Pieces of a Blog

Monday, Sep 14, 2009 | Swimming | 3 comments

Recently, while playing wedding (Chach and B, we have you to thank for this alarming new trend), Fooey said, “And here’s where I’ll put the wedding cheese.” That caught the ear of her mother, passing by. “Umm, the wedding what?” “The wedding cheese.” “Oh?” Fooey looked a bit disappointed in me: “You know the wedding cheese. With the little people in it.” Then I realized that my brother had displayed just such a cheese (standing in for their cake) at his wedding. Ha! This is how traditions are started.

Well, she went into the school today looking very small, and very excited. “Hand on your hips, and finger on your lips,” said the teacher, and Fooey looked pretty darn pleased to oblige. I am thinking of her now, as quiet time approaches. So many small hopes I have for her day: hope she enjoyed her food. Hope there was enough. Hope she’ll have a rest. Hope she finds a friend to play with on the playground. Hope her big sister or brother visit at recess. And on and on.
I spent the morning alone with a little guy who could hardly believe his luck. We baked muffins together, matching aprons. Built block towers. Read books. Put teddies onto riding toys. Sounds pretty lowkey, doesn’t it? Then why am I twice as tired as usual? Here’s hoping I can head upstairs and get an hour to write. Cup of tea in hand.

Oh, I cooked a frozen chicken overnight in the crockpot. It was done by morning, whereupon I added potatoes and carrots and they were done within two hours. I set it to low the whole time, so maybe my pot runs hot? I removed the finished stew to the fridge, because it didn’t seem like it needed more time on the counter. The scent of roasting chicken invaded my dreams. I woke with this strong sense of purpose: to go downstairs, core one tomato, stuff said tomato with one peeled clove of garlic, and add this to the pot. The idea may have come to me in a dream, but that’s exactly the first thing I did this morning after brushing my teeth.
Yesterday’s crockpot meal was a perfectly acceptable (read between those lines) use of leftover brown rice, but not something I’d willingly serve to guests. Four out of six of us agreed; two said major blech and ate buns and cheese instead. Then we went to the family swim at the Rec Centre and had a blast. A perfect activity for Family Fun Night, as the kids like to call anything we do together that’s ever so slightly out of the ordinary. Way cheaper than going to the movies.

Shoot, was just prepping photos to post, and realized the ones of Fooey in her class lineup all involve other children whose parents I don’t know. It looked like a class of mostly boys. Sure hope they let her boss them around.

Food Food Food Food Food

Sunday, Sep 13, 2009 | Music | 4 comments

Food food food food food … it’s on my brain. The need to prepare and serve it in a variety of ways feels suddenly more constant, more pressing, more always. And more difficult. It can’t be that there are more meals to make. It must be that there’s less time in which to make them.

Yesterday, I spent the better part of the afternoon converting two baskets of market tomatoes to 14 jars and 7 freezer bags of the processed variety. (Plus one tomato from our front-yard garden: Albus’s! He insisted it go into the sauce so that he could imagine he was eating “his” tomato all winter). As a guide, I used last year’s blog entry on the subject of canning tomatoes. (Note: I forgot to mention, in that entry, that after placing the skinned tomato pieces into the jars, you fill the jars with hot water to a half-inch head). The work wasn’t hard to do, but it was time-consuming, and in the end felt anti-climactic as this won’t come close to filling our pantry. If I have the heart for it, I’ll repeat the exercise again next weekend. (It would be easier to do, and I recognize this, if there weren’t a thousand interruptions. I suspect it might even be something I’d enjoy doing: simple and productive handwork while the mind wanders. But right now, it feels like a chore among others.)
It’s Sunday, so I’m trying out my crockpot for the first time in years; that way, if the meal flops, we can order last-minute takeout and it won’t cramp our no-room-for-error weekday style. Are there some foods that actually taste better cooked in a crockpot? My experience, though limited, has been discouraging, so I would appreciate hearing some hurrahs for the crockpot. For tonight’s meal, I made up a recipe loosely based on a bunch of recipes in Fix It and Forget It, a cookbook which seems to rely heavily upon cans of cream of mushroom soup. No cans in my cooking. In fact, that may be why the crockpot has seemed so unappealing: because I’m used to eating food cooked up from scratch before mealtime, using the freshest ingredients. Can a crockpot really compete?

Here’s this week’s menu, at a glance:

Sunday: Crockpot brown rice casserole with hamburger, spinach, cheese and tomatoes. Roasted veggies on the side.

Monday: Chicken roasted (steamed?) in crockpot with root veggies. Buttered noodles on the side.

Tuesday: Mac and cheese with ham in crockpot. No time for sides.

Wednesday: BBQ at meet-the-teacher night.

Thursday: Beans or lentils, possibly in crockpot. Possibly not.

Friday: Leftovers. Plus some fresh items picked up from Nina’s buying club.

Of course, in addition to supper, there’s also lunch, and tonight I will be making THREE lunches to send for school tomorrow. Fooey is thrilled. But I am suffering school-lunch anxiety: her teacher has requested that I split the lunch into two well-marked portions (the children’s school has two nutrition breaks per day, but the older children simply choose what they want to eat out of whatever I send). Fooey’s teacher recommends that the first portion of lunch be the more substantial: sandwich. The second should be more snack-ish: fruit, veg. I’ve almost paralyzed my thinking on this subject with over-complication.

Ah, cup of coffee. That’s what I’m enjoying right now. Soon it will be lunchtime … scrambled egg and bean burritos. It never ends. Well, it never ends right now. And I’ll miss it when it does. But perhaps that will be because I’ve romanticized these days and forgotten how little time there was to sit and think. I miss sitting and thinking. There’s much to be said for it, even if what it produces is invisible to the eye.

:::
Random bits. Yesterday, CJ took my hand and led me to the rocking chair in our backyard. “Sit” he said, and I sat. He wanted an audience for his sandbox play. Or maybe he just wanted his mother to sit and think …

The children have been practicing piano, ten minutes apiece, in a the mornings before school. I love this more than I seem capable of expressing. It’s a bit like love. There’s no way to describe love without diminishing it. Hearing them play (or attempt to play) these simple songs on the piano is both ordinary and deeply affecting. It’s comforting. It’s beautiful. It returns me to my own childhood. It is such a wonderful way to start our day.

Conscious Discipline

Friday, Sep 11, 2009 | Mothering | 2 comments

Conscious discipline. It is something I think about and struggle with daily, while trying to meet the needs of four very different children–and my husband’s, and my own. So it was like wandering through a cool, nourishing summer rainstorm to discover these ten simple principles of conscious discipline on my friend Kristin’s blog. (You will have to scroll down past the beautiful black and white photographs to find the link within the text). Kristin is the director of a preschool to which I long to send my children; except that we’re separated by several time zones. In fact, to my knowledge we’ve met only once in our lives, as children, and reuinted these many years later via the wonders of Facebook and Blogland.
I’ve tried to distill these ten rules of conscious discipline even further for my own purposes, and fit them all onto one handy reminder sheet which I intend to study whenever perplexed or frustrated. Here they are, for you.
1. Tell your children what to do. Rather than what not to do.
Principle: You get what you focus on.

2. When you’re upset, you need to give your children information they can use.
Not: “Why would you do that?” (Seriously, could you answer that? I know I couldn’t. Yet, it’s an oddly tempting opening line when upset).
Instead: “Let’s start by doing this …” “Let’s think about this …”

3. The only person you can change is yourself.
Therefore, you need to ask yourself questions that will bring about creative, cooperative solutions.
Not: “How can I make my child stay in bed?” (manipulation or coercion)
Instead: “How can I help my child be more likely to choose to stay in bed?”

4. Two heads are better than one.
Ask your children to work with you to solve their problems.

5. Spend time with your children. Establish family rituals. Be in relationship.
“I don’t care” = I don’t feel cared for.

6. Encouragement empowers.
Always.
In wonderful times. In tough times.
“I believe in you.”

7. Take back your power.
Not: “You’re driving me nuts.” (Who’s in charge of your feelings?)
Instead: “I’m going to take a deep breath and calm myself down. Then I will talk to you.”

8. Become the person you want your children to be.
Smile
Take a deep breath
And
Relax

9. Do not save your children from the consequences of their actions.
Principle: Psychological pain is a signal to make changes in your life.
Don’t lecture: “I told you so …”
Empathize. “I know that was really important to you …”

10. Conflict is an opportunity to teach.
Don’t punish children for not knowing how to resolve conflict.
Teach them: assertiveness.
“I don’t like it when you …”
(I would like to add that “taking a deep breath” is a really fabulous skill to teach your children. In fact, Albus uses this technique, and the other day was teaching it to his younger sister, who was in the midst of a tantrum. Breathe in through your nose, out through your mouth, taking your time; repeat for at least ten breaths. You can do this facing your child, showing them how to breathe, too. Albus does it the other way round–in through his mouth and out through his nose; whatever works!)

:::

A couple more images from our today: Pie for breakfast! Now that’s a happy-making prospect. Thanks to Nina and Matthew, friends and neighbours, for giving us this delicious gift. I’m thinking … hmmm, pie for supper, too?
And talk about how a parent can help her child choose to stay in bed … well, late-night sewing projects are not a means to that end. Last night, after brushing her teeth and putting on her pajamas, Apple-Apple felt inspired to work on a dressing gown for the girls’ doll. This meant she did not get as much reading-in-bed time; she did not cope well with the consequences of this lesson in time-management. But she did wake extra early to continue working on the project, till done.

Memoir Research

Thursday, Sep 10, 2009 | Reading, Writing | 0 comments

I’ve been reading memoirs.

First, I re-read an old favourite: James Herriot’s All Creatures Great and Small, which is not, strictly speaking, a memoir, but a fictionalized account of the author’s experiences as a country vet in the Yorkshire Dales before World War Two. I’ve loved Herriot’s books since childhood; they’re funny, poignant, a bit sentimental, and the writing is what I’d call hard-working. It does the job. Sometimes that’s really all that’s required, and anything more would seem out of place.
Next, I read The Way of a Boy, by Ernest Hillen, a memoir about the three years he spent as a child in a Japanese work camp in Dutch Indonesia, during World War Two. This is an entirely and remarkably unsentimental memoir; it seems like the author re-entered his boy self in order to tell this very pure and moving story. Inherent in his telling is complete trust in the reader. I liked this book a great deal. There were many loose threads, as the boy and his brother and mother were moved from camp to camp, losing contact along the way with many of the characters, and there was no attempt to tie up these threads; true to life. The portrayal of the author’s mother was humbling: she was unselfish, stoical, expressed and seemed to feel no pity for herself and their situation. She was also strong, brave, loving, and most impressively, eschewed martyrdom–rather than giving her share of food to her children, as other mothers did, she unapologetically ate it in order to stay strong for her family; she stayed up late reading, if books and light were available; and on occasion, she swore like a sailor. Ernest Hillen came to Canada after his family was released from the camps (he was then about ten or eleven), and grew up to work as an editor. According to the foreword, by Charlotte Gray, he never spoke of his experiences in the camps or even thought much about them until he began work on the memoir, some forty years later. Remarkable is the detail he was able to bring to the surface.
Finally, I’m thoroughly enjoying another memoir recommended to me by a friend: Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, written by Alexandra Fuller, who grew up in Africa as the daughter of white African farmers. This story is skillfully told within a non-linear frame, and is so far extremely entertaining. The character of the mother is (again) drawn with particular brilliance (what is it about us mothers??), though in this case much less flatteringly.
All of this is “research.” Pleasant, easy research, I must add. Next week marks the return to some regular writing hours. My sense is that I’m going to dive into my own attempt at memoir; with a couple of caveats. Should the work seem like a slog, should it not come naturally, I’m not going to push it. And I really only have to write a chapter or two and an outline before running it by my agent, who will take it further, if that seems the right direction.
Those stories, on the same subject, still feel very present and vital. There may even be more of them yet to write.
An acquaintance who reads this blog emailed to remind me of the value of fiction (that wasn’t necessarily what she was trying to do, but that’s where I went with her thoughts): that as human beings we need–we long for–the purpose and order created by the artistic act of reimagining the human experience. Fiction isn’t made-up life, it’s life re-made.
What’s memoir? I’m not sure I know. But at this point, it feels possible to frame this story I’d like to tell in two vastly different ways. I’m going to try, anyway.
:::
For those of you interested in reading a couple of the aforementioned stories, I will let you know when they become available in the fall edition of The New Quarterly.

Yes!

Wednesday, Sep 9, 2009 | Music | 1 comment

“This is my first day of school in my whole life!”
She has, in fact, been dragged back and forth to school since she was five weeks old, but finally finally her own time has come. This morning, she met her teacher and explored her classroom. She looked confident and prepared, identified the “F” in her name (afterward she confided rather dismissively, “That was easy!”), and she and her little brother played together contentedly while the proud parents discussed the ins and outs of full-day kindergarten with her teacher. (I love how in kindergarten the grownups are required to squat on teeny-tiny chairs around teeny-tiny tables). She will attend her first full day on Monday. Her inside shoes are already there, waiting for her in her shoe cubby (there is also a bin with her name on it, a hook for coat and backpack, and a lunchbox cubby; all labelled and waiting to welcome her).
:::
Yesterday we tried out racing from school to piano lessons to City Cafe Bakery for take-out pizza to home again, all the while thinking: next week we’ll add choir in, too, after supper. Well, maybe not. Choir might just have to take one for the team, because the kids were in states of fine fury and exhaustion by 6pm. Albus kept stalking around glaring at everyone and saying, “I’m so angry!” “Why are you so angry?” “Because you’re not … because Fooey is … because !!!! roar!” Clearly, he was in the frame of mind that in adulthood calls for swear words mumbled under breath, or a nice restorative after-dinner beverage on the porch. We figured he was angry because he was exhausted beyond all repair, and we let the children veg after supper with a movie, then brush teeth, and fall into bed. But Apple-Apple in particular was too wired to relax, and had fits in her bunk, insisting that she must read herself off to sleep. This argument proved particularly effective on her mother, who feels exactly the same way most nights.
:::
Want to make note somewhere (baby book not available): CJ is speaking words! Putting them together in twos! “Dada ball,” he told me last night, coming inside after kicking a soccer ball around the back yard with his dad. Seriously, he did! He also announced, clear as a bell, and at exactly the right moment: “Nap.” Yup, it was naptime. What was that you say? Naptime. Oh, “naptime, naptime!” “Didi” continues to stand in for animals of all kinds. If he’s not kissing his favourite “didis” (animal crackers included), he’s having them kiss each other, or demanding we kiss them. And he’s got a great big head nod he uses to indicate “yes.” I like when a kid says yes rather than no. Shows a positive outlook in life, doesn’t it?