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A few months ago, at breakfast, my son pointed to page one in the daily paper and asked "is he hurt?" It was an AP photo from Iraq showing a car bombing, a man slumped over, dead. I lied and said he'd had an accident.

"The ambulance will be there soon," I said. My son was visibly relieved.

In the old days, newspapers policed themselves on the matter of corpses. Most simply didn't show them, the same way they didn't use the F word repeatedly as an adjective. But things change. I saw my first corpse in the local paper about 10 years ago, someone who'd died in a boating accident. Today, it's not at all uncommon. And my firetruck-loving son--who's got a built-in radar for emergency situations--always notices.

Last summer, he found some papers from September 12, 2001, and came running to ask what happened. "Bad guys," I said. He seemed to get it. These were burning buildings, after all. Not people. Recently, he found another front page and wanted to understand what those men were doing. They were Iraqis mourning, wailing painfully over the corpses right there in front of them, bodies half wrapped in white cotton, laying on a street curb.

Journalism rule no. 27: Don't make readers wince at the storytelling itself. Stories--the very real things that happen in this world-- may make readers wince and scream and cry and pass out because life can be a wretched, brutal, unmerciful thing, filled with as much misery and Guantanamo as mom's love and the Magic Kingdom. But storytelling, the device that conveys information, the photos and words, doesn't have to be cruel or flip or screaming in your face to get the point across. The story itself is enough.

My son didn't get it -- those bodies on the curb.

"Are they dead?" he asked.

"I think so," I said, thinking maybe I shouldn't shield him so much.

"But the ambulance will come and make them alive again," he said, decisively. It was not a question.

He believes so powerfully in the inevitability of rescue. That ambulances and firetrucks can--and will--fix everything. Even mortality. And it breaks my heart to know that one day, the world will reveal its truth: there's a terrible shortage of rescues and heroes.

One day he'll learn that. But not today.

*

Not so long ago, I began avoiding the daily paper, despite my obsession with Jumble and Sudoku. They'd sit for days on my snowy porch. Then I tossed them in a pile. Until one day I realized I was totally ignoring the news. I just wasn't doing it. And it wasn't just that my son chancing upon images of death and destruction was as inappropriate for a 5-year-old as stumbling across a Playboy or internet porn. It's that the news, right now, is just too much. The stories themselves hurt too much.

I called to unsubscribe a couple times but hung up out of total cognitive dissonance. How could a journalist unsubscribe? How could I leave a paper where I once, long long ago, was a reporter and editor? Well, it turns out that you just can. And finally, when the stack of unread papers reached 2 feet, I realized my indecision was making a mess, probably killing a whole aspen tree or something, and so I called, and I didn't hang up.

Now at breakfast we look at the morning sun or argue about how much cartoon-watching is healthy or look at the calendar and talk about all the things coming up--the birthday parties, vacations, picnics and parades.

It's liberating.

It's peaceful.

And life is beautiful, even if it's not. And that's okay. For now ...

Beyond the Tipping Point: Green Mac-n-Cheese

I was disproportionately overjoyed to find Kraft organic mac-n-cheese at the local grocery store recently, a clear sign that we've hit the tipping point in the go-green-go-organic race to the moon.

Now, I feel a little vulnerable here, outing myself, admitting I use boxed anything for dinner, but ... hey ... it happens. Even with those supermoms out there. At some point in the journey, we come to peace with the reality that we can do a lot, but we have our down days. The days when "what's for dinner?" is a tipping point into some sort of nuclear meltdown. Enter convenience foods.

Boxed mac-n-cheese give us a little break, now and then, from meal making. It's that simple. As with delivered pizza, it's a little like having a staff, if only for one meal. And now, with the advent of mass-produced organic boxed foods, mother's little helpers don't contain ten-syllable ingredients, cost $8 a serving, or take more than 12 minutes from start to finish. Hallelujah.

I know in some circuits, there's great debate about multinationals and organics. Yes, I'd prefer to be paying for locally made, organic, affordable convenience foods. But until that's available, I'd like to say thanks for all the foodmakers out there -- big and small, high and low -- who are helping us out with dinner and giving healthier foods, inch by inch, macaroni by macaroni.

Jack's Macs

Until this year, when my son encountered untampered-with macaroni and cheese at school (and liked it like that), we'd mix something (anything) into this childhood staple. Sometimes I'd hide things so he was getting vegetables without even knowing it. And usually I make homemade macaroni and cheese. Here's what we'd do:

Homemade: This is a no-bake version that's fairly quick and easy. Cook up several cups of macaroni. Any macaroni works, but our favorite is white spelt, which is usually only available at co-ops, and even then sporadically. (Rice macaroni seems to get a little soggy.) I douse each serving with a simple cheese sauce. Make a white sauce (2 T. butter, melted; stir in 2 T. flour until it's congealed; add 1 cup liquid (milk, broth) slowly, stirring as you go to eliminate lumps; toss in a cup or two of cheese (sharp cheddar seems to work best, but I use whatever's on hand.) For flour, use whatever works for you. We've used whole grain spelt flour, which has kind of a rustic autumn taste to it, and rice flour, which is really refined tasting (but doesn't store well, so don't do leftovers with it.)

Spinach-Tomato: This is the only kind of macaroni and cheese my son would eat for a year, between about 2-1/2 and 3-1/2. Just toss in (canned or fresh) tomatoes and (fresh) spinach. It's that simple. I always chopped the spinach into tiny slivers. For homemade, I'd mix everything together after the sauce/macaroni were ready, for boxed, just toss it all in at the end. There's enough heat there to warm the tomatoes and wilt the spinach. Grate some Parmesan on top if you like it.

Broccoli: If your child loves fresh broccoli (or cauliflower or asparagus), chop some up and toss it in. With homemade, I cook the broccoli in the cheese sauce. With boxed, I toss it in with the macaroni to cook. When my son was small, I chopped broccoli into tiny pieces, almost mincing it, but the pieces grew larger as he did.

Hiders: Best bets are onions, zucchini and summer squash. Cut them into pieces smaller than the macaroni, either cook in sauce (for homemade), with macaroni (boxed), or saute them separately until they're translucent. Be sure to peel the squashes so they can go undetected. Warning: Skip the onions if your child can detect them. These hiders also work well in spaghetti sauce (try finely finely sliced fresh spinach too).

Smallfish Clover: The Secret Lives of Boys

My dear friend, writer Heather Shaw, just launched a small cooperative press and is blogging her journey publishing "Smallfish Clover," a young adult novel about the adventures of an American boy who loses himself in a Peruvian market. It's a larger-than-life quest/adventure filled with street waifs, medicine girls, street theater and incredible writing.

I love how Heather gets kids and honors the epic worlds inside them. Here's a quote by Orson Scott Card from her web site, www.iamopress.com:

We forget, in our society, that adolescence, for males at least, is not the age of preparation-for-career or getting-an-education, even though that's what we compel them to do.

Adolescence is the age of heroism. The age of poetry. The age of great dreams and noble ideals. The age of sacrifice…

…They hunger for something great to do. When cynical liars get to them, men of this age can be talked into strapping bombs on their bodies and blowing themselves up.

Pre-order her book here. Keep up on her publishing adventures at SmallfishClover.typepad.com. And hats off to Heather for undertaking her own epic journey.

Boys rule, TV drools

A few weeks into kindergarten, my son casually informed me: "Girls are cool; boys are dumb."

This felt like a gut punch. "Where did you hear that?" I asked.

"I don't know. Maybe at school?"

"Well it's not true," I said. "Girls are cool, but boys are cool too -- way cool. You are definitely a cool kid. And you're all smart."

He looked at me and took this in. "Okay," he said, and zoomed off to crash some trucks.

I thought this kind of gender nonsense was as passe as moon boots and Nixon. I wonder why, in this lovely new millennium, this kind of thing ever became part of my son's frame of reference. Why, as he's entering kindergarten, did he have to get smacked with the notion that he's dumb because he's a boy? This is a child whose vocabulary doesn't even include the word dumb -- I'd never heard him say it. This is a child who's always felt empowered. At age two he proclaimed, "I am as big as the air!" And age three, he distilled democracy and the election process to its bottom line: "I am the boss of the country!"

And so I'd like to track down the parent of the child or children who said "boys are dumb," who afflicted my son by proxy, and give them the Kim Possible Kung-Fu treatment, in the same way I'd want to Kung-Fu someone who negligently infected my boy with a deadly virus. They caused my boy, at age five, to doubt his worth. To deflate. To consider for the first time that he's not as big as the air. And that is definitely not cool.

Let it snow II: Fire and ice

I was still sleeping the other morning when my boy, in his Thomas the Tank Engine jammies, crawled up next to me and stared out the window at the falling pre-dawn snow. "Mom?" he said. "A lot of people have died already. Right?"

I open my eyes and look at his still-sleepy face. "Right," I said.

He takes this in. I thought I should probably think of something to say, but what? I want to tell him we're immortal, that (to crib from Kurt Vonnegut) everything is beautiful and nothing hurts here on this planet. That it's a perpetually snowy, sleepy, jammied-up and cozy-with-mom place. I want to tell him not to think about these kinds of things, that it's forbidden until he's at least 21, or he'll be grounded.

"Why do you ask?" I finally say.

"There have been a lot of crashes and fires," he quickly replies.

"Yes," I say. "there have been."

He looks at me and smiles his 5-year-old smile. "But it's okay." And he tackles me.

Jack's crash-and-burn gear

Let it snow ... please

Here's an essay from last year on snow shoveling, which hopefully will help remind January what season it is.

SHOVELING GAME

Winter’s first snow is a happy magic—shimmery flakes falling from the black sky, sparkly white covering up barren grass. Last year, when the first flurries descended from heaven, my 3-year-old son and assorted relatives fell over each other trying to get out and play. We scrambled for mittens. We threw snowballs, made a teetering snowman, stuck out our tongues for flakes. We fell backward into the powder and made angels. Later we went to bed, cozy against the cold, listening for snowplows, snug and exhilarated by winter’s white.

The next morning, the newspaper skidded onto the white-white-white sidewalk. Inside was a handwritten note: “Please shovel the walk.”

Oh.

That.

Each season has its magic. Each season also has its chores. Now, shoveling shouldn’t be difficult but I’d never actually done it in any meaningful or comprehensive way. It was as if I’d had a get-out-of-jail-free card: Someone else had always cleared the paths. Until now. So--still giddy with snow fever—my son, Jackson, and I headed to the store to buy shovels.

He zeroed in on a pint-sized orange model and was off, pushing it up and down the aisle, making snowplow noises as I stared at the grownup options. Scoop or shovel? Bent or straight handle? Metal or plastic edge? How hard could this be? “You’re going to need a metal edge with all the snow we get,” said a fellow shopper offered.

My son drove his shovel back and forth, unfazed by the choices. He gets it, I thought.

“Don’t forget pellets,” another shopper said. “You don’t want ice.”

I grabbed pellets and a sober gray model with a metal edge and, as my son snowplowed his orange shovel to the checkout, calculated just how much snow we really do get: something like twelve feet a year, give or take. Take the cubic weight (I guessed oh seven pounds) and multiply it by all the walkways and driveways, paths and porches. Well, the winter’s scary math equaled something like, oh, 25,000 pounds of snow, all for me and my shovel to push around.

That night, I parked the shovel on the porch and planned to call the neighbor kid first thing in the morning.

And that night, we got a ton of snow. My son is a boy who dreams of machinery—bucket trucks, front-end loaders, firetrucks. Useful machines, made to do useful things. That night he dreamed of his very own useful tool, his new orange shovel. He woke and sped down the stairs and pulled his boots on over his footie pajamas and told me to hurry please hurry.

“We have to shubbel,” he said urgently. I thought about it for a nanosecond.

“I have to drink coffee.”

“We have to shubbel.”

The universe was commanding him. And I thought, why not? I could go out on a blue-sky sun-bright morning and watch him shovel.

Jackson zigzagged his orange shovel down the drive, then looped back and completed his “racetrack.” He pulled his tricycle out of the garage and positioned himself on the track. As he pedaled, his tires lodged in snow. He pushed and on his pedals, inching forward on the thin track. “Here,” I said, setting my coffee down and grabbing my shovel. “I’ll make it bigger.”

I widened his road and he pedaled like mad, circling and circling, delirious as only toddlers on trikes can be. Then he got up and grabbed his shovel and said, “Come on mom.” He blazed more roads. And I followed. From the backyard to the front. Down the city sidewalk. Up half the neighbors’ walks in our downtown Traverse City block. He cut the trail and I widened it. Then he ran for his Radio Flyer tricycle, and as he pedaled around his mini-autobahn, I sprinkled pellets so ice wouldn’t build up. The drive was nearly clear, so I swiped it a few times to finish up.

The next day we did the same thing. And the next. I never got around to calling the neighbor kid. Day after day, week after week, shoveling became part of our winter rhythms. I woke up happy about going outside into the freezing sunrise with my hot coffee, squinting at the winter dawn. There was something Zen-serene about the pure motions of scraping and pushing, the mindless repetitive movement. Back and forth, tiny diamonds. A red tricycle in snow.

We’d push the snow into a pile that became Jackson’s igloo, with walls and windows, and he’d invite me in for pretend pancakes. We raced our shovels down sidewalks to see who was fastest. We’d throw snowballs at icicles. But mostly we were quiet in the morning, clearing the way together.
As those twelve feet of snow piled up—to my knees, to my waist, above Jackson’s head—the paths became more and more distinct. Soon they were the only passageway from home to the world, our only way out.

And one winter morning, the newspaper skidded up the walk. Inside was a handwritten note: “Nice job on the shoveling.”

Exhale

School starts back up tomorrow and tonight, my boy just couldn't get to sleep. For two hours, he tossed and turned, calling me upstairs to tell me he'd found a solution for the Christmas tree (take it to the chipper truck behind the library tomorrow at 3:30...???), asking for a drink, wanting me to cuddle him. So I did. We sang some songs, which only made things worse--he got up and started dancing in Vogue-like poses to the old Christmas tune, "Hey, Ho, Nobody Home."

"The cough syrup must be keeping you awake," I said. "Lay down. Just relax. Close your eyes."

He tried. He really did.

"I know," he said, finally. "I'll just lay here and breathe everything out of me. Except my name."

Upon dismissing the news that grownups wring out mops: