To Other Little Girls They Are Life-Sized

Little girls are cute and small only to adults. To one another they are not cute. They are life-sized. ~Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye I have a game I play with myself I call perspective: when a problem is bothering me I try to remind myself that five years from now I probably won’t even remember the details of it. That’s a nice, self-help-y sounding start, right? Only, this week I suddenly realized that I don’t get to live five years from now, I get to live right now, and sometimes stuff right now stinks. So much of parenting in my family right now seems to be meeting my kids melt-downs. They feed and dress themselves and even help out with household chores, and go about the world so autonomously, that the real work of parenting now seems...

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Posted by Mara Collins on Jul 29, 2008 | 5 comments

Improvised Birthday

My baby turned four yesterday, which means he isn’t so much baby anymore. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a lot of time for planning a huge birthday celebration. A week ago we returned from a nice vacation visiting my parents in New Mexico, and this last week has been a busy one with Raven doing OSCON, leaving the house before the kids were up most days and returning after they were in bed. The older boys did the first week of drama camp (Harry Potter!) and loved it, and I spent more time driving than I would choose to. With little time for shopping or planning, and as I think I’ve mentioned, not being a big fan of elaborate children’s birthday parties, or more, not believing I quite possess the skills required to make it a happy event for...

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Posted by Mara Collins on Jul 27, 2008 | 4 comments

Proof that My Kids Are Turning Out Cooler Than I’d Ever Dared to Hope

Overheard in the car this morning: Me: “Science plus optimism equals… what?” Aodán: “Huh?” Me: “That MAX car over there has ‘Science Plus Optimism’ but you can’t see the rest because of the station awning. So I am thinking delusion, right?” Aodán: “Yeah, it could cloud your objectivity. The microbe attacks the cell, no, that’s too dark, let’s just say the microbe and the cell become friends.” Me: “I’m an optimistic person, I just don’t think that the place for it is science…” Aodán, in fawning assistant voice: “Sir, I am afraid there is no Happy Bunny Flower Organ.”

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Posted by Mara Collins on Jul 23, 2008 | 3 comments

Remembering to Play

I have been a little anxious about Soren and Rainer not having learned to swim yet, at three and five, when Aodán and Xander could at these ages. It seems like one of the automatics, good parents get their kids into swimming lessons. But I never get my stuff together enough to sign up for lessons in advance, and am unsure where would be good, and, truthfully, dread, having to figure out what to do with older boys so I can take younger boys to a pool for lessons. Except for music lessons, the activities we do tend to have to be to everyone’s benefit. So, this week, enjoying my parents’ swimming pool, I have felt compelled to do swimming-lesson-like activities, trying to get them to float on their backs with me supporting them and to put their faces in...

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Posted by Mara Collins on Jul 16, 2008 | 7 comments

Pocket Full of Kryptonite

I woke this morning at five a.m. from a dream that didn’t feel like a bad dream — I had been hanging out on the roof of a tall building with a man, just sort of exchanging polite chit-chat and he pointed out a truck leaping off another building, but he pointed out that it was driven by a woman in a mini-skirt — irrefutable dream evidence that it was a sort of performance, and, looking closer, I realized the truck was, indeed suspended from a helicopter. “Come on,” he called out, leaping off the building towards the truck, gesturing we should play too, and so I followed, and only in mid-air realized it was a mistake and that the ground was suddenly rushing up at me. Confronted with the end of my life, I squeezed my eyes closed and...

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Posted by Mara Collins on Jul 11, 2008 | 5 comments