Way back, when Vivian was two instead of four, and when Nora had yet to be born, this used to be my blog.
Things have changed now. I publish under a new name, and I am expecting a new book: a young adult fantasy adventure named Plain Kate.
This has called for a new web site, and this means that I publish under a different journal. These posts remain as an archive of my writing up to 2007. To see what I’m working on right now, please see my current posts here.
Thanks!
November rain --
a field of pumpkins
softens
Yesterday Vivian wore her tights with the turquoise, pink, and yellow stripes, turquoise shirt with stars on it, and a ruffly denim skirt. She looked like a Who down in Whoville, especially with the pigtails on top of her head. In the evening she decided to ditch her skirt and add a pink tutu and pink sparkly shoes to the above ensemble. We put her video of the Nutcracker and she danced and danced.
This morning she picked out a green velvet dress, which fit last March and now comes about mid-way down her diaper, and clad her endlessly long toddler legs in white tights with pink teddy bears on them.
I am bewildered about ending up with such a girly girl — but I am happy to have her.
Yesterday we took Vivian to Sheridan Nursery so that her hopelessly unorganized mother could pick up tulip bulbs. (Hey, the ground’s not frozen solid yet! It’s not too late!) It was amazing there: they were having a Christmas party with a bluegrass band, lots of trees and lights, and free cider. Vivi just walked around with her eyes really big, holding on to her yellow ball as if it were a backstage pass.
Then she discovered the indoor Koi pond. Well, forget Christmas trees — fish!
“Ball!” proclaimed Vivian, handing it off like a surgeon. “Jacket!” she demanded, thrusting her chest out for help with the tricky last inch of the zipper. She shrugged off her coat and she gave us this look like: “And someone brought my wetsuit, right?”
from a stand of drowned willow
a heron lifts
We spent Friday — Vivian’s second birthday — on the town in Toronto. The highlight of this bright, bustling, beautiful city? Pidgeons.
Early in the morning we stopped at a coffee shop at Queen’s Quay for treats and caffienne, and Vivian made a real mess of her muffin. So we gathered up the crumbs and took them down to the Music Garden — possibly my favourite place in Toronto.
Drop one crumb, and a pidgeon comes. Drop two, and the pidgeon Bat Signal is activated, and they come swooping in from all directions. Vivian gathered a flock of a dozen or so with a tiny handful of muffin crumbs. She was entranced, laughing, drunk on her new power.
But things get better: if you run at the pigeons while laughing madly, flapping your toddler arms, and shouting “fly, fly,” they take off in grey whirls of wings. But they don’t go very far. You can chase them!
Clearly, turning two gives you power over the entire animal kingdom.
Halloween was a huge hit at our house. Vivian was a monarch butterfly, in her black velvet sweat suit with wings and pipe-cleaner antennae.
According to James, she was initially iffy about wearing the wings, but by the time she got to my office for a surprise trick-or-treat at 4:00, she had settled into them. It helps when people beam at you and give you cookies.
When the first little trick-or-treaters came to the door, Vivian was intrigued, and tried to help herself to one of the chocolate eyeballs we were passing out. But when James explained that they were for the kids who came to the door, but she could go to other doors and get different candy, she gave us this look which read: “Well, why didn’t anyone tell me? Let’s move, people!” She was prancing with anticipation. So we took her out.
The first couple of doors turned up no one home, and Vivi began to suspect a hoax. But then we started to find neighbours who were open or business, and Vivian was so excited. She couldn’t quite manage a “trick or treat” but she did get off a shy “tank oo,” and an enthusiastic “bye!” before turning and shrieking with delight and surprise. And running to the next home.
We came in early, but Vivian stayed at the door and helped shell out until a late supper got on the table. Even then, she insisted on sitting on Grandma’s lap, and the two of them had to run downstairs each time the doorbell rang. Gales of laughter, every time.
She even learned to hold the chocolate eyeballs up to her eyes and stick her tongue out.
Unbelievably, our baby Vivian will be TWO on Friday. I’m the mother of a two-year-old, people! She talks and runs and sings and reasons and pretends. She says “all done” in the middle of her diaper change in the belief that words make it so. Last weekend she held her first turtle, right up to her nose.
I have no idea where two years went. It doesn’t seem possible that Vivi is two. But on the other hand, I was watching home movies of her at 3 months yesterday, and they seem impossibly long ago.
It’s amazing to watch her grow and figure things out. Yesterday we popped out to a diner for lunch. Her kids’ menu had a girl on the cover who was hanging by her knees, pigtails pointed straight down. Vivian turned the menu over so that the girl was right-side up. Then she opened it and found the kids inside were upside-down. She flipped it closed again and checked. Traced the hanging pigtails with one finger. Turned the menu over again.
A appealing title for a novel I will probably never write.
A small oddity of history: on October 24, 1593, a young soldier in uniform of the Philippine regiment was found wandering dazed in the Plaza Mayor in Mexico City. On being told where he was, he insisted that he had just been on sentry duty in the governor’s palace in Manila — and offered the news that the governor, Gómez Pérez Dasmariñas, had just been murdered. He was confused about the date; he said it was the 25th.
Gil was arrested for desertion and on suspicion of witchcraft, but cleared a few months later when a ship arrived from the Philippines, and one of the passengers testified that he knew Gil and had seen him on duty in Manila on the night of the October 25th.
The earliest records of this are from the 1600’s, and no primary evidence — prison or trial documents — exist.
It just smells like a ripping good story to me — with a little elaboration, of course. Starting with changing Gil’s name to Gilbert because that’s a better title. But then I remembered that I am never going to write a historical novel again. Even if it does have a great title.
So what am I up to? Deep thinking and preliminary noodling on Plain Kate, in response to my agent’s astute comments. Children of Peace is appealing to me — a sequence set in a suburb that’s been abandoned for 400 years particularly so. Bathtub tiles and fire hydrants, drifts of aluminum siding, white-rusted with rain. Haven’t touched Otter since I accidentally created fruit. Poetry has deserted me. I write about Vivian and sleep a lot.
Vivian really is getting big. Sunday night in the tub, she took a wash cloth and delicately wiped bubbles off her toy frog’s head, giving a little patter about “rinse” and “hair.” It’s the first time I’ve seen her pretend, I think.
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