Hot Cuppa, Wot?

STRIP JACK NAKED. This was the name of the card game our British neighbor in Dhaka taught my sister and me, aged six and eight. In the afternoon, Heather and I would run through the sweet smell of frangipani trees, squeeze through the hedge, and visit the old British granny-lady. She fed us biscuits and taught us how to cross-stitch, and if the first title of the card-game was too racy, we could always call it BEAT THE OLD LADY TO BED if we preferred.

Later in Kenya we had another lovely British neighbor who was soft and smelled wonderful and called us "Lovey."

So maybe it's these two exquisite ladies that put the anglophile in me, or maybe it's tea, or maybe it's the BBC.

Tea! Tea cozies! John Cleese! Spot of milk or slice of lemon! Wedgewood! Hyacinth Bucket! Marmite! Judi Dench! Egg cups! Wellies! Wot?

If any of these things make your heart beat faster, you might be a bit of an anglophile yourself.

One glance at my Netflix queue reveals a striking similarity in all the vicarious lives I indulge through TV or film. Hmmm. All set in U.K. For some intense weeks I lived with Judi Dench (or maybe I WAS Judi Dench?) as I took in the entire series, including the bonus, of As Time Goes By. The music for this sitcom is atrocious, but the script writing is clever. Also, I enjoyed looking at Dame J.D.'s tea mugs, her smart London townhouse, and the richly furnished country estate (complete with eccentric locals). As I sat comatose in front of the TV, I was actually touring London on foot; I suddenly loved runny poached eggs; everything I said was witty and well-pronounced as I poured from a tray with an endless supply of duty-free liquors from Heathrow airport.

If Henry James and T.S. Eliot could switch nationalities, why can't I? If they could, just on whim, began writing colour, centre, theatre, and wot-ho, why can't I?

Actually, I do not want to trade in passports. Though American tourists are generally embarrassing in foreign countries (super LOUD), the charm of living vicariously in a hay-topped cottage (with hollyhocks in the front yard) without any of the reality is too great a temptation.

I am ashamed at the sheer commercial nature of the following. Nonetheless, here are some of my favorite anglophile pleasures:


BISCUITS: Marie biscuits, for their crisp texture and perfect tea-dipping properties; digestive biscuits of any kind, especially if they're coated in chocolate.

CANDY: Smarties, rattling happily in a cardboard tube. Cadbury's bars in golden wrappers.

CLOTHES: Knee socks (with shorts); wildly clashing patterns worn together

*See all sources for pictures listed below.

TEA: A six cup teapot, warmed with a swirl of boiling water. Twinings English Breakfast is the tastiest tea (beyond actual East African tea) I can locate in America. Do not overbrew to a soup. Nor do you want a weak cuppa that pales hideously at the first drop of milk. And use a tea cozy so the pot lasts, and lasts, and lasts, through all the courses of your tea. Cozies are extremely hard to find; in fact, an import store, a trip overseas, or your own sewing machine may be your only affordable options. And of course, use a cup and saucer unless you're busy or on the run. And then a beaker is okay.

Scones, yes. Clotted cream, Devonshire, absolootely. A dollop of marmalade.

Best BBC TV SERIES:
Jeeves and Wooster, Monarch of the Glen (Scottish), Ballykissangel (Irish), As Time Goes By, Father Ted (Irish--in small doses), Waiting for God, Keeping Up Appearances, Fawlty Towers, Yes Prime Minister

Best BBC DRAMAS:
Of course, Pride & Prejudice, North and South (rivals P & P), Wives and Daughters
*
Pretty-Good BBC DRAMAS: Daniel Deronda, The Way We Live Now (David Suchet goes nasty for this leading role)--these are both based on Anthony Trollope Novels

Not-so-hot BBC DRAMAS: He Knew He Was Right (acting is good but as title suggests, not worth three-four hours).

BRITISH THINGS I HATE: Marmite, Vegemite, poached eggs, kippers for breakfast

BEST MYSTERY SERIES: Poirot (charming voice and narcissistic but polite manner); Cadfield (a monk-detective in Middle Ages--top marks for writing); Midsomer Murders are at first promising but the sheer number of murders is ridiculous

BRITISH THINGS I NEVER USE BUT WISH I DID: A slotted toast tray; egg cups; heated radiator covers in the bathroom for damp towels

Here I listed Music, Plays, and Movies, but that was just a waste of space. The answers are obvious. U2, Oscar Wilde, and just about anything BBC.

BRITISH FIXTURES I WISH AMERICA WOULD ADOPT: Real pubs, warm beer, the BBC, red post boxes, the metro to everywhere, Heathrow Airport, teatime, British Airways, Margaret Thatcher

BOOKS: Too many to mention. My favorite still has to be Austen, and my biggest surprise would be when I actually fell asleep reading Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope. I rather thought I was going to love it.


CHILDREN: If you have children and are just a teeny bit of an anglophile yourself, I would strongly recommend The Naughty Little Sister series; Shirley Hughes' Alfie books and charming illustrations (click on 'Hughes' above for website); Kipper the Dog DVDS. All of these celebrate story and character without imposing didactic morals on children. Thank goodness.

And for the very young: Helen Oxenbury's "Pippo" stories. Elspeth (1) loves the bold pictures, the simple story, and the charm of the characters. I love how English it all is.

Cheerio, and toodle-pip!

***Sources for pictures (in order): www.bbcamerica.com; www.englishteastore.com; www.amazon.com; www.egglamania.org; www.wikipedia.org; www.liverpoolmuseums.org; amazon.com; www.ratherjolly.com

Don't be Thrunch and Spuddle; Thrip and Squiddle

Translation:
Don't be angry and make a mountain out of a molehill; snap your fingers and waste time with an idle chat.

(or: Let down your hair, man.)

Fancy fadoodle? Me, too.

--Source of poplollies: Poplollies & Bellibones / A Celebration of Lost Words by Susan Kelz Sperling, Konecky & Konecky 1981*

GUESS: What does FADOODLE mean? Guess below; answers in tomorrow's Poplolly.

*Click on S. Kelz, above, for source for picture and NPR interview.

Miss Vanderbilt--Ahem--There's a Dog Paw in My Pudding

**see photo source below I wonder how many wives could resist rising up in unholy protest if husbands suddenly took to wrapping their heads up in wire and head rags, greasing their faces, tying up their own chins, putting on oiled mittens for the night.--Vanderbilt 513

Amy Vanderbilt is a good read. If you've run out of Jane Austen, consider a nightcap--settle into a good chapter of New Complete Book of Etiquette / The Guide to Gracious Living.

Ms. Vanderbilt is side-splitting (not generally an acceptable mannerism) for several reasons:

1. She often writes tongue-in-cheek (but only in private; tongues should not reside in cheeks in the public domain).

2. This historical edition of Etiquette, this interminable commentary on correctness, all 706 pages (excluding the index), is an archaic catalog of the many graces our modern society blithely deposited in a waste can. And this is hilarious, because I am me and you are you. We only remember manners like Amy's in some past great aunt or in the blue flickers of a British sitcom.

3. The minutia is astounding and worth remark. Jane Austen, yes, but here the minutia is broken down in instructional chapters. My manners have slipped, yes, but just how many disappeared? For example, I can choose from a list of topics, from pages 212-220, read, and master The Social Pleasantries:

"Gifts of Love" * A Guide to Tactful Conversation *
When to Use a First Name * If You Cannot Remember Names *
Personal Questions--What Are They? * Dangerous Topics of Conversation * How to Parry Direct Questions * That Word "Lady" * How about "Miss!"?

And so on. I wish I could delight you with the entire list.

And egad! I certainly encourage good manners. Suddenly, as when you look at your dirty house in spring sunlight, I have viewed our table manners and shuddered. "When we come back from vacation," I warned at dinner tonight, "We are lodging a frontal attack!"

I talk with my mouth full, keep my knife in my right hand at all times, and point with my silverware. I am up and down from the table like a wind-up toy. Martin leaves his napkin on the table for the duration, sprinkles crumbs like Hansel, and occasionally brings along reading material (not for group edification, mind you). Merry eats many no-no things with her fingers and groans about soup for the third time in a week. And Elspeth is our crowning glory. She kicks up her feet into her food, which resides temptingly on the bare tabletop. She casts all things to the ground while grunting and smiling. She stuffs vegetables into the unreachable crevices of her highchair.

Every woman should change for dinner, if only into a clean house dress. Dinner is the high point of the day, the forerunner--it is to be hoped--of a free evening. Every little girl should be clean and in fresh clothes, even if they are just clean pajamas and bathrobe for nursery supper, every night, so that the idea of changing for dinner is inculcated at the earliest possible time. . .[she goes on]. . .Fresh grooming for evening is one of the criteria of gentility. --Vanderbilt 183

Scene: Evening. Mother and children lying exhausted on couch. Husband Martin sets the table and cooks dinner. Wife requests a cup of tea but receives none. Dinner is ready. The lovely family enters grandly (no bagpipes) for this "forerunner of a free evening:" Elspeth is still in pajamas from the morning. Merry is stained by tomato soup (did we brush her hair this morning?) and her face is crusty. And I, that paragon of gentility, have already showered and am clad in my biggest, softest, smelliest red bathrobe. Hair freshly brushed? No. Make-up? Heck, no. Heels? Try slippers.

All right, we do all have head colds. But Amy Vanderbilt would point out that is no excuse.

And last night, I gave myself a sharp wake-up call when I tossed a cooked carrot across the table, head of to foot of, mind you.

My great aunt would have di-ed. Actually, it is probably a good thing she has, because our table manners have become worthy of a Berenstein Bear's Book, a TV reality show, a PBS special.

In fact, Fred Rogers surfaced earlier this week as Merry critiqued our table manners and then systematically listed new rules for a new, gentler family dinner.

One, one, one! One, we need to start putting bibs on Elspeth.

Two, we need to start putting napkins on the table.

[Merry goes on--skips four, and continues--]

and seven [two fingers thrust into air]--We need to start behaving at other people's houses,

and number eight, we need to start turning lights on,

and the last one, we need to start picking up Elspeth's food that she throws on the floor.

Then she paused to survey our shocked faces, since we had all suddenly grown pig snouts and were snuffling in main dishes like the parents in Spirited Away. Undisturbed (she had seen it before), she concluded, "The person who wrote Mr. Rogers is very talentive."

Gentle people are often acutely embarrassed by the table manners of those with whom they find themselves eating. A carefully bred wife may suffer much inner torture because her husband--always when manner seem very important--forgetfully leaves his spoon in his cup or absent-mindedly licks his fingers. --Vanderbilt 229

I think I can conduct myself with adequate propriety. My mother certainly pressed upon us all the importance of the placement of the knife, the proper usage of napkins, appropriate dinner time conversation (no bodily details, no fights, no descriptions of illnesses.) And so on. She even let me know what to do when a "foreign matter" entered my mouth, such as a disgusting piece of gristle or fat or bug (and we had those occasionally on our produce growing up in Kenya). But I forgot this one night on a date with Martin as I audibly expectorated a piece of sushi, back onto the artful arrangement of lettuce and beet shreds on my plate. I love sushi. But my taste buds told me something was amiss with this one. Martin, let me tell you, was utterly horrified. Really. In retrospect, I feel I should have brushed up on foreign matter, or foreign bodies as Miss Vanderbilt terms them:

Foreign bodies accidentally taken into the mouth with food--gravel, fish, stones, bird shot--are removed with thumb and forefinger. . .If a gnat gets into a beverage or some other unappetizing creature turns up in or on a diner's food, he fishes it out, unobserved. . .or leaves the drink or dish untouched, depending on the degree of odiousness of the intruder. A gnat or a tiny inchworm on lettuce shouldn't bother anyone, but most fastidious people draw the line at a fly or worse. --Vanderbilt 232

This leaves me in pleasant reflection as I imagine what "or worse" could be. A rat. A human finger. A chicken head. Teeth.

But I am clearly missing the point. Besides, the list above does not constitute polite conversation, in any company.

Forgive me.

GUESS BELOW IN 'COMMENTS': WHAT YEAR WAS THIS EDITION OF VANDERBILT'S NEW COMPLETE BOOK OF ETIQUETTE PUBLISHED? AND DON'T CHEAT. IT'S NOT GOOD MANNERS.

**For more on Amy Vanderbilt, and for the source of her photograph, go to: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9074800/Amy-Vanderbilt (photo: 1956, Brown Brothers).

Slow Down, Read a Book, Chew a Gnat, Post a Comment

Don't miss JL's new book review (see below) on Seth Vikram's book.

And don't forget to share a comment, above--
Guess the date on Miss Vanderbilt's advice on gnats.

AND below--
Slowing Down. . .In our busy world, what slows YOU down?

CONTRIBUTOR REVIEW: A SUITABLE BOY BY VIKRAM SETH

A Suitable Boy

by Vikram Seth
Harper Perennial Modern Classics, Reissued October 2005


Seth was, pre-Boy, perhaps best known for his novel Golden Gates, written entirely in sonnets. A Suitable Boy is quite different, though suffused with poetry, both in the rhymes one family spontaneously generates at the slightest provocation, and in the rhythm and elegance of Seth’s prose. However, this book is most like a Victorian novel in genre. It is HUGE. It has lots of pages. It has nearly as many characters and subplots, complications, major and minor life devastations, and an ending both as final and as inconclusive as anything George Eliot ever produced.

It is set in 1950’s India around the time of Partition. This is not a historical moment that I’m especially familiar with, and I think a bit of prior knowledge would have helped my comprehension of the larger story. The ostensible main plot, however, is fairly universal: Lata, the young heroine, has a devoted mother who is busily trying to marry her off to a suitable boy. Unfortunately, Lata meets and instantly falls in love with an extremely unsuitable boy—for starters, he’s Muslim and she’s Hindu. Enter a couple of other suitors AND everybody’s families AND dashes of religion and politics and other romances of the mostly unsuitable variety, and you’ve got a really long novel. Also a very good one.

Lata is a woman at the cusp of many things, the modern era being but one of them. So, for her, the choice of husband (inasmuch as it is her choice, which brings up another set of issues in the novel) carries a vast weight of symbolism. Will she choose the vulgar but traditional and up-and-coming shoe salesman her mother promotes? Or maintain a balance between tradition and individualism by marrying the witty and educated Hindu poet whom her mother doesn’t like but cannot forbid? Or will she go the truly modern route and marry her Muslim student for love? And by the end, which does the reader, seduced into the mindset(s) of the book’s world, want her to choose, and why?

If you do read this one, please do let me know your thoughts on it. Especially on the ending. You can email me at thelonglets@hotmail.com.


--Reviewed by Jordana who holds and juggles two MAs, two children (one unborn), one biohusband, and many good ideas. Jordana teaches English at a high school in coastal Virginia. See her blogsite carpematrem.wordpress.com.

Slowing Down Your Frantic Inner Chicken

**See photo source below

The old proverb, 'Laugh and grow fat,' is a saying with sound sense behind it. Good temper and merriment certainly aid digestion. Mealtimes should be among the pleasantest occasions of the day. There is no reason why we should not enjoy partaking of the food, as well as take pleasure in the companionship of those who share our table. --from my old 1913 copy of Elementary Physiology and Hygiene by H.W. Conn, PhD, published first in 1906
When I was a child growing up in rural Bangladesh, chicken slaughters were high entertainment. I was six, blond, in a light cotton dress. My sister was eight, brown with the sun and barefoot. At the cook's summons, we left our books and blocks and tore to the back door, where we sat down for the day's best event. THWACK went the axe, off came the head, and we burbled happily as the headless bleeding carcass staggered dizzily about our yard.

Fast forward twenty plus years, and you'll find my family groaning in exstacy as we devour Martin's delectable Thai chicken and basil and sip his spinach-tofu soup. I wish I could say that I had nipped the Thai basil from my own garden, but as my indoor basil growing has proved sad, I bought it at the wonderful Asian Market in the next state over. So while we didn't know from which quarter our Thai basil originated, we did know where the chicken spent its few giddy years. Not in our backyard, but in our own county. The woman who sold us our organically grown, happy chicken lives in the green hills of our countryside, and she is serious about her chickens. Not only do they toddle around eating natural worms in a natural yard, they have a dignified death. Our chicken woman stretches out their necks with her own hands, and then she slices them and lets their blood pour into the soil of her farm. (Queue: Circle of Life). This is glorious, unless you are the chicken, but at least you haven't bitten off your neighbor's beak in desperation, which you might have if you had been "farmed" the industrial way.

But this is not a treatise for organic chickens, nor do I intend to go into industrial farming.

No, this is a happy reflection on SLOW FOOD.

For our chicken was plucked, frozen and much later stuffed with apples and onions and devoured in our dining room. Then we extended its memory by stewing it in a pot with fresh rosemary and oregano (grown indoors), basil (frozen from the summer garden), onions, carrots and celery. O, the smell as it flooded our house was delectable.

I grew up with "slow food." This is because, growing up in Bangladesh and Kenya, food was never fast. First of all, we didn't have one-stop shopping--no, my mother went to the greengrocers, the dryfoods store, the butcher (yes, pigs hanging and all), and bought roses and mangoes and whatever else from hawkers in the parking lot. Once home we had to soak all fresh food in a bleach solution; we 'made' our own drinking water in a chlorine machine, and there were no cans to crack open. We lived out of More with Less.


Believe me, now that I live in wintry Pennsylvania I take full advantage of cans and frozen food and already-soaked beans. But once and a while it does me good to slow down, to smell bread baking or the slow stewing of a chicken. Kids will slow you down, too--I deboned chicken with one hand and held Elspeth on my hip with the other. She was fascinated at the process, just as I once loved to watch chickens meet their doom. This slowing down is therapuetic, as is kneading bread, brewing wine (so I hear), and toasting your own granola. I absolutely despise fiddly tasks (Pastry chef? No!@#$!), but I love the rhythm of hearty, slow food.

Slow food is like a meditation of sorts. As its scent fills the crevices of my house, I am grateful for journey, the slow origins of the food itself and then for the process of preparing it. Of course one of the best things about slow food is the culmination of all that sensory anticipation, when you sit down with good people and eat that good food. And then the groans! The embarassing cacophony of utter joy!

So slow down. Take some time to thank your food for coming into your mouth. Feed some good people and drink some good wine. The most delicious things take the most time.
So now it's YOUR TURN: How do you slow down in a busy world? Post your comment below and edify us all!

Egg Photo Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Egg_in_straw_nest.jpg

New Book Review

Check out A.S. new book review, below: "What is the What" by Dave Eggers.

E-mail your book, film, or music review to me for publication on this page. We all benefit from the recommendations. My "Must Read" list is growing already. . .

Sesame Street Deserted, Gentrified and Bought by Private Company

This morning Merry has a cold and we are all at home. And so we sat sniffling around the kitchen table eating pancakes and listening to NPR's Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. If you've not listened to this hilarious show, a favorite section of ours consists of three stories--one is true, the rest are false. Today's true story recounted Ariel's "Sweet Sixteen Birthday Party" (broadcasted on MTV). Ariel's daddy throws her an immorally lavish bash, exposing himself and his oil fields to publicity; now you can read about the scandal in The Arizona Republic: Ariel's generous papa is on the news for "fraudulently promoting oil and gas investments in Kentucky." Investors feel grumpy about their money being invested in a brand-new BMW for little princess Ariel. But Ariel seems like a typical sixteen year old girl; she believes in the inherent worth of her father and of oil both: "My dad owns his own oil company. He has oil wells all over the world. I love oil. Oil means shoes and cars and purses," Ariel said on the show, which aired Monday. "So it sets me apart from everybody else in this town. . . . It smells like money, Daddy!"

You can find all the endless horror on sweet sixteen birthday parties on the MTV site. Or you can just watch MTV. Or our kids can watch MTV and dream of big bashes of their own.

What is happening to our culture? I know, I know, there are excesses in every culture, historically, all over the world. But the great excesses of our culture, and particularly our youth culture, deeply disturb me. There seems to be a growing sense of entitlement among American youth in general. And the problem goes much deeper than a mere feeling of deservedness. The problem is, our youth do not know what they truly deserve any more.

Children do not deserve cars, or cellphones, or a glittering social life among their peers. They do not deserve to feel comfortable all the time or to even be happy. They should not expect easy answers or facile outcomes. Youth should not feel they are the centre of their culture or the universe in general, nor should they expect an easy flow of material goods. They are not entitled to an easy education; they are not entitled to rewards.

What do our youth deserve? They deserve to be servants. They deserve to work hard and then to realize small but enduring benefits for their work. They deserve a love of learning, brought by discomforting, hard labor. What can we give our children? Not more things. We can give our children good conversation, the wisdom of the aged, knowledge of books. Our children deserve lives based on truth and realities that occasionally make them feel sad or disquieted.

I propose an alternative show to "Sweet Sixteen." Instead of taking in the frills and arsenic-laced whipped cream of excess, we could instead educate ourselves on the realities of an economically and socially torn world: a sixteen- year old orphaned by AIDS, caring for her siblings and grateful for what little education she can receive. A sixteen-year old sold into the sex trade by her desperately poor parents. A sixteen-year old conscripted into military work. A sixteen-year old who is the sole survivor of terrorist attacks in Iraq.

Oh, wait--are we at war? I had forgotten.

And God forbid we impress our youth with the reality of who they are in the world, and what work they must undertake to make our culture, and our world, a better place.

And education--what is that these days other than a product-line? Don't our youth deserve good jobs that will make them loads of money? Isn't success based on our professions, and our paychecks, and how much we are able to afford? What is learning but a means to an end?

Our society will collapse, piece by piece, if we do not give our children what they truly deserve.

I'm not waving the flag of socialism here. I'm not planning to strip my daughters of all their toys and give them sawdust pallets to sleep on. I'm not suggesting labor camps. I am certainly not advocating a loss of childhood. I believe in childhood, and I believe it is full of wonder--and chores, responsibilities, discipline, learning by experience, real conversation and silence and respect.

But I want to give, as much as I am able, a real life to my children. I want them to be unafraid to encounter and react to suffering. I want them to be compassionate and delight in all that is truly and deeply real. I want them to have wonderful imaginations, imaginations that give them faith to believe what is unseen and good.

_______________________________________________
What does this have to do with Sesame Street?

I love Sesame Street--it is clever, robust programming. I love the good services that CPB (Corporation for Public Broadcasting) delivers to children all over the US, without advertising and meaningless fillers. To me, CPB is a sign of health in our media morass. NPR is a bright spot in my daily routine and offers true education and responsible perspective.

And in the midst of our wildly disproportionate defense spending, not to mention controversial programs such as "No Child Left Behind" and our immoral health care messes (just to name a few concerns), the House has once again targeted CPB: "On a party-line vote, the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees health and education funding approved the cut to the budget for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which distributes money to the Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio. It would reduce the corporation's budget by 23 percent next year, to $380 million, in a cut that Republicans said was necessary to rein in government spending." (For a great illustration on government spending, see the Cookie Site).

And who loses? Our children. Again. And so society suffers: the cuts would force the network to "drastically reduce the programming and services public television and public radio can provide to local communities," as well as cutting funding and thus obliterating 'Ready to Learn,' a literacy TV program, and online teaching resource `Ready to Teach' (The Boston Globe 2006).

But don't worry. If our children want good programming, they can always find "Sweet Sixteen" on MTV. MTV doesn't depend on the government for its funding, and guess what? It's doing just fine. Big Bird may have to register for food stamps, but MTV will not suffer. Hey, maybe Big Bird could actually get a beak-job and have his own show.

My sense of unreality grows. As Marvin Gaye put it, WHAT'S GOING ON?

CONTRIBUTOR REVIEW: What is the What by Dave Eggers

What is the What
Dave Eggers
McSweeneys, 2006



Dave Eggers’s “What is the What” follows the first-person account of a “lost boy” from Sudan, who lives in Atlanta at present. The book is nearly nonfiction—based on a real person of the same name—but in building the narrative Eggers played with facts enough to call it a novel; this twist of truth makes the 400+ pages an especially compelling read. Eggers does away with his typically profane style of writing to present Achak raw and gentle, full of faith that eventually gives way to doubt.

In Achak’s bare English, at once formal and poetic, the story of Sudan’s civil war and one man’s life will shatter you.

--Reviewed by Amy Scheer

Besides her day jobs as freelance writer and mother, Amy Scheer is a prolific editorial letter writer. Most recently, her letters have appeared in Newsweek and Time. Amy lives with her composer-husband and two jolly sons in Grand Rapids, MI. Favorite past-times include sipping East African tea.

Feminist Reading of Boneheads, Stegosaurs

As we flipped through Usborne's "First Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Life," Merry took in the pictures of fast-running, sharp-clawed, dagger-toothed dinosaurs. Meat eaters, made to rip and shred and ingest one another. Merry's mouth gaped. Suddenly she asked,

"Are WE meat?"


I have to admit, I am not a dino-fan. But Merry was rivited as we turned page after page of endless saurases. And then the text began to tickle my funny-bone.

Read the following exerpts with a feminist lens and see if they're not funny:

"Stegosaurs were big and heavy, and could only move slowly. . .Their bodies were almost as big as a bus, but their brains were the size of table-tennis ball." Here you can see the size of a stegosaur's brain compared with its body. (insert picture here of huge animal with teenytiny brain).

And my all-time favorite. Boneheads: "Pachycephalosaurs [had] bony domes on top of their heads. These dinosaurs are sometimes known as boneheads."

(And my favorite line:) "Male boneheads sometimes fought each other."

So the world evolved. But some things never changed.

New Book Review by Rice Eater Below

A new book review has arrived! Check it out below--Rice Eater from CT reviewed "Zoom."

Daughters, Body Parts, Facts of Life

Gender issues--they start early. Elspeth is still utterly unaware that she is female. At one year old, people are big or small, but they are all to be played with and smiled at, though Elspeth more readily trusts smaller people and has a distinct aversion to people with beards, male or female.

But at five, Merry is already very aware of gender and many of the things that go with it. Though we try hard never to ascribe roles to gender or typify boys or girls, Merry has figured a few things on her own.

Boys do not generally wear dresses. Despite the history I gave her on women's rights and how women had to fight to wear pants, Merry steadfastly refuses to wear anything but dresses. Boys and girls have different physical characteristics. Boys are often more physically rough than girls--Merry believes this beyond a doubt, since she has personal experience to back up this belief: she has been bitten, pushed, her hair pulled, jostled, etc.--almost entirely by boys. When she was just four, this history of violence made Merry immediately wary of boys, and if there were any on the playground, she hung back in terror and clung to me for dear life. We explained to her that many boys were gentle and fun to play with. She did not believe us.

Since then she's had a few key male friends, and she has started to trust the male race a little more. So much so that today when Martin picked her up from preschool, she announced she had made friends with Richard and Devin. Two boys, in point of fact.

Martin was pleased, and mentioned in the course of conversation, "Boys and girls sometimes play differently, don't they?"

"Yes," said Merry, "Because they have different bottoms." She was of course referring to the undeniable fact that boys have penises and girls have vaginas.

She has known this for a long, long time, way back when she was two. And then, when she was three, she started to make use of her knowledge. The following scene took place a year and a half ago in Iowa.

_____________________________
My friend Amy and I sat at the table near the window, chatting over a book we had read, as her son Theo ate chalk and bobbed his head happily. Her four year old Simon and my three year old Merry sat on high stools at the breakfast bar, rolling play dough. Their voices suddenly raised to a high pitch:

“No, you don’t!” Merry yelled, her lips pursed and her eyes narrowed.

At intervals, Simon was grinning and then frowning in a perplexed way. “Yes, I do, Merry,” he murmured, studying a green piece of play dough plastered to his fingernail.

Merry put her chin in the air, smiling slyly. “No, you don’t,” she proclaimed again. She banged down a cookie cutter on the counter to emphasize her superior knowledge.

This exchange went on for some time. Amy and I paused our conversation, trying to understand what our two kids were ragging on about. Finally, Amy leaned toward me.

“I think Merry is telling him that he does not have a penis,” she said.

“Merry,” I yelled over my shoulder, “Simon does have a penis.”

Merry stopped mid-shout. “Oh,” she said, and shrugged. “Okay.”

Simon lowered his head to look at her. “I—I told you I had one,” he stuttered, relieved.
_____________________________
When I was about eight, it occurred to me that babies had to come from somewhere, just as a cake emerged from mixing a certain set of ingredients. So I asked my father. I expected a facile answer.

My father was standing over the sink, cleaning his razor. He told me: “The daddy gives something special to the mommy.”

“How?” I pursued.

My father stopped talking, and a pregnant silence followed. Finally he said, “We’ll tell you soon.”

For a day, I imagined the most awful things I thought possible: does the mother eat something gross from the father? Do they exchange saliva? Nasty! I never guessed--I could never have guessed--the horrifying truth.

My mother broke sex wide open for me the next evening. I was in the bath with my two-year old brother. She explained, concisely and graphically, what baby-making was. I looked at her, a washcloth hanging limply in my hands, my face and insides contorted with disgust. Why would God make such a thing necessary in order for the creation of babies? The splashing of my naked brother suddenly sounded very loud in the quiet of our bathroom.
______________________________________
Later in the car, Simon reviewed his conversation with Merry. First he reaffirmed the fact that he did indeed have a penis. And then Simon asked Amy: “So what does Merry have?”

His mother told him, and Simon asked what a vagina looked like. His mother struggled to explain, and after she had finished Simon was quiet for a moment. “Will Merry grow a penis?” he finally asked.

And on our end, Merry also continued the discussion. “Mommy,” she said casually, “Simon has a penis.”

“Yes, he does,” I said. “And what do you have?”

“A vagina,” she answered.

I am glad Merry knows the proper names for body parts, and it is natural she should notice differences between the bearers of those two body parts. All the same, I am glad to wait for a few years before Merry asks me for more specifics. The gender issues have started already, and it's early enough.

CONTRIBUTOR REVIEW: ZOOM BY ISTVAN BANYAI

Zoom
by Istvan Banyai
Puffin Books, 1995

A wordless meditation on perspective, Istvan Banyai's 31 page picture-poetry
provokes this what-if: you and I are the farm hands on the plastic toy set
of a magazine cover shoot held in the hand of a boy sitting by the pool-side
of a advertisement of a cruise line on the side of the bus in a giant city
being viewed through the television screen in the middle of a desert on the
postage stamp of a letter sent to Mr. Taumata Tafia, Tribal Chief of the
Solomon Islands?

Whimsical fancy or existential angst? It's worth the look, either way.

--Reviewed by Rice Eater who lives for the moment in New Haven, CT. Rice Eater is finishing a PhD from Yale in Political Science and will be teaching at The New School in New York City next year. Rice Eater has two lovely little girls and a wonderful spouse. Rice Eater occasionally, but not often, eats noodles.

Free Loving Dogs*

They Could be Yours to a Good Home: Free Loving Dogs

Names: Marmaduke and Chloe
Licensed Alsatian Wolfhounds

Both beautiful dogs come with stamped papers and engraved collars that bear their names and the slogan Make Love, Not War.

Both Marmaduke and Chloe can howl along to Pete Seeger's If I Had a Hammer.

Both dogs can stand on their hind legs and gyrate in time to Blowing in the Wind. Chloe prefers Dylan's rendition, while Marmaduke is a Peter, Paul and Mary fan.

Marmaduke is accustomed to ground beef while Chloe appreciates a little marijuana mixed into her Puppy Chow, “to take off the edge.” She is just a tad high-strung.

Free Loving Dogs Marmaduke and Chloe come with their own puppy beds as well as their own PEACE insignias. Marmaduke drives a VW Van. Chloe has made the curtains for the VW Van. Both dogs are talented and well behaved, though they do tend to wander into neighbor’s yards to visit other dogs if not chained.



*The title of this blog appeared as an e-mail from our town's FREECYCLE service. Martin begged me to write a blog in response. Less tempting for us was the "Free Loving Hamsters" that someone was trying to fob off. How many rodents does one family need, after all?

Ash Wednesday

At 6:30, it was still light. After what seems like weeks of smudgy grey, the sky was creamy as the inside of a shell, striated with faint pinks. An airplane silently left a perfect contrail, white like a child's chalkmark. Elspeth had been out of sorts all day but now she was quiet and nestled close to me, her hand unfurled on my arm. The snow outside had all but melted completely. The brittle edges of winter had given way to a quiet softness.


I had meant to mull over Ash Wednesday; I had meant to walk into and explore the phrase Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. That phrase and the accompanying smear of ashes has haunted me for years. I first truly encountered its power while teaching at a Jesuit high school. At mass that day I watched students filing past me, shadowed with a cross of ashes, their mortality. They didn't know it. They chatted and whispered behind their hands as they filed back to their seats. But judgement, inevitable death, yelled from their foreheads. The smooth young flesh that covered their cheekbones would one day fall away, and they would return to dust.

Later my first born child was marked with ashes. She too will die someday, as will I and my husband and my second daughter. So will my parents, and my siblings and all my friends. We have been formed out of earth-dust. We walk in young bodies and laugh with quick mouths. We burble with life like rivers. Sometimes when all is most happy, in the silence that follows a burst of laughter, in the quiet when somebody I love leaves, there is an echo, a shadow that never goes away: "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return."

Reading the prayer book today I was glad to remember that you, God, who are everlasting, "hates nothing you have made." And indeed as I sat in the rocking chair, holding Elspeth in my arms, a pervading sense of peace filled my hair, my mouth, every particle of my flesh, with warmth. I felt, as I often did as a child, that the evening had been created for me especially.

As an adult I see rationally that believing that an evening, or a storm, or an early morning, has been created specifically for one person is crazy. Thinking of it critically, I feel embarrassed, as when I wave warmly and energetically at someone only to find they were not waving at me but someone behind me. But I can't shake the feeling. And is it so odd to believe in something ludicrous?

Is it not ludicrous that we, who are somehow and mysteriously infinite should also decay into a world that was born and will also die?

I don't know how it all works. I know Ash Wednesday makes me sad, and that is right enough. I know too that time and flesh, body and spirit are much more than we can begin to imagine. Listen to the mysteries in this last breath of Ash Wednesday: Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace.

Thank God for mystery; for the ashes of cooled fires and the infinite sky. I thank God for the curve of my husband's shoulder, the foreheads of my children, the grasp of my friend's fingers. For wet grass, the cries of birds and the glimmer of water. For voices. Thank you.

Note

Note: Below, find the first book review for this blog, submitted by me (Kim) this morning. If you're not interested in the book reviews, simply skip over them to my personal posts below.

BOOK REVIEW: The Twelve Little Cakes by Dominika Dery

The Twelve Little Cakes
Dominika Dery
published 2004 by Riverhead Books

Charming Memoir, Fast Read

The Twelve Little Cakes is a charming memoir about little six year old Dominika's childhood in 1970s communist Czechoslovakia. The story's conflicts stem from the status of Dominkika's parents as poilitical dissidents: Father Jarda is always being fired from jobs by the Secret Police; Mother Janna's parents have disowned their family; little Dominika suffers the close scrutiny of her community.

I found the landscape and historical setting of the memoir fascinating, especially since Dery is only two years older than I. Dery's courageous family is sketched insightfully--her father Jarda is an especially lovable lunatic who at one point skis down a mountain with a St. Benard on his back.

Dery captures a child's perspective well in the precocious character of Dominika. The writing is light and often humorous even when the subject is dark; Jarda and Janna do not hide hard facts from their daughter.

Chapter Seven, "The Little Indian," about the quarantine ward at Bulovka Hospital, and Nine, "The Little Yolk Wreath," about Dominika's early religious experiences, are especially captivating.

Spend a few pleasant evenings with a tumbler of home-brewed gin and Dery's book. The writing itself is not particularly fine or tightly strung, but that suits the book's tone. This is Dery's first book in English, and it is worth reading.

--Reviewed by Kim Cockroft

BOOKS, REVIEW EM AND SHARE EM

HELP!

Friends: BOOKS! Some of them put me to sleep [Anthony Trollope's 'Barchester Towers']; some of them are easy and delightful [D. Dery's 'the Twelve Little Cakes'], and some I never finish even though they are fantastic [Salman Rushdie's 'Midnight's Children'--I do plan on finishing].

I am always on the look-out for a great book to read, and I know my friends are, too. I wish you all would jot off a couple lines on books you're reading. If you only have a couple lines to write, that's fantastic--the reviews do not need to be in-depth or professional. My father, for instance, reads books like most people eat popcorn, on long overseas flights. My sister reads books while she does just about everything except showering, and my friend Jeff always has a good tidbit to share with me, such as the jack ass and Robert Louis Stevenson, which is now on my list.

I just want to know what books you're reading, and whether I should read them, too.

If you've just read a book you'd like to review, e-mail it to me and I'll post it on this page. To access the book reviews, click on the BOOK REVIEWS label on the list of TOPICS at right. Then others will be able to share your book knowledge and recommendations.

If you want to include links to other reviews, please do so, and I'll post those as well.

Here's to books!

My Father is a Feminist

After staying up too late last night reading Wendell Berry's novel, "Hannah Coulter," in which the protagonist grows up working hard on a farm, going to bed exhausted from manual labor and rising early, I awakened around 7:30, longing for a sleep-in and coffee. Merry was singing a song at my elbow; Elspeth was alternately chewing on my nipple and crawling on my head. I stumbled downstairs and immediately and grumpily began taking stock of my husband's shortcomings. (My husband loves and looks forward to this pasttime of mine). He had not swept the floor or washed the cookie sheet from the night before; he had not fixed me coffee; he had not changed Elspeth's diaper. Never mind that he had cooked dinner the night before and cleaned the kitchen, or that he had fed Elspeth breakfast.

After a good strong cup of coffee, I was able to find my inner reason and begin again my internal discussion of feminism. What does it mean to be a daily feminist? Does it mean ticking off household duties, weighing out who did what and deciding whether I am succumbing to prescribed roles? My brother-in-law has pointed out that the women in my family talk hard feminism but love their men. Well, the two are not exclusive. Gentleness and feminism are not by any means contradictions of each other. And being a feminist does not mean that women are grouchy people or militants, though they jolly well have equal rights to those two things! But the point is, nobody, regardless of who they are, has the right to treat another person badly.

I grew up with the best parents possible. My mother was a feminist in every true meaning of the word; she consistently instilled in her daughters self-respect, determination, and idealism backed by the practice of hard work. She pooh-poohed moodiness, never gave stock to self-pity, and expected us to work hard and hold fast to true ideas of ourselves. Under her guidance, I never doubted for a minute that I was inherently worthwhile and strong. She generally espoused the notion I recently heard in "Mary Poppins," that while men with exceptional character can individually be adored, "as a race they're rather stupid." She did not encourage false vanity and even laughed at it but always, always affirmed that we were beautiful not because of how we appeared, but because of who we were, deep down. Nothing could change that, no matter what people said about us or did to us.

My father is a gentle, soft-spoken, easy-going humble man who works hard, thinks well, succeeds quietly, and loves us all with a deep, abiding tenderness. I have never heard or seen disrespectful behavior from him, especially regarding women. He takes a lot of flack and criticism from my sister and I, but he knows we are proud of him and hold him up as an impossible ideal for all men.

The point is, my parents are more who they are than what they do. My father has his PhD in public health and is a writer; my mother is a powerful speaker and has her Masters of Christian Education, which she took course by course with Kenyan classmates when I was in high school in Nairobi and enjoyed every minute of it. Both my mother and father are self-sacrificial. Both expect and value self-discovery and individual pursuit in each other, and share and nurture newness in each other. Both value family over everything else; both profess to love each other more than they love us, emphasizing that this is the way to love us best. They are not perfect, though I often thought they were. Their marriage is not perfect, though there is far more to admire and emulate in their partnership than to criticize.

My mother is a feminist, and my father is also a feminist. And how could a daughter ask for more?

I wish I could say I fell in love with my husband Martin at first sight. I did not. But I did fall for him at second sight, which is almost as good. After our second meeting, and after just one kooky, wonderful conversation, I told my roommate I had found the man of my dreams. Martin's mind and manner were the first draw; after that I found out he was a musician and a writer. I understood always that he was exceptionally kind in the deepest way. I didn't think much of his poetry at first, but as the years passed I began to think he was an excellent poet. It is handy to be married to a fellow writer, and it is good to be married to a life-long learner and a gentle person. When we married, we discussed children and decided that when we had them, we would both work part-time and stay home part-time. I can say in perfect honesty that Martin would have been happy to stay home full-time while I went out to work.

And then Merry came along. Martin was in graduate school and I was teaching English at the Jesuit high school in Missoula, MT. After my maternity leave, I went back to work, leaving Merry at home with Martin during the day. After work, I came home, Martin passed off baby like a baton and went on to his evening classes. It was miserable. Every time I stepped outside to walk to work, I felt as if I were ripping out my heart and leaving it bleeding in the doorway. Once I was at work, I enjoyed teaching my classes. But I couldn't shake the thought of all I was missing, with Merry changing quickly and still just an infant.

To make the separation harder, Merry refused to take my bottled breastmilk and cried all day, so Martin began rushing her in for feedings during my breaks. I barely saw Martin. We quickly realized this was no way to live.

And then I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I wanted to stop working at the high school and stay home with Merry. I longed for it so much that I categorically insisted that this must be. Martin felt a bit double-crossed, since we had discussed childrearing and agreed that we would share it evenly. "I don't care what I said then," I told him, "This is how I feel now." And so Martin sacrificed for me, and found a full-time job, and I got my heart's desire and stayed with Merry.

This is what the partnership of marriage is about: a life-style of mutuality and self-sacrifice. We have followed Martin's vocation to many different places, and though I take my vocation with me wherever I go (parenting at 'home' and writing), moving in pursuit of his job prospects has involved hard work and sacrifice from me. But it is mutual, and it is based on choice, and that is truly liberating.

I am baffled by women who talk as if they exist purely for the whim of their spouses. "Poor so-and-so," they'll say, referring to their husbands, "I haven't put on lipstick all week." And then, often in the same breath, they berate their spuses and denounce them as demanding and unreasonable devils.

I do not dress, or wear make-up, or do anything purely for Martin's benefit, anymore than he does everything for my benefit. To do so would be unhealthy, because acting in such a way would put unrealistic expectations upon each other. I do not wait around for Martin to fulfill all my needs. He does not depend upon me for his self-worth. If Martin died, God forbid, I would suffer, but I would not stop being a whole person with high expectations of myself and my daughters. And I would jolly well keep putting on clothes to please myself and nobody else.

What Martin says, or does, cannot change the person I am at the core of my being. And vice-versa. At the same time, we expect and celebrate all the things that we mutually contribute to each other and to our family. We realize that we are a small community of sorts, made to exist within a larger community. We realize and affirm that our love for one another must sometimes, and often, involves self-denial.

But true feminism does not come from a series of things I do, or what my profession is (though who a person is and what they do dynamically affects each other). True feminism comes from inside me, from a deep, unchanging well of self-respect and faith that I am whole, worthwhile, and capable. This is an ideal that I wish for everyone I love, male and female. It is a reality that I am constantly reminding myself of and working towards.

Tomorrow, I want to think more about feminism and its practical implications for my daughters.

But now my Elspeth is awake and typing with one hand while I breastfeed with the other is proving tricky. (Note to self: You chose this.) Right-o! So I did! Hallelujah!

Hot-dogs Don't Tell Tales

At intervals, the sizzling Hebrew National hot-dogs smelled of wet dog and incense. I hoped they were still good. My windows and doors were locked. Nobody would know I was feeding myself, and my daughter Merry, non-organic, unhealthy, bizarre meatstuffs.

Martin and I are semi-vegetarian, semi-organic foodies. We had a brief romance with vegetarianism, during which Martin ate fillet-o-fish at McDonalds and we realized we were part-time carnivores at heart after all. I read enough information on little beef-fed girls who bud breasts and develop cancer to scare me meatless. One of our friends based his doctoral thesis on undercover work in a meat processing plant in the midwest. His stories were enough to make you plant your own bean crop in the back yard. So we compromised. When we are at home, we eat only organic, natural and hormone free, or local meat, and we don't eat that very often (who could afford to?) We feed the girls and lactating me only organic, hormone-free milk.

And generally speaking, I publicly denounce hot-dogs.

But I have a secret passion for Hebrew-National, so much so that this year during the superbowl at my parents house, when my mother sent away an unopened package of Hebrew National Franks with my brother and his girlfriend, I disgraced myself by throwing a mini temper tantrum.

--Those were SPECIAL, I hissed, as my brother's girlfriend disappeared to put on her coat. --Those were SPECIAL TREATS.

My mother shrugged as if to remind me that my little brother lives in an almost-condemned house, works hard, and most importantly, is my blood relation, after all.

--We still have the other package, she said, referring to the sorry buy-one-get-one-free, preservative-packed, non-kosher mystery dogs in our refrigerator.

--He doesn't even CARE about his health, I complained, holding an invisible cigarette in my fingers. Besides smoking, my brother does horrible things like eating frozen Jimmy Dean sausage sandwiches.

--I saved one of the Hebrew National for Merry, my mother pointed out, just before my brother and his girlfriend reappeared. I banished my pout until they were safely in the cold air, plastic sack in hand--containing not only the whole package of expensive kosher hot-dogs but the rest of the salt and vinegar kettle-cooked chips! Double-whammy.

When I came back home from my parents house with the girls, Martin had a surprise in store for me. Nestled in our rickety, twenty-year old refrigerator drawer, not one, but two Hebrew National hot-dog packages smiled up at me. I have shared this secret with nobody. When our friends came for lunch and Merry mentioned the possibility of hot-dogs, their mother, a vegan, pooh-poohed.

--Oh, no, she said. --I don't think your mother would have hot dogs.

I did not admit my secret and shameful cache but instead shoveled Trader Joe's macaroni and cheese onto her children's plates. I saved the Hebrew National for quiet afternoons, like lunchtime today. It did not matter to me that they smelled odd as they cooked.

As we waited for them to pockmark deliciously in the pan, Merry read me the book she had created this morning out of green construction paper, called "The Cornia Tales."

--This is a tale about Merry, the artist, Cocoa the famous doctor, and Elephant, the farmer,
she began.

She went on, undeterred by Elspeth, who was making a sound like a blocked vacuum cleaner with every bite of natural, dye-free noodles.

--Sometimes Elephant did bad things, but Merry forgave him anyway, Merry continued, holding up the picture for me to see. And then the book abruptly ended. The hot-dogs were blackened and smelled delicious. I slid one onto her plate.

--I don't think that book has enough narrative tension, I pointed out.

Merry picked up her hot-dog and licked it.--Yes it does, she argued.--It has narrative tension because sometimes Elephant does bad things. Also, it's only the first book.

--Good, I said, and bit into my lovely, hot, tasty, clandestine Hebrew National hot-dog. I finished it quickly and with gusto. Within minutes of the last bite, I doubled over with a stomach cramp.

Merry looked up from her hot-dog, which she was nibbling slowly and deliberately. "Maybe you'll throw up it," she said.

And here's the real source of narrative tension: the things we claim publicly and proudly; the things we actually do in secret; and the consequences when the first two do not meet. Call it the ego and the id, if you will. I call it a stomach cramp. But guess what? The cramp passed, and I squirreled the rest of the Hebrew National hot-dogs safely away in our cheese drawer. They wait there for another quiet afternoon. And they aren't telling any tales.

A Nut Searches for Her Inner Light

Today, sitting in the balcony at a church in town, I noticed that the chandeliers looked like heavily pregnant spiders. The pastor's wife asked me how I was and I said, "Oh, this winter! I feel like a nut, in a shell, and I'm knocking for spring." I noticed Martin looking at me askance.

Maybe it is the snow, and the long winter, that makes me restless. I wandered from the sermon to the window and beyond, where the snow was blowing. Looking sideways, I felt like my daughter Merry must when I take her face between my hands and say, "Look at my eyes when I talk to you!" Merry's eyes dart and then fixate on something fascinating on her right.

I don't think that God had my face crammed into his hands and was willing me to look forward at the pastor. I think perhaps I was gazing sideways away from my own guilt and out to God in the swirling snow.

The service ended with a hymn I disliked so strongly that I refused to sing part of it. There was war imagery, which of course is "Biblical" (along with a whole host of things you don't want your children knowing about) and Western, and also filled with requests for God to shake us from calmness and contentment. If anything, I thought, we need to stop fighting, release ourselves, and find contentment. And that does not come from striving and squinting and begging. It comes from letting our hands fall open, and it comes from being silent.

Quaker meeting, anyone?

Martin would love to celebrate the Inner Light and join a Quaker meeting. We actually visited a Quaker meeting in the next big town over. It was good to be silent for an hour, and I wondered what profound thoughts everyone was thinking during the calm. When the optional sharing time came at the end, I was disappointed. One lady said she liked gardening. (And why would this have disappointed me? I love gardening, too, and feels it draws me closer to what is real and true.) Another man recounted a rather bizarre dream about his mother and roses, and now that I write this I can't think of exactly why that was disappointing, either.

Episcopalian service, anyone?

Perhaps I am still an Episcopal at heart, and want the structure, meaning and otherness of the liturgy. The liturgy says all my insides long to utter but cannot articulate.

I am one of many of my generation who grew up in churches, still love God, but do not love churches. We want to serve Jesus but wonder if Jesus would darken a church door if he were around now. But we join the many who go anyway, because there are few acceptable alternatives, especially when you have children--and especially when you feel guilty and disenfranchised if you don't go. But as the pastor talked about hypocrisy this morning, I suddenly woke up and thought, Ah! That's me. Here I am sitting in church.

Of course it's complicated.

Bruderhof community, anyone?

Anyone up for a house church? By this I mean everyone eats brunch at a long table, and a person reads from the prayer book, and we sing a few hymns. But we eat lots of pancakes and share grace by soaping dishes together.

Catholic conversion, anyone?

Martin and I briefly considered becoming Catholic. We became envious of the Catholics sitting around us in mass, who had never considered being anything else. For people like us (evangelical kids-turned -Episcopalian) to become Catholic, we have to become Catholic hook, line and sinker. We have to wrestle with every doctrine and sweat over whether we can truly convert or not. And then when our parents (who are worried about their children converting) visit, they can't take Eucharist, and by then we've stopped birth control and are having babies up the wazoo. If you are born as a Catholic, count your blessings. You can stay Catholic and use birth control and disagree with the Pope. But if you are not a cradle-Catholic and you decide to convert, you have to sign on the dotted line under every doctrine. At least that's how we felt. And we couldn't do it.

So now we're easy-going but fraught-with-questions/ evangelical turned Episcopalian/Catholic-Mennonite-Bruderhof-Quaker wannabees/ attendees at a Presbyterian Church. While we would have liked to have tea with Calvin, we would have kept the conversation on the snow and the spider-like light fixtures and away from predestination and perseverance of the saints.

Nevertheless, Martin and I are going to sing in the choir. Go figure. Life is a series of tensions.

So, I'll close with a song from Merry, who has no doctrinal issues. (During this song, Elspeth, who is the more pragmatic of the two girls, grunted along audibly in a concerted and stinky effort, but this did not dim Merry's Inner Light as she sang):

Jesus is a-somewhere.
Where? I don't know!
In the clouds?
He's not here; I don't see him
But every day he's here with us
Even though you can't see him,
When you go to bed he's there.

The angels will be here,
Even the angels.
If you look up into the sky at night
You'll see 1,000 stars.
Jesus is made up of stars.
I love Jesus my light!
Jesus is my star and the sun.

Oh, that Merry girl would make a great Quaker.

For This Morning, at 3:30 a.m.

In a place close to us this morning, six children burned to death. They would have been deeply asleep when the fire started, tucked away inside their beds as the world froze around them. Just as my children were at 3:30 this morning.

God is not trustworthy in the way I want him to be. I want to tell children, don't worry; you will be safe. God will keep you safe. I want to tell my children this; I want a guarantee that they will live long, joyful lives. I want to promise them that they will live to see their own children sleeping well and safely in beds.

My one-year old's mouth cups my breast and pulls milk from my body. As long as she wants to eat, I will hold her there, feeling the soft warmth of her downy hair against the inside of my arm.

My five year old sleeps, arms splayed open above her head, cheeks pink, mouth open. I bend close to hear her breathing.

There were three skeletons archaeologists uncovered in the ruins of Pompeii. I saw the picture in National Geographic: A man's arm covered his wife's shoulder; his knee nestled gently into her back. She in turn was curved around the bones of a baby. I hear the breath of that family, the sighs of their dreaming, suspended like glowing suns above their bed. I hear the hush of their sleep, the music of their contentment. Then, in an instant, it disappears like the smoke of a candle.

I finger my one year old's toes, one by one, hold the heel of her foot in the palm of my hand. I hear the laughter of my daughters, glittering like sun-caught dust in the windows of my house.

In Dresden, in Hiroshima, in so many places at so many times, children were eating. They were singing songs like my daughters. They were holding pencils and drawing; bent over books, tasting new words; rolling bright green balls across their floors. Their breaths were like bright birds, flying in circles, showing the undersides of brilliant, beating wings.

O, God. My Father and Mother God, you do not offer me the promises I want so much. And I, in turn, cannot give them to my children.

No Substitute for a Barn Raising

My husband-professor Martin gave me my first taste of "Facebook" last night. The sheer amount of information, split-ends of messages, and dribbling trails of self-examination were mind-boggling to me. He had posted a picture of me with a swollen face.
--What's the matter with my face? I asked. It looks as if I've been stung by dozens of bees.

--Oh, you were pregnant then, he said.

But of course it was a picture JUST of my face and shoulders.

lol. What's that? I asked. Laugh out loud, of course. I must be the only one on the PLANET who doesn't know lol.

--And these are the "friends," Martin said, indicating a scroll of names and pictures with the mouse. "They're not friends, actually, in the way of real friends, all of them," he said, and helped me understand a person can have two hundred or two thousand "friends," depending on who decides to let you be their companion, in that way. Not companion, but friend. A different sort of friend.

--Really, I said, in a cynical way. You mean they're not really friends?

* * * * * * *

I grew up in Kenya on a housing compound surrounded by a white gate, dense thorn hedges, and high walls trailing with morning glories. (But this was true for every house and compound in Nairobi). In my compound, I lived in one of perhaps twelve maisonettes, or townhouses, with the members of my immediate family. Across the way lived two Israeli families; down to our right we could smell the then-Zairian (now Congolese) family's fish drying on their lawn; also, there were a few Brits, a couple East Indians, and one handsome, naughty Spaniard. My little brother was in love with the Mexican American girl next door. My mother's Somalian friend came over once and while to drink tea and tell my mother about the idiots at the drygoods store and how she had dismantled their shelves in protest. Her house always smelled of incense and occasionally she wore sheer, expensive outfits and had bellydances with her friends. My sister and I put on a Christmas play in front of the hibiscus bushes with the Nigerian kids.

Always our door was opening and closing; always there were the thuds of bare feet on our wooden floors; always there were shafts of sunlight and tea in the back garden. Our house was constantly bustling with our community in the compound and the endless international guests my mother and father entertained. I learned as a child to sit at the dinner table and absorb the conversations of doctors and film directors and mothers and fathers. Our lives were full, so full that one year there was perhaps only a week when we didn't have company in the house. I loved it and hated it; I was drawn into the fray and frazzled by the fray. There was a small space between the refrigerator and the kitchen wall where I folded myself into when the company got too thick.

Even the driving in Kenya felt relational. It had to be because none of my friends or I had driver's licenses; none of us had e-mail, of course, or our own computers, or any TV schedule to keep up with, though The Cosby Show did come on once and a while. We spent long evenings playing outside, making up plays indoors or laughing, and reading and playing games.

Our compound in Kenya, diverse and exciting, is what many people's online community is now. You can e-mail or chat with a person in India or Uganda or England, and you can do it in your skivvies from the warm upstairs room of Wazoo Farm in PA.

But it's not the same. Something feels amiss.

* * * * * * * * * * *
For about six months, our family did without the internet at home. When I first cancelled our DSL, I had illusions about writing sheaves of letters. I could taste the envelope adhesive on my tongue. I would finally get rid of those stacks of stationary and cards.

Not having internet at home was inconvenient; I take care of the bills and finances and much of that business is taken care of online. But it was also wonderful. Martin, who quickly gets sucked into baseball stats and bottomless wells of trivia and "news," jolly well had to talk to me instead. We read more, played more music, talked face-to-face instead of side-by-side, with the blue shadow of a computer screen flickering on our faces. If we had an urgent question, like WHO was in that movie, we had to wait for the answer.

I fell down on e-mail, and since I hate telephones, and it has been winter forever, I became somewhat of a recluse.

In the silences that no e-mail left, our house echoed. This is our second year here, and the community that seemed to happen so seamlessly in other places we've lived has been slow here. We know one other family well, and they are odd-balls like us. Without their friendship, we should be all at sea, I'm afraid. Part of this is our fault; we've become busy with so many things we can't really name, and Martin stays very busy at work. Compared to most American families we probably have more company than most.

But people seem to keep to themselves, occupied with what Merry likes to sing: TOO MUCH OF NOTHING. I can't help but think that the Internet, and cellphones, and Facebook, has much to do with that. Have we filled ourselves so full of that alternative community that we don't need human flesh anymore?

* * * * * * * * * * * * *
Last night I noticed my eyes were bloodshot.

The night before, Merry came up to bed, Rose book in hand, and said, Mommy, don't do what you did last night. --That is, I had sat at the computer, hammering away, as Merry sat in bed waiting for me to read to her.

Confession. Hear me, for I am hooked. It's been less than a week since we restarted the Internet.

Here's another funny thing. When I'm around TV, I realize that TV is insulting. There are few shows that are worth watching; the news is full of NOTHING; the advertisements are condescending and damaging to my children; the reality TV offers more of NOTHING. But all these things, like junk food, fill you up until you forget that you're hungry anymore.

Too much of nothing can make a man feel ill at ease.
It's all been done before; it's all been written in a book.
When there's too much of nothing. . .

I am outraged by the fact that the media assumes that I am dying to know about celebrities' lives. I don't give a damn about their personal details, or their clothes, or their petty arguments, any more than I should care about Jane Smith over in Iowa who burned her meatloaf last night. I find it utterly depressing that people I love seem to know a whole list of dull details about so-and-so, and even worse, want to talk about them. Knowing more NOTHING makes people feel important.

I found this out when I returned from Kenya straight into college. I stood out the fringes of crowds who batted around pop trivia like a volleyball, back and forth, quickly, happily, smiling at each other and at their own cleverness. Then the pop trivia volleyball whizzed toward me; I stuttered, "I actually haven't ever watched that show--I don't know who she is--" and the volleyball fell through my open, hopeless fingers. I couldn't play social volleyball any more than I can play real volleyball, because I hadn't studied up on the rules.

Confession. In the evening, when darkness is falling and the lamps I switch on do not seem to banish the shadows--in the evening, when I am tired and weary of talking to my children and angry that Martin is late--in the evening, I sometimes long for the noise of the TV. And I don't want a DvD. I want the same TV everyone, everywhere across my town, is watching. I crave the sense of connectedness.

* * * * * * * * * *
But this dichotomy, this separation of body and soul, is not new. In a way, we are the New Platonists. We are nothing more than so many spirits, sending messages through the black expanses of space, listening to voices in our ears that have no warmth.

My house echoes so often, and it cannot be filled by the community of handless images on Facebook. My insides sometimes echo, too, and while an e-mail fills the emptiness for a minute, it does not fill me like a handshake, or a hug, or the comfort of sitting down with my friend face-to-face. The Internet and chatrooms do not call on me to serve, to brew tea, to cook a meal, and so they cannot possibly ever become a substitute for real friendship.

There are no real barn-raisings online. There is no bad breath, no BO, no particular sound of a friend's voice accompanied by their breath, by the warmth of their fingers, by the sounds of their footfalls.

The Amish must be right. Technology distracts us from real community.

Yet here I am, in my pajamas at 11 in the morning, typing away. And I feel, as I so often do, filled with longing for the sounds of diverse voices in my house. I want the rooms filled. I want help with the farm that does not exist yet. I welcome the messes that real people, with real bodies, bring.

Dead Mice, Feminism, and Why I as a Feminist am Not Good All the Time

Merry thrusts her arms into the air, like a mad swimmer. She is conducting her invisible orchestra. Peanut butter and jam smear her cheeks. I don't care if I'm not good! she sings to the increasingly vigorous baroque music burbling from the radio. I don't care if you're not good! She plunges a finger into her sandwich, leaving a hole.

This is lunch time, after which I open the doors to retrieve a plastic-wrapped square of dish detergent (the same that Elspeth took a bite from and then vomited into the sink two weeks ago). I slam the doors shut, put a hand to my mouth, admit into the air a high-pitched sound that is generally reserved for passionate and rodent encounters both. AHHH.


--What is it, Mommy?

--Nothing, I say, as I shove the handles of several wooden spoons through the cabinet handles.

--Yes, I saw you put your hand up to your mouth.

I try to banish the glimpse of the mouse, in a pool of coagulating blood, snapped by the trap.

It's not that I didn't want to catch the little rodent.

We've been trying for weeks. At the beginning we felt sorry for the mice but were optimistic about a catch. My husband, Martin and I tried for the last part of an evening hunched over the little traps, bending back the springs and almost losing fingertips. Finally Martin pronounced his triumph and superiority with dohickies by getting the trap to stay sprung. He set it gingerly in our kitchen cabinet, and we arose the next morning with apprehension. Martin's bravado from the night before had sadly diminished in the face of mouse murder--classic morning after--and so I threw open the cabinet doors myself, expecting to see carnage. Instead, the mouse had escaped with the peanut butter, which is no small feat considering its adhesive properties, but left the trap intact. Martin, who is a pacifist to the core, seemed secretly pleased.

As the mice outsmarted us night after night, his pride in them grew.

You're really happy they're getting away, I told him.

No---he said with an odd light in his eyes--But it is really a smart mouse.

I asked him if he had prayed that the mouse would escape. And he said, kind of.

I reminded him of disease, and that we have a child who eats everything, including indistinguishable things, in greedy fistfuls from the ground. I went back for more traps. There was a prominent display of traps at the front of the store, including a huge rat trap that made me shudder. As I paid, I told the men at the hardware store: I used to feel sorry for the mice, but I don't any more.

They laughed.

--Yes, I said, I can hardly wait to see their little necks broken.

They stopped laughing. This cessation of merriment, I know, was prompted by the realization that I was not so much funny as frightening. I had crossed the line from being femininely charming to being a feminist. Or a mad woman. Both of these things--feminist and mad women--I am into. But I do not think the hardware chappies were.

In any case, I talk a bigger game than I play. One glimpse of that gory mouse and understood two things:
1. the source of the odd smell I had detected off and on all morning
2. the fact that I would, in the near future, call Martin and tell him that I would rather
a. clean up human vomit
b. move away
c. scream my guts out
than deal with the dead mouse.

"Of course you would rather clean up vomit," he said, when I told him. "So would I. So would anyone."

Don't get me wrong. I am a feminist, and I am a tough woman. I have endured Elspeth falling down a flight of stairs with an open pair of scissors; roto viruses; boils as a child. But dead animals somehow just put me over the living edge.

We all have our weaknesses, and like Merry, I don't care if I'm not good. I will shovel the snow tonight, and Martin can jolly well take care of the mouse.

Resist the Plant Lust! Reason vs. Nursery & Seed Co. Giddiness

There are stirrings of life on my mental Wazoo Farm as I ease the mouse cursor over Gurney's Nursery's happy images of tender male asparagus, doting lily of the valley, potpourric lavender, phallic Red Hot Pokers and stripey, muscular rhubarb stalks. Botany-intoxication floods warmly through me as I add:

Storm Petunia ("Legendary Performance!")

Hopa crabapple ("Like a Rosy Bouquet")

Hybrid tea roses ("elegant summer blooms")

Russian Sage ("Decidedly Fragrant Foliage")

And who can resist the "Blooming-est Daylily Ever?"

Who indeed?

It would be madness, I tell myself, not to click all these bright and varied plants! They can be mine! Click the mouse, by George, buy the lot! I can just see smell the hybrid teas, can feel the earlobes of the snapdragons, can feel within the core of my very being the wild excitement of Summer Pastel Yarrow's "Explosion of Color!"

O, Gurney's Seed & Nursery Co. has got me pegged. I drool all over the keyboard in undisguised plant lust as I tap in the plant codes.

"Forget the credit card balance!" I mutter under my breath. "Forget the drafts and the heating bill! Forget the mice problem! Forget the mortgage payment!" I want lilies, bleeding heart, balloon flower, and Mr. Lincoln the lovely hybrid tea!

I WANT SPRING! And I want to feel earthworms wiggling around my fingers and soil caking on my feet and blisters on my hands. I want these things and I want truckloads of profusely blooming perennials for my beds.

Ah, reason. The virtue that saves lovers from suicide, mothers from tearing their hair, marriages from ruin, cars out of canyons, credit cards from soaring balances. I reduce quantities, blink back tears, erase items completely. I have whittled my list down to a reasonable amount, alas for Gurney's Nursery, good for our bank account. Wazoo Farm will still be Wazoo Farm with a few less roses.

Of course, I still have three catalogs to go. Seeds of Change is selling trees, now, and I want every packet of their zinnia seeds. Henry Fields has a sale. I still have to do my part for trees by joining the Arbor Society, and filling their coffers with my nonexistent money. And did I mention the heirloom tea rose catalog on its way to my door?

Seems my hands will not lack from blisters this spring after all. Whoopee!

The North Wind Doth Blow (Elephants in the Wind)

And we shall have snow--
And what will poor Robin do then, poor thing?

If you know the poem then you know the answer: poor Robin does what we all do--puts his head under his wing, poor thing.

Of course in Missoula, MT, where we gloriously dwelled for three years, everybody is out skiing and embracing the weather. Here in PA I am hunkered down watching the snow blow over Wazoo Farm.

What's the trick? One winter my sister said she was ready to meld with and form a happy relationship with the winter--all you have to do, she said, is relax every muscle you can--you'll lose the chill and you'll enjoy the cold at the same time. I have tried this, sitting in a car, waiting for the heater to fire up. I've battled against the urge to curl into a little tense ball, dense as a chestnut waiting under the snow. Once or twice I've even been able to accomplish the trick, and yes, it was effective. A sort of yoga for snowbound, cold people: it relaxed me, it centered me, it made me content. For a second, anyway.

Relaxing when you're cold is like trying to relax in the dentist's chair. Of course the way to relax in the dentist's chair is to imagine you're on an island sipping a ridiculous drink, or in a garden, or on your grandmother's knee. You don't relax by reconciling yourself and being happy about three or four hands shoved into your mouth and the whirs and scrapings. (I heard the history of dentistry--in sounds--on NPR today and I feel like there's nothing to complain about now).

Well, enough griping. Suffice it to say I'm indoors, enjoying the blowing snow and the sight of other people's tires spinning multiple times before they get traction.

Here's a song by Merry for the day (not often do you get phonics, religious devotion, multiple organs, and Valentine's Day in one perfect tune):

I wanna shine for Jesus
I gotta Valentine for Jesus
Open my hearts to Jesus
Sounds like a G but it's Jay-J-J-J!
I wanna J-J-J Jesus!
I wanna shine, Jesus!
I WANT JESUS!
Jesus sounds like a G
But he's just a Ja-Ja-Ja-Ja-Jesus!

Merry would be a fascinating field project for an anthropologist. She's a fine conglomeration of Episcopal (our and my parent's choice), Baptist (her TX grandparent's choice), Presbyterian (go figure) and Corneese.

Cornia is Merry's world, wherein the following characters dwell:

Elephant: indeterminate gender; always naughty and just on the brink of self-destruction

Cocoa: Elephant's father, and Merry's husband, who is a famous doctor, farmer, and what-not to boot. As far as I can tell, Cocoa is fairly level-headed but a bit of a fool when it comes to parenting.

Mano: Extra. I think he's Cocoa's brother.

Bodo, Godo, She ? Shitake?, etc: a crew of extras.

People in Cornia are rather wicked, I think. And of course therein lies the draw for Merry, who is by all accounts a very well-behaved child.

--You know WHAT? Merry says, eyes about to roll out of sockets.

--No.

--Elephant has been UP on the ROOF again.

--No!

--Yes! I said, Elephant, WHAT are you doing up on the ROOF? And he just jumped into the trees.

Well, you get the idea. Elephant is incorrigible, as my mother says--a sociopath at best, an absolute danger to society in truth.

Also, in Cornia, there is no God, or if there is, as Merry says, HE DOESN'T REALLY CARE WHAT YOU DO. I can't quite figure if there's government in Cornia, though I think perhaps there are jails, because I think Elephant has spent a few time-outs behind bars for some of his worse transgressions.

Besides keeping up with the goings-on of Elephant and his Cornia compadres, Merry freelances as a preacher, songwriter, dancer, and story-teller.

One day in IKEA, when she was three (this is after attending my in-law's Baptist church), Merry climbed onto a display and thrust her little fist in the air.

Jesus was born in MONTANA! she yelled.
He died for your sins on a cross in IOWA!

The passion and appropriate intonation with which she delivered her sermon brought a few people to tears and I can tell you with a triumphant heart that there were converts that day.

Oh, Merry Bear. What a funny mix you are: a soup, in fact, of all the odd and wonderful things that makes us all the botched-up, funny, graceful people. There is a wonderful liturgy about prophets and puzzled people; I googled until my googler was soggy and couldn't find it. But it's a wonderful mix, don't you think? We are usually puzzled, and rightly so, but once and a while there's a flash of inspiration, or God, and we are suddenly prophets. And in a way, a parent takes on a prophetic role every day, as does a friend to another friend: "You will be all right;" for instance; or "You are a creative, lovely person;" or even "You're a bad child." Naming people and situations is the same as prophesying.

So anything for Valentine's Day? Not really. It's cold and snowy; I stayed up late cutting out paper hearts for the members of Merry's preschool and then school was cancelled today. My father used to bring my sister and I roses and that was so nice, especially when the other girls seemed to be getting an embarrassment of flowers from boys (or, who knows? from themselves, perhaps). It seems just unfortunate that the advertising industry could have caused such a ridiculous hoo-ha all over the United States: disappointed lovers, lonely people, and money-spenders who pleased someone after all.

Well, Happy V Day. And more importantly, happy every day. Watch for elephants in the wind.