Baby's First Winter Solstice

Last Monday we celebrated our first winter solstice. The twinkle lights were up, and sparrows and cardinals had danced outside our window bird box all day. My son watched as I opened his solstice gift after which he promptly sought to put the wrapping paper in his mouth. Mostly, he just giggled at my friend holding the video camera, whom I pestered with, "Did you get it? Did you get the cuteness?" A few minutes of playing with the farm house that Erin sent, and then it was time to brush teeth. Friend and I feasted with an astounding wine (Truchard, yum, yum!) and more (olives, artichoke hearts, and a tomato-basil tart.)

The next morning: heavy fluffy flakes, spiraling past my bedroom window, and more bird visitors.

One of my favorite solstice gifts this year, however, was this poem from Kate (A collection of poems by Billy Collins going on my Amazon wish list riiiighhht...now):

Ornithography

The legendary Cang Jie was said to

have invented writing after observing

the tracks of birds.

A light snow last night,

and now the earth falls open to a fresh page.

A high wind is breaking up the clouds.

Children wait for the yellow bus in a huddle,

and under the feeder, some birds

are busy writing short stories,

poems, and letters to their mothers.

A crow is working on an editorial.

That chickadee is etching a list,

and a robin walks back and forth

composing the opening to her autobiography.

All so prolific this morning,

these expressive little creatures,

and each with an alphabet of only two letters.

A far cry from me watching

in silence behind a window wondering

what just frightened them into flight—

a dog’s bark, a hawk overhead?

or had they simply finished

saying whatever it was they had to say?

By Billy Collins

That What It's All About, Part Two

The first parent-teacher conferences of the year bring many pleasant surprises. I adore hearing stories about the little things students are taking home with them. One little girl, a parent reported, sings our months of the year and days of the week songs around the house. Another came home one day hunting for all of the thermometers in the house. A little boy who is a real live wire of energy has been observed making "beginning sounds," trotting around showing off things like "it starts with /p/" or "/m/." So exciting and strangely, it feels unexpected. Two little girls were described as wanting to go home and do their homework "right away:" "She always says, ' I've got to do my homework!' "a dad described.

I'm also impressed by the level of parent involvement. Single parents, working moms and dads, talking about learning toys and games siblings play with their kindergartners to help them learn. Having met parents and teachers in the past who are more concerned with their own interests than those of the people around them, I am overwhelmed with admiration at the deep, sincere love, commitment, and delight that the parents at my school demonstrate. We revel in the curiosity, energy, and humor displayed by these little comical people, and are companion members of an audience eagerly awaiting what show our kindergartners will bring us next.

There's this song (Townes Van Zandt, I think,) titled "If I Needed You" that has come to my mind when reflecting upon connections between people, real, superficial, imagined or defined. Driving home to my son, I think about the grin of recognition I see in parents' faces when I describe a face or phrase that their child puts to good use. I think about my son, and how like those moms and dads who come with questions, I am wholly concerned with the science and source of my child's happiness.

Oh, You Creepy Electronic World, You

So a few weeks ago I was buying my very first hair dryer at Walgreens. That's it. Just a hair dryer, nothing else. As I'm collecting my receipt from the nice checkout lady, the receipt printer spits out its usual coupons. This time, much like other times in the recent past, it printed coupons for baby formula. I'm standing there, holding my hair dryer, thinking...wait a minute. Baby formula? I just bought a HAIR Dryer. How does it KNOW? (Cue eerie X-files theme. This song is by Mark Snoooowww...)

The checkout lady tells me that It (the omniscient receipt printing machine) knows what your credit card is buying. Which for some reason, just icked me to pieces. It knows what you're buying. What if I bought nothing but prophylactics for a month? Dozens and dozens of boxes of them? Would it print coupons for Hustler?

While ruminating about this "I'm watching you"-type network, I thought about the little column-living ads in Gmail, Facebook, and Amazon that tell you what you might like to buy and do. Also creepy, me thought. I mean, I open an e-mail from a teaching friend about National Writing Day, and all of a sudden, GMail is offering me creative writing courses and opportunities to publish my book. Like, back off, man! What's with all the pressure?

Still, I was a little tempted to follow the suggested link that read: "Choose your own adventure. Help write the story one snippet at a time. Www. 1000000monkeys.com." The web address alone is intriguing. Too bad I have other things to do with my time this evening. Like click "publish post," turn my personal home-brainwashing machine off, and curl up on my big brown couch with a new book of poems (W.S. Merwin.) Yay, Me. Boo, creepy electronic world.

Word O' the Day

puerile

A Word I Liked on A Skeleton Poster

cuneiform

A Word I Like Today

cull

Spring

From Owls and Other Fantasies by Mary Oliver

Spring

All day the flicker
has anticipated
the lust of the season, by
shouting. He scouts up
tree after tree and at
a certain place begins
to cry out. My, in his
black-freckled vest, bay body with
red trim and sudden chrome
underwings, he is
dapper. Of course somebody
listening nearby
hears him; she answers
with a sound like hysterical
laughter, and rushes out into
the field where he is poised
on an old phone pole, his head
swinging, his wings
opening and shutting in a kind of
butterfly stroke. She can't
resist; they touch; they flutter.
How lightly, altogether, they accept
the great task, of carrying life
forward! In the crown of an oak
they choose a small tree-cave
which they enter with sudden quietness
and modesty. And, for awhile,
the wind that can be
a knife or a hammer, subsides.
They listen
to the thrushes.
The sky is blue, or the rain
falls with its spills of pearl.
Around their wreath of darkness
the leaves of the world unfurl.

Indeed.

Two Words I Like Today

...courtesy of Jane Austen:

verdure
remonstrance

"To Kill A Mockingbird is worth fifteen points."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/books/review/Straight-t.html

"Librarians and teachers report that students will almost always refuse to read a book not on the Accelerated Reader list, because they won't receive points. ... The passion and serendipity of choosing a book at the library based on the subject or the cover of the firstpage is nearly gone, as well as the excitement of reading a book simply for pleasure."

You know, sometimes I think that schools with their accountability measures, and their imagined fool-proof literacy intervention programs should just all be done away with, and the powers should build a little cottage and plant a little glen for it to be sitting in for every child. And in that little cottage, there'd be a magical bookshelf which would always be filled with whatever the child wants to read and then a few extras that he or she has not yet discovered. And no teacher, administrator, or politician should ever be allowed near the glen with their well-meaning Post-It strategies (What child who has ever been lost in a book, has a sudden urge to reach for a pile of Post-Its?) their tedious vocabulary lessons, and their point/ranking systems. That's it. A glen and a cottage and a magical bookshelf. Once that's done, let's plant a glen for every adult, too. Some of us could use it.

Words I Like Today

flummox
exquisite

Perfect Days: A Thank You Card

This has been one of the finest summers I've ever known. It seems impossible to catalogue the various aspects of the summer's perfection - I'm sure when I look back on it, I'll have nothing to sift through but photographs of smiles and surprised faces, and faint, wispy impressions of experiences.

Here are a few:

Walking through Bughouse Square

This tiny little park (parklet, perhaps) is what I imagine if someone took the Boston Commons or Rittenhouse Square and shrunk it down to fit inside a little bottle in Chicago's brain. Here, a daily walk led me to study the truly lovely flower bed around the fountain, bees and monarchs darting around its bold denizens. A blanket and a shady spot, and hours spent playing airplane.

Farmers' Days

"I could marry a farmer," I joked to Kate after our fantastic lunch. The Green City Market is a banquet, a plaza, and the best produce section you've seen. My first visit this summer was with Joan where we enjoyed savory crepes (cheese, tomatoes, arugula) and peach smoothies. Then, the following week, the Welvers blanket was honored to host three friends, a blueberry crepe, and much sympathy for my laid-off-ed-ness. (Temporary, I hope.) The flowers, the food, the babies staggering about - so much to see. Not to mention the delight I took in ogling the young bronzed farmers. So young...*smirk*

And Even More Tomatoes

For three straight nights this summer, I feasted on a bag of tomatoes - a gift from Kate's garden. How to describe their sweet, intense flavor? Those tomatoes were...oh, take it away, Neruda....

And there it is: on
the table, at the summer's
equator,
a tomato -
an earthen sphere,
a fertile and
repeated
star -
reveals
its folds
and channels,
its renowned fullness,
its abundance
free of pits
and peels,
thorns and scales.
It's the tomato's
gift to us,
this fiery color
and undiminished freshness.

__________________________

Other Impressions

A million facial expressions. The smiles of strangers. Songs, songs, more songs. So much laughter bubbling forth. Drooly raspberries, a new trumpet to play. Goodnight, Moon. (Goodnight stars. Goodnight air. Goodnight noises everywhere.) Long strolls under the honey locust trees. Dancing to Chuck Berry, Sam Cooke, Little Richard, Desmond Dekker, and others. "I've Been Working on the Railroad." Gazing at the Tree of Birds in Abuelito and Abuelita's back yard. The relief of a welcome nap.

I am so grateful for good friends, a safe home, and perfect summer days.

Lying in Wait

About a year ago, I was woken by a series of mosquito stings. I sat up, turned on my bedroom light, and waited, knowing that it wouldn't be long before the little sucker would be back for more. Legs crossed, my eyes scanned the room, hoping to notice the little bugger in flight so I could track where it landed and then kill it. Suddenly I noticed a spot on the yellow surface just behind my head. My hand shot out and I slapped a bloody smear on the wall. So satisfying. I slept well that night.

Now it's past midnight, close to one, and I'm lying again in wait, bad leg elevated and the living room light dim but there. So far I've missed it on two tries. The second time, it zipped around my face and I swatted at it, surprised, like a caricature of how girls supposedly fight, hands flailing. Turning out the lights and trying to fall asleep is futile - I'll lie awake imagining the shrill buzz torturing my ear until it actually manifests itself. I can only lie here in this half-light, waiting for either another visit from the mosquito or for my six-fifteen wake up call, the much more delightful sound of my baby son giggling himself awake.

Bikes That Go Fart in the Middle of the Night

I always know it's summer when motorcyclists begin to tear down La Salle in the middle of the night. Initially I wondered, why my street? It may be that the lights are timed just so, so that the motorcycle riding loonies can accelerate just enough to make all the lights from one end to the other. And while, as a pre-pre-teen, I had many Grease II (*cringe*)-inspired fantasies of riding on the back of some leather-clad stud's bike, hair whipping out behind me, I now have detailed an entirely different kind of motorcycle-themed fantasy.

In my new daydream (or awake-night-dream, thanks to the flatulating growls of bikes all hours past my window,) someone like Bond's Q has designed a special weapon just for me. At the very moment a sensor detects a single bike or troupe of motorcycles are approaching my block, a microscopically thin trip wire shoots out of the weapon and fastens itself somewhere on the Moody Bible Reformatories across the street. The cycles sputter ever closer then ... phwwTT! They hit the wire, hurtling wheel over wheel up, up, up into the air. A massive portal opens up at the intersection of Oak and La Salle the bikes fall into a below-street-level colossal pit of assorted animal dung,* like that scene in Back to the Future, where Marty McFly's super smooth skateboard moves draw Biff and his gang to slam into a manure pile with their car.

Sigh. I get happy just picturing it.

* I couldn't decide whether to use the word 'dung' or 'offal.' Offal is so much more elegant.

Off to the Shedd

I'm quite excited to be visiting the Shedd Aquarium today. It will be my first visit in over a year. The Shedd has long been one of my favorite places in Chicago, a place to go by myself, to mull things over and to delight in the colors, shapes and movement of swimming things. Now, I go to the aquarium with a fresh pair of eyes. In the past, I haven't really paid attention to the other visitors. I haven't compared their regard to my own, but now, I think, I'll no longer be imagining that I'm alone in a private marine paradise, but rather my inner delight will be mirroring the enchantment of those I'm with. Glee.