Summer before spring

Spring hasn't even hit the calendar and yet we have barely had any winter at all. I'm not so un-Chicagoan as to jinx it all and put our winter coats away but I'm letting the sunshine hit my pasty-white legs and fade my gadillion-dollar dual-processed hair as often as possible. 

That means I'm also giving in to the small child's incessant begging for summer silliness -- watergun show-downs and playing tag at the park before dinner and eating more ice cream than usual. Why not? Next week, we will probably be shoveling snow. 

This afternoon, he was set on a watergun battle with my parents, allayed only by the opportunity to "earn cash" from Grandma by picking up sticks in the backyard. I told him I'd meet him at their house and bring over the Ziploc full of tiny squirters after his chores were finished. He was so afraid I'd open water-fire on him when he answered the door, I could hear him squealing from the other side when I rang the bell. My mother cautiously opened the door, and there he was in the dining room, squeezed back into a dark corner with a plastic chair held up as a shield.

His worries were premature. I hadn't even filled the water guns. In fact, I made him prep them all and hand them out fairly (such an only child, always trying to take two and leave someone totally defenseless) and then I unleashed the fury. My mom was soaked within minutes and my dad ruthless fired at my head while I reloaded in the trash can full of hose-water my mom left on the front porch.

We had so much fun, laughing and perching behind tiny trees in the neighbors yard as protection (unsuccessfully). We refilled and reloaded until we were all worn and very wet. All, but Lil E, who wanted to keep on until dark.

We did this all last summer -- drenching each other with super-soakers and surprising each other with stray water streams through car doors and after school -- and it's just come a bit earlier year.

Which gives me plenty of time to let the fear of being sprayed down fade away and then show up at the front door with my own water theatrics -- crazy-cold hose-water-filled dollar-store guns blazing all over my boy who thinks he's the one with the smart strategy.

Watch out, son. It's going to be lonnnnng and crazy season. And hasn't even officially begun.

Click to read more ...

Quiet observations

He likes to be the lead. He was not happy he only had a few small lines in his Sunday School play at Christmas. He raises his hand, even when he doesn't have an answer. He believes his opinion is just as important as every adult's words in the conversation. 

I love this about my boy. I am raising him that way.

I recall a conversation about cancer research at the kitchen table one night when I was about nine. My parents were discussing some article or study or something that seemed heady and important when my dad stopped abruptly and turned to me and asked me what I made of all of it. I remember the yellowish light from the aged fixture that hung over our hand-me-down table and the clank of the forks on unbreakable china plates and the swell inside that made me physically feel what I always knew, "What I think matters in this family. I have a voice." 

I wanted my child to grow up feeling that. He does. Sometimes overwhelmingly so. Once he cried when I made a unilateral decision about something tragic like where to go out to dinner or what time to leave for the park, sobbing, "I thought we were a team! I thought we made every decision together!"

Obviously we don't. But I also realize I make many solo decisions behind the scenes and rarely skip asking his opinion, even when it's in no way a deciding factor. It's not that I want to un-do all the space and voice and judgment I've given him at our own second-hand kitchen table. But maybe loosening the knot a bit would serve him well, too.

I thought of that when my dad texted me this photo he snapped with his phone last week on a day off from school. Lil E is bathed in the light shining through skylights at the Art Institute, carefully sketching a Picasso painting. 

It was my mom's idea to take sketchbooks to the art museum, in part because she is an artist who has recently re-lit her love of drawing. And in part because she loves to do projects with Lil E and he loves that time back. 

There is something about seeing your child that still. And not just a quiet body, a calmed mind. That was my intention when I created the home where we now live together, for it to be safe and bright and happy and also a place where minds could ease. When I see this, though, I wonder if there could be more room for the stillness in our place, piled high with recycleables and books to review and high heels and plastic crap dug from little boy pockets.

It wasn't all romantic at the museum. He was not shy about telling me many times about the "nakey guy statues" and "boob statues" he saw there. 

He also had a mission from me to find his favorite detail in Chagall's blue stained glass panels, my long-time favorite installation there. 

A pause for something luscious and deep:

In the early '60s, Chagall said of his stained glass window art, "For me a stained glass window is a transparent partition between my heart and the heart of the world. Stained glass has to be serious and passionate. It is something elevating and exhilarating. It has to live through the perception of light." 

But here and probably only for minutes at a time at other stops in front of other paintings, he is sitting, observing, interpreting -- just quietly.  

His body tells me how hard he is concentrating -- he scrunches up like that when he is most focused. And as an only child, he certainly has many moments of reading, drawing, and building Lego in that state. 

Here, though, there is a silence and stillness and a peace that I always associate as being within him but often don't hear coming out of him as he talks and talks and talks details of Wii game levels and movies and shows and crazy-kid stuffs. The balance is good.

It's on me now, to bring some of that basking-in-light, blue-glassed sweet stillness and calm into our home, to fit the museum into through our tight doors and packed schedules and excitement to get our words out. 

The reminder and the balance is here, though, in this photo. If only for one little moment. If only until it's time for dinner again.

Click to read more ...

Essential weekend reading

We all know you're waiting for your Words With Friends games to update while "watching" your precious little boos do roundhouse kicks/score goals/learn backstroke/learn the fine art of comedic timing at a kiddie improv class. Take the break and click over to five of my very favorite reads of the week. Trust me, your Saturday (or Sunday or wee-hours Monday) will be better for it.

How to perfect red lips - This step-by-step post went up last week on BostonMamas for the lady (or gent, whatevs, I don't judge) who wants the perfect crimson pucker, but I can't stop thinking about it. Perhaps it is because I was JUST with post author Christine Koh at BlissDom and she excused herself from the lunch table to go freshen up her pout. And she said it all definitively and without invitation to further discuss -- "I'm going to go up to my room and reapply my red lipstick so it keeps looking fabulous" or something similar. And you know what? She did it. She did it UP. So I highly recommend following her lead and these steps so your red-print isn't all over your chin/shirt/hand/teeth/random lady on the bus.

How to make lip scrub - Allison at PetitElefant is stunning. Stun.Ning. So basically, I do whatever it is her Joan-Jett-coiffed phenomenally accessorized self tells me what to do. Now that you're treating your kisser to scarlet lipstick, be sure you also give it a little scrub with this DIY concoction that will bring out the sweet, natural pink.

On hating The Notebook - When Tracey at Sweetney wrote that she saw the movie and hated it, I felt her (I mean, not the actual HER, but her words...good Lord, you know what I mean...stop it). Why all this feeling? Because I hated the book. I also detested Bridges of Madison County. So there. But Tracey does a lot better job explaining the back-and-forth of Ryan Gosling/hot duder love and celluloid hate. I invite you to feel her, too.

I am a mother. But first I was just me - Remember that moment of relief and  and fear exhilaration when your whole identity shifted into motherhood? Meagan Francis goes back to the moments and years before that to find what she needs now and in the future - more of the not-mom self. Read, nod, reflect.

Holyohhell, Angry Birds crafts - If you actually carry these out with your kids, you are a much better mother than I. More power and Play-Doh to you.  This mama, the delightful Sarah James of Whoorl, also has time to lie to Ryan Seacrest and make a commericals, so you know, maybe we should all be crafting app characters. 

Click to read more ...