We interrupt this faux-art-blog for a word about P

Sometimes you just have to announce it:

This is a public service announcement regarding the amazing-ness of my husband. Let is be known: P is tops. He is. He wins. You're the winner, P! Sweet P. Sweet P who is returning at 1:30am tonight from a ten day work trip and has to be at work at 7:00am to present to parents at 10:00am and the faculty at 3:00pm. Sweet P who leaves in two sleeps after that to keynote at a groovy conference in Malaysia because he's so darn good at what he does. Sweet P who has a lot on his plate and is working very hard and is always hopeful and never seems to be buried by life. Sweet P who is capable and kind and so gosh darn functional. That very same Sweet P supported this wife giving up 60% of her decent and not-too-hard-to-earn salary for ethereal reasons. Wow.

He has always been solid when I've been flaky. He has been positive and patient when I've been here. He has always been my biggest fan. We moved back to good ol' Singapore for a lot of reasons, but one we can't ignore is the financial stability, and I've gone and knocked it off the rails to pursue...well...to pursue something.

I promise I'll make you proud P. And the horrible thing is, I know if I don't, you'll still be as amazing as you are. Three cheers for supportive P!

Catch-up

The last eight weeks:

1. Mooncake folly: About a billion months ago, Gus and I went to a neighborhood mooncake making party. We soon realized from the looks on everyone's faces that our bewilderment on the process and the directions we required to complete the process was the equivalent of an alien showing up at a Christmas cookie decorating party and asking, "Now, which is the cookie and which is the frosting?" "What exactly do you mean by 'spread the frosting on the cookie?'" "Do I use the green sprinkles or the red sprinkles? How many sprinkles exactly? All over the frosting? How many milimeters of frosting?" We were high maintenance and worrisome. And, horror of horrors, we ATE our mooncakes as soon as we made them. It was sort of a Homer Simpson moment looking around at all the other tables with pretty mooncakes in pretty boxes and Gus and I with full mouths and sticky fingers and mooncake guilt.

2. Perspective: A baby elephant strolled down the beach, and I went wild, urging Gus to go over and pet it. Gus looked over his shoulder and said, "Nah. I've seen enough elephants." I was pretty sure I'd failed as a parent in every regard until the neighbor came over with his Golden Retriever and Gus lost his mind with delight. It was a dog you could pet. A dog that wasn't feral. A dog without rabies. 

3. Legos: The male people in this house have Lego fever. I'm considering using Legos as leverage for all the atrophied skills I worry over. Want to build? Ride your bike. 

4. Waiting. We're waiting to learn about the margin in our lives. We're waiting for P to return from a big long work trip. We're waiting for Gram's cinnamon rolls. We're waiting for our winged bean crop on the back patio to be ready for harvest since the last crop was STOLEN by someone who obviously does not understand how desperately a three-year-old waits to harvest his winged beans.

5. Drawing. We tried to draw a Christmas card, and it just didn't work. We're on plan 42. We'll get there. We did eke out something for our sketchbook exchange:

 

6. Mustafa Centre. After ten years in Singapore, I went there today, and it was amazing. You should all be worried about your Christmas gifts.

 

Outward thinking

Today we think about positive things that are always true:

Generosity is happening all around us.

Dear friends who have given us more than we can ever return served us a decadent dinner on these placemats in June. I ogled them. And last week, my own set arrived in the mail.

I love Indian block prints with my whole whole heart!

Then I came home to a pile of hand-me-down clothes from the neighbors upstairs. And dear P took dear Gus to the pool this afternoon so I could draw and write and listen to podcasts. And in return, I'm channeling all that love into this card for a generous writer who mentored me this summer. Thank you JL for being so wise and so patient with someone so silly.

People will surprise you. Look for it:

This last week I spent three days on a remote island of Indonesia with 110 fourteen-year-olds on a field trip. Some especially quirky kiddos were amongst us. And as always, the group of people on the planet that gets the worst reputation (those selfish adolescent brats!) were the ones that humbled me the most and restored my faith in the goodness of humans and reminded me to always always always be kinder than you need to be. That said, I slept 13 hours last night to recover.

I have had some stupid weeks being tired and being stretched too thin and being frustrated in the right-now. They are self-inflicted woes, and they are really rather funny and embarrassing when you think on my laments, "Oh, if only I only worked part time but could still afford to keep the nanny...."  The common thread in all self-inflicted woe is looking inward. It's no good, people! Look away!

And so, this week I am trying to look outside of my inner-ridiculousness to a week where I notice what is good and joy-filled and worth emulating. Although, I do worry this will impact my sense of humor since the day I cried because the island had run out of quinoa and consequently panicked that staying here was ruining our health was super duper funny in retrospect. Perhaps another truth we'll live out is, "You can be ridiculous as long as you make fun of it later and don't ever do it again."

It's a long-winded road from guilt-ville

I repost this blog entry with a disclaimer and a wise quote reminded to me by wise JB:

Sometimes I tell the same joke three times in one day to my three classes. When I'm feeling sociological, I like to deliver it identically. I stand in the same spot in the room, and I carefully re-enact it to examine reactions. It is never the same. There's one class that thinks I am hi-larious. Doesn't matter what I say. I'm funny-fun-lady. There's another that either doesn't get the joke or doesn't even realize I'm in the room or has caught on that my jokes are really lame. The third class is hit and miss, and it's a real victory when they chuckle.

My blog posts have a worse ratio. What I think is a real side-splitter more often than not causes others alarm. I think a good rule of thumb is that if something makes you want to reassure me, then I probably meant it to be funny. My sense of humor, as most of my students and one tough-sell of a Gus will agree, is off.

"Everything that happens to you, belongs to you." Anne LaMott. Here is what is happening--and yes, really, I think it is funny:

The past two Augusts, I've convinced myself that only bad mothers go to work. I think about all the scenarios Gus encounters all day that I could help him process, and I tell myself he is turning into a horrible man as a result of my neglect. I start reading Cup of Jo and think wicked thoughts. I perseverate on the value of autumn and tractors and I make myself depressed, slightly insane, and agitated. Gus senses this. He has a weird mother. She smiles too big when he comes in her classroom after school. She hugs him too tight. She asks him, "Was anyone mean today?" and gets too close to his face. She takes the Fisher Price people and role plays potential character building scenarios. "See this farmer, Gus? This farmer is that big kid next door that doesn't pick up his toys from the yard and borrows our playdough but never invites us over to play..."  or  "Noah and his wife here are the bus driver and the bus monitor. When Mrs Noah says buckle your seat belt..." This makes Gus angry. ANGRY. He tells me his feelings. He has a lot of feelings. He draws on things that are not paper. He is as much fun to be around as I am. And of course, I interpret this as the result of me being a working mother, and the cycle beats itself into a wild froth.

I told this all to my running partner, and she just laughed. At first I was mildly offended, but it's possible that's the best reaction any of us could hope for.

I like to look at my Goodreads account in August to take a barometer reading. Parenting Without Fear. They Called Themselves the KKK. Third-Culture Children of Educators. Love and Logic: The Toddler Years. Honestly. That list needs a glass of wine and a don't-take-yourself-so-seriously pill.

Years and years ago my sister said something that she didn't realize would become a refrain in my head for beating me back into sanity. I was having hysterics over something ridiculous and would not calm down. I was crying that something was all my fault: I ruined Christmas, or there was no world peace, or everyone ate too much at Thanksgiving dinner and had stomachaches. She looked at me, with the sensibility and the frankness of an older sister and said, "I've never met anyone so insecure with such an enormous sense of self-importance."

You betcha. She's sitting right here. She's a bad mother with the capability to influence the planet into darkness and ruin. Guilty.

Tonight, I attended Gus's first-ever Back to School Night. Given my book reading and my train to guilt-land, I was in rare form. Both Gus and I had gotten antibiotics that day. I stayed home from work to take him to the doctor. I may have bought some expensive guilt Legos post-doctor-visit that I'm hoping no one in the house mentions. At the start, it seemed like the evening might be normal: It was a lovely group of people who seem to really love their jobs and my child. Gus drew a self portrait that was magnificent:

(He's probably inspired by his super artistic dad who just made something really fab)

But then it happened. The parents were asked to leave behind a self-portrait of themselves drawn in their non-dominant hand. Now, I need to mention that something had already agitated my weak and grace-less mind. I chose a very specific seat, and a group of fairly non-threatening people sat around me. Peace prevailed. Then, out of nowhere, BO lady sat down. I am so glad BO lady made it to her kid's Back to School Night and didn't worry about washing prior, but it really set me off. As a result, my safety net of strangers moved. Couples would walk to my row to sit down and the wives would get a whiff of BO lady and mouth to their husbands, "not here." But there I sat. Alone. Rows empty around me except for BO lady. It got my crazy motor running.

So, the parents are all supposed to be self-portraiting in their weaker hand. I look around and see that virtually every other parent is not following the rules. They are just drawing! They are making happy faces that do not look shaky and awkward! People---drop the crayons! Regrettably, instead of turning on my social filter I loudly proclaimed, "Looks like everyone is choosing not to use their non-dominant hand." No one likes the smarmy lady. No one likes the weirdo that comments on rules. No one likes the self-righteous woman wearing deodorant. I have no idea why I spoke but speak I did and their looks replied more than my ridiculous words. And so I left. I turned, I left, I got in the car and texted Patrick that I'd let the family down. (inflated-sense-of-self-importance-Becky ALMOST texted the teacher to apologize for ruining the evening)

So there I was, a grace-less lady who smelled just fine but was riddled with guilt and social angst and a sinus infection. It was August in full depressive force. And as always, a little magic happened just when I was thinking it was time to make that appointment with HR to break my contract. I walked into a little boy's room who was almost asleep. He rolled over, he didn't tell me he hated me, and he said, "I just need to hear a song about a star, mom." So I sang to his request, and held him tight and prayed over all three feet five inches of him and hoped that he would have character that definitely transcends mine. I thanked God that for now, his self image is pretty darn good (those lashes in the drawing are spot on). He is happy. He is okay. He is not saying rude things in front of other adults like his mother. He is playing every day and learning every day and amazing me every day. He is all right. You could feel the all-rightness in the room even with his emphasymic-seal cough. I left that cozy boy of goodness, took a deep breath, and realized I am just three days until September.

It is going to be okay. And like my running partner wisely modeled----we are all just going to laugh. Especially at ourselves.

It is THAT time

It is that time. That time that is back-to-school and shifting from introvert brain to fake-extrovert brain (I try not to tell people what to do, but read Quiet. You'll understand the human race so much better.). It is the time when Gus's naughties go on over-drive because the adults in his life are busy and distracted. It is the time when everyone gets colds. It is the time when I say things I shouldn't. It is that time.

It is time to make soup!

And soup I made. I resurrected my Czech self and sliced cabbage and garlic and infused that pot with all the immunity boosting goodness of which I know. Celery root was replaced by enoki muchrooms, and I cut and chopped my way back to sanity:

These continue to be tiny times. Tiny times where in the words of Linda Sue Park via Betsy Hall we eke out nine tentative lines a day on our half-baked novel, we breathe deeply, we aim for kindness (because George Saunders changed our lives with this commencement address), and we make soup.

Last post I promised art. And here's what I came up with:

What's awful and hilarious about this stack of almost-in-the-card-business goodness is that there's a misprint on the back of every darn card. If I could learn to speak Mandarin, I might be able to swing this card gig in Singapore. But honestly, I'm not sure that's where my heart is. If what I do every day is what matters, then it's nine lines, scribbles for friends, and lots of chasing sweaty Gus.

It's THAT time.

 

Being Luminous

This summer, at writing bootcamp, an amazing Newbery Honor author urged us fledgling writers to "be luminous." I'm trying to decide if that applies to blogging.

Things that are not luminous:

I currently base a day's success on how many vegetables I have hidden in the boys' foods. Yesterday's triumphs: clandestine veggies in oatmeal, cookies, popsicles, and smoothies. It was a five star day.

I am not writing or creating art. I am in creativity limbo, and it will end tomorrow when I will get my act together. It will happen! A big Monday is a-coming!

Things that ARE luminous:

My sister. She sent me two hand sewn skirts this summer (skirts with pockets!). They are wearable quilts of genius: 

New teachers. We are the welcoming committee at our school this year, and I feel pretty ridiculous that everyone needs far less help than I need on an annual basis, and I've lived here for almost eight years. They are competent. And kind. It's silly. I keep hoping someone will rampage, but they seem to just be pretty swell.

Tuesday. After I get my act together, there will be art to post to this. There will be works written. There will be peace on earth. Maybe.

 

 

WallowING

I am full of "ings" this week.

FearING ticks.

SqurimING awkwardly.

ScribblING nervously.

WalkING quickly.

WorryING. 

It's one of those big comfort-zone buster kind of weeks where you wonder what you're doing and why you're doing it and you come out better on the other end. I'm seven days from the other end, so right now it just feels like some sort of introvert torture camp, but really it's a writer's retreat full of talented people and great ideas and one big ol' awkward lady from Singapore. 

I'm so flustered I can't remember my conversation starters, and I'm also so concerned about making this time count that I'm talking more than normal. It's a bad contradiction, and at night when I am sequestered away in a cabin all my own, I remind myself of core rules to follow in perilous times: Be humble. Be generous. Smile. Listen. Ask other people questions about themselves. Remember everyone's names. Drink lots of water. 

So far, I'm well hydrated. 

Birthday and bon voyage

In 48 hours, we will be on a plane and grandma-bound. The following five weeks will be hikes and mud pies and raspberries and good microbrews. There will be lots of hugs and slow mornings. I'm excited, and I'm probably tuning out until late July. 

We'll kick off the summer with a birthday shout-out to dear JC. May all her birthday year dreams come true. And may our upcoming flight be toddler-drama-free. Yahoo!

Time to waste time by reflecting on people that probably resent time wasters

Tis the season at work. The season of emotions running high and workloads increasing. The season of students moving and friends relocating and upheaval in spades. The season to spend inordinate time on one's personal laptop to play with Adobe Illustrator in the name of wall art for next years' classroom. Probably not the best use of time. Very satisfying.

 

Gifting

It's birthday, Mother's Day, moving day, and goodbyes month. And that calls for art. Some card ideas and with which I'm tinkering:

 

The home stretch

It's the time of year when people start counting days. Thirty-two teaching days. Fifty-one Singapore days. Two public holidays. My Gus is counting fingers to ensure that he's ready when that fourth birthday rolls around. (352 days)

As the end of year approaches and the tidying up begins, our school is taking pictures of teachers for READ posters. My former poster was immortalized by clever L, who toted me on holiday (I wish I could have seen customs' faces when opening her suitcase), to evening bookclubs, and all the way to Starbucks for a post-run latte:

Flat Becky had herself a time. While those Flat Becky pics rank pretty high in the super-nice-things-friends-have-done-for-me files, I detested that poster of me looking wistful and all Manifest Destiny about poetry. This year, I held up a beloved coloring book and got to design my own background. I altered a former doodle from Gus's first birthday:

My sister was kind enough to point out that the title says "Read", and I'm a literature teacher holding a wordless coloring book. 

Ha ha ha.

Never you mind. That happy Coloring Book Becky is gleefully counting down days until she and Flat Becky converge in Ithaca for two nights with their L: 66. We've many missed lattes and long run-talks to make up for.

And at the same time, I'm dreading the June day until I have to say "see you later" to true rocks in my Singapore life---dear G and K. I scribble at night things that make me think on them, and they are piecing together into a wee goodbye gift:

Thankfully, they remain on the same continent and reliant on Nespresso pods. I have volunteered to be their mule, and there will be rendezvous.

I can't wait to get it on the calendar!

Why we continue the conversation

I get giddy when design, digital connections, science, and art intersect. Add NPR to that mix, and I'm a sloppy fool. So, when Radiolab ran a story that led to this blog post that led to this art, I had to share it with all my students and all my teaching buddies and annoy over 70 people.

But the connections are REAL and the world is SMALL and art and writing matters. I want those folks to see that. Case in point: The husband and I spent our two years in Prague packing this book around to pubs and also reading the author's occasional writings on blogs and in the English language newspapers. On Goodreads.com recently, P posted a review. And last week the author wrote to P, thanked him for the review, and sent an advance copy of his next book for P to look over. Wowsers!

Lastly, to keep the conversations going and link lives, a gaggle of colleagues and I are ending our year with an eight week sketchbook swap. So proud of these brave sketchers.

Buck up you big baby!

This week I juiced for five days, wallowed in caffeine withdrawal-misery, and fantasized about the life of full time writers and artists. I watched this video by writer/illustrator Oliver Jeffers (Totally delightful. Take the three minutes. And buy the moose book.). I worried about North Korea. I sighed a whole bunch. 

In those self-pitying moments of discontent I often find myself quickly and fiercely humbled. And I was. I read The Artist in the Office, and these quotes said, "Grow up, you big-dumb-time-wasting baby."

"For six months, ignore the engine of worry and get to work...do what you can for fifteen minutes." (Summer Pierre)

"Procrastination is not downtime. Procrastination takes a lot of energy and leads to guilt and critical self talk." (Summer Pierre)

"Fantasizing about pursuing our art full-time, we fail to pursue it part-time----or at all." (Julia Cameron)

"If you can't do your art--even a little--in the life you have now, with the person you are right this second, YOU MAY NEVER DO IT." (Summer Pierre)

I also managed to squeeze into those five days of self-centeredness some seriously mis-guided motherhood decisions. New mothers out there, take note: TAKE THE DAY OFF TO GO TO YOUR SON'S SCHOOL BIRTHDAY PARTY. YOU'LL WANT TO SMOTHER YOURSELF LOOKING AT THE PHOTOS OF YOU NOT BEING THERE.

All that stinkin' thinkin' put aside, I feel better. I'm now using my fifteen minutes, and they've led to some finished products. Here's a sneak peek at a commissioned piece:

I like the stained-glassy look that came out of this.

I also decorated some cupcakes for a pretty fabulous little dude. I hope they softened the sting of those bonehead moves I made earlier this week. New mothers, also take note: BY THREE THEY KNOW WHAT DAY THEIR BIRTHDAY IS. YOU CAN'T PRETEND THEIR BIRTHDAY IS SATURDAY OR THEY WILL THINK YOU FORGOT IT. SUCK IT UP AND CELEBRATE ON TWO DAYS.

It's humble-cupcakes and fifteen minutes a day. And I think that will turn out a lot better than five days of pathetic wallowing on a liquid diet.

Tiny times

After re-submitting (emphasis on the RE) Aetna reimbursements took three hours of my life, I did two little things that were a lot more satisfying:

1. I read this book. It's Anne LaMott meets Anthony Bourdain (pre-fatherhood) meets Mary Karr's Lit. I can't decide if I'd recommend it or not, but it did make me want to visit St. George's Anglican church. I'm binging on memoir, starting this at the same time as this (the latter is about their friendship and has inspired me to write about my own Sherie V. Her sordid past doesn't include AA, but it does include a bad relationship with Pepsi and many a sketchy afternoon talking officers out of speeding tickets).

2. I scanned this doodle:

Tiny times around here.

Tonight

One son early to bed + one husband over at the neighbor's + one This American Life = One card colored.

Customized Birthday Love

The oxygen is working! I'm a-doodling!

There are many good birthdays this week: Sweet M from Praha, BC's grand 5-0, talented JB of Bergamot Orange, and spunky LD (who we will sorely miss next year).

I want to color this card up differently for all of those fab folks and send it with a personalized name in the blank in the middle.

I'm thinking on custom cards this week. If I were to post my nine-doored cards on Etsy and tailor the images and writing inside to the purchaser, would anyone scoop 'em up? And would it be worth my time? We wonder.

 

When in Rome...one delivers zucchini bread

There's this burn barrel about eight feet from my patio where all of my neighbors burn their Joss paper money from time to time. Oranges and incense crowd around it. It's really interesting and beautiful, and I really don't mind it except when they set that thing alight while my son is busily chalking it up six inches from the roaring flames. Okay, I mind it a lot, as it also leaves a layer of ash on my furniture and stinks up my yard and makes relaxing outside with your wine-filled-with-floaters a little challenging. But, When In Rome. Which is why I should not grouse that I've been the recipient of three condo complaints in three days. One was just from a screaming auntie telling Gus to quit having fun at 1:00 in the afternoon. He was standing in the grass. The other was a nervous security guard having to quiet down my patio for the second time. He backed off when he saw it was just four adults chatting normally at a normal evening hour. But today we got the big, "Three strikes and yer out" lecture when Oscar's chalk art was finally formally reprimanded. We've been told to spread the word, folks. Chalk art---verboten!

So little Banksy and I are having to take our work to shadier places. And honestly, on an island where you can't chew gum, I can actually wrap my brain around the horror of our actions a little bit. A little bit. 

As someone who has spent a lot of her life worrying about how much time she takes in the ATM, or thinking that the car that's honking is absolutely honking at her because she is doing something tragically inconvenient, or going out of her way to never ever cut in line or be late for a meeting or not be fully prepared for any number of documents you might have to present at passport control, I am struggling a wee bit to discern if I've morphed into the ugly American. We do collect a lot of snails. There is a patch of grass that may not grow back due to some digging. Sometimes, sometimes we turn up a song called "Alabama Chicken" very loudly and sing the chorus with gusto. 

All of this coincides with a hilarious English-as-another-language moment with my students. I have these "choices" cards where I read some inane statement and the kids have to make a quick decision. It's supposed to be based on brain research and warm us up for some serious thinkin'. "Would you rather eat a raw egg or a slice of raw bacon?" kind of things. "Would you rather give up your birthday forever or give up your siblings?" They love it. The last one was, "Would you rather be chased by a charging bull or a roaring lion?" And one sweet student, wonderful dear student, got this disgusted look on his face and said, "That's ridiculous. Why would anyone be chased by either of those things?" I tried to cajole him into guessing. I mean, come on, I know it isn't going to happen but neither is the loss of your birthday (unless you chalk art on the mean streets of this condo!). He stared at me, brow furrowed, and finally said, "A roaring lime?" He thought I'd asked if he'd rather be chased by a bowl or a lime. Yes. Yes, that IS a stupid question.

I've been trying to think of how to pose my neighborly dilemma in the "choices" jar later this week. "Would you rather be neighbors with the family that waves and smiles and doesn't make a peep from 9:00pm until 7:00am but that sometimes draws repetitive patterns of squid and octopus on the walking paths and may have been responsible for the snails that crawled in your kitchen window because we lined them up under there when you had them all open and they move far faster than one might expect--OR--would you rather not?

Hm. I guess that is a stupid question too. When in Rome. When in Rome one bakes something really good as an apology. Gus and I have some serious baking to do!

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We also have some baking to do for an upcoming birthday bash. Gus is six weeks from age three, and so I've reserved the poolside for cupcake eating and unorganized preschool mayhem. We ignored his birthday for two years, and he's catching on. Goodie bags, here we come!

PS. Today's video: Killer Snails.

Recycled topic: Living well 101

It's been almost three years of almost:

Almost back in shape.

Almost drawing again.

Almost Skyping all those people I've told I'll Skype.

Almost enjoying long hours building block towers that get knocked down over and over and over and over.

Almost writing.

Almost parenting.

Almost making it home for Christmas without the flu.

Almost maintaining friendships.

Almost sleeping through the night.

Almost hanging all the pictures in the eight months "new" apartment.

Almost figuring it out.

Almost buying a house.

Almost handling that last interaction with grace (before it went tragically south).

Almost learning Czech.

Almost making it through the whole year within my sick day allotment.

Almost attending the 47 dinners I've canceled.

Almost grading all those papers on time.

Almost using "swag" correctly in front of my seventh graders

Almost giving up coffee.

Almost tackling that skin rash.

Almost answering the phone.

Almost finding a new topic for the blog other than the cyclical, "How do I enjoy this cup of life that is handed to me?" one.

As I've alluded to 40 billion times, as someone that read wayyyyy too much Emerson in college, I know that I should take heart in the process of transcending my yucky self, but being on the verge is really unsatistfactory. I'm a lady hankering for a victory. An apex. Two and a half weeks post-sinus-surgery, I have a big ol' infection in my face. I'm thanking God it's not MRSA, but I'm also cartoon kicking the dirt and saying, "shucks!" If you knew how meticulous I have been with self-care, you would think my usual cavelier-about-doctors'-advice-self was taken over in the zombie apocalypse. I have been careful. 

And so I'm mildly defeated over dumb reasons.

I canceled another dinner date.

I came home from the doctor and was a poopy mom and didn't really enjoy setting up the lego train or (worst game of all) pretending there was a bee trying to get us so we hide under a blanket and scream (repeatedly). 

But, I did do something I haven't done in months. Maybe years. I handwrote a letter. I got out paper, and I scribbled a long note to a dear friend and in the slowness of those looping words, I reminded myself about (warning: repetitive blog topic alert!) seasons. We don't get to pick how long some seasons are, but we can wear them well and with kindness to self and others. We can quit fighting them and live them. We can shut up. This season is one of loose ends and loss of muscle tone and holding tight to what is near. Writing it out to her relaxed me enough to think past simply grinning and bearing it (at least for the afternoon), and I was able to react to my day with true delight. Gus was wild, and so he and I sang ourselves through a little Sesame Street therapy after dinner, which I did thoroughly enjoy. Prior to his shower I got out the "washable ink" (a manufacturer's joke) stamp pad, and we made marvelous fingerprint caterpillars and a few deranged handprint turkeys. And as we lay in bed thanking God for his snail collection, his friends, his dad who is admirably building houses in Cambodia with 14-year-olds, and anything covered in chocolate, I was understanding of our now. I wouldn't have chosen all of it. Almost-living isn't best for my personality. I'm disappointed I didn't get to have Nepalese food with a gaggle of interesting people tonight. But I am thankful--very thankful--I got to watch my interesting son shovel in quinoa and tell me the differences between male and female mosquitos.

Madeleine L'Engle wrote often of the necessity for "being time." The time where we walk alone, where we sit alone, where we write for ourselves, where we let our brains relax a bit so we can tackle the routines before us without animosity. I am so ridonkulously stupid that I forget it. And I waddle through days in my Almost-fog and forget to live. And to be fair, how is one supposed to feel excited about that dreadful bee game when a truly disgusting situation is going on in her newly remodeled nose? Being time PLUS giving ourselves a big fat break seems a fair balance for sanity and the ability to recognize the good in life.

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I took some being time last week while I mended to celebrate a birthday of a new friend. She doesn't resent my 5:00am texts canceling our jogs, understands why I didn't show up to the dance party, and she also eats frosting-laden cupcakes, so I like her very much:

I also bought these confectionery shaped erasers. They've totally amped up tea parties around here:

PS. It's question list time in my class! Man, is THIS a season that's easy for me to savor. My list wonders what adenoids do, what YOLO means (yes, I finally looked it up), the reasoning behind the mango shortage during Chinese New Year, why they all laugh at me when I say "swag", whether or not I can eat my lucky Mandarin oranges, how they pick a new Pope, what the US's involvement in WWI was, tenable methods for deterring a large asteroid from striking the Earth, what was the Marconi scandal, and does Chapstick really create a dependence on lip balm. Good times.

 

Story telling

I've been thinking a lot about story lately. Dear friends were discussing a family phrase for recentering worrying in their house, "Is that the truth, or is that a story you're telling yourself?" It's a good barometer reading for self-imposed-suffering.

Since Deborah Wiles worked with my students (see yesterday's post), I've been thinking on how story tells the truth, even when what you're writing is fiction. It's helping me frame some of my own stories and giving me license to write. It's also providing a more compassionate lens.

(thank you for DW)

When P and I were recovering after the tsunami, we had our stories taken from us by two different people. One journalist published an email we didn't want seen and another author lifted quotes by P and used them in painful, derogatory ways in widely-read angry diatribes. Those violations made me quit talking and question my own reliability and experience. This week, an 8th grade student was doing a research project on the tsunami of 2004 in order to write a short story for her language arts class. She found one of those "shocking but true" books that tells tales of brushes with death. And of all the stories, in that book was the tale of the family that P helped rescue eight years ago. But, P wasn't in the tale. They shared an entirely different story with an entirely different hero. At first I was enraged. For the third time we were absent from our own life-changing experience. But then I thought about what Debbie Wiles taught us, and I stepped back. That story was what that family experienced. They were panicked--like us. They were in survival mode--like us. What they wrote is what they felt, hoped for, and lived through---even if it didn't really happen. Who am I to say I'm the reliable eye-witness? I spent enough years teaching social studies to know that no account is to be trusted when we examine history. Include me in it. I'm sad we're not in the story in the book, but it's only for petty reasons. Mostly, I'm happy that family had a shared narrative that leaves them stronger and that gives their children scaffolding for making sense of something very hard and scary. I'm grateful for story, and it's not mine to judge if it's fiction or not. 

That's all sort of heavy and weary-making, so I'll think about this: Today, while I continued to recover in bed, Gus brought me a coconut he picked up on his walk home from school. Things like that make me really dig Singapore. We shook it together, heard the milk slosh around and made plans to smash it open when his dad gets home. In Gus's story, he knows that you can't stand under trees laden with coconuts or one could fall. He also knows that there are different kinds, and we usually only drink from the green ones the street vendors hack into with machetes and poke with bendy straws. He knows every snail in his yard by family order ("that's the littlest brother and the almost biggest sister"), and he also remembers not to touch milipedes or yellow fuzzy caterpillars. The sting is outrageous. Yesterday, a green snake (mildly venemous) climbed the trees in our yard and got into a second story apartment. Gus knows that snakes are dangerous and that we run and get help when we see one. The condo "uncle" who caught it, also told Gus tales of a python he caught on the eighth story last year. Gus is learning his natural world even in a city of five million people, and he is creating memories that I had. Mine featured large mouth bass, ducks, and sunfish. I picked lilacs and goldenrod and not tropical fruit. The parrots in the trees we see here would have only existed at the zoo. When we moved overseas, I worried that we'd lose our footing with nature. Thankfully--hallelujah-- nothing has been lost: the storyline is the same, the elements have just altered. That gives me great joy.

So does smashing coconuts. 

Breathing soon

We've been having a quiet time that has felt very noisy.

P and I, ever list makers, have been feeling overwhelmed with lack of lists and Groundhog Day-ish surviving. Even after long post-holiday peptalks where we informed ourselves we were not too tired to be creative, we are still working our way through evenings of season two of NCIS when we could be scribbling. And darn that Downton Abbey. It's simply no good. 

We're doing things. We work. We send a lot of house-buying emails. We have mandatory daily walks. We play with that wild Gus, and we changed four light bulbs on Tuesday. I had the rich pleasure of co-teaching (That's a lie. She did it all.) for three days in my classroom with Deborah Wiles, who reminded my students that they are not invisible voices and that our stories matter. I cried happy tears every day she was there. I've rushed through fleeting art moments. For his 37th birthday, P got a card I was too lazy to scan with a Carole King quote that did not look quite as sappy when I drew it in blue ink: "Funny how I feel, more myself with you, than anyone else that I ever knew..." He also got a from-scratch red velvet cake that stretched for five whole days.

I even sketched a collection of logo ideas (View this photo) for a friend that is doing admirable jewelry work. What's your vote?

And yesterday, I got my sinuses surgerized. My face feels like I should have ducked a little lower during that last shot, but I'm told my life will change. The new B will get so much oxygen to her brain that she'll only need four hours of sleep and will finally produce that novel. Or at least she'll make a list or two. On that list will be, "embarrassing hospital stories." They will include the doctor in Prague that ate his lunch in front of me while I sat pantless polietly listening to his diagnosis on a very cold chair. They will also include Wednesday's nurse, a lovely woman who apparently is from a far more conservative culture than mine, who had never heard of a tampon and caused me to have to explain what it was in front of six patients and several shy hospital staff. 

I will also have a list entitled, "community building 2013." We've had the rare rare rare Singapore opportunities lately to make people meals (gasp), walk their dog (wow), and send get well cards. In our insulated society of (for whom we are much grateful) domestic employees, you rarely get to open someone's refrigerator and get yourself a glass of water. To get to deliver the soup to the table is the community we crave, and I'm so happy the C family let us in this week. (I'm also embarrassed that it's all it takes). That same week, we found ourselves at 8:30pm getting in trouble from the condo security because an impromptu happy hour led to a dozen children drawing with chalk on the sidewalk (against the condo rules!) and playing fabulous rowdy games in the yard too loudly. It was such a welcome scolding to have enough kiddos around us that we could make a wild ruckus on a weekend night not from the adults on the patio but from the sweaty toddlers to teens in the yard. My biggest prayers when we moved here were that Gus would be loved by others and that there would be dirt in which to dig. He is hugged, and he is filthy. Praise God. To all my Singapore friends, you can look in my laundry basket anytime. Please, let's see one another's mess.

And man, once that oxygen starts flowing, who knows what creative genius will strike. Look out kids, chalk masterpieces are ahead!