March 05, 2010

I’ve come across a few pearls. One is strung on a fine strand of others like it, one is loose, hastily snatched up and offered to you haphazardly, the third, a beauty to tuck in your emotional jewellery box.

Unlike many bloggers who can render almost daily gems, I fuss over posts, turning them this way and that, editing and fretting until I am absolutely certain I can hit publish and not look back. I’ve found these pearls in the last week, and I offer them to you here as a bookmark (if you will forgive the lumpy mixed metaphor). They are to hold this place for you until I am ready to show you the other thing.

This may turn into the first in a series of occasional Pearl posts. Let me know if you like them.

Here is the first, from Michael Chabon’s gorgeous book called Manhood For Amateurs. The stories in this collection are like baroque pearls, all are linked more or less by the stand of fatherhood but each is different, some rough some smooth, some so beautiful you can’t help but run your fingers over them again and again. This is one such passage:

“Every day is like a kid's drawing, offered to you with a strange mixture of ceremoniousness and offhand disregard, yours for the keeping. Some days are rich and complicated, others inscrutable, others little more than a stray gray mark on a ragged page."

This one is a refrain from the end of the movie Crazy Heart – sung by Robert Duvall’s character in the bow of a rowboat at the end of the movie, lilting almost off key, prefect. I scrawled it on an envelope in the dark & maybe misplaced a word here or there but it went something like this and I loved it:

“Mothers and fathers try to raise them right
don’t make them feel forsaken
just lead them toward the light.”

And this last one is a beautiful, resonant post, by Mom-O-Matic. It was brought to my attention by my friend the lovely, talented, & blog-generous Sharon DeVellis (yes, she of The Inside Scoop) Just go. Read. You’ll understand why.

The Wisdom Of My 38.5 Years or Maybe Just Rambling

 

Labels/Tags: EarnestGirl, West Coast Chronicles, Small Pearls, motherhood, pearls of wisdom, Crazy Heart, The Inside Scoop, Mom-O-Matic

Posted by CatherineJ at 03:17:50 View Comments | Click Here to Comment

February 19, 2010

Sloth, that most delightful of Deadly Sins, I remember it well:

sunlit afternoons in my childhood living room with Nancy Drew and handfuls of stolen After Eight mints from the sideboard in the dining room where my mother hid such forbidden grownup treats.

university evenings curled up in my little room, eating Haagen Daz from the tub instead of the proper dinner I should have pulled together for the same amount of money (another sin, I am sure) when I should have been writing essays.

countless books read under Sloth’s munificent cloak.

bed rest – virtuous sloth! After the fear wore off and the routine settled in, there were long slow days of holding my miraculous belly full of baby, watching the buds unfurl on the trees outside my window and basking in sunshine like a fat, golden lioness, lolling and watchful on the savannah of my couch.

Family time, motherhood, the weekend lists of chores and activity, the everyday race to school and back, the grocery lists and things that need attention occupy full days, consume whole weeks and evaporate afternoons that once promised sloth.

I bargain with time, tell myself I’ll wake up earlier on the weekend, just to lie in bed with a newspaper, or get the homework and night time routine done sooner, light candles at 9 p.m. and sit quietly, wine in hand, with my husband and Sloth curled and purring at our feet.

It does not happen.

Sloth is an elusive cat I want to invite into our home. I’d like her to pad on velvet feet up my daughter’s bed, settle in on Sunday mornings and bask in the quiet of bed-rustle and page turning.

Sloth is a slow moving sunbeam I want to catch hold of so I can watch the dust motes sparkle, feel time’s slow revolutions without the prodding forward of messages and machines.

Sloth is a weekend soundtrack of pancakes and radio and cushions spread out.

Sloth is every mother’s dream.

Sloth is a gift we should give to our children more often.
 

Labels/Tags: EarnestGirl, The West Coast Chronicles, motherhood, sloth, bed rest, over-scheduled lives

Posted by CatherineJ at 20:41:07 View Comments | Click Here to Comment

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