At 9:30 this morning, the last load of laundry for the weekend went into the washer. 9:30am. On Friday.
The birthday present for the surprise party Husband and I are attending tonight? Was purchased and wrapped last Friday. One whole week early.
The new blouse I am going to wear? The black, silk, sleeveless, gorgeous, new blouse? I planned out the rest of the outfit last night, which includes even special "foundation garments" that have already been purchased and are just lying in wait.
[You know where this is going, don't you? You have that feeling of doom? The one I should have had when I realized everything was falling so nicely into place? Oh, yes, yes, you do.]
The fact that I kept forgetting to call the sitter, despite being so excited about an evening out with my husband at a swanky jazz club? Doesn't matter because my delightful neighbor offered to have the kids for a sleep-over with her son, and insisted that I bring them over an hour before we have to leave, so that I can have time to shower and do make-up and get ready like a proper grown up. And then the children will sleep over, so we not only don't have to pay a small fortune to a sitter: we also don't have to be home at any particular time, and we don't have to be worried that someone will creep into our room in the middle of the night...
By 1:00 this afternoon, I had spent an hour and a half volunteering at my son's school doing a creative and engaging art project with the class while teaching them about the great Louis Comfort Tiffany. The grocery shopping was all done and put away, and I had even organized the pantry to boot.
And then, at 1:23? It all came crashing down.
Hello, stomach flu. Not the slightest bit nice to see you. As much as my poor daughter hates you right now? I hate you even more.
It is a fair bet, however, that my son will not catch this bug from her. How do I know, you ask? Because he is supposed to attend a birthday party tomorrow. One for which there is no present as yet purchased, let alone wrapped. One for which I am not even sure the location and will certainly have to scramble to determine the where and when. And because we are completely unprepared for this party, nothing will stand in the way of his attendance.
Just as, because I am completely prepared for the jazz club birthday tonight, with its famous chef, and its grown up conversation, and its black silk attire, and its empty house afterwards, I will not be able to attend.
Because that is the Birthday Party Principle.
If you are the mother of a pre-schooler.
Friday, February 18, 2011
The Birthday Party Principle
Friday, February 11, 2011
Signs of Love
With the Holiday of Romance just around the corner, I've been thinking a lot about what constitutes the romantic.
Remember back in elementary school, where the litmus test of a good Valentine's Day was if the brown paper bag hanging on the back of your chair was pleasantly full? Back in those cruel days, not everyone's mother made them address a card to every kid in the class--so it was perfectly possible to have many more or far fewer cards than your classmates. The really really good cards came with a candy heart tucked into the envelope, and--if your own three hours of deep deliberation over who should get which card was any indication--those tiny bright pink stamped letters meant something. Sure, maybe Matt K. had tucked a candy heart into every Valentine he addressed, and maybe his mother (like yours) made him designate a card for each kid in the class, but surely the fact that the candy heart you received said "YOU'RE GREAT" meant he liked you. And not just liked you the way that he liked sandwiches, but liked you liked you. [Those sighs you hear in the background are the expression of the deep longings of the ten-year-old heart.]
And then at some point, paper bags taped on the backs of chairs were totally for babies.
And that year, Matt K. gave Kristen an actual Hallmark card. AND a flower. A real, live, long-stemmed carnation. [Those whooshing sounds you hear in the background are the wildfire-quick spreadings of twelve-year-old gossip.]
[That silence you hear is middle school. During which time no one knows anything about how to behave, in love or otherwise.]
In high school, Valentine's Day was saved from utter humiliation only by a circle of girlfriends who, thank goodness, understood the unspoken rule that it was deeply important to order Beta Club carnations to send to each other, so that by second period, all of you would be wearing multiple corsages. You were bedecked and therefore beloved. And if no boy had written any message on a Beta Club order form and chosen you a red flower, well, no one else was any the wiser. [If you listen carefully, you will hear the quiet ache of unrequited love beating beneath those giggles.]
Somewhere along the way, your notions of romance evolved (not coincidentally, the boys you liked evolved too, if "evolved" means "grew up a little"). They began to include long walks in snowstorms, stories read aloud to each other over the phone, mix-tapes, home-made chocolate cakes, large envelopes full of small papers covered in poetry.
And then, the epitome of romance: the unsigned Valentine. Tucked under your dorm-room door, this English tradition amazed you with its profundity. What could be more romantic than a small, home-made card containing a typed poem and a message of love and clever clues as to the identity of the sender? How about TWO such cards? Both unsigned. Both expressing admiration and a crush. Both leaving you to speculate about who among your circle was thus half-declaring himself? [That sparkle you hear is a young heart filling with the wonder of potential delight.]
As an adult, the love has been less tinged with mystery. It has been more deeply felt, no doubt--declared in an over-sized, wonderfully home-made Valentine of proposal; in sushi-dinner traditions; in cards expressing love and given on no particular date but just because it seemed a good day to say so. It has been more stable, less agonizing. More journey, less quest. [That hum you hear is the warmth of contentment.]
It cannot be denied that there was something perversely appealing in the mystery. That the uncertainty, while filled with ache, also carried the excitement of anticipation...the mystery of not knowing whether he liked you liked you or not...the mystery of wondering whether anyone, ever, would kiss you--especially if he would...the mystery of whether this one was the one.
The romance of the uncharted waters, like the unsigned Valentine, carried a wealth of potential.
[That crack you hear is the realization that potential does not always materialize.]
[That smile you hear is the realization that you do not ever have to be fifteen again.]
[That tearing you hear is the opening of a hand-made, crayon-lettered Valentine addressed to "Mama."]
[That deep breath you hear is the realization that signs of love, thankfully, abound in your life. And you do not ever have to be fifteen again.]
Monday, February 7, 2011
Happy Birthday, Charlie, Old Boy!
Charles Dickens was born Feburary 7, 1812. If he were still alive, he'd be 199 years old. Since I read something written by him at least once every semester, he seems more "alive" to me than dead -- and I find it somewhat astonishing to be forced to recall that, in fact, his best work is over 150 years old. It's not like this makes me feel old; after all, I was never at any of the raucous parties at which he famously trotted out magic tricks or kept the entire company in stitches till 2am. But it does make me feel a little in awe of the fact that some authors can manage to write things that are still worth reading all that long time later. You may beg to differ, of course. Especially if you are no fan of nineteenth-century prose. But if you love a madcap, eccentric character, or a detailed description so vivid you can see the place as if it were right before your eyes, you have to love at least bits of Dickens's work.
Though I have nothing particularly profound to say today about the man himself, I thought I would repost something I wrote about him two years ago, which might make you laugh. Some of the items on this list (Dickens's Facebook meme) will be funnier if you've ever read any of his novels -- and some of them suggest he wasn't just a chuckling old grandfatherly type. But there's truth to be found buried in the criticism, I'd wager, and I'm not sure even the old boy himself would disagree. So, without further ado, I give you:
Being But an Incomplete List of the Idiosyncrasies that Together Form the Better Part of One Man's Existence in the Present Age
by Charles Dickens
1. My life has been filled with the best of times. (The worst of times I choose not to mention.)
2. When I was a child, my father called me "Chuckles," in jesting reference to my less than enthusiastic reaction on being taken from school and sent to work in a blacking factory to help pay his debts.
3. The schoolmaster Mr. M'Choakumchild is based on a real teacher in my grammar school, who did his best to educate me according to his own philosophy (until I was sent to work in a blacking factory). I found his real name, Mr. Gentlesweet, to be odiously inappropriate. I am of the opinion that a name should reveal something accurate of a man's character.
4. And that children should not be sent to work in blacking factories.
5. I feel a desperate urge to throw stones every time I visit the Crystal Palace Exhibition. However, my friend Wilkie argues even I could not excuse such behavior in an immense glass-house by blaming the sparrows, which are an avowed annoyance. Pity.
6. I have a particular fondness for an elegant turn of phrase; and find that a descriptive passage, when once properly constructed, veritably takes on a life of its own and brings before the reader a vision of such power and vividness as to render him almost breathless.
7. I am paid by the page for my prose.
8. I have never read the whole of Bleak House.
9. My mother was a pretty, silent, persevering, delicate, loving, little thing. Had it not been for my father, she would have been quite perfect.
10. I would like to write more romantic scenes in my fiction and cannot fathom why I am unable to do so successfully.
11. My wife, Catherine, has chosen lilac for the drawing-room. I cannot abide lilac. I am not convinced she has considered this carefully as a means of torturing me; however, she is nothing but indifferent to the tremendous strains and pressures of my extensive work obligations.
12. I like my slippers just so, and my pipe already filled when I retire to the drawing room of an evening. Catherine cannot seem to recall this. I suspect laziness on her part.
13. I have lately lost my ninth child, a sweet infant called Dora, and am most crushed by the loss.
14. My other children are some comfort, but Catherine is positively useless. I cannot think why she is not more supportive of me in my grief. Certainly it affects my writing.
15. I am partial to hand-cut swan quill pens, constructed of right-wing feathers. I do not feel it is too much to ask that my desk be prepared accordingly before I come down to write of a morning.
16. Catherine cannot manage this either. I cannot fathom what she does all day long to make such a simple thing impossible to recall.
17. Once and for all, David Copperfield is not myself. The fact that he is sent to work in a bottle factory, having been removed summarily from school at the age of ten despite his promising intelligence, is merely coincidence.
18. I am of the opinion that every man would do well to mature far beyond the child he once was.
19. I find gruel abhorrent and would rather take nothing at all.
20. I strongly resist attending any dinner party that I reasonably suspect will not end with several games at charades and at least one impromptu set of magical tricks.
21. I have asked my publishers to withhold all mail suggesting plot changes for my novels while they are running serially. Having once been coerced by popular opinion to alter the outcome of a novel, much to my own dissatisfaction, I have sworn firmly to resist such influence forevermore.
22. In my experience, Americans have an ill-formed sense of humour when it comes to considering themselves. However, they have a quite proper respect for fame.
23. I once had an aunt who could not abide donkeys on the village green. She would chase them off with sticks. I used to lure donkeys to the village green with carrots, just to watch her emerge running from her house in her enormous turban (the headwear that had been fashionable in her youth, and that she saw no reason to change on a sudden whim after forty-years' passage of time).
24. I am unaccountably timid of railway travel.
25. I find David Copperfield to be the funniest of the productions of my pen and will be much gratified if the public adjudges it likewise. I should so like to be remembered as a man who could make people laugh.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Blizzard Schmizzard
I know all you meteorologists out there will beg to differ on a technicality, but the Detroit verison of "Snowpocalypse 2011" really is a huge let down. Oh, sure, somewhere around 2am, it was a justifiable blizzard here--all crazy high-pitched wind and snow being hurled at the house so hard it sounded like furious sleet. But the net result is something like six or eight inches of snow cover, which, any way you shovel it, is pretty anti-climactic.
It's hard to tell precisely how much snow we got because the wind sent it drifting to such an extent that it was about four inches deep along the entire length of our driveway on the south side, and eight or ten inches deep along the north side.
So, I guess that counts as some kind of cool blizzard-y phenomenon.
But it's hardly something to write to my sister about. You know, the sister who lives in the Boston area. The one whose house saw 68" of snow in January alone. The one who, without a snow-blower, has been routinely removing 14" or 22" or 26" of snow from her driveway. The one who lost her five-year-old a few times the day they went out to shovel the snow off the back deck because they were worried about how deep it was getting. Lost her. In the snow drifts.
I look out my window, and it just looks like a snowy day. I can't see the grass. The margins between driveway, yard, and street are completely erased in a sea of undifferentiated white. I find it pleasant to be visually marooned this way, drinking coffee laced with heavy cream (I have decided any other kind of coffee is pointless), and reading and writing at my desk. I like the sensation of winter stillness, the muffle of passing cars, the slow sifting downward of heavy flakes.
The stiffness in my back attests to the fact that shoveling this morning was much more work than it has been recently. But NOAA photos notwithstanding,
 |
| Cloud cover over the US as of yesterday afternoon. No small storm system. |
I was all excited for a real, honest-to-goodness, two feet of snow, no one's going anywhere in a hurry, kind of blizzard. I've never been in that kind of snowstorm before, and it sounded fun. (I know, everyone on the East Coast is throwing rotten tomatoes at me right now. Sorry.) It sounded like an adventure.
The word blizzard is vaguely thrilling. Dangerous sounding. Enticing.
We basically got eight inches of snow with the promise of a few more today.
There's a word for that too.
It's winter.
Not that I don't like winter. (See above.) I was just hankering for its more exciting cousin--as I was promised.
The moral? Don't believe the Weather Channel hype.
The good news? Since I long-ago learned that most meteorologists could do with a good dose of look-out-the-window-occasionally-buddy, I sort of already knew that about the Weather Channel. Hence: I didn't run out to the store yesterday in a panic for milk, eggs, or other "essentials" -- so at least I don't have to eat spaghetti-o's for the next two days.