Swing and Sway

"I want Princess Leia sway," says my five-year-old. Because her seven-year-old sister had asked for that picture, too.

"Slave. Slave. Slaaaaay-vuh."

"What's a slave?"

So, see, my kids love it when I print coloring pages from teh intrawebs for them. Name cartoon-character-of-choice (and yes, I count Star Wars among that, even pre Cartoon Network Clone Wars series among that), and somewhere on the Web there's a coloring page for it. Even if it means you need to go to DeviantArt (gotta make sure it's the adult-material-screened search when they're looking over my shoulder) and find a pencil drawing. Characters from the Mario videogames are big, various superheroes, too. The past week, there's been an ever-increasing demand for Star Wars characters. And Princess Leia, slave, because you see, doesn't her hair look so pretty, when it's not in the Cinnabons on either side of her head? And her costume -- isn't that so much more interesting than that boring white robe?

A Complicated Woman

Part the First: Dreaming

I still have dreams about my grandmother's house. In my dreams, it still has white clapboard siding rather than red brick, and wood paneling with dark marks and circles and ovals and striations that my brain always ordered into faces. In my dreams, the only toilet and shower stall are still in the basement, open to all the world, and I can smell the mustiness. Not that the basement was a scary place when I was kid -- all the grandkids loved it. My brother Yancey and I, and our cousins Maria and Crystal would go down there and play, chasing each other around and being chased by imaginary bad guys who would periodically capture us and tie us up with invisible chains to the support columns. The outside of the house had little in-ground hidey-holes that had windows looking out into them from the basement stairs; my grandmother's cats would nest there, and have kittens, and we could watch the brood squirming and mewling from the other side of the glass.