Rebel Yell

I've started reading Alice Randall's Rebel Yell, and while I should reserve judgment until I'm finished, so far it just doesn't have the emotional drive, the sense of humor, the rollicking language, the rich characters of Pushkin and the Queen of Spades. It feels a bit thrown together...so I'm wondering if I overestimated her in a previous post. However, I won't say more until I've finished it...and I'll stop there for tonight as it's been a busy, tiring week.

Gotta Go, Gotta Go

The propulsion mechanism in my son seems to be turbo-charged these days. I've never seen him so active--and he's never been so desperately in need of activity, of movement, of physical stimulation. It's as if some little genie inside of him won't let him sit still and keeps shouting, "Gotta go, gotta go"; only when he's just waking up or is very sleepy will he sit in my lap for any length of time. But this isn't to say that he's not showing affection. We're playing games with each other almost all day long--I keep making up new ones, and the sillier the better. Also, I do make a point of incorporating calm moments into some of his activities, because I realize that that little genie, which obviously woke up inside him when he started walking, might be pushing him too hard and too fast at times.

Current Trends

I'm disturbed by a lot of the current trends, in movies, television, popular culture...which makes me an old fuddy-duddy. But I don't understand what the excitement is about in relation to Avatar, Inglorious Basterds, Dancing with the Stars, Project Runway, Twilight, texting, and so on and so forth...even that admirable film about sappers in Iraq was, I thought, just an admirable film, not a landmark event in film worthy of Academy Award-level attention. What's disturbing is that the common denominator in all of it seems to be, a search for sensations on the most primitive level.

Yes, I do sound like a fuddy-duddy, I know...I watched plenty of Bugs Bunny cartoons well into my early teens, out of a desire for sensation and silly spectacle, not out of a desire for beauty and higher meaning. I just hope--I'm just hoping like mad that my son will reject most of what our culture is dishing out these days, not out of disdain or to be a fuddy-duddy, but because life is so short and his hunger for books like Walden and Pride and Prejudice, for artworks like Michelangelo's David and Giotto's Arena Chapel, for music like Bach's St. Matthew Passion and Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, is so enormous.

But it's not just that, I'm suddenly realizing...it's not that our culture chooses Avatar over the Arena Chapel; I wouldn't mind that, as long as people accepted the Arena Chapel's value as an artwork of timeless beauty. But it seems to me that recently, what's obviously light entertainment has started passing itself off as a cultural event of great importance. What happens then is that a lot of amazing artworks like the Arena Chapel simply get shoved aside; they fall entirely out of people's consciousness. And that makes it far less likely that my son will ever be exposed to them. And that disturbs me. A lot.

Organizing?

Sometimes, with an active 13-month-old under your wing, it's hard to keep up with minor daily tasks like keeping tables and floors free of clutter, brushing your teeth carefully, and paying bills. When a few other things are piled onto your plate like organizing an event for over sixty moms, the pinball machine quickly goes on TILT. Something like that looms on my horizon, unless I'm very careful. That's about all for today as I'm already up way past my much-valued bedtime.

Big Boy

Along the lines of yesterday's post...when I see my son pick up a big metal bowl or other large object, walk to the living room, put it down, drop a Lego piece in it, or a wooden spoon or some other toy, then march back to the kitchen with it...or when I see him walk over to the bookshelf in the living room, pull out a book, study the cover, throw it on the floor, then pull out three other books, study each of them and throw them on the floor, then take the fifth book and bring it over to me, I'm forced to realize that he's not a baby any more. It's wonderful to see.

The only hard part is when he cries out for something, compelled to express his increasingly strong desires in the only way he knows how, and I have no idea what he wants. That happens rarely, however. It's often not that difficult to interpret his cries and gestures. He almost always has his eye on an electronic gadget like a cell phone or a computer, or he wants to be put down on the floor, or he wants to be picked up and put to bed, or he wants something to eat.

So far, the terrors of toddlerhood have not outpaced the joys. But I know that as far as toddlerhood goes, we're just getting started.

Baby Eyes

As my son makes the full transition from baby to toddler, I see how Mama needs training to deal with toddlerhood as much as baby does. By that I mean--I can hardly bear the thought of weaning him from the bottle. But I do see that it's time. He's drinking plenty of milk, he has no need of formula--it's purely a comforting habit for him to take his bottle of formula right before going to bed, or taking his two naps. But I know that it's not good for his teeth.

If I wean him, I will be deprived of that lovely moment of gazing into his eyes as he relaxes in my arms and takes his bottle. The look in his eyes at that moment--is there any way to describe it in words? I seriously doubt it.

I know that it has to be done. It's as much a process of weaning Mama as it is, weaning the little one.

Short-shorts, Part Two

I've punched out six very short stories in the last couple of weeks, from a page to two pages in length. It's the right approach for someone who only has an hour here and there to write. The time pressure forces me to get to the point as quickly as possible. I have to reach the emotional core of the story in the first fifteen minutes or so of writing. I frequently despair of writing anything at all, my mind is so preoccupied with baby and with daily life--but sometimes I can use that despair itself to build up the emotions on the page. Hopefully it's panning out; I won't know for several more weeks.

To See the World in a Lamppost

The other day I took my son to the children's section of our local branch of the public library; the most fascinating and delightful part of the trip for him wasn't the actual perusal of books, and it wasn't, for once, the computers; it was the discovery of some plastic-covered yellow lights near the base of a long wheelchair ramp leading to the lower-level entrance. He chortled with pleasure as he walked up to them and tapped them with his hands. At the Randall Museum yesterday, he was moderately interested in the rabbits and chickens and turtles, but what really impressed him was the sight of all those bubbles rising from the pumps in the aquarium. At the Academy of Sciences today, his big thrill was pushing around the plastic chairs in the outdoor cafeteria (though he did also stare at the fish in that huge aquarium with open-mouthed fascination). My husband reports that during our son's outdoor stroll along the Embarcadero, he really communed with garbage cans and lampposts, hitting them with the palms of his hands and shouting with excitement.

I know he's not that different from any toddler his age. Which is what makes toddlerhood a truly remarkable time. Never again will he discover things with quite this much enthusiasm and wonder. Or to put it more positively--one of my goals is to help him see the world at least partly from a toddler's perspective for the rest of his life.

Downtown

The kid and I traveled all the way to downtown San Francisco today, to a sandwich place near the Embarcadero, where I met up with three old work friends for lunch. My husband also came; he ended up caring for our little bundle of energy most of the time we were there. The little fellow was so eager to explore that he almost headed out the door on his own; the two of them went for a walk near the Bay, otherwise Little Guy would have been bouncing around in our restaurant like a pinball.

We were blessed with dazzling spring weather--just a touch of a breeze in the air, mid-sixties, glorious sunshine. I was struck by how sharply attired most people were--not just compared to me (I was dressed in my usual stay-at-home-mom fatigues--sloppy shirt, jeans and food-encrusted fleece jacket), but compared to people in every other part of San Francisco. We score high as a city, if scruffiness is a valid fashion statement. But people in the Financial District walk to the beat of a different drummer--a drummer working in an elegant nightclub, it would seem. Be that as it may--the little one was not checking out the fashion statements, he was checking out garbage cans and lampposts, according to my husband. More about that tomorrow.

The Emotional Life of Parents, Part Two

To continue with the sentiment expressed at the end of yesterday's post: I know that it's not possible to be perfectly calm with one's child, and why should we strive for that kind of false perfection anyway? But I do believe that it's possible to avoid shouting, unless they're really on the verge of hurting themselves. I've just noticed that during those times when I manage to stay calm, cool and collected, even when things are growing chaotic around me, my son usually has far fewer outbursts of fussiness. I'm not saying that his every mood revolves around mine, but the connection does exist.

The book I mentioned yesterday, The Emotional Life of the Toddler, discusses the importance of providing--no, really, of being a secure base of love and support, from which your toddler can venture out into the world, and to which he can reliably return if some mishap occurs. I thought about that today, right when my kid did an interesting spiral on one foot as he was reaching for a book, then fell flat on his back--not seeming to fall very hard, but it was a big surprise to him, obviously, to be looking up at the ceiling all of sudden. He cried out, and I went to him--but not in any kind of panic; I picked him up saying "Oh, you're okay!" in a jovial tone of voice, and kissed and held him close, but continued to speak cheerfully; then I sat him in my lap and we started looking at his favorite open-the-flaps book. I could feel his whole body relax against me. He was reassuring me as much as I was reassuring him, to tell the truth.

In fact, I'm sure that he's providing me with his own kind of secure base...maybe I won't feel that way when he's sixteen, but for now, there's no doubt about it.

The Emotional Life of Parents

I've purchased a number of books on toddlers and toddler care, because I feel so enormously ignorant about this particular phase of my son's life. Perhaps the adolescent years and the toddler years are the biggest mysteries for parents. At least, that's what a lot of parents have reported. I'm already seeing big changes in my son that I never would have expected to arrive so early.

The book that seems the most promising so far is The Emotional Life of the Toddler by Alicia F. Lieberman. I've only read the introduction, but the author gets to the heart of the matter right away, explaining certain characteristics of this age that fit my son's behavior perfectly. It helps to remember that certain wild mood swings have their basis in a pair of enormous needs on his part, to explore and, in equal measure, to be close to Mommy and protected by her presence. As the former need expands, so does the latter--at least, that's how it is for now.

It's also interesting to read that older toddlers need to be reassured, when we scold them, that we don't think they're bad people because they've done something wrong. Apparently, it makes a big difference to say things firmly, but gently and with love in our voices. I even see the effects of my more somber moods on my very young toddler, and I'm trying to control my reactions to his little adventures. For instance, when he heads for the "off" button on the oven, as he often does, I try not to react too strongly.

This evening though--I shouted "no" and pushed his hand away from the button while I was in the middle of cooking something. Not surprisingly, by the fourth time this happened he was upset...he did stop reaching for the button; but thinking about it, and after reading the introduction to this book, I know I should have handled it differently.

I don't want to shout at my son. Period. I don't want to get on that roller coaster.

New Mark Twains?

No one could write exactly like Mark Twain or Virginia Woolf today, of course (see yesterday's post)--nor would anyone be silly enough to make the attempt. What I was saying was that certain writers pay such close attention to language and to the culture around them that their writing never seems stale or out-of-date.

Perhaps it is just this combination that is lacking in our current literary moment. Most new novel or short story writing feels like it has been workshopped to death--by that I mean, every word is so carefully placed, every metaphor so colorful, that one forgets how little the writer is actually saying. At the other extreme--some writers have something important to tell us, but lack the imaginative tools to make that story come alive. The combination of striking, imaginative language and cultural relevance would feel startling if I came across it. I think the author of The Wind Done Gone and Pushkin and the Queen of Spades, Alice Randall, is onto something in this regard; I'm not so sure I would call her an author of groundbreaking literary works, but I do think she's tapping into something important in our culture and our language, and I applaud her for it.

Art and Progress

I've been viewing a series of lectures on European art--yes, it's part of my self-improvement "program" for the next year or so (see an earlier post, written sometime last week, I believe). One interesting point the professor makes is that we are too quick to believe that an artwork using a more modern style is an automatic improvement on those in more traditional modes--or more broadly, that there exists an inherent progressive trend in the history of art. He uses as one of his primary examples Duccio and Giotto, and argues that Duccio cannot be thought of as less valuable than Giotto simply because Duccio's style looks back to the medieval period instead of looking forward to the Renaissance.

I have no doubt that the professor is right; but I wonder if that idea applies equally to all the arts. Literature that reinvigorates the language of the times usually does so by saying things in a new way--either by discarding shopworn phrases and stale images to arrive at something simple and direct, or by incorporating subtle meanings into what seems, on the surface, simple and direct--or both at the same time. Literature survives because every time it threatens to flop over on its back and die, fresh blood is injected into it in the form of a Shakespeare, a Flaubert, a Hemingway, a Virginia Woolf. All people who threw out what had become stale in the language of the day, and created a language and literature that were both new and necessary.

We live in a confusing and not terribly encouraging moment where literature is concerned, because few people seem interested in finding or creating literature that reinvigorates the language of the times. People are too busy texting each other. (This texting, of course, could become the new literature--but I tend to think that "literature" as we traditionally define it will continue to survive, right alongside all the newfangled ways in which we communicate.) As Andrei Codrescu once put it, most writers nowadays act like people milling around in an airport--an airport where none of the airplanes are taking off. We want writing to "send" us--pardon the pun--to send us where? "Out there," as Codrescu might have phrased it. To some unknown place that we can only dimly fathom, even after having taken the trip.

So I welcome newness in writing--real newness that makes us think about how we speak, how we communicate with one another--that finds ways to point out to us that our everyday language has a stranglehold around our throats. However--if someone decided to write more like Virginia Woolf and less like Michael Chabon, or more like Mark Twain and less like Alice Munro, would I consider either move a step backward? Hardly.

To Live and to Write

In To Live and to Write, that marvelous compendium of short stories written by Japanese women in the early part of the twentieth century, the editor Mariko Lippit describes the poverty experienced by two of the writers, Hirabayashi Taiko and Enchi Fumiko, very early in their writing careers. They were roommates as young women, and they owned only one dress between them; they used it only when one of them went on a job interview or spoke to an editor. This simple example of their poverty speaks volumes--not only of their hardships, but of the spirit of sisterhood that two Japanese women, both struggling with outsized dreams in a man's world, could forge.

Their stories, especially those of Hirabayashi Taiko, revolve around the struggles of the poor and the working class; they write directly and simply, without sentimentality, about lives that must have been very much like their own.

Why do I find these stories so compelling? It has something to do with the fact that my mother was from Japan, of course--and was even, almost, of that generation, having been born in 1926. But there's more to it than that. These women of the 1920s and 1930s--their writing, the best of it, burns with a passionate clarity and an urgency that I rarely see in the writing of young people, men or women, in our own times.

This was the era of the watakushishosetsu (the I-novel) in Japan; many writers borrowed heavily from their own lives for their stories, or even lifted entire episodes from their lives and wrote about them. It might seem, to many of us in the West, that is was a degraded form of storytelling. But in my view, it never really matters much where the stories come from as long as the central characters are vivid and the stories themselves make a difference to us. And somehow, the women in these writers' stories, eking out a living on the margins of Japanese society without much encouragement from anyone--their lives do make a difference, to anyone who can imagine that level of social and psychological isolation. And the writers in this anthology make it rather easy to imagine.

Ultimatum

I never thought I would become a mother at the age of forty-four; but now that it's happened, I have absolutely no regrets.

However, I do wish that I had listened harder when I was pregnant and my husband (already the father of a 12-year-old) talked about how little time to myself I would have, not just for the first few months of my baby's life, but for the first few years.

The hardest thing about being a new mother is reconciling oneself to the fact that one's personal time is so extremely limited. The only way to cope is to pare down one's non-baby activities to the absolutely essential. In this regard, I've been doing better in recent weeks, but only a little. I still manage to fritter away vast juicy gobs of time sending useless emails, cleaning, organizing papers, checking the weather reports and, yes, writing this blog.

To that end--I hope to spend no more than fifteen minutes a night writing this damn thing from now on. (I love writing it, don't get me wrong--it's just eating up too much of my personal time.)

Short-shorts

I've decided to write short-short stories (two pages or less). I began one yesterday and completed it today, and though I don't think it will send tremors through the literary world, this short-short story approach feels like the right one for me, at this time in my life.

I could say more--but most of my writing energy was taken up by this story, to be honest. And that's probably how it should be.

The Utter Strangeness of the Everyday

My son has shown me that our contemporary world is a strange and hysterically funny place. I cannot feel the same level of excitement he displays, when witnessing some of its oddities; but he makes me realize for at least a few seconds that, yes, it is hilarious that the cord on the vacuum retracts with lightning speed when you press a button (then can be made to emerge again), or that the unit that holds the fan above the stove can be pulled out from the wall and pushed back; or that the velcro fasteners on his new shoes make such a loud ripping sound.

The way he laughs, when he witnesses these mysterious movements and sounds for the first time, is one of the most priceless memories I will retain of his first years. He is in tune with modern contraptions in a special way--they are alive, and they perform for him. What could be more amazing and funny than that.

Setting Boundaries

My new-mother friends are in partial disbelief when I tell them that I've succeeded in setting certain boundaries for my son. They look at me dubiously, as if a 13-month-old child couldn't possibly understand what boundaries are.

In an earlier post (maybe a couple months ago), I mentioned that I was told, by someone who made a career out of child development education, that a parent can set very few boundaries for a young toddler; the best strategy, this person said, is to eliminate the need to set boundaries (by locking down the toilet lid, for example, or removing the valuable object that you don't want your child to break). While I agree in principle with that idea, I do think that some boundaries have to be set. And I've seen that those boundaries are respected by the child IF the parent sets them patiently and consistently.

It's difficult, because while you're busy setting new boundaries, your child is busy developing on multiple levels: motor skills that seem to increase with the velocity of a jet engine (yet still leave him extremely vulnerable); a curiosity like a raging wildfire; cognitive reasoning abilities that advance with leaps and bounds every day, even if they remain brutally limited by adult standards; greater independence coupled with bouts of sudden insecurity, and so forth. Your child will test all your limits in ways you could not imagine him achieving just a few weeks earlier--and create reasons for new limits on an almost-daily basis.

In fact, I don't think it's good to try to set too many limits in a short period of time; one has to choose one's battles. Just today, my babysitter (who is excellent; I've blogged about her before but not often enough) told me that she is not letting my son throw food off his tray onto the floor, touch the TV set, or touch the stereo. She's a much better boundary-setter than I am; I like what she's doing, but I might only implement boundary number one (it has become a major inconvenience to clean up after him when he finishes eating). I just don't want to fight my child every time he walks over to the readily available TV screen or the stereo--not yet, anyway. I'd rather do what I eventually did with my computer--keep those objects out of his reach.

But even as I make these decisions to set more boundaries, he's adding more behaviors that need to be addressed. I won't give details about those behaviors (I'm still trying, in this blog, to protect his privacy as much as possible, by not revealing too much personal information about him). Suffice it to say that I realize fully how challenging toddlers can become. But I also believe that as his physical and intellectual skills mature, so do his emotional skills, such that he becomes more and more capable of understanding what "crossing the line" means, every single day. It's up to us as parents, I suppose, to make very clear where that line is.

Newton's Law of Baby Motion

I recently reviewed Newton's laws of motion and it struck me how relevant they are when you're a baby and are just starting to learn how to hurtle your body through space. Especially the second and third laws. Whenever I see my kid waddling gleefully and with surprising velocity down the hallway, I think of how physical the equation "Force = Mass x Acceleration" has become for him. Whenever his legs give out and his little bottom hits the floor, or he falls forward, I'm painfully reminded of both Newton's third law of motion and his law of universal gravitation.

There are times, however, when he seems to defy the laws of motion: when he balances himself at an odd angle to pull a book down from a bookshelf, for example, or when he almost falls, but throws one leg forward at the absolute last moment and saves his balance like a street dancer. And that's what it is, really: learning to move is also about learning how to defy the laws of motion, thus achieving, at random moments, something like a dancer's grace.

Children's Books, Part Two

I thought I'd mention a few more children's books that my kid has loved (since I've dissed so many of them in the past).

A little book in French called Peppino by Pascale Bougeault, about a pig who runs away from home, is his current favorite. He still adores many of the children's books in French by Antoon Krings (not sure if I mentioned those before), including Mireille l'Abeille and Camille la Chenille.

He is absolutely crazy about Thomas the Tank Engine's BIG Lift-and-Look Book which provides him with about a hundred flaps to lift.

Lift-the-flap and pop-up books have been favorites of his for many months now, although the Spot series of books by Eric Hill meet with only lukewarm approval. He loves The Wide-Mouthed Frog by Keith Faulkner and Jonathan Lambert, and Says Who? by David A. Carter. (He's always on the verge of destroying the final, exciting page in the latter, where every animal pops up all at once.)

And as mentioned in an earlier post, he loves Byron Barton, especially My Car, The Three Bears and Machines at Work.

Oh, and though he's never been wild about Eric Carle, he adores What's for Lunch, in which a little cardboard monkey swings from a real string throughout the book.

As predicted, the Dr. Seuss board books, while not exactly fading out of sight, have lost some of their appeal at this point, perhaps from overuse more than anything else.

I'm constantly on the hunt for new children's books that he'll like, as his appetite for books is still voracious; I'm constantly disappointed by what I find in libraries and bookstores for children of his age (around one year old). People need to realize what kids his age, especially boys, perhaps, really adore: books that offer vivid pictures, unusual sounds, and surprising images (or interesting tactile encounters with the page), as well as (believe it or not) some kind of plot, with a rhythm in the sequence of pictures and in the words. It shouldn't be that hard; but considering the paucity of good books for young toddlers, books that live up to these simple requirements, perhaps it's harder than I think.

Tiny Babbles

My son is a bit late, perhaps, in his ability to form actual words--"mama" is the only word that has issued from his lips, and even then, it's more often something like "ma-ma-ma-ma, ma-ma-ma" spoken to the air, rather than two syllables directed at me. However--recently, perhaps sometime this week, he began to talk in complete baby sentences--a variety of syllables and phonemes, rising and descending inflections, and a wealth of feeling behind every statement. This vigorous vocalization occurs most often when he's well-fed and highly content with the state of the world and the state of his own body. And it seems tied in with his ability to walk, which has also progressed markedly in recent days.

Of course, I'll be eager to hear more actual words pop out of his mouth; but I adore this particular moment, when he's the master of his own private language and has such fun using it.

Mission Doldrums

My son has a cold (or perhaps allergies) and my husband happens to be out of town for a couple days. It's the first time I've flown solo with the little guy for two days in a row. It's been a tough couple of days. Be that as it may--I feel semi-rehabilitated after an ibuprofen tablet, a late-evening shower and a small glass of whiskey (I swear, not much more than a shot), plus handfuls of my son's crunchy cheese snacks. But I'll try to keep this short, to allow myself to get to bed ridiculously early.

Took the kid to Dolores Park today--I think I've only been there twice before, and both times were for a political demonstration. My ulterior motive for going was to stop in a cafe somewhere for a cup of coffee, but I did manage to make it to the playground as well.

The park was a mob scene--no other way to describe it. I would guess that around two hundred people were there, sunning themselves on the lawn and engaging in a variety of activities, some of them illegal, some not. I've never seen so many different forms of circus and parade-type pursuits going on someplace other than a circus or a parade, and by that I mean: tightrope walking, twirling long batons, juggling balls, making dogs do tricks, and so forth. The pot-smoking was, I guess, the "old school" form of entertainment.

I must admit that I wasn't really getting into the spirit of the moment. I kept thinking about my husband in New York and wishing I was with him; I was probably thinking about that coffee as well, and how I'd rather be sitting in a cafe reading a book and drinking it. Also, my son was almost hit once by a stray frisbee; then someone nonchalantly threw a baseball not far from where we were strolling, not close enough to hit him, but carelessly nonetheless. I think the only part of that excursion that my kid really enjoyed was watching a few cute dogs walk by, and the only part I enjoyed was when I was finally sitting in the car again on the way home, eating pumpkin bread and drinking an excellent cup of coffee. There are days like that.

Does Mommy Have a Brain

It's hard to carve out time to brush my teeth and get some kind of regular exercise, much less find a way to keep my brain in good working order. (Full disclosure--I have an advanced literature degree, but that probably means that I'm even less likely to have a fully operational brain than the average person.) However, I've set up certain intellectual tasks for myself for the next year or so (not including the obligatory books on baby and toddler care--I've bought a whole new batch recently). It's time to read--cover to-cover--the Bible, and, to balance it out, a few books on classical mythology. It's also high time that I gained some sort of basic working knowledge of scientific principles, and of the history of art. (I've bought a series of educational videos on the two subjects--enough to skim the surface of both subjects and not much more, I realize--but better than nothing.) On top of that, there's a desire to read more in my own field--after all, my interest in literature has never waned--and, oh yeah, there's that writing "career" which has never quite materialized...and a couple translation projects that I've only begun to pursue; and I hope to resume piano playing sometime soon...

I only have about an hour a day to devote to any of these projects...I know, I know, I'm wildly unrealistic. but I've thrown down the gauntlet here, just by mentioning all these things; we'll see how far I've gotten by the time the little guy's second birthday has rolled around and I'm starting to look for a form of brain work that actually brings in some income.

Mommy Play, Part 2

I've become the leader of a massive older mothers' playgroup--which has never met. Won't bore anyone with the details; suffice it to say that this playgroup has about fifty-plus members, but many of these have signed up online but have never volunteered to attend an actual meeting. (Though it's true, this playgroup has only existed for a few weeks so we'll see how things develop.)

An interesting statistic appeared in the paper yesterday: in 2009 in the U.S., the only births that increased were births among mothers over forty. They think the recession has caused this lowering of the birthrate, and that mothers over forty are having babies anyway because they simply can't afford to wait.

Perhaps this explains why my older mothers' group is so huge; but it might also explain why few of them actually attend playgroups (or so it seems): they're all too busy working or looking for jobs.

On the other hand: at the same web site where my mothers' group is quietly floundering, a woman posted a notice saying she wanted to form a group for mothers who are artists or aspiring artists--and she received about ten replies almost instantly. It seems that mommies really do want a playgroup where THEY can play...and why not, though it remains a monumental challenge to pursue any sort of art or business with a baby or toddler in the house, demanding your attention at nearly every waking moment (unless they're remarkably independent--which might be true for, oh, two percent of babies). I'm still trying to figure out a way get out the computer when my son is in the room--if I do, he makes a beeline for it and practically claims it as his own toy.

North by North Beach

My random walk today (yes, I finally managed to do this again) took me and the kid through North Beach--the northern part of it, mostly, the part between Washington Square and Fisherman's Wharf, though I did move quickly down Grant Street and up one block of Columbus. It was heartening to see that many of my favorite eateries and cafes are still there, though I didn't stop in any of those, choosing instead to feed the baby his lunch in Washington Square (surrounded very quickly by aggressive pigeons); then I gave him an opportunity to walk barefoot in the grass, pushing the stroller in front of him, then, to go for a ride on a swing. I did manage to grab a cappuccino-to-go in an out-of-the-way cafe near where we were parked, before putting my son back in the car and heading home; the cappuccino was, tragically, mediocre beyond words. (I say "tragically" because one of my best memories of my early days in San Francisco is lingering over a book and an excellent cappuccino in one of those aforementioned North Beach cafes.)

I wish that I could say that this moment of flanerie gave me a new perspective or made me feel less like a harried housewife and mother. I was hoping for that, perhaps too intensely (how often have I made it to North Beach in the last year or so? Uh, never). For a few brief moments, perhaps, I felt the faintest waves of relaxation and invigoration pass through me. Walking up Powell Street towards Washington Square, I noticed just how gorgeous the weather was--the air sun-kissed and breeze-kissed, just a trace of wind, and the trees and houses almost sparkling in the clean air. And it reminded me, for a few seconds, of the East Side of New York, or certain neighborhoods in Paris--there was a whiff of creativity in the air...I think it was mostly the shops and businesses I saw on Powell Street (little out-of-the-way establishments, like a hapkido studio, a skateboard design shop, a "cheese school," and a center for the study of urasenke, or Japanese tea ceremony). The actual people weren't all that inspiring, with, perhaps, one exception.

As my son chortled his pleasure about some obscure sight, or just some feeling he was having, a middle-aged man smiled quietly at him. The man, who was seated at a sidewalk table outside one of my favorite Columbus Street cafes, was on the small side--in fact, his head and face were surprisingly small--and he was well-dressed in a quiet, smoking-jacket-and-dark-clothes kind of way; a book by Ian McEwan (in hardback) sat on the table in front of him, next to his coffee. Everything about this man said "not-too-loud." He wasn't the kind of man you would expect to be interested in babies or toddlers. And yet, he beamed at my son--just at him, as if sharing a private moment with him. I don't know exactly why I found this so charming; I think because I felt that this man would remember my son long after the moment had passed. And that I would also, somehow, remember this man.

But I was hoping for more than that from North Beach...I don't know if you can go home again, but you can't go back to your favorite San Francisco neighborhoods again and have them be what they once were, that much is certain.

Shorter and Shorter?

In a book called Reality Hunger: a Manifesto (Alfred A. Knopf), David Shields talks about the need for short-short fiction and his disinterest in long novels--even long novels he admires and has read in the past. I haven't read his book, but apparently he's trying to make the point that in today's culture, people just do not have the attention span required for plowing through a longer book, or even, a normal-length short story. He argues for more short-short stories (one or two pages).

In her preface to Nightwood by Djuna Barnes (the New Directions edition), Jeanette Winterson writes, "In our society, where it is hard to find time to do anything properly, even once, the leisure--which is part of the pleasure--of reading is one of our culture-casualties. For us, books have turned into fast food, to be consumed in the gaps between one bout of relentless living and the next."

They are both mostly right, I think...and yet.

Many people (members of my family included) turn to genre fiction--fantasy, mysteries--when they want something to read. I myself am turning to short stories more and more (not short-short stories). It's true that most people these days do not choose to make time in their lives for short stories or novels; but I think it's also the case that the vast majority of the stories that people are producing just do not feel relevant to most of us. I've certainly felt that with most of the short stories and novels that I've read in recent months.

And yet. I'm someone with a high tolerance for unusual forms of writing, or even so-called "experimental" writing that does not make sense on a literal level.

I also feel a lively hunger, all the time these days, for a good story--of any length. For me that means, something that takes life and turns it on its head, looking at things from such a special angle that my brain is shaken loose from its foundations as I read.

Life is so full of reality, in all its tedious and horrible glory, that we need these doses of otherness every once in a while. I'm sure that's why my husband and stepdaughter head for the mysteries and fantasy novels. We need to travel. That's the whole reason behind my hunger, as well, for the random walks (see my earliest posts).

I don't agree, then, that we only need super-condensed stories. We need stories that are both relevant and imaginative. And those are, in my view, the rarest and most enduring stories of all.

Go Baby Go

This weekend, the only thing on my mind is the fact that my son is walking. Not steadily--not with ease--but he is taking more than a handful of steps at a time, and sometimes, thirty or forty steps in a row. Soon, I realize, he'll get up and walk anywhere without a second thought. But I suppose the day that you can say your child is walking is the day you stop counting the steps, because he or she is taking so many in a row--that happened yesterday for the first time.

It's the beginning of something. But the end of something too--I guess that in some circles he's considered a toddler now. Whatever he is--it's probably the most exciting milestone of his young life; and my own heart is racing as I type this.

A Nation of Consumers

Hearing that 200,000 people would line up Saturday (yesterday) for the new iPad made me realize all over again what a nation of consumers we are (this is my husband's expression, and I think it's a good one). Some of us really do live to consume--the latest gadgets, the latest toys, the latest hair products. And where is that going to lead us, besides more global warming, more distance between the haves and the have-nots, more focus on the least important aspects of our lives?

It's not just that we seem to be obsessed with computer gadgets and Internet social networking sites. It's that we seem to need to trumpet our obsessions, to broadcast them and share them with our friends. "You're not on Facebook yet?" some people ask me, disbelievingly. "Are you available online tonight?" I heard someone ask an acquaintance in a cafe. The response was, "I'm always online at night." I don't think it's bad for a nation to be wired, and for all of us to have computers. I just think we're becoming, more and more, the tools of our tools; E.M. Forster's story, The Machine Stops, had it mostly right.

Where does that leave my son? What sort of planet will this be seventeen years from now, as he enters adulthood?

Just a Moment

Holding my baby close to me today, at a random moment when he was standing in place, making happy sounds and saying "Mama-mama" over and over, I was overwhelmed with his beauty and, by extension, the beauty of all little people--their utter innocence, their overflowing love of life, their appreciation of any love that they are shown.

Yes, I know that some babies are difficult, from birth. But I also believe that even the most difficult baby possesses, underneath it all, a hopefulness and a sense of innate joy and wonderment that cannot be squashed except by an absolutely unloving parent. (And I know that those parents do exist.) To stand close to a baby and feel that joy, that life pulsing in him or her, is to recapture a small piece of that wonder oneself.

Rainy Days, Blustery Nights

The weather continues to act up--it's rained twelve days out of thirty-one this past month, which is a lot for March in San Francisco. And I haven't had to water the garden at all since December, I believe. This past week has been particularly tough to deal with, since it rained more days than it was dry, and one begins to wonder when the gorgeous spring weather will arrive. As a stay-at-home mother with a one-year-old, I suppose that I have a touch of cabin fever at this point.

A lingering high-romantic side of me has always adored rainy weather--especially on those days when I can curl up all evening with a good book and a mug of hot chocolate...but having a child does burn some of that dreaminess out of one's soul. I'd just appreciate a string of several days in a row when I don't have to cart my son to yet another indoor playgroup because it's too wet for him outside.