December 10. People of the Day

Thanks

More on the holiday later. It was splendid.

Nightlife and Hayley Mills

Why, oh why? Why am I up? Portland city lights winking out my studio window. Fewer with each passing moment past Cinderella hour. Seriously. Why am I up.

Because this is when I can work. In the bluelight hours (more boringly called day), I teach. I fix our home. I play with my children and bride. And frequently try to work. But the siren call of too many other obligations, commitments, and Hayley Mills movies is strong. Too strong.

I can do some work in those bluelight hours. But other work, I need blocks of time; a linear chunk of time to get immersed and down to business. I call it "Cinderella work."

Note: I just invented both those terms as I was writing. Bluelight and Cinderella.

Hayley Mills. Love her and her chirpy, cheerful English cadence. We just watched the original Parent Trap with Magdelana. What a terrific, silly film. And all the scandalous subtext underneath the adult chitter-chatter...the subtle intonations and inferences in the dialogue of those '60s, times-a-changin' movies is so charming...what a sweet film. Despite the horrendous bluescreen footage in a couple scenes. Some things you shouldn't skimp on with the budget.

And Magdelana loved it. Is it too late to get her a British accent? Is too late for me to get one? Family discount?

Can't wait to watch Amélie with her someday.

photograph: November 07

He lights up when she bounds into sight. Eyes start fluttering, Jupiter-size grin breaks out. Arms pumping and legs a-skatter as she plops all around and over him. Hi Johanni! Hi! Hi! Did you miss me? Yes, I'm sorry I wasn't here, don't be mad. Okay Johanni? Okay? Don't watch the television - here, I'll cover your eyes. No! No, you're not supposed to be watching television, silly Johanni!


And he glug-smiles and drools litres and leaks spitup as he and Big Sister snuggle. Like their Mum and Dodes. We are snuggly family extraordinaire.

Gute nacht.

Untitled, for now

Truth

How are we supposed to know what's true?


Don't come up with a view, find everybody who agrees with it, and then say, "Look at this, I must be right." Start off by saying, "Who do I trust?" On global warming, for example, I happen to trust climate experts, world academies of science, Nobel laureates, and certain science journalists. You have to decide who you trust before you decide what to believe.


excerpted from Wired magazine, September 2010.
Interview with Simon Singh, pp. 112-115. The Truth Is Out There by Robert Capps.

Norman

Handmade Lunch (the Best Ever)

Magdelana was born in July 2007. For the first year of her existence, you could almost measure the amount of time she spent separated from me or Becca in minutes. When Becca returned to work after maternity leave, it made sense for Magdelana to hang out with me. I work from a home studio, which is a slightly-more friendly place for an infant to hang out than in a dental office.

The number of hours Magdelana spent in my lap in front of the computer are incalculable. The hours we spent listening to music, making art, taking expeditions to the city, trying to learn Norwegian and French...they are innumerable. 


I told Becca, I know you miss your daughter terribly every time you have to leave her. But you have my promise, my vow that she will always know that. 

So she was glued to my side. Work, play, baking, cleaning, laundry, client meetings, inside, outside, upstairs, downstairs...the bonding time we had those first three years was wonderful. Challenging and coffee-filled.

Now, our work schedule is a little different and I have to be away 2-3 days a week. Two children. A little more difficult to take two into some situations. I have spent more time away from Johannes after three months than I did away from Magdelana in her first three years.

I recall three distinct periods of Magdelana's life where I have become of...secondary interest to her. Secondary to what? Secondary to whatever, or more specifically, to whomever happens to be around. There was a little chunk of time in Year 1 and Year 3. And now.

I am not a fan of guilt trips. I have no guilt trip to give her. Her personality and her intentions are honest. I do not want otherwise. It is a phase, and it will pass, without commentary by me to her. We still have many great times, but at this specific juncture, I happen to be a person of less interest to her. Everything is "Mama, mama, mama!" She loves her Mom. Becca. And I love that. A little sting? Yep. But I have no doubt of her love and loyalty to me. I will take all the good times I can get.

And today was one of those extra-good times. After accepting the fact that Becca was at work for the day, and therefore unavailable, she moved on to her distant second choice. Me. Or rather, third choice, after Johannes. We did some drawing in Photoshop - she is learning how to use a Wacom tablet and spell letters on the keyboard - and made some little doll furniture out of old magazine covers. A blast, soundtracked by Vampire Weekend and Peter Gabriel. 

designed by Magdelana Deluca 2010.

But the best. The very best. Was around noon. With squirming Johannes under one arm and Magdelana telling me how hungry she was, my cell rang. A work-related call I had to take. Mags, I'll make lunch as soon as I'm off the phone, I distractedly told her. As I picked up the call, she confidently told me that she would make lunch.

Ten minutes later, off the phone, still bouncing Johannes over my arm, she walks out of the kitchen. Stepstool pushed up to the counter, splashes and crumbs and smears all over, she had prepared lunch for us:


Two peanut butter sandwiches, with a quarter inch of Adams crunchy lovingly smoothed across slices of Dave's Killer bread. Each tucked inside a brown paper lunch bag, sans plastic baggies.
We are going to go have a picnic lunch on the front porch now, she announced, not doing an effective job of concealing satisfaction at a job well done. Outside we marched.


It was the best peanut butter sandwich I have ever had.

Extra Assistant

It is late. But fortunately I have help.

It is now Magdelana's birthday. Her birth certificate says she will be tres, though she insists she is turning four.

All she wants for her birthday is an Octopus.

Octopus is not the vernacular for some hip new stuffed toy, or little road racer. She wants, quite literally, an Octopus. As in the eight-armed cephalopod that lives in the deep sea.

We have also been trying to ascertain what sort of special dessert she might enjoy.

Shall we bake a cake for your birthday?

- No! I just want to eat an octopus for my birthday.

Later, she requested chips and hummus, and asked that we not celebrate with strangers. She has developed some interesting and strong opinions about birthdays. I am intrigued just how those strong notions have developed in her mind.

above: one year ago (July 2009)

photograph: Josef Long

Not even three years old, and she is one of the great conversationalists in the galaxy.

I'm all done eating, Dodes. she informed me at supper.

Uhh, no, I want you to eat three more bites of tomatoes, Mags.
- Why? Why Dodes?

Because tomatoes have antioxidants, and they help make you healthy and strong.

- Oh yeah. But some things don't make you healthy and strong. Like cigarettes and littering.

Absolutely correct.

Gotta go. See what mollusks I can find on Portland Craigslist...

roadside pit stop in East Portland.

Admiral James, Active Legend

It is Jamey's birthday, and we are together. Minus Leanna, Joshua, and Sasha.

The sun is blazing warm, and I am grateful for Admiral James. He is funny, and kind, and he makes the world both smaller and more elephantine.

When Johannes learns to talk, he will likely express something similar.

Our family has always made a big deal out of birthdays. I think it is magnifying such rituals that helps connect families over decades.

Popping Stars

Magdelana has been loving the popping stars this time of year. Some call them fireworks, but I like her name for them.

Popping stars.

I am so curious about early childhood memory development, and particularly the role that the proliferation of digital media may play in that development. I, like many parents, have a not-insignificant library of photographs and videos taken over the course of our child's life.

(Unlike many parents, I am extraordinarily - or obsessively - organized about how I label and archive that media. But that's for another day...).

Magdelana is frequently my collaborator in organizing photographs.

Her specificity of recall is...amazing. Example: recently she was referring to very particular details of last Fourth of July. Where we were at (Rockaway Beach). What we were eating (watermelon). What was going on (the stars were popping). These were not topics of conversation in the weeks preceding - it arose, with no apparent context, from the labyrinths of her memory. She would have been a few days shy of two years old when that happened.

Obviously, I am proud of her intelligence and memory. But this is not just parental chest thumping*. My question is legitimate and sincere: how has the proliferation of digital and social media, in which we have rapid access to reviewing recent events in our personal histories, affected the development of individual memories?

Especially those little ones who are growing up with it as the new normal?

*I said "not just"

Name

Johannes Xavier Ivan Long.
more on naming later.