A Mother's (quick/limted/ain't gonna happen all the live-long day) Indulgence

Dear Reader -  Please let me start by admitting that posts like the one to follow could quickly devolve into one of those oh-dear-heavens-Jenny's-gonna-start-doing-mind-numbing-stuff-like-showing-us-endless-pictures-of-her-kid-or-her-last-trip-to-Poughkeepsie kind of scenarios:

But I promise you that I ain't gonna let it get to that.

You see, Miss C likes to write. She started songwriting in second grade, then she moved on to chapter books a year or so later, and she's currently dedicated to her latest novel. She also discovered that she's kinda fond of poetry over the last two or three years. (Confession: One of my prime motivations for opening biblion is to add to Miss C's literary world - giving her more opportunities to steep her reader/writer self, giving her more platforms and tools for exploring what this part of her is all about.)

I became a major fan of her imagery when she put up a series of "love is like" statements on the fridge with our magnetic poetry in fifth grade. My favorite was "Love is like . . . a moment seeing only beauty."

In addition to her school work, Miss C does a correspondence course for her writing. She digs it, and she wrote some cool stuff for her assignments last semester - I was, once again, a fan. I mean, who could help but find the relations and politics of kindergartners compelling with a passage like this from her story A Cookie?

"The other kids turned to me, sulking next to the Pepto-Bismol pink plastic table, my brown eyes dark with sadness; their faces wore expressions of disgust. You see, we kindergartners had an honor code, sort of, so whenever one of the kindergartners hurt someone else, everyone shunned them, which was exactly what happened to me right then. Everyone turned away and went back to what they were doing before Jena and I had caused the distraction, which was mostly eating up their own plates of cookies. Some looked back and stuck out their tongues, most just walked away with their noses in the air, like the pompous brats they were. I sat down in a plastic chair and put my head in my hands."

And one of my favorites was how she kicked off her poem, The First Snow of Winter. I, in my I-know-I-don't-got-no-objectivity kind of way, loved these images, too; and - particularly as I'm hoping that our most recent snow was our last - I thought you might enjoy reading it here as we step toward Spring together:

The First Snow of Winter
A silvery-white disk,

Cold as the lips of the dead,

Drifts down,

From the graying sky,

To land,

On the outstretched branch,

Of a birch’s skeleton,

Then,

A frozen rain,

Plagues,

The dead land,

The never ending white,

That covers the landscape,

Like a newly cleaned sheet,

Full of the sorrows and woes,

Of Mother Nature herself,

It causes,

All of the tired,

And helpless beings,

Of the world,

To crawl back,

To their lairs,

To the flickering light,

Of a dying fire,

The starched sheets,

Of a four poster bed,

Then come the marks,

The small holes,

That are born into the world,
Destroying the soft perfection,

Of the white landscape,

The next step,

Of its destruction shall be,

The brown slush,

And slick ice,

The woes,

Of many a weary traveler,

Then our nurturing Mother Nature,

Shall restart the cycle,

But never shall it be,

Remotely close,

To the caliber,

Of the first snow,

Of winter.

Copyright 2011, Miss C

Oh! And speaking of 2011 copyrights, our pre-ordered Collapse into Now was waiting inside our mail slot yesterday. This is significant relative to Miss C, 'cause she discovered when I got her some REM two Christmases ago that she kinda loves them - a lot - particularly Bill Berry (sorry, folks, we still miss Bill Berry here at Casa J&C). Anyhow, I'm digging the new tunage so far. I love that we've taken a turn back to rock, and I particularly love that we're back to largely unintelligible lyrics (or intelligible ones that leave us looking quizzical and scratchin' our heads). Enjoy (note: the graphic says it's "Oh My Heart," but it's a live version of "That Someone is You" - happy!)!  - Jenny

P.S. Thanks for your indulgence of mine, dear Reader.  - J

P.S.S. Darn Youtube: Somehow or another the video of "Oh My Heart" that I'd linked here got switched out to a really cruddy recording of an earlier REM fave. We've rectified the situation with another lovely live recording with a little "interview" with Michael at the beginning. Sweet.