You’ve Got Ten Minutes — What (Else) Should You Read?

After learning about what East End Mama is reading, I thought I would share what I have been reading, or trying to read, lately.

The Light Between Oceans

By M.L. Stedman

I kept seeing this book pop up on “new and hot”-type lists, so I thought I would give it a try. It is about a post-war Australia that still relies on lighthouses to guide ships. Lonely ex-soldier meets free-spirit town girl and they decide to live together on a romantic island where they, and the lighthouse, are the only inhabitants. After they make love on every inch of said island (not gratuitously, I might add), she suffers much heartbreak and is unable to carry a baby to term. Then one day a boat washes ashore with a dead man and a living baby; what to do? Keep the baby, obviously. Her husband is very torn about this, mainly because he lives and dies by the lighthouse code, which is to write everything down in the log. But, of course, the wife NEEDS this baby and believes it is divine intervention. So here the moral dilemma begins. What to do? What to do?

I can’t say I really fully agreed with anything that either character does, but it was thought-provoking and did more than accurately capture the intense and powerful connection between parent and child. I won’t ruin the ending for you, but there is some heartbreak, to be sure. It also made me ask my husband a lot of questions about what he would have done if WE lived on the lighthouse island (cue his eye rolling).

The Paris Wife

By Paula McLain

This is loosely based on Hemingway’s relationship with his first wife and their years spent in Paris. As a wife of an intensely creative man, I felt for her as she patiently sat by his side and urged him to keep writing and keep trying. I also really felt for her when she lost his prized manuscript (in the days before email and USB keys) on a train. I have done things like this, and you are never REALLY forgiven in the eyes of the spouse. (But I digress…)

This was a quick read that gives you extra smart points because I think it is technically historical fiction, so you can whip out some Hemingway knowledge at an upcoming dinner party.

The Night Circus

By Erin Morgenstern

(Disclaimer: I listened to this on audio — but it was unabridged, so that counts.)

This was a book unlike too many others I have come across, not only in subject matter (the full history of a truly magical circus) but also in complexity. There are many characters, and they are all fleshed out in lots of detail. No one disappears from the story and you feel really satisfied by the end of it all. There is a mysterious romance plot, but it never gets too “sexy” (maybe the one minor flaw…), and there are elaborate descriptions of the sumptuous black and white circus, with lots of attention to detail and food, in particular. This is a book to fall in with (maybe on vacation or a sick day) and let your imagination go. I am sure there must be a movie of this book in the works somewhere.

A Fine Balance

by Rohinton Mistry

This isn’t on my most-recently-read list, but whenever I talk about books people should read, this book has to be on it! HAS TO. It is a long, sprawling tale about India in the mid-70s, with a strong focus on the actual people living there, mostly in extreme poverty. If you are able to read this book without crying, you are a weird person to be sure. This is one of those books that stick in your head for years after reading it. They don’t get much better than this.

-Tightrope Mama


[image: books]

My Shopping Compulsion

Do you ever find yourself buying things that your baby or child doesn’t really need and you can’t really afford? 

I do.

I was never much of a shopper before I had J-man, but now I find it hard to resist shopping for things for him. This impulsion covers all kinds of things: toys, outfits, art supplies, hair products, videos, books, and food. I am not certain what the draw is, but I see things and I find myself talking myself into buying things. Last week I bought him Spiderman shoes. They are way too big and probably don’t have good arch support, but they were just so cute!

When I returned home, my husband looked at me sideways. “What does he need those for? It’s going to be a while before they fit — no?”

I was caught and didn’t have much to say — they will fit eventually. They were just so cute!

It got me thinking about all of the things I’d previously bought — a pair of rain boots that never did fit, crafts that he can’t use until he’s a little older, noise toys that drive us crazy, a dinosaur set that is so spiky he could poke an eye out. They were all just so cute.

Do you remember your baby shower? How many things did you get or put on your registry that you thought you needed but never used? I had a few, but wasn’t everything just so cute?

I don’t have an answer for why the advertisers or product developers get me, but they do. Just thought I’d toss it out there. I have a house full of things that I’m not sure we need and certainly couldn’t afford. Do I just want him to have everything and to try everything?

Sleepwalking Mama

[image: shopping carts]

Childcare

In the last 48 hours I have encountered two one-armed persons.

The first was a crabby YMCA counterperson.

I’m trying to find ways to have some time from my kid. In Toronto I had the West End Y with the merry band of ex-fighter-pilot childminders. Only four bucks an hour, two or three women, crisp uniforms, gorgeous open space, coupla babies, coupla two-year–olds; Shirley running things like a sergeant major (I mean, running the other childminders, who clearly fear her). The Guppins would melt at her “Whatsa matter — you gotta problem?” attitude and dissolve with ecstasy into her wise womanly arms. I’d get a sauna, whirlpool, bit of stretching, say hello to several other unemployed actors…what a dream.

I’m missing Shirley and the gang.

Here in Smalltown I’m greeted by a very nice woman who escorts us to an airless cubby in which sits a baseball-hatted babysitter watching her own snot-encrusted three-year-old, her five-year-old, and her five-year-old’s friend, an obnoxious brick shithouse of a child. I tremble. I can’t turn around and leave — the room is too small, it would be noticed. The three-year-old is all over us like a dirty shirt. The beleaguered babysitter (who shares my real name, which makes it pleasurably easy to remember) barks at the five-year-olds while shooting me strained smiles that say:

Please stay I am desperate for company and hate children.

Only five bucks from 9 ’til 12! My dreams of Smalltown childcare realized.

I did not leave the Guppins alone in the room. Though, truth be told, she had a pretty good time chasing around the bigger girls.

I return a few days later. I’m greeted by a different customer service rep (one-armed) who tells me no, it’s SEVEN dollars, even if I leave my kid for the one remaining hour, because I am a visiting member.

I decide to not argue with the one arm.

Door swings open, babysitter running out the door, no intention of turning back.

One Arm stops her in her tracks.

“If there’s no one here by 11 I leave,” she whimpers with determination, kids tugging at her clothes, pale face, monster pick-up running outside.

One Arm gives her a murderous look, says to me (also with a murderous look), “She’ll stay if you want her to.”

Tense silence.

All I’m thinking is get me outta here.

(I mean, the change room looks like a dated dirty high school locker room, they have a co-ed sauna — who wears a bathing suit in a sauna? — the price just went up, I’m clearly an outsider, there’s a whole lot of desperate aggression going on. I mean, what would I possibly have to gain by staying?)

Freedom.

I pretend to be generous.

“No, go ahead, it’s totally okay.”

“If you come earlier tomorrow my daughter’s friend will be back.” (…to stomp out innocence.)

“Okay, great!” I lie.

One Arm’s eyes dart from me to her.

I shift the Guppins to my left hip.

Nobody’s moving and I’m thinking, JUST TURN AROUND, WALK CALMLY TO THE EXIT, DO NOT ENGAGE FURTHER, AND START THE CAR.

The second one-armed person I met was a guarded, intense, edgy little girl named Ariadne, at the community centre drop-in. I think she is my first new friend. (Besides, potentially, Graham Greene. If the name doesn’t ring any bells, your mother might have the Dances with Wolves VHS box set.)

Ariadne let me photograph her artwork.

P.S. The paint is real chocolate.

-Drama Mama

Your Words Are Music to My Ears

Today I am thankful for my daughter’s ability to speak well. How quickly I’ve forgotten those
months of frustration when Cookie desperately wanted something but couldn’t get me to
understand, and collapsed into screaming fits from frustration. Now the screaming fits come
because I say no to her perfectly articulated requests. Success.

Speech has been a preoccupation of mine. My sister is a speech language pathologist who
works with school-aged children, so her tales of children who have limited words or sounds, or who just can’t speak at all, fill me with terror. I decided against baby signing for fear of delaying speech. There’s a theory that children who know how to sign resist speaking because it’s easier to ask for something in a language they already know. Studies have proven this theory unfounded, but anecdotally, before I had Cookie, every child I knew who had learned signing was delayed in speech. Perhaps they were still in the “normal” range, but their parents panicked and struggled to get them to speak.

No such problems with us. Cookie was right on schedule, and at under two-and-a-half she
recently shocked her grandmother by telling her, “Actually, I’d like to go to the park now.” So I’m proud and relieved and satisfied. Until…

My sister-in-law tells us about a child she knows who is just about Cookie’s age and “fluent”
in three languages. And about two others slightly older who are fluent in Mandarin (they are
most definitely not Chinese). My reaction is physical — I feel phantom hackles rise on my back; my body flushes with an angry heat. The competitive aspect of raising a child infuriates me so much that even the slightest allusion to what someone else’s kid is doing brilliantly immediately brings about this reaction. These comparisons are pointless, and they depend on factors almost entirely outside our control, like culture and economic status and geography. And I’m sure in many cases they make little difference on the end result. How many Mandarin-speaking toddlers will go on to be diplomats or CEOs of multinational companies? Just look at children’s pageants: kids are rewarded for being the prettiest and most precocious, but how many of them end up having high-paying jobs for all their effort and pain as three-year-old beauty queens? Give me a study on that. Perhaps most of them — hey, who knows? — but somehow I doubt it.

When I was little, one of my aunts was convinced that her nieces and nephews needed to learn Japanese if we had any hope of being productive members of the society of the future. My parents laughed, and that was that. (Particularly since I grew up in northern Ontario, which has a rather slim Japanese population.) And look how that turned out — Japan is pretty far from being our evil overlords. Now Cookie’s aunt insists that she needs to learn Mandarin. Maybe she’s right, and maybe one day we’ll regret not giving Cookie lessons when she was young, but first off, we have more pressing things to spend our money on, and second, isn’t being half fluent in English at two-and-a-half good enough? Besides, most Chinese people I know aren’t anywhere close to fluent in Mandarin. Let’s give the Anglo toddler a break on this one, shall we?

One of Cookie’s daycare friends is almost incomprehensible. He’s a couple months younger,
and he’s a boy, so there’s that, but every time I talk to him, that old worry comes back. I want
him to have everything a little boy deserves (after all, this is not a competition!), but now he’s a big brother, so I’m afraid his speech development will take a back seat to myriad other demands on his parents’ time and attention. The most I can do is ensure that Cookie is a good role model for him. And that is one thing I am confident about, at least.

-East End Mama

[image: hello in 42 languages]

The Toy Box

On Monday morning, in the staff kitchen, a colleague asked me how my weekend was. Although I had been up with J-man at 1 a.m., 3 a.m., and 6 a.m. and could hardly stand, I politely said it was wonderful. Interested, I guess, he asked what I did. So I explained that I had spent Sunday shopping at IKEA, which of course meant I spent Sunday evening building furniture. It was well after 10 p.m. when I first sat down for the day — a load of laundry still in the dryer.

“What a nightmare,” he replied. “What’s wonderful about that?”

It was the reaction I would have expected of my dad, who always said IKEA was a four-letter swear word. “Well,” I explained, “I bought a toy box for my living room.” I then explained how tired I was of tripping over J-man’s toys, which seem to have taken over my house. I also bought a contraption to organize his teddy bears in his room because there are nights I can’t find his crib through the bears. Being a dad, he was quick to respond that he remembered the days of toys taking over his life to the point of being a safety hazard. He agreed that organizing children’s toys, which seem to quickly take over our lives and our spaces, was well worth a day at IKEA.

On Monday night I returned home to a house that was unusually serene. My husband, ever the tidier, in the morning had tucked the toys back into the box. I put my feet up and thought about a glass of wine. It was peaceful for a full ten minutes. At that point I jumped to attention and started to organize supper. J-man started a new game, taking everything out of the box one by one onto the living room floor. I hope I can teach him that it’s equally fun to put it all back.

Ten minutes of peace, of feeling organized and on top of my life, was well worth the long drive to IKEA, the ridiculous tour through the entire store (like somehow I have nothing else to do but browse) with a cranky husband, the rude and unhelpful warehouse guy, the check-out line that took forever, and the icing on the cake — delivering the boxes home only to have to build the toy box. Oh, the things in life that make us happy — even the small things!

-Sleepwalking Mama

The Santa Experience

Note: I wrote this last year, when W was one and I wasn’t pregnant with #2. But I’m still questioning my sanity, as well as the whole “Santa Experience” sign-up process, so I thought it was worth sharing.

I’m starting to wonder about the kind of parent I am.

I mean, I know I am a good, kind, and funny parent. But lately I have been wondering if I am slowly crossing into insanity. Here are two pieces of evidence that may prove the theory.

First: My best friend is getting married, and as co-MoH I am organizing her bachelorette and shower...on the same weekend...at my house. I have planned a fancy dinner out and a trip to a vodka bar, and this will be amazing fun, but I am not what I used to be. I can’t walk in heels and “club.” I don’t wear Spanx (but might have to start), I don’t order bottle service, and while I have NO problem getting drunk, I physically just cannot be hungover. It is actually painful and lasts a minimum of one day for each bottle of wine I drink. I am also hosting the bridal shower the next morning — post “club” and mid-hangover. Insane. Don’t worry, I’m an organized person; I printed make-ahead recipes and ordered cupcakes. The other MoH is bringing mimosas; it will be all right. Just keep telling yourself that, right?

All this is fine, however LAST weekend I invited over fifty people to our house for a Halloween party. It was good times and the kids (I think I have to stop saying “babies”) were just too cute for words. (Amazing costumes included a ladybug, Princess Leia, a turtle, a lion, a fireman, a cat, a pumpkin, and a puppy!)

What I wasn’t thinking when I thought, “Oh, let’s have some friends over and look at costumes” was, “OMG, I have to be the world’s best friend and hostess in six short days.” Now as I look around, I see I have to take down plastic bats from my ceiling, peel weird plastic blood drippings off my window, and pick up over 250 balls from the playroom floor (husband bought the balls, as if that needed to be clarified), and then transform my place into Martha Stewart’s chic city pad complete with eggs Florentine and bacon biscuits! Fuck. Oh, yeah, and while I do have the perfect gift for my perfect best friend, I forgot to drop it off weeks ago (I’ve had it since May) to get framed and am now paying a rush charge of $40. Fuck. (Side note: I am cheap, and things like “rush” charges at quaint framing stores bug me to no end.) I called the cleaning lady; she’s coming over. One spark of sanity.

Second: I thought I would wear a cute, pre-baby black dress to the bachelorette weekend of amazing-ness. False. That dress looks like someone who just had a baby is squeezing into something too small. So I rushed out last night to the local “nice” mall (i.e., not my usual mall, which actually has an eyeglass store called “Spexx” and a hat store called “Lidz”). I had one hour and fifteen minutes, and I tried on three dresses in store #1, and two were decent. I had one hour left to peruse. Then, I saw it, a big line in the middle of the mall. I thought, what are all these people lined up for? A blood donor clinic? A book signing? NO! Santa!! WTF? (Remember how I said it was just Halloween?) So, I read the big poster: Sign up for Santa, in person only. OMG — what to do? Shop for myself or stand in line to secure a Santa Experience? You guessed it, I stood in line. Fuck. Insane. I know. I texted my husband thinking he would say, “Silly, go shop, buy yourself something pretty.” What he actually wrote was, “Sign. Him. Up.” So, at least if I am insane, he is too.

This was the first day of Santa sign-up, and the woman behind me told me that people were there right when the mall opened that day and waited four hours to sign up. Take a second and soak that in, people. They spent four hours of their lives waiting to sign their kids up to see Santa. At a mall. We all know he isn’t real, right? Twenty-four hours later I am still unsure whether I did the right thing. W has no idea who Santa is, or what the difference is between a “Santa Experience” and watching Elmo on YouTube.

In case you actually remembered that this was about a dress, don’t worry, I ran back to the store and bought a tight leopard-print number. I think that is my third and final example of insanity. Leopard print? Yep, yep I did.

I rest my case. I am an insane mother who hosts back-to-back events in my own home, signs my kid up for things called “The Santa Experience” one and a half months in advance, and buys cougar dresses. What shocking personality disorders will next week reveal?

-Tightrope Mama