About Babies (of the Family)

Posted on July 29, 2021 by bonniedonily

[My “baby” turns 24 next week. How did that happen? I wrote a version of this when he was twenty less than that.]

Lately my husband has been bringing to my attention the fact – or opinion, depending which side of the fence you’re on – that I’ve been spoiling our youngest son. He says that my baby boy doesn’t get the same treatment as the other two sons. But it’s not that Simon doesn’t catch trouble from his mom. It’s just that mom’s tolerance level with her littlest man is a tad higher when he does get into mischief, meaning maybe, sometimes, okay, yeah, he might get cookies even if he doesn’t finish his supper.

Well, who can blame me? The baby of the family deserves some consolation: after all, he is always going to be the last, the most ignored, the one whose voice can reach screaming proportions and can still be unheard and the one whose ideas are never as good enough as the older people’s. And frankly, Simon has an ally in his mother because – ahem – I am a baby of the family, too.

I suppose that I see Simon’s frustration and automatically sympathize. Yesterday, he got beaned in the head with a snowball by one of The Older Bros., mostly because he was an easy target. The brother then dutifully led him to the house for first aid (hugs from mom and removal of the snow creeping down his neck). Simon was wailing and obviously very mad and, to his credit, (older brother’s name withheld for legal reasons) did apologize several times. But it was only when Simon all-out punched him that his own frustration finally dissipated and he was suddenly remorseful as well. Although I chastised him for letting his temper get the better of him, I related so well. Sometimes the only way to make the bigger people know you can’t be messed with is to get physical with them. Forgiveness doesn’t come as easy as when it’s mutual.

Simon does have an advantage over me. While I was a few years behind my next sibling, he’s not even two years behind and not compromised in size at all. Actually we predict that our youngest will probably outgrow the other two. (Update: Challenge accepted and met.) Consequently, we often warn them that if they keep trying the sit-on-Simon’s-head-game, it’s probably going to come back and bite them (in more ways than one). But Simon’s voice is smaller, if not in actual decibel output, in dismissible quotient. It seems all too easy for his older brothers to carry on a normal conversation while Simon tries in vain to get their attention. And when I casually mention to them that their brother is saying something, they appear surprised, as if it was only the wind blowing outside.

I remember those days of engaging in whole conversations only to find out I was the only one listening to myself. Granted, maybe my juvenile pursuits weren’t exactly interesting to my older, more sophisticated siblings. So I gradually became accustomed to doing things on my own. Anyways, when you’re ignored, it’s easier to get extra attention from mom, a trick that Simon has learned well. Some may call it kissing up (or other more derogatory terms). We babies just call it playing your hand.

If you sympathize with our plight, chances are you’re a baby, too. Oldest and middle children say that we live up to our name, but we can just give them back some of their own medicine: ignore them. After all, if you tried to say something, they probably won’t hear you anyways.

About a Shoebox

Posted on July 22, 2021 by bonniedonily

When I was a kid, an important part of summer was the extra-hanging-out with The Cousins, especially the ones that lived about a mile away, easy distance by hike or by bike. And unlike school, where we were shuffled off into age-segregated groups, summer was a time to do away with those artificial lines. In the summer, The Youngers were sometimes allowed to hang with The Olders. It wasn’t Lord of the Flies, either – we had civilized wiener roasts or picnicked on white-bread sandwiches cut into neat triangles made by our auntie – and if somebody’s glasses got broken, we all commiserated. (Because we all wore glasses and knew dang well how much they cost.)

Usually, we stayed outside, because that was the best place to escape The Adults. But a sudden thunderstorm might send us into the barn or the playhouse, or even sometimes, the house. On one of these afternoons, with all of us crowded in a circle on my cousin Barb’s bed, she decided to show us The Shoebox. It was a pretty ordinary shoebox. And the shoes that once lived there had moved on. Inside, in a reverse chronological pile from the top down, were all the things she had saved in her life thus far, the Things She Decided Were Worth Saving. I don’t remember exactly what was inside that box but I could venture to guess there were some newspaper clippings, a napkin or two from a wedding (remember when napkins were “engraved” with the couples’ name and date of the wedding?), probably some birthday cards, friends’ school photos, bottlecaps, badges and some letters, still tucked inside their envelopes with their time-stamp postmarks on the front.

I was completely enamored. Here was her entire life in a shoebox! Okay, maybe not really. But it felt so personal to me, her letting us see All Those Special Things, because she was showing us a little piece of herself, her memories, her dear ones. And I knew then that I needed to get my own shoebox.

Shoeboxes have long been repositories of such collections. Before my Shoebox Epiphany, I knew there already were other shoeboxes in our house. There was a box of unused greeting cards that I loved to look at, with some strange postcards at the bottom that never would be sent to anyone. There was the box with all the invitations from weddings past. There was probably a shoebox with old photos in it. Because shoeboxes, by their very neat size and construction and maybe their appealing color or design (or perhaps by the sheer price tag of the shoes you purchased) demand to be saved. So you might as well put them to work.

The shoebox is also a good limiter. Once the shoebox is full, well, you need to get rid of something. One of the first things I remember secreting to my shoebox was a cardboard french fry box shaped like a skunk (WHAT?) that came from a rare lunch out in The City. I kept it for a loooooooong time but eventually it was ousted from the shoebox. The shoebox is a flexible time capsule so, if you’re a Peruser or a Rememberer, you might find yourself naturally culling through the box every time you rifle its contents. Because food-stained skunk boxes eventually do lose their ketchup-colored patina.

Of course, you could also just add another shoebox.

There’s a few “shoeboxes” in my house now: some actual shoeboxes, some are dedicated dresser drawers, but mostly, I have saved things in scrapbook albums, including some of those things from my childhood shoebox. I sometimes wonder what to do with it all. But then, one of the kids or the girlfriends or a niece or nephew askes a question about our Good Old Days and we find ourselves, in a circle, around the Proverbial Shoebox.

I’ve saved too much, I have so many shoeboxes, I wonder what to do with it all sometimes. Except: it’s always fun to look back and remember a time when your whole life could fit into a shoebox.

Do you know a kid who needs a shoebox this summer? It’s a pretty simple do-it-yourself project. And, of course, no adults allowed.

About One Crazy Summer

Posted on July 15, 2021 by bonniedonily

My love for children’s books began – wait for it – when I was a child myself. Of course, when I learned to read I reached for those books that I could easily enjoy at first and then I slowly climbed the ladder to “harder” books. But I never left the love of those “softer” books behind. After all, my basic criteria for what I want to read is a good story, one where I can maybe learn something about the human story, about history (or “her-story”) and about ways to use the language. And there are many picture, middle grade (MG) and young adult (YA) that fit that bill.

When I first read the book The Happiness Project, I felt vindicated in my unabashed love of children’s literature when Gretchen Rubin expressed her habit of returning again and again to the books of her childhood to re-read – for comfort, for enjoyment and to learn something new each time about the book, the writing or herself. She even started not one, but two book clubs, centered on reading such books because she discovered that, once confessed, she was not alone in in her quirky affection and therefore needed two groups to hold all those as secretly passionate as her.

During our homeschooling season, we once went to a conference where an educator discussed the merits of using children’s books, not just for children, but for adults, too, as launching pads into a new subject. If you want to learn about how airplanes work – because I sincerely don’t understand such magic, do you? – you should go to the library and find a children’s book about it. And maybe, that might be all you need. Oh sure, I could ask Wikipedia or the Google, but it often doesn’t engage me the same way. I can still picture the illustrations of Wilbur and Orville Wright from the Children’s Encyclopedia that I read from our basement library as a kid (Volume A: because that was the free incentive to buy the set). And while I may not remember the mechanics of flight, I know that the Orville Bros. of Kitty Hawk did and they were persistent enough to make it happen.

I didn’t pick up One Crazy Summer because I wanted to know more about the summer of 1968 in Oakland, California or about the Black Panthers or because it was a “black book”. I picked it because it was on the Newbery Medal and Honor List, which is awarded to exceptional MG and YA books and, again and again, I have learned that the Newbery Committee (usually) knows what they are doing. That being said, after visiting the King Center in Atlanta in the fall of 2016, I found my knowledge sorely lacking for what went on in the sixties with the Black Panthers and the other side of the coin, Martin Luther King Jr.’s non-violent protests.

Without context, we often assign judgement to acts of violence or protest. One Crazy Summer gives that context, with its story of the three Gaither sisters who travel from Brooklyn to Oakland one (crazy) summer to live with the mother who abandoned them when Delphine, the oldest, was five. Told in her voice, Delphine is a classic oldest child, a protective rule-keeper, a paradigm that Cecile, their mother does not fall into. Arriving in Oakland, it is not the happy reunion that the girls maybe hoped for, with Delphine resigning: “I was happy to be there and that had to be good enough.” In the way of their mother’s working routine, the girls are sent to a day camp run by the Black Panthers where they learn about Malcolm X and color protest posters that demanded “FREE HUEY”.

Over the course of the (crazy) summer and the course of the book, Delphine, Vonetta and Fern do learn more about their mother, a poet, and what she stands for, in the author’s masterful “show-don’t-tell” way. At the end of the summer, Delphine has a completely new paradigm in which to view her mother and a promise of a relationship going forward – which you can visit in the sequels P. S. Be Eleven and Gone Crazy in Alabama.

About What’s Saving My Life Right Now

Posted on July 8, 2021 by bonniedonily

At the end of Barbara Brown Taylor’s book Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith, the author lists a number of things that are “saving her life right now” – intuitive, instrumental and illuminating things that are life-giving in organic and maybe unorthodox ways – a little different to what she conventionally taught from the pulpit for years as an Episcopalian minister. Things like: teaching at a college, living in relationship with creation, and encountering God in other people.

At the end of every one of her podcasts, Jen Hatmaker borrows this same question to ask her guests – What is saving your life right now? – and the answers are not usually spiritual or abstract. More often what is saving someone’s life right now are ordinary things like reading a poem a day, eating ripe in-season strawberries or watching the latest Brian Regan special on Netflix.

I thought about this last night when I donned my eye mask before going to sleep. It’s usually still light outside when we hit the hay in this house and all the sleep-gurus strongly suggest that when it comes to sleeping better, darkness is your friend. I’m not that great of a sleeper these days – at least not during the second half of the night when my water habit wakes me up. It took me awhile to get used to it, but I think my eye mask is saving my life right now, helping me to get back to sleep a little quicker than usual.

But then, when I wake up in the morning, coffee is saving my life right now. Well, really, coffee has been saving my life for a long time, since I starting making cups of milky instant Nescafe to help me study for final exams in grade twelve. However, I sometimes get a little overzealous in my coffee habit and it becomes more of a havoc-maker than a life-saver. A visit to a doctor a few months ago instigated a stint on a very strict hypoallergenic diet to identify any foods which were causing my post-menopausal body more grief than they were worth. Happily – and maybe the reason I was able to sign on to such austerity – was that I could still drink my beloved coffee. But only two cups a day. It turned out to be such a good thing, because I’ve returned to the delight of really relishing those two cups, so much more so than the 4 or 5 I was glugging down.

Walking in the morning is saving my life right now. I love walking year-round but in the summer, there’s nothing so wonderful as being able to walk out the door in the early morning, knowing I’ll be greeted in sound and scene by all the friendly flora and fauna that love the early mornings, too. (Of course, there are some enemies as well: swooping gulls and rumors of bears in the park – but I’ve learned to avoid their usual hangouts.) And during our record-breaking “heat-snap” last week, morning was the only time that a long walk was tolerable.

Intermittent fasting is saving my life right now. Or I.F. to those in the club. For those of you not yet inducted, it simply means waiting a little longer than usual before you eat your first meal of the day. For me that is anywhere from 10 to noon for a total of 14 to 16 hours without food. (I do get to have my first cup of coffee because I drink it black during this window.) It cuts down my calorie intake for the day a little, which is good since Mother Nature decided that older women need to burn less. This doesn’t help when you’re used to eating three squares a day. Plus snacks. Plus dessert. Plus plus. I.F. has given me some reins to pull on the horse I call my appetite and by the time I do eat “break-fast”, I feel hungry and a good-emptiness in my tummy.

And, of course, reading (as always) is saving my life right now, but more specifically: reading other writer’s journals. So far I’ve read May Sarton’s Journal of a Solitude and I’m over halfway through Madeleine L’Engle’s four-book Crosswicks Journals. Both women were writing from “about my age” in these journals, contending with everything from a raccoon who regularly breaks into the house every night (Sarton) to a mother’s last visit and then death at Crosswicks (L’Engle). And all the while, they were trying to keep up with the business of writing and managing a household, while also not getting as much sleep as they would have liked because of raucous raccoons and aged mothers. It’s a good reminder of the quote that “everyone is fighting a hard battle.” But in the midst of the battles are loveable grandchildren and velvety donkeys, burgeoning gardens and restful walks to the stream: things that were saving their lives right then.

It’s also a good reminder that it’s the little things that really make that difference. What’s saving your life right now?