We took the kids to see the Basquiat exhibit at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts. Ford validated my anticipation, eagerly counting recurring symbols and remarking that “he uses crayons!” I knew the portfolio would captivate Ford, with the cartoony anatomy and cars and expressive style. But I didn’t realize how much it would synchronize with Ford’s interests. And I enjoyed it, too! Even if I couldn’t really stop and breathe much throughout the show. Our tour was characteristically whirlwinded; we bounced around the gallery, cross-referencing to find the ties that bind the work, punctuated with requests to go to the bathroom, get a drink, go home, no stay, go to Austin. Chas, for his part, snoozed in the stroller.

It’s New Year’s Eve in Houston, and over the buzzy drone of Chas’ snoring I hear little groups of people hollering one block away, the rat a tatting of firecrackers and guns, and the horn of a freight train downtown. Our house and much of our block is asleep. But if you walk barefoot out onto the front porch, and sit on the swing, you can see Christmas lights smiling at the raucous din of nearby celebration. The turning of a new year unfolds as I swing back and forth in the stillness. The family of gliding squirrels is probably shaking on one of the grand oak boughs above me as bottle rockets whine above them.

Being a homebody on New Year’s eve never felt so luxurious. I think I got over being homebound on New Year’s eve four years ago when we made Ford.

Cheers to that and a new year!

Trippy, huh? Bright red is a hard color for me to photograph. All the iPhoto tools in the world can’t help this out. I’d take a better picture than this silly one if I hadn’t already given this to my mom. It’s her Holiday Celebapron. More here.

For starters, you get interrupted quite a bit when you read to them. And it’s not always the “Why?” kind of questions. Sometimes, you have to play dictionary. If you read “The Night Before Christmas” to them, you might get a “What the hell is a sugarplum?!” or a “Bloody Hell! How do you know what the elves know?!” Other times, interruptions are more the result of commentary, which is endless, throughout the day and every day. Try reading the Grimm classic tale, “The Bremen Town Musicians,” as I did the other morning:

A certain man had a donkey, which carried the corn-sacks to the mill indef-
“Nutsack!”
-indefatigably for many a long year; but his strength was going, and he was growing m-
“Nutsack!”
-he was growing more and more unfit for work. Then his master began to consider how he might b-
“Nutsack!”
-He bagan to consider how he might best save his keep; but the donkey, seeing no good wind was blowing
(snickering from Damon across the room, acknowledged)
ran away and set out on the road to Bremen.

“Nutsack!”

The Christmas buzz that had us sailing into hyper drive has slowed to a sobering halt, and the quietness in our house is chopped into pieces by the babble of children at play. Here I am, taking a picture of Chas, on the back porch, trying to open the back door. I stand here laughing from the dining room because he has smooching his nose up to the glass, making funny faces at me:

Unintentionally, I took a revealing self portrait today. It’s me, the me that I see, the reflection of my children. I see my creativity in the toys I make for them, I see my attitudes in the way I dress them, my discipline in the way I may sometimes remember, but not always, to cut and comb their hair and brush their teeth. I see my self-esteem in the way I keep my house (dirty windows and all).

Perhaps my perspective is just as distorted as the self portrait; in the act of mothering my mind is sometimes so absorbed in the middle of every minute that I lose point of reference, and my closest point of navigation is my limbic tunnel, that impulsive, instinctive maze of motherhood. My rational mind is often in left field. In content imbalance, I’m satisfied. When I put things into greater perspective, I feel so fortunate. Left to calmly breathe and think in quiet, as I am doing now beside that little boy you see above, now in deep slumber, I tend to call upon the more rational part of myself and remember that it’s all good, it’s all part of the process. Breathe in, breathe out.

Other self portraits can be seen here.

I don’t pretend this is a craft blog, but to mark my time on this planet I have to log the hours I spent making these little wee people into the wee hours preceding Christmas. Behold, Ivy Elizabeth Walker, cloaked in the safe color of mustard and in the forbidden woods with her bag of magic rocks! (Reference to the movie “The Village”)

And here are a grandmother and her grandchildren, open for interpretation; I’ve been using them to play Hansel and Grethel:

And lastly, Grandma fairy, made in the likeness of my mother-in-law (and who she forgot to take back home with her):

For the past month, I have been the anal-militant freak with the alcohol lotion in her diaper bag, whipping it out and sluicing all of our hands when we were so guilty as to even look at the floor we walked on. I have been that afraid of being sick yet again on Christmas day. And for the week preceding Christmas, I was feeling extra edgy, avoiding most crowded places and supplementing our diet with added vitamin C and food grade Plutonium. We were really doing well; Ford had already suffered his week of agony two weeks ago, and Chas just this past week recovered from a week bout of croup. People, mostly veteran parents, warned me that our house would be sick all winter once we had two young children, but enough is enough already, especially this close to a happy occasion.

Well, Christmas morning, the inevitable happened: I got sick.
Sunrise was such a pretty assemblage of rainbow peach for me to sneer back at it when I awoke, but I was pissed. I felt worse than the usual hangover, worse than a night without sleep. Meanwhile, as I tried prying my eyes open, Chas began to crawl over me to join Ford, already under the Christmas tree.

Buzz an blur, fast forward through presents with the strobe of a camera keeping time, and I found myself bent over the toilet, popping eyeball cappilaries and yelping for relief. And not one, but two Phenergans and three hours later, I had puked my way out of Christmas dinner at my brother’s house. Damon was able to leave the children with the rest of the family and hold my hand while I puked some more.

Finally, around eleven pm, I began to regain consciousness. I remember tossing and turning in a dehydrated, feverish funk through a series of old indie films, knowing the room was too hot and stuffy but too weak to get out of bed to open a window. Damon meanwhile slept in the boy’s room, all three of them must have been curled in a giant snuggle pile watching Harry Potter. I could hear the menu music playing on Ford’s iBook repeating over and over again. Although it was endlessly irritating, and I was too tired to lift myself out of bed, I let it replay in the background until I finally fell asleep.

I walked my way through today feeling cored and weary. Damon had cleaned up the downstairs last night, so that this morning there were no untidy remains of Christmas day. There was no ribbon scattered about, no toys littering the floor, no gung ho Christmas music and no grandparents. Just one very tidy, vacuumed living room. And this, coupled with a deafening quiet, made me feel very sad. So I suggested we go out for pancakes. And while I felt as if I’d been kicked in the stomach by a large plow horse, I had a huge appetite. Until I began to eat, and then I felt otherwise.

Anyway, there was more to Christmas besides my 24 hour bug, right?! For example, if you pause the screen at about 7:30am, you can watch Ford open the present he has been surreptitiously avoiding while dutifully opening a series of other smaller, less huge gifts. It is unmistakably his, yet his name is scrawled onto the wrapping paper with a big black marker: it the long-awaited electric guitar, just like his father’s:

Fast forward ten seconds. For months, for a long as I had been planning on not getting sick for Christmas, I had been wondering how in the world I would find a laser fan that Ford wanted. A laser fan. This, to replace the laser fan he lost, the seasonal item that Target carried last summer. Well, on a last-minute shopping trip to Whole Earth Provision with Mom and Dad (aka project flu transmission) I happened upon a basket of these little f-ckers amid all the stocking stuffer impulse grabs on the counter. Did we SCORE or what?! Ford nearly exploded when he discovered this in his stocking, and I will never understand this fascination, but it is apparently as contagious as the flu virus (except that adults seem to be immune, unless on acid):

Mom and Dad were wonderful. They gave such fun gifts to the kids, as well. Among them: an set of German puppets and a doorway theater that John and I used to play with when we were little. They were handmade in the likeness of Hansel, Grethel and the old witch. I feel extra special to have received a Harvard copy of fables and folk-lore. Well, it was meant for Ford and Chas, but they can’t fully appreciate a book without pictures yet (unless it has “Harry Potter” written on front).

The imagination is wild these days! I set up the theater today in the doorway to the boy’s room. While I checked my email in the office, I could hear them laughing and running back and forth through the fabric wall. I came to discover they were actually transporting themselves through Platform Nine and Three-Quarters (and if you’ve read Harry Potter books, you know that this is the secret rail platform one must run through a brick wall to access, which leads to the Hogwarts Express and takes you to Hogwarts School). The theater is still up, and the boys are now asleep to the sound of the credits music, again. I just peeked in on them through the stage window.

I hope you had a wonderful Christmas, and that it was free of the flu and full of this much magic.

-Steph

Tomorrow is the shortest day of the year. We have never before celebrated Winter Solstice, but it has earned higher rank this year as I try reconciling myself with Texas’ sublime seasons. I am frustrated reading about snowy winters elsewhere when we are only now beginning to see the red leaves go brown and fall. To celebrate, we will plant mostly seeds for spring, but also some painted rocks and magic pebbles. And tomorrow night: every light will be a candle.

I keep forgetting about to the weekly Self Portrait group. Here’s my contribution. So what if it’s really Wednesday.

Some of the entries were amazing!
I don’t know why I love this type of self portrait so much.
Two weeks ago, for fun, I took this photo. It’s pretty half-assed, I know. And it’s late, too!
I could take another shot; alas, the camera is charging and in five minutes my five minute window of opportunity will be gone.
Look familiar? Same glass door, this time in winter: