WAKING UP
(About The Ten Year Nap)




At twenty, I was a dreamy girl halfway through college until a brisk full-moon night laced with snow and stars revealed my firstborn's shocking existence. I fell into motherhood clumsily...ineptly. I hadn't necessarily wanted to be a mother--was never a girl who had her dream wedding planned since seventh grade with the ideal set of matching babies to go along with it. I swooned over stories of poets locked in Parisian garrets or writers with heavy notebooks thumbing rides across the country and back again. I hungered for travel and pined for a vagabond life that wasn't meant for me--right up until the baby was born, when I couldn't see any further than the glow cast by her nightlight as we swayed in the rocking chair--a whole continent unto ourselves. I wasn't a natural at it...still am not in a conventional sense. But, shhh...don't tell my three children that, because for eleven years we have stumbled along together--making it up as we go along...winging it, carrying on in a greater adventure than any I'd read about.

Still, it was unusual...juggling babysitters and packing a diaper bag with sippy cups then dashing across campus, looking to the world like just another co-ed, to attend seminars on Women in Shakespeare or Linguistics: Semiotics, praying that the mandatory study session wouldn't interfere with the baby's bedtime. I ventured into student-teaching (full-time work with zero pay), putting her in daycare without a second thought--not realizing until I stood up in front of an angst and hormone-ridden classroom that I craved my daughter like a drug and I couldn't bring myself to leave her for work "for real". The semester ended, and so did my brief foray into full-time teaching...I quickly got used to being the youngest mother on the playground and to scraping by on just one income. I never fit in with the "mommies" who had handi-wipes in their bags to share or an extra pack of goldfish crackers when I'd remembered to bring along a book of Neruda's poems in my backpack, but not the baby's snack. Somehow my age insulated me from the hotly contested "mommy wars" and related issues--I was already an odd-ball mother, and we already didn't have any money to speak of.

The characters in Meg Wolitzer's novel, The Ten Year Nap, were already established in their careers when they made the often-fraught decision to leave the workforce behind to raise their children. They contend with issues of finances, shifting roles in their marriages, and a deep sense of inertia now that their children's early years have passed. Unlike most of the material written about the relationship between stay-at-home and working-mothers, this is a work of fiction--so the potential to get deeply within the subject exists without the need for objective/academic distance. However, my feelings about this novel are definitely mixed. Wolitzer's writing is undeniably poetic and lyrical in places, however, the overall trajectory of the story was a bit slow for me. I appreciated how the author traveled in and out of the perspectives of the women, providing depth and insight into the broader spectrum of emotions brought up by being a full-time mother. But, the one "working-mother" character, Penny, isn't given her own point-of-view and is instead viewed at a distance by the full-time mothers who alternate feelings of envy and sympathy for her situation. To cover the broader spectrum of maternal uncertainty, and to illustrate that *both* working and at-home mothers experience very similar concerns and doubts, it would have made sense to give Penny a voice. Many people argue that the issues between mothers who work out of the home and those who don't have been a bit over-played at this point. Women who want to work and/or need to work should--and those who don't/can't shouldn't feel forced to. Right? However, in The Ten Year Nap, Wolitzer gives readers more to think about concerning this ambiguous and often-debated topic. It is well-worth a read.

As for me, I will be joining the full-time workforce this fall with the onset of a high-school teaching gig. I have cobbled together a part-time college adjunct and freelance writing and editing career in the eleven years I've been a mother...so, in many ways, I still hover just beyond the edges of this discussion, not fully fitting into either mothering "camp". Still, my heaviest work days are ahead of me...my eldest will enter junior high in September and come home to an empty house afterwards. My third-grade son and kindergarten "baby" will be in a classroom until after I am done work for the day. Unlike the mothers in this novel who grapple with whether or not they want to go back to work, I am leaping in without a second thought. Life has shifted profoundly in the past six months and, for me, having this teaching career launched once and for all is a part of the deep process of "waking up" I'm experiencing already. I think women's experiences are far more complex and dynamic than to distill mothering down into two roles: SAHM or Working Mother and then declare one superior to the other.

And anyway, there will always be the gypsy-mamas like me who never quite fit into the carefully constructed ideals...who are surprised by motherhood, shocked by the ferocity of their love for their children...mothers who keep active in the workplace but also spend long afternoons painting watercolors with a toddler...mothers who are wistful on cold starry nights and who may not be able to run a company or to remember to bring the color-coded-tupperware-lidded-baked-from-scratch cupcakes to the classroom party either. But, my backpack is still full of poetry...and if you ask me nicely...I just may share the ephemeral wonder of words with you.




***I'm also willing to share my copy of The Ten Year Nap with one random commenter below! (Leave your thoughts about this issue or about "waking up" in general & I'll let you know next Thursday who that is.)***

Edited to add: we put the names into a baseball hat and my youngest picked JANUARY's name out! I hope you enjoy the book...

SKY: a review and 300th post book giveaway



Back in August, I was lucky enough to be a part of the first Writers Revealed Bookclub live podcast where Meredith Hall, author of the lyrical memoir, Without a Map, allowed readers to interview her about her book and the writing process. It was a wonderful experience all the way around, as was the second one I participated in for Dani Shapiro and her novel, Black and White. The opportunity came about thanks to host of the show, Felicia C. Sullivan, whose new memoir, The Sky Isn't Visible from Here, was recently released by Algonquin Books.

Sullivan begins her powerful tale of a lost childhood and harrowing coming-of-age with her college graduation when her mother didn't "appear among the proud, applauding parents" and she knew then that she "would never see her again." With this, Sullivan plunges into a 255-page meditation on her mother, her difficult upbringing, and the effort it took for her simply to reach adulthood on her own terms. It is a broken love story from child to mother--a lament for the many betrayals and upheavals she endured at the hands of a "mother who didn't know how to be a mother...the woman who broke (her) heart." Sullivan doesn't pull any punches when looking at the realities of her mother's past or her own. As a young adult, she spiraled into her own alcoholism and addiction, mirroring her mother's struggles, before finally coming clean regarding the lies she'd told about her life to her friends and herself--and letting go of her self-destructive history to embrace her creative and inspired future.

The writing itself is spare, direct...shifting back and forth in time and circumstance, circling over memories and the things Sullivan knows about her mother and herself. I read it in one deep breath of a day and night, captivated by her story and the honest rawness of her reflections. As a writer, I openly admire those who hold themselves up for examination. Truth, and the act of telling the truth, is such a profound creative act...one I approach myself and then back off from quietly, trying not to stir up any dust--preferring instead to veil my fragments in fictional characters who bear little more than an inconsequential shred of emotional resonance with my own history. Still, writers who do manage this self-revelation on the page fascinate me...and Sullivan's book was breathtakingly close to the bone in many places. As a mother, I found myself wanting to identify in some way with Sullivan's mother as she struggled to find her role through difficult circumstances. This isn't a foreign concept to me, a mother at a young age--after many years of proclaiming that I would never have children at all, so convinced was I of my own lack of nurturing abilities. The jarring of the "self" that Sullivan's mother experienced as a parent was something I intuitively understood, though my own commitment to my children and mothering has been very unlike hers. I also felt the daughter's role echoing somewhat in my experiences as the child of an alcoholic and absent parent in my own life. The places Sullivan was willing to travel in depth through are ones I shy away from and so this memoir felt like a true accomplishment of a woman over her reluctance to expose the reality of her past.

I highly recommend this book...so much so, in fact, that I will give The Sky Isn't Visible from Here to one random commenter below. Have you read any books lately that speak to some hidden facet of yourself or your experiences? Tell me about it, or comment about this post or Sullivan's book before next Thursday, February 28th when I will draw *one* name and mail my copy to you!

NOVEMBER 13: The Daring Book for Girls



DISCLAIMER: In order to review The Daring Book for Girls for MotherTalk today, I had to brave the unruly chaos of my eleven-year-old daughter’s bedroom to find it. This book has been in her clutches from the moment it arrived, and, surely enough, I located it easily...tucked beneath the pillow on her bed.

Last spring, this same daughter and I were spending time at the bookstore together, browsing the stacks and writing down promising titles we might add to our already ridiculously long book “wish list”, when we saw The Dangerous Book for Boys by Conn and Hal Iggulden, sitting securely on the bestseller list shelf. My precocious girl looked at it and immediately chorused, “No fair! What about the dangerous girls?” and I nodded, predicting, “Don’t worry—I’m sure someone has already thought of that.” That someone, it turned out, was Andrea J. Buchanan and Miriam Peskowitz, two Philly-area writers whose writing I’d followed from their debut titles, Mother Shock and The Truth Behind the Mommy Wars respectively. I met these two women at a MotherTalk Salon in Philadelphia a couple of years ago, and was inspired even then by the spunk and wit of each--personality traits that are immediately apparent in the tone of The Daring Book for Girls, their answer to the wildly popular Iggulden book.

With topics ranging from: Pressing Flowers to Going to Africa, Friendship Bracelets to Finance: Interest, Stocks, and Bonds—this book certainly reassured any initial reluctance I may have had with regard to separating topics as “female” or “male” as these books, on the surface, could. I was impressed with the evenhandedness of the subject matter, with learning so many things I didn’t know about women’s history in spite of my women’s studies degree, and with the variety of “things to do”—which can keep my girl interested no matter what her mood is in any given moment (and any mother of an eleven-year-old girl will tell you, the ranges on these are endless). My daughter has already made a note of the contents of “Every Girl’s Toolbox”—including the glue gun, adjustable wrench, and jig saw—for her Christmas list and was kind enough to include her little brother in her initial attempt to make a flashlight from household items (an effort which was temporarily thwarted by our lack of working D-batteries). The accompanying book website has Daring Girl stationery, a printable Passport to Adventure, a Daring Girl anthem, and (our personal favorite) a set of six downloadable badges for completing the activities within each section of the book.

The Daring Book for Girls is beautifully designed, as well—with illustrations and wide pages easy to prop open as a girl is busy building her own scooter or fort, practicing her karate moves, or bird watching. I know that, around here, it is going to continue to be carried out into the front yard and tucked in between bed sheets—the grass stains and battered cover tell-tale signs of a well-loved book. Girls (of any age) with a penchant for adventure and experimentation need to have this book—but, note to self, if you want to borrow it for your own daring exploits, don’t even bother to look for it gathering dust in the delicate confines of her bookshelf…

SPECIAL GUEST POST:REVIEW by my daughter, Petunia



For the last MotherTalk review I am on-schedule to do for a while, I decided to get my sweet-sweet Petunia to assist and post a guest review all her own of The Dark Dreamweaver, the Juvenile-fiction book by Nick Ruth. For me, any novel that can get a dialogue going between a mother and her (almost) eleven-year-old daughter is a very good thing. With The Dark Dreamweaver, we discussed nightmares and monarch butterflies, problem-solving, magic, and mystery over cups of tea and the most indulgent desserts possible at our local cafe. What follows is Petunia's un-altered take on this, the first book of The Remin Chronicles series.

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The Dark Dreamweaver is a very descriptive and creative book in which fantasy and reality are tied together creating one world. The characters themselves were filled with individuality. Mr. Ruth invented creatures that are astounding to me, such as the physical structure of Aradel and Sir Heads-a-Lot. The plot of The Dark Dreamweaver reminded me of other stories with children going into magic worlds, however, this book has its own twists and personality. The little caterpillar who seemed only slightly different from the others reveals himself to David as a wizard under an evil spell who needs assistance to save Remin, the magical home of dreams.

I feel The Dark Dreamweaver worked because it was interesting how Monarch butterflies starred in the world of magic and Remin. In addition, the few scary parts made me look all around my room as I read before sleep, searching for wicked faces or strange serpents. I learned new things about butterflies, which, for me, completed the story in a very interesting way. The final section of The Dark Dreamweaver was full of useful reference information about hatching your own Monarchs and gave me very interesting websites to learn more facts about butterfly gardening as well. I also highly enjoyed the ending of this book, and how David's cats ended up playing a role in saving him from the evil Thane.

In the beginning, this novel had a lot of drama, which kept the reader gripped, but the charm faded slightly as the story unfolded. Some of the wandering in the middle of the book could have been shortened a bit because it took up too many pages. In the end, though, the battle and conclusion zap action back into the story like a bolt of lightning. Also, since I believe that nature is a very important thing in this (and every) world, I adored the fact that the back cover mentions that "5% of all the net proceeds from The Dark Dreamweaver will be donated to help reforest the Monarch butterfly overwintering sites". In conclusion, I would recommend The Dark Dreamweaver to my friends because the novel offered the elements I always look for in a good story: drama, excitement, and magic.
*************************************************************************************Reviewer Bio Note:
Petunia Moon is a very bookish young lady who will turn eleven on October 19th. She loves hiking, star-gazing, and anything that will take her outside in nature--where she says "her spirit lives". Though for many years, she wanted to be a marine biologist, currently she is interested in a career in the arts or possibly as a psychologist since she recently has become fascinated with the structure and chemistry of the human brain. She mystifies her mother on an hourly basis and I want to thank her, sincerely, for how seriously she took this review-writing process!

ON BORROWED WINGS: A REVIEW



"Mother once said I'd marry a quarryman. She looked at me as we washed clothes in the giant steel washtub, two pairs of water-wrinkled hands scrubbing and soaking other people's laundry. We were elbow deep in dirty suds and our fingers brushed under the foamy mounds.
"Some mistakes are bound to be repeated," she murmured."

But the main character, Adele Pietra, in the novel, On Borrowed Wings, does anything but live out her mother's mistakes. She is a young woman determined to blaze her own path through the gender and societal conventions of her time, class, and circumstances. When an accident kills her father and brother, it is up to Adele to elevate her mother and herself. While the mother insists this will come only from marrying reasonably well, Adele has bold ideas of her own. It is Adele's unwavering faith in her own dreams and possibilities that makes Chandra Prasad's novel a compelling and memorable read.

Set in an insular Connecticut town and 1930's Yale, the backdrop of On Borrowed Wings has clearly been well-researched and carefully drawn. In an interview with CTcentral.com, Prasad notes how her own years of study at Yale (which only admitted women students as undergrads in 1969) inspired her to write this book, "I got to thinking, what if a young woman before that time really wanted to go — what were her options, and this got me thinking on the gender disguise issue," said Prasad, noting that an additional inspiration for her novel was the Stony Creek granite featured in many places around the Yale campus and in New Haven as well." She manages to set up her plot and narrative carefully enough that the issues of gender and feminism are not overly melodramatic or sermonizing, but still illustrate the importance of educational equality. With her mother's help, Adele disguises herself as her late brother, Charles, and takes his place in Yale's freshman class.

The novel also illustrates the tension between the mother-daughter relationship, and raises the subjects of class and racism when Adele lands in an independent study with a professor who seeks to prove that immigrant families are of a sub-par intelligence and morality through his research. On Borrowed Wings is an ambitious novel, weaving together history, gender, and coming-of-age narrative threads, while maintaining an accessible charm to keep readers turning the pages just to see if things will all work out for the daring protagonist.

Adele's struggle to find her place and her identity lands her in a group of boys, each grappling with his own conflicts highlighted by the time-period, including those of anti-Semitism, homosexuality, and class. When she finds herself falling for one of them, the pressure escalates and threatens to expose her hidden femininity and destroy her chances for earning her degree. If this wasn't enough, Adele's mother, who was initially a reluctant accomplice in Adele's concealment, decides that she no longer wants her to pursue her academic career and attempts to blackmail Adele into adhering to her wishes. Still, with her customary bravery and determination, she manages to follow her heart and her own path--at any cost.

On Borrowed Wings is a fable of love, confidence, and fearlessness...and a call to remember our own aspirations and dare to find out "how the world looks on high".

GETTING UNSTUCK


Waking up this morning to rain as I have for a few days now...cooler air filtering in through the window screens, the last crickets of the season still singing their jagged-edged notes, and the rhythm of the raindrops a staccato lovesong. It is a perfect day to write. I imagine myself settling in across my desk here and pushing through an even dozen of the last pages of my book, fueled by chai and inspired determination. I can see the structure of the poems I'm putting together--their narrative arc...I already believe in the anthology so much I can visualize its front cover. But, my fear is that it will be a day like my others this summer have been...one of relative silence. The confession? I have recently been a blocked writer.

It is no coincidence that my own voice was lost in the rise and fall of the children's, who have been home with me full-time since school let out. As if that wasn't enough, I added work responsibilities--taking on a large number of students over the summer semester and falling victim to my usual teaching-perfectionism, which says that I must get through to each and every one of them no matter what I have to do. Suddenly, the novel--which had all but written itself from January to late-May was left inert beneath the desk (where most of my forgotten writing goes to die). Whole weeks began to pass where the only writing I could manage to do in the crush of children, grading, and planning was in my journal. Rather than poetic musings on the slant of shadow over the table--they were scrawled pages of youcan'twriteyoucan'twriteyoucan'twrite. A terrifying place to be in, and any of you who've experienced this--no matter what the creative or academic outlet may be--understand all too well what I mean. (Some of you may have run off already afraid of the contagious nature of creative blocks!)

I wish I could say this was the only time I've had writer's block. It isn't. Last summer, when writing the novel became unbearably painful, I started a second one. I shelved Migration Summer completely and fell into the open arms of book two. Fast forward ninety pages of manuscript and six months, and I stumbled across the opening pages to my first novel and felt a remorse so profound I picked it up right then and there and vowed to finish the book at any cost--just to prove to myself that I am not a quitter. Not only did I get back to work on it, I found a writer's group to provide feedback on sections of it every single month. I started getting fierce about my writing time and immersed myself in it with all that I had. I attended a writer's conference and had positive reinforcement from two published authors I respect immensely--and an editor at a large NYC publishing house is now on my casual email acquaintance list based on what he saw as the strength of the book's opening. All I have to do is FINISH THE BOOK...yet, the closer I get to success, the more my words dissipate. I've been wondering why this could possibly be, and then I read Getting Unstuck Without Coming Unglued by Susan O'Doherty (aka Dr. Sue of the weekly "The Doctor Is In" columns on the infamous Buzz, Balls & Hype).





When I saw that MotherTalk was looking for reviewers of this book, I tried to be calm and collected about expressing my interest in participating--but, by this time I'm sure my desperate blocked-self was showing through. I've been reviewing books for almost three years now, and I have read absolutely everything on creative writing and the artistic process (and then some). What Getting Unstuck does that so many others have not is focus on the particularly complex role of gender in women's creative silences. The other key aspect of this book that I found so unique is that it is not specific to one creative outlet--it can be used by women who are painters, sculptors, jewelers, musicians, photographers, designers, and women in academe or in the grant or dissertation writing process. In this way, the book has a true diversity and appeal--even for those of us who feel we've "seen it all" by way of creative kickstarts.

O'Doherty gives insight into her own personal issues as a blocked-writer and then uses a series of composites of her actual clients to round out women's experiences and disciplines. In addition, readers are led through a chronological series of exercises designed to "constitute their artistic autobiography" and help to dismantle their blocked state. Getting Unstuck Without Coming Unglued addresses how gender roles perpetuate female silences, how fears of being seen may equate for some with fears of abuse, and how romantic relationships and sexuality intersect with expression. The section on mothering and creativity struck a chord for me in my current summer-situation, especially with the quote, "And, ironically, now that I'm in touch with so much richness and nerve, I can barely find the time to write a grocery list, much less an essay." Yes, my summer has been incredibly rich...but no, I haven't been able to articulate it (hence my month away from onscreen life).

This book broke me through my customary routine with creative self-help books, where I skim along the surface completing the exercises as I feel they apply to me. O'Doherty issues a warning at the opening of Getting Unstuck suggesting that the ones we are most reluctant to do are the ones we may need most. Calling attention to this directly got me to engage in each one as it came along...I can honestly say that I have now looked at personal reasons why my writing has slowed down right on the edge of possibly breaking through. It is deeper than "I'm short on time" or "I'm exhausted"...for all of us who struggle with creative silences. I recommend Getting Unstuck Without Coming Unglued to any woman who is ready to fully understand her creative process from the inside out.

As for me, the summer semester wrapped up on the last day of July, and I spent one full week decompressing and resting up without expecting too much of myself. Last week, I started writing again--baby-stepping my way back into the wild thickets of my novel. I am not able to say that I am officially "unblocked" yet, but I know I accomplished more in five days than I had in the seven weeks prior. A rain-soaked Tuesday presents itself to me...children still sleeping, my notebook and pen at my left side, that cup of tea on the right. So now, if you'll excuse me, I've got some work to do...

THE OTHER MOTHER: A REVIEW





Gwendolen Gross wrote and successfully published two novels about women's adventures and self-discoveries in the wilderness, Field Guide and Getting Out, before marriage and motherhood. In each of these books, the female protagonists immerse themselves in the natural world and find strength and solace there. Gross had a wealth of personal experience living this rugged lifestyle herself, as her biography explains, "She spent a semester in Australia with a field studies program, studying spectacled fruit bats in the rainforest remnants of Northern Queensland." The poetic opening of Getting Out reveals how significant the setting was for these two prior novels, "I didn't expect to love it so much to come to need it, going out, the trees lit with green or bare fingers, the open palm of the sky from a peak...I never imagined...that I would long for the smells of cedar and old oak leaves and the woody tang of sassafras twigs against my tongue. I didn't realize I would have to keep going, staying out longer and longer until I could see myself clearly enough to come back inside." In her newest novel, The Other Mother, the setting is a suburb on the outskirts of New York City--an emotional wilderness no less profound in its impact for the women who live there.

Gross conceived this book when she was a brand new mother, "rocking (her) colicky son under the ecstatic blossoms of the plum tree (raining pink petal rain when the wind blew)" and when asked, "So, what are you writing next?" she answered, "Fiction about the mommy wars. I want a character taking each side." The Other Mother is the result of that post-partum burst of inspiration, following the stories and perspectives of Thea, a stay-at-home mother-of-three, and Amanda, a children's book editor for a prestigious New York publishing house and a first-time mother who moves in next door. The tension between these two characters is almost instantaneous, and when an unexpected series of events compels Amanda and her husband and new baby to stay in Thea's house--the sparks ignite and the neighborly relationship buckles beneath the pressure of their mutually-judgmental recriminations.

The Other Mother is a highly engaging book--a perfect read for a late-summer evening, sitting by the pool, glass of iced-tea in hand. Shifting back and forth between the perspectives of the two women, this novel gives a glimpse into the private backgrounds influencing them to make the choices they do about life, family, and career. This empathetic point-of-view allows the reader to "walk on both sides of the fence" of this societal debate about women's roles and validations. For me, the inner struggles of the characters and their personal relationships and hidden conflicts were the most profound--even more so than the outside situations Gross repeatedly threw at the characters to mix it up. There was no need for the dramatizing of the external, as most women know--this deeply private issue is complex enough on its own. Still, Gross manages to make two fully-realized characters, both flawed in their own ways--both conflicted and curious about the choices the other has made.

In my own life, as a feminist and a mother, I have watched "the mommy wars" with curiosity and caution--having always been an "other mother" myself. First, I was a "young" mother--pregnant in college before I was married and had a career or a degree or a plan or a 401k. None of my peers could relate to my tenuous balancing act of cramming for finals, maintaining a 4.0 G.P.A. to keep my scholarships going, attending mandatory student orientation sessions, while dropping my daughter off at daycare, making sure she ate from the food groups, and puzzling with her father over how we were going to cover rent for our apartment, groceries, and childcare on just our meager income. The mommies we met on the playground couldn't relate to me either--my nose buried in a textbook as I pushed my girl on the swing, a beat-up old car I'd had since high school a year or two earlier, with no tidy house in the burbs to drive home to. Even after I graduated and had more children and settled into motherhood and grew older, this "other" label still hung from my back. I have been a veritable patchwork quilt of mothering and career--full time teaching to part time and back again. I can relate to the women who drop their children off at daycare in the morning and how the mother-guilt cuts against personal-satisfaction and trails her all day long. I also understand the ache of women who are with their children full time--completely sure that they are doing the most important work of their lives and yet...completely lonely and sometimes bored and frustrated.

Now, I am teaching a course of my own design and freelance writing--still straddling the divide. My novel work has become all-encompassing as well, another ball to throw up in the air and keep juggling with mixed success. I am not the mommy who will be whipping up fantastical cupcake-creations for the neighborhood or heading up the PTA--but I deeply respect and appreciate the ones who do because they are contributing to the welfare of children. I am not the mommy who will be getting into her high-powered business suit and catching the train into the city to head up a corporation after safely ensconcing her children with the nanny for the day--but, I am so grateful that she is out there, working to hold a place for women in the broader society. As The Other Mother draws to its conclusion, the characters seem to make peace with their own choices. Books like this one continue this very important conversation and show how clearly each person needs to look at herself before critiquing others. In the end, this is what women everywhere need to do...let go of the judgment and self-doubt and stand comfortably in our own terrain--no matter which side of the fence it is on.




Want to win a free copy of The Other Mother? All commenters on this post will be entered into a giveaway drawing and one will win of a copy of the book, which I will mail to you next week. What are your thoughts on motherhood and paid versus unpaid work...the various ways women seek to compose their lives and make meaning from it? If you have children, have you ever experienced the "mommy wars" yourself? If you don't have children, what do you make of society's focus on women's choices? Or, just feel free to comment and tell me what you think! (Comments will be closed after Wednesday, August 15th and I will announce who has a free copy of this book headed to their front door courtesy of the publisher and MotherTalk!)

BLUE MOON BOOK REVIEW


(image Kostian Iftica, c/o NASA)

A blue moon in common folklore refers to two full moons appearing in one calendar month...Last night, we sat out outside and watched the only calendar blue moon for the next 2.73 years rise through the trees in our backyard. The term has nothing to do with color, (as my children were disappointed to discover) and everything to do with frequency...In the same vein, I offer today a blue moon book review (two in a calendar month) for MotherTalk--this time of The Kids' Book Club Book by Judy Gelman and Vicki Levy Krupp. My other review for them was posted on Monday about my thoughts on Lisa Tucker's intriguing novel, Once Upon a Day. I have been missing the reviewing since the magazine I wrote for was put on editorial hiatus and am happy to share my rampant book love here instead! (Especially today's book, which is a fascinating resource guide for book lovers everywhere.)

I know what the title says, The Kids' Book Club Book, but the links these authors made between reading, crafting, cooking, and conversation could readily inspire book club readers of any age. Gelman and Krupp spent over a year surveying and interviewing hundreds of book club leaders and participants about favorite titles, themes, and activities to ensure that the guide was packed with innovative ideas. Having read it, I can confirm that it absolutely is...

The statistics on reading rates, as the authors point out, is staggering: "44 percent of children ages five to eight read a book every day, while by ages fifteen to seventeen, the number drops to 16 percent. The reading habits of young adults between ages eighteen and twenty-four are also in sharp decline...down 28 percent since 1982." Perhaps because I am a reading and writing instructor at a community college filled with eighteen to twenty-four year olds, I witness first hand the struggles my students have with reading. Every semester it is the same thing, I ask, "How do you feel about reading?" in an introductory interview and get same answers, "I hate it." "I only read what I have to for class." "Books bore me, I'd rather watch TV." I ask this question now, after seven years of teaching there, because I know the one I used to ask when I started out, "What is your favorite book?" elicited blank stares and the sound of chirping crickets from the corners of the classrooms. Had my students been involved in reading groups like the ones The Kids' Book Club Book describes, they would likely never dream of responding "I hate it" to their reading teacher on the first day of class. In fact, this book would make an excellent reference for educators looking to inject some creativity and life into their literature curriculum.

This summer semester in my class, we are reading this book. The section of Gelman and Krupp's book about reading Persepolis and serving Iranian tea has started me thinking about replicating something similar at our end of the term book discussion. This event usually involves pizza or doughnuts--but, in honor of Moshiri's Iranian-immigrant character, Roya, I am inspired to consider having our discussion over tea that Gelman and Krupp describe as: "served without milk or sugar, but Iranians put a sugar cube on their tongues and draw the tea through the cube as they drink. On formal occasions, the tea is flavored with cinnamon or garnished with crushed rose petals." I can only imagine what my students' responses to this will be, but it would certainly enhance the tone of our conversation.

Like most bookish tweens, my daughter is eagerly awaiting the next Harry Potter installment next month. In the meantime, The Kids' Book Club Book has recipes for Chocolate Cauldrons and Iced Butterbeer (hint: it includes rootbeer, vanilla ice cream, and butterscotch syrup--oh my!) and tips for making potions and magic parchments, things I can only hope will tide her over until its release. She glanced through The Kids' Book Club Book with excitement as well, and has asked if I'd consider sponsoring a book club through her school next year. I am already known as "the literary mom" because of the poetry workshops I've taught for her classes--so, who knows? The Kids' Book Club Book makes it look easy, fascinating, and fun enough that I am already starting to see myself adding "book club mom" to my personal resume. I tell my students who "hate to read" that, "We just haven't found your book yet. We will." Not only does this guidebook offer a diverse helping of possible titles for readers from eight to eighteen--but it also shows the countless ways into them. Writer Lillian Smith said, "The impact of even one good book on a child's mind is surely an end in itself." Inspired anew by the passion for promoting literacy on the part of Judy Gelman and Vicki Levy Krupp, I hope again to be an active part of sharing even just one...

ONCE UPON A...

Time ago in these suburbs, I was waiting for my firstborn to return home from school. The bold yellow bus dropped her off right out front back then, and she would dash wildly across the street--glad to be home. So much of what I do as a mother always has involved this sense of waiting, but it was different with that first child. Waiting anxiously for the bus to take her from me, waiting for it to bring her back over icy winter streets or with anonymous substitute drivers at the wheel. I wanted to know if her little school on the hill had security measures in place to keep her from harm's way when I couldn't. I learned all about pesticides in her food and mercury in her vaccines...devoured books on reforms in gifted education and how to fund private school tuition. Her foot would touch the street and my skin would split, maternal instincts in overdrive--just waiting for a car to whip around the curve, exhale lodged in my throat until she stumbled up onto the sidewalk again. Whole days passed in this way, a slight cast of anticipation and worry over each moment.

This is why when I recently sat down and read the novel Once Upon A Day by Lisa Tucker, I immediately felt a sympathetic pang for the father character, Charles Keenan, though he was disturbed and extreme and just so obviously wrong. After a tragic experience, Charles' hypervigilence concerning his children reaches a critical breaking point. Instead of sinking in and battling through his fears about how to raise them in a broken complex world, he retreats to the New Mexico wilds with them and promptly disappears. That I can find any resonance with a character who ultimately inflicts such damage upon those he claims to love speaks to the fullness of Tucker's portrayal of each one. Told in alternating perspectives between mother, father, and daughter--Once Upon a Day gives readers access to the inner-workings of the key characters. (Though I would have loved to have seen the brother, Jimmy's, thoughts as well while he encountered the fallout from his history in a completely different way.) The book hinges on seemingly random moments that take on unexpected significance, "charming coincidences", and pivotal transitions--a young woman trying to make her way out of a difficult past in the fairytale-esque L.A. film world, a man traveling to the heart of his own fears and isolation, a son on a mission to find out the truth about the watered-down version of reality he's been given, a naive daughter setting out to rescue her wayward brother from his wandering, a cab driver who is navigating his way through grief and loss--and the places where each of these journeys intersect and divide again. This book is a highly readable, "page-turner"--even as it mines some darker subterranean territory of psychological responses to trauma, fear, and the unforeseeable fortunes affecting us all.

Years have passed since I first watched my oldest come and go on the anonymous yellow bus, heart slippery and lurching through me. I wanted to tuck her close into my pocket. But, as sweet as she was even then, she was not a girl for tight seams and neat stitches. Her eyes have always been fixed on some distant point on the horizon...and I understood that she would never be contented with the walls I set up for her, that she believed the whole world had her name on it. Being open to take chances will carry her out of my sphere of influence, as it already has. Her siblings have also deviated widely from the path I'd neatly charted out for them and from the trail she kindly blazed just ahead. Unlike the Charles Keenan character, I've accepted that I need to learn about letting go. Now, with adolescence rapidly approaching, the lines have blurred even more. I mean it when I tell her to go out and explore...I send her into the neighborhood where I no longer can control every single aspect of her environment as I could when she was an infant. But then, there are still these moments where I stand in the doorway, watching her steady feet carry her away from me to catch a solid yellow bus--and it is all I can do not to call out to her...





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LOOK BEFORE YOU LEAP: on Becoming Fearless





I know how fear has been a driving force in my life...how I wanted to avoid calling up any darkness by carefully guarding myself against it. I know that this hasn't served me...hasn't worked. I also know when I started to let go of my fears and open up to life, love, and motherhood with all of its terrifying possibilities. The women over at MotherTalk named today Fearless Friday in honor of a book by Arianna Huffington called, Becoming Fearless. I thought about my reckless college days, chasing down every dare I could. I remembered more recent travels over unknown highways in New Mexico with only a map in the passenger seat of my rented car keeping me company. But my fearlessness really began with motherhood...with that bittersweet realization that I didn't want to parent out of fear of what I could do wrong, but out of the possibility for the amazing ride we could take together--if I learned to let go.

My boy-o helped me with this by not fitting into the safe and secure roles of the hot house flower-children of his generation. One March, not long before his fourth birthday, my son curled up on the hardwood floor beside the glass door.
"Watching," he said.
"For what?" I asked him.
"For the sun..."
Our little nest was coated with day old snow--the most gray sky of the month hung overhead. Blooms and buds and the initial sprouting of an eager spring were subdued, in muted colors. I almost told him that the forecast said the sun wouldn't reappear for three days. But, I stopped myself. In that instant, my fear of his disappointment almost led me to chime my thoughts over his own, to assume the role of "knowledge dispenser". Suddenly I wanted him to just lie there, still, on the worn plank floor--his blue eyes scanning the trees and sky. I realized that leaving him to his own thoughts, his "watching" would teach him more than if I stumbled over his plans for sunshine with my presumptuous authority.

He was contented beneath a ragged patchwork quilt, his newly sprouting limbs curled up around themselves. He was quiet and a bird landed just on the other side of the glass. I saw him smile without even looking. With my firstborn, I surely would have sat beside her and said, "No, sweetie...you can't watch for the sun today. The weather report says it will be overcast and icy until the weekend." No doubt I would have then regaled her with the bits and pieces of meteorology I know, talking cold fronts and barometric pressure. She would have listened to me, and rightly so. Those were the facts...maybe she would have gleaned some new detail to tuck away in her mind about the weather. She could have pulled it out in school, a statistic about the jet stream and her teachers would have nodded, knowingly, at her intelligence. I would have felt a little more in control of this parenting thing, a little bit less afraid.

At every child's birthday party or school function, we over eager springtime parents spout praises about our prodigious offspring.
"Oh, he's speaking French already."
"Well, we've been doing Spanish ourselves."
"She's in art, soccer, and piano...it's never too soon, you know."
On and on and on we go...fear, fear, fear. Fear of our child's failure, of falling behind, of not being a good enough parent. We want the best, all of the best, for these little ones we so dearly love.

And yet...I let my son continue in his quest for sunlight on a dark day. I let him sit there, watching the birds skittering across the slippery ice outside. The sky covered us with drab fog, showed no signs of breaking open, clouds hanging heavy in the late winter sky. He wasn't getting the "facts" he should have been. But, something in me was breaking open and I wasn't worried or afraid for his skills and abilities. He was learning something, after all, of waiting. He was learning stillness and patience. He was observing the clowning birds perform a matinee of slips and scrapes and ruffled feathers, just for him. Instead of anxiously filling him, pouring details into his brain, I let him stitch together his own process without coating him with my mental fingerprints. I felt oddly at peace with this, I felt fearless...

In the end, I huddled down on the floor beside him and he casually shared the quilt and the space. The baby was sleeping, the eldest off at school. He relaxed his wiry body against me and I shared his silence.
"There is no sun today," he whispered.
"Oh..." I said, breathing him in. I had the sun, outgrowing my lap more each day--golden skinned, golden haired, warm blooded, fiery spirited. Instead of nervously teaching him, I held him. Instead of carefully cultivating his first thoughts, I let him grow.
"Watch, Mom," he urged, "The sun might come out soon."
His familiar arms twined around me like errant vines. His belly fluttered against the palm of my hand. He was introspective, glowing. I felt time pass through us and saw the certain sunlight in future days.
"Watch with me now," he said.
And so, wise for once...fearless in motherhood for the first time, I did.


That boy is now a seven year old dynamo, his elder sister on the verge of adolescence, and the baby nearing four herself. I continue to work to hold onto my sense of adventure as a mother, as a writer, as a woman--but I can pinpoint that moment as a pivotal one. When did you first become fearless in your life?