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I took this before we went in to the RV show at the Minnneaplis Convention Center. Ess is holding what she calls ‘mama’: a hot pink Under Armour shirt of Mykala’s that Ess, out of the blue, began to use as a security blanket of sorts. In fact, she’s holding it as she sleeps right now. Anyway, we needed a way for Ess to be able to hold the blanket as we strolled around; Mykala thought to tuck it into the straps.

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I’ve had this file, 20111229_fa_02.mp3 sitting on my desktop for a while. It’s Terry Gross’s final interview with Maurice Sendak, on the occasion of the publication of his book, Bumble-Ardy. I knew that, in 2011, it made me think when I heard it, but I had forgotten what it was: a creative human, successful in his time, looking back with his hand lightly brushing old scars and lamenting the accretion of new cuts as he watches, unable to affect the marching-on of time:

…the fragility of life, the irrationality of life, the COMEDY of life. My tears flow because two great, great friends died close together, a husband and a wife, who meant everything to me and I am having to deal with that. And it is very, very hard.

And on art and seeing:

There’s something I’m finding out as I’m aging: that I am in love with the world. And I look right now, as we speak together, out my window in my studio: I see my trees, my beautiful, beautiful maples that are hundreds of years old. They’re there, they’re beautiful. And, you see, I can see how beautiful they are, I can take time to see how beautiful they are. It is a blessing to get old, it is a blessing to find the time to do the things to read the books to listen to the music.

And:

I have nothing but praise now, really, for my life. I mean, I’m not unhappy. I cry a lot because I miss people. I cry a lot because they die and I can’t stop them. They leave me, and I love them more. And I’m in a very soft mood, as you can gather, because new people have died, and they were not that old.
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Oh, god, there are so many beautiful things in the world which I will have to leave when I die. But, I’m ready, I’m ready, I’m ready.

You really should listen to this, because the tone and inflection deliver at least as much as the words when Sendak speaks. There’s a difference between talking of the past, on his troubles with his parents, and talking of the present, on losing those he loves.

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“Dada, hi!” and then a pause. “Dada… hi.” Essie had just turned to see what I was doing at the edge of the bedroom, and while she has been uttering expressive morphemes in response to me and my actions for a while, her greeting marked one of her first definite sentences at me. The thrill! Burbles and gurgles of infancy have so quickly become expressions of thought and opinion and frustration and love.

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“No!” Essie said with an upward lilt in her inflection, meaning she was saying her word for snow, that she saw it falling and wanted to tell me the huge flakes were settling on her face, transforming into tiny little water droplets as the warmth of her skin transformed them.

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