Just For  Him

We're all smitten by screen stars, for the very obvious reason that after hoards of people have spent oodles of hours making said star look attractive, someone's directed them how to most dashingly spend a music-filled few hours working their way through deep challenges, with all the appearance of heroic self-abnegation and breathtaking daring-do.  And of course, there are screen stars of all stripes for all varieties of viewers, regardless of one's preference.

My own preferences lying a certain way, I was naturally drawn (as were approximately 10,432,639 other viewers worldwide) to that most unlikely hero of the latest epic:  Sam Gamgee.  I will admit to surfing a few sites for a peek at the actor himself, and found as well-coifed an on-line image as the screen version:  a dedicated husband and father with all the requisite Good Causes to his name.  And, of course, the usual laughingly-revealed all-too-human faults and foibles.

Marking him as an actor to keep an eye on, I thought again about the character that Astin so well-portrayed.  Director Jackson's Sam Gamgee, interestingly but perhaps unsurprisingly, is the only one of the massive cast of that epic who made it almost unchanged from tale to screen.  He is the truest-of-the-true salt-of-the earth, a humble individual with the deepest of love and loyalty: loyalty so great, indeed, that of all the more dashing and devilish RingBearers before him, only Sam Gamgee -- simple straight-forward Sam -- never fell to the power of the dreadful thing he briefly bore.  Only Sam (even surpassing his much more worldly master) never abandoned the Good and the Right for either the fear or the self-aggrandizement of Evil.

No wonder one finds oneself smitten by such a hero, thought I.  How, amid all the world's shadows and gray areas, can one not adore such shining purity?

And then I was smitten by something else: a small, personal thunderbolt.

I've married Sam Gamgee, I realized.

And I have.  For starters, my own Gamgee much resembles the character in appearance (I've ever been one for stalwart, well-fleshed sinew; willowy pretty boys need not apply).  My own Gamgee loves the soil and the field: his gentle husbanding of plant and animal fill our pantries with good food born of honest toil and our gardens and verges with beautifully fragrant flowers and herbs.  My own Gamgee is a man of few words, and those straightforwardly-spoken; he doesn't bear much with artifice and politicking.  My own Gamgee is a man of hearth and home, and although he has wondered far afield on adventures of his own (and my) making, his heart always remains in our own quiet, rural hobbit-hole.  My own Gamgee knows what is good and what is bad, and he sticks to his convictions regardless.

And most importantly, when he and I have climbed -- as all couples must, some more than once -- that marital Mount Doom, he has most assuredly, amidst the wind, the evil ash and falling rock, said to me:  "If I can't carry it, Ms. LMF, then I can carry you," and lifted up me, and all the burdens I bear, and staggered on over terrain I myself couldn't find the strength to tread.

Then, after the end of all things, when peace and calm descend again, my Gamgee can, in fun and frolic, literally lift me up and parade about the house to the delighted squeals of our little ones.

If you're already married to the star, why ever look elsewhere?

Happy Valentine's Day to you and your own Star!

Quilting Magic

Yesterday I had the honor (and the fun) of reading one of the best children's books ever written to a group of first and second graders hanging on every word (I'd like to think it was my brilliant delivery, but I expect the credit goes all to author Jeff Brumbeau and artist Gail de Marcken). 

I've mentioned The Quiltmaker's Gift before, but it's worth mentioning more than once.  This is a modern fairy tale with all the right nuances, placed in a beauteous kingdom wherein there dwells a grandmotherly quiltmaker of flowing white hair who refuses to sell her wondrous creations for any amount of money, but distributes them among the poor for free.  Until the time of the tale, her incredible creations have never been known to the kingdom's ruler, a grim fellow with a bald spot beneath his crown.  But in his minions' search for the gift that will make the king happy (a gift not yet discovered, despite the fact that he has so many many gifts that he has "lists of all the lists of all the treasures that he owns") they finally stumble upon the quiltmaker in her sunlit chalet high on a distant mountaintop.

The thinking adult can well imagine the course the tale takes, and the ways in which the kind and clever quiltmaker eventually brings the king around to realize that the greatest happiness comes not from receiving, but from giving.  It isn't a new, or unexpected, tale.

What is amazing about it, however, is the concurrence of clear, precise language with just the right insertion of humor to tweak the 6-year-old funny bone (the king, who is "very good at being greedy but very bad at being mean," after tossing and turning all night about the plight in which he has left the intransigent quiltmaker, orders his soldiers out to rescue her in their pajamas -- a tidbit that never fails to raise peals of laughter from an audience newly attuned, themselves, to the importance of attire appropriate to the task at hand). 

What is amazing is the beauty woven by de Marcken into the lined faces of the middle-aged characters (not a stalwart prince nor a willowy princess in sight), and even moreso the stunning brilliance of the gifts and the quilts against multitudinous detailed landscapes -- drawings that bring the adult sneaking back to the bookshelf, post bedtime, to pour over those incredible images and mouth the lyrical words again.

If you have a handy eager listener in your house, I urge you to waste no time trying out your own delivery of those words.  If you don't, then the next time you're in the library, meander over to the kids' section anyway and pause to look.  I'll guarantee you, no matter what your age, you'll read through to the end -- and then turn back to the beginning for "just one more time."

Dinner With Children (reproduced without embellishment)

Little Ms. Six (reaching across the table):  Give me that lamb; it's mine.

Sister Three (cuddling worn stuffed lamb gently to chest in it's 'blanket,' an old washcloth):  But lambie loves me.

Six:  Lambie loves me more; it's MINE.

Three:  (kissing lamb)  Lambie loves me.

Mom:  Now Three, you know Lambie does belong to Six.  And since you've had lambie all day, it's probably time to let Six have a turn.

Three: (sadly hugging Lambie, then holding it out)  Oday, Six, here's Lambie.

Six (triumphantly seizing toy):  Lambie loves me more.

Mom:  Now Six, Lambie loves both of you exactly the same!

Three (slips off her chair, murmuring sotto voce in tones of utmost pathos and dragging empty washcloth behind):  Thwee walks off sadly.

Mom (fighting both tears and laughter, a little more loudly for the departing Three's benefit):  Six, Lambie loves BOTH of you.

Six (ever practical):  Lambie's known me longer, so he loves me more.

Mom:  Nonsense.  I've known you longer than I've known Three, but I love both of you exactly the same.

Six:  That's right, you've known me ever since Daddy gave you the seed that started me!  (thoughtfully)  Mom, when Daddy gave you the seed....

Mom (hastily overstuffs mouth to avoid any further requirement to speak)

Six:  .....did you know whether I'd be a boy or a girl?

Mom (gagging in relief):  Uh -- cough -- no, honey, no I didn't!

Six:  Which did you want me to be?

Mom:  (truthfully)A girl, honey, I really wanted a girl.

Six (beaming):  And you got two of us!

Mom (beaming):  I did, honey, I absolutely did!

Book Review:  The Da Vinci Code (spoilers for the first scene)

I knew the buzz was on about Dan Brown’s DaVinci Code, but even though I’d read a review or two in passing I’d missed the point.  I thought this was a Very Heavy Duty Serious Tome that just happened for some odd reason to pique public interest.  I thought it would be something like The Name of the Rose.  When the Code was assigned to my book club, to be frank, I cringed.  I’ve read the Rose (although I didn’t make it through Foucault, alas).  I’m a great fan of seriously great thinkers  who also write fiction.  Someday, I will have time to read all of A.S. Byatt, and I’m looking forward to it with anticipation.  But I don’t have time in my life right now for thoughts other than my own, and even those, for sheer lack of time, have to be based on prior experience rather than research.  Right now I just didn’t have one second for serious thought.

Not to worry.  And not to be putting down Mr. Brown, either.  Mr. Brown has actually accomplished a very interesting thing.  He’s written a red-hot, page-turning murder mystery, similar to the better Agatha Christies, and he’s also managed to popularize something I’d never thought popularizable.  Anyone else ever seen PBS's "Frontline" entitled "From Jesus to Christ"?  Unfortunately I myself haven’t seen it in its entirety (because it arrived on the scene after children had arrived on mine, and the latter event erased tv from my life as a time-consuming option).  But I did see enough of them, in passing, to deeply appreciate the insight they provided to the modern guise of Christianity, and also to deeply regret that this fascinating and well-researched information wouldn’t ever reach the general public.  Well now, apparently, it has, in the form of Religious History and Symbology Lite.  And bravo to Mr. Borwn, for that, say I.!

If you are familiar with the standard clichés of the murder mystery genre, you may find the Code a bit old-hat to start.  Sure, it grabs you by the throat and keeps you gasping, but you find time to roll your eyes a bit between gasps.  I mean, like me you might not have known that DaVinci’s famous nude male in the pentacle-within-the-circle was called The Vitruvian Man, but when the opening lines’ macabre murder victim is found to have spreadeagled himself on the floor of the Louvre, with a pentacle painted upon his abdomen and a sweeping circle about him, and the top cops and symbologists and code crackers are all standing around saying “Hmmmm!” or, since it’s France, “Mais qu’est-ce que c’est, ca?” really, you do find time to wander into the kitchen in search of another cup of tea and wonder whether perhaps there was something else pressing on your bookshelf.

Fortunately, however, things improve after that.  Or rather, they stay the same (same breathless pace, same switchbacks to other gasp-worthy scenes elsewhere, same macabre overtones, same weird unknown backstory) but intensify and get more puzzling.  The codes and the secrets soon reach beyond the average ken, and the in-depth research part of the text, although not entirely adroitly intertwined therein, is never dwelt on overlong before there’s another chase, another turn of the plot, another unexpected betrayal, or another puzzlingly clue to solve.

I am left, shortly after pulling an all-nighter just to get all those pages turned, wondering about the degree to which the research part of the story is correct.  I believe it is nearly all accurate (not as in “truth,” but as it “existing speculation and/or documented theory”), and I’m looking forward to a little web-browsing to get a taste of the Christian establishment’s response. 

I am NOT left wondering about Mr. Brown’s firm grip on all the ploys of the successful murder-thriller.  It’s a recipe, and it’s not haute cuisine, but it’s assuredly tasty enough.  And I highly recommend it, particularly if a lengthy plane trip or long weekend without much else of entertainment value looms in your near future.

Are You Game? 

It's Friday after a truly long and hideous week (where did all the short, fun weeks go??  Lost in the mists of childhood?).  So this week's word fun is very simple, because I need to laugh a lot at nothing.  Here's the challenge: 

Write something short.  Within the text you must include these three words (by themselves, or as a part of a whole):

PIERCE

BREAST

SONG

Mega-points, of coourse, for the non-obvious.  Such as, perhaps:

"Pierced, she fell upon the breast of the new-fallen snow with something like regret, warbling in song.  'On Donder, on Blitzen,' she cried, 'But why on top of me?' As the reindeer, oblivious to her trampled form, dashed away, dashed away over the wall."

Or maybe:

"Breasting the wave with the sangfroid of the long accustomed, he pierced the tunnel in exhaltation."

I'm not up to form today, but I know you can do better!

How the Game's Played

Monday morning my husband stopped me as I (be-gloved, coated and laden with computer and briefcase) rushed out the door.

• "Hold on  -- you'll have to know this for the office."
  
• "Yeah?"
  
• "There was a Super Bowl last night."
  
• "Oh -- right."
  
• "It was a good game"
  
• "Really?"
  
• "The Patriots won in the last seconds."
  
• "Oh -- okay.  Thanks!"

Generally my husband's attempts to keep me in the loop on the "everyone-knows-that" side of sports are office-adequate.  But dang it.  Where was the last comment?  "Oh -- and Janet Jackson flashed a tit."  "Yeah?"  "It was pierced."  "Ah -- of course."

Anyway, I certainly learned it soon enough.  In fact, I even managed to learn it before NPR did a spot on it.

[SIGH]

For well over four years, taken in sum, I personally provided the ogling public with unrepentant tit-exposure as a nursing mother.  And not a hair was turned.  Not a question was asked.  Not a glance dared be glanced.  Everyone just walked right on by, withholding whatever comments they might have had (we need make no reference to the fact that I resemble Ms. Jackson in no way whatsoever, up to and including tit-jewelry).

Not to entirely plagiarize that excellent Xangan Thyrio (what's worth writing is worth repeating?) but we're not really talking tits here.  The issue, if one feels an issue should be made, is the throbbing and the jiving.  The thrusting and the groping.  The blatant sexual content of everything media and entertainment in our culture today.

But I'm not going to get all heavy and repressive about this one.  I'll just say, frankly, that you can give me a good half-hour's entertainment listening to my engineering staff raking Jackson, tits, piercings, and the Bowl commercials over the coals, with their acerbic geeky wit, in lieu of the actual event, any day.

Private Life, Religion and Civil Law (or:  how many hot button topics can one address in 800 words or less)

This is a companion piece to today's by Quiltnmomi.

A colleague and I were having a discussion about gay marriage.  We did not agree.  I was of the get-your-laws-off-my-body school; he of the heterosexual-marriage-benefits-solid-families opinion.  The upshot was that he challenged me to tell him what I thought civil law should regulate.  I tossed and turned over that one, and finally spewed forth the following.

But before I proceed with this rather opinionated and perhaps poorly rationalized set of remarks, I checked in with my good friend who's currently undergoing a divorce.  I wanted to assure her (a) that I wasn't attacking her decisions, or any of other divorcing persons; and (b) to get her thoughts on the matter, because she's one of the most thoughtful people gracing the world today.  So before you get a little hot-and-bothered about some of the implications below, please know I much I deeply love and respect my friend and her decisions, and please also read her take.

This is what I think are some underlying principles about civil regulation of social unions:

Belly Laughs

"WHEEEEAAAAOOO (get back, get back; get lost) WHOOOHOHOOOO (stop! get back) WWWHHHHHEEEEE!"

This would be me, zipping a-l-l-l-l-l the way down the cow pasture on a red plastic sled, with my 3-year-old on one knee, 6-year-old on the other, and the frisky yearly steer thundering after us inquisitively.

There aren't enough belly laughs chez LMF, to be honest.  We run a fairly tight ship on schedule, with lots of checks and balances between our disparate worlds of work.  Sometimes I'm sort of afraid we're not teaching the kids enough about how to just let it all go and giggle.

But last weekend my husband, the family cook, was giving me turkey-roasting instructions while dressing for a day of rough woods work in the frigid air.  The kids were riotous around us, the oven was half open, and I was dubiously eyeing the trussed fowl.  My husband put on his fuzzy rabbit-fur hat.

"Turn and baste every half hour."

I nodded.  He zipped up his Carhardts.

"Put some foil over the legs if they start to get too brown."

The youngest pulled on my legs begging for a game.  I nodded again.  My husband laced his steel-toed boots.

"Two and a half hours, but be sure to check the temperature."

I picked up the youngest and jounced her absent-mindedly while looking around for the thermometer.  My husband wound his scarf, simultaneously opening a drawer and tossing two oven mitts toward me.

"These might help you when you try to flip the bird."

There was a moment's serious silence.

Then we roared.

Yep.  Good ol' belly laughs.

Fearing Failure

When I was 21 and being interviewed for the Peace Corps one of the questions was "Tell me about a time you failed."  And I couldn't.  It wasn't because I was being disingenuous.  I just couldn't think of a time that I'd FAILED.  When I recounted this moment to my mother, she instantly came up with the time I said I would paint the silo, and managed to annoint a third of the rusty steel with bright red before quitting for some other exploit.  True, true, I'd forgotten that (although, to be fair, it might have been a definitional difference rather than an actual memory lapse: one teenager's better-use-of-time is one parent's "failure"?).

At 42 I'm no stranger to failure, but on the other hand I don't have to extricate myself from its grasp every morning either.  And this is not because I'm stronger, wiser, more careful or even just plain luckier than the next gal, really.  It might just be a streak of wilful self-preservation:  metaphorically speaking, I don't apply for jobs I won't get.  Something like that.

But right now I'm staring failure in the face, and let me tell you it's a frightening spectre.  My eldest's private school is 20 years old, but like many such institutions, it's built on the good will and exhaustive volunteerism of its staff and clientele.  That means plenty of room for dropped balls.  At the moment the ground is littered with the remnants of things once bright-and-bouncy.  There were bad administrative decisions, bad fiscal decisions, and then, last year, one excessively bad straw-on-the-camel's-back personnel decision.  I'm fighting the good fight, along with a few other stalwarts still on the field, but I'm also in deepening doubt that we can win this war. 

It's not just that my kid may join all the other kids in the public school maelstrom next year, although that's part of it.  She will not be used to it, and she may struggle a good deal.  But I'll grit my teeth and she will too and she'll be okay.  And if she isn't, well:  Plan B.  Quit my job and homeschool.  Move to the city.  Get her counseling.  Whatever it takes.

But failure in and of itself doesn't permit that optimistic Plan B Attitude, does it?  You throw everything you have into a cause, whatever the cause.  And you struggle and laugh and cry and celebrate.  You agree and you squabble.  You kibbitz and you collaborate.  You create something.  Something big and glorious and important.  Something you believe in with all your heart and soul.

Then the edifice falls.  And amid the ruins, amid the "why me's" and "whose faults," there's just this immense sense of personal devastation.  Of loss.  Not loss of the thing itself, the whole-greater-than-the-parts thing.  But personal loss of part of yourself.  I fear, not so much failure per se, as the loss of that part of me which crumbles with the edifice.

I think I should call up my old recruiter and tell her I can answer her question now.

The Storm

The long-anticipated storm fluttered deceptively gently down around us in the midafternoon out of a blue-greyish sky (still lit, on its northern edge, by the brighter light that belied our expectations all morning).

The evening brought no twilight, just a deepening gloom around the farm while the animals hunkered down a bit.  Animals’ lack of capacity to plan is, in times like these, surely a blessing --  there is no sense of impending doom; merely a shouldering up to the burden when it comes swirling down from a cold clear sky.

There’s many a road out there in the snowy world still to travel, and the anticipation of them all sits in the back of my brain this evening:  the asphalt, tomorrow, icy perhaps and treacherous down the hills into town.  The path through the coming Spring in my various positions of responsibility, with uncertainties and unpleasantnesses lurking at the bottom of the option barrel.  The long, long road a-windin’ off into the future, with the girls growing up into a world full of impending storms.

But this evening’s the fire is banked against the imminent threat, and really, there is – yes, admit it, there is – time to stare awhile into the coals and warm the soul.

(picture credits:  me, for once!)