The Former Anne Spollen's Author Blog Is Being Retitled to "Notes from Living Upghetto": Thanksgiving and Three Heads and A Habit of Gratefulness

Sunday, November 28, 2010

Thanksgiving and Three Heads and A Habit of Gratefulness

I always have this idea that Thanksgiving is going to be one of those calm holidays where we bond as a normal family with a long car ride, and I don't know, stories of how wonderful our lives are or how wonderful something is. It seems that other families are driving into New York City all calm and happy with children coloring in the backseats. Maybe they are just better at using silence as a cloak of dsyfunction. I'm not sure. I like to think that's what it is.

Our holiday began normally enough. We were within an hour of our time to pick up the kids' grand uncle. (Yes, he brought his hair clipper so my husband could clip his ear hair - if you are familiar with this blog, you know Uncle Jack's ear hair cutting is a somewhat unusual, but expected, holiday tradition - if you want to really, really stretch the word tradition)

Around ten minutes into the ride, Emma asked me how many fingers I could hold from my hairline to my eyebrows. I sort of didn't want to answer, but I did. "Umm, four."

"See, that's my whole problem. I can only hold three fingers there. I don't have a forehead. I have a three head. And that's what aliens and cavemen have."

I turned to look at her brothers who were very, very innocently gazing out the window.

And our usual wildly weird conversation went on until we reached Grandma's. That's when I thought I'd take some nice holiday pictures. Here is a lovely shot of Philip growling while Christopher politely tries to duck the camera:

And here, poor Philip looks like he needs corrective surgery.

But it was at some point during the dinner, maybe when I realized they were actually pretty nice kids when people other than me spoke to them, that I realized I have to stop thinking about the serene families. I'm lucky to have them. They only pass the green bean casserole and whisper, "Some vomit in a bowl?" to each other when no one is within earshot. And even though they never colored or sat quietly, they do all pile in the car and endure the strange conversations of their elderly relatives (yeah, it's about that, complete with amount, consistency and frequency) without batting an eyelash.

We will probably never drive down the road without our minor battles and our own brand of three headed weirdness, but at least we are all together and we are all talking. It's really corny, but I like that Thanksgiving reminds everyone that we should be in a habit of gratefulness rather than think about it only on one day.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...: YOur kids really are nice, Anne. I think they are coming out just wonderful. Your not so bad yourself, you know -- N.F. (Nanci); Monday, 29 November, 2010
Anne Spollen said...: Thanks, Nanci -- nice to see you on line!; Monday, 29 November, 2010
Anonymous said...: I enjoy the togetherness of the holidays. I don't know about the long car rides, though. I'm the type to always ask, "Are we there yet?"; Monday, 29 November, 2010
Mary Witzl said...: We may be having a house guest at Christmas time, a wonderful girl a few years older than our eldest, whose equally wonderful parents I've known for decades. My kids are panicked: they're afraid they won't measure up to her effortless goodness and perfection. But most of all, they worry that their weirdness will stand out. I ought to tell them about your kids and your grand uncle -- those stories would cheer them up considerably.

I've just finished reading 'The Shape of Water', and I enjoyed it so much. I wonder where books like that were when I was growing up because they would have helped A LOT. We had our own words for people who were 'standard'. We weren't standard, but I probably don't need to tell you that.; Tuesday, 30 November, 2010
Anne Spollen said...: Medeia, I think being trapped in a car for long periods of time is a test of some sort -- how long can we be normal? Or act that way? But yeah, I like the togetherness of the holidays the most of anything about them.; Tuesday, 30 November, 2010
Anne Spollen said...: Oh, Mary -- effortless goodness? I'm afraid of that, too. I find prolonged houseguests really, really difficult. So hard to be polite and nice for that long!

I'm so glad you enjoyed Shape of Water! I don't know where books like that were when we were Magda's age -- maybe that's why I wrote it - to fill that gap.; Tuesday, 30 November, 2010
Anonymous said...: I fool interpret a few of the articles on your website now, and I unqualifiedly like your tastefulness of blogging. I added it to my favorites entanglement page muster and last will and testament be checking promote soon. Divert repress into public notice my site as ok and leave to me be acquainted with what you think. Thanks.; Tuesday, 30 November, 2010
Anonymous said...: А! Es evidente que hay mucho que aprender acerca de esto. Creo que hizo algunas cosas buenas en características también. Sigue trabajando, gran trabajo!; Monday, 06 December, 2010

Books

Light Beneath Ferns

"I have this strange sense that my silence is preparing me for something I can't name . ."

Elizah Rayne is nothing like other fourteen-year-old girls. More interested in bird bones than people, she wraps herself in silence. Trying to escape the shadow of her gambler father, Elizah and her mother move into an old house that borders a cemetery. All her mother wants is for them to have "normal" lives. But that becomes impossible for Elizah when she finds a human jawbone by the river and meets Nathaniel, a strangely hypnotic boy who draws Elizah into his dreamlike and mysterious world.

Only by forgetting everything she knows can Elizah understand the truth about Nathaniel—and discover an unimaginable secret.

Teen made trailer for Light Beneath Ferns.

Order Light Beneath Ferns here.

Foreword Magazine's Review of Light Beneath Ferns

Excerpt from THE SHAPE OF WATER

CHAPTER ONE
I discovered windows one afternoon and after that, nothing was ever the same. They had always been there, of course, glass panes shimmering in the color of rain, but that spring for the first time, I was able to open the windows in my room. For years, the locks had been painted stuck, and during the winter, heat from the radiator beneath my windows finally steamed off enough paint off the metal wings of the locks could be twirled open. Knowing that I could open the windows attracted me to them, and I began sitting under the windows, staring through the glass at the sky. From that position, on a chair in my room, the sky did not seem real; it seemed a place I was making up, so I watched it.
The white wood of the window panes acted as frames so the sky came to me slowly, and the huge openness of its space did not touch me. All the window glass in our old house had wavers and bubbles inside it, so at times the clouds moved like water, melting and blurring until they passed outside of the warp. After a few afternoons of sitting, the heavens seemed too quiet to keep watching so I began watching a small patch of woods next to our yard that housed little more than trees and a scatter of bony, mean-looking rabbits.
I started gazing at the sky and the woods in March when the branches were still wet and it was then, with nothing outside my window but trees and rain, that I noticed a shine inside darkness, I noticed colors glimmering within the darkness of the wood. I watched birds come and go, I watched rain nipple down from buds to the grass. The water dripping from branch edges and leaves created optical tricks; I could see that as I watched leaves melt.
Then one day I ventured into the space outside. I did not think about doing this much beforehand. I simply opened the window and dropped to the ground below, uncertain as to why this should be such a more satisfying exit than simply using the door; my father worked until seven o’clock and I could do whatever I wanted until then. But I liked the solid sound my legs made when I landed. Leaving via a five foot drop seemed so much more a decision than just using a door. The sense of escape made my heart pound, though all I escaped was the soundless spread of moss-colored light inside my house and the silence.
I had come to know silence well during those months after my mother died. When you sit in silence long enough, you learn that silence has a motion. It glides over you without shape or form, but with weight, exactly like water. Its color is silver. And silence has a sound you hear only after hours of wading inside it. The sound is soft, flute notes rising up like the words of glass speaking. There comes a point when you must shatter the silence, when you must shatter the blindness of its words, the blindness of its light. I did this by going into the yard. Once I stood there, in the grass next to the trees I had been watching, I found silence outside as well. But I was happier outside than I had been in the house, so I stayed for a bit. I stood beneath my bedroom window for a few minutes, looking up at the branches and the crooked pieces of sky colliding between the branches. I believed I could identify the scent of the sky as I stood there, a blue menthol fragrance similar to the scent of seawater that sprayed into my face when I first dove into the ocean. That initial scent smelled much more subtle than the ocean’s heavy, fishy aroma, a whiff of salt and mint that warned a more powerful scent would enter my nose just as I approached the water on a dive. It was the scent I dreamed in. And it was the scent of that spring sky as I stood in my yard.

***