Let the Wild Rumpus Start

The much-anticipated live-action film of "Where the Wild Things Are" opens today. Many critics have already lavished praise on director Spike Jonze's interpretation of the beloved classic. Michael Phillips, of the Chicago Tribune, calls it "a nervy and breathtaking achievement."

Jonze, the director of such offbeat and edgy concoctions as Adaptation and Being John Malkovich, had to take some liberties in turning a 338-word picture book into a feature film. But the movie has earned the stamp of approval from author/illustrator Maurice Sendak, who walked down the red carpet with Jonze and child star Max Records at the film's New York premiere.

The movie has aroused controversy; some charge that it is too scary for young children. "But what if that intensity, that asymmetry, is exactly why children should see Wild Things?" ponders Newsweek critic Andrew Romano (see http://www.newsweek.com/id/217830) "The greatest children's stories are about what happens when we become untethered from authority...to be rid of rules and face a dangerous and exhilirating world alone." Parenting today seems more about structure and supervision, but "the less room we leave in real life for rebellion and abandon, the more kids need stories to make space for those very things."

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The Caldecott-winning book also stirred things up when it was published in 1963. "Having a story about a small child throwing a tantrum for the benefit of his mother was not a story you were going to find in children's literature before the 1960s, because children weren't supposed to yell at their mothers," said children's book author and historian Leonard S. Marcus. "The idea that children experience rage and that it's a natural part of their psyche was a new idea to children's picture books."

Then, as today, some found the "wild things" too frightening for children. But exploring childhood fears has long been a preoccupation for Sendak, who at age 13, learned that many of his relatives had perished in the Holocaust.

Sendak grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., the son of Eastern European immigrants. His "wild things" were based on relatives who frequently visited his family on the weekends and shared meals with them. "Three aunts and three uncles who spoke no English, practically. They grabbed you and twisted your face, and they thought that was an affectionate thing to do. And I knew that my mother's cooking was pretty terrible, and it also took forever, and there was every possibility that they would eat me, or my sister or my brother," he recalled in a recent Newsweek interview.

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Reflecting on the Wild Things, I remembered a great story that Sendak once told in an interview, that really demonstrated his appreciation for children. With a little searching, I found the interview, which was conducted by NPR's Terry Gross a few years ago. Sendak described how he had received a card with a charming drawing on it from a little boy. "I loved it. I answer all my children's letters--sometimes very hastily--but this one I lingered over," he said. "I sent him a postcard and I drew a picture of a Wild Thing on it. I wrote, `Dear Jim, I loved your card.' Then I got a letter back from his mother and she said, `Jim loved your card so much he ate it.' That to me was one of the highest compliments I've ever received. He didn't care that it was an original drawing or anything. He saw it, loved it, he ate it."

My Parents Were Awesome

A new website is looking for photos of your parents from their "Mad Men" days--when they were young, beautiful, and having the time of their lives. The website celebrates the days "before the fanny packs" when parents "were once free-wheeling, fashion-forward, and super awesome."

The photos on http://myparentswereawesome.tumblr.com/ are mainly from the 1950s to 1970s. A journey through the site confirms--yet again--that people were simply more glamorous pre-1970. The fashions of the 1970s, combined with drinking, were not a good mix. But see how the elegant mid-1960s lady pictured below deftly manages her cigarette, cocktail, AND bridal veil.

The first names of the subjects in the photos are given, but no other information is provided. We are left to imagine the stories behind them. There's "Dan," a young man from the 1950's, sitting astride his motorcycle. I think he's just gotten his diploma and he is done with his small town. "Magali," a beautiful blonde with Britt Ekland bangs and a confident smile, poses in front of a plane. She's a future Pan Am stewardess who one day just might marry that millionaire.

In the picture to the left, "Renato" holds "Isabel" in his arms and kisses her on a rooftop. I imagine they are backpacking through Europe and have stopped in Italy. They are young and just starting out. They are poor, but very, very happy.

White lace and promises. A kiss for luck and we're on our way...

As my husband looked through the photos he was charmed by them, but a little wistful. "It's such a brief time when we are young," he said.

We've got talent!

Last Wednesday, I saw someone that I knew performing on a reality t.v. show. The show was America’s Got Talent, and the performer was my stepbrother’s wife, Barbara Padilla. It was a surreal and exciting experience, to say the least, to watch Barbara sing Puccini’s “O mio babbino caro” on a show with over 10 million viewers.

On the day of the show, we learned that Barbara was going to be part of the televised Houston auditions that night. We immediately got the word out through Facebook and phone calls. My 13-year-old excitedly text messaged the news to her friends.

As the show began, we had to sit there on pins and needles, watching a mix of weird and wonderful performers step up to the mike. The first act, the charming “Texas Tenors” got the crowd warmed up. We laughed at the raunchy but surprisingly funny Grandma Lee, and were grateful that the relative we were waiting to see was not the circus dude who stapled things to his forehead.

We waited nervously for Barbara to come on, baited by the commercials that hinted at her story. Finally, it was her turn. A short bio introduced her. “Last to perform is a stay-at-home mom who’s hoping to impress the judges by dusting off her lifelong dream,” said the host in a voice-over. My girls cheered when they saw her being interviewed in the clip, along with their uncle Kyle and little cousin Elizabeth.

Then it was show time, and Barbara arrived on the stage in an elegant white dress. After a few notes, we could tell that the judges were surprised, as we had been once, that such a tiny lady could have such a big, operatic voice. Barbara gave an beautiful, moving performance and ended the song on a soaring note. The crowd roared and gave her standing ovation.

The first judge to speak, Piers Morgan, told her, “You have an amazing voice.” He asked her what it felt like to have performed like that.

Clearly touched by the response, she joked, “how long do I have to answer that question?” Then, she shared some of her story. “I’ve lived through miracles, and this is one more miracle because I’m a cancer survivor. I was sick for five years, and I’m in remission, and now I’m here. What a dream!” she said, with a big smile.

Barbara had first come to Houston from Guadalajara, Mexico for treatment for Hodgkins lymphoma at M.D. Anderson Hospital. While in Houston, she also auditioned for a spot in the master's program of the University of Houston's music school. Weakened by radiation, and weighing about 90 pounds, she tried out. The faculty, clearly impressed, awarded her a full scholarship.

The first time that I heard her sing, I was having dinner at a Mexican restaurant in Houston with Barbara and Kyle, along with my dad and stepmother. The mariachis came by, and Kyle asked if Barbara could join them in a song. When she hit her first high note, everything in the restaurant stopped. Waiters paused to listen. Afterwards, as the dining patrons cheered, one woman came over and praised her. “You made my mother cry," she said.

Whether performing before a few dozen in a restaurant, or before millions on t.v., Barbara gives an emotionally riveting performance. As judge David Hasselhoff told her, “What you did is, you showed us your heart.”

The judges voted unanimously to send her to the next round in Vegas. May Lady Luck shine on you, Barbara!

You can watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDRsxMMqAEU

Surrogate Fathers

We hold our holidays to impossible standards. The right gifts must be chosen, the food must arrive on time, and everyone must get along. But celebrations like Father’s Day often fall short of our expectations. For those who are physically or emotionally separated from their families, they are often a crushing reminder of loss.

Our Sunday paper was filled with memorials to fathers and grandfathers, their pictures lovingly displayed along with special notes written by loved ones still grieving.

In our hearts your memory lingers, sweetly tender, fond and true. There is not a day, dear father that we do not think of you.

Another: Papa it's been 17 years sense (sic) you been gone. I still miss you Papa.

Some spent Father's Day coping with emotional separation from their families. Yesterday, I received an email from a friend in Los Angeles whose family cannot accept the fact that she is gay. “On a sad note," she wrote, "I was not invited today for Father's Day."

She called her dad to wish him a happy Father's Day and asked when she could see him and give him his gift. Her stepmother told her to stop by after 8 p.m., because they would be busy before then. They had already made plans to go to the beach with her brother and his family. “I said nothing and waited. I was not invited,” she said. She later left the Father's Day gift on her parents' front porch.

After talking it over with a supportive friend, "I realized my real family is all my amazing friends. I have to start making the distinction if I am ever going to get over this and be happy," she said. "The fact is, since I'm not living the life they have chosen for me, my parents are not supportive. I must let go.”

*****

On Saturday, while watching my children at the pool, I heard a relentless, high-pitched scream. I turned and saw a small crowd moving quickly from the playground. In the front, a man comforted a small boy in a towel who had received some sort of terrible injury. The boy cried as blood dripped from his mouth. He had taken a tumble off the slide and bitten through his tongue.

The man helping him began giving directions in a surprisingly calm voice. “Can someone get some ice?” he asked. "Does anyone know his mother?" To the boy he said, “it will be o.k.”

The woman from the snack bar rushed over with ice. A lifeguard ran over with his first aid kit and wrapped up the boy's tongue. Someone grabbed a pediatrician who was doing laps. Another found the boy’s mother and little sister. The little sister was so upset that she started crying and ended up biting her own tongue, which also started bleeding. Everyone was taken care of, the situation calmed, and the mother and her children headed towards the parking lot.

Over the Father’s Day weekend, I reflected upon the man who had helped the little boy. By his care and concern, I had assumed he was the father. Apparently, they didn’t even know each other. How reassuring to know that there is within us something instinctive that enables us to care for one another as a parent, when the real parents can’t be found.

*****

Over the weekend, people around the world began receiving the shocking images from Iran of a young woman shot to death at a rally. According to reports, 27-year-old student Neda Soltan had been attending a protest on Saturday when a sniper shot her in the chest. I haven’t watched them, but understand that cell phone videos capture the horrifying moments as two men gently help her lie down on the sidewalk as they try to stop the bleeding. One of the men, since identified as her music teacher, was at first believed to be her father. On one video, as she begins to lose consciousness, he is heard offering her comfort in her final moments.

"Neda, don't be afraid…"

The world grieves for this young woman, whose death has become a galvanizing force for Iranians opposed to President Ahmadinejad. Protestors around the world now hold posters with her image and name, which means “the call” or “the voice” in Farsi.

As the world watches and waits, in the White House, another father, one who seems an exceptionally moral and intelligent man, contemplates the extent to which we are our brother’s keeper.

Happy Father's Day and Bon Appetit!

I was blessed to spend the week before Father's Day with my dad and stepmom, who were visiting from Florida. During that time, my dad (with my stepmom and youngest daughter, the patient co-chefs) insisted upon making dinner every night. My dad is an amazing cook who enjoys preparing meals for our family. Even before he packs to come up here, it's on his mind. My dad once hauled a 10-pound hunk of prime rib in his luggage.

Eating a nice meal is important to him, perhaps because he grew up with the poverty and rations of World War II Aberdeen. He views food as a necessity for which you should always be grateful.

Voilà! Garlic chicken.

When visiting us, my dad goes with the flow during the day, but when mid-afternoon approaches, it's time to get down to business. Around 2 or 3 p.m., he will begin to show a little antsiness in his manner and assume a look of focused intensity. He will begin opening cabinet doors in the kitchen, and peeking in the refrigerator. If I haven't picked up on what's going on, if I have missed the signs, he will ask me directly, "O.k., NOW--what are we going to have for dinner?" Because I am usually a last-minute, fling something together type of cook, I usually have no idea. I usually haven't given it the first thought.

Ah, amateurs. He comes up with a plan for dinner and, before long, he is pulling out pots and pans and organizing any necessary runs to the grocery store. A couple of hours later, things are really happening around the kitchen. Ingredients are being mixed, steam is rising, butter and garlic are crackling from the frying pan. My stepmother darts around the kitchen, moving boiling things. My dad, his face now sweating, takes a brief sip from a glass of wine before deftly chopping some herbs. The door swings open, and who is there standing before him but his adult child.

"Need any help?"

*****

Father's Day was fast approaching and we were running out of time. My girls wanted to find something special for their dad, who they both love so dearly. Though he works such long hours, he still finds time for swim meets and basketball, teacher conferences and just hanging out with his family. One of the things he enjoys doing most is making spectacular meals for us.

Thinking about that gave my youngest daughter an idea. "He's been looking everywhere for a crepe pan," she said.

A challenge! We went to the mall and, after looking around a bit, struck gold at Crate and Barrel. The next morning, we gave my husband breakfast in bed and showered him with an array of small gifts. Among them, the little round pan that had so eluded him.

He had not much time to lounge about aimlessly when our youngest asked if he could show her how to make crepes. Soon, he was in the kitchen, stirring batter and then warming it up in his new pan.

I watched as, with a spatula, he expertly folded the thin pancake over some strawberries. "You're not supposed to be doing all this work on Father's Day," I said.

"This is how I wanted to spend it," he said.

Within a couple of hours, he had to head to the office again--though we all knew he'd much rather be at home with his girls, flipping crepes.

*****

Happy Father's Day to our family's two special chefs!

Model childhoods

Not long ago, a story appeared in the Richmond Times-Dispatch about a retired engineer who is reconstructing his childhood neighborhood in miniature. Carl Kersey, Sr., 73, grew up in Happy Hollow, a neighborhood of about 50 homes in eastern Richmond. The homes were bulldozed more than 30 years ago by the local redevelopment and housing authority, but the neighborhood lives on in his mind and in his scale replica.

Kersey's miniature Happy Hollow is rich in detail, from the tiny sheets that flap from clotheslines to the swimming pool that recalls the one that his father made from a fuel tank. In the article and accompanying video, writer Melodie Martin records Kersey's memories of an enchanting, working class community, where children bought penny candy at the corner store, swam in water-filled gravel pits, and whiled away afternoons "in the grassy lots between homes where they played baseball, cows grazed and tent revivals were held."

Reading the article, I feel a nostalgic tug for Mr. Kersey's neighborhood. It is interesting to me that the most modest of living conditions can often glean some of the richest of childhoods.

http://www.timesdispatch.com/rtd/news/local/article/KERS06_20090505-223203/266005/

*****

My 13-year-old was intrigued by the pictures of Mr. Kersey's model of Happy Hollow. "It's like the one in Mister Rogers' Neighborhood," she said. Both of my children have a fond appreciation for that quiet, slow-paced show. One of their favorite parts is the opening, when the camera pans a model of the neighborhood as the themesong begins.

The model is used in other parts of the show. When the kindly Mister Rogers visits his neighbors, his journeys are traced down its orderly streets. Everything that Mister Rogers needs seems to be within walking distance.

I would love to be able to walk a few blocks to check out some books from the library, buy a gallon of milk, or say hello to a friendly fireman. But my neighborhood is considered "car dependent," at least by the folks at http://www.walkscore.com/. Our community is safe, and abundant with natural beauty. The trade-off is that, unlike Mister Rogers, we would have to walk a couple of miles and cross some pretty major roads to get to the nearest store or library.

*****

My grandparents lived in Toronto for most of their lives, and, while there, they never owned a car. Everywhere they wanted to go was either accessible by foot or mass transit. We lived in Toronto when I was very young, and Gram watched me during the day while my parents worked. I still have vivid memories of my time in their very walkable neighborhood. I remember pushing my dolls in a little pram when we went to the playground down the street. On the way home, we'd stop at a corner store where Gram would treat me to a soda, a comic book, and ketchup potato chips. My grandparents lived on the second floor of a three-story walk-up, and the halls and stairwells always seemed to smell like fried food.

My grandparents have been dead for a number of years now, but, last fall, I returned to that old neighborhood. Lacking a child's dramatic sense of scale, everything looked so different. The buildings, especially, seemed so short. I did not recognize the playground down the street where I had spent so many hours. I wondered how many years it had been since they had replaced the swings and slides on which I had once played.

The older I get, the more I miss my grandparents. Perhaps I thought that by going back to their old neighborhood, I could somehow replicate what it felt like to be three years old and walking to the playground with my Gram. I found that I could no longer connect to what was, and would instead have to hold on to the memories of what had once been.

Boo Radley and other childhood mysteries

Early in To Kill a Mockingbird, 10-year-old Jem tells his cousin Dill about his mysterious neighbor, Boo.

“Well, judgin' from his tracks, he's about six and a half feet tall. He eats raw squirrels and all the cats he can catch. There's a long, jagged scar that runs all the way across his face. His teeth are yellow and rotten. His eyes are popped. And he drools most of the time.”

Dill is so enraptured by the story that he is startled when his aunt comes up behind them.

“My Lord, Aunt Stephanie, you almost gave me a heart attack!” he says, rattled.

If you were lucky when you were growing up, you may have had a similar neighborhood mystery to ponder—a neighbor with a secret or a peculiar house that was rumored to be haunted. Such stories likely drew you and your friends together, and added a sense of danger and excitement to long summer days.

Growing up in Houston, I remember a Spanish-style house in our neighborhood with a walled courtyard in front. If you peeked through the gate, you could see that the house had a very large picture window. The window revealed a staircase with a second-floor balcony. Sometimes you could see a ghost there, according to neighborhood lore. The ghost was rumored to be a beautiful woman dressed in a nightgown.

My friends and I would walk by the house at night and peek in. We were in junior high, so even if there wasn't a ghost per se, there would always be some sort of drama--a shadow or a movement of some kind to give us a rewarding scare.

*****

My cousin, Darla, was a master weaver of tales. I’d see her in the summertime, and we would have slumber parties at my great-grandmother’s house in Nova Scotia. After a full day of Barbies and adventures with our other cousins, we’d settle in for the night. We would be tucked under home-made quilts, the moon outside our window. She would begin her tales in a quiet, gather-round-the-fire voice. “A friend of mine told me this story. It happened to someone she knew…”

Darla likely told me about “Bloody Mary,” who would appear in mirrors when you repeated her name three times. She might also have told me the story about the woman in Toronto who was killed by her husband and plastered right into the wall. Today, some of her stories would no doubt be investigated and found wanting by Snopes. But they were riveting…the very stuff of childhood.

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One of the mysteries of our current neighborhood is right outside our front door. In our flower bed, we have a small grave. “Andy We Love You,” it reads.

My husband and I have made some dark, Lemony Snickettish suggestions to our children (“Andy was your older brother, who didn’t look both ways before crossing the street…”). But, we’ve all pretty much settled on the idea that the grave belongs to the beloved pet of a prior owner.

My 10-year-old, in fact, is certain about the identity of Andy, whose grave is right outside her window.

“One night I woke up, and there was a black lab at the foot of my bed,” she told me. I asked her about the dog, and learned that he was friendly and had blue eyes. But before she could approach him, she said, he wagged his tail three times and then jumped through the window.

“Do you think it was…” I started.

She nodded her head solemnly.

*****

I have seen my littlest one pointing out Andy’s grave to her friends. Although I am older now, and no longer privy to secret childhood conversations, I hope that she is carrying on the tradition set by my cousin Darla and the other storytellers in our family. I hope she is scaring the heck out of them.