Hearts of Celery

I've mentioned that I'm a touch compulsive about this and that. That shows up in putting groceries away in a number of ways, one of which is to clean and cut up vegetables before I put them in the crisper. When Richard and Julie were little, they knew that there would always be a container of cut up snacks in the crisper: celery, carrots, radishes, green onions, cauliflower, turnips, kohlrabi, cabbage. Whatever their little hearts might desire. The only thing I never cut up ahead of time was bell peppers, since they get slimy on the cut surface. At the same time, I would save parts of the vegies that would go in soup, such as celery leaves and scallion greens, in the freezer and clean the greens that came attached to kohlrabi for steaming. And, since I was being so virtuous and preparing the vegetables, I got to eat the celery heart*, my very favorite part of the entire lot, while I was cleaning and cutting.

When Julie was in high school, she took over putting the groceries away, which included the vegetable prep. I would go into the crisper to get a snack, and there wouldn't be any celery heart, but of course I accepted that now that Julie was doing the work, Julie got the reward.

I think Julie had been cleaning the celery on a weekly basis for well over a year before I walked into the kitchen and saw her run the celery heart down the disposal. That's when I discovered that Julie doesn't like celery and since she had never seen those luscious, pale green little stalks or the small section of the heart in the drawer, she thought that they weren't edible. For well over a year, the best part of the celery had been going down the disposal. It broke my heart. It still does.

* Just looking at the picture of those tender stalks makes my mouth water. Luckily I'm going to shopping right after breakfast, and I can get some.
Image: Cookthink.com

Smokeyville Towers

I mentioned that Julie and Richard had all sorts of construction toys when they were little. There were the standards, like Tinker Toys and Lincoln Logs and Legos and Erector sets and various other block sets and building things I've since forgotten.


They had a huge Lego set, the largest sold at the time, which never looked like this because I'm a little compulsive and I would go in and sort the blocks by color into the little compartments. I didn't expect them to keep them that way, but it pleased me when they opened the box to see everything laid out in order. Like my thread board. Like Sheldon cleaning Penny's apartment.

One of my favorites was the Crystal Climbers. They were so pretty, with their transparent colored pieces.

Julie and Richard would get out all of their construction toys and make these wonderful play scapes across my living room. A Lincoln Log fort, a Crystal Climber castle. Highways of Hot Wheel tracks. Industrial centers of Erector sets. State fairs of Tinker Toys.

A final touch that they added, were dozens of Pringle cans. Since I seldom bought potato chips*, they canvassed the neighborhood, asking people who bought Pringles to save the cans for them.These were added to the project to create "Smokeyville Towers".****

* When I moved out of that house, my mother and sister helped me pack, doing some of it while I was at work. The kids had decided that they didn't need as many Pringles cans, and were throwing out some of them. My mother called me at the office to tell me that I was never going to be thin** if I ate that many potato chips! And when I told Forrest about it, he told me that was what I could expect if I let Mama know anything about my business***.

** Once, when the kids mentioned to her that I had taken them out for banana splits (I, honest to God, had a cup of coffee! Being "good"!), she told me I would never get thin eating banana splits! I hadn't had one in over a decade, but as soon as I left her house I went right out and scarfed one down!

*** I had been so foolish because this was the first time I had lived in the same town as Mama in the ten years since I was 16.

**** Named after Smokey Bear, Julie's true and constant companion since she was 15 months old. She still has a Smokey and the tattered remains of a Smokey that her dog Samantha chewed up.

Photos courtesy:
Tinker Toys, uh.edu;
Lincoln Logs, Gamerevolution.com
Legos and Crystal Climbers, Family Resource Network
Pringles, Pringlestower.invectory.com

Monopoly

When Julie and Richard were children, we played a lot of board games. Every year for Christmas, in addition to gifts that they received as individuals, they always received one or two board games.* We started with Sorry when Richard was four, using the games to learn to count and then to add. Eventually, we used Yahtzee dice to play Sorry, using the color of the larger number to decide whether this move would be decided by addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division. It led to interesting games and the kids learning basic math in an enjoyable way.

Julie was at a disadvantage to Richard for some time, because in the early years two years difference in age can really affect how well you do math and strategy. But, not for long. Julie's desire to do things as well as Richard did them led her to play games to win.

Except when my parents came to Fairbanks to visit. Julie couldn't stand the thought of her grandmother losing. So I was treated to the delightful spectacle of Julie trying to lose to her grandmother, while her grandmother was trying to lose to her.

* as well as items like the large box of Legos or other construction toys that I could not afford two of although they both liked them. The rule was whichever child took the toy from the shelf could decide wether to play alone or with the sibling. However, the other child got to decide if the first child could play exclusively with only one or more of the jointly owned toys. Usually what would happen was they would share playing with a number of construction toys. Some marvelous things were built on my living room floor.




Images courtesy of World of Monopoly
Spilling the Beans
Construction Toy.com

Lovely to Look At

I haven't anything to say this morning, so I thought I'd share this lovely picture of the Campanile on the Berkeley campus. When Richard and Julie were little, and I was a student at UC Berkeley, every Saturday we would spend running errands and exploring the world. One of the stops was the Campanile, which charged a dime for the three of us (R & J in the double stroller) to go to the top. It is a lovely view and on a clear day you can count the windows in the buildings in San Francisco.

Happy Birthday, Deardle Heart

One of my favorite pictures of Julie. For a more current photo, there are two on my sidebar. Do click to enlarge.
Last year at this time I posted Julie Yvonne, December 31, 1965, about the day Julie was born.

Julie has always been a sheer joy to me. She was the most serious, sweet, funny, smart, and loving child. Deeply sensitive, she hated winning Monopoly games against her grandmother, because she didn't want Grandma to lose. She has a natural affinity for animals which, combined with her sensitivity, could lead her to bring a snail with a cracked shell in to me to be fixed (we put adhesive tape, which seemed to do the trick) or to nag me until I fixed the small hole in the screen door that she was picturing the kitten escaping through.

Julie has become a woman to be proud of. She is an excellent mother and a good wife. I can't imagine that anyone in the world has a better daughter. She lets me know how much she loves me. She loves and trusts me enough to tell me when she needs me to do something for her or not do something to her.

Julie is still funny and smart and sweet and loving and brave and . . . The list is long; perhaps the list is endless. Julie is a treasure.

You can read her blog, Thinking About and learn her take on the world.

In A Blink

Julie has posted This Too Shall Pass on her blog.

I remember one day, my MIL was rocking Maya to sleep, and one of us said, ‘we don’t want her to get used to being rocked to sleep all of the time’ (my MIL watched Maya a few days a week for us, and would rock Maya to sleep at nap time every day)…my MIL replied that we would miss these times, that they grow up so quickly. You know what? She was right.***My mom said, “Don’t worry, I’m sure she’s grow out of it by the time she’s 35.” Her way of telling me that this too shall pass. And you know what? It did.

And, as often happens with Julie's posts, it got me thinking about when Julie was 5 and Richard was 7 and I really wanted time to pass. Richard was having a hard time learning to read, and Julie was still in night diapers. I really, really wanted these two "problems" to be finished. And what I didn't realize was that these were situations, and only problems if I deemed them to be. And that at the same time these two minor annoyances were going on, some pretty wonderful things were also going on. They were both living home, both funny, both smart as whips, both loving, both well behaved, both helpful around the house. They hadn't yet hit adolescence, which is hard for the child even if the parent does remember surviving it. They weren't confronting many of the ways that life doesn't live up to its PR yet.

Two or three times a day, we ate together. We spent the evenings and weekends together. We played board games and cleaned house and went on picnics and to movies and the fair together. They told me so much about their lives. I still read them stories. We loved and laughed and filled our lives with each other and animals and Alaska. We went berry picking and made jam and planted a garden and . . .

And when Julie no longer needed night diapers, and Richard was a good reader, many of the days of that delightful existence had passed. There were fewer days ahead of us as a family that lived together. Fewer berry picking days. Fewer trips to the lake with the canoe. Fewer Monopoly games.

All of it passes. Instead of wishing part of it away, I wish I'd treasured it more. Because, it all passes in a blink.

Again???!!!???!!!

Richard doesn't like tuna and noodle casserole. Julie and I love it, but he just simply hates it. Since he was in most respects a far from picky eater, my solution to this was to let him fix something for himself when we had it. Eventually, I just stopped making it.


So, when Richard was 16 he went to Silver Lake Family Camp to work for the summer. While he was gone, Julie and I had tuna and noodles once in a while. After all, it had been eight years since I'd served it, and we were using Richard's absence as an excuse to scarf it down.

I expected him to return home on a Sunday. However, he got a ride home a day early, so he walked in as we were sitting down to dinner, took one look at the table, and said in the most offended voice imaginable, "Tuna and noodles?? Again!!!???"

Update
Julie commented:

That was so funny! Poor Richard. I remember it a bit differently...He was so hungry he ate a huge serving, and only when he was going back for seconds did he focus on what he was eating, and then he said, "tuna and noodles...AGAIN???" Funny either way.

And you know, I think she has it right.

The Two-State, Three-Generation Sunday Morning Hoo Ha*

Our table, without, as it happens, us.
The Saturday Morning Breakfast Club goes to Sandpiper for breakfast, and then I go to A & P and shop for the week and the Care-A-Van picks me up and takes me home with my groceries and I put them away. This week, it was the second sunny day in a row** and so as soon as I'd put away the things that needed to be refrigerated and the Hooligan bait, I left the rest of it, grabbed my current book,*** hied myself outdoors****, sat on the bench in the pocket park across the street, and spent two hours reading and watching eagles and ravens. An innocent enough start, one would think. Well, in my family, one would be wrong.

It seems that, as I was quietly reading and enjoying my first opportunity to sit in the sunshine in weeks and weeks, my mother called. A couple of times. When I came in, the answering machine was blinking but she had only left one message and it said she would call me back. By 8 p.m. Alaska time, I knew that it was 9 p.m. California time and she was going to bed so she wouldn't be calling on Saturday. Figured she would call Sunday.

Saturday night I had trouble falling asleep. Once I did, at about 3:30, I slept like a child. But, of course, I slept in. At 10:30 Mama called but I didn't wake up. So then, being Mama, she got worried and called Richard, who called at about 10:34. I still didn't wake up, but the phone must have made some impression on me because I pulled myself out of the best dream***** I've had in a lo-o-o-o-ong time and got up.

I was getting dressed when I heard Richard's voice on the staircase, "Mom? Are you up there?"
"Yes, I'm up here in my underwear."
"Grandma's been trying to get you for two days and she's panicking." He called from his stationary spot on the staircase," And you didn't answer when I called, either."
"Had a hard night. I was sleeping in."
"Well, call Grandma and tell her you aren't laying on the floor with a broken hip unable to get to the phone," and out he went.

So, I called my mother. I figure Richard must have called her from his cell phone because by the time I got to the phone and called she was calm. After Richard had called her to tell her I hadn't answered his call either, she had called him right back to suggest that he come over and see if I was okay, and he had told her that he already had his jacket on and was on his way out the door at that very moment. Into, he didn't tell her, a rain storm.* (again) On foot, since he doesn't have a car and doesn't drive, at any rate.

Sunday night, I called Julie for our regular chat and she told me that while she, Ted, and Maya were out to breakfast, Richard had called and left a message on her voice mail asking if she had talked to me lately. When they returned, since their voice mail doesn't have a blinking light and she wasn't expecting a call, she knew nothing of it until Richard called to reassure her that I was ok. She told him that although she hadn't turned on her computer yet, she knew I'd posted here the day before, so I'd been ok then.

Mama suggested to me that I should call Richard everyday and check in so everyone would know I'm alright, because as she said, "You have lovely cats, dear, and they are very smart I'm sure, but they refuse to answer the phone and reassure your mother." I'm not going to do that; had we been going by that system already, when Mama called Richard he wouldn't have had a call Sunday yet and would have had to go out in the rain in any case.

So, Julie and I have worked a deal. I will post here every single day, which I mostly do, and if I don't have anything else to say it can be YouTube or a picture or a cartoon, and the whole family can know I was alive that morning.

* And isn't it wonderful to know you're loved?
** A rare and wonderful occurence this year.
*** Imperial Times in the Emerald City.
**** In Alaska, outside means out of state.
***** And one day I'm going to figure out who that man in my very best dreams is and go hunt him down!

Click on pictures to enlarge.

Christmas Week1967

Here is Julie, two years old, reaching up for a bite of turkey, while Mama explains to her that lunch is almost ready. Mama was always firm about not letting us spoil our dinner, as you can see from her pointed finger. Julie should have gone to Daddy instead. Her beloved grandpa could never deny Julie anything, nor could he expect a hungry child of that age to wait for an official meal. But, to her credit, if Julie was aware that she could have gotten anything she wanted out of Daddy, she never played it.

If she were only a bit taller, she could have reached up and managed it all by herself. The curse of being small.

So, since she had been told that lunch was almost ready, and since she could see that the table was almost set, she went to the table to wait.

And we can see that lunch was not almost ready by the way Julie was measuring time that day. There she is, waiting. Where is the food? She looks so sad here that I have always treasured this picture.

How heartless must my mother be to make that child wait? And how heartless must I be to take a picture of it instead of sneak her a bite of something!

Parallel Play

Remember when you took child development and the professor talked about, or you read a parenting book and the author wrote about parallel play? That early thing you see with very young children where they play next to each other, enjoying each other's company, but don't really interact?

Well, by the time I took these pictures Richard and Julie were long beyond that, spending most of their time interacting. However, here we have two sets of pictures, each set taken within a few minutes of each other, of them doing the same thing.


These two were the day when Richard tried on my sunglasses, and then Julie had to. Notice that she has to hold them on to keep them from falling off. Also notice how short I kept her hair -- that was so that we didn't have to go through the terrible hair combing traumas that Mama and I went through. As in Where My Ringlets Went.

These pictures were taken on the porch of our apartment in Berkeley, so that makes Richard almost five and Julie almost three at the oldest.



This next set was taken in our house in Redwood City, while I was going to grad school. Which makes them almost six and almost four. I was cooking dinner and thought that they were still outside playing. Having been raised to pay attention to how they felt, they got tired and fell out for a nap. Richard is sleeping on his bed, which he had made himself, and indeed had been making himself since he was three and a half. It's not perfect, but it is certainly good enough.






Julie, on the other hand, only got as far as the couch. She was always the very finest example of the advice I gave parents in my classes: if your child comes in clean, she hasn't been playing hard enough, send her back out.

I don't think Julie ever had to be sent back out until she was well into her teens.

Julie Does It Her Way*

Years and years and years ago, long before Maya was born, Granny was a young mother called Mom and Uncle Richard was a little boy called Richard and Maya's Mama was a very little girl called Julie. And they all lived together in Berkeley while Mom went to the university.

Now, Maya knows that every person starts out as a brand new baby, and brand new babies can't talk and they can't walk. Maya has seen, on Maya TV, herself when she was just a little baby and couldn't walk or talk. And every day Maya learns new words and learns to say old words better. Why, Maya used to say Mike Mugalin, and now she says Mike Mulligan. And she used to say valina, and now she says vanilla. So, she knows that learning to talk takes some time and you get better at it as you get older. Most babies start with a single word, and then they learn to say two at a time. It is the same with walking — babies start by standing up and holding on to something and then standing and not holding. Then they walk and hold on and then they walk without holding. That is the way it is usually done.

Indeed, that is the way Richard learned to talk and walk. When he was nine months old, he pointed to the light and said "light!" and that was his very first word. The next day he could say another word and then another. And then he learned to say "What's that?", a very useful phrase indeed, because then Mom would tell him what it was and he would say that word. When Richard was eleven months old, he went to see the doctor. The doctor asked Mom, "Is he trying to talk yet?" and Mom said, "He knows 25 words." Then the doctor, who was very young and hadn't met any children as clever as the children in our family, said, "Well, no. He's saying mamammama and you are thinking he is saying Mama. He's too young to be saying real words." And Mom said, "Richard, say hello to the doctor." And Richard said, "Hello, doctor." And then the doctor said, "Next time I will listen to the mother. Then I won't sound like such an idiot."

Richard started standing up against things when he was about eight and one half months old, and soon wherever Mom went in the house, there he would follow. He might have to lurch from wall to wall and go the long way around, but he could follow her from room to room and by the time he was nine months old and saying "light" he could walk without holding on to something.

When Richard was two years old, Julie was born. Mom and Richard were both as excited as excited about that, and she was a delightful baby and they loved her very much and she loved them very much and life was just wonderful with the three of them to love each other. And every day, Richard learned new things and Julie learned new things and even Mom, who was going to the university like Maya's Dado is now, learned new things. And one of the new things that Mom was learning was child development. She was learning all about how children grow and learn. Her professor said, "Girls learn to talk and walk at a younger age than boys. Second children learn to talk and walk at a younger age than first children. It isn't that the second child is smarter, it is just that the second child wants to keep up with the first child."

"Well," thought Mom, "Richard was a boy and a first child and he learned to walk and talk at nine months. Julie is a girl and a second child — my professor says she will learn earlier than Richard did! She will really be young!"

Well, Julie got to be nine months old, and she hadn't taken a step and she hadn't said a word! "Good heavens," thought Mom, "my professor was wrong. I wonder when she will talk and walk?" Well, the days went by and the weeks went by and the months went by. Not a step. Not a word. Mom was tempted to be concerned, and indeed if she were the worrying kind she might have been. However, since she is not the worrying kind (unlike her own Little Mama and indeed Julie herself) she noticed it but didn't worry. Mom could see that wherever Julie wanted to get she crawled to quite nicely. And really, she didn't have to talk — she had Richard. If Julie wanted something, she would make a motion and Richard would say, "Julie is hungry" or "Julie wants you to play Revolver (an album by the Beatles)" or "Julie wants to play outside." And Richard would always be right. And Julie would always get what she wanted. Besides, Mom remembered how the doctor had been wrong about Richard and she decided that sometimes experts made mistakes and she wasn't going to worry about it.

Well, one day when Julie was 15 months old, and Mom was beginning to wonder if she was going to ever walk, up she stood in the middle of the room. Off she walked. And she walked and she walked and she walked. All day long, all she did was walk. She walked until she was tired, and then she laid down wherever she happened to be and fell asleep. And she did that and she did that and she did that. Once she even fell asleep under the kitchen table. The next day, she did the same thing. After that, she walked wherever she wanted to go. "Well," thought Mom, "not only didn't she do it at the same age that Richard did, she didn't do it in the same way that Richard did. Julie certainly does it her way."

Now, when Julie had been walking for about a week, Mom and Richard and Julie went to Stockton to spend the weekend with Mom's Little Mama and Daddy and her sister Colleen. They arrived Friday afternoon, and that night everyone went to bed and to sleep. The next morning, Julie woke up early. Mom and Richard and even her Aunt Colleen were still asleep. But her Grandma and Grandpa (Mom's Little Mama and Daddy) were up sitting at the table drinking coffee. Julie got up, and walked out to the kitchen. She looked around and then she said, "Where's the little dog?" And that was the very first thing she ever said! After that, she talked all the time. She said things Mom had no idea she could say. And to this day, Granny is a little puzzled why she kept it a secret that she could talk. It was partly that she didn't need to say anything as long as Richard was there to talk for her. And partly, she wasn't going to do it until she could do it perfectly. Or it just may be that that is the way a Wait-A-Bit does it. Or it may be that this second child didn't want to keep up with the older child, she wanted to do it better than him. However it was, Julie did it her way. And to this day, she still does.

* A story I wrote for Maya when she was about three years old.

Richard Picks Up His Toys

When Richard was almost four, I happened to be reading Logical Consequences by Rudolf Dreikurs and Loren Grey one evening as it was getting on time for the kids to get ready for bed and I decided to try the approach. So, as we were getting ready to get ready, I asked Richard, as per instructions, "It's time to put your toys away. Would you like to put them on the shelf or would you rather I put them in the closet?"

Being perfectly willing to let me do the work, he answered, "You put them away." And so, I got out a box, picked up all the toys on the floor, and put them on the closet shelf. The next day he still had lots of toys to play with, but he did ask for one or two of the ones on the shelf. I explained that they were on the shelf for a week, showed him how to count that off on the calendar, and went about my business. That evening, again I asked what he wanted to do, and again he wanted me to put them on the shelf.

However, now he had not only his very favorite toys, but also his next to the favorite toys in the closet. So on the next day, he asked for a number of toys. Again, we worked it out on the calendar. Again, he accepted it easily.

That evening, when I asked him, I got as far as, "Would you like to " and he broke in with "I'll put them on the shelf." I don't think he ever had me put his toys away again. And, the wonderful thing about it was that he never complained about the toys in the closet.*

Having discovered this miracle answer to discipline, I used it often. And because my children always got to choose*** they did not resist or resent. They could see the logical connection between the choice they made and the consequence, whether that was what they wanted or not. And, because I always asked if they wanted this or that, and never said, "If you don't put them away, I'll put them in the closet (or whatever the choice was)", and always had a logical connection between the choices, we had very few problems.

As they grew older, I stopped offering choices and simply delivered the consequence. When Richard**** was 12, his Uncle Forrest, attempting to be helpful, told him that he was the man of the family. And Richard observed that his grandfather and his uncle didn't pick up their own dinner dishes and put them in the dish washer, like we did. So, having picked up his dishes without fail for ten years, one night he left them on the table. A simple, "Richard, your dishes are still on the table." took care of it that night. But, three nights later, he did it again. This time I didn't say anything. I picked up his dishes and put them in the frig (didn't want the little bugger to get salmonella, after all) and the next morning served his French toast on his dirty dishes. I never had to say anything. It is obvious -- if you don't pick up your dishes, they don't get washed. I didn't say anything. He didn't say anything. But, to this day, you almost have to constrain him to keep him from taking his dirty dishes out to restaurant kitchens.

* It helps with keeping a child's room clean if you use a little Montessori as well as a little Dreikurs. So, my kids never had toy boxes. ** They had shelves at their height. Toys with parts were in containers, and since the box the toys came in would fall apart rather quickly, they had baskets and other containers that wouldn't. And we rotated toys in and out of the room so they had a manageable number. They got to choose what they wanted out at any time, we rotated right after finals when they were little and I was going to school. Every time we would rotate, there were all of those toys they hadn't played with for an entire college semester -- it was like Christmas.

** Toy boxes worked when children had many fewer toys than they do these days, or servants. To get a feel for how unwieldy a toy box is for a child, think about what life would be like if you had no cupboards or drawers or canisters or shelves in the kitchen. If everything had to go in a the box your refrigerator came in. Loose. Once you opened the flour or the rice, the rest of the bag was just dumped in. Everything in your kitchen. In one box. Want to fry an egg? Not only do you have to take out everything you are going to use, but all of the things you aren't going to use between the top and where it has filtered down. Then put it all back, repeat when you need to do something else, put it all back. How long would your kitchen stay tidy?

*** If they had no choice of whether they were going to do it, such as brushing teeth, they got a choice of where or when -- would you rather brush your teeth in the bathroom or the kitchen, before or after your bath?

**** I used to tell lots of these stories to my parenting classes, since concrete examples help teach the concept. Once I noticed that they were almost all about Richard. I mentioned it to Julie, who answered, "I always watched what happened when Richard did something new to find out if it was allowed or not." So, almost all of my Julie discipline stories are about things Richard never did or which were not an issue with him.

Honours Abound

So, I've won a prize.
Contest Winner: Dubious Claim of Most Humiliating Child for

Best Retro Entry: Maya's Granny, because this one could have gotten her fired back in the day:

At 6 [my daughter] shouted out from our front door to her best friend across the street, just as the mothers of every child I taught that year were coming out of the library we lived next to, "No, you don't either have to be a virgin to get married. My mother says she wasn't."

The Stranger Lad

This is one of my favorite pictures of Richard when he was very young. He is so pensive looking, so uncharacteristically quiet for the moment.

A few minutes after I shot this picture, I called him to come along and he answered that I had his name wrong.

"What? Well, then who are you?" I asked.

"A stranger lad." And so for about a week, he was the Stranger Lad. It was the only thing he would answer to. He was really into it. He wanted different books read and different foods and to wear his shirts with different pants than he usually did. Since I was in school at the time, not only did I have to call him Stranger Lad, but so did his child care provider* and all of the other children at day care. Even Julie had to try to say Stranger Lad.

And then, one day, he was back to being him again. When I asked him where the Stranger Lad was, he said he had missed his own toys and so gone home. I told him that I had really missed him, but the Stranger Lad was nice. And he told me I was a better mom than the Stranger Lad had.

*Which was fine by her, since her name was Yolanda, and he called her My Landa.

Best Buddies

Julie and Richard have always been best buddies. From the very beginning, they liked each other and got along well. Not that they didn't have conflict, all human beings have conflict, times when what one wants is what the other doesn't want. But their good times always way out weighed their not-so-good times; I don't think they ever had bad times.

I read once that a good candid picture of people shows their relationship. And you can tell how they feel about each other according to where they are looking. In the six candid shots here, Julie is always looking at Richard or where he is indicating she should look, and in most of them he is looking at her or showing her where to look.


Here they are again. Gazing fondly at each other. The world is full of interesting things, and they share them with each other.

We spent so many days in Berkeley with them in this stroller. At first Richard rode in the back; when he walked beside or ran ahead, he was always circling back to check in with Julie. Before she could talk, she made motions and he told me what she wanted. He was always right.

As long as Julie had Richard, there was someone on her side, someone who made sure she got what she needed, that she wasn't ever overlooked. I can remember giving him a treat and him asking, "What about Julie?"

Here they are, with him leading the way to the Christmas stockings. And how, you may ask, do children who are brought up to understand that Santa is a story, deal with stockings? Well, Christmas Eve, Richard and I filled Julie's stocking, and Julie and I filled Richard's, and they filled mine. Same with hiding Easter eggs.

The pajamas Richard is wearing here were a gift from Daddy, with cowboys on them. My favorite part of these pjs was that they were so close to the color of his hair.

Looking at Julie stepping up the hearth, I marvel at how children manage to get around in a world obviously designed for adults.

This is in our Fairbanks garden. Richard is pointing to the plant and Julie is listening to what he has to say, because of course he knows. He always knows. He is two years older and so much more experienced.

They both helped with this garden. Putting up the chicken wire fence that kept Samantha out, re-digging after Samantha had rolled the rototilled earth flat (obviously before we got the chicken wire up), measuring the space between rows, planting, weeding, watering, harvesting. I was out in the garden, there they were with their tools. The two of them using the tape measure to show me the correct distance between rows, with Richard consulting the plans and reading, "tomatoes next, so we need 24 inches."

This was taken one summer when we spent a month in California. We were staying with Aunt Flo for this week, and Aunt Flo lived in Aptos in an apartment on the cliffs above the beach. In the morning we would sit on the patio and drink coffee and watch the pelicans teach their young to fish. The kids, of course, had cocoa or orange juice. They both had a lovely time.

Aunt Flo and my parents had paid our way, since it was cheaper to bring the three of us to the family than the entire family to us. It is nice to know you're loved.

And, finally, they grew up. Notice that Richard has no idea what to do with a baby, and Julie still wants to share her every treasure with him. Luckily Maya is a very calm and accepting child.

One of Richard's friends once asked him if he was jealous of all the attention that I gave Julie's baby, and he answered, "Of course not. Maya is the future of our family."

So, even if he didn't quite know what to do with her at first, she is his treasure, too.

And this is the last picture I have of the two of them. Richard lives eight blocks from my place, and Julie lives 1,476 miles from us. When they get together, it is because Richard and Kathy have gone to California, and I'm not there with a camera.

They are endlessly proud of each other and pleased with each other. Alike in some ways, totally different in others.

My Roof, My Rules

One of the things I know about parenting is that how you word things makes a big difference in the results you get. To say, "No, I won't let you do that" implies that I might let you do it under different circumstances, and so can invite most children to argue that these, indeed, are different circumstances. To say "The rule is no movies on school nights" suggests that I can't and most children will not argue about exceptions. Particularly if you hold with "a rule for one is a rule for all" and follow-up on "the rule is if you want to talk to someone, go where they are instead of expecting them to come to you" by going to the child when you want him, or "the rule is no hitting" by not hitting them, kids are accepting of rules and life can be much smoother.

It was also a good way to explain why, in our house, if they wanted a snack they weren't to bother me about it but just go fix themselves something, for heaven's sake, but at their grandfather's house, they had to ask and wait for someone to get it for them. (Mama used to say that Daddy wouldn't let her go in the frig if he could avoid it.) In that case, I would remind them, "Grandpa's roof, Grandpa's rules." And when they, very raresly since it never got any other answer, would tell me that "Mary's mom lets her," my answer would be, "My roof. My rules." Now, that's perfectly clear. At least, I thought it was clear.

Until a 15 year-old Richard came home from a friend's house and announced, in a voice of startled discovery, "You make up the rules!" I admitted I did. That, indeed, that's what "My roof, my rules" meant. Well, he was outraged! Here he had been going to David's house for years and thinking that David's father broke the rules when he sat in his recliner and called David to come to him. Somehow, that day Richard had realized that the rules in David's house were different and David's father wasn't blithely breaking them for the hell of it. (He did still prefer it the way we did it.)

It was about at that time that he came home all indignant and announced, in that same voice of startled discovery, that cars would too start without seat belts fastened! He was taking driver's ed and that day had done his first practice driving. He had been in the back seat, getting ready to fasten his seat belt, and the student behind the wheel had turned the key and the car had started. How, I ask you, was I to know that when I told a four year old "I can't start the car until the seat belts are all buckled" he would think it meant the car wouldn't start that way? And that he would maintain that impression for over ten years?

The Beast Charmer

When Julie was little, she was a beast charmer. One day when I was pushing the kids in the stroller, and we were waiting for the walk light, I looked down and she had her little face hidden in the fur of the mangiest cur I've ever seen. This dog was licking the back of her neck and wagging it's almost bald tail with great enthusiasm. When it walked away, a nearby woman told me that she hadn't said anything while the dog was there because it could probably smell fear but -- this was a dog that bit a lot. She had never seen it react to anyone with anything less than a snarl and semi-lunge. Indeed, she had at first thought she must be mistaken and this must be some other dog, but then she realized that there probably wasn't another dog on the face of the earth with just those mange patterns.

We moved to Fairbanks when Julie was four. A couple of weeks after we arrived, the Tanana Valley Fair opened, and we went. As we left the horse barn, I realized that Julie was not with me. Since she loved horses it took little detective skills to realize that I needed to backtrack and I would find her. And, indeed I did. Sitting between the front hooves of and having the back of her neck nuzzled by a horse which was roped off with a sign saying, "Stay back. Extremely vicious horse." There were about forty people standing around looking dumbstruck and worried. Julie was petting the horse and kissing its cheek.

And a couple of years after that, we were at the Alaskaland park and Julie got in trouble for picking up semi-wild ducks and geese. She would sit quietly, holding out the broken cones that the ice cream parlor gave out for feeding them, and they would come close enough that she could, ever so patiently, reach around them and pick them up.



I don't know if the fact that her dog, Samantha, allowed her to crawl into the dog crate and attend the birth of puppies was due to Julie's beast charmer skills or Samantha's incredible good nature, nor if she was able to manhandle Thor the night he tried to eat Grandma (the parrot) was more a reflection on her or on him, but she certainly had the magic touch.

Driving on Purple Streets

When I was doing free lance training in California, I had a contract to do two-days on communication at the California Bar Association Meeting, in San Diego. It may have been Spring Break, because I took Julie, who was about 17, with me. We did a day at the Zoo, some shopping, and mostly just acted like tourists when I wasn't working.

At the end of the first day, Julie and I were set to go out to dinner. As we had driven into San Diego, we had seen a Love's Barbeque about a block from the freeway, just before the exit to our hotel. I looked up the address in the phone book and checked a city street map. It was about eight blocks from the hotel over surface streets. Two blocks this way, turn that way, three blocks, turn the other way. Easy. I wrote the directions down, took the map with us, and off we went.

Except, when I had gone that three blocks, the street that was on the map wasn't there. I figured I'd go that way anyway, turn over on the next street, and intersect it. Nope. The next thing I knew, we were out in the canyon, nothing around except houses, and not many of those. I drove back towards civilization, stopped at the first 7-11 we came to, and asked for directions. Wrote what the young lady told me down, followed those directions, and ended up on the other side of the freeway, but no Love's, no street that Love's was on, no two streets leading to the street that Love's was on. Stopped at a gas station, where the young man explained that the map had streets in two colors -- the blue ones had been constructed, the purple ones were planned. I had been trying to drive on planned streets. However, it was easy to get to Love's -- take the freeway, take the first offramp to the right, and you would be half a block from it.

So, onto the freeway, get positioned in the right lane for the offramp and . . . there was a fork in the freeway before I reached the off ramp, the right fork went somewhere I didn't want to go, and the traffic was too heavy for me to change lanes in time. And then, there wasn't an offramp for 26 miles. Take the offramp, turn around, go back. We could see Love's from the freeway, except that we were on the wrong side. Since we were tired and hungry and I was getting a little toasted, we decided to do Love's the next night, when we would know how to get there, and eat at our hotel this night. Parked at the hotel, went into the dinning room. The host asked how we were doing, and I said, "Much better, now that we're here." "Have you been on the road long?" he asked. "Two hours," I sighed. "My. Where did you start?"

"Room 314," Julie answered.

Saturdays In Berkeley

When I was living in San Francisco, between Richard's and Julie's births, I read a book about household organization, which said that, just like a business, a family does better when it knows its mission. Are you going for good citizens? Concert musicians? Scientists? Tightrope walkers? So, being me with my decidedly odd slant on the world (I told you. I send Edward Gorey Christmas cards.), when we moved back to Berkeley, I had a sign on the front door that read, "Gipson, Gipson, & Gipson: We Dirty Clean Diapers".

On Saturday mornings we would get up and clean the apartment. The kids helped from the beginning. Actually, the first time Richard helped he was nine months old, we were visiting my parents, and Daddy asked him to bring his bottle to the kitchen to be washed. And Richard, who was at that time refusing to crawl and walking around by holding on to the walls, walked around three walls to get to the bottle and then back around to carry it to his grandfather. And when I saw how proud he was, I asked him to do anything that I could think of after that. So, on Saturdays we would get up and clean, each doing according to ability.* And when we were finished, we were out and about.

I had two luxuries in those days -- diaper service, and a laundromat where I could drop the clothes off and pick them up, washed, dried, and folded, a few hours later. So, the first stop of the day was to take the laundry. Then the library. The stroller was too wide to go between the shelves, so I would park it at the end of the shelf I was checking and they would look quietly around and nibble on teething biscuits. Every week when I checked out my books, the librarian would comment on how they were so quiet that the first she ever knew we were there was when we checked out.

Then we would head up to campus. Get out of the stroller and have a picnic on the grass. Walk under the trees. Play with passing dogs. Help them climb a tree. Splash in the Sproul Plaza fountain on warm days. Spend a dime and take a ride up the Campanile to look out at San Francisco. Walk back down Telegraph Avenue, stopping in the book stores. They were there in their double stroller the day I discovered Edward Gorey (The Insect God, still my favorite) and laughed until the tears ran down my face. We would stop in the pet store to look at tropical fish and birds, a candy store to buy us each a licorice whip, maybe the dime store if I needed something else. Slowly, we would work our way from campus to the grocery store. Out would come the list. Discussing what we were buying with them.** While Richard was still too young to walk the rest of the way, I would have the little-old-lady cart and use it for groceries. When he was older, he would get out now and we would use his seat for the groceries. Back and drop the food at the apartment, and then to pick up the laundry.

And, along the way we would stop and check out any construction that was going on,*** look in lots of windows, stop and chat to people we knew or people who were interested in small children. Notice how flower gardens along the way were progressing. Recite nursery rhymes. Talk and talk and talk. Laugh.

We would be out for about four or five hours. Fresh air. Sunshine. And, more often than not, at some point along the way, as apt to be uphill as down, I would just have to run. Pushing two kids with one hand and pulling the week's groceries with the other. Because it was just good to be alive and together.

And I'll tell you, I still miss it. Not just having the strength to push a stroller with two kids and a few library books and pull a cart full of groceries up a hill while running. Mostly the delight of their company. Watching them learn about the world. Every age they have ever been has been a delight, and I would go back and do any of them again in a heartbeat. But, I think I might go back and do this one as the chorus to the rest. A, B, C, B, D, B, E, B, F, B. I can't remember a time in my adult life when I was happier. And I've been happy most of the time.

* We always did that, as long as they lived with me. And, the rare once or twice that one of them decided to sit down and allow the other two of us to do it, I would say, "Your sibling has decided we need a break" and the other two of us would sit down and wait. And when we were done, we went out and had fun. It's easy to get kids to do chores when you do them together and there is family fun right after.

** Once when we were shopping a man approached and told me that he taught child development, and he was impressed by the way I talked to them. I was, he said, developing both language and logic skills. And, you know me, I delight in being recognized for what a good job I'm doing. Made my decade, that momentary encounter.

*** For a couple of years there it was BART. Which they kept having to tear up again because they had left something (like the ventilation system) out the first time.

Samantha's Garden

Once upon a way back, so far ago as the 80s, Maya's Mama was a young girl named Julie, and her Uncle Richard was a young teenager called Richard, and her Granny was known as Mom. This, of course, was before Maya was born, or they would all have their current (and real) names. At the time of this story, they were living in a small duplex in Stockton, just the three of them and Julie's dog Samantha (usually called Sam) and Richard's cat named Sheba, and two tanks of fish, and whatever gerbil or hamster Julie had at the moment.

In the very small back yard, right outside the sliding glass doors, there was a concrete patio, and then a strip of earth with cedar chips, maybe two feet wide, and then the back fence. Beside the patio was a large square of yard with cedar chips and a tree in the middle, and that was all. Nothing usually grew in the strip of earth, except weeds. So, since Mom liked to have a neat yard, she would pull those weeds right out of there.

Well, one day she was out there pulling weeds, and there in the cedar chips by the fence was a little plant that looked and smelled like a baby tomato plant. Since Mom didn't know of anything that looks and smells like a baby tomato plant except a baby tomato plant, she didn't pull it up. Instead, she started to water it. Well, it grew and grew, and sure enough, it was a tomato plant. Pretty soon it was very big and since there was a fence behind it, it could only grow out over the patio. It got so big that pretty soon the weight on one side pulled it over and it laid down on the concrete and soaked up the heat and the summer sun and got bigger and bigger and bigger. Then it began to be covered with little yellow tomato flowers, and then some of the flowers fell off and the cherry tomatoes came. More and more yellow flowers, more and more cherry tomatoes! Why, there were so many tomatoes that Mom was picking 20 or 30 a day, every day, all summer long! What wonderful salads they had! They could just eat a handful of tomatoes any time they wanted. And they did. Mom would say, "I wonder why this tomato plant decided to grow here. I never planted it. Where did it come from?" Julie and Richard always said they didn't know either, and there was never any reason to doubt that.

One day, Richard asked Mom, "If I tell you where the tomato plant came from, will you promise not to be mad?" And Mom said, "How could I be mad? This plant has given us so many wonderful tomatoes!" So, Richard confessed. One day he had been sitting in the living room and eating cherry tomatoes (that Mom had bought at the grocery store) and Samantha had been whimpering in the back yard to be let in, and he had become irritated with her and thrown a cherry tomato at her. That tomato had bounced on the back fence, and smashed apart, and fallen into the cedar chips. When it smashed on the fence, all the seeds inside were released. Well, when Mom heard that, she wasn't angry at all, even though Richard had broken two rules: not to waste food and not to throw things at Sam.

Another time Sam was instrumental in growing food in that same strip of cedar chips. It so happened that Sam loved apples. When Julie would eat an apple, she would feed the core to Sam and Sam would gobble it all up. Well, in apple cores are apple seeds. And dogs don't digest apple seeds. And food that isn't digested comes out in poop. So, one day a year or so after the tomato plant had come and gone, Sam made some poop right in that same strip of cedar chips and she deposited some apple seeds. And then a lovely pippin apple tree grew there, and it grew beautiful apple blossoms and delightful little pippin apples.

So, there were two plants that grew in the strip of cedar chips, and both of them provided food for Mom and Julie and Richard. And both of them were an accident. And both of them were because Sam spent so much time in the back yard. But, in one way they were different — the apple tree was because Julie loved Sam, and the tomato plant was because Richard was irritated with her.