October 1, 2009
Wish List
Cheeky, cheeky, I know. Any excuse to slip in a baby picture, but I assure you that this is entirely relevant. Obligatory baby shot amidst some pumpkins is a symbol of autumn, which means that Harriet is four months old, which means that in two months, she’ll be six months old. Which means that I will soon lose my maternity leave top-up, and then will have to stop spending money like a Rockefeller. (Or did the Rockefellers make money? And save it? Perhaps this is my problem.)
All of this is fine, except that it throws a kink into my book-buying habits. Or at least it should, particularly as I have forty-two books waiting to be read on my book shelf. (Some are more likely to be read than others. Nightwood by Djuna Barnes has been there since 1998).
When I buy new books, it’s a kind of compulsion. I feel as though said book has to be mine as soon as possible, and if I delay, I’ll lose track of my desire for it, and then the world will end. I’m serious. But seeing as we’re entering a new age of impecuniousness, I’ve got to change my ways.
Which doesn’t mean I’ll stop buying books. No, I once read an essay by Annie Dillard who wrote that anyone who hopes to make money from literature has to spend money on literature (and hard cover literature to boot), all for the sake of karma. (And I would extend this to anyone who values and enjoys literature as well, but that’s just me.) I will continue to buy new books, of course, which provide the best value for money I’ve ever known, but I have to be more careful about going about it.
There will be no more rash purchases. A good review in The Globe no longer means I have to rush around the corner to Book City immediately. Instead, I will wait on my urge, think about it for a while. Perhaps I will even wait until Christmas, for somebody to give it to me? And in order that the world not end, and I keep my desires neatly organized, I’ve started a new list in my ever-expanding sidebar. See “Wish List”, to the left, which has already two.
I don’t expect it will stay so short for long.
September 25, 2009
Happy Friday
I just received a spam email from “me” with the subject heading, “I’m so proud for you”. Totally! We’ve had a very good week this week, mostly due to the fact that I’m no longer exhausted. Harriet is back to getting up just once a night, probably just because she decided it would be so, but we like to think because I’ve started waking her for a feed right before I go to sleep. So we’ll enjoy it while it lasts.
She’s also going bed early, however eventually, which gives me a marvelous break in the evenings. And since I’ve (almost) quit Facebook, I’ve ceased my epic time wasting. I’m getting lots of reading done, working on knitting a little sweater for Harriet, working on a writing assignment that I’m finding absolutely thrilling, as well as a bit of fiction. Little Women is wonderful, actually. I have a short story coming out in December, and I’m very excited about that (with details to come, of course).
I am very grateful to have two good friends also on maternity leave right now, and their company is the best way I’ve found yet to pass the days. And not just to pass the days, but to enjoy them. Today we all finally went to The Children’s Storefront– it was my first visit, finally, and was an absolutely magical place we’ll be returning to. And we’re looking forward to Sunday, when Harriet hosts her very first party.
It is a happy Friday indeed. (And is this where we cue the baby going ballistic, and not sleeping at all tonight? Just in order to make me eat every word I writ. Oh, we’ll see…)
September 14, 2009
Pirates and Penguins, oh my!
Yesterday, our wee family attended the launch of Patricia Storms‘ book The Pirate and the Penguin at the magnificent Yorkville Public Library. It was not actually Harriet’s first literary event, as she’d attended Coach House Press’s Wayzgoose Party the week before, but it was her first launch, and the first time she’d sat down for a public reading. She was spoiled by Patricia, I think, who had an actual pirate on hand for the occasion, and was kind enough to pose for a picture with us. Her reading was excellent, and held even Harriet’s three and a half month-old attention span. Afterwards, Stuart and I had shared a slice of cake, which Harriet inadvertantly stuck her hand in.
We loved the book, from each one of its delightful map-illustrated inside covers to the other. Now, I’ve never really *got* pirates myself, except Somali ones– I don’t understand why International Talk Like a Pirate Day is funny, for example. But I’ve been a big fan of penguins going back yonks, and I like alliteration at the best of times. The story was funny, and sweet, and I especially liked its references to knitting and yoga. Patricia has been illustrating really wonderful books for a long time, and we’re so excited that she’s finally written her own!
September 13, 2009
Worst Nursery Rhyme Ever
My friend Kate gave us a gorgeous Mother Goose collection when Harriet was born, and Stuart and I have been happily reacquainting ourselves with the rhymes since then. And Mem Fox does prescribe at least five nursery rhymes per day (“Begin on the day they are born. I am very serious about this: at least three stories and five nursery rhymes a day, if not more, and not only at bedtime, either”) so we’ve been following her recommended dosages, and then some. We ended up receiving another collection used from our neighbours, and so now we’ve got Mother Goose for upstairs and down. And how wonderful, to discover these rhymes with their words and rhythms, and to realize we’ve known them all along, stored somewhere in the back of our minds but coming back to us just like that.
“Hey Diddle Diddle” is Harriet’s favourite, we’ve decided, because it was the first nursery rhyme she ever heard (on her second day in the world, when we walked part way down the hall in the hospital, and stopped at the “Hey Diddle Diddle” mural, because I could go no further).
But we hate “Bat Bat”. Neither Stuart nor I had heard it before, and when we found it in the first collection, we thought maybe the editor’s son had written it, and they’d included it to be nice. Because it was a load of crap. But it’s in our second book too, so it must be real:
Bat bat come under my hat
and I’ll give you a slice of bacon
and when I bake
I’ll give you cake
if I am not mistaken.
We’re going to start skipping this one, so not to put Harriet off nursery rhymes altogether. They’re all a bit goofy, but “Bat Bat” is idiotic: why would you want a bat under your hat? And would one be enticed by a slice of bacon? Who’d entice a bat? Do bats eat cake? And doesn’t all of this suggest the narrator is indeed mistaken? Nonsense is one thing, but stupid is another.
Worst Nursery Rhyme Ever.
September 1, 2009
A Compendium of Literary Harriets
For my own interest, and compilation will be ongoing. Please feel free to add to the list via comments:
1) A Big Storm Knocked it Over by Laurie Colwin: Harriet aka “Birdie”
2) Tom’s Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce: Harriet Bartholomew aka Hatty
3) Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh: Harriet M. Welch
4) Harriet, You’ll Drive Me Wild by Mem Fox: Harriet Harris
5) Garbo Laughs by Elizabeth Hay: Harriet Browning
6) The Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries by Dorothy L. Sayers: Harriet Vane
7) The Gates of Ivory by Margaret Drabble: Harriet Osborne
8) Harriet Bean series by Alexander McCall Smith: Harriet Bean
9) Emma by Jane Austen: Harriet Smith
10) Coventry by Helen Humphreys: Harriet Marsh
11) Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley: Harriet de Luce (in spirit)
12) The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing: Harriet Lovett
13) “Harriet” (poem)by Charlie McKenzie: Harriet Michaels. (In the film So I Married an Axe Murderer, so this is a fictional literary Harriet).
14) Franklin the Turtle series by Paulette Bourgeois: Harriet the Turtle (Franklin’s sister).
15) The Little Friend by Donna Tartt: Harriet Dufresnes
16) Harriet and the Garden by Nancy Carlson: Harriet (who is a dog)
17) The Colour by Rose Tremain: Harriet Blackstone
18) Some Tame Gazelle by Barbara Pym: Harriet Bede
19) The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larrson: Harriet Vanger
20) Mr. King’s Things by Genevieve Cote: Harriet the Owl (who was named for my Harriet!!)
21) After Claude by Iris Owens: Harriet (who has no last name)
August 28, 2009
Books for tactility
Of course, the point of books is exploration, and it was very exciting to see Harriet realizing that this morning. I’ve been helping her “read” her touch and feel books for a while now, but this morning she reached out and did it herself. I read to her all the time, and she seems to listen, and she looks at the pictures, but this was the first active response she’s ever shown to a book, and it made me very happy. Books are for touching indeed, and soon they’ll be for eating, and one day you’ll be reading and have the world in your hands.
August 26, 2009
So lucky
Harriet is three months today, which means I’ve got every right to post baby pictures. And we’ve got some gorgeous ones, taken this weekend by our friend Erin who makes everything beautiful, as well as another one displaying the ever-elusive, always precious Harriet smile. This third month has been a very fine one, real life returned to us. Harriet sleeps in her crib now, and for such long periods of time that I’m a very spoiled mom. During the past week we’ve gotten so that I get to come back downstairs after putting her to bed, rather than just collapsing into bed exhausted.
I kept a journal of letters to the baby throughout my pregnancy, and my plan was to write it throughout the postpartum too, but I didn’t write a word until Harriet was nearly two months old. Which is interesting– I’ve thought so much about how there is so little record of what that period is actually like for anybody, but I know that for me, I had no desire to write it all down so in essence to live it twice. Once was most certainly enough. It is, like much of motherhood, I am learning, better just to get on with it.
But part of the struggle, for me, was that my feelings weren’t at all what I’d expected them to be. 
Not only did I not know how to articulate them properly, but I was uncomfortable even trying. I’d wondered if I’d see my baby and recognize her from the start, but I didn’t. Getting to know her has been a slow and involved project, and of course I have to say that of course I’ve always loved her, but it’s much more complicated than that, really. I’ve had to grow into this love, or perhaps it’s that my love for her is so entrenched within me that I barely recognize it. It’s way below the surface, is what I mean, so that I find myself staring at this tiny stranger and wondering who she is, and yet when we’re apart, she is the string of thoughts in my head. Meeting her needs is such a primal urge I’m scarcely conscious of it, and yet it’s overwhelming. When she’s sleeping, I want her to never ever change, and at the same time I’m so eager to mark her progress, to meet this person she’s slowly becoming. I can’t remember what I ever did before, who I was then, but I also don’t feel substantially changed. In that I’ve been Harriet’s mother forever and ever, is what I mean by that. Or something quite different at the very same time.
I’ve heard tell of complaints that Toronto’s had a very rotten summer, but I’ve missed the rotten, playing with my baby under shady trees, taking long walks, taking her to yoga, to the library, to the museum to sit on a bench and watch the fish swim. We’ve cut down on our evening walks now that the baby goes to bed early, but they were what got me through June and July when Harriet screeched on schedule, and I will remember the fresh air of those nights with fondness forever. Too many trips leading to ice cream, but it kept us happy and sane(ish). And now lately, we’ve had weekend trips away, a jaunt over to Toronto Island, and we’re going away this weekend too for a tiny getaway, just for fun, just for summer. The summer that I thought would be lost to me, because certainly I do not remember June, but it all comes back, slowly, it does. And we’re happy, if not always, and so lucky, always, always.
August 14, 2009
Children's Writer Mem Fox
Our next-door neighbours were having a clear-out this week, and found a copy of a book they thought we might be interested in. Harriet, You’ll Drive Me Wild! is a delightful little picture book about a pesky little girl and a mom who loses her cool. Spoiler alert: happy endings in sight. We love it, and I’m quite happy that through this book, I’ve discovered its author, Mem Fox too. She’s an Australian writer of 33 children’s books and a literacy educator as well. Her excellent website features her full bibliography, biographical information, and lots of other fun stuff, including articles and addresses she’s written for parents and teachers about promoting a passion for reading, including “Ten read-aloud commandments”, “If I Were Queen of the World (…on how to read before school)”, and “Winning the War Between Books and Television” (which acknowledges that television is an excellent medium for turning children onto books). Fascinating stuff, all of it, and because I’m so glad to have found it, I wanted to share it with you.
