hi!

I’m going to take out a craigslist ad, I tell him, for a show watching buddy. No touching! That part in bold and large font! Just so we’re clear. I’m so lucky, in that I’m married to someone I like -a lot- and we generally like a lot of the same things. We’ve been together a long time (sixteen years married this summer!) and it’s no small thing that we still have similar sensibilities. But no matter the things in common, we have this glaring difference: that old man of mine does best when he gets to bed at a reasonable hour and wakes up early. He is best in the morning. He just is. And I am an unabashed night owl. So for us to have hang-out time together, one of us has to give. I admit that he attempts late nights way more frequently than I try to wake up early.  Attempt and try. It’s awfully hard for us to be, without kids needing our attention, just the two of us together. It takes us a loong time to slog through grown up tv shows together. As far as he’s concerned, we could watch stuff separately and report back. But I like to talk about the thing I’m watching while I’m watching it. I like to talk about the thing I watched after I watched it. Which is why my evening comes to an anticlimactic demise when, by the time the thirteen year old finally heads to bed, I realize that the husband has fallen asleep on the couch.

Does Bob’s Burgers make you LOL like it does me? I can’t recall ever laughing like that when watching tv all alone. The other night, it was just me and a big mug of sleepytime tea and everyone else was asleep and I took a sip and choked myself from laughing and woke my husband up (I was watching in my bed, on my phone, you know) and my choking, unstoppable laughter was so confusing, he started laughing, stirring babe between us, and I thought, right then, that it didn’t matter that he didn’t have a clue what I was laughing about. He could have been annoyed that I woke him up. He could have thought I was ridiculous for drinking tea in the dark and watching an animated comedy on a tiny screen, but he just laughed.  It was funny. I don’t even know why I’m writing about this! Because somebody slept in too late today and somebody else was up at sunrise and so somebody still has hours to go and somebody else has long crashed and so somebody needs to remember that that’s ok. We don’t have to share all the things. We share the stuff that matters.

• Ulysses is pushing up on his knees now. And I swear, but don’t quote me on this, that he said “hi!” yesterday.
• the car situation is back from red alert to orange! cross fingers we can get to all the places we have to be from here on out!
• my girl rode her scooter the other day a couple of miles to an activity, making that her longest solo trip yet (most of our town amenities are just blocks away). having a capable big kid is pretty awesome.
• mister six is single handedly protecting our front yard garden from being the neighborhood litter box. among other serious self-appointed jobs. that boy of mine, he is a worker.
• I am picking plenty of spinach every day. this had been our best spinach year yet! (I really need to blog about our yard + garden.)
• I can’t believe it’s summer. Cue annual freaking out about Fall. I’m not sure what next year is going to look like yet.
• still listening to The Lumineers, repeat, repeat.

(sorry no picture! i am woefully slow on the upload these days. . .)

the lights are on in there

That’s what our geneticist said several times last week, in reference to Ulysses, “the lights are on in there.” Because that was the big worry, see. Before he was born it was near certain. Everyone we spoke to made sure we were prepared for the likelihood that our baby’s brain development had been compromised. And then he was born and he was fine. He was as fine as a baby with missing bones (and adjacent anatomy) and a hole in the heart can be. But you don’t experience that level of worry without some repercussion, without the fallout of feeling like a crash test dummy thrown from a windshield into a wall. It’s taken all these six months to stop anticipating that at any moment some other surprise could reveal itself. So even though he’s been trucking along, no red flags, that wonder baby of ours, it was very reassuring to have the geneticist affirm that his brain still seems typical.

Let me tell you why this was such a fear of mine: how would a future of bilateral amputations and prosthetic legs be successful if he is neurologically impaired? I already cannot comprehend how anyone can learn to walk without feeling the ground beneath their feet (without having any feet!) but to be mentally deficient, as well? Would walking even be possible? Would we even consent to the surgeries?

I told the geneticist that my pat response to people is that Ulysses has a “rare genetic condition that affected all four of his limbs” and the doctor applauded my tact and said he would probably tell people, “it’s none of your business!” if he were in my position. It’s hard to know how much to say. I want to say nothing; I want to walk up and down the street with a sandwich board strung over my shoulders with the whole story written in bold sharpie. I want to do the thing that will give Uly the best chance of acceptance and support.

So, I was dreading that appointment, so much, since it had been made, but as it turns out, that was the least dreadful part of that day. Do you want to hear something terrible that happened to me a week ago? On the way to the appointment, with just my napping babe in the backseat, my car died. On the freeway. And if you’re familiar with Portland I will tell you these two words and you will understand completely why I have been a tense back-aching mess since then: Terwilliger Curves. It’s a heartstopping fright to have one’s car die on the freeway, but on a curve where there is no shoulder? The worst! After a minute or so (a minute dead on the freeway = a lifetime!) of cranking the ignition, my car began to drive again. The short version of this bad car karma story goes like this: we made it to the hospital and parked, met the husband who had driven across town from his work. after the appointment, it was clear that my car was unsafe (oh, what since it blew a gasket, lost all the oil, and the engine seized up), so we loaded the baby’s carseat and all  my stuff into the husband’s car for the drive home, choosing to leave my car behind to be towed later. But in another my-life-is-like-a-movie moment, the husband’s car blew a fuse and died. He changed the fuse. It blew. Repeat, repeat, give up. Call two tow trucks to the hospital parking garage. It was kind of cute, almost. Like that time I accidentally bought nearly identical hiking boots to a pair my husband already owned, or the way he started wearing the same clogs I do. Even our car breakdowns are matchy-matchy!

Our car situation had held at a steady Orange Alert for years, but with both out of commission at the same time, and us living an hour from the mister’s work and an hour from many resources, we bypassed Red and went right to. . . what’s after red? Total meltdown? Because, that. We haven’t quite figured out the final solution, but we’re making do with an amalgam of stopgaps.

It’s been particularly warm here. I’ve been drinking a lot of iced beverages. I can’t come up with a quick fix for the stupid car thing and I can’t know for sure that Ulysses will learn how to walk someday and I can’t seem to stop tensing up my muscles so that I’m always ridiculously sore. But I can fill up a quart jar with ice and pour cold coffee in it and I can sit on my patio in the middle of our herb garden and I can enjoy the afternoon breeze and I can say that funny thing that makes the baby laugh every time and I can watch the big kids scooter down the block and away out of sight and I can be so glad that things can be so stressful and still so full of good.

yesterday

What’s the bravest thing you did today? I mucked about in my front yard garden for a few hours, with the baby on my hip in my old trusty ring sling, and if you don’t think that’s brave, you’ll just have to trust me on this one. Every time I leave my house I have to be brave and strong and consistent. And sometimes I don’t feel so brave, so I stay home. While we live in a small town (35,000 population little city, actually) my house is oriented in the “downtown” core. I am 2 blocks away from the most intriguing hustle and bustle this town has to offer and my sidewalk gets a lot of foot traffic. The arrangement of our house on our lot is such that we have a long and very narrow backyard, while the bulk of our gardening and play space is in the front. Which is to say, when we’re out in our yard, working in the garden, it’s not private at all. Which is also to say, even going into my garden is going into public. And yet, because it’s my yard, my tiny plants to water, my weeds to pull, my patio to sit on, my comfortable space I’ve built out of an unappealing swath of what was once chemically treated grass and nothing more, I feel like it should be my safe place. I feel like I should be immune from double takes and whispers. But I’m not. When the baby’s waving his little arms around, grinning happily like he does, someone’s bound to glance, to squint, to stare. And to keep my own yard safe, I have to go about my business, I have to keep watering and pretend not to mind and smile and say something friendly and I have to be ON. I can’t hide in my yard, is what I’m saying. And not hiding is extraordinarily brave.

Is this what it feels like to be Angelina Jolie? Oh, Angie probably doesn’t have a rental car in the driveway because BOTH of the household rides bit the dust on the same damn day. And, really, there is nothing we have in common (except I confess I did have a pre-famous Brad Pitt poster on my wall when I was sixteen, back in his long haired, dirty rebel days. So I guess we technically both have fond feelings for the same fella, even if, technically, I was fond of him first, ha!) BUT it must be exhausting for her to go anywhere. That I understand, now. It’s exhausting for me, too. When I go somewhere by myself, a quick zip into the grocery store or whatever, I feel like Angelina in disguise. I feel like I’m getting away with something. I can pass as “typical”. I can pass as nobody. I can be in and out and it’s no big deal. But the whole time I’m thinking, wait! You think I’m just like you! But if I had my baby with me you’d look at me differently! Don’t you know who I am? I’m Ulysses’ mother! And I feel guilty, because I know Ulysses will never pass as typical.

Sometimes I fantasize about taking out a full page newspaper ad to introduce him to the world. I wonder what it would be like to widely distribute pictures and a story so that everyone we meet would know him already. I want them to smile, right off the bat, hey! there’s Ulysses! I don’t like having to feel the weight of strangers’ curiosity and confusion again and again and again. I just want him to be known and loved. The things I want for Ulysses are no different than any parent wants for any child. The difference is that his road is more challenging.  We all have challenges. But not all of our challenges are noticeable when we’re just minding our own business in our own yard, you know?

Yesterday the baby became SIX MONTHS OLD. I feel embarrassingly ambivalent about his birthday. He was born a week past his “due date”, a week of heartache you cannot begin to comprehend, and it was I who chose his actual birth date. It was I who called up my new perinatologist and said, basically, I’m done! I can’t cry and grieve and anticipate this horrific thing one more minute. I insisted upon induction. They accommodated. So, he was born on the 9th of November because maybe if I’d had to wait until the 10th, or the 11th, or who knows which day, for him to arrive on his own, I would have imploded. I am still really proud of myself for advocating for that intervention. It was the right decision.

At six months, Ulysses is scooching a little, rolling a lot, laughing easily. He isn’t sitting up yet. I expect that particular milestone will be a little later coming; he doesn’t have long fat legs for leverage. But he’s strong and determined. I know it won’t be long.

Half a year. Dang. I am not the same person. I have hurt more. I know more. I love more. I tolerate less. Ulysses has changed me incredibly.

(I tried all my best tricks to get him to smile for that picture, but he was ready for a nap and wasn’t having any of it. Today was the first day I was able to comfortably carry him in that sling and I needed photo documentation. that sling! I carried my daughter, who is lady sized now herself, all over Portland in that sling when she was little. I carried mister six, when he was a great big giant thirty pound baby, all over Phoenix in that sling. that sling! I guess I won’t carry any more babies in it after Uly, but I might always keep it hanging on a hook in my bedroom.)

it’s like this

Sooner or later, anyone with a special needs child is going to hear or see that short essay called Welcome to Holland. I’m not going to share it here, you can google it and find it easily enough. I suggest you read it, if you haven’t already, before you continue reading this entry.

I am certain that the original writer of the essay intended to create a few paragraphs of encouragement, a little validation that Yes, this is different, but Yes, this can be good, even great. And I appreciate that. I recognize the positive intent, of both the writer and fans of the essay, even if I think it’s all wrong.

Here’s the thing. Having a baby with surprising and severe differences is not like planning a vacation to one place and ending up in another. Because, people? I still live with all of you. I see you and your fully-limbed babies. I see you looking at my limb-different one. I don’t get to remain in a bubble of differences.

When Ulysses was very new, within his first week, I remember wishing desperately that I could spirit my whole family away to a remote location. I wanted to remove ourselves from everyone and everything and just love my baby so much nothing else would matter. I wanted to protect that tiny boy from ever being sedated and scalpeled. I wanted to be where I could keep him safe. It was hard to imagine, that newly postpartum, what life would look like with a special needs child. It’s getting easier. Ulysses has become a quick-to-smile crinkley-eyed sprite of a boy. He is such a wonderful baby, such a good sleeper, such an easy nurser, just so dear, that I wish I could have ten more after him. Ok, maybe not ten. But a few, yes! I wish. It’s hard not to be in love with everything when that baby is on my hip. He is that sweet.

And I feel such overwhelming love, so big and complete, when we’re home, when we’re isolated and I can be in control of my world. And it’s here, in this house, where that Holland analogy makes sense. When I change his diaper and I struggle, every time, to clean him adequately because his crooked feet twist into the way, I don’t even care, because he’s blowing raspberries and laughing at my singing and I am in Holland and everything is fine.

But when we leave these safe walls, that overshared essay falls apart, makes no sense anymore. Because when we leave, I have to take this boy, who isn’t any less wonderful to me, out among people who don’t understand. I have to be his ambassador to the world. And it’s not our safe world, the remote island I’ve made of our home. It’s the world where people say ignorant things, where people stare and whisper. So it’s not at all like planning a vacation to one destination and arriving unexpectedly in another. It’s like living in two different places, and hoping desperately when you go from one to the other, someone there will be able to speak your language, fluently or not.

Ulysses is very nearly six months old now! (wow!) It’s been the hardest six months of my life, in the discovery and the anticipation and the near-breakdown in the hospital after his birth, his open heart surgery, and in learning so much. Soon I will write a proper baby update post, full of proud mama bragging and pictures and such, but right now, I just want you know to how glad I am to be past this first half year.

Other things I aim to write about soon (soon being a tricky equation of baby naps and big kids and all of that): spring in the northwest, our garden this year, the book Bloom, mister six lost his first tooth, that time i read that thing someone wrote about people with no legs that was so stupid and ignorant it deserves a blog response here, the ukulele, decluttering, fertility (or lack thereof, and my thirtysomething view of that), grains (or no grains, depending), new rules, my corner poetry board, gratefulness. (it might take the whole month of May, or longer, to get through that list. and who knows what else will crop up.)

sounds like spring

When the children run through the sprinklers and the hose, when we linger for hours on the front patio, when the baby is magically entranced by everything he sees, when the dog doesn’t bark too much, when the husband comes home from a bike ride exhilarated and glad, when I sit on the sunny front steps and practice my ukulele (!), when the lilac is blooming, when I think about how many blueberries we’re going to get off of our bushes this year, I think we could stay here, in this sweet little house, for always.

If I could conjure up the missing pieces to make this situation fit just right for us, the husband wouldn’t have to drive so much every darn day, and if he did, he could do it in a different, more fuel efficient car. And there would be some kind of funky art school experience for my passionate artist daughter to attend, full of amazing and engaged young people. I would give her the community she seeks and I’d give her the kindred spirits she needs and there would be some kind of nature based outdoorsy all the time experience for mister Six and this would be enough, this town would be enough. But the things I want aren’t here, yet. Maybe someday. But we need this stuff now. My children’s childhoods are happening now and my wishful intentions aren’t sufficient.

We have planted things in our garden, anticipating harvest. We are looking forward.  We want to stay. We want to be gone already. The disparity tears me apart. Oh, Spring. Oh, thirteen year old daughter. There are a lot of perks to having gigantic sibling age gaps (virtually no squabbling!), but when your big kid is a teenager and your youngest is a little baby, it’s like a constant droning thump in the brain, so fast, so fast, so fast, it goes by so fast.

In-between the country road driving, and the seed inventory, and the muck and management of keeping house, I listened to these songs a lot today. If I had my act together, I’d make a Spring playlist for you, and these two would probably be on it. Can’t we just sit around in the magic evening sunlight and listen to music we like? Can’t that be enough?

(so many other things i want to blog about! i know Super Ulysses is what everybody wants to read about, and i have volumes i could write about him, but it’s not all limb differences and surprising baby over here, it’s also grassy feet and sweeping floors and dinner. thanks for sticking around, though. you’re like the good neighbors i wish i had but don’t.)

challenges you don’t think about

Please forgive that crappy photograph, it was taken in low light with my phone, while The Baby hung out in his bouncy-bouncy chair and I tried to cook dinner or something, I don’t remember. The reason I wanted to use that photo in this entry is because it’s the only one I could find that showed Ulysses holding his skwish toy.

Have I mentioned that I’ve saved everything from my other kids? And since you know I’ve been doing this parenting thing for over THIRTEEN years now, you should know that we have a lot of stuff. Plenty. We can amuse and care for kids of all ages in this house. I gathered up the “baby toys” out of storage, cleaned them and made sure they were still decent, back when I was pregnant. I put them in a big basket in my office (because we don’t really do nurseries) and waited for the baby to come. And when the baby did come, it was pretty obvious right away that so many of those toys, various and sundry rattly little things, would not work this time.

Probably every baby you know has a great big bear paw of a hand with five functional fingers. My baby has one fairly functional hand, with three digits, and another “hand” with two wily fingers. I have this brilliant flash of memory from my first go around in this mothering trip: I was talking on the telephone to a friend and my wee months-old daughter reached her hand up and grabbed a toy I’d been shaking to interest her. I don’t remember all the specifics, just that I was in the middle of a conversation and sort of freaked out, “she’s grabbing a toy! she’s grabbing a toy!” like my baby had invented the opposable thumb! I was a new and young mother (oh, 23!): everything my baby did was amazing! Certainly my enthusiasm was tempered the second time (although just ask me about Mr. Six’s sparkly eyes, which he’s had since he was born, and I won’t shut up. he is a wonder, in his solid loyal cheerfulness). But now. Here I am again, freaking out because my baby grabs toys.

Anyway, we didn’t have one of those ubiquitous skwish toys for the other children. When peers of my girl had them, you know back in the late nineties, they were all multi-colored and had a little bell attached. They come in several colorways now, including this lovely all natural wood version, but none have the little bell anymore. Choking hazard, I guess. This was the only thing I knew that I wanted, no, needed to get my new baby for Christmas. We “skwished” it down into his stocking, we did, even though by late December he wasn’t anywhere near the toy grabbing stage yet.

I am so glad we bought that dumb little toy. Like I said, Ulysses can operate his right hand very well. But his left hand serves more as a counter balance post than a grabbing tool. Imagine a hand with only a thumb and a pinky. But, make sure that the hand you’re imaging doesn’t have ANY of the corresponding absent bones or ligaments. It’s hard to understand, but it’s basically like Ulysses has two digits attached to his forearm. No wrist, no palm. And we believe that his left hand will get stronger. We believe he’ll learn to use it as functionally as anyone needs their non-dominant hand to be. We really do believe that. But right now, he cannot grasp with it and he hasn’t quite figured out how to use the deep cleft that divides those digits to his advantage. So what I’m saying is that his left hand offers no holding assistance whatsoever right now. But with that skwish toy, he can stick his hand in and it gets stuck in the string, and he can use either arm to get the toy into his mouth. And everytime he does it, I am blown away and so ding dang proud. He is figuring this out! He is learning how to maneuver his body and we just need to make sure he has the right tools.

I’ve saved all of the baby toys from my older two kids, and you know I’ve saved all of their old clothes, too. Last summer, when I was “great with child”, I guilted the mister into organizing ALL of our saved baby + kid clothes with me. It was a dirty, tedious job but when we were finished, we had a tidy stack of bins, clearly labeled by size. Remember, we didn’t know if baby “Scrappy” was a boy or a girl (although, my older babies largely wore the same things, regardless of gender), and it felt good to know that we had all our bases covered.

But no one can be prepared to have a baby with limb differences. All those bins of clothes? Yeah, those aren’t working out so much. I’ve had to buy new things this go around, too. Ulysses pretty much lives in pajamas. You know the ones, baby clothes manufacturers label them “sleep ‘n play”: all cotton zippered suits with attached feet. It’s the attached feet part that really matters. I haven’t shared pictures of my baby’s feet and I think it’s because it just hurts me too much. Before he was even discharged from the hospital following his birth, we were told amputation would likely be recommended. (please. imagine your “babymoons”, if you will, those days just following your babies births, and think what it would be like to hear that you would need to  CUT OFF your baby’s legs. it is NOT easy to reconcile AMPUTATION with the reality of any newborn.) So, if you’ve forgotten, or if you’ve never read my blog before, he has something called Tibial Hemimelia, which basically means that he was born without tibia, or shin, bones. But the peripheral issues of that birth defect are missing ankles, non-functional knees (he has one “good” knee and one that does not work at all), and clubbed feet (oh, and he also has ectrodactyly, so his feet? only have two toes each). It’s funny, now, what I know about orthopedic issues. When we were at our first consult at our first orthopedic surgeon appointment (yes, we’ve seen more than one in my baby’s five months), I was sitting in the waiting room next to a family with a baby with one clubbed foot. That’s it. Not other orthopedic issues. Just one clubbed foot. And they were clearly squeaky wheel patients. And even then, when my tiny boy was a little swaddled thing, I was so offended by the audacity that one quirky foot was even a problem. (of course, the irony is that had either of my other two kids been born with a clubbed foot, I would have surely freaked out with worry, too.) You know what happens when you have TWO clubbed and unusual feet attached to tiny lower legs? Socks don’t fit. Like, not at all. It’s kind of a running joke how baby socks never stay on, right? But when I say I can’t keep socks on my baby, I mean it in a much more serious way. I’ve found the best solution is to keep him in zippered footies. The problem is that I didn’t actually have all that many from my older kids. I’ve had to buy new baby clothes after all. A lot of good all that careful saving did me.

The other problem is that I’ve already had two separate accounts of people making snide “baby in pajamas” comments to me. I think they both said something like, “look at you, wearing pajamas!” to Ulysses. Now, both incidents could have been absolutely benign. Maybe they meant, “oh how nice it must be to be a baby who can wear pajamas all day” but my understandably defensive filter heard, “why is your baby wearing pajamas in the middle of the day?” And you should know that I didn’t explain to either of these people, I didn’t attempt to justify my baby’s slovenly daytime attire to perfect strangers. But those comments, as innocuous as they might seem, just make me hurt. I have so many cute baby clothes. The baby farm here is all closed up (I guess? I am kind of old now. and not so lucky in the fertility department) and it’s hard to come to terms with getting rid of things my older two kids wore that my third will never be able to.  I’m glad I’ve found an answer to keeping him warm and comfortable. But footie pajamas also keep him safe. It’s going to be too warm soon for attached feet all the time. And then I’ll have a whole new challenge to face.

Today we were afoot in the city, all five of us. We grocery shopped and watched the tail end of the sister’s parkour class and ate out and meandered through that great big blue warehouse (swedish for crap, such wonderful enticing crap, you know. but we had a list and stuck to it!) and Ulysses was a champ. He was a pajama wearing, grinning champ. You say one kind word to that baby and he rewards you with the best ever grins. Please say kind words to him.

until the cat knocks the jars over

What if I told you that I was wrong about Springtime? What if I changed my mind, and wished we could go back to winter? What if the sunshine feels like chewing hair and I want to spit it out and draw the curtains? What if I’m not strong enough? Today my son cried because his big sister came back from the library without any books for him. Do you see what is wrong with that sentence? The sister went to the library alone, which is no big deal. We live nearby and she can walk herself all over our little town for the things she needs. But whereas we used to pop into the library, all of us, at least once week (at the very least!) we don’t go at all anymore, and my boy was feeling the absence of that. We went once all together when the baby was a tiny sleeping thing. He has been a handful of times in the last five months with his dad. I think about it and change my mind.

Maybe it’s not that I’m not strong enough. Maybe I’m too strong. Maybe I’m afraid something will happen, some look or word or awkward silence, that will provoke me into piling all my strength into a big public heap. And would I be able to sweep it back up again, and cram it all back inside of me?

She put small bouquets of front yard flowers all over our house. Beside me right now is the tiniest jar of white cherry blossoms. Our flowering cherry is in bloom. The daffodils are fading but I noticed trillium today. The lilacs aren’t far off. I remember when I thought this parenting thing would just get easier and easier and I couldn’t have been more wrong.  Sometimes the worry and the wishes and the prayers and the love consume me. I want everything to freeze so I can remain in one sweet moment, where everyone is safe. I am so glad she snips flowers for me still.

I am listening to Alabama Shakes over and over and nothing else sounds quite right. I have barely listened to other music for the last week. It’s big and soulful and balances my big feelings. Do you say that to your small children, like I do? You’re having big feelings! But one of my children isn’t so small anymore, and it just sounds silly when I say it to her. Probably sounds sillier when I say it about myself. But it’s true.

We’re forecast to have a beautiful weather weekend. I hope I can take it.

hard boiled eggs in the sand

Somebody, come hold this baby of mine so I can write a blog post! He is five months old now, can you believe it? And he rolls -both directions!- over and off of his safe little quilt in the time it takes me step away for one quick chore. But mostly the floor is not good enough and he wants to be up and in my arms and walking around. He is so sweet and so interested in everything, but writing is a challenge. I have so many things to document and share; I’ll just have to chip away at them as I can.

We went to the ocean on Easter. From my house to the sea is exactly the length of They Might Be Giants album Flood, which we sang all the way. Why is the world in love again? Why are we marching hand in hand? Why are the ocean levels rising up? It’s a brand new record, for 1990. They Might Be Giants brand new album, Flood. If you know me and my little family then you know that tmbg is like our family theme music. They’ve been running in the background since before we were a family, since we were just two young kids dating in west Texas. And now it’s all these years later and there are five us us and life has changed incredibly, but the songs are steady and never old.

It was quite possibly the most beautiful day of the year, so far, clear and mild and windless. The children and the dog ran and ran, like children and dogs will do at the beach, and the baby napped in the sling and then watched, so seriously, the waves crashing. The ocean is serious. Standing at the edge of it always reminds me how big the world is, and how small I am, which can be either depressing or comforting, depending. This time it was the latter, which was wonderful, and just what I needed.

sister

I am sorry for all the people who do not have a girl like mine in their life (even if I know that she’s one of a kind), if only because I cannot imagine my life without her. She hangs out in the kitchen while I cook, drawing. If she’s not reading she’s drawing and if she’s not drawing, she’s reading, and if she’s not doing either, she’s raising her voice in some extemporaneous rant on all that ills the world and how to fix it. (take note, world.)

I would not be thirteen again for all the mega millions in the world. (I confess: I have not bought a lottery ticket since the week I turned 18. it seemed the only immediate coming-of-age thing I could do, and I still have that ticket in a scrapbook, somewhere. but all the mania last week -biggest jackpot ever!- softened even my grumpy old heart and I thought maybe, maybe, maybe. my life has felt like a movie lately, why not? but no.)

And I think if she could be any other age, if she could whisper a wish to an unplugged Zoltar machine, she would. Thirteen is hard.

We’ve had a rough go of it lately, this little unit of mine. The stuff I write about and the stuff I don’t. And a tumultuous age plus tough circumstance equals everything is amplified. And for good reason. These years are the years that really matter. She barely remembers the sweet and easy years, the ones I call our golden years, when our life looked like a magazine spread. Thrift store eclectic meets nerdish bookworm in the inner city! I would say that we didn’t know how sweet we had it, but we did, oh we did. I knew every day, with that curly headed toddler beside me with the gigantic vocabulary (sometime I’ll dig up some audio clips of her as a talking one year old and you won’t believe your ears), that it could be gone in a flash. And it was. Gone. We moved, life changed. It happens.

The moment to moment is awfully sweet around here. But the big picture is askew and we’re not quite sure how to right it.

That girl of mine, though, she is so good. So helpful and full of wit and humor. Lucky is the person who knows her.

But when she’s discouraged, and trying to be her fantastic self in spite of it, I sing the Mumford and Sons song Sister to her. Do you know that one? I wrote a little here about what I feel about Mumford and Sons almost two years ago. I have a lot of music that I listen to on my own, the husband has stuff he likes better than anyone else (he’s got a soft spot for anarchy-folk), the daughter keeps certain things in her headphones (how many times in a row can anybody listen to Poker Face?) and even Mister Six has his own special preferences (although, who doesn’t love Raffi?) but we have a shared Most Loved list and you know Mumford and Sons is on it.

I don’t know how some British guys who don’t even know us managed to write a song for my awesome daughter, exactly where she is right now, but they did. Sister don’t let go, I tell her. We’ll figure this out. We will.

where’s madge?

I don’t think I would have wanted to have seen the movie after reading any reviews, so if you haven’t seen it yet and plan to, it won’t hurt my feelings if you want to skip this blog post.

Let me say right off away that my girl and I liked the movie. We enjoyed it, we were not disappointed. Now on to a few paragraphs of Buts. . .

Apart from any differences from the book to the movie, which I’ll get to in a bit, my enjoyment of the movie was absolutely diminished by the weird camera work. Which is to say, I would have liked it a whole lot more if it didn’t feel like it was filmed with an iphone through a keyhole. I am not a fan of the shaky, shifting focus, up-close filming style, I am not. Maybe the director wanted viewers to feel as if they were experiencing Panem first hand, but I just felt frustrated, and a little headachey. I understand why they might have used that style of filming for the particularly violent scenes, to provide the intensity of fighting without the actual graphic depictions that would’ve nudged the movie from a PG-13 to an R. But the whole thing was that jumpy and close. It felt claustrophobic and chaotic to me. I kept wishing that the camera would pull back, I wanted to see more.

How is the movie being received, I wonder, by those who did not read the book? Because I’m not sure the movie was successful as a stand alone; I definitely relied on my previous understanding of the characters to color my response to the movie. I was fine with all of the casting, despite dubious thoughts going into the movie. Stanley Tucci as Caeser Flickerman was brilliant, perfect, couldn’t have imagined him better! Woody Harrelson as Haymitch was an excellent match. I appreciated the disgusting insipidness of the Capitol come to life and the gray dreariness of the districts. I think the movie was fairly spot-on, visually (even if I thought Katniss’s leather jacket before she becomes a Tribute looked like something I bought at the mall in 1995, chunky zipper and all). What was missing for me was her motivation, what makes Katniss hard and capable and different? The books describe this pretty well, but the movie relied too much on Katniss’s relationship with her sister, which just didn’t seem that compelling to me, especially minus the poignant recollection of her dead father’s influence and legacy.

I don’t think the sheer danger of Katniss’ hunting jaunts was emphasized enough, nor the risks she took in bartering her kill at The Hob. We know that the symbolism of the Mockinjay pin only increases with the sequels, but having Katniss just kind of come across it at the market, instead of being given it by an admiring acquaintance, makes it seem less important to me. I think the plausibility of the pin as a symbol of widespread revolution will be hard to believe in the future follow-up movies.

Would it have killed the director or screen writer to spend a few extra minutes having Katniss and Peeta get to know each other? They barely spoke during the Games, which makes me wonder how the Sponsors ever believed they had a burgeoning romance happening at all. Where was the story about Prim’s goat? The movie surprised me by hitting all major plot points, and I don’t feel like anything really important was left out, except for character depth. Maybe I expect too much.

And how is it that Donald Sutherland, who in real life probably creeps out the barista at his neighborhood drive-thru coffee joint because he’s just so smarmily creeptastic, managed to play President Snow without being nearly creepy enough? I needed less powerful old guy and more sinister scary guy if I’m going to consider him a villain in the next movie.

I think that covers it. My girl and I had a good time seeing it at the midnight opening; it’s not often that this old lady is out so late and certainly not with my thirteen year old daughter. She and her dad are going tomorrow, she’s fairly chuffed to be viewing it twice on opening weekend. Even though she’s the Hunger Games superfan in the house, and I was sure she’d be involuntarily shouting out differences from the book what we watched, I’m the one who talks during movies and she did, I confess, have to shush me more than once. The husband will make a much better silent companion.