the tedious case of benjamin button

it was long. it was sad. it was a little creepy. should have gone to marley and me.

i had to flee the theater before (spoiler alert) little benjamin reverts to infancy and dies at the end. i shouldn't watch anything with a baby named benjamin who dies. just on principle.


and did i mention that it was long?

all is bright

i schemed all day to have a few minutes to myself tonight so i could write something before christmas eve slipped away. it's a blue-gray twilight and i believe - probably it's my imagination - that the daylight persists just a bit longer tonight. the solstice came and went.

tonight we're having a traditional scandinavian christmas supper at my in-law's house, and i'm helping prepare the food: halibut, swedish meat balls, creamed corn, potatoes, lefse, and if the evening takes a turn for the tragic, lutefisk. since i'm not swedish, norwegian, finnish or danish, the menu doesn't hold particular sentimental appeal to me. at all. at all. however, i love a swedish/norwegian man, and i peeled potatoes and baked halibut today with affection for him in my heart.

ali made a nice christmas mix cd for 2008. she does it every year. i have mixes dating back to 2001 and i listen to them over and over. this year's mix has a couple of songs by the staples singers, a few maria taylor tunes, and standards by gene autry, rogue wave, mason jennings, perry como, don peris and over the rhine. see? good. good. good.

time to pack up some presents and go to grandma b's house. a merry christmas to all.

my mother bear/my self

i might as well admit that putting ben in the church nursery on sunday mornings is the most uncomfortable part of my week. it's hard to curb the protective instincts.

when i compare myself with moms who cheerfully and confidently leave their children in daycare every day, i see a paranoid, squint-eyed mama bear looking back at me in the mirror. the kind of mama you can spot a mile away, who:

won't let her kids play outside because there might be a pesticide
won't let them play inside because there might be a dust mite
won't let them play with others because they might catch a sniffle
won't let them play alone because their imaginary friend might teach them a bad word.

that's me.

(although maybe i'm not that protective, because as i type this, ben is hunting for bits of onion skin off the floor and eating them, and i type away, undeterred.)

so i stayed with him in the church nursery yesterday (he freaks out when i leave. other big kids - who are too old to be there - mow him down. and he gets a cold every tuesday after he's been there. but who's keeping track, right?).

and right before my eyes, another child (who has a raging cold and shouldn't be there, but who's keeping track) walked up to him and, totally unprovoked, clawed him in the eye.

i thought, really? really? you, you tiny, runny-nosed pipsqueak, are going to take a swipe at my cub under my very nose. re-e-e-eally.
but instead of roaring, etc., i picked up my sobbing ben, told the other child he wasn't allowed to hit, and tried to take a couple of deep breaths.

ben's eye was red for two days and then cleared up with no harm done. yet the mother bear within is decidedly provoked. lumbering around the cave, growling.

but here's the complicating factor. the aforementioned pipsqueak is the child of a single mom in a low-income situation, and that little guy spends eighteen hours a day in daycare. eighteen hours a day being cared for by strangers while his mom works hard. he needs a bath. he needs a change of clothes. most of all he needs time with his mama. he's the same age as ben. it would pretty much kill me if i had to do that with my child. and the only difference between his mom and me is, i have resources: money, time, family. and the pipsqueak hits because he gets hit by other kids and nobody teaches him any different.

no, the world isn't nice and isn't fair. and if the injustice of an unprovoked poke in the eye gets me riled up, the other, much bigger injustices made visible by this little situation should
too, much more.

calexico was here...

and though i missed the show at the slowdown, i enjoyed this nice little write-up in paste. and it gives just one more reason to hang out at la buvette.

ben was here...

and here...


and here...

pseudo-science thrills me

i've always had a soft spot for personality tests, temperament assessments, and type indicators. and dubious though they may be, it's sort of hard to resist taking a quiz that claims to illuminate and articulate one's interior labyrinth in clear, straightforward terms. better yet, that will tell one what to do to improve and to solve one's self. and by "one," i mean, me. i'm always yearning for a diagnosis.

the hot topic among my friends at the moment is richard rohr's work on the enneagram, which uses an ancient geometric symbol as a map for understanding nine personality types. rohr uses the enneagram as a spiritual formation tool, wherein the nine types correspond with the nine motivating sins (the seven deadly, plus anxiety and self-pity) that drive people. i read a few chapters and clearly recognized my type/sin. it sort of nailed me to the wall. andrew's uncle dean, a wise man and a psychologist, says the enneagram isn't really an academically respectable assessment tool ("not valid" was his exact judgment). so i take it with a grain of salt. but still. i'm thinking about it pretty hard.

the other semi-respectable book i'm reading is called live right for your type, which lays out diet and exercise plans based on blood type. who knows whether any of that's true or not, right? the science seems a little shaky. but another friend swears by it, so i'm in. my type is supposed to eat all vegetables and do yoga, and i do love vegetables and yoga, but where does my coffee-and-scone habit fit in? all the same, being diagnosed and given a plan for success is so irresistibly compelling...

if you see me walking around, suddenly perfected in personality and physique, you'll know it was all true.

tree party

on the night before thanksgiving, andrew enacted a venerable and time-honored ritual of the pater familias. he brought home a fresh christmas tree. we would have wrapped ben head to foot and gone out together, but ben needed a bath and an early bedtime more than a trip to the tree lot. and it turned out for the best because andrew brought home a winner and ben got to lay down his weary head in a timely fashion.



he chose a beauty, no?




on the day after thanksgiving, my grandma, aunts and sisters came over and helped me decorate the tree. you know how the real holiday gatherings never quite meet your expectations? well, this time the party was actually sort of magical. the morning sun came in the windows, the fire was merry in the fireplace, the christmas music was sprightly, the coffee lovely, and baby charming, and everyone was happy to be together with nothing to do but string cranberries and make paper chains.




the tree turned out pretty nice, if i do say so.