A Day in the Life of Claire: A Biography in Real Time

     Today, as I was yelling up the stairs for my small people, once again, to come down and get bundled up, I started thinking about how my kids see our day from their side, especially our perennially turtle-ish older daughter. She is often wandering in the vastness of her own mind, writing songs and creating little worlds of her own on every available surface of her room. I think it would be absolutely fascinating to read her ongoing biography from an omniscient point of view, to delve deeply and at length into what she is thinking while the rest of our lives happen around her. Because I’m a writer (or trying to be) and no salient point or poignant vignette springs to mind for today, I have given myself license to begin her biography…

                                                  A Day in the Life of Claire; a biography in real time

                                                                      Chapter One

     Claire had a messy room but a very neat dream life. Her bedside table had a setup, (it always did), with folded tissues for beds, empty Altoids boxes for mini-rooms and books for risers, dividers and sometimes even for reading. She had plenty of Scotch tape in her desk, and many glue sticks as well (one never knew when things needed to be connected artificially after all.) She had a habit of shoving many different things under her bed at once and then announcing that it was clean, which it was, to anyone who didn’t bother looking under the long drape of her comforter.

     We find our protagonist on this particularly cold winter day lying on this same comforter, thumb in her mouth and two fingers tracing circles on her earlobe. She was, as usual, supposed to be doing something else. She stared up at the ceiling lost in thought as words floated by her; words like, “get dressed,” and “brush your teeth,” and “What are you doing up there?” Although she could hear these words, she wondered why someone would bother repeating anything so unnecessary. She did, after all, get dressed and brush her teeth every morning, eventually. Slowly, her mind shifted back to the epic story she was writing in her head that would be set to music, much like “Peter and the Wolf.” It didn’t bother our young hero that she did not know either how to write music or how to play any specific instrument yet. These minor inconveniences were easily overcome with some imagination, and that she had in spades.

     Much to her dismay and the interruption of her reverie, her mom showed up and insisted on her actually enacting some of the requests that had floated up the stairs to her. After brushing her teeth, she wandered back to her room and proceeded to stand with only undies on for a full five minutes in front of her closet door. Her thumb in her mouth and her head angled to the side so as to be able to get the perfect position for standing ear rub, she contemplated her epic, and then also wondered why the moon had been so bright last night. Questions swam through her mind; “was the moon that bright in China as well last night? Can my friend Hannah see the same moon where she is?” Her questions led her to her bookcase, where she pulled out a book she knew she would need at some point and so had rescued from Goodwill. Still clad only in undies, she sat on the floor of her room reading about the moon, pausing every couple of minutes to suck her thumb and rub her ear, or as she would later learn to call it “philosophizing.”

     She heard irritation in the footsteps on their way up the stairs to her so she quickly put the book back and opened a drawer in an earnest attempt to stick to the schedule, or at least look like she was sticking to the schedule. Her mom walked by and peered in with raised eyebrows for good measure and then wandered off to hurry some other dawdler along. Finally dressed, she headed down the stairs to confront the barely controlled chaos of packing lunches, assembly line style and the inevitable craze that comes with the last five minutes before heading to school.  This world was a loud one, much busier and less contemplative than the one she had just left in the comfort of her own room and mind. Nevertheless, our brave hero forged on, stepping into voluminous snow pants, a jacket, hat and mittens steadily but oh so slowly. The last one of all her siblings to the car, she heard an exasperated sigh from the front seat as she stepped over mountains of backpacks and legs to find a seat.

More to come…

Love under scrutiny

     If you want to see yourself in the harshest possible light, have a three year old and a four year old stare at your face from four inches out. “Your hair is kind of two different colors” (thank you Loreal), “what is that red dot?” (thank you, Irish ancestry), and my favorite, “I think some of your hair is silver too” (thank you to all 36 of my birthdays.)

     The thing that always fills me with wonder in this process is that all that scrutiny doesn’t matter to them. Because in the end, they stick their wet thumbs in their mouths and lay those little faces on my chest contentedly. They make it ever so clear that none of the features that make us different, the ones we sometimes try to hide, matter in the slightest. Kids love because they love. Why? Because that’s what love is. As is so popularly repeated, love is blind. But, love is blind not because differences, peculiarities and irregularities aren’t noticed, but because they are overlooked; kids inherently know that surfaces don’t matter.

     A few weeks ago, when the wonderful news story about the record clearing of nine civil rights protesters (the Friendship Nine) came out, I read it to my kids. At the time, my oldest daughter’s class was discussing Ruby Bridges and Rosa Parks and my older son was learning about Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad. I thought the modern day news story would connect them to the fallout from slavery and the process our slow redemption has taken us on since the Civil War.  When I got done with the article, one of my daughters asked why, for so long, we thought black people and white people were different. Being born in 1978, and to parents who  raised me to be color blind,  when I am faced with this question, I always have a hard time answering. I talked about the European worldview at the time of colonization as well as differences in culture and economy in a long and meandering way.

     After my diatribe, I was met with blank stares. I realized that no matter how I tried to phrase my answer, it wouldn’t matter. These children were born in the 21^st century and have absolutely no idea how it is possible to hate someone because of anything they can see, nor what it feels like to feel better than someone else by virtue of ancestry. What a blessing this is; what a debt of gratitude we, as a nation, owe to the many people along the way who have made it possible for our children to be open to the world, to be oblivious to any thinking that implies differences on the surface mean anything more underneath. To children, love is blind, and in the end, isn't that the only true kind?

Snapshot cakes: the beauty of birthday baking

   In the last four weeks, I have baked, frosted and decorated ten cakes. Ten. My sugar taste buds are worn down nubs, my hands are still a reddish hue from food dye and I am currently scouring Amazon for a new hand mixer. You see, January and February are birthday season in our house, with three of our five children celebrating within three weeks of each other. A sane person might ask, “if there are only three birthdays, why so many cakes?” The reason is this: we celebrate birthdays in a big way; we have a cake on the actual day of the birthday, a cake for school, a cake for our family party and a cake for the friends’ party. During fits of self-pity when all the spatulas are dirty and I have four different icing colors in front of me, my very practical husband asks “why don’t you just bake one sheet cake and divide it in three?” His suggestion is very reasonable and sounds good at the time: fewer pans, fewer burnt out mixers and a lot less dish soap, but then I remember why I do this every year…

    A birthday honors more than the day these beautiful people came into our lives; it also acknowledges the moments that have passed along the way and the stage each child is in right at this moment, in this time. When Maeve, on her third birthday, asks for a mermaid princess cake, it is because she spends her time wearing plastic heels, tutus and any kind of outfit with tulle. She is at the stage when I know she is coming by the click-click of heels on the hardwood and the certainty that she has changed, yet again, right before a meal which will inevitably end up on the front of whatever dress is the current choice. Ryan, my six year old, asked for a blessedly simple blue heart cake for our family party. Ryan is all heart; he wears it on his sleeve for the world to see, following every rule and trying his sweet best to make everyone happy. That cake was, to me, who he is and I know I will remember his blue eyes looking up at me in their gentle way every time I look at pictures of him blowing out his candles. Claire, my oldest daughter, wanted a white tiger cake. With fondant, sticky hands and a whole lot of artistic license, I was able to give her an approximation of the animal with one eye who shares her pillow with her every night. She has researched white tigers and has come up with so many ways she thinks might help get them off the endangered list. My girl is on the verge; her heart is coming through and the capacity that she has to do good in the world is emerging. Her tiger cake reminds me that while she might be encountering the world on a grander scale, she also needs to hold something close at night, keeping it, and herself, safe.

    In the end, I make all those cakes because they mean more to me than a symbol of my kids’ latest craze. They are, to me, a snapshot of their lives, marking time as it gains momentum year by year. Looking back on the train cakes, the castle cakes, and the shark cakes, I am reminded of things they have played with, have loved and, in the end, have let go for something new. I am filled with gratitude at knowing these amazing children intimately enough to have a front row seat on their journey, gratitude that another year has passed in which we are all here, all smiling and singing as their wishes blow away off into the world.