Time flies

I happened upon an online journal entry from almost three-years-ago to the day. 

The growth of my girls - July 9, 2007

"I didn't want to have my face painted today."

"No?"

"No. I was scared."

"Oh, I can see how that might be scary."

"Nobody else, just me."

"Nobody else was scared?"

"No."

"How did that make you feel?"

"Sad."

Devyn's aware of herself in the context of others. She compares herself to others.

She's also shot up another two inches in the last couple of months. She has a tiny waist, so her pants are long enough but she needs to wear a belt. (It's surprisingly difficult to find a belt for a preschooler.)

At her last Well Baby appointment (June 29th), Molly was 10lbs 8oz (I won a bet with K about how much she weighed) and 23 inches long. Funny, we didn't know how long she was at birth because that measurement isn't routinely sought.

We've had a difficult month, I'd say. Devyn's feelings about having a sibling aren't always positive and this is to be expected.

She's told me that she's disappointed that I can't spend as much time with her, so I spend as much as I can.

She's told her father that she doesn't always like being a big sister.

She's asked if we have to take Molly along on drives, etc. One day last week or so, while at the kitchen table, she asked:

"Why do we have to have Molly?"

"Because she's part of the family," I struggled. Begging the question, I know.

"Why was she born?"

So, she's struggling with big questions, too.

This might explain why, a couple of weeks before her 4th birthday, she is extraordinarily defiant, argumentative and generally difficult. This makes for long days.

One funny expression lately: when asked if she's ready, Devyn will say, "Ready as a liver bee!"

At least, Molly sleeps through the night. The breastfeeding clinic told me a few times that she's too young to miss feedings and that she needs to be awakened in the middle of the night. Everyone else, including my family doctor, told me to allow her to sleep and that demand-feeding is perfectly fine at this age (10 weeks). I've stopped going to the clinic.

We're continually amazed by Molly, just as we have been amazed by Devyn. She's started kicking and making sounds other than crying. She smiles easily and raises her arms up and down quickly when she's pleased with her toys, etc. She kicks now, lifts her head (but she has since the first week) and always has a pacifier in her mouth.

She's so calm, never cries anymore unless we let her go beyond the hand-sucking stage of hunger. Colic only lasted a few weeks.

Finally, my concentration has returned and I finished reading the first book since becoming pregnant (I'd been averaging about one per week prior to pregnancy) on July 7th.

Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I haven't collected my thoughts about this coming-of-age story set in a strife-ridden Nigeria. I do know that it made me long for some fiction by Uwem Akpan.

Pregnancy -- and then sleep-deprivation -- really affected my concentration and made reading impossible.  Considering thatI was on bedrest for much of the latter part, this was a problem. 

Devyn is now very comfortable with being a sister and they're usually the best of friends.

What a pleasant surprise it has been to look back!

Opportunities

I get to read while I wait in my doctor's office for appointments. My husband has the children (it's a small waiting room) and I am gloriously free for, at times, an hour to an-hour-and-a-half.

When they apologize for keeping me waiting, I always tell the staff not to worry:

"Are you kidding? This is the only rest I've had all day!"

The other day, I took along my latest issue of Quill & Quire: It's a magazine that, frankly, enables my odd habit of reading "just enough" of a blurb or a review of a book so as to note that I want to read it while seemingly avoiding spoilers that could pop up unexpectedly. Then, I mark a line in the top-right corner of the page to indicate that it's a page I want to remember.

I made note of a few titles that belong to the two subsets of literature comprise my reading list: that of the South Asian diaspora and that of the African diaspora (well, my reading also list includes authors still resident in their country-of-origin):

Vishnu Dreams by Ven Begamudre

I haven't read Ven Begamudre's first novel so I haven't the slightest sense of the author's style.

According to Emily Donaldson, Begamudre's second novel deals with "the conflicts that develop within an Indian family in the wake of their emigration to North American in the late 1960s . . . The story follows their attempts to integrate into a culture still mired in racism and ignorance."

There were also some titles for the young that really caught my eye:

The Bite of the Mango by Mariatu Kamara with Susan McClelland (Young Adult)

This account of young Mariatu Kamara's trauma in Sierra Leone -- which garnered international attention -- was released in September 2008.

Laurie McNeill writes:

"Because the text bears witness to a conflict most young Canadians will know little about, it deserves thoughtful reading, though its necessarily graphic nature makes it best suited to mature readers."

I think I'll have to work up to this and, admittedly, there are so many books awaiting my attention that it could be many months before I get to this one. Heavy.

Child of Dandelions by Shenaaz Nanji.

This novel is set in the era of Uganda's Idi Amin.

Librarian By Day writes:

"Child of Dandelions offers a positive look at a difficult period in the life of a girl, a family, and a country. This is an intriguing novel, one that could be paired with other culture-clash or immigration novels, to offer an example from the recent past." (Italics mine).

Usually, reading Uwem Akpan or Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (my favourite authors) requires a strong, emotional commitment due to the serious and descriptive content that captures individual strife in the midst of national turmoil. I suspect, this novel will require the same kind of relationship. Am I ready?

The Octonauts & The Frown Fish by
Meomi

(Honestly, being so out-of-touch with, well, everything, meant that I needed to Google Meomi to find out who/what it was. It is a self-described studio.)

Wonderous Strange by Lesley Livingston

I want to write more but can't because a toddler pulls me away from my compuer to read to her.

Finally, a decision!

Again, I decided on a book of some controversy; at least, it was banned in the author's country of origin (Saudi Arabia): Wolves of the Crescent Moon by Yousef Al-Mohaimeed (translated). Though I've read only the first few chapters, it is already emotionally difficult.

When reading books of Saudi origin, I am always thirsty for a sense of the geophysical landscape (having never visited the kingdom before); but, this is generally the case for books. I positively crave ethnographic and geographic detail. As for books of Caribbean origin, I am drawn by a sense of the familiar, too. At the moment, I'm just exploring and absorbing and being filled with wonder.

Of course, I'm reading Wolves on my Treo; otherwise, I'd never have the opportunity to sit down with a book and read.

At the moment, I'm trying to decide what to do with the children and I think I've decided on the library.

Kabul Beauty School (Random House, April 2007)

As often happens, I find a brilliant passage in an article that describes something far more effectively than I. In this case, the following from the New York Times captures both the co-author, Deborah Rodriquez, and the bottom-line effect of Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind The Veil:

The book, released April 10 [2007] by Random House, is a story of a
flame-haired, cigarette-smoking, multiply-divorced Michigan hairdresser who travels to Afghanistan, falls in love with the country, and returns later to set up a beauty school.

The story provides a greater appreciation of the cultural mores (and sometimes laws) governing male-female relationships in Afghanistan and it is this kind of ethnographic detail of both fiction and nonfiction that I generally crave.

Initially, I wanted to say that the account is kind of thin. The author could have done more to flesh out relationships, maybe focus more indepthly on the follow-up of the individual lives that she affected.

And I asked myself: What was Deborah Rodriguez's original intention in writing this book? Clearly, she wants to let the world know about the organization responsible for getting the beauty school-cum-salon off the ground.

She probably wants people to know her own difficulties in getting and keeping funding for the school which included starting a salon of her own. (In this way, she trained would-be professional beauticians, generated revenue and sourced additional teachers as the project grew.)

I like to think that she wants to convey the magnitude of the accomplishment: Empowering women with skills to run their own salons and generate income for themselves or for their families seems no small feat in a country in which women are discouraged from doing such things.

Considering the general public reaction to the book, my own observations seem inconsequential. The narrative, at times, is jagged and I wonder what, if anything, I might be missing. But I like the dialogue and the sometimes creative means by which the author overcomes language barriers.

I think she fails in some important respects. The personal stories -- when mentioned -- are not detailed enough for me. I still want to know what happened -- what really happened -- to Topekai, Baseera, Roshanna, Laila and Hama. I am still curious about Shaz.

But there are bigger problems and I may have been too optimistic in thinking that she and others might have started social reform in Afghanistan from which future generations will benefit.

According to the NPR in June 2007, the details already shared in the narrative cause controversy and anger:

the subjects of her book say Rodriguez and her newfound fame have put theirlives in danger . . .

About the subject women, the article continues:

At least one of the girls from the school has made an escape plan. One, who is called "Topekai" in the book, says her husband, who read the book, is moving their family to Pakistan.

The others — whose husbands are unaware of the
book — say they don't know what to do.

The woman called "Baseera" in Rodriguez's book says it may not matter. She is convinced someone will kill her.

This is serious and saddening: Cross-cultural value systems colliding, sociopolitical fears casting shadows over well-intentioned efforts.

And there is yet more controversy. According to quoted subjects in the New York Times (April 2007), there are questions about consistency and accuracy and perhaps enough changes to actual details that place the very nature of the narrative in question.

Frankly, like the project itself, the book initially seemed to be the start of something and, hopefully, the promise of something more. Now, I am not so certain. Did I even read a memoir?

Shades of Truth: An Account of a Kabul School Is Challenged (Abby Ellin, NYT, April 29, 2007)

Subjects of 'Kabul Beauty School' Face New Risks
(Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson, NPR, June 1, 2007)