Her Invented Country, My Invented Country
Thursday, July 02, 2009

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.

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If Hamlet and Ophelia had gotten married, had kids, & moved to the suburbs...
Monday, June 08, 2009

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!)

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Cars, and trucks, and dirt, and bugs---that's what some little girls like
Tuesday, May 19, 2009

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!

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Women with Big Dogs (and infertility)
Thursday, May 07, 2009

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."

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And all that's best of dark and bright, Meet in her aspect and her eyes
Wednesday, May 06, 2009

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.

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In the battle of the sexes, I side with backpack wielding little girls
Friday, April 24, 2009

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.

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How to be a Hero instead of a Zero (in your kids' eyes)
Tuesday, April 21, 2009

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!"

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