While there are, of course, many, many types of readers in the world, the ones whom I am concerned with today divide into two camps: those who like scary books, and those who won't touch them.
Child No. 2 finds the plot stress of All of a Kind Family—will the children eat the corned beef that wasn't meant for them?!—almost beyond bearing, and will writhe in an agony of terror: "It's not their corned beef and they're eating it! Oh, tell me what's going to happen! Tell me what's going to happen! Oh, stop reading, I can't, I can't!"
Child No. 1 will happily read through the twists and turns of any number of monster, dragon, and magic books, some of which get really scary: Inkheart, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and so on.
I myself am now rereading 'Salem's Lot, which is probably one of the scariest books I've ever read. Reading it, for me, is terrifying but also in some ways a tonic: the great fear (and do understand that it's not that they don't scare me, I am terrified, but at least it takes my mind off other things) is transporting. It takes me away from other more uncomfortably real, worries. But, as so often happens, Child No. 1 espied my book.
Now, we have made some decisions at our house. One was that Child No. 1 was to be allowed free reign over the books in the house.
All of them.
I came to this, following an interesting discussion with the author Charles Slack, who told me that one of the joys and motivations for his writing life was his sense of his parents' bookshelves as this place of wonder and possibility, his own private place to discover. I worried, though, that Child No. 1, an extremely early and avid reader, would read things that her mind, while very sharp, could not quite process. But talking to others, and thinking it through, I came to believe that whatever she couldn't quite process would just sort of float away, unprocessed, filed under: to be understood later.
But when I saw Child No. 1 looking interestedly at the back cover of 'Salem's Lot, I just said NO.
No, that book is way too scary. No, you may not read it. No, you will not be able to just scoot past the things that you don't understand, because you will understand them all and THEY WILL TERRIFY YOU.
I explained this in as low-key and rational a way as I could. But I know that, however much I believe that children should have a world of possibility open to them, that books themselves cannot do any real harm, I am going to keep a very close watch on that book. And when I finish it, it is leaving the house.
This is censorship, isn't it? But this book scared me so much when I read it at 15, that I slept with the covers pulled high around my neck for...well, let's just say for a long time. I'm trying for benevolent censorship. But is there such a thing? What do you think?
What they're reading now
Child No. 1: Heir Apparent
Child No. 2: These Happy Golden Years
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Sunday, March 29, 2009
The Other Side
One of the great treats of living with a particularly voracious reader, like Child No. 1, is that she brings home a really wide variety of books. She will read almost anything (provided I don't push it toward her too much), and this has brought both of us toward that great nation of previously unknown (to me) books: Boy Books.
I know, I know, they're not really boy books. I mean, just because a book has a main character of one specific gender, does that have to mean that only people of that same gender will like/understand/read that book? And isn't a great book great in its humanity? There aren't boy's and girl's painters, or sculptors, or musicians? Or if there are, can't we all be bigger than that, too?
I hope so. But it's not exactly how I have found the world to be.
Growing up as one of three sisters, the books that came my way were often handed down by an older sister who was very interested in Little Women, Ann of Green Gables, and so on. These are worthy books. But they have in common that very excellent and familiar narrator of young fiction: the bookish girl. Now, I am a HUGE fan of the bookish girls in the world, but being a bookish girl, reading about bookish girls, who themselves think about other bookish girls, can be...limiting. So imagine my fascination when Child No. 1 came home with this:
I thought, at first, that the title, and thus the book, was the horrified voice of a girl. But, seeing as the house was a terrible mess and I had lots of things to do and work worries to attend to, I decided instead to sit down on the couch and read it. All of it. And it is excellent.
It's (in some ways) the story of Bradley Chalkers, a boy who is everything that girls fear about boys: a bully, gross, clueless, mean, angry, large, overwhelming. In no way is he an everyman; he is troubled and difficult and committed to being BAD. But this is his book and holds tight both to his powerful difficulties and his humanity, never sacrificing one for the other. It never tries to make him "normal" or easy. Its eponymous scene allowed me that rare thing: a moment of crystallizing insight into just how massive and ridiculous the divide between the genders is. How scary we look to them, how scary they look to us. It made me so happy to see that my girl might have the opportunity to see a boy depicted this way, to have a glimpse inside one boy's head, and know that there really is a person there.
And this is just one. A whole slew of amazing books seem to have appeared between my being a child and my having one. I will try to post more about them here.
I know, I know, they're not really boy books. I mean, just because a book has a main character of one specific gender, does that have to mean that only people of that same gender will like/understand/read that book? And isn't a great book great in its humanity? There aren't boy's and girl's painters, or sculptors, or musicians? Or if there are, can't we all be bigger than that, too?
I hope so. But it's not exactly how I have found the world to be.
Growing up as one of three sisters, the books that came my way were often handed down by an older sister who was very interested in Little Women, Ann of Green Gables, and so on. These are worthy books. But they have in common that very excellent and familiar narrator of young fiction: the bookish girl. Now, I am a HUGE fan of the bookish girls in the world, but being a bookish girl, reading about bookish girls, who themselves think about other bookish girls, can be...limiting. So imagine my fascination when Child No. 1 came home with this:
I thought, at first, that the title, and thus the book, was the horrified voice of a girl. But, seeing as the house was a terrible mess and I had lots of things to do and work worries to attend to, I decided instead to sit down on the couch and read it. All of it. And it is excellent.It's (in some ways) the story of Bradley Chalkers, a boy who is everything that girls fear about boys: a bully, gross, clueless, mean, angry, large, overwhelming. In no way is he an everyman; he is troubled and difficult and committed to being BAD. But this is his book and holds tight both to his powerful difficulties and his humanity, never sacrificing one for the other. It never tries to make him "normal" or easy. Its eponymous scene allowed me that rare thing: a moment of crystallizing insight into just how massive and ridiculous the divide between the genders is. How scary we look to them, how scary they look to us. It made me so happy to see that my girl might have the opportunity to see a boy depicted this way, to have a glimpse inside one boy's head, and know that there really is a person there.
And this is just one. A whole slew of amazing books seem to have appeared between my being a child and my having one. I will try to post more about them here.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
The Oldies Problem
While we here at Diamond in the Window don't own a car (the beauties of living in Brooklyn), we do sometimes use cars (we're zipcar users). And when we do use a car, there arises the question of the radio station.
I know that there is a lot of excellent new music being made, all the time. And I know, too, that for art to exist, it needs people to support it. And I wish—how I wish!—that I were the sort of person to push my own boundaries and take more risks in what I take from the world around me.
But.
Far too often, I end up somehow, again, on CBS 101.1, "Songs you can sing along to," belting out something from the early eighties behind rolled-up windows.
It seems to me that somehow something in my—what is the word for palate, but for all five senses? Something in my taste-judger got set in stone around 1979, and however much I might pretend to view things differently, deep inside, when I see Frye boots, or hear Aerosmith, or eat Mystic Mints, that something inside just resonates.
And so it is with books. When I pick up The Long Winter, or Ballet Shoes, or The Cricket in Times Square, (and of course The Diamond in the Window), I lose all perspective, distance, and critical judgment, and I just fall into it. Totally and completely. And don't get me wrong, this is a joyful experience. It is, in some way, the most basic pleasure of reading to me—I disappear, and the story magically becomes real while I fade to the background, able to live, invisibly, somewhere else.
But, just as it nags at me now that I might be missing the next amazing Radiohead (which someone had to drag into my ears against my general stodgy proclivities) by singing along so complacently to on CBS, I don't entirely trust the way I bring my literary past into my children's lives with me and dump it on their beds. Or in their bookshelves. Or whatever.
So here is my fear: That I am so entirely enamored of the books I loved as a kid that it is to the exclusion of better, newer books that would be theirs. Not that I block their access to the outside world of books, but it may be true that I don't foster it as much as I might. Is there a problem with the idea of comfort books? (And then there's the inevitable weird dated racism/sexism/class-ism that is a bit too prevalent to be considered only "teaching moments.") I'm not sure.
What they're reading now:
Child No. 1: The Battle of the Labyrinth
Child No. 2: Watch Me Throw the Ball!
I know that there is a lot of excellent new music being made, all the time. And I know, too, that for art to exist, it needs people to support it. And I wish—how I wish!—that I were the sort of person to push my own boundaries and take more risks in what I take from the world around me.
But.
Far too often, I end up somehow, again, on CBS 101.1, "Songs you can sing along to," belting out something from the early eighties behind rolled-up windows.
It seems to me that somehow something in my—what is the word for palate, but for all five senses? Something in my taste-judger got set in stone around 1979, and however much I might pretend to view things differently, deep inside, when I see Frye boots, or hear Aerosmith, or eat Mystic Mints, that something inside just resonates.
And so it is with books. When I pick up The Long Winter, or Ballet Shoes, or The Cricket in Times Square, (and of course The Diamond in the Window), I lose all perspective, distance, and critical judgment, and I just fall into it. Totally and completely. And don't get me wrong, this is a joyful experience. It is, in some way, the most basic pleasure of reading to me—I disappear, and the story magically becomes real while I fade to the background, able to live, invisibly, somewhere else.
But, just as it nags at me now that I might be missing the next amazing Radiohead (which someone had to drag into my ears against my general stodgy proclivities) by singing along so complacently to on CBS, I don't entirely trust the way I bring my literary past into my children's lives with me and dump it on their beds. Or in their bookshelves. Or whatever.
So here is my fear: That I am so entirely enamored of the books I loved as a kid that it is to the exclusion of better, newer books that would be theirs. Not that I block their access to the outside world of books, but it may be true that I don't foster it as much as I might. Is there a problem with the idea of comfort books? (And then there's the inevitable weird dated racism/sexism/class-ism that is a bit too prevalent to be considered only "teaching moments.") I'm not sure.
What they're reading now:
Child No. 1: The Battle of the Labyrinth
Child No. 2: Watch Me Throw the Ball!
Friday, March 27, 2009
Girls and Ego
So, Child No. 1 in my household has never had any great love for Babymouse.
Quite the contrary, actually. Back when a lot of girls in her class were falling for Babymouse's powerful charms, she was loudly, vociferously, adamantly immune to them. But the charms seem obvious: clear unmistakable voice, a sense of defiance, very few words, very many pictures, and, most of all, a real, deep channeling of that all-too-fleeting sense that girls can get in second grade or so, that they are POWERFUL.
I saw it work wonders for my daughter's friends; it spoke to them in some deep way. It gave voice to their sense that they were, in fact, the center of the universe, and the best things in the world. And, most likely, it spoke, too, to their fear that they were not.
She felt that Babymouse was bossy, shrill, and "thinks she's so great." And certainly this is sort of true. Why this worked to communicate empowerment to her friends but only alienated her is a complete mystery to me. I suspect it will be a different story with Child No. 2.
Instead, Child No. 1 got her power from a really sweet series, Girls to the Rescue. They were very folktale-like, and almost aggressively wholesome. She loved them, and they certainly spoke to girls about power, but unlike Babymouse (for the most part) it was a more public, external sort of power: being the one who saved the village, rather than the hero of one's own more private, internal life. The wholesomeness made me think it would be less compelling, but then again, I'm not 8.
The other power-girl books Child No. 1 reads that I love, the ones that are about really envisioning the strength possibilities for girls, are the Tamora Pierce books, like Young Warriors and Emperor Mage.
But they're definitely for older girls, and have such a deep appeal that I will promise myself to publish another post of them later.
What they're reading now.
Child No. 1: Searching for Dragons
Child No. 2: The Trek
Quite the contrary, actually. Back when a lot of girls in her class were falling for Babymouse's powerful charms, she was loudly, vociferously, adamantly immune to them. But the charms seem obvious: clear unmistakable voice, a sense of defiance, very few words, very many pictures, and, most of all, a real, deep channeling of that all-too-fleeting sense that girls can get in second grade or so, that they are POWERFUL.I saw it work wonders for my daughter's friends; it spoke to them in some deep way. It gave voice to their sense that they were, in fact, the center of the universe, and the best things in the world. And, most likely, it spoke, too, to their fear that they were not.
She felt that Babymouse was bossy, shrill, and "thinks she's so great." And certainly this is sort of true. Why this worked to communicate empowerment to her friends but only alienated her is a complete mystery to me. I suspect it will be a different story with Child No. 2.
Instead, Child No. 1 got her power from a really sweet series, Girls to the Rescue. They were very folktale-like, and almost aggressively wholesome. She loved them, and they certainly spoke to girls about power, but unlike Babymouse (for the most part) it was a more public, external sort of power: being the one who saved the village, rather than the hero of one's own more private, internal life. The wholesomeness made me think it would be less compelling, but then again, I'm not 8.
The other power-girl books Child No. 1 reads that I love, the ones that are about really envisioning the strength possibilities for girls, are the Tamora Pierce books, like Young Warriors and Emperor Mage.
But they're definitely for older girls, and have such a deep appeal that I will promise myself to publish another post of them later.
What they're reading now.
Child No. 1: Searching for Dragons
Child No. 2: The Trek
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Problem Books
Sometimes, life is just hard.
This is what I tell Child No. 2, who is the one who seems most in need of comfort after a day of school. There are, of course, the usual odd assortment of bumps and trials, and then there are the recurring ones. Each child has her own, of course, but for Child No. 2, the big ones seem to be:
Fear of growing up
Fear of losing her teachers, parents
Dread of mean girls
Fear of monsters (all kinds, including the little known but lately prevalent (to her) idea of fairies-gone-bad)
I’ve tried to compile a group of books that helps these in some way, and it’s been tricky. Books you think might work, don’t (they make you feel worse, because the kid in the book solved the problem while you didn’t); books about monsters turning out to be nice after all get rejected out of hand as too scary; and some books they just refuse to read altogether, apparently smelling a rat in a too-obvious title (How Nancy Learned Not to Be Afraid of Dogs!). And then there’s the whole problem of things backfiring. Like when I told someone about The Boy Who Cried Wolf, and then had that someone spend the rest of the day running around the house and crying “Wolf!” and then laughing hysterically.
So what does work, at least sometimes?
Well, here are a few of the ones we rely on. Note: these categories are really embarrassingly random.
For feeling afraid of getting older and wanting to stay a little kid, we appreciate Little Gorilla. This is pretty much made for little kids (up to 5 or 6 or so) but we here have a 7-year-old who appreciates its message mightily.
For when someone in your class is teasing a fat kid, or you are the fat kid getting teased, or you just want your child to understand that “fat” is not synonymous with bad, there is Bigger Is Better. (Sorry, I couldn't find the link or the book in my house. And let me tell you: don't google this title, because you will be washed away in a river of p*rn, and not the Cobble Street Cousins type). This is more of a YA novel, told first-person, from a girl who is big and wishes everyone would let her be herself and think about something else for a change.
For generalized anxiety (dogs, water, swimming, you name it), Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great made one of my children endlessly happy, just the relief of knowing there was someone like her. Judy Blume is some sort of mad genius with her books, able to reach out and speak a truth that kids connect with so viscerally. We read this aloud to our nervous at-the-time-6-year-old, and it was unadulterated joy.
For the deep hatred and despair that come (for some) with the arrival of a new sibling. We found the brilliance that is Bear and Roly Poly at the bottom of a bin at a church book sale, and I don't even know why we took it home with us, but boy am I glad that we did. It pulls an amazing power move by casting the little girl as the mommy, and her favorite toy bear as her child. The new baby's role is played by a new toy, a GIANT panda, far, far bigger than Bear, her original teddy bear. The physical representation of the interloper as overwhelmingly larger, louder, and more alien seemed to reach some intense inner core of pain for our older one, and she really grasped onto the whole thing, including the welcoming of the Other into their world by the end. It's pretty high on the pastel-pretty things-little girl scale, but I know more than a few boys who have felt its touch on their hearts just as surely as my girl did. It was just intensely healing. Go figure.
I will try to think of more of these (and then, of course, there are the nonfiction ones) and put them in another post. Are there any books that have saved you?
What they're reading now.
Child No. 1: Warriors Field Guide: Secrets of the Clans This series is so nutty, sure to be the subject of some future post. This book is like a guidebook to all the cats and their relationships.
Child No. 2: Little Town on the Prairie We're just about to get to the minstrel show, which is so amazingly disturbing.
This is what I tell Child No. 2, who is the one who seems most in need of comfort after a day of school. There are, of course, the usual odd assortment of bumps and trials, and then there are the recurring ones. Each child has her own, of course, but for Child No. 2, the big ones seem to be:
Fear of growing up
Fear of losing her teachers, parents
Dread of mean girls
Fear of monsters (all kinds, including the little known but lately prevalent (to her) idea of fairies-gone-bad)
I’ve tried to compile a group of books that helps these in some way, and it’s been tricky. Books you think might work, don’t (they make you feel worse, because the kid in the book solved the problem while you didn’t); books about monsters turning out to be nice after all get rejected out of hand as too scary; and some books they just refuse to read altogether, apparently smelling a rat in a too-obvious title (How Nancy Learned Not to Be Afraid of Dogs!). And then there’s the whole problem of things backfiring. Like when I told someone about The Boy Who Cried Wolf, and then had that someone spend the rest of the day running around the house and crying “Wolf!” and then laughing hysterically.
So what does work, at least sometimes?
Well, here are a few of the ones we rely on. Note: these categories are really embarrassingly random.
For feeling afraid of getting older and wanting to stay a little kid, we appreciate Little Gorilla. This is pretty much made for little kids (up to 5 or 6 or so) but we here have a 7-year-old who appreciates its message mightily.
For when someone in your class is teasing a fat kid, or you are the fat kid getting teased, or you just want your child to understand that “fat” is not synonymous with bad, there is Bigger Is Better. (Sorry, I couldn't find the link or the book in my house. And let me tell you: don't google this title, because you will be washed away in a river of p*rn, and not the Cobble Street Cousins type). This is more of a YA novel, told first-person, from a girl who is big and wishes everyone would let her be herself and think about something else for a change.
For generalized anxiety (dogs, water, swimming, you name it), Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great made one of my children endlessly happy, just the relief of knowing there was someone like her. Judy Blume is some sort of mad genius with her books, able to reach out and speak a truth that kids connect with so viscerally. We read this aloud to our nervous at-the-time-6-year-old, and it was unadulterated joy.
For the deep hatred and despair that come (for some) with the arrival of a new sibling. We found the brilliance that is Bear and Roly Poly at the bottom of a bin at a church book sale, and I don't even know why we took it home with us, but boy am I glad that we did. It pulls an amazing power move by casting the little girl as the mommy, and her favorite toy bear as her child. The new baby's role is played by a new toy, a GIANT panda, far, far bigger than Bear, her original teddy bear. The physical representation of the interloper as overwhelmingly larger, louder, and more alien seemed to reach some intense inner core of pain for our older one, and she really grasped onto the whole thing, including the welcoming of the Other into their world by the end. It's pretty high on the pastel-pretty things-little girl scale, but I know more than a few boys who have felt its touch on their hearts just as surely as my girl did. It was just intensely healing. Go figure.
I will try to think of more of these (and then, of course, there are the nonfiction ones) and put them in another post. Are there any books that have saved you?
What they're reading now.
Child No. 1: Warriors Field Guide: Secrets of the Clans This series is so nutty, sure to be the subject of some future post. This book is like a guidebook to all the cats and their relationships.
Child No. 2: Little Town on the Prairie We're just about to get to the minstrel show, which is so amazingly disturbing.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Work, Writers, Work!
A moment to express my deep appreciation for an author whose work is fast receding from us: Byron Barton.
Why the hell is this stuff so good? Whence the comfort? Why is/was it that I didn't even mind reading it over and over and over and over?
When I had to read/sing Wheels on the Bus over and over I wanted to throw the book out the window. Yet, when I come to that excellent last page of the seminal Machines at Work, "More work tomorrow!" it just makes me feel oddly comforted. As if it was the voice of some calm person, patiently discussing the ways of the world with me. And the ways of the world were predictable, and that was good.
And yes, my kids are long past the age of reading these, and soon even my nephews will leave his heavily-bordered illustrations behind. But I will always love them.
More work tomorrow.
What they're reading now.
Child No. 1: Dragon Song
Child No. 2: If You Lived in the Time of the Northwest Indians
Why the hell is this stuff so good? Whence the comfort? Why is/was it that I didn't even mind reading it over and over and over and over?
When I had to read/sing Wheels on the Bus over and over I wanted to throw the book out the window. Yet, when I come to that excellent last page of the seminal Machines at Work, "More work tomorrow!" it just makes me feel oddly comforted. As if it was the voice of some calm person, patiently discussing the ways of the world with me. And the ways of the world were predictable, and that was good.
And yes, my kids are long past the age of reading these, and soon even my nephews will leave his heavily-bordered illustrations behind. But I will always love them.
More work tomorrow.
What they're reading now.
Child No. 1: Dragon Song
Child No. 2: If You Lived in the Time of the Northwest Indians
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Kiddie P*rn
I know, I know, it's not really right to go with the shock value title. But it is how I always think of these books. And, to be clear, I'm talking about more p*rn (yes, I have to sue the weird spam sort of spelling because I seem to have freaked out the software) in the sense of pandering to our basest desires, really, so for, say, harried mothers p*rn might be Elizabeth Berg, while for 7-year-old girls it might be The Cobble Street Cousins. Cynthia Rylant, who wrote this series along with about a billion other kids' book series (Henry & Mudge, Poppleton—truly excellent exploits of a kind and nervous pig who is friends with a llama), as well as others too numerous to name, has no shame about giving the people what they want. And when the people want little girls who get to live in their own private attic space (!), above a flower shop run by their pretty young aunt (!!), while their parents go off on a world-wide tour to perform ballet (!!!), well, the whole thing goes on in that vein. There is everything, in this fictional world, that many (not all, certainly) little girls obsess about: cookies, tea parties, pretty little things, nice but safe young men, special talents, etc etc. And I identify, I do. I know what it's like to yearn for that particular comfort that is offered by someone giving you exactly what you want, even (or especially) when that doesn't challenge or stretch you in any way. And the sweetness of the world is so evident. Both my daughters were transfixed by the tiny dollhouse-like world these books created, and I can't explain why some part of me (a very, very small, part) feels somewhat hesitant about them. It's certainly not pap, nor is it the automoton-like facistic niceness that is regurgitated all over the page in the Strawberry Shortcake books (God I DETEST Blueberry Muffin, I detest all of them) or the My Little Pony Books. Those books seem to make sweetness into a fondant of some kind, that is suppose to be spread over little girls, shutting them up into a sugary tomb of niceness. But even in these really good Cousins books there is something that tugs at me slightly uncomfortably, when they come up in the reading cycle. It's probably unfair of me. They do bring great, great joy to my girls, and I love them for that, and I admire their...purity is the only real name I can come up with for it. But still. There's something.
What they're reading now
Child No. 1: Alice, Let's Eat! by Calvin Trillin (she reads it over and over, it just tickles her)
Child No. 2: George and Martha Tons of Fun by James Marshall (what an excellent book this is!)
What they're reading now
Child No. 1: Alice, Let's Eat! by Calvin Trillin (she reads it over and over, it just tickles her)
Child No. 2: George and Martha Tons of Fun by James Marshall (what an excellent book this is!)
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Those *Mothers*
This blog more or less all came out of my discomfort with Ma. Also with Mama. These two ladies, of Little House on the Prairie and the All of a Kind Family series respectively, have been hovering like shaming specters over everything I do. Every difficulty I have pales beside theirs, and even so they consistently manage to display grace, affection, patience, prudence, etc etc all the while raising their children to be SO MUCH BETTER BEHAVED THAN MINE.
It's...frustrating.
Yes, yes, I know: they're fictional. That gives them, no doubt, a decided advantage. But they're only very cursorily fictional. They're clearly modeled, after all, on the authors's mothers. And it all has, to my ears (eyes?) at least, the very strong appearance of truth. They were just better, is the truth of it. Better at being parents, wives, at teaching children to behave, at cleaning their houses for certain, at somehow doing it all with an often-referred to gentleness that is the most uncomfortable superiority of all. It has gotten to the point where I dread to read each night's installment for fear it will point out some new way in which they calmly triumphed over a grasshopper plague while holding their children to a standard that will always serve them well blah blah blah.
So far as I can tell, the only bright spot is that the child who has all of this read to her—my child, that is—has so far not appeared to notice any embarrassing, er, contrasts, between her own mother and Ma. She seems, instead, to be ignoring the adults entirely in favor of Laura, much as I did myself and for which I am extremely grateful. So it's only myself I have to blame when I lie there in the dark, that night's chapter read, worrying: why don't I try Mama's trick of a happy song that makes children eat vegetables? Why don't I hide a penny so they can try to find it when they're dusting? Why haven't they ever dusted, anyway? Why haven't I ever dusted? How does a person even dust?
It gets demoralizing.
And that, too, is part of what I would wish to change. A better way to look at them, these mothers, and that is to be inspired (yes, yes, except for Ma's troubling racism, which I will try to address more another time). That would be so nice, wouldn't it?
What they're reading now:
child no. 1: 101 Ways to Bug Your Teacher, Muse Magazine
child no. 2: Little Town on the Prairie, The Smart Girl's Guide to Friendship Troubles
It's...frustrating.
Yes, yes, I know: they're fictional. That gives them, no doubt, a decided advantage. But they're only very cursorily fictional. They're clearly modeled, after all, on the authors's mothers. And it all has, to my ears (eyes?) at least, the very strong appearance of truth. They were just better, is the truth of it. Better at being parents, wives, at teaching children to behave, at cleaning their houses for certain, at somehow doing it all with an often-referred to gentleness that is the most uncomfortable superiority of all. It has gotten to the point where I dread to read each night's installment for fear it will point out some new way in which they calmly triumphed over a grasshopper plague while holding their children to a standard that will always serve them well blah blah blah.
So far as I can tell, the only bright spot is that the child who has all of this read to her—my child, that is—has so far not appeared to notice any embarrassing, er, contrasts, between her own mother and Ma. She seems, instead, to be ignoring the adults entirely in favor of Laura, much as I did myself and for which I am extremely grateful. So it's only myself I have to blame when I lie there in the dark, that night's chapter read, worrying: why don't I try Mama's trick of a happy song that makes children eat vegetables? Why don't I hide a penny so they can try to find it when they're dusting? Why haven't they ever dusted, anyway? Why haven't I ever dusted? How does a person even dust?
It gets demoralizing.
And that, too, is part of what I would wish to change. A better way to look at them, these mothers, and that is to be inspired (yes, yes, except for Ma's troubling racism, which I will try to address more another time). That would be so nice, wouldn't it?
What they're reading now:
child no. 1: 101 Ways to Bug Your Teacher, Muse Magazine
child no. 2: Little Town on the Prairie, The Smart Girl's Guide to Friendship Troubles
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