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For a kid who’s not even two, our Henners certainly has a voice. His habit of saying ‘mommyeeeee’ or ‘daddyeeeeee’ repeatedly, insistently, usually for no reason whatsoever, takes me back on a daily basis to the movie ‘Forget Paris’. Debra Winger’s dad lives with them, and one clip shows him fixating upon a Toyota advertisement, saying: ‘you asked for it, you got it…Toyota.’ Over and over, in this terrible nasal voice, that would have driven Mother Theresa insane.
We were sitting in church a few weeks ago when Jason turned to me, deep in thought. I was under the impression he was going to share some profound insight with me. Instead he said, ‘how does she make her voice sound like a recorder?’ In reference to one of the female singers’ harmonies. If his observation hadn’t been remarkably accurate, I would have been really annoyed with him. Is the man incapable of having a deep thought?
But it’s true, I suppose that a voice can make or break a person. Whenever we go on a roadtrip, we usually procure a book on tape from the library. Several trips ago, I got Anne Lamott’s ‘Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith.’ Jason was so bothered by her voice that he couldn’t listen to the whole thing and I had to finish it alone. Apparently he’s okay with reading her books, he just doesn’t want to hear her reading them.
David Sedaris, on the other hand; the man could read a washing machine manual and we’d probably laugh. All he has to say is ‘I mean, really‘ and it’s funny: the mixture of paranoia, uptight voice, and odd expressions. Unlike Mr. Michael Ondaatje.
In an effort to force myself to read (aka expand my horizons beyond pathetic Facebook games), I signed up for the adult summer reading challenge at the library. A giant leap of faith considering the last book I read was at the beginning of April. And only because we were in the car for fifteen hours. This particular reading challenge consisted of listening to a book on tape (cd) or mp3. So I got Sedaris’ ‘When you are engulfed in flames‘ and Ondaatje’s ‘Running in the Family‘ or something like that. But after five minutes of listening to Mr. Ondaatje’s voice, I had to quit. The man may have a gift with words.
But I’d rather see them in written form.
We went to the library last week for the first time in a very long time. You know it’s been a long time when your not quite five year old asks ‘do you think we can go to the library today?’
So we went and, in addition to grabbing the requisite Thomas DVD that never works because it has been viewed way too many times, we left with a stack of books. Making up for lost time, I guess.
In the pile, was this little gem which has turned out to be a favorite. G is fascinated with the depicted ‘festivals for children’s growth’ and ’sushi’ and ‘tea ceremony’.
But he’s really fixated upon the ‘yuzu bath‘ mentioned in the book. Which, if the book and the internet are to be believed, is an ancient tradition occurring on the shortest day of the year. Apparently, a steeping tub is filled with hot water and yuzu oranges. The hot water apparently causes the scent of the oranges to be released.
The seven year old narrator of the book opines that the yuzu bath leaves them ‘warm and smooth.’ Two concepts that fascinate our Gort. ‘What’s warm and smooth?’
So, in an effort to be on-the-ball-maximizing-teachable-moments-mom, I came up with the bright idea of approximating a yuzu bath at home, by dumping some regular American navel oranges in the boys’ bath.
G seemed pretty psyched about my idea. Oranges. In a bath? In the end I decided it was pretty wasteful to take a bunch of tasty oranges and throw them in bathwater, so I compromised and suggested we only use one orange and quarter it. To create the effect of there being several oranges in the water.
Which was fine and good. Except, the tepid water could never coerce any orange – yuzu or otherwise – to release a semblance of scent. And the Hen kept trying to grab the oranges and put them in his mouth. And then G set the oranges on the edge of the tub where he may or may not have squeezed them, sending sticky juice everywhere. And when the water had drained, there was orange pulp clinging to the bottom of the tub.
So, ‘warm and smooth’….didn’t happen…and my experiment was a bit of a bust.
Next time I’ll leave the teaching to someone else.
It means ‘frog’ in French. And has little to do with anything besides the fact that I watched ‘Le Scaphandre et le papillon’ a few days ago. ’The Diving Bell and the Butterfly’ for those who didn’t take four years of high school French.
Continuing in the ‘why your life doesn’t suck as much as you think it does’ vein, it is based on the book of the same title, written by Jean-Dominique Bauby. He had a stroke that left him paralyzed; only able to communicate by blinking his left eye.
The book’s not that long, understandably.
But both book and movie are very good. As long as you don’t mind feeling like a total heel for grumping about minutiae.
And if you get your husband to watch it, he might not point out that the ‘free’ movie you got from the library ended up costing $4+ due to all the late fees you racked up.
All of a sudden she began to whistle. By all of a sudden I mean that for more than thirty years she had not whistled. It was thrilling. At first I wondered, who was in the house, what stranger? I was upstairs reading and she was downstairs. As from the throat of a wild and cheerful bird, not caught but visiting, the sound warbled and slid and doubled back and larked and soared.
Finally I said, Is that you? Is that you whistling? Yes, she said. I used to whistle, a long time ago. Now I see I can still whistle. And cadence after cadence she strolled through the house, whistling.
I know her so well, I think. I thought. Elbow and ankle. Mood and desire. Anguish and frolic. Anger too. And the devotions. And for all that, do we even begin to know each other? Who is this I’ve been living with for thirty years?
from Winter Hours by Mary Oliver
This one’s for my reader friends (or anyone who was unlucky enough to catch Rob Lowe in ‘A Perfect Day.’)
Yesterday I listened to an NPR interview with Jeff Karp. He started a publishing house called ‘Twelve’, that [only] publishes one book per month..compared to an industry that publishes more than 500 books a day in the U.S. alone.
