family

Any Other Name

Posted on by Beth Hull

She calls me “Mom Mom.” It’s kind of cute, I guess, but it’s what I called my grandmother. So it makes me feel like I should be calling jeans “dungarees,” complaining about the dry heat of California, expounding on the benefits of sleeping without underpants, and sending post cards from far-off places.

Mom Mom would absolutely love Z. As would my grandfather (plain old “Grandpa”) and Husband’s grandmother (“Mama Nona”), and so many other friends and family who have passed away. It gets me thinking, and remembering, and above all, hoping we can make these people come alive in our memories, so that she can learn about them too. I’ve never felt I had much of a heritage, because I’m a mixture of so many ethnicities no one ever bothered to keep track. Husband’s half-Italian, so we get a lot of through-the-generations-traditions from his side.

I think my “heritage” will have to come from the people I love, and I think I’ll need to remember them, find photographs of them, and tell Z all about them. I’ll need help from my family in remembering, but that’s what family is for, right?

And of course, we invent our own traditions and family culture as we go along, momming, writing, playing with our kids. It’s all (forgive the soft, poetastic description) part of the richness of life.

As far as my name, I won’t ask Z to call me anything different. But I’ve re-spelled my name to “Mamam” in my head. It has a European feel to it (“Maman” is French), so I can get on board with that. Especially if it erases those images of commando sleeping habits from my brain.

E Tea

Posted on by Beth Hull

We like to pass our finer points on to our children. Our striking good looks, endless patience, witty sense of humor. Unless you’re me, and have none of those things (okay, I’ve got the good looks and the sense of humor. Yes, I do say so myself). At any rate, if you are like me, you can also pass on both your tendency to hoard things, and the things you hoarded.

See my Photographic Evidence below.

Photographic Evidence A

This is my E.T. Tea Set, circa 1982. Utterly fabulous. I had to battle TWO black widows to rescue it from the clutches of my doll closet. The doll closet is a whole other picture, but I’m not about to venture out to the Love Shack (garage/guest room) at night to take a photo.

Photographic Evidence B

Here we have the companion to my tea set, a Read-Along Book & Record set. Not pictured are my “Gingerbread Man” and “Walt Disney’s Peter Pan” Book & Record sets.

Sadly, the records have disappeared. Not that I would know what to do with them if I had them. Z might use them for serving platters for her tea parties.

Photographic Evidence C

See the treasures I have unearthed! It’s The Cabbage Patch Kids! What joy!

Photographic Evidence...What Letter Am I On?

Vintage souvenir t-shirt from Great America (now Six Flags or something completely different. I’m hoping I never have to keep track).

Photographic Evidence Too Much

Is there no end to the wealth of wonders? This flowered cat is companion to…I kid you not…a flowered camel. Don’t ask me why.

I’m SOOOO glad I saved them though!

Photographic Evidence The End (Finally)

There are scores more books where these came from. [Hey look, it’s the Peter Pan book!] Her current favorite books include “Bedtime for Frances” (mine), “E.T. Read-Along” (mine), and “Peter Pan Read-Along” (also mine).

All of this, and more. As my parents will tell you, since they hauled it all to our garage as soon as we bought our house.

And these are just the things I found lying around. I didn’t have to search for them. There’s also the unicorn shirt which I desperately wanted a photo of, but Z happens to be sleeping in it right now. It screams 1980s.

If I can’t give my daughter good looks (like I need to; she’s beautiful on her own) or any of my other desirable qualities, at least I can give her lots of cool junk.

My Suit of Armor

Posted on by Beth Hull

Cowboys wear tight jeans, boots with loopy embroidery, and giant silver belt buckles. Corporate executives wear suits and ties. James Bond wears a tuxedo and looks mighty fine. Chefs wear white hats and white aprons and wield spatulas. Superheroes sport spandex and capes, doctors don lab coats and stethoscopes, construction workers wear t-shirts and hard hats, and I? The writing mother?

I wear sweats.

Z knows when we’re going out because I finally put on jeans. And for some people, jeans are like, dressing down. Whenever there’s a wedding to go to, or a writer’s conference (like last Saturday and this upcoming Saturday: SCBWI Spring Spirit Conference for Nor Cal!), I’m left with a closet full of question marks. “Does this even fit anymore?” I wonder. For last weekend’s writer’s conference I must have tried on fifteen different outfits. And then, taking the all-inclusive trip into Nerdy Obsessive Land, I even got out my digital camera and took pictures of myself in the mirror. I was thisclose to uploading them on Snapfish and sending an invitation to two close friends for help in deciding what to wear when I finally got over it and figured out, “You know, I’m 29 years old. I think I can choose a professional-ish outfit. Even though none of them make me look 15 pounds lighter.”

I know that looking professional is a good thing. At least, I think it is. I actually had some success experimenting with this idea when I was a grad student at UC Davis. I’d go in for my office hours most days in jeans (sadly not sweats), a tank top, and some flip flops, and I’d do my lesson planning and work on my exam papers, and I’d play a bit of Spider solitaire here, a bit of Spider solitaire there. Towards the second half of my second year, I decided to up my professional-dress factor, and began to wear the occasional skirt. If I wore jeans, I’d top them with a blouse instead of one of my left-over-from-high-school tank tops. My Spider solitaire habit might have declined (luckily, I never kept a log of hours or games so I can’t be embarrassed now). But I noticed the change in dress, and a change in attitude. And other people noticed too. Like one of my advisors. It was a good feeling.

These days, I don’t have much reason to get dressed up (and by “dressed up” I mean something above sweats on the formal-wear continuum). I’ll toy around with some jersey dresses and leggings, just to mix things up a bit. But honestly, it takes so much more effort than grabbing the first pair of yoga pants and natty old sweatshirt I can find (usually these are the pants and sweatshirt I took off to take my shower). If we go somewhere, like the grocery store or library story time, I’ll feel like I’m exceeding expectations by swapping those yoga pants for jeans.

And as soon as we get home? Z has to wait for her milk and snack while I change back into the yoga pants.

It’s a sweet life, comfortable. But even I am starting to feel a little grubby.

The Unsung Clarkie Underfoot

Posted on by Beth Hull

A Wednesday Momming Around Entry

Clarkie

Don’t sit down. Especially with a blanket and a book or notebook. This cat has Couch Radar and she knows when your lap is easy game. Even the dinner table and the desk are fair hunting grounds for her. Your lap is her prey and she is a skilled huntress.

Clarkie (Clark) is my other baby, and she will never allow herself to be forgotten (you’ll feel the prick of her paw on your face in the morning, or trip over her as you prepare breakfast). Since Z made her screaming way into our lives, though, Clarkie has been shuffled off to the side in a classic case of Forgotten Older Sibling. Has anyone read Socks by Beverly Cleary? Because that’s what I think of sometimes with Clark, and it makes me very sad.

We feel bad for her, especially now that Z is on the move. It used to be that we’d drag a toy mouse on a stick over the bed for her to chase, or toss paper balls around the house. Now Z runs after Clark, an old paper ball held in her sticky, outstretched hand. Screaming. And Clarkie just trots in the other direction. Quickly. I can see a martyred expression on Clark’s face. I think she’s grateful that she is unable to have children, and a little resentful that we did.

Everything Zen in the Tibetan Singing Bowl

Now that Z takes one long nap instead of three excruciatingly short ones, Clark has found my lap again. As I type this she’s tucked into  my sweatshirt, twitching her ear occasionally, but I can tell she’s happy. Ah yes, there’s a purr.

And yeah, she’s obnoxious sometimes. When it was especially difficult to get Z down for her nap for awhile, Clark would wander into Z’s room, meowing loudly. It was like she had Spidey (Kitty) Sense that Z’s eyes were closing, and she just had to foil my hard work. Punishment for spawning. I could read the vengeance in Clarkie’s eyes.

Clarkie is infuriating in some ways, and we have to be, you know, responsible for her, and clean up her poop and make sure she’s fed. But she’s soft, and cute, and so full of love and joy, and she makes us laugh. So really, she isn’t that different from Z.

*   *   *

Writing update:
No longer rushing to finish revisions. These things take time, and I don’t want to ruin chances with this Dream Agent by sending anything less than my very very best.

Max the Noble

Posted on by Beth Hull

Naming inanimate objects has always been a hobby of mine. My favorite egg baby in middle school was Hester. I had a dust mop named Jorge in college, and my dwarf mandarin orange tree is named Frida. Most, if not all, of my stuffed animals had names, and now I name Z’s animals. She has a giraffe named Gerald, a penguin named Mr. Penguin (yeah, really stretching the bounds of creativity on that one), and her Duplo person is Guy. Husband named her stuffed cat Talula, and I’m jealous that I didn’t come up with the name.

I also have a clothes hamper named Max. He was  in the garage, on top of the Yard Sale pile, and I’d forgotten about him until yesterday when my friend Kristin visited. “You have an elephant clothes hamper,” she pointed out in wonder. Or horror. One can’t be sure.

Max previously belonged to my Grandma Marion, and I don’t know where she got him, or why. But grandmothers have a way of foisting their strange belongings onto their granddaughters. I still have a garbage sack filled with throw pillows Grandma Myrt started to sew but didn’t want to finish. When I look at the fabric patterns of gigantic, blazing orange peonies and kittens wearing Christmas-patterned ribbons, I have to wonder why she abandoned that particular project.

But back to Max.

I grew so attached to him throughout middle and high school that he came to college with me, and then my first apartment, and to subsequent apartments, until Husband and I got married. Now we (gasp!) shared a clothes hamper, and Max simply wasn’t big enough to contain our filth–especially since said filth collected for between two to four weeks at a time until we made a trip to one of our parents’ houses to do laundry (yes, even when we were married. We have a deep-seated and irrational fear of laundromats). Max was sent back to live with my parents, and we adopted an accordion-style, silvery clothes hamper from IKEA that I have christened Ugly.

When we finally bought our house and our parents brought all of our junk from their garages to our own, Max resurfaced, took a quick breath of fresh air, and then the garage door closed on him for months. (Anybody thinking of The Velveteen Rabbit? ‘Cause I am.) During a purge of old things, Mom finally convinced me to put Max in the Yard Sale Pile: an epic mound of…garbage, basically. But garbage I hope someone will buy, so that I can, in turn, use their money to buy more garbage.

Then Kristin mentioned Max, and I remembered our fond times together. Personified as a faithful friend, he held my dirty clothes for so many years, and now I sell him like the other garbage? I asked Kristin if she needed a clothes hamper, concealing the fact that Max was missing an ear. No, she didn’t need a clothes hamper.

But you know who does?

My daughter.

Max the Noble

Welcome back to the fold, Max.