August 30th, 2011
Here be (no) dragons
One day, after ages of it being beloved, Harriet suddenly refused to let me read Sheree Fitch’s Sleeping Dragons All Around. At that point, she was unable to articulate why, but it was still significant as the first time a book had been outright rejected (as opposed to, say, abandoned out of boredom, which is different).
She also wouldn’t let us read her The Lady With the Alligator Purse– we’re still not sure why. But by the time she’d gone off two books as various as Neil Gaiman’s Instructions and Robert Munsch’s The Paper Bag Princess, I’d started detecting a theme. And by this time, Harriet had the words to explain: “Too scary,” she told us. Apparently it’s a fire-breathing dragon thing.
But how did she discover that dragons were scary? I’d certainly gone out of my way never to mention such a thing. In fact, I’d never mentioned that there was such a thing as “scary” at all, because little people are so open to suggestion, and I’ve been working hard on cultivating fearlessness. I don’t really do “scary” anyway, except when it comes to sensible things like diving off cliffs and tightrope walking. The closest thing I’ve got to an irrational fear is an extreme unease around dogs (which is not so irrational, I’d argue, because they’re equipped with teeth that could chew your face off), but I promise you that around a dog, Harriet has never, ever seen me flinch.
So this dragons thing has brought me to the limits of my powers, my powers of “cultivation”, and I get it that this is only the beginning of a very long education. And I get it too that it doesn’t take a genius to deduce that oversized fire-breathing lizards are probably best left undistubed between covers. (Interestingly, Harriet’s dragon aversion doesn’t extend to dinosaurs. She loves dinosaurs–plush, fossilized, wooden, Edwina, you name it.)
The thing is actually, that I fucking hate books with dragons (some excellent picture books aside). It’s true. I always have– when I was growing up, I never read a single book with a dragon on the cover. Which wasn’t really difficult to accomplish, because there weren’t many books with dragons on the cover. (My YA self would have been horrified by the popularity of science-fiction/fantasy today. And my adult self remains mystified.) A dragon on the cover was a kind of book design shorthand for “boring book for nerds”, and though I was certainly a nerd, I was the type of nerd who preferred books about pretty girls dying of anorexia or getting cancer.
Fantasy books: here’s another place where I’ve come to the limits of my own powers. I just can’t get into them, though I’ve tried. And I think back and wonder if I’d been less dragon-phobic in my youth, maybe fantasy-appreciation would come easier to me. There are a lot of things I wish I’d spent most of my life being a lot more open minded about, hence the reason why I want to make Harriet’s literary horizons broad from the very start. I want her to read better than I did, but then she persists in having her own feelings about things. She persists in refusing to be malleable, in having fears and preferences and in being a person apart from me.
But also a person who is very much like me, which I’m not sure is more or less disconcerting.
August 17th, 2011
I love books too
This evening was very upsetting for Harriet, because her balloon monkey with which she was besotted suddenly popped. We explained that this was part of the balloon’s natural life cycle, then consoled her with a gingerbread man whose arm fell off, and then I ate the arm, and then Harriet went insane, screaming, “I need new arm right now!” We explained that the gingerbread man was a cookie, and that she could eat the rest of him. She was having none of it, and finally her father constructed a prosthetic limb out of a chocolate chip cookie piece. The man’s a genius. Then Harriet forgot about the gingerbread man altogether, went to bed, and now the gingerbread is no more. He was delicious, but his kind will never darken our door again.
This evening Harriet also sat at the table like a superstar, however, and ate her pesto pasta with gusto. “I don’t like beets,” she told us though, and then I banished all talk of “I don’t like—” from our dinner table henceforth, because there is no conversation more boring. The beets were delicious. For afters, we had Barbara Pym with fresh strawberries from the market.
Harriet has become very good at issuing orders. “Stop talking, Mommy!” is a frequent shout, and she clearly doesn’t know me very well, because I’ve never responded well to that kind of guidance. “Stop dancing, Mommy!” was a bit devastating to hear one day last week when I was rocking out to The Kooks, and I fast forwarded to her teenage years and when she finds me totally mortifying. “Clean my diaper!” is another, and my thinking is that if you’re old enough to make a demand like that, you’re probably old enough to use the potty. But alas…
Harriet is currently in love with Curious George, and his curious pipe-smoking ways. If you ask her what her favourite book is, she’ll tell you Knuffle Bunny. We love Mo Willems’ new book Hooray for Amanda and her Alligator. She loves Corduroy too, and Alfie and Annie Rose, and anything else by Shirley Hughes (whose other characters we refer to as “Alfie’s Friends”). She has lately refused to read Sleeping Dragons All Around: “too scary,” she says. She can’t get enough of Murmel Murmel Murmel. And Mabel Murple rains supreme.
If I say, “I love books,” Harriet says, “I love books too.” Which was really exciting for a little while, until I learned (with “spinach”, “tomatoes” and “yak poo”) that Harriet will use that sentence construction to claim a love of anything. But she really does seem to love books, and outside (pronounced “asshat”), and painting, and popsicles, and sandals, and sandcastles, all her friends, dogs and cats, going on the subway, and eating ice cream. She has a hilarious English accent. Her favourite ice cream flavour is cherry, which is weird and we don’t know how she ever discovered that there was such a thing. She has an imaginary friend called Mimi who loves at the museum, and apparently her hair is blue. When we were there last week, Harriet seemed genuinely distraught not to find her there, but we’ll look again. There are dinosaurs in the meantime, and garbage trucks, and fire trucks, and the whole world is amazing.
July 15th, 2011
On books, sharing, communal toys, and the playground
I am really not very good at sharing. Giving, I’m all over that, but sharing makes me wary– too often, the things I’ve shared have come back to me quite battered, and usually these things are books. Which is why now if you ask if I will lend you a book, I will tell you no. I will feel terrible about this, embarrassed at being socially awkward and ungenerous, but not so embarrassed that I could be persuaded to change my mind. I like to have my things where they belong.
Which is why I sort of understand when my daughter doesn’t do so well at sharing either. There were two watering cans in the pool yesterday, and she insisted on playing with the red tin one that Margaret was using. And I could understand why because the green plastic can is obviously inferior. The green plastic can is the one she will “share”, and the red tin can will stay with its rightful owner. (Thankfully, dear Margaret [who has been Harriet's best friend since she was two days old] was civilized enough to go along with this plan). I’d like it if Harriet were a more easy-going person, but I can usually understand the reasons why she isn’t. She’s fierce and feral, but she makes a lot of sense to me. Sometimes “sharing” seems a lot like having Goldilocks come to visit, and while I want Harriet to learn to be a good host and a good friend, where’s the fun in that?
Stuart and I got called out by one of the terrifying mothers at the playground on Sunday. We’d brought a bucket for Harriet to play with in the pool because Harriet insists on having a bucket at all times, and one of the communal buckets might not have been available. (Moreover, the communal toys at the playground are crap because nobody bothers to take care of them, but that’s another story…) Some kid came up and took the bucket from beside where we were sitting. “It’s Harriet’s bucket,” we told the kid, who gave it back, no problem.
But his mother behind us said to our friend, “The boys never understand when they go someplace and everybody has their own toys. They just go up and take them, and the other kids get upset, but parks are supposed to be communal. I mean, that’s the whole point.” (Man, would I ever make a really bad socialist. For someone who doesn’t own any property, I’ve sure got a lot of views about private ones.) So we considered ourselves chastised, and I was feeling badly about this, wondering if we were approaching the whole thing wrong. And then the annoying women’s two children (who were named Cashton and Thorston) started assaulting their friend with shovels, and the annoying woman yelled at the boy, “Walk away, Siegfried! Walk away!” while poor Siegfried got battered. So think that she might not have all the secrets to raising children after all.
It’s a tough call, and I’m still not sure how I feel. I know that I don’t like sharing my books though, which is something. We share snacks, we even share ice cream cones, we’d share a skipping rope if Harriet were capable of jumping. We take turns on the swings, we don’t rip toys out of kids’ hands, if there is a communal toy we want to play with in the playground, Harriet waits her turn. If we were at Margaret’s house and Harriet wanted Margaret’s prized watering can (as you do), I’d have to tell Harriet, “Tough luck.” To me, this is sharing.
We brought our bucket to the playground again on Monday, and a little girl picked it up, hurled it to the ground, and the handle broke off. Is this sharing? Because if it is, sharing sucks. But I don’t want to be a person who thinks that sharing sucks. And I actually appreciate all the communal toys at the park, but everything doesn’t belong to everyone, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing…
So no conclusions. But this is the kind of philosophical issue that I’m grappling with these days. I’m still not lending you my book though.
July 14th, 2011
Barbara Pym for afters
We’ve invented a new dessert! Or rather, we’ve re-christened a very familiar one. This all came about because Harriet had taken to walking around the house screaming, “Barbara Pym!” Which is a bit weird, because Harriet and I don’t talk about Barbara Pym a lot, but I must talk about her to other people enough that the name is known (and I shouldn’t be surprised– Harriet has had her photo in the Barbara Pym Society newsletter after all).
One night a few weeks back, when Barbara Pym mania was at its height, Harriet was coerced into her chair at the table with the promise that we were going to be eating Barbara Pym for dessert. Dessert turned out to be berries with ice cream, which has since become the Barbara Pym that we eat almost daily. Splendid local raspberries tonight with maple ice cream made this particular dish of Barbara Pym delightful.
Here is a photo of the world’s dirtiest child devouring hers, having just completed her first course, which was mostly ketchup.
July 3rd, 2011
Best morning ever
Our friends Jennie and Deep have a new house within the vicinity of Trinity Bellwoods Park, so that was where we met them this morning for a splendid picnic brunch. It was a brilliant walk in the sunshine, from our house all the way down to Clafouti for the best croissants in Toronto. We had teas and coffees, and sat on a blanket under a tree, and marvelled at the goodness of life in general, in particular on a day like today. And then Harriet went to the playground and the wading pool, while Jennie and I dashed across the street for a browse in Type Books. I bought Should I Share My Ice Cream? by Mo Willems and It Must Be Tall As A Lighthouse by Tabatha Southey. Jennie bought the Jack Dylan Trinity Bellwoods poster (at right). Then back to the park where we splashed around with Harriet in the pool. She was eventually bribed out of the pool with the promise of ice cream, which dripped until she was covered in it, and by then we were home. And then Harriet slept for three hours, which made this probably the very best day on record. Not a bad way to cap off a weekend of patio sitting, bbqs, and reading a big fat summer book. More about that book later…
May 26th, 2011
This cake is for the party…
We decided that a six-layer cake needed a bit more height, so we put it on a pedestal and added cake bunting. It was delicious. Only problem was that one slice fed all our party guests, so now we’re looking for some other parties for this cake to be for.
(I stole this idea from here, just in case you’ve mistaken me for someone original. And her cake wasn’t crooked. But then her philosophy also probably isn’t, “Bake a cake, but bake it slant.”)
I think you’ll be two now and forever
I’ve written posts before about Harriet being older than she’s ever been, like back when she was seven weeks old, and I was amazed at how far we’ve come. Or when she was three months old, and when she turned one, or six months ago when she was a year and a half–these signposts that have us take stock and realize that we’ve been moving forward all along, even when we spend mornings reading stories on the couch and it doesn’t much feel like it.
But this is different. My friends, never before has Harriet been two-years-old, one hundred and four weeks, an upstanding (most of the time), fast-running, fierce shrieking, word-speaking, unabashed hugger and devourer of tiny muffins, counter of cars, page-turning, tutu-wearing feral creature who reads the newspaper while she eats her lunch, looking for advertisements with pictures of cars. Cars with wheels.
The age of two is a bit like colic. It’s a dreaded thing that everybody warns you about, and some people say it doesn’t exist, but others spent nine months suicidal because of it. I thought that since Harriet has been annoying since birth, we might miss out on the terrible. Her tantrums started when she was about a year old, so I was well-versed in the child lying face-down, kicking and pounding the floor and crying until she pukes. I thought I knew what people were talking about when they were talking about two years old, but like everything to do with each new stage of parenthood, I had no idea.
Two is terrible in a brand new way. It’s the kid who is trekked all the way to swimming lessons then refuses to get into the pool, the kid who won’t say hello to her grandmother on the phone, who won’t eat unless she’s sitting on her mother’s lap, who wants her father to get out of the way and so stands with her hands on her hips and says, “Bye, Daddy. Bye, Daddy.” It’s the kid who knows she can climb up on a kitchen chair to turn the stereo on, but also knows she isn’t supposed to, and is in thrall to the tension between these ideas. She’s fascinated by her ability to provoke a reaction, and by her dawning awareness of being a free agent in the world. She also has the self-preservation instinct of a lemming.
But two is also happiness beyond the wildest dreams. It’s the kid who’s fascinated by prepositions, and lying in bed between her parents on Saturday morning looked at both of us and said, “Harriet in family.” It’s the kid who wants to go outside always, and never wants to come in. Who loves to talk about her friends, and never sees any of them (or does anything) without having to be pulled away shouting, “More!” She loves chocolate, ice cream, and this weekend decided that cupcakes were called “Happy Birthday Muffins”. She has just learned the word, “Nobody” and loves to play her guitar, and makes up songs in a combination of English and Harriet-ese. She loves car-rides, puppies, dancing, teapots, puddles, stickers, clocks, digging in dirt, watering cans, and dustpans. Her favourite author is Byron Barton, among others. If it’s close enough to bedtime, she will laugh hysterically about anything. She loves to help with everything we do, and sometimes she even manages to.
Harriet is two, which is the oldest she has ever been, but also not much older than seven weeks old, relatively speaking, (and still “nearly new” according to A.A. Milne). And it’s true what they say, though it wasn’t for a long time–I can’t imagine my life without her. I don’t know how I got along before, but now I’m so glad I don’t have to. She is everything I ever wanted her to be, and me because of her.
We love her, we love her, we do.
May 10th, 2011
Spring Things
Spring things: first pie of the season (strawberry), High Park hanami beneath the sakura, and the flowers on Harriet and my matching aprons, which were a home-made (!) Mothers Day gift from my mom.
May 8th, 2011
Mothers are people
Before I had a baby, I thought the song “Parents are People” from Free to be You and Me was about the wide range of employment opportunities available to men and women everywhere in this brave new world– that some mommies drive taxis and sing on TV, and daddies play cello or sail on the sea. And then I had a little baby and for a while (in retrospect, a very little while, but at the time I didn’t know this) my entire self was erased, and it dawned on me that the song was about how parenthood doesn’t have to constitute the entirety of a parent’s identity (though I’ve got no qualms about those for whom it does. Parenthood is a noble and worthwhile calling).
Lately I’ve been extending my thoughts on the song and imagining it in terms of a mathematical equation though. (This is the kind of thing that occupies my mind as I push a stroller down the sidewalk looking kind of vacant.) If Mommies=People [with children], therefore People=? The logical answer is that People are People, but even Depeche Mode didn’t manage to get to the bottom of that matter. Indeed, why should it be that you and I should get along so awfully? But it does clear up the matter of why mothers can’t seem to get it together and support each other. Because mothers are people, and people just don’t do that.
Case in point, the story in the Toronto Star this week: “These moms refuse to wear sweats”, which makes the argument that motherhood doesn’t mean we have to stop wearing skinny jeans and motorcycle boots. My initial response is “ugh” for many reasons, chief among them being that I never looked that nice even before I had a child, and also because I don’t have the money, figure or talent to ever look like the skinny jeans moms do.
But I realize that these women are fighting the same mommy stereotypes that I grapple with. “Motherhood doesn’t have to mean 
sweat pants, baggy tops and bad perms” so the article goes, which is analogous to my own crusade, which is “Motherhood doesn’t have to mean being an idiot”. I’m not sure who exactly are these mythical frumpy idiotic mothers we’re all running from, unless we’re all running from the very worst fears we harbour of ourselves. And these selves are so various, and we’re all running so hard that it starts to look like we’re running from each other, but we’re not.
Or perhaps what I mean is that we’re not mothers divided as much as people with children who never had all that much in common in the first place.
I can’t tell you how wonderful it is to be out of the first year or so of motherhood. Those months when everything is so urgent, so terrifying, and so unsure that you just cling to something that may be true in order to make sense of a chaotic universe. On top of the practical matters of new motherhood was how threatened I was by other mothers and their choices. I was told that this would lessen as I became more assured, and it’s true. I think we all muddle through, and there’s no one way to do it, and that families are people as much as mommies are, and people are.
(I also think that that Tina Fey’s Fuck You to breastfeeding in her book Bossypants should be required reading for anyone who gets upset at the sight of formula fed babies. And I think that anyone who finds breastfeeding evangelicals offensive should consider the innumerable ways that breastfeeding mothers are only superficially supported in our society. And then should go read the Tina Fey chapter and feel better about everything.)
Lately I’ve noticed my failure to find my place in the mom dichotomy. Either I should be always putting my children’s need first (this rarely happens. Harriet is a fairly robust human being, and therefore under normal circumstances, her needs are pretty much on par with my own) or taking time for myself and having a manicure (which has never happened. Because it is very difficult to read and have a manicure, or so I imagine. See notes above about me being frumpy). The great thing about this lack of inclusion, however, is that I don’t have be involved in the mom dichotomy at all. Because, well, mommies are people with children, and people are…
And in such open endedness lies liberation and infinite possibility.
There is a book called The Happiest Mom that I’ve been eager to get my hands upon, most because, like all the best parenting books, it might validate all the choices I have already made. (Also, if you’re newish to this blog, read Dream Babies by Christine Hrdyment, which will teach you that all baby/parenting books are faddish fluff, and you are your own best parenting expert if only you have the confidence to believe it). I love the idea of a book suggesting that happy motherhood is possible (it is!) and that there’s a way to get there (and there are many!).
For me, the way to get there has involved a husband who’s as good a mother as I am, a life that gives me plenty of time to myself, and not having another child anytime soon because I think it would probably break me. An individual path, but it works for me, and so I feel so lucky to be celebrating my second Mothers’ Day (or my third, if we count the Mothers Day I spent having an external cephalic version).
First, because we had a lovely evening with own mom. And because my husband and daughter gave me a basil plant and license to run wild in the bookstore this afternoon (I got I’m a Registered Nurse Not a Whore by Anne Perdue, and The Bradshaw Variations by Rachel Cusk, whose novels I can’t get enough of). They also accompanied me on A Pro-Choice Jane’s Walk around downtown Toronto today in the glorious sunshine, which is fitting because my own reproductive freedom is part of why I get to be a happy mother.
I’m so grateful for the choices I’ve been able to make on the road to here.
