So do you know that book? The one that's titled, "If you give a mouse a cookie"? If you do, then you know my current life inside and out. If you don't, well then I'll tell you - it's kind of like this: (if you replace the mouse with a 6 year old girl)
If you give a 6 year old a choice, she's going to choose the one you didn't want her to choose.
So say it's between having her breakfast in bed or downstairs. She'll choose in bed, every time.
If she eats it in bed, she'll want to watch a video while she eats. She'll pick one and then change her mind as soon as you've put it in. It's best to tell her she must watch whatever one she chooses, so she best choose carefully the first time!
If you put in a video, she'll want to watch the whole thing AND draw while she watches. So you must get out blank white paper and markers so she can color away.
If she's like most 6 year olds, her attention span will not be long. So about half way through the film, she'll decide she wants to play house AND keep watching the film. So you play house, and you're ALWAYS the mom or the dog.
When the movie finishes, she'll probably want to keep playing. But this time, she wants her dolls to have houses and beds. She'll ask YOU to make them for her. And because it's fun, you'll make a house with red walls, a pink roof and a green door. It will have yellow trimming and grass growing around it. She'll want the beds to match, so you make one of every color.
Now it's lunch time, and she'll want something you've never made before. So you must go down to the kitchen, and not be long, and make whatever it is that she wanted. You end up asking the cook to help.
Again, while she eats, she'll want to watch ANOTHER video. You put ANOTHER video in and watch the WHOLE thing. Again, she'll get anxious and want to draw again, but this time - on your hands. By the end of the movie, you have flower doodles all over you paws and paper chips in your hair. She's still running around you while you try and scrub them all off - which they never do!
Finally, after you chase her around the room, she gets a bath. But in the bath she'll want you to read to her. So you'll read her almost three books before her 30 minutes are up, and then take on the task of drying her two and a half feet long golden locks.
While you're drying her head she'll want to sing and maybe cut up some shimmery pompoms so she can use them as confetti in her next game which is shower time! You lay on the bed and she showers you in little shimmery pieces of chopped up bows. It takes you another half hour just to clean them all up.
Lsatly, you send her off to supper which is hopefully followed by TV time with her mom and dad, which is then hopefully followed by bedtime and two books.
You'll go to bed after her, flop on your pillows and close your eyes for a minute only to find the next day has come, and you get to do it ALL over again. THE END.
Typing this, and knowing that I was once a six year old like this, too, makes me want to write a special thank you to my own mom and dad: THANK YOU FOR NOT SELLING ME SO YOU COULD HAVE FREE TIME! IT TRULY IS GREATLY APPRECIATED!
I on the other hand, may sell this girl back to her family. There's only so much tinsel in your face, ears and arm pits that one can take!
Monday, June 27, 2011
Monday, June 13, 2011
Bars of Gold
Hi, my name is Jenna. I live in a place made of reenforced steel and specialty woods from Europe. There is a food store that never runs out and a clean water tap that never runs dry.
A piano sits adjunct to a panorama of the Bosphorus. I can play it whenever if there is no one sleeping in the house.
Outside there is a pool which is cleaned weekly by someone else. There is also a garden where fresh strawberries grow and beat like petit hearts. I can stroll by them day or night, pick them if I wish to fill my belly or make a pie for all to enjoy.
Contiguous to the house is a winter garden where I can read my books, study my Turkish and play with the baby of the house if I'd like a break from thinking. My favorite place is there as it overlooks the Bosphorus as well, and Rumeli Castle and the second of the two bridges that connect Asia and Europe. A walnut tree is there, too. I'm grateful for it as its leaves shade me while I read and study. Without it, I'd be open and vulnerable to the sun because the winter garden is made of glass. Sometimes the light finds its way through the branches to my face and blinds me. Other times it warms my back and legs, giving me energy to continue my reading. I love the winter garden.
Then there is a girl who lives here, too. She is young, only six. She has golden hair down to her tush and a presence which demands attention. Her room is from a JC Penny catalogue with pink and purple and white and princesses decorating every inch of the space. Toys are stuffed into every niche and sometimes, so am I. She acts and plays like a princess, and if I were her, I would also be confused whether I was one or not. She asks and receives at a speed near the transfer rate of a fiber optic cable. There is no such thing as "no". And I am but another toy in her house of glass and gold.
Gold because though all is perfection and bounty and beauty, there is a price in gold bars. They define the space as Eden and all else as not. Outside them is a reminder of the city I came to see. Loud cars, cramped buses, ferries coming and going like bees at their hive. Just over the hill is a space where women dress in long trench coats with long skirts and head scarves. They are always walking, I never see them sit. The men are the opposite. They sit but not walk. They drink a lot of tea and smoke a lot of cigarettes. I shouldn't, but I like the style of the men more. They at least know how to relax. I don't think the women are allowed.
Across the Bosphorus there is another scene which plays to my imagination more so than my reality these days. That is of a monkey-Brendan at home in a world of stress and loneliness. I worry that he may be going mad without me to make him take a break and play. I worry that I may be going mad worrying.
Thus, my job is in its inchoate stage. It's fresh and new and beautiful. I am lucky. I have bars of gold that keep me safe and pay me well. Not many can say such things. Yet, I miss a bit the world of chaos and insecurity. It was fun because it was uncertain, and I thrive in the uncertain. I'm ironically unhappy that I'm not certain as to how I'll thrive here, behind bars of gold.
A piano sits adjunct to a panorama of the Bosphorus. I can play it whenever if there is no one sleeping in the house.
Outside there is a pool which is cleaned weekly by someone else. There is also a garden where fresh strawberries grow and beat like petit hearts. I can stroll by them day or night, pick them if I wish to fill my belly or make a pie for all to enjoy.
Contiguous to the house is a winter garden where I can read my books, study my Turkish and play with the baby of the house if I'd like a break from thinking. My favorite place is there as it overlooks the Bosphorus as well, and Rumeli Castle and the second of the two bridges that connect Asia and Europe. A walnut tree is there, too. I'm grateful for it as its leaves shade me while I read and study. Without it, I'd be open and vulnerable to the sun because the winter garden is made of glass. Sometimes the light finds its way through the branches to my face and blinds me. Other times it warms my back and legs, giving me energy to continue my reading. I love the winter garden.
Then there is a girl who lives here, too. She is young, only six. She has golden hair down to her tush and a presence which demands attention. Her room is from a JC Penny catalogue with pink and purple and white and princesses decorating every inch of the space. Toys are stuffed into every niche and sometimes, so am I. She acts and plays like a princess, and if I were her, I would also be confused whether I was one or not. She asks and receives at a speed near the transfer rate of a fiber optic cable. There is no such thing as "no". And I am but another toy in her house of glass and gold.
Gold because though all is perfection and bounty and beauty, there is a price in gold bars. They define the space as Eden and all else as not. Outside them is a reminder of the city I came to see. Loud cars, cramped buses, ferries coming and going like bees at their hive. Just over the hill is a space where women dress in long trench coats with long skirts and head scarves. They are always walking, I never see them sit. The men are the opposite. They sit but not walk. They drink a lot of tea and smoke a lot of cigarettes. I shouldn't, but I like the style of the men more. They at least know how to relax. I don't think the women are allowed.
Across the Bosphorus there is another scene which plays to my imagination more so than my reality these days. That is of a monkey-Brendan at home in a world of stress and loneliness. I worry that he may be going mad without me to make him take a break and play. I worry that I may be going mad worrying.
Thus, my job is in its inchoate stage. It's fresh and new and beautiful. I am lucky. I have bars of gold that keep me safe and pay me well. Not many can say such things. Yet, I miss a bit the world of chaos and insecurity. It was fun because it was uncertain, and I thrive in the uncertain. I'm ironically unhappy that I'm not certain as to how I'll thrive here, behind bars of gold.
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