At the still point of the turning world

So I'm reading the Hours by Michael Cunningham, a book that has sat on my nightstand in that stack that gets started and left for other easier reads or for books that have due dates at the library (this stack also includes a Japanese book in translation, Places left unfinished at the time of creation and a number of anthologies that are easy to read a chapter and put down for months at a time). I'm not sure why it's taken me this long to read the Hours as it is beuatiful and flowing and I've seen the movie so I can sort of picture what the whole thing looks like, which is nice in that picture plus a thousand words way. Unfortunately, the book itself has the movie poster as a cover and I am fundamentally opposed to books that have been made into movies sporting the stars who made it-especially in this case because the character Clarissa who is played by Meryl Streep in the movie really loves Meryl Streep the actress in the book, which is just too strange and unfair to deal with when you are trying to absorb a character's personality.

Regardless, there is this really beautiful line where the Meryl Streep character talks about wanting to pour out her life to this old acquaintance but not in some sit around for hours and catch up-sort of way. She wants to pour out in one motion all the vivid pointless moments that don't make good stories. I don't have the book in front of me right now, I am busy watching sesame street, pulling the whells off and then "fitching" (fixing) them again, typing this post and pulling the blanket away from henry's mouth and nose so I'm not sure the quote is quite exact, but you get the idea. I told James that these vivid, pointless moments are just what I am struck with daily and tell him about and try to connect them in some way by saying "the other thing is" or "oh and also" which he always laughs at because he can never figure out what the first thing was.

But this line is so true about life. The moments like when Bing and his brother went walking along the train tracks with a kid they weren't supposed to hang out with and the kid shot a woman in the shoulder with his shotgun thinking she was a scarecrow (she lived and was out in her garden the next week) make really good stories but it's the other moments that fill in your life. I was thinking of these sorts of moments and compiling a list. My life as a stay at home mom right now does not have that many good stories but it is certainly full of the vivid, sometimes pointless moments that don't make good stories. And just thinking of them got me excited to write them down. James said that Larry King's column is like this (I haven't read it) where he lists things like "I really like green beans" or something like that. I'm going to try to jot down some vivid moments on a semi-regular basis, here on this blog to make this or that live in time and be remembered.

Here are a couple I am thinking of today:

Henry breathes really loudly when he is sleeping, which is really great because I don't have to get up and lay my hand on his chest to make sure he is still alive. This seems a little morbid I know, but any of you who have or have had a newborn know the feeling-like the life you made is so fragile and could stop and go away so easily.

Finn has started pretending to talk on the phone, imitating me, by leaning the phone on his shoulder and jabbering into it with his hands free to do other things. Just now he is holding the phone in this way between his ear and raised shoulder and then holding his toy school bus up to eye level and blabbering like he is reading the VIN number off to his insurance agent.

He also saw a commercial for Jeeps this morning and said outloud, with total joy, Jeep! like he had discovered that word and what it meant for the first time. I told him that Aunt Bum has a Jeep and he has been muttering "Jeep! Aunt Bum!" and smiling at me in this knowing way all morning. if I don't respond right away, he repeats it until I confirm and then raises his eyebrows and nods like, yeah I'm a pretty smart kid, huh?