Today Marshall informed me that he was going to be King of the House. Livia, never to be outdone, said that she would be Queen of the House. And in keeping with your noble aspirations, you decided to make crowns.
I gave you some art supplies. The crown project kept you busy for a while. I should probably be horrified by the amount of tape you used. Is there any better way to use tape, though, than in the making of royal accouterments?
You looked the part in your finished paper-and-tinfoil crowns. The time had come to start acting the part. Marshall proceeded to dictate new rules for the house.
You can watch TV all day.
You can go to bed whenever you want.
You can eat whatever you want.
These sounded like good rules for you, and I thought you were done with your list. But I was wrong. You both agreed that you would need at least ten rules. Marshall continued dictating.
You have to do videos, any kind you want, including “booming tank videos.”
You can eat cookies any time you want. And candies. But not everyday, so you won’t get too much sugar.
Alas, the list of rules was never completed. Lunch hit the table and you got distracted. I’m not surprised. I’ve heard before that royal whims come and go.
You’ve both told me several times today that I’m supposed to do whatever you say. I’m not always good at obeying authority, though. So I haven’t given you all the cookies that you wanted. And bedtime will no doubt occur at the same time as it usually does. But you’re watching “Curious George” on TV right now, so royalty does have some privileges.
I was once so in love with a piano piece that I tried to learn it by ear. It was a tune called “Sonatine” from one of my favorite albums, Ryuichi Sakamoto’s BTTB. The letters BTTB stand for “Back to the Basics,” and it’s a fitting title for an album of simple, beautiful piano pieces. But though “Sonatine” is fairly simple, my ear is only so-so, and one section of the piece completely eluded me.
This half-learned tune has been a little thorn in my side since. Unfinished projects are a serious problem in my life. But more importantly, I just want to be able to play it. I love its unexpected dissonances. My mother would probably hate it for its dissonances, a thought that makes me smile every time I play the parts of it that I know.
I knew the solution to my “Sonatine” problem. What I needed was sheet music. I had looked on-line for it several times and found nothing. But, as hope springs eternal, I searched again last month. And this time I discovered (hooray!) that there are several collections of Sakamoto’s music available from Japan. None of them listed “Sonatine,” but since some of the song titles were in Japanese, I couldn’t be sure it wasn’t in there. One collection contained just enough other pieces from BTTB to make it a reasonable gamble. I ordered it.
It takes a while for a package to travel all the way from Japan to New England. The estimate arrival date was late September, but I hoped the book would arrive before my birthday. And it did! It arrived yesterday. Happy Early Birthday to me!
Stamp from Japan This package shipped from Aichi Prefecture. Do you suppose the person who prepped this package thought that Rhode Island sounded as exotic as Aichi sounds to me?
And here is the book itself. I love the juxtaposition of Japanese and English.
I flipped through the music eagerly. Alas, while one of the Japanese titles did turn out to be a piece from BTTB, it was not “Sonatine.” Still, I enjoyed playing “Energy Flow” and a few other pieces that I recognized.
Then I went on-line yet again. I thought that maybe if I dug deep enough into the Google results that I would find another sheet music collection, or maybe a transcription by a fan. There were some promising hits, but they didn’t pan out. I was almost certain that the sheet music existed, so it was very frustrating to be unable to locate it.
I also stopped by Sakamoto’s official website to see if there were any links to sheet music there. There weren’t. But there was a letter from Sakamoto. It started with this stark announcement: “In the end of June, I was diagnosed with throat cancer.”
Oh, no.
The news made me so sad. I don’t know what kind of prognosis he was given, but he did also say, “I promise to return after a full recovery.” I hope he will be able to keep that promise.
While the news made me sad, it also made me even more determined to learn to play “Sonatine” as a sort of homage. Perhaps it will have greater symbolic significance if I can manage to learn it on my own, because I’ll have to work for it. So that will be my musical project for the next few weeks. I’ll also make good use of my new sheet music by learning to play “Energy Flow” by heart. With every note I’ll be sending the composer my best wishes for recovery.
My kids like to make up their own words, like “keegher.” But sometime their made-up words sound an awful like words that already exist. Here’s a good example taken from a conversation I had yesterday with Livia.
Livia: Knock, knock. Mommy: Who’s there? Livia: Hooker. (I paused for a second, but decided to go along with the joke.) Mommy: Hooker who? Livia: Hooker Mommy! (Oh, dear.) Mommy: Um, Livia, what’s a hooker? Livia: Great and smiley and cute. That’s why I called you that.
She then proceeded to explain knock-knock jokes to me. She told me that first you say “knock, knock,” and then, when the other person answers, you say something funny.
Once upon a time, you would not let me brush your hair. You would scream, squirm, run away, or cry, “Ow! Ow! Ow!” It was frustrating, and sometimes you’d go whole days without getting your hair brushed, simply because I didn’t want to deal with it.
I finally broke down and said something terrible. I said, “Livia, you need to let me brush your hair. If you don’t, spiders will start living in it! You don’t want spiders living in your hair, do you?”
You did not. You absolutely did not want spiders in your hair. You immediately let me brush it.
As the weeks went by, you discovered that having your hair brushed wasn’t so horrible. Soon you started letting me put your hair up. We discovered how cute you look in pigtails. We had some great mother-daughter bonding moments.
That little lie of mine worked so well that I didn’t feel bad about it at first. I had purchased a lot of good behavior and happy moments at the cost of one tiny spider-shaped smudge on my soul. I reasoned that my lie was close to the truth anyway. It is possible to get pests living in your hair, just not usually spiders.
But then one day Marshall wanted to brush your hair. When I asked why, he replied, “To make sure there are no tangles or spiders in there.” Then I felt bad. It was indeed a small lie, but it was misinformation that I didn’t want either of you to carry too far forward in life. I mean, if you mentioned something like that at school, people might make fun of you for your ignorance.
So I told you the truth. I was surprised at how well you took it. Neither of you seemed upset. You just absorbed the new information and moved on.
As I brushed your hair last night before bedtime, I marveled at how soft and shiny it is. I said, “Beautiful.” As you danced away, you replied, “Super beautiful!”
Getting ourselves dressed up for formal events always seems like a bigger deal than the event itself. We’re not used to dressing nicely. It causes us to do unusual things, like these:
1. I really did tailor Marshall’s pants with masking tape and safety pins. All the dress pants that I could find for him were either too short or too long. By the time we figured out that perfect pants weren’t going to magically appear, we had run out of time for proper tailoring. Hence the masking tape. For the record, the tape held, and the pants looked pretty good, I think.
2. I really did break my long-held anti-paisley rule.
Dress With Paisley Print Wait, don’t I hate paisley?
3. The most unbelievable of all: I really did wear 4-inch heels!
Four-Inch Heels Maybe I was overcompensating for the paisley?
Below by Meg McKinlay, A-: On the day that Cassie was born prematurely, her family’s town ceased to be. The local government had already built a new town in a different location so that they could flood the old one as part of a dam project. Cassie, who never lived in the old town, is obsessed with it and the lake that now covers it. Thanks to her premature birth, she has a breathing problem. She’s supposed to swim laps every day to strengthen her lungs, but she hates the town swimming pool. So she starts swimming in the lake. As the water level starts dropping, parts of the old town start to resurface, and maybe some secrets well. I think Below is a beautifully written book, but I never really understood Cassie’s obsession. I mean, I got why she was supposed to be fascinated, but I never felt like her level of obsessions was justified. Also, I was well into the book before I realized that it took place in Australia. While I was impressed in a way with the story’s universality, I think it might have been more interesting if the location had been highlighted.
The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean, A+: I loved this book. It’s a collection of stories about the science and the scientists behind the periodic table of elements, and it is absolutely engrossing. Recommended.
Elidor by Alan Gardner, B+: Four siblings are magically transported to a land called Elidor, where a man named Malebron enlists their aid in finding four magical treasures that he believes will save his world. The siblings return home and hide the treasures, but they soon discover that something is trying to enter their world to steal the treasures. The ending was so abrupt that I kept flipping through the last few pages (all blank) looking for the rest of the text, which just wasn’t there. I wondered at first if I had gotten an incomplete edition. But no. That’s just the way the story ended. It left me feeling cheated.
Language Visible by David Sacks, B+: This is the story of the English alphabet, tackled one letter at a time. Alas, the format leads to a somewhat tedious read, as most of the letters followed similar routes into our alphabet. The book would probably be much better if read a little bit at a time. That makes sense, as it originated as a series of columns for a newspaper. In any event, it contains enough interesting information to make it a worthwhile read.
The Last Dragonslayer by Jasper Fforde, A-: The Last Dragonslayer takes place in an alternate reality where magic is used in a way similar to how we use electricity, England is divided into a bunch of independently ruled kingdoms, and orphans are sold into indentured servitude at the age of 12. The main character is Jennifer Strange, an orphan who was sold to the owner of Kazam, an employment agency for magicians. Her master has gone missing and so it’s up to her to take care the business and its ragtag collection of magicians. Not quite as good as Fforde’s Thursday Next series (while sometimes seeming very similar to it), it is nevertheless a fun read. Recommended.
The Song of the Quarkbeast by Jasper Fforde, A-: Sequel to The Last Dragonslayer and equally good.
Moonwalking With Einstein by Joshua Foer, A-: This is the story of how Joshua Foer (brother of author Jonathan Safran Foer) learned to master ancient memory techniques and subsequently won the United States Memory Championship. Interesting, informative, and fun.
