Sometimes These Things Just Write Themselves

September 13, 2007 @ 7:45 pm | Filed under: Books,Family Adventures,These People Crack Me Up

I’m washing dishes, and I pick up a spoon that looks, at first half-attending glance, like it’s covered with applesauce. I begin to wipe it off in my sudsy water, but it isn’t applesauce after all; it’s gooey and greasy and clings to my fingers, rather like…Vaseline?

"What’s on this spoon?" I ask the three girls at at the breakfast table.

"Vaseline," confirms Rose, all nonchalance.

"And why, may I ask?"

She is matter of fact, as if anyone with sense ought to have known without asking. "I was playing Rowan of Rin,* and I needed to make an antidote to Death Sleep. The Vaseline was supposed to be Silver Deep."

Well, okay then.

(*Technically, I think the Death Sleep bit comes into Rowan and the Keeper of the Crystal. Darn good books, by the way: a fantasy series by Emily Rodda. Big hit with all the 9-and-ups in this house.)

(I miss the old covers, the ones with young Rowan on them.)

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Faerie Rebecca says:

We love Rowan in this house, too! And the old covers were indeed better. Wonder why they switched?

And how silly of you not to recognize Silver Deep when you see it. Jeesh, Mom LOL
Posted on September 14th, 2007 at 4:39 am
coffeemamma says:

We picked up some copies with the old covers at bookcloseouts.com for our 12yod- she absolutely loves the books!
Posted on September 14th, 2007 at 6:36 am
Margaret in Minnesota says:

My oldest son thanks you for sending us off to the library to find these books!

PS. The older covers are definitely more magical.
Posted on October 9th, 2007 at 5:19 am
Next Shelf — Here in the Bonny Glen says:

[...] Rowan of Rin by Emily Rodda, the first book in a favorite series of my girls. [...]
Posted on September 26th, 2008 at 10:15 am

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And yet—and yet—I think we are at once ‘carried away’ and made more fully present in the now, more rooted, by these relationships between ideas about things past and future. The joy of connection makes me want to celebrate this moment, this brief encounter with wild-haired child and broad-trunked tree, bus going by, sign on church wall, Scottish warlord creeping over the tower wall and startling the English soldier’s wife who has just put her babe in arms to sleep by crooning that the Black Douglas won’t get him. Child, laughing, shouting “Dinna ye be sae sure aboot that!” across the courtyard outside the library. How can I not celebrate this freedom?

(from a post called Way Leads on to Way)

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Every day is complicated, messy, and full of friction. And every day has glorious or cozy moments worth celebrating. I seldom bother to chronicle the friction and the mess because writing time is fleeting and precious—and childhood even more so. I’d rather capture the small joys that I might forget—or take for granted—if I don’t take time to set them down in words.

(Excerpt from this post about Real Life, quoted here because I don't want anyone to be under the impression that things are always perfect around here! Heaven knows we are anything but. Perfect, frictionless, orderly? Nope. Happy? Most of the time!)