Get a grip

Earlier this week I was flipping through a book on Medieval manuscripts when I came across these images from the Lindisfarne Gospels. What caught my eye was the way Matthew and Luke were both holding their quills. With two fingers on top!


This was quite an epiphany for me, because I have always held my pencil the same way, which according to every teacher I ever had in elementary school, is the wrong way to hold a pencil. Mrs. Robins (my Kindergarten teacher who, I swear, also masking-taped misbehaving students to their chairs. We lived in mortal fear) even rapped my knuckles with her reading glasses whenever she caught me sliding back into “bad habits.” My teachers barked at me and held the freaky callous forming on my fourth finger up for ridicule before the other children. I took to scooping my left arm around my writing hand and hunching over so they wouldn’t see me giving in to my perverse addiction—I couldn’t have felt more shame if I had been sneaking hits on a cigarette with the lunch ladies behind the dumpster.

If only I had the Lindisfarne evidence 30 years ago, I could have proven that I was not, in fact, weak willed or digitally impaired. I was instead following in the footsteps, um fingersteps, of the great Evangelists themselves.

What’s really ironic is that now Gabie holds his pencils and pens with three fingers on top and I find myself correcting him all the time. He knows the “school way” to hold things and if I tell him to, he’ll quickly shift to one finger . . . which lasts right up until he picks up a new color. I think I’ve corrected him a thousand times (and I know his pre-school teacher did too and now his Kindergarten teacher must be doing the same). Still he persists and I wonder if it’s worth the battle. I say I’m just trying to help train him early to protect him from what I went through. But maybe I’m more Establishment than I’d like to think. Am I truly willing to perpetuate the myth that there is one God-given way to grip a writing utensil? Who cares? Honestly as long as he is writing something worthwhile, he should be able to hold the dang thing with his toes for all it matters.

And here’s what Gabie wrote (with three fingers on top) today: TOMOM FRMU GABRIEL MOM I LUF UTO FOREFR AND WIL FOR EFR NOMATRWAT!

Not exactly scripture, but holy writ as far as I’m concerned.

Gabie-tude

Hi. It’s Gabie again. Sorry I haven’t written on my blog for a while. Thanks for tolerating my Mom in the meantime. She’s a good substitute. (She’s also a good hair cutter, Ramen Noodle warmer upper, and double-knot shoe tie-er but I don’t tell her that or it might go to her head). I’ve been busy with Important Things lately. Here’s what I’ve been doing:

Going to school. I’m in Kindergarten now so this means I have to get up so early in the morning that after Mom carries me out of bed, I have to sit in my chair for at least 10 minutes staring into the cereal bowl to warm up my brain. Sometimes Mom asks me if I’m trying to glue the bowl to the table with my laser vision but I don’t laugh. Nobody’s mom is funny at 7:30 am.

I like school. Mom says that’s a good thing since I’ve decided that I’m going to be a doctor and all. She says I only have 24 more years to go. I think I’ll be able to skip a few of those since I already know tons. I’ve read at least five books about the human body and I like to use words like cartilage and kidneys whenever I can, especially when we have stewed chicken for dinner. (I asked mom to save the bones for me so I could study them.)


I drew these pictures yesterday of my brain and my mom’s brain. Mom wanted to know why mine is all loopy and hers is all “compartmentalized” whatever that means. I said boys brains and girls brains are totally different. Duh.

Nobody else knew that my pictures were brains except mom. She said she knew because she had seen the same shape in a painting by Michelangelo (then she actually showed it to me because she’s a serious art nerd!).


Sometimes Dad lets me watch Survivorman on TV. Mom says I shouldn’t watch so much Discovery Channel, but I tell her it’s educational. This week I learned how to boil jungle roots in a tin can to get rid of foot fungus. This will come in handy if I’m ever stranded in the Amazon rain forest. You never know. That’s why it’s so important that I don’t miss any episodes.

N.T.A.W.

Cool news: my entry won the writing contest at Scribbit.

This made my day and almost made up for the fact that all week long I have been trying to work on various writing projects but have been thwarted at every turn by the realities of motherhood, teaching and housekeeping. I had to laugh as I read something today from Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. She is arguing that a writer needs a room that is quiet (even soundproof, can you imagine!) where she can be alone to work. She says, “a work of genius is almost always a feat of prodigious difficulty. Everything is against the likelihood that it will come from the writer’s mind whole and entire. Generally material circumstances are against it. Dogs will bark; people will interrupt [may I add toddlers will climb on your lap and poke you in the nostrils as you type] . . . If anything comes through in spite of all this, it is a miracle, and probably no book is born entire and uncrippled as it was conceived.” Ah, Virginia, I may not be writing a work of genius, but I can certainly vouch for the crippling interruptions.

I've decided I’m in love with the word thwart and will henceforth strive to use it as frequently as possible. Thwart, thwart, thwart. You just don’t get much closer to a vowel-deficient freak of language than that. It sits right under thwack in the dictionary and contains words that mean “a hard tumorous skin growth” and “open armed conflict or military hostility” within itself. It has a taste of the onomatopoeia to it—say it a few times fast and it sounds like you’re shooting darts out of your mouth or maybe imitating the sound of a boat oar knocking someone upside the head, both things you might try if you were attempting to obstruct or defeat a person’s plans, which is what the word means.

I feel thwarted lately and so I hereby declare this National Thwart Awareness Week. You are welcome to join me if you so desire. Please aim your darts responsibly.

“Mistakes were made”

I love the way politicians invoke the passive voice when they want to apologize for an indiscretion while simultaneously implying that they had little to do with it. Mistakes were made. I may have, in fact, been in another state when it happened; if you’ll give me a minute to check my appointment book I’ll verify, but in the meantime, I am deeply sorry for whatever it was.

I wish I had some invincible excuse for my behavior last night at the Cub Scout Pinewood Derby. I wish I could say I was at my ranch in Montana at the time and so I could not possibly have been that blonde woman who totally lost her cool when she saw her son (who had spent DAYS working on his little wooden firetruck only to see it eliminated in the first round of the competition) wind up disappointed and hurt. I wish I could say that I’m on some kind of prescription medication that makes me irrational and liable to walk right up to the person in charge (we’ll just call her “Sally”) and tell her what I think of her decision to change the way the Pinewood Derby has been run in the past—from “everybody races everybody else and has fun” to “we must have ONE winner so we’ll embrace the NBA model and eliminate the losers one by one even if it means some kids get one turn down the track and others get 15.” I wish I could say my upbringing at the Kennedy mansion has regrettably given me a hot head, a temper easily sparked by rumors of missiles in Cuba or maybe infuriating ladies like Sally who see the graphite-streaked tears on my son’s face and then point to the sign that says “Sportsmanship” above the narrowing brackets of the elimination chart, and ask him sharply, “What part of that word don’t you understand?”

Well I was there. I have no ranch in Montana. And I must admit that if mistakes were made, I was the mistaker. I regret the whole thing, not because I shouldn’t have said anything, but because I should have handled it far differently (like in writing the next day, for example). Instead, I wound up making McKay feel even worse by embarrassing him. And I made myself look stupid. And, frankly, I should have known better. I have known Sally for several years and, in moments of sweet rationality, I am completely aware that Sally and I may live a few houses away from each other, but we come from two entirely different planets. She comes from the “PE teachers who quote Harvard studies which prove that children need competition or they will fail in the workforce” planet. I come from the “Moms who feel that competition trains children to see other children as rivals and squashes their natural gift of empathy and all those external rewards like prizes, trophies, and titles of victory don’t encourage appropriate kinds of internal motivation and I want to see a copy of that “Harvard study” you like to quote because if the workforce is learning anything it’s that models of creativity and cooperation produce far better results and if you don’t believe me just look at Pixar and good grief they’re only a bunch of CUB SCOUTS!” planet.

My planet is right and hers is wrong, of course, but that doesn’t change the fact that when planets collide, it may not be the best thing for a little boy with an adorable hand-made Pinewood Derby car that looks like a firetruck (with a matchstick ladder!) and a very soft heart. And so for that, I am deeply sorry.

What is that maniacal laughter I hear coming from upstairs?

I am liking my blog again. I went through a little phase where I was proud of what I had written in the past but also feeling resentful and imposed upon to keep it up. To wax Brontë-esque, I was ready to move on with my life but I couldn't because I still had that darn lunatic first wife locked up in the attic.

This week, I am back to enjoying my blog and wanting to feed it and keep it happy. I think this is due in part to learning about blooks and also seeing my blog as more of an asset than a liability. A blog can be a great platform - to use the publishing lingo - from which to build other things, or launch a career, do some really wicked tap-dancing, or maybe guillotine some heads (whatever it is one does on a platform).

In that spirit, I'm willing to do fun things, like enter that lovely writing contest Michelle hosts every month. (The topic is "learning" so I submitted this post about blank slates). I also thought I'd post a little fragmentary idea that has been floating around in my head for a few days. If I had more time, I'd develop it fully and come up with illustrations to match, but of course (the overarching THEME of this blog if ever there was one) I have no time because while I may not have much of an attic, I do have 4 kids to deal with and I am my own crazy first wife.

So here's the idea:

You know those Usborne touchy-feely books where each one is based on the phrase "That's not my...."? We own That's not my train, That's not my puppy, That's not my lion, That's not my monster and I think one more but it must be buried somewhere under Gabie's bed. Inside each book, it goes through 4 or 5 pages of things like "That's not my lion. Its ears are too soft." and "That's not my lion. Its paws are too rough." On the last page, you finally get "THAT's my lion! His mane is so shaggy." Anyway, I think you'd have to know the genre to appreciate it, but I'd like to write a new one called That's not my mommy. Here's what I've come up with so far....

That's not my mommy. Her hair is too pretty.

That's not my mommy. Her face is too smooth.

That's not my mommy. Her eyes are too bright and perky.

That's not my mommy. She looks way too good in jeans.

That's not my mommy. She smells too sweet and clean (okay, so now it has become a scratch and sniff book).

(and finally,)

THAT's my mommy! Her lap is so wide and squishy.



I don't know, do you think Usborne will go for it?