I am halfway through the third book in the Deptford trilogy, World of Wonders. I love how Robertson Davies takes his time with a story, slowly revealing little tidbits and asides along the way so that you get the entire story only at the end. I think he’s just brilliant. He has much in common with John Irving, although he is more workaday – for example, his depiction of a traveling circus is so different from how Irving chooses to portray many of the same elements - much less oddity, more delving into the human character behind the weirdness. But the spirit is similar. As is the attention to detail, although Davies is much more subtle with his foreshadowing.
My plan to just reread things seems to be working with my limited and scattered concentration, although I did pick up An Unexpected Light yesterday afternoon. I am sure it’s very good but listening to and responding to Jude’s nonstop chatter (see below) made it impossible to concentrate and really get anything out of it.
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Heartrending Jude moment, number sixteen thousand four hundred and seventy two:
At Taz yesterday morning, where we enjoyed hot chocolate and a doughnut (him) and a mocha latte and a chocolate croissant (me):
Jude: Mama, me happy. Me happy, Mama.
Argh. How do I let this boy out of my sight?
Of course by the end of the day I was worn out by Jude’s constant – and I mean constant – monologue. Although it’s not really a monologue as he does require replies. I guess it’s so rare that he gets a chance to speak without interruption that he just took full advantage of the situation. I thought my head was going to explode by six o’clock.
Now if only he doesn’t spill the beans to Si that we went to Taz without him…
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First it was all Jehovah’s Witnesses, all the time, at the old house. I was home with a month-old baby, I probably would’ve talked to Charles Manson, but still…they were persistent buggers! We had to move away to get rid of them. Here it seems to be Mormons, although I only see them wandering the neighborhood; so far I have escaped actual personal contact with these clean-cut youngsters. (Is there some sort of sacred think tank or research group that goes into which religious group canvasses which neighborhood? Inquiring minds want to know…) Today – a neighborhood Baptist church. Sweet kids, very earnest…but I was brought up Baptist, in the little-known Bible belt of South Jersey, and am still recovering. Thank you, but no. You are welcome to and encouraged to practice whichever religion you choose and I will defend to the death your right to do so, but…
I would like my children to believe that God is a compassionate and helpful entity who wants you to try to be good, not some fire-breathing old ogre looking for any old excuse to throw you into hell for eternity.
I do not ever want my child to wake up in the middle of the night and feel he has to go make sure the rest of the family is asleep in their beds, and he was not the only one left when the Rapture happened.
I do not want my kids to think that the Beatles and Billy Joel sing Satanic music that you have to listen to backwards to get the full effect of the evil contained therein, or that Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds is a song about LSD (who cares if it is, frankly?).
I would like them to grow up well-adjusted, fairly happy, and moderately self-confident individuals who have some sense of self and are encouraged to live life fully – in other words, SO VERY NOT what the Baptist church of my youth encouraged.
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Simon is heading to kindergarten in a little more than a year, and already the school anxiety has begun. We dithered over where to move – Mt Lebo, Fox Chapel – due to the quality of the schools, and finally decided we wanted to live in the city so darn it, we were going to live in the city. So then the consideration of private and parochial schools began. Did we really want to spend their college money on kindergarten? If necessary, yes. Did I want my children brought up to practice a religion which my husband does not practice and in which I do not believe? No, unequivocally no. Could we get them into a good public magnet school? Possibly, depending upon the luck of the lottery system that the Pittsburgh Public School system uses. Was the feeder neighborhood school an option? No. I want racial and cultural diversity, I do not want my child to be one of only five white children in a school of several hundred. The stress, oh the stress. We started to discuss moving again. The thought broke my heart: I love my house, my neighbors, my neighborhood. I love my kids more – I could become a suburban minivan-driving soccer mom if that’s what it took to get them decent schooling.
At a meeting at Peabody High School earlier this week, Dan stood up and mentioned his concerns about city schooling and several parents took the opportunity to talk to him about where their kids go and how they like it. One wonderful woman in particular sent us an email extolling the virtues of a school we had briefly considered and then rejected – she has children roughly the same ages as ours and lives in the neighborhood, and is beyond happy with her experiences at Dilworth. She also stressed that no decision is irrevocable, so that immediately helped assuage my fears that if we couldn’t get my kid into Linden or Liberty, it was all over before it had even begun. I would prefer not to get into the application/interview/assessment admission process that many schools use even for kindergarten. I have friends with three- and four-year-olds who have undergone more rigorous admission processes than I dealt with to get into college. But I also am unhappy with the complete randomness of the public school-magnet admittance process.
And everyone thinks childbirth is the hard part!
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