Liliana Has Two Grandmothers

101:8

No, this doesn't have quite the same likelihood to be challenged that Lesléa Newman's Heather Has Two Mommies did throughout the 90s, spawning a controversy over a positive portrayal of a same-gender (I believe gender raises fewer red flags and has fewer connotations than sex) relationship in which a child is raised that has gotten parodied -- the controversy, not the book -- in the following decades. But Leyla Torres' Liliana's Grandmothers (ISBN 9780374351052; I chose the title for parallelism) written and illustrated by the author is simple enough, with Liliana being able to spend time with both her mom's dad and her dad's dad, but we're not told in the story whose mom Mima who lives down the street is and whose Mama Gabina who lives in Central or South America (the book's not clear save she only speaks Spanish and she has to fly in a plane to see her). If this is like my family, Mima is likely Liliana's mom's mom.


This book's also been published in Spanish, and you have to check out the illustrations.


Liliana's teddy bear is in every picture and think of Dave Gibbons' illustration from Watchmen -- every time you look at them there is something different. I have to wonder if the bear's somehow alive, for the bear's posed or appears in ways and places I can't imagine Liliana putting her. Torres the author even promotes one of her other books, Subway Sparrow, when Mimi is reading to her. I have fun noticing these things, such as Mimi having a black cat and Mama Gabina having a parrot. And I'm sure there's more if I bother looking again -- come to think of it, have YOU bothered looking in your favorite children's book (which Watchmen definitely isn't, I warn you) illustrations lately to see what you haven't before? For you truly don't outgrow them ... I may be pulling teeth some days to get the kids to read more during the summer, but did I really read a lot at their ages of eleven and nine?


Yes I did. But perhaps not "a lot".


See this is what I get when System Restore is going on at work and I don't post what's going on in my life but instead choose something appealing to me ... I forget what I wanted to say! Monday while I was at work I cooked pot roast in our crock pot and I'm finishing it today for lunch, and yesterday (Tuesday) I am nearly done cleaning out my work office of everything that's mine. When I went to pick Sarah and Jeffrey up -- due to the rain, they weren't able to go swimming as they did the day before -- Sarah greeted me at the door with a lost tooth in her hand! One of her canines, I believe, top right. We got home, we fended for ourselves for dinner, we played on Wii Fit Plus (that may be the best twenty dollars we ever spent, have I said that before?), and we slept way better last night!


At least I can say I did.


President Trump, my father-in-law Robert, and my brother Bob are all seventy-one today. I'm still letting that settle in along with this morning's shooting of five people at a Congressional baseball practice (how CBS News explained it, at least in my hearing) in Virginia that I heard as I brought the kids to my in-laws' for the day. The shooter was just five years younger, so he'd be sixty-six, from Illinois and there's question whether this act was premeditated or not? He takes trips from Illinois to D.C. as a routine and picked one day to "go off"? With an M4 carbine? But I digress; it's hard to pray for shooting victims when shootings just seem to keep happening when you've risen from the altar.


They just keep coming, like the news from San Francisco now.


I'm not giving up, but often I question through the church I'm part of and other areas of my life whether I can possibly do enough, give enough, be enough for where I live and who's in my circle of influence. They are very few outcomes I be blamed for, just the efforts I do or do not make. Which almost sounds like I'm throwing prayer out the window, but no ... I can't make God create the results I want in the world, and it's far beyond me to question His methods. Take a minute to think about what I just said, and I think it will make sense.


As I finish posting this, 101 hours and 8 minutes left at Fast Cash.


David