And Max Said, "Be Still"

If I were ever forced to make a list of my five most prized possessions in the world, at least two of them would be books. One of them is my ancient, elderly, bruised and beaten and battered paperback copy of Slaughterhouse-Five that I stole from a yard sale when I was in high school. The page corners are dog-eared and passages are highlighted and underlined and notes are scribbled in the margins from I can’t even tell you how many essays I wrote about it. I don’t know where that book is right now, and I won’t allow myself to die until it is located. (Note to my husband: this is not a challenge.)

The other book is hardback, still in its original dust jacket, was a gift for my husband the first Christmas we were dating and has pretty much saved our relationship hundreds of times since then, and is basically pristine except for the fingerprints. Three sets of fingerprints, to be precise: his, mine, and hers. Because the other book is Where the Wild Things Are, and even when she was very small, our daughter knew not to mess with the Wild Things.

I don’t know a lot of people who don’t know about the Wild Things. The book was published before I was born, but not too long, although it seems like everybody including my own parents was read that book as a child. I’m sure my parents read it to me, because I remember the pictures, and I remember sitting in the dark at night thinking about those creatures who roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws, and I remember never once wondering what “gnashed” meant, because I already knew, from the book.

We went through a phase, a wonderful phase, my favorite so far, where Shae wanted to read Wild Things every night before bed for like a whole month, and my husband and I would take turns reading it to her, and we each had a different way to read the story. My husband, surprisingly, is all energy and light and loud noises, and when he reads it to her there is a lot of laughing and giggling and crazy frenetic dancing. His Max is much more regal than mine, more kingly, and his voice is deeper and manlier, and his Max is strong and assertive. I think she likes his version best, honestly.

Because mine is different. When I read the book, and we get to the bit about “LET THE WILD RUMPUS START” there is jumping on the bed and crazy choreography and hooting and hollering and howling at the moon and sometimes I’ll pick her up and fly her around the room, but when we get to the part about “BE STILL” my voice breaks a little bit, cracks ever so slightly, and once we round the corner of “OH PLEASE DON’T GO, WE’LL EAT YOU UP WE LOVE YOU SO” … there is quiet. My Max is sad. He misses his Mommy and his toys and his string cheese and all the things that he loves best in the world, and when he says, “NO,” it is a whisper.

In that moment she is not Max any more – I am. And I have gone from being master of the house, superhero of the world, king of where the wild things are, to a tiny little thing, just a mom, whose daughter is growing right there in the bed where we are all snuggled together reading, and I can feel the time ticking away, and already she is about to start kindergarten and soon middle school and then high school and then college and then marriage and then children and I just want it all to stop, to calm down, to be silent and small again, my little baby, the best thing that has ever happened to me, the greatest thing that I have ever done in my whole entire life, possibly the greatest thing that I will ever do, and I just want it all to be still.

So I whisper “NO,” and she steps into her private boat and sails back almost over a year and in and out of weeks and through a day and into the night of her own room, where I have always been waiting for her, with her supper.

And it is still hot.

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NY Times Obit

NPR Remembrance

Sendak on Colbert: Part 1 and Part 2

Book Review: "You Have No Idea" by Vanessa Williams and Helen Williams

YES. THAT Vanessa Williams. THE Vanessa Williams. The one who went to Syracuse and was the first black Miss America and who was on Broadway and who played the resplendent Wilhelmina Slater on Ugly Betty and who sang that song from Pocahontas that listen to in my car every day because my kid just won't shut up about it. VANESSA WILLIAMS.

(You can probably tell that I am VERY EXCITED that BlogHer Book Club gave me a chance to review her memoir, You Have No Idea, which Ms. Williams wrote with her mother. And here's a newsflash [and also the short version of this review]: Vanessa Williams is pretty awesome, and her mother doubly so.)

(Also, full disclosure: I love that "Colours of the Wind" song. Makes my cry every time. Yes, I'm a hippy-dippy tree hugger. Whatever. Don't you judge me.)

The main theme of You Have No Idea is resiliency. How do you bounce back from scandals, bad decisions, broken hearts, deep dark secrets, and somehow manage to come out on the other side better than ever? According to Vanessa and Helen, you do it by never forgetting where you come from and by always remembering what is really important. You stand with and behind the people who have always stood with and behind you. You learn from your mother, and you share your wisdom and experience with your daughter.

One of the things I like best about this memoir is that is told "in parallel" -- for example, when Vanessa talks about the Miss America scandal, it's not just her story; her mother also gets a chance to talk about how those events affected her, as well. You can tell in the language and expressions how much these two have rub off on each other. They're not entirely alike, but they're not entirely different, either (as you would expect from a mother and daughter who are very close).

Mostly, though, it's refreshing to read a book about a celebrity that isn't vapid, vacuous, or vicious. Partly this is because Helen is not "famous" except mostly by association (although her own accomplishments as a teacher are outstanding on their own), but I also think this is because both women are just so darned nice, smart, and funny. The tell their story in a way that is honest but also diplomatic; they recognize that it is possible to tell the truth without hurting others' feelings more than necessary.

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Disclaimer: This is a paid review for BlogHer Book Club, but the opinions expressed are my own. Come on over and join the discussion!

Book Review: "The Magic Room" by Jeffrey Zaslow

I have a daughter, an adorable girl who will hopefully grow into a stunning woman, and one day her father and I might have to buy her a wedding dress. And when that day comes, I hope my daughter will get to stand on a pedestal in a place like Becker's Bridal, in place like the one Jeffrey Zaslow details in The Magic Room.

I hope that she will be like one of the brides that Zaslow describes, with a lovely or heartbreaking but ultimately interesting story of how she became the woman she will be, peering at the precipice of a new life with her future partner, maybe naïve or maybe wordly, maybe in the first blush of young adulthood or maybe well-established, but definitely hopeful and happy.

I hope that she will be helped by a woman like Shelley Becker Mueller, or her mother, or her grandmother, or her daughter, women who appreciate that every bride and every wedding is precious, and that every woman is perhaps at her most beautiful in her wedding dress, as she beams or weeps or both in the company of the memories of all the brides who have walked the aisle before her, carrying the hopes of all the brides who will come after.

I really enjoyed The Magic Room and have already recommended it to other parents of daughters that I know. My only caveat is that I found the subtitle ("A Story About The Love We Wish For Our Daughters") and the Introduction to be a bit misleading. The opening pages are quite personal and lyrical and almost had me in tears in places, but the rest is much more journalistic and objective. I would have liked a bit more introspection and perspective from the author -- what did he get out of his experience of writing this book, of spending so much time with these women and their families? But all in all, I found this to be a very satisfying read. 

We're reading and discussing The Magic Room at BlogHer Book Club this month -- won't you join us?

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Disclosure: I was provided with a copy of The Magic Room and was compensated for this review, but these opinions are entirely my own.

Crap on a Cracker

I have SO MANY COOKBOOKS, you guys. SO MANY. Even though I only cook like five things and they almost all involve cream of mushroom soup. Seriously, I must have hundreds of cookbooks, enough to open a store that sold nothing but cookbooks and I'd still be able to be open for years, because honestly: it's like they've found all the nice warm spots in my house to hide away and breed, like escaped hamsters.

The reason I discovered this is that I was looking for something new and exciting to make for our annual department Turkey Day Potluck, which is coming up in a few weeks. For the last couple of years I have made my famous (infamous?) pumpkin dip, which is perfectly delicious and totally fine and whatever, but I've been trying to branch out a little bit, and I thought it might be fun to try something else for a change.

I'm not entirely sure what I thought I was thinking of -- maybe a homemade cranberry sauce? Or some kind of bread pudding? Perhaps a vegetable side dish in the crock pot, green bean or broccoli casserole maybe? Something to reactivate my lately-dormant Martha Stewart complex. The kind of stuff that I should definitely have been able to find in one of those cookbooks I have lying around.

My initial line of investigation went something like this: Thanksgiving is a holiday that is all about memory and tradition, right? And tradition means old-fashioned, vintage-y recipes that have been passed down through generations of home cooks, doesn't it? So if I'm looking for something like that, something that somebody else's grandmother might have made, where do I look? I look in one of these ancient and elderly cookbooks that I "inherited" from my aunts or my mother-in-law, don't I?

That's where I started, hoping to find something classic and comforting and totally holiday-appropriate and possibly even impressive, because vintage home cooking is the new haute cuisine. Right? So the other night, at dinner, I paged through an cookbook that used to be my mother-in-law's, perhaps even her mother's. I couldn't find a copyright date in this particular edition, but judging from the design of the kitchens and the clothes the people are wearing in the pictures, I would guess that this one is from somewhere between 1965 and 1975.

Should have been ripe for finding charming little old dishes like grandma used to make, right? Instead what I found were some of the most horribly, face-meltingly, stupefyingly bad "recipes" that I ever did see in my whole entire life. I am not talking about stuff that uses weird ingredients like rutabaga and sauerbraten and something called "No. 2 cans" of tomato soup, although there was plenty of that.

There was also a lot of ... whatever the hell that thing is, up there. In the cookbook, that monstrosity, that absolute affront to all that is good and holy in this world, that hot mess is called "Perfection Salad," and it is made with unflavored gelatin, sugar, salt, water, vinegar, lemon juice, shredded cabbage, celery, green pepper, and pimiento.

Or, in other words: SHREDDED VEGETABLES IN JELLO GARNISHED WITH OLIVES AND THINGS THAT LOOK LIKE OILED BABY FINGERS WHAT THE CRAP IS THAT I JUST CAN'T EVEN.

Now, look, I know that this was a different time in our history. I've watched a few episodes of "Mad Men." But come on now. Did anybody actually cook like this? Did anybody actually eat this stuff? Really? If this is what my grandparents' generation fed to my parents' generation in the 1960s, then it's no wonder that everybody did drugs in the 1970s. Who would look at that picture and say, "You know what? This gelatinous ring of disgustitude really IS just right for a buffet! Let have a dinner party and invite all my friends just so I can serve this!"

Probably the same person who would serve THIS mess. "Tasty Tenderloin-Noodle Casserole." Those meat-like chunks in the picture are supposed to be slices of pork tenderloin that have been browned in "hot fat." To me, they look like some kind of meatball, or potted meat product, or possibly wads of tree trunk -- or worse. The chunks are combined with "noodles" (I guess any old kind?), chopped green peppers and pimiento, and a "blue-cheese sauce" that is seriously the grossest thing that I have ever heard of. And I LOVE blue cheeses.

Here are some common things in this cookbook that I just don't understand: Pimiento. Monosodium glutamate. Unflavored gelatin. "Shredded process cheese" of unspecified flavor profile. "Luncheon meat," which I think means Spam or something? Recipes for "Mexican" and "Italian" food where the only spices called for are salt, pepper, and parsley.

These are two sample real recipes for "Appetizer Juices": (1) 2 parts chilled tomato juice and 1 part sauerkraut juice, stirred, served over crushed ice in cocktail glasses, and (2) heated vegetable-juice cocktail with 1 teaspoon butter stirred in. BUTTERED V8. Save me.

This is called "Rainbow Snowball Cake" and it's made from whipped vanilla ice cream, three kinds of sherbet rolled into balls and frozen on a "cooky" sheet, and apparently eleventeen different kinds of artificial colorings. I am getting hives just looking at it. That dessert is, like, 25% red dye #40.

Scary-sounding foods: Dried-beef Log. Prune Spice Cake. Baked Prune Whip. Glorified Rice, which is a dessert. Cottage Pudding. Baked-bean Sandwiches. Toasted Cheese Loaf. Liver Loaf. Chicken-fried Heart. Also, this cookbook contains a section on setting the table, including how to create "lovely and delightful centerpieces," one of which is basically -- no, it is exactly -- made by putting daisies in a saucepan.

Three things about this here thing, and then I need to go throw up and then take a nap: (1) My grandmother's nails totally looked like that, same shape and color and everything, until about 1997, and (2) that white thing is a so-called "pudding" made from unflavored gelatin, coconut flakes, and whipped cream, which is pretty much everything that is wrong with America, right there, and (3) WHY ARE THEY POURING BLOOD OVER THIS POOR THING? MAKE IT STOP.

Still want to see more, for whatever reason? You can check out The Gallery of Regrettable Food, and then maybe you should go seek professional help.

Book Review: "Theodora" by Stella Duffy

Sometimes I get really excited about a book because it has an interesting picture and an exciting quote on the cover. The cover of Theodora: Actress, Empress, Whore by Stella Duffy falls into exactly that category – the cover art features the back of a nude woman and the pull-quote from The Guardian (London)'s review reads, "There is no end of show business, court intrigue, and exotic sex."

Well, then.

I am sad to report that this quote is wrong on every level. The main character in the novel, Theodora, is an actress from sixth-century Constantinople, and in a way she sort of remains in "show business" throughout the book, but she leaves the theater proper early in the story. There is some "court intrigue" when Theodora becomes a Christian convert and is used to foster a relationship with Justinian, the man-who-would-be-Emperor. And there is only "exotic sex" if you consider a pre-adolescent girl being sold into forced prostitution by virtually every adult in her life, including her own mother, to be exotic. (I personally don’t, but then again, I read a lot of romance novels.)

But, I am happy to say, the cover of this novel is refreshingly misleading. There is nudity, and quite a lot more liberal use of the F-word than I expected. But while this is a book about someone who was, in fact, an actress, an empress, and a whore – Theodora is so many other things. She is strong and smart, a survivor of unfathomable abuses, yet always self-aware, self-confident, self-reliant, self-sufficient, and never a victim. The things she ends up with at the end of the novel are well and truly earned, and by the end of this book, I felt like Theodora truly deserved them.

And she'd definitely have some killer stories to tell about her journey.

We'll be discussing Theodora over at BlogHer Book Club this month -- if you're interested, why don't you join us?

Disclaimer: This was a paid review for BlogHer Book Club, but the opinions expressed are entirely my own.

Book Review: "Slow Love" by Dominique Browning

I'm on vacation this week, and every spare moment has been spent in a book. What I've been reading between wine coolers is Slow Love: How I Lost My Job, Put On My Pajamas, and Found Happiness by Dominique Browning, a memoir about the author at midlife, working through the abrupt changes that lead her out of her corporate office in Manhattan and into her pajamas in Rhode Island.

Much of the book is about the author's working through a long-term relationship with a legally-separated-but-not-divorced man, whom she eventually realizes is ambivalent about their romance. If you could even call it that; I don't think it's particularly romantic to spend more than a few months working things out with someone who repeatedly asked why it mattered that he remained married to his wife.

Ultimately, it felt to me like that relationship ambivalence bled into the pages of the book. It is beautifully written, almost lyrical, but behind the pretty words there is a strange lack of emotion. Every time I felt Brown had turned a corner and was getting to the point where she would finally find happiness, she reeled herself back and only seemed to find a grudging, almost unappreciated acceptance that I found frustratingly disappointing.

We'll be discussing Slow Love over at Blog Her Book Club this month -- if you're interested, why don't you join us? I'll be there as soon as I get back from vacation.

Tree Meet Apple

These pictures are kind of a gross, unfair violation of my kid's personal space. (Just these? Snerk.) I mean, really, what kind of parent takes pictures -- FLASH pictures, no less -- of their three-and-three-quarters-year-old in the middle of the night like this? (Well, it's 10:00 -- middle of the night to her, anyway.)

A bad parent, that's what kind. And a bad photographer, too. Yes, yes, I already know -- these are TERRIBLE pictures. Just wretched. The wrong things are in focus, it isn't framed well, the lighting is godawful. All of it is just wrong. But I had a revelation last night, one that I found it urgently important to document.

Other kids have security blankets, but mine has security books. Every night, when I tuck her into bed, she asks for a book or two to cuddle up with. Last night it was A Crazy Day at the Critter Cafe and Tea for Ruby. When I go back up to check on her before I go to sleep, 95% of the time her light is on and she has fallen asleep, the book still open or right next to her face, with other books strewn about the bed among the random stuffed animals and Pillow Pets.

And it occurred to me: what I was seeing wasn't just my daughter. I was also seeing myself. This must be what my husband sees when he gets home from work these days, when I've read myself to sleep and end up passed out diagonally across the bed with the bedside lamp still on and the pages of my latest Terry Pratchett damp with drool.

What is that they say? About the apple not falling far from the tree?

The Big Chill

You know that myth-slash-urban-legend that says that there are like some ridiculous number of words for snow in the "Eskimo" "language"? I bet the word for what is going on today is something like "sukksimush." Because, really, this weather situation does, indeed, suck so much. I'm through with snow. Done. No more, okay?

It starting snowing sometime overnight on Wednesday, and flakes kept right on falling all day yesterday. During the day things were fine, but sometime after 9:00 last night the temperature dropped about 20°F, the snow started sticking, the wind kicked up ... and here we are. Snowed in again.

The extreme cold and the blowing are something else this time, too -- I mean, we lost the bottom front porch step in the drifts. The good news this is what I call "Syracuse snow": not exactly fluffy, but very light and very fine, made of what feels like artificial fibers, and since it's so cold a lot of the clearing can be done with a broom.

Obviously we're going to be watching a lot of movies and TiVo'ed shows today, and reading a lot of books. Our hit list so far includes "101 Dalmatians," "Alice in Wonderland," Dora, "The Snow Bear" by Miriam Moss, "The Snowy Day" by Ezra Jack Keats, and of course more of "Imogene's Antlers," because hey why not? It's going to be fun, if we all live through it.

Reading Rainbow

Sometimes I am amazed at how much of a mini-me Shae is, in ways that both impress and mortify me. She is many of the same things that I am -- stubborn, independent, funny, smart, with a hot temper -- which is both a blessing and a curse. The good news is, we know what we're going to need to work on as she gets older.

One of the things we don't mind, not at all, is that she is a reader, just like me. She loves being read to -- in fact, we can actually get her to go to bed early if we promise an extra story. And she won't settle down for the night unless she has a book in her hands when we tuck her under her covers.

My Aunt Bet got Shae some new books for Christmas, and right now the favorite is "Imogene's Antlers" by David Small. Already we know the story by heart, so Shae can read it with us instead of us just reading it to her. She gets so engrossed in the story that we sometimes need to stop and talk about what is happening in the pictures.

I love this kid.

The end, my friends, is nigh. Oh yes, the end is nigh and the sky is falling and the world as we know it will soon cease to exist. (And I feel fine.)

Beginning 36 hours from now, I will be observing radio silence, along with about 95% of the rest of the world. No phone calls, no television, no Internet, no nothing, until I have finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Nada, nothing, nil. Total media blackout.

Yes, I know that there are now just over 28 hours until the book is "legally" available, but while I am crazy in my own sorts of ways, I will not be one of those wackadoodle Hogwartsheads who will be camped outside the Barnes & Noble so that I can get my grubby little mitts on my very own personal copy the second it goes on sale. Let's not get crazy, now. Like any civilized person, I preordered my copy from Amazon, so I know it will come in due time. (Whee, Amazon Prime and free guaranteed publication-date delivery!)

Or, if it is not here by 7am, I will track that shit down and start stalking the UPS man, so help me Jeebus.

My plan at this point is to read all weekend long. Read, and probably nothing else, until I have finished all 700+ pages. I don't remember exactly, but I think that's what I did when the sixth and penultimate book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, came out. So far the weekend is shaping up nicely to encourage that sort of behavior: G has to work 2nd shift on Saturday, so for at least a few hours I will be here alone with no distractions.

If I play my cards right (and if I get to bed early enough on Friday night and/or sleep late enough on Saturday morning), I should be able to read all the way through at least once before I need to sleep - and by then, I expect, I will need the sweet escape of slumber.

The spoilers are out there, but except for the New York Times' review of the book, I haven't read any. I don't think the NYT article gives very much away, so I will reference it here, but if you want to remain totally blissfully ignorant until you read Harry's final adventures for yourself, then by Merlin's beard, DO NOT CLICK HERE.

I expect that at the end there will be some weeping and blubbering and rending of garments, and then after all is said and done ... what? I came late to the Potter party, not reading Sorcerer's Stone until just after Goblet of Fire came out and apparently shook the adolescent literary world to its core, so for me this is just the end of a series. A big one, definitely, but not the last book that will ever matter, and certainly not the last one that I will ever read.

Reading the Harry Potter books has revitalized my love of fantasy fiction, so I have sought out books that focus on the magical and the supernatural. I have discovered Cornelia Funke and her excellent Inkworld novels (Inkheart and Inkspell), and also the Septimus Heap series by Angie Sage. Both of these authors have more greatness to come, no doubt.

Also, I have expanded my collection of "adult" books and started reading more Christopher Moore, who is so amazing I just can't even tell you. Love this guy. If you've never heard of him, pick up Practical Demonkeeping and don't stop until you've read everything. Let me know when you get to Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff - I defy you to tell me it isn't one of the very best books ever written.

But, for now, until sometime on Saturday, I have to keep my Google-fu in check so I don't get ahead of myself and try to find out what happens to Harry, Hermione, Ron, Ginny, Neville, Luna, and the rest of the D.A. What will become of McGonagall, Hagrid, Hogwarts, the Order, and He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named? Who is R.A.B., and what really happened in Godric's Hollow that fateful night so many years ago, when the love of a mother saved her son and gave him phenomenal cosmic powers? Where is Sirius's flying motorbike?

My God ... what am I going to do when it's all over but the crying?

(Cross-posted at MySpace)

Kurt Vonnegut, author of about a million books including one of my all-time favorites, Slaughterhouse-Five, has died. So it goes.

I wish I could say that I had actually met the man and known him well, but I didn't. However, I did get to dance the hokey-pokey with him once. But we'll get to that. And of course he has inspired and impacted me in ways that he will never know about. Or maybe he does. Who knows?

My first exposure to his work came sometime around the eighth grade, when one of my teachers – Mr. Grier, probably, who was exactly the sort of teacher that I believe Vonnegut would have approved of – gave my English class a pamphlet that Vonnegut had written for International Paper, titled "How To Write With Style."

It's funny that anyone would ever ask Vonnegut about how to write with "style," because while he most definitely had a voice and a perspective all his own, he did not write with the sort of elegance that one associates with greatness. He was aware of this; as he said in that essay, "I myself grew up in Indianapolis, where common speech sounds like a band saw cutting galvanized tin, and employs a vocabulary as unornamental as a monkey wrench." So it goes.

Whether it was his intention or not, in that piece Vonnegut also gave voice to what would turn out to be my Secret of Life. To this day, I have another quote from that pamphlet in my mind at all times, and on the wall of my cube, where I can see it every time I turn around, in case I need a reminder about what is really important:

"I myself find that I trust my own writing most, and others seem to trust it most, too, when I sound most like a person from Indianapolis, which is what I am. What alternatives do I have?"

Shakespeare said "To thine own self be true," and he meant it; so did Vonnegut. He wrote about what he knew and what he saw and what he loved and what he hated, a world and a life filtered through Indianapolis, a World War, the firebombing of Dresden, book bannings and book burnings, depression, two wives, seven children, and 69 years of smoking Pall Malls. So it goes.

All of these helped to create a body of work and a humanist sensibility that have profoundly affected me in ways even I am not fully prepared to deal with. Obviously I loved very much that in Vonnegut I had found someone who was older and more experienced than me, who also agreed with me on matters of some import. He was something of a socialist, and a member of the ACLU. So am I, in part because from reading Vonnegut's books I learned that it was OK, encouraged even, to question authority and trust no one, including yourself.

Vonnegut also gave me some of favorite lines to quote when things get out of control, weird, or downright stupid, including but not limited to "Welcome to the Monkey House." Of course, most of the people that I deal with have no idea what I really mean by that, because they've never read the story, but I strongly suspect that Vonnegut himself had some of the same problems from time to time. So it goes.

And none of this really explains why I'm walking around in a weird kind of funk today, mourning his passing. It's because I keep remembering a moment, from May of 1994, when I was a sophomore in college. Vonnegut was the commencement speaker at Syracuse that year, and I was on some committee, and I ended up at the graduation dinner-dance. Where I joined Vonnegut in doing the hokey-pokey.

If there's a heaven, and Vonnegut believes in it, that's where he is right now, no doubt. Smoking his Pall Malls and being unstuck in time and shooting the shit with Kilgore Trout and laying naked with Montana Wildhack and being his rumpled old Indianapolis self and doing the hokey-pokey.

Hopefully he'll save a spot on his dance card for me, someday. So it goes.