"Good night Fiona." The gun is still on the kitchen table, and he pushes it toward me. He knows that I'll be sleeping with it. "If you get into a situation, remember you have trauma. Your instinct will tell you to do too much or too little. Both are bad. Use your head, not this." He points to his heart.
I nod. I know what he means. I've got a slogan for it. "Fuck feelings, trust reason," I say."
I started this blog before facebook as a way to comment on friends' blogs and over the years I've used it for different purposes. To share my reading list, to muse, but now, after 8 years as a single mom to most incredible boy, I've remarried and I thought I'd share our story of becoming the "Waki Family."
4.30.2013
4.14.2013
"Raising Boys without Men" Peggy Drexler
"We live in a culture where we want mothers to do everything and whenever something goes wrong, it's the mother's fault," Mary Becker told the NYT."
"The maverick mother's sons I studied, clearly showed that a boy's morality and masculinity could be cultivated without a live-in father. I found there were no differences in the boys in terms of their conceptions about what they considered fair or their reasoning about moral issues."
"I have come to take a stand against the recent tide of opinion and the rash of books asserting that boys must have a father in the home to in order to to grow to full manhood. Instead, I have found that loving, growth-encouraging parenting is what boys need. A good parent, whether mother or father, will enable a boy to develop to his full potential as a young man, as long as his individuality, his manliness, his courage, and his developing conscience are respectfully and and fully supported."
"The maverick mother's sons I studied, clearly showed that a boy's morality and masculinity could be cultivated without a live-in father. I found there were no differences in the boys in terms of their conceptions about what they considered fair or their reasoning about moral issues."
"I have come to take a stand against the recent tide of opinion and the rash of books asserting that boys must have a father in the home to in order to to grow to full manhood. Instead, I have found that loving, growth-encouraging parenting is what boys need. A good parent, whether mother or father, will enable a boy to develop to his full potential as a young man, as long as his individuality, his manliness, his courage, and his developing conscience are respectfully and and fully supported."
"Listening for Madeleine" Leonard Marcus
Despite sometimes long narratives by friends, it her own words that spoke to me in this book:
"My books are not bad books to die with...What I mean is that when you read a book, if it makes me feel more alive, then it's a good book to die with."
Also, this description: "For most of her adult life, Madeleine L'Engle enjoyed a stage actor's fine powers of recall and too casual pride in the manner of well-read men and women of own and earlier generations, in seasoning her writing and conversation with lines from the immortals."
"My books are not bad books to die with...What I mean is that when you read a book, if it makes me feel more alive, then it's a good book to die with."
Also, this description: "For most of her adult life, Madeleine L'Engle enjoyed a stage actor's fine powers of recall and too casual pride in the manner of well-read men and women of own and earlier generations, in seasoning her writing and conversation with lines from the immortals."
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