While my daughter is babbling a blue streak-- sometimes I think I hear the ”pop” of her neurons expanding--I can feel my brain atrophying. Since Jane was born, I’ve read a total of one book (OK, three if you count books I’ve read for work).
It took me six months to plod through Jane Jacobs’ “The Death and Life of Great American Cities,” the 1961 masterpiece of urban planning that argues against the prevalant thinking that vast open spaces in the middle of a city are good and soot-caked yet walkable neighborhoods of aging brownstones are bad. The book was invigorating, if you can be invigorated in a very slow, unfolding way.
Vast open spaces in the middle of one’s head are, bad, too. Sometimes, usually after several hours of making sure a 16-month-old doesn’t paint the dog blue or eat the couch cushions, I can’t think of words for everyday things like trees, sidewalks, and bricks. I wish my head were a more walkable neighborhood, with elegantly decrepit windows facing out into a street full of elotes vendors and children playing with bottlecaps.
I also wish it had taken me six months to read “Chicken Soup for the Policeman’s Soul” instead of something brilliant and intellectually fortifying. That would be more fun to say, and I’d get more shocked, grave looks from family members.
Actually, who am I kidding--my people probably would say, unironically,“Good for You.” Hardly anyone in my extended family reads much. And they’re not too fluent in irony, either. Probably because, at one time or another, they all had kids and their humor became really first-grade. They still make me laugh with their poop jokes, though.
Laura Putre is a journalist who now works from home, after learning that she'd have to start selling plasma on the side to afford day care. She lives in Rogers Park with husband Richard, lovely daughter Jane, and Ernie the dog.