Archive for the 'About' Category
The first thing Ethan asked after he saw Fidel: Do all mammals have nipples?
Why yes, son. Yes, they do.
(Or not. Did you know that male mice and male horses don’t have nipples?)
Another picture from the cookie baking soiree. Anne and The Partner mocked my use of cookie dough rolls for our cookies, but I assert that it’s considered baking if it’s put into the oven.
Also, this will be the last picture I post of myself for about another three years. Since I posted it on the wrong blog three times, it’s bound to be a jinx.
A quote from Ethan during a pre-Christmas cookie baking soiree with Anne and The Partner.
I decided to break my No Ethan Pics policy because this one is too cute. I was especially proud of my purple turkey cookie. Ethan was proud to eat it.
Chris kindly offers this illustration to accompany this story.
This is what Doug looks like when photographed with a good camera. Still cute, still lumpy.
Many thanks to my friend Anne, who also took several incredibly unflattering pictures of me last night.
Tonight Ethan regaled me with some Yeats and some Whitman, and I responded with Christina Rossetti and Lewis Carroll. Ethan found this poem by Rossetti particularly compelling. He asked me what it meant so I gave him a simple explanation. Offended, he asked, “Why would she want a dead guy?”
Come to me in the silence of the night;
Come in the speaking silence of a dream;
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright
As sunlight on a stream;
Come back in tears,
O memory, hope, love of finished years.O dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet,
Whose wakening should have been in Paradise,
Where souls brimful of love abide and meet;
Where thirsting longing eyes
Watch the slow door
That opening, letting in, lets out no more.Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live
My very life again though cold in death:
Come back to me in dreams, that I may give
Pulse for pulse, breath for breath:
Speak low, lean low,
As long ago, my love, how long ago!
I just like the line: “Speak low, lean low,/ As long ago”. It speaks to my dramatic teen goth side.
Further squicked out by my explanation why Rossetti would pine for the dead guy, Ethan changed the subject, asking me what my favorite poem was or if I ever wrote poetry. “I have lots of favorite poems, none of which are in this book,” I told him. “And Mommy used to like writing poetry. In high school. Poorly.”
Ethan then requested a recitiation of Carl Sandburg’s “Chicago” which was not as popular as Rossetti’s ode to dead dude.
Now I’m on a poetry hunt for things approriate for advanced second-graders. I’m thinking John Donne. Maybe The Wasteland.
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