MamaStories

(Choo-Chee the Fox by Galina Kolev, used with kind permission)

At the new house we’ll be seeing lots of foxes. I’m looking for a good book about them. It could be a fairytale or a picture story or a more scientific book (not too advanced). As long as it doesn’t reinforce the old stereotype of the wily fox who gets outwitted and has to go without food for another day.

Any suggestions?

Amie and I had just read a book about snails when lo and behold! One showed up on our doorstep, literally.

That’s our doorstep.

Amie was enthralled. We talked about how it carries its house on its back, leaves a trail of mucus, can crawl up vertical surfaces and upside down (try explaining “suction” to an almost-three-year-old!). We checked out the movable and fully retractable tentacles: the two long ones on top ending in the eyes, and the two smaller, lower ones being the snail’s nose. Amie found that very funny and told me I was being silly.

We’ve always taught her not to approach or touch wild animals, but I allowed her to gently touch the snail’s shell. “If you want to touch a wild animal, always ask Mama first!” I guess we’ll have to specify that rule at some point.

Over the weekend we visited Walden Pond. As I had hoped, it was frozen over. The Ranger told me the ice measured only 4 inches, and that it wasn’t safe to walk on - it being a very deep pond (102 feet). Nonetheless, there were quite a few people on the ice. We just braved the first couple of yards near the beach. Like the Ranger said: nothing had happened yet, but you could be the first to fall through. No thanks!

As we approached we asked Amie where all the water had gone! She knew from reading Stella, Queen of the Snow.

- Frozen!

We walked on it, tested the hardness, and made tracks in the snow. Listened to the frogs sleeping underneath the ice. She was all for walking across to the other side, and it took some persuading to get her off again.

We also spotted deer tracks in the snow, and compared their to those of our tracks, explaining the difference by how our feet and shoes are shaped differently.

Lastly we visited the mock-up of Thoreau’s house and shook the bronze statue’s hand (very cold). Amie asked again, as she usually does when we visit Walden Pond:

- But where did Henry go?

- We don’t know. He’s dead. We don’t know where we go when we die.

I think Thoreau might have appreciated that answer.

While in Kolkata, I got hooked on birds again. It happens at times, especially in Spring. It stands to reason that I should be a birdwatcher: I love quietly observing, recording in notebooks, classifying. I love birds - of all the animals, I think they are the most wonderful. I have several bird guidebooks to show for my interest, though no lifelists, and no real knowledge. The problem is that, once I’ve admired the cardinals, blue jays, mallards and American robins, I turn to the many sparrows and get frustrated.

In Kolkata, which most of you know as Calcutta, we stayed in a gated community in the middle of the city yet curiously quiet and lush with plantings. Our building stood on the edge of a small copse of trees and shrubs, and we stayed on the fourth floor. From the balcony I spotted many (to me) exotic birds, so colorful that it was easy for me to identify them.

Amie at 2 years and 3 months was still too young to observe birds for more than a minute. She still had (and has) some trouble following their rapid movements. But she appreciated what came to be called, over the ten days of our stay there, “Amie’s Little Bird”.

She became more familiar with the bird in her grandparents’ Swiss cuckoo-clock. I am ashamed to admit, that I failed to observe this bird closely and that therefore I cannot identify it, though it did visit faithfully every hour on the hour.

One day I was spotting birds on the balcony while Amie was inside painting. I heard Amie’s Little Bird before I saw it: I recognized its chew chew. Suddenly there it was, not 10 yards away on a dead branch right at my eye level. I grabbed my digital camera.

When I came into the living room to announce my good luck - I hadn’t yet had the opportunity to identify the bird and this still image would definitely help - Amie had painted the following:

Amie’s Little Bird! Can you see it, hovering above the cuckoo-clock?

She had no help beyond some verbal guidance from her Baba, who only asked her where the bird’s legs and wings should go.

Later I risked my neck crossing Park Street in the evening rush hour (those of you who have been to Kolkata know what that means!) to reach the Oxford Bookstore, where I bought Salim Ali’s The Book of Indian Birds. Amie’s Little Bird was easy to find, on Plate 40. It is a Coppersmith or Crimson-Breasted Barbet (Megalaima haemacephala).

A while ago I was given a review copy of Home Ground, Language for an American Landscape. Barry Lopez, the editor, set 45 writers to writing over 850 new definitions for the terms Americans use to describe their land.

What a book! It has revived my love-affair - lately somewhat neglected -with America and American nature writers, from Rick Bass to NathanielHawthorne, from Mary Oliver to Walt Whitman, from Wendell Berry to Bill McKibben to, of course, Henry David Thoreau.

I wrote a review for Suite1o1.com that explains why I think the book is so succesful and necessary.

Amie and Baba at the Park 

Yesterday morning was blustery and a little cloudy, but sunny and quite balmy. The three of us went to the Larz Anderson Park, where Amie ran and ran, up and down the hill, in a field of leaves and dandelions, hemmed in by trees changed to all kinds of colors.

Was she tired afterwards! 

On our way home we drove past a huge yard sale for a neighborhood school’s extended day program. It was very child-oriented, with heaps of children’s clothes, piles of books, and boxes and boxes of toys. Amie was very happy to delay her nap for an hour.

We bought mainly books, and small plastic bags stuffed with Schleich animals, and two Groovy Girls dolls. Don’t ask me which ones: they’re hard to identify without their clothes on! When we pointed them out to her, Amie piped: “O!” Sold. We also bought a $100 bike trailer for $30! Now I have to get a bike too, and we’re off on adventure at no cost to the earth!

One of the books I found was Donald Hall’s Ox-Cart Man. I came home and read it cover to cover. The book’s subject matter fits exactly the other books we’ve been reading, about nature and the turning of the seasons, the joy and worth of manual labor, and family life. I’ve always been a fan of Hall’s brand of “American poetry”. And the illustrations by Barbara Cooney are gorgeous in the “American folk” approach…

To offset the “American” aspect, I also got Laurent de Brunhoff’s Babar Learns to Cook. I love how Babar, the King of the Elephants, does all these domestic things. And how the elephant kids are up to all kinds of mischief all the time. {UPDATE: We now actually read the Babar book and I have to put this straight: Babar doesn’t cook at all! His wife, Celeste does… Sigh.}

Last but not least, while I had eyes only for the books, DH scored this set of handpainted porcelains cups (4), saucers (8), coffeepot (1) and milk pitcher (1). We’re not thrifters - don’t have the time, the money, the room - but when it comes to delicate porcelain cups and saucers… and then it was a pity to break up the set, which only cost us $8!

Amie and Baba at Walden Pond (click on My Flickr to the right for more)

• The Pond

All three of us went to Walden Pond today (Amie no longer calls it “Walrus Pond”). It was 83 degrees F, that’s 28 degrees C! We had not expected it, so we were rather overdressed (long pants).

The pondwater was warm enough for Amie, who has been suffering from a cold, to go in whole. This time we did take care to take her shoes off first thing - but we were too late with the shirt. Her diaper swelled up like a balloon half her weight, but she was unperturbed. She floated and splashed and drank the pondwater (we asked her not to, but what can you do?).

We collected stones and leaves and dirt.

Walden Pond in summer can get very crowded, but as you can see from the photo, today was fine, surprisingly for such a hot Saturday on a long weekend. There were mostly families with children, many of them as unprepared for a swim as we were but goin’ in anyway. It felt rather neighborly.

• Then we met Henry

On our way back to the parking lot we visited the replica of Henry David Thoreau’s house. When we arrived the door was open but Amie wouldn’t go in. The bed, with its messed-up brown blanket, scared her a bit. She said:

“I want to see Henry!”

A young couple who were also looking in through the doorway laughed and the girl pointed at her boyfriend, saying:

“There’s Henry!”

The young man took up the role with ease and gave us a tour of his house: the three chairs, the fireplace, the table and the bed.

Amie stared.

And she stared. Was it because he didn’t at all look like the bear in D.B. Johnson’s books? Or did she stare so because she has a sense of Thoreau’s stature, or of the fact that he’s the past and, actually, quite dead…

Who knows what goes on in that little head of hers. More than we give her credit for, I’m sure!

Henry David Thoreau

(July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862)

We love Thoreau around here.  Ever since our visit to Walden Pond, Amie often asks to be read her books about “Henry David Thoro-ow”. We have several children’s books about Henry, but the core of our collection is the series written and illustrated by D.B. Johnson:

1. Henry Hikes to Fitchburg
2. Henry Climbs a Mountain
3. Henry Builds a Cabin
4. Henry Works

We love these so much, I wrote a raving review about them for Suite101.com. Go have a look-see!

We were all set for a relaxed weekend, when at 10 in the morning our place was suddenly bombarded by a deafening noise: our upstairs neighbor was having her floors sanded - without warning to us. Well… It was still going on when time Amie’s naptime came around, so we had to flee, and after trying to get her to nap in the stroller - that’s not going to happen anymore! - we got in the car and drove to Walden Pond.

We spent two wonderful hours there. Amie loved it, picking up stones and sand and throwing them into the water, and before I knew it, getting in up to her ankles, shoes and socks and sleeves and all! 

I stripped us of socks and shoes, rolled up the trouser legs, and we made sand clouds by wiggling our toes, stomping our feet. Threw rocks of course, and stuck twigs into the loose sand. Admired little stone houses built by previous visitors to the small beach. We admired the sunshine on the waves, got dizzy looking at them - Amie kept saying: “I’m going! I’m going now!” - and once or twice nearly fell in.  And made waves.

The weather was  glorious and the water warm from an entire summer. There were maybe thirty other visitors - a stark contrast to our last visit over a year ago, when we had to fight to find some towel space on the beach.

I picked up Amie and carried her on my hip almost halfway around the pond, telling her about Thoreau - we didn’t make it to the site of his cabin.  She may have understood something of it. It doesn’t matter. She came home and told her Baba: “I went to Walrus Pond!”

I felt pretty bad about the car drive. The question of whether a nap was worth it became useless as soon as it was clear that Amie wouldn’t even go to sleep in the car (she didn’t: she was a wild child by the time we got home!). Next time we’re taking more people along, and/or we’re getting there by alternative means.

I published an article called Coperthwaite on Educating Children on Suite101.com.

It’s a summary of William Coperthwaite’s views on the ills of traditional schooling and family life, and the roles of nature, community and physical labor in the education of children. Food for thought, definitely, for the home and unschoolers among you!

Enjoy.