I thought that I didn’t have time to read fiction. I thought being a mother and scientist sucked all the time away. I turns out that I do have time to indulge in fiction. . . as long as I give up blogging, blog-reading, reading the newspaper, looking at my children, talking to my husband. . . I’ve spent the last few months in a daze, sucked into the universe created by George R. R. Martin in his A Song of Ice and Fire series (the basis for the HBO series A Game of Thrones). The series has gotten so much hype this year that I fell for it and started the first novel this summer. More than 4000 pages later (that’s not a joke), I finished the fifth and latest novel this week. Guess what? The hype is totally deserved.
The publisher summaries on the backs of these novels are vague. I understand why—they’re difficult books to describe. Epic fantasy in a medieval-based world? That sounds so clichéd. It is a medieval-based world, the story is epic in scope, and there are elements of fantasy. . . But for large parts of the series, the fantasy elements are pushed to the edge. High-stakes political intrigue—diabolical and brutal, the “game of thrones”—takes center stage. Much of the first novel feels less like fantasy than incredibly gritty and detailed medieval history. This isn’t the medieval world of Tolkien or his early imitators—no happy peasant villages where the common folk are all well-fed and literate. Many of the knights in this series are as likely to rape a maiden as to rescue her. The caste system of feudalism is rigid. And men really do shit themselves in battle.
But on the edges of this harsh feudal world, the fantastical lurks. There are blue-eyed zombies (called “wights”) in the frozen north. There are the zombies’ mysterious makers and commanders, known as the Others. The reader comes to understand that the Others and their zombies are the real threat to the realm, but the kings and would-be kings are too busy fighting for power and tearing the realm apart with their wars to take heed of the threat. Across the sea, an exiled queen plots to invade the realm and claim her family's throne. And above all, winter is coming. In this world, winter can last years.
A Song of Ice and Fire is like a glorious mash-up of genres and themes. There’s war, and coming-of-age arcs, and political intrigue; straight-up action adventure and horror; lots of witty dialogue and cinematic flourishes. And in a story remarkable for its seeming “realism,” every now and then there comes an infusion of pure myth. There is one haunting scene in the third book that involves a rescue by a flock of ravens. It’s a startling, dream-like scene, evocative as any image from the Brothers Grimm or ancient myth.
But it’s the characters that really sell this story. The plotting is intricate and brilliant. The world-building is complex and fully-realized. But the characters. . . oh, my. Did I once write a blog post raving about how taken I was with the characters in the Hunger Games? I did, but I knew nothing. The characters in George R. R. Martin’s world are developed with a complexity and vividness that I’ve rarely seen. During the course of this series, he can take a character that you hate at the beginning, and then two books later switch to that character’s narrative viewpoint and make you fall in love. He can take a character that you already love and make you fall even harder than you thought possible. Of all the characters in these books (and there is a named cast of hundreds, with the narration told from the viewpoints of no less than twenty), I am most taken with the character of Jon Snow. Bastard-born son of a great lord, Jon Snow is a boy looking for his place in a world with little regard for bastards. In a world where there is little of black and white, where every decision is haunted by moral ambiguity, Jon Snow is—as described in a fan forum—“one of the lightest shades of gray.” He is one of the few undeniable heroes. Yet he’s no bland goody-goody, and much more than your standard-issue hero fare. His character is complex and multi-layered. When we first meet him, he’s only fourteen years old: proud and insecure, controlled yet rash, ambitious and hungry for glory. And he’s also kind and noble-hearted, with the courage of a lion* and all the integrity and honor of his great father. Watching the boy grow to a man is one of the chief pleasures of this series.
The author has the diabolical habit of piling up cliff-hangers at the end of each book. The end of the fifth installment, Dance with Dragons, is no exception, and ends with the worst, most diabolical cliff-hanger yet. I understand that George R. R. Martin took five years between the third and fourth books, and six years between the fourth and fifth. I am fervently hoping that the HBO series will light a fire and force him to move more quickly with the last two planned installments of his series.
And, um, now I’m bereft. I feel like a big hole has opened up in my life. Without another book of A Song of Ice and Fire to read, what am I to do late at night? Read science?
*or, er, direwolf. For those of you familar with the story.
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Indian summer, lab reunions
It’s summer in October—the days unexpectedly balmy, women in sun dresses and children running in shorts, all under a brilliant blue sky and trees flaming in reds and gold.
Our family took a trip to Old Postdoc city this past weekend. The lab where my husband did his research fellowship was celebrating its 20th year in existence. Quite a milestone, obviously. Lab alumni from around the country flew in for the event. A mini-symposium was even organized, where alumni (the ones still in research) gave talks on their current research. While Husband went to this Saturday symposium and reunited with old colleagues, I took my girls to one of the most beautiful parks I know of. The kids found sticks in the grass, wound them with stems of grass and poked them through leaves, and then tossed their concoctions into a lake, proclaiming that they were “launching boats.” After more than a half hour of this, I persuaded them to see the other sights of the park, and they chased each other over four bridges and under tunnels of trees. Gold leaves rustled above them. Ducks and swans and kayakers moved past on the river. All the colors of autumn—the warmth of russets and dark gold, the intensity of fire-orange and scarlet—were in that day.
Afterward, I met up with one of my old lab mates for lunch, and we were later joined by two more friends. We hung out at one of their houses, and the host spoiled my children with ice cream and cookies and allowed them (actually encouraged them) to play with and torment her poor cat. My old lab has shrunk considerably since I left, and my old PI seems content to keep it small. Although he would seem to be very successful with grant funding (two R01s!), he appears to be spending most of his time on administration these days, and is scaling back the research. His last student graduated a year ago, and the PI has said that it will likely be the last student he ever takes on. “We’re in the same place,” my one friend, a very senior research scientist, told me. “I am not so ambitious as I was, and I don’t think he is either. Once I wanted all my papers to be Nature or Nature Cell Biology. Now I’m content with MBC. I don’t want to work 14 hours a day. I want to enjoy life.”
I picked up my husband from his symposium, and we later went to a celebrated local restaurant for the 20th-year lab-anniversary reception party. More reunions, as my kids started melting down from the late hour. Four years on, most people looked mostly the same—maybe a spiky new hair-do, or a suddenly dapper wardrobe, but mostly the same. Many of our old friends’ lives have changed little, but some have changed dramatically. We heard tell of new engagements, marriages and significant others. Babies. Divorce and remarriage. Career changes. Of the people who showed up for my husband’s lab reunion, about half were in academic research. And half were working in “alternative” careers—from jobs in pharma and biotech to jobs working for a defense contractor, a non-profit science lobbying group, and a job for an health insurance agency (“the dark side” my husband termed that last. His own “alternative” was to move from research to full-time clinical work in medicine).
“Good for you!” a number of people told me after hearing that I was back at the lab bench.
Good for me, indeed, I feel. But I know that I’m not as ambitious as I once was. I’m not one of the eager grad students in my current lab, working crazy round-the-clock hours fueled by Mountain Dew and the energy of youth. I may still hope for that big GlamourMag publication, but I know that a solid MBC-type journal would be more realistic (and is also perfectly fine). My expectations are adjusted downward. If I could just keep a long-term job as a perma-postdoc/staff scientist in my current lab, I would be happy as a clam.
It’s been interesting to see who among our former lab colleagues is still swinging for the glamorous prize of PI-dom, and who has stepped away. The PI from my first postdoc was once very hard-driving and ambitious, and I would not have expected him to contentedly downsize his lab as he has done. I am not surprised by the choices of other people . . . And I admit that I feel some trepidation for the other postdocs/non-tenured scientists who are still in the academic game.
It all feels very unpredictable—life, that is. Or predictable in broad outline. . . and then not at all. The evening was so unseasonably warm that the reception area on the enclosed patio felt hot. We stayed through the dessert (the kids now past the meltdown phase), and my husband’s old boss hugged us good-bye. I don’t know if we’ll see any of those people again anytime soon. I can’t say that we are truly still close to any of them. But it’s a small world, and the academic and medical worlds even more so. Somehow, the goodbyes I’ve said to old labs have never felt final.
Our family took a trip to Old Postdoc city this past weekend. The lab where my husband did his research fellowship was celebrating its 20th year in existence. Quite a milestone, obviously. Lab alumni from around the country flew in for the event. A mini-symposium was even organized, where alumni (the ones still in research) gave talks on their current research. While Husband went to this Saturday symposium and reunited with old colleagues, I took my girls to one of the most beautiful parks I know of. The kids found sticks in the grass, wound them with stems of grass and poked them through leaves, and then tossed their concoctions into a lake, proclaiming that they were “launching boats.” After more than a half hour of this, I persuaded them to see the other sights of the park, and they chased each other over four bridges and under tunnels of trees. Gold leaves rustled above them. Ducks and swans and kayakers moved past on the river. All the colors of autumn—the warmth of russets and dark gold, the intensity of fire-orange and scarlet—were in that day.
Afterward, I met up with one of my old lab mates for lunch, and we were later joined by two more friends. We hung out at one of their houses, and the host spoiled my children with ice cream and cookies and allowed them (actually encouraged them) to play with and torment her poor cat. My old lab has shrunk considerably since I left, and my old PI seems content to keep it small. Although he would seem to be very successful with grant funding (two R01s!), he appears to be spending most of his time on administration these days, and is scaling back the research. His last student graduated a year ago, and the PI has said that it will likely be the last student he ever takes on. “We’re in the same place,” my one friend, a very senior research scientist, told me. “I am not so ambitious as I was, and I don’t think he is either. Once I wanted all my papers to be Nature or Nature Cell Biology. Now I’m content with MBC. I don’t want to work 14 hours a day. I want to enjoy life.”
I picked up my husband from his symposium, and we later went to a celebrated local restaurant for the 20th-year lab-anniversary reception party. More reunions, as my kids started melting down from the late hour. Four years on, most people looked mostly the same—maybe a spiky new hair-do, or a suddenly dapper wardrobe, but mostly the same. Many of our old friends’ lives have changed little, but some have changed dramatically. We heard tell of new engagements, marriages and significant others. Babies. Divorce and remarriage. Career changes. Of the people who showed up for my husband’s lab reunion, about half were in academic research. And half were working in “alternative” careers—from jobs in pharma and biotech to jobs working for a defense contractor, a non-profit science lobbying group, and a job for an health insurance agency (“the dark side” my husband termed that last. His own “alternative” was to move from research to full-time clinical work in medicine).
“Good for you!” a number of people told me after hearing that I was back at the lab bench.
Good for me, indeed, I feel. But I know that I’m not as ambitious as I once was. I’m not one of the eager grad students in my current lab, working crazy round-the-clock hours fueled by Mountain Dew and the energy of youth. I may still hope for that big GlamourMag publication, but I know that a solid MBC-type journal would be more realistic (and is also perfectly fine). My expectations are adjusted downward. If I could just keep a long-term job as a perma-postdoc/staff scientist in my current lab, I would be happy as a clam.
It’s been interesting to see who among our former lab colleagues is still swinging for the glamorous prize of PI-dom, and who has stepped away. The PI from my first postdoc was once very hard-driving and ambitious, and I would not have expected him to contentedly downsize his lab as he has done. I am not surprised by the choices of other people . . . And I admit that I feel some trepidation for the other postdocs/non-tenured scientists who are still in the academic game.
It all feels very unpredictable—life, that is. Or predictable in broad outline. . . and then not at all. The evening was so unseasonably warm that the reception area on the enclosed patio felt hot. We stayed through the dessert (the kids now past the meltdown phase), and my husband’s old boss hugged us good-bye. I don’t know if we’ll see any of those people again anytime soon. I can’t say that we are truly still close to any of them. But it’s a small world, and the academic and medical worlds even more so. Somehow, the goodbyes I’ve said to old labs have never felt final.
Friday, August 26, 2011
Friday lab rant
Have you ever walked into your lab, taken one look at your cells, gone "F---!!", and then wanted to walk right out again and never come back?
Yeah. It's one of those days.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
On vacation
No, I'm not physically gone. But mentally I'm away. Against my better judgement, I gave in to peer pressure and hype and picked up Game of Thrones, first in a five book (so far) fantasy series which totals at least several thousand pages. Trying to put this book down at a decent hour is like trying to stop at just one potato chip.
Plus, it's summer. I'm trying to kick back. Or to at least kick back as much as I can.
So it's summer hiatus on this blog. I'm going to vacation a bit in Winterfell, try to get out of the lab this weekend, and remember to look at my children and husband.
See you all in a bit.
Thursday, July 21, 2011
My new niece
The midpoint of summer comes as it always seems to of late—far too soon. Already the newspaper is publishing articles on back-to-school shopping. Looking at the calendar, I see that Bean-girl’s summer camp ends in just a few weeks. We’re in the midst of a dire heat wave, yet fall is just around the corner.
Do you remember when you were a kid and summer lasted forever? At least it did for me. No schedule, no place to be, nothing I had to do: summer was a limitless day, an empty bucket begging to be filled. My sisters and I played with each other and neighborhood friends; we read books, lounged about the house, quarreled. We had to actively look for ways to pass the time. We sometimes complained that we were bored. Now I’m catching my breath from school graduation, getting used to the rhythms of packing lunches for day camp, and suddenly it’s time to think about back-to-school shopping. Do things slow down at your work in the summer? someone asked me recently. No. If anything, my experiments seem to speed up in the summer, as new data comes gushing in.
This doesn’t mean I don’t take any breaks at all. We’re off on a family vacation this weekend—a small getaway Up North to a place on a lake. My husband and I did sneak off in June for our anniversary. And two weekends ago we managed to get away to the Big City where my sister and brother-in-law live. Our new niece lives there, too, who was born this past fourth of July. I would post a picture, but I think that might freak my sister out. So let me just say my niece is the cutest baby that was ever ever born. And I can say this with perfect loyalty to my own children, because they were also the cutest babies ever born.
Baby M, I will call my niece. She was crying when I took her in my arms. I rocked her, and she went silent in surprise, her mouth open, her blue-black eyes staring at me in shock. WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU??! her eyes said. Then her eyes closed and she went right off to sleep.
It’s my sister and brother-in-law, of course, who are the sleep-deprived ones. Baby M will sleep and eat, sleep and eat, coddled and pampered by her loving parents. She’s sooo cute! Bean-girl kept whispering, creeping up to gaze in awe at her cousin’s face. Legume, less impressed, spent her time playing with Baby M’s toys.
********************************************************************
They are doing remarkably well, Baby M’s parents. Almost preternaturally calm and confident. Where did they get that from? Was I like that? Did I give that appearance?
We in the Bean family are looking forward to getting to know Baby M. I envision vacations where our families get together, where the cousins all gather and play. My sister doesn’t know it, but I’m imagining spring break together in some warm family-friendly all-inclusive resort.
I imagine the cousins playing together on the beach. Summer.
Do you remember when you were a kid and summer lasted forever? At least it did for me. No schedule, no place to be, nothing I had to do: summer was a limitless day, an empty bucket begging to be filled. My sisters and I played with each other and neighborhood friends; we read books, lounged about the house, quarreled. We had to actively look for ways to pass the time. We sometimes complained that we were bored. Now I’m catching my breath from school graduation, getting used to the rhythms of packing lunches for day camp, and suddenly it’s time to think about back-to-school shopping. Do things slow down at your work in the summer? someone asked me recently. No. If anything, my experiments seem to speed up in the summer, as new data comes gushing in.
This doesn’t mean I don’t take any breaks at all. We’re off on a family vacation this weekend—a small getaway Up North to a place on a lake. My husband and I did sneak off in June for our anniversary. And two weekends ago we managed to get away to the Big City where my sister and brother-in-law live. Our new niece lives there, too, who was born this past fourth of July. I would post a picture, but I think that might freak my sister out. So let me just say my niece is the cutest baby that was ever ever born. And I can say this with perfect loyalty to my own children, because they were also the cutest babies ever born.
Baby M, I will call my niece. She was crying when I took her in my arms. I rocked her, and she went silent in surprise, her mouth open, her blue-black eyes staring at me in shock. WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU??! her eyes said. Then her eyes closed and she went right off to sleep.
It’s my sister and brother-in-law, of course, who are the sleep-deprived ones. Baby M will sleep and eat, sleep and eat, coddled and pampered by her loving parents. She’s sooo cute! Bean-girl kept whispering, creeping up to gaze in awe at her cousin’s face. Legume, less impressed, spent her time playing with Baby M’s toys.
********************************************************************
They are doing remarkably well, Baby M’s parents. Almost preternaturally calm and confident. Where did they get that from? Was I like that? Did I give that appearance?
We in the Bean family are looking forward to getting to know Baby M. I envision vacations where our families get together, where the cousins all gather and play. My sister doesn’t know it, but I’m imagining spring break together in some warm family-friendly all-inclusive resort.
I imagine the cousins playing together on the beach. Summer.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Work-life balance rant, and tribute to fathers
Oh, dear. I didn’t mean to get sucked into the perennial work-life balance meme. I really didn’t.
There’s certainly been temptation of late. From excellent posts by Cloud and others, a crazy-ass op-ed piece in the New York Times and the resulting blogosphere uproar. . . I wanted to say something because, hey, someone is wrong on the Internet (and thanks for that link, Cloud!) but really, last week all I wanted to do was get to bed before midnight.
But something—and I can’t even remember what—has just set me off again.
In all the discussions about women, motherhood, and work-life balance, one point is often brought up: that parental leave and family care and work-life balance are not “women’s issues”; these are issues that affect both mothers and fathers, men and women. I see women bringing up this valid point in various feminist comment threads—but often (not always, of course, but often enough) there is something angrily accusatory about it. The tone is often not Gee, we should also respect men’s rights to parent and have a decent work-life balance but Goddamnit, if men would just step up to the plate this wouldn’t be such a problem! If those lazy-ass dads would just pitch in and change a diaper it would be easier and things would change! Those @!*%! men! They are not helping out and it’s all on us women, all the time!
Look, I don’t doubt that there are douchebag husbands and fathers like that. Thankfully, I don’t really know any of them. This blog post is not about them. It’s about the many fathers I know who struggle every day to share equally in the demands and joys of child-rearing, family care, and domestic chores. The dads who need to be respected for that—just as their wives are. Who turn down certain opportunities at work because they put their families first—just as many women do. The truth is that in American society, it is really more acceptable for women to “opt out” of the workforce for a few years to be a stay-at-home parent than it is for a man to do so. It’s still more acceptable for a woman to duck out of a meeting early, or miss a work event because she is tending to a sick child or attending a parent-teacher conference than it is for a man to do so. When I think about including men in the perennial “work-life balance” discussion, I don’t mean to complain about selfish pigs who aren’t doing their fair share—I want to talk about the men who are trying their best to do their share, and talk about how to make it easier for them to do so. How to make it easier for everyone to do so.
This is not your father’s generation, as the old saw has it. Even the fathers I know who have stay-at-home wives are incredibly involved and committed to sharing in childcare duties. Two of the postdocs in my lab are fathers with young children and stay-at-home wives; they both get into work at an ungodly hour (6 am) so that they can leave early and have dinner with their families and see their kids before the littlest ones go to sleep. They coach soccer and spend as much time as they can with their children. When his kids were recently sick, one of the postdocs took time off from work to stay home with them—even though his wife wasn’t working and was home anyway. He knew that she needed a break and some help—three kids sick at once!—so he helped out. Somehow, I don’t see this as common among male scientists and workers of a generation ago.
My brother-in-law is seriously considering quitting his job to stay home and be primary caregiver for his soon-to-be born baby daughter. My parents are absolutely horrified by the idea.
And I haven’t even talked about my husband, and all he does for his daughters and for me. We absolutely share in home and childcare duties—sometimes it tips more his way for a while, sometimes it tips more my way. Overall, it works out to 50-50 (although it can be so exhausting that it often feels more like 120/120).
So to end this rant. . . There are committed fathers who want to share equally in childrearing and family life. It’s not just a matter of haranguing men to take more responsibility. It’s a matter of making it more possible for them to take more responsibility—of offering reasonable paternity leave as well as maternity leave, of making it more socially acceptable for a man to ease his work hours or take time off from a job to care for his family. Although yes, I am also aware that in the United States of America, a country with no paid maternity leave and no paid sick leave, the idea of a paid paternity leave and more humane working hours lies in the same realm as unicorns and leprechauns. *
*Because in the end, you know (and as GMP eloquently pointed out in a blog post) no one really cares.
There’s certainly been temptation of late. From excellent posts by Cloud and others, a crazy-ass op-ed piece in the New York Times and the resulting blogosphere uproar. . . I wanted to say something because, hey, someone is wrong on the Internet (and thanks for that link, Cloud!) but really, last week all I wanted to do was get to bed before midnight.
But something—and I can’t even remember what—has just set me off again.
In all the discussions about women, motherhood, and work-life balance, one point is often brought up: that parental leave and family care and work-life balance are not “women’s issues”; these are issues that affect both mothers and fathers, men and women. I see women bringing up this valid point in various feminist comment threads—but often (not always, of course, but often enough) there is something angrily accusatory about it. The tone is often not Gee, we should also respect men’s rights to parent and have a decent work-life balance but Goddamnit, if men would just step up to the plate this wouldn’t be such a problem! If those lazy-ass dads would just pitch in and change a diaper it would be easier and things would change! Those @!*%! men! They are not helping out and it’s all on us women, all the time!
Look, I don’t doubt that there are douchebag husbands and fathers like that. Thankfully, I don’t really know any of them. This blog post is not about them. It’s about the many fathers I know who struggle every day to share equally in the demands and joys of child-rearing, family care, and domestic chores. The dads who need to be respected for that—just as their wives are. Who turn down certain opportunities at work because they put their families first—just as many women do. The truth is that in American society, it is really more acceptable for women to “opt out” of the workforce for a few years to be a stay-at-home parent than it is for a man to do so. It’s still more acceptable for a woman to duck out of a meeting early, or miss a work event because she is tending to a sick child or attending a parent-teacher conference than it is for a man to do so. When I think about including men in the perennial “work-life balance” discussion, I don’t mean to complain about selfish pigs who aren’t doing their fair share—I want to talk about the men who are trying their best to do their share, and talk about how to make it easier for them to do so. How to make it easier for everyone to do so.
This is not your father’s generation, as the old saw has it. Even the fathers I know who have stay-at-home wives are incredibly involved and committed to sharing in childcare duties. Two of the postdocs in my lab are fathers with young children and stay-at-home wives; they both get into work at an ungodly hour (6 am) so that they can leave early and have dinner with their families and see their kids before the littlest ones go to sleep. They coach soccer and spend as much time as they can with their children. When his kids were recently sick, one of the postdocs took time off from work to stay home with them—even though his wife wasn’t working and was home anyway. He knew that she needed a break and some help—three kids sick at once!—so he helped out. Somehow, I don’t see this as common among male scientists and workers of a generation ago.
My brother-in-law is seriously considering quitting his job to stay home and be primary caregiver for his soon-to-be born baby daughter. My parents are absolutely horrified by the idea.
And I haven’t even talked about my husband, and all he does for his daughters and for me. We absolutely share in home and childcare duties—sometimes it tips more his way for a while, sometimes it tips more my way. Overall, it works out to 50-50 (although it can be so exhausting that it often feels more like 120/120).
So to end this rant. . . There are committed fathers who want to share equally in childrearing and family life. It’s not just a matter of haranguing men to take more responsibility. It’s a matter of making it more possible for them to take more responsibility—of offering reasonable paternity leave as well as maternity leave, of making it more socially acceptable for a man to ease his work hours or take time off from a job to care for his family. Although yes, I am also aware that in the United States of America, a country with no paid maternity leave and no paid sick leave, the idea of a paid paternity leave and more humane working hours lies in the same realm as unicorns and leprechauns. *
*Because in the end, you know (and as GMP eloquently pointed out in a blog post) no one really cares.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Anniversaries
Once upon a time I saw this blog as a digital baby book of sorts—a place to record memories and milestones of the bean children. But they grow too quickly, my bean girls. The milestones fly past. Before I knew it, my first toddler became an articulate six-year old, a beautiful girl who dresses herself in the morning, finds her own snack to pack for school; who lost two front teeth in one week, who can read to herself (for a long time I despaired over the reading issue), and who, impossibly, just graduated first grade. How did this happen?
And my other bean child, the Legume. I thought she was a baby. I want to see her as a baby. But it’s been a long time since she was a baby at all. Two weeks ago, she turned four. Yes, four. I carry her when I don’t need to. She wiggles in my arms, squirms away. There she is, running away. “Bye bye,” she flaps a hand at me as she runs off to her friends at daycare/preschool. Her eyes crease into half-moons when she smiles. She has peaches for cheeks; her arms and legs are still rounded and soft. But those legs and arms have lengthened and thinned; she dangles against me when I lift her, and I can’t deny that she’s growing.
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“Legume doesn’t walk,” my husband observed. “She gallops.”
It’s true. She gallops. Or hops. Or skips. Or runs. Maybe a better word is galumph. She galumphs through the house. And clumsily knocks into walls, chairs, furniture. She seems clumsy, but then is very agile when it comes to scaling heights in search of candy and treats. She follows and worships her big sister when she is not squabbling with her. Her nickname (among many) is “Fire-pig.” My husband discovered this name when he looked up her Chinese horoscope and found that she is a pig with elements of fire. Somehow the name fits, and she delights in it. We told her daycare teachers, as she often refers to herself by this moniker; they were also delighted by the name, agreeing that it fits her spitfire personality. “The Fire-pig fights fires!” she proclaims. She and Bean-girl weave a complex mythology of the Superhero Fire-pig with laser eyes who fights bad guys. “Stay away from the stove!” I tell her, and she responds, “But mommy, the Fire-pig fights fires!” (yes, and stay away from this one).
She can eat a watermelon like nobody’s business. I’m talking an entire small watermelon, all by herself.
She is a tomboy who likes to play with trucks, cars, trains, space ships, and has a special fondness for fire engines. She wants to be a fire fighter when she grows up. And a scientist as well (just like mommy).
We despaired of her ever being toilet trained. We thought it might never happen. “I’ve yet to send a child off to kindergarten in diapers,” her lead daycare teacher told us. “There’s always a first time,” my husband said grimly, and the teacher had to nod in agreement.
But our stubborn stubborn child is coming around. When you are four, you have to use the potty, we told her. And now she seems to have finally agreed. I shouldn’t jinx it be writing this here, but I think just maybe we won’t be packing diapers in her kindergarten bag, after all.
**********************
Time goes too fast. Last week I noticed the lilacs by our front door blooming, giving off their evocative scent. Today the blooms are already gone. Our youngest daughter turned four, and my husband and I celebrated our tenth wedding anniversary. For the first time in years, we went away for an entire weekend, just by ourselves. Focusing just on ourselves. My parents came up for the weekend to take care of both kids—a first for all of us. Lilacs were blooming in the lakeside resort town my husband and I visited; lilacs lined the walkway to our B&B. It was a pretty tourist town with art galleries, ice cream shops, and little to do after dark. We walked on the beach, window-shopped, and ate out. On Saturday evening we took in some community theatre. The play, These Shining Lives, was well-written, although the amateur cast was mostly stiff. (The lead actress, however, was wonderful, completely natural and affecting. She was a college theatre major, and the training and talent showed).
On Sunday morning we sat in the B&B’s lobby and read the newspaper front to back. The silence felt like a heavenly indulgence.
The weekend made my husband and I remember that we need to take time out to focus on just each other. The last time we got away for a weekend sans kids, it was for a wedding. Fun, but not really a weekend of alone time amidst the usual wedding whirl and socializing. This time it really was a weekend just for us. A little bubble of peace and quiet. Our bedroom suite was beautiful. And my husband, who does not normally express his feelings in words, expressed them in a card that made me cry.
Ten years. Four and ten. My newly four-year old daughter was born on the date that my husband and I married ten years ago. I can’t believe how the years have flown by.
And my other bean child, the Legume. I thought she was a baby. I want to see her as a baby. But it’s been a long time since she was a baby at all. Two weeks ago, she turned four. Yes, four. I carry her when I don’t need to. She wiggles in my arms, squirms away. There she is, running away. “Bye bye,” she flaps a hand at me as she runs off to her friends at daycare/preschool. Her eyes crease into half-moons when she smiles. She has peaches for cheeks; her arms and legs are still rounded and soft. But those legs and arms have lengthened and thinned; she dangles against me when I lift her, and I can’t deny that she’s growing.
****************************
“Legume doesn’t walk,” my husband observed. “She gallops.”
It’s true. She gallops. Or hops. Or skips. Or runs. Maybe a better word is galumph. She galumphs through the house. And clumsily knocks into walls, chairs, furniture. She seems clumsy, but then is very agile when it comes to scaling heights in search of candy and treats. She follows and worships her big sister when she is not squabbling with her. Her nickname (among many) is “Fire-pig.” My husband discovered this name when he looked up her Chinese horoscope and found that she is a pig with elements of fire. Somehow the name fits, and she delights in it. We told her daycare teachers, as she often refers to herself by this moniker; they were also delighted by the name, agreeing that it fits her spitfire personality. “The Fire-pig fights fires!” she proclaims. She and Bean-girl weave a complex mythology of the Superhero Fire-pig with laser eyes who fights bad guys. “Stay away from the stove!” I tell her, and she responds, “But mommy, the Fire-pig fights fires!” (yes, and stay away from this one).
She can eat a watermelon like nobody’s business. I’m talking an entire small watermelon, all by herself.
She is a tomboy who likes to play with trucks, cars, trains, space ships, and has a special fondness for fire engines. She wants to be a fire fighter when she grows up. And a scientist as well (just like mommy).
We despaired of her ever being toilet trained. We thought it might never happen. “I’ve yet to send a child off to kindergarten in diapers,” her lead daycare teacher told us. “There’s always a first time,” my husband said grimly, and the teacher had to nod in agreement.
But our stubborn stubborn child is coming around. When you are four, you have to use the potty, we told her. And now she seems to have finally agreed. I shouldn’t jinx it be writing this here, but I think just maybe we won’t be packing diapers in her kindergarten bag, after all.
**********************
Time goes too fast. Last week I noticed the lilacs by our front door blooming, giving off their evocative scent. Today the blooms are already gone. Our youngest daughter turned four, and my husband and I celebrated our tenth wedding anniversary. For the first time in years, we went away for an entire weekend, just by ourselves. Focusing just on ourselves. My parents came up for the weekend to take care of both kids—a first for all of us. Lilacs were blooming in the lakeside resort town my husband and I visited; lilacs lined the walkway to our B&B. It was a pretty tourist town with art galleries, ice cream shops, and little to do after dark. We walked on the beach, window-shopped, and ate out. On Saturday evening we took in some community theatre. The play, These Shining Lives, was well-written, although the amateur cast was mostly stiff. (The lead actress, however, was wonderful, completely natural and affecting. She was a college theatre major, and the training and talent showed).
On Sunday morning we sat in the B&B’s lobby and read the newspaper front to back. The silence felt like a heavenly indulgence.
The weekend made my husband and I remember that we need to take time out to focus on just each other. The last time we got away for a weekend sans kids, it was for a wedding. Fun, but not really a weekend of alone time amidst the usual wedding whirl and socializing. This time it really was a weekend just for us. A little bubble of peace and quiet. Our bedroom suite was beautiful. And my husband, who does not normally express his feelings in words, expressed them in a card that made me cry.
Ten years. Four and ten. My newly four-year old daughter was born on the date that my husband and I married ten years ago. I can’t believe how the years have flown by.
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