This will sound ridiculously small an act, but I’ve been doing this for years now (a decade?) and it seems to help. I have a Base-Lock Rubber Type kit with tiny letters (think linotype) and on one line I keep the word “write.” I keep a paper planner, and each year, at the start of the year, I get out the stamp pad (some years black, some years purple, with no apparent logic) and stamp that word on each square in the planner, so the word “write” accosts me every day. (It helps that this planner is the way I keep track of everything, and yes, I’m still wed to paper. And yes, I spilled water on it one year and it was sobering, but because I usually use pencil, it was not as devastating as it might have been.) Each day that I write something, I check off the word “write.” Each day that I don’t, I draw a line through it. There are plenty of lapses, days at a time when I haven’t checked off the word, but somehow this small practice keeps me accountable to myself. And when it happens, it feels really good to have a week with more checks than lines marked through. (For all of us, may there be many more such weeks, this year and beyond.)
Today I took my daughter to our local independent toy store, Mr. Fub’s Party . We go there regularly for balloons and sometimes more expensive treats. It’s a great store, and so precious in these days of the mauling malls and Toys-R-Us. Today’s trip was so she could use the coupon they sent for her birthday (10% off any one item). I told her I’d buy whatever she wanted as long as it cost less than $30. (She already has three Groovy Girls but she’d been eyeing a fourth, and I assumed that would be her choice.) Instead, she chose the Melissa and Doug Bride Role Play costume. I walked around the store with her for a few minutes, repeatedly asking, “Are you sure that’s what you want?” and “Don’t you want something more interesting, or something to build?” and while she was tempted by a couple things that I consider infinitely “more interesting” than a white wedding dress costume (fits age 4-6! Start them early!) I decided this dress was okay for several reasons:
1. I wanted to keep my promise to let her choose whatever she wanted.
2. At least this wasn’t another doll for the stable of a million dolls.
3. She loves costumes–loves all things theatrical, not only dressing as a princess. She has four pairs of wings, and she wears them each, depending on what the occasion calls for.
I bought the white wedding dress for her. (With the discount and tax, the total was still under $30.)
I’m comforted by a conversation she and I had afterward we left the shop. I reminded her that brides can wear whatever color they want (and that her mother wore red velvet).
“I know,” she said, “I’ve seen your pictures.”
I named each color in the rainbow of colors from which a bride might choose, including grey and brown and black, and also mentioned stripes and dots.
“I want to wear stripes and dots and ‘giraffe blobs!'” she said.
And I was comforted further by another conversation we had, after she asked what the “he” is called that marries the bride. I reminded her that there might instead be two brides, or two grooms, and that if people choose to get married, they can wear whatever they want. I told her that I know a woman who married another woman and they both wore white wedding dresses, because that’s what they wanted to do.
“I know!” she said, to all of the above, and then decided to marry me instead of the original plan to marry her father.
Oh, that the world of her world will continue to be so open and free, and moreso.
There are days (or lifetimes) when it seems the only proper soundtrack that can, that should linger behind my thoughts will be something dreamed up by Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry of Dead Can Dance. (Here’s an interview with Lisa Gerrard about their now and their history.) Last week, I heard Perry’s voice at Open Books in Yellow Springs (thanks, Miriam!) and remembered they had a new CD out, and I bought it. To me, today, their music seems the only sound big enough to contain the shadows and the light, all of it, everything. Want proof? This is good enough for me.
I’ve been noticing people answering questions or explaining things with the preamble “so.” It’s become something I notice all the time now. It’s SO rampant. It bugs me! I did a google search and found that it’s been going on (and been noticed, notably) for a while now.
The problem is that you are what you eat. I keep hearing it, and now I’ve slipped into using it. It bugs me! I want to stop! Please correct me if you hear me using it when I talk to you, and I will check myself as I go
In 1993, I flew from Seattle to Los Angeles to visit a photographer I was dating. He took me to a party in LA. Everyone I met at the party seemed to be looking over my shoulder every few seconds, perhaps to see if they could find someone more interesting. The level of distraction, this kind of superficial seeing and being seen, seemed to be the game. The most famous person at the party was Darryl Strawberry’s father, and when he arrived, I’m sure that most others at the party were instantly de-prioritized.
Lately I’ve been thinking about the importance of seeing and being seen. Not like that LA party, but seeing a person fully. Looking at another person, asking how they are, and really listening for a real answer. “Presence” and “mindfulness” tumble around until they are dulled by overuse, but I can’t think of better words to describe what I’m thinking about. Every month, I gather with a group of others to practice (among other things) seeing and being seen. Only sitting and listening, attending, has become a crucial practice to me. I think it’s expanded my humanity.
When my daughter’s Nursery School teacher, Ann Guthrie, talked about how the children get to know each other, she described how they really see each other. They know which child to go to for what type of fun, or solace. Even before words can form in their brains to articulate what they understand, they know, they see in each other that inner coil of humanity, the ineffable it-ness of each person. When Ann talked about this, I thought, “Yes, of course! Yes.” Maybe that’s what the game of peek-a-boo is about. “I see you!”
I want more of my day to be spent in this practice of true seeing and being seen. Rather than doing three things at once, I am slowing down, breathing as I listen to the human across from me. Try it. Try it with a beloved or with a stranger. Try it with a Democrat or a Republican.
This is not the kind of makeup kit I’m talking about.
After school today, my almost-five-year-old daughter informed me that two of her friends (very close to her in age) have “make-up kits.” One of them, she said, brought the kit to school. Soon after she got home, my daughter drew all over her own face, “putting on makeup” with her washable markers. I didn’t tell her not to draw on her face. I decided to focus on natural consequences–let her see how hard it is to wash even washable markers off her face. (After her bath, there was still a rainbow on her forehead. This made her happy.)
I know the markers will fade. But it’s impossible for me to overstate how much I object to children her age having anything called a “makeup kit.” These friends of hers are sweet and wonderful, and are dear to her. Their parents are dear to me! Still, I’m feeling angry and truly nauseated at the thought of girly makeup kits for children.
Let me be clear: I’m working under an assumption that the makeup kits in question are not the harmless face painting kits that children use for dress up and Halloween. I am assuming they are the Princess or wanna-be-a-woman-too-soon type. I could be wrong. I told my daughter I’ll get her a face painting kit so she can pretend to be a cat, and so on. She was thrilled. She loves fantasy play, and loves to dress up, choosing not just princesses and fairies but many other creative beings. I feel a whirl of victory that, despite her being in the midst of a “Princess” phase, and being named Merida, she has chosen to be a dragon for Halloween. I’m working on a homespun dragon costume. We’ll see how it goes. I studied theatre. I completely support the budding actor/director/playwright that my daughter is. Storytelling and imaginative play are crucial to her psyche, as they are to any child’s development. Storytelling and imaginative play are crucial to all humanity, actually! Theatrical makeup and play is not the kind of makeup about which I rant.
What’s making me feel sick is how “we” undermine and curtail childhood in ways that might seem harmless, but are not. I’ve worked hard to keep Disney Princess as gone from my daughter’s frame of reference as possible. Those pink frilly whispers slip in, sure. After all, we live in the commercial world that is the U.S., and plenty of her friends are allowed to access commercial media. But my daughter doesn’t watch TV, and isn’t allowed piles of plastic, soul-killing merchandise. This afternoon as we hiked in the woods across the road, my daughter carried her beloved baby doll, and told me there are two kinds of Barbies: the kind one of her friends has, and the kind she was carrying. Another small victory willowed through me.
I’ve sometimes written about these issues on my blog. My daughter’s name is Merida, named well before the recent princess in Brave. I know I will continue to face these challenges, in waves, as she grows up. Right now, these chippings away of the important things of childhood make me want to cry.
Yes, I have a sense of humor. No, I won’t release my power of choice when it comes to how I raise this future-woman.
Tomorrow I’ll buy her face paint. I hope it will satisfy her need to play.
I’ve had little time for writing lately. But the intention, and the work when time allows, is to return to the brain of my novel in progress. At intervals, when I approach the stack of notes, outlines, and diagrams, I find scrabbly handwritten pages, still to be typed up. Today, three such forgotten pages included intricate ramblings that I don’t remember writing. But based on the single sheets on which the words are written (not in the notebook, not on yellow legal paper) I recall now rushing to my daughter’s creative movement class, realizing I brought no work to do, and finding scrap paper. The words on the paper were extra crazy and weird, abstract and also specific, really just a spew of stuff about the textures and elements of this novel. If the last novel was water and air, this one is earth, metal, fire–so this is what the windings on those found pages contain.
“Just make some shit up,” my husband and I often say about writing fiction, part joke, part true. For now, when it’s hard to get back into the novel’s essence, I am grateful for these odd scrabbles to type up. Because I can always type. And I trust the Wexlerian principle of just putting it all in, pile it on, see what fits.
The junk yard of words is in no hurry, will wait for me.
Inspired by a friend who’s gained an audience on Open Salon, I posted an essay there. Read my back-to-school essay here, and let me know what you think!
I used to see movies at the cinema all the time. Since becoming a mother, I see a movie at a cinema once a year, on a good year. Maybe. The last movie I saw was “Black Swan” so it was actually a year and a half ago. I’m not kidding. The year before that, it was “Fantastic Mr. Fox.”
Tonight I saw “Beasts of the Southern Wild.” My neighbor, who owns the Little Art Theatre, had said it was a film like nothing else. Another friend, the writer Laraine Herring, told me I should see it because it features a child narrator (played by then five-year old Quvenzhané Wallis) in a magical, mythic world.
I’m not going to say much about the film. Watching this film during yet another deluge on Louisiana was wrenching. But considering how often I see a movie at the cinema, I’m glad it was this one.
It’s playing again tomorrow night at the Little Art Theatre.
(And when did we stop clapping after a movie? Was it when we began to retreat into our VHS/DVD/internet bubbles for home viewing? Every year or so, you will hear me clapping in a public cinema. Feel free to join me.)
Rebecca Kuder 