Molly and the Middle East

I'm lying in bed with my latest book propped up against my knees. A sickly Molly is lying beside me because her illness has been concerning despite antibiotics. I'm exhausted but she's not tired.

"Molly, you need to go to sleep. I'm doing research."

She loves to "do research" with me. So, really wanting her to go to sleep, I realize I shouldn't have said this but, oh well. You can't unring a bell.

"So, tell me about that fancy pen of yours," she says, smiling up at me. It's often easy to forget that she's only two but, at this moment, the fact that she's only two has hit me. Hard.

"It's a highlighter," I explain, a sense of dread creeping up on me because I have taught her not to write in or otherwise destroy books. Could I really end up unravelling a couple of years' worth of her learning in this regard, end up changing her relationship with books?

"How does it work? How do you draw with it?"

"Well, you don't draw with it. Sometimes, in special circumstances, in special books, for special reasons like research, you use it to mark words that you want to remember."

She's really happy to learn, I think, that she may one day be able to write in books and she asks me to show her what highlighting a word actually means.

It's not a "dry" read by any means -- a memoir of travels in a Middle Eastern country -- but I can't imagine a two-year-old enjoying it or that I may be able to edit effectively as I read. But she wants me to read aloud.

"It's about a country called Iran," I tell her. "It's part of the Middle East."

"Could we travel to there?"

I pause. I don't want to tell her about visas and the difficulties one apparently encounters while trying to secure them. She is, after all, only two.

"Yes, we can one day."

She smiles and hugs me. For a moment, I imagine the two of us travelling to the far reaches of the globe together.

"We can travel there now, tho', in our imaginations. We can pretend we're there. Books help us do that. You can go all over the world by reading books."

And I start reading to her. There's really nothing obviously inappropriate in the passages I've reached thus far and, when something questionable arises, I omit it. If she notices, she doesn't let on. She listens attentively as the narrator recounts how his faith in humanity has been restored following an act of kindness by locals.

Time has stopped for a brief period. I'm no longer thinking that it doesn't feel like 8:30 at night; I no longer feel exhausted. As the story escapes my mouth and the words fall and settle between us, there's a calm sense that she and I have started something that we'll always love to do together.

Notes / A Mummy-and-Molly moment

During dinner last night, I can see from the corner of my eye that Molly is trying to get out of her booster chair. She's on her stomach, her legs dangling, and she's kind of squirmy.

"What are you doing?" I ask matter-of-factly.

"Trying to get out of my chair," she says.

"How's that going?"

"Not well."

Vendredi et le week-end

As I half expected, enrolling Devyn in French Immersion resulted in a hybrid language being spoken around the house -- this I was assurred is the first step towards bilingualism.

"Maman, est-ce que je peux une boire de l'eau? Thanks!"

"Combien de jours until Vendredi?"

"Mummy, quel jour is it? Vendredi?

Vendredi is very important in our house. It's Devyn's show-and-share day though the show part of the equation has pretty much been eliminated by now and she simply gets to speak of something important.

I get almost daily updates from the teacher that Devyn is speaking more freely in class, that she is doing very well, that she learns best when something new is introduced with music (e.g., a song).

I've had to re-learn and improve my French and Keith, well, he simply has never forgotten. In fact, Devyn's teacher has told me that Keith has great French. He speaks it to our child in the evenings and she has begun to respond more and more in French instead of in English. I think my French is getting better.

But, lately, Devyn's mind has simply exploded in French. She speaks without hesitation, sounds far less anglo than I do and the English components of sentences are disappearing. Her vocabulaire has grown exponentially. So, too, has her confidence.

A village tale

"Once upon a time," I began, "there was a young lady, who was very poor and very sad. She lived in a village where people always laughed and danced and were very happy."

The girls stopped playing with their bath toys and looked at me.

"She was so sad because she didn't have any friends, even though she was surrounded by so many laughing and dancing people. So, she decided to go to sleep and she slept soundly. But her dreams were interrupted by a voice that spoke to her:

'You need to go out into the village, to an inn. You will know the inn. You need to dance and laugh.'

When the sad, young lady awoke, she said:

'Oh, my, I'm hungry!'

So she changed into her tattered best clothes and headed off into the village, straying a little farther than she had ever done before. For, after all that sleep, she was feeling a little brave, too. She walked until she came to an inn. She had come to THE inn.

It was dark inside but the lady could hear the voices of people making merry. She could see some people and one person in particular caught her eye.

'Surely, he is kind,' the lady said to herself, for she had no idea that he was a prince. And when they spoke, the man told her: 'You are a princess. You have a gift. Whenever you speak, your words sound like music. We must be married.'

Oh, how her heart fluttered! And then he said . . ."

"I think he chose the wrong lady," Devyn interrupted.

"What?"

"I think she's old."

Notes / Molly's reading interests

Molly has never met a book she didn't like. Lately, however, she has bonded with an inexpensive encyclopedic series for older children; so, our conversations about them have caused me discomfort because she wants more information than I anticipated.

Holding a book on the human body -- which is illustrated in a colourful but standard way -- she asks me about a human figure: "What's this?" and "what's this?" she asks several times.

"Our bodies have skin, and under our skin are muscles, tendons, and bones. We call the collection and structure of the bones a skeleton," I try to explain, obviously flustered trying to keep up with her.

"I have skin and bones and muscles."

"Yes," I say, kind of relieved. I mean, she's two-and-a-half. She gets it.

"And intestines."

Huh?

"I have intestines." She rubs her abdomen.

The next book waiting for me (she's waiting for me) after I write this post is about ancient history.

As I walked into the kitchen this evening . . .

"Hello, Mummy. How are you?"

"Er, hi, Molly. I'm well, thank you. How are you?"

"Good."

"You're well? That's great."

"I'm going to be three."

"Really?"

"Yes, three."

"Um, you will be three next year. You're about two-and-a-half right now."

"Yes, I will be three but Devyn won't be three."

The way we read . . .

I like to think that everyone has a reading style. I also like to think that mine is of the read-and-let-read variety. So, when Devyn showed interest in reading the Junie B. series, and I got excited about it, I guess I kind of assumed that she and I shared a reading style. Not so much.

"Hey, let's read a Junie B. book," I suggested this morning.

"O.K.," she bounced up. (At least, I think she bounced because she always bounces and that's my overall impression of her.)

And I actually meant that she would read it and that I would listen which would have been just fine with her except we got stuck at the Junie B. part.

"Here, let's find the first in the series."

"I want to read this one." She held it up to me as if she was holding something very precious which, if you think about it, it really is. Anyway.

"Is that the first one in the series?" I started comparing dates of copyright.

"Uh . . ."

"No, that's not the first one. This one is. It comes before that one, anyway."

She shrugged her whole body in that way that only six-year-olds have learnt to do. I knew what she was going to say . . .

"But I want to read THIS one, not THAT one. THIS is the one I want to read."

We rallied pronouns back and forth until I got caught in the net. It was her book and, ultimately, for her benefit that we would be reading. I couldn't walk away without admitting defeat. But I wasn't happy about it.

A series. It's a series and series are meant to be read sequentially, right? Does it really matter, though, if Devyn doesn't have all the information that would be available in the first book? Wouldn't there be sufficient information, anyway, in the second or third books for her to gather impressions -- however vague -- of what has gone before?

Yes, probably. But it didn't matter, at least not while we were disagreeing.

Yet I realized that we were stepping out of the matter of personal preference and into the morass of mother-child relationships. We weren't negotiating which book would be read first; we were staking territory. This is where my parental rights in the matter ended and I was clearly encroaching. I had the sense that I should not push further despite all that I believed that I had left to teach her in this area.

But I'm not surprised. In fact, I am continually amazed by the capacity of my children to teach me about this life stuff. For example, I know this wasn't the last territorial scuffle.

Finished but not forgotten

It took me approximately one uninterrupted hour to read Guy Delisle's Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea this evening. I would love to record my thoughts but I don't have time to sort through them this evening since Joe Sacco's Palestine is already due back at the library.

Then there's the matter of having finished Meera Syal's Anita and Me last week or so and looking for my notes jotted here and there . . .

But, before I go to bed, I have to note a conversation had over the weekend with Molly about a book:

"And big kids don't need pacifiers," I say as we reach the end of the book.

"Yes," she says matter-of-factly as she removes it from my hands. "They do."

Molly's Lexicon, 27 months

to bin: to insert oneself into a clear, plastic bin for fun.

She stood inside the bin (it's about 18" high) and said, "Mummy! Look at me, I'm bin-ning!"

She needed a word to describe what she was doing -- standing in the bin. Binning. I've never known it to be used to describe a game. I like it.

Notes / Reading with Devyn

Devyn and I spent every spare moment reading a chapter book together yesterday: The Red Ghost. It marked a change. I've always wanted to introduce her to the ghost genre of children's books and this was the best time.

I worried that she'd be frightened, even though the target audience of The Red Ghost is six to eight or nine years. I worried that she might not be able to follow along with the plot or the subplot.

The reference to a significant period in history could have been an obstacle.

I was wrong on all counts. Instead, she surprised me. In response to my, "What did ya think?" She said, "I'm disappointed."

"Why? What didn't you like?"

"Well, why did it have to come at the end?"

"What at the end?"

"The ghost."

"Good question! Do you think it should it have appeared at the beginning?"

"No, it should have come in somewhere in the middle."

I was proud of her, of this independence of thought, of this opinion of hers that wasn't at all groundless.

The suspense just hadn't worked for her; it had annoyed her.

But, anyway, as August rolls in, I'm reminded that my time with Devyn is about to change dramatically: We won't be together everyday or every weekday that she's not in school because she'll be in school full time. From this point on, it's about Devyn gradually letting go of our time together in order to embrace new and more complex social environments.

We'll have to work harder to get in those chapter books. I already know the next title to introduce to her; the earlier title, The Blue Ghost, followed by The Secret of the Painted House. Where we'll go from there, I don't yet know.

The Red Ghost
(a Stepping Stones book)
Marion Dane Bauer
Illustrated by Peter Ferguson
Random House
April 2008
Trade Paperback

Reading-less

Camping, preparing two birthday parties, having two birthday parties, in the same week left little room to read.

But I've never tried so hard -- and failed -- to read. While camping earlier in the week, I couldn't charge my Treo telephone (a problem I've had for months and which is worsening). I was fumbling in the car every chance I got, trying to make the car charger communicate through an unyielding socket. It never worked.

So, with the charge at less than 30 per cent, and once the kids were sleeping in the tent, on the last night I sat in a mesh-enclosed gazebo with the moist air heavy on my skin and in my clothes. I tried to read the last of The Hakawati but the mosquitoes had found a way in and, frankly, I felt burdened under cold clothes and under the stress of a relentless downpour.

That was my final effort because there wasn't an opportunity until this morning. On the way to Devyn's second birthday party, as promised, I read the girls a story in the car: Eloise and the Very Secret Room. OK, it wasn't from my bookshelf but this little bit of reading time made the girls so happy -- made me happy -- that it settled us all: It anchored us to a small part of our routine that was otherwise lost this week.



Ready-to-Read, Level 1 book based on the art of Hilary Knight -- Kay Thompson (Author), Ellen Weiss (Author), Tammie Lyon (Illustrator)

Notes / Reading this week

Because I can't read just one book at a time, I have all these loose ends that need to be tied up. (So don't believe everything you read on a sidebar). I'm closer to finishing The Hakawati by Rabih Alameddine than I was last week.

The only problem that I have with this novel is that I can't read it casually (which degree of intensity would really suit my lifestyle). It seems as if every paragraph has embedded within it an observation, an analogy, a metaphor -- and not in an undesirable way -- that stops me in my tracks and forces me to re-examine the preceding passages. I'm not well-versed in the history of Lebanon, having to draw sometimes as much from the common cultural sense of "Middle East" (unfortunately) and from my friendship with a family that fled the troubled nation when I was very young as I draw from my past reading experiences. But maybe this isn't as much of an obstacle as I worried it could be. In May 2008, in a review in the New York Times, Lorraine Adams wrote:

If any work of fiction might be powerful enough to transcend the mountain of polemic, historical inquiry, policy analysis and reportage that stands between the Western reader and the Arab soul, it’s this wonder of a book — a book not about a jihadi but a hakawati (Arabic for storyteller). 'Listen,' Rabih Alameddine invites. 'Allow me to be your god. Let me take you on a journey beyond imagining. Let me tell you a story.'

In the beginning, rapt by details of Osama's (the narrator's) return to his country of origin, I was thirsty for images of modern Lebanon as seen through the eyes of one who had lived through harsher times there. Now, I find myself adrift between the ancient times of legend and my sense of the modern country and it doesn't bother me because the story is captivating.

I see the parallel that the author draws between the story of Hagar, Sarah, and Abraham, and the story of his grandfather's life, and I note the differences. In this way, I am at the will of Alameddine and not just because he directs my journey -- I've come under a spell of timelessness that he has deftly cast:

'The Hakawati' uses one of the oldest forms of storytelling, the frame tale. Western readers know it from 'The Canterbury Tales,' but the device precedes Chaucer by well over a thousand years, originating in Sanskrit texts known variously as the 'Panchatantra,' 'The Fables of Bidpai' or 'Tales of Kalila and Dimna.' As Doris Lessing notes in her introduction to the most recent English translation, one version of the Sanskrit framing narrative has Alexander the Great enlisting an Indian sage to reform a cruel potentate by telling him stories. In another, an Indian king uses the stories to arouse the curiosity of his three sons, whose brains have gone soft from privilege. Whatever the original frame, the history of the whole collection is a record of the cross-fertilization of cultures. Through storytelling, the conquered and the conquering can become as close as family.

I'll admit that I don't usually read reviews before reading a book (almost never), but you only stand to gain when a reviewer encapsulates an idea more succinctly and to a greater depth than you yourself could. And, again, I'm in unfamiliar territory because my exposure to Chaucer at university was scant at best. Regretfully, I can't riff on the cultural significance of story-telling through the ages, other than to surmise that mores and value systems are heritable and that the story-teller, among other things, is an agent therefor.

I'm happy just to sit right back and listen to a tale (or two) unfold because the voice is mellifluous and mesmerizing.

The numbers-driven life

(Addressing reading-time deficit)

Ashes to ashes

Dust to dust

Oil those brains

Before they rust.

I used to have my cardio time at the gym five days a week reserved for reading. But I don't have that opportunity anymore and it occurred to me today that my life has become very numbers-driven.

Each day, I need to get 1200 calories of food over five meals. Each meal must consist of 8 grams of fat, 18 grams of protein and 24 grams of carbohydrates.

I need to walk .82 miles to and .82 miles from the gym six days a week. The girls have to be at the gym by 8:45 on four of those days.

I do High Intensity Interval Training -- sprinting at 60% my target heart rate to 90% for 45 seconds, twelve times, four times weekly, in addition to one intense spinning class. There is no room for talking or reading at this point; even picking up a dropped water bottle is out of the question.

The other two mornings, I have a personal trainer take me through a customized resistance workout which consists of sets and repetitions of exercise, usually three sets of ten reps at x-weight per exercise. Obviously, I can't read here.

Before I see my trainer, I need to have warmed up for five minutes . . .

(At home, about an hour after the gym, life is child-oriented completely and, since I usually don't have help at home during the day, reading is out of the question).

This leaves a tiny interval of about three hours (again with the numbers) in the evening to . . . clean or to type furiously on my laptop.

But, the picture is pretty clear. Amidst or among all these numbers, you'd think I could squeeze in at least ONE book?

I used to stay up very late to read but, since I began training and since I bought a nifty training application to enhance the experience, I stumble over concepts such as recovery and my app sputters warnings about over-training because I'm tired.

I do love my workouts and I do miss my reading. I've had more difficult problems than this in the past and I'm willing to concede that, on a global scale, my troubles are minuscule. Still, as trivial as it seems, what's left of my mind -- what pregnancy and two years of sleep-deprivation left of my neuron count -- still needs to be fed. It's hungry. Even if it can't process language as well as it used to because the lights have gone out in my temporal and parietal lobes and compensating parts of the brain are doing little more than an adequate job. So what. It still needs to be nourished.

Look to the right of my blog, the sidebar -- It introduces two books that I'm apparently reading. A more accurate account of my activities would be: Books have been picked up from my shelf and placed (reverently) on my nightstand; an ebook has been secured for travel reading ops.

What to do? The numbers-driven life -- is it compatible with intellectual development (or, heck, even maintenance) and spiritual fulfillment? I don't know. I think it has to be.

So, I do know one thing for certain: I will read again.


*poem J. Prelutzky - A. Nonny Mouse Writes Again! (1993)

Molly's story

I don't actually have one book in which I record everything. I need to write this down:

I like the cats. I want one. A pet. Will walk him. Go to the park. I might fall.

- 26 months

Keith, if you're reading this right now: Molly wants a box like the one in the dining room. In fact, just so you won't make a mistake:

Buy one, a new one. There's a picture on it. It has a butterfly on it. It's heavy. There's another butterfly on the back. Pick it up, buy it.

News from nature . . . Again!

We're sitting on the screen-enclosed porch today. It offers fresh air and shade. And chairs. And the kids can make as much mess as they want while crafting.

At any rate, I'm just about to click open my ereader copy of The Synaptic Self, when Devyn announces:

"Do you know that people use chemicals to get the honey from bees?"

"Huh?" I'm very focussed on opening a file and adjusting my computer on my lap.

"People use chemicals to make the bees sick."

"People do what? Why?" She's got my attention.

"So they can get the honey, of course!"

"But, who -- who does this?"

"The people who want to put honey in the grocery stores."

"Where did you hear about this?" I'm really shocked by her reportage. She doesn't watch much television.

"I don't know. I just know, I guess."

"How does it make you feel?"

"Sad, Mummy. Very sad."

To be honest, I don't even know if what she says is true or to what degree it might be accurate. I'll have to do some research. Each day, lately, however, brings news of some sort from the world of nature and conservancy. I admire her.

1-800-Where-Was-I

I try to take advantage of spare moments to read which usually means that I have my chin on my chest and my eyes glued to my Palm Treo when I'm in the car. (Uh, when I'm the passenger).

As such, I have travel books and the most recent is the first in Meg Cabot's 1-800-Where-R-You series: When Lightning Strikes. It's grittier than I would have predicted, even in a YA context, and it reads smoothly so far.

Today, as I became more engrossed in the novel while on the way to St. Jacob's, Devyn interrupted:

"Mummy?"

"Yes?"

"Did you know that rhinoceroses are killed for their horns? Just for their horns?"

"No, I didn't know . . . How do you feel about that?" (OK, I did know but I wanted to see where she would take this conversation).

"It makes me sad."

I tried to return to my book but I didn't get much more reading done, reflecting as I was on Devyn's emerging sensitivity. A little while ago, she announced that she didn't want to "eat dead animals" -- we allow her to be a part-time vegetarian -- and she continues to process information that leads to the development of her own conscience. So, I imagine that this will be a very interesting year as she gets closer to her sixth birthday and further and further away from babyhood.

Homemaking

In The Science of Homemaking (1962), we are advised to consider the following: "Now that you no longer have to make candles and soap, what part do you play in the life of your family?"

I could take a poll of my family! I've done something similar in the past -- asked Devyn what she thinks I do -- and it was fun. But, then, sometimes a poll just isn't necessary as I learned only moments ago.

--

A tiny voice surprises me in the quiet. "I love you."

I'm snuggling up to Molly, my just-turned-two toddler, as she goes to sleep; it's part of her bedtime routine. My heart jumps. What? Did she really just say what I thought she said? For the first time?

"I love you." She did. She did say it!

"I love you, too." I feel as if I'm the happiest I've ever been.

"Mummy . . . ?"

"Yes?" It's a warm-and-fuzzy, mother-and-child moment. Could this become a game of exchanging 'I love you' until we giggle? Maybe. But she seems serious.

"The house is messy."

"The house is messy?"

"Yes . . . The house is messy. Clean it up, please."

--

The Science of Homemaking - Ruth Binnie and Mary Adams (Toronto, 1962)

The Shark

I've lost her. The shark died in my dining room the other day. Keith tried to revive her but she was pronounced at approximately 9:00 a.m. that morning.

From an older blog, dated August 2005:

Not My Grandmother's Iron

Before K left for work and the shops, I explained:

"I need a really, really good iron because I'm very bad at it. A proficient ironer can get away with using the cheapest iron because she knows what to do with it; I don't know what the %!& I'm doing."

He must have agreed. Leave it to him to come home with the most elaborate 'ironing system' that I've ever seen.

I've never had to read an instruction manual before using an iron until now. The little promo gadget: a recorded voice message on a black disk whose little red button (beneath the 3-D image), when pressed, boasts its 'X-tended Steam Burst' capabilities. It works vertically and horizontally. But that's not all. It features:

Intelligent electronic controls
360 degree pivot, extra long 12 ft cord
1700 watts of steam power
Electronic controls displays set and current
iron temperature
Advanced Electronic Technology Multi-Position Auto
Shut-Off, automatically turns iron off from any position
Stainless steel
soleplate for maximum glide-ability and heat retention
Anti-drip feature
cuts off water when temperature is too low
Permanent anti-calcium filter
prolongs the life of the iron
Self cleaning feature flushes the internal
soleplate with water

So, now my husband, when he leaves the home everyday, will leave in crisper clothes. He'll smile (ping!) as he dons his hat and leaves with his briefcase. I -- and my smartly-dressed child -- will follow him to the door, waving and smiling because I know the best housekeeping secret on the block: the Shark Intelligent Electronic Iron.

*first image: Household Management Illustrated (1953)
**second image

The curse of Scooby Doo

This morning, Devyn asked me to read her a story. She produced a school library book and we sat on the sofa to read Shiny Spooky Knights (Scooby-Doo! Readers, Level 2) by Gail Herman (Author), Duendes Del Sur (Illustrator).

Just a few pages in:

"What's a Mummy?"

"It's the effect of a process that some ancient cultures used to preserve a person's body after death. Mummies don't come back to life."

"What's a vampire?"

"In folklore, the vampire is a person who drinks blood, has to stay out of the sun in order to survive and who doesn't die. Most people don't believe that vampires exist."

"What's a witch?"

"A witch is often depicted as an old, green woman who wears black and who stands over a pot making magic potions and who can cast spells on people using magic. But, really, a witch is someone who practices a religion called Wicca. Wiccans love the earth and nature and it's a very peaceful religion."

"What's a zombie?"

"A zombie is a dead person whose body is brought back to life under mysterious circumstances. But they don't live as people; they're scary looking. Most people don't believe they exist." (Ed. I left out the David Wade books, thinking that perhaps she has enough to think about at this point in her life.)

"Why are they chasing Shaggy and Scooby?"

"Well, because we've read this book before, we know that they are really people dressed up in costumes who want to invite Scooby and his friends to a party."

"Why do they want to invite them to a party?"

"Uh, I don't know."

New York

My first thought: Somebody, please tell me why this graphic novel -- New York Four -- has not been made into a series?

This is pretty much the only complaint that I have about this work that features Riley Wilder, twenty-something rich kid let loose on the streets of Manhattan to attend NYU.

I read it quickly, enjoying the portrayal of a young woman's anxieties that author Brian Wood has created. Riley's first taste of freedom is tainted by conflicting family loyalties, awkwardness, but the excitement she feels is heightened by intrigue and the unknown.

We visit Japanese restaurants, comfortable apartments, and dance clubs.

Manhattan is gritty but there's not even a glimpse of the more traditional depiction of New York City streets: crime, homelessness, etc. New York is not as bad as the media would have us believe.

The setting stands in stark contrast to the book I read before this: Overheard in New York (Updated), by Morgan S. Friedman and Michael Malice, founders of the well-known blog of the same name.

Racism, toilet humour, sexual positions and preferences. Nothing is off limits. Cruelty, indifference, ignorance and thoughtlessness. Nothing is unthinkable.

Though the latter is handpicked from reality, it actually seems less believable than the fictitious angst and naivete of a young woman on her own in the big city. Hang on. Here comes the cringe-worthy cliche: Truth is stranger than fiction.

Or is it that I'm in denial, that I don't want to believe the worst of people is possible? I doubt it. Or do I want to hang on to the image that I have cultivated of a city in my dreams? More likely.

But, it's all possible. Maybe that's partly the message -- good or ill -- of both books: Anything is possible.

But the books exist in a state of tension. To believe the worst of New York in reality in Overheard, I have to believe the best of New York in fiction in New York Four.

Overheard In New York
Brian Wood