Beth Ain's Blog, page 3

Jessica Wakefield, Paula Danziger, and me

If you were lucky, someone likely came along at some point in your life and set you straight–leaving in their wake a person who might have otherwise traveled a different path. A less interesting path. Or maybe just a less inspired one. And if you were especially lucky, this person came along when you were young. Or perhaps it wasn’t a person but a moment, or an event, or a book.

I was spectacularly lucky in this way. I got both a person and a book. In tenth grade it was a teacher who I’m certa...

“I’m gonna send your vote to college” (or 2nd grade anyway)

When, during the Democratic National Convention, they paid tribute to the late Ted Kennedy, I sat down on the sofa to watch even as the chaos of the dinner and homework hour pressed on. I expected to have to ignore the crashes and whines that usually come in the wake of my getting sidelined by something that holds my attention a little longer than 2ndgrade word problems and cleaning up spaghetti from the floor.

But there was no whining, no pasta casualties. There was the peace that comes when...

Have the day you have!

Sometimes, in the course of my day, I step on the tiny little pieces of whatever my five-year-old has collected from the universe of tiny little pieces and then methodically arranged across his floor–turning his bedroom into a rigged, land-mine experience for us and our bare feet.

I can’t freak out, though. I have to move on.

But throw enough tiny little things in front of my 7 year old, and you will watch a storm blow up inside her and explode all over the place—pushing those tiny little piece...

Things I learned from Footloose…(in honor of banned books)

There is a scene in Footloose (the real Footloose, not the fake-let’s-please-pretend-it-was-never-remade-Footloose) when the straight as a line Reverend Shaw Moore is called down to the library to deal with a group of creepy book burners. Earlier in the movie, our fiery, Men at Work blasting hero, Ren has already made the mistake of telling the town he read and even—gasp—liked The Slaughterhouse-Five, and now here we are waiting to see how the fire and brimstone Reverend reacts to setting sai...

Whatever would they do without us? (More than you might think!)

A friend recently told me that she went to a bookstore looking for something new to read to her daughter. The bookseller made some age-appropriate suggestions, like –(and I know I write this a lot—it’s an epidemic)—Rainbow Fairies. My friend was not so impressed and pushed back. How about The Boxcar Children? She wondered out loud.

The bookseller shook her head no. “Those kids have no parents.”

Though I was the very person who made this recommendation to my friend, I tried not to take personal...

We’re Going on a Bear Hunt–Be Back in Five…

We were on the road, windows down, house locked up and alarmed behind us, as if we had hung a Gone Fishin’ sign on the door. We were giving ourselves a time-out. Time-out! For too much carpooling, too much rushing, too much yelling, too much organizing, too much working. But this was no sit-in-the-corner-time-out. Nope.

There was going to be rafting and late-night dance parties, and down-the-side-of-a-mountain hikes, and cliff-jumping and rapids-surfing, and window-shopping and steak-frites-ea...