Julie Pippert: Using My Words

How the holidays fill me with loads of hope

2009-12-09T21:04:00.011-06:00

I am part of a special holiday Blog Carnival hosted on Blog Nosh Magazine and this post was sponsored by the Tide Loads of Hope program.

I was standing outside my house, directly under my children’s bedroom window, in what passes for cold in Bay Area Houston. In my hands I balanced a big boom box, Say Anything style, except it wasn’t blasting music. It was blasting the sound of reindeer hooves on a roof, including snorts, and the jingling bells of their harnesses.

That’s when I knew it.

No, not that I had lost my mind; I knew that I had finally gotten my holiday groove back.

I knew that come what storms may, we could weather them, and when you have a chance to stand outside in what passes for cold blasting sleigh bells on a boom box to bring a little magic to kids, your kids, who still believe in, well, the everything sort of possibilities…you go for it, big.

This marked a huge change.

I’ve spent my life trying to find my footing during the holidays. My family had the general traditions – ham, pie, gifts, visits to family – but nothing terribly consistent. My parents had barely settled into our immediate family’s ways when they got divorced, then we had to transition into juggling two (very competitive) Christmases. That was barely settled when each got remarried and then a whole new set of traditions and expectations came into play. By the time I left home and married my husband, I was more a little confused about the holidays. I was, in fact, completely cynical.

I remember all the craziness and competition, but I also remember being in the bell choir and making beautiful music for the Christmas Eve candlelight service. I remember the year I got to be the Angel in the Nativity scene. I remember my grandmother making chocolate silk pies with whipped cream topping, just the way I liked it – and saving the first piece for me. I remember being bored one afternoon with my friends and sister and masterminding a caroling outing. I remember the man who cried when we sang, and who could barely express how much our song had meant to him.

Our neighborhood wasn’t the nicest, not even during the holidays. Nobody put bows on street lamps, and decorations were few and far between. It wasn’t the sort of place that had carolers. But that afternoon, some little girls, eight-ish and ten-ish went around to sing because we loved Christmas. The man told us we brought him joy. And hope.

That’s the magic of kids, you know? They live in a world of magical realism, impossibility, and belief. They hope. And why not?

That’s why – despite the past and the last five years – I found myself standing outside my girls’ bedroom window adding to the myth.

The last five years have been a mess: two hurricanes, both damaging; a lost job; three pet deaths; a cross-country move; losing the vast majority of all we owned in a flood; fighting two major and serious diseases; losing several friends to cancer; and more.

It’s taken a toll on us, the adults, and by virtue of that, on our kids. My older daughter is old enough to remember Before, but this life, the one we lead now, is all my littlest one knows of our lives.

For a long time, I’ve been telling myself a lot of shoulds – how I should be, what I should do, what the kids deserved and how I should fulfill that -- all of which increase in volume and frequency this time of year. I know that when you’re tapped out on so many fronts, every little extra effort seems beyond your ability, even if it’s for good. Still, I put on a front, for the kids. Because I should.

But sometimes, that fake it until you make it has a way of working out.

Last year, we laughed with true glee as we spread reindeer feed in the front yard. We laughed even though our yard hadn’t recovered from the hurricane and we still had two holes in our roof and our budget was missing in action because the insurance settlement barely covered a third of the cost. We laughed because we had a reason to be happy – we had our home, we had what mattered. We had each other.

I stood outside with those recorded bells jangling that Christmas Eve night, and I shook not with cold but with excitement and suppressed laughter.

This year, I pulled out my holiday shirts. All of them. The St. Patrick’s one, the Easter one, the Fourth of July one, the Halloween one, and yes, even the Christmas one. This year I decked the halls for every season. This year, as soon as we put the Thanksgiving décor away, we started pulling out the Christmas things.

Our house may not have lights strung all over, but it’s got two little lighted Christmas trees in the front flower bed and a homemade by children wreath on the door. My kids may not remember the individual gifts they get, but I hope – I hope loads – that they’ll always carry memories of the special times we create every year. I hope they’ll remember the night they heard Santa’s sleigh and knew his reindeer ate their feed. I hope they remember how mom cried at their Las Posadas program and tried to tell them how much it meant to see them dressed as little angels, singing about the real reason for the season. I hope they know hope, always.

How do the holidays fill you with loads of hope?

Respond here, or on your blog, but please come join the carnival of hope!

Loads of Hope for the Holidays

Please join us at Blog Nosh Magazine as we share stories of hope this holiday season in support of the Tide Loads of Hope program, a mobile laundromat offering laundry services to families affected by disasters.

Share your own stories of hope, along with Blog Nosh Magazine, Velveteen Mind, and a gathering of inspiring bloggers, and enter your own post link in the blog carnival below. Visit Blog Nosh Magazine to explore featured bloggers as well as three featured posts selected from carnival participants listed in the linky (that could be you!).

Lend your voices now, then participate live during a two day event in New Orleans, Sunday and Monday, December 13 and 14, as we tweet stories of resilience from laundry recipients and volunteers on the ground. Follow along on twitter via #loadsofhope and be sure to follow @TideLoadsofHope.

Learn more about how you can extend hope to families affected by disasters by visiting http://tideloadsofhope.com

Blog carnival hosted by Blog Nosh Magazine, sponsored by Tide Loads of Hope.

How do the holidays fill you with loads of hope?

Someone's in the kitchen with...KIDS! And it's called Kinderkitchen by Kuhn Rikon

2009-12-03T12:46:00.012-06:00

I am a frequent customer of my local caterer, which offers really economic home-cooked meals. You buy, bring home, and eat. Yum. And easy.

I used to like to cook, bake especially, and my true gift is as a saucier. I can also whip up amazing things with just what's in the fridge.

People used to fly up to Boston just to eat the seafood I made. Well probably also see the sights and maybe visit me, but seriously, they requested to eat in, specifically asking for my crab cakes, shrimp, and Scrod.

I can't explain how I morphed into a noncook. It's maybe the Unappreciative Audience (aka The Kids). It could also be the exhaustion. The other demands. But mostly, I think, it's the kids.

I do know that they'll eat food other people make. My kids, for example, turn their noses up at my homemade stew (and it's good, honestly, it is) but will eat it at a friend's house. They'll eschew my fish, but will chow down at Joe's Crab Shack. They'll savor the caterer's casseroles, after telling me my own is Yuck.

It's not me, honestly, it's them. Seriously. Truly.

I do also know they'll eat what they make, so I've been, especially now that they are older, involving them more and more in the cooking process.

Then my favorite local caterer started offering kids cooking classes. How cool is that! Kid-friendly recipes and lessons.

So I'm twittering this (because that's what you do -- or rather, what I do) and a local friend says, hey did you know there are kitchen tools designed for kids?

Uhh, no, because I am not that savvy or cool. LOL I make my kids suffer through using what we already own, because I am so scroogy that way and "fit them into my world" is how I roll.

Then, as if leading me to new knowledge wasn't enough, she offers to donate a gift pack of these tools. They're called KinderKitchen by Kuhn Rikon. And oh-my-stars this is like "little gingerbread playhouse in the garden" level dream-come-true cool.

I relished the idea of Fun in the Kitchen with My Kids, but knowing that these tools would be ever so much more valuable as a silent auction item in our school fundraiser, I bravely and selflessly handed them over for the greater good.

There was maybe a little weeping at my pity party.

So at the fundraiser, everyone got to see these amazing kid's kitchen tools. They are kid-sized, easy to hold with good grips, really high professional quality (maybe a little nicer than my own things, actually), and adorable with cute designs and bright colors.

Let's just say...BIDDING WAR.

There was maybe a little smugness at my school fundraising party.

But anyway I know you folks are out there gift shopping. And while I've heard people are fighting for some robotic hamster in a cage (????), I personally prefer fun yet useful will use it all year long gifts.

And really...what better than kitchen tools for kids?

Mouse measuring cups. . .so much better than robotic gerbils:

This post is uncompensated and written for no reason other than because I wanted to do it, because seriously, I think these things are wicked cool and wanted to tell you about it.

Bitten tongue

2009-12-01T12:39:00.017-06:00

I, as you may have gathered, like to use my words. I try (like hades) to use them wisely and for good. But I am a woman of opinion, prejudice, judgment, and some immaturity as we all are and so sometimes my mouth, it does run away. Less these days than in the past, I hope. Although I do seem to talk a lot, still.

However, recently I've been learning how very much I say about the things that often matter little to me.

I have always kept up an artful show, a stream of lies and excuses -- a habit, a defense I developed long ago to protect myself, which, in turn, protected others around me too, for better or worse.

One time, in middle school, I pretended I didn't know how to clean anything. More specifically, I pretended I didn't know how to sweep. This from the girl who'd been sweeping and mopping for years, among many, many other responsibilities. I'm all for chores, but there's a distinction between responsibility and burdening. But at camp that summer, I wanted to be that girl: the carefree one who had little responsibility on her shoulders. The one who was only expected to make her bed, clean her room, put away laundry -- my idea of normal. The one whose parents adored her, and maybe spoiled her little -- and not only in front of other people, when they thought they were being watched and judged. I wanted to laugh and joke and kvetch about parents in normal teen ways, such as "My mom won't let me go to the Mall!"

When I pretended to be that girl kids liked me. They thought it was funny. I played along, adding to it, pretending to be rich and indolent, hamming it up. I never told an outright lie, beyond the sweeping thing. Instead, I would tilt my head, raise my eyebrows, and be silent, letting the other kids draw their own conclusions. They were so happy to be so bright and insightful.

They let me in, they joked with me, they gave me a nickname. I was accepted.

When I pretended to be that other girl -- the one who could not sweep -- I belonged. I was no longer the girl who was afraid to walk into her own house, uncertain of what I'd find (anger? okay?). I didn't need to worry about money. I didn't have anxiety. I didn't worry whether others knew.

That girl did not live in a house of cards. She did not lose sleep at night wondering when her house would fall.

She was fun, and people liked her.

When my sister found out and outed me, she asked me why. I shrugged. I couldn't explain why to anyone, not really. Anyway, I imagine most kids would never, ever have understood why I started this pretense. I imagine most adults would not have, either.

The best I can explain it now is a girl desperate to escape. I no longer wanted to be me, in my life. Some kids might have felt suicidal. I felt like pretending.

I think, maybe, that children with safe relationships are the ones who complain out loud about their parents. I think kids who say, "Oh my GOD, I HATE my mom," are the probably often the ones with very little to no valid reason to hate a parent. I think the ones who have real reason to hate a parent are often very quiet about it.

My parents. My family. The place I come from. It is why I bite my tongue. It is why holidays stress me. It is why sometimes I feel hopeless about humanity. It is why I analyze things. It is why my posts are often about my Holiday Cocktail and ways to save and serve leftovers instead of warm and moving lovely personal familial posts.

I wanted to write a happy Thanksgiving post -- something about gratitude and good attitude, and the small joys that came. I wanted my week to be full of the silly relative stories that make us laugh, too much food that makes us all groan in sympathy, and sweet kid tales that make us all smile.

There was that.

There was also the catching up on the to-dos.

There was also the Great Battle of Sugar Ant (ongoing), my latest humorous home invasion accounting that I've been trying to write.

There was also the rest of it.

The rest of it I usually turn into shame and artfully mask with many words that don't mean as much. The rest that is pretense.

One time, a couple of years ago, some people asked me why I am such a scrooge about Christmas. A hundred replies about every Christmas of my life so far, each sounding worse than the last, pounded in my temples. The question became a challenge, and my response became a post about why I have a Blue Christmas.

The reactions humiliated me. I lengthened my perspective and I saw that what caused my humiliation was buying into the dysfunction -- believing in any way that it colored me, and was in some part, my fault (as I'd always been told).

And yet, it also freed me. So it has made me think again about revealing.

Letting it out, letting it go. Distancing myself from it.

I know well this pattern and how it plays out. I know where it goes.

That's why I was not surprised when, while holding the beautiful Kirsty book in which one of my humble blog posts was published, instead of saying anything about congratulations or pride, my father instead launched into a lengthy and loud public criticism of all of my essay's faults. That's why none of what came during this holiday surprised me. If you lived this, you too would not be surprised. That's not the same thing as being prepared, though.

This morning, the first grade teacher at our daughters' school caught me and my husband doing one last peek into our littlest one's classroom. "Don't you wish you could be a child, that age again?" she asked us.

My husband laughed. "No, not really," I said. At that age my father locked me outside one night and told me I could live with the dogs if that's the best I could behave: like an animal. My mother let him. She gestured helplessly at me, which is my best recall of her during my childhood: gesturing helplessly. At that age, I curled up next to my miniature Spitz for warmth and comfort. My dog, my best friend, my unconditional love. The teacher regarded me oddly. "I wouldn't want to relive my childhood," I said, "But it is a beautiful thing to see them live their childhoods. I just enjoy childhood through their eyes. How happy they are, how much they enjoy things." How they trust me enough to get angry at me and tell me they hate me.*

This afternoon I watched a video of a woman speaking about how the first thing she did when she got her cancer diagnosis was call her mom and dad, because she knew they'd be there like they had always been. My prospect for that is a much lower percentage. Her certainty shook me. I'd call but I'd expect little, and I might get more, or less, depending. How much I got would all depend on me, as it always has. My parents would ask me to understand, would ask me to see how much I was asking of them, and would, in some way, gesture helplessly, moving on to the more important things. This is the little message sent to me regularly: I'm not that important. I know where they come from, what they dealt with in their own childhoods, and that this is how it is.

Like I said, though, knowing this does little in the way of preparation. Infertility is better for that, actually. I know I am not alone in that I had little rituals and superstitions on important cycle dates. Building little altars everywhere -- whether literal of figurative -- is what does something in the way of preparation.

On my way over for Thanksgiving, I read Tweets from Grace about surviving the holiday and things to do to protect yourself when it suddenly struck me: I have never fully believed I deserved, was worthy, of protecting myself.

So for my Thanksgiving? I am grateful for people who help those lightbulbs go on overhead, for people who use their words and courage of sharing to facilitate this, for realizing. I am grateful for people who understand and do not diminish you.

So later that same day, after reading messages of Forgive Yourself, Stop it Before it Hits You, Never Be Afraid to Walk Out, when the shame and not good enough and no love started coming my way I did not let it enter in. My essay is not bad. I am not bad. My essay is not weak. I am not weak. My essay does not lack critical information and points. Neither do I. I have not asked for this. I do not deserve this. I am not asking too much. There is not a limit on what I am worth.

When I will stop wondering why this is the way it is will be another blog post altogether.

* Do you know? When I said I did not want to relive childhood, that teacher opened up to me, too. She shared a couple of challenges, very briefly, to let me see a new facet of her, something deeper than the expected, and more of a human, than simply a cheerful smiling face that thinks children and childhood are gorgeous in some oversimplified way. I liked her immensely, then.

Perfected art of dehumanizing

2009-11-24T15:50:00.012-06:00

We humans have perfected the art of dehumanizing people for our own ends. We modern people have perfected the art of rationalizing this, even to the point that we believe it is Good and/or Deserved.

Reality TV doesn't help, but, perhaps ironically, I think blogging does. In snippet situations--which abound in all areas of media and life these days, from text messages, to brief interactions, from hectic schedules to ideology condensed to a talking point--we can find our brief summaries of others reinforced. Blogs and other lengthier more personal interactions force us to pause and reconsider...if we let ourselves.

It's so simple to sum up another person: she's organized, he's loud, she's a christian, he's a liberal, she's scary smart, he's so nice...

We often even think of these things as compliments. But are they? Or are they oversimplified labels that in some way dehumanize the other person? Have we snapped people we know into lock boxes, never to be taken out and examined more closely? Have we missed something key to that other person?

Here's why I find that troubling: what do we value, when we value people? And are these the attributes we seek, past the surface, if they are not displayed superficially for us to easily grasp? Some may hide deeper those things which you value.

I was thinking of examples in my own life. One of my favorites is Harry. I met Harry at work when I was still wet behind the ears despite a wedding ring, college degree, and more than a few years of professional working experience. I was, at the time, probably an ideal employee: self-starting, knowledgeable and experienced enough to have and volunteer ideas, but still eager beaver loyal and desiring to please. I joined a really cool start-up, replacing Harry.

"Why are you leaving?" I asked.

"I don't really work here. It's just a contract. I'm not into the whole working for the man, staying put thing. I work, save up, and spend the rest of my time in South America climbing mountains," he said, emulating the epitome of Cool Alt Dude.

A fairly traditional gal at heart, I admired what had to be my polar opposite. I shared Harry Adventure Tales with my husband the entire week I spent being trained for my job by Harry. I was fascinated by Harry's incredibly different lifestyle and life choices. I kept trying to get to know him. Harry, however, was unimpressed by me and I accepted that. I was Normal, Average, I had no problem Working for the Man, carrying home a regular paycheck, and missing South American mountains. I had no stories of adventure.

At the end of the week, I learned Harry had recommended I be fired.

Why would he do this? He didn't want this job -- he was heading for Chile next week anyway! Wasn't he Nice? All Cool Alt Dude let it flow? Why would Harry do this to me? I'd only tried to do my best, learn everything -- was it a problem with my knowledge or performance? No. Wasn't I nice? Yes. Then why?

Harry had pigeon-holed me and it wasn't in a good way. My neat desk indicated I was Uptight. My questions to ensure I learned my job well indicated I was High Maintenance. My carefully organized files indicated I was Anal. My excitement meant I was High Strung.

The very things I cultivated carefully to be Really Really Good and that I thought were valued highly in employees -- plus, just happened to be fairly innate to me and were my techniques for doing a good job -- were somehow twisted and sounding awful coming from his mouth.

"She's not ever going to be a fit," Harry told my boss, who thankfully ignored him. My boss, much wiser than me, probably saw past the Adjectives and Perfect Dehumanizing t0 the realness of both of us and the situation. Harry resented me taking his cash cow, however innocent I was in that decision. He had a good thing going, what with being able to eat his cake and have it too.

I wasn't wrong, Harry was Cool Alt Dude with a Brown Belt in Zen, but that didn't mean he was above feeling very human in this situation. Harry wasn't wrong, I am organized, and a little high strung, but that doesn't mean I'm not human, or much more than that string of judgments.

Harry labeled me, and locked me out. As a result, neither of us gained a better picture and understanding of Who the Human was, really. We probably never would have been friends. But, we'd have each had -- especially Harry -- a better idea of a complex person, one we might never know, or even like, but that we could accept as a multi-faceted human. (Although, I hadn't yet learned that it was an option to not like another person then -- I was still trapped in the idea that I had to like everyone and had to make all of them like me, too. Not managing that was a major failure, indicating Imperfection and Something Bad in me I had to fix.) (I am, to some degree, over this, except when it comes to people I do like, who do not like me back, or who do in some ambivalent way that does not lead to the friendship I hoped for.)

I might have understood and been more thoughtful of how it worried Harry, losing this contract and putting the very Cool Alt Dude lifestyle he so valued in jeopardy. He might have understood that Id just moved over 2000 miles from home for this job, was trying to acclimate, and was desperate to succeed for a myriad of reasons, not the least of which was not wanting to prove all our parents dire predictions of failure and ending up in a box under a bridge" true.

I might have grasped his Cool Alt Dude was a protection from the commitment and chaos he knew he'd have to someday deal with, but that he still fought and feared. He might have seen that my organization was compensation for my fear of chaos, and my social awkwardness of not knowing what to say or do sometimes.

But we each needed to know ourselves better, first, needed to understand and accept our own complexities, before we could see that others had more surface area than we initially saw, too.

With time, I came to understand that.

I came to understand that I needed to open up my personal book just the right amount to not dump too much or hide too little. Leave a bit to wondering, wanting to find out. This is not a natural skill for me, like it is for some.

But in time I learned people value that more, just as I learned that workplaces appreciated organized, motivated workers, but not as much as they valued people they liked. Offices were no different from high schools or life, in that respect.

At the end of the day, you don't hear people saying, "I LOVE her, she's so detail-oriented! That's why she's the best employee!" any more than you hear people say, "I LOVE her, she's so organized! That's why we're best friends!"

You do hear, "She's so fun, I love being around her!" Fun. Kind. Thoughtful. You know the rest. You know the things you say you like about other people, and you know you need to like other people to value them.

Those adjectives are hard to come by, though, and are nearly empty compliments.

I do worry about how so much of today's world seems to encourage and reward fast summation of other people, condensing their lives into brief talking points and their humanity into 140 characters or less.

Perhaps we are active participants in our own labeling and dehumanization.

I think of my friend Cyn explaining why she's given up on adjectives and nouns in the short social media bio sections. To attempt to paraphrase her: Verbs say so much more about who I am, through what I do, instead of just labeling myself for you. Verbs can lead to questions. Verbs make you active. Adjectives and nouns coat you in amber for viewing.

What is valuable to you and why is that valuable?

A Whale of a Great Slumber Party at SeaWorld

2009-11-17T12:10:00.020-06:00

A while back I conceived of this brilliant plot whereby I would conspire to convince SeaWorld that TheMotherhood.com and I could make fantastic co-hosts for an awesome event at their San Antonio location.

Friends, I must talk a really great game because I convinced the brilliant (and occasionally omniscient) Kami Huyse and SeaWorld as well as the amazing Cooper and Emily of TheMotherhood.com that this was a very good idea.

The next thing any of us knew (ha! as if it was simply movie magic easy LOL!), we were blowing up air mattresses with some of the most fantastic women in Texas to sleep with extremely cute but a little smelly puffins.

I've felt at a cross-roads this year, more so lately, which may or may not have anything to do with a recent birthday. I don't mind getting older or even middle-aged, aside from the minor physical inconveniences (great scott, the plucking!) (the sagging elbows!) (the creaky knees!) (enough!) but the big benefit of aging is supposed to be wisdom and perspective, and I'm determined to get me some of that, especially as I watch my days end at 9:30 p.m more and more often and start considering my reminder iPhone apps and Advil as best buddies.

You don't need me to tell you that it was so incredible to spend the night at SeaWorld. You can guess how it felt to fulfill a version of my nearly 30 year "From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs Basil E Franweiler" fantasy. You comprehend how awesome it was to check off some cool items on my bucket list:

sleep with polar aquatic birds,
stick hand in dolphin's mouth,
gain approval of killer whale matriarch,
perfectly mimic seal,
make BFFs with beluga whale, and last, but not least,
over divine food, listen to major executive passionately talk about green initiatives.

You can imagine how much I enjoyed having the park all to us. You know those animals are amazing. Incredible. You may even know personally know how very hard it is to stay behind the blue line while beluga whales flirt with you and, like sirens, entice you to leap in their pool and frolic with them, shedding the last stressed mantles of your humanity.

But how did this add to my Ultimate Life Goal and Commitment to Meaningful?

Aside from the obvious and pat answer that everything beautiful and experiential is worthwhile (which sort of smells slightly new agey to me, a scent only two grades above Dolphin Food and Puffins Au Naturel):

Things are richer with personal connections

Beautiful settings don't hurt, either.

I always get more out of a place when I know enough about the place to ask questions beyond the pat and obvious (although I'm not above acting like a second grader and asking questions such as, "What do they think of their poop, if they deign to notice it there in the tank with them?")

But I like to get a deeper appreciation for the little things of a place and how they fit together to make the whole such a wonderful picture.

What makes me take notice is seeing a place and event through other people's eyes and being aware of the place through knowing important things about it.

These things connect me, personally. I'm engaged. That makes it matter more, which, in turn, makes it a richer experience.

Being able to share that with others only enriches it more.

I loved being able to share it with Heather, Erica, Kelly, Joy, Dwan, Colleen, Debi, Dawn, Rachel, Emily, and Kami.

Slumber parties and inside jokes

Is it feeling a little clammy in here to anyone other than me?

While Emily and I were waiting for the fabulous Suzy of SeaWorld and Kami, we were shooting the breeze when I trotted out a memory of being on a bus heading to sleep away summer camp, a time I always loved. My hair, long and straight except for the feathering around my face, blew back in the wind from the open windows. My shorts-clad legs stuck to the hot fake leather seats, which had that acrid sweet smell old bus seats always had. Beside me, my friends Brandy, Shannon, Laura and Jenny sat laughing. We were so thrilled to be together we began belting out "Don't You Want Me, Baby." We were young, excited, happy, carefree, and on our way to the best time of the summer. Who was new? Who was back? Who grew up over the past year? Who was different? Who was the same? Most importantly, which guy would be cutest and who would hook up with him?

Now, nearly thirty years later, I had the same excitement buzzing in me as I waited for the WildSide adventurers to arrive for our camp. Would the ladies I only knew online seem as familiar and friendly as they did online? Would they look like their photos? Sound like their blog posts and tweets? Were they as giddy about being in a major theme park overnight, just us, as I was? Would anyone know the book From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler if I kept referencing it? Was anyone else feeling unbearably light inside?

What I found were women even more amazing than I expected, who were very real, and kept it real, all while maintaining a wonderful spirit for adventure. Despite the risk of getting drenched, everyone hung right by Mrs. Shamu. Despite our great and knowledgeable guide Chance sharing good information, and knowing the rule about the blue line, plus being warned that "whales look sweet but are NOT furry warm cuddly creatures," we all nearly leapt in the pool with the beluga whales.

These ladies asked tough questions, and every member of the SeaWorld team from executive Dan Decker to our guide Chance, SeaWorld comm rep (and indispensable cheerful and professional help) Suzy, our camp counselor Brooke, or anyone else on hand to help us enjoy ourselves, had the answer.

SeaWorld is awesome. I love their commitment to conservation and green choices. Who doesn't love a graceful and gorgeous dolphin being friendly? There is so much to see, learn and do there.

But it's even more awesome with a well-educated guide (getting a Ph.D) who calls out "Hey Hotties!" when he wants our attention. (And we must have been like herding cats, seriously.) And at night. By ourselves. With good food. and chocolates and mocktails. Who doesn't love a good sleepover when everyone has good laugh at silly slippers and people share their stories?

WHALE DONE! Such a Duh! and yet, Life Altering

Looking mighty bottle-nosed to be a whale, but at SeaWorld, hungry aquatic animals will be whoever you want for a bucket of fish. KIDDING!

We got a copy of this book, WHALE DONE!, which discusses the techniques SeaWorld trainers use to encourage the desired behaviors the animals display during performances (and other times).

I've read the positive parenting books. I took the classes. I went to puppy kindergarten. Four times.

I want to do this, and yet, it's a struggle. I come from a completely and totally GOTcha life (read the book, you'll get it) and setting expectations and working in a WHALE DONE way is, and probably always will be, a struggle to me due to background, habit, culture, temper, and so forth.

But through this book, and events like this, I keep feeling doors and windows in my mind open.

And you know, when I go away (mommy guilt) it helps more than a little to know I will be bringing back something more than 9admittedly VERY CUTE) stuffed penguins. (Stuffed with fluff, folks, I mean, what do you think we did in the penguin encounter all night? I assure you NO AQUATIC POLAR BIRDS were harmed in the making of this spectacular event.)

To read others' take on t he event (and isn't it awesome to read different takes on the same thing? see? ENRICHING! No wonder blogs are so popular.):

Heather http://www.savingssosweet.com/2009/11/seaworld-san-antonio.html

Dwan http://mommadjane.com/walk-wild-side

Debi http://sabusykids.com and http://voices.mysanantonio.com/sabusykids

Kelly http://www.savvymoxie.com/2009/11/sleeping-at-sea-world.html

Dawn (Lettergirl) http://notgoingpostal.com/2009/11/17/lessons-from-a-seaworld-slumber-party/

Colleen http://bit.ly/wild-side and http://babypotential.typepad.com/start_here_grow_far/2009/11/introducing-some-of-texas-finest-and-funniest-mommy-bloggers.html

Special thanks to the amazing SeaWorld hosts: Brooke (our counselor), Chance (our guide), Dan (our Big Wig), Kami (our Hottie Van Hot), and Suzy (our amazing contact).

And the fun doesn't end. SeaWorld, as you might have gathered, is so much more that simply an incredible and fun destination. They offer so many resources for parents. Come check out this circle, Raising Enlightened Kids, at TheMotherHood.com., where you can "discover the stories, photos, projects, lessons and fun SeaWorld offers for families who want to add meaning and culture to their family time. Let's talk about giving back, positive relationships, conservation, animals, education, and more!"

We've had, already, a really enlightening talk with SeaWorld trainers about how to use positive methods in work and home to accentuate the positive and reach desired behaviors let me just say...afterwards my kids made it to school on time, neat, and all of us were HAPPY.

Full disclosure: I worked with SeaWorld for this event. However, this post represents nothing other than me and my own thoughts about the event, and was not in any way solicited or compensated by SeaWorld.

100 Years of Magic -- Cute Costumed Kids Included

2009-11-13T07:25:00.009-06:00

My four year old dressed to the nines for our special night out to Disney on Ice. I thought she'd be unique, a stand-out. I thought she would garner attention in her plum fairy princess outfit.

What I forgot was that "costume" is the preferred style for the four year old girl crowd.

Instead of being the one, my daughter was one among many. Princesses (all of them, including Pocahontas), fairies, Minnie Mouses, and any and all Disney characters pranced in mini-form around Reliant Stadium.

My daughter had, in her ineffable way, tapped into the collective four year old dress-up girl consciousness.

As we passed these costumed sprites (and fairies, and princesses, and mice), my eyes met the other parents' eyes in a flash of commonality: we were parents with This Sort of girl child, and we were That Sort of parent, who was willing to let our girls dress up to go out, even if it was in costume. Whether we had anything else in common was irrelevant; on that point, we met and connected. Our girls had donned costumes for this special event. In my case, both of my girls did, in their own ways.

The thing about my little girls donning costumes is that very rarely are they donning a character. The costume, for them, is an extension of their own character. Persistence, my four year old, was very much herself last night. She just happened to be wearing a multi-hued wispy fairy outfit.

My kids are very imaginative and like most kids, they do enjoy imagination and role-playing games. Sometimes they use props or costumes to further the playacting, but so often, costumes are an end in and of themselves. They are something fun to wear.

And when did we stop doing that, grown-ups?

Upon deeper thought, though, maybe we haven't -- it's simply more subtle. I was wearing a deep purple cardigan over a lavender shirt, with jeans, and ballet flats. I dressed it up a bit with a big multi-toned purple necklace, with huge brooch-like dangling charm. I wore matching purple crystal earrings. What, in the end, was so different between my outfit and my daughter's? Other than hers was largely chiffon-esque and mine was cotton and denim.

The point was, we both put on costumes of a sort to reflect something we were feeling about the night and the event: we felt it was special. Something to do a little something extra for, via our clothing.

And Disney on Ice was special! Before the event, I joked that as someone who couldn't ice skate on kids' style double blades while clutching the railing, I was always going to be impressed by people who could glide on a thin blade on slippery ice.

These skaters glide, dip, fly in the air, hop on and off props, and all in all, tell an entertaining story, all while amazing us with athletic grace on the ice.

What's great about Disney on Ice, and one reason I think it works even for tots, is that it spins out different short tales, tied by very thin thread, with frequent changes to keep interest and attention. It also includes visually interesting costumes -- read: lots of sparkle -- and characters the kids know. Plus, it ends with small "fireworks" display.

The show began with Mickey and the gang, as usual. It then spun into some other snippets, most notably to my four year old, the big Princess sequence. She got to see Belle and Beast, and then every major Disney princess skated out with her Prince. They did duets and also big ensemble numbers. I loved the nostalgic wrap up of the first half with a grand ensemble of It's a Small World. The performance had the different music and dance styles, costumes from each country, and lighted floats. The second half included a big Pinocchio number, which my seven year old enjoyed.

It was a good time -- a special family outing time.

In my last post, I included details about going, coupon/savings information, and so forth. If you are thinking about going, I encourage you to just do it! I've seen a few Disney on Ice shows and really like this one best so far. It's on in Houston through the weekend.

Big thanks to MomCentral, Feld Entertainment, and Disney for a good time for our family. I only take offers like this for events I think are a fit for our family. I do receive tickets as a gift, but they only ask that we enjoy ourselves and let them know if we liked it, or if we write about it. There is no deal, requirement to go to the event, or exchange of services. That I've written about it -- and glowingly -- is simply a factor of "we like this event, we enjoyed ourselves, and it was a good time for our family." But I think the photos of my happy kids show that!

This is a sincere promo post about Disney on Ice

2009-11-10T14:38:00.004-06:00

Don't roll your eyes at me -- I come bearing coupons!

So listen, my kids are MAJOR fans of Disney on Ice (any one, they aren't picky) and frankly Disney ought to hire them to promote the show because honestly nobody else does a better job. Right now a bunch of parents we know are either cursing my name or buying tickets to the show (although, upon reflection, it's not mutually exclusive lol).

The kids are currently hoppier than a grasshopper in a field of clover and more excited than for Halloween because tomorrow we are going to see Disney on Ice's 100 Years of Magic.

I am really glad it is tomorrow because I told them a week ago that we were going and it's been a chorus of "are we there yet?" ever since. And we're excited about it too because it IS a great and entertaining show. I can't ice skate in simple clothes clutching a wall so to watch these athletes glide around in elaborate costumes wows me every time.

I'll be back later with photos and stories (you may comment on the cuteness of the kids) but in the meantime I wanted to tell you tomorrow is opening night and if you want to go, there's a coupon code. Here are the details:

Use code: MOM**
Get 4 tickets for $44 weekday or $4 off on weekends
You can buy tickets at ticketmaster <-- that link also has date, time and location details

There are worse things I could do

2009-10-27T12:48:00.010-05:00

It's a jungle out there, which requires skilled juggling and a bag of tricks, too.

When Grease! (the movie) came out, my friends and I went Grease-crazy. Everyone bought the album, and we poured over the foldout album cover's yearbook style collection of photos. We tried to decide which T-Birds were cute versus too greaser, and which photo of Danny and Sandy was best. Meanwhile, the vinyl record played on the record player in the background, repeating the songs until they were burned into my brain for thirty years (and probably beyond).

For my birthday, I had a fifties themed party that year. All the kids came in rolled up jeans and tee-shirt or puffy poodle skirts. I have the photos still, and there we are dancing, singing, and mugging in a big group for the camera. It's amazing how period-perfect we looked. It's amazing how carefree and happy we were.

When I look at the photos, I remember other things beyond the giant amount of fun we had at my party, beyond how thrilled I was when the first doorbell chimed with the first guest. I remember how my entire birthday nearly crashed and burned before it even happened, courtesy of a very mean girl who lived on my street. And I remember how Grease fixed it.

Most girls liked Summer Nights or Hopelessly Devoted, and I did too, but this little heart-breaker from Rizzo (Stockard Channing) was my favorite.

Grease was the first time I caught a hint that the incredibly scary Girl World (via Rosalind Wiseman) I inhabited was not my own personal limited experience (and occasional nightmare). Here was an entire movie about the scary dynamics between girls, their friends, and boys, too. It was, apparently, a universal truth, a universal experience. That truly helped to know. The movie played to sterotypes but not too deeply. Each female character had a little bit of complication and depth:

You had Betty Rizzo, the head Pink Lady. A tough girl. Hard of mouth and hard of heart. Sexy. The school loose girl. Plays insider jokes to heighten a sense (or fear of) exclusion. Sets up pranks and prats for Sandy, the new girl, to trip over. The Mean Girl.

Then there was Marty, often Rizzo's right-hand girl. Pen pal to a long billfold full of servicemen. Goes for older guys. Flirtatious. Hints of sweetness and innocence, or wicked irony in naming her after a cherry that's been popped and pickled. Borrowed sophistication.

Frenchie was the girl who floated around the edges of the Pink Ladies, and tried to truly befriend Sandy, but not enough to stand up for her when the ladies target her. Frenchie has her own issues, anyway.

Jan, the class clown who seemed to follow Rizzo more often than not.

Last but not least, you had Sandy Olsson, the new girl, the good girl, the one who is just trying to be nice and yet somehow inadvertently stepped all over toes everywhere while trying to figure out who she is and how she fits in.

The quintessential coming of age story.

Also? The quintessential Girl World movie. Well before anything starring Lindsay Lohan. A whole generation before, in fact.

Shelley was the Rizzo of our neighborhood, and Moria was her Marty/Frenchie. Mine as well. Shelley was completely a power player -- a player with power. She was the youngest of older parents, with older siblings. Her older siblings were in high school and could barely spare us a glance. She was incredibly spoiled. She got more money, candy, and TV than the rest of us combined. She also got a lot more freedom. And she used that liberally.

She'd plan trips to the corner store, which required walking up a major road for several blocks. My mother put her foot down with a big no. Shelley sweetened the pot saying she'd buy everyone a bubblegum who came. I pleaded. I whined. I threatened. My mother held firm. And so I'd watch the kids tromp off with Shelley, who had the lead, of course. She'd tell them how to walk and which songs to sing. They all came home with new bubblegum card packs. How I felt: my mother was in my way of maintaining my position in the pack. She was ruining my life. And it was all Shelley's fault, too.

Shelley moved in after we did, and by the time she arrived, my sister and I were good friends with the two sisters next door -- by luck we were all of an age. Shelley leapt into the center of that, of course. She offered constant tests of her friendship and friends' loyalty to her. She'd dare them, challenge them to prove how they'd do anything for her, for her friendship, and the kids invariably did.

Except me.

And thus began the battle.

By the time my birthday rolled around, the war was in full heat. Shelley threatened to tell everyone to skip my birthday. Much drama and threats and tears and yelling and more drama ensued. I wish I remember exactly how it all worked out, but my memory gets a little hazy at that point. I think some of the mothers talked and the kids were given no choice. Except, maybe, Shelley. She never said one way or another whether she was coming, but in the end, with the entire neighborhood and our friends all there, she came. The last guest to arrive.

I remember her arrival and how I tensed. Missy, my lifelong good friend who went to another school and lived in another neighborhood, had heard about Shelley but never met her. Caryn, my very own personal best friend in the whole wide world, knew Shelley well from school. When Shelley arrived, I deployed my manners, but then I also gave into a hissy fit. I stalked back to my bedroom with Missy and Caryn and vented about Shelley coming.

They tried to reassure me that I should ignore her, that it would be fine, that she wouldn't cause any trouble. They talked me into returning to the party and having fun anyway. Then Missy delivered the coup de grace, "She doesn't seem so bad, anyway, Julie," she said, "I mean, from your descriptions I sort of expected Regan!" (Regan, from The Exorcist.)

Could nobody see how bad this girl was? How manipulative? Could nobody see her games? Every time I tried to talk to anyone about Shelley and the misery she caused, I got a lot of "ignore her" and "it's not that bad" and "you need to quit making such a big deal out of it" and "let it roll off your back." I also got, "she's insecure," and "she's jealous of you," which I did not buy for one second. Shelley had nothing to envy, that was clear, plus she never seemed envious or insecure. The worst was, 'You're letting her do this, letting her get to you." After a while, I began to believe that it was true: I was the problem, I made the problem by naming it, and it was all my fault. Not to mention, I must deserve it.

On some level, though, I continued to think Shelley was the bad news, not me, and someone needed to notice and take care of it.

I stalked out to my party with my friends, and Caryn, always the fun and funny girl, said, "Let's twist again, like we did last summer!" She swung her hips and demanded music and dancing. Nobody cared it was anachronistic. Nobody cared because we all just wanted to have fun.

I ran to the big stereo table and grabbed the Grease album. A Rizzo photo caught my eye. Suddenly, the Shelley v me situation was so clear. It was life or death to her, or felt like it was to her, to be in charge of the Pink Ladies (or our neighborhood). It was who she was, and my constant challenges on the basis of fairness and principles to her authority, while seemingly rational and reasonable to me, were attacks of the very fiber of her being to Shelley. Shelley would never give up her Queen Bee perch, and we'd never be friends, no matter how much I followed my mother's entreaties to "be nice and you'll make friends." I didn't like her, she didn't like me, and we disagreed about the rules of the 'hood.

Right in the moment I was ready to slap her with my glove (metaphorically), I realized...I didn't even really want a duel, and the principle was really not that important to me. I'd been engaged via my stubbornness, only. In fact, maybe, just maybe, I was part of the problem. In fact, maybe, just maybe, I'd been a bit territorial about the friends when she arrived. Maybe I wasn't quite blameless. Maybe things weren't so simple or black and white.

I looked at Caryn, Missy, and the girls I really liked. True friends.

In my mind, I stepped aside. The next day and the day after that, I stepped aside. I quit letting Shelley be That Important, That Powerful. I'd made my point -- I wasn't her subject. I couldn't force others to make the same choice, and in that instant, I realized that these girls probably wouldn't. They'd keep playing her game. In the end, that had been what I'd wanted. In my mind, it was justice -- to convince these girls to see the power player for who she was and to abandon her court, so we could return to the happy play days we'd had before she arrived.

But it would never be, and so, I opted out.

I took the measure of the other girls and recognized them for the Marty, Frenchie, Jan, Betty Rizzo, Sandy, Patty Simcox and so forth that they were. I recognized them for who they were as much as which roles they played. And I got it, sort of.

I opted out, and things were more peaceful. Nobody thanked me. Nobody expressed appreciation that I'd quit putting them in the middle of a struggle between me and Shelley. Nobody said they were glad that the tenseness eased.

But the friendships got a little easier, and Shelley's teasing had no more nerve to hit.

I found out that Shelley wasn't evil personified at all, sometimes, she was even kind of fun. But, she was not a girl I'd ever particularly like. And that? Was okay. Because we could get along.

I wish I could say that there was never another problem, or that I didn't continue to have to close my eyes and count down my anger. I wish I could say I really learned learned that lesson, and never went through the same things again and again throughout my youth. But, I needed to learn it a little bit more thoroughly. The key, though, was that Shelley, Rizzo, and Grease! did provide valuable perspective: it's not really life or death, it's not the end of the world, you can make a choice, and in the end, you can always opt out.

I'm still learning how and when to do this, but as I raise my daughters -- and re-read the new edition of Queen Bees and Wannabes (just go get it -- it's still as good, and better, with updates, additions, and the new technology chapter that helped me and my husband settle on a Specific Policy WRT Technology and now I sleep better at night. really.) -- I have an empathy for the Girl World they inhabit that I hope translates into useful and supportive parenting.

Because of all the Shelleys, Morias, and similar that I met in life, it caused me to constantly seek perspective and positive tools to handle the situations.

Because of Grease! and Rizzo, I always suspect that under each Girl World role-player lies a real feeling human being, who, regardless of role, probably feels like the real girl Rizzo sang about:

I could hurt someone like me,
Out of spite or jealousy.
I don't steal and I don't lie,
But I can feel and I can cry.
A fact I'll bet you never knew.
But to cry in front of you,
That's the worse thing I could do.

It doesn't make us like each other. It doesn't make the world sunshine and roses whenever we're around each other. But it does provide an underlying base of understanding, that can enable us to let it go -- in a real way, a positive way, not a "try to shut it out and sweep it under the rug way."

So when my older daughter refused to say goodbye to a classmate one day, and when I asked about it said, "She's always so mean to me!" I thought of Mean Shelley, and I thought of Wise Rosalind, and I checked my personal baggage and asked, "What does that mean, she's mean to you? What is mean?"

In this case, mean meant bossy. Mean meant challenging my daughter's perceived right to run her own show, and that show might include a cast of characters that overlapped the other girl's show. In this case, it meant a Shelley and Julie dynamic.

I took a deep breath...and we talked.

I watched my daughter consider taking the same step I had, and letting it go. For now, though, we agreed that you don't have to be friends, but you do always have to be courteous, which means accepting it when it comes your way.

It's never simple, never black and white. There are always multiple players in any game, and a key is deciding what you are doing, and whether it fits with your own personal convictions for who you are and what your morals are.

Imagine all the people...celebrating more birthdays

2009-09-30T13:49:00.010-05:00

It was days, really, between learning my friend was being sent home, cancer treatment suspended, and learning she had passed away. Sadly, the first symptom came well after the cancer had already metastasized and spread. They began intensive treatment, aggressive. It was hard on her, but she had a lot to live for: loving family, loving friends, and two beautiful children, as well as all of her work, including a book she authored for children about children on the autism spectrum. That was her: a do-er.

She was the sort of person you could picture growing older, still doing. I could even picture her forty years from now blowing out a cake full of candles. In my imagination, over her cake, her hair was still bright, as it was before she got sick. She’d do that, I knew, keep herself looking nice. She’d have a big smile, and she’d tell everyone they shouldn’t have made such a fuss, but everyone would ignore her because they knew she was deeply touched -- family and family times were everything. I wished that for her with all my heart.

When I got the message she was gone, I denied it. I didn’t believe it until I read her obituary in the paper. I left a comment on the online memorial. I spoke about what a fantastic person she was. I spoke about how heartbreaking a loss it was. I mentioned nothing of my anger.

The next day, I went for a run. My feet pounded the track in fury. The hot Texas summer sun pounded me back, just as brutal as my anger. I hate this, I thought, I hate this day. My children had been surly, uncooperative, and cranky. The day was intolerably hot and humid. The sun was relentless. I pulled myself along the straight stretch before a curve that took me along the water.

My iPod stumbled out of my pacing songs and Falling Slowly came on. I nearly clicked to the next song, but the lyrics caught and tugged at my grief. We’ve still got time…the song trilled. But my friend doesn’t, I thought, my friend hasn’t got more time. Why not? I knew how she’d feel about that, and that she’d be of two minds, and unapologetic. That’s how she was. She called it like it was. But she also called blessings for what they were too. I felt ashamed of my ingratitude: for having known her, for all the gifts I received from her, for the beautiful children she brought into the world and would not get to see grow up, for the fact that I had today, another day with my children even if they were cranky and I was grief-stricken and miserably hot.

I took the curve in the track a little slowly and I thought hard about her. She’d have loved this hot day. She’d have loved to be healthy and bickering with her children about getting ready for day camp. She would have loved having this day, I knew. And I wanted to give it to her, a late or early birthday gift, depending upon how you looked at it.

Here it is, I thought with my mind and heart, here is this day, another day, one you would have liked, one that was hot, one that was about being a mom, one that was about making a healthy choice.

I sent the experience of the day up and out, and away to her. And a little bit of grief fell away from my heart. She may not have another birthday, but I do. She may not get to celebrate another birthday with her kids, but I can. And I can send the appreciation and joy from that to her.

My friend, and all the other friends, mothers, sisters, daughters, brothers, fathers, husbands, wives – all the other people who have gone, or are still here fighting, or stand beside someone fighting cancer – are why I joined the American Cancer Society’s More Birthdays effort. I can take a page from my friend’s book and be a do-er. I can celebrate and recognize that every birthday is a blessing.

***********************************************************************************
I am a member of the American Cancer Society's Blogger Advisory Council, a small group of volunteers that advises the Society on its social media strategy. Part of our mission is to spread the word that we have power in the fight against cancer. The first step is to build awareness and engage women. Visibility equals power! So we have started a blog "chain" to spread the word among women bloggers. We call it Bloggers for More Birthdays.

You can help me!

Join Bloggers for More Birthdays by dedicating a blog post to someone you love who's been affected by cancer. Host the badge on your site to build visibility. It's a simple way to celebrate those you love. Just write a post, host our badge, and know that whatever you write, you’re raising awareness and inspiring others to join American Cancer Society in the fight against cancer.

And please, host the special Bloggers for More Birthdays badge on your blog to encourage others to join. Just visit our site for the code to grab a badge, and sample posts.

We want to spread the word, so we ask you to get others in your networks involved by sending them your posts and asking them to dedicate a post of their own. If you don't have your own space online, email a post to bloggersubmit@officialbirthdayblog.com and we'll post it for you.

You can tweet about the chain as well, please use #morebirthdays:

Examples:

dedicate a blog post to someone you love with cancer and tell their story join http://bit.ly/13kS6L for #morebirthdays

blog against cancer: join http://officialbirthdayblog.com/category/bloggers/ for #morebirthdays

Blog for #morebirthdays, less cancer join http://officialbirthdayblog.com/category/bloggers/

Happy Birthday.

The American People in their Righteous Might*

2009-09-11T11:15:00.018-05:00

* Title from a speech by FDR immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor

Eight years ago I was so pregnant I was at that "oh no you didn't go and make me move, now I'll have to sit on you and crush you" stage.

When I woke up that morning, I lay on my side, the left, of course, with my knees slightly bent, of course, and I contemplated the floor. Was it going to be easier, I wondered, to maneuver the upper half of my body upright first, or to kick my legs hard enough to get momentum to drop them over the edge of the bed to help hurtle me into a standing position?

In the end, hunger is what really got me out of bed that day. But still, I moved at the speed of snail.

That's why I was still in my car zipping through Salem, slowing only to consider stopping for a pistachio donut at the greatest little bakery right before the historic square. In my mind, the morning is molasses slow motion and details are vivid. It was a gorgeous perfect New England fall day. Brilliant sky, crisp air with sunlit warmth. I glanced to my left as my car slowed for the curve and checked out the window display for the Salem doll lady, then swung my head to the right to drool over the gorgeous Victorians. The witch museum off the square was preparing for Halloween. Not a morning like any other, a sharper more perfect morning than any other. A day that should have been as spectacular as the weather, as the coming season with all its fun and treats and special moments.

NPR chirped the news in my ear. I turned off to Marblehead, and as I drove into my work parking lot I felt so lucky: I was pregnant, healthy, had a great job, lived in the most beautiful place in the US, had a great husband and life was good.

That's why I was so stunned, so disbelieving when the newscaster stumbled over his words and said, "This can't be right...we're getting reports that a plane has struck the World Trade Center...we don' t understand the report, we need to check, we'll keep bringing information..."

That's the moment the day started to move in fast motion blur.

I actually ran into my office building, the first office was the film guy. He had all sorts of TVs and equipment and people were crammed into his office.

"Oh my God," I said, "They're saying...planes? In New York City?"

"I know," my coworker Frank said, "We're watching..."

And the bodies parted and we turned to the television just in time to see the second plane hit. There was a long, loud audible inhale, and maybe a short scream, but what I really recall was the publisher's long low moan. "My son," she said, "My son is in that building!" She hurried from the room and it was so, so quiet until several people started murmuring oh my god.

The newscasters were talking about Boston, about threats and planes to Boston, to the Financial District where my husband worked.

I tore my eyes away from the television and hurried to my office. I called my husband, "Oh my God did you see?"

We spoke for a few minutes then he said there was a commotion outside his office. He came back a minute later, "There are military planes flying over my building," he told me, "What is happening?"

"You should leave," I said, "I heard they're shutting down the trains."

"I don't know," he said, with that reluctance of people who've been through too many false fire alarms.

A minute later I heard urgent shouting behind him. "What was that?"

"A fireman," he said, "He told us all to get out, now, not to shut anything down just go."

"Do it," I said, "Run as fast as you can to try to get space on the train. Get off at Swampscott," I said, naming a stop significantly south of us, "I'll drive to get you."

"I'll call you," he said. But cell service went out and it was the last I heard from him for hours and hours.

Nobody understood. Nobody comprehended. But urgency began penetrating the shock.

I drove to Swampscott and waited. Much later than expected, the train arrived, so full that people stood on the steps, clinging to the rail, white-faced, silent. People poured out. "There he is!" an older woman said out loud. "Oh I'm glad," I said. "Do you see your husband yet?" she asked. "No, no, not yet." Her son joined her and they lingered beside me until I burst out, "Oh thank goodness there he is!" She smiled at me and left, one happy end to one story that day.

Every architect in America who watched the news that day knew what was coming. The World Trade Center towers are standard lesson in architectural school. My husband predicted nearly to the minute when the towers would fall, and how. Later, I heard countless architects share the same story.

So much grief and anger. So much sudden comprehension. So much seeing what would happen next with deep dread. So much so unavoidable. So much anger about what could have been, or should have been, known and avoided.

My sister-in-law called. She'd been rounded up by the FBI. That's how she phrased it -- rounded up. "I stood behind him in line," she said, "The terrorist guy, the one who flew the Boston plane. He was right in front of me." She was terrified and the FBI kept questioning her. They took all her bags -- briefcase and purse -- and her car. She cried. Not from fear, but because she had nothing to tell them. She wished she had something to tell them.

We all wished we had the right words that day, the ones people wanted to hear.

I remember being so confused by my shock. "It's not like it's the first time this sort of thing has ever happened," I kept saying.

"Always will we remember the character of the onslaught against us.

No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.

I believe I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost, but will make very certain that this form of treachery shall never endanger us again.

Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory and our interests are in grave danger.

With confidence in our armed forces - with the unbounding determination of our people - we will gain the inevitable triumph - so help us God. "

--- Franklin Roosevelt's Pearl Harbor speech, December 8, 1941

The truth is, history and past events not withstanding, it was unprecedented, what happened that day.

Shock became anger, anger became action, action became war, and then the losses compounded, as did the deep divisions, and the cementing of opinions and sides.

Eight years later.

That baby is nearly eight now. My baby, I mean, not the war.

But you can't hardly think of ages without realizing that we've been at war my daughter's entire life. That children her age are missing someone. I read an essay today by a 9/11 widow. She has meticulously architected, in her mind, her husband's death, and her own life to this day.

This morning, on another 9-11 -- which remains, no matter what, not just any other day in September, not any other Friday or birthday or deadline or any event, special or mundane, Nine Eleven -- I felt sluggish as I did eight years ago. I pushed myself around the track, though, bribing myself with an episode of This American Life: "Fine Print." They interviewed an Iranian man who had been seized, imprisoned, tortured and forced into a false confession about conspiring with Western Powers. Western makes me think of cowboys, which isn't too far off if you think more deeply about how the West was won. Western makes Middle Easterners, okay, Iranians, think of 1953 and how the West won then, too. They have not forgiven or forgotten, and it lends credence to the false confessions, which are actually well-planned and profesionally delivered.

Omid Memarian's confession was well-planned and professionally delivered, despite his best attempts to surreptitiously poke sticks in the spokes.

He said that he realized, a week or so into his detainment (such a word) and torture, that he wasn't even the real target -- the perceived threat. He was merely an innocent bystander, so to speak, a tool to threaten and get at the real targets and true perceived threats. He sounded put out, and humiliated. To go through all this and just to be a tool.

Sort of like the people in the Towers, on the planes, in the field in Pennsylvania. The people lost in 2001.

Memarian falsely confessed in 2004, his country ramping up its anti-Western strategy, possibly as a direct result of US actions -- although they seem to dislike the British as intensely -- which were a result of the 9/11 attacks which were a result of...

War is a Mobius strip.

So here we all are, eight years later, continuing to feed in on ourselves, feed on ourselves.

Memarian also said that while he was being tortured he thought, "I don't want this to become that divisive moment, that defining moment, not for me, not when I'm only 30."

As a journalist, he said, explaining, you spend time with people in tragedies, and you realize that there are these moments when life becomes split into Before and After. He'd interviewed detainees and torture victims, among others, and he said they just never quite recover themselves.

The producer of the show, Nancy Updike, didn't ask him to explain what he meant. At this point, eight years later, we all comprehend what that means.

1941
1953

In 1969 Elisabeth Kubler-Ross published her book On Death and Dying. In 1969, a lot of people knew a lot about loss and grief. In 1969, four generations of men had fought four generations of wars. In 1969, war didn't bring about a baby boom, it brought about a baby bust. The joke is that the Baby Boomers were too busy being eternal teenagers and living selfishly to actually have children, but if you asked me straight out I'd say that's silly, straight out.

Anyway, as we all know, they waited until the first Gulf War was over to have children. Maybe we all thought war was petering out, by then. It certainly didn't have the same impact the Vietnam War had on us, culturally. Also, the Greatest Generation had already happened, so what was left to the rest of us? Lesser? Frankly that was fine by me. I didn't mind having a lesser and more comfy life. I was happy to appreciate the mettle testing the gradnparents' generation had sustained if it meant I got to miss out on a Great Depression and World War.

Anyway, though, as we all know, that wasn't to be.

2001
2009

Kubler Ross said there were five stages of grief. Have we hit number 3, Bargaining, yet? or are we stuck at 2, Anger?

You aren't supposed to rush the process.

But maybe, just maybe, it's time to let go of the second stage.

I heard that the ability or willingness to traverse the stages linked to the amount of meaning and purpose one has in life.

Here's to us finding, nationally, a new and strong meaning and purpose beyond the before and after, beyond the anger and fear.

I learned a lot more about loss and grief, personally, this summer. That's why right now it feels so important, urgent maybe even, to me to say we need to celebrate.

A short while ago, on a curve in a track by the water, I cried about a lost friend. I cried because I hated the day -- it was hot, the children had been contrary -- and she would have loved it. I cried because I was here and she was not. How I wish you were here to have this day, my heart cried. That's when it hit me: I needed to have this day and find the joy in it, and send it up to her, somehow.

Live and let live.

We need to have this day and find the joy in it and send it up, somehow.

Anger in another language

2009-09-08T13:17:00.007-05:00

I've been subtly correcting my children lately. Persistence has anger management issues, which I realize is the definition of a four year old, but directing that from anti-social to acceptable communication is the definition of mother.

"Stomp your foot, say I feel angry! That's okay! It's not okay to hit or say hurtful things!"

If I had a dollar for every time I said that the private school tuition would be paid for.

We used to say mad. But the phrase "I'm mad" began to get under my connotation, denotation, and grammatically OCD skin.

I did not like picturing Ophelia. I did not like being put in mind of a mad bull, someone enraged; greatly provoked or irritated; angry; abnormally furious; ferocious; extremely foolish or unwise; imprudent; irrational.

Although upon reflection, perhaps mad is the right word, after all. But we've stuck with anger. Angry sounds like something you can get under control. Mad, enraged, fury does not.

Betty Draper is walking fury.

My friend Becky generously loaned me her disc collection of the first season of Mad Men. I leapt into the show a few episodes into season 2. Season 1 is a real eye-opener. It also proves that this show was completely self-actualized and brilliant from the beginning.

Yesterday I watched the episode where an ad man appealed to Betty Draper's vanity and asked her to be a model for a campaign. It was all part of a different campaign entirely -- to recruit her husband from Sterling Cooper to this other firm. When he declined, Betty's photoshoot and campaign was scrapped. Ruthlessly. Without thought for her face, or any saving of it. The next day, she went outside and began shooting at her neighbor's pigeons. It's nearly too complicated to explain why, but she had her reasons.

I think it was really because he made her little girl cry and she was just that done with men and their oppression and manipulation.

I was thinking about Betty Draper when reading (again) Isabel Allende explain how Chilean women render their men utterly dependent on them domestically, pampering them like babies, thinking they are queens of the castle, without really understanding they were royalty in name only.

It's really about trying to find comfort in any perception of power in a powerless place.

I wonder how Chilean men who can't cook for themselves and mad men who objectify women into sex and chess pieces explain the current level of pigeon-shooting anger that obscures our national vision now. Pea-soup murky hazy miasma.

Anger.
Mad.

Ira.
Furia.
Cólera.

Choler makes me realize we have a long and lethal history with anger, we people. We understand it is more than an emotion; it is also a physical and physiological thing. In horror movies, anger summons poltergeists who feed on the fury, are attracted to it.

I wonder if too many of us in the US, in the world, have become poltergeists, attracted to and feeding off of anger.

Today I told my sister I am angry about everything. For example, I told her, I am angry that some utility company or another has been digging in my backyard for nine months. Then I laughed because it is foolish to be angry about this. It's self-pity really. But I've got a hearty mad on about it.

She said she is angry too. For example, she told me, she is angry that she ordered a necessary suit for her son three weeks ago and said she needed it by today. The store said fine, then when she went today to pick it up, the angry sales clerk angered my sister by telling her she was being ridiculous: delivery trucks only come on Thursdays.

My sister called me in the first place because she is angry about something else. I am angry about that, too. We are angry because it is, and even more because there is nothing we can do about it.

Oppressed.
Manipulated.
Powerless.
Angry.

My Facebook stream and any news or blog feeders are clogged with anger.

I laughed long and hard during the moment in Mad Men when, based on an old fraternity prank, Pete and Harry decided to clog up the airwaves with Nixon and Secor laxative ads, blocking Kennedy from TV. That show. So clever. In the good way.

In a different scene, Cooper came to see Sterling, and told him to put out his cigarette, "It makes you look weak," Cooper said. He backed up his point with an anecdote about Neville Chamberlain and Hitler. Hitler planned the meeting in an old castle that forbade smoking, which cost the cigarette-addicted Chamberlain greatly. "By the end of that he would have sold his mother to Hitler for a dance," Cooper said.

"All I got from that story," Sterling said, "Was that Hitler didn't smoke."

All I got from that story is that the writers know their history. Mr. Appeasement, that's what they called former Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. I've never before heard anyone blame cigarettes for his giving away of a chunk of Czechoslovakia to Germany but I have heard the logical equivalent of bipartisanship blamed.

But drinking and smoking are time-honored methods of smoothing over awkward social moments, and without either, I bet there were plenty in that meeting between Neville and Hitler. Of course later Mr. Appeasement had to resign, but he got a new job in in Churchill's War Cabinet, which I always thought was the embodiment of the old adage about working from the inside out, but now I wonder if it's the embodiment of the old adage about an angry dove, furious about being bitten, morphing into a hawk.

Outside of Mad Men, we seem to have lost sight of our history. Forgotten it. It's a big hole in our perspective. It means we are perpetually four year olds, relearning lessons each generation, over and over, about anti-social versus acceptable communication of anger.

Why Playing the Whore Card in Reference to Mombloggers is So Not Cool

2009-08-11T09:59:00.011-05:00

I'm really really glad I missed BlogHer this year. Every account makes it sound like a Self-Righteous Fest rather the the community building, sharing, learning, and fun I expect from that event. Then, that spilled over into the rest of the online community, and now moms who blog have garnered a reputation for being greedy, graspy harpies who cage fight for minor pieces of swag, like deranged parents beating one another up for the last Cabbage Patch doll.

Way to further the rep.

Even if people had fun -- and good for you -- clearly there was a major undercurrent I had been calling Culture Clash (which provided private amusement because it dredged up funny old 80s bands to mind) but have now begun calling the Whore Wars. You can subtitle it: That Same Old Mean Girl Judge and Jury Fest We've Had Since 5th Grade.

It's because yesterday someone played the whore card in reference to the mombloggers + PR + Review = Sometimes Profiting/Being Compensated While Blogging.

Don't be a whore, this person entreated.

ACK

ACK ACK ACK ACK ACK

Let's be honest here for a minute. Who sees big bloggers making a bit of a living at this and doesn't wish for that, just a little? Who loves blogging but doesn't wish to earn a little something from it, too? Who found a passion in blogging and doesn't want to succeed at it, grow in it, go to the next level? Who NEVER EVER wants to earn something for doing something they love?

You are welcome to head back to your ashram, my friend. Go in peace and with my good wishes. Maybe I can be you in my next life.

Okay back to the rest of us.

I started this blog as a business. It was intended to boost business, keep a Web site fresh, etc. I started it to promote some of my artwork and my other services. I started it because I intended to require my authors to promote their works via blogs. It was the Hot New Marketing Model and before I asked someone else to do it, I needed to know how to do it, and whether it was reasonable, and how to do it well. (Also, members of my writing group such as Halushki and OmegaMom had talked it up as such a positive medium and experience. It sounded like a Can't Lose proposition. And it has, in fact, been a Win! On so many unexpected levels.)

It evolved into a more personal venture because I moved most of my business work elsewhere and also I learned a large number of crucial lessons along the way that caused me to change direction and refine my strategy.

Writing is a business for me, and my sidebar clearly says so.

I had no ethical dilemma about putting ads on my sidebar. Why in the world wouldn't I grab the chance to augment my effort with income? I put effort into this, writing is my business, and my goal has always been to earn from it. The fact that I discovered this was a wonderful way to interact with a marvelous community was a bonus.

My family still needs to eat.

I had no ethical dilemma about trying out products and reviewing them. I personally prefer personal recommendations and reviews from people I know to any other criteria for selecting a product, service, or serviceperson. (Why do you think Angie's List is so successful?) I bought Ecover dishwasher tablets because someone on Twitter assured me they were good, and if I liked the dish soap, I'd like these too. I bought the A/C I have because the Small House movement recommended several models for good price and good green status. It helps me.

By the same token, I like to tell people about things I particularly love -- such as the Spanx Bralellujah which is the BEST bra I've ever met (and no, I got no free products or entreaties for reviews, but if I had I'd take it in a New York minute) -- in the hope that it helps them.

Believe it or not, I consider this part of being a member of a community.

It was never a question to me whether I ought to accept any sort of profit or compensation for effort I make from this or other online writing.

When it was an ethical dilemma for so many, I was boggled. Seriously.

Think of me what you will, but it sort of felt like a more erudite airing of the young babysitter who says, "Oh I don't know, whatever," when asked how much her time is worth.

It also smelled a bit like a prettily wrapped but still sexist package: why are women expected to contribute out of the goodness of their hearts? Why is receiving compensation a prospect that somehow corrupts what they do and makes them into whores in the eyes of their community?

It boils down to this for me: I want to earn from this OR I don't. The don't side is fair enough, but it isn't, in my opinion, an ethical question or a question of right or wrong -- it's an "I don't want to be obligated in any way."

Because the truth is, if you accept a job -- whether it pays in money or product -- you do accept a degree of obligation (or at least I do in my mind). I'm not per se obligated to write, or write positively, or on a timetable, but I do accept trying out the product, service, etc. I understand that by forming a relationship, I've agreed to Having Expectations on both sides.

Like I said...I'm a professional and this is a business. I know how to go about my business.

But now you've got the "it's for fun only" camp and the "this is a good business model" camp clashing, and suddenly you have insults such as "selling out" and "lacking integrity" being hurled until you reach the crescendo: whore.

A profitable venture is not inherently ethically wrong or lacking in integrity.

Yes, I wrote a positive review of a Ridemakerz event because it was an AWESOME experience for the whole family. I would never have tried that if they hadn't invited me. I subsequently had my kids' birthday party there and more parents found out it's fun. It felt like such a win-win.

Now I have paused to ponder that people I know and respect in the blogosphere consider that "selling out" and even possibly being a "whore."

That's so sexist and insulting. It really, really is.

Whore is, by its very first definition, about women: 1 : a woman who engages in sexual acts for money : prostitute; also : a promiscuous or immoral woman

An immoral woman. A woman who accept money for an effort. A woman who makes money from blogging is a whore, is immoral.

It sounds an awful lot like slamming a glass ceiling down hard and judgmentally on a group of people who have, by dint of a sexist workplace, already had to choose between career and family, and yet, by dint of wonderful technology and new marketing models, found a way to eat her cake (be at home) and have it too (contribute financially to her family and maintain her skills and independence).

Women, more specifically moms who blog, have begun succeeding in this market in major ways.

Suddenly, we have discussions about integrity and ethics and trust and ruining community. We use the whore word.

So some people aren't doing it "well" or meeting someone's standards. I have faith that this is a majorly impressively intelligent community and those who do it well and with integrity will succeed, and we'll begin avoiding those who do not meet those criteria. From backchannel discussions and intelligent conferences such as Mom 2.0, I know people know the difference between honest and with integrity and not. I know people I know who are doing this as a business are already employing personal integrity and standards.

Implying that it is otherwise on the whole has, I think, contributed to many negative perceptions, loss of opportunity, created an unnecessary divide within the community, and, I'm going to go ahead and say it, added to the National Advertising Review Council’s investigative units decision to impose rules, regulations and limits on bloggers that no other journalist or writer has, even when doing the exact same thing!

We're shooting ourselves in the feet, folks.

I bet some bloggers decided to forego any compensation, even if they needed it, because they were scared of alienating their community. Would you EVER ask that of ANYONE else?

"Dear Free Monthly Community Newsletter That Is So Wonderful to Read and So Useful to Me, Please quit running ads, I find them distracting, junky and they ruin my trust in your content. It makes you a big sell out. A whore."

"Dear NPR...please quit doing pledge drives. I know you need money to operate and bring me all that great content I ove and rely on, but I just hate it when you ask me for money. You bunch of whores."

ACK!

ACK ACK ACK!

Let's be reasonable. It's the business model, friends. I agree: some will do it well, and some not so much. You can trust spots like Cool Mom Picks, for example, and bloggers you know and like. You may not prefer it when they do things for compensation, but let's be fair, okay? Blogging takes time and ultimately it costs. It's okay to profit a little from it.

Let's roll back the debate, and stop using pejorative, sexist insults such as whore.

Instead of judging, asking "should we," and stating moral imperatives, why don't we instead use our voices to say "hey this one was good, and I like it when, and these are the best Dos in my opinion," and help each other grow and develop constructively.

It's not reasonable to ask people to stop or to make big soapbox ultimatums about refusing to cross paths with people who profit or advertise. You can do it, but it's not reasonable. It's not going to stop. I won't quit. I need an income. I know I'm not alone.

But we can -- and should -- speak up about when things are done well. It's new, this business model, and we can shape it positively instead of trying to destroy the opportunity, each other, and our community with glass ceilings and judgments.

Acceptance...sort of

2009-08-10T20:31:00.005-05:00

The other day I was looking at this gorgeous house. It was my ideal sort of house: sort of large and rambly, older but fully restored with the same character and time period architecture, a flowy floor plan but with a fair amount of openness, and lovely furnishings...just nice enough to be nice but not at all out of a catalog or showroom. Homey. Classy. Clean. Lovely.

All of the sudden, with a hitch to my stomach, I thought, "I am just never, ever going to have a house like this."

For a second, I mourned.

I am never going to have a house like that because my husband is an architect and I am a writer, and we will likely never make That Amount of Money necessary.

I am never going to have a house like that because my husband is an architect in the same way a doctor is a doctor and a plumber is a plumber: they do grand work for everyone except themselves.

I am never going to have a house like that because I am Decoration and Flair challenged. I even once took a couple of courses at a junior college and a weekend seminar from a furniture design place to try to get some basic skills. However, I stand before you Not Like That At All, you know, all Good At Decorating. Mostly I find stuff a big fat bother that needs cleaning and so forth and I don't like it.

I am similarly DIY challenged. I'm not motivated nor do I have the drive or skill.

For these last two points, I can do it, if I put my mind to it, but mostly, to be honest, I don't.

I am never going to have a house like that because our children are just like us, only maybe a little bit worse. We all live much, much more in our heads and in the ether out there somewhere than in our actual home. I think I am the most homey and I say that knowing full well it is a pathetic statement.

I have a million things I'd rather do than tend my home. I'd rather read a book, take a nap, go for a drive, explore a trail, try a new restaurant, talk to a friend, write anything, volunteer, help a cause....

I am never going to have a house like that because I am who I am and I have chosen my life as I have.

As things stand, I either do it myself or find a new level of income and pay someone.

Except, if I earn more money I'd rather take a trip with my family. I'd rather send my kids to music lessons. I'd rather pay for private school. I'd rather take a class.

I have a million things I -- if I'm honest -- would spend money on than tend my home. If I'm honest, we could -- if our house were a bigger priority -- have saved money to do things for it. Instead, we've spent that money elsewhere, which I think says a lot about our priorities.

We haven't been terribly good, truth be told, accepting this with grace and alacrity. That's because in our area, homes are the priority. We've gotten that message loud and clear our entire lives. We hear it now as people we know renovate, remodel, redecorate and otherwise make their homes very nice.

"Oh we ought to see about doing that," we say to one another, half-heartedly, in that "oh someday we ought to weed the garden" tone of voice. You know the one, the "yeah, it's a should but not ever likely to be a will" tone.

We're always slightly apologetic and occasionally mildly fretful about the state of our home. I do think both of us wish we could do better by it. Sometimes, we'll get aggravated or chastened enough and we'll start saving or making a plan, which we always end up abandoning because something else comes along.

When we recently took a trip, we stayed in a Small House. This is a whole movement, the Small House movement. It's about being green, and lowering our carbon suckage. I liked how do-able that house felt. I have not felt do-able about a house since we lived in a one bedroom apartment, actually.

"I wish we had this house," I said. The family agreed.

That means we want about 800 square feet on a lot of land, with two bedrooms, a loft, one bathroom, and an open kitchen-living-family space. Like a cabin. Little House in the Hill Country.

It could be the inexpensive do-able home base that we returned to from every other place we'd rather be and all the other things we'd rather be doing.

Or not -- maybe we don't really want that. Maybe it just seemed perfect for our vacation.

Mostly, I'd like that grace, that acceptance of this is who we are and this is what we have and we're good with that. We need new floors, if you measure by fancy Jones standards, and new windows. Our cabinets could use freshening.

Instead, my husband is having a holiday with the kids while I go to a conference.

At my age, it seems as if you must let go one by one (or in batches) of things you dreamed of or thought of when you were younger. Many of those things are surprisingly easy to let go of.

With time I expect the rest of these will float away too.

...and that's why it made perfect sense that the cats peed on my business suit.

2009-07-18T10:49:00.011-05:00

They are cute, these kittehs, but I now see that they are all a part of God's plan, my cross to bear, as it were.

As I revealed in my post about how I know I am Chilean, I believe in the fair and equal balance of good and bad, which I hope/believe I can control through the Art of Self-Imposed Minor Suffering.

If I have too good of a day or too much good comes, I'll spend the next day atoning, trying to bring my minor suffering back in line enough to mitigate any additional instances of major suffering. I'll drink my water without ice, and no flavoring of tea. I'll skip eye liner. I'll eat a Weight Watchers frozen meal instead of getting that Schlotzky's sandwich I want. I'll watch Duck Dodgers with the kids.

As soon as good news came down the pipe, I know the bad will, too. I consider myself lucky because the universe likes me balanced in the middle, and I know it could be much worse on the other end.

I could, for example, be the police officer who lost a handcuffed suspect on I-10, I could be the person who found that vicious -ism graffiti at the fire station, or I could have numb thumbs from too much texting.

I don't know why the universe operates this way or why I have been selected for this section of the Bell Curve, although I've made plentiful contributions to the Fair to Middling Writers Fund by purchasing many books with theories.

None of them know, either, but God love them for trying. It gives me hope that they do try.

That same wishful wannabe optimism co-mingled with Chilean POV is why I'm willing to believe in the space elevator but not odorless, trackless kitty litter.

I thought the universe spoke to me this week, actually. Through my purse. Which, when you think about it, is exactly the medium through which the universe ought to speak to a busy on the go woman these days. A burning bush would elicit a quick dial of 9-1-1 on the cell. An old man with long beard who is carrying a rock wold get a cash donation. But talking through a purse? That's a clever, modern God who has caught on to what we'll pay attention to.

It was this past Wednesday afternoon when my purse reached out to me. I was in a rush, hustling from one thing to the next, in crazy heat. My purse---which is really a woman-mom-worker combo case---was heavy, banging against my back. I had the beginnings of a headache, which I counted as my due for having a seriously interesting day.

I'd better get green tea, cold at least, instead of that coffee, I was thinking to myself as I muscled my way through heat so thick it felt like a new heavier gravity. Oh I wanted coffee, how I wanted it. Rich caffeine on ice with fat free soy and a dollop of French vanilla. Grande, of course.

And that's when my purse spoke to me. "Progress report!" it demanded.

Of course, I thought, of course when I have a Divine Amazing Interaction it will be incredibly practical and results oriented.

My steps slowed.

Well I still need to write an article about that health rally on Monday, especially now that I've got those photos. Then there's the article about that sexist cartoon. And schedule the two chats I have in mind. Plus prep for that contract. Oh and call The Client, the One I've Been Needing to Call. Prepare for the kids' birthday party, follow-up on RSVPs. Buy the toys for the party. Promote the circus. Followup on that call. Write two more articles, fulfill volunteer obligations, reach out to those contacts, check on that thing....wow, uh, can you check back later, Demanding Universe?

I stepped inside the Starbucks, expecting a cool blast of air, but found none. I was almost slightly relieved. This practically gave me permission to get the coffee, all things (and balance of suffering) considered.

"Progress report!" my purse demanded again, and this time, the man in line ahead of me whipped around and shot me a look. I gave the startled deer in headlights look and innocent silent shrug. He narrowed his eyes at me, anyway. I now knew, however, that this wasn't all in my mind.

"Just smile and wave, boys, smile and wave," my purse advised.

Now the man's eyes widened. After another look at me, he turned away and edged forward slowly, away from me.

I stuck my hand in my purse and began feeling around as nonchalantly as I could. The demands and advice grew more insistent, "Progress report! Smile and wave! Progress report! Smile and wave!" My hand landed on a small, hard toy. I pulled it out.

A Madagascar 2 Happy Meal Penguin toy.

I pushed the button on its back, "Progress report!" I pushed it again, "Just smile and wave, boys, smile and wave."

"Ohhhhhhhhh," I exhaled in enlightened wonder.

In front of me, the man's shoulders shook a little.

I stuffed the penguin back in my purse, wait, maybe it would keep talking. I pulled it out and inspected it. Ah ha, an off switch. I stuffed the muted penguin back in my purse.

But it's not nice to ignore the universe. It will get your attention, one way or another. And that's why it makes perfect sense that later that night, the cats peed on my business suit.

Her Invented Country, My Invented Country

2009-07-02T08:31:00.006-05:00

I am reading, no, savoring, Isabel Allende's memoir, My Invented Country. I am taking my time with this book, picking up small portions delicately, raising them to my eyes and mind with slow anticipation, chewing and digesting them lingeringly.

Once, I considered myself an avid scholar of the magical realism genre. That was back in my scholar days---the late 80s and early 90s. Gabriel Garcia Marquez was king. I found Allende's House of the Spirits a pale imitation of his work.

Why was magical realism so appealing to me? Nobody ever asked.

However, Allende, in her memoir, has finally answered the question for me: I am a ghost of Chile, wandering the practical world with an imaginative mind fixated in superstition and surprise divined from stockpiles of observation.

Chileans, Allende asserts, offset their superstition, sobriety and natural intolerance with a love of regulation, "I believe this obsession of ours with legality is a kind of safeguard against the aggression we carry inside; without the nightstick of law we would go after one another tooth and claw."

She says the Chilean bureaucracy is a crazy tangle of reel after reel of red tape, "Recently, a busload of us tourists crossing the border between Chile and Argentina had to wait an hour and a half while our documents were checked. getting through the Berlin Wall was easier. Kafka was Chilean."

Chilean, you see, is more than citizenship; it is a frame of mind.

Her memoir is an unraveling of this Chilean frame of mind---a sociological exploration of how such democratically minded people ("We love to vote," Allende writes, "If a dozen kids get together in the schoolyard to play soccer, the first thing they do is write a set of rules and vote for a president, a board of directors, and a treasurer.") who live so precariously amid natural disasters and poverty remain so optimistically and superstitiously hopeful.

She writes, "At heart we know very well that life isn't easy. Ours is a land of earthquakes, why wouldn't we be fatalists? Given the circumstances, we have no choice but to be also a little stoic---though there's no reason to be too dignified about it; we are free to complain all we want."

Chileans, it seems, practically accept the strange and catastrophic, which explains magical realism in so many respects. In a life of such vulnerability to things beyond your control, the best method for explaining reaction is to seek a causal action in yourself.

It explains the reason why Allende's family embraced the Chilean spartan and stoic belief that discomfort is good for one's health. Her grandfather advocated cold showers, lumpy beds and bad shoes and food to ward off tragedies such as cancer.

Bring the bad on yourself, it seems to suggest, and divine intervention will not be compelled to force you to suffer.

I know this mentality well.

One time I heard a performer making a joke about the Latina nerves, "The women in my family have more nerves than women of other races, and they are more active nerves, too. As a result, it seems their nerves are constantly in question or on the verge of collapse."

I know this mentality well, too.

I'm not just enjoying Allende's memoir---which displays a greater gift for narrative, even, above and beyond her fiction, which I have since come to appreciate---I am eternally grateful that she pointed me to my country of soul origin.

She carried her Chilean mindset with her into her new life in the US, and I have apparently carried mine with me into this life. I was never sure about reincarnation or ghosts, but reading this book has convinced me. It is the best explanation.

Allende's house in California was built distressed, she shares, with high open ceilings to provide space for all the ghosts. This makes sense to me. Around me everyone works so hard to keep the old, the ghosts, the past shut out, arming themselves with phrases such as "let it go" and "let sleeping dogs lie."

I, on the other hand, strongly and firmly am convinced that sleeping dogs will eventually wake up, and ghosts will haunt you no matter what, so may as well be ready for when that dog wakes and create space for those ghosts. I believe it is better to work around the spiders and let them go about their business as I go about mine. In Chile, this would make sense. In the US, not so much. It has always given me the sense of being foreign; moving frequently as a child only exacerbated that sense.

Allende talks about being a foreigner and moving often, too:

From the moment we left Chile and began to travel from country to country I became the new girl in the neighborhood, the foreigner at school, the strange one who dressed differently and didn't even know how to talk like everyone else. I couldn't picture the time that I would return to familiar territory in Santiago, but when finally that happened, several years later, I didn't fit in there either, because I'd been away too long. Being a foreigner, as I have been almost forever, means that I have to make a much greater effort than the natives, which has kept me on my toes and forced me to become flexible and adapt to different surroundings. This condition has some advantages for someone who earns her living by observing; nothing seems natural to me, almost everything surprises me.

She finds native status intriguing and attractive and explains this is one of the chief things that pulled her to her husband

He never has any doubt about himself or his circumstances. He has always lived in the same country, he knows how to order from a catalogue, vote by mail, open a bottle of aspirin, and where to call when the kitchen floods. I envy his certainty. he feels totally at home in his body, in his language, in his life. There's a certain freshness and innocence in people who have always lived in one place and can count on witnesses to their passage through the world. In contrast, those of us who have moved on many times develop tough skin out of necessity. Since we lack roots or corroboration of who we are, we must put our trust in memory to give continuity to our lives...but memory is always cloudy, we can't trust it.

Like Allende, I married a native, and a few years ago, after some time in another foreign place, we returned to his place of origin. I, who have no ties to my past, each ribbon severed eventually with each subsequent move---it is too hard to maintain a past life while building a new one, not too mention the space for you closes and everyone is so married to the concept of moving on---remain intrigued that my husband's old piano teacher lives in our neighborhood, we run into his former teachers at restaurants, and a past classmate is his mother's eye doctor. His parents are still married, and until recently, lived in the exact same house my husband grew up in.

I realized our differences on a visit back to his home early in our marriage; he still carried house keys and felt no hesitation about using them to enter his childhood home with no notice. In contrast, I knock on the front door of my parents' homes, places they moved to after I was an adult, and waited permission to enter.

I envy these roots, and do not understand why my husband works so hard to shake and avoid them.

As a result, I can identify with Allende when she says she has absolutely no sense of certainty. I know what she means when she says, "A friend of mine says that we---we Chileans---may be poor, but that we have delicate feet. She's referring, of course, to our unjustified sensitivity, always just beneath the skin, to our solemn pride, to our tendency to become idiotically sober given the slightest opportunity."

When she describes Chile as, ". . .the way a country road might look as night falls, when the long shadows of the poplars trick our vision and the landscape is no more substantial than a dream," I know this place, and have been there.

Allende describes my invented country when she writes about her own.

It's a brilliant tale.

If Hamlet and Ophelia had gotten married, had kids, & moved to the suburbs...

2009-06-08T09:04:00.002-05:00

SCENE I. Elsinore. A platform bed in the master bedroom.

MOM and DAD modestly under covers.

DAD

Who's there?

MOM

Nay, answer me: stand, and unfold yourself.

DAD

'Tis now struck twelve; get thee to bed, child-o.

Exit Child 1

MOM

Well, good night.
If you do hear or see another one,
The rivals of my sleep, bid them make haste.

DAD

I think I hear them. Stand, ho! Who's there?

Enter CHILD 1 and CHILD 2

CHILD 1

Tis us, fair father, Friends to this bed.

CHILD 2

And liegemen to our fair mother, bearer of us and our not so fair antics.

MOM

Give you good night. (to DAD:: And not in our bed, ho!)

DAD

What, has this thing appear'd again to-night?

MOM

I have seen nothing. (to DAD:: Ignore those specters and they shall return from whence they came.)

DAD

Mom says 'tis but my fantasy,
And will not let belief take hold of her
Touching this dreaded sight, twice seen of us:
Therefore I have entreated her along
With us to watch the minutes of this night;
That if again the apparitions come,
They may approve our eyes and speak to it.

MOM

Tush, tush, 'twill not appear.

DAD

Peace, break thee off; look, where it comes again!

MOM

It would be spoke to.

DAD

Question it, Mom.

MOM

What art thou that usurp'st this time of night,
Together with that small and tantrumlike form
In which the majesty of buried restful nights
Did sometimes march? by heaven I charge thee, speak!

DAD

It is offended.

MOM

See, it stalks away! (to DAD: Our work here is done!)

Cars, and trucks, and dirt, and bugs---that's what some little girls like

2009-05-19T18:29:00.012-05:00

My girls are girly girls. They like their dolls, their dresses, their creature comforts. My little one prefers bows in her hair.

But this has never, ever stopped them from reaching out to traditionally "boy" areas of play. One of my favorite photos is of my girls and a couple of friends in princess dress-up costumes paying with Tonka dump trucks outside.

In our backyard, we're creating a natural habitat. We started with the pond and it has grown from there. We're planting ecosystem- and fauna-friendly plants, and trying to make sure our backyard helps the plants and animals we share our space with. This gives our children ample opportunity to delve into the world of bugs, tadpoles to frogs, crawfish (yes!), snakes (yes!) and even some cute mammals such as bunnies, not to mention our bird families.

Overall, I'd say our kids are the normal amount of skeptical reluctance to new things, but their natural curiosity leads them to try anyway, which is our general family rule.

So when we got invited to a promotional party at Ridemakerz, I was a little put off by the big focus on boys, even though I understood why it was specifically reaching out to boys. Making a car sounded wicked cool to me, even better than stuffing some bear (although my kids are huge fans of Build-A-Bear).

I RSVP'd my yes, and we went.

Hoo boy.

The party was on Sunday and my kids have not stopped with the cars since. First, they had a BLAST choosing from the umpteen million (technical number I hear is 70) body styles. Then they loved getting to choose which tires and rims, but wait, it gets better...then they found the stickers to decorate the car with and the blinged out accessories and went crazy. The guy who helped us was good about explaining the car parts---my girls now know what a chassis is!---and showing the girls how to put the car together all by themselves.

Since coming home with the cars, the kids have played with their Ridemakerz car in our cul-de-sac every day---which requires borrowing Mom's and Dad's cars for friends. I asked my kids about their favorite part and both said "making the car," which, after some investigation, meant "applying power tools to the assembly of the car."

That's my grrlz, all about the Power Toolz!

Now they want their own Power Toolz.

They got to register their car on a computer, get a certificate, and even create custom license plates.
My husband was impressed that they only offered American car models, but I think he was trying to sound smart and adult because I know what he really liked was (other than the whole thing) choosing the accessories (is there a more technical term for those spoilers, bumpers, running boards, etc?) because he loitered there the longest.

My only complaints here is that our lives now revolve around their Hot New Cars, we have to play Name My Car while we drive (and I really suck at that game, just ask my brother), and they overheard our Ridemakerz guy tell us we can bring our cars back in to redecorate them.

Can we say Ridemakerz Addictz?

I can't explain to you why I feel better about watching my kids play with their cars, or why I like Ridemakerz better than the alternative. Maybe it's a relief to know we haven't locked our kids into stereotyped gender roles. Maybe it's good to know that remote controlled toys don't intimidate them, or they didn't even notice the store was geared to boys (the younger is very sensitive about that). Maybe I'm glad that even though Persistence chose the hot pink car, she chose it not because it was girly but because, "It looks fast!" Maybe it's because Patience chose a mini-Cooper in blue.

I think it's all of these. I just feel good to see my girls have fun, show confidence in slightly complicated toys that take tools (they just do it, no hesitation), and not even hesitate or consider that they are treading into an area girls were basically banned from when I grew up (not that this stopped either of my parents---especially my dad, who, as a race car driver on the side, was very into all things car).

But truthfully, it might be that I think it was way more wicked cool than almost anything we've done and it does my heart good to see my kids and their dad having equal levels of fun playing.

Ridemakerz has stores, a Web site, and lots of data about all the types of cars they offer, and ways to use them. You can check the Ridemakerz Web site for the details.

Right now I'm too busy planning two Ridemakerz party. Yes, you heard me. My kids decided that's the party they want this year. I'm also taking the gift card Ridemakerz gave me and putting it towards a party for the members of my mom's club. I want to give back to this great group of women but it's also selfish---now my kidz can meet their kidz in the cul-de-sac and they can all play with their own carz and leave mine alone!

Women with Big Dogs (and infertility)

2009-05-07T10:08:00.013-05:00

My husband and I were turning thirty. We'd been married for five years or so and the families had the grandchild bug bad. Both of our sisters had recently presented the Most Perfect Precious little baby girls ever born, and our parents figured, based on our niece's extreme level of adorable and intelligent, that their children (meaning us) were capable of producing wonderful babies, the best kind of baby: the sort who does cute and then goes home with their parents. Everyone loves a child whose diaper, feeding, and crying all night is not their problem.

Until you actually become a parent, you really have no idea how much work the care and feeding of a baby will seem like to you. Every parent has a big job ahead of him and her, but some of us are lazier and more self-indulgent than others.

But you never know that, really, before.

So, one day, after caring for our two nieces---at the same time---we figured we were ready for kids.

What's the saying? God laughs at those who make plans. Well, His stomach must have been awfully sore at each and every thought of us.

Let's have a baby, we said to each other, rather smugly and self-congratulatorily.

This is how it works, and I know this is fact because the very gruff and red-faced assistant football coach told me so in high school health class (as if we hadn't wondered about sex well before that sophomore year): if you have sex, you get pregnant.

Just like that.

Barring getting pregnant, you get a disease, a terrible one that makes all your limbs fall off and your brain rot---after you go crazy because you aren't emotionally ready. Or God smites you with a bolt of lightning or a crazed mask wearing killer gets you while you are creeping, in a short t-shirt, down a darkened hallway.

And you should hope for one of the last two cases because having a baby as a teen or getting a sexually transmitted disease as a teen is the very worst thing that could ever happen to you in your life and your entire life is down the toilet, forevermore. Caw Caw.

It should be no wonder, then, that an entire generation of people waited until 35 on average to have children, if they escaped the Health Ed Coach's Curse, that is.

We all understood, from our divorced Boomer parents and our teachers, that becoming a parent ruins your life in horrible, horrible ways.

Nevertheless, as we transitioned from the "Teen, Take 2" Twenties into the "It's About Damn Time You Two Settled Down and Grew Up" Thirties, we forgot those lessons in the face of the beautiful reality of parenthood.

We wanted in to the club.

Unfortunately, our application? Was denied.

After the first year of Trying To Conceive (this is the official title of that phase, I know because iVillage says so)---arguably my husband's favorite part of our marriage ever---we started thinking, umm, maybe the coach got it wrong.

Meanwhile, everyone around us wondered if we got it wrong.

"How are you doing it?" someone asked me once. "Maybe you're doing it wrong," someone else said to me.

I'm not kidding. I am completely incapable of making up the ridiculous on the fly.

Then other people told us we needed to relax, take a vacation, quit thinking about it, use a pillow, and other graphic suggestions that really? I have a right to not know they know.

Infertility gave us our first inkling that parenting may not necessarily take a village, but the village doesn't know that. They all think it's all their business.

Infertility also gave us the skill of positive redirection. My husband and I both became workaholics. By God, maybe I couldn't produce a baby but I would produce three of the top ten bestsellers for my publishing company that year. My husband decided to become a bi-continent worker.

And we got a dog.

A puppy, actually. A round, roly, lovely chocolate Lab puppy.

As we waited for our puppy to reach the magical "ready to be adopted" age, we shared with family and friends that we'd have a dog soon. We were so happy to have good news to share, about an expectant event. Our friends and family were so happy to have good news to express joy over, about an expectant event. We were very pleased with ourselves, and everyone relished the break in the "no news is bad news" phase we'd been loitering for a few years too long.

Except one person: my friend Cate was appalled.

"Tell me you did not get that dog in place of a child," she said.

"Don't all people get pets in place of children?" I asked, "I mean, in suburban middle-class America, where dogs just are, versus other places where they have an actual function other than sponge to soak up family's affection and spoiling?"

"We're going to the lake," Cate said, "You need to see what life with a dog really is."

Cate meant Lake Winnapausakee, otherwise known as Golden Pond. We'd spend a nice long weekend enjoying the beauty of the lake and soaking up sun, but first, we had to drop by her in-laws for a visit.

As Cate's little station wagon---her two dogs in the back, my husband in the middle, and me up front---jounced along the unpaved long drive to the house, Cate said, "Okay, we need to get our stories straight."

"Our stories?" I asked.

"Yes, how we met," she said.

"Umm, we met in the infertility group," I said.

"Yes, but we can never, ever say that," Cate said.

Cate was openly gay, living in a long-term committed relationship with her partner. They were both honest with their families, friends, neighbors, and everyone who knew them.

But we had to hide our infertility.

She was willing to let everyone know about her homosexuality, with pride.

But infertility? Needed to stay a dirty little secret.

That's what it was.

And that's how it felt.

Like a secret shame.

Shame and dirty little secrets lead to lies.

So we lied. I'm a horrible, horrible liar. I blushed, stammered and nearly blew it. But we got our "story" straight.

No pun intended.

But it's a fact: the infertile are defective.

We are also screwed.

No pun intended.

After the second year of infertility, when the doctor said something about anovulatory, I had this flash where I thought, "Oh, my gosh, all that wasted opportunity!" I thought back on high school and college. Then I thought about the bottom line. "Oh NO! All that money spent on birth control! I could have a second house in the mountains of France by now!"

We are also the ones who break all the comfortable little maxims.

This makes people angry at us, at least I think so. People don't like to be troubled with other people's troubles, other people's long-term grief. They don't like it when bad things happen to good people because it makes them ask too many questions of themselves and their beliefs. They don't like long-term support. They get impatient for you to wrap up your problem and tie it off with a nice bow, stick a card on it that says "Finally Finished! And moving on, back to Normal!"

Before that though, they get impatient and angry with you. You can tell when people hit this state because they start with pat answers to you when you talk to them.

"Maybe it's not meant to be."
"God must have another plan for you."
"There are millions of children who need good homes, you should foster or adopt."
"You should get a dog."

Sometimes it takes people five minutes, other times they can hang in for years, but then drop off.

In the end, though, we got lucky. We lived in Massachusetts, which happens to be a state that believes access to health care, for any and all health woes, is a right. The great and mighty Commonwealth of Massachusetts provided us full access to the highest quality reproductive endocrinology available.

That's why I say my daughters were gifted to us by the state of Massachusetts.

People always want to hear my birth story. Less and less now, as the kids are older, but it still comes up.

It's sort of like people wanting to know how my husband and I met. It's a cute story: we met in our astronomy class the first semester of my freshman year of college.

That's just a pat one-liner. the real story is much more complicated (and in my mind, more entertaining, because it involves Mardi Gras, a drunk guy I ran into on Bourbon Street who I'd known since childhood, Tulane Law School parties, that guy from Brandeis, and Robert Goulet.)

But nobody ever asks about that part, you know the part that answers this question: how in the world have you two been together for so long, and married for sixteen years?

(Or better yet: Robert Goulet? How long ago were you in college, exactly?)

But that's always the real story.

I can't tell the birth story without choking back the real story, the one that answers the real question: how did you become a mother? Because the birth story is completely not the answer to that.

Also, actually, in some way, I hate my birth stories. The first one was remarkably hard, and I thought I might die. That part I didn't care about, because then I thought my baby might die and it would be all my fault. I failed at the getting pregnant right part, and now I was failing at the giving birth right part.

But I was lucky. All through my pregnancy I'd had excellent health care. I was Mature (which is code for "over thirty first time mom"), married, solid income, a house, health insurance, and access to a great system that was the exact model President Obama wants all over the country: completely high-tech and computerized and interconnected. Let me tell you? It works, great.

You want it---truly you do, and I don't care what political party you vote for. You want that health care, even more than you want a new ultra light and thin plasma TV. Or that house in the mountains of France.

Because of that health care, I got pregnant. Because of that health care, we saved that pregnancy. Twice. Because of that health care, we saved me, once. Because of that health care, my baby was born healthy and fine. because of that health care, my baby was cared for after birth as she needed to be.

Because of that health care, I had weekly nurse support for a full year after I gave birth. Because of that health care, I was a better mom, and less women had post-partum physical and emotional issues.

Because of that health care, I got pregnant again.

That's a really funny story.

But you can't hear it right now.

Instead I'm going to tell you that during that pregnancy we moved to Texas, where I no longer had access to that health care.

First, in Texas, the insurance company got to exclude my pregnancy and offer no prenatal or postnatal care at all.

When we were finally able to close our jaws after that shock, we checked costs, and found it was cheaper to pay for COBRA to maintain our Massachusetts health care, than to pay out of pocket.

If any of you know about COBRA, you should now be mouth agape.

We were glad we kept our insurance, though, because then I had trouble in that pregnancy and had to be hospitalized, and then put on bedrest.

Imagine paying for that out of pocket.

Instead of choosing whether or not to get the best care for me and the baby, based on what we could afford, we just did the best thing we needed to do in order to preserve my health and the baby's life.

I can't even imagine where our family would be if we had not had that health care. We'd probably be a family of three instead fo four, and we'd probably be living with relatives because we probably would have had to sell our house to pay for medical debt.

This morning, as I did my laps, I thought about my story, and its other possible outcomes. Despite the 80 degree heat and 84% humidity, I felt chilled.

We were so, so lucky. We were lucky to live in Massachusetts where we got great health care. I didn't know anyone who had troubles or complained about health care, because everyone had access to it there.

We were lucky we could keep that health coverage when we moved to Texas. Here, everyone complains about health care. Here, I hear about troubles with access to health care.

Lives hang in the balance. This isn't about entitlement or pull yourself up by your bootstraps. This is about women and children, and little babies. Babies who were made and are coming and deserve the very best chance available.

My babies did, and I am thankful every day for it.

That weekend at Lake Winnipesaukee, I convinced Cate that I was a woman worthy of a big dog. The truth is, everyone who is going to have a child should get an audition weekend like Cate gave us for the dog.

I proved I could hide pills in peanut butter, remember the care and feeding instructions, and throw a ball out in the water for fetch.

Luckily I still retain those skills.

I earned my big dog, and my status as dog mom, and I earned my babies, and my status as human mom.

But you don't know that---my whole story. You don't know how or why I am a woman with a big dog going in laps on a track. Or how I became a woman with two girls in the back seat of my car.

And if you ask, for my birth or "coming into motherhood" story, what you probably really want is a magical realism description of that moment when I first held my baby.

You don't want to hear about the infertility, the challenges in my pregnancies, the hard labor, or how access to good health care saved our lives.

But that's the real story---and it is the one that spotlights the making of me as a mother. It is the one that shines the light on how essential it is that all women have access to what I had.

Join MOMocrats as we support the White Ribbon Alliance's efforts to help save mothers and babies through access to health care with their "Every Day is Mother's Day" campaign.

Write your own post, and we'll do a link love post on Mother's Day at MOMocrats.

FREE! A GIVEAWAY! And if you comment here, I'll enter your name in a drawing for a brand new DVD of Dog Days of Summer, which has been called a "brilliant film" that is a "tense Southern Gothic slice of literature."

And all that's best of dark and bright, Meet in her aspect and her eyes

2009-05-06T11:18:00.007-05:00

She gets angry, oh so angry. She is kicking the table legs, throwing sand on the playground, staring you in the eye as she defies directions. She swishes her head away and up in the air, with a big "Humph!" and crossing of her arms to add an exclamation point to the end of a sentence that is already exclamatory enough. Her tone starts at whiny and ends at petulant. Her joy is the exception now, rather than the rule. For some reason, her world infuriates her, all the time. Calm is a fighting word. Even when she is laughing or happy, it is more of a defiantly triumphant pleasure than pure joy.

The people around her who care are perplexed, and out of patience. There is always something, and it is always making her oh-so-unhappy.

We think if only we knew what it was, we could fix it.

But what we do know is love, and this we give freely, sometimes with patience, sometimes with impatience. But if we offer it, love and calm, like stroking a frightened upset animal, it will eventually settle on her, a mantle of sorts, maybe temporary, maybe more.

I always believe that in the end persistence is pervasive, which can be a very good thing, because the ideal is that the love and calm overcomes the fury. And we see once again the bright shining well past the darkness, so that is what you see first and last and most.

In the battle of the sexes, I side with backpack wielding little girls

2009-04-24T16:14:00.008-05:00

It's a savannah out there.
I was sitting in my car, by the curb, waiting for my daughter to come down the path. School was out, it's Friday, and children ran as fast as they could---not so much away from school as towards freedom.

But one pair sprinted past the rest. A girl chasing a boy. In early elementary school, and often, all through it (back in my day, anyway) it always was the girls chasing the boys. My husband swears it was the other way around. But as I recall, boys would run up, tease, and run off, with a backward glance that begged, "Chase me!"

And we did. Usually laughing. Usually.

I knew both of the children. She's a first grader on my daughter's soccer team, and he's a neighborhood second grader. The girl had an uncharacteristically intense face. Normally she has a huge smile as she runs towards after school freedom, but today her face was pinched in a concentrated frown.

The boy? He appeared to be running for his life. He spotted a tree and clumsily hefted himself up into it, as high as he could, as fast as he could.

Without a sound, the girl flung her backpack up and whacked the boy on his rear end, which dangled over the tree limb that was his perch. She yelled something, and the boy shook his head. WHACK! went the backpack again. She appeared to repeat herself, the boy refused to look down. WHACK! WHACK! WHACK! went the backpack wielded by a girl who, by all appearances, was actually angry.

Suddenly, I recalled that sometimes, when chasing a boy, that burn in my chest wasn't just from my lungs working hard in the endless rapid circling of the playground. Sometimes that burn was anger.

Sometimes boys went too far in their taunting and teasing and stepped on the girls' pride.

You could tell the ones who wouldn't take it, would never take it. Their faces, as they chased the boys, read clearly, "You're going downtown Buster Brown!" They weren't giggling. I recall pinning a boy, who a moment before had been laughing, thinking his taunt hilarious, until I actually, fueled by a burst of fury, caught him, and knocked him to the ground.

My knee in his chest I said, "Take it back! I mean it, take it back forever!"

"Okay, okay, I take it back I take it back!" he cried in surrender.

"That will teach you!" I said with a humph, marching back to my girlfriends.

I watched that little seven year old girl giving the little eight year old boy the whatfor, and I thought, "That is awesome."

I really, really did. Make of it what you will, but it makes me warm and fuzzy inside to see little girls not taking it from little boys.

That's because I know in a few years, before they even leave elementary school, the boys, physically progressed beyond their emotional maturity perhaps, will continue those taunts, and if girls don't fight back, they'll never learn that you catch more flies with honey than vinegar, and they'll think it's okay. They'll draw around them girls who twitter and giggle instead of twisting their noses, hard, like they should when boys are cruel to them. The boys will develop a sense of entitlement to taking from and treating girls any way they like.

We think as parents that we teach our children how to be, but we must also accept just how very much outside society---mostly of their peers--shapes them too.

When I thought harder, the boy I chased and knocked down hadn't insulted me at all, but had instead insulted my best friend, who cried in response. I was avenging her honor, with more verve than I might have done for myself.

I suppose, on some level, I should have thought that the girl beating the boy with her backpack was doing something wrong, and maybe I ought to have hopped out of my car and stopped it. But in truth, I know the kids, he probably teased, and she was probably defending her honor. It seemed like kids learning to work it out for themselves. I was quite sure it would get worked out, and they'd be play buddies again before we knew it. It's important to draw boundaries and ask others to respect them, and this is how children do it. Sure, sure, we parents work to teach them other, better ways, but their peers must teach them, too. That lesson is essential.

And I know little girls are told too frequently too often in too many ways to be quiet and take it.

So I sat in my car, watched her teach him a lesson, and hoped she learned one too---a good one, one in which defending her honor was fine, being angry when taunted was fine, and not taking it from boys was exactly the way she ought to live her life.

Side note: Lest anyone feel defensive about boys, the other side of the story, how girls treat boys, etc, relax. This is, in fact, just one side of the coin, but it is a true side, and I, a girl, am most concerned with this side as I raise my girls.

How to be a Hero instead of a Zero (in your kids' eyes)

2009-04-21T06:44:00.014-05:00

It's easy: take the kids to Disney on Ice: Mickey and Minnie's Magical Journey!

Sit very close to the action:

Where the kids get to see live action Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, and Donald and Daisy Duck.

Then have a lot of awesome segments of the kids favorite Disney shows from Lion King...

to Little Mermaid...

to a brief moment of Mary Poppins with quick segue to Peter Pan, where you have some BIG awesome skating numbers including flying and Tinker Bell...

Catch a PRICELESS video moment of your enraptured and joyful kids clapping enthusiastically to wake up Tinker Bell (then taunt the Webz with it by not showing it because well, it's your kids faces)...

Include an adorable segment with Lilo and Stitch, including a rocket ship and incredible alien costumes (sorry, was too enthralled to remember to take photos!)...

Then wrap up with a HUGE exciting number where all the skaters come out as the favorite characters...

Take them out for ice cream afterward and you just might get, "This is exactly the type of day a kid loves, Mom!"

Breastfeeding is like five whole minutes of your life, total...so to speak

2009-04-13T14:48:00.023-05:00

Hi.

I'm speaking from the position of a person with two kids. Not babies, kids. And trust me, that makes a difference.

While they still need us on a daily basis in many ways, our kids don't need us on a minute basis.

In general, that means things such as

if a kid is thirsty, I can say, "Hey you know where the cups and water are..."
if a kid is hungry, I can say, "Hey, grab a cheese stick or apple."
if a kid wakes up before sunrise on a Saturday I can say, "Hey, go play in the playroom."
if a kid is bored I can say, "Hey, go knock next door and see if your friend can play."

Do you see a theme? I have more space, more choice. My kids are fairly independent, and I can baby them, or not. But they do still need me, and parent is still my number one job.

Recently, there has been some hoopla about a couple of articles that were semi to very critical about breastfeeding and its antifeminist yoke. I've read several bloggy responses, comments to those, and the original articles in question (Judith Warner's latest blog post at the New York Times talking about banning the breast pump and Hanna Rosin's Atlantic article about the case against breast feeding).

Do you want to know what I think? I think it's much ado.

When I first had my first baby, I joined a great mom's support group. People razz Massachusetts but seriously, it's a great state. It gets an awful lot right, including healthcare, which I still miss. Part of the service to new moms was a free, nurse-lead support group once a week. For the entire first year of your child's life.

I can't possibly express how very valuable that was, but I expect you can guess.

I promise it made all of our lives that much better. Every single place should offer that exact program.

But the very best thing about that group is the timeline the nurse drew.

One day all of us new moms were having a good, old-fashioned feel sorry for ourselves vent. We felt overwhelmed, we felt too taxed. We felt touched out, exhausted, done in. Our bodies felt off-kilter, our backs ached from carrying big diaper bags and babies. We felt drowned.

"Of course you feel that way," the kindly nurse said understandingly, "This is taxing, it's exhausting. You are done in. But let me show you this."

After agreeing that the average age of the group was about 32, she drew a line, marking off certain life highlights---first day of school (A), high school graduation (B), becoming a mother (I).

"Here's what you don't know yet," the nurse said, "But I do, because my kids are grown and I have grandchildren now." She added two lines like this:

A---------B----------II---J----------------------------------------------------

and in between those two close together lines (I) that? That is how long your baby is a needy little baby.

J marks the spot when you----rather than your baby---are begging for your offspring's attention and affection. The rest? is the rest of your life (God willing).

Do you see much space between the two Is? That's right---not much; it's a blip.

Do you see how quickly J comes? That's right: fast.

It can feel like forever, at the time. You can think it's going to kill you, at the time. You can think you'll never be a real person with a real life again.

I lived through that baby period (I), twice. I know how it kicks your rear end. I know how it takes all of you, physically, mentally and emotionally, and then demands more. I know you cry Uncle (or just cry period) and wish for your own Mommy.

I also now know that nurse was right: it's a blip.

My kids have no round left on them; they are all length and angles. Cribs, sippy cups, toddler beds, four outfits a day, bottles, special baby food, and all the accouterments of infancy and early toddlerhood are finished and gone.

But guess what?

I'm still a mom.

I still have to work out how to work, live and play without shirking my parental duties, which, for the record, are in play for the remainder of our lives.

So while these moms sit and kvetch about the "unnatural antifeminist oppression" that breastfeeding is, I will pause and wonder just how oppressive they find the rest of parenting---and if that doesn't trouble them, then I will wonder just what it is about using one's body to nourish one's child that is so deeply, inherently submersive and subversive for them.

I'm going to guess it's a matter of perspective. Or possibly lack thereof.

The timeline is a tough concept when you are mired in the midst of the Is, but keeping it in mind can help, does help, as does a sort of Zen acceptance of, "This is now, and this too shall pass."

Breastfeeding is a matter of months, literally. I know very few people who go past 36 months, and let's be honest, we all count in months until after 3, don't we? So months. Breastfeeding is a matter of months.

If these women feel oppressed and tied-down and suppressed as strong women from the few months dedicated to breastfeeding---then how in the world will they ever reconcile the lifetime duty and obligation we take on for our children when we become mothers? The compromise, the sacrifice we are obligated to make at times, sometimes too frequently for our comfort?

And that's what it is really about, you know?

When we engage in a lifetime partnership with another person, to some degree, we begin living our lives for that person. When we become parents, to an even larger degree, we begin living for those people, these people, our children.

And, somehow, we must balance that with living for ourselves. It's a condition of humanity. It really, really is. Whether you ever become a parent (or not), unless you are an absolute hermit, in some way you must balance living for yourselves with living for and with others.

If you do become a parent, that doesn't end when we wean a nursing infant, whether it's done from the breast or from a bottle.

I breastfed, a number of my mom friends did too, and a number did not. It seemed split fairly down the middle, to the best of my recollection. I could not have cared less what the other mothers did; I was too busy trying to do my own thing. But, it seems that there were freedoms and limitations to both breastfeeding and formula feeding.

For example, you know how mindless you can be when you are sleep-deprived and a new mom. If I left the house with just me and my baby? We were fine for the short period of time we could be out, you know, diaper and nap time and good humor span considered (all of which factors are relevant regardless of feeding method). If my friends did the same, they had to go back home to get the bottle, formula and water.

If my friends wanted to get away by themselves for a while, it was no problem usually; they could leave the baby with a sitter and a bottle of formula. That is, if the baby would eat from another person other than mom. And guess what? Sometimes? A baby won't.

I could do the same, but only for as long as my pain point of engorgement could stand it. I left bottles behind, too. So usually my baby and whoever cared for her was fine; it was just me.

But I found, when out for Mom's night out with fellow moms---and I did go out; I appreciated, courtesy no doubt of our support class, a culture that encouraged us moms to nurture ourselves, too--- we all had a sort of "time limit" out and it seemed to be about the same length, regardless of whether we were engorged or just tired or simply ready to be home with our babies.

What I'm really saying, I guess, is that the obligation to the baby really wasn't due to or freed from based on whether we breastfed or bottle fed. I did not personally notice a big difference in lifestyle.

Maybe it's mental---and that's a fair qualifier for deciding between breast or formula, because an okay mom is a better mom.

Me? I consider myself a slacker sort of person, in a way. I like to achieve maximum efficacy with minimum effort. For me, that was breastfeeding. It spoke to all of my needs and wants. For other moms, it's better to formula feed.

It is what it is.

At McDonalds today, half a dozen four year olds ran like wolves. I couldn't say who got breast and who got Similac. I also couldn't say who co-slept, who did not, who was sleep trained, who was not, who had a pacifier, who did not, and so forth. The children appeared happy, healthy and nurtured and I doubt a single one of them had the exact same infancy as another.

At the elementary school today, fifty seven year olds ran like wolves. I can't tell you what sort of infancy any of them had, either.

I stood to the side with the teachers, also moms. Although I can't tell you what their early days with their babies was like, in terms of specifically what they chose to do or not do. However, I'm sure I could tell you in general what the experience was like: simultaneously empowering and take you down to your knees like. That seems to be universal.

But today, the kids ran madly and happily, and the women, all of us working, stood on the side and had intelligent cogent conversation about things.

Breastfeeding, bottle feeding, pacifiers, sleep training and all the weighty decisions of infancy are a phase for you and your baby.

Those will give way to other weighty matters, such as "my kid is six and not reading yet, is this an issue?" and "oh no Mean Girls!" and "Gifted and Talented: to test or not to test" and "ballet and soccer, just enough extracurricular activity or too much?" and "holy crap are we saving for college yet?" and so forth.

If you feel so oppressed by the charge of feeding your child that you make it a Big Fat Political Issue on Par with Lack of Fair Pay and Piss Poor Family Leave protection...let me assure you that the ONE THING that never changes is hungry offspring demanding food and weighty parenting challenges. The issues change and kids get more independent...but they will always demand nourishment in some way.

If nourishing a child is oppressive to the level of being felt as anti-feminist to you, then I don't know...maybe it's not for you.

And that's fine.

That's what feminism is: choice for us as women, freedom to choose.

Yeah, there is the common choice, the popular choice, the choice generally regarded as ideal and bucking that method is sometimes tough, but if you're happy with the choice you made you should sit within satisfaction in that, okay?

The rest of us are probably way too self-absorbed and mired in our own choices to be spending much time judging you and yours.

And if not? Oh well.

It truly, truly is like the the quote from Hamlet that I used in my last post says:

"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."
William Shakespeare, "Hamlet", Act 2 scene 2

Oh yes, easier said than done, trust me, I know.

But how much wiser we can be in our reconciliation if we know and accept that, I truly believe.

A Friendly Word

2009-04-06T10:29:00.016-05:00

Oh they are great and wide, these swaths of our minds and imaginations. We think, sometimes, that what we know and experience is the sum total of the world, that it is what we think it is---when we are deciding things. When we are figuring out things. When we are determining.

If you ever asked us, I think most of us, well, the ones I know anyway (just proving my point) would acknowledge a broader understanding of a Hamletesque world.

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
William Shakespeare, "Hamlet", Act 1 scene 5

The other Hamletesque point I'd like to make might surprise you:

"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."
William Shakespeare, "Hamlet", Act 2 scene 2

Thinking, hmm, is that the real problem? Or is it the underlying assumptions we make about events and people that is the real problem?

"I hate her! She's a mean girl!" my daughter said, very angrily, the other day.

"Is she mean, really, all the way through her heart?" I asked, "Is this really about her, or is it about you? Mean is a pretty serious accusation. Let's talk about what happened to make you say this, and figure out what's what here."

As we delved into the event, I came to understand that what had happened was that a friend had hurt my daughter's feelings. In struggling to deal and understand, my daughter slunk home in anger and despair. By the time she arrived home, her mind had firmly fixated on the idea that she was the poor put-upon child harassed by a mean friend. The offending incident? My daughter, arriving later at the friend's because we'd run errands, was initially not included in the game that had already started. She'd lashed out, then was told that she could never play.

Her entire world suddenly centered on that one event, and it was the new outcome of her entire life.

"Shhhhh," I said, "Listen, do you hear the birds, look, see the cardinals at the feeder?" She sat on my lap, something she can still do at this age. I stroked her hair.

When her heart and mind slowed a bit, we talked about how in every angry situation and fight between people, everyone contributes something. We talked about feelings, and how feelings can seem like thoughts, but aren't really.

My feelings get hurt, too, when I feel left out, I told her. Sometimes when a friend leaves me out a lot, I think that friend is mean and doesn't like me anymore, and I feel sad. And when I act on that, I usually regret it, but then I don't know how to undo it, if I even can. That's because those were times when I let my feelings be my thoughts.

Ego. Pride. These are the things that always get in the way.

When we create expectations of others in our heads, then sit back and wait for them to fulfill our desire of them, we have created a path to failure.

"What did you picture in your head," I asked my daughter, "When you went to your friend's house?"

"That we would play and have fun!"

"That's reasonable, but then that didn't happen, so..."

"I got mad! She should have let me play!"

"Hmm," I said, thinking. I have become ambivalent lately, or maybe I mean confused, about this overarching expectation of all inclusivity all the time. I am weighing the issue. What is our obligation to one another? What about when our own needs conflict with a friend's? Is it a clear right and wrong?

I thought about a string of comments I'd heard recently from friends, expressing disappointment and displeasure in friends who had not met expectation. Friends who were, the upset person threatened, on the verge of being reclassified as "not friends." If they didn't shape up. By which, I assume they mean, become who that person needs and wants them to be, on some level, to some degree.

Each time I hear this I think, oh dear. Yes, just that articulately.

I think we are on guard, vigilant really, for a terrorist in our own lives. The Disappointing Friend. People make a living writing and speaking about Toxic People in our Lives. Are we unhappy? Who is it, exactly, that is poisoning us to be unhappy?

Maybe the real question is what is poisoning us. Maybe Shakespeare had it, back when he said hundreds of years ago through Hamlet---the ultimate poisoner in a way, the archetypical self-absorbed character who could be classified as Toxic Friend, and yet who, usually, we sympathize with and feel empathy for, largely because he speaks so truly---that thinking is the bane of our existence. Thinking, by which I assume he meant, really, assuming and expecting.

I say this because the full exchange between Hamlet and Rosencrantz includes Rosencrantz retorting to Hamlet's observation, "Why then, your ambition makes it one; 'tis too narrow for your mind."

More specifically, Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2:

HAMLET
243 Denmark's a prison.
ROSENCRANTZ
244 Then is the world one.
HAMLET
245 A goodly one, in which there are many confines,
246 wards and dungeons, Denmark being one o' the
247 worst.
ROSENCRANTZ
248 We think not so, my lord.
HAMLET
249 Why, then, 'tis none to you; for there is nothing
250 either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. To me
251 it is a prison.
ROSENCRANTZ
252 Why then, your ambition makes it one; 'tis too
253 narrow for your mind.

Do we, with our words and expectations, lay confines, wards, and dungeons for others? And, therefore, for ourselves? Simply by thinking it so?

"I think maybe that 'playing together' should be the hope rather than the plan..."

My daughter stared at me, confused.

"I mean, maybe next time she says you can't play, maybe you ask her why not, and ask her when you can, or you step back and watch a minute, and think of a way you can fit in to the game," I said.

My daughter's mind worked.

"They were playing pet shop," she said, "But only had three cages. That's why I couldn't play."

Therein lay the key to release from the dungeon, the opening of the confined mind.

"Have we got something here you can take to build a cage, so you can be a pet in the pet shop?"

Her brow furrowed.

"What are the others using?"

"Beach towels."

"Ahh," I said, "Well we have plenty of those."

Ask next time, I had said to her. Communicate. Step back. Think. Find a way. Release from the confines of a narrow ambition. Can we, the adults, do that?

Doesn't take much to make me happy and make me smile

2009-04-03T09:02:00.006-05:00

I am driving in my car, with the windows down because it is a beautiful day and I don't care if the wind messes my hair. It is sunny and 60, my favorite. The sky is an even blue sheet above me, and the road is a blur below me. Lily Allen is singing "Smile" on my iPod and I do, because I am old enough to know it is complicated, how she means it, not ironic. That's what we do: we just smile. Plus it's a pleasant and light tune.

I'm still in my workout clothes, fresh from the track and my laps. I sped along that track, relishing the fresh laid gravel, still damp from yesterday's rain, so the dust and pebbles didn't kick up so much. I circled past the sea twinkling back at the sun, over and over. I watched seagulls and pelicans fish the schools who risked the surface to catch some of that warm shine for themselves. The huge birds dove, scooped, then rose---the only white specks in the otherwise spotless sky. Triumphant, they tickled their full bellies along the tops of the tall wetlands grasses that grow out from the coastline. After my laps, I did a cool down walk, circling the trees and hibiscus bushes, and I wondered if I looked to some creature the way the birds looked to me.

In my car, I am less a part of the ground and more a part of the air. I am dog happy with the breeze in my face. Now Lynard Skynard is singing about Alabama, and I think about the South in the Spring and feel a little sorry for my Northern friends. Spring comes early and stays a while, late even this year. It smells different, damply verdant today thanks to the welcome rain yesterday. A front from the west temporarily pushed the humidity out to sea, so it is perfect, perfect today. And that makes me smile. Although sometimes it is hard to come by, it doesn't take much to make me happy.

Just watch this joy:

Julie Pippert: Using My Words

How the holidays fill me with loads of hope

Someone's in the kitchen with...KIDS! And it's called Kinderkitchen by Kuhn Rikon

Bitten tongue

Perfected art of dehumanizing

A Whale of a Great Slumber Party at SeaWorld

100 Years of Magic -- Cute Costumed Kids Included

This is a sincere promo post about Disney on Ice

There are worse things I could do

Imagine all the people...celebrating more birthdays

The American People in their Righteous Might*

Anger in another language

Other People and Their Stories

Why Playing the Whore Card in Reference to Mombloggers is So Not Cool

Acceptance...sort of

...and that's why it made perfect sense that the cats peed on my business suit.

Her Invented Country, My Invented Country

If Hamlet and Ophelia had gotten married, had kids, & moved to the suburbs...

SCENE I. Elsinore. A platform bed in the master bedroom.

Cars, and trucks, and dirt, and bugs---that's what some little girls like

Women with Big Dogs (and infertility)

And all that's best of dark and bright, Meet in her aspect and her eyes

In the battle of the sexes, I side with backpack wielding little girls

How to be a Hero instead of a Zero (in your kids' eyes)

Breastfeeding is like five whole minutes of your life, total...so to speak

A Friendly Word

Doesn't take much to make me happy and make me smile