchanged looks of panic in which I swear I saw in her eyes a momentary thought of grabbing her perfectly-petite and European carry-on and making a break for the nearest cafe. I don't blame her. I would have cut my clothing losses and ran too if it weren't for the fact that I had also managed to entangle in the handle of my much too-large luggage my purse strap and slightly smaller (just acceptable as such, really) carry-on and, further, was trapped physically in a strangle hold by the web of straps. Everything I owned in Paris was twined around the handle of the turnstile including me; I couldn't get back or forward. It appeared my bag was permanently wedged and I would be spending the rest of my life in the Pasteur stop of the metro.
[side note: I am still amazed at how much D can pack in such a tiny bag. She got books, dresses, boots, heels, a laptop, hair straightener, adapters, and toiletries into her tiny bag of great magic. I, on the other hand, needed about five times the space to accomplish the same thing. And I still borrowed clothes from her! Was it the pillow I brought? Or the German cell phone that doesn't work in France? Or the 15 books?]
Remember, we are in a metro station. A bustling metro station. Not once, even during D's and my eye-locking moment, did people stop rushing around and, literally, into me. The susurrate sound of their passing perfectly complemented by the disgusted hissing noise they would make when they realized that a perfectly good turnstile was being blocked by a very obvious (the luggage, the expletives, the wide ass) American. The volume of the hissing was proportionate to whether the person had seen my predicament from a distance and moved to another turnstile or had noticed my lack of forward motion only after ineffectively pushing into my luggage and finding his way barred. To the sound of hissing, I pushed and pulled and groaned. But my bags stayed fast (at this point I had disentangled my body from the web of straps and could move freely around my bag). D pulled from one side, I pushed from the other, both feeding our tickets again and again into the turnstile to trigger the handle's moving freely (it didn't). My bags were the mountain. They could not be moved.
Finally, a kind gentleman (I don't really remember what he looked like, but the image that comes to mind is the cranky painter in Amelie) called from a gate that allows handicapped people into the metro (and Americans with lard-ass luggage), "Utiliser ceci."
"Je ne peux pas," I wailed. “Aidez-moi ici, s'il vous plait.”
[Yes, I know, not good French, but I do not claim to speak good French.] With an untranslatable grunt, the man realized that my condition was less that I needed a larger entrance and more that I needed the jaws of life to free my possessions from their metal prison. Somehow (French magic, I guess), he managed to use his brute force to pull my bag through. I profusely Merci Beaucoup’d him, but he left with no response other than an equally untranslatable cough. I am not sure if he helped me because he was nice or just fed up with my ineptitude. At least he didn't hiss.
On the move again, I quietly vowed to get me an my embarrassment of luggage to our hotel as quickly as possible without calling further attention to myself. A short-lived vow as D and I encountered the steep flight of stairs for the metro exit.
Bump
Bump
Bump
Pause
Bump
Bump
Went my bag and I until a petite French woman in a cream suit and work heels that put my "sassy" heels to shame, without missing a beat, bent down and grabbed the bottom of my bag, propelling me and it to the top. She graciously acknowledged my thanks, releasing my bag and continuing on her way until we reached the next set of stairs. After my first "bump" up the step, she reversed her direction and returned to the bottom of the flight to help me with my bag again. I said thanks, again. She gave a slight farewell smile, again. We parted ways, again.
Then I came to the third flight of stairs. The woman, again, helped me up. This time with a pained look of embarrassment on her face for me and my ridiculous situation. As soon as we reached the top of the steps into the square of the Pasteur stop, she quickly set the bag down and disappeared into the crowd without waiting for my (third) thanks.
[a few of you have already read this one, but the others will be new to you--and most likely new to me since the trip happened months ago]
Having traveled a wee bit in our lives, getting to Paris was simple. As was the transfer from airport to train into the City of Light. We could read the signs (I have a rudimentary French background and D is fairly fluent though she'll modestly argue that point), could understand instructions, and since metro systems don't really vary from country to country all that much, knew how to move around in the underground warren of trains. At this point, both my traveling companion and I were operating on 20+ hours of being awake. But sleepiness fled as we entered the bustle and energy of the metro station. We were here! Not just a sterile airport, but the metro that natives used in their day to day lives! We were listening to French being spoken by real live French people en masse! And understanding it! We looked fairly sassy despite our flight! And if we kept our mouths shut and looked purposeful, we would pass for fellow Europeans (though most likely not French Europeans)!
The excitement kept building as we quietly discussed our plans for the day so that no one could overhear our nasal English (wine, wine, and more wine, then maybe some rich and fatty food followed by even more wine). D and I could feel the gathering strength of our travel mojo. This high on life feeling was going to last us the entire week, we were certain. The adrenaline rush you can get when you travel is amazing and being in Paris makes that rush even more so, especially when, suddenly, you get your large and distinctly American luggage firmly and irrevocably wedged into the metro turnstile. All that adrenaline soars and shifts magnificently into a fight or flight mode. Or in our cases, flight or flight.
Both D and I are no strangers to the myth of the American-hating French. Both of us also had on good authority that Paris is the epicenter of such fomenting disdain. In fact, we were hoping to get through this trip with exciting as little of that sentiment as possible. So, needless to say, both of our hearts sunk into our practical yet fashionable heels. She and I exchanged looks of panic in which I swear I saw in her eyes a momentary thought of grabbing her perfectly-petite and European carry-on and making a break for the nearest cafe. I don't blame her. I would have cut my clothing losses and ran too if it weren't for the fact that I had also managed to entangle in the handle of my much too-large luggage my purse strap and slightly smaller (just acceptable as such, really) carry-on and, further, was trapped physically in a strangle hold by the web of straps. Everything I owned in Paris was twined around the handle of the turnstile including me; I couldn't get back or forward. It appeared my bag was permanently wedged and I would be spending the rest of my life in the Pasteur stop of the metro.
[side note: I am still amazed at how much D can pack in such a tiny bag. She got books, dresses, boots, heels, a laptop, hair straightener, adapters, and toiletries into her tiny bag of great magic. I, on the other hand, needed about five times the space to accomplish the same thing. And I still borrowed clothes from her! Was it the pillow I brought? Or the German cell phone that doesn't work in France? Or the 15 books?]
Remember, we are in a metro station. A bustling metro station. Not once, even during D's and my eye-locking moment, did people stop rushing around and, literally, into me. The susurrate sound of their passing perfectly complemented by the disgusted hissing noise they would make when they realized that a perfectly good turnstile was being blocked by a very obvious (the luggage, the expletives, the wide ass) American. The volume of the hissing was proportionate to whether the person had seen my predicament from a distance and moved to another turnstile or had noticed my lack of forward motion only after ineffectively pushing into my luggage and finding his way barred. To the sound of hissing, I pushed and pulled and groaned. But my bags stayed fast (at this point I had disentangled my body from the web of straps and could move freely around my bag). D pulled from one side, I pushed from the other, both feeding our tickets again and again into the turnstile to trigger the handle's moving freely (it didn't). My bags were the mountain. They could not be moved.
Finally, a kind gentleman (I don't really remember what he looked like, but the image that comes to mind is the cranky painter in Amelie) called from a gate that allows handicapped people into the metro (and Americans with lard-ass luggage), "Utiliser ceci."
"Je ne peux pas," I wailed. “Aidez-moi ici, s'il vous plait.”
[Yes, I know, not good French, but I do not claim to speak good French.] With an untranslatable grunt, the man realized that my condition was less that I needed a larger entrance and more that I needed the jaws of life to free my possessions from their metal prison. Somehow (French magic, I guess), he managed to use his brute force to pull my bag through. I profusely Merci Beaucoup’d him, but he left with no response other than an equally untranslatable cough. I am not sure if he helped me because he was nice or just fed up with my ineptitude. At least he didn't hiss.
On the move again, I quietly vowed to get me an my embarrassment of luggage to our hotel as quickly as possible without calling further attention to myself. A short-lived vow as D and I encountered the steep flight of stairs for the metro exit.
Bump
Bump
Bump
Pause
Bump
Bump
Went my bag and I until a petite French woman in a cream suit and work heels that put my "sassy" heels to shame, without missing a beat, bent down and grabbed the bottom of my bag, propelling me and it to the top. She graciously acknowledged my thanks, releasing my bag and continuing on her way until we reached the next set of stairs. After my first "bump" up the step, she reversed her direction and returned to the bottom of the flight to help me with my bag again. I said thanks, again. She gave a slight farewell smile, again. We parted ways, again.
Then I came to the third flight of stairs. The woman, again, helped me up. This time with a pained look of embarrassment on her face for me and my ridiculous situation. As soon as we reached the top of the steps into the square of the Pasteur stop, she quickly set the bag down and disappeared into the crowd without waiting for my (third) thanks.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Apparently Books Are My Scrapbooks
I just finished Kathleen Norris' Acedia & me--a book that has taken me a year to read. That fact alone is not unusual. I am prone to stops and starts with reading, picking up a book and reading a few chapters before I set it down to pick up another. My "currently reading" list is so long it is laughable. And a tiny bit sad.
This book was unusual in that it took me so long to finish it not because I got distracted but because it was so incredibly good. I literally could only read about ten pages; then I would have to stop and think about the implications of what I'd just read . . . for about a week. I've read other books by this author, but this one, I think, by far is her most affecting.
So today, I finished it. In a hurry, spurred by a friend's also currently reading it (and he really is, not in the "it takes me a year to read a book because I am a shameless book polygamist" way that I do) and we want to be able to talk about it by the time he comes up to visit me next week. When I finish a book that has taken me a long while to read, it is always fun to look through it and see the detritus that has accumulated between its pages over time (oh, that's where that $100 bill is) because I tend to write or slip whatever is going on at the moment between the pages. This practice can have embarrassing side effects when I lend out books (for example, I once lent out a book that included an list I made on an index card that had "vagina presentation" in it), and I now usually look through my books when I finish them to remove anything that is too personal or if it can't be removed, mark them "do not lend out." In this book I found:
disciplinary notes from my son's first kindergarten teacher explaining how bad my son's behavior was for the days of 10/20 and 10/21/2009 (including, "he touched another child at share time"--really? He was 5. They are all touching each other at that age),
a post-it that outlined how I was going to correct my son's "deviant" behavior at home and the rewards he'd receive if he "behaved" (I am using the quotation marks here intentionally and accurately), rewards that included "biking, hiking, gelato, two-square, pizza at Bronx Pizza,"
three western blots,
yellow legal pad paper with the locations of Target, Trader Joe's, and Whole Foods in Monterey,
a note from my niece that reads "I love you so much, Tia,"
a map of Paris,
the card from my friends' dad's funeral,
spring semester after hours parking permit for SDSU,
two pictures from my son diagramming a plant's physical structures,
my son's first first grade report card (that's from this week),
a beer list from Anchor & Hope, a kick-ass San Francisco restaurant,
post-its describing PCR primers,
and much scribbling in the margins and empty filler pages (which includes a very bad poem--who am I?).
And as Kurt Vonnegut says, "so it goes"--another book, another year.
Incidentally, this book now falls in the "do not lend out" category. So don't ask.
This book was unusual in that it took me so long to finish it not because I got distracted but because it was so incredibly good. I literally could only read about ten pages; then I would have to stop and think about the implications of what I'd just read . . . for about a week. I've read other books by this author, but this one, I think, by far is her most affecting.
So today, I finished it. In a hurry, spurred by a friend's also currently reading it (and he really is, not in the "it takes me a year to read a book because I am a shameless book polygamist" way that I do) and we want to be able to talk about it by the time he comes up to visit me next week. When I finish a book that has taken me a long while to read, it is always fun to look through it and see the detritus that has accumulated between its pages over time (oh, that's where that $100 bill is) because I tend to write or slip whatever is going on at the moment between the pages. This practice can have embarrassing side effects when I lend out books (for example, I once lent out a book that included an list I made on an index card that had "vagina presentation" in it), and I now usually look through my books when I finish them to remove anything that is too personal or if it can't be removed, mark them "do not lend out." In this book I found:
disciplinary notes from my son's first kindergarten teacher explaining how bad my son's behavior was for the days of 10/20 and 10/21/2009 (including, "he touched another child at share time"--really? He was 5. They are all touching each other at that age),
a post-it that outlined how I was going to correct my son's "deviant" behavior at home and the rewards he'd receive if he "behaved" (I am using the quotation marks here intentionally and accurately), rewards that included "biking, hiking, gelato, two-square, pizza at Bronx Pizza,"
three western blots,
yellow legal pad paper with the locations of Target, Trader Joe's, and Whole Foods in Monterey,
a note from my niece that reads "I love you so much, Tia,"
a map of Paris,
the card from my friends' dad's funeral,
spring semester after hours parking permit for SDSU,
two pictures from my son diagramming a plant's physical structures,
my son's first first grade report card (that's from this week),
a beer list from Anchor & Hope, a kick-ass San Francisco restaurant,
post-its describing PCR primers,
and much scribbling in the margins and empty filler pages (which includes a very bad poem--who am I?).
And as Kurt Vonnegut says, "so it goes"--another book, another year.
Incidentally, this book now falls in the "do not lend out" category. So don't ask.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
I Consider This Less a Problem Than a Precipitate
*and if you got the title, you are a complete nerdThursday, July 22, 2010
Ankle Weights
So Today I:
1. Said goodbye to one of my best friends ever and my son's second mommy (the second close friend in less than a month)
2. Completed day 5 as a stay-at-home mom
3. Did preliminary moving preparation
4. Realized that I will have to say goodbye to more than the formerly mentioned people very soon.
5. Wore ankle weights while moving heavy furniture . . . by myself.
Note: I cried through it all.
I'm sure I'll be funny again someday soon. I'm sure I'll be able to look at all the blessings in my life and see how freaking fortunate I am. I'm sure that things won't see so completely random and out of control.
But for now, they aren't and are (make sense of that yourselves).
1. Said goodbye to one of my best friends ever and my son's second mommy (the second close friend in less than a month)
2. Completed day 5 as a stay-at-home mom
3. Did preliminary moving preparation
4. Realized that I will have to say goodbye to more than the formerly mentioned people very soon.
5. Wore ankle weights while moving heavy furniture . . . by myself.
Note: I cried through it all.
I'm sure I'll be funny again someday soon. I'm sure I'll be able to look at all the blessings in my life and see how freaking fortunate I am. I'm sure that things won't see so completely random and out of control.
But for now, they aren't and are (make sense of that yourselves).
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