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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Wonder Time

Posted January 14, 2008
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It's funny that this site is called Wondertime, because just now as I was looking at my collection of notes for the week, I thought to myself -- with a sense neither of humor nor of irony -- "This really is a time of wonder." And then I slapped my forehead with my corny, embarrassed hand.

But it is. Birdy right now -- you can practically hear the tick-ticking of her brain as it works, swirling information around like wine in a glass. I always picture the inside of my own mind as a large, dim room filled floor to ceiling with dusty piles of bursting and disorganized file folders, lots of them held together with decaying rubber bands, maybe an old guy at a desk working by the light from a candle stump. I have, I confess, pictured the inside of Michael's mind as a moonscape with an odd gravitational field, but where the inhabitants are engaged in intelligent, if inscrutable, experiments -- and also Canadians are playing hockey there. Ben's I picture as the ribbon of musical notes spooling from a cartoon trumpet, only some of the notes are flowers and some of them are numbers. But Birdy's? The picture is only just emerging: it's stuff pouring in -- buttons and words and animals and feelings and sandwiches -- and a person frantically sorting, trying to keep up with the influx.

"What about the front of the plane?" she says, apropos of precisely nothing, and you have to say, "What about the front of the plane?" And she says, like a comical skit, "Exactly." When you pursue it, it turns out she's wondering about the tray table -- how the very first seat of a plane could have one -- and when you explain how it folds out from the wall, her eyes light up with the cleverness of it all, and she says, "Aha!"

"Why are those a few of my favorite things?" she says, apropos of precisely nothing, and when you ask about it, she sings, "When the bee stings, when the dog bites, when I'm feeling sad." And so you explain how that part fits into the rest of the song, and she says, with the lit-up eyes, "Aha!"

"Why don't they test your sense of smell at the doctor?' she says, apropos of precisely nothing, and so you explain about the senses -- ones you can try to correct, ones that are important for your relationships with other people or for keeping yourself safe. "Although," you add, "it could be important to be able to smell something dangerous, like spoiled food or chemicals," and she adds cheerfully, "Or a fart."

"If I had to pick getting hurt or dying," she announces suddenly, "I'd pick dying. Because then at least it wouldn't hurt." I keep my voice nice and level to explain why this might be a somewhat shortsighted choice, panicking irrationally the whole time that it might somehow come to pass -- the devil wheeling and dealing, "Hey, Birdy -- a scraped knee or eternal slumber?" -- and she narrows her eyes, says uncertainly, "Hm," and returns to her drawing of a cartwheel. Later she announces to Ben, "I think the order our family will die in is Daddy, Mama, you, me." Then she adds, "Unless I start smoking cigarettes," and laughs.

"I think," she says, nibbling the crusts of a grilled cheese sandwich, "that all drawings of people should have a lift-the-flap so you can see their bones underneath." "That's an interesting idea," I say, and she repeats loudly, but without a trace of macabre humor, "SO YOU CAN SEE THEIR BONES."

"When you get taller..." she says, "Well, you know how your head is higher up? You know? How it's your head that goes up higher on the measurer? It's not actually just your head that's getting taller -- it's your whole body!"

Birdy has been less affectionate lately, and I can't help wondering if it's because she's just so busy -- busy figuring out the world and being in it -- but it makes me a little sad. When you go to kiss her, she cranes her head away instinctively, and then leans in almost guiltily to plant a consoling kiss on your cheek or arm. "That's okay, sweetie," I try to say, "you don't have to be kissed or kiss me," but I'm sure I look crestfallen. Ben, too, is often lost in thought these days. Sometimes I come upon him sitting in the living room -- just sitting quietly on the couch with his arms by his sides. "Are you okay?" I ask, and he looks up, as if from a dream. "I'm just listening," he says pleasantly, and I realize there's music on -- the Dixie Chicks or Mozart -- and that's what he's doing. I want to let the mystery be -- the mystery of these children I share my home with -- but it doesn't come naturally, leaving anything well enough alone. I suppose prying is the flabby, annoying underbelly of wonder.

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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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