Remember what your dream house used to be? I do: fourteen years ago, Jamie and I moved into ours We didn’t pay rent to live in our dream house, we owned it. We could decorate it, paint it, do anything we wanted. We could make any changes we wanted; but why change it? In our house, there were enough rooms for Jamie and I to have our own little offices. We could look out upon our decently-sized yard and imagine our children playing in it. The subway, the cheap movie-theater and decent restaurants were a quick walk from the front door. Did I say “dream house”?:; well it was. Jamie and I didn’t dream big house-wise, so the house could be small.
I still love this house. It’s my family's history. Both my kids came home to this house. My children are city children; they walk places because so much of life is within walking distance. They know kids on this street. Their yard is the best yard, climbing structure and all.
This is our home, and we’re bursting out of it. Those two offices? They were perfect places for desks and filing cabinets, Once they became the kids’ rooms, they got smaller. Now that Emma is sleeping in the cozy little office where it wrote for hours on end, it looks smaller than a hotel coat-closet. It is, and always was. Liam’s room is jam-packed with Legos. The kids need bigger rooms. I need a second bathroom because, first thing in the morning, desperately wants the only one we have. The half-bath, the guest-room, the laundry-room up where all the laundry is; yeah, we need them.
The house has us, it really does. The porch has been torn down, and the cement steps got demolished yesterday. The back-door opens straight into nothing. Step outside, and you’d drop into a hole that’s as deep as our basement. The only way out of the house is through the front door. We’ve got nowhere to go but forward.
Emma turned four today. Four, she told her teachers and every kid in the Red Group as soon as she walked through the door. The same age as her bestest buds , this seemed to be bigger news than all the cupcakes we brought, even the ones she frosted. Tonight there are new books to read and a new game ( Chutes and Ladders, which Jamie remembers fondly ). Some rainy day, there will be a new puzzle to try. Indulgent?; hard not to be with my little girl.
Six years ago, while we watched our sons run around the park, my neighbour, Paul, noted that four-year-old girls are the most self-confident people on earth. If allowed, they would, and could run the world. Paul had never lived with a four-year-old girl, but he knew people who did, and he’d heard them holding court around the jungle-gym. I’ve seen little girls in full command of two different day-care-centers. Emma knows the world belongs to her.
Yesterday, I watched Emma and three of her girls around a pink tea-table make big plans to wreck havoc. When our girls are dressed up in pink tulle with crowns and sparkly shoes, they rule the kingdom, and there’s not a king in sight. Emma loves Cinderella, she loves the magic and the transforming; when she plays it, the Prince never even enters the story.
Last year, I wondered how I was going to handle fairy tales. Last year, I imagined a Cinderella who took a break from the party to check out the castle library. That’s where she meets the very shy Prince;; they discuss literature and science. before hitting the dance floor. Okay, sometimes I tell the story “by the book”, but I’ll try and remember to tell it my way more often.
It might be easier to bring out my Ella if I could show her off in a picture-book. Any artist out there want to work on one with me? I’m not kidding; my drawing style is a little too modern and cartoonish than I think this beauty needs. Interested?; be in touch.
In that park that morning with Paul and the boyos, I hadn’t spent too much time with little girls. It is easier to wonder where all the girl-power goes if all you know is that theorists say it goes. Many of the ten-year-old girls I know play soccer and practice Kung Fu like they have something to prove. My mother-in-law (former Biology teacher) always said that the best group-projects were the ones where short teenage girls headed the groups. Those girls wanted good grades, and no lazy boys were going to stop them dammit!
Maybe it’s good that some girls think about their appearance before boys do. Some boys I know leave their houses in black sweatpants and dirty navy shirts, and I’m sick of looking at them. Stop embarrassing your mothers boys, before we stop chalking it up to “boys being boys”
My Emma is tough, powerful and loves loves pink. She turned four this morning.
When I was seven or eight, I met my childhood hero, the one who pulled me into the 19th century. On a rainy Sunday afternoon, my father took us into Boston to see the 1939 film “The Hound of the Baskervilles”. You may know it, the brittle brilliant Holmes, his dottering Dr. Watson, and 200 pounds of sinew, teeth and fur. Piece by piece, clue by clue, it all came perfectly together; how could I resist? Why should I?
From that afternoon on, Holmes was my number one, over-the-top hero. Comic books, space-operas, they meant nothing to me. Other detectives were mere, dim shadows. Holmes solved crimes on the London street and in country homes in that big costume-drama, the Victorian era, where I dreamt. At night, on the school-bus and during Math lessons, I invented crimes to solve with Holmes by my side.
By the time I was ten and attending the yearly meetings of the Friends of Irene Adler, I had probably heard every story thanks to a public radio station that ran the half-hour radio plays of the Sherlock Holmes stories made by the BBC in the 1940s. My father and I saved each story on an old tape recorder we placed by the speaker. Dad and I liked these better than the movies because they got the whole stories just right and showed Watson the way he really was; as Holmes’ intelligent contemporary. Listening to those plays with Dad was the best part of Sundays.
Every December, Dad put on his tux and escorted me to the dinner-meeting of The Friends of Irene Adler. Here, all members worked our way through a nearly impossible quiz on Holmes and his work before dining on roast goose and sherry trifle. At my first meeting, I got up and proposed a toast to The Baker Street Irregulars. The Irregulars were the street-kids whom Holmes paid shilling to ferret out clues and information. Queen Victoria, Irene Adler, Holmes and Watson had been thusly honoured I didn’t want my boyos to be forgotten. Nobody had thought to toast them before, and that became my yearly responsibility.
I loved Holmes because he proved that being smarter than anyone else really counted for something, Sometimes, it was all you needed.
When I was a kid, I liked Irene Adler just fine. It took me years to fully appeacuate her power. She stopped Holmes in his tracks so completely that he had to admit defeat, even to himself. It’s only after watching men lock themselves into some pretty stupid mistakes because they can’t own up to making mistakes that I realise what an achievement that is.
Another hero from my childhood was Oscar Wilde. He never solved a crime or prevented an innocent woman from being mauled by mastiffs, but Oscar could nail a situation, or an adversary, with a few well-chosen words. Oscar would probably have made a better dinner-companion.
So, did I like the new Sherlock Holmes movie? Oh, yes I did!!! It’s a big concoction of 19th century adventure. This is still the kind of get-away I need.
