I am also well aware that despite my pledge to begin a memoir-ette about the life and times of one Barbara May Bender, I have barely carved out a word. A photo of Barb even now stares out at me from my computer wall paper. She is sitting in a forest green library chair on the first floor of the Jewish home, and affecting an uncharacteristically easy-going, lip smile. She is donning a pair of faded old person's jeans and a white, long-sleeved sweatshirt with a pudgy cartoon cat on the front saying (via a thought bubble), Stress, What Stress?
Despite Barb's shock of white hair, her twisted arthritic hands folded uneasily in her lap, her sunken bosom, and her head propped up between two angular, bony shoulders, it's hard for me to see her as elderly. When I look at any photo of Barb I see--and will always see--a woman in her mid-forties, neurotic to the core, ornery, needy, and alive. Even now, four months later, my mother's death barely feels like a reality, though this very afternoon I met with a broker at my bank to help me to make financial arrangements with my portion of the inheritance.
Three nights ago, I found myself staring at her picture on my computer: "I can't believe you fucking died," I told her image. "You, of all people, were suppose to live for-fucking-ever."
Tears ensued as they do even now.
* * *
Zinnia has added several words to her astonishing vocabulary: Mama, papa, woo-woo (as in, woof-woof, (i.e. dog), and occasionally, Bzzzzzzzzz, when she says a picture of a bee. She also occasionally hisses when were are reading one of Eric Carle's beautifully illustrated but mind-numbingly dull books, and her eyes light on a picture of "a slithery snake."
My daughter loves to read. That's L-O-V-E. She has discovered--as Don Cheadle pointed out in the film "Out of Sight" after a a prison guard interrupted a fight between he and George Clooney in the prison library--"You know, reading is fundamental and shit. We got all excited and everything."
Yes, indeedy, it's official--Zinnia is a genius.
We are up to--conservatively--25-30 books a day. Some are quite short and an easy read, like an eight page, large print book about smiles. It features a group of toddlers who--even though most kids this age are incapable of affectation--somehow still appear as if they are being forced into a smile as if one of their parents is being held by gun point off camera unless they do what the photographer says. The photos are posted above saccharine-sweet captions like, "Give us a smile, won't you please?"
Others books are a little wordier, and Zinnia's attention quickly wanes. She has learned to subtly let us know when she is ready for the next story by simply toddling away mid-reading (often to get a different book) or by grabbing whatever book we are in the middle of from our hands, closing its cover, and hurling it to the floor like yesterday's trash.
Jenn often teases me for having what I call a discerning pallet when it comes to movies. If there is even the smallest of plot holes I will pick up on it and make fun of the film. If the hole is too gaping, the plot too weak, I disengage from the movie entirely and fire verbal spitballs at the actors and director from the confines of our microfiber couch.
Likewise, I have become a bit of a children's book critic. The classics seem to have stood the test of time. Goodnight Moon and most Dr. Seuss books are still quite readable, though the Seuss knock-off's by Eastman suck. The Hungry Caterpillar is a lovely book about, er, a hungry caterpillar and how it transforms into ... a yellow dump truck. (Ha, ha! I mean butterfly). There's one called "Papa Hugs" which Zinnia and I both approve of. It counts the kinds of papa hugs there are all the way up to 10. "Zinnia's Garden," is a book about a girl's first garden and how she keeps a diary about her successes which one can see in the corner of the page. "Dear diary, I'm so excited! My first sprout popped up today. I can't wait for all the other ones." Kinda sweet, really.
However, a number of books have what i consider to be a slight, anti-father leaning to them. "Wide Awake Jake" tells of a little boy struggling to go back to sleep. He keeps going downstairs to ask his parents for advice. The father says things like, "Why don't you count to a million?" One can almost hear the sarcasm dripping from his gruff father's voice. Mom counters with, ""Pretend your a little mouse going to your mouse hole to sleep for the night." Jake never thinks his father's suggestions are very good ideas (they aren't), but he tries every single one of mom's suggestions. Needless to say, I started to come up with my own suggestions, which gave Jenn perhaps the slightest of smiles: "So then Jakes father said, 'Hey Jake, why don't you go run around the block in nothing but your Garanimals until your utterly exhausted?' But Jake didn't think that was a very good idea. Then mom said, 'Pretend your a sunflower folding up its petals for the night.'
Another book is about a father who takes his kids on a bear hunt. Without mom, of course. They go through a grassy field, a dark forest, across a rushing river, and even hazard a blustery snow storm until they enter a cave. Of course there's a bear in it, and of course they all run back through all the obstacles they just come through--bear hot on their trails--until they make it home and hide under the covers. It ends with, "We're never going on another bear hunt ever again."
No shit. Call me old-fashioned, but I would have turned around once my jacket-less kids got slammed by the howling blizzard.
Another book that Jenn likes and I loathe is about a baby bunny and a parent bunny of unspecified gender, but because of the dialogue, I strongly suspect it is the little rabbit's father. The baby bunny stretches out its arms or climbs a hill or points to a cloud and says, "I love you thisssss much." The bigger bunny opens its arms wider, higher, etc, and tells the baby with a smile, "Well, I love you this much." And being the adult, the parent's love is always bigger, higher, greater than the baby's.
If I had that papa bunny in front of me, I'd smack him upside the head and say, "Look, get off your narcissistic high horse and stop comparing your love to your kid's. You're going to make him feel bad about himself." I might even go into a spiritual discourse about the nature of love and how there are no shades of gray. I would tell him about the purity of a child's love and the fact that the older bunny can't let his baby's love in without comparing it to his own says more about his own fucked-up-ness than anything. Then, of course, I would remember that I'm talking to a fictional rabbit and get some help.
One of the great literary culprits in the kids book pantheon is, I believe, the highest selling kid's book in history. I speak, of course, of that ode to codependence and selfishness, "The Giving Tree." Through the years, the tree gives and gives and gives to a boy as he transitions from young lad to youth to young man to adult to decrepit elder. Through it all, the boy takes and takes and takes without a thought for the tree or giving anything in return. In the end, all that is left of the tree is a stump, which he even still offers to the selfish old man as a seat to rest his bones. The man wordlessly sits on the stump looking alone, sad, and confused. The end.
If I have any say-so, the pages of The Giving Tree will never darken Zinnia's crib unless it's to show her the hazards of being selfish and self-centered, and how important it is to value the earth ... or am I taking these things a little too seriously?
