we survived christmas!

here is maya's scene, created with legos and hand-painted and carved wooden ostheimer dolls (her big xmas gift, to help her remember her first preschool.
407 pieces of violent pretend play. i just read michael chabon's book of essays, manhood for amateurs, and there is a great part about legos, how these kits with massive books of step-by-step directions took some creativity away, but how the legos end up being used by the kids imaginatively as the 407 piece creations eventually break down and get reused by characters such as huge wooden princesses posing as galactic senators.
maya sticking spruce tree trimmings in pink playdough. this morning she woke up and told me, mommy you are so cute, you are as cute as a little mouse. i don't know why she tells me nice things every morning but i like it.
the bandstand at fort mason, made from debris in the bay. wish i had a microscope on my computer to read the white panel that explains more. we saw the young performers theater version of the little prince which was a little creepy and long-winded and prompted distractin g bugs bunny-like kisses from miles' buddy near the end of the show. fort mason also host to my new favorite bookstore, the book bay, as well as the renegade craft fair where i scored a jill bliss from oregon bear poster.
the tortured artist at work.

the michael chabon essays were inspiring (thank you mom) in their coherence and in their closeness to my own thoughts. i guess what i feel inspired to do is to carve some time out to focus my mind a little and write some of it down. not right now though, but soon. ha, how is that for lame procrastination! i feel inspired, but not inspired enough to do anything about it. i guess i will blame this day of 407 lego pieces, of cooking meals, of swiffing crazy-ass amounts of debris off the floor, of taking maya to the zoo, of playing basketball with miles, of reading kids to sleep, of reading inspiring essays and now of sending photos to you, dear reader, to let you see what i see.

xo

ghosts of christmas present and i want to become a pagan

our house is filling up with holiday photo greeting cards of all the cute little kids who have moved away. miles looked curiously at the photo of eva and margot and then decided he didn't recognize them. elise and nina, ditto. nina and niko are still recognizable to my children, which is nice. ben and ella, with reminders. new baby calvin i would like to get my hands on before he is holding a lightsaber. man i wish you were all closer and that your kids didn't look so huge.

and after hearing an INORDINATE amount of pre-christmas gift angst from my obsessive boy-child i have decided i want us all to become pagans. maybe maya's school with its lantern celebration (children walking with lanterns in the dark and singing in rounds end up at a spiral of greens. one by one as everyone sings "oh how lovely is the evening" they walk the spiral with a votive candle which is lit in the center by a teacher, sitting by a tree stump with candles and a big crystal on top, then they find a place for the candle in the spiral. predictably maya is one of the 15% or so of the children present who put down their candle and then leave this beautiful sight to go sing potty songs ["oh how lovely is the pooping" haha] and mess with the pine cones and evergreen boughs over in the corner. this is the school we left, sigh.) has rubbed off on me but i am wishing for a celebration like the old old OLD days, where people lit candles and celebrated trees and created altars at the winter solstice to make sure the sun would return and everyone could continue living. really, the christmas tree, the birth of the son (aha, the rebirth of the sun, interesting) and the hanuhkah candles (which miles wants to investigate next year, thinking he would not have to wait so long for presents) must all stem from these ancient beliefs. how did things get to the point of huge boxes of wrapped gifts criss-crossing around the country and kids being miserable as they count down the days to 12/25. too bad we have been sucked into the vortex of buying a bunch of crap at christmas, including lots of plastic crap for miles, who probably will not be happy with whatever he gets anyway. i am feeling frustrated with materialism and powerless before its forces. i really would like to start over with this season and go all witchy, celebrate on a beach or in the woods with nature and maybe a homeade toy or two for the kids, but with toys everywhere and commercials on bus stops and friends telling and showing my kids what they have got it feels impossible. there is my little rant. i want to be a hobbit or go live in the future in an ursula leguin book. i wish i had kept my kids from the world of material greed, but i have failed, and christmas feels like the prime example, and it makes me feel not so great.

so maybe next year around thanksgiving i will take my family up to the wilds of mendocino and tell them we are pagans now and christmas is no longer, and we can hold candles and dance around a tree. there would probably be a lot of yelling but after a while it would die down. they would probably get bored and want to watch videos on those short days with long nights, but we have plenty of those for the watching.

i don't know if we can fight the dark power of christmas present mania here in the city. what do you think? i know only the spammers are reading this blog anyway.

thank you sister

shopping around for christmas presents with maya on 18th street in potrero hill was a bit depressing. what do i get for anyone? i couldn't spend much time looking at books in christopher's because maya kept smacking me with princess books she wanted me to read, and the lady in one store joked a little grimly about maya's expensive taste as the little princess started walking around in some 300+ buck vintage designer shoes draped with jewels. so i got nothing for anyone. a cold wet day. then we went into farley's for a hot cocoa and sonic youth "sister" was playing. and then my bloody valentine "isn't anything." i got giddy and happy and read maya a ridiculous book in farley's book box about a pig named farley with a gas problem. me and my beautiful girl sipping chocolate on a monday, surrounded by tables full of people working on laptops, talking, drinking, and art on all the walls from the folks at creativity explored, smiling faces, needlepoint animals. listening to some of the best music in the world.

lately i have not been posting about many of the interesting parts of my life because there is a confidentiality factor. is it time for an anonymous blog where i can really spill my guts? i will keep this little one for grandma and far away friends, of course.

a little sad

well, there was a lot of talk at miles' school, and today he asked me point blank if santa was real--and i told him no. he had been fighting against the school rumors by almost feverishly making gifts for santa the last few days. it feels strange seeing the "merry christmas santa" shrinky dink ornament made only 2 days ago by this now non-believing child of mine. i don't remember ever believing in santa claus, but miles has always seemed pretty innocent. then mid-day his first tooth fell out. the tooth fairy is real, right? he asked. i said sure, but felt that maybe he was just hoping that is what i would say.

the whole world of giants and santas and dragons and tooth fairies and easter bunnies, how can in crumble in one day? i guess these things do not have a firm foundation. what will take their place? i am a little sad.

new school

we finally made the decision to take maya out of the very sweet,lovely little waldorf-inspired preschool where she has been happily playing princess, peter pan, hair salon, and learning all kinds of songs and stories for the past three months. it has been hard to figure out, but a nagging feeling that the preschool is just too far away has motivated the change. only 10 minutes on the highway, i kept telling myself, but getting on the highway is just not a good thing, at least in my mind. even on no traffic days the commute just didn't feel quite right. every day on the way to preschool and back i make up a story for maya, and usually stopped the story when we were on the highway because it really is harder to tell a good one when you are driving at 70 mph. so, we are trading the wooden toy, old fashioned school with natural rhythms for the somewhat more chaotic and less lovely-looking preschool which is closer to home. in the end, it feels more right and natural not to get on a highway with 5 lanes of traffic merging and speeding, than it does to drive a little way through our neighborhood. i am sad about leaving this very special little place, which was on potrero hill when i found it, and which had to move to another part of town because of funding issues. in a way i feel that maya will miss out because her mama cannot tolerate the stresses of highway driving very well, but i am the only mama she has got.

i guess we will have to make up this loss to maya by finding a little bit more of that old-fashioned imaginative play and story-telling at home. all the wooden toys--a little too expensive. i think maya is pretty happy playing with her royal family. wish us luck with the transition in january.