Letters

In a letter to her husband:

Dearest darling,

       I've been away from you enough during the last year to last me for the duration of this existence and I hope Heaven is a small place or travel is by instant atomic force."

Letters by Marjorie Pay Hinckley

As a sophomore in college I spent a semester studying abroad in Spain, about an hour outside of Madrid.  I went with a group of about 30 other kids from my university in the US and we lived with families for the 3 months we were there.  Each morning we had class for several hours and then we had the afternoon to spend how we pleased.  Several of the kids jumped on the train after school each day and headed to the city, where they spent hours, then days, then weeks and months exploring Madrid and beyond.  After class each day, I walked home and stayed there.

My genuine hope while living in Spain was to know what it felt like to live in Spain.  I spent as much time with my family as possible, because I wanted to see and know and feel how they lived.  I spent two hours at lunch with them everyday.  I watched TV and movies with them.  I played games with them, made dessert with them, practiced French with them and went on walks with the dogs.  I was fascinated by the quotidian lifestyle and have no regrets about how I spent my time.

I find I am still drawn to people that live quiet lives of consistency and build a life out of routines, habits and little actions.  I love Marjorie Pay Hinckley because she was genuine, full of life, humorous and involved in the day-to-day.  I just finished reading Letters, a compilation of letters she wrote throughout her life, for the second time and enjoyed it yet again.  It feels to me like sitting down with one of the older women you love, cherish, admire and lean on because their experience in life has granted them wisdom and stability that is gained no other way.  Her letters made me laugh on several occasions and made my heart hurt on others.  She brought countries of the world to life with her descriptions of them and she pushed me to reach out to family members more consistently (if she can drop postcards to grandkids from countries around the world I can certainly take time to reach out to those that are a few miles away).  I just really love this book.  She makes me feel so optimistic about life.

By the way, I typically link the title to amazon but this book is particularly hard to find as it's been out of print for a half dozen years or so.  I just got my hands on a used copy and after cleaning up the cover a bit it's good enough for me: happy hunting!

Garlic and Sapphires

Every restaurant is a theater, and the truly great ones allow us to indulge in the fantasy that we are rich and powerful. When restaurants hold up their end of the bargain, they give us the illusion of being surrounded by servants intent on ensuring our happiness and offering extraordinary food.  

But even modest restaurants offer the opportunity to become someone else, at least for a little while. Restaurants free us from mundane reality; that is part of their charm. When you walk through the door, you are entering neutral territory where you are free to be whoever you choose for the duration of the meal.

Garlic and Sapphires by Ruth Reichl

What an interesting book.  I now feel like I should be eating infinitely more fancy food, all the time.  (Though I confess that when I eat my very simple chicken tacos at home with my husband I feel like it's all I need, which might explain why we've had chicken tacos at least three nights a week for four weeks straight now.)

Ruth Reichl was hired as the food critic for The New York Times in the 1990s.  She moved her family across the country and settled in New York City where she dove right in.  This was a fascinating life for me to hear about: I had no idea that such people exist, frankly.  I mean, I assume that somewhere in my mind I realized that there were food critics and that they ate out a lot, but I didn't full understand that to give a fair review you probably needed to eat at the same place 3-5 times trying more than a half dozen dishes each time.  I thought I had a hearty appetite but I really respect someone who can sit at the same table eating the same meal for five hours straight.

Also, I don't drink alcohol so the wine aspect of this book was really fascinating to me.  I'm trying to think of a non-alcoholic similarity but I just can't seem to find one: seems like a very rich experience for so many.  It's really interesting for me to read about the sommeliers and the wine snobs and the depth and flavor of a good wine.

Aside from the wine, I really enjoyed simply getting a glimpse into such a different lifestyle from my own.  I have never tasted about 90% of what she wrote about (I had to ask TJ what foie gras was) and I am confident I'm incapable of naming every ingredient in the foods I eat.  Aside from being able to taste things in details (an odd combination in writing) she is a great writer.  Her food descriptions were gorgeous - I can see why she was given the job.  This short description of noodles gives you a taste of her writing:

I was not prepared for the feel of the noodles in my mouth, or the purity of the taste. I had been in Japan for almost a month, but I had never experiences anything like this. The noodles quivered as if they were alive, and leapt into my mouth where they vibrated as if playing inaudible music.

One thing I really appreciated was the clean language...until about halfway through when there were three instances of the f word on one page.  I sure wish that would have been left out!  There were a couple other swear words so if you're a sensitive reader (as I consider myself to be) beware.  You could certainly skip that page without missing a beat, which makes me think I should've grabbed the page number before returning it.  Sorry about that.

If you're looking for a look at a different lifestyle (assuming you're not already a food critic) this is a fun read. 

French Kids Eat Everything

Chances are, my children are not going to grow up to go to Harvard, or to be major league sports stars, concert musicians, or NASA astronauts.  But no matter who they grow up to be, how and what my children eat will be of great importance to their health, happiness, success, and longevity.

French Kids Eat Everything: How Our Family Moved to France, Cured Picky Eating, Banned Snacking, and Discovered 10 Simple Rules for Raising Happy, Healthy Eaters by Karen Le Billon

Last year I picked up the audio version of Bringing Up Bebe and went back and forth between being entirely intrigued by it and being sort of bored with it.  Overall, though, I enjoyed it and picked up some insights along the way.  One of the most captivating themes of Bringing Up Bebe, for me, w
as the way that French families, and children in particular, eat.  So when Janssen said that French Kids Eat Everything was one of the best books she's read this year, I went and snagged it from the library.

This is such an interesting book.  I really enjoyed it.  The foundation of the book is that the narrator, Karen Le Billon, married a man (Philippe) from France.  When their children were 2 and 4 they decided to move from Vancouver, Canada back to France for a year.  Both she and her husband were given a one year leave from the university where they taught and they moved to the same village as his parents, in Brittany, France.

And so the adventure begins, with all sorts of cultural mishaps, misunderstandings and mistakes.  Children, and adults!, in France eat so differently from those in North America.  Karen is quite floored to see children at the age of two eating a four course lunch in day care everyday with utensils.  There is no whining or crying or complaining.  The kids eat things like fish, leeks, beets, and Roquefort cheese on a daily basis (I showed TJ the menu for one week of preschool lunches and we truly did not recognize 70% of the foods on it).  It is so fascinating. 

Over twelve months Karen, with the help of her husband, his family, friends and other locals, starts figuring out what the French do differently that make their kids like all sorts of things that her kids won't touch (and neither will any other child in North America) and why they are so well behaved at every meal.  Eventually she compiles a list of ten rules, each of which is explained in the book. 

Many/most of these rules is pretty contrary to the norm for North American parents so it was refreshing to see a new perspective.  That said, I don't think the typical person in North America could follow these to a T, which she discusses in the last chapter (after they've had to make adjustments in Vancouver themselves).  However, as TJ and I discuss someday having children, some of these ideas take on greater weight for me.  My biggest takeaways:

1. Food should be used for nutritive purposes only.  This does not mean one should eat only to meet dietary guidelines (in fact, the number one purpose of food in France is pleasure, which I think is delightful), but rather that food should not be a pacifier, a distraction, a soother, or a threat.  The French would simply never think to say, "Stop hitting your sister or you don't get dinner."  They (including kids) would also never wander to the cupboards when bored.  It is just engrained in them that meal times are 7:30, 12:30, 4:30 (for the kids) and 8:00 that they don't do differently.  Already I sneak candy to the kids all around me and realize now I am encouraging food as a comfort or distraction, which only breeds problems in the long run.

2. Kids can like all foods.  Research shows that it takes 12-15 instances of exposure to like a food (taste is learned).  The French master this by beginning to introduce everything they can think of (really) before the child is 2 years old (at which point a fear of new things sets in: irrelevant when everything is already familiar).  This concept is practiced both at home and at school, as vegetables, especially, are served as purees, sauteed, raw, in salads, as side dishes, and in casseroles.  Parents are gentle but firm in insisting that the children try them and peer pressure often helps the situation.  In the end, the children do truly learn to leave all different things, which I just don't see where I live.  My goal, which I know is aggressive, will be to introduce many vegetables between the ages of 1-2 (the French typically feed their child a leek puree [I've never had leeks] before anything else, including cereal).  The plan is to start making these with TJ now!

3. Food should be enjoyable, not guilty.  This goes against everything I've been taught growing up: I love it.  I really appreciated that the French believe that food is meant to be enjoyed: it should not be a source of guilt or anxiety.  The quote at the beginning of this post sums it up for me: eating is a part of life and should be healthy, happy and enjoyable.  For too many people that is not the case and I think we can do better training our children!

And on that note, go read the book.  It's fascinating.  And it taught me that maybe if I just give olives a few more tries I'll like them.

The Council of Dads by Bruce Feiler

"Slow down.  I've forgotten how beautiful the world really is.  Do you see it?  Do you see it?"
-Bruce Feiler, The Council of Dads, page 170

The Council of Dads by Bruce Feiler

This is one of the best books I've read in some time.  I snagged this from the Reader's Choice area at the library and I am so glad I did!  I devoured it in a day (I can typically measure how good a book is by how long it takes to read) and could start again right now!  The number of Amazon reviews (44) tells me that not nearly enough people have heard about this book, so let me do my part: this is a great read.  A thoughtful read by a remarkable author (if all sentences were written as well as his, reading would always be more pleasant than eating, I think).

Bruce Feiler and his wife, Linda, have twin two-year-old daughters (Eden and Tybee - such beautiful names) when Bruce is diagnosed with cancer.  Bruce has osteosarcoma, a disease than fewer than 100 adults in the US get a year.  This book covers the time frame of what he terms "The Lost Year": his year of treatments and surgery and war with cancer.  He includes letters he writes to friends and family every 6-8 weeks, which are gorgeously if not painstakingly written and thought-provoking and he includes a narrative about the project that earned the book its name: The Council of Dads.

A few days after his diagnosis, and because he has been worrying about his daughters and the possibility that he may not be around to teach them, Bruce comes up with the idea of forming a group of men that could be his "voice" for his daughters if cancer did take his life.  He and his wife brainstorm together to form a list of six men that each know and represent a distinct part of him and then he meets with each of them personally and reads them a letter he's written, asking them "Will you be my voice?"

As you can imagine, each person he asks is deeply touched and emotional about the situation.  Some of them have been friends for more than 20 years, others for a much shorter time but very deeply.  Between the letters that he writes to family and friends, Bruce writes in depth about his encounters with each of these men he loves and respects and the specific lesson that he would like them to teach his girls if he can't.  In the end, he has six lessons that he summarizes as:

Approach the cow
Pack your flip-flops
Don't see the wall
Tend your tadpoles
Live the questions
Harvest miracles

The last chapter is the letter for his daughters, that brought me to tears when he ended with:

"Take trips, girls.  Take chances.  Take off."

The book didn't feel contrived or superficial to me, at all.  Perhaps it is because people near me are struggling with cancer right now, but I felt like his battle was real, his feelings genuine and his words sincere.  I felt privileged to be included in his life for a few hundred pages, and grateful for the lessons I gathered while reading.

"I believe the best teacher is beauty.  I'll teach them to memorize Auden poems and Shakespeare sonnets so that wherever they are at any given moment in the world, they can just sit under a tree and have Auden or Shakespeare of whomever as their companion for an afternoon..  I'll give them the sound of Mahler symphonies that they can hear again and again and that will always trigger similar emotions.  I'll show them how to appreciate Chinese calligraphy, which is an expression of your internal energy.

"What I want them to know, is how easy it is to see beauty.  How the wonder they felt on that plane never has to leave them.  Miracles are all around them.  They just have to learn to see through the clouds, and go out and harvest those miracles themselves."

-page 195

Oh, and because I respect you, this one had a couple (5 or less) instances of the "f" word.

No Biking in the House Without a Helmet

"We so loved raising our four children by birth, we didn’t want to stop. When the clock started to run down on the home team, we brought in ringers."
-Melissa Fay Greene, No Biking in the House Without a Helmet

No Biking in the House Without a Helmet by Melissa Fay Greene

Have I mentioned lately how much I love memoirs?

I passed this book in the Book Club section of my library several times before finally picking it up and giving it a go; I am so glad I did!  I pride myself on finding enjoyable nonfiction (it's not where I most comfortably reside) and this one absolutely did the trick for me. 

No Biking in the House is an autobiography of sorts about Melissa and her family.  She and her husband, Don, have four children of their own that they loved to pieces; aside from two busy careers they both love parenting best.  She describes parenting with genuine humor and I found myself laughing as I flipped through the pages as quickly as possible.  Such funny kids!  What a humorous husband!  It was enjoyable to just get a glimpse into their home.

When their four start growing older, threatening to start leaving the house for college (just as parents hope they'll do) Melissa and her husband start looking seriously at adoption.  They don't go about it lightly, but rather work tirelessly to find the right child, one that's healthy, that will be able to love and be loved and will fit into their family.  Melissa finds him in Bulgaria, and as a reader my heart ached with hers as she worked for years to make him feel comfortable (when she takes him to preschool he panics, thinking she's leaving him in another orphanage).  Eventually, she and Don adopt four more children, each one brought in with great love and described with great pride and humor.

The nine Greene kids become quite an adventure: their English is nothing short of hilarious, their antics entertaining (hence the title of the book) and their struggles heartfelt as they work to become a true family.  The author describes situations so adeptly it wasn't difficult to imagine being there myself and witnessing an epic adventure.

As fair warning, the "f" word does come up a few times in this book (maybe 3-5).  I typically put a book down at the first encounter but overlooked it this time and still found a great read.