Dear Friends and Family,
In the spirit of “better late
than never,” we are sending you another year of news along with our best
wishes.
This year Robin (a.k.a. Baba)
has become addicted to online word games such as Babble and Scrabulous. If the
scientific studies are correct, Robin’s in no danger of getting Alzheimer’s. As
Ping! (her online identity), she is quick-witted and fast, unscrambling words,
piecing together letters, and racking up points like a card shark. As the
family historian Robin continues to post
bright photos and shiny plot
summaries of our lives. Her blogs number 4 now, and they’ve received more
than a half million hits, so if you’ve been lame and out of touch, click here, here, here, or here. Robin still brings home the bacon literally and
figuratively. The staff and board at WITS recently honored her 10th
year as Executive Director with Italian cream cake and kind words. She deserves
both. During the month of April Robin participated in A Poem a Day and wrote 30
poems in the wee hours of the night. She never thought she’d be labeled a Texas
Poet, but that moment has arrived. Robin’s poems “Damage” and “The Grief
Snapshot” are featured in the Lone Star anthology The
Weight of Addition. Despite
these depressing titles, Robin manages to remain quite cheerful most of the
time, and her hearty laugh still fills even a huge theater. Robin does lots of things to keep the
family boat afloat—picking up size 5 diapers and yogurt on the way home from
work, giving Moriah the cat her nightly diabetes shot, paying the bills so we
have hot showers and a working stove, giving horsey rides to Carrie, helping
Pearl select tomatoes at the Farmer’s Market, and coaching Marcia on how to
poke someone on Facebook. You get the idea; Rob’s enthusiasm is enormous, her
job endless.
Your dear friend Marcia is in
the midst of an awakening. After wandering around for a long time in the fog,
she is coming to life again—the sunshine is stunning, the sea dazzling, the air
salty and clean. After 10 years of graduate school, teaching, and focusing on
matters of the mind (semiotics, global hegemonies, cyberfeminism… ummm, yeah),
she is diving headfirst into the body. In yoga she’s learning how to bend, twist, and yes, arch her middle toe.
She lives a vegan-esque lifestyle with daily staples such as asparagus, kiwi,
and quinoa. Her breath smells faintly of garlic and onion, but she still needs
kisses, so don’t hold back. So far, her midlife crisis has played out benignly,
even positively, but she does fantasize at least once a day about moving the
family to Isla de Mujeres and buying motorcycles for the mamas, surfboards for
the girls. About 10 hours of the week Marcia works outside the home teaching
creative writing to elementary, middle, and high school students. She’s also
writing a book for the nonprofit C-STEM about sea turtles, robots, John Biggers,
and geo-positioning (if you can’t see the connections, folks, buy the book). If
you have a good imagination, you can find Marcia drinking peach oolong tea at
Antidote or strolling down Heights Boulevard listening to The Beautiful Girls
on her iPod. If you’re more realistic, you can find Marcia hanging out with
Pearl on the monkey bars at Proctor Park or chasing naked Carrie through
mountains of mulch. This is the life of Marcia (a.k.a. Mamu), and it’s a
lucky one indeed.
Pearl, who is 3 going on 6, spends
most days in character. This week she is Batty and her sister is Cilantro. Her days are a story in progress, and anything can launch a new chapter—a misplaced eraser, a broken clothespin, a
picture of Dim Sum. When she draws or paints pictures, the results are often
what she calls “story maps.” She
also has a talent for designing elaborate zoos out of building blocks. They
become stories too. At her Montessori preschool, she constructs with pink
towers, brown stairs, and red rods. She has a good memory and knows the names of dozens of dinosaurs as well as her 23 classmates. Lately her
favorite videos are stories about dogs—Lady and the Tramp, Balto, and Milo and
Otis. Pearl loves to run, whether
it’s on the playground at school or in the dance studio at NIA
Tots. Her best friends are
boys—Alex, Miles, and Avery. She
can dress herself and help her sister solve all her “baby problems.”
Carrie turned 2 on Thanksgiving Day. Although following in Pearl’s footsteps might not be an enviable position, Carrie has definitely taken on the role, and she’s
made
it her own. She plays practical
jokes that she finds quite hilarious. She is an avid photographer, when Baba’s camera is accidentally left
within her reach. In the spirit of postmodernism, her favorite photographic subject is…herself. Carrie loves playgrounds, and she will try ANYTHING, much to her parents’ distress. She enjoys small dolls and the three-story doll house that David and Glenda gave us. Despite
the limitations of a two-year-old vocabulary, she tells stories too. Most feature one of three basic plot
lines that can be summarized as:
Want to play?
Help, help!
Happy Birthday!
Carrie’s best friend is her sister Pearl. When she wakes up in the morning, instead of asking for Mamu or Baba, her first words are, “Where is my Pearl?”
You can keep in touch
throughout the year by bookmarking The
Other Mother and by emailing Marcia
or Robin any old time. We hope you will. Happy 2008 to you!
Love,
Marcia, Robin, Pearl, and
Carrie
Carrie has been admitted to the Montessori preschool that Pearl attends. The acceptance letter was waiting for us when we got home from our trip. We read it aloud to the girls, but in all the excitement of being back home, we weren't even sure if they understood. I must confess to you that even though there is no admission criteria beyond first-come first-served, no test or interview, nothing, I still felt extremely proud of Carrie. I can remember feeling the same way when Pearl's letter arrived two years ago. We have explained to Carrie, however, that there is one catch: she must be out of diapers before she can join Pearl at this school. 
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