You can’t help but be concerned for the future education of your children when you look at the school newsletter and you see this headline.
Regains? You mean it lost its accreditation?
That’s just peachy.
I was working in my office yesterday when my husband brought Marshall in to play for a while. I was concentrating on my work and so I didn’t pay much attention to what either of them was doing. Occasionally Marshall would grab a candle or a picture or something else that he wasn’t supposed to have. Eventually this wore down his dad’s patience, so they left. As my husband carried the boy out of the room, he said, “Sorry about the mess.”
“Mess? What mess?” I thought to myself, but I was too busy with work to worry about it. When I finally got up and walked around the desk, this is what I saw.
Thanks, Hon.
Dear Livia,
Your grandmother once called you Little Miss Smiley. That name fits you so well. If you’re not careful, Smiley will become your permanent nickname, because you smile for almost anything. Here’s an example.
We often put you on the floor in the dining room, which we have gated off from the rest of the house. You crawl around, looking for things to amuse yourself. To the casual observer, you’re intent on what your doing, but watching you carefully, I notice that you often look up to see if anyone is paying attention to you. If you look up too many times and find that you don’t have an audience, that’s when you start to cry. If you look up and see me watching you, you beam at me, as if to say, “Hi, Mommy! Aren’t I clever/beautiful/wonderful?”
You are, Sweetie!
Love,
Mom
Dear Marshall,
Few things in my life have been as interesting or as enjoyable as helping you learn how to speak. I wish we could record it all with a video camera, so that I could create a movie with all the best parts. But while the end result would be nice, years of having a camera in our faces probably wouldn’t be so pleasant. We will just have to make do with the written word.
You are a language artist, Sweetie. Keep painting these beautiful memories for me.
Love,
Mom
Just as one sends a letter from place to place, one may send, to one’s self or others, letters through time. Photographs, mementos and journal entries are letters we send into the future; and by writing or speaking about events gone by we can communicate to some extent with the past. To do this regularly and intelligently is to expand our being in time.
from Time and the Art of Living by Robert Grudin
I become increasingly concerned with my usage of time as I grow older, because I realize that, while each day still arrives with a full complement of minutes and hours, I have fewer days to which to look forward. It is hard to contemplate such things, but I’m glad to think of them now, rather than twenty years from now, when I have twenty years less time to enjoy. I very much want to enjoy my time, to make something of it, and to reach the end of my life knowing that I used it well.
It is not such an easy thing to do. People talk the good talk—“Carpe diem!” “There’s no time like the present!” “Life it too short to…”—but hardly anyone seems able to maintain a focused awareness of time passing. A proper awareness of Time is, I think, part of living a full, happy life.
One day I came across an interesting quote about Time and it led me to its source, a book called Time and the Art of Living by Robert Grudin. I borrowed a copy of the book from the library, but failed to finish it before it was due back. I then acquired a copy of my own, but again failed to read it. I have owned it now for years but have yet to read more than a fraction of it. It is ironic that I can’t seem to make time for this book about Time.
As I type this post, Livia is sitting in my lap. Just a moment ago, she grabbed the book (which is next to the computer) with both hands and stuck it in her mouth to chew on it. That is a lovely metaphor, isn’t it? This baby with, I presume, absolutely no awareness of Time, simply does what she wants most to do in life, which is to devour all that lies before her. She doesn’t wait. She doesn’t ponder. She doesn’t plan. She just grabs and chews.
A few days ago, I picked up Time and the Art of Living and tried again to read it. I still find much of it difficult to read. Parts are written in a scholarly style that is, to me, superficially opaque. It requires effort just to get the meaning of the words and even more to understand them. Perhaps some of it is simply over my head. But there are parts that are simple, clear, immediately beautiful (like the quote at the beginning of this post), and that is what keeps me returning to the book. Those parts make it worth the effort to read and understand the whole of it.
I think I approached the book poorly in the past. It is not a book to be read in one sitting. The author probably never intended it to be. He wrote, “I have written . . . a kind of moving picture, a series of statements and reflections which readers may follow at their own pace. Rather than leading readers to preordained conclusions, I wish to make them stop and think. . . . The blank spaces between my writings are as important as the writings themselves.”
Now my approach will be to read one section at a time. Technically, I should put the book aside during August, which I have proclaimed Rainbow of Reading Month, but I’m going to make an exception for this book. I just really want to read it now. Wish me luck with it.
Dear Livia,
You’re so beautiful. Your hair and eyes are brown. Does that sound plain? It’s not! You have big, pretty eyes surrounded by thick lashes. There’s a touch of red in your hair. We can’t be sure how red your hair will look when you get older, but I think the color is going to be magnificent.
You’re so curious, just like a cat. As soon as Marshall and I start to play a game or read a book on the floor, you’re there to watch and grab. If I block off any area of my office with pillows and boxes, you headbutt the pillows and boxes until you force a way through. I just plugged my computer in, and within seconds you had your hand on the plug. That’s dangerous, Sweetie! But it was new and you had to go for it. You can’t help yourself.
You’re so strong. By Marshall’s 2nd birthday party (July 2), you could crawl. Then a few days later, I looked down and you were sitting up straight, all by yourself. Just a few days after that, you were pulling yourself into a standing position. That’s right! You’re not even 7 months old yet and you’re already standing!
Livia The Beautiful, The Curious, The Strong.
You are amazing and I love you so much!
Mom
A conversation from a few weeks ago—
Me: I found three millipedes in the house this morning. I couldn’t bear to kill them, so I threw them outside.
Hubby: Don’t do that!
Me: Why not?
Hubby: Because those ones already know how to get in, and they’ll tell the others!
Here, perhaps, the reason why I get so little writing done.
“It is certainly necessary for a writer to have ideas in his head,” agreed Poirot.
from Death in the Air
I have decided that August will be Rainbow of Reading Month. That is, for the entire month of August, I will only read books that have colors in their titles. I will count words like “plum” and “chocolate” as colors, whether or not they were used in that sense in the title, because it suits my love of wordplay.
Some titles I’m considering:
I might also go to the library and pick out some books based purely on their titles. Who knows what colorful gems I might discover!
Growing up, I always thought I would marry an Italian. I lived in Connecticut, just north of New Haven, and there, as my friend once put it, you are either Italian or married to an Italian. But I moved to Rhode Island. Here in my new hometown, you are either Portuguese and/or named Mike. I was not named Mike, so I married a Portuguese man. Now I am Portuguese-by-marriage.
When I married into a Portuguese family, I didn’t know what to expect. The first thing I noticed was their fondness for food, particularly seafood. Personally, I don’t mind a little bacalhao every once in a while, but I get tired of having to pull shellfish, which I don’t like, out of every other dish. I also love dessert, but I don’t need a dozen different desserts at every family gathering. Unless we’re talking baked custards. Or biscoito. Or popovers.
Arg! The Portuguese are making me fat!
Arg! And all that seafood is making me talk like a pirate!
But as much as I love the Portuguese, not to mention their witty sayings (e.g., “The sheets make the peace”), there are times when they’re just plain silly. Take my father-in-law’s obsession with all things Portuguese. He goes on and on about the simplest things that he used to enjoy in Portugal. He seems to imply that if those things are also available here in the U.S., it is only because the Portuguese people made them first.
My husband and I have created a running gag out of this idea, expanding and reinterpreting it to mean that everything in the world was invented by (or first discovered by) the Portuguese. So, for example, if one of us were to remark that the piano sounded nice, the other might say, “Did you know that the Portuguese invented the piano?” And the proper reply would be, “Yes, I know. They did that right after they invented music!”
This gag has nearly gotten me in trouble on several occasions. For example, at my sister-in-law’s wedding shower, we girls were discussing where one might take a dress to get it altered, when my mother-in-law mentioned that there used to be a tailoring shop nearby with a Portuguese seamstress. She went on and on about how good the seamstress was, even after being told that the tailoring shop was long gone. I had to bite my tongue to keep myself from saying, “Hey, did you know that the Portuguese invented sewing? Yeah, that was right after they invented cloth!”
In addition to such fun games, there are other positives to being Portuguese-by-marriage. It connects me and my children, however nebulously, with the spirit of exploration (Vasco da Gama, Ferdinand Magellan), philosophy (Baruch Spinoza), and “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” (Meredith Vieira). We, the Portuguese, have great music (Fado), a popular language (over 200 million speakers), and a multitude of wines. We are many, we are proud, and we polka!
Well, some people polka. I may be Portuguese-by-marriage, but my feet are still American-by-birth. I don’t dance much, but maybe my kids will learn how to polka someday.
I sometimes look at my life and wonder how I got here. This Portuguese-by-marriage life is not what I envisioned when I was a child. But back then I hadn’t met my husband yet, and I had no idea how attractive, loving, and wonderful the Portuguese could be. I’m glad I found out.
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