Category Archives: Pure bliss

It’s official…

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The single reason my son is a terror and I am a writhing mess:  lack of sleep.

I suspected it, but thought there might be greys and nuances and spectra. Nope. He slept through the night last night, and I got a full eight hours uninterrupted by cat or child or snores (you know who you are) or trains. And I was a peach today. So was my kid. We had a grand old time. He told me this was his best day ever. He’s three. He should know.

Don’t know how to decree an official mandate on sleep, but I right now hold aloft my sword and declare this family will commence giving me nights like that every night for-freaking-ever more.

Else rue the day.

As they have been for years.

“The Unfinished”

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It has taken several days for me to finish D.T. Max’s New Yorker article, biography of sorts, of David Foster Wallace’s unfinished novel The Pale King. The article is moving, and includes correspondence from Wallace to Franzen and DeLillo, and quite a bit from his wife, Karen Green, whose pain I cannot even fathom and would love more than anything to salve with…what I don’t know. Because it’s none of my business, but if I cry reading a biography what must she do living in it?

Aside from being a touching portrait of an intensely intelligent writer who wanted simply to make readers feel “less alone inside,” and who in that quest felt increasingly more alone (except in the sunshine that was his marriage…thank heaven for Karen Green, who from the article I gather made him feel more at home and comfortable in his own skin than, it seems, anything else could outside really great writing).

What compelled me yesterday, reading the final pages of Max’s article (I still haven’t read the new piece of fiction that follows—I can’t yet) was Wallace’s root idea for The Pale King, as he articulated it in a typed note amongst his papers: “Bliss—a second-by-second joy and gratitude at the gift of being alive, conscious—likes on the other side of crushing, crushing boredom. Pay close attention to the most tedious things you can find…and, in waves, a boredom like you’ve never known will wash over you and just about kill you. Ride these out, and it’s like stepping from black and white into color. Like water after days in the desert. Instant bliss in every atom.”

I think that technicolor bliss can probably come after any intense “almost kills you” period of intense focus on undesirable emotions (fear might work as well as boredom).  As melodramatic as I oft am, I know that the weeks of intense three-year-old battling, of taking each breath as though it might be the only thing that could keep me going, is part of what made yesterday, a gorgeous, sun-filled day of hiking and strawberries and camaraderie with Peanut, the second-by-second bliss it was.

It was not a perfect day. It was a perfect-as-human-existence-can-get-if-you-have-a-dollop-of-realism-adorning-the-top-of-your-daily-trifle day.  And I’ll take it.

New games

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What follows are the announcements preceding this week’s new games. Explanations follow, so you can benefit from our experience the past week. Took a while to understand, and now we know all rules.

Peanut: We has we’s name on we’s back!!

(translation: “let’s play catch with a soccer ball pillow.” Not sure where he came up with the name on jersey back thing, since we don’t watch or play organized sports. But apparently he’s seen enough in passing to know that we has we’s name on we’s back when we play.

Peanut: School time!

(translation: “Get in the big cardboard box ‘cuz we’re gonna draw until I say we’re done.”)

Peanut: Knock knock ya need some?

(translation: “let’s play Halloween, but I’ll come, dressed in costume, bearing treats. I’ll give you as many as I see fit, run in circles in the living room, then come back for the booty in a minute.” Often includes the following exchange…
P: Knock knock
Me: Who is it?
P: Who is it?
Me: You say trick or treat.
P: Trick or treat. What are you?
Me: What are you?
P: [chooses a random noun; sometimes Fill-in-the-Adjective Boy]
Me: Oh! You’re a beautiful [noun or Fill-in-the-Adjective Boy]
P: Thank you. You want some? [hands me broken crayons from a bucket]
Me: Thank you.
P: That ’nuff?
Me: mmmm. Little more, please.
P: Here ya go. And extra.
Me: Thank you. Happy Halloween.
P: Happy Halloween! [runs circles in the living room and comes back] Ya need to put some ‘way?
Me: Yes, thank you.
P: Okay bye bye. Peanut goin’ on trip.
Me: Bye. Have a good trip.
P: Bye bye mommy I loves you.)

The Grapes of Recession

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So Peanut and I were curled up in a large, comfy, red armchair before a warm, crackling fireplace of a hotel lobby yesterday. (I get more romantic moments with my kid than with my Spouse. Kind of funny, kind of creepy, kind of depressing.) Peanut was devouring grapes, and I was flipping through the Wall Street Journal. He still isn’t down with me reading adult material, but the fruit distraction helped.

He told me to stop reading. I asked which part he wanted me to read him. (I understand the “pay attention to me.” I won’t heed the “do what I tell you.” It’s a little game we play, where we both want control. And neither of us thinks it’s a game.)

He pointed to a graph of the Dow’s…um…progress over the past two months. “What dat?”

That, I told him is a chart that shows what people’s money is doing. Right now, I said, people are selling their money because they don’t want it. They don’t like to see money go down, down, down like this, and they are scared, so they’re selling their money.

“People scared…[he tried to find the words]…people scared ’bout money…[he tried to sign, but just kept repeating the sign for Roubik’s cube over and over]…people tell Peanut ’bout sad, scared, Peanut give them one grape, they no be sad, scared.”

I wanted to clarify. “So the people who are scared about money, sad about money can tell you that they’re scared and sad, and you’ll give them a grape?”

“Huh. And they be no more scared.”

“Honey, I think that is a great plan. That’s the best plan for being scared about money that I’ve ever heard. What a wonderful idea. We should tell this man about it [showed him Paulson’s picture].”

“hmmmm. No. No tell that man. Only tell people sad scared.” He popped another grape into his mouth and asked about an ad on the next page. I told him it was an ad, and he yelled NO at it, then turned the page with me.

So you heard it here first. We’re only telling you—the people who are scared and sad about the money graph—that you can tell your problems to our very thoughtful toddler, and he’ll give you one grape.

Only I don’t think he understands how many grapes that would be. The graph was small, and he must think that the scale is a bit more grape-able than it might really be. Then again, a sweet faced boy who really wants to fix your sadness with fruit…maybe that is the answer.

Psssst. Mr. Paulson. Mr. Darling. Mr. Lagarde. Mr. Manuel. And all other finance minister types. Don’t tell him I told you, but this guy has an idea to fix your…how do we put it…catastrophic international economic failure issues. Get this–a plan to stabalize markets and boost local, organic farm production. Win-win, no? Call us and we’ll give you details. Just be sure to spell the name correctly on the Nobel Prize.

Can’t we just live at The CheeseBoard?

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The center of my sense of home and community is The CheeseBoard Collective on Shattuck. Living near there formed some of the most important pieces of who I am, and visiting now brings back a flood of revelations, realizations, and nine-plus-senses pleasures that make me happy to my core.

So I took Peanut there.

He’s been before, but this time we went to the store/bakery and to the pizza joint. The latter is not at all the CheeseBoard where I lunched countless afternoons in the ’90s and ’00s. It’s bigger, since they took over the shop next door and expanded with more tables (shock), a bathroom (gasp), and a full area for the musicians.

The pizza of the day was roasted cauliflower, caramelized onion, mozzarella, cheddar, chive, and garlic olive oil on the trademark sourdough crust. It was gorgeous and drippy and wonderfully flavorful. But I’ve rarely had a bad slice there.

The band was the California Honeydrops. They sunk their teeth into a soulful performance and totally captivated my son.

So we ate, me a slice of heaven and him a cheese roll from the Collective. We listened to the blues. We watched the locals and newbies, alike. We basked in the glow of the new paint, the cheerful tile, and the clean bathrooms.

And he said to me, of my favorite place in the world, (except my aunt and uncle’s house at Thanksgiving), “this place make Peanut happy!”

I cried. “Me, too, bug. This place make mommy happy, too.”

I love you, CheeseBoard family.