parenting success

i called my sister and told her i had a Parenting Success. she asked if there is such a thing.

oh, there is.

little hal, lately, has been throwing all his food on the floor. i’ve scolded, i’ve frowned, i’ve ignored, i’ve punished (ok, i’m not good at “punishing”). finally the light went on. i pulled the garbage can next to his little booster chair and said, “darling hal, when you’re finished with the food, put it in here.” he grinned. he gleefully tossed everything on his tray into the can. he begged for another biscuit, ripped it into small pieces, and chucked it in on top of his white bean soup. he laughed derisively.

he now asks for the garbage can when finished with a meal.

and that, my friends, is a Parenting Success.

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jiggety-jog

we’re home again.

to celebrate the sort of up-endedness you feel leaving one time zone full of family and familiarity and heading back to a place that you’re still getting to know (that you may never know), we gardened in the moonlight. i plucked slugs off my yellowing begonias. i weeded the clover from between the toes of my coleus. i tied jute string around the posts of the porch and threaded the morning glory up our brick wall. i listened to voices jutting out of the moonlight: forks clinking against plates at the italian restaurants, the swooop of table umbrellas closing up for the night.

i settled back on my heels, watching the fireflies wink, feeling simultaneously completely at home (at peace) and itchy: itchy to be somewhere, to be out on my colorado plain where my soul seems to unfold and unfold and unfold until i’m bigger than i ever imagined possible.

so, what is home?

is home the place you grew up? where you caught frogs and watched sunsets and broiled in horrific poetry about this or that crush?

is home the place you have your couch, your mattress, your rothko, your books? is home the moment you brought your baby across the threshold and saw his mouth open and close? is home the place where you gather tomatoes and watch for beets to take root?

is home a place i haven’t been yet, somewhere i haven’t had the chance to imagine?

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imagination

i am a lucky girl. not only has my posture improved over the past week, but i also got to spin out a week of my life at cleveland state’s imagination workshop. for those of you who are turning up your noses and thinking–writing in cleveland, it’s not possible–think again. neal chandler, director, is a genius. and meeting josip novakovich was beyond delightful: the man is hilarious in a sort of deadpan eastern european way. my list of books developed a sort of bunnies-mating quality. and i’m even more determined to get a few essays out as soon as reading periods open again in september. it’s a pleasant little time-warp to feel like a student and a writer again after so many days of playing at the park and reading sandra boynton. so, all of you with dreams, give yourself at least a week to dabble in them. you’ll walk a little taller.

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bravo, voters

now that you know i’m not immune to popular culture, i just wanted to say, thank you america (whoever you are: be you teeny boppers voting 15 times with your cell phones or housewives in sweats and cookie crumbs) for getting susie off so you think you can dance. teachers everywhere can stop cowering in shame.

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confession

i’ve been very busy. very busy not finishing the brothers karamazov. no, since about february, i’ve been doing something i’ve never done before and i just wrapped it up saturday night. [yeah, i know you’re wondering what in the world could take months, besides reading the brothers karamazov.]

i just watched the gilmore girls from season one all the way to the bitter end of season seven. [i’m not sure i even want to calculate how many useless hours of tv viewing that turned out to be.]

i’ve been having dreams about paris geller for months. i’ve been having dinner conversations with joe (yes, somehow i roped him into the occasional episode) wherein we discuss the various choices of lorelai and rory. occasionally these conversations even trump details about joe’s patients and their teeth.

on one hand, i will miss those crazy gilmores and sookie’s pigtails. on the other, i cannot believe how much of their fake lives these fake people spent fighting. really, who fights with their mom every single day about every single thing she says? it just seems so exhausting.

am i the only one in the world who enjoys calm, pleasant relationships with little to no conflict?

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