what do you buy a girl turning four? and how I worked that out, with some goodies for me and parenting philosophy on the side
I know what I want to give my child, when she turns four in March.
But what for the little girls in her classroom who are turning four and giving parties this week?
The ridiculous and ugly stuff marketed to little girls these days reinforces so many things I don’t want to encourage– traditional female roles, consumer culture, ugly plastic aesthetic, low to fleeting imagination or creativity value… but I can’t impose my snobberies on others’ children. And I can’t afford Magic Cabin for everyone. I can’t even afford it for her. And plus it’s too late to order Magic Cabin.
I know if I called these parents they would say please don’t bring anything, just come. I know that’s what I would say. And I would mean it, too. But I have a feeling it would be a serious violation of Expensive Montessori School Social Code not to bring something. You play, you pay. One little girl is my child’s especial playmate, and I would really like to get to know the other’s mom…
[The next day]
I enlisted the help of my mom’s group friends, who had wonderful helpful ideas… and then wouldn’t you know, I had a Barnes and Noble gift card to spend on myself and my husband, so I walked into the book store and did the librarian birthday gift after all.
I purchased a Moongirl DVD/Book set for each girl. Ah, now it is done! But of course I don’t have any wrapping paper except Christmas. Too bad. I guess I better hit the Dollar General. Anyhoo, this is a wonderful story, with wonderful edgy art and a fabulous soundtrack for the DVD featuring the ever versatile and hardworking They Might Be Giants.
At first I wanted to give Robert Sabuda’s popup Alice in Wonderland, which is a truly complex and beautiful work of art. But there were two copies of Moongirl, and only one copy of the Sabuda… so guess who gets the Sabuda? That’s right. Moi.
I am a Tenniel Snob. Two brown ‘leather’ bound volumes, dated 1974 inside the front cover in my father’s handwriting, containing the entire unabridged stories and the original Tenniel illustrations, still sit on my shelf. They may be the two most important works to my inner and imaginative landscape, as well as my literary aesthetic, of my entire childhood. I remember being about four and having a pair of brown wing tipped mary janes (oh to have those shoes again, some for me and some for my girls!) that I called my Alice in Wonderland shoes.
I have raised my little girl to be sort of a rough-and-tumble consumer of all media, pedestrian and ugly as well as beautiful and original. Our home is a far cry from the dark, quiet, rarefied, nearly tv free space that characterized my childhood. Sometimes I wish I’d been more careful with her, but… ever since she walked at nine months I have sort of thrown my hands up regarding forcing her to conform to my expectations and decided to pick my battles and let her make (the less harmful of) her own choices. I scour my friends’ libraries for truly beautiful and rich works of art for kids– M and W have put me on to the awesome Miyazaki anime films, for example, although I am disappointed that I get them dubbed in English rather than in the original Japanese– and hope that I am giving her a balanced smorgasbord of choices of theme, culture, and artistic style.
But I digress.
Every once in a while I run across a work of children’s literature that restores my faith in the children’s publishing industry and in the media world’s power in general to produce something truly beautiful and worthwhile.
The Sabuda is sort of the Tenniel work on acid (as if the original Tenniel illustrations weren’t acidic enough!!). [And let me clarify that I have never done acid. Never. I did chew up a tiny shroom one time but it did nothing for me and it was too nasty to attempt to eat any more. But I think I know it, or what our society characterizes as it, when I see it.] The 3-dimensional popups are huge, intricately detailed, beautifully colored, and give delightful views for the story from many angles– look down the accordion-pleated rabbit hole, or through cellophane windows into the house where the giant Alice is trapped! I haven’t read it through, so I’ll weigh in on how well the abridgment of the story works soon. But since it makes me so happy artistically, I’ll love it no matter what. I’m such a hoarder I believe I may purchase another copy or two today off of Amazon…
along with a copy of Skinny Bitch. The title and cover illustration are a clever marketing trick which, I am ashamed to say, worked on me, but I cracked it and read a few pages in the store, and just now read the customer reviews on Amazon. You know I just quit eating meat (except last night I had a few bites of delectable lasagne that I made myself, with meat, because we forgot to make me a little meat free one on the side), and I gather this book gives a lot of information about nutrition and the food industry that everyone needs to make informed choices about what we eat. If it’s in a no holds barred, listen here girlfriend while I tell you straight so you can take responsibility and live a happier healthier life format, so much the better.
We just lost power here for several minutes. Our infrastructure in this community is such that the slightest variation in weather– today, heavy but not exactly monsoon rain– throws our power grid into a tizzy. Anyway, I adore wordpress.com because it saves posts constantly. I lost very little work.
So. It’s New Year’s Eve.
I have lots to do including all my housecleaning so that I don’t have to wash my good luck away tomorrow, soaking black eyed peas and cooking sweet potatoes for sweet potato pie, taking shaky baby to that party at about 12.30 which involves getting us both showered and dressed, and taking a fearless and searching inventory (to quote Lindsay Lohan) of last year’s accomplishments and my hopes for next year. I’d better run along.
my worst (literary) fears realized
My brother and sister in law sent me a wonderful book of fairy tales in their original, dark and depressing forms, with wonderful dark (mostly) illustrations by some awesome artists. I am a huge fan of dark and depressing fairy tales and dark and moody artwork.
I sat down to read Sleeping Beauty to shaky baby. She said, ‘I want to read about the REAL princess!’
I knew I’d live to regret that Disneyland trip.
do you know how old I am?
Thirteen, right?
I’m blogging from my training. This is very bad… I should be in the final presentations of this week, paying attention… but I have to be out of here at elevenish… It’s a wash at this point anyway, isn’t it?
Do you remember that middle aged senator from somewhere out west (I think) whose diaries were released to the public or press in conjunction with some impropriety? He had written details about how he fixed his (doubtless thinning, oh the indignity!) hair and dressed for particular functions or meetings– and the impression he just knew he would make because he looked so darn hot.
I remember feeling so sorry for the old lech, because, as odious and womanly as he was, I, too, am that self absorbed.
Don’t you think that most of us have that Walter Mitty dialog running in our head most of the time? (Yes I am in fact a HUGE Thurber fan. He gave us some of the finest and funniest insight into a certain subset of the human condition and culture EVER.)
I think perhaps that the senator’s (or whatever he was) personality was such that he didn’t have the self awareness to be embarassed… but I would have been so mortified I would have absolutely died.
I was at healing school a weekend or so ago and one of my colleagues volunteered to go first for a grueling emotional class exercise involving exposing one’s own subtle and pathetic lies to oneself. She jumped right up, admitting that she loved attention. I could have kissed her! It’s not loving attention… it’s loving it and pretending — or not even being aware — that you do. Her humility is a beautiful thing, because underneath it is discernment, honesty, and compassion, three of the key– in fact perhaps *the three key* components for growth and healing.
It’s attention… but it’s also, for me, a sense of being tied in, or part of something. D’you see the subtle difference? Both are related to my neediness and self absorption I think.
Like, when I wake up in a big city hotel, and the big city day is getting started, and the feel of rush hour traffic is all around, and news is blasting from televisions throughout the facility, and people just seem to have places to go… I love it. I am essentially a country mouse. But when I’m in a congested urban area of a major city, I feel tiny and insignificant, yet I feel like I’m really part of something. I think it would just exhaust me to be part of something all the time… but for a while, as in DC this week or as in Boston last spring… it feels really, really cool.
To get back to my own particular Walter Mitty script, there’s a young librarian in this training who, every time he sees me, calls me by the name of the state where I work. You know… Georgia, or Virginia, or Alabama like the name of the wife in Zelda Fitzgerald’s semi autobiographical novel.
This boy is at least ten, if not fifteen, years younger than I am. He’s a cutie, one of those young men who seem eminently secure in themselves, mature, responsible and thoughtful and serious, yet have a great sense of irony and humor.
What I wonder, because of my self absorption, is would he be relating to me in this manner if he knew how old I am? What is it about me– the way I look or relate, or what is it about him– a general desire to relate to me personally, or a general desire to relate to everyone — both of which I think are kinda cool– that makes him heckle me so? [He also complimented my footwear... does he have a shoe fetish, or is he just gay?]
I like it, because it makes me feel like somebody. Does he think I’m a matron who needs some attention, or does he think I’m hot, or is he just a really friendly fellow… almost doesn’t matter because I like the attention. Although it would reflect wonderfully on this boy if he made it a habit to try to make people feel like somebody, wouldn’t it.
It’s really important to take interactions, and people, as they come, with a healthy combination of friendly interest and healthy lack of expectation. But I’m so needy that I have to think about all this stuff, spin out my Walter Mitty.
I’m just sayin. This is me. The internet is the new vehicle for all our narcissism. At least it’s out in the open now, eh? That’s got to be a healthier state of affairs.
Right?
misc
Randomly:
I am off for two work days on the road and then healing school Friday night and Saturday morning. I have so much I want to write, namely a long one on the nature of friendship in general and the loss (through fighting and falling out) of one’s closest friend. It, that is, writing about it, will have to wait. It has waited a year, it can wait several more weeks or even another year.
Thank goodness Gymboree has nothing I want in terms of Halloween costumes, so I don’t have to spend a hundred bucks on that, at least.
Since our dustup last week, my husband has been really working to pull his weight in terms of dishes, cooking, household labor. I *think* he even cleaned a toilet for, like, the second time ever since we moved here.
Is he okay with that? Or is he doing it to spite me or worse to avoid what he perceives as my nagging and my view of ‘deficiencies in his character’? I’ve also been thinking a lot about the nature of intimacy, honesty, and accountability in intimate relationships. I’d like to write about that, too, in general terms of course, not in terms that would violate our privacy too much, but in my head, my worries and what I view as my shortcomings or my tasks as I grow into myself.
I read Deborah Wiles’ Each Little Bird that Sings last night. She notes in her foreword that she wrote this book after enduring way too many losses in her family in a way too short amount of time, so I don’t think I’m giving anything away by saying that I snuffled and bawled and squalled as the book came to its close.
The book has won many awards, and I guess, rightfully so. In my lowly opinion, especially lowly since I’ve never even written a book, children’s or otherwise, it’s not exactly great literature… and I am not one of those who thinks children’s literature should be held to a different standard than adult literature. Great writing is great writing, and I hate for it to be dumbed down. On the other hand, I absolutely love Wiles’ evocation of quirky southern life– yes, southern life can indeed be that quirky, even if the quirks are not layered on quite that thick in real life. And I do think it’s a wonderful book about handling grief. Sort of. If you’re really in the mood to handle grief, and Lord, who is???? I know, I know… it’s a reality, but… Anyhoo, the author does a wonderful job of creating a heartbreaking but still manageable (just barely) growth opportunity for little Comfort Snowberger, whose narrative voice is really too cute.
I’d love to hear what others think about this one. I am so impressed with Wiles. She’s won all these prizes, and I don’t think she started writing, or at least getting published, until she was in her forties. As always when I hear of such a thing, I think, hallelujah! There’s hope!
All right, dear reader (My friend M is the only one reading this, right? and maybe her husband???). I must jump up and get ready to hit the road. Talk to you soon.
would someone *please* tell me
how to pronounce Seamus Heaney’s last name, and Djuna Barnes’ first name?
Damn I’m good. I had both of them right. I looked them up here.
