I know the seasons are about the change when I log on and see the referrals from Pinterest. Old posts are making the rounds, and it makes me happy, even though this blog is mostly dormant and the plucky bookseller posts are a thing of the past. Life transforms but some threads remain, and thank goodness. It is September and we are in that season between seasons. Ewan turned 5. Posy shot this video of us at Arch Cape at the height of summer and I can already see how much he's grown. In a week or so, the sugar maples will start to turn and it will remind me of the last post, written at the height of my worry. What a difference a year makes. And a teacher. Tomorrow we might go pick some apples, even though the rain is supposed to return after a 60+ day dry spell. We'll put on rain boots and say goodbye to summer. It was a good one. Maybe the best.
I slipped the letter into the mailbox when I went back to get his things. Pink construction paper folded in half, no envelope, “To Lolo” written in purple marker underneath a sideways heart. The dog watched me from the window of the school. It was Saturday morning, and I made sure it stayed safely pinched in the mail slot, in case the dog was a letter-eating type. There was a paper bag on the porch labeled “Ewan,” mostly empty, and I rifled through the contents: a painting, a laminated name card, a potty seat, a water bottle left behind on the last day when I carried him, sobbing, from the classroom to the car. And a self portrait. White page with a black border. His name written in small letters underneath a smiling face. Dots for eyes. No ears. Four individual strands of hair hanging down like noodles. I put the bag in the front seat of the car and suddenly had the urge to toss it all out the window. Unwanted memories. Had they already covered up the space on the wall where the noodle-hair picture had been? Removed his name from the coat rack? Erased.
I drove down Fremont, past the sugar maples turning red, through the stop light, diagnostic jargon running through my head. Hyperlexicchildren are often very outgoing and affectionate with family, but reserved and distant with peers and would be playmates. It was true. It was not true. “Lolo’s new favorite game is 'The Obamas,' Emily told me after one of her weekly visits. Emily, his therapist, but also my only window into that part of his life, knew how much I loved those stories. “She showed him how to walk and wave. He seemed confused, but happy. She wants him to make speeches.” She laughs. “Only if he can read them," I laugh.
Lolo watched, unblinking, as I carried him—all 41 pounds of flailing limbs and muscle and tears, from the downstairs class, through the playground and out the back gate. I’m sorry. Not a good fit. He interrupts the lesson. Reads the boards. Wants to answer all the questions. Can’t sit still. The other children need to learn. Not a good fit. We were as invisible as a howling, writhing alligator is invisible, but the teachers looked away or slipped back inside. The other children wandered off. Except her. She watched from the top of the stairs--a tiny girl in an Elsa dress, staring out from under blunt bangs. I thought I heard her say “come back," but the gate clicked shut.
The year before, he found a book at the bookstore. Friends, by Eric Carle. “Well, it’s no Very Hungry Caterpillar,” I thought as he read it aloud. But he flapped his hands and mimicked the expressions, acting out each page, and the sweetness won me over in the end. There were a lot of questions about “best friends” in the months that followed. Mickey Mouse and Daddy and grandma and I were all contenders. Somehow he began to realize that was not right. That the girl in the story was none of us. He did not know her. He was distraught. And then I hated the book. I hated it for showing him what was missing. I hated it because I did not know if it would ever not be missing. There were no words to reassure him. I put the book on a high shelf, next to a volume of Scandinavian fairy tales--a gift from one of my librarian friends at his baby shower. The shelf for books that are scary.
It seemed like the most natural thing in the world, the way he curled over the pink paper, writing each word with a purple marker as I wiped down the kitchen counters. Except, of course, it wasn’t. Long past the age of needing help with spelling, because that age never existed, his tiny hand, too small for the marker, wrapped around it like a fist. To, the marker scratched, Lolo. “Can you help me make a heart?” he asked, and started with a backward three. I attempted to attach a tail, but it went sideways. He seemed satisfied anyway. I put the letter in my bag, and he asked again to go back. “I miss school.” It had been like that every day. He pulled a workbook out of the cupboard.
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The noodle-haired picture sits on top of the microwave with its smiling face. I can't seem to throw it out. He drew himself happy. He was not welcome and he drew himself smiling with no ears. I thought it might be magical thinking, the way some children draw themselves as superheroes or princesses. It wasn’t. He wrote her a letter. It said, “To Lolo. You are my friend.”
It started with a conversation last spring. Jess Fechtor was in town for the night for a book-signing, and it seemed like the perfect chance to turn an internet friendship into a real-life friendship. She ubered to our house in outer Portland, after dark, in a downpour, and I offered her microwave popcorn and whiskey, because I am a terrible host. After spending her entire night talking to a large crowd about writing and her new book, she sweetly asked me for some hot water with lemon, and then let me take up the rest of her night, talking about writing and her book, listening to me (intently, warmly, because she is amazing like that) yammer on about the last few years. I told her about Ewan, about Hyperlexia, echolalia, about the things in my life that seemed ironic at the very least, fated at most. That I was once a children’s librarian (and later a book-seller) who wanted a child more than anything. And that after four years of waiting, Ewan was born. And that despite a million odds (or one in ten thousand to be exact), my formerly useless, near-encyclopedic knowledge of children’s books, became significant in a way I could not have predicted. They became his language, our language, when language failed. And somewhere in that conversation, she said, “Well that’s a book, you know.” And I knew she was right.
There is no way to separate the books I read and wrote about and sold for years from this story. Or even this blog. And it is new territory, not knowing how to write about them or even where to begin, or if these stories are mine to tell. We still speak in books, Ewan and I, even though he has his own words now. But I can no longer read the last page of Are You My Motherwith any kind of objectivity. I wrote this post, once upon a time, both knowing and not knowing, how differently our lives would unfold. So I am writing now, again, in a completely unfamiliar way. Scenes or maybe chapters or snippets of our life and the books that brought us together. I hope to share things that I am working on here from time to time, to all two (?) or three (?) of you who might still be out there. Time flies like a speed demon. Winter is almost here. There is so much left to write.
When my friend Posy approached me with the idea of adding video to her photography repertoire and asked if we would be her first subjects, I may have cried a little bit. After a year full of extreme highs and lows, it was the greatest gift anyone could have possibly given us. I asked her if I could share the finished video on my blog, and then in a moment of extreme panic, wondered, "Wait. Do I still blog? Do I even remember my password?" Well...no, and no, as it turns out. And yet, here I am. I am not ready to say goodbye to this space, even though I thought I might be, after six months without a computer. It only took four minutes and forty four seconds to change my mind.
Easter has come and gone. Mother’s Day too. Vintage shortsuits were worn with saddle shoes (!) and knee socks (!), and there was a lot of brunch. It seems like there is a lot of brunch in the spring. I spent my first two nights away from Aaron and Ewan in almost three years, on the Oregon Coast. It was notterrible. The strawberries are in full swing out on Sauvie Island (where these photos were taken), and we learned that u-pick with a toddler is both adorable and futile. This summer will likely be hotter than any I can remember here, and I am looking forward to it. I ordered Ewan two new swimsuits from the little boy's section. He will be three in August. I know this in my bones, when I look at him, when I try to pick him up, all limbs and solid muscle, but I also don’t believe it. Listen to me getting ahead of myself. In more ways than one. Tonight is cool and there is still some time unaccounted for. The world is that funny shade of florescent green. New growth. Spring.
What do you do when you’re feeling overwhelmed? Not the day-to-day kind of overwhelmed (although there is always that), but more, cosmically overwhelmed? I am still trying to find a solution. There is melodramatic television. (Hello, Outlander). Friends. Knitting sometimes. The god-forsaken internet. There are the same cookies every Friday. Everyone in this house but me is sick of them (if people can even be sick of cookies), and yet I keep making them? The same meals are on rotation (sorry, New Year’s resolutions). The same walks. The dogs are bored out of their minds. I sing to myself, mostly old songs. Hymns from my childhood. Listen to Sibyelle Baier and Angel Olsen on repeat. There is a stack of unread New Yorkers and three unopened library books on the nightstand. I taped this Rilke quote to the bathroom mirror. It mostly works. Except for when it doesn’t.
Reading rut not withstanding, I started Sally Mann's autobiography this week and finished it in a few days. I think the book is good, even great sometimes (although often problematic), but more than that, it was what I needed. I wonder about what Ewan needs. That is the understatement of the century. It leaves me reeling, all the ways I champion him and fail him every day. I am not doing a very good job of keeping track of his reading habits here, although I wish I was. Those posts matter more to me than all the others. There is one post, long overdue, about picture books involving letters and numbers and how we have read EVERY ONE IN THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE a million times over these last six months. I now consider myself an expert in the field. Albeit a narrow, only-interesting-to-a-small-handful-of-children, sort of field. Maybe I will still write it. There is a lot of comfort in a story about letters. There are only (ever) 26 of them. Finite things in an infinite world. I think I know exactly what he’s after.
Spring is here, approximately two months early. I am knitting. Not well, but there you have it. A hurdle overcome after only a decade or so of trying. Quarter-life crisis in full swing. I have ripped out and re-started the same project an infuriating number of times, but that's okay. Knitting, even bad knitting with a lot of swearing, is just as calming as everyone says. The process is still a mystery to me. Why does it work? Seriously. I do not understand it AT ALL. If I make a mistake I have to rip everything out and start again. If I read too far ahead in the pattern or try to think about the big picture, I start to hyperventilate. One stitch at a time. Stitch, stitch, stitch. This is good practice for a parent. Or maybe just me. It's different than sewing in that way. You don't need to hold all the pieces in your head or think about what's next. One stitch. Then another. Then hey, congratulations, you made a hat.
I wouldn't be doing any of this if it wasn't for you, so thank you for all your encouragement and advice and just generally being fantastic people. Alicia reminded me about this piece she wrote awhile back on learning to knit, and you should probably drop everything and read it. I remember being very moved by it back then, but even more so now--to tears, actually. This is a knitting season of my life. I'm glad to have it. Glad for what it means. I still have to watch my hands closely (see previously mentioned swearing), so I have been listening to a lot of podcasts while I work: Dear Sugar (YES THIS IS A THING), Spilled Milk, and Radiolab, my old standby. I put Ewan to bed, and then put him back to bed, and then back again, and then put on my headphones and pour myself a bourbon and get to work. Fergus steals my ball of yarn like some freaking cartoon caricature of a cat. The dogs snore like dragons. It works, is what I'm saying. Quiet mind. Busy hands.
And then you have spring. Which is here, despite the odds, despite ten feet of snow elsewhere in the country. So much for my Hygge. Spring in Portland is really something. Cotton candy trees and the sky full of birds. I had no idea spring was actually like this outside of Eloise Wilkin illustrations, until I moved here from the California desert eight years ago. The desert has seasons to be sure, but they are subtle--a change in the quality of air, of wind. Maaaaybe some cactus blooming. Old retirees stop wearing socks with their sandals. (Just kidding, they never stop wearing socks with their sandals.) Spring here is basically drunk by comparison. Flowers spilling out everywhere. It seems impossible. Not unlike knitting. So we are partners in amazement, the two year old and I. We take walks. I tell him the names of the trees: plum, cherry, oak, apple, pear. He beheads a daffodil every ten feet. I find sticks and rocks and other flower casualties tucked in the front pockets of his overalls. Dirt pours out when I let down the cuffs.
The sun has been shining for ten days straight and I am trying not to think of the drought I know is coming, the dry and snowless Sierra Nevada's. We feed the ducks on Sundays. I am reading plenty: Dinner: A Love Story, by Jenny Rosenstrach, One More Thing, by B.J. Novak, and Slouching Towards Bethlehem, by Joan Didion, which I am embarrassed to say I never read in college like the good Gen-Y'er I claim to be. There are matchbox cars everywhere and on everything in my house and if someone hasn't invented a life insurance policy specifically for "death by slipping on matchbox car" then they really need to get on that already. I am making plans for my first weekend away from Ewan and Aaron since before I was pregnant, and I am a little bit worried but mostly excited. I am knitting. It is March. Impossible and beautiful.
"Make quiet for Emily Dickinson. Sing gently a hymn in between the heaves of storm. Let the top of your head lift. See? There are spaces between things. What you thought was nothing-ness carries the life of it."
"With Margaret Atwood and Doris Lessing you will learn to stiffen your spine, when to laugh and throw the drink back, when to weep and with whom, when to pick up a rifle. Jeanette Winterson will make a small thing enormous as the cosmos. Toni Morrison will let you cry home the passage. Leslie Marmon Silko whispers the story is long. No, longer. Longer than that even. Longer than anything."
"With Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath drink at the bar. Laugh the dark laughter in the dark light. Sing a dark drunken song of men. Make a slurry toast. Rock back and forth, and drink the dark, and bask in the wallow of women knowing what women know. Just for a night."
"With Virginia Woolf there will perhaps be a long walk in a garden or along a shore, perhaps a walk that will last all day. She will put her arm in yours and gaze out. At your backs will be history. In front of you, just the ordinary day, which is of course your entire life. Like language. The small backs of words. Stretching out horizonless."
Still making friends with non-fiction. Finishing upThe Chronology of Water. Filing this chapter, under "Things I Want to Remember."
These photos were taken while visiting Aaron's family up in the Canadian Rockies just after Christmas. I offer them to you not only as proof that we have been alive and well (sorry, blog!), but also because look at that snow! What I wouldn't give for snow right now. It was a dreamland, I tell you. We had one small storm in Portland last year, so we weren't sure if Ewan would remember what snow was like. We talked about it a lot beforehand. Watched the Daniel Tiger, "Snowflake Day," episode four thousand times. Of course, when we got there he just acted like he'd been around snow his entire life and cried every time we asked him to come inside. The Canadian genes are strong with this one. So dear universe, Ewan and I would like some snow now, please. You know where to find us.
I beg for snow in January because January here is tough. Actually, all of the months until March are tough. Winter in Portland means low, looooow clouds and freezing rain with a side of seasonal affective disorder. It can be hard to get pumped about the new year when all you want to do is binge-watch Netflix and drink soup from a mug. I'm not really a resolution person, but I do like the idea of taking stock. Looking back at the past year and figuring out what worked and what I still suck at. And I want to start the year out on a positive note, not rocking under a sun lamp somewhere. So after reading this piece by one of my longtime favorite bloggers, I decided to make some small, attainable goals that don't make me hyperventilate, and possibly tackle my loathing for this season once and for all. In no particular order they are:
1. Play more music. We spent nearly all of December at the piano singing Christmas carols (with Ewan jamming on the triangle LOL), and it brought me right back to my own childhood. Someone was always playing or singing or harmonizing, or putting on a show. I'm sure my parents owned a lot of earplugs. Even though we play our instruments regularly, both Aaron and I want it to become a daily habit. I checked out a giant stack of piano and ukelele books for kids from the library, and we've been adding a song or two a day to our repetiore. I'm no Zoe Deschanel, but after nearly every song, Ewan says, "Wow! SO singing! Thanks mama!" and then I fall on the floor and die.
2. Make one new dish every week. I desperately need to shake things up in the recipe department. I want to cut myself some slack since I solo parent almost every night (oh the glamorous life of a chef's wife) and I always cook from scratch even though I haaaaate cooking, but I am FULL of excuses when it comes to trying new things. My goal is to add 52 new dishes to the rotation by the end of year and then declare myself a culinary goddess. Just kidding. Kind of. If anyone has any cheese-free recipes they'd like to share, especially of the one-pot variety, I'm all ears/eyes. Ewan has hated cheese basically since he started eating solid foods, and I know it's a battle I will never win. Also, WHO DOESN'T LIKE CHEESE? If you need me, I'll just be shoveling an entire block of sharp cheddar in my face after bedtime every night.
3. Hygge. I've read about it before--the Danish concept of "cozy," but decided to put it into practice this year. Especially if I want to make it to March unscathed. At first it seemed kind of ridiculous to light a fire in the fireplace every night and light every damn candle in the house and spend too much money on brunch and brew endless pots of tea for just me, myself, and I, but years previous have taught me that not doing those things takes a much bigger mental toll. So even if this isn't the snowy tundra, I'm trying to apply the principal in earnest. Now if I can just resist the daffodil bunches in front of Trader Joe's until it is actually SPRING, I'll consider it a victory.
4. Read more non-fiction. Honestly, I could just type "read more" and leave it at that, but non-fiction has been weirdly integral in finding my reading grove after becoming a parent. I love YA and kid-lit, obviously, but in my former life, I liked my books long, complicated, and preferably Russian. I beat myself up about it, until Aaron got a New Yorker subscription and I realized I could read small sections of non-fiction without falling asleep or feeling taxed. (And holy cow you guys, I just noticed that an all access subscription is only $12 on Amazon right now, WHAT THE WHAT?!) Suddenly I am reading again, and it feels really good. I've finished Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar (loved), Wild (did not love), Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant? (brilliant), Yes Please, and Not That Kind of Girl (both fun). I re-read Holy the Firm for the millionth time, and just started The Chronology of Water. So if you have any other non-fiction to recommend, please feel free to share them in the comments!
5. Learn to Knit. Or maybe crochet? I don't know. All I know is that I can't do either and it's not for lack of trying. Already, two very dear people have tried to teach me to knit, and I don't know how to explain it, but I've never felt so clumsy in my life. I'm not sure why I could never get the hang of it. I used to love to quilt and sew, and still do, but I've realized that this is just not a sewing season in my life. But I think it could be a knitting or crocheting season? if I could just figure out how, and figure out the best way to learn. I've heard good things about private lessons through local fiber shops (luckily PDX is full of them), but maybe there is a book out there I should read instead? Or YouTube videos? Seriously, I have no idea. Maybe some of you lovely Fiber Arts people could steer me in the right direction? And also weigh in about the difference between learning to crochet vs. knit? I would very much appreciate it.
And that's it. Or at least it's a start. When I think about what's ahead, I keep coming back to this one corny little song. I mean, it's SO corny, but makes me weep nonetheless. I am getting sappy in my old age. Every time I play it for Ewan on the ukelele, he sings along at top volume in his sweet, small voice. "A wiiiiiiiiife dat's good!"
Hello! How have you been? How was your November? I had big plans to be on time with holiday wishes for you folks in the States, along with a quick advent calendar post, but it's suddenly the 4th of December and I'm not sure how that happened. (Time machine? Sleep deprivation? Too much whiskey?) There is maybe the chance that one or two of you are still looking to throw together a sweet and easy advent calendar for the small people in your life, so here I am with the most belated (and possibly redundant) post of all time! I have to admit I was confused by the concept of the modern "advent calendar." I have a few vague childhood memories of paper calendars with tiny windows you could open on each day of December, revealing a little scene from the nativity. But that's about it. I grew up celebrating advent in my family...but, you know, actualAdvent. With a capital "A." Advent was a time of spiritual reflection: lighting special candles each Sunday, reading poems or scriptures. It was about reverence and tradition and, I realize now, silencing the noise and consumerism that typically fuels the Christmas season. As a kid I hated those Sundays (so boring! so stuffy! such itchy tights!), but I get it now and I love it. I carry on the tradition in my own home and look forward to it every year.
But hey! it's 2014 and Pinterest exists. There are suddenly "advent calendars" everywhere. And people are into them. Homemade, store bought, full of candy, or toys, or just... activities? It's perplexing. For one hot second, I started to think my kid (or future kids) would be disappointed if I didn't jump on the bandwagon, but then realized how insane that sounded, and promptly stepped away from the computer. I mean, I like the concept of a countdown calendar centered around winter/holiday activities, but the very idea of putting one together sounded like a logistical nightmare. Factor in a toddler with SPD, and obvious holiday activities like driving around to see the lights, riding the Holiday Express Train, going to the Nutcracker, meeting Santa, shopping, etc, were all completely out of the question. In fact, most holiday activities are a total nightmare for kids with different processing needs, so goodbye advent calendar! It was great not knowing you.
We were at the library browsing through the holiday books a few days later, when it finally occurred to me that we could do an "advent calendar" in our own way. The Book-Scout and her sensitive child way. Screw Pinterest. We checked out 25 holiday (and winter) books. I tried to make sure they were toddler appropriate--so no Gift of the Magi, or you know, Dickens. I picked up a bag of round wooden numbers at our local craft store, one for each day, and hot-glued them to some popsicle sticks we already had on hand. Viola. The Book-Scout Advent Calendar. Fifteen minutes to make, a total cost of $2.50, and already a huge hit with my tiny bookworm. He is especially into numbers and counting at the moment, so asking him to find the book with the right number each night after dinner is basically the most exciting thing that has ever happened to him. It's also been a neat way to get to know different stories within the Christmas tradition, and I want to continue to include books from across as many cultures and countries as possible, just like we do in our every day reading. Best of all are the few minutes of quiet and calm I get to spend with my boy at the end of these long, long days, in the busiest of all months. In December, it feels like the rarest thing. Because it is.
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These are the books we checked out this year, but feel free to share any of your new or old favorites in the comments! It was very last minute, so we used only what was on the library shelves (no holds, etc.), but next year I might take some more time to curate it and check out a few more titles from the list we all put together last December.
I'm Andrea. A former librarian turned SAHM, in Portland, OR. I write about life and parenthood and books for kids. And teens. Or maybe you. I won't tell.