Always Remember That

You are scornful that a mere six inches of snow can shut down the metropolitan area, but when a friend calls and suggests meeting up, your first reaction is “Are you crazy? We can't go out in this!” You wonder what good a snow day is when it falls on a Saturday. You rejoice that your children are finally old enough to go out and play in the snow without you. You grow weary of putting the boots on the children and taking the boots off the children, and finding the mittens, and drying the socks, and zipping the coats. You are unsurprised when the cheapo boots you bought for your oldest daughter turn her socks a vile shade of brown (and leave tracks of dye all over the snow, so that she comes to the door and cries: “There's blood in the snow!”). You admire your daughter's very first snowman. Who is a little...flat...but cute nonetheless. You re-read Wicked and are so engrossed in it that you resent having to put it down to feed your children. You are amazed that you...

In order: the acclamation point; the doubt point; the irony mark; the certitude point; the indignation point; the love point; the interrobang; the authority point; the indignation point again. Because that one's my favorite. No, I did not make these up .

I'm going to see Wicked (the musical) in May with my sister- and mother-in-law. I'm excited; I like musicals. In anticipation, I downloaded the soundtrack a few days ago and have been listening to it continually on my ipod ever since. I read Wicked (the book) back when it first came out, but didn't remember much of the plot. So in order to understand what happens in the gaps between the songs in the musical, I turned to wikipedia for a plot summary. Then I clicked over to the synposis of the book to see how it differed from the musical. Reading about the book made me realize that I had pretty much forgotten all of the book. In fact, to be honest, what I remember about the book was that I found it a bit dull. A bit long. A bit too much about the politics of an imaginary country. A bit too full of unsympathetic characters. And then, I remember, I read the author's next book (a retelling of the Cinderella story) and didn't like it much at all. So I never even cons...

Phoebe's brain has, lately, been working far faster than her mouth. She'll start to talk and the words will tumble out so fast that it's impossible to understand what she's saying. If you tell her to start over, though, she'll repeat herself just as fast but softer , making it even more difficult to get her point across. The other night she was telling me something of great importance, and her words got all tangled up and I must have been looking at her with complete incomprehension, because she stopped and said: "Mommy, can you just pretend that I've already said what I was trying to pretend to say?"

I visited the online site of my hometown newspaper on Monday, something I rarely do, and I read something there that made my jaw drop and filled me with righteous indignation. I fired off a letter to the editor and was just about to hit the "send" button when I came to my senses. But I have to get this off my chest, so I'm posting the letter here. A bit of background -- my hometown is in Texas; Texas is having a primary for the gubernatorial election in March; one of the candidates is a Palestinian-American named Farouk Shami. Whom I'd never heard of before Monday, and about which I know nothing at all. Here are the first few paragraphs of the paper's "Town Talk" section: The US has over 300 million folks but a mere 545 of them control your lives. . . . They were elected to represent the folks but often the Power of DC makes them forget. It is often said, “pray for our leaders.” I don’t think they deserve praying for. There are a bunch of people ...

I read a New Yorker profile of Paul McCartney not along ago, and was struck by something he said: There were four people in the Beatles, and I was one of them. There were two people in the Lennon-McCartney songwriting team, and I was one of them. I mean, right there, that’s enough for anyone’s life. And there was one guy who wrote ‘Yesterday,’ and I was him….All those things would be enough for anyone’s life. So to be involved in all of them is pretty surprising. What a humble way of thinking about his life, I thought. As though being in the Beatles was just something that happened to him, just a magnificent stroke of luck, instead of something that required a great deal of talent and hard work. Last week Miep Gies, the woman who hid Anne Frank’s family from the Nazis, died at the age of 100. An NPR profile of her life included this quote from a 1997 interview: I don't want to be considered a hero. Imagine young people would grow up with the feeling that you have to be a her...

Earlier this week, in the car: "Who sings this song?" Phoebe asked. "It's the Beatles," I said. " Dude . I know that. I mean, is it John or Paul?" ****** Later, out of the blue: "Why are there quarters in the train station?" Mallory asked. "What?" "You know, there in the station: Lack of queen quarters with some kind of ties." I think. Then: "Oh! Plasticine porters with looking glass ties. A porter is someone who helps you with your luggage in a train station." "Were John and Paul teenagers when they sang 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds'?" Phoebe asked. "I'm not sure. They weren't old, but I don't know if they were teenagers." "Are they old now?" "Paul is old, but John died," Mallory said. "Oh," Phoebe said. **** Later, also out of the blue: "What's an English cotter?" Mallory asked. "I...d...

How's this for a weird homework assignment: "Examine your conscience." (Mallory's learning about the Sacrament of Reconciliation.) This morning Phoebe's preschool class went to Mass, the first time together as a class. (Can you imagine taking 18 4-year-olds to church?) At breakfast Phoebe said, "Mommy, I think I forgot how to genuflat!" And before I could even say, "Um, what?" Mallory said, "Don't worry, I'll show you how," and proceeded to genuflect before the kitchen table. She added, "And listen, if the priest tries to give you the wafer -- don't take it! You're not old enough yet!" I told her that at the church I grew up in, there wasn't a wafer -- we used a loaf of bread for Communion. And we had little individual glasses of grape juice instead of a communal cup of wine. And sometimes there were cookies for the kids. She thought that was weird, too.

This is Phoebe walking down the hall: Phoebe takes three normal steps. Phoebe stops abruptly to adjust her underwear. Phoebe takes three tiny steps. Phoebe stops abruptly to demonstrate how she can balance on one foot. Phoebe takes two backward steps. Phoebe stops abruptly to examine something on the floor. Phoebe runs for five steps. Phoebe stops abruptly to ask what is ten plus one. Phoebe takes two normal steps. Phoebe stops abruptly to adjust her right sock. Phoebe takes one step. Phoebe turns and embraces your knees. Phoebe takes four steps. Phoebe announces that she's hungry and must have some Club crackers immediately. I say that maybe she can have some crackers if we ever arrive in the kitchen. Which at this point seems doubtful. Phoebe runs runs runs, on her tippy-toes, with her arms hanging straight down except for a slight upward tilt of the wrists. Her hair bounces. The old line about the distant drummer -- Phoebe hears that drum loud and...

If you have nothing better to do this Friday night and happen to stumble upon this -- please be aware that I realize that this isn't quite right. And no, it wasn't smart to start this twenty minutes before leaving work on a Friday night. Even less smart was not saving the necessary files in a place I could access them from home. So this will not be fixed until Monday. Come back then!

My dilemma -- Phoebe loves bedtime stories, which is wonderful, but I am desperately weary of all of our pictures books, which I've been reading over and over and over again for eight years now. (I did decide, recently, that it was well within my rights to refuse to read certain books, such as Richard Scarry's Busy Day [nothing wrong with Richard Scarry, of course, but I prefer a book with a plot] and anything with "Seek and Find" in the title.) Phoebe, however, hasn't been receptive to reading chapter books yet. And Mallory, who should be reading chapter books herself, is similarly uninterested in them, but has taken to calling most of our picture books "babyish" (which sometimes makes Phoebe cry, which is not what you want at storytime). But in the bookstore this weekend, I found a solution -- Mercy Watson. She's a pig -- well, not just a pig, but a porcine wonder -- who gets into wacky adventures and who loves hot buttered toast. The books are f...