joy – Page 5 – My Truant Pen

Minor miraculous detours

You’ve had the bones of our summer vacation – the bright lights on warm summer nights revealing the shadows of majesty in the theater. But there were other moments too.

The journey from Mt. Rainier (more or less) to Ashland usually takes about 7 and a half hours – if you stick on I5, go 70 and don’t stop. But it’s not what you would call a lovely drive (at least not until about Roseville). It had been years since I’d been to the Oregon Coast, and none of my memories of it are strong. So I decided this was an ideal time to rectify that.

It took us quite some time to get from Kelso/Longview to the water views on 101 in Oregon. Once we did, winding slowly behind lumbering RVs, the fog rolled in and there were few and dangerous views of the roiling waves below. Then, at one, we just stopped. Parked. Got out of the car and walked.

I had warned Adam not to expect sandy beaches. My (dim) memories were of rocky shorelines and dancing from dry-foot-fall to dry-foot-fall among the tidepools. But much of the Oregon coast line was sandy and lovely. This beach had large pebbles, then small pebbles then sand. There were uncompromising rocks erupting from smooth beds, like bullet holes through stop signs. We walked around a cape, carefully and quickly, to avoid the waves. We wanted to linger longer, but the pounding surf would soon make our retreat impossible. We stood, looked, listened, enchanted. I have long thought that the West was underlauded in stories and song. These coasts and mountains and forests deserve a rich, deep mythology. Those fogs should hide legends and rumors of legends. Those peaks should be shrouded in many names, mysteries and prophecies. And on this day, the waters of the Pacific, throwing themselves upon the unrelented shores of New Albion, were truly mystical.

But all stories come to an end, so we climbed back up to the car, rolled down the windows, and kept on. 101 jogged inland for a bit – more dairy farms than mystical rocky outcroppings – before lurching back out to the coast. We found a good radio station playing classic rock and roll, ignore the hours and miles in front of us, and sped onward.

An hour or so before dark, we stopped again. The northern fogs had lifted, and only the salt spray obscured the coast line. The beach where we stopped was a long one, with summer cottages redolent in childhood coming-of-age stories perched along the bluff, ending with a lighthouse that looked like the painted background on a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. We climbed down through scrub to the deserted beach. The water snuck up, like the serpent in Eden, to entice us in. Quickly shoes were discarded and jeans rolled up past the knee, and we stood touching the majesty of the unfettered ocean.

That half hour spent there, feet sinking into sand, waves crashing into us, eyes towards the sunset, was one of the most magical I have know. There we were, in love, together. We held hands before the eroding power of the Earth, strong together. We laughed, watched and exhaled our shallow breaths. It was with great reluctance that we finally put our shoes back on and climbed back up the bluff.

All was well with my detour (carefully negotiated with the help of Google maps with my husband who-does-not-love-road-trips) and I regretted not a minute of it. But it was 7 pm and we had between five and six hours of driving left in front of us. I was well rested, experienced and not too worried. With the last light of the long Western twilights, we turned onto Rt. 38 to Rt. 138 for the last haul to our rest.

It should be mentioned, at this point, that I am an extremely experiences mountain-road-night-driver. I learned to drive on mountain roads in the dark – usually while it was raining and I was super tired. I regularly came home from the theater in Seattle at 1 am when I was in high school. The roads I drove on were car-commercial-curvy with no lights. I remember some nights where the only point to the headlights were to be seen, not to see, since the lamp of the full moon offered more illumination than the paltry output of the forward lights.

I have never, in my life, seen a blacker road than I drove that night. There were no towns or outposts. There were no lights at the tops of hills. The moon was a memory, perhaps never to return. The stars were up there, but hidden and dimmed behind a high mist. The world was shrunken and swallowed to whatever dim advice came from my headlights, and my reflexes entirely guided by staying between the yellow reflectors and the white reflectors. We were far from rest or guidance and tiring fast – and in elk country. We were the only souls fool-hardy enough to be braving that stretch of highway in the dark. The road followed etching of the Umpqua River through the mountains, gleaming in starlight to my right, but beholden to the urgings of water (which are not the straight lines of men). Translation: it was curvy and windy and unpredictable, as well as dark. I do not believe two hours driving has ever left me as worn and weary as that two hours did. By the time we ceased our digression and made it back to I5, I gratefully passed the keys over to my husband.

But really, look at this road and note how green and unamended are the mountains through which it passes! (101 to 38 to 138 to I5)

We did make it safely, of course. And then we commenced our time in Ashland, returned home by way of Crater Lake (oh most patient of husbands!), went pontoon boating with the family and then returned, in stages, to the flat coast.

This is, sadly, the last report of my vacation that you will get. There’s one more story to tell, but I think it shall come from memory instead of journalism. But as a parting sweetener, I offer you these pictures!

Vacation 2011 Pictures

Heavy-Laden

I was by myself this weekend. My husband was off not-sleeping, playing round-the-clock games with 20 other like-minded RPGers on Cape Cod. Cape Cod in April totally works if you have no intention of setting foot outside for several days! However, without backup, this weekend seemed like an excellent one to devote to labors. And so I did.

I did the taxes Friday night. Saturday, I did two dishwasher loads, hand-washed the leftovers, five loads of laundry (including hauling downstairs, sorting and folding), culled all the toys upstairs and downstairs, took Grey and Thane to swimming lessons, prepared two meals (in full disclosure, Grey made breakfast for himself and his brother. I only cleaned up the inevitable crumbs.), bathed both boys and cleaned the house.

Sunday, I went to church, made two meals (Grey made breakfast again!), did three more loads of laundry, bought 3/4 of our summer plane tickets (the logistics of the journey are boggling), planned out our vacation requests in detail, and reserved our camp sites for Memorial Day, cleaned the house (AGAIN!) and took the boys bike-riding.

Funland required all the blankets in the house to construct

This fascinating account of my weekend was livened up by a few unexpected occurances. If you look back at that Saturday report, you might note that I used quite a bit of water. Significant amounts even. First world extravagant amounts of laundry. A friend had recently asked for a recommendation for a home inspector, and I forwarded the one we used, saying they’d be right on about the problems we had and hadn’t experienced. Well, that home inspector had indicated that we shouldn’t get too emotionally attached to our hot water heater, ifyouknowhatImeanVerne. And lo. Sunday morning, the water, though it ran and ran, stayed tepid. Yup.

So included in my fun and fantastic Sunday were online investigations of hot water heater options. (For reference, I opted for this one, which is pretty much the only Energy Star model I can get installed this week. Home Depot seriously had NO Energy Star hot water heaters — except the tankless ones, which I lack the time to get installed.) We still don’t have hot water, and I’m not entirely sure when we’ll get it.

I really hate it when I have a weekend like this, that is completely consumed by the labors of life. I get very little time to decompress, and do what I feel like doing. I keep making this choice, to do lots of work. It’s as though I haven’t learned that no matter how much work I do, I’ll never be done. I’ll never be caught up and on top of things. If I don’t make room for myself in my life, it makes me extremely cranky, and it makes it hard to come back to work on Monday and really engage in my labors. I desperately need a day off. (Next scheduled day: May 20th for my brother’s graduation…)

Still, there are always moments of grace. It was really fun hanging out with some of my neighbors and watching our kids ride bikes together. On Sunday after church, Grey began constructing a huge fort he named “Funland”, and telling me over and over again that it was “A dream come true.” (This is why I had to clean the house again. I regret nothing. It was worth it.) My eldest made breakfast two mornings in a row, without complaint. My youngest came up to me several times, twined his sticky arms around my neck and told me, “Mommy, I love you so much.”

So today I will choose to let the rain wash away my memories of work, and leave behind glittering clean memories of the moments that make life worthwhile.

Turnabout is fair play

In the angsty period after the birth of my first child, I wondered if I would be able to rejoice in my children’s successes without considering them mine. I mean, how much credit do you usually give to your parents for your accomplishments? Indubitably less than they’re due, but that is the way of things. Would I own their accomplishments as if they were my own? What if my children were not particularly accomplished?

I never considered, in the throes of generational myopia, that it might be my parents who would rack up accomplishments worthy of note. I mean, yeah. So my mom was one of the first ever Commissioned Lay Preachers in the Presbyterian Church. So my dad’s work in Africa probably saved the lives of hundreds of children. Yes, I went to my mom’s Master’s graduation. And you know every time that a fisherman in Deadliest Catch goes in to get medical care at Dutch Harbor… my father set up that clinic with telepresence. But my parents are my parents. They’re supposed to be nearly retiring, and, er, parental. Right? (Editor’s note: my mother says she was not such an early CLP. I’m still waiting for my dad to weigh in on what I said about him.)

And then, when I turn my back, they both go and make me sure proud.

My father has, over the last few years, grown more and more interested in local history. He made friends with the old folks who still own the oral history. He took their old black and white pictures and digitized them. He learned the stories about our adopted valley home. Then, he set about combining story and picture, legend and fact into a book. A real book. Published by real publishers and available in real book stores. It comes out next week, and he already has the author copies. You can get some sneak peeks in his blog.

Now this has been a long time in the works and comes as no great surprise. But man, that’s a big deal. I’ve wanted to write a book since second grade. But my father beat me to it! And I couldn’t be prouder!

Then there’s my mom. She teaches 5th/6th combo in a very small school in said mountainous valley. As part of her teaching, she includes a segment each week on French, and has for years. Well, she just won the “Eberspacher Award for Excellence in teaching of Modern Western European Languages”. She applied, but definitely didn’t expect to win, since her time per week is so short. Here’s her winning essay for the prize.

I was both surprised and honored to be nominated for the Eberspacher Award. Since I am not a full-time language teacher, I certainly never expected such a nomination. The student who nominated mewas in my highly capable 5/6 grade class. Her exposure in my class to French came in 30 minute a week doses. It has never been enough, but it has been a fun time for the students and me.

My introduction to the study of foreign languages was unfortunate. One year of junior high school Spanish followed by two years of high school Spanish left me with fragments of Spanish about Juan and his friends going to the library. While I remember the dialogues, their English translations are forever printed beneath. The study did not become a meaning-to-Spanish connection, but rather a
continual activity in translation. Biblioteca conjures up the word library and not a picture of a room of books. I do not blame my teachers. They were hampered by a curriculum, complete with tapes, and large class size. But both my teacher and I heaved a sigh of relief when the mandatory two years were over.

My next language experience came when my husband and I were posted to Africa. We made a six month stop on the way in France to learn French. Le Chambon sur Lyon was an immersion experience. We were greeted by Mme Rivier who spoke not a word of English (a claim I now doubt – but we believed then). She pranced around the room shaking hands with us and pointing to this and that. After a couple of bewildering weeks, patterns began to emerge and what she said began to make sense.

And the whole town was in on the activity. The first week, we could go to the patissaire and point at a chosen pastry. After the first week, we needed a s’il vous plait with our grunts. The community welcomed us and conversed with us in patient French. They did not sell me the knife I demanded for my six-month old daughter (my sister), but waited until I found the word for spoon.

The pivotal point in my French career happened in the pension (boarding house) associated with the school. One day a sign appeared on the dining tables which stated, Ici on parle uniquement francais. (Here one speaks only French.) I confess to tears of despair. I would never be able to talk again! But I did. My first meaningful conversation was with a fellow student, a Norwegian who didn’t speak English. We discussed infant baptism.

When we arrived in Zaire (now the DRC), I was much better equipped to deal with Tshiluba. A native Tshiluba speaker prayed for those of us learning Tshiluba once. He asked that we would have “windy tongues, and intelligence on top of the little we already had.” Windy tongues indeed! Grant my students windy tongues!

So when I entered my sixth grade classroom at Columbia Crest, I decided that I would teach my students something of what I learned studying French. Mme. Jeanpierre (my name is Johnstone) appears weekly in my class with her beret. That woman knows not a word of English! Fois is shivering and warming her arms. Chaud is the fanning motion. We greet and introduce one another, commenting on our health. We do calendars. We play Voila (also known as Bingo), and Allez Peche (Go Fish) to learn numbers. We go to the clock and door, and discuss others going to the clock and door. We watch The Red Balloon with a running narration in French. We struggle with why some of us are Americain and others Americaine.

Perhaps students do not leave my class knowing as much French as I would like. I hope what French they learn has a direct connection between the object or idea, and the French words. But the French they learn is a side benefit to something bigger. I would say my goals have more to do with language acquisition. I want them to know that learning a language can be fun! I want them to see that you do not need to dread learning a language. Play is a powerful tool in language acquisition and I want them to see that.

I also want my students to know that when faced with someone who does not speak your language, you need not be helpless. Patience, attentive ears, and observation can go a longs ways to untangling the nonsense syllables they hear. Students don’t hear that message in schools now. We teach them so much with direct instruction that they don’t necessarily know how to acquire knowledge without teaching. I want my students to know that they need not throw up their hands in despair when their Tshiluba/English dictionary fails them.

Especially, I want them to learn to create direct connections between language and meaning. I want them to avoid stopping at the English word on their way between un livre and the book on their desk.

So thank you, student, for nominating me for the Eberspacher Award. I hope it means that you took with you from Mme Jeanpierre, something valuable about French and about languages.

Way to go, parents of mine. I’m proud of you both.

These are a few of my favorite things

This time of year is hard. Hard hard. There’s still snow on the ground. You’re a million years from any vacation, past or present. And work is hard for me right now. So instead of whiiiiiining about it all, I thought I’d list out (for you and for me) some of my favorite things.

The smell of yeast when you add it to warm sugar-water when you begin a bread recipe

The way Mt. Rainier explodes into view when you turn the corner on Mineral Road South

The happy look on Thane’s face when he snuggles into bed with Puppy

Flowering tea balls

The Good Friday service

The garden on the next street that is first out with the snow drops and the creeping phlox in spring

Reading in the bathtub

D20s

Doing even stupid chores with my husband, because we end up laughing together

The wild patches in the big cloverleaves at the insterstices of busy New England freeways, like 93 and 95 on the North side

Advice columns!

Listening to Grey read aloud and then get quieter and quieter until he’s reading to himself

Text messages – they’re almost always from friends, almost always welcome and pretty much never hum drum or spam

Looking out the third floor window of my house across old New England walls, and hearing the carillon sound from Town Hall

Catching a real smile in passing from a stranger

Rachmanninoff, Gabrieli and Byrd

The way my kids walk/bounce/rejoice with every step

The smell of vanilla leaf and the tart taste of freshly picked sorrel

Friends on my doorstep

The sight of a Starbucks logo — still makes my heart leap!

Ars Magica — a game that’s been here and gone, like fairy rings, since I was pregnant with Grey

Minor music played on trumpet in a cold, dark sanctuary

The cliffs on Roundtop Mt. in the golden setting summer sun

The deep, hot, clear way jam looks when you add the pectin in

The way that the hum of the freeway in summer reminds me of the rush of glacial rivers near Mt. Rainier campgrounds

Real letters

Grey’s sincere interest in the babies in his life

Peach pie

Pretty dishes, especially when they have obscure purposes but I manage to use them correctly (looking at you, deviled egg dishes & asparagus server!)

The 5 second view of the Boston skyline you get on 128 in Burlington

The “kids say the darndest things” stage. (Thane announced the other morning that he wants to be called “Ketchup” from now on.)

Those are a small subset of my favorite things. What are your favorite things?

Christmas Music

For almost all my life, I’ve been the person who turned the music on. As a girl, growing up, music was played much more often once I figured out how to make it go. I still remember fondly all 6 of the CDs we owned, seared into my hind-mind as they are. When I graduated, I secretly absconded with all my favorite CDs. (Note to parents everywhere: check what your kid packs to college, especially when they’re going 3000 miles away and will never ever actually return with their possessions.) The music and NPR always played in my dorm room, eventually joined by baseball broadcasts. In my own home, I have complete ownership over the sound system. If it’s on, chances are over 90% it’s because I turned them on.

So it’s interesting to notice my sons gradually taking control over their own soundscape. Each has a CD player in their room. Grey is vert interested in what it plays, and will make careful choices among his handful of CDs. He loves Simon and Garfunkel’s Sound of Silence, but thinks Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme is too scary. And he’s started to form his own opinions about what he likes, what he wants to listen to. I’m sure there will be a moment in the future when I have to compromise the music played in our public space. I’m hoping to avoid sharing as long as possible, however, because my music is better. Ahem.

Anyway, this year for the first time, Grey has a favorite Christmas carol. What do you think it is? Maybe Rudolf? Grey went Christmas carolling with the church group this year (as our official bell-ringer – he refused to sing) and Rudolf was his request, but no. It’s not a kid’s song. Perhaps the Carol of the Bells on the traditional side? Or Joy To the World? Or “Darcy the Dragon” which is MY favorite Christmas song? (Kind of.)

Nope. Grey’s favorite Christmas song is The Kingston Trio’s Mary Mild, from the Last Month of the Year. It is such a joy to see him decide this on his own. While that song is certainly in heavy circulation (“The Last Month of the Year” is my husband’s favorite Christmas album), that song isn’t in my top 50 list. I’d hardly paid much attention to it, other than pondering its apocryphal origins. But he loves it. He sings it. He requests it at night time.

I know that my choices create the soundscape in which my sons grow up. They seem so young, so clearly under my purview. But already, they love things that I like. They notice things that escaped my notice. They hear things with fresh ears and reach different conclusions. I have set the foundations, but the house they build upon it will be all theirs.

“Go up the hill,” His mother said, “and there you will find three jolly children.
But let me hear no complaint of You when You come home again.”

All I want for Christmas is a digital SLR

This, my friends, is a perfect Christmas. We’re at my mother-in-law’s house… which is to say we’re completely spoiled. The place is all Christmasy. She has, at least count, six Christmas trees up, two full size and several smaller ones. She has about 6 batches of baked goods and every possible treat you can imagine. She also bought out several toy and clothing stores to outfit us. She told us not to pack anything… she had everything – and she does!

I spent this lovely hour today: my husband was watching Tron, the boys were down pretending to nap, the Christmas music was on, the fireplace was roaring and in an extremely unexpected turn of events, it was snowing. I sat on the couch, quiet, and read “The Dark is Rising”, which is my favorite Christmas book. It was an astonishingly lovely moment.

Anyway, for Christmas Santa Husband bought me a Digital SLR camera. I bought a photography book a while back and read it through. This permitted me to know exactly what my point and shoot could or could not do. It can actually do a lot. I use ISO all the time and I think it immeasurably improved my pictures. But there were things I couldn’t do: anything with detachable lenses and most importantly f-stops. I thought about it for about two years. But I decided: I wanted a real camera. So I told my husband and left him to do all the research on which one was best yadda yadda. My new camera is a Pentak DAL 18-55 mm F3.5 – 5.6 AL.

It’s my first non-point-and-shoot, so I’m probably not well qualified to review it. But I have spent, oh, about 24 hours with it now and taken over 300 pictures. It’s a leap of faith to record Christmas morning on your brand new camera (do you know how to take the lens cap off?) but we did it. Here are all the pictures, but let me call some out:

This here explains why I needed this camera. In a point in shoot, usually, most of the picture in the camera is sharp. That’s great – it means Aunt Agnes isn’t a blur (or everything is) – but it also leads to flatter pictures. Snapshots. Nothing wrong with that, but I wanted more. So here is a “non flat” set of the same pictures:

And for your viewing pleasure, here’s a full set of Christmas pictures!.

PS – I have totally not figured out how to work my camera! But I’m looking forward to doing so!

Mocksgiving and other pictures

It’s Christmas card time of year. I usually do ridiculously complicated Christmas cards. In recent years, my cards have involved:
1) Hand-stamped return address
2) Hand-stamped stamp in corner of envelope
3) Hand-addressed
4) Christmas card with personal note
5) Christmas letter (sometimes with personal signature)
6) Lovely family portrait picture

(I usually do about 80 of these)

There’s a chance that I might not live up to that this year. Let’s take, for example, the family portrait. It’s already pretty late to get one taken. And it requires planning. Money. And a time when we are free and no one is guaranteed to be hungry, tired, cranky, or demanding “red car! red car! red car!!!!”. Yeah. So then I wen through my 2010 pictures looking for that great picture where both my boys are looking at the camera and smiling. Now, I’ve taken a lot of pictures this year. Probably over a thousand. You’d think that there would, you know, be that picture. But you would not be the mother of a 2 and a 5 year old. There are few enough pictures where they’re both looking at the camera.

So a month ago, I decided to set this up. I found some scenic locations, and asked the boys to stand together, arms around each other, looking filial. HA!

I’m thinking this might be a good year to skip the family portrait. Still! Here are my attempts, along with Mocksgiving pictures (some great ones there!) and a bonus video of Thane at the Museum of ~~Dinosaurs~~ Science, talking about his favorite dinosaurs. (Tapejara, Neovenator, etc. You know. The classics.)

The First Five Kid

When my brother was a boy, he had a very rich fantasy life. There were two tropes: Ruff Land, where Matthew Ruff lived (it mostly involved rules) and Spaceduck. Now, Grey has always reminded me a bit of my brother, but plenty of perfectly normal kids don’t build fantasy-tropes that they talk about for months.

Then I encountered The Five Kids.

The Five Kids have awesome powers. They get in fights with bad guys. They reason with bad guys and ask them to make better choices. They get to eat all the Halloween candy. They are orphans. They are brothers. They all die at the end. They keep coming back in newer and better patterns. There are ten of them. (I know! Just makes it more awesome! Apparently the first set of Five Kids were brothers and they met another set of Five Kids and made them brothers so now Five Kids includes ten kids.)

For quite a while I think the Five Kids were actually five of the kids at school — Grey was one, and Lincoln and some of the other kids. But Five Kids has merged, melded, grown, expanded. It fills the dark and bright places of my son’s imagination — his wishes and his fears. The Five Kids are there.

Knowing how transient this can be, I sat with Grey to talk about the Five Kids today. I did explain that sometimes I write stories on the computer, and people read them. He gave his permission and cooperation to share this. Here’s his first ever Five Kids story:

Five Kids and the Bad Troll
By Grey
When the First Five Kid was very young, and four years old, he had secret powers. His name was Drago. He had ice, fire, no sensitivity* and he had flames. He makes the flames by scraping his hand.

When he walked over the bridge, a big bad troll came and said, “I’m going to shoot you up!”

So he said, “I’m going to flame you with my flames! Kaching! Kaching! Kaching!”

And then the troll ran away into the water and he was free to go.

finis

After this story, I did a brief interview with the author:

Interview with Grey
Q: How did you learn about Five Kids?
A: I went to bowling/wrestling and Jock Cina said, “The Five Kids are around here. Can you cheer?” And I cheered.

Q: Which Five Kid would you most want to be?
A: First Five Kid.

Q: What are the names of the Five Kids?
1) Drago
2) Mario
3) John Michael Robert
4) John Meana (because he’s mean to bad guys)
5) Fire Flame Guy
6) Scooby Lick
7) Fire Ice Squares
8 ) Camera (he blinds his opponents with flash)
9) Light bulb (he, uh, blinds his opponents with lights)
10) John Michael Cina Underpants (he included an illustration of Mr. Underpants)

So there’s your introduction to the Five Kids. If you talk to Grey, this is probably pretty useful, as he will assume you know what he’s talking about. I can’t wait to hear what the Five Kids do next!

*Apparently this means he’s immune to other attacks. The word choice is his.

Summer is a-comin in

It’s hot out. 90 degrees. My company just sent out a notification that we’re in voluntary energy reduction to try to prevent rolling blackouts. That’s how you know it’s summer… when the electrical grid is struggling to keep up and you’re glad that your California-raised mother taught you how to keep a house reasonably cool without AC.

And Sunday is the equinox, the longest day of the year! Last night I was coming home from the Plato book club discussion at about 9:30, listening to the Celtics on the radio as I drove through Boston. On the horizon, that late at night, there was still the touch of color from a sunset that has not quite succumbed to night.

It’s so amazingly liberating to bare skin. There is a phenomenal feeling to the hot sun against your skin, melting away the shell of winter. There’s the omnipresent buzz of summer: of lawnmowers and chainsaws and insects and leafblowers and circular saws slicing out new porches for backyard barbecues. There’s the nightly throwing-open of windows, to invite in the sounds and smells and relative coolness of the brief dark of night, which inevitably leads to you being awoken at 5 am by a rousing chorus of birdsong in the dawn.

And there’s the food — the amazing bounty of the land. December knows nothing like a June strawberry, and February has forgotten the explosion of taste that comes with a sunwarmed raspberry eaten straight off the bush in the backyard. The winter-dulled palate is amazed by the variety, abundance and excellence of everything, until it becomes sated and blase by the oppressive humidity of August.

But now, in June, this liberation is new and freeing. The blow-up pool in the back yard doesn’t have that patina that such pools so quickly obtain. The stack of swim diapers is high. The jug of bubble-stuff nearly unmolested. We have forgotten the sensations of sunburn and bugbite, and see only the brightness, and the undimmed memory that with heat comes leisure. (I confess that I wonder if my sons will have any such associations — my sister recently “booked” her summer and realized that her kids only get about 4 weeks of Doing-Nothingage, which I recall being the dominant component of my summers when I was their age.)

There is swimming ahead, and parks. There are camping and hikes. There are roadtrips across haze-shrouded hills when the black asphalt waves in the heat. There’s whitewater river rafting (for reals!), ocean-cool downs and back yard BBQs.

And as quickly as it comes, I know, it fades again into the joyful and exuberant solemnity of autumn. But that is beyond tomorrow, and next week, and next month. It is a full season away. Today, my friends, we celebrate summer.

To be a lover of books

What gifts and passions do we hope our children have? If we were fairies at a christening, what would we bestow? I’m coming to understand that the answer isn’t the same for all parents, that the “of course” attributes that I value are not the same ones other parents do. That’s part of what makes us so wondrously different. For me, there are some key attributes. Kindness. Integrity. Courage. Joyfulness.

But then there are the other things, the ones that I secretly really hope for, but know it’s not fair to expect. Love of music. The willingness to sing in public. Caring about what’s fun more than what’s cool. A love of nature. A disdain for hurting others. Stopping to watch the ants. Memorizing poetry for fun. And, critically, a love of books.

For that last one, at least, my parenting hopes look like they’re on track.

Last night, Grey requested the opportunity to read Thane on of his bedtime books. He selected his favorite from his room: Luke Skywalker’s Amazing Story. Starting with the title page, he read through it. He read about droids, and the Force, and Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru, and Obi-Wan Kenobi and “rebel leaders”. Of course, many of the hardest words he’d remembered from other circumstances. Let’s be honest, Obi-Wan Kenobi is a bit tough to guess phonetically. But he pronounced “Aunt Beru” differently than I did. He corrected himself when he misread a word. He paused and analyzed some of the hard words. He read with inflection and meaning, and understood the words as he read them. And I sat there, hiding tears, amazed to learn (spoiler alert) that Luke Skywalker’s father was Darth Vader! You could see the effort he put in — he actually got tired towards the end and started making mistakes out of the fatigue of his effort. But that by itself points to the reality. My son is reading! He’s a reader! He loves it! He does it out of joy! I can almost see the doors of a vast new world opening to him, whether he sees it or not.

Now let us speak of my youngest. About a year ago, Thane went into a book stage. It was one of his first words. He showed unusual focus for a small child on listening to the stories. But, probably not coincidentally, around the time he started getting the ear infections, his love was transferred over to cars. Vroom! Clearly we continued reading to him at night and sometimes in between, but it was no longer “his thing”. Then, a few weeks ago, it all changed. Thane is having a passionate love affair with books. Specifically, books that you are reading to him. And woe betide all moments not happily consumed in book-ishness. Today was a tight morning, schedule-wise, so we ONLY read him about 5 books before breakfast.

This would be a happier thing if Thane wasn’t quite SO upset between readings. He regularly throws epic, grand-mal tantrums with 15 minutes of loud, disconsolate weeping, arching of back, and pounding of hands because you have cruelly and viciously REFUSED to read him a fourth book! Look! He has it right here! “Don’t Let The Pigeon Drive the Bus”! If he says “happy” enough times, surely you’ll understand and read it!?!? (NOTE: Books are identified by their loudest phrase. So “10 Minutes to Bedtime” is identified with “Bedtime”. In one of the Pigeon books, the Pigeon says he is “Happy, Happy HAAAPPPPPYYY!!!!” therefore all Pigeon books are “happy”. There’s a certain irony as he, tears streaming from his eyes, holds up the book and urgently says through his weeping “Happy! Happy!”) If you do not immediately oblige, the bitter crying starts. Last night when I was rapt listening to my eldest read a book, I was bouncing on my right leg a disconsolate Thane who kept bringing me different books in the fond hope that I’d finally read one to him, as he screamed and howled his disappointment.

This is, of course, a stage. You can’t multi-task and read “How Do Dinosaurs Eat Their Dinner”. I’m pretty sure that’s the point. Thane has figured out how to get whole and undivided attention from the people he loves: grab a book and plop your little diapered butt in their laps. Works every time. And of course, he really does love the books. Grey loved the alphabet at that age. He actually knew it all by 18 months. Thane? He loves the reading, specifically the one-on-one time with his parents. I don’t begrudge him, even as much as sometimes it would be nice to have him sated by, oh, three or four books.

One of the memorable moments of my shared childhood experience was a car trip where my parents and siblings and I talked about all the books that the younger of us had not read and the jealousy of the elders that they would be so fortunate as to experience them for the first time. My sons’ feet are on that road. Oh, what stories await!