Three Minutes

My friend Janelle texted me the other day: "Do you have three minutes?" I did not, at that precise moment, because I was driving.

When I got to my destination – a soccer field, of course, where Little T was experiencing the joy of "pod" training (thank you COVID) – I texted Janelle to let her know that I now had three minutes.  Next, she asked if I was in a quiet place.  Yes, I told her, for once, I was in a quiet place, not surrounded by my boisterous, busy family.

I was in for a treat. She sent me a link to this video and told me to listen:

Three minutes of sheer beauty and joy! Such a treat, so welcomed in this time of chaos and anxiety.

I have listened to it several times since and shared it with friends and family.  But in addition to bringing me real joy, this brief three-minute video has also taught me some uncomfortable truths about myself that are not at all joyful.  

The first time I listened to it, I couldn't focus on it. I immediately loved it, to be sure, but I was also distracted. Less than one minute in, I was already thinking about sharing it, already crafting a tweet or a post about it, already thinking about how MY take on it would be received (by my very, very few followers, no less). Mere seconds had gone by, and the beautiful music was already competing in my head with noisy thoughts about who I should send it to, who needed to hear it, why it was important, why my kids should listen, and what kind of moral decay the world was in if they couldn't appreciate music like this.  It was unsettling to recognize that I couldn't simply sit still and listen to two incredibly talented musicians for three tiny minutes; instead, I was neurotically scheming about how to use this piece of art for myself.

Thankfully, I forced myself to quit that nonsense. Don't tweet. Don't post. Just listen. Just enjoy. Just be with the music. I am out of habits like that. I am in the habits of curating my responses for social media, thinking in sound bites, and anticipating notifications. Creativity cannot compete with such foolishness: I need different habits of being. 

Today, I deleted Twitter and Facebook from my phone, the number one places where I get sucked down into the valley of scrolling death. Yes, I'm writing this reflection on my blog: irony is a bitch in heels.  

The task in front of me is to figure it all out: figure out how to enjoy art and beauty, and how to create whatever it is I'm going to create, and how to do it authentically, and how to share it authentically. I think it starts with stopping: stop being on social media for awhile, stop scrolling and reading one-liners and hot takes and having nanosecond reactions to things that barely register before I'm on to the next thing, like some never satiated hunger that grows larger with every swipe. Stop being horrified by Trump, and racists, and DeVos, and anti-maskers, and whatever new horror comes along. Scrolling is numbing me and depressing me; it is lulling me into imagining that my outrage is my activism. It is not.

We must be able to take in beauty, deep inside: it is an act of self-preservation.  I wasn't able to do that with The Swan the first time I heard it. I will keep trying.

 

Cheapest, Best School Lunch EVER

Isn't it the greatest thing ever when you screw something up and have to settle for a really lame Plan B, only to be rewarded by a super awesome unforeseen consequence that basically makes you look brilliant?

That happened to me today! Yay!

We just came through one of the most soccer-packed, social-packed, traffic-packed, logistics-packed weekends of our lives, which is indeed saying something.  Before the weekend even started, I texted the following to my husband:

"Can you hear the circus music yet?  I CAN!"

My eldest saw that text in the car on the way home on Friday evening...he got a chuckle.

But I digress.  It's just that the weekend was so completely fricking insane that I couldn't manage to do any grocery shopping, so I had to settle for my last minute fall back: take the kids to Safeway in the morning on the way to school to get them breakfast and lunch.  But then, I was so sleep deprived, and in such a non-caffeine dither (no coffee in the house either!), that I completely forget to get off the freeway to go to Safeway.

No breakfast.  No lunch.  No plan.

My three oldest go to school in downtown Oakland, which is a lousy place for a person in search of groceries, especially at 7:45am.  So we made the very sad decision to get what we all call Gas Station Food.  We stopped at one of those food marts at a gas station and stared dismally at the selections before making some seriously depressing choices.  Off Lola went with her Cup Noodles, with a side of her mother's shame and guilt to chase it down.

That was my really lame Plan B.

But the brilliance!  The unforeseen brilliance!

When I picked her up after school, she happily announced that her buddy desperately wanted that Cup Noodles and gratefully traded her own lunch: a gourmet chicken caesar salad.  Lola was psyched.  I was relieved that she got to eat something besides a styrofoam cup full of sodium.  It was a win-win.

The best was yet to come, though.  Because then I came up with the BEST School Lunch Plan Ever, and the most Affordable.  I'm going to buy her a couple flats of those cup noodle things.  She'll be the most popular lunch trade in town, and all those other chumpy moms will buy the really good, organic, non-GMO, non-HFCS, locally sourced, locally grown, attractively packaged, liberal-heart-soothing lunches and their kids will trade with my kid.  Healthy lunch at processed food prices.

Bingo.

I just love that I learn something new every day, especially when it involves me being brilliant and not even knowing it.

* * *

Thank you, Philip Levine

On Valentine's Day, Philip Levine, our 2011 Poet Laureate, died.  To mark his life and the small but significant impact he had on me, I am re-posting a reflection I originally posted back in 2011, shortly after his appointment as our nation's "First Poet."  I still think about this post, and its impetus, frequently.

* * *

from The Poetry Foundation's website
biography of Philip Levine

Written August 11, 2011. Yesterday, the Library of Congress announced the appointment of Philip Levine as the new Poet Laureate of the United States. The job of the Poet Laureate is "to raise the national consciousness to a greater appreciation of the reading and writing of poetry." (Taken from the website of the Library of Congress.)

Prior to that announcement, I knew little to nothing about Philip Levine, although his name was familiar. But the news came to me yesterday while I was lamenting the quality of my children's exposure to arts and culture, at least any arts and culture that doesn't make my ears bleed. So when, in the car on the way to camp this morning, our local public radio station KQED aired an interview with Levine, I turned it up. I wanted my kids to hear this guy talking about poetry. I'm sure my intended audience was more attentive to his/her electronic devices, but I turned it up anyway. I paused to explain to my captive audience what a Poet Laureate is, and was greeted by blank stares.

But I, for one, thoroughly enjoyed the interview. I liked what he had to say about teaching at Fresno State, where he has been for 30 years: 

"I've got these students, who are capable of learning, gave themselves the freedom to learn because they gave themselves the freedom to fail."

He goes on to say that at other, more prestigious schools where he has taught, like Yale and Vanderbilt, "students had a lot of trouble being told that their poems were no damn good." It seems that education, for these high achieving students, is more about being brilliant already than about expanding one's mind and possibilities. (You can access the whole interview here.)

What an important concept to keep in mind. Amidst all our striving towards excellence and achievement, it's easy to lose sight of real learning. We can forget the importance of failure in shaping our minds, our hearts, who we are, and how much we grow, in intellectual and in more personal or creative endeavors.

While we may want our children to work hard enough to go to a good college or university, what we want for them even more is the freedom to fail, the freedom to find more and better paths for their creativity and innovation to flourish. Maybe in art or poetry, maybe in engineering, maybe on a soccer field or in a medical lab, maybe in their personal pursuits or in common cause for others. 

Maybe in family life and raising children, too. Maybe parents need the freedom to fail, in order to grow and get better at crafting children, the way a poet crafts his poems. Perhaps it's not about being perfect already, but about keeping ourselves open to the possibilities before us, to directions we aren't expecting to go.

Leave it to a poet to remind us how our hearts and minds expand.

* * *

Read more about Philip Levine in his biography on The Poetry Foundation's website.

This Is What It Takes

I've created a monster.

Little T's fall back activity is watching TV, and it's all my fault.  When dad's not around to help out, TV is the quickest, most expedient way to get rid of her, so I can do all of the other things I have to do around here.  It's not as if I'm pawning off my kid so I can be lazy and have fun.  I'm not eating bon-bons, or catching up on Duck Dynasty, or internet shopping, or FB-chatting with Janelle.

Okay, some of the time, I'm FB-chatting with Janelle.

But mostly, I'm doing exciting things like sorting through piles of school papers, doing laundry, washing dishes, planning meals, and paying bills.  In order to do all of that and more, I've been letting her watch too much TV.  Only now, we are paying the price, in the form of tantrums when she hears the word 'NO.'  It's not a little horrifying.

So with my resolve steely and my hopes high, I decided NO TV for Little T this morning.  Here's what it took for me, assisted by her sisters, to keep her occupied.

No TV, but my house is destroyed/festooned and I'm blotto-exhausted.  Every single one of those activities still needs to be cleaned up and put away.  Turns out, creativity is messy, inefficient, loud and time-consuming.  And awesome.

At least we have started the long slow process of turning the TV-addiction ship around.    I predict I need to have 327 more mornings like this to truly break the habit.

And so, another epic battle begins: who will win???

* * *

Words

Today, in 6th grade Science class, the esteemed Mr. Underwood had "Ask Anything Day."  I think he means ask anything about science.  But maybe it's really just ask him about anything.  Either way, it sounds fun.

Here's what my daughter did during the entire class: she wrote down the all words she heard.  She did not take notes.  She created:

She filled five sheets of paper with words.  Colorful, funny, gross, serious, silly, boring, nonsensical ("prrrt," apparently when the esteemed Mr. Underwood released a dismissive puff of air or some such) scatological, inspirational words.

I know she's my daughter and all, but I think this is genius.  Who knows what she will remember from the Ask Anything questions and answers, but there is something about the activity of listening to the words swirling around her and giving them life on paper that just tickles me to pieces.  It's like a mind map, a place for ideas to swirl around, a way for future ideas to incubate and multiply.

Or perhaps that's just a big rationalization, because I am a big-time doodler myself; my own notebook pages can look pretty disorganized, but it's the way I think.  My to-do lists are neat and tidy, but the pages that surround them are filled with drawings, slanted off the line writing, circles, arrows, and jumbles that look just a little nuts.  It works for me, in my little corner of the world.

But those pages my daughter filled?  I pretty much think they are proof positive that she is destined for greatness.

* * *

Designs By E

Once again, taking TV out of the equation has yielded boundless creativity.

I was super bummed out last night when my two little girls behaved so abominably at the grocery store that they lost their The Middle privileges.  Even as the words escaped my exasperated lips -- "If you keep fighting and being mean to each other, you will not watch The Middle tonight." -- I was regretting them, knowing as I do that enforcement is a bitch.

Of course.  They kept fighting.  Kept being bratty and mean.  Kept being those kids you see at the grocery store and silently thank the Lord they are not yours.

No, these two are mine-all-mine, and mine, the distinct pleasure of enforcing the consequence.  It was awful.  Oh, the whining, and pleading, and stomping, and thrashing!   Oh, the indignation, and disbelief, and horror, and insult!  Oh, the injustice of it all!

I just had to grit my teeth and keep telling myself that good mothers (a) enforce consequences, (b) do not slap whiny children (mostly), and (c) drink red wine in moderation (mostly).

And so the evening continued down a dreary path, until Lady E finally turned her attention away from pleading with me to change my mind and towards her aspirations to have her dress designs featured on ModCloth someday.  (You're welcome, ModCloth, for the unpaid advertisement.)

The Middle makes me laugh, but these designs make me happy happy happy:

Yay for no TV!  Yay for creative kids!  Yay for sucky consequences and silver linings!

* * *

Why My House Is Such a Mess

Saw this on Facebook this morning, posted by Blick Art:

I live with a whole bunch of creative types.  It's super annoying.  But then, I get to live with things like this too...

...so on balance, I'd say I'm ahead of the curve, even if the curve is cluttered with markers and paper and beads and paint and feathers and pencil shavings and scraps and piles and lots and lots of people.

It's all perspective, baby.

* * *

SMH*

I am a list maker.

I live and die by my lists.  I make them every morning, and use them like a religious zealot.  And while there are not many things about which I am obsessive or anal retentive, when it comes to my lists, I am both.  I need clean paper and good pens.  In a pinch, I'll go for a very sharp Ticonderoga pencil, but I'm bound to feel just a little resentment that I can't find one of my fine point pilots.  

I don't need much. Clean paper.  Good pens.

So when I sat down this morning to make my list, and found my nice new pad of yellow legal paper had been hijacked by a 5 year old, I was displeased.  Here is what I discovered:

And it went on and on and on.  Every.  Single.  Page.  Of a brand new yellow legal pad.  

Stupid creativity.  This is what happens when I don't let her watch TV.  I won't make THAT mistake twice.

* * *

*True confession: it was not that long ago that I had to turn to my teenager to find out what SMH means.  Here, for the also clueless among us, is the translation: Shaking My Head.

7 Quick Takes: Volume 38

Whoa!  Did I just blink and another Friday rolled around?  And why does time keep speeding up on me?  Seriously, whose in charge of slowing things down around here?  I would like to file a formal request.  Here's the basic text: "HELP!  SLOW DOWN!"  I sure hope I get a response by next Friday.

Please visit the lovely host of the original 7 Quick Takes and visit the links to other bloggers playing along.

~1~

Yesterday, I offered to take the kids to get ice cream cones if everyone finished their work by 1pm.  Little T looked at me in dismay.

"What?  Ice cweam cones??  Why?"

Her face crumpled.  She fell to crying.

Huh?  I was baffled.  Until she clarified that she didn't want just the cone, she wanted the ice cream to go with it and thought it was very mean of me to just buy the cone.

So yesterday, when my kids finished their work by 1pm, I took them all out for ice cream cones, and I even let them get some ice cream to put on top.

~2~

We have started playing around with the math videos and practice exercises on Kahn Academy.  If you are not yet familiar with Kahn Academy, you should be.  You want to be, you just don't know it yet.  What a cool site!  What an amazing resource!  I ♥ Sal Kahn.

And for further math delightfulness, check out this version of the fantastic Tom Lehrer New Math song:

~3~

We learned how to make these fun paper boxes the other day:

Perfect.  Right when I finally purged all those calendars and children's book jackets I had been hoarding for years.

No matter.  I'm sure I can replenish that supply in a heartbeat, and I expect this to be a fun activity we will do many times.  They make delightful gifts and gift containers.  Thank you Lori and Maddie for teaching us!

~4~

Cooking with Mama Monica

Hee-hee...oh, my, that title makes me laugh.  I'm sure it would make my husband giggle, too.  Ah, the hilarity!  But my limited range in the kitchen is exactly why I am sharing this recipe.  It is the single easiest thing I ever make, and really quite delicious.  Every time I make it, I feel like I'm getting away with something.  So here ya' go:

Rosemary Chicken

I use thighs.  Place your (frozen, if you're like me) chicken thighs in a baking dish.  They don't need to be thawed, another important feature of the easiest recipe ever, since I never remember to thaw things.

1/2-1 cup of red wine
1/4-1/2 cup of olive oil
1/4-1/2 cup of chopped onions (I've used red and yellow, depending on what I have.  Both work.)
1/2 teaspoon of sage
1/2-1 teaspoon of rosemary
You can add a dash of salt: I don't.

Whisk together all of the above ingredients.  Pour the mixture over the chicken.  That's it.  Seriously.

Whoops!  Forgot to tell you to preheat the oven.  Which makes sense, since I always forget to do it.  Anyway, set oven to around 375-400.  Sorry I can't be more specific, but I've got a really spazzy oven, and I'm never sure exactly what temp I've got goin'.   Cover with foil and cook for around an hour...remove foil and cook for another 15 minutes.  Maybe longer.  Test it for doneness.  If you're like my husband, that means cut it open, eye it suspiciously, and poke a forkful in your wife's face and say: "This look done to you?"  I just use a meat thermometer.

Enjoy over rice or pasta.  And bask in the glory.  This takes about 10 minutes to prepare, and tastes like it took much longer.

You are most welcome.

~5~

And a shout out to my 12 year old son, who broke his own juggling record yesterday.   I did not catch the momentous occasion on film, but I did get this video a few weeks ago, to give you an idea of what he is doing.  He got to 50 or so in the video...far below the new RECORD TO BEAT OF 475!

475!  Woot-woot!

~6~

It turns out the Serenity Prayer is perfect for teenagers.  I had occasion to tell mine about it the other day, which reminded me of this prayer for the first time in a long time.  I'm glad I stumbled on a chance to bring it back into my daily life (because I can't control much), and I hope my son makes it part of his.  This is probably better than the Golden Rule as a succinct life philosphy.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

The courage to change the things I can.

And the wisdom to know the difference.

Really, what more is there?

~7~

And if the radically opposing natures of most of my posts have been giving anyone whiplash lately, if you can't figure out if I'm a big sap or a total cynic, if I seem to be sweet one minute and sarcastically cruel the next, welcome to my world.  It's confusing to be me, trust me. But really, what about my kids?  Say a special prayer for them, with me as their mom.  They'll either be hopelessly confused by the world, or ready for anything.  I'm going for better than 50%, so we'll see how that goes.

* * *

And the castle, it is the best castle...

A little over a year ago, I wrote in this post about how a bedtime plan backfired on me. Thirteen months later, that same plan finally bore fruit!

Little T was tough to put to bed last night, crying and carrying on, and claiming she could only sleep cuddled next to me. I was trying to think of a nice way to keep her butt in her bed, or barring that, at least in her own room. Lady E saved me.

Tallulah, one time, I had a hard time going to sleep, and Mommy told me I could just make up stories right in my own mind! And I did, and the stories were about princesses and stuff, and I can help you do the same thing!

Exit Mommy, fist pumping the air.

Enter Mommy an hour later to find two sleeping girls and the following story on the pillow next to one of them:

We lived in a castle, a very big castle. We loved it.

It was very awesome and it was covered with

flowers. It had a very pretty garden, very

very beautiful. I loved the garden.

And the castle, it is the best castle I have ever seen.

I guess creativity past bedtime is OK after all.

* * *

Saved By Fingerpaint

The sun was shining.


You were both under my feet, in my hair, on my arms and driving me mad.


Thank God for fingers and for paint and for the combination of the two.


Thank God for sunny days, when fingers and paint can come together out of doors and make a mess far from my dining room floor.


Thank God for bright colors, the yellow sun, the blue flowers and the orange hat.


All converged to ensure that I survived another day without losing my precious mind. I have lived to scream another day. But not today, because today the sun was shining, and there were fingers and paint in lovely motion.

* * *

Dizzy

Yesterday, my day consisted of getting new tires, searching for live crickets, buying live silkworms instead, trying to talk to the rackin-frackin insurance company, dealing with a daughter who keeps pooping in her underwear, working on art projects for Father's Day, watching part or all of three world cup games (we're sad Cameroon lost), going on a handful of errands (including one that earned me a beer with a favorite family), completing and mailing next school year's enrollment forms, and feeding people.

No wonder I am dizzy.

This past Sunday, we drove five hours, 2.5 hours into the foothills for a birthday party and 2.5 hours back. Once again, my love for farmland and foothills was re-affirmed and strengthened. It's absolutely beautiful out there in the middle of nowhere.

The linguist Geoff Nunberg, a professor at Cal, did a radio essay yesterday on the NPR program Fresh Air about how haiku has been all over twitter. You can listen to it here:



I do not twitter, but I like playing around with haiku. So here are two, inspired by my last couple of days.

Haiku for a Busy Day

Much to take care of:
Bank, friends, forms, art, food, futbol.
Done. Good and dizzy.

Haiku for a Road Trip to the Countryside, Where I Wish I Lived

Miles take me there.
Landscape lulls me to silence.
But I don't sleep there.

* * *

Join the Haiku party: post yours in a comment!

* * *

Brooklyn Brownstone

Do the wonders of my family never cease?

My dad painted this picture of the house some of our family stayed in during our trip to NYC. I especially love the window to the right and the greenery at the bottom left. While a bunch of us slept elsewhere, this place was "home base" for all of our festivities. He captured our home-away-from-home perfectly.



Since he has retired, he has returned to watercolor painting. He has always been an artist; in fact, he was a professional potter for much of my childhood and I was well into my teens before I realized that some people actually purchased the dishes they ate off of. I have many fond memories of running around at street art fairs in San Francisco, dodging in and out between tables of hand-crafted jewelry, tapestries, pottery, paintings, etc. It was a great way to grow up, surrounded by people who take in the world and give something beautiful -- or at least interesting -- back.

Between my artist father and my writer mother (and throw in both of their experiments as musicians!), I think I know where I get the urge to be, if not the practice of being, creative. What a gift! And what a curse as well, as I think almost daily about what creative endeavor I wish I were engaging in but am in fact not. I have the will, but not yet the way. What I do have are a bunch of whiny weak excuses. Well, that and five strong, compelling excuses!

But the will does not leave. I will find some way to create...if only to keep up with my family.