The Five-Year-Old discovered Lisa Loeb’s summer music album, Camp Lisa, this week. She loves it so much that she asked me to sit down and listen to the whole thing with her “so that you can talk about it on Caterpickles, Mommyo.”
The Five-Year-Old, yelling from the top of the stairs: “Mommyo! Come quick! It’s an EMERGENCY!” Mommyo, panicked, drops the pan she’s been washing in the sink…
On an unexpected detour this weekend through South Natick, The Five-Year-Old noticed a sign for the Charles River. After establishing that it was in fact the same Charles River that flows by the Museum of Science, she naturally wanted to know: “Mommyo, how did the Charles River get its name?”
Exposure times for photography in those days were extremely long, which had the perverse effect of making the dead daughter in this example the only reliably in-focus part of the image, while her (then) living parents appear blurred and more ghost-like. (Image via cogitz.com)
Earlier this week while doing some of the never-ending research for my novel-in-progress, Asylum, I came across memento mori, the Victorian practice of posing their dead for photographs. At first, I labeled this as just one more in a long line of somewhat creepy things Victorians did. But then The Five-Year-Old did something that completely changed my perspective on it.
Mommyo, disentangling her fingers from the hairs’ nest on the back of The Five-Year-Old’s head on a recent Sunday morning: “It’s bath day today, I think.”…
Last weekend, the Caterpickles squad traipsed into downtown Boston for a trip to the Big Apple Circus. Now in its 34th season, the cozy, one-ring Big Apple Circus is a Boston tradition.
After presenting me with a Victorian necklace crafted of the finest rainbow-splattered duct tape and yellow construction paper, The Five-Year-Old was naturally concerned about the authenticity of her work. “Mommyo, did Victorians use duct tape?” I was pretty sure duct tape was invented after the world had said goodbye to Queen Victoria, but I had to look the exact date up.
Several months ago, The Five-Year-Old and I were reading Stephen and Lucy Hawking’s children’s book George’s Secret Key to the Universe when we came across a picture of Dr. Reaper wearing an older style gas mask. When I mentioned how old-fashioned that gas mask was, The Five-Year-Old immediately wanted to know, “Mommyo, what does a new-fashioned gas mask look like?”
The Five-Year-Old, pointing to clouds streaking across the sky on a recent trip to downtown Boston: “Daddyo, how is that even possible?”
As if we really needed another one. The Five-Year-Old, on hearing that another fast food run wasn’t on the docket until at least June: “Mommyo, not…
CATERPICKLES 