Coincidentally, the boston.com Moms blog linked to this Associated Press article just a day after my 7-year-old called out to me from the post-bedtime darkness of her room to say she was mentally planning out her next birthday party. This is the kind of thing she thinks about while she’s falling asleep, and she wanted to update me right away so that I could start my part of the planning. Since her birthday isn’t for another seven months, I didn’t feel it was anything I needed to act on too quickly, but I was still curious to hear what she was thinking. Turns out she wants a penguin party this year, with penguin party favors, black and white cupcakes, a slip-and-slide in the yard and slushies for a snack.
Holly has planned her own birthday parties ever since she was five. To me, they never quite feel like the height of simplicity as her visions usually require quite a lot of materials-gathering and baking on my part. Reading this article, I couldn’t help but think it might be easier to just hire a clown, order up a bubble machine, sit back and let the fun happen. Instead, I’m usually busy pre-assembling puppets for a craft project, whipping up frosting for the cupcake-decorating contest, putting together a playlist of dance hits for freeze-dancing, and so forth.
Nonetheless, I’m glad that not only Holly but just about all of our social circle favor simple, backyard birthday parties. Oh, sometimes we go to parties where a juggler or guitarist will perform a set, but for the most part, even when clamor about over-the-top kids’ parties was in its pre-recession heyday, the concept wasn’t popular in our circles. And I’ve always found that notable because we know plenty of families who spend huge amounts of money on recreation in the form of kids’ extracurricular activities and family vacations. It’s not that they couldn’t do these kinds of parties; it just seems not to be a priority in our community.
But I do empathize with the mother in the party article who says her baby’s first birthday party was really for her. And actually, I think she’s right. Getting through the first year of parenthood is a major milestone. Tim’s first birthday party left me with wonderful memories. He didn’t yet have friends of his own, so we invited all of our friends. It was a beautiful day and we had a cookout on the patio at our old house. Halfway through the party, Tim went down for a nap and I visited and laughed with all the old friends I hadn’t seen enough of since Tim was born.
These days, the kids’ parties seem easy. Although in the preschool and early elementary years we tended to have big gatherings to which the whole class was invited, the traditions changed fairly quickly as the kids and their friends grew older. Tim is now eleven, and for the past few years, he’s favored a small-group approach, inviting just a few friends to a special event. One year he invited a friend to our family’s vacation house in Maine for the weekend; another year Rick took him and two other boys to Six Flags. This past fall, he had three boys for a sleepover; they went bowling and then played Wii games late into the night. Not only is it much easier to manage these small groups, but I like the way my kids now take part in planning their own celebrations and choosing activities they really like – roller coasters, baseball games, whatever – rather than the free-for-all parties of their earlier days.
So on the one hand, I’m sorry to see children’s entertainers getting less work; as a writer, I always appreciate any opportunity for artists to find employment. But I think cutting back on over-the-top parties might benefit everyone else: parents, birthday kids and friends alike. It’s fun to figure out how to have your own kind of fun, without bringing in the pros. And in my experience, as long as there’s ice cream somewhere along the way, it’s pretty much a sure thing that birthday boy or girl and guest alike will have a good time.
Friday, January 29, 2010
Thursday, January 28, 2010
The one thing I wish I had more time for...
I was reading an article recently that posed this exercise: List those things you wish you had more time to do. The article even helped the reader along by offering a list of possibilities that might make someone’s list: Exercise more. Travel. Go back to school. Spend more time with children. Work on a hobby. Develop a richer spiritual life. Do more writing.
I made a list, but it wasn’t as long as I expected, and when I got to the next instruction, choose the three most important, I realized there was only one item on my list that was really important to me given the specificity of the question. It’s not that I couldn’t have come up with dozens of ideas for my own self-improvement, but most of them had to do with developing a stronger interest in or commitment to something, as opposed to finding more time for it. I should be more politically active, more environmentally conscientious, and a lot of other things, but it’s not really a function of time that I don’t; it’s a function of my interest level.
When I winnowed my list with a critical eye, it revealed that the only thing I really wish I had more time for is reading. I never read enough. I read for 45 minutes every morning while I ride my exercise bike, but I start with the newspaper, which usually takes up about half the exercise session. That means I often read only 20 minutes or so per day, which given how many amazing and important books there are in the world, with more coming out every day, just doesn’t seem like enough.
So, I asked myself, how can I create more time for reading? How can I make it more of a priority? If I manage to find time for every single one of my other priorities – time with my family, writing, exercise, spiritual contemplation – how is it that I can’t find more time for reading?
Looking at my daily routine, I concluded that one answer is to spend less time doing nighttime tasks and try to get to bed early enough to read. Typically, I focus on the kids until they go to bed; then I start making lunches for the next day, folding laundry, returning e-mails, whatever I didn’t get to in the course of the day. I usually don’t get to bed until it’s time to go to sleep.
Could I cut down on those busy-work tasks in the evening? The laundry does need to be folded, but is there another time I could do it, like during the weekends? Would anything be lost if I spent less time e-mailing? Probably not; I could just turn my computer off early in the evening and catch up the next morning with whatever correspondence remained. The kids’ lunches need to be made, but maybe I could do that at the same time I’m preparing dinner.
So I resolved to try, and the pile of Books To Read on my night table is serving as a powerful incentive. There’s just too much great literature out there for me not to be able to find the time. If it’s the only thing I want more time for, I just have to believe there’s a way to make that happen.
Already, I’m making a little bit of progress. Holly has just started taking an afterschool pottery class that lasts 90 minutes. I thought about all the errands and tasks Tim and I could accomplish between drop-off and pickup. We could buy groceries; get the oil changed in the car; visit the office supply store and the drugstore; pick up dry cleaning. Instead, this week, we headed for the bagel store. I bought Tim a toasted bagel with bacon cream cheese (his favorite treat) and myself a cup of coffee and a chocolate chip cookie (which turned out to be of poor quality, but it made me feel entitled to sit at a table for an hour. Calories don’t count if you’re giving yourself an excuse to take up space at a café, right?). Tim had brought along Robin Hood, a childhood favorite of Rick’s that he’s slowly making his way through; I had a pile of sections from last Sunday’s New York Times.
And together, we read. For a whole hour, we just sat there in silence together reading. It was such a treat. I could have been doing so many other productive things, but I convinced myself that this mattered too. We’ll try it again during Holly’s next pottery class, and see if we can make it a regular habit. One hour more of reading a week? It’s a great start.
I made a list, but it wasn’t as long as I expected, and when I got to the next instruction, choose the three most important, I realized there was only one item on my list that was really important to me given the specificity of the question. It’s not that I couldn’t have come up with dozens of ideas for my own self-improvement, but most of them had to do with developing a stronger interest in or commitment to something, as opposed to finding more time for it. I should be more politically active, more environmentally conscientious, and a lot of other things, but it’s not really a function of time that I don’t; it’s a function of my interest level.
When I winnowed my list with a critical eye, it revealed that the only thing I really wish I had more time for is reading. I never read enough. I read for 45 minutes every morning while I ride my exercise bike, but I start with the newspaper, which usually takes up about half the exercise session. That means I often read only 20 minutes or so per day, which given how many amazing and important books there are in the world, with more coming out every day, just doesn’t seem like enough.
So, I asked myself, how can I create more time for reading? How can I make it more of a priority? If I manage to find time for every single one of my other priorities – time with my family, writing, exercise, spiritual contemplation – how is it that I can’t find more time for reading?
Looking at my daily routine, I concluded that one answer is to spend less time doing nighttime tasks and try to get to bed early enough to read. Typically, I focus on the kids until they go to bed; then I start making lunches for the next day, folding laundry, returning e-mails, whatever I didn’t get to in the course of the day. I usually don’t get to bed until it’s time to go to sleep.
Could I cut down on those busy-work tasks in the evening? The laundry does need to be folded, but is there another time I could do it, like during the weekends? Would anything be lost if I spent less time e-mailing? Probably not; I could just turn my computer off early in the evening and catch up the next morning with whatever correspondence remained. The kids’ lunches need to be made, but maybe I could do that at the same time I’m preparing dinner.
So I resolved to try, and the pile of Books To Read on my night table is serving as a powerful incentive. There’s just too much great literature out there for me not to be able to find the time. If it’s the only thing I want more time for, I just have to believe there’s a way to make that happen.
Already, I’m making a little bit of progress. Holly has just started taking an afterschool pottery class that lasts 90 minutes. I thought about all the errands and tasks Tim and I could accomplish between drop-off and pickup. We could buy groceries; get the oil changed in the car; visit the office supply store and the drugstore; pick up dry cleaning. Instead, this week, we headed for the bagel store. I bought Tim a toasted bagel with bacon cream cheese (his favorite treat) and myself a cup of coffee and a chocolate chip cookie (which turned out to be of poor quality, but it made me feel entitled to sit at a table for an hour. Calories don’t count if you’re giving yourself an excuse to take up space at a café, right?). Tim had brought along Robin Hood, a childhood favorite of Rick’s that he’s slowly making his way through; I had a pile of sections from last Sunday’s New York Times.
And together, we read. For a whole hour, we just sat there in silence together reading. It was such a treat. I could have been doing so many other productive things, but I convinced myself that this mattered too. We’ll try it again during Holly’s next pottery class, and see if we can make it a regular habit. One hour more of reading a week? It’s a great start.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
A range of winter weather patterns
I’m not sure whether it’s a coincidence or an intentional curricular scheme, but both of my kids’ grades are looking at the weather this month. Tim’s fifth grade class is studying weather patterns from a scientific perspective; Holly and the other second graders have an assignment to record the temperature each day and write their observations.
It seems to me like the perfect time of year to be studying weather. This week we’ve had a wide variety, and each change brings with it welcome effects. Over the weekend, the temperatures hovered right around freezing and there was a great deal of ice on the ground. Holly went sledding and deemed the conditions perfect; from inside the house, I baked bread and enjoyed feeling cozy in the chill of winter. Then on Monday we had a January thaw and heavy rain, which melted the ice that had been causing me so much anxiety on my daily run and washed away a lot of the snow that was blocking the footpaths. Yesterday I felt so grateful to be running on muddy gravel instead of ice, and the balmy air made me think of spring: not really all that close at hand right now, but somewhere in the not-so-distance future. The rainfall meant I didn’t have to fill the tub that the cows drink from when the stream freezes over, and the snow washing away allowed us to open the gates between pastures and let them roam freely, which they love; it’s always fun to see them venture out onto the hillside after staying near the barn for several days.
Today is cold again, with a prediction that much chillier air is on its way, but the sun is shining and the ground is dry. I like the hard frozen conditions of late January; now the ice is gone but the mud has frozen into smooth hard terrain, and the bright sunlight shining through the treeless branches is starkly beautiful. This morning when I went out to feed the cows, I heard birds chirping, and despite the 25-degree air, the sound of the birds conveyed a hint of spring mornings.
My spouse sometimes says he’d be happy living in a warm climate yearround – he likes swimming, barbecues and baseball and has no use for wintertime -- but I love the change of seasons. I love the dreary seasonality of a sloppy winter day and the elusive relief of a January thaw, a short reprieve from the cold. I like heavy snowfalls and dry sunny days like today. I like walking in thick powder or atop a crust of old frozen snow.
Committing to a daily run two and a half years ago put me in closer touch with the weather than I had previously been. In years past, I was guilty of driving from garage to garage in the winter, sometimes not spending any more time outside than it took to cross the parking lot at the supermarket . I used to take the winter off from running, which did have the benefit of generating a craving to run by springtime. But now that I am committed to ten minutes or more of running every single day, I don’t have the option of ignoring the weather. I know when it’s wet or cold or icy or dry or snowing. And sometimes winter running is really challenging. But where modern life and its conveniences make it so easy these days to ignore the weather altogether, I’m glad most days to put myself out into it, comfortable or not.
It seems to me like the perfect time of year to be studying weather. This week we’ve had a wide variety, and each change brings with it welcome effects. Over the weekend, the temperatures hovered right around freezing and there was a great deal of ice on the ground. Holly went sledding and deemed the conditions perfect; from inside the house, I baked bread and enjoyed feeling cozy in the chill of winter. Then on Monday we had a January thaw and heavy rain, which melted the ice that had been causing me so much anxiety on my daily run and washed away a lot of the snow that was blocking the footpaths. Yesterday I felt so grateful to be running on muddy gravel instead of ice, and the balmy air made me think of spring: not really all that close at hand right now, but somewhere in the not-so-distance future. The rainfall meant I didn’t have to fill the tub that the cows drink from when the stream freezes over, and the snow washing away allowed us to open the gates between pastures and let them roam freely, which they love; it’s always fun to see them venture out onto the hillside after staying near the barn for several days.
Today is cold again, with a prediction that much chillier air is on its way, but the sun is shining and the ground is dry. I like the hard frozen conditions of late January; now the ice is gone but the mud has frozen into smooth hard terrain, and the bright sunlight shining through the treeless branches is starkly beautiful. This morning when I went out to feed the cows, I heard birds chirping, and despite the 25-degree air, the sound of the birds conveyed a hint of spring mornings.
My spouse sometimes says he’d be happy living in a warm climate yearround – he likes swimming, barbecues and baseball and has no use for wintertime -- but I love the change of seasons. I love the dreary seasonality of a sloppy winter day and the elusive relief of a January thaw, a short reprieve from the cold. I like heavy snowfalls and dry sunny days like today. I like walking in thick powder or atop a crust of old frozen snow.
Committing to a daily run two and a half years ago put me in closer touch with the weather than I had previously been. In years past, I was guilty of driving from garage to garage in the winter, sometimes not spending any more time outside than it took to cross the parking lot at the supermarket . I used to take the winter off from running, which did have the benefit of generating a craving to run by springtime. But now that I am committed to ten minutes or more of running every single day, I don’t have the option of ignoring the weather. I know when it’s wet or cold or icy or dry or snowing. And sometimes winter running is really challenging. But where modern life and its conveniences make it so easy these days to ignore the weather altogether, I’m glad most days to put myself out into it, comfortable or not.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Of course you look cute in that; now get out the door
Because I was at a meeting during Holly’s bedtime last night, she broke our cardinal rule about picking clothes for the next day before bed. So we were back in fashion chaos this morning ten minutes before the bus was due to arrive.
Well, to me it was chaos. To my 7-year-old it was just another day of dress-up. She seemed utterly unflustered as she held up one shirt after another. “Do you think I can wear my fluffy pink scarf with this blue shirt, or do you think it will look too fancy?” she asked.
“I think it will look nice,” I replied, and then heard the unspoken retort of my conscience – which sounded startlingly like myself at age 12 – saying “I knew you were going to say that!” It’s true; I now do exactly what I once accused my mother of: claim that any outfit Holly picks out looks “nice.” As a child, I was so skeptical of my mother’s fashion choices that her proclamations of approval were akin to George Bernard Shaw’s comments about not wanting to belong to any club that would accept him as a member: if you think it looks nice then it’s obviously too dorky to leave the house in.
At the time, I really thought my mother had a hopeless sense of style, because I assumed she was telling me the truth at all times. Similarly, when my first grade teacher said I looked “very sharp and really smart” in glasses the first time I wore glasses to school, I assumed he had terrible taste in physical appearances because I took his words at face value. Only years later did I realize he probably thought I was self-conscious about the glasses (in fact I was not) and it was his attempt to build my self-esteem.
Now that I hear myself reassuring Holly that the fuzzy pink scarf will look great with the blue jersey, though, I realize there’s another motive at play. It’s not that I’m aesthetically clueless as a mom; it’s not even the inherent bias that most moms really do think their young children look adorable in almost anything. It’s that I have a vested interest in getting her out the door, and it wasn’t looking too promising this morning.
But it turned out approving the pink scarf was insufficient for achieving that goal. “Okay, I’ll wear it,” she announced. “Now I just need help finding it.” It wasn’t with her dress-up accessories or her outerwear; nor was it on the door handle where she sometimes drapes decorative items. “The last time I saw it, Ella and I were pretending it was a leash and had it tied to a stuffed dog,” Holly recalled.
Watching the minutes tick away, I checked her toy box, then remembered that for some inexplicable reason, she and Ella like to cart things around in suitcases when they play. With one minute left to departure time, I unzipped a purple butterfly-patterned suitcase from Holly’s closet. Out tumbled the pink scarf.
“Yay!” she exclaimed, grabbing it and knotting it loosely around her neck. She climbed up on the bed so she could see herself better in the mirror. “Nope, it looks silly.” Nonchalantly, she removed the scarf and flung it into the dress-up box.
So off to school Holly went in just a regular blue shirt and jeans. She looked cute in the outfit; she had also looked cute in the scarf for which I’d squandered precious morning minutes searching her closet. But now I know: some things remain unchanged, and a daughter’s reaction to her mother’s sartorial observations is one of them. “You like it? It must look silly on me.” I don’t mind the oppositional response; I just wanted her out the door on time. Si as of tonight, it’s back to the rule of picking out school clothes the night before.
Well, to me it was chaos. To my 7-year-old it was just another day of dress-up. She seemed utterly unflustered as she held up one shirt after another. “Do you think I can wear my fluffy pink scarf with this blue shirt, or do you think it will look too fancy?” she asked.
“I think it will look nice,” I replied, and then heard the unspoken retort of my conscience – which sounded startlingly like myself at age 12 – saying “I knew you were going to say that!” It’s true; I now do exactly what I once accused my mother of: claim that any outfit Holly picks out looks “nice.” As a child, I was so skeptical of my mother’s fashion choices that her proclamations of approval were akin to George Bernard Shaw’s comments about not wanting to belong to any club that would accept him as a member: if you think it looks nice then it’s obviously too dorky to leave the house in.
At the time, I really thought my mother had a hopeless sense of style, because I assumed she was telling me the truth at all times. Similarly, when my first grade teacher said I looked “very sharp and really smart” in glasses the first time I wore glasses to school, I assumed he had terrible taste in physical appearances because I took his words at face value. Only years later did I realize he probably thought I was self-conscious about the glasses (in fact I was not) and it was his attempt to build my self-esteem.
Now that I hear myself reassuring Holly that the fuzzy pink scarf will look great with the blue jersey, though, I realize there’s another motive at play. It’s not that I’m aesthetically clueless as a mom; it’s not even the inherent bias that most moms really do think their young children look adorable in almost anything. It’s that I have a vested interest in getting her out the door, and it wasn’t looking too promising this morning.
But it turned out approving the pink scarf was insufficient for achieving that goal. “Okay, I’ll wear it,” she announced. “Now I just need help finding it.” It wasn’t with her dress-up accessories or her outerwear; nor was it on the door handle where she sometimes drapes decorative items. “The last time I saw it, Ella and I were pretending it was a leash and had it tied to a stuffed dog,” Holly recalled.
Watching the minutes tick away, I checked her toy box, then remembered that for some inexplicable reason, she and Ella like to cart things around in suitcases when they play. With one minute left to departure time, I unzipped a purple butterfly-patterned suitcase from Holly’s closet. Out tumbled the pink scarf.
“Yay!” she exclaimed, grabbing it and knotting it loosely around her neck. She climbed up on the bed so she could see herself better in the mirror. “Nope, it looks silly.” Nonchalantly, she removed the scarf and flung it into the dress-up box.
So off to school Holly went in just a regular blue shirt and jeans. She looked cute in the outfit; she had also looked cute in the scarf for which I’d squandered precious morning minutes searching her closet. But now I know: some things remain unchanged, and a daughter’s reaction to her mother’s sartorial observations is one of them. “You like it? It must look silly on me.” I don’t mind the oppositional response; I just wanted her out the door on time. Si as of tonight, it’s back to the rule of picking out school clothes the night before.
Monday, January 25, 2010
The luxury of normalcy
My friend Becca has a postcard on her fridge that I gaze at every time I visit her house. The postcard is a black-and-white photo of a bathroom scene. There’s a deep old-fashioned bathtub from which is visible the head and shoulders of a cheerful 30-something woman and the beaming face of a small child. A man is in the process of setting towels down on the ledge next to the tub. The caption reads “Normalcy: the greatest luxury.”
All it takes is a moment out of normalcy to remind me of how true this is, and sometimes not even that. Sometimes I’m reminded right in the midst of normalcy how much I appreciate the everyday.
There are some people who would find my life unimaginably quotidian, with its daily routines of housework, deskwork and child-tending. But I love all of its diurnal patterns, and nothing reminds me of this so much as having them broken, even by forces that are not necessarily negative. Once while I was on a tour of the Irish countryside, I entered a tiny cottage and saw a woman in a re-creation of a 19th-century Irish village rolling out pie crust. Her motions made me suddenly homesick for the daily pleasure of measuring out flour and sinking my hands into a baking project at my kitchen counter, though cooking isn’t normally something to be missed while on a European vacation. Whenever the electricity goes out, as it typically does two or three times per year (though not yet this winter, knock on wood), it reminds me of how welcome the hum of the refrigerator and the luxury of being able to run a washing machine are during my daily life.
I was thinking about this over the weekend because we spent two nominally dull days doing everyday sorts of things, and yet it all seemed cozy to me. On Friday evening, friends came over and I made pizza. On Saturday, we spent a lot of time picking up the house. I ran four loads of laundry. I went to the post office, the transfer station, the supermarket; but simply because there was nowhere else I especially needed to be, I indulged in a sense of reassuring normalcy in these errands as I picked up mail, got rid of trash, loaded up with ingredients for menus I’m looking forward to making. On Sunday we went to church, and in the afternoon played Scattergories. Sunday evening I completed the weekly ritual of cleaning out the guinea pig’s cage. The weather was cold and damp, and Rick was working all weekend, so my running time was limited to only 15-20 minutes a day and we didn’t do any other outdoor recreation, but the kids had fun at the indoor pool on Saturday, and I did some reading while they swam.
One the way home from grocery shopping, just as I was passing our local cross-country ski center, friends of ours pulled out of the parking lot right in front of me. I indulged in a wave of envy; I wished my family had been out on the cross-country trails rather than grocery shopping and dropping off the newspapers at the recycling center. But then I thought again about the reassuring sense of normalcy that doing routine tasks and errands gives me. Seeing the families sleeping on the streets of Haiti is all it takes to remind me how much I love having a house to clean and groceries to put away. Remembering the days after 9/11 never fails to conjure up for me how good it feels not to be worried about much more than whether antibiotics will clear up the dog’s ear infection.
Normalcy, the greatest luxury. Now it’s a drizzly Monday morning: the roads are slippery, the sky steel-gray, and I’m waiting for roadside repair to come fix a flat tire on our truck. But I’m also feeling fortunate that the tire went flat in our driveway rather than in a parking lot, and that roadside assistance is just a toll-free call away. It’s a routine day, and as far as I’m concerned there’s nothing at all not to like about that.
All it takes is a moment out of normalcy to remind me of how true this is, and sometimes not even that. Sometimes I’m reminded right in the midst of normalcy how much I appreciate the everyday.
There are some people who would find my life unimaginably quotidian, with its daily routines of housework, deskwork and child-tending. But I love all of its diurnal patterns, and nothing reminds me of this so much as having them broken, even by forces that are not necessarily negative. Once while I was on a tour of the Irish countryside, I entered a tiny cottage and saw a woman in a re-creation of a 19th-century Irish village rolling out pie crust. Her motions made me suddenly homesick for the daily pleasure of measuring out flour and sinking my hands into a baking project at my kitchen counter, though cooking isn’t normally something to be missed while on a European vacation. Whenever the electricity goes out, as it typically does two or three times per year (though not yet this winter, knock on wood), it reminds me of how welcome the hum of the refrigerator and the luxury of being able to run a washing machine are during my daily life.
I was thinking about this over the weekend because we spent two nominally dull days doing everyday sorts of things, and yet it all seemed cozy to me. On Friday evening, friends came over and I made pizza. On Saturday, we spent a lot of time picking up the house. I ran four loads of laundry. I went to the post office, the transfer station, the supermarket; but simply because there was nowhere else I especially needed to be, I indulged in a sense of reassuring normalcy in these errands as I picked up mail, got rid of trash, loaded up with ingredients for menus I’m looking forward to making. On Sunday we went to church, and in the afternoon played Scattergories. Sunday evening I completed the weekly ritual of cleaning out the guinea pig’s cage. The weather was cold and damp, and Rick was working all weekend, so my running time was limited to only 15-20 minutes a day and we didn’t do any other outdoor recreation, but the kids had fun at the indoor pool on Saturday, and I did some reading while they swam.
One the way home from grocery shopping, just as I was passing our local cross-country ski center, friends of ours pulled out of the parking lot right in front of me. I indulged in a wave of envy; I wished my family had been out on the cross-country trails rather than grocery shopping and dropping off the newspapers at the recycling center. But then I thought again about the reassuring sense of normalcy that doing routine tasks and errands gives me. Seeing the families sleeping on the streets of Haiti is all it takes to remind me how much I love having a house to clean and groceries to put away. Remembering the days after 9/11 never fails to conjure up for me how good it feels not to be worried about much more than whether antibiotics will clear up the dog’s ear infection.
Normalcy, the greatest luxury. Now it’s a drizzly Monday morning: the roads are slippery, the sky steel-gray, and I’m waiting for roadside repair to come fix a flat tire on our truck. But I’m also feeling fortunate that the tire went flat in our driveway rather than in a parking lot, and that roadside assistance is just a toll-free call away. It’s a routine day, and as far as I’m concerned there’s nothing at all not to like about that.
Friday, January 22, 2010
Fifty photos for fifty cents (and lots and lots of memories)
Maintaining my photo album is yet another one of those things that I know I should make a regular habit of, but it always falls in priority to the point where it doesn’t get done. Compared with keeping up the house, completing paid writing assignments, or playing with my children, it’s just too far down on the list. Back in the days of print photography, I was much better about it. I’d finish a roll of film, send it off to get developed, winnow through the packet of prints that came back, and slide the one I deemed worthy into the plastic album sleeves. When friends admired my well-organized albums and admitted they stored their packets of prints in shoeboxes, I felt a little bit superior.
But after I started using a digital camera, my good habits fell by the wayside. It’s so easy to just store electronic files and promise yourself you’ll print them someday. After all, you know they’re right there on your hard drive (and we all know what a safe place that is, ha ha. I frequently remind myself that storing files on my hard drive without backing up is like putting a mug of coffee on the roof of the car while I help the kids with their seatbelts. Maybe it’ll still be there when I remember to retrieve it, and maybe it won’t.)
So when Kodak ran that memorable ad for photo printers with the line “Mothers, don’t let your babies grow up to be pixels,” I knew they meant me.
Still, it’s hard to keep up. I don’t have my own photo printer, so I need to send my photo files out to be printed, and without the standard unit count of 24 that we all became accustomed to with film photography, I never quite feel that the time is right to print.
This year I came up with a different approach – the opposite of the keeping-up strategy that I used back in the film days. I kept procrastinating on ordering pictures although I had them all organized by month on my computer, and then right after Christmas I received a promotional email from Snapfish advertising 50 prints for 50 cents. Not only did it seem like a good deal even with shipping costs added on; I liked the idea of choosing the 50 photos that best reflected 2009 for us, although I wasn’t averse to paying a few cents more if I couldn’t winnow it down to 50.
Once I’d chosen, it actually came out to 54, and by the second week in January, the packet of photos had arrived in the mail. I happened to be going away over the weekend, so I took a newly purchased album and the photos with me, and a mere two hours on Saturday afternoon was all it took to get The Year in Pictures all wrapped up.
And I have to say, I’m delighted with the results. It’s not just a matter of feeling organized. Putting a year’s worth of pictures in an album has the effect of giving the year a certain shape and form that it didn’t necessarily have in my mind previous to this representation. On the one hand, it’s not an original observation to note that in family photos, everyone always looks happy and harmonious; no one (except maybe art students) takes pictures of family fights or boring rainy afternoons.
But it’s not just that. Seeing our year reflected in its most photogenic moments reminds me that even though every year has ups and downs, disappointments, disputes, illnesses, frustrations, we also had a lot of really great times during the past twelve months. There were the obvious and unforgettable ones, like our five-day trip to Florida in late February: look at the kids building a sand castle together on the beach and taking a ride at Busch Gardens. But there were those that we might forget without a commemorative photo as well: the June afternoon when Tim and I went running with Tim’s fourth grade teacher; the morning Tim and his friend Will fed the cows and sheep by themselves; Holly reading a picture book to her two younger cousins on Easter morning. Halloween costumes and Thanksgiving feasts: of course we’d remember that those holidays took place, but the pictures remind me that these annual observances have unique hallmarks from one year to the next: Holly marching in the school parade hand-in-hand with her friend Samantha (a monkey and a witch, together at last – why not?); Tim and three friends savoring a nothing-but-bacon breakfast at the end of Tim’s birthday sleepover.
And while I might have ended 2009 with the overall sense that we didn’t do much in the way of family travel last year, the photos remind me of all the many smaller excursions we took: the Boston Harbor Islands on a hot August day; Bath, Maine, for the Fourth of July; Pennsylvania during April vacation. True, I always feel like I don’t see my sisters and their families enough in the course of a year, but the photos remind me of the good times we managed to fit in with them: playing basketball in Swarthmore; a spring tea party over Easter weekend; an afternoon of tiara-making; an anniversary dinner which featured the most elaborate baked Alaska I have ever seen, made by my sister Lauren.
Maybe it’s just to excuse future procrastination, but in a way I like this approach: wait until the year is over and then compile photos from the entire twelve months. Yes, it sanitizes things by eliminating all the not-so-memorable times. But it also reminds me that if we‘re as fortunate as we were last year, we have plenty of good times to look forward to in the next twelve months.
But after I started using a digital camera, my good habits fell by the wayside. It’s so easy to just store electronic files and promise yourself you’ll print them someday. After all, you know they’re right there on your hard drive (and we all know what a safe place that is, ha ha. I frequently remind myself that storing files on my hard drive without backing up is like putting a mug of coffee on the roof of the car while I help the kids with their seatbelts. Maybe it’ll still be there when I remember to retrieve it, and maybe it won’t.)
So when Kodak ran that memorable ad for photo printers with the line “Mothers, don’t let your babies grow up to be pixels,” I knew they meant me.
Still, it’s hard to keep up. I don’t have my own photo printer, so I need to send my photo files out to be printed, and without the standard unit count of 24 that we all became accustomed to with film photography, I never quite feel that the time is right to print.
This year I came up with a different approach – the opposite of the keeping-up strategy that I used back in the film days. I kept procrastinating on ordering pictures although I had them all organized by month on my computer, and then right after Christmas I received a promotional email from Snapfish advertising 50 prints for 50 cents. Not only did it seem like a good deal even with shipping costs added on; I liked the idea of choosing the 50 photos that best reflected 2009 for us, although I wasn’t averse to paying a few cents more if I couldn’t winnow it down to 50.
Once I’d chosen, it actually came out to 54, and by the second week in January, the packet of photos had arrived in the mail. I happened to be going away over the weekend, so I took a newly purchased album and the photos with me, and a mere two hours on Saturday afternoon was all it took to get The Year in Pictures all wrapped up.
And I have to say, I’m delighted with the results. It’s not just a matter of feeling organized. Putting a year’s worth of pictures in an album has the effect of giving the year a certain shape and form that it didn’t necessarily have in my mind previous to this representation. On the one hand, it’s not an original observation to note that in family photos, everyone always looks happy and harmonious; no one (except maybe art students) takes pictures of family fights or boring rainy afternoons.
But it’s not just that. Seeing our year reflected in its most photogenic moments reminds me that even though every year has ups and downs, disappointments, disputes, illnesses, frustrations, we also had a lot of really great times during the past twelve months. There were the obvious and unforgettable ones, like our five-day trip to Florida in late February: look at the kids building a sand castle together on the beach and taking a ride at Busch Gardens. But there were those that we might forget without a commemorative photo as well: the June afternoon when Tim and I went running with Tim’s fourth grade teacher; the morning Tim and his friend Will fed the cows and sheep by themselves; Holly reading a picture book to her two younger cousins on Easter morning. Halloween costumes and Thanksgiving feasts: of course we’d remember that those holidays took place, but the pictures remind me that these annual observances have unique hallmarks from one year to the next: Holly marching in the school parade hand-in-hand with her friend Samantha (a monkey and a witch, together at last – why not?); Tim and three friends savoring a nothing-but-bacon breakfast at the end of Tim’s birthday sleepover.
And while I might have ended 2009 with the overall sense that we didn’t do much in the way of family travel last year, the photos remind me of all the many smaller excursions we took: the Boston Harbor Islands on a hot August day; Bath, Maine, for the Fourth of July; Pennsylvania during April vacation. True, I always feel like I don’t see my sisters and their families enough in the course of a year, but the photos remind me of the good times we managed to fit in with them: playing basketball in Swarthmore; a spring tea party over Easter weekend; an afternoon of tiara-making; an anniversary dinner which featured the most elaborate baked Alaska I have ever seen, made by my sister Lauren.
Maybe it’s just to excuse future procrastination, but in a way I like this approach: wait until the year is over and then compile photos from the entire twelve months. Yes, it sanitizes things by eliminating all the not-so-memorable times. But it also reminds me that if we‘re as fortunate as we were last year, we have plenty of good times to look forward to in the next twelve months.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Yoga? Of course I should, but...
Yes, I should try yoga. Yes, I know I should try yoga. And yes, I was telling myself it was time to try yoga even before I saw this story in today’s Boston Globe. In fact, it’s a bit of a coincidence: among the many possibilities for self-improvement that I contemplated last weekend while I was away on a two-day retreat was that I should take up yoga.
What happened over the weekend was typical for me. Twenty women gathered in the spacious living room of the retreat house at 8 AM. I passed them as I headed out the door for my daily run. An hour later, we met up again: they’d done a long and well-focused yoga sequence; I’d run five miles. We all felt rejuvenated and well-exercised.
At the time, the idea of yoga provoked its usual reaction from me. Many of my friends practice yoga regularly; my mother has taught it for nearly forty years, “way before everyone else was doing it!”, as a long-time acquaintance remarked recently. One of my closest friends studied it so seriously for a while that she almost became what her family referred to as a “yoga nun” (apparently there really is such a thing). So it’s a question I’m faced with fairly frequently.
“Runners don’t like yoga,” I always say dismissively. “There’s nothing wrong with it; I just can’t sit still long enough. Why devote an hour to exercise if you’re not going to reach your target heart rate?” Or, put more bluntly, I can’t be bothered to work out if I’m not going to burn measurable amounts of fat in the process. And although I know there are some forms of yoga in which an aerobic heart rate is the goal, these are generally not the kinds my friends are practicing. In the past, I just haven’t been able to get past the fact that for my exercise value – by which I really mean the time I devote to it – I want the effects of running: the pounding heart, the invigorating fresh air, the justification to eat a few cookies afterwards.
Plus I just know I’d be really bad at yoga. I’m not a very graceful person and I’m remarkably inflexible. (I mean that literally, not just where decisions about breaking up my regular running routine to give yoga a chance are concerned.) I have short, tight muscles that don’t like to stretch. I’m absolutely certain I’ll look clumsy and ridiculous and I won’t be able to achieve any of the poses.
But all it took was one overheard conversation recently to make me think a little bit differently. My mother was explaining to someone who had just taken her yoga class why it remained so important to her. She described how she’d seen firsthand the importance of flexibility in aging bodies. Her own mother, who lived to 93, had inclinations similar to my own: she loved fitness activities but lacked the patience for slow stretching. As my mother put it in the conversation I dropped in on, her mother had played tennis and skied into her 80’s and never carried an ounce of fat on her lean, athletic frame – but in the end, she still paid for her lack of suppleness and muscle resilience. As she grew very old, as my mother put it, “she just sort of shrank away.”
Since I saw my grandmother regularly during those years and could picture exactly what my mother meant – my grandmother really did seem to melt away to nothing in her final years, even though she was never in particularly bad health – it was a wakeup call. I may care more right now about burning fat than developing long sinewy muscles or graceful balance , but if my grandmother is any indication, I might regret those priorities if I live long enough. Right then, I resolved to give yoga another chance.
So now it’s just a matter of making it enough of a priority. A friend who heard me talk about this on the retreat offered to lend me her yoga Wii program, which strikes me as a great way to try it out but ultimately not exactly the right way to go about it: I know that for my friends who practice yoga, being at the studio with an instructor and other students is a significant part of the overall experience for them. And yet at the same time, I know how often my primary reason for not doing something I should do – from picking up the dry cleaning to buying a book I want – is the odious suburban reality of getting into the car and driving. Do I want to add another hour or more of driving every week for the sake of yoga?
It’s been only a few days, but so far I still haven’t done anything about it other than admit to my mother that she’s right. (Of course, that in itself can be a big step for a daughter to take. But it still doesn’t have too much to do with reaping the benefits of yoga.) I read the Globe story this morning and agreed with everything the author said. I know I need to put my priority into action and get myself off to a yoga class. I need to give it the three-week chance that any new pursuit deserves.
Slow down. Start at the beginning. Take a chance. Try it out. Not an easy message for a veteran runner, but clearly one I need to take more seriously.
What happened over the weekend was typical for me. Twenty women gathered in the spacious living room of the retreat house at 8 AM. I passed them as I headed out the door for my daily run. An hour later, we met up again: they’d done a long and well-focused yoga sequence; I’d run five miles. We all felt rejuvenated and well-exercised.
At the time, the idea of yoga provoked its usual reaction from me. Many of my friends practice yoga regularly; my mother has taught it for nearly forty years, “way before everyone else was doing it!”, as a long-time acquaintance remarked recently. One of my closest friends studied it so seriously for a while that she almost became what her family referred to as a “yoga nun” (apparently there really is such a thing). So it’s a question I’m faced with fairly frequently.
“Runners don’t like yoga,” I always say dismissively. “There’s nothing wrong with it; I just can’t sit still long enough. Why devote an hour to exercise if you’re not going to reach your target heart rate?” Or, put more bluntly, I can’t be bothered to work out if I’m not going to burn measurable amounts of fat in the process. And although I know there are some forms of yoga in which an aerobic heart rate is the goal, these are generally not the kinds my friends are practicing. In the past, I just haven’t been able to get past the fact that for my exercise value – by which I really mean the time I devote to it – I want the effects of running: the pounding heart, the invigorating fresh air, the justification to eat a few cookies afterwards.
Plus I just know I’d be really bad at yoga. I’m not a very graceful person and I’m remarkably inflexible. (I mean that literally, not just where decisions about breaking up my regular running routine to give yoga a chance are concerned.) I have short, tight muscles that don’t like to stretch. I’m absolutely certain I’ll look clumsy and ridiculous and I won’t be able to achieve any of the poses.
But all it took was one overheard conversation recently to make me think a little bit differently. My mother was explaining to someone who had just taken her yoga class why it remained so important to her. She described how she’d seen firsthand the importance of flexibility in aging bodies. Her own mother, who lived to 93, had inclinations similar to my own: she loved fitness activities but lacked the patience for slow stretching. As my mother put it in the conversation I dropped in on, her mother had played tennis and skied into her 80’s and never carried an ounce of fat on her lean, athletic frame – but in the end, she still paid for her lack of suppleness and muscle resilience. As she grew very old, as my mother put it, “she just sort of shrank away.”
Since I saw my grandmother regularly during those years and could picture exactly what my mother meant – my grandmother really did seem to melt away to nothing in her final years, even though she was never in particularly bad health – it was a wakeup call. I may care more right now about burning fat than developing long sinewy muscles or graceful balance , but if my grandmother is any indication, I might regret those priorities if I live long enough. Right then, I resolved to give yoga another chance.
So now it’s just a matter of making it enough of a priority. A friend who heard me talk about this on the retreat offered to lend me her yoga Wii program, which strikes me as a great way to try it out but ultimately not exactly the right way to go about it: I know that for my friends who practice yoga, being at the studio with an instructor and other students is a significant part of the overall experience for them. And yet at the same time, I know how often my primary reason for not doing something I should do – from picking up the dry cleaning to buying a book I want – is the odious suburban reality of getting into the car and driving. Do I want to add another hour or more of driving every week for the sake of yoga?
It’s been only a few days, but so far I still haven’t done anything about it other than admit to my mother that she’s right. (Of course, that in itself can be a big step for a daughter to take. But it still doesn’t have too much to do with reaping the benefits of yoga.) I read the Globe story this morning and agreed with everything the author said. I know I need to put my priority into action and get myself off to a yoga class. I need to give it the three-week chance that any new pursuit deserves.
Slow down. Start at the beginning. Take a chance. Try it out. Not an easy message for a veteran runner, but clearly one I need to take more seriously.
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