Sleep, Mommy, Sleep

Type "sleep" into the Amazon search engine and you'll get 109,860 results.  The first few titles are Deep Sleep Every Night, The Harvard Medical School Guide to a Good Night's Sleep, Quiet Your Mind and Get to Sleep, The Promise of Sleep, I Can Make You Sleep.  Then there's all the books on getting your kids or babies to sleep.  Sleeping is, apparently, of big concern to the world.

I was trying to remember when was the last time I slept for longer than two or three hours at a stretch.  It must've been back before Sunshine was born.  But no, she was sleeping through the night (going to bed at 8 pm and waking up at 8 am) at fourteen months.  So there were a few months of good sleep in there before I was super pregnant with Lily and then waking up with her. 

My cousin and I recently joked about how our bedtime was 7:30 until we were well into our teens.  When I was growing up, we all woke up at 6 am with my dad to have breakfast with him before he went to work.  Mom was often up earlier, as she wanted to go for a bike ride, swim, or walk before Dad left for work.  My parents were usually in bed by 10:00 pm, if not 9:00 pm.  Even in university, I kept early bedtime hours (and never pulled an all-nighter).  Saturdays were for sleeping in and a Sunday afternoon nap wasn't an uncommon occurrence.

That all seems blissful now.  The girls still wake up at 8 am.  Sunshine rarely naps or if she does, it's rarely when Lily is napping.  Lily just started sleeping through most of the night—she only wakes up twice now.  Then the colds hit, keeping first Sunshine and then Lily up at night coughing.  If Lily does sleep for six or seven hours, then it's Sunshine who is howling for Mommy because she needs a hug or her soother.

At playgroup, all the moms seem to share this obsession with sleep.  We ask moms of toddlers, "Does she still nap?" We ask moms of babies, "Does he sleep through the night yet?" We ask moms of two, "Can you get them to nap together?"  We talk about "sleep training" and "sleep solutions" and the good old days when we only had one child and could nap when she napped.

Google "sleep" and you can find the American Sleep Disorders Association, the Canadian Sleep Society, and the Better Sleep Council Canada.  The BSCC website presents some interesting statistics:  27% of women say sleep is the most important component to their overall well-being; 31% of suburban moms are likely to make sleep a priority; 50% of women with children agree that sleep is the best way to recharge, nine points higher than women without children; and 45% of women agree they feel most refreshed after a good night’s sleep.  Clearly, moms need sleep and know it.

Once upon a time, I could sleep through anything.  My best friend growing up often asked me, "Did you hear that thunderstorm last night?" and I'd say, "What thunderstorm?"  During university, I went to Jasper with two of my girlfriends.  We had a downstairs B&B and I slept through the drunken party upstairs, while my two friends heard every thump and shout.  I even slept through my husband's snoring.  Now, the slightest couch or squeak from the room down the hall will have my laying awake and tense in bed, waiting for the next noise.  Is Lily or Sunshine awake?  Do they need me?

My mom tells the story of how my twin brother and I started sleeping through the night when we were six weeks old (or something very young).  Then, after about a week, we realized that we weren't getting fed if we did that, so we started waking up again.  Dad said we clearly knew how to sleep through the night, so he put Mom to bed with a glass of red wine.  When we woke up, he changed us, gave us our soothers, and put us back to bed.  We started sleeping through the night again.

Waking up to feed a baby in the middle of the night is hard.  However, the moments when she falls asleep beside me, satiated on warm milk, her breathing deep and even, her eyelashes resting on her pudgy cheeks, one hand dropping lightly from her shoulder as I pick her up to take her back to her crib, moonlight on her face as we walk down the hallway—those moments are unforgettable magic.

Book Review: Almost Heaven

I feel like I've given out too many rave reviews lately (like some professor who's only allowed to give out so many A+ marks), but here I go again.  I really enjoyed Almost Heaven by Chris Fabry.  I'd never heard of Fabry before reading this book, but he's apparently a Christy-award winning author of 70 books for children and adults.  He also hosts a daily radio program, Chris Fabry Live! on Mooday radio, which gives him the background for this book.

Billy Allman is the main character, a humble, prayerful man who begins his story at age ten.  He and his family are among hundreds who lose their home when a dam at the top of the valley bursts and the valley is flooded.  Billy's family is spared—just barely—but Billy's dad is never able to work again afterward.  He has black lung from working in the mines for so long.  Billy, in a way, must grow up young, taking care of first his father and then his mother (who develops mental illness).

Intersecting Billy's story are snippets told from Malachi's point of view.  Malachi is the angel assigned to Billy, though he tells the reader, "You must know at the outset that I did not want this assignment.  I did not seek it or grasp for it because at heart, I am a warrior, not a scribe."  Over the course of the story, as Malachi gets to know Billy, he slowly comes to love Billy and is even sad when he is called back to battle during a few years of Billy's life.

Even from a young age, Billy showed great talent with the mandolin and with electronics.  His dream is to start a radio station that would combine these loves.  For this goal he works tirelessly, piecing together the parts he needs, slowly building his station, until finally, he goes on air.  His only help is his good friend Callie, who cooks meals for him while he focuses on the station.  However, when Callie gets in trouble, Billy must confront his feelings for her—and for some events hidden in his past.

I enjoyed the changing perspectives between the two narrators—the formal, almost philosophical tone of Malachi who says things like, "Humanity is not easy for a being like me to understand.  In our battles, there is no acquiescence to defeat.  But on that time-bound planet, the goal for the human believer is not found in every victorious triumph, but in the elusive relationship with the Father that then leads to ultimate victory"—and the simple, straight-forward storytelling of Billy.

The story also revealed new twists that kept me reading and wondering what would happen next.  For example, I expected that the creation of his radio station would be the climax of the story, the thing towards which he had been working for years.  Yet when he finally goes on air, it's only the middle of the story.  Unlike Screenplay, however, which felt like the story ended halfway through, this one felt like it was just beginning.  There was so much more to the story than just Billy's radio station.

At the end of the story, Fabry includes an Afterword explaining, "Good stories come from real people and real life.  There is no fiction well, only people's lives."  He talks of how he dreamed of owning and running his own radio station in the West Virginia hills, then mentions an email that he received from a listener who told him about the real Billy Allman.  That idea sparked Almost Heaven, but Fabry says, "Everything in this book is from my imagination.  As far as I know, there are only shadows from Billy's real life.  But I hope that in crafting this story that I have captured a little of his heart."

Chris Fabry has a gift for storytelling just as Billy Allman has a gift for the mandolin.  At the end of this book, there's an excerpt for Fabry's other book, June Bug, which tells the story of a minor character in this book.  I'm adding that book to my list of books to find... and I suggest that you grab a Chris Fabry book too.

This book was provided for review courtesy of Glass Road Public Relations.

Would You Like Some Truth With Your Nonfiction?

Until I started my creative nonfiction classes this term, I hadn't heard of James Frey's novel A Million Little Pieces.  Or should I say James Frey's memoir A Million Little Pieces.  Apparently, it's been both.  He originally tried submitting it to publishers as a novel.  Nobody wanted it.  So he called it a memoir and submitted it one more time.  Bite.  Bestseller.  Oprah show.  Then the bad news: somebody found out that A Million Little Pieces wasn't actually fact.  That Frey kinda smudged a few details, here and there, like how long he'd been in prison.

When I first heard it, it was an amusing story about the publishing industry.  Frey was a smart fella who saw the hot trend for memoir and jumped on.  Or you could say he was one of those guys who fictionalized his own life (and, come on, he wouldn't be the only novelist to admit he's written from life experience—or at least started there).  No big deal.

But a lot of people—including Oprah—have gotten really mad at Frey.  Really, really mad.  I don't really get why.  I mean, I haven't read the book, so I can't say how I would react if I had read it and then found out that, well, things got a bit stretched.  If I read it now, it would be with the knowledge that Frey exaggerated things (and if I read it now, it would be just to see if someone can really write a good novel/memoir without rewriting, as Frey claims to have done).

He's not the first writer to be unveiled as not totally honest.  Farley Mowat came under fire for Never Cry Wolf by critics who said he only spent a week among wolves (not the months recorded in the book) and didn't do half the things in the book.  I haven't found the answer to that—whether he or his critics are right—but honestly, I don't care.  Never Cry Wolf was an extremely good story.  If it didn't really happen, whatever.  It was funny.  It could have happened.  It did happen—in Farley's head and in all his readers' heads.

In my creative nonfiction classes, we talk about truth, disclaimers, distinctions between terms like autobiography and memoir.  We talk about spectrums with fiction on one end and nonfiction on the other, and where does a certain piece fall in the middle.  Is there supposed to be a hard, fast line between fiction and nonfiction, or can that line blur?

What do you think?  Should James Frey have written his "memoir" exactly as things happened (even if that was less interesting)?  Should he have warned his readers that some details in the book were changed or exaggerated?  Does it matter whether his book is fiction or memoir?

Sick Days and Doctor Visits

I run my finger down the index page of Dr. Sears' The Baby Book.  Eyes, blocked tear ducts, 105-106, discharge from, 426, 498, 670.  I flip to the first pages.  Blocked tear ducts seems to be a problem for newborn babies, not six-month-old babies.  I try the other pages.  Eye drainage is often associated with an underlying cold, especially a sinus infection... This type of goopy eye drainage does, however, merit a doctor visit.

That advice is repeated on a few other pages.  I peer at Lily's face.  She smiles at me, one big brown eye twinkling, the other eye half-shut, swollen and red, mucous still hanging at the end of the eyelashes even after I've wiped her eye.  When she goes down for her nap earlier than usual, I'm convinced she's sick.

It's been going around our household.  It started with runny noses for both the girls.  Then coughing at night for Sunshine.  I developed a raging headache Tuesday night that stayed until morning and left me laying around on the couch the next day.  The slicing pain every time I swallowed hit next, though my energy levels slowly returned.

At first, I ignored Sunshine's watery eyes, thinking it was just because of her cold.  When my husband brought it up and said something about sinus infections, I consulted Dr. Sears.  She had most of the symptoms.  I spent twenty minutes trying to get our local walk-in clinic on the phone so I could book an appointment for her Thursday afternoon.  She spent the morning playing happily with my aunt, who didn't think she seemed very sick.  As we walked over to the clinic, her eyes weren't watering and her nose was hardly even running.  I wondered if I was over-reacting.

In the exam room, I lifted Sunshine up onto the table.  She promptly lay down, pulled her shirt up, and stuck her tummy out.  I laughed.  She'd learned well from watching all my prenatal appointments.  She was perfect for the doctor, too, letting the doctor check her ears and mouth and listen to her chest.  "Ear infection," the doctor said, giving me a prescription to fill if it didn't go away on its own in a day.

After her nap on Saturday morning, Lily's eye looked better—still a bit red, but open wider and not as mucousy—and I debated whether I should take her in to the doctor.  Something said go, so I went.  The doctor walked into the room, took one look at her, and said, "Pink eye."

It's hard to know sometimes, what warrants a doctor's visit and what doesn't.  Both the girls have been playing happily, despite colds and ear infection and pink eye.  I've been tired and stuffed up—just a really bad cold.  Dr. Sears often helps me decide and know what to do.  Yet there's something about a mother's instinct, the little niggling voice that says this should be checked out.  So far, when it comes to the girls, that voice in my head hasn't been wrong.

The Mystery of Marriage

My family appeared to be the perfect family when I was growing up.  We ate supper together—all five of us—every night.  My dad had a good job in the city and my mom stayed at home to take care of the house and homeschool my brothers and I.  We were at church early on Sundays, ushering or putting up overheards or making coffee.  My brothers and I never went through that expected teenage rebellion.  It looked good.

When my parents separated just after I finished university, most of the people we knew were shocked.  Some of our closest friends still don't know all the reasons that my family fell apart.  So I understand when Wendy Dennis says, in her essay on "The Mystery of Marriage,"

To say that there is a conspiratorial silence about marriage may seem like a strange assertion in a confessional culture where so much is exposed you begin to wish for a little dignified restraint. But for all the obsessional taking of marriage’s pulse, for all the sordid, maudlin bloodlettings on talk TV, nobody really talks about what a marriage looks like at the molecular level. It is the last taboo. People would sooner talk about their colonoscopies. 

Early in university, I began watching married couples, trying to find out what was special about their relationships.  I watched couples joke with each other, help each other, cut each other down, surprise each other, praise each other, but really, all I saw was their public face. 

In the first months of my marriage, friends would ask me, with a huge smile and a knowing expression, "How's married life?"  I always gave the expected answer ("Great!") whether or not that's how I was feeling.  My husband and I have had our ups and downs, but there are very few people I'll tell about those downs.  Marriage is private; what goes on behind closed doors is known only to those who are there.  Dennis holds Bill and Hilary Clinton's mariage up as a model, one that has survived some huge ups and downs, yet I wonder: is it the same when they are home alone?  Maybe they're putting on a great front for the tabloids and not talking to each other when the door closes.

Dennis talks of her daughter's cool realism towards marriage and says, "I blame myself for her cynicism, of course. How is she supposed to believe, as I do, that aspiring to intimate partnership is a worthy goal, when all around her marriages are collapsing?"  We all know that 50% of marriages fall apart, yet I and most of my friends still chose to get married.  Maybe we think we'll beat the odds—fall into the good 50%.  Or maybe we're watching the marriages that work instead of the ones that don't.  Then again, perhaps we can learn from both.

I don't think there's any one answer to what makes a perfect marriage.  I think it's something that each couple has to work out themselves.  And I mean "work."  Marriage isn't easy, despite all the advice provided in the thousands of marriage books available. 

Sometimes I wonder if the perfect face put on marriage—that facade for friends and family—makes it harder.  Would more transparent marriages prevent the let-down felt when a seemingly perfect marriage falls apart?  Would more transparent marriages encourage people like Dennis' daughter, by showing them that yeah, there's good and bad, but it's worth working towards the good?  And like dealing with any other struggle in life, would a more transparent marriages make it easier for those struggling to keep going instead of calling it quits?

What is Creative Nonfiction?

When I was growing up, my mom kept the Reader's Digest in the bathroom.  My dad had built a shelf into the wall that held the garbage can, toilet paper, and Kleenex box, with several shelves above that for scented soaps and one for the magazines.  The first articles I read were the "Drama in Real Life" stories.  At the time, I didn't know they were creative nonfiction; I just knew that they were interesting stories.

During my first degree, I enrolled in the only two writing courses offered: fiction and creative nonfiction.  I wasn't quite sure what creative nonfiction was, and I didn't think I wanted to write nonfiction—I was already a committed novelist at that point—but it was a writing course.  I discovered, through the reading and writing we did in that class, that I enjoyed nonfiction.  In fact, my first published pieces (before I started that degree) had been creative nonfiction.

You won't find a section titled "creative nonfiction" at the bookstore.  It is usually filed under sub-genres, like memoir or biography or travel or inspirational.  The Chicken Soup for the Soul books are creative nonfiction, as are most magazine features.  As I've discovered in this term of university, creative nonfiction is a blanket term for many types of writing, from literary journalism to personal essays to profiles (just as, for that matter, fiction includes sci-fi, fantasy, romance, history, etc).

The two genres that I plan to focus on during this degree are fiction and creative nonfiction.  At the beginning of this term, as I was in two classes on creative nonfiction, I thought it was easier.  The story is already there for the writer; it just needs to be shaped and moulded into something interesting and attractive to the reader.  Fiction requires much more imagination—and yet also provides much more freedom.

Both of my courses in creative nonfiction this term have given me so many more ideas for writing.  Even the process of choosing a topic for our papers has been a exercise in creativity.  The topics that got rejected for papers are still there, waiting to be written—if and when I find I time.  I can't believe there's only two weeks a bit before the end of term, but I'm looking forward to a few weeks of "free time" over Christmas to hopefully work on some non-school-related writing.  Like maybe something for Reader's Digest.  :)

Five Minutes for Mommy

My daughter pooped her pants the other day.

It wasn’t her fault. It was mine. She told me she needed to go potty, even ran to the bottom of the stairs to wait for me to take her up. I could have gotten her to the potty in time. And afterwards, when I was cleaning up the accident, I thought I had probably made more work for myself by not listening to her.

But when she asked, it was that proverbial “last straw.” Lily had been up more times than I could count the night before. She hadn’t napped for very long during the day, hadn’t wanted to play by herself. Sunshine had needed help with everything and wanted to play with Lily when Lily just wanted to sit with me. Then we had taken my husband downtown for an interview and wandered around Chapters—which is, for the most part, enjoyable; it’s just a lot more work while carrying a baby and chasing a toddler. When we got home, there was supper to get on the table (from the crockpot, thankfully). A potty break. Clear the table. Then another request to go potty.

Those are, of course, all excuses. Justifications for why I didn’t respond immediately to the request that I’ve worked so hard to receive. I should just say I’m selfish—I wanted five minutes to sit and eat my cake. Five minutes.

Perhaps, if you are a mom, you will understand how the day-to-day minute requests of a toddler can pile up until you simply want to sit for five minutes without interruption. “Mommy, I want a snack. Mommy, I want a juice. Mommy, I need to go potty. Mommy, read me a book. Mommy, can I sit with you? Mommy, Mommy, Mommy!”

I love her. Sometimes I think I should be a better mom—I should be more patient with the endless little requests, because everyone tells me that she’ll be a teenager soon and won’t even want to talk to me. I should be reading her stories and taking her to parks and doing puzzles with her.

Instead, I am encouraging her to do things herself, to read her own books, to play with Lily, so I can read essays and stories for my classes and work on my assignments and write blog posts. And she can do those things by herself. Sometimes I'm amazed at her creativity when she's playing by herself.  She’s gone potty by herself and changed herself from her clothes into her jammies. Just not when I ask her to do it.

One evening, when Sunshine was in bed and Lily was playing quietly with her toys, I was reading a novel. I was too tired to focus on anything school-related, just waiting for Lily to fall asleep (and trying to work through the stack of books I’ve requested to review). My husband asked me something. Then, a few minutes later, something else. And then another question. Finally, I said, “Please. Just let me finish reading. I get interrupted all day by Sunshine. Can I just read five pages—one chapter—without someone asking me something?”

It was probably unfair to him. He wanted to talk, to discuss things we were doing the next day. I was enjoying the quiet, a break from the endless toddler chatter that both brightens my day and makes me wish for silence.

Mommyhood is full of ups and downs. The joys of finally having a potty-trained toddler—and the need to respond to that. The fun of having a toddler who can now carry on a conversation—and the need to provide that conversation. So I made mistakes, get impatient or tired, and try to do better next time.

Guest Blogger: Alissa Bjorn

Alissa is a good friend of mine from my homeschooling days.  She asked me to help with a cause very close to her heart and in turn, I asked her to write something to share with you.

I want to share with you today about something very close to my heart. It is about life, about tiny lives that are lost. Sometimes a life is taken from us when we would give anything to keep it, yet sometimes we give up that life without even giving it a chance.

Two months ago my daughter Grace Bjorn was born. She was perfect! Tiny little hands, eyelashes and a heartbeat. She wrapped her hand around the tip of my finger, and kicked her daddy when he tickled her foot. She was precious, and she was small. Grace was born at 23.5 weeks along in my pregnancy—about 17 week early. Yet she had a chance! If it hadn't been for the complications of an infection she might have lived.

Since that time my heart has been heavy for all the mothers that choose to give up their child. Did you know in Canada you can abort up until 9 months? In fact, only in Canada and one European country is this even legal. Check out this very sad but clinical overview.

So many young mothers have been lied to, told that each baby is simply cells, without a soul until an undefined time, usually thought of as birth. Pregnancy Care Centers around the world are trying to change that. They are trying to help new mothers understand the incredible gift they have been given by counseling them and encouraging them.

The Kamloops Pregnancy Care Center has helped over 300 women in the past 3 years, and all except for three girls have chosen to carry to term. This is an incredible ministry, changing the lives of so many women and infants! To do this requires money, however... but I am not asking you to give any. The Kamloops PCC has been nominated for Joey's Only Community Revival Contest, and if they receive the most votes by the end of November they will win $25,000!

Can you imagine the impact that money could make? Anyone can vote from anywhere in the world. The life of a small child is bigger than a city, bigger than our country! So in memory of my daughter Grace I am asking you to vote, and share with those around you. Right now our votes can seriously save lives. Not often you get that chance. Thank you so much for your time, and thank you KBW for allowing me to share.

God Bless, Alissa Bjorn

Vote Here by selecting the Kamloops Pregnancy Care Center about a third of the way down the list. Thank you!

Green Books Campaign: Eastern Passage

This review is part of the Green Books campaign. Today 200 bloggers take a stand to support books printed in an eco-friendly manner by simultaneously publishing reviews of 200 books printed on recycled or FSC-certified paper. By turning a spotlight on books printed using eco-friendly paper, we hope to raise the awareness of book buyers and encourage everyone to take the environment into consideration when purchasing books.

The campaign is organized for the second time by Eco-Libris, a green company working to make reading more sustainable. We invite you to join the discussion on "green" books and support books printed in an eco-friendly manner! A full list of participating blogs and links to their reviews is available on Eco-Libris website.

When I think of Farley Mowat, I think of the old paperbacks my mom had—the kind with stiff, yellowing pages and brittle spines that cracked when you opened the book. Our copy of The Boat Who Wouldn’t Float wasn’t a book anymore; it was a collection of loose pages. I remember my twin brother flopped on his stomach on our sheepskin-covered ottoman, reading the book on the floor below him, so that he could just pick up each page and turn it over.

Owls in the Family, The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be, and Never Cry Wolf are among my favourite books, so when I saw that a new Farley Mowat book was up for review on the Green Books Blog Tour, I jumped at the chance to read it. Eastern Passage was typical Farley Mowat; an amusing, inspiring read all the way through.

Eastern Passage is the second instalment in Mowat’s autobiography, picking up the story from Otherwise. The book begins in 1946, with Farley’s return from war, quick marriage to Frances, and desire to go up north. He signs on a student assistant in a research project of the northern caribou, and with his wife heads the land of the Ihalmiut. However, Farley soon discovers that he dislikes killing anything—whether plants or animals—for the purpose of scientific study, and he fails to fulfill the requirements of his job.

Returning to rural Ontario, he and Fran begin homesteading and Farley turns to his writing to earn an income. Between building a log cabin, planting a garden, digging a pond, and other homesteading tasks, he writes People of the Deer and other short stories. He includes samples of his letters to his editors, detailing the publishing process. Many of these letters had me laughing out loud. Farley completely ignores most of the etiquette pounded into a writer’s head today about how to treat your editor. His letters are tongue-in-cheek, chatty, completely Farley.

Farley chronicles the controversy that arose around People of the Deer (which I haven’t read yet, unfortunately) as various groups discussed in the book, most notably the Hudson’s Bay Company, took issue with what Farley wrote about. He then heads off to Europe with Fran to tour the battlefields of his old regiment in preparation for writing a book about them. Research for that book also included visits to the areas of Ontario where most of the men were from, and a long chapter about the grandfather of one of the men in the regiment.

Eastern Passage concluded with a chapter about Farley’s trip down the St. Lawrence Seaway with his father on a rickety boat, reminiscent of The Boat Who Wouldn’t Float. Then the story just ends. Perhaps there is another book coming to continue the tale and bring the reader to the present-day in Farley’s life.

Overall, the book was as good as I expected it to be. Farley is still in fine storytelling form for a writer approaching ninety. While the book itself seemed to jump around, each chapter was organized around a section of his life. At times, he seemed to get sidetracked (Harv’s story was very interesting, but a bit of a rabbit trail) telling interesting stories that he discovered and perhaps hadn’t fit into any other books.

I also found it rather suitable that a Farley Mowat book was “produced using ancient-forest friendly products.” Farley’s work is almost synonymous with environmentalism, and indeed, in this book, he keeps up his theme of concern for the environment. As one who likes the feeling of holding a book in my hands, and much prefers reading on paper to reading on screen, I’m not ready to see the end of the book age and the beginning of the electronic age. At the same time, I like lots of trees. So I’m pleased—and I think Farley would be as well—to be part of this movement promoting “green” books.

This book provided for review courtesty of McLelland & Stewart.

Sunshine Says (Vol. 3)

I was folding laundry on our bed, with Lily playing on the other side of the stack of laundry, when Sunshine saw something as she ran past. Stopping, she stroked a neatly folded set of flannel pajamas and exclaimed, “You found—you washed my sheep jammies!”

“Yes,” I said, smiling and folding Lily’s sleeper.

She looked up at me, very hopeful. “Can I put them away?”

I laughed. “Yes, you can,” I said, picturing the jammies ending up in a pile on her bedroom floor.

She picked them up, saying, “I carry them,” and marched off to her bedroom. In a minute she was back and I asked her to put her pants away. She agreed, saying to Lily, “I be right back.” Then I asked her to put her shirts away.

I took a stack of Lily’s clothes to their room. The jammies and pants were sitting in the right drawers, but Sunshine dropped her shirts on her bed, saying, “I put them up here.”

“Can you put them away?” I asked as we walked back to the bedroom for her socks. “Can you put them in the drawer?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “They sleeping.”

*     *     *

Later, as I was making our bed after mending and washing the sheets:

"I wanna sit on it!"  Sunshine said.

"No, Mommy's making the bed.  You need to stay off."

"I wanna wear that!" Sunshine announced, trying on the bracelet I'd left on my night table.

"No, that's Mommy's."  I rescued it and put it on my bureau instead.

"I wanna read a book!" Sunshine picked up my copy of My Utmost for His Highest and began flipping the pages, as if she were speed-reading like her Daddy.

"A pillow-sheet!" she announced when she saw me stuffing the pillows into their cases.

As soon as I had the bed made, she said, "I wanna sit on it," and got up, sprawling on her back on my pillow while still reading the book.  Soon, she rolled onto her side and said, "aw-schnoo," then looked at me and said, "I say 'aw-schnoo' like Daddy."

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Watch for my review of Farley Mowat's book Eastern Passage on Wednesday as I participate in Eco-Libris' Green Books Blog Tour.  For more information on the tour, check out their recent press release: 200 Bloggers, 200 Books, 56 Publishers and One Hour.

Reviewing My Library

On the main street of my hometown, there used to be a small second-hand bookstore. It was a narrow store, but long, with books stacked right to the ceiling and often sitting around on the floor—like so many other second-hand bookstores. In a few visits, I learned the organization of the store and could then go right to my favourite sections. Browsing the books, I never knew what treasures I might stumbled upon. It was there that I first discovered Anne Bronte—I picked up Agnes Grey merely because I recognized the name and was curious.

I used to feel that I ought to read all the books that I owned. Books that I hadn’t read seemed to jump off my shelf at me. Then I read the words of Walter Benjamin, a German book collector who says:

“Experts will bear me out when I say that [the non-reading of books] is the oldest thing in the world. Suffice it to quote the answer which Anatole France gave to a philistine who admired his library and then finished with the standard question, ‘And you have read all these books, Monsieur France?’ ‘Not one-tenth of them. I don’t suppose you use your Sevres china every day?’”

Running my eye over my bookshelf brings back a host of memories. The Thornton W. Burgess books take me back to childhood visits to the library. My Judith Pella series reminds me of the Christmas my younger brother got me Toward the Sunrise (and the subsequent Christmases in which he gave me the rest of the series). The Oath makes me feel once again the rough fur of the sheepskin that covered the ottoman I sprawled upon while reading. And the books that I picked up in Australia, by Australians and about Australia, take me back to my travels there.

Not every book I read is one that I want to add to my library. There are books that I want to read, just once, and return to the library. Others I want for my own collection. Classics fall into the latter category just because of their authors: Dickens, Shakespeare, the Brontes, Twain. Some earn themselves a place in my library, when I really enjoy reading them: The Passion of Mary-Margaret, Daisy Chain, Talking to the Dead. A library is a personal thing, as Benjamin says:

“The acquisition of books is by no means a matter of money or expert knowledge alone. Not even both factors together suffice for the establishment of a real library, which is always somewhat impenetrable and at the same time uniquely itself.”

Benjamin talks of means of acquiring books, from buying them at auction or through catalogues to “the borrowing of a book with its attendant non-returning.” He also says, “Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method.” That made me smile. Perhaps my writing is simply an extension of my book collecting, though I have yet to put a book on my shelf with my name upon it.

Why do you collect books?  What books bring back memories for you?

November Write Mama

Welcome to the second edition of the Write Mama blog carnival!  I hope you enjoy all the posts about writing and mothering.

Mothering

Theresa Burley-Hughes presents a discussion of child anxiety in Worry Dolls posted at A Mountain Momma.

Ella Moss presents a comparison between Russian and American school systems in American Education Reform posted at Zodiac Times.

Chris presents a childhood memory—and warning for parents—in Stranger Danger posted at Life As A Human.

DGMommy presents a short, nostalgic moment in Baby bliss posted at (aspiring) Domestic Goddess Mommy.

Bonnie Way presents some ideas for keeping your six-month-old baby busy in Activities with Baby posted at The Koala Bear Writer.

Writing

Joanaa Tiger presents 10 TV Shows That Writers Really Love posted at Online College Courses.

Joanaa Tiger presents 10 Autobiographies That Were Totally Bogus posted at Online College Courses.

Writing and Mothering

Bonnie Way presents an encouraging, must-read book for moms in Book Review: Blue Like Play Dough post at The Koala Bear Writer.

That concludes this edition.  Submit your blog article to the next edition of Write Mama using the carnival submission form (please read the guidelines). Past posts can be found on our blog carnival index page.