I’m so happy she loves them.
Some days, don’t you wish you could pitch a tent in someone’s personal library and read all day?
I’ve been reading in short, irregular spurts late at night. I’m reading “Selected Poems” by Frank O’Hara and “The Red Convertible” by Louise Erdrich.
{photo via carolinaherrera.com}
My daughter and I are down with the flu. The doctor said to assume it is H1N1 because that is what is going around. 
Whenever I am sick, this quote makes me think about illness in a different way.
Always to have sympathy, always to be accompanied, always to be understood would be intolerable. But in health the genial pretense must be kept up and the effort renewed–to communicate, to civilise, to share, to cultivate the desert, educate the native, to work together by day and by night to sport. In illness this make-believe ceases. Directly the bed is called for, or, sunk deep among pillows in one chair, we raise out feet even an inch above the ground on another, we cease to be soldiers in the army of the upright; we become deserters. They march to battle. We float with the sticks on the stream; helter-skelter with the dead leaves on the lawn, irresponsible and disinterested and able, perhaps for the first time for years, to look round, to look up — to look, for example, at the sky. – Virginia Woolf, On Being Ill
I’ve been reading to my daughter since she was born. One of the stories I introduced very early was Where The Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. Together, we would point at the monsters and growl. One day, my husband said he saw her with the book open, pointing to the wild things and growling. As she got older, she started to become bothered that the white dog that appeared in the beginning of the book seemed to disappear. “Where dog?” she would ask me over and over, flipping back to the page with the dog. And now, at 2 1/2, she is starting to learn fear. When I try to read it to her, she tosses it aside, saying “Mama, I scared. No read it, I scared.”
We went to see the movie this past weekend. I was concerned she would be frightened. She loves going to the movies because she loves popcorn and peanut M&Ms, sitting in a darkened theater and watching what she calls the “Big TV.” The beginning of the movie is electrifying. It has all the pent-up energy and wildness of a young boy, as we see Max running in the snow. She was riveted, and so was I. I loved the nostalgic quality of the cinematography, the focus on the details, and the liveliness of the action.
My favorite part of the movie is the moment when he hides in the cool, white hollow of his snowfort expecting the strength of it to protect him … only to see it all get smashed in on top of him. I feel like it is a metaphor for the entire film. Expectations of authority are always dashed, and the ways we react to it 
can tell us so much about ourselves. We want, as children and adults, to have someone who will have all the answers, someone perfect who can fix everything. It is frightening to realize there is no such person.
After the wild things were introduced, my daughter slid off her booster seat and up into my lap. “Mama,” she whispered, “why monsters no growl?” I looked up at the wild things. They were chatting. My concerns about her being scared were unfounded. These were gentle creatures, each with their own neuroses. She started to growl at the screen, her hands outstretched like claws. As I shushed her, she sat looking at me. Then, I began to feel a bit of fear. I thought about Carol’s expectations of his king and Max’s expectations of his mother. I began to wonder when my daughter would realize I was not all-powerful and of all the ways I would fail her.
I picked up The Wild Things by Dave Eggers the other day and started reading it. So far, it is very close to the film but provides more complexity and extra characters that couldn’t be shown in the film. For example, the scene after his snow fort gets smashed gives shape to his expectations and his relationship with his sister, Claire:
He choked on snow and phlegm. His heart seemed to have split itself, migrated northward, and was now beating in each of his ears.
Where was Claire? She should have been with him by now. Holding his shoulder. Rubbing his neck. Cupping her hands around his ears, blowing hotly to warm him as she did just a year ago, when he had fallen through the ice in the creek after the blizzard.
But Claire was not near.
More Wild Things Around the Web
A review by Rebecca Serle at Nurturing Narratives
Robert William Berg’s review at Rob Will Review.
Roundup by Celeste Ng over at Fiction Writers Review
Today I’m participating in a mass blogging! WOW! Women on Writing has gathered a group of blogging buddies to write about family relationships. Why family relationships? We’re celebrating the release of Therese Walsh’s debut novel today. The Last Will of Moira Leahy (Random House, October 13, 2009) is about a mysterious journey that helps a woman learn more about herself and her twin, whom she lost when they were teenagers. Visit the Muffin to read what Therese has to say about family relationships and view the list of all my blogging buddies. And make sure you visit www.theresewalsh.com to find out more about the author.
Sometimes I miss the childhood summers my little sisters and I spent cloistered in our house. In the chill of air-conditioning in Phoenix, we imagined entire worlds. An Oriental rug became a canoe which we sat upon and rowed, with invisible oars, past pirates and sea monsters. Ripped up pieces of construction paper became hasty pudding, a concoction we had only read about in our Laura Ingalls Wilder books. All it took to put on a play were some garbage bags and paper plates to create costumes to be the Billy Goats Gruff. We created our own families out of Legos and played out dramas — arguments, romances, dilemmas — with the little blocks.
I often wonder if I would be a writer if I never had sisters. The way we spent those summers, all in solid belief of our own created world, validated the importance of the imagined. Without that confirmation, I sometimes wonder if I could find truth in the made-up. Not once did we stop and say, “This isn’t a canoe, it’s just an old rug rolled up on the ground!” We carried our fictional ideas forward, fully convinced, and that is something necessary of anyone who writes stories. There is a point in every story where it is easy to give up, to find the entire thing completely ridiculous. At that point, I pretend my sisters are right next to me, seeing the same imaginary things I see, bolstering me to continue.