Birthdays...

Even though I swear that my birthday is meaningless and I don't want to celebrate in any way, I always look for special things to happen.  Sometimes they do and lots of times they don't.  But yesterday was a pretty cool, special day, all in all, and because I was looking forward to a late afternoon/early evening gathering with friends at a venue I'd never visited, it seemed like my actual birthDAY.

The day was gorgeous, a real spring day, culminating in the low 60s.  A stop at Gracefull Heart, where I bought myself a new jade-bead bracelet.  Then on to Verizon where I treated myself to a new glass screensaver for my phone - holy shmoley what a difference!  From there to Ashcombes, where I purchased a jade plant and had it potted.  (It wasn't until later that I realized I bought myself both a jade bracelet and a jade plant.  Weird.)

Because I was searching through my stash of cards for a birthday card for Bonnie I discovered a treasure trove of really cool cards I'd bought (and never sent) through the years.  I pulled out FOUR and wrote letters to four special people.  It felt so good!  I haven't actually written in handwriting with pen and ink that much in forever!  Sally, Andrew, Fran, and Heather!  And that really made me happy.  I even mailed them on my way to the Hook & Flask where I met up with Lani, Sandy, Micah, Bonnie, Devera, and Pat for a Pear vodka drink (yum, slurp, guzzle....), chicken wings, and onion rings.  

Such a fun day!

And then the actual day.....family!  Dinner at Carrabbas.  Delicious and oh-so-fun!  Grinned my way through it.  Photo above.

Poem: Conjuring Nana by Barbara Quick

My wonderful Oz/Maine/Tucson friend, Sheila, sent me a lovely card and a wonderful poem for my upcoming birthday.  I'm sharing them both so they're firmly set in my memory.

                   Conjuring Nana

I learned how to make Nana's chicken soup

by shadowing her steps in the kitchen,

taking notes on a white paper napkin.

A cauldron of sorts is required, as well as a

once-animate chicken submerged above

the stove's blue flame.

"You put in the onions," Nana said,

her Russian accent as fresh as the breeze

must have felt on her face when she debarked

at Ellis Island in 1916 or so.

"How much salt?" I wanted to know --

and when she shrugged I could see

a palimpsest of the girl she was at my age.

The water boiled and the air filled with steam.

Not offering an answer in words,

she poured salt into her upturned palm

and tipped it out into the pot.

No measuring cups for my Nana.

"A little this, a little that" she'd say,

cocking her head, adding a pinch of black pepper

and copious piles of carrots and celery.

I thought about the chestnut-colored braid

my other showed me, wrapped in a piece of sea-green silk.

Nana was beautiful when she was young.  

Everyone said so.

Cleaning a leek, she told me, "I don't know

what it's called, but it makes the soup good."

Sixty-four now and all my elders dead,

I add a parsnip as well, just as I watched Nana do,

and I feel the velvet touch of her hands on my forehead.

All the old people I knew 

spoke English with sounds borrowed

from Russian and Polish, Yiddish and Romanian.

I assumed, as a girl, that I would speak like that, too,

when my hair turned gray and the pads of my thumbs

grew soft and pillowy.

Gathering parsley for the soup from my garden,

I seem to hear Nana saying my name

made rich with her guttural R's and broad A's.

"Bahbra, dahlink!" the birds are singing today.

I boil Manischewitz noodles, only adding them

to the bowl when I ladle out Nana's love.

Golden and gleaming with fat,

as bejeweled as the star-filled sky must have looked

when, shipboard, she tipped her kerchiefed head back

and filled her eyes

with all the dazzling possibilities,

and all the dangers, of a new place,

a new language, a new land.  Her favorite brother

waiting for her with his Romanian wife.

The brother-in-law she'd marry. 

Twenty-seven years following the end

of Nana's life, her love fills me up

and restores me.

4. 11 Birthdays - Wendy Mass

This was a reread - I read it aloud to my 3rd & 4th grade book club.  They loved it.  During the last reading you could have heard a pin drop - 20 kids who are usually eating their lunch, making all sorts of chomping and crumpling noises -  were totally entranced.
Good choice for this group!

Finished  2-1-16
Goodreads rating: 4.16
2009, 267 pgs.

My original blog for this book.

Goodreads summary:  GROUNDHOG DAY meets FLIPPED in this tale of a girl stuck in her birthday.
          It's Amanda's 11th birthday and she is super excited -- after all, 11 is so different from 10. But from the start, everything goes wrong. The worst part of it all is that she and her best friend, Leo, with whom she's shared every birthday, are on the outs and this will be the first birthday they haven't shared together. When Amanda turns in for the night, glad to have her birthday behind her, she wakes up happy for a new day. Or is it? Her birthday seems to be repeating iself. What is going on?! And how can she fix it? Only time, friendship, and a little luck will tell. . .

Pablo's Tree - Pat Mora

Illustrated by Cecily Lang
$17.95 HC
1994, Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
32 pages
Endpapers:  red
Illustrations:  Cut paper
Goodreads rating:  3.68
I liked it - nice story.

When his daughter adopts a tiny baby boy, his grandfather/abuelito plants a tree.  Every year he decorates it, as a surprise, in a different, colorful way.  Pablo and his namesake spend the day after his birthday playing under the tree.  They reminisce about the different years and we see how much the tree has grown.

The Can Man - Laura E. Williams

Illustrated by Craig Orback
Lee & Low Books, 2010
$18.95 (they keep going up!)
32 pages
Rating: 4
Endpapers: clay-colored wash over linen/board

Mr. Peters used to live in the same apartment building as Tim, but with the loss of his job and income he is now homeless. He spends his days digging through trash cans to find empty soda cans he can redeem for a nickel apiece. He's now called "the Can Man" by everyone.

Tim badly wants a skateboard, but even with his birthday coming, his parents can't afford one. After watching the Can Man, he decides he'll earn money for a skateboard in the same way.

I wonder if young readers will figure out that what Tim's doing is unfair to the Can Man. I was getting more and more bothered - as I know I was supposed to. Mr. Peters is a lovely man who even helps Tim transport his bags of cans to the redemption center.

Well, of course Time comes through - he ends up giving all his can earnings to the Can Man, who badly needs a winter jacket as the cold season approaches. And (final SPOILER) on his birthday, Tim finds a used but newly painted skateboard on his front step.

Most of the illustrations cover 3/4 of the 2-page spread, edge to edge, with a vertical edge of white where the words are printed.

A great book to talk about!

Otis & Sydney and the Best Birthday Ever - Laura Numeroff

Illustrated by Dan Andreasen
Abrams Books for Young Readers, 2010
$16.95
32 pages
Rating: 4/5
Endpapers: Light blue

This is a very cute story about friendship, about best friends, about enjoying the company and companionship of just each other - needing no other entertainment.

When Otis plans a surprise birthday party for this BFF Sydney, he puts the wrong date on the invitations....and no one shows up, of course, on the right date. All his planning doesn't go to waste, however. The two friends dress up and play and eat and have a blast together anyway.

Once again, it's the illustrations that I love most. Beautfiully inked black lines create the pictures, then they're colored in. The texture, the patterns, the facial expressions, the happiness, are all expressed in the illustrations. My favorite illustrations so far this year, I think!

This would be a great book for adults to give to their own BFFs!

The Birthday Tree - Paul Fleischman

Illustrator: Barry Root
Published: Original 1979, newly illustrated 2008
Rating: 4
Endpapers: Glossy rust with newly planted tree in 2" oval on front, Fully grown (and happy!) in the same oval in the back

Barry Root did a lovely job illustratiing this "second coming" of The Birthday Tree. His watercolors are lovely and fit the story beautifully. The cover doesn't seem particularly enticing, but the corresponding illustration inside works just fine. It may be the font of the title that turns me off.

"Once there was a sailor who fled from the sea. He and his wife had lost three sons to the waves, so they gathered up their belongings in a creaky wheelbarrow and left the water behind them." The went three days away from the sea, built a house, had another son, named him Jack, and planted a tree to commemorate his birth. The tree grew. Jack grew. Jack played in the tree and snoozed underneath it. And soon Jack's parents discovered that when Jack was feeling poorly, the tree drooped. When he was happy, the tree was perky.

"The sailor and his wife never spoke of the sea. Yet sometimes a strong, salt wind would blow in from the ocean and the sailor would notice Jack sniffing the air with curiosity." Jack takes off, and they watch for signs on the tree that indicate Jack's happiness and whereabouts. They "see" him traveling the sea, happy for awhile, then shipwrecked, starving, dying, then being rescued. Just when they don't know what's happened to him, they find him curled up and asleep in his bed - home at last.

Someone said this book is a parable. It's certainly mystical. It's a cool story by one of my all-time favorite writers.