Dalai Mama Dishes

by Catherine Newman

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

Dalai Mama Dishes

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

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Listen Up

Posted September 07, 2007
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New feature: Ever wonder what Catherine sounds like? Listen to her read this blog entry.

I can't always tell with Birdy what the deal is with talking. I mean -- if you transcribed a typical conversational day at our house, perhaps it would look on paper as if everyone spoke an equal and regular amount. Perhaps only if you italicized all of Birdy's loudness would you understand that this person I share my house with sees the world through a rose-colored megaphone. If our family is an orchestra, Birdy is the percussion section: the rhythm and background snare, the tinkling triangle, the crash of cymbals, the deafening shudder of the gong even when we're playing Vivaldi's Four Seasons.

"Onions have a kind of a papery skin!" is the first thing she says to me upon waking today, for instance. Italics really don't do justice to the groggy shouting of this observation into my face. Birdy has been lying on top of me, and she rears her head back to say it again: "A papery skin! And you shred it off -- you just kind of SHRED it off, right Mama? You SHRED it."

It really is funniest when Birdy's half asleep -- a dozy time one might incorrectly associate with whispers and quiet musing. Like the night she wanders into our bedroom, sputtering with woe because one of her leg Band-Aids has fallen off in the bed. After a fresh one is obtained and applied, she sneaks exuberantly into bed between Michael and me -- like the motion equivalent of a stage whisper -- and seems to sleep while we discuss her weepy, spreading rash. Her eyes snap open. "WHAT'S OLD NAVY?" Her mouth is a bellows, words pushed out in roaring blasts. She's like one of those friendly cartoon dragons who just wants to say hello, but ends up setting your braids on fire. "Old Navy is that store with that truck and the pretend dog and the rubber ball machine," I say, "where we get sun hats and flip-flops." "I thought so." Her eyes close again. Can you put hydrocortisone on a child? We don't know. We've heard that very hot water is helpful. The eyes snap open again. "HOW DID IT HURT MY LEG?" What? "WHY DID OLD NAVY GIVE ME A RASH?" "Oh honey. No. Poison ivy. That plant when we were looking at the lilacs. Remember?" "Oh. Poison ivy." Her eyes close again, then snap open before Michael and I have even stopped laughing. "Wait, wait," she says. "Tell me again. HOW did Old Navy make ALL THESE SPOTS ON MY LEG?"

Last week, my mother and I were pulling weeds out of her asparagus bed, the kids chattering in the background while they pushed seeds into the ground. My mom had sighed adoringly and said, "I never tire of those little voices," and I'd agreed with absentminded sentimentality, "Me either." And then a second later: "Wait -- what am I saying? I tire of them constantly." And my mom had laughed because there was Birdy already, her face pressed right up against mine, saying, "Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. I have a toenail that's a bit GRUBBY." "Ah," I had said. "Some toenails are like that." "Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. I have a toenail that's a bit SHAGGY." Whenever I try to remind her about saying "Mom" one time, and then giving me a moment to respond, she says, like a stand-up comedian, "Mama? Mama? Mama? I FORGOT."

Sometimes I worry that Birdy talks so loud and stammeringly because I've been distracted lately. I don't know quite how to describe this distraction, except to say that I'll vow to pay attention to one of the children's stories, and then I'll find myself more or less coming to when the concluding "AND IT WAS INSIDE MY SOCK THE WHOLE ENTIRE TIME!" detonates through the fog of my atmosphere. I'll have to shake my head -- say, "I'm sorry, honey. Tell me that last part one more time." What is it with me? Work? Email? Middle age? The aluminum I wrap our leftover pizza in? Or is it simply the fact that the kids' stories are like those telethons from childhood, where you turn the TV off and eat your franks and beans and take a bath go to sleep and wake up and eat your Buckwheats cereal and turn the TV back on -- and Jerry Lewis is still talking. I just don't want to turn into one of those dads -- the kind with the kids tugging on the hem of his suit coat, the kind that needs to learn a Big Lesson in a movie with grief at its core. I want to kneel down lower and listen harder. Even as my hair goes up in flames.

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About Catherine Newman

Catherine Newman is the author of the memoir, Waiting for Birdy: A Year of Frantic Tedium, Neurotic Angst, and the Wild Magic of Growing a Family, available online and in bookstores nationwide.

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