WordSisters

Author: Ellen Shriner

  • Love Your Public Library

    Growing up, my Dad, my sister, and I visited the Sanger library in west Toledo every week. In all my memories, the library is sunny and bright, and I was eager to discover what wonderful stories might be waiting for me. When the pickings were slim, I was actively disappointed, but checked out whatever books I could find. Being without books to read was worse than reading so-so books. To this day, I have stacks of books by my bed and downloaded onto my iPad. If I’m traveling, I need at least three books available to feed my reading addiction and keep my no-book anxieties at bay.

    The three of us loved to read and each of us checked out four books (the maximum allowed). In second and third grade, I read through a shelf of orange-bound biographies and met Mary McLeod Bethune, George Washington Carver, Florence Nightingale, Lucretia Mott, and others. I also LOVED Nancy Drew mysteries and tore through them. Later, I learned that Toledoan  Mildred Benson (whose pen name was Carolyn Keene), wrote many of the stories in that series.

    By the time I was in fourth grade, I had read all of the children’s chapter books, so Dad arranged with the librarian to let me read whatever I wanted in the adult section. Today, when book banning is rampant in schools, this seems like a surprising decision, but Dad wasn’t worried about what I might find. He once told me that he attempted to read all of the library’s books (he got from the A’s through the G’s), so he understood my need to read. In fourth grade, Daphne DuMaurier’s Rebecca was one of my favorites, and I went on to read all of the DuMaurier books at the library.

    At home, our bookshelves may have seemed oddly empty. Although Dad loved reading, he didn’t need to own the books, and so my sister and I learned we didn’t either. As a practical matter, we couldn’t possibly find space for all the books we read. Dad’s philosophy is still ingrained in me. Over the years, I’ve borrowed most of what I wanted to read from the public library, and I’ve bought books as a special treat or if the library didn’t carry what I wanted. I still feel that way, but now I buy books I love in order to support living authors. However, typically I buy them after I’ve read the library’s copy. Weird, I know, but I can’t own everything I’ve read or plan to read.

    Today, my relationship with the library is different. I don’t visit in person as often as I used to. Instead, I download ebooks from the library, because I love reading on my iPad (so many books in one lightweight place!). But I am as firmly committed to public libraries as ever. For me, they represent a world of stories and knowledge: garden books about shade plants, novels about China during the Mao’s Cultural Revolution, financial reports of companies I want to invest in, travel guides about small Irish towns. For other people, they’re a source for free computer and Internet access for research papers, Facebook, and job searches.

    Today, the Dakota County Library in Minnesota is my home library. While their funding is secure for this year, the Toledo-Lucas County Public Library is facing a 50 percent budget cut if the local levy doesn’t pass this fall. I hope my Toledo friends and family will vote for the levy renewal, so this wonderful resource doesn’t become a memory!

  • To parents of college-bound kids

     

    Whether you’re taking your first or your last child to college this fall, my advice is, “Hang in there, you’ll all be OK in a while.” I’ve done both and lived to tell the tale.

    But admittedly, undoing all the underpinnings of daily parenthood is a very odd process. You’ve spent nearly 20 years building the structure of parenthood—teaching them to dress themselves, holding them close when they’re sick or sad, cheering the speech they give and the goal they score, nagging them about homework and chores, worrying about their friends and who’s driving—but now you’re supposed to quickly dismantle all that daily caretaking. You’re supposed to gracefully move into the next phase—occasional bursts of intense parenting—which is what being the parent of an adult consists of. I almost wrote “parent of an adult child.” That paradox explains how weird it is to send a young adult out into the world. Your son or daughter is and isn’t an adult, is and isn’t a child, but you’re always a parent. Sigh. It’s confusing.

    Becoming a parent was a major adjustment for me, even though I’d longed to be a mother and was delighted when I became pregnant. Learning to share my body and change my eating and drinking habits—more protein, less junk, no caffeine, no alcohol—was hard but worth it. Assuming the role of responsible parent was even harder. I always had to think about someone else and bring the equipment he’d need—food, diapers, pacifier. I had to learn to plan ahead, make sure there was gas in the car and money in my purse—no more flying by the seat of my pants when I had a baby with me. Staying out partying didn’t make sense anymore when we had to drive a babysitter home late, and I’d just have to get up with a baby at 6:00 a.m.

    Soon I became accustomed to being responsible and it no longer felt like a sacrifice. Soon it was second nature to put the kids first—making sure they got fed something relatively nutritious before they got too cranky, scheduling my plans around naps and bedtime at first, and later, around homework and extracurricular activities. Juggling work, daycare, and the kids’ schedules. My life was crazy-bizzy, but good.

    When my kids were young, the biggest challenge of parenting was having the stamina to do it all. Later, the challenge became thinking through the best way to handle a kid’s emotional and moral development—teaching them how to handle mean kids, how not to be a mean kid, deciding how long they needed to keep practicing something they weren’t good at, teaching them how to be their own person, how take care of themselves, how to take care of others, and so on.

    By the time my kids were teenagers, I could hear the warning bells—ACT tests, talk of colleges, college visits. I knew their departure was coming, and I knew it was how their life was supposed to go. But it was hard to wrap my head around the reality of them leaving. These people I love so much, who have been the center of my life, are really going? I could hardly bear to think about how big a hole they’d leave in my life, and yet and I had to help them go, because that’s what was right for them. Occasionally they were annoying, so was easier to think of letting them go. It helped to remind myself that the goal of parenthood is to raise a person who’s capable of being independent, that I should measure my effectiveness as a parent by their ability to be OK without me—but after nearly 20 years of worrying about them daily—well, old habits die hard.

    But each of our sons left and I lived through it.

    Soon I learned that they still needed me but in a different way—not daily, but occasionally, in intense spurts. Their problems were harder—how to deal with all the drinking in the dorms, how to handle roommates who wreck your stuff and are late with the rent, how to find the right career path.

    My husband and I lived through a number of jangling adjustments: from being alone to having them back, from being delighted to see them and their friends to wishing they’d pick up the pop cans and pizza boxes, from acknowledging their independence to setting ground rules for the courtesies a house full of adults needs.

    They have turned into adults I genuinely like and enjoy as people. I have turned into a mom who rarely says, “It’s supposed to be hot/cold/snowing, don’t you think you should wear shorts/pants/a jacket?”

    In fact, I’ve gotten so used to my youngest being gone, that the night before he returned to college this year, to my profound embarrassment, I forgot to cook dinner. I don’t mean I neglected to cook a special goodbye dinner, but I didn’t remember to cook any dinner whatsoever (bad Mommy). So we ate nachos, leftovers, and frozen pizza. And it was fine. Because now we’re all adults, and I don’t have to be in charge of meals. 

    But my youngest still welcomed the box of cookies I stayed up late baking the night before.

     

  • Relishing the Possibilities at the St. Paul Farmers’ Market

    On Saturday and Sunday mornings, St. Paul’s streets are empty. The city’s usual activity is suspended, but the day is filled with promise. The sun is high and the air will soon be steamy, but Mears Park’s paths are shady and lined with bright pink and white flowers—the work of volunteer gardeners. Occasionally, a homeless guy sleeps on a bench near the man-made brook that flows through the park, but we don’t bother each other. The brook has broad flat stepping stones, and I like crossing on them almost as much as the little kids in the park do.

    Mears Park, St. Paul

    In the block between Mears Park and the market, there’s a poem embedded in the sidewalk: “A dog on a walk 
is like a person in love — You can’t tell them 
it’s the same old world.” I think, you can’t tell me it’s the same old market. Who knows what I’ll find today?

    The pungent scent of fresh dill is what I notice first. Big ferny bunches rubber-banded together. Much as I like dill, I’ll never use that much, so I pass it by. Next, I’m drawn to the New Guinea impatiens. No, no more flowers for the garden. Oooh wait, over there are some banana peppers. But what will I do with them?

    For a person who loves cooking and eating as much as I do, there’s real joy in discovering what’s fresh and considering what I might make with my purchases. I settle down to cruising through the whole market before I buy—making note of who has the best-looking tomatoes and pickle-size cucumbers. That’s all I really need today, but I know I’ll go home with more than that.

    Asiatic lilies’ sweet heavy scent draws me toward the buckets of cut flowers. At $5 and $6 a bunch, the mixed bouquets are a cash crop compared to the vegetables—only $3 for green beans or new Yukon Gold potatoes. Often the sellers are enterprising young Hmong-American women. I wonder if they’re earning college money.

    At the St. Paul Farmers’ Market, everything is locally grown or made, so if it isn’t in season, it isn’t there. I pass pale green scalloped patty pan squash, peeled new onions with green tops, and scrubbed carrots. Maybe some of those tender green and wax beans . . . nope, we already have plenty of those at home. Sweet corn, too.

    I zigzag from stall to stall looking for the perfect rich red tomato (not pink, not yellow) and the slight softness that tells me they’re really ripe. Cucumbers, on the other hand, should be firm, and I run my fingers over their bumpy length. Paper-skinned shallots call to me. Sautéed, their flavor is more delicate than that of onions, and they’re hard to find. But they keep for months. I pay (only $2!) and drop them in my bag.

    The dark red and deep gold beets attract me. I gently run my fingers over the rough globes and imagine making a roast beet salad with citrus dressing and bleu cheese crumbles. Nah, I don’t want to spend the whole afternoon in the kitchen. But on the other hand, making rhubarb sauce is easy and my husband loves it. I hand over the money for the long ruby stalks. 

    Half of the farmers are Asian-American—Hmong, I think. Like their European-American counterparts, they work together on family farms. Often at the stalls, there are several generations—grandparents, parents, and teenagers. The teenage or college-age sons and daughters working at the market look and sound assimilated. I wonder if they’re so assimilated that they hate being seen with their parents?

    To me, these more recently immigrated families also represent the plenty and the possibility the farmer’s market is teeming with. And ultimately, that’s what draws me weekend after weekend from May to October – the day’s early morning promise, the potential of a special dish enjoyed with my family, and the glimpse of hopeful belief that still drives every new group of immigrants.