Go the F*k to Sleep

For those of us who go through nightly bedtime drama, Adam Masnbach's Go the F*k to Sleep offers some desperately needed comic relief.  Most of us can't be shocked these days, but seeing this made-for-adults childrens' book does initially shock, just a little, and in a delicious way. 

The illustrations by Ricardo Cortes are beautiful, and if you didn't read English, you would just think this was a sweet little bedtime book.  The innocent graphics make for a mischievously delightful juxtaposition to the prose.   Mansbach has been writing for a decade and just happened to make a joke on facebook, it spread like wildfire, and the book was born.

This irreverent jab at bedtime is a great antidote to pastel bunnies and saccharine rhymes, and it's just a welcome chuckle for exhausted parents.  Not for those offended by four letter words (and if you are, read this).

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The Idle Parent by Tom Hodgkinson

The Idle Parent is a refreshing, funny, practical approach to parenting and boy do I wish I'd read this much sooner.  Rather than live with your stomach in knots trying to do the right thing and often failing miserably because of the impossibility of it all, author Tom Hodgkinson encourages us to relax.  All that worrying, obsessing, and helicoptering does not a happy childhood (or parenthood) make.

The guy is old school progressive.  I confess I'm guilty of a little (a lot) of hovering, but I have ambitions of having a free range kid.  As my son gets older, I'm getting much much better.  This book will be one that I come back to again and again for that reassurance and the reminder to lighten up.  It's also good for a laugh, Hodgkinson writes with a great sense of humor and he had me chuckling throughout the book.

Idle parents are, by default, eco friendly parents, eschewing plastic both figuratively and literally in favor of the more real, authentic, and closer to the earth.  Hodgkinson suggests walking or busing over driving, gardening, farming, and keeping waste and want to a minimum.

Turn off the TV, forget about all the lessons (apart from swimming), theme parks and expensive toys and get down on the floor and play with your kids.  Build forts with blankets, play in the fields.  He argues we have lost touch with nature and references old world themes like having reached the ideal of  a Bruegel type situation at a get together--kids playing at one end of the field while the adults chatted over beer at the other.  This is the stuff of life.  Not seclusion in front of screens and the "digital straightjacket of the internet."

There are some contradictions and the guy likes his drink,  butI don't think it's meant to be taken entirely literally.  Read it for amusement, comfort and some good old fashioned common sense.  Find it HERE.

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Hand Wash Cold by Karen Maezen Miller

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Every now and then a book will find its way into your hands that feels like an intimate conversation with  an old friend.  For me, Hand Wash Cold: Care Instructions for an Ordinary Life is one of those books.

Not really all that instructional per se, this book is unassuming and comforting and lets you know you are not alone in your endeavors with spirituality, relationships, motherhood, and mundane tasks like laundry which Miller uses both literally (we need to get our hands dirty) and metaphorically.   Real, meaningful life is deeply embedded in the mundane tasks and Miller is validating and celebrating those moments which go unnoticed, begrudged,  and/or delegated to others because we think we have more important work to do.

As  a child I was painfully aware of the passage of time and since becoming a mother I ache with this awareness.  Still it's quite an effort to stay in the moment and really experience the present (cliche as it is).  Precious moments with the most important person in my life, my son, pass by at light speed.  Miller totally gets it, has struggled with it herself and offers compassion and insight.  Embrace your life as it is, right now, she encourages.  Be present in your own life.

She shares her own flaws and vulnerabilities and made me cry, more than once.  She is a Zen Buddhist priest but that doesn't come through so much in this book, and I think that's the point.  She is not cold and detached, but warm and accessible.  Never did I feel in reading this that someone more enlightened than me was telling me how it is, there's nothing lofty, just something Raw and Real.   I can't wait to read Miller's former book, Momma Zen: Walking the Crooked Path of Motherhood.

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