Light and Momentary

A few thoughts on Our Mutual Friend

Over the weekend I finished rereading Our Mutual Friend. I have been making notes to myself on the dining room whiteboard about the things that struck me this time through, and probably the biggest one is craft. That could be a really negative thing -- I hate reading books in which the writer seems to say "Look at me being a Talented Writer!" -- but I was delighted by the blend of joy and skill that bubbles through the book. 

I've posted before about the webs of connections that characterize Dickens' longer novels, but I found it especially striking in Our Mutual Friend. Toward the end I was thinking, "Wait, when did Mortimer Lightwood meet Mr. Riah? Oh, I remember! Yet another clever thing for Dickens to arrange!" He is sometimes criticized for creating one-note characters, but in the longer novels with their giant casts it's a help to have an identifying feature. It's like rosy-fingered Dawn, only more exuberant: Sloppy's buttons are like eyes, Sloppy's buttons are watching you, Sloppy is a veritable Argus of buttons. When Sloppy reappeared at the end of OMF I sighed an unwitting sigh so emphatic that my 13yo asked me what was going on. "This is perfect," I said. "Absolutely perfect." Dickens uses an emblem of Sloppy's poverty and misery to turn him into the jubilant agent of a well-deserved comeuppance.

Somewhere around 2008 I got annoyed with Dickens' female characters. They tend to take the identifying feature thing too far for my taste: there's Ditzy But Sweet (Exhibit A: Dora in David Copperfield) and Noble Despite Circumstances (Esther in Bleak House). But Bella Wilfer is genuinely interesting. I sympathized with her even when I cringed a little at her, and her transformation is persuasive. In the scenes where she chats with the Inexhaustible Baby I wanted to invite her over for tea; I can hear her laughter in my imagination.

Another bit of novel-craft that stood out to me was the Bella-Lizzie contrast. (If you're reading this book (I'm looking at you, Kerry!), maybe skip to the next paragraph.) Early on we're introduced to two very different father-daughter relationships. Over the course of the book we see their entanglement with the mutual friend of the book's title, their meeting and becoming friends midway through, and their eventual marriages. Another thing I love about Dickens is his certainty that life is full of unexpected good gifts, and that comes through clearly in his portrayal of these two.

Last time I didn't notice, or at least I don't recall noticing, the thwarted malice of the old man whose will sets the book's events in motion. He intended to cause his son suffering that would endure for years after his death. What actually unfolds puts me in mind of Joseph's comment to his brothers: you meant this for evil, but God meant it for good. The same idea is more explicit in Bradley Headstone's turmoil (when Dickens names a character Headstone, you have a pretty good idea from the get-go that doom attends him): love transforms even the most evil intent. Love can bring good out of any circumstance.

Dinnertime dictates

Tonight at dinner a disgruntled boy watched his sister ask to be excused and then scoot away from the table. "When I was 6, did I get to leave the table when I was finished?" he asked, in a tone that clearly called for an "absolutely not" in reply. He was surprised when I said, "Oh, yes, you did it all the time." 

I didn't blog about it at the time because I was embarrassed we hadn't done it sooner, but at some point we said to the kids, "Listen up, things are going to be different around here." It used to be that when they were done eating they could ask to be excused and leave the table. The trouble was that this inevitably triggered an avalanche of excusees, running away to play while the grownups grumped through their meal. You know how sometimes the start of dinner is a little ragged, on a night when maybe you all say grace but then you realize that people are going to want ketchup...and sour cream...and oops a serving spoon so they're not scooping up beef stew barehanded because BY HECK we have standards around here?

In those days it wasn't uncommon for the first kid to ask to be excused before the parent on bits-and-pieces duty had taken a bite of dinner. I found it demoralizing to spend 5 times as long preparing dinner as they spent at the table. I said, "We need a new plan."

When we told the kids that no big kids could be excused until everyone was done eating, they thought this sounded like an Eighth Amendment violation. They got indignant when people took seconds. They moaned when I reminded them yet again about the new rule. My husband said it was never going to work.

But I, my friends, am stubborn, and I do not like feeling demoralized. Slowly, the kids figured out that the new rule wasn't going anywhere. (There are exceptions, of course, for circumstances that merit exceptions.) And then lots of good things happened: people started eating more dinner, more happily, and stopped begging for snacks later. People tried more new foods, because they had time to observe that so-and-so hadn't turned into a lizard when he put the kale in his mouth and you know, the kale was just sitting there right in front of them. The best part is the conversations, though.

It's not as if we have great conversations seven nights a week, but we have a lot of great conversations. Tonight we were talking about how you might defend an aircraft carrier against submarines. Probably the out-of-context idea of carpet-bombing the Pacific does not make you laugh until you cry, but I had to stop typing to giggle. Mixed in with the silly ("whale salad for dinner again, boys!") were sub-conversations about books (Temeraire) and history (who was the first Secretary of the Navy? (no Google allowed at the dinner table)) and geography.

Pretty soon it will be time for Stella to learn that she needs to wait until everyone is finished before she leaves the table, but I'm not going to work on that this month. It is oddly satisfying, though, to see how complete the change has been: they don't even remember when it was different.

My quirk here is fun

In our living room we have a basket of books that's still called the library basket even though it contains very few library books. Mostly it's the "what-people-are-reading-this-season" basket, and Stella had been dipping into it for her Marcia Williams fixes.

Today she gasped. "Mama!" she called, in tones that made me think she needed a bandaid. She didn't need first aid, though; she just needed a book that she'd spotted in the "other books by this author" section at the back of her current reading. She needed the other Marcia Williams Shakespeare book, which has been living on the bookshelf and not in the (not-really-the-)library basket. I helped her find it, and she promptly immersed herself. "Oh!" she gasped again, only now she sounded elated rather than wounded. "This is where some of my favorite stories have been!

My 15yo was sitting nearby solving a Rubik's cube. "Which ones are your favorites?" he wanted to know. She flip-flip-flipped through the pages. "This one!" she said, holding up Antony and Cleopatra. She flip-flip-flipped again. "And this one!" she said, turning the book to reveal...Richard III.

"Well," I thought, "my work here is done." And then I thought again: maybe my work here does not consist of teaching my daughter to love the story of an evil shriveled serial murderer. Maybe.

I was cleaning out a tray of abandoned old papers, and at the very bottom I found a list I'd made in early 2011. Stella was newly 2, and I was worried that her language development was a little slow. I'd written down all the words she could say, and set aside my worries when I got to 195. That's on the slow side, but within the normal range.

I looked a little more closely at the list. In the animals category: cow, pig, cat, bunny, pachycephalosaurus, and Cthulhu. (I probably don't need to add that no one outside the family would have recognized either of those last entries. But we knew exactly what she meant.)

Whatever words my children may use down the road to describe their upbringing, I hope "boring" is not among them.

Delicious with tomato soup

"It's weird," mused Miss Stella earlier this year, "that my brothers don't eat boy cheese sandwiches. How come they eat girl cheese sandwiches too?"

Context

I do not remember enjoying Our Mutual Friend this much on my first time through it. This morning at swim lessons I was reading the chapter in which the Podsnaps throw a party for their daughter Georgiana, and I was thinking about the ways that my mood shapes my willingness to be amused and to suspend disbelief. 

Dickens does nothing halfway. In the run-up to retrieving a dead body from the Thames, his characters observe that under the pained light of a wretched dawn, even the signs on buildings look like tombstones over dead businesses. In the real world, one of the frustrating things about grief is that the rest of the world proceeds in its usual fashion, offering no indication that a hole has been torn in the fabric of the universe. Not so in Dickens, where your cutlery and cabinetry illuminate your character and perhaps the next plot point.

This evening, again at swim lessons, I was skimming the introduction before I decided that I didn't want to be reminded of any surprises I might have forgotten over the past 8 or 9 years. Before I bailed, though, I read that Our Mutual Friend was savaged by Henry James. In his view, Dickens didn't deserve to be called a great novelist. The literary world had moved on from his offerings to appreciate the more naturalistic works of writers like George Eliot. To this I said harrumph, because if I were trapped on a desert island with the works of Dickens, James, and Eliot to keep me company, I think the James compendium might wind up toasting my marshmallows. And though I might keep dipping grumpily into the Eliot, shouting FLEE FLEE FLYYYYYY to Dorothea Brooke while she married Casaubon yet again, it would be Dickens who would bring me solace while I waited to be rescued. I might have thought, "Oh, Henry James, you only WISH you could write (and sell?) like Dickens."

While in one mood I am charmed by the backup policeman whose name is Officer Reserve, in another I might be irritated by the troweled-on creepiness of Mr. Venus. There are many moments in a Dickens novel in which I can see that my emotions are being manipulated. Sometimes it works; sometimes it makes me laugh. Sometimes it vexes me.

Twice recently I saw Dombey & Son described as a particularly appealing and accessible Dickens novel, a description that made me say (articulate as always) "Huh?" I hated D&S -- rejoiced when it was over. Also in my personal lowest tier: The Old Curiosity Shop (the one whose readers flooded onto the docks in NYC, unable to contain their impatience about Little Nell's fate) (spoiler: she dies. It's a relief, actually) and Hard Times. I know of a woman who wrote her dissertation on Hard Times. I can't even imagine the torment.

This week I am wondering, though, whether those books deserve their rankings in my own system. Was I really grumpy when I read Dombey & Son? Is Hard Times as bad as I remember? Is Little Nell really that bathetic? (I think the answer to that last question is probably yes.)

Have you come back to a book and found it much better (or much worse) than you remembered? Don't you want to join me in the search for Mr. Rokesmith's identity? In contrast to Mrs. Lammle (c'mon, you know you want to find out more about Mrs. Lammle), I inveigle only for the enjoyment of the inveigled.

Easy Answer

In my email there's a message from a feed reader that I don't actually use. The subject line asks breathlessly, "Are you the next BREAKTHROUGH Fashion Blogger of the Year?"

Unless the BREAKTHROUGH Fashion Bloggers of the Year are competing to see who can hang out in the sweatiest running clothes, the answer to that question is no.

Mrs. Boffin, on the other hand, has lots to say about capital-F Fashion, even if Mrs. Wilfer is rude and unpleasant about it. I do love Mrs. Boffin. And I think Our Mutual Friend is underrated. Hey! Maybe I will be the BREAKTHROUGH Dickens Blogger of the Year.

I'm sure that's a thing.

She who sings brays twice

Am I pseudonymous enough to write this post? I hope so, because I'm writing it anyway.

You guys, for years I have struggled with the music at our church. There are so so so many things I love about our parish, but the music has never been one of them. I wrote a little teeny bit about it years ago (that Liberace reference pretty much sums up my objections). Recently our pastor announced (very kindly, with much gratitude for her service) that the music director would be stepping down. Am I pseudonymous enough to say that I wanted to cheer? That I didn't want to hear Hosea or other refugee songs from the 70s at Mass even one more time? That it's frustrating to attempt to lead the singing of O Come, All Ye Faithful and be unable to figure out where I'm supposed to come in or where the beat is supposed to fall?

Since 2006 I have been a cantor for my parish. I have sung about once a month with one of the organists, figuring out music that fits with the readings and makes us both happy. (Only once, on Christmas, was the music director at the organ; that was the day when I thought, "If I can't figure out O Come All Ye Faithful, something is really wrong here.") I can learn the music on my own time and show up half an hour before Mass to rehearse the bits and pieces that are unfamiliar. I never ever have to sing Gift of Finest Wheat or anything penned by David Haas. It's been a great way to keep the musical part of my brain humming while respecting my family's needs.

This is not my most becoming admission, but I just didn't get it when people were sad about the music director's departure. Bring in the new! Three cheers for an end to relentless arpeggiating! 

And then last week there was an announcement in the bulletin: no more cantor/organ Masses. Each Mass will have its own ensemble; all ensembles will have a weeknight practice. All musicians are required to audition in order to continue as part of the music ministry, and then they'll be assigned to the ensemble that's the best fit for them.

This announcement sparked some exclamation-pointy emails among the cantors and organists. We were supposed to get some advance notice, apparently, instead of learning about the change through the bulletin. For whatever reason, those phone calls didn't happen.

I don't want to act aggrieved here. I have a lot of confidence in our pastor's judgment. But I am also unhappy with my options. I am very cautious about taking on weeknight commitments. And this may not be my most becoming admission either, but I feel cautious about spending my free time singing music entirely selected by someone else. Life is too short to rehearse Let There Be Peace On Earth. By and large, Christian music is a depressing indicator that Sturgeon's law is optimistic.

So. I am keenly aware of the irony here: late May thoughts of "Why are all these people grumbling about the pastor's decision?" followed by early June thoughts of "Why did the pastor make this decision that I don't like one bit?" I missed the organizational meeting on Wednesday, and I mislaid the bulletin with the information on scheduling an audition. At the same time, the thought of not being involved at all in parish music makes me sad.

I guess I'll just complain about the situation on my blog instead. How's that for a productive approach?

No good deed goes unpunished

This morning I ran a 5K with my husband and my 13yo. My husband doesn't run at all, ever, so I was surprised and pleased when he suggested it. Joe was planning to run it faster than we were, hoping to finish in <30 minutes. I let him wear my Garmin so he could pace himself appropriately. 

I was surprised to come upon him walking a little past the halfway point, looking discouraged and uncomfortable. I stopped to walk with him for a minute, and then encouraged him to get moving again. He was hanging in there until we hit a little hill, on shadeless blacktop, in scorching heat. I tried to pep-talk him up the hill, but he was sounding pretty wheezy. We took another walk break together. I said, "Let's try this. I always pray the rosary when I'm running, so how about if we say a decade together? I'll say the beginning of each prayer aloud, and you can say the rest in your head if you want to. At the end of the decade, we'll be at the water stop. We'll walk through the water stop, and then it's just another half-mile." 

He was game. At the end of the decade we could see the water stop; just after that we could see the finish line. Elwood was ahead of us, but not by a ton. When I looked back at the Garmin record later, I saw Joe's final acceleration clearly-- he was zooming to catch his dad. Right at the end he was running a sub-8:00 pace. I was hanging with him for the first part of the last leg, but as we crossed into 8:xx territory my stomach lurched unhappily. (Stella was throwing up this morning, and my stomach had been rumbling threateningly as well.) While it might be a marker of hardcore-ness to throw up on the far side of the finish line, you don't get any brownie points for spewing up your breakfast on the course. I pulled back a little. Joe crossed the line two or three seconds ahead of Elwood; I was a second behind.

I really really really wanted Joe to feel pleased about finishing, about pulling it together when his Plan A didn't work out. I was focused on him, until Elwood said, "Hey! Now I can tell everyone I beat you in a 5K!"

Which, I suppose, is true. 

Finally

It is probably a good thing that I did not tally the hours it took me to empty the 18yo's room. "That's going to be a big job," I warned him. It turns out that my definition of "empty" and his definition of "empty" do not actually overlap very much. It was indeed a big job.

If I were more domestic I would paint it before I moved brothers around, but I might just take a nap instead and call it good.

This one's for Joe

Sometimes my kids love to read my blog, but a lot of the time they find it very dull. "Have you written any good posts lately?" Joe will ask me. Usually I say, "Nope, only boring ones." He loves the posts that talk about funny things people say; he will read them again and again.

I am cautious about writing those posts, because much depends on context. Joe wants me to write a funny post about the guinea pigs but I am not sure how well guinea pig humor would come across in this space. Even apple-peel guinea pig humor, which keeps the crowds rapt around here. (If you use an apple peeler-corer-slicer and feed the resulting long strand of peel to the guinea pigs, hilarity ensues.)

So maybe I will tell you about Stella instead. Last month we were all walking together to get ice cream. "Scoot over," I called to her. "Over to the right side of the trail." Learning to share the bike trail is a rite of passage around here. She was happy to cooperate, if a little vague on the rationale. "Oh!" she answered brightly. "Are there trolls on the other side?"

Mostly, she sounds like a grown-up girl when she talks these days, but she has some sweet little remnants of little-girl speech. She moves her chess pieces "diNAGally" instead of diagonally; she asks a "queshun" instead of a question. (Hey, language geek friends, what other English words have that /stʃ/ phoneme sequence?)

Tonight we had a sad interruption at dinner, sparked by saffron pilaf. I was serving leftover rice under freshly cooked lentils, with leftover chicken on the side. I think I'm going to make Thoughtful Thursdays part of my weekly meal framework, serving simple legume-based meals as a reminder of the poor around the world. (It is a little weird, I know, that the inaugural Thoughtful Thursday dinner featured the world's most expensive spice, but like I said: leftover pilaf.) Anyway, Stella was not happy about that rice. "It has lots of vegetables hidden in it," she said woefully. "Look at it, darling," I told her, "it has bits of onion, cooked until they're sweet and tender, bits of garlic ditto, and a pinch of saffron. There is nothing yucky in the rice." Her objections continued. "You're a nut," I said, and though my tone was not at all unkind she fled the table. She returned to a conversation about nuttiness and related insults, and her distress was only intensified. "You're saying I'm a nut and my family is wacky," she wailed. "That's not very nice."

Niceness may be in the eye of the beholder, but I leave it to the reader to assess the truth of my assertions.

Time management musings

Laura Vanderkam's new book came out yesterday, and I bought it because I like her writing even when I disagree with her. In it she's writing about insights gleaned from the lives of mothers who earn >$100K. While I'm not in her target demographic, I'm intrigued by what she has to say about the ways our culture gets it wrong on work-life balance. In case you couldn't tell from the tone of my last two posts, I have been battling a discouraging malaise. I have a zillion things to do and yet I am not sure where my days are going. The less I get done, the gloomier I feel; the gloomier I feel, the less I get done.

So! I decided to log my time this week. I have tried and failed to log my time before, but I think my days are less fragmented now that my kids are bigger. Insights from today:

• I think I'd like to use my mornings better. Earlier this spring, right after I wrote this post, I got into the habit of getting up and doing three newspaper puzzles in the morning. I had this aching need to find the Right Way, the Logical Solution, in a situation with puzzling tangles and distressing possibilities. It doesn't take me a long time to do the puzzles (Sudoku, Cryptoquip (she admits with a trace of embarrassment), KenKen), but perhaps I can do them after I've knocked some stuff off the list.
• Part of my cooking slump is that it takes time, more time than I like to think it does, to cook from scratch. Still, I think it's worth it. This is a golden opportunity for teaching the kids Life Skills and working together companionably. It is worth the hassle. I think I'm going to try a rough menu framework this summer and see if that eases the decision fatigue. (OH, such a first-world problem it is to feel overwhelmed by all the things one might feed one's family. EEK, this is rather an embarrassing post.)
• Our summer schedule is going to involve more driving than I like (today I logged a hundred minutes in the car; during the school year I might go a couple of days without setting foot in a vehicle). It can be a pleasant opportunity for conversation, but it's important to leave enough time for getting out the door so the tone is calm as we drive.

The #1 determinant of my state of mind and productivity continues to be adequate sleep. So off to bed with me!

In which I am not Ann Voskamp

If I were Ann Voskamp this would be a different post. I would see my trials as opportunities for thanksgiving. I would intersperse brief snippets of text with photos from my lovely farm, and I would do that funky adverbization of adjectives thing at least once per paragraph.

I do not mean to sound snarky about Ann Voskamp. More power to her. I am feeling a little impatient with myself, and my impatience with myself is not making me less grumpy. Would you like to hear about my troubles, friends?

1. Epic-level procrastination from a teenager. When the kid with a titanium will bumps up against a task that his mother is trying to make him complete on a deadline, there's going to be some platinum-medal procrastination going on. I am going to be vague because somewhere inside me is a person who knows she ought to respect her teens' privacy, but LORD HAVE MERCY it is exhausting. Barbara Coloroso would tell me that it is counterproductive to say "If you had done the 20-second task I asked you to complete A MONTH AGO we would not have to RE-BOOK OUR VENUE," but sometimes the counterproductive route is really really tempting.
2. Finger-wagging from the orthodontist's assistant. The boy with braces was told they should be off in August of 2014, give or take three months. Ten months later, they are shrugging noncommittally when asked for a rough estimate. I said, "Less than five years, right?" "I could lose my job for answering that question," says the assistant, who has twice told us that my son's oral hygiene (which is perfectly reasonable for a teenaged boy; no complaints at all from his dentist) is the reason for his slow progress.
3. Horrible children's books. The babysitter took my kids to the library yesterday while I failed to make much forward progress on a paper I am not-writing, and the bag they brought home was crammed full of Barbie mermaid princess stories of learning to appreciate your own specialness. If I read someone else's post about Barbie mermaid fairies I would assume it was a joke. I would assume that person had exaggerated the shortcomings of the stories. But friends, I am here to tell you it is no joke. These books are so bad that I want to gather them all in a pile and light them on fire. It would be a public service. I am restrained from doing so by the knowledge that I would have to replace them. It's bad enough that my tax dollars funded a single purchase. SO SO BAD. I was trying to read them with an open mind today but that loud KERCHUNK you heard was my mind slamming shut on the topic of Barbie mermaid princess books. NO MORE.

I turned on the air conditioning when it got to be 86 degrees in my house. I'm still waiting for it to help. Maybe tomorrow I will amuse myself by creating a mix-and-match template for writing your own Barbie picture books. Wait. No: then there would be more of them in the world. I will have to find another strategy for amusing myself.

Kitchen inspiration sorely needed

I am back from a lovely few days away. I had a conference (it went well) and Elwood tagged along. But now that I am back I have to think about cooking again. I have been so uninspired. Beyond uninspired, actually. 

Can you recommend some good books or blogs or something to get me unstuck? Thanks, all!

Threads

This morning I took Joe and Pete to 7:00 Mass and came home full of ideas about what I was going to get done today. Minutes after I got home, I was surprised by a sudden visual disturbance: the size of a big floater, but flashing. I was worried that it was a retinal detachment, but Elwood said, "I hope you're not getting a migraine." It grew bigger and bigger until it ate up a huge swath of my visual field, like this but longer and fatter. It didn't change when I winked or closed my eyes, so I figured it was a brain thing and not an eye thing. I tried to consult Dr. Google but it was hard to read. I said to my husband, "I am feeling distress disproportionate to what is actually going on here." (I hate it when my body does surprising things.)

"This," I said, "is weird timing given that the first reading was from Tobit today. At least no birds pooped in my eyes." I asked St. Rafael to pray for me. I drank a cup of coffee. I asked Elwood to dig up that beautiful Cardinal Newman quote that says "my sickness may serve him." The scintillating scotoma shrank and then disappeared, leaving me feeling unexpectedly fatigued and wobbly for a chunk of the day.

In Mass I had been reflecting on unexpected connections. I was remembering feeling really stressed about money during my first year in the doctoral program. I didn't know that the job I felt compelled to seek would not only ease my short-term financial concerns. It would provide me with illustrations that my future students would benefit from. It would build a friendly relationship between my boss and me, leading to the grant proposal I submitted this spring. Whether or not it is funded, the proposal will advance my tenure case. In those weeks when my bank balance had me in a tizzy, God had a plan stretching years into the future.

I've been thinking about that all day. I cannot see God's purposes, but I believe he is purposeful. Perhaps one of the people I prayed for in my unexpectedly quiet day needed those prayers more than I knew. Perhaps I'll think back on this day years from now and say, "Oh, I'm glad I know what a scintillating scotoma is because ____." I've had the Carrie Newcomer song Threads in my head: joined to one another by invisible threads.

Summer Reading, part 2

You guys, I finished the best book today. SO SO good. Jennifer Fulwiler recommended The Long Ships in a blog post ages ago, and the sample sat on my e-reader for ages. I started reading it as part of my "clean off the Kindle" summer project, but pretty quickly I was reading it for its own sake. 

There's a scene near the end where a character is in peril, and I had to stop reading, set the book down, and take a couple of deep breaths. The rational part of me was saying, "This is a fictional character, and even if he were a real person he would have been dead for 900 years anyway." But he was a fictional character of whom I had grown very fond, and I wanted him to die a contented death in his old age -- not under the blade of an outlaw's axe.

It's describing such a different world, one in which a wounded man gets worried when there are no lice in his hair. Is his blood too thin to support a louse? It's a sign of his improvement when a further hunt finds a louse. For me it would be a sign of the apocalypse to find a louse in my hair. I'm not sure I would have cut it in 10th-century Denmark.

If you have read the Aubrey-Maturin series, you probably got to a point where a brief exchange between Jack and Stephen could make you laugh in a way impossible to explain to someone who hadn't read the books. I felt the same way about Orm and his friend. Who knew that a 500-page Viking novel would make me laugh out loud?

This is not a book for someone who gets indignant about improbable plot machinations (like my 15yo). You already know I'm not that reader, though. I loved this book. I will read it again. I'd love to chat about it in the comments if you've read it too!