Prayer

Lizzie has decided to undergo a double mastectomy, doing everything possible to minimize the risk of recurrence down the line, and gunning for a long life; she will go in on Monday for surgery. At her husband Scott's suggestion, she has started a separate blog to track her battle with cancer. If you would like, you can follow her story at Liz's Cancer Blog, a.k.a "Suck it Cancer" - the title of which should give you a sense of the amazing attitude she is carrying into this fight: resilient, strong, funny as hell.

This morning Clio and I went to family yoga, and the class ended with a song. The instructor asked us to sing it once for ourselves and our families, and, the second time, to send it out to someone else.

Sitting there, surrounded by families and bright morning light, I found myself rocking from side to side with tears streaming from my closed eyes; I could no longer sing, so I sent these words out to Liz in my heart:

May the long time sun shine upon you
All love surround you
And the pure light within you
Guide your way on.

It is the closest I have come to praying in a very long time.

Ready for her (cat's) close-up

Frequent readers of this blog know that Clio's desire to be photographed has been weak, at best, over the past year or two. Every once in a while (usually when someone outside the family is holding the camera), she'll really ham it up. But in all other instances, we have resorted to many different techniques to capture her on film. The one met with the most success (but least integrity) is the decoy move, wherein we swear to Clio that we are not taking a picture of her, but one of her sister (mother, father, friend). Of course, as it turns out, we will happen to catch her in the frame, too. I don't love the dishonesty of this approach, though it's coming from a good place: the desire to document our kids lives for far-off family and for their future.

The other day, while actually taking a picture of Eleri, Clio wandered into the frame, and though she hid behind a cat, I could tell from the way one eye peeked out that she was game for a photo shoot.


I love how the resulting pictures really are of Clio being Clio, even if we can hardly see her face.

Multitasking Mama

Eleri has stayed home sick most of the week. She actually doesn't seem particularly sick, except for the faucet nose and the deep, hacking cough that makes her sound like she's 60, a lifelong smoker, and/or is going to literally cough up a lung. So we've been taking turns staying home with her, and between the two days this week and my own recent stomach flu, I'm feeling a little guilty about all the time I'm missing from work.

Today, however, I was scheduled for a webinar on the scintillating topic of Building a Development Committee, and guess what? Turns out a 2-hour phone call where you are only responsible for listening is the perfect work to do while entertaining your sick(ish) toddler.

First, Eleri got to work, too.


Then, pushing the multi-tasking envelope, I did a little housework, sweeping the kitchen while Eleri swept, too; ultimately, though, she decided the child-size broom made a better horsey.


We played peekaboo in the curtains

And "fort" under the table

And Eleri participated in some crawling sprints. She made very good time.



At one point I managed to blow bubbles with one hand, take photos with the other, all while keeping the phone tucked up to my ear (and understanding, for the first time, the wisdom of earpieces). These photos, however, did not turn out at all. I guess I'm learning my limits.

Finally, we had lunch during the Q+A section of my call. Eleri started mimicking the head tilt that I had kept up for the previous two hours, as if she, too, were holding up a phone.


Weirdly, while I felt a little guilt that part of my brain was occupied on work while we played, this quickly passed when I realized I had engaged with her more during the call than I might have without it- trying to keep her away from the computer wires while I check email must be much less satisfying to her than all the games we played this morning.

You know what else? My webinar was actually pretty inspiring, and it has set in motion a plan to resolve some issues I've been having at the office.

And now, I will pat myself on the back.

The Artist at Work

Clio brought home a backpack full of artwork today. This was a near-daily occurrence at her day care in Brooklyn; here, they save it up and, I think, edit it to the best or most representative pieces and send it home once every month or two.

Clio has always had artistic inclinations (upon seeing the recent still life of the rubber ducks in the tub, her great grandmother declared: "She'll be an artist"), but it's fun to see how her style and ability evolve.

I like her sense of the graphic, of pattern, and of negative space evident in these collages:


Her use of color in the tight abstracts that she's been doing lately, like this one:


And I especially like her attention to faces and figures.


She has been making figurative work for a while now, but I was still really struck by this piece, which looks to me a bit like a lion or scarecrow cross-country skiing.


When I showed it to Dave, he said something like, oh that's great- she made the Francis Bacon version of that in watercolors.


Indeed.

A few weeks ago, after I edited some of the collection (read: threw out the lesser examples. Yes, I THREW OUT some of my artistic child's artwork), I compensated by creating a special place for Clio to display her work. Oh, wait: that's revisionist history. Here's what really happened: Clio got her hands on the tape, and started taping up pictures on every available surface- each cabinet, the walls lining the hallway, her closet doors. Her dad was complicit in this, taping piece to the upper cabinets as well (unless Clio has figured out how to set up and climb a ladder), and my sense of order felt a little...assaulted. So we consolidated the remaining work (because the part about throwing some of it out is altogether true) and allowed Clio to choose some favorites for this rotating "gallery," the back of the half-wall that separates the kitchen from the hallway across from Clio and Eleri's room.



It always seemed like a natural place for artwork- it's essentially useless for anything else- but for some reason, I kept thinking I needed to install cork tiles and pin things up. Over Christmas, I saw a tape gallery in Carrie's upstairs hallway; I think that may have been the inspiration. However it came about, it's lovely to have a spot to display Clio's work, and I look forward to rearranging it with her, to give some of these new selections pride of place.

A Curious Garden*

The other day, after Clio had been off on her own in the house for a while, I encountered this scene in the office.


Clio was lightly stepping from book to book. Before I (reflexively) got mad at her for potentially harming her books, and making a mess to boot, I asked her what she was up to.

These are lily pads, she told me. I'm hopping across the pond.

Delightful.

I love how creative Clio is, how well she invents worlds for herself while the rest of us are too busy living in this one.

While she wouldn't allow me to photograph her walking her lily-pad path, she did, without argument, help put all the books away.

*The title for this post comes from the same picture book where, I believe, Clio got this idea. We had taken it out of the library in Brooklyn, and one of my aunts gave it to Clio for Christmas. I highly recommend it.

Valentines

I love making valentines. Somewhere along the way, I figured out my favorite method for producing these little cards, which mostly consists of a layered collage of heart cut-outs. I vary the materials- one year I got particularly creative with some leftover origami paper with intense, graphic patterns; sometimes ribbons and feathers make it into the mix- but the general make up is the same. This year, Clio will be exchanging valentines for the first time at school, and so, after a brief internal debate over the Disney Princess card kits (because we all know how Clio feels about Disney Princesses), I decided to introduce her to my method.



We decided on the basic scheme together: a red background with "ruffled" edges at the top and the bottom, layered with a pink construction paper element (hearts, ruffled-hearts, or a rectangle with heart cutouts), then "decorated" with slips of ribbon and glitter and/or metallic heart stickers. I had never actually employed stickers in this process before, but Clio likes them and this was really her project.... right?


So far, we have made about 22 of these, over the course of the two nights. (We need 30 for school, plus a few extras for non-school friends). As we go, Clio grows more confident in her decorating, and I have loosened up- a little. I will admit, at first I was one of those moms who thought her child was doing it "wrong" and tried to keep her "on track." But more and more, I remembered that Clio has a very artistic eye, and that she would likely come up with some ways of decorating that would never have occurred to me (I tend to be a little rigid. You're surprised, I know.) Indeed, I was right. I like how there was generally a method to her madness, like filling in a heart cutout with stickers, or lining tiny little stickers up all along the edges of a heart. the only control I continued to exert was not letting her use the grown up scissors to cut the ribbon (just a physical challenge and possibly dangerous).

I also remembered a scene from the movie Six Degrees of Separation, where the Donald Sutherland character, an art dealer, is telling a story about the artwork he encountered at a local school; in all of the classrooms, the work was a mess, colors muddy, paper laden, except in second grade. In second grade, "picassos, every one". He wonders aloud whether this is developmental, if there is something peculiar that happens to a child at this age. No, the teacher tells him; I just know when to take their drawings away from them. A revelation. Mostly, Clio knew when her cards were finished, but on occasion I did have to save her from herself.

My last stress about this? I wonder if she will be the only one to bring homemade cards to school and if, upon realizing that Disney Princess valentines (and Dora and Spongebob, etc.) exist, if she will regret the ones we made. But I don't think so. I believe the spirit of valentines is to make or choose them with care to express love, friendship, or admiration, and I truly hope that, during her valentine's celebration, Clio will feel nothing but pride and delight at the little piece of herself that she will give to each of her friends.

Embrace!

Several years ago, The Denver Art Museum worked with starchitect Daniel Liebeskind, he of the Holocaust memorial and the ill-fated Liberty Tower at Ground Zero, to create a massive addition to the building, doubling the museum's size and drawing criticism for Liebeskin's trademark jagged edges and tilted walls- full of affect, but not so great, practically speaking, for hanging art. The new curator of Contemporary and Modern art, a German import who I met in September when interviewing for a position with the DAM Contemporaries, a membership group at the museum, devised an exhibit to embrace the museum's quirky space: 17 artists were invited from around the world to create site-specific installations that take advantage of the galleries strange angles and lofty walls. Yesterday, I dragged everyone along for the Free First Saturday (including one of Dave's fellow students, Ciny, her 4-year old son, Xander, and her mom, who is visiting from Arkansas), to check out whether or not the exhibit- named, quite literally, Embrace!- met its goals.

I'm not sure I can effectively answer that question: I spent most of the time serving up snacks and scrambling after Eleri, trying to keep her mitts off the artwork. But I will say this: The Denver Art Museum is perhaps the best I have seen when it comes to family friendly programs. You may not ultimately see much art if you focus on all the kid stuff, but the kids will feel as if they have spent the day in a very cool playground.

Case in point: On the ground floor of the new building there was this room full of words.


Not only were there styrofoam words hanging from the ceiling and colored acrylic words cascading infront of the windows, but there was a pile of beanbag words for kids to jump into- several older children were smashing each other with "sandwiches" and "leisure."


The walls were also papered with words written by guests to the museum. Clio chose "rabbit" for her word likely after the stuffed toy she found in the car and snuggled with on the drive from Boulder.


I have been noticing since Thursday that the word "Cancer" is also all around you if you are sensitive to it, like the bumper sticker on the car next to ours in the parking garage that read "Stupid Cancer," and sure enough: there it was.



After spending much of the morning swimming in language, we did manage to at least make our way through the exhibit, with Clio "explaining" the work to Xander as we went.




She's quite an expert. When we got to this installation on the second floor, she declared that it was "not art" and suggested that we move on.


We didn't argue.