Hand-me-downs: Those Words We Grow Into

Words have always been important to me because they are how we tell our stories. It is through the telling and hearing of stories that we communicate with one another and connect in such a way that we know we are not alone. 

Some of us are born with stories falling out of our mouths and dripping off of our fingers. I remember as far back as second grade, writing a story about three rebellious rabbits (Hopsy, Flopsy, and something else that rhymed) who had run away from home and taken to a life of drugs on the streets. The DARE program had clearly made a profound impact on me and driven me at the age of seven so much so that I wrote a seven-page story (front and back, no skipped lines). Side note: You have to specify "front and back" when you're seven. You have to. 

Diary after diary, journal after journal, words continued to be important to me. I sloughed them off between classes in markered, bubble-lettered, origami-folded notes with arrows labelled "Pull here" and  warning signs reading, "Don't open until lunch." They wore off through the day and regenerated with every conversation and observation and interaction, wending their ways into letters and poems and stories. 

A multi-year spelling bee winner in elementary school and yearbook editor in middle school, I learned quickly that it was easy to impress people with your words. They would reward you for it, even label you with new words like "smart." They would put you in a category like "honors." They would keep you around but at a distance--close enough to check their homework, far enough so that some labels like "nerd" and "geek" didn't wear off you and onto them.

I'd grow, as most do, to wear those last words proudly. 

By high school I had learned that words could get you into trouble. These are the stories I don't write for free. 

Like words, names have power. I do not think they wield the power to determine who we become, but they certainly generate others' expectations of us. Impressions attach themselves to names so that, once we've met one by a name, we judge all others by that standard. We expect all Jennies, all Beckys, all Deborahs to be the same just like so many people have met black Deidres and then look at me, disappointed, when I walk in a room white, like I will never not do. 

My name actually means "sorrowful wanderer," and I am. Some days.

I have three children, ages twelve, two years, and two months. When I named each, I named them with great hope and anticipation for the adults they would become. Each of them corresponds with a avian reference (I'm pre-Portlandia), and all of them are literary. 

Daina stands for song. It is the name of traditional music or poetry from Latvia. She is my songbird. Her name's spelling has ties to dainty, and her middle name is Alivia-Lee. When I think of it all together, it occurs to me as dainty, alive, and free. It always has. 

Atticus is my son, named after the noblest character in all of literature, Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. I love how this character represents the ones who speak for those who cannot, despite the cost. Atticus is a high bar for anyone to reach, so we gave him Holden as a middle-name backup from Holden Caulfield from The Catcher in the Rye. 

Evangeline Ever is our newest. Her name means "bringer of good news always." Our third bird, she's the dove and olive branch, the promise of good things to come. 

When I gave my children names, I paired a word with their life and what I'd hoped it would be and who I believed they could become. I gave them names with high bars and big shoes.

These are the stories I'm telling about them before they happen, written with hope onto their birth certificates, above closet doors, in lunch boxes, and on the tags of winter coats.

I etched each letter with love, thought of every serif curve, planned how I would pen it on presents and at the bottom of Christmas cards. I played the mean girl while pregnant and imagined how it would be botched by too-tired teachers who would, after mutilating every syllable, shoo my child's corrective words away with a dismissive Frenchman's wave. I weighed the cost of the time and energy I'd spend spelling out "Daina" and explaining that it's like "Diana" but inverted. I'd forecast the pained face I'd fight each time someone cited Atticus as a character from "that really good movie," never knowing who Harper Lee was or what that book did. I knew the ways everyone would try to shorten Evangeline ("Have you thought about Angie? What about Angel? Maybe Evie?") to make it easier when I know good and well that easy is the last thing most people need.

What they need are words big enough to grow into and strong enough to pass down when they're through.

Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys

My husband and I have a few people in the world we absolutely and collectively adore. One of our friend's fathers is such a person. He says things like "He's driving like a cowboy!" which is to say that that the person has a complete and utter disregard for the law and which, naturally, we've adopted into our family-friendly traffic cursings.

I've adored the phrase and its nuances so much that it has become part of my grading vernacular: "He's writing like a cowboy!" 

I don't say this, of course, but I think it with an echoing contempt for what appears to be that complete and utter disregard for the law and an outright refusal to "share the road."

I don't say this, of course, not aloud, because it has become increasingly difficult to tell the difference between someone who hasn't tried and someone who doesn't know, and I would never want to accuse someone of the former when the latter is true. It would be simpler if these beginners could hang a sign on the back of their paper, like we see affixed on so many Civic bumpers, alerting us of learners' status. Warning, they'd say, Student Writer. Proceed with caution (and a healthy slathering of traveling mercies).

I don't say this, of course, never aloud, because I am busy worrying about how many times they must have seen the words don't, can't, or won't in books and believed the apostrophes to be merely decorative. The gasp echoes again when I see a lonely lowercase I (see, I can't even reproduce it here it's so terrifying) and stop to think of how many first-person books they mustn't have read along the long path to believing that (deep breath) "i" ever appears on its own in nature.

I don't say this, of course, when I see I seen without room for the Holy Spirit and a helping verb left between them. 

And this isn't the only thing I don't say. 

I don't tell them I can spot a reader from across a room, or worse, that I can spot a non-reader from across a parking lot. 

I try to keep quiet that, because I've read so much and so long, I can spot an accidentally italicized period after a book title in a works cited entry. They don't need to know that my eyes have traced and memorized half the fonts in Word so that I can't not see a header in Calibri 11 when it's supposed to be Times New Roman 12. I don't tell them I can spell words I can't pronounce because I've seen more words in print than I've ever heard spoken. 

Instead, I tell them that to be better writers, they must be better readers. What I mean to say, though, is that they must have been better readers, and what I need to give I cannot: a time machine, a lap, a love, and a library card. 

Bednight and My Goodnight Book

Ever since my twelve-year-old daughter Daina was little, she called our nighttime ritual "bednight." Here are a few of the usual contexts: "I'm going bednight," "I'm ready for bednight," and "Do you want to go bednight?" Although she's well past needing anyone to read her bednight stories or to even use the term bednight to make it sound less threatening ("Go to bed" sounds so lonely, and "Say goodnight" sounds so evilly permanent), we still use the term even with no children present. It just stuck, and I have a feeling it will stay around now that we have two more little ones to coax into unconsciousness. 

When my husband and I were children, our mothers read us Bible stories before putting us to bed. Because neither of our brothers have children, we've inherited what seems to be dozens of children's Bible storybooks from both sides so that we could, if pressed, open a Revelation-less evangelical used bookstore. 

But another book stands out as a staple from my bedtime memories. It was called, ever so appropriately, My Goodnight Book. The book takes the reader through a "night in the life of" this Everyday Jane who is clearly tired (see toddler trademark eye rub below) and fully equipped, layered pajamas and apathetic bear in hand, to go to bed. The ritual is tracked through the pages of this board book, which I still have in my son Atticus's stash of "try and tear this one--ha!" books.

I remember reading and reading and reading this book or, rather, having it read to me, as I likely procrastinated through the whole bednight process. And, looking back, it was such a very direct approach compared to the bednight books I see nowadays. It was none of that Goodnight Moon nonsense where the reader is encouraged to talk to inanimate objects. My mom knew what she wanted--my three-year-old self in bed now--and she just went for it: here's a goodnight book, so goodnight. 

I've overcorrected, perhaps, with my own kiddos. We tackle gritty fare when the sun sets. With Daina, I must have read this book a thousand times: 

It is one of my favorite children's board books, and it's one that every parent should have. Another bednight book I love is How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight? 

This was a Daina hand-me-down to Atticus, and he adores dinosaurs (hey, that rhymed!), so the book hits several right notes with him. 

There is something about books and bed that just feels right. Although the natural connection is the peace and solitude that happens in the evenings and how that makes it easier to read and just be with a book, I think this is only half of it. 

Perhaps the more important half is that we are willfully ushering ourselves into our dreams. We are calling together everything and everyone we want to take with us, and we pack them tight into our mind's weathered case. The book is that "all aboard" call before the train sets out. 

We kiss a cheek and squeeze a hand. And then we go.  

How to Make Windows and Doors

When we give our children books, we are handing them escape routes. One page is a crowbar; another a key. Some stories teach them how to jimmy locks, how to unlatch gates from the outside, how to get out from in and in from out. 

These books aren't books. They are ladders and bridges. They are rescue ropes fit with carabiners. They are the jetpacks and the fuel.  

When we read to them, we are saying, "Look what's here. You see this? This exists. And it will stay here. You will never open this book to this page and not not find it here. It will always be and be just as it is."

This blog will be a collection of stories about my stories and stories about my children's stories. I want them walking with eyes wide open and a pocketful of keys. I want them knowing how to make windows and doors in a world too full of walls.