dayenu

Today we are celebrating the sunshine, the birth of a good man and the appearance of two pearly whites that have been particularly painfully slow to erupt. Sort of like this hesitant spring we've been waiting on, plants started on the window sills reaching up, looking past the grey.

Tonight we'll open the door for Elijah: one of my favorite traditions, for its underlying meaning. We turn our backs with optimism and let the needy, the good fortune, the curious neighborhood cats find us.

Happy Pesach, friends. May the search for the afikomen keep your kids occupied until they crash.

fine reads: one hundred is a family

One Hundred Is A Family, by Pam Muñoz Ryan and illustrated by Benrei Huang is, on its face, a book about counting set to rhyme: both popular subjects with my three year old. Its underlying themes, however, are ones of diversity, community and stewardship of the earth; the families represented are multigenerational, chosen, single-parent, in some cases ambiguously gendered and -- most importantly -- all happy to be hanging out together. 

Beginning with a single child ("one, finding a place to call home") and counting through ten, then by tens to one hundred, each number represents a different concept of family, from two women and a young girl stargazing to a farmful of workers bringing in the harvest. In the final pages, one hundred people tend the earth to make it better for the child pictured at the book's start. My preschooler quickly seized on this idea and turned back to the beginning to look at the kid, pointing out that all one hundred people were "his family, and the earth's family, too."

Huang's cheerful watercolored characters aren't overly stylized or arty, and are shown planting a garden, eating around a big table, hiking, and (most exciting, for me) co-sleeping four to a bed (without mention of poverty or implied pity - imagine that!), among other fun, often festive activities. A Chinese New Year celebration illustrates number seven ("a family keeping traditions of the past") and this sparked a neat bedtime conversation about the lanterns and dragon, and the similarities to American New Year's celebrations. 

As the numbers climb higher, the concept of family gets broader, including a school posing for a portrait and a neighborhood gathered for winter caroling. Muñoz Ryan's approach here is admirable. Where many children's books over-explain, One Hundred Is A Family assumes you can hang with the relative subtlety of families of origin shown next to communities, and see the importance of both. My three year old, who regularly calls his preschool classmates his brothers and sisters, was certainly able to buy in to the idea, and I'm sure others like him, with a large extended chosen family would be able to do the same.

No time was given in this book to defining characters' gender, and while some of the people present more typically, with 1990s side ponytails or skirts, there are plenty of folks with no obvious gender, leaving the door to interpretation wide open. My son identified two families as having two mamas (one of which was the co-sleeping cuties at left), and a few of the baseball cap-clad kids as girls though they were indistinguishable to me from the ones he identified as boys.

Several races and ethnicities make appearances, here, with no tokenism or heavy-handed approach to diversity. The feeling is truly one of inclusion, not for its own sake, but because it fits the story. 

Overall, we found One Hundred Is A Family refreshing, fun and inspirational. With the tie-in to caring for the earth, it's a timely choice for our garden-loving crew as we prepare for spring, and a relatable read for my littles, with chosen families as cherished as the ones they were born into. 

Ratings:

KIDS' GENDER NEUTRALITY: *****

Five stars for some skirts, some headbands, but plenty (and I do mean plenty) of kids in neutral colors with no gender signifiers and nothing to tell you how anyone identifies. Nary a gendered pronoun in sight. 

FAMILY SITUATIONS: ***** 

Five stars for happy families doing things like eating a meal around a big table and sleeping four to a bed. Lots of babies as active participants and older folks as relevant and fun. Characters' neutrality means pretty much any familial configuration can find representation.

MULTICULTURALISM: *****

Five stars for people of different races and ethnicities depicted hanging out, doing stuff with their loved ones rather than exemplifying stereotypes. Traditions are respectfully hinted at, as in the picture of a Black family stitching together a quilt, but don't overpower the more powerful message of togetherness.  

GENTLE PARENTING: ****

Four stars for co-sleeping and family members of all ages working together harmoniously. Big people looking lovingly at littles, and the implication of mutual respect. 

STORY AND ILLUSTRATION QUALITY: ***

Three stars for a somewhat dated illustration style I don't personally love, but my son found fun and accessible if not wow-inducing. A well worn rhyming scheme perfect for toddlers and preschoolers, with a beautiful overarching message and simple text appropriate for young listeners and readers. 

OUR FAMILY'S OVERALL RATING: ****

Four stars. A sweet, uplifting and inclusive book I didn't mind re-reading when asked, which gave us the opportunity to talk about our different families and communities, and what other families look like. No problematic gender stereotypes, ageism or scary stuff to turn off my sensitive son. Cartoony but well-done illustrations that appeal to preschoolers. A fine read indeed! Check it out at your library or buy it at Powell's or Amazon.  

As a closing note: So many people have offered their suggestions for Fine Reads, and each book mentioned is added to my reading list. Thank you, all, for the ideas about subject matter, authors and books you've loved sharing with your own kids, or remember enjoying as children yourselves. Most of what's recommended to me are books that deal directly with same sex parents, boys that wear dresses, and the like. While these are great, I wanted to clarify that they aren't my focus. I know that I could walk into a library and ask the librarian for a book about having two moms, for example, but a child with two moms doesn't need to learn about that phenomenon. Instead, I'm trying to find books that simply show diversity, different families, gender de-emphasis, and differing abilities as truths that fade into the background of an otherwise-angled story. I think this might make my small efforts a more universal resource, and I hope that the open-endedness of the books I choose leaves more room for self-directed thought and discussion by young readers and their big people. That said, keep those rec's coming! 

dental touches

Dear Zelda,

Tonight while nursing you, before you signaled that you were ready to sleep by unlatching and looking for Papa (who slings you to dreamland as he does the dishes), I was finger-combing your hair. It's getting longer. Long enough to "do." This makes me very happy. Anyway, I was finger-combing your hair while you nursed, and when I stopped, and rested my hand on your little belly, you reached down. You grabbed my hand and brought it back to your head, making me pet you with your fat fingers tight around mine, puppeteering. Looking at me, satisfied, you stopped nursing to say, with a sleepy smile, "den-tal." Gentle. Yes.

Love,
mama

thrifty sunday: be happy

The past couple of weeks have been especially fruitful, thriftwise. I've replenished George's dwindling shirt supply (his torso is lengthening at an alarming rate!) and Zelda's dwindling leggings supply (her thighs are expanding at an adorable rate!), and even found a dress for myself, pleasantly reminiscent of a suzani and good for spring which is when you might see it. Right now I need sleeves. But the best thing I found while perusing the Goodwill was a renewed faith in humanity. Aww, gross! But seriously.

As I stood in line to pay, I watched a tall man in ill-fitting, worn clothes wheel around a child I guessed to be two in a tiny, tattered umbrella stroller. The boy was asleep: slumped over as far as one could slump -- head nearly resting in his own lap -- and unbuckled, as I'm sure the straps were too small to fit around his body let alone the bulky winter coat he wore. The dad went outside to look at the strollers on display next to the rack of bikes for sale, and an employee rushed out to ask accusatorily, "Can I help you??" as though the guy could realistically take off with two strollers, one of which barely held his sleeping child. The father shook his head and came back inside where he poked around for another few minutes. A woman in line at another register left her place to retrieve the stroller the dad had been looking at -- reclining, with a large sun shade, a cup holder and nicely padded seat -- and she and I walked out with our purchases a few yards behind the father, who left empty handed. 

She jogged over to him with the stroller and called out, "Excuse me!" As I put my bags in my car, I heard her say, "I've seen you guys waiting for the bus. It's so hard to afford everything." 

"Holy shit!" the man said. "Are you serious?" She walked off quickly to her car, giving a wave, and, grinning, he wheeled both strollers to the curb for transfer. As he picked his son up out of the old stroller, he began crying, yelling "Thank you!" and waving to the woman as she drove away. He left the old stroller in the place where the new one had sat, for sale, and he and the still-sleeping boy headed for the bus stop. 

Only one thing seems fitting to post after that. A sign for the entry way, $2.99.

I am not an astronaut and other failings

A question I heard on the radio today struck me: would your six year old self like you? I hope that in my case the answer is yes, but what I really got to thinking about was if my adult self would live up to the expectations of my childhood. And that answer is, unequivocally, no.

Many girls, whether because of social constructs or through their own choosing, dream of and plan to have children when they're still kids, themselves, but I wasn't one of those. I didn't fashion wedding gowns from my mom's cast-off dresses and I didn't imagine myself caring for babies. Once, while walking to my mom's car with her after a school function, she remarked to one of my ten year-old classmates that the baby on the girl's hip -- her own little sister -- was positioned just right, and I remember the eye roll of annoyed pity I shot in her direction. I just won the science fair, but have fun with that baby. 

You could attribute my disdain for motherhood (because, let's be honest, that's what it was) to any number of things: the fact that the feminism of the time wasn't particularly supportive of mothers (and my exposure to it WHICH I DO NOT REGRET FOR ONE MOMENT through my own mom), my disappointment in the way women were pigeonholed into the role whether they wanted to be or not. But the biggest reason was probably the fact that I had little faith in my own ability to rise above my family of origin and the world around me to turn out happy, functional people of my own making. 

Now, that sounds really depressing, especially coming from a then-ten year old, I know. It was depressing. I was a depressed kid, situationally, chemically, but my line of thinking also felt plainly realistic. I believed what others told me -- that everyone was just doing his or her best -- and I assumed that anger, cruelty, addiction, apathy and all the other trappings of dysfunctional families were just some people's natural states, and the matter couldn't be helped. The best I could do was take the phone off at the root, so to speak. If others just did the same, I thought, we'd certainly have less unhappiness to deal with.

In my late teens and early twenties I adopted as reasons for childlessness the issues of overpopulation and environmental responsibility. Having kids was just irresponsible, I railed. I've heard it over and over and over since then, said by young women not (in any substantial ways) unlike I was at twenty to my face while I held a baby in my womb, in my arms, as my only child turned into two. They don't mean harm, and I don't take offense. I've thought the same thing, and don't totally disagree with them, in any case. 

I don't mean that they're necessarily going to see the folly in their thinking; plenty of people choose not to have kids for exactly those reasons, justifiably, and stick contentedly to their choice. But I don't guess I'm the only one who looked for more socially acceptable, more enlightened, less pathetic-sounding reasons for childlessness than I'm afraid of myself and the world around me. 

Obviously, at some point, I changed my tune, since I have two children. I never stopped questioning my own desire to have kids (and this is the reason why I try to limit our consumption and live consciously), but I did stop questioning my own ability to grow. Because I don't consider myself a naturally nurturing person, I researched. I researched my ass off, and continue to. I read a lot about child development so I know how to adjust my expectations. So I can forgive myself the time I embarrassed my dad in a restaurant and received a spanking despite my behavior being normal, expected, and incidentally out of character for a child like I was, who had been manipulated into "behaving" because I believed my parents' love to be contingent on my doing so. I contracted with my kids that I would learn everything I could so that I could be the mama they deserve.

I also stopped telling myself I was doing the best I could. My therapist argued about this for years, literally, but I think this practice can serve as one big crutch to lean on when our pasts loom so large that we feel bent under their weight. Even though I knew that I would fuck up, I birthed these little creatures, and despite fucking up all the time, I keep trying. Yelling is not my best. Manipulation is not my best. Bribing is not my best. I will own up to feeling the tsk-tsk of my conscience when I resort to bad mothering, and ignoring it. I admit that I think, sometimes, I just want you to ___! What will it take? And it's in those moments that I am willfully not doing my best. It pains me to say so; one of the traits I adopted when my family made it obvious that my brain mattered more than my feelings was precision. Correctness. I hate being wrong, and yet. I am, many, many times a day, because I'm a parent. Because I'm human, and we're wrong. A lot. This is not something that ever was presented to me as a possibility, let alone a universal truth. 

Even though I'm wrong like a million times an hour, I'd like to think that the six year old me, and the ten year old me would be impressed that I've taken the initiative to learn. They'd look at my empirical data, they'd look at my bookshelf and be satisfied that I may not be an astronaut but I am using my brain. In fact, I might be using my brain in a way more beneficial than they teach at space camp. They might like to hang out with me. They might think I was a loser, but guaranteed they'd think I was a nice, respectful one.