Category Archives: Life

Extra Yarn

“Soon, people thought, soon Annabelle will run out of yarn.

But it turned out she didn’t.”

-Extra Yarn, by Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen

Scarlett has a fabulous book called Extra Yarn. It was a gift for her third birthday, and we still read it often. It’s about a little girl who finds a box of yarn, and no matter how much she knits, there is always yarn.

Now, I’m not going to get all “life is like a box of yarn” in my best Forrest Gump voice, but I do love this book. The little girl makes a colorful sweater for herself, and one for her dog, and when a neighborhood boy is mean, she tells him he’s just jealous. I’m not, he replies. But, as the author tells us, it turns out he was.

The little girl is told that her sweater is a distraction, and when she offers to make one for everyone, she’s told that it’s impossible. That she can’t. But, the book goes on to say, it turns out she can.

And in the end (do I have to write spoiler alert here? The book is like 22 pages long, so I think you’re ok to hear this) when a terrible archduke curses the little girl, yelling that she will never be happy again, it turns out she is.

I kept thinking about that book during ALS Awareness Month. Read More>

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For My Mom on Her Birthday

Today is my mom’s birthday. I would post how old she is, but I’m not sure if that sort of thing is acceptable, even on one’s own blog, so I’ll just say that yesterday when Scarlett was asked that question, she responded “49.” Let’s go with that. Happy 49th birthday, Mom!

I was scrolling through old blog posts I’ve written about my mother: her visits to see me in New York, back when I was childless and she was a professional grandchild advocate (“I don’t even care if you get married!”); our trip to Florida when my parents met Rob’s parents for the first time and my mom and his stepdad bonded over light beer with ice in it and a mutual inability to stop themselves from overdosing on mixed nuts; our wedding weekend in New York (because that thing about her not caring if we got married was nonsense); her time in San Francisco right after Scarlett was born, when she saved my sanity by going everywhere with me and not judging me when I cried during the opening credits to the TV show Parenthood, then in its very first season, just like I was.

But that’s just the stuff I wrote about. When I was younger, my mom was a source of great pride to me. She was a teacher, she did Jazzercise, she had a ton of friends. She wore little short shorts and bandanas, and in the summers she was as brown as a leaf, and smelled like tanning oil. She had 4 sisters, 3 brothers, and parents who lived a mile from us, and our house was always overflowing with family. Read More>

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How to Talk

Here is what sometimes happens when I ask Scarlett to choose a book to read. She goes into her room, and returns with my 368-page paperback copy of How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk. “This.”

“Why was that in your room?” I ask.

She shrugs. “It’s mine.”

Then she climbs into my lap and flips pages until we get to the illustrations of parents saying the “wrong” and “right” things to their children. Scarlett particularly enjoys the sections where a parent is nagging a kid about something, like leaving a door open or not feeding the dog. I do the nagging, and then she reads the recommended approach in a singsong voice. “Johnny, the dog.”

I bought the book when she was two, and it had nothing to do with my ALS. I wanted to make sure that as she grew, we continued to have a relationship that was open and candid. I wanted to answer her questions in ways that would encourage her to keep asking them (although the book advises responding to many questions with the line, “What do you think?” and when I try that, Scarlett becomes apoplectic.) Read More>

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