Spring Bonus!
On the spiritual benefits of rearranging and a giveaway
The tentative schedule that I set for myself and this blog when I started it was to post the first and third Wednesday of every month, which translates to about every two weeks most of the time. This March had an extra Wednesday, however, and I decided to go ahead and write something, so this may feel like an extra post a week early. Bonus!
Anyway, intrepid readers who make it to the end have a potential reward waiting.
Onward to the post . . .
My husband and I had the carpet in our house replaced last week, during our daughters’ spring break. This is a long, exhausting process that involves moving everything you own without going anywhere. I would make a “one star, would not recommend” joke here, except that the new carpet looks great and our home feels clean and new—a surprising feeling after a year of mentally taxing confinement inside of it.1
What I liked best about doing this was the opportunity to empty every room and fill it again with an eye on what is most important, after the recalibration of values and priorities that the pandemic imposed on all of us. This is especially true in my daughter’s rooms. Currently 9 and 6 years of age, they both hate letting go of things they have outgrown. Thus, their spaces were full of more things than any child would need or know what to do with. They are, perhaps, too young to relish reorganizing the way I do, but one bright spot during the week involved the 6-year-old telling me she lined up the “I Can Read” books on her shelf according to color and reading level. She was proud of herself, and I was proud of her too. The older one had no interest in reorganizing. (She has none in organizing to begin with, if I’m honest.) But for her, the process unearthed a set of books about writing that my sister-in-law sent her a while back. Intrigued, the kid began reading one on writing short stories and her excitement over what is, essentially, a textbook warms my nerd heart.
My husband also took the opportunity to paint our home office and build new shelves for our books, which allowed us to rearrange them and do a bit of culling. We did this on a Friday night while drinking wine. Reader, it was a blast.
Re-carpeting turned out to be about more than just carpeting. It was much needed shake up of the house, the things in it, and the soul. “Spring cleaning” may feel good to some, and I understand why that is, but cleaning alone falls a step short for me. Sometimes, I need to move things around too. Really move them. A kaleidoscope can’t be merely dusted off. Shaking it around renders the same bits and pieces in beautiful new ways. This spring that feels important and necessary for all of us.
April Book Bites
Capsule Book Review
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova - finished in 2010 - Not a bad book, but a little too plodding at the start, and never got as good I hoped it would. Interesting history of the dracula myth, but reads too much like a history book, and not enough like the thriller that the dracula subject suggests it should be.
Currently on my night stand
The first of these is a fantasy novel for young readers (9-12 years) about a girl from Haiti drawing on dark magic to survive her new life in the United States. I picked it up from the library to take a break for Lee’s long tome on an uninspired college student’s adventure at the hands of a charming, new mentor and an older woman with a young son he later finds himself living with. Both touch on crossing cultures and the emotional perils of doing so.
What the kids are reading these days
Scholastic Guide: Writing Stories by David L. Harrison - As I mentioned above, my 9-year-old is reading part of a collection of books first published by Scholastic over two decades ago about writing. The others in the series touch on poetry and essays as well as overall writing style. There are two things at play here: This kid has always loved reading informational texts (dictionaries and encyclopedias are totally her jam), and she has also always loved the idea of writing her own plays and stories. Sometimes, she just turns books she has read into plays, using the names of her friends for her characters. Sometimes, the stories are genuinely original. She’s working on an original story as she makes her way through this guide.
Mary Wears What She Wants by Keith Negley - This picture book about Mary Edwards Walker is a hoot. The woman the story is based on was a Civil War doctor and the only woman to be awarded the Medal of Honor. She did numerous extraordinary things during her life that could make for a whole series for children’s books. This one is about the fact that she wore pants at a time women and girls were not allowed to do so. It tickles me that the daughter who loves this book has not worn pants with buttons in all of the six years that she has lived on this earth. It’s skirts, dresses, shorts and, if absolutely necessary leggings—better if they are leggings with unicorns. But she does love the book. Whenever she asks to read it, I think about how easy it is to take girls wearing pants for granted now, while boys who want to wear skirts and dresses still face an uphill battle to be themselves and wear what they want.
Recently Purchased/Borrowed from the Library
Of Women and Salt by Gabriela Garcia - I always try to contain my excitement when it comes to fiction involving multi-generational stories about Latin women and immigration (especially when they involve Cuba) because reading these types of books always ends in either pure love or pure disappointment. I’m feeling good about this one though.
Just as I Am by Cecily Tyson - There were about 100 people ahead of me on the “holds” list at the library for what turned out to be Tyson’s swan song, but just the introduction by Viola Davis, which I read right away once I got the book, was worth the wait.
Recommendations
April is National Housing Month, so here are two for your to-read pile on the subject.
Towers Falling by Jewell Parker Rhodes
This book is about a girl whose family is experiencing homelessness in Brooklyn, and though it is written for kids, it’s a good illustration of and reminder to adults of how trauma is often the cause of financial instability and housing insecurity. My review from when I read at the start of 2020: Picked up this lovely, touching work from the “Staff Recommends” shelf at the library. And I, in turn, recommend it to all my teacher friends in the middle grades who are interested in introducing their students to a tough subject in an honest, empathy-driven way. The story focuses on Deja, a homeless girl in Brooklyn living at a shelter with her family, and follows her into a new school, new friends (a boy whose father is a Marine who volunteered after 9/11 and a girl whose Muslim family came to the US from Turkey), and a new lesson about the events on Sept. 11 that shed light on her connection to “home” and her own father’s PTSD. You’ll cry, you’ll laugh, you’ll learn.
Color of Law: : A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein
Systemic racism in the United States begins with housing policy. If you are interested in informing yourself about our history and how to become a better advocate against racism, this is a great book to start with. My review, also from last year: This book offers a comprehensive understanding of how the legacy of racism created a system of housing that continues to segregate and to keep African Americans from achieving the suburban American Dream. Indeed, the book makes a case for that dream as a fiction created specifically to exclude Black Americans. The history is not written in the infuriating, exonerating passive voice. Rothstein names names. Only a clear, unflinching view of how America and American wealth was built can lay the foundation for the work to dismantle this system. Some may find it depressing to read just how racist some people and institutions had to have been for these policies to have been created and enforced for so long. Racism takes effort, sustained and committed, and that is the least of what it will take to break it down. But somehow, having identified the wrong (segregation in housing and neighborhoods) this specifically, Rothstein somehow manages to be motivating as well. I felt empowered reading this and would recommend it to anyone who wants to learn.
And Finally, a Giveaway!
First, thank you for making it through the post!
Second, having reorganized and slimmed down (only ever so slightly) my book collection, I have a few in pristine condition that are ready and waiting for a new home.
To enter the giveaway, please share this blog with a friend and let me know either via email or a comment below OR comment below about a room or space that you have recently cleaned out or rearranged or just your general thoughts on spring cleaning. The first two I hear from will receive Lab Girl by Hope Jahren or In the Midst of Winter by Isabel Allende. So share and comment!
I must affirm here that in spite of the challenge of not getting to leave our house much this year, we are very lucky to have it, especially during this pandemic, which has hurt so many people financially as well as medically.
Lab Girl has been claimed!