A Few Of My Favorite Things

Last week Idgie and I went to hear a reading by one of my favorite authors, Tom Spanbauer. He's a local Portland author, and it's always lovely to spend an evening with him. He has a wonderful, calm reading voice, and his fiction is gorgeous. He also tells amazing, riveting stories that are often intensely personal, and he's just a plain old nice guy. When I heard him read a couple of years back from his most recent novel, he walked around the room before the reading began, shaking everyone's hand and saying, "Hi, I'm Tom." Imogen was quite cooperative for the event, falling asleep as the reading began and waking up to happily stand in line to get my book signed while being adored by strangers (then she cried in the car all the way home).

Tom Spanbauer gets the honor of having written my favorite book in the world - the one I would take with me to a desert island. The novel is In the City of Shy Hunters and takes place in New York City during the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s. The story is amazing, you'll never want the characters to leave you, and Mr. Spanbauer's writing style is not like anything you've ever read before, I guarantee. I can't recommend the book highly enough.

While I'm on the subject of favorites, I also recommend every last word ever written by poet Naomi Shihab Nye. I attended a week-long women's writing retreat with Naomi in 1995, and she has been my favorite poet and personal hero ever since. Naomi is one of the most genuine, kind, and talented women you could ever know. In her presence, you'll feel like an old friend, and you'll want to talk to her for days and days. She's written countless poems, as well as essays, children's books, young adult fiction, and songs. Every one is remarkable.

And I must show you these photos of my two favorite people. This is Elliot at 5 months old and Imogen at 7 months old, wearing the very same hat.


This will probably be my last April post, so in honor of Autism Awareness Month, I want to give one final shout out to Elliot's preschool (and all educators and specialists out there who are helping children on the spectrum). I can't say thank you enough for everything they've done for Elliot. You can read more about Elliot's amazing school, School of Autism, here. And if you are interested in supporting the school with a monetary donation (they still need all kinds of supplies and funds for the addition of grades 1-2 in the fall), or by buying a T-shirt or a copy of the film that was made for the auction, you can do that here (your donation is tax-deductible!). The film was created by Peter Fuhrman of zodbox, and he did an amazing job. Elliot saw the film for the first time yesterday and immediately requested when it ended, "You want to watch that again!".

And, since April is also National Poetry Month, I thought I'd offer up a teaser for a chapbook I'm working on. It's a series of 40 short poems, one for each week of pregnancy. I started the series while pregnant with Elliot and continued it during my pregnancy with Imogen. I still have a few more poems to write before it is complete. Here are three of my favorites from the series, one for each trimester.

5 weeks

This is the week the heart starts
beating. Little bird, little lizard,

little princess pea. Small round
stairway of spine. Small cleft

body. Small ache in my belly.
Everything moves over –

my insides rearrange. The heart
starts beating. My insides rearrange.

Brittney Corrigan, copyright 2003, all rights reserved.


23 weeks

Little nymph, your skin is like
dragonfly wings. Everything

below is visible, illuminated
through your shimmering limbs.

Your blood travels in quick rivers
beside trees of bones.

Your heart is a small, red poppy
fluttering in a field of rain.

Brittney Corrigan, copyright 2007, all rights reserved.


34 weeks

Little person, we are almost ready.
I am preparing for the suckling,

you are standing back like a painter
from the canvas, adding a brushstroke

here, a whorl of color there. We bulge
under the veil, anticipate the viewing.

Then we can touch each other’s artful
lines, open our eyes and stare, and stare.

Brittney Corrigan, copyright 2007, all rights reserved.

Finally, I want to leave you with a story that my friend Christine shared with me today. Her son Jasper, 2 1/2, is good friends with Elliot.

In the name of friendship
Jasper and I were at the mall today, running errands. I told him we needed to go downstairs and he asked, "On the elevator?"
"Sure," I answered, "or the escalator. You can choose which one you'd like."
"Well, well... well... I love Elliot and he loves me. We love each other, and I'd like to take the elevator." (Pause.) "I don't want to hurt his feelings."
"By taking the escalator?"
"Yeah."
"I don't think he'd mind if you took the escalator. I don't think he'd even know."
"Well, Elliot is my friend and we love each other and I want to take the elevator."
So we did.

You can't ask for a better pal than that.