Friday, April 18, 2008

Today it was possible to revise...

...two paragraphs about a childhood piano teacher—(from an exercise called “Spots of Light” I found in Your Life As Story: Discovering the “New Autobiography” and Writing Memoir as Literature by Tristine Rainer, which asks you to balance the writing of dark subjects with forays into bright moments from the same time frame: “from an artistic as well as a mental health point of view, you need light with dark memories. In autobiographic writing as in painting, you need to protect your light colors...”) laptop in the kitchen, the youngest nursing, the five-year-old squeezing a steady torrent of red and blue food coloring into his pancake mix, a good morning despite the shrieking that ensues when, flipping with one hand and balancing the nurser with the other, I accidentally break the handle on the purple purse pancake. It does no good to explain that the purse handle will taste the same whether or not it is attached.

Still, I’m happy here with my sons, the five-year-old asking how to spell “poison oak”, the nurser asleep enough to maneuver down into the bed for an hour nap. The laptop hibernates while I bake with the five-year-old; he’s singing the same three-note song over and over, then plinking it out mercilessly on the piano with his flour-coated fingers. But it buys me a few moments at my own keyboard to right a word or two.

Later when I sit down to play, D will stick to E, the lentil he used to mark Middle C now wedged between. But I know better than to think I can make it through more than a couple measures of Beethoven; besides, it is Wednesday: writer’s group; at 6: 17 p.m. I’ll be escaping with my miss-matched socks, dried pancake batter in the bangs, and a folder with the week’s worth of sentences, heading towards another human being who cares to discuss verb nuances over mugs of Earl and, if we’re lucky, something warm from the oven the husband has prepared: chocolate-chip cookies or a loaf of sourdough oozing with brie.

2 comments:

  1. Hey Tania

    How are yoy and your familie?
    Good I hope.
    Mom and dad got your letter a chrismas and the invitations to come and visit you all. All 3 kids looks very nice and grateful like the mother:-) They cant travel very fare because dad is very sick - he has been sick sins 1999.
    I hope you read this mail...I/We dont have your email. If you have a more privet mail, I would like to have it.
    I have tryed til google you and this is why I sent this mail.

    Mom is sad, because she has'nt sent you a letter, but dad is very sick and to day, frieday, I got to jutland to visit him on the hosital. He just got a new knee. We have vaited for 9 years and yesterday he got it. Dad got prostacanser in 99 and it spread to his boons. Therefor we did'nt thought it was posible. But now they say he will be able to walk again. So that is very good. I know they wants me to give you a big hug if this emailadd. is right.

    Big hug to all your kids and say hello to Mark from me.

    Ulla

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  2. Tania, I forgot to tell you, that you can google me...then you will find my email.
    You konw my last name:-)

    ReplyDelete