Random Bullets of Curious Girl

• There's a sign on Curious Girl's door tonight, a sign she dictated to me during dinner, for use later in the evening:

The Noodle Girl is sleeping, because her belly is full from all the noodles

Kitsune udon, to be precise. She and a friend just couldn't stop eating at dinner, and I am just loving it. Her friend's grandparents, who first met her when we were doing 5 tube feedings a day, couldn't believe it either.

• Conversation while driving home from the synagogue this morning:

Curious Girl: "I love Baby Jesus."
Me: "Hmm....you love Baby Jesus? Um, what do you like about Baby Jesus?"
Curious Girl: "That she's so cute."

• She's ready for the Super Bowl. She wore three layers of Giants gear today.
  
  
  

Five Years and Two Days

I never liked the term Gotcha Day to mark the anniversary of adoption--it's too informal, too grasping, too cut-and-dried to make sense of the complications of adoption and family. We call it Family Day, although we've never been sure how to celebrate it. The first year, think we made a point of watching some video we'd shot on the first day we met Curious Girl (but then I left it in the VCR and something recorded over part of it, which caused me great trauma, although we eventually found another copy that is whole). We made a dinner with food from CG's homeland (which she didn't eat, having a feeding tube at the time). Another year, we had a friend over. We've never really settled on a ritual. I've read that some families have very particular celebrations (like presenting the child with a gift from their homeland every year), but we've never come up with much of anything.

This year, we didn't do much of anything. Politica is away--although we had talked about the fact that she would miss family day at home--and somehow, I think we lost track of what the date is. Maybe that's OK: I'm still not sure exactly what we're celebrating. There's so much loss wrapped up in her early months, and I'm very aware of that as I think back on our time with her in her orphanage.

I love December and January, though. They remind me of that most magical period in 2002-2003, when we learned about Curious Girl, started making travel plans, and met her. When we went to court, when we held her, when we dressed her. Every day, I marvel at her: her language, her self-awareness, her joy. I treasure the unfolding relationship we have, the steps she takes toward independence, the snuggles she wants in the morning and at night, the sling she still wants to ride in when she's sad or scared, the books she shares with me, the art and letters she makes. I love the way she can talk about adoption, heartbreaking as it sometimes can be. In December, when her class put on a play, she asked "Will [my birthparents] be there?" I explained that no, they wouldn't, which led to a series of questions and comments about whether they had our phone number and if they could come to visit. The other day, she was trying to explain that she knew more things than a younger friend did. I pointed out that younger friend could do a lot, knew a lot. "But he doesn't know about orphanages," she said. Not that she remembers hers directly, but I did allow as he didn't know much about orphanages, having been born to his mother.

Judges made Politica and me mothers, legally. But Curious Girl makes us mothers over, and over, every day. And for five years and two days, it's been an honor and a privilege--I wake up every morning wanting more.

And City Books!

When I dropped Curious Girl off at school today, we read the board together. In her responsive classroom, there's always an interactive part to the morning message, and today's was "Name one thing you find in a city." Her classroom is heading into a unit on cities, which will culminate in Mini City, where each 4/5 classroom opens 4-5 stores and the children alternate between being shoppers and being shopkeepers. On the final of the three mini city days, it's open doors among the 3 classrooms and the little shoppers can go anywhere! Last year, CG's classroom had a jewelry shop, a pet shop, and the Lookin' Good Salon, where you could get a shave, manicure, makeover, and hair cut.

So I'm also thinking about city books for the spring. I'll check out Elswhere's great list in her comment on the prior post, and maybe push back The Chicken Chasing Queen for later in the spring. Knuffle Bunny Too, which CG is pushing for this week, does have a multicultural friendship developing (not to give too much away!). I also like Music Over Manhattan for its cityscapes; I'll check out Ezra Jack Keats' work, too, as it's set in cities.

But now, off to work, where I'm working on an essay about teaching English. Time for some writing of my own!

My Wednesday Book Club

Edited to add a book I forgot--and check out the great suggestions in the comments!

Edited again to add: Mo Willems (now the Geisel winning, Caldecott Honor winning author) has a blog.

S. asked in a recent commet how my reading went last week. Every Wednesday, I have lunch with Curious Girl and her 15 classmates, and after lunch, I read them a story. This didn't start as a regular pattern, although I do try to go and have lunch once a week at her Posh Progressive School (tons of tuition, and she gets free lunch everyday, and so do I anytime I want to join them. Plus free school pictures. Such a deal!). Sometime in September, we'd been reading Borya and the Burps, and CG asked me to come to school and read it to her friends. Sure thing, I said. Then we were reading another book at home, and she asked me to read again. The teachers love it, and I love it, and now the girls think that any parent who comes to the classroom after lunch is going to read to them--they automatically sit on the mat for storytime. I love that part.

So I've been having a ball thinking about what books to read with them. So far, we've read

• Borya and the Burps, by Joan McNamara (and we also looked at a few pages of CG's baby pictures from her orphanage--this book is a wonderful story about a burpy boy who gets adopted in an Eastern European story; it really captures some of the emotions an infant can feel during all that transition)
• Library Lion, by Michelle Knudsen, who has a blog (a great book for people who love books: what's not to like about a lion who loves to go to the library, and has to learn that sometimes, it's OK to break the rules)
  
• Jessica, by Kevin Henkes (who is rapidly becoming one of my very favorite authors)
  
• The Adventures of Polo, by Regis Faller (a graphic novel for kids!)
  
• The Trouble with Chickens, by Bruce McMillan (on his author site, select Books at left and the Trouble with Chickens will come up in the right frame--scroll down and you'll get interesting links to the amazing illustrator's work--Gunnella. He does a lot of work in Iceland)
  
• Knut: How One Little Polar Bear Captured the World, by Craig Hartikoff. A true story! And CG got to share the Knut stuffed bear we got near the Knut exhibit last summer
  
• The Apple Doll, by Elsa Kleven (it has directions for making an apple doll at the back, and it's a great story about a girl and the rough start to a school year and how imagination saves the day)
  
• The Quiltmaker's Gift, by Jeff Brumbeau
  
• Snowflake Bentley, by Jacqueline Martin
• Miss Bridie Chose a Shovel, by Leslie Connor
  

and perhaps a few other titles as well--like Chester's Way, another Henkes title. The girls are a wonderful audience--they are wiggly squiggly, of course, but they clearly love our reading time. When I arrive at the lunch table, several of them ask "What book did you bring today?" I usually try to have some kind of interactive portion of the reading (during Jessica, for example, they got to be an antiphonal chorus, half of them being the parents saying "There is no Jessica" and the other half responding, "But there was.") Or I'll ask them to look for things on the page, or to predict what a character might do next, or how someone might be feeling. Curious Girl handles the questions and comments at the end (3 or 4 participants), and it's so cool how they all raise their hands to tell everyone what they liked or to respond to whatever question I've posed. Last week, as I closed The Quiltmaker's Gift, one girl exclaimed, 'That is the BEST book! I love all the pages!!" I just don't see that kind of enthusiasm spilling out in college classes.

I'm a teacher, so I"m always looking for activity tie-ins. For Snowflake Bentley--the true story, gorgeously illustrated with Mary Azarian's woodcuts, of the man whose photographs of snowflakes are the basis of the first scientific study of snow crystals--I brought them all a piece of black construction paper. If you keep it in the freezer, and take it out when it's snowing, you'll be able to see the snow crystals on the paper. The different shapes are truly amazing. We also looked at online images from his collection (click on any image to embiggen). As the girls said, "Hey, that one looks like a snowflake!" (when it had that what-you-think-a-snowflake-looks-like-shape) but for others, "a flower!" and other shapes. Even if you think you know that snow crystals are unique, you'll be amazed at what you see.

Last week, after the Quiltmaker's Gift, I cut up some scrapbooking paper into squares, rectangles, and triangles, and the girls all made paper quilts the next morning at choice time. I have been working on more ways to get scissors, crayons, and coloring opportunities into my writing courses in college, too, but the crafty possibilities are endless with the preschool set. I also decided to try having them help me read--when we did Polo, I had each girl read through one two page spread. They didn't hold each others' attention as well as my reading does, but I liked encouraging everyone to come up and read.

As I've been thinking about this post, I realized my list of books has mostly white protagonists, so I'm going to make some extra efforts to diversify my selections for the spring readings. Next week, we'll be reading The Chicken Chasing Queen of Lamar County, by Janice N. Harrington. Tonight at home, we read Norton Juster's The Hello, Goodbye Window (illustrations by Chris Raschka, another one of our favorites; yes, that is the same Juster from The Phantom Tollbooth) and I may take that one in. Because it's an all-girl class, I've been emphasizing books with girls, although not exclusively--Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney is on my mind for sometime, too.

I guess I don't need to sell the value of reading to kids to anyone taking the time to read blogs by mothers who like to write and academics who read and write and think and teach. I've been reading to Curious Girl since our first night together, and I've been enjoying introducing her to old favorites of mine and learning my way around new-to-me authors like Mo Willems and Kevin Henkes. But I am just loving the informal structure of my Wednesday Book Club--my little moment to think about themes, rhymes, illustrations, colors, activities that will engage my very loving, wiggly audience. I love getting to know the girls, know who gets scared, who likes to participate, who needs some encouragement. And I love seeing their appreciation for longer stories emerge.

And to tell the truth, I like the books, too, with their merging of visual and textual features. They're fun.

So what are you all reading, aloud or silently, with the kids in your lives? And any suggestions for our spring selections?

Rollercoasters, List Version

The Home Front

• Politica is off on a professional adventure. Yay her.
• Emotions are, um, turbulent. Curious Girl and I are not getting enough sleep, and tempers were fraying last night, starting with an argument about why I am the meanest person ever because I would not let CG stay up until midnight even though Twin Friends (allegedly) got to stay up until midnight one night, ending with over 90 minutes of sobbing and screaming (not all of it CG's, I should mention).
  
• Have I mentioned how much I love CG's teachers? They knew CG was off-kilter the minute we walked in. Short Teacher suggested that CG could draw a picture of what she's mad about, when she gets all mad.
• So today, we're going to make a Feeling Box, with art supplies in it, so that we can draw mad pictures when we need to. Cross your fingers that this works. (It well might. Similar tactics have.)
• I'm going to lunch with CG's class today. I'll have to post about my post-lunch reading series with the girls. They are a great audience.
  

The Office Front

• Performance review season is always here. That stresses people out, and there are a million little questions about what to put where on the form. My university requires everything to be classified as teaching, research, or service, and that leads to a lot of fretting about whether, say, judging the student magical mystery competition is teaching or service or whether writing a short article for publication x is research or teaching. It's not easy to balance reassuring the stress with encouraging people to step back and think about how their report communicates what they did.
• My favorite part about being department chair is helping people--it's so emotionally rewarding to have conversations helping to move toward tenure dossiers, for example. The flip side of that, though, is being a responsible chair even in situations where things are not emotionally rewarding--I'm learning strategies for not taking it personally when colleagues are doing things that don't work so well. It's hard, but important, to keep that boundary up. Thank FSM for the therapy that taught me about boundaries. They rock.
  
• I cleared my desk yesterday! (But my desk at home is now piled with stuff from the bedroom, that's getting painted. Boo.)

I am now going to read and write until lunch, at home. I love Wednesdays.

Even Dr. Google has his limitations....

Background info: Curious Girl loves John and Abigail Adams. and last night, when she couldn't sleep, and she got into a fit of giggles with Politica around midnight, I asked what was so funny and she said, "The presidents!! They slept sitting up! John Adams slept sitting up!"

So at dinner, Curious Girl is looking at her placemat o' presidents, and says, "these ones (pointing to the top row) slept sitting up. John Adams! John Adams! Last night, I almost slept sitting up!" Politica had remembered a museum docent somewhere telling us that the reason old beds are so short is not because the people were shorter (although they were, a bit), but because people used to believe it was healthier to sleep sitting up. So we all got to wondering which presidents slept sitting up and which would have been of the era when the thinking about sleep changed and people would begin to sleep laying down.

Politica says, "Let's ask Dr. Google," and moves over to the conveniently located laptop. Curious Girl, who'd been on the way to the bathroom to wash her hands, runs back in the room. "Dr. Google! Can I see? Is there a picture of him?"

As I'm clearing the dishes, I hear these questions spilling out, as Politica is googling various things, calling out to me "what about this phrase?" "how about this one?" to try to find an answer to our question (I'm hoping this is the sort of little detail Trillwing might have encountered in her seems-to-me-incredibly-cool-program, or my favorite librarian readers might have a tip). All the while CG is keeping up a patter:

Does Dr. Google know everything?
Does he know about me?
Why don't you ask "why do cows have black spots?"
Can we go visit him?
Does he know about lions?

Reference librarians will never go out of business.

Pinky Promise

We need a little levity around here, what with the drama I've been writing about in my last several posts. Just to show you another side of life in the Granola household, here's a scene from yesterday afternoon, when Curious Girl was having a skating party indoors with all her (imaginary) loved friends. (In case you're wondering how to make an indoor icerink, here's how: scatter paper all over the floor, take off your slippers, and slide around, saying "Mama! I'm skating!").

Curious Girl: You can be the girl police officer who takes care of the party. And you're my cousin. But pretend you didn't know it was my skating party and I didn't know you were coming.

Me: OK. (pause) Hey, cousin, is that you?!?

CG: Cousin!!!! You're here for my party.

Me: Hey, kids! No pushing on the ice. Good job, babies!! Look, CG, aren't the babies doing a good job?

CG, beaming: Yes! I teached them how to skate.

CG skates around, then returns to me. "Pretend you're going to live with me in my house for the whole rest of the year, but I don't know that."

Me: You know, there's not much left of the rest of the year. When we wake up tomorrow, it'll be a whole new year. Now, it's 2007, but tomorrow, it will be 2008.

CG: No way! Tell me the truth.

Me: Really. Right now it's December. I can show you on your calendar. Tomorrow starts January, and it's a whole new year then.

CG: No it is not. I don't believe you. For real? Tell me the truth.

Me, trying not to laugh: Really, truly, for real life. It's going to be 2008 tomorrow. It's the last day of 2007.

CG: But tell me the truth. Pinky promise? (extending pinky) For real, pinky promise?

Me: Pinky promise it is really going to be a new year tomorrow.

CG: I don't believe you.

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This morning, when CG wakes up, having slept in a little after the late night she had at a new year's party with our friends, I tell her "Happy new year."

CG: I didn't believe you yesterday. But today I do.

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Some cool new year's posts are up at Magpie's, Rhymes with Javelin, Profgrrl's (the post before that is a good New Year's meme which I may do later in the week), and Geeky Mom's.

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So however unbelieveable it is that a new year has arrived, may it bring you and yours bountiful hope, joys, and community.

A Popsicle

Things are looking up, and I am wordlessly grateful for all the comments on the previous post.

Quiet Friend is better today--recognizing more people, more alert, even sat up to eat a popsicle. It may be that the combination of not enough platelets and too much fluid in the body caused weirdness in the brain.

So things are looking up, today. And Mississippi Friend, ever a believer in the kindness of strangers, will be touched by your comments. Thanks for helping us wait this out--today, hope seems more possible.

Love Needed

Quiet Friend (for whom Politica recently organized the room renovation) is in hospital tonight, having been medevaced home from Mississippi last night. He and Mississippi Friend had gone back to their hometown for Christmas, and what had appeared to be some discomfort from a pre-bone-marrow-transplant-spinal-tap blossomed into increasingly painful and complex symptoms. So they ended up on a private plane back to the university hospital here.

Things don't look good--although QF has had some moments of lucidity, and may somehow find the strength to fight back whatever is going wrong, whatever that may be, as doctors have not yet figured out what might actually be causing the current crop of problems. But still, they don't look good, and Mississipi Friend is awash in hopes and feelings. Quiet Friend has been through a lot, medically, in the past seven years, and between the cancers he seems to be prone to, and the cumulative effects of chemo over time, he may simply be worn out. For all he's gone through, this is the first I've seen him looking truly sick. Tired before, fiercely scarred after the brain tumor, but never sick. He looks far away sick, like he's just withdrawn into his body which is busy trying to do what it can.

Politica spent the night at the hospital with him, so that Mississippi Friend could get some sleep. Friends took Curious Girl to a New Year's Eve party so I could slip down to the hospital and sit with them a while. Mississippi Friend is a wonderful friend, and there were a small group of us at the hospital, and more people are coming in from out of town tomorrow. Politica is planning to go a-sabbaticalling on Friday, to somewhere far away for a while. She's wrung out, not sure how she can leave someone who's close as family to us, knowing she has to be doing things with other people in a faraway place next Monday. Mississippi Friend is tired, full of emotions, fears, hopes, grief. She still gets indignant about the fact that the universe just isn't fair. It should be fair, she thinks. It's supposed to be. But it's so clearly not.

We could use some more love in the universe. So could you toss some out for us? I'll collect it for my friends, and share it with all of you.

Season's Greetings

We've arrived at part one of our trip, and had an amazing dinner with Graduate School Friends (one of whom grew up in South Texas, hence the menu), and opened a bottle of wine Politica and I had brought back from South Australia six years ago. It aged well, and GSFs were the perfect people to share it with. Politica's dad joined us for dinner (although he ate swedish meatballs rather than tamales), and CG collected clothing from GSFs' daughter, including a fancy blue dressup dress. I love the comfort of old friendships, and I love watching our kids play together. When CG was falling asleep, she rolled over and said, "I wasn't even shy at the beginning tonight. Because, I thought, I remember this place." I'm so glad we have good friends living near here--it makes our visits to Politica's dad feel much more homey than they might otherwise.

So life is good. (Although Politica, who just returned from her father's, where she was wrapping gifts, observes that Christmas is easier when you're a kid.) I finished CG's stocking, and it's by the fireplace in our hotel room in all its pink, purple, yellow, and rose glory. What's in it? A Miss Piggy journal, some glittery kid makeup, some lotion from my last hotel stay in a really cool shaped bottle, a clementine. I hope she likes it.

Merry Christmas to those of you celebrating tomorrow.

Get Your Nerd On

Thank you, thank you, thank you for all the comments on the previous post--I went to bed last night feeling validated, with a better understanding of just why this was all so hard to shake off. Nice phrase, Arwen, about conversations "loaded with history."

We fly out today and will have a wonderful time with Graduate School Friends and Politica's father. The assisted living facility is nice--institutional nice, but nice--and visits with Dad and GSF just revolve around everyone having a good time. And once we're at my sister's, we'll have a good time, too. The cousin excitement will be soothing for all the adults, I'm sure.

Since the tone around here is not usually so gloomy as those last few posts, I thought I'd leave you with some nerdy pleasures for the end of 2008:

• Free Rice, where you can play with words and help fund UN hunger relief efforts
• Kingmaker, where you can make predictions about the US presidential elections (primary/caucus results, campaign strategies, and even join pools if you're so inclined). Brought to you by the makers of Fantasy Congress. Woman of Many Talents and I had a great time going through some of Kingmaker the other day.

So even in the midst of all the family drama yesterday, I had some nerdy fun, and I certainly woke up in a more positive frame of mind thanks to your comments here, and to Politica's and WOMT's talk in real time. Wrapping up the year in the company of such friends, in and out of the computer, is a real gift.

Thank you all. And happy end-of-December to all of you.

Holidays for the Inner Child

So I've been back in touch with my inner child lately, which is to say I'm spending too much time feeling too sensitive about things that really shouldn't be that big a deal. I realize that there are far bigger actual problems in the world, and I have the emotional wherewithal to rise about all this. But still. It's not always so easy.

I wrote a bit about our Thanksgiving. I realized, later, that part of my problem that weekend was that I was doing some very particular things that I wanted my parents' approval and endorsement for, and they weren't giving it. Last winter, when my parents were moving out of their New York apartment, I took a box of old family photos and offered to put them into an album, telling my mother it would be a kind of album like I made from our adoption travels (a scrapbook format, with things pasted to the page, all archival-quality materials). I never got around to making the album, and last spring when we went to Florida, I took the photos, and my mom and I organized them by topics and family groups, and she identified people for me. I still didn't have time to do the album, but I thought over Thanksgiving, we'd have time to sit together and put the pages together, and I planned to give Mom some journalling boxes so she could write captions for the photos. It wouldn't be fancy, but it would get everything in a book.

When we sat down to do the album, though, my Dad walked over and said, "but what if you wnat to take the pictures out? Or give some to Other Daughter?" So they decided no, they didn't want the album. Which is fine, but it also means they weren't listening when I had offered to make the album, and it also means I had acquired a bunch of album supplies I didn't need. And my inner child heard all this as "You don't matter." Which I realize is all the product of my inner child's insecurity schtick which my inner child has processed in therapy and I thought had gotten over. But apparently not.

So I went to a photo store and got drop-in archival photo sleeves and a binder to put them in, and we put the photos in pages, with some paper for writing captions, and Mom was happy. Then she wanted to pay me for the materials. Which my inner child also perceived as a huge slight, because I had wanted the picture-organizing to be a gift for them. I tried to say, no, no, it's a gift, but they insisted.

In the meantime, my mother was trying to tell me six ways from Sunday how much she enjoyed all the food I had cooked over the weekend--which is really a pretty big deal as my parents are not vegetarians, and are pretty suspicious of vegetarian cooking. All those compliments didn't really make a big impression, because my inner child was moaning so much about the failure of the photo project.

So really, my mother and I were talking at cross purposes: I am sure that she meant her food compliments to convey her appreciation for all we did to organize the Thanksgiving weekend. I am also sure she has no idea what the photo-organizing project meant to me. And I don't know why I can't, having come to this analysis, just take in the compliments for what she intended and leave the photos behind.

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I have been on the phone with my sister several times today. We're going to her house the day after Christmas, for the Granola family Christmas celebration. Curious Girl, who in years past has been pretty darn terrified of Santa, has this year started to explore a little bit of Santa enthusiasm (she is scared of real Santas dressed up but has been having hysterical conversations with rooftop Santas we've seen around the neighborhood). We've always been rather reserved about the Santa mythology (a topic Dani has had some interesting thoughts about lately), in part because neither Politica nor I are really comfortable with actively building up a story I know to be false (most of our pretend games are driven by CG's imagination, but the Santa story is one we would need to feed to her), in part because we're not celebrating Christmas as a religious holiday even though we do love our Norsk Jul with Politica's father and my family-of-origin celebrates Christmas religiously; in part because we are always on the road. We are the People who Travel to the rest of the family.

But, Santa brings presents for my nieces , and last year, when we were there on Christmas morning, we had a Santa present for CG, too. (I think the year before, I hadn't thought about this at all, and my sister had a spare Santa present for CG. So last year, we organized for Santa, and this year, we had planned to ship a present to my sister's for CG). All fine. Except that UPS isn't cooperating. Our gifts for Politica's dad have arrived, but not our package to my sister's.

So why not just have Santa arrive at Politica's father's, you may be wondering? Well, because CG, in her Santa narratives this year, has been saying to anyone and everyone, "Santa is coming to my cousin's house." And we've just been nodding in agreement. It was a lovely narrative--we got to hitch onto my sister's family's rather extensive Santa mythology without having to do much ourselves to support it. But UPS isn't going to arrive until 12/27, we discovered today. So I suggested that Santa could leave a note saying he'd swing back around on the 27th for CG (we can reallocate some gifts and have a present that was going to be from Politica's dad come from Santa instead, so we'll have it with us when we arrive.) No, my sister says, that won't fit with where her kids think Santa will be on the 27th (at the North Pole). Just have Santa come at Politica's dad's, she says.

Politica and I confer. We like sticking to the CG-generated narrative about Santa coming to the cousins. So I call back. We'll have Santa deliver the present at my parents' house, which is where we'll actually be staying. No, that won't do, because my sister and her kids will be over at my parents' before we arrive, and they will know there is no Santa gift there. So that won't do. Just have Santa come at Politica's dad's, she says again.

My sister also says, "you sound upset at me," and I lie and say I'm not. She presses me, and I continue to lie. This is my deal with my family--I do not like to show my emotions in front of them because I am afraid that they will ignore them. And my sister's continuous suggestions about how we can manage Santa anywhere but near her house are certainly feeding that fear. I had called her a few weeks ago, actually, to talk about Christmas stockings. I'm knitting one for CG now. She's never had one, although my nieces, sister, and brother-in-law all have stockings I knit for them. Last year, CG was in tears on Christmas day because her cousins had a couple of little matching items--hairbows, I think--that had come in their stockings, and she wanted one, too. She didn't really care about the stockings, she just wanted to match her cousins. So I asked my sister if she could pick up three of anything she was getting two of for her girls. I wasn't asking her to fill the stocking, just enable a little matching, I told her. She was surprised. "I thought you'd do the stockings at Politica's dad's," she said. Politica points out now that this was a big hint that she didn't really want our Christmas stuff at her house. We had an awkward conversation that night, and I called her the next day to say not to worry, we'd do the stocking on our own time.

At the moment, Politica and I are both livid. I guess we'll have Santa's gift arrive on Christmas morning, which has the advantage of giving us one more thing to do with Politica's dad in the assisted living facility that morning. There's not going to be a lot of hoopla--our traditional Norsk Jul isn't really possible given that we don't have a kitchen. We're going for Christmas Eve dinner to Graduate School Friends' house, which will be wonderful, joining them for their tradition, which is tamales. Christmas Day we'll be eating at the assisted living facility, and we won't really be able to make the traditional rice pudding (which Politica doesn't like, anyway). So having a stocking and a morning gift will make a little more hoopla, and that will be nice with Politica's dad.

But still, I'm livid. Yes, my sister says, if we had ordered the gift a week earlier it would have been there. Yes, if we had called my sister a week earlier she would have picked something up for us (although my efforts at early coordination didn't really pay off on the stocking). But when you are the People Who Travel, it is hard to craft holiday traditions, and I would think that the People Who Don't Travel would cut us a little slack and help manipulate the narratives to make our lives a little easier. Instead, my sister has all kinds of ideas about how we can change the story we've been telling Curious Girl so that she doesn't have to change a darn thing in her own narrative.

And this bugs me. I know I should be able to let it go. But it's not fading easily. And I wish my inner child weren't so up in arms about this. I've had enough therapy to see the patterns, to understand why all this happens. I don't understand why it's suddenly so hard to react in a more healthy fashion.

Bah, humbug.

But hugs to anyone who's reading my rant: my inner child is happy for supportive readers!

Looking for the happy

It has been a loooooonnnnnngggggg week in my office at the end of a reasonably long-feeling semester. Yesterday, for the first time since being department chair, and I hope it will be the last, I came home from work feeling like I wanted to burst into tears. (So perhaps the fact that Curious Girl has been bursting into tears at the drop of a hat lately is simply a reflection of my vibe? maybe a contributing factor.)

So I went blog surfing today looking for the happy. And I found some in posts like those, posts that made me smile.

I also found a pay-it-forward project, at Rhymes with Javelin (and Niobe's), a meme that involves bloggers sending happy (in this case, hand-made) gifts out into the world. If you participate as a receiver, you have to make the same offer on your blog, too. Here's the scoop:

I will send a handmade gift to the first 3 people who leave a comment on my blog requesting to join this Pay It Forward exchange. I don’t know what that gift will be and you may not receive it tomorrow or next week, but you will receive it within 365 days, that is my promise! The only thing you have to do in return is pay it forward by making the same promise on your blog.

What do you have to do?
1. Respond here and give your email address so that I can contact you for your address.
2. Place this on your own blog and also send the first 3 people that respond something.

So sign up, and perhaps on a day when you're looking for the happy, the happy will arrive in your mailbox. Well, not the happy, but a happy, anyway.

And if you're looking for other ways to spread the happy, Magpie has a wonderful post today about 13 ways to use charitable giving (or involvement) to make a difference, and the Clutter Museum has had two posts this week about good causes. To Magpie's list, some other interesting charities I've heard of in presentations lately are Agape International (a Christian organization working with orphanages for HIV+ children and children orphaned due to AIDS in India); this wonderful school in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria and another organization helping children in that same area; and a school for children affected by HIV/AIDS in Uganda. I didn't post for World AIDS day, but it's getting on that time of year when the anniversary of my uncle's death rolls around. He served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Nigeria, and he died of AIDS-related complications four years ago. In between, he had a big impact on me--the first relative to really treat me like a grown-up. I miss him.

So it's a good time of year to spread the happy. I could use it, and I bet you could, too.

Professor Ms. Manners

A friend wrote to me today, wondering what to say to a friend and colleague who's been denied tenure. Any suggestions from out there in reader land?

My own experiences with a friend denied tenure were wrapped up in some awful personal and campus politics, so much of our conversations around that involved venting and analyzing the rather idiosyncratic and personal factors that led to the situation. My friend was so angry that the anger steered a lot of the conversations.

In the friend-of-friend's case, I don't know anything about the background. But I can imagine that this general scenario is the kind in which many people don't know what to say, so they don't say anything, and they avoid the person, which could well make the person feel even worse. So what to do?

When New Kid on the Hallway didn't have her contract renewed last spring (click back to the April 2007 archives to see a set of posts about that, and here's the first long discussion of it), there was an impressive array of comments supporting her in all kinds of ways. Her most recent post, in fact, discusses what she's thinking about her future career options; it's clear that her response to the non-renewal has been to stop and consider what she wants to do with her talents and interests (not to mention moving, necessitating a new pseudonym for Long Distance Husband). That's the attitude at a moment like this, I think, to try to remember that life goes on--in or out of academia--and there are options to consider.

But still, what to say, in the moment? In the face of any kind of loss or sudden bad news, it's wise to let the friend take a bit of a lead: does s/he want to discuss it? avoid it? dwell on the sadness? anger? At the same time, the friend probably doesn't know what s/he needs, either. So bringing over dinner, or movie tickets, or inviting the friend over for lunch or out for a walk or whatever seems good. Dropping a note to say, "I'm thinking of you," or bringing by flowers. Gestures that let the person know you notice them, that they've not gone invisible, that you're trying to make their day a little brighter.

What to avoid, I think, is pushing to solutions when the person isn't ready for that. In any kind of crisis, we need to be sensitive to when someone wants a listening ear, when they want some help with strategy, when they want additional ways to look at things, when they want validation for their analysis or reactions. If the friend really wants someone to say "Ah! those b@st@rds! " and instead gets detailed advice about how to work the grievance procedure, frustration will ensue.

I remember a Tenured Radical comment at New Kid's last spring that brought me up short: as I recall, there were a number of comments about NK's non-reappointment that were focused on could she appeal, how awful it was, what should she do next, and TR said, "whoa! let's think outside the box: what do you want to do now?" (I can't find the post and comments to link to, so perhaps my memories playing tricks on me. But this seems like a TR kind of comment to me, and I can't imagine she'd be distressed to find it attributed to her.) So in the long run, I think the friend, and friend-of-friend, need to find ways to use the tenure denial as an opportunity to figure out what is the right next step. There are plenty of prominent academics who didn't get tenure and whose careers have flourished. And there are ways to take skills from academia and use them elswhere. (As college class newsletter, I'm amazed at the jobs people have that I never new existed.)

So those are some of my thoughts. Yours?

The Lost Glove is Happy. Poetry Friday is early this week.

By Nuala Archer, from The Hour of Pan/Ama (Salmon Poetry, 1992). This wonderful poem arrived in my mailbox thanks to their poem of the week program. Special good wishes for anyone reading who's losing gloves, and who shares my fondness for Lubbock

Is it in the terminal I left
the brown, rabbit-fur-lined gloves
made in Taiwan? Gloves
I've worn in Ireland.
Gloves that kept my fingers
warm walking the bitter cold
coastline of Bull Island
with Howth and her necklace
of lights in the background.
Gloves lost now between Stillwater,

Oklahoma and Lubbock,Texas
on the way to see my mother
Come, she said, I'm in
the midst of desolation. Come.
Take Southwest Airlines, past
Love Field. I'll be waiting
for you. I'll be waiting.
And in the mall, when I got
to Lubbock, arrived to embrace
my mother in desolation, she had
me strip, try on outfit
after outfit-sweaters, trousers,
skirts, shirts, shorts, slips
and blouses-to see like
Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
how does your garden, my garden,
grow? She in her mid-fifties
and I at the cliff-edge of
twenty-nine. My mother had me
fly to Lubbock and on the way

I lost my rabbit-fur-

lined gloves. When I got
there, when I arrived, when
I reached desolation, my mother
alone, in the middle of crazy

cottonfields, my mother in

desolation, I reached her,
I travelled to her,
to desolation, and in desolation
we were as lost as any
two mismatched gloves and

for a few moments we relaxed, lost
and strangely happy,
in the Lubbock Mall, without

labels stripped to our bones.

Sometimes, You Get What You Need

Recently overheard chez Granola:

Curious Girl: "I don't want to go to school tomorrow because I'm sick, and New Classmate Who Doesn't Speak a Lot of English Yet will want to kiss me becuase she always kisses me, and I don't want to make her sick. Teacher will say "no, no" but New Classmate won't understand."

Politica: "Well, if you're sick, don't breathe on me because I don't want to get sick."

Curious Girl: "But Mama will take care of us!"

**********************************

Curious Girl, walking down the hall, singing: "You can't always get what you want. You can't always get what you need. But if you try sometime you can't always get what you want. This is so catchy! It's catchy!"

**********************************

It's the end of the semester and the middle of Hanukkah. May all the latkes be yummy and the celebrations happy, for those who are celebrating. For all us academics, may the distance between now and final grades somehow be covered quickly.

Barn Raising

Politica spent the day at Mississippi Friend's house, working with a group of contractors and friends clearing out two of the bedrooms in the Victorian house Mississippi Friend and Quiet Friend bought, intending to restore it so they could grow old together in the city. Shortly afterwards, Quiet Friend got diagnosed with an incredibly rare cancer, and time that might have been spent on the house got redirected to doctors, hospitals, and sickbeds. Quiet Friend is now incredibly-rare-cancer free, but has recently been diagnosed with another cancer, one which isn't responding to treatment. So he needs a bone marrow transplant. MF wants to ask her parents and in-laws to come help take care of her/the house/their child/QF during the transplant and recovery, but there's no place in the house for them to sleep, those other bedrooms never having been restored. So Politica is organizing a group of people willing to donate time and/or money to get at least one other bedroom habitable. It's a good thing, and it is at least a thing we can do in the face of the medical problems plaguing them.

We have another friend with a different and rare cancer who'll be having another kind of surgery next week. This surgery should set him up well for a multiple organ transplant sometime next year. I've blogged before about Annika and Moreena's experiences and the importance of talking about organ donation. Now I have two other friends waiting for transplants. I missed the work party today because I was taking care of Curious Girl. The least I can do is remind anyone reading this that organ donation saves lives. Shareyourlife.org has links to organ donation information in the United States, and you can get more information about organ donation at http://www.organdonor.gov/myths_and_facts.htm. The National Marrow Donor Program has information about bone marrow donation in the US. I hope more people I know never need the services here--but too many people I know are already waiting.

It's not April, right?

If it were April 1, I'd be wondering whether this is an April Fool's story. But I checked: it's November, and according to Inside Higher Education, a Florida community college is now providing pet insurance, after declining to add benefits for domestic partners for faculty and staff. Really, you couldn't make this stuff up.

I Wore My Wedding Dress

We had the traditional lesbian vegetarian thanksgiving: mushroom-tofu-leek phyllo pastries, maple pumpkin pie, roasted vegetables, cranberry sauce with a raspberry/orange twist, and a wonderful salad made by Husband of Pseudonymless Friend. The children ran around the house and everyone was happy except for the shy cats. My parents (who are not vegetarians) are here, and Mom asked Politica "Where's the bird?" (we did cook a turkey two years ago for Thanksgiving, but it was a lot of work, I didn't eat it, and the house smelled of turkey for a whole day afterwards. Why do that when the phyllo pastries are so tasty?) But even the meat-loving grandparents were happy with the meal. It was good, and the table was beautiful.

At one point, my mother said to me, "That's a nice outfit you have on." I paused. "It was my wedding dress, " I told her. She doesn't know that because she didn't come to our wedding. She paused. "Cute outfit," she said, and turned away.

I have mostly let that go, that she didn't come to our wedding. Mostly.

I shouldn't dwell on that, when there are happier moments to savor:

• Curious Girl falling asleep on my shoulder, exhausted after a day of playing, giggling, and shrieking
• CG talking to the balloons in the Macy's T-Day Parade. I'm going to miss it when she finally figures out the line between reality and fantasy
• Working in the kitchen with Politica. We were in and out of the kitchen all day, and the food was good.
• Eating bread fresh out of the oven: I made sandwich bread for my parents, and when I offered to cut some for my mother her eyes just opened wide. "Don't you want to save it for the company?" You are the company!
• Watching Politica gradually relax over the course of the day.

Here's hoping all Thanksgiving-celebrating-readers had a good day.

Bad at the Buzz

When I updated my previous post, I said that I thought it was OK that Mother Talk, on its summary of what the MT bloggers are saying about the Daring book, had quoted a single sentence from my previous post. The more I thought about this, especially in light of Jody's post about the book and Mother Talk today, the more that troubles me. I don't know that this is a fair reaction--after all, as Politica reminded me tonight, when publicists ask you to read and talk about a book, they're asking you to blurb it, not review it. And I don't think I fully understood this aspect of Mother Talk. I had envisioned it as a little more of a conversation-based site. And I'm a little irritated that the single sentence they pulled out of my review fundamentally misrepresents my post (even if what they say in the summary is literally true. I did say that.)

So I'm bad at the buzz. But it would't be a bad thing for more of us were talking about gender and parenting. How do we raise kids to move beyond oversimplified notions of gender? I loved Jody's story about Gemma and the shoes "from the boys side" of the store. Head over there and check out her post and the comments (unless, that is, you've arrived here from there: statcounter shows a lot of people are stopping by from Jody's today. Welcome!)