Small good things

Yesterday Frances and I were reading an I Spy book together. It's one of those books that has pictures alongside the text that can help prod little not-quite-readers to figure out the words. So we were reading and Frances was sounding out the letters, or sometimes guessing based on first letter + picture. And then she looked down at one page and read aloud "I spy... a trumpet!" She looked at me and beamed. And then the next word just came, and then the next. She was wiggling and bouncing with excitement because she was READING. And for me just basking in her delight was a joy.

Of course, she still couldn't read every word. Some she needed to sound out, others stumped her entirely. But she proved to herself she could do it.

Posts I Didn't Write

I've been so busy I haven't been able to do some of the writing I'd like, so I decided to write a post about the things I would have written if I'd had the time.

An experience with illness
I really wanted to write about an early, formative experience with illness. What was it? When I was a girl my mother had a good friend that we called Auntie Dorothy (she wasn't really an aunt, but my family has always had a very liberal definition of extended family). Auntie Dorothy had breast cancer back in the days when breast cancer was the #1 killer of women and research was in its nascent stages. What I remember most is that when she came to visit us (as she did every Christmas to spend the season with us and to visit her doctors), she'd always brush and braid my long hair. She did it because she said it was a good post-masectomy exercise. All I knew was that I loved having someone else brush my hair.

This I Believe
You have no idea how much I've been wanting to write one of these essays! But for now a brief what if? will have to do.

I've been mulling a few ideas. One is on love. I believe love is a gift that we must bestow upon others. It can't be hoarded like a miser's gold. It must be given away.

But I also want to write an essay that starts with the claim I believe in sex education. Because I do, especially now that I am a parent. Why? As a parent of course I want to help my child through all of the big decisions, but the truth is when my kids need to make the really big decisions--like whether or not to smoke, and certainly whether or not to have sex--I won't be there. As a parent, you've got to trust your kids to make the right decisions, and that means empowering them by giving them the knowledge to choose wisely.

Baking

Having searched in vain the other day to find a recent photograph of myself, I realized that no one takes pictures of me anymore, not since I had kids. That's an exaggeration, there are pictures of me of course. There are pictures of me nursing and rocking a newborn to sleep. There are pictures of me holding a baby by her fingertips while she takes a few tentative steps. And there are tons of me holding this kid or that kid in my arms. But there aren't many pictures of just me. That's a pretty good metaphor for how motherhood has changed me. My life is not just about me anymore, my kids are always in the picture.

Take, for example, a photo my husband took a couple of Christmases ago. I'm in the kitchen baking a chocolate cake with my kids. (That's another way motherhood has changed me, I bake more.) My husband likes to take candid shots of us. Mostly they don't quite turn out. Someone—usually my son—moves too much and the photo comes out blurry. But sometimes, as here, everything clicks. The shot is taken through the cutaway between the kitchen and the dining room, so I have to bend down to appear in the frame. We are all leaning in towards each other and our faces occupy the top half of the frame. My son and I are looking right into the camera, my daughter is looking into the bowl. Frances has a gleeful look on her face and a bit of cake batter smudged on her lip. Isaac has a finger poised over the bowl. I am wearing no make-up, and a self-conscious smile that says, "you had to take a picture when I had no make up?" But that's okay, my eyes look a bit tired but I look happy.

What I love about this photo is how well it captures us as a family. Although it was holiday season, there are no signs of the holidays. But baking is one of those things that makes even ordinary days festive, that may be why I like to do it. It is one of life's quotidian pleasures. I don't think my father ever took a picture of my mom and I baking together, but some of my happiest memories are of doing just that, of me and my mother in the kitchen making cookies, and of sneaking a taste of cookie dough past her. And that too is part of what I cherish about this picture, for there I am standing in my mother's kitchen, standing in her place now, the palimpsest of past and present.

Welcome mat

Hey, it may not be much, but it's virtually home, right?

My plan? I'll be doing a bit of blogging right along side all of you, sometimes responding to the same assignments, sometimes not.