Two Movies to Watch With Your Kids

More people are staying home these days, and some family-friendly entertainment may be what you're looking for. (Or maybe these movies will drive you nuts, and you'll let your kids watch them if they want while you hole up in another room to get some work done.)

Title: Annie (2014)
Director: Will Gluck
Language: English
Rating: PG

You would think by reading some of the reviews for this film that it's a horror show, that it will make you want to claw your eyes out and stuff your ears with cotton balls, but what I found was something different.

- The lead actress, Quvenzhané Wallis, approaches her role in a lovely way. She plays a quick-thinking sweetheart of a girl who powers through life with optimism and charm, and her performance doesn't feel forced.

- Jamie Foxx's performance is pretty funny and, at times, genuinely moving. He plays an out-of-touch billionaire running for NYC mayor who tries to boost his performance in the polls by throwing money at everything – sound familiar? – and he does it well.

- There are tongue-in-cheek moments and self-awareness in the film. Even though some scenes are played in earnest, other times the movie nods to its own ridiculousness and lets in some sly humor. There's a scene poking fun at Twilight types of movies, an acknowledgement of how little privacy people have in the age of smart technologies and social media, a look at the corrupt strategies a political campaign will resort to, and some fun with the conventions of a filmed musical (how can someone succeed at being mayor if they're dancing and singing so much?). As an adult, you can watch this movie with kids and still find enough humor in it yourself. It doesn't take itself so seriously, though it does touch on some serious issues (like, it's all well and good to sing about how everyone has a shot at success, but what do you do about poor education or parental neglect?).

- The movie is sentimental, but I didn't find it so cloying – first off because of its self-awareness, and secondly, because I accepted the rules of this fictional universe, where a poor kid will get adopted by a billionaire whose basic decency has been buried under money and workaholic habits. The performances from the main actors and supporting cast work pretty well too, balancing earnestness with an awareness that this is a fun bit of entertainment. (Among the supporting actors, Rose Byrne plays an especially sweet character.)

- Are the musical numbers powerful? I don't think they're breathtaking, but they're still engaging, and the actors hit some of the right acting notes during each (even if the singing isn't mind-blowing).

- I enjoyed some of the footage from around NYC (shout out to the 125th street stop of the 1 train!)

I think some of the people who gave it awful reviews loved the 1980s Annie, which I might have watched as a kid but don't remember. If you're a fan of that one, you may approach this one with mistrust and distaste, and you maybe won't allow yourself to enjoy any of it. I can't help that. All I can do is recommend 2014 Annie for people in search of a reliably entertaining family-friendly musical.

Title: Kit Kittredge: An American Girl (2008)
Director: Patricia Rozema
Language: English
Rating: G

A movie based on an American Girl doll? Yes, and it's entertaining, with enough to enjoy even if you're an adult. Set in Cincinnati during the Great Depression, the movie features Kit (Abigail Breslin), who dreams of becoming a reporter. When her dad loses his job and heads to Chicago to find work, her mom turns their home into a boarding house and takes in lodgers for money.

Kit winds up experiencing some of the struggles of the Depression, writes about what she sees, and identifies the real criminals behind a series of thefts while preventing someone innocent from being arrested. Along with its clever and cute scenes, the movie shows some of the harsh realities of poverty as well as efforts people made to get by and help each other.

The villains wind up being a bit Scooby Doo-ish in their final act, where they're thwarted by those meddling kids. And there's a schmaltz overload at the end. But it's still a decent movie with good work from the child actors and an array of well-cast actors among the adults. The standouts are Julia Ormond, who gives an affecting performance as Kit's mom, and Wallace Shawn, who plays a cantankerous newspaper editor. Also, Colin Mochrie from Whose Line Is It Anyway has a small role as a hobo.

Additional suggestions:
Check out the movies I've been recommending on this blog, including other family-friendly ones like Mary Poppins, The Wizard of Oz, The Secret Garden, Anne of Green Gables, and Lilo & Stitch.

Week in Seven Words #494

cooling
The branches are flapping in a strong wind, as if the trees are fanning themselves.

employing
The kids are inexperienced executives; the parents are zealous secretaries and social directors.

evacuations
The male and female hikers break up to urinate in the woods. They're yards apart, forming protective circles around each pee-er.

fitness
Because the elevators aren't working, the stairwell echoes with dreadful gasps.

head-on
Unresolved trauma will ruin your life, she says.

old-fashioned
Their home is Colonial style with a broad, pale face. An American flag is draped over the porch railing. The front door opens to small rooms stuffed with comfortable furniture. Rectangles of light cast by the windows fall short of the photos on the shelves and walls.

outage
Aside from a radio blatting from behind a door, the hallway is silent. Shadows are ganging up on the feeble emergency lights.

Week in Seven Words #492

bouts
He makes his wrestler figurines tussle in the grass. When called indoors, he leaves them propped against a lamppost to rest until the next match.

dusky
We walk along the river right after sunset. The buildings blush slightly before going pale in the dark.

fortify
Outside in the dusk I watch fireflies and listen to crickets while thinking, "Hope for the best. Prepare for the worst."

purslane
A weed that has overrun the garden beds is very nutritional. It's amazing how something dismissed as a pest can contain more nutrients than the vegetables it's supplanting.

reproduced
The women all look similar: long, wavy-haired wigs, super high heels, thin figures, babies hanging around them and on them.

snarly
For the entire subway ride, she speaks to her kids in threats. ("I'll slap the sh*t out of you," she snarls at one point.)

teenager
He squirms in the photos, grins while dancing with his friends, and delivers a speech in a dogged way, as a commitment made and seen through.

Week in Seven Words #488

audible
The dad's "SHHHH" is at first louder than the rising pitch of the child's tantrum.

breadth
The view opens up to brown hills and sunlight in visible tracks angling down from the clouds to the water.

browbeating
The young woman sitting behind us on the bus is being taken on a guilt trip by her mother. She fretfully pleads her case – that she isn't staying away from home too much, or using work and friends as excuses for avoiding home. She lists dates and times when she was in fact at home, but her case is crumbling, the judge unforgiving.

delighted
She has become ridiculous to her friends, largely because her voice turned into a blaring horn as her hearing deteriorated. But there's nothing ridiculous about the joy that transforms her face when her grandson visits unexpectedly.

disparaging
She glances at her daughter, who's asleep open-mouthed on the sofa, then looks away with pinched lips. "Look what's become of her," she murmurs, her disappointment genuine.

palate
The dog is sleek and golden, friendly and energetic. He also loves eating feces, any feces he can find. His own, the cat's, another dog's. He isn't picky.

smashed
The wine bottle rolls out of the fridge and shatters, and for an hour after we're still finding bits of it. Splinters of glass wink at us from unexpected places, such as a couch cushion. What brought the glass to the couch? The soles of someone's thick socks.

The Daughters in Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens

Paul Dombey is wealthy, proud, and heartless. Well, not entirely heartless. He shows signs, even at the start, of being able to feel a bit of unease now and then at how he treats his daughter, Florence. Because she isn't a son who will one day go into business with him, he maintains a distant coldness towards her and suppresses the occasional twinge telling him that he's not as a father should be. At various points, he also feels hatred, jealousy, or outrage because of the love and loyalty she receives from people who should be giving their attention primarily to him.

Dysfunctional parenting is a major part of Dombey and Son, which I read for the Classics Club Challenge. Dickens makes a connection between cruelty and neglect in private homes and cruelty and neglect in public life. Mr. Dombey measures Florence's worth by what she can bring to his business; she doesn't seem worth much in monetary terms. Similarly, there's a scene where Florence, as a child, is kidnapped for a short while by an old woman who steals the nice clothes off her and gives her some rags to wear before setting her free. As she tries to make her way home, Florence is soundly ignored or sneered at because of these rags; in public, her worth is measured by how much (or how little) money she appears to have.

Two other daughters in the novel – Edith Granger and Alice Marwood – are additional examples of the harm that comes from viewing people and relationships in a purely transactional way. In their case, it's their moms selling them into marriage or prostituting them. Florence, at least, had the benefit of knowing that her mother loved her; perhaps this is one reason Dickens has her maintain her angelic character. Edith and Alice, in contrast, are full of rage and bitterness, and Dickens winds up pushing them out of the way by the end of the novel, giving them tidy endings in an overseas home or in death. Florence gets to stick around because she maintains purity and an inhumanly forgiving personality. No anger for her, unnaturally so. (Among the wronged daughters in this novel, the options are all-consuming rage combined with compromised sexual purity OR unblemished forgiving sorrow combined with sexual purity.)

In any case, Dickens has chosen women as the primary way of showing the dangers of treating people as objects in a transaction, with Florence worth nothing to her dad, and Edith and Alice worth only as much as they can bring to their moms through looks, charms, and/or pleasing accomplishments.

Edith, by the way, is Mr. Dombey's second wife, and one reason their marriage tanks so quickly is that Dombey uses a go-between to express his displeasure to her. This go-between is Mr. Carker, the right-hand man in Dombey's business. (This is another way Dombey is mixing business with personal relationships.) Carker is the most smiley villain I've seen in any book. At no point did I come close to forgetting that he smiles a lot, because Dickens refers endlessly to Carker's teeth. Well, not endlessly. Carker does come to a pretty grim end, and his teeth stop appearing in the novel.

What I like best about Dickens is his description of places (here's one example) and certain psychological states and social conditions. His characters, however, don't feel quite real, even if some of their thought processes are complex and real. His descriptions can be wonderfully inventive, but he also falls back on repeating dull phrases like "weary head" and "little hand." The book, which is roughly 950 pages, is over-sweetened and made false at various points by excessive sentimentality. It's also larded with repetition.

I still think it's worth reading because of its better parts and its themes, particularly how genuine love and closeness can't exist in a relationship that's based primarily on how useful someone is to you in the wider world.

Four Short Stories Where Underdogs Triumph

Title: The Cambist and Lord Iron
Author: Daniel Abraham
Where I Read It: Fantasy: The Best of the Year 2008

Olaf works as a cambist in an exchange office. He unfortunately attracts the attention of a dissipated, cruel nobleman, Lord Iron, who puts him in an untenable situation that will very likely cost him his life. Olaf succeeds in extricating himself, in this story of wits and courage triumphing over power and cruelty. (Olaf is a fan of adventure novels, but his own story is an even better adventure, and he's a better example of the traits he admires in fictional heroes.)

Title: Lolita
Author: Dorothy Parker
Where I Read It: Mothers & Daughters

A vivacious, petite, and charming woman, Mrs. Ewing, has a daughter named Lolita who appears to be everything her mother isn't. She's shy and quiet; you can fail to notice she's in a room. She's plain and doesn't clean up well. She can't do much around the house. Most people in town kind of pity Mrs. Ewing for having a daughter like that, even if they have nothing against Lolita. But when Lolita gets courted by a handsome, charming man, it becomes apparent that Mrs. Ewing needs her daughter. She needs to compete with her daughter and come out on top, looking more attractive and desirable. Life has less relish when Lolita isn't around to serve as her mother's foil.

This short story came out shortly before Nabokov's novel was released. Parker's Lolita gets a considerably happier ending.

Title: The Revolt of "Mother"
Author: Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
Where I Read It: Great American Short Stories: From Hawthorne to Hemingway

Sarah Penn's husband promised her 40 years ago that she would one day have a real house, not the home that's been crumbling around the family for decades. It's a promise he has never fulfilled, instead providing nicer, newer quarters for the farm animals. At the start of the story he's determined to build another barn. When Sarah lays out her case plainly, he's unmoved. In a poignant moment she retreats to her room, emerges again after a while with red eyes, and resumes her work.

After appearing resigned, she winds up meeting his taciturn obstinacy and callousness with quiet resolve. If her husband is a wall, she finds a clever way around him that works out for everyone. There's a difference between being dutiful and being a doormat, and she knows her own mind and what's right. (Even when a clergyman comes over at once point to advise her against her unorthodox course of action, she remains resolved.) Freeman I suspect was giving Sarah the kind of satisfying outcome that she would have liked more women in the real world to enjoy, should they have been stuck with such a husband.

Title: Triumph of Justice
Author: Irwin Shaw
Where I Read It: Legal Fictions

Mike Pilato wants to receive some money owed to him. He never got the promise of this money in writing, but he doesn't think it should be too hard to go to court without a lawyer and defend his case. Typical court proceedings don't tend to favor people like Mike, who isn't polished and who pronounces Thursday as Stirday. But Mike manages to upend the order of the court for long enough to get a necessary confession. He uses methods that would lead to unjust outcomes in other situations, but here they make sense to him, because someone is brazenly lying. ('Justice' and 'respect for legal proceedings' aren't always the same...) The dialogue is key to the story's humor and keeps the text punchy.

Week in Seven Words #420

careered
One of the boys loses control of his skateboard, which rockets into a woman's chair.

consensus
Is what they're saying true? They don't care if it isn't. What matters is that equally ignorant people agree with them.

hiccups
There's no telling when he'll arrive. Over a stretch of 40 minutes, he repeatedly claims to be 10 minutes away. Meantime, I read on a bench outside the cafe he chose. I get up, stretch my legs, look around the corner. The cafe has decent potatoes and strange chickpea fries. Our conversation, when he arrives, is propped up by friendly, distant remarks. He buys a heap of desserts. I feel at peace, knowing that I have no plans to meet with him again.

lunching
The pizza parlor is a little red cube with a window and a crowded counter at lunchtime. There's enough space for three stamp-sized tables. I wait at one while eating a slice of excellent margarita pizza, as my phone flickers with text messages about subway delays.

nagged
Two young girls on scooters, pursued by the fretful whine of their mother's voice.

shiny
A cloud of glossy rectangles spangled with lights and colors: the children's section of the bookstore.

trembled
When his voice spikes, he covers his mouth with trembling hands. He had been striving for an impression of generous ease and calm. Now he looks child-like, afraid to be punished for displaying strong emotion.

Week in Seven Words #404

bodies
We walk along the reservoir in the dark. The water is glossy, and the backdrop is a hard, glittering skyline. One building has a red spire, like a syringe. From a dark pocket of trees, someone sings "Piano Man," his voice bright and disembodied.

childishly
The protesters outside the hotel take up a chant that has the pitch and rhythm of a child's taunt. It makes them sound immature and powerless, as if they need to wrap up their playtime soon and be home before dark.

error
A dad treats his young son like a computer program that needs constant debugging. Everything the boy does warrants a sharp remark, as it doesn't fall within the precise specifications of the programming.

frisson
We explore the edges of a milky gray pond. The leaves underfoot are clumpy and pulpy. Overhead, a black squirrel shudders along a tree branch and leaps, the branch shivering at its departure.

kinswomen
An aunt and her nieces and nephews sit on the steps of the museum and eat vanilla soft serve ice cream with sprinkles. A grandmother watches over a grandson and granddaughter as they pretend a giant, sloping rock is a hill of snow for sledding. A mother and her teenaged son relax on a bench and discuss face recognition software.

lagomorph
One train rushes by, then another. They sound like roaring water and hollow, rattling stones. The train we need still hasn't arrived. I spot something small and dark under the opposite platform: a rabbit the color of soot. It seems portentous, the Dark Bunny of Delays.

silica
The glass sculptures look like alien growths transplanted among the flowers and mushrooming out of the pools of water.

Three Short Stories About Daughters and Their Not-So-Maternal Mothers

Title: The Girl Who Left Her Sock on the Floor
Author: Deborah Eisenberg
Where I Read It: The Art of the Story

“Fading smells of bodies clung to the air like plaintive ghosts, their last friendly overtures vanquished by the stronger smells of disinfectants. An indecipherable muttering came from other ghosts, sequestered in a TV suspended from the ceiling.”

Francie is at school on a scholarship when her mother dies. The girl is burdened by a sense that she has been unloved and disapproved of; her mother gave her care that didn't feel caring, as it came with a heap of anger and bitterness. Francie may also have been kept from important truths about her life.

The hospital floated in the middle of a vast ocean of construction, or maybe it was demolition; a nation in itself, of which all humans were, at every moment, potential citizens. The inevitable false move, and it was wham, onto the gurney, with workers grabbing smocks and gloves to plunge into the cavity of you, and the lights that burned all night. Outside this building you lived as though nothing were happening to you that you didn't know about. But here, there was simply no pretending.

Francie confronts the inescapable. There's her mother's sudden death. There's the aloneness, and being left in the dark to fumble towards a new life and deal with questions that can't be ignored. Adults look at Francie like they don't know where to put her or how to get her out of the way, and Francie herself doesn't really know where she belongs, only that she can't escape her life. The legacy of mother to daughter is one of a dark, cutting, and uncomfortable weight, the burden of a fury that never abated. The question is if Francie will ever find a place in her life where she can live at greater ease with herself.

Week in Seven Words #402

combing
During dinner on a second-story terrace, the wind sighs at us through the crown of a tree.

delicately
At first it looks like a piece of stained glass, catching at the corner of my eye. It's a monarch butterfly poised on a leaf and opening its wings.

management
She left work a few months ago to become a stay-at-home mom. Within a few days, she began reorganizing a communal playroom in her apartment building and looking for other projects to sign up for. I'm guessing she will soon return to the corporate workforce.

musically
It seems like overnight she's become a major Hamilton fan. She's memorized all the lyrics, even the complicated rap battles stuffed with historical references. Today, she greets me at the door with "Washington on Your Side."

pity
Pity is uncomfortable and distasteful, regardless of whether it's felt about one's self or other people. This thought comes to me in the middle of a conversation with someone I'd rather not be talking to. I don't want to pity this other person or have that be the motive for the conversation.

relaying
The library has multiple floors, cozy and compact. A spacious staircase links them together. Footsteps echo in it, and whispers and laughter.

sidelines
We spend an afternoon at the fringes of a park, with traffic at our backs and terraced greenery before us. There isn't much hospitality indoors. One place is cliquish and for another we lack the required ID. So we're outdoors, waiting for the afternoon to fall away into evening.

Week in Seven Words #392

admitting
The post-and-rail fence has fallen apart and let a deer through. The gaps in the fence have also offered scaffolding to plants.

chillax
During a get-together at a friend's apartment, a married couple tells me not to live by any ideals because inevitably I'll fall short of them and become a hypocrite. I don't know whether they're taking their own advice, but they seem comfortable with themselves.

glib
He tells me it's ok to be an asshole as long as you're upfront about it. It's honest that way. But I don't think he'd be fine if I were to act like one. Or if anyone close to him did.

plagued
Misfortune seems to shadow her, even in small ways. The bottom of her shopping bag opens like a trap door, and the cans of beans clink on the sidewalk, and the water bottle sprays her feet. Once in the car, she can't find her keys. She does, eventually, but only after running back to the store.

standard
A photo shows a group of boys who are friends. They look alike, more or less - similar size, same clothes, all of them cute kids. Another photo shows a group of girls who are friends. Also more or less alike, dressed alike, all of them pretty and none of them too pretty.

weariness
Someone I'm used to seeing behind a podium as he commands the attention of a crowded room, his voice formidable, I now see in a grocery store one night, his face yellowish under the lights, his eyes tired as he pleads over the phone.

withdraw
They don't know, and don't want to know, who they're raising. Maybe they'd hoped for someone else as their child.

Fraught Parent-Child Relationships in Daniel Deronda

Like other novels by George Eliot, Daniel Deronda is dense and rich. Eliot has an exquisite sensitivity to the inner life of her characters and the way they're struggling with or making sense of their place in their society and culture.

Three of the characters (Daniel, Gwendolen, and Mirah) struggle to find a place for themselves in the world. For different reasons, they're not at home in their own lives. Parent-child relationships are a key reason they feel lost or are experiencing a crisis.

Gwendolen isn't a likable character, but she's rendered sympathetic by Eliot, especially as the novel unfolds, and she begins to question who she is and how she can ever learn to be good. She's raised out in the country in a respectable family that's fallen on hard times. The most influential adults in her life are her mother and uncle. Her mother, who seems to have known only unhappiness in marriage, clings to Gwendolen, and often Gwendolen needs to be a mother to her. Her uncle is short-sighted in some ways and fails as an adequate father figure for her.

Week in Seven Words #357

dessert
Pumpkin pie filling rises between the tines of my fork.

hooked
The choice of entertainment falls to the youngest child. He picks a documentary on fish that weigh a lot. Everyone winds up gathering at the TV to watch.

hushing
She calms her patients with soft string music, a dish-sized fountain, and a murmured mantra.

inordinate
A parent, embarrassed by his children's bickering, loses his temper. His overreaction is significantly more embarrassing than anything his children have done.

juxtaposition
One of the apps on her phone lets her make movie trailers. The latest one features a bad-tempered dance instructor and the floating head of a unicorn.

membrane
The waiting room is part of a suite of doctors' offices. The sofa cushions are stiff. I toy with a book, without reading it. Through a thin wall, I hear wracking coughs and a low, anxious voice.

reconnecting
It's been a year since we last spoke, and it would be a shame if we never spoke again. I email her, and she replies with warmth and surprise. We're still friends.

Week in Seven Words #333

dumping
After getting picked on, he picks on another kid. Watching his pain play out in someone else is satisfying.

invite
There are people who say, "You can tell me anything!" and then react with rejection, contempt, or rage the moment it sounds like something they don't want to hear. Not long after, they'll repeat, with a pristine memory, that you can tell them anything.

ocherous
The river has an orange and silver shimmer. In the foreground, cars race past with headlights like fireflies.

parameters
The adulthood his parents show him seems easy to master. There's a small set of correct beliefs. There's a larger set of beliefs to pay lip service to and mock in private. There are certain people it's ok to laugh at and wound. Always act as if you know what you're doing.

puppies
Four of them have tumbled on a diamond-patterned blanket. Their faces give them a free pass on all mischief.

refreshed
She's happy I call her on her birthday. I'm happy I didn't talk myself out of it with the usual excuses: it wouldn't matter, she doesn't know me well, I'd just be bothering her...

snooze
He's presenting a complex lecture, and all it takes is ten seconds(?) of zoning out for me to lose the thread. Like a cat batting at yarn, my brain goes after it, before curling up to nap for the remaining fifteen minutes.

Week in Seven Words #314

absolution
They love talking about actions having consequences, until it comes to something they've done. Then, good intentions are all that matter.

absorbers
She writes a tribute to her friends, the three closest, who cluster around her when shockwaves spread through her life.

coagulation
The greatest gift her parents gave her, she writes, is a love of cheese. Cheese platters and wine are what hold her family together at home and abroad.

guesswork
We play charades. I act out a kangaroo. "Karate bunny!" she shouts. I try again.

moth
The boy runs straight at the headlights. He cries when his parents snatch him away.

rebounds
The basketball flies around like Flubber in the cluttered room.

unused
Dark windows and deserted streets tell me stories I don't know how to interpret. Some neighborhoods wither like unwatered vines, and it isn't always clear why.

Six movies that fit the holiday season

Title: Home for the Holidays (1995)
Director: Jodie Foster
Language: English
Rating: PG-13

In spite of its premise - woman visits her bonkers family for Thanksgiving - the movie isn't a standard, sitcom-like holiday comedy. The main character, Claudia (Holly Hunter), reconnects with some of her family, runs up against resentment and anger, and falls in love with her brother's guest, Leo (Dylan McDermott) - but these developments don't feel contrived. The actors inhabit the movie naturally, as if they aren't putting on a performance.

I like the exploration of the family, the ways in which they're close or have fractured. Claudia and her brother, Tommy (Robert Downey Jr.), cling to each other as the unconventional children, while their sister, Joanne (Cynthia Stevenson), is perpetually on the outside and profoundly unhappy; she's married, has two kids, helps her aging parents, and so one would think she'd be comfortably settled at the heart of her family, but she seethes with stress and joylessness, pushing people away while also living with unnamed betrayals (including self-betrayal).

Among the older actors, like Anne Bancroft and Geraldine Chaplin, there are also strong performances, especially Chaplin's heartbreaking, eccentric character, also a family outsider. The filmmakers don't let the movie get melodramatic, though. There's restraint to the anger and pain, and there's plenty of light-heartedness and some moments that made me laugh. Though Claudia's life is in a bit of an upheaval, she has good things going for her; she's smart and fierce, and has a close relationship with her teenaged daughter, Kitt (Claire Danes). Not all is right in the world, but there's enough that's good.

Title: I Remember Mama (1948)
Director: George Stevens
Language: English and some Norwegian
Rating: Unrated

The movie centers on the matriarch of a Norwegian immigrant family living in San Francisco in the early 20th century. She's played by Irene Dunne as practical, devoted, steadfast, and sharp, her influence present in everyone's lives - such as when her older daughter, Katrin (Barbara Bel Geddes), has dreams of becoming a writer.

I Remember Mama is warm but not cloying. It's spiced with enough humor and character complexity to keep it from becoming too sentimental.

Week in Seven Words #304

diatonic
From behind the rocks on the beach, a woman's voice rises and falls in octave scales. I imagine she's a siren, warming up to lure sailors.

edge
The evening is as smooth and comforting as a chocolate bar. (But I'm not good at accepting comfort. I enjoy the moment, while wondering how long the peace will last.)

jingly
One of the moms talks to the kids in a patient sing-song voice. She talks to the adults the same way. There's no off-switch for that voice.

loosened
She talks about her life as if she's read about it in a three-paragraph magazine profile.

outraged
The baby tries to arch out of the stroller, her mouth opening for a cry that she hasn't yet worked up the breath to release.

startling
The shriek that fills the room comes from a bird at the window. It flutters off before we can get a good look at it.

tortuous
We're trying to map out motives as if they follow a straight course from A to B, when what really happens is that they go through hidden tunnels and rebound off secret mirrors and raise echoes in sunken caves before emerging into the light.

Week in Seven Words #295

deflective
When the adults ask him questions about what he values, the boy makes flippant remarks. He doesn't like how they want to sit in judgment over his words and pick apart the things he holds important. He deliberately gives them nothing of value.

depressing
They receive love, or something like it, only when serving their parents' shortsighted and limiting needs.

dibs
A plate of puffy chocolate cake floats around the room. With bits of cake indented and crumbling, we know the kids have gotten to it first.

gifting
They send me a gift card with money from their own account. It's a lovely gift, and it reminds me that they aren't little kids anymore.

lance
A dinner that's more like a joust, the guests having a go at each other across the length of the table. All in good fun, they claim.

sizzle
The delicious crackle of a pan filled with pepper steak and mushrooms.

strive
As I get older, my relationship with my religion becomes more like an invigorating wrestling match. And sometimes like an expedition.

Week in Seven Words #270

cradling
Held in place by the people around her, she falls asleep standing up in the subway car.

enthused
Flowers spilling out of the grocery store to meet the warmer air.

frenzied
We have a short time together. Make it count, I think. Tell funny stories, crack jokes. But I can't think of anything. My need to perform is proof of the distance between us. I can only wave and gesture and pull faces like a clown; anything more subtle won't get noticed.

glaring
Coffee in a solarium. He wishes he could smoke indoors too. He takes out his lighter and turns it in different angles until a blade of sunlight springs out of it.

intrusive
Fog probing the upper reaches of the tree.

unaccountable
It's hideous when parents turn one of their children into the brutal enforcement arm of their parental power. The child dispenses punishment - berates the other children, bullies and hits them. The parents watch calmly from their heights.

wreckage
The fire station has fallen apart. A truck and a police car have smashed into the pizzeria. Mermaids bob in the harbor next to capsized boats. The future of Lego City looks grim.

Five Short Stories Featuring Mothers and Daughters

Title: Ashputtle: Or, the Mother’s Ghost
Author: Angela Carter
Where I Read It: Mothers & Daughters
Carter writes three versions of the Cinderella story, not with the 'bibbity bobbity boo' Disney godmother, but with Cinderella's dead mother helping her in some way (usually in the form of a guiding animal spirit). The three versions vary in violence, in the desperate competitiveness between the girl & her mother vs. the tormenting stepmother and her brood, and the freedom the dead mother grants her daughter.

There's only one version where the mother gives her daughter some gifts and then sets her free to embark on life, where it may take her. In others, the vision she has for her daughter is more fixed; she controls her daughter and maneuvers her into a narrow role. It's for her daughter's own good, she would say, because why take chances? But taking chances makes that third version, the freer one, so compelling. The mother trusts her daughter most in that one.