Beloved Books

Hedgehog just asked me, "Mama, what's your favorite story?" "You mean favorite book?" I clarified. "Well, yes, I guess so," she said. But I like the way she put it. Favorite story. We discussed it together, and she absolutely couldn't come up with a single, or even five, favorites. Just couldn't narrow it down.

Here are my five, all pretension aside, the books that honestly mean the most to me in the world.  I can tell you, it wasn't easy:

1. "These Happy Golden Years" by Laura Ingalls Wilder

2. "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" by J.K. Rowling

3. "The Weather in the Streets" by Rosamond Lehmann

4. "Brideshead Revisited" by Evelyn Waugh

5. "We Have Always Lived in the Castle" by Shirley Jackson


Here are Sgt. Pepper's five:


1. "Lord of the Rings" trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkein

2. "Three Men in a Boat" by Jerome K. Jerome

3. "A Thurber Carnival" by James Thurber

4. "The Name of the Rose" by Umberto Eco

5. "Peter Simple" by Frederick Marryat

He insisted that Lord of the Rings is one book. And he would have included all of Patrick O'Brian, but I told him he would have to pick just one book from the series, and he refused on principle.

I think our book choices really tell something about who we are, me and the Sarge.  We both like fantasy and magic, the hopeful idea that there are other worlds beyond and around ours.  We both love a good love story (what's Lord of the Rings if not a love story? And "These Happy Golden Years" is I believe the most beautiful romance ever told).  Then our tastes diverge a bit--Sarge loves best laugh-out-loud funny, and I go for a gloomier sort of diversion...but now, we share a choice of favorite short story: "The Dead" by James Joyce.  However, we each have a completely different interpretation of it, and have argued at length about which is the correct reading...

Well, what are your favorite books?

By the Way, This Child Made Them

Hedgehog has a small business making earrings, and today she set up a table at our block fair to exercise her entrepreneurial spirit. "Mama," she commented. "I think they'll sell better if people know a 7-year-old made them." If you click on the picture, you can see her advertising technique:



Yes, "this child made them".

She sold quite a few pairs, and then lost interest and wandered off with a ten-dollar-bill to explore the fair with her grandma. A few minutes later, she came racing back, bursting with news: "Mama! I found a remote control gorilla for only five dollars!"



Indeed.

Smother Love

Hedgehog had been looking forward all week to a Friday date with her friend (I'll call him Bunny).  She asked me specially to make her favorite treat, "Old-as-Pilgrims Molasses Cookies." I had visions of a cheerful, tidy house smelling cozily of baking ginger and cloves, and happy children playing a board game on the rug while the rain drummed on the skylight.  At 5 p.m. promptly, I would serve roast chicken, biscuits, and a fresh salad on our apple-patterned placemats to my hungry little charges.  

Here's how my day went, and this should tell you just what kind of a self-conscious, trying-too-hard mother I can be: After I dropped Hedgehog  off at school, I went in the rain to procure the ingredients I didn't have on hand.  I also chose some other snacks that would be fun but not too egregiously junk foody: popcorn and Orangina.  I went home, tidied my heart out, prepared the cookie dough (it has to chill for an hour).  Tidied some more, baked the cookies, seasoned the chicken and put it up to bake...I did do some reading for my dissertation in all this homemaking frenzy...

The cookies were very nice:



and the play-date was too. It was quite wholesome and sweet...until the dreaded video game fiasco...Bunny wanted to play a video game, so I asked whether his mother allowed this after school...he said she did...I told them they could, and so they played...in my defense, only for the last 30 minutes of a three-hour playdate...as it turned out, Bunny wasn't allowed, but for one day a week. Only on Sundays, apparently. OH, the guilt. The guilt. All my efforts at being the perfect mama with the coziest house, the most delightful snack, were ultimately for naught as my poor showing of in loco parentis was made manifest...the only thing noted and subsequently remembered would be this, this atrocity...

Okay, back it up, Leah...so, I had a slight lapse in judgment there, but who cares.  After all, it was not my playdate.  I can have my own with my own friends.

I learned something today after getting so overwrought.  I need to back off and let Hedgehog have more space to lead her own life.  I know she's only 7, but I think it's never too early to back off with the smothering "love."  I am taking a solemn oath to do this to the very best of my ability.  So, I swear here before witnesses that I will try not to hover, smother, overwhelm with attention and ego investment, pepper with questions, live vicariously through, or otherwise try to usurp the individuality of my little girl.

Signed,

Leah

I can't promise I won't bake those cookies, however...you can't take everything away from me...

Shaolin Daughter

From my vantage point outside Hedgehog's martial arts class--she had a private lesson today, just by chance--a poorly-lit, clandestine photo.  She was beautiful in class today--her focus and form are impressive.  She's a graceful, tough little girl, so different from the child I was.  I guess that's the best thing about one's children--although they come from you, and learn from you, they're never exactly like you.

It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

This is what I see when I stand in front of our house and look up:



And here's our brick house; apparently, before the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway cut the nabe off from the water, it was located down by the docks, and went through several incarnations as a boarding house and a house of ill-repute (or so they say). It still has the peculiar little warreny rooms and our bedroom has the original tin ceiling.



I drove around Brooklyn doing errands, and ran into a horrendous traffic jam right here:




I panicked and booked, going the wrong way down a one-way street to escape the foul fumes and claustrophobia. Going a different route, I passed this off-duty lunch truck. "White & Hot"? Maybe there's actually a little disco in there:



And this guy, the angry gorilla who presides over a used-car lot. I'm not sure what the advertising concept is. Is he freaking out over the amazing deals? Or is it more like a threat--he'll chase you down if you pass up the amazing deals?


And the wonderful ruined bathhouse, haunted with the ghosts of nude old men:



And a 3rd Avenue mural:

The Thwarted Aspirations of a Would-Be Tupperware Lady

So I had a brainstorm this morning, as I blindly groped my way through the a.m. tasks. Despite how I sometimes try to tart up the truth, I'm pretty much a full-time housewife at this point. Unfortunately, my household doesn't always run as a household should run that's run by a full-time housewife. If you get what I'm saying. Take this morning, for instance. In my mind, I like to think I woke up a good half-hour before Hedgehog, laid out her clothes, made a pot of coffee and poured the juice and scrambled the eggs. Then greeted her, turning from the stove with a bright and cheery smile. The reality is always different. Wake up late? Check. Groggy? Check. Hungover even though I didn't drink? Yup. Stumbling around because I can't find my glasses and I'm blind as a bat without 'em? Mmhmm. Brownies and water for Hedgehog's breakfast? Well yes. Only shoes available are two left ones, one sneaker and one sandal? You betcha.

But as I stood (well, sagged) at the kitchen counter, waiting for the coffee to brew and resurrect me from the twilight sleep of undeath, I grabbed a cookbook at random off my shelf to peruse for dinner ideas. What did I grab? It just so happened to be my Tupperware Picnic Foods of the World cookbook...Tupperware, Tupperware...hmmm...a faint song could be heard in the dimmest recesses of my mind, I think it was "Too Much Too Young." No just kidding. But a light went on in there, and suddenly, just like that, I decided to become a Tupperware Lady. They still exist, you know. I checked it out. Yes, I was going to host a Tupperware party right in my own home, and from there, well, the sky would be the limit...somehow, Tupperware would make me a better housewife, I just knew it.  In the cranky morning over the sink full of dishes, brightly-colored plastic storage solutions seemed like the key to life, the universe, and everything...

As swiftly as my dream was born, it was murdered.  Murdered by Sgt. Pepper not half an hour ago, when he uttered the fateful word: "No."

Gramercy

A warm, bright morning in Gramercy Park, where I actually found a parking spot. Not a hydrant with my four-way flashers going, mind you, or even more luckily a meter, but a real live bona-fide NYC parking space, right across from the Park. So I walked a bit, enjoying the sun through the trees:



and peering into the famous locked park like the envious riff-raff I am to ogle the imprisoned tulips:



and taking an illicit photo of the greener grass in there, trodden upon only by the very lucky few key-holders:



The famous National Arts Club (what goes on in there, one wonders):



Mansard roofs:



And ivy-covered retreats:



Just a few blocks away, I heeded the warning:



and overheard these fine gents discussing their job histories-- "I used to do break-ins, tvs and stuff, I don't any more":



After I ran my errands, I headed home to our street like a Brooklyn bower:




And p.s. if anyone stops by with a ghost story, leave it as a comment on the May 4th post. I'd love to hear it!

Ghost Stories

I've been thinking a lot about ghosts this weekend, as I do periodically. I love the ghost hoax photos of the 19th century (see above), and I love reading ghost stories. I adore getting that chilly spooked feeling--I find it both delightful and heartening. And I will tell you a secret: I do believe in ghosts, as surely as I believe in myself.

Here's my own true ghost story, as it happened to me.

My father died in January 2005, at home, after a long illness. He died in his comfy easy chair, in his living room, with us at his side. The next day, we visited him for the last time at the funeral home. When I bent down to say goodbye, I whispered a little wish, "dad, please, I would love a spooky visitation from you." Just those exact words. I don't know why I did this, except that maybe I didn't want to say a final goodbye, and maybe I knew that he always knew my penchant for the macabre, the eerie, and the supernatural, and might enjoy hearing, and even honoring, this somewhat silly but nonetheless heartfelt request. I felt foolish, but I meant it. Somehow I thought he might understand.

That night, after a restless evening, I settled down to sleep. Out of habit, I placed my cell phone on the bed beside me. I had done this the last night of dad's life, when we left him for a few hours with his carer, to go home and rest a bit. I had programmed his phone so that he could press send and reach me, without having to dial the numbers.

Anyway, I did finally fall asleep and slept soundly until, in the very heavy, chilly dark of an early winter morning, I was startled awake by something. It took me a moment to get my bearings, and then I realized it was my cell phone ringing, insistently ringing right next to me. I grasped for it in the dark room, finding it by the little light of its screen...on which showed, clearly, my father's cell phone number. I blinked, looked again, literally rubbed my eyes to get the sleep out of them...but it was his number. When we left his apartment the day he died, we made sure to leave the cell phone, along with his glasses, the NY Times crossword puzzle, and his familiar gold Cross pen, on the little table next to his easy chair...

In the night, in bed, I picked up my phone and listened. What did I hear? My own voice, a message I had left for my dad on my birthday, January 8th, a week or so before he died. It said "Dad, where are you? I can't get hold of you by phone...call me back if you get this..."

When I hung up the phone, I could see by its clock that it was nearly 4 a.m. I lay there for a long time, until the first light.

And that's my story, and it's all true. I'm still not sure exactly what it means, except that I really like to believe that dad had his odd sense of humor, even after the very end, and I got my "spooky visitation" as I dearly wished I would.

Now I pose it to any readers out there. Do you have a story for us, something that happened to you? If so, I would absolutely love to hear it. Please do share; I know I'm not the only one!

A Post a Day for May

I'm taking this challenge (although I missed May 1). What fun! I shall hold forth on topics I enjoy each and every evening in May. To kick things off, a bit of randomness. First, here's my latest yarn acquisition:



arrayed in my Grandma Eva's fruit bowl. She always had this on her table, full of peaches, pears, and bananas. Doesn't the yarn look a bit like fruit in this context? And what, pray tell, is this stash going to be? Well, that remains to be told, as it's a surprise for the lovely Miss AKPW, and she might run into this post!

And in honor of May Day, for Sissy:

"[H]e does not fulfil himself in his work but denies himself, has a feeling of misery rather than well-being, does not develop freely his mental and physical energies but is physically exhausted and mentally debased. The worker, therefore, feels himself at home only during his leisure time, whereas at work he feels homeless. His work is not voluntary but imposed, forced labour. It is not the satisfaction of a need, but only a means for satisfying other needs."

--Karl Marx

...and Welcome, Whomper

Maybe it's too soon, but the empty cage was making us all feel funny.




So baldly stated, this hamster transaction. There's the food. Then there's the unfortunately named "Hamsteroids," an outsized hamster treat for power nibbling. Then there's the hamster itself. 9.99. Less than ten dollars for a mohawked, whiskered, tufty-butted, whimsical little man. People, I love hamsters. It goes against all sense and reason--the blank, beady eyes, the inexorable movement toward escape. They take everything from us, and give nothing back. But somehow, this household feels incomplete without one.