la femme follette

blood, poison, physics, war

Last year, I read everything from the library's juvenile collection about America's Revolutionary War to the children, because Garçon was into it and Fillette was not opposed to it.  I had a problem with the fact that Garçon was into the Revolutionary War and the biography of every person connected to it, but out of sequence.  So that just one day we start talking about the Revolutionary War.  It bothered me, the unruliness of it, but I just went with it.  A month or so ago, he came to me and said, "So, why was France so mad at England, anyhow?"  O, FINALLY!   This child-led stuff really works!   

The French & Indian Wars seem a little more complicated for him, he is frustrated, I think, more than I remember being over the same topic.  A lot of it is about homeland geography.  The children are growing up in one of the 13 colonies.  I grew up smack in the middle of the Great Lakes region.  What is meaningful, tangible to us is different. 

I managed to get the French and Indian Wars going at the same time that I brought us snuggled up to some more specifics about the French involvement on the American Revolutionary War.  Then last week, we had to go to Valley Forge.

What we learned on the trip is that all that yap about the starving and the freezing is not true!  Lies our history teachers told us!  Garçon read a book the day before our trip that was all about Valley Forge, and while the National Park Ranger was telling us about how it was a military encampment and the recordkeeping is there, and there was not starving nor freezing, I said to Garçon, "What did your book tell you?"  He said, with a giggle, "Mom, it said that they starved and had rags on their feet."  I shrugged apologetically at the ranger and gestured for him to set us all straight.

I am not big into field trips, but this Valley Forge trip last week changed my mind.  Park Ranger Tells Family -- You've Got it All Wrong! Ordinarily, I do not go in for all this experiential-type learning stuff (although, it has its place, see above: homeland geography).  This sometimes raises eyebrows with the Other Homeschoolers, who like to spend their time ... doing stuff I would never call educational.  ("Doing laundry teaches about physics!"  yeah, ok)  I like rigor and nonfiction texts; Dates & Timelines, Major Players; Nuts and Bolts, Black and White.  A few months ago, when I started working with Garçon on the 50 states and their capitals, Mari came to me and said, "Um, why is it important?  That he memorize the states and their capitals?"  I gave him a look. 

Mari and I had very different K-12 educations and I give him a certain lips-zipped look quite often.  He gives a different look to me, like when the children come with a crackpot question like, Who was the 14th President?  or What happened to Babylon?  and I immediately reply, Franklin Pierce or Baghdad.  There was a time that Garçon wanted a map of the U.S., a while back, years, something to do with the Postcards from Buster teevee show, and all Mari could find on the internet was a blank one.  I took it and filled it out in about 2 minutes flat and that was another time I got the look.  I always feel a little freaked out by the look.  Like, what, just because I do not have a job and do not like to calculate my own metric conversions, I cannot just know some stuff? 

One time, Mari and I were talking about time travel.  I was making some not-fully-realized joke about being on the train and the babies would be in the front and then turn old toward the back, or something -- it made sense in my head.  Mari took it upon himself to try to explain to me why time travel is impossible.  It started with him trying to explain to me again the theory of relativity, which is hopeless; the greatest minds of a generation have tried extensively and failed.  Then, he said, "Well, the speed of light is ..."  and he was groping for an adjective, maybe?  To explain to me why time travel was impossible? 

Maybe he was just searching for a way to convey it to my feeble mind, because when I interrupted and said, "299,792.458 kilometers per second," his mouth stopped working, while he gave me a look, which plainly said, "Who are you and what did you do with my left-brained wife who makes pretty things?"  And I was angry!  I went to high school!  I dissected a fetal pig!  I took an organic chemistry class and got an A!  I took a university physics class and got another A, even if I never did understand the theory of relativity!  I just last fall read that Galileo text footnoted or appended or whatever by Stephen Hawking, all by myself.  Just because I am not always fucking talking about it does not mean I do not know it!      

That is not a fair anecdote, because it kind of paints this portrait of my husband thinking I am not very smart.  I am sure that is not the case, I know it is not the case, but still ... that look he gives me.  I do not know why! 

Yesterday, Garçon sat down where Mari and I were reading and knitting, respectively.  He said, "Mom, the capital of South Dakota is French."  I said, "No, the capital of South Dakota is American."  He said, with a giggle, this goofy pre-pubescent giggle he giggles, "No, Mom, the name of it is French.  It's Pierre."  I made an agreeable mouth noise.  "Mom, I think that is because it used to be a part of New France."  It was my turn to give Mari a different kind of look, the patented look that says, Look!  What a good wife!  Not gloating!   But on the inside, I felt like the George Peppard character on The A-Team.  Our boy!  Thinks about things!  Because he knows some stuff!

Which is good and bad.  A while back I accidentally borrowed the audiobook of Sadako and the Paper Cranes from the library.  I never read the book as a child, and I thought it was about origami.  Ahahahahaha.  So, unsuspecting, I just popped it right into the CD player while we piled on the bed and I knitted.  I knew the girl died, sure, but had not anticipated having to answer 1,000,000 questions about nuclear weapons and leukemia.  Not at bedtime! 

I am a person who was concerned about the Revolutionary War being out of order!  I should just skip ahead to the Manhattan Project and the Truman administration?  They have been full of questions ever since they made me pause the audiobook during Chapter 3, "Oh, oh, wait, wait!  Stop it for a minute," they said in tandem.  I can tell that Fillette in particular is working up to a doozie that is going to make me say, "Um, can I explain this to you on a different day?  I want to make sure I get this right."  She is totally going to wait until I am reading the Sunday newspaper, I just know it! 

bigger boat

I was reading Esquire's sandwich roundup in this month's issue and came across the promise of a reuben, fashioned by transplanted Chicagoans now somewhere in Colorado, which eschewed rye bread in the favor of latkes.  Hm. 

I hardly think about bread except when it comes to the sandwich, and one of my favorites was a reuben.  I was at the beginning of our interminable illiness when I read about this switcheroo.  During health's brief reprise, I made one.

It was tasty and well worth the effort of making latkes, then assembling and grilling a sandwich.  Time consuming (I made the russian dressing myself), and also tricky was the getting the latke big enough to hold a sandwich but still small enough to avoid gumminess.  Less tricky was remembering to leave one side with a lighter browning so that it could face out and finish while the cheese melted and the sandwich heated through.  I used izdiabal instead of swiss.  A knife and fork are mandatory for the eating.  All told, if I could eat bread, I would never bother, but I would order it if someone else were doing the cooking. 

We are still ill, the children with a lingering cough and me with something that wants to be the mother of all sinus infections, if only I would put away my neti pot and let it.  Mari is just afflicted by his general surliness and refusal to take B vitamin supplements. 

I have three spring birthday presents on the needles and feel a little like Norma Rae.  A Norma Rae who is in love times three, but still.  Knit knit knit.  A lot of movies have washed over me in the past week: Syriana (learn CPR, parents); MI:III (really poor villain development, really);  Ocean's 13 (not enough Izzard), and Hitch (not good, but somehow exceptionally funny).  Mari has never seen Jaws (excellent tension out on that boat), and tonight we are going to change all that.   

bang-bang

This week we have been supremely, gorgeously, unthinkably, sublimely & superlatively ill.  I had not been this sick for over 15 years, and all I can do is be happy the children were in the deathbed with me, for otherwise there would have been a lot of sore-throat hollering, a lot of making dinner while asleep standing up, and so much naughty behavior of the kind that only happens when Mommy is sick, which is why mommies do not get sick days.  I am really, really glad the kids were down, too.

They did not even know people could be this sick, with the coughing until sneezing leads to vomiting and then dizziness and, as Fillette very helpfully volunteered, "the headache and the sore throat!"  Monday, I thrashed around all night long, waking up every hour from a confounding dream in which I was guest-starring in an episode of Chico & the Man -- a show of which I have the barest sliver of a recollection -- during which the major plot device was that I had somehow been in some kind of a cabrito accident which left me with 400 tiny pieces of paper stuck to my body. 

So, every hour I would wake up, in something of a lather, get up, be sick on two feet, go back to sleep, and have the same dream all over again in the same way -- me, Freddie Prinze, Scatman Crothers, coming back from the cabrito accident, me with the pieces of paper (400!) stuck to me, little pieces of confetti, Della Reese very very angry with us for being careless, and a guy named Chanco.  Was there a guy named Chanco on Chico & the Man?  Also, Ed was just nowhere in the dream.  So, every time, we would stop in the middle of the garage, sort of by the lift, Chico would talk to Chanco, Della Reese was looming as a threatening mother figure, and then I would wake up.  And do it all over again. 

Finally, I just forced myself to stay up, certain I had mercury poisoning.  I have not slept well since, afraid of the torture of the repeat-dreaming.  This was not even sponsored by a cold-relief medication.  Just me and my sick mind.  With the children ill, I am reluctant to avail myself of my usual inventory of sleeping pills since what if I have to deal?  No good to be all bogged down in the tangled grove of diphenhydramine citrate.      

Wednesday, I sent Mari off to his office as usual, like a good midwestern wife, "No, no, you go ahead.  We'll manage!"  By the time he was two states away (which is not far at all), I was on the phone to him crying -- crying real tears! -- because I could not find the kleenex anywhere.  He said, "They were in the bed with you!"  I said, "I know!  I still can't find them!  How am I going to get through the day??" 

By giving the children Nyquil at 9am, is how.  But we are on the upswing now and I feel hopeful for our full recovery by Monday.

Before we all went down, we went to a Lunar New Year Celebration.  We were already feeling under the weather --Fillette had the sniffles, plus the aforementioned headache and sore throat; I was queasy and jangly -- and the weather was not feeling so good to us anyway, so while we usually go up to NYC for their raucous celebration, this time we crossed the river to visit the other Chinatown -- which has firecrackers ... 

So Mari and I stood on the corner with our children stamping box after box of party snaps and whooping it up with the drum-bangy thingers, for about a half an hour, while proprietors strung up enough fireworks to take out a city block in front of every store, and we discussed whether or not they were decorative or functional.  It was the typical sort of fascinating discourse people who have been married for over a decade have:

Me:  Jesus.  Are they really going to light that?

Mari:  Yeah.

Me:  No-ooo-ooo!!

Mari:  Yeah.

Me:  Whaaa-at?

Mari:  Yeah.  Totally.

[long pause]

Me:  Do all those people clustered around it have any idea how noisy that is going to be when it goes?

Mari:  Nope.

I cannot decide which I want less of next year -- traffic in the Holland Tunnel, or fireworks.  It was noisy and unbelievable, somehow more and less chaotic at once.  Honestly, the dancing of the dance is comparatively more excellent than in NYC.  It only took a short while before our ears were ringing, so we crossed the river again and came home. 

Chilled, exhausted, and ready for some family hangout teevee time, we learned that our son broke the DVD player by sticking a hairpin in it to see what would happen.  I did not even have the strength to invoke Terrible Mothering Protocols.  No matter, in 24 hours, 3 of us would be at death's door, suffering from something like cholera crossed with some kind of 1970s superflu.  Gee, it would have been nice to try to spend some of this week's sick time zoned out in front of The Simpsons.  Instead, there is Nyquil.  Which, really?  Is just teevee in a bottle.         

blur

We made it, the four of us, through another Family Observation of the ballet class.  I almost did not make it.  Last week, I spent a lot of time, crying and crying, because I realized that Fillette would next year be in the Big Girl Class, no more Baby FunTimes Ballet.  Two classes every week, de rigueur, no longer in a pastel leotard.  I do not want this for her, we do not want this for her.  It is not our idea of a life well-lived, but it is not so much our life.

This, for us, is where the parenting rubber meets the road.  We have this child who so clearly, so zealously, wants to do something that is so alien to us, and we have to say yes.  People have asked why we do not tell her no to ballet.  We did put her off for quite some time, not saying no, just somehow not hearing her when she asked.  She was four and did not have the world's best follow-through; it did not matter.  Between four and five-and-a-half, she started to show herself as a fearsome kind of all-around athletic type in all the usual ways -- soccer, monkeybars, playground asskickings -- and still, once a week the subject of ballet would come up.  There was talk about duct-taping toe shoes -- had she secretly been watching Fame in the night?  Mari and I had many raised eyebrows at each other over dinner conversation, she never equated the dance with princesses or fairies or ponies or that sort of bullshit, and so finally we relented.

Those Who Know have sweetly told Mari and I that we are exactly, perfectly, a Ballet Parent Type.  The parents who have a little girl who is driven to dance who has parents who are pretty much, "uh, wtf?  why??"  We were relieved to hear there have been millions before us.  I am by myself one of the perfect Ballet Mom Types, mine sort of an anti-Stage Mom who regards the whole business as more than a slight threat to her baby and if there is one false move, I am going to cut some motherfuckers.  That is pretty much, yes, the truth. 

We are learning:  the proprietress of the venerable pointe shoe boutique in our town here has been the sweetest treasure to me; the administratrix of the ballet school has a thing or two she knows about the game.  So, ballet seeps into our family culture a little at a time.  I am shocked to realize that the NYT has a story or two on ballet at least twice a week during the season.  Surely they have always been there, but I have never noticed.  We took the children to the ballet in October and apropos of reading the Playbill, Mari said, "Is Christopher Wheeldon important?"  And I said, with an audible inhalation, "Oh, god!  Yes!!" 

Um, how the fuck I even know anything about Christopher Wheeldon is so far beyond me.  But there he is, rightfully placed in his place in contemporary ballet culture, right in my knowledge bank.  Instead of a delicious book waiting for me on our sideboard about Conquest and Spices, I am slogging through the new Kavanaugh biography of Nureyev.  It was interesting to me, already, in a fun, retro, Cold War way, it is excellently well-written, and then at the moment of this defection, names start turning up that we know.  Dancers who teach at her former school, the woman who owns her current school.  This ballet is small-group stuff, taught hand-to-hand in direct lineage.  Weird.  We had no idea.

Still, it is not really our thing.  But it is her thing, so we have made room.  She knows that we do not love it, but we love her and love that she loves it.  As a girl cut from her father's same sinewy, ectomorphic cloth, they tell us, she is perfectly proportioned for this endeavor.  (They rave, actually, and have inaudible gasping, these ballet people.  I fight back tears.  My baby.)  It is a challenge for her, already.  Because she was waved along a ballet-grade (she is apparently quite good, they told us, then I cried), next year she will be taking class at a time when I would rather she be in the bathtub.  There is a big cultural difference, let alone developmental, between 7 years and 8.

It is always the bun that kills me, that starts the killing.  Last year, when we all decided to switch her to a school with no performance, she immediately asked for a haircut, since she doesn't need all that "ballerina hair" anymore.  We never got one.  One thing leads to another, she could not decide how short she wanted it, etc.  As long as she has two fistfuls of it, we have to secure it.  I hate the hairdo, always whisper to Mari in a hissing way that it makes them look like robots.  Also, complain that it looks like nothing, this hairdo that takes three hands to properly cement in place.

 

The only good thing about this hairdo is when I pick her up from class, all flushed and a little sweaty from the exertion of ballet plus getting dressed in street clothes again in the 80-degree locker room, she will be tired and let me scoop her up for a minute of the recharging on mommy that most kids her age still need.  I can stick my nose right along the nape of her neck, all uncovered, almost behind her ear in the hairline, nibble her tiny earlobe, and catch the tiniest whiff of what little is left of her baby smell.  Only once a week, but still. 

slipstream

Last week, Filette and Garçon were with me in the grocery, which almost never happens, so the result was that they were loitering around produce, fascinated by the inventory as if Soviet defectors, and did not hear me when I said, "I'm moving on." 

The result of that was them rushing up to me (finally!) while I was on line for the register, "Mommy!  We couldn't find you!"  I had another errand to run in the store next door to the grocery, and as old as they are, I was certainly going to abandon them into the grocery and come back for them later. 

Whatever.  They knew where the car was parked.  I was in a hurry.  The knitting mines have been the least of it, but just because of that, calls have not been returned, all communication has been shorthanded, emails have been totally ignored.  I have been trying to get it on when I can; watch the mails.   

Legwarmers for a little ballerina.  From the Hoverson Last-Minute Knitted Gifts book using Araucania Nature Wool and Madil Kid Seta, both from stash.  The book is way the fuck wrong about how long they take.  I almost did not make the deadline.  Cheers.